"Teacher of the Year" quits over Common Core tests

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is my first year student teaching. My daughter is four, so I hadn't been exposed to the common core before this year. My kindergarten class is drowning in common core waters. It takes a truly remarkable teacher to get kids up to these levels. Some of it is easy and seems like common sense. Others, not so much. I'm really worried about the future of education. I've strongly considered quitting, but I'm too far in now. Everyone at the school keeps telling me that to just do my five years and try to get a job working with policy.

I don't understand. All Common Core does is say what the kids need to know at the end of K. Are you saying these expectations are too hard? How do standards make you "drown" in "Common Core waters?"

I assume these standards are things like primary colors, count to 10, etc. Is that really so hard?

[Anonymous]

She's "Teacher of the Year" in the American Idol sense, I guess. It doesn't means she's been acknowledged or recognized by her peers or anyone in the profession.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is my first year student teaching. My daughter is four, so I hadn't been exposed to the common core before this year. My kindergarten class is drowning in common core waters. It takes a truly remarkable teacher to get kids up to these levels. Some of it is easy and seems like common sense. Others, not so much. I'm really worried about the future of education. I've strongly considered quitting, but I'm too far in now. Everyone at the school keeps telling me that to just do my five years and try to get a job working with policy.

I don't understand. All Common Core does is say what the kids need to know at the end of K. Are you saying these expectations are too hard? How do standards make you "drown" in "Common Core waters?"

I assume these standards are things like primary colors, count to 10, etc. Is that really so hard?

Here are the kindergarten standards for math: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/K/introduction/
Here are the kindergarten standards for English/language arts: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/K/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Are 4th graders now taught how to do problems with multiple orders of operation?

Yes. It is called a "multi-step problem".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is my first year student teaching. My daughter is four, so I hadn't been exposed to the common core before this year. My kindergarten class is drowning in common core waters. It takes a truly remarkable teacher to get kids up to these levels. Some of it is easy and seems like common sense. Others, not so much. I'm really worried about the future of education. I've strongly considered quitting, but I'm too far in now. Everyone at the school keeps telling me that to just do my five years and try to get a job working with policy.

I don't understand. All Common Core does is say what the kids need to know at the end of K. Are you saying these expectations are too hard? How do standards make you "drown" in "Common Core waters?"

I assume these standards are things like primary colors, count to 10, etc. Is that really so hard?

Here are the kindergarten standards for math: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/K/introduction/
Here are the kindergarten standards for English/language arts: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/K/

They look pretty basic and pretty normal for K to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Here are the kindergarten standards for math: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/K/introduction/
Here are the kindergarten standards for English/language arts: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/K/

They look pretty basic and pretty normal for K to me.

According to the MD Public Schools forum, they are appropriate for preschool. According to the Schools and Education General Discussion forum, they are appropriate for second grade. I always have to double-check to see which forum I'm reading, when I read about the Common Core kindergarten standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Here are the kindergarten standards for math: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/K/introduction/
Here are the kindergarten standards for English/language arts: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/L/K/

They look pretty basic and pretty normal for K to me.

According to the MD Public Schools forum, they are appropriate for preschool. According to the Schools and Education General Discussion forum, they are appropriate for second grade. I always have to double-check to see which forum I'm reading, when I read about the Common Core kindergarten standards.

LOL! So true. It's crazy. I think people who post an opinion need to state which state they are in.

[Anonymous]

Common Core isn't the problem. Most of the private schools have the same exact standards in place, and they are not substantially different from the standards we had prior to adoption of Common Core. It is the implementation that is the problem - the curriculum, the tests, the approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Common Core isn't the problem. Most of the private schools have the same exact standards in place, and they are not substantially different from the standards we had prior to adoption of Common Core. It is the implementation that is the problem - the curriculum, the tests, the approach.

No, the problem is a lot of parents losing their shit because their precious little snowflakes aren't learning long division the way they were taught.

As for this "OMG the tests!" -- I was in elementary school in the late-1970s-1980s and we had tests like this every year, then, too. Stanford Achievement Tests, anyone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Achievement_Test_Series

[Anonymous]

As for this "OMG the tests!" -- I was in elementary school in the late-1970s-1980s and we had tests like this every year, then, too. Stanford Achievement Tests, anyone?

