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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^ EXACTLY.  Testing isn't the problem, and nor are the standards.  It's what school districts do with the test results, and how they remediate the problems that is the issue.[/quote]

You get the test results 6 months later and a child gets a 1, 2, 3, 4. No details on where a child needs specific help. The tests are garbage. In many grades you won't even have the same teachers. ... How will the tests advance any child.
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We get a lot of our test results within a few weeks -- DRA results fairly immediately.   SRI results within a few weeks.  We KNOW which children aren't reading on grade level.   We have lists and list of kids who are On or above grade level and below grade level.   In our school we know that 20% of our students are scoring below grade level on numerous tests of reading in 4th, 5th and 6th grade.

But aside from having "small group" reading mini lessons we really aren't doing much to remediate the specific problem the children are having.   It takes TIME and MONEY to properly remediate and those are things we do not have.   These kids need one one on tutoring to get up to speed quickly and we don't do that.

And yes, it is the school district that is telling us we need to expose the children to all the higher order thinking skills of the grade level curriculum and I am not saying we don't need to do that.  If all we do is remediate at the 1st and 2nd grade level the children will never catch up to the 4th and 5th grade level.   But we can't just remediate at the 4th and 5th grade level without going back and teaching the basic, foundational reading skills that this children just never mastered.   They need BOTH which will take extra time and extra instruction which we aren't giving these students.

Honestly sometimes I want to invent an assessment technique called "DSS Plus"  :   "Data by Sitting with the Students (Plus asking them questions)"

Are your fourth grade students failing their reading and writing and math assessments?   SIT DOWN WITH THEM and watch them take the test.   Have them read the test questions aloud to you and notice which words they stumble over because they can't sound them out.   Have them read the math test out loud and watch them add and subtract 3 digit numbers.   YOU WILL BE SURPRISED at the fact that many kids can't perform multistep operations because they don't know how to perform single step computations correctly.   They are hopelessly confused and they ned to go back to basics, yes even back to a 1st grade level in 4th grade, because they are lacking in basic skills.   They need DIRECT INSTRUCTION in BASIC SKILLS and lots of drill and repetition before they will be successful at all this higher order stuff.[/quote]

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