“Those that make test scores and grades the heart of education hit their targets while entirely missing the point.” – Joe Bower
More on the Common Core!
This last week the California legislature voted to suspend standardized testing for all public school students for the 2013-14 year. (Here’s who voted for and against). This was based on the idea that we are transitioning from the California state standards to the Common Core standards. In this transitional year, many districts are spending their money on updating their technology, professional development and practice tests for the Common Core. Teachers, administrators and districts do not want to test students on the old standards while they are preparing students using the new standards. Testing kids on both would be a monumental task, stress students, teachers and schools, pull everyone in two directions at once, and stretch districts’ resources – all the while taking time away from actual teaching and learning.
Tom Torlakson, our state superintendent of education, along with the support of CA educators (and me), support the suspension of the CA tests while we ramp up for the Common Core, while Arne Duncan, the US Education Secretary, is threatening to withhold federal funding to California students and schools if we suspend the STAR tests.
Here is a link on the story.
And here is a link to a very succinct Valerie Strauss article on problems with the Common Core, as they are currently being rolled out. For me, it is dismaying to hear that the new standards, which have the potential to give back more control to local teachers and local schools in creating critically engaging lessons and learning experiences, are much more likely to repeat the problems of the past – teachers teaching to multiple choice exams that are made by for-profit testing companies and the continuing misuse of exam results to blame teachers and students, rather than to allocate more resources to schools that serve poor and/or minority students. What’s even more disturbing to me is the astonishing amount of money that will now go to tech companies to buy computers and other gadgets so that students can take the tests. I am very confused by the educational purpose of having students take the tests on the computers (will computers grade the essays? Are 8 year olds required to have decent keyboarding skills?), and I have no idea how even my rich suburban school will be able to afford this, or schedule all the computer labs for such a purpose.
Which leads me to another compelling story on how some districts are attempting to get ready for the technology based tests. Here are a couple of links on the LA Unified decision to use funds to buy iPads for every kid while class size goes up, art teachers and other “non-tested” subject teachers have been laid off. As people have started to question the use of such a large amount of a 25 year bond for the gadgets that have, at best, three years of life, the Deputy Superintendant of LAUSD in charge of the iPad rollout, resigned this week.
And an open letter to Apple Computers from an LA teacher:
http://www.hemlockontherocks.com/2013/09/an-open-letter-to-apple-computers.html
Of course, my favorite educator, Diane Ravitch, has an editorial in Scientific American about the dubious uses of technology in schools – well worth a read!
Meanwhile, I am so glad to have an amazing Stanford student teacher this year! She is helping me deal with the 35 students in each of my classes – she works one on one with students who need it, and helps me keep sane with all the correcting of papers and projects. A German mom of one of my students spoke out at Back to School Night a week and a half ago about the insanity of such class sizes. I couldn’t agree more. I think that funding smaller classes would definitely be better than giving each of my students an iPad. Students really respond better to human interaction in learning language; I’m pretty sure it’s in our genetic code, the way babies respond to live people, but not recordings of live people.
Maestra Malinche
(married to an Apple programmer, and married to my Apple computer, by the way.)
teaching malinche 