No. NOt the same. Those tests were validated and tested. Teachers evaluations did not depend on them-nor did the school depend on its life based on those tests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

As for this "OMG the tests!" -- I was in elementary school in the late-1970s-1980s and we had tests like this every year, then, too. Stanford Achievement Tests, anyone?

No. NOt the same. Those tests were validated and tested. Teachers evaluations did not depend on them-nor did the school depend on its life based on those tests.

These tests have been validated and tested too. In fact, my child's school participated in the testing of the PARCC tests last year.

The school-test results relationship is the result of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and has nothing to do with the Common Core standards. The idea of tying teacher performance evaluations to test results also has nothing to do with the Common Core standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As for this "OMG the tests!" -- I was in elementary school in the late-1970s-1980s and we had tests like this every year, then, too. Stanford Achievement Tests, anyone?

No. NOt the same. Those tests were validated and tested. Teachers evaluations did not depend on them-nor did the school depend on its life based on those tests.

These tests have been validated and tested too. In fact, my child's school participated in the testing of the PARCC tests last year.

The school-test results relationship is the result of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and has nothing to do with the Common Core standards. The idea of tying teacher performance evaluations to test results also has nothing to do with the Common Core standards.

Describe how they are valid, in detail.

You realize your child likely failed the test, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As for this "OMG the tests!" -- I was in elementary school in the late-1970s-1980s and we had tests like this every year, then, too. Stanford Achievement Tests, anyone?

No. NOt the same. Those tests were validated and tested. Teachers evaluations did not depend on them-nor did the school depend on its life based on those tests.

These tests have been validated and tested too. In fact, my child's school participated in the testing of the PARCC tests last year.

The school-test results relationship is the result of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and has nothing to do with the Common Core standards. The idea of tying teacher performance evaluations to test results also has nothing to do with the Common Core standards.

Describe how they are valid, in detail.

You realize your child likely failed the test, right?

Nobody failed any test last year. Last year the PARCC tests and Smarter Balanced tests got tested. This is the first year that anybody will take the PARCC or Smarter Balanced tests as tests.

Also, "valid" and "validated" mean different things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I took a sample PARCC test online for 4th grade math to see what all of the discussion was about.

I was surprised at the number of steps involved to get to the right answer for some of the questions.

An example is:
you have 4 teachers teaching a chess class. There are 18 chess boards. They order 3 more cases of 15. If each teacher has the same number of chess boards and the remainder are donated to the library, how many chess boards does each teacher get?

As adults, we can quickly see the answer is 15 but it will take a 4th grader a long time to get there.I

No, why?

18 + 3*15 = 63

63/4 = 15 R 3

The computation isn't complicated, and if the math curriculum is good, then the fourth-graders will have plenty of experience solving word problems like this.

It's even simpler than that.

4 teachers. 3 new sets of 15 chess boards. To give the same number to the 4th teacher, take 15 from the 18 you already have. There's only 3 left, not enough for each of the 4 teachers to have 1 more. You're done. No multiplication and no division, just 18-15 and 3<4.

If you start by computing, it takes a long time and is fairly complicated. If you start by thinking, it's trivial.

(Hat tip to DC's 1st grade teacher, who has been teaching DC, and thus me indirectly, how to start by thinking.)

I like both approaches, PPs. I dislike the question, though, because it has multiple solutions. The teachers could each get from one to 15 chess boards (or even zero), with the remainder going to the library.

I hope it's a multiple choice question and that the incorrect answers are all greater than 15.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As for this "OMG the tests!" -- I was in elementary school in the late-1970s-1980s and we had tests like this every year, then, too. Stanford Achievement Tests, anyone?

No. NOt the same. Those tests were validated and tested. Teachers evaluations did not depend on them-nor did the school depend on its life based on those tests.

These tests have been validated and tested too. In fact, my child's school participated in the testing of the PARCC tests last year.

The school-test results relationship is the result of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and has nothing to do with the Common Core standards. The idea of tying teacher performance evaluations to test results also has nothing to do with the Common Core standards.

Describe how they are valid, in detail.

You realize your child likely failed the test, right?

Nobody failed any test last year. Last year the PARCC tests and Smarter Balanced tests got tested. This is the first year that anybody will take the PARCC or Smarter Balanced tests as tests.

Also, "valid" and "validated" mean different things.

States are dropping the PARCC left and right. There are only a few states left -- it's THAT BAD,