Reply to "Teacher of the Year" quits over Common Core tests

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I'm not the K teacher.

My concern is that all of this "fear" of being behind internationally (in math and language) is overblown.  The thing that has made America great (and let's not forget that America is great) is our ability to create.  Building towers out of blocks and thinking in directions that are not necessarily the ones mandated by the "standards" are probably the kinds of thinking that have made America great and different from all those places that are "ahead" of us on tests.  We lead precisely because we see beyond the "standards".  We see that the possibilities for ways of seeing the world are endless.  We should not try to box ourselves in or define ourselves with rigid standards.

And to the person who says, "Oh, but the standards don't do that" I would say that they do that more than you might think.  They do consume time and take time away from other endeavors.  They are especially bad for students on either end---the ones who need time to come up to standard (because the pressure with those students is to cram and drill and kill to get them up to speed) and for the students at the high end for whom the standards are too weak.  Those students may do okay, but the teacher will be spending time with the weak ones because of the high stakes pressure of the tests.

If the "standards" dominate due to the high stakes nature of the testing, there will be students who lose.  Higher end parents may opt out of public education (which the Republicans would be only too happy to see happen).  Low end and middle range students will be stuck with a minimal and prescriptive education.  [/quote]

You are really trying far too hard, to the point of totally contradicting yourself.  On one hand you are calling the standards "minimal and prescriptive" and suitable for low and middle range students, while at the same time complaining that they are too hard, are too much "pressure", and that they can only be met with "cramming and drill and kill."

As for taking too much time away from other endeavors, I again have to eyeroll.  Building cities out of blocks was something most of us on our own as kids.  The priority in school was the reading, writing, and so on - NOT the stuff that kids could just as well do on their own.  And before you go off on another nonsensical commentary about not everyone being so privileged as to have a fancy set of blocks, we built with old cardboard boxes, we made cities in the dirt and sand outside, we made do as kids.[/quote]

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