By now, everyone has been duly warned that the new Common Core tests will be “harder.”
The passing rates are expected to drop by 30%.
Advocates of privatization are excited and hoping the bad news will encourage parents to abandon their community schools.
Entrepreneurs are poised to sell stuff when everyone is desperate for the latest new thing.
But what about the kids?
This teacher describes what she sees in her classes: fear.
“I have been chatting with my classes explaining that we expect the tests to be tougher and that we are taking our best guesses as to how to best prepare them. They (6th graders) have looked at me incredulously and asked, “You mean you don’t know what is going to be on the test?” I have used the “good, better, best” terminology this year to help them ramp up the rigor in vocabulary, reading, and their writing. I replied, “I expect higher than “best”….(for the level they can be prepared for). They looked stricken. They expect me to know and to be able to help them prepare. I know in my heart they think I am letting them down. I have never been a teach to the test teacher. I am flummoxed by this unbelievable plan of teacher destruction.
“What has been completely lost in all of this is the students. They are going to have to sit and struggle with these Ela tests for three days knowing by the end of the first day that they are not doing very well. Imagine what this will feel like to our plucky special education students whom we have supported throughout the year. Or, how about the ESOL kids who are valiantly interpreting every thing they read in a second language. Their reward? They will do the same the following week for the math tests. Highly regarded teachers have been in tears trying to understand how to convey very abstract mathematical concepts to our concrete thinking 6th graders. Rigor is important but not at the expense of known developmental benchmarks. The sample sent out by the State Ed. Dept. for Ela had reading passages at levels more than four or five years higher than our middle schoolers read.
“Who said yes to this? Who said yes?! And even more importantly, how will this end?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I so agree with your pain. I would love to understand who threw developmental learning and preparedness under the bus. Some people act as if treating students on their developmental level is “babying” them and “dumbing down” the curricula. I never talked “baby talk” to my own children. I never treated my students as babies. I talked to them just as if I were talking to adults. I told them truths … even about testing. I told them not to worry about their scores, but to have confidence in themselves that doing their own personal best was all that mattered. I believed it then and I believe it now. Receiving a handwritten, personally delivered letter from a former student who had been very shy and ill-at-ease as a 4th grade that stated how I had changed his life was the very best departure gift I could have imagined. He now possesses leadership skills that he and his family never dreamed he’d have. It wasn’t because I babied him, it was because I saw his potential and helped him believe in himself. He wasn’t a test score. Neither are other students. Teachers aren’t test scores from one given day in time. The whole idea is just absurd … and hurtful to everyone. Private school owners can dream … they will make their fast millions and fade into the ocean, leaving a trail of damaged children in their wake.
Here are some definitions of rigor. Is this what our kids’ education should br? Main Entry: rig·or Pronunciation: \ˈri-gər\Function: nounEtymology: Middle English rigour, from Anglo-French, from Latin rigor, literally, stiffness, from rigēre to be stiffDate: 14th century1 a (1) : harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment : severity (2) : the quality of being unyielding or inflexible : strictness (3) : severity of life : austerity b : an act or instance of strictness, severity, or cruelty 2 : a tremor caused by a chill 3 : a condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable ; especially :extremity of cold 4 : strict precision : exactness 5 a obsolete : rigidity, stiffness
I just did a Close Reading of that definition of rigor and now realize that my instruction to 2nd graders is a simple matter of life and death. Thank god for David Coleman.
I choose life for my 6 year old and take a pass on the rigor.
My sentiments exactly. I don’t know what else to do. I’m in my 35th year of teaching and I have never seen such chaos and hatred for teachers. The children are the ones getting screwed.
Well there is no place in my ethics book for teachers to be “screwing” the students. Don’t give the tests. Refuse!
If only it was that simple. I refuse to give the test. Get fired. Lose my pension. Will you pay my bills?
Lynda,
Sorry, can’t pay your bills, got too many of my own from being hosed by the housing market crash. Doesn’t stop me from fighting these battles in the way I can best which is to try to educate all to the inherent invalidities involved in this whole process.
Well the least you can do is to not sign any forms saying you won’t read the test. Don’t you have an ethical right to not give a test you haven’t vetted? I believe so. Read the test so as to be able to help students with questions they have problems with. Now that doesn’t mean giving answers but the concept of any testing situation being standardized is a falsehood. It is impossible to standardize the various testing environments in which students find themselves. The whole process from the start is invalid. Whatever supposedly little “non-standardization” you would supposedly inject into the situation is very minor compared to all the errors and obfuscations of the whole educational standards, standardized testing regimes and even the “grading” of students. See Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 in order to get a better understanding of the logical inconsistencies and sheer idiocies involved.
