Reply to Common Core's epic fail: Special Education

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a teacher in a MD school.   Our kids recently took a practice, PARCC-style writing assessment, to see how they would do on the real PARCC writing test coming in March 2014.

Some students did well, but most students failed.   The test required them to first read a short story or news article, then write something based on what they had read.

Most students were decent writers; they can spell OK and use correct grammar.   But where they failed was in two areas.

1)  They didn't use information from the story or article to answer the question.   The prompt specifically said "Based on details in the reading.... write your opinion on/write a story about....." but the students just didn't do that.   They had an opinion or created a story, but it didn't include details from the reading.   They just came up with their own ideas.

2) They didn't write with any cohesiveness.   They basically rambled.   Maybe they had some concept of an introductory or topic sentence, but after that, they just started stringing ideas together, one after another, with no sense of organization.

So what was the result of this practice test?   Teachers are very busy now, having kids get more instruction in sticking to the writing prompt, answering using details from the text, and writing cohesively.   Kids are writing paragraphs with a topic sentence, details, and a concluding sentence.  Older kids are writing essays with several paragraphs.

Most of the students in our schools with special learning needs are also participating in this remedial writing instruction.   Even the kids who have a hard time writing and spelling.  They are writing simpler sentences than their grade level peers, but they are writing and learning to organize their thoughts.

The kids who are really struggling are those who are reading and writing more than 2 years below grade level.   We certainly don't have many such students.  Most students who have had difficulty with reading and writing have caught up by about 5th grade.  I'd say that in our 5th grade class of 60 students, 2 are severely below grade level, and one of those is also an ESOL student.   I would agree that for these students, the priority should be to get them confident with the lower level skills in reading and writing they are lacking, before asking them to be able to both read a text and write a response to it.

But for the other students, including the learning disabled, the increased focus on writing to a prompt with cohesiveness seems to be a very good result of the new Common Core standards for writing, and the PARCC test.[/quote]

Will you still feel this way when you lose your job when your students fail the test?[/quote]

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