This
week I’ve been blog trolling and found a good amount of discussion centering on
worries about Common Core plans as well as continued discussions on high stakes
testing from SATs to High School Exit Exams.
Both topics are rich with controversy but also offer insightful
possibilities for how the nation looks at the important job of educating our
K-12 students.
From
the flypaper blog associated with edexcellence.net, Tim Shanahan and Ann
Duffett examine the way texts are being incorporated in classrooms under the
Common Core rubric. What they find is
that on the one hand teachers are eager to bring new emphasis on reading
content to their students, but they also found that teachers have become so
habituated to teaching skills that this method often supersedes selection of
texts based on content. Further, the
study found that Common Core asks teachers to plan lessons with texts that
provide language complexity and proper grade level information and
vocabulary. Teachers, the preliminary
research suggests, still prefer to assign reading that matches the students’
ability, even if it is below grade level.
It is good to begin hashing out all these complications with a new
national system of education standards.
It is understandable in a nation with roughly 3.9 million K-12 teachers
that we wouldn’t all see eye-to-eye. I
think in some ways this question about text complexity has surfaced in other
discussions in education over the years. Author Mem Fox talks about Basal
Readers being the one sure fire thing that kills reading. And many studies
point toward children with rich vocabularies come from homes where parents use
big words often. It stands to reason this
could work in classrooms too. The growing
pains with a shift from the emphasis on skills in reading to content and higher
grade level reading will be felt with the Common Core style teaching methods,
but in the long run, these classes may provide more rich topics for kids to
explore. The challenge for educators
will center around this question- is it possible to find a happy medium between
providing skills and drills for the reluctant reader to move ahead and
designing a rich in-depth reading environment that supports science and history
content? Read more at http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/common-core-in-the-schools-a-first-look-at-reading
Robert Schaeffer wrote in his blog Getting Schooled (part of the Atlanta
Journal Constitution online newspaper) about the continued frenzy
associated with high-stakes testing.
Performance on one test can keep a student from earning a HS diploma,
getting into college or in some instances moving up a grade level. Schaeffer points out the many studies that
disprove the reliance on one test as an accurate measure of anyone’s abilities. He also documents the well-worn area of how the
curriculum narrows as a result of teaching toward the anticipated test and how
all of this really diminishes the rich content that could be in schools if we
were less focused on the singularity of testing. His thoughtful words really support what teachers
need to hear, because more often than not teachers get the brunt of the
ridicule nation-wide when it comes to performance on tests.
As educators, we should consider these questions: It comes down to what is the purpose of a test? Is
it really to assess and monitor a student’s progress through school? Or is it
about shaming and punishing those who don’t measure up? Perhaps in the short term some test score
improvements may occur in the current climate. But for long-term motivated
learners to prevail, a new system without blame needs to endure. Assessment can be productive. We don’t have to be anti-testing. The summative testing climate is about
flogging instead of about learning. A formative assessment is flexible,
context-specific and linked directly to recent content.
Schaeffer’s
blog urges us to seriously consider our testing culture. I say, let’s as educators consider replacing
shaming measures with formative ones.
These tools help the teacher and learner establish where they are and
how to precede. The process is transparent to both teacher and student and
establishes learning as a goal, not a contest! Read more of Schaeffer’s ideas
at http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/get-schooled/2013/sep/26/flawed-exams-support-phony-school-accountability/
