"Teacher of the Year" quits over Common Core tests

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Another great post by an actual teacher in the trenches. Thank you.

Common Core's demands that everyone be taught at grade level whether they are actually there are not are going to be a disaster for 70 percent of kids in this country. They will get behind in Kindergarten and never be allowed to catch up.

As the actual teacher in the trenches clearly explains, the Common Core standards do not demand this. The teacher's school administrators demand it.

[Anonymous]

And we don't have license to teach a below grade child, at a below grade level. We are still supposed to be exposing the child who is in 4th grade but reading at a K/pre primer level, to fourth grade reading concepts and skills, while simultaneously (magically, by osmosis?) teaching him how to decode words.


This! This will never close the achievement gap.

This is actually widening the achievement gap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

And, the public schools are not putting money into summer programs anymore because they don't have it. If the feds want some help with solutions, maybe this is one place to start. Fund summer school for these kids. Also, expect reasonable amounts of improvement for individual students and stop focusing on "group gaps". Lower SES will always do less well because of the above type of activities. The government can never replace the home influence unless they set up residential schools or mandatory adoptions.

There are actually a lot of things that the government could do to reduce income inequality and to reduce the effects of income inequality. But there is no political support for the government to do these things.

[Anonymous]

Common Core's demands that everyone be taught at grade level whether they are actually there are not are going to be a disaster for 70 percent of kids in this country. They will get behind in Kindergarten and never be allowed to catch up.

This is true.

K is much harder these days. That's why I held my son back. My daughter was fine - no worries with her. But my son wasn't ready for this level of thinking. I feel sorry for second language learners and kids with IEPs. There's no way to master all of this content by the end of K.

Thankfully, the delay for my son is working in his benefit, and he's been successful. no so true for some of his peers

[Anonymous]

There are actually a lot of things that the government could do to reduce income inequality and to reduce the effects of income inequality.

Please list the top three things the government should do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Another great post by an actual teacher in the trenches. Thank you.

Common Core's demands that everyone be taught at grade level whether they are actually there are not are going to be a disaster for 70 percent of kids in this country. They will get behind in Kindergarten and never be allowed to catch up.

As the actual teacher in the trenches clearly explains, the Common Core standards do not demand this. The teacher's school administrators demand it.

No, there are one set of standards and everyone is to be taught these standards. And tested on them.

No flexibility or leeway at all. The 1.5 pages on kids with IEPs in the Common Core standards makes this clear. They use garbage talk like "unpacking the standards" as if that will work.

[Anonymous]

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-common-core-is-tough-on-kids-with-special-needs/283973/

In a recent discussion board thread on reading comprehension challenges in autism, a special-education teacher commented that her students can’t understand the assigned reading passages. “When I complained, I was told that I could add extra support, but not actually change the passages,” she wrote. “It is truly sad to see my students’ frustration.”

Why must this teacher’s students contend with passages that are too complex for them to understand? She attributes this inflexibility to the Common Core, new standards—created in 2009 by a group of education professionals, none of them K-12 classroom teachers or special-education experts—that have been adopted by 45 states. Though most Common Core goals are abstract and schematic, collectively they constitute a one-size fits-all approach that, in practice, has severely straightjacketed America’s special-needs students.

The teacher I quoted above—one of the many special-ed instructors Iteach at the Drexel University and University of Pennsylvania education schools—is hardly alone. She’s echoing the concerns of dozens of other special-education teachers I’ve spoken with, most of whom have already gotten the message from their supervisors or superiors that they must adhere to the standards and give all their students the designated grade-level assignments.
...


one Common Core document that addresses this subject: a one-and-a-half-pager entitled “Application to Students with Disabilities.” It says that special-needs students should have the support services, individualized instruction, and assistive technology they need for the “the rigor and high expectations of the Common Core State Standards.” It does not, however, state what these services are or how they would work. As for curricular materials, they might be altered or presented “in multiple ways,” but only “within the framework of the Common Core.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


Another great post by an actual teacher in the trenches. Thank you.

Common Core's demands that everyone be taught at grade level whether they are actually there are not are going to be a disaster for 70 percent of kids in this country. They will get behind in Kindergarten and never be allowed to catch up.


As the actual teacher in the trenches clearly explains, the Common Core standards do not demand this. The teacher's school administrators demand it.

