Reply to New SOL Cut Offs

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Reply to "New SOL Cut Offs"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Carson sent out an email that said about 25% more kids will fail the SOLs at the new level. If that is the case at a school that everyone thinks is hihg performing, what the heck is going to happen at other schools? Every school in the state is going to be failing. The only “solution” is going to be even more teaching to a test and not really learning and encouraging growth in students.

It feels like schools are pushing acceleration in math right now, and a god number of kids are struggling with that, and now we are moving the SOL standards. Why are we setting kids up to fail? We have lost sight of the fact that kids learn at different rates and that should be ok. We don’t track kids, we expect teachers to teach to kids at six different levels in one class, and we expect kids to stay motivated when they are in the wrong class for them, both the kids struggling and the kids who need more.

I hope the new DOE walks back the SOL changes. I am not sold on the fact that the SOL is all that worthwhile as it is and I don’t like that it is the test that the schools teach to already, making that worse is the wrong direction to go. [/quote] Virginia has very low testing cutoffs, well below national averages.  It's entirely reasonable to raise those to match other states.  That's setting kids up to succeed in the long run, and failing our kids not to expect enough of them.[/quote]

Setting up our kids to succeed would mean providing enough reading and math specialists to work with kids in ES so that they develop strong foundational skills. It would mean decreasing class sizes or adding aides into ES classrooms to work with kids who are struggling and work with kids who are on grade level or advanced.

Teaching to a standardized test does not set kids up to succeed. It is theatre that diverts resources from helping kids succeed. [/quote]

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