There aren’t any papers to be signed. If I don’t give the test, I will be fired. I am fighting the best I can. I don’t read the test to my students. Just out of curiosity, are you a teacher?
Yes, 19 years and counting of high school Spanish. But I didn’t start until I was 38 so I have a wide background of different business experiences.
How do we eliminate Common Core? Thats the real question. Does the Dept. of Education have the right to impose a national curriculum?
Get state legislatures, governors, state dept ofto back out
Oops state dept of ed
A bill has been introduced to limit the power of the Department of Education.
http://www.siacabinetreport.com/articles/viewarticle.aspx?article=2750
“The National School Boards Association and its 90,000 members are sponsoring legislation aimed at curbing the authority of the U.S. Secretary of Education – an outgrowth likely stemming from the group’s chilly relationship with the Obama administration during the president’s first term.
HR 1386 by Congressmen Aaron Schock, R-Illinois and Patrick Meehan, R-Pennsylvania would prohibit the U.S. Department of Education from adopting any new regulations, rules or grant requirements without first offering the education community 60 days to provide written comments.
The bill would also restrict the education secretary from taking any new regulatory action that would conflict with the “power and authority” of local educational agencies or would add additional costs not supported by federal funding.
“A lot of the policies of the department have just been stepping over the authority of a locally-elected school board to make decisions that are in the best interest of their community and students,” said Erika Hoffman, legislative advocate for the California School Boards Association.
“What we are asking for in the bill, is an opportunity to review policies and have a voice in how it comes down – which we think is important,” she said.
Schock, a former member of the school board in his hometown of Peoria, said in framing his legislation that there is growing concern that regulatory actions from the Department of Education threaten to undermine the benefits of local school boards…”
They didn’t impose the common core, they just made it a lot easier to get “competitive” grants if you did.
Comment on Susan’s comment above: Yes, and many STATE governments are ALSO undermining local school boards–ironically,
Aaron Schock’s Illinois! Illinois has a State Charter School Commission, which can OVERRIDE a local school board’s decision to deny approval to a charter school’s application. Recently, District 299 (CPS!) denied Concepts Charter Schools.
The State overrode and approved it. A charter school will now be opening just a few blocks away from a Chicago Public School that will be closed! Additionally, the infamous K12 has invaded the Chicago suburbs, seeking approval to open virtual charter “schools” in 18 suburban school districts! It has been reported (and I watched one such hearing) that both the boards and the district administrators have done their due diligence, asked all the tough questions/made the correct comments, leading to the indications that not one of those school district’s boards will approve K12. However, the State Commission is another story…
They don’t. They also don’t have the right to subvert Congress’s NCLB to implement an even worse reform in RTTT. Arne Duncan should be impeached and removed.
To hear far too many folks in the “reform” movement nowadays tell it, no one in this country ever got a decent education in a public school. Thank goodness we now have the CCSS, TFA, and the for-profit “reformers” to rescue us from our mediocrity…
Of course, there’s that pesky matter of who actually is in charge of our public schools, but what’s a little despotism in service of the greater good? http://tinyurl.com/c4vnaof http://tinyurl.com/dxqnz8v
Those kids might be crying today, but they’ll be thanking their lucky stars some day for that “rigorous” education they got…if any of them can remember any of it five minutes after the last test has been taken…
My 8th grade math students took the Smarter Balanced Pilot a few weeks ago. They trickled into my classroom as they finished. They looked completely demoralized- just sat staring. A few had questions, almost all based on fear. “Did that ‘count’?” “Was that high school math?”, “Was that what we’re supposed to know?”
No sign of enthusiasm or anticipation- only dread.
These are students who are in “grade level math”, some of whom are clearly over their heads already. Our school is over 50% free & reduced lunch, and over 50% African American. My classes are at least 70% in both categories. I also have most of the ESL students in 8th grade, which lends significance to the story told by one student;
“One problem was a long story about kids going on a ski trip, and all the stuff they had to pay for. Then there were questions about it that were really hard. You had to write explanations and everything.”
I’d bet a week’s pay that not one of my students has been within 20 yards of a ski. A series of questions in a context with which a large group of students cannot relate should be labeled “culturally biased”. A non educator may say that context and definitions are not relevant- just do the math.
An educator knows how an unfamiliar context can affect a child, how distracting and stressful it can be.
Sadly, the emphasis of reform has been on curriculum (what), instructional strategy (how), and, of course, the test results.
From one who has been personally invested – on the front lines- for 20+ years, the elephant in the room is the epidemic of poverty, and societal changes over the last three decades that have impacted WHO we teach.
Untill this is addressed, we are dressing the emperor in just another set of new clothes.
Sounds like the rigor the reformers were looking for. (see my earlier post)
Kinda like rigor mortis, eh?