The NCLB mandated testing causes the administrators to demand this. In VA, where CC standards have not been adopted, this is a problem (it's the NCLB problem!). Dig deeper on this. If CC standards are tested and accountability at the federal level (through testing) continues to be a mandate through NCLB or similar law, this will all continue the same way. Local administrators all over the country did not come up with these demands just for fun. The pressures are real and they come from above and are sent down to the classroom. The classrooms have to be allowed to function locally. The pressure from the feds is too much.

[Anonymous]

That's one of the problems and idiocies of Common Core "fixing" everything. No one has addressed what happens when kid does not meet standards--except that it reflects poorly on the teacher and school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's one of the problems and idiocies of Common Core "fixing" everything. No one has addressed what happens when kid does not meet standards--except that it reflects poorly on the teacher and school.

Nobody has said that the Common Core standards will fix everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Another great post by an actual teacher in the trenches. Thank you.

Common Core's demands that everyone be taught at grade level whether they are actually there are not are going to be a disaster for 70 percent of kids in this country. They will get behind in Kindergarten and never be allowed to catch up.

As the actual teacher in the trenches clearly explains, the Common Core standards do not demand this. The teacher's school administrators demand it.

No, there are one set of standards and everyone is to be taught these standards. And tested on them.

No flexibility or leeway at all. The 1.5 pages on kids with IEPs in the Common Core standards makes this clear. They use garbage talk like "unpacking the standards" as if that will work.

You can't be taught standards. You can be taught [whatever] so that you are able to meet these standards. And yes, everybody (in states that adopted the Common Core standards) is to be tested on them, as a result of the NCLB testing requirements. Do you think that it would make sense to say, "Well, you are in fourth grade, but you are only reading at the first-grade level, and so you will take the first-grade test."? (Especially since there isn't a first-grade test. The purpose of the tests is to determine whether the students in the school meet the standards. If you are in fourth grade, but reading at the first-grade level, then you don't meet the standards.

Meanwhile, where in the Common Core standards does it say that fourth-graders can only be taught materials related to the fourth-grade standards?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's one of the problems and idiocies of Common Core "fixing" everything. No one has addressed what happens when kid does not meet standards--except that it reflects poorly on the teacher and school.

Nobody has said that the Common Core standards will fix everything.

They will actually fix almost nothing, and instead make things much, much worse. The top learners will learn and thrive -- as they have always done. Anyone who gets even a bit behind will get ground up and spit out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Another great post by an actual teacher in the trenches. Thank you.

Common Core's demands that everyone be taught at grade level whether they are actually there are not are going to be a disaster for 70 percent of kids in this country. They will get behind in Kindergarten and never be allowed to catch up.

As the actual teacher in the trenches clearly explains, the Common Core standards do not demand this. The teacher's school administrators demand it.

No, there are one set of standards and everyone is to be taught these standards. And tested on them.

No flexibility or leeway at all. The 1.5 pages on kids with IEPs in the Common Core standards makes this clear. They use garbage talk like "unpacking the standards" as if that will work.

You can't be taught standards. You can be taught [whatever] so that you are able to meet these standards. And yes, everybody (in states that adopted the Common Core standards) is to be tested on them, as a result of the NCLB testing requirements. Do you think that it would make sense to say, "Well, you are in fourth grade, but you are only reading at the first-grade level, and so you will take the first-grade test."? (Especially since there isn't a first-grade test. The purpose of the tests is to determine whether the students in the school meet the standards. If you are in fourth grade, but reading at the first-grade level, then you don't meet the standards.

Meanwhile, where in the Common Core standards does it say that fourth-graders can only be taught materials related to the fourth-grade standards?

In this document, straight from the CCSS:

http://www.corestandards.org/assets/application-to-students-with-disabilities.pdf


Instructional accommodations (Thompson, Morse, Sharpe & Hall, 2005)
changes in materials or procedures ?
which do not change the standards but allow student
s to learn within the framework
of the Common Core.

[Anonymous]

Instructional accommodations (Thompson, Morse, Sharpe & Hall, 2005)
changes in materials or procedures ?
which do not change the standards but allow student
s to learn within the framework
of the Common Core.

And, if JOhnny can't pass--it's the teacher's fault!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

There are actually a lot of things that the government could do to reduce income inequality and to reduce the effects of income inequality.

Please list the top three things the government should do.

1. Increase the bargaining power of workers.
2. Raise taxes on the capital wealth of rich people.
3. Stop treating money as speech.