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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Anonymous wrote:
However, the probability is high that if the child does not pass the test, the child does not truly understand the information.

You are assuming two things: 
1. That the test correctly tests the standards taught. 
2. That the standards taught are appropriate.

No.

1. If the child does not pass the test, then the child does not truly understand the information the child needs to understand in order to pass the test. That is true regardless of what has or has not been taught. 
2. The appropriateness of the standards is a different question entirely.

Also, it's not possible to teach standards. Teaching is curriculum.

People definitely teach to standards. Curriculum is developed according to standards. Why does this person get so hung up on this.[/quote]

I agree.  The poster acts as if standards and curriculum are not related to each other when in fact one is predicated on the other.  If this were not true, nobody would be concerned about the standards.  The curriculum is based on the standards.  It's like a sentence that has a subject verb, and object.  The subject is the standard; the verb is the curriculum; the object is the test.  You cannot connect the subject (the standard) to the object (the test) without the curriculum (verb).  The curriculum is the action that gets you to the test.   You can't make a sentence without all three (subject-verb-object) just as you cannot have instruction without all three (standard-curriculum-test).

Without giving schools time to develop curriculum and pilot it, you cannot test---because there is no connector between the two that is effective.  In fact, I think that writing the curriculum, which is basically translating the standards into day to day instruction is much harder than writing the standards in the first place.  It's much more challenging to have the students in front of you and plan to make the standards workable in a classroom atmosphere.  It's where the rubber meets the road.  The teachers are the backbone of the process and they need time and support to make the standards practicable.

All that being said, it is only natural that students will increase their scores over the years as teachers develop curriculum that more closely mirrors the new standards.  So what you may be seeing when students "increase" their scores is the effect of the teachers having time to write plans and understand the new standards.  The standards do narrow the curriculum in this way.  That is the danger of having a set of standards and this problem is magnified if teachers are evaluated based on their students' scores.

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