Thoughts on the Core and Assessments and Such...

 

As I prepare for this year's testing at my own school, I am not surprised by the number of tweets and blogs and articles about the common core and high states testing that are surfacing.  Here is a look at just a few of them that I found the most intriguing.  Perhaps my bias shows.

Study: Twitter Discourse Reveals Deeper Rifts on Common Core: Parents, Non-Experts Also Gained Bigger Voice on Common Core
By Sarah D. Sparks

An interesting look at a study by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education that explores tweets about the common core on Twitter. “Overall, the researchers identified five common objections in which common-core opposition is conflated with concerns about the federal role in education, student data privacy, standardized testing, business influence in public education, and focusing on student test scores to the exclusion of underlying causes of low achievement, such as poverty and inequality.”

Why My Children Will Not Take State Assessments
By Mrs. Momblog

She explores the notion that the right to opt children out of state assessment programs is constitutional.  Among other thing she notes,” Our children are not percentages or scores. In addition to being students, they are athletes, community members, school theater participants, student government representatives, and musicians–all of which can’t be shown on a bubble sheet of a state assessment.”

Teaching to the Test is Not Teaching
By Peter Greene

An experienced educator looks at the flawed design of the current assessment system in many common core states. Among other things he suggests, “Teaching to the test means preparing students for one narrow task, like teaching a chocolate lab to fetch.  It is not so much teaching as training. It is not the work we signed up to do, but it has become the work we are judged by.”  

Opting Out of Standardized Testing

As an educator I can’t help but be interested in the growing number of parents who are choosing to opt their children out of standardized testing driven in most states by the infamous common core.  As the dreaded testing season approaches, articles seem to be popping up all over the Internet detailing this movement.  In an era where educators are called to defend things like the offering of electives to students, I am surely anxious to see how this movement develops.  Some pertinent articles and resources:

Kathy Matheson’s “Testy Over Testing: More Students Snub Standardized Exams” at the Huffington Post.

This article explores a variety of communities where parents are taking the little explored option to remove their children from standardized testing.  Even teachers are holding evening workshops to increase awareness of this option.  Several alternatives to high stakes testing are suggested.

Valerie Strauss’s “Principal: ‘There Comes a Time When Rules Must Be Broken...That Time is Now’” at the Washington Post.

This blog entry includes a post by award winning principal Carol Burris from New York who feels led to make her parents aware of the opt out choice with regard to standardized testing. Several movements in New York, New Jersey, and California are noted. Burris also provides compelling details regarding 4 reasons she believes the opt out movement will continue to grow: Backlash Against the Common Core, Lack of Evidence that the Testing Movement is Increasing Gains in Student Achievement, Annual high-stakes testing has not resulted in equity gains, and the Realization About the True Agenda of Standardized Testing. Burris provides link to a variety of studies to support her arguments that should be thought provoking and conversation inducing. Fairtest.org offers a variety of resources for parents who are considering opting out of standardized testing.
From the website: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) advances quality education and equal opportunity by promoting fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial evaluations of students, teachers and schools. FairTest also works to end the misuses and flaws of testing practices that impede those goals.

Charlie Boss’s “Opting Out of State Tests Has Costs for Ohio Students, Schools” at The Columbus Dispatch.
This article explores some of the drawbacks in Ohio for opting out of state testing, suggesting that such a movement is not necessarily an easy fix for the problems of testing.

What Schools Should Do...

On occasion, more often lately, when we are frustrated with state mandated testing and new teacher effectiveness hoops and SLO’s and on and on, my educator friends and I say, kind of jokingly, that we should just open our own school.  We’d have most of the curricular bases covered.  The article A Project in Learning by Jordan Shapiro covers a school that was formed in just that way.  45 years ago three frustrated teachers set out to form their own public school.  Parents and teachers together formed curriculum and functioned as the school’s administration. Certainly PDE could not have that:

“Unfortunately, Pennsylvania was unhappy with this rogue institution because it did not adhere to state standards. But Allender, Fox, and Bailey believed in choosing the right curriculum for each individual student. They would not squeeze individuals into a mold designed in Harrisburg. They took their inspiration from the writings of the education reformer John Dewey, refusing to test students because they did not believe assessments should be comparative: Individuals should always make cumulative progress, but not be measured against their peers. Not surprisingly, the state eventually pressured the school to close its doors.”

But the doors did not stay closed.  After intensive discussion, the school reopened as a private school intent on “ teaching children a way of being in the world. “ How about that?  I was exploring a book this morning - Educating Angels: Teaching for the Pursuit of Happiness by Tony Armstrong PhD. In it he suggests that instead of growing workers, schools should be teaching toward helping every student to pursue happiness.  The school highlighted in Shapiro’s article seems to do just that. Shapiro writes, “The conversation about education should not be all about the Common Core, testing, charter schools, and technology integration. We also need to ask: How do we raise a generation of children who use their academic skills in ways that reflect and reinforce the values that we believe should ground our society in the future?” When my colleagues and I dream of a different school this school is the stuff of our dreams.