In Texas we’ve been living this reality for several years now. The test has demoralized our profession and extinguished the passions of so many stellar educators. Thank you for shedding light on this critical issue. I’m hoping we’ll have a revolution similar to what Egypt experienced a few years ago.
http://writingmomentum.blogspot.com/2013/03/slice-9-of-31-still-waiting-on-world-to.html
Who did this? Obama’s henchman, Arne Duncan, that’s who!!
It has been a truly bipartisan FAIL, in my opinion. Neither political party has anything to be boasting about when it comes to this stuff. They’ve both got their fingerprints all over the mess…
Both political parties have declared war on public education, and thus democracy. They are in the grips of a destructive, crackpot cult called neoliberalism.
I think we all know how this will end. All public schools – even those wealthy suburban schools – will be categorized as failing. Then we can justify closing all of them. We will use tax dollars to open all new private and charter schools, none of which will be subjected to any sort of standardized testing.Teachers will be paid half of their current pay with no retirement. Walmart will open schools. Kids will go online for drill-and-kill schooling. If you are a teacher right now – consider leaving your job and going to work for Pearson. They will be taking all the $$$!
And after ten years of only private schools that are failing, what then? I suspect they will take away the vouchers and require each family to PAY TUITION for their kids’ education… or else the State will come in and take away their kids! And the kids from poor families will be under pressure to qualify for full-tuition scholarships.
It’s the big $$$, my friends, for all involved. And that’s ALL it is.
Jacking up the standards is designed to create failure. The whole goal of education to the neoliberals is to cut off access to a higher education. “Higher education” to them is anything past the seventh or eighth grade. That’s why they are furiously tracking kids beginning with pre-K so that they never work in anything more meaningful than deadend service jobs with rotten pay and no benefits.
As Linda says above, “Walmart will open schools.” Thus will be the start of the school-to-poverty-level job pipeline. The end of the middle class.
BUT–WE are NOT going to stand by & let that happen–KEEP fighting–don’t just wish for Karen Lewis, BE LIKE Karen Lewis.
As she stated, “It isn’t over until WE say it is!”
Yes, WE can! March in D.C. on Saturday, April 6th!
As Linda said, “higher education” to the neoliberals is anything past the seventh or eighth grade. Maybe also anything past the sixth grade.
Just want to confirm the sentiment of FEAR in our household. I sat up with one child until 1am while she cried and shaked in anticipation of the next morning’s test. I was just flabbergast. As far as I could tell or understand, this was actually, in some sense a test of the _teacher_ and not the kid. Sensible-ness of that aside, as my kid’s parent, I wanted her to at least shed some of this sense of doom and guilt by understanding it wasn’t even to reflect on *her*. I don’t even know if I’m right; it’s not as if we parents even got told these tests were in the works in school. All I knew was that my kid couldn’t sleep for the fear of it all. I was bewildered about what was going on.
It’s actually rather abusive of the kid. Never mind the teacher, who I think bears the brunt of the test results.
What if the kid knows this? I think they must. I think my kid must have been feeling she would be responsible for whether her teacher got a passing grade and the guilt of this was practically worse, if not perhaps more so even, than were she responsible for the consequences of her own learning (as in a report card of her own performance).
The more I think about this the angrier, as a parent, I become. If someone threatened my kid on the playground to the extent they were crying and shaking and not wanting to go to school the next day, we would all understand this to be actionable bullying. So why shouldn’t I be angry as a parent that this policy has instilled at least as much fear in my kid?
I do honestly, really, feel so sorry for you teachers. I am absolutely mystified as to how, when and why all this balkanization of fake constituencies got started: “parent”, “student”, “teacher”, “administrator” — some of these entities aren’t really coherent constituencies to begin with, and all of them ought to be working together not against each other. Utterly ridiculous….
I know exactly what you are talking about. The stress is unbearable. One of my kindergarten students was in tears for three days about her third-grade sister taking tests. Why is this happening? Who is being served by these policies?
redqueeninia: This makes me SO sad. Next year, PLEASE opt your daughter (& any other children you have) OUT. Tell your friends, neighbors & relatives to do so, as well. If EVERYONE OPTS OUT, the testing will stop.
Yes, I just sat in one of these common core meetings recently. Yes, the tests will be harder, much harder. After looking at some of the tasks, it just confirmed my gut feeling from the beginning. These tests are made to break the “good” public schools in the suburbs. Even in the wealthy suburbs with high performing kids (like my school), I estimate no more than 30% will pass these tests. Then the parents will think, “Wait, my school is failing too.” In will move the charter schools, vouchers, etc., and that is that. In an inner city school (non-magnet) I imagine 5-10% will pass these tests. That is a generous estimate. In a really rough urban school, it may just be 1%. Who knows? Wait until they don’t allow kids to go to the next grade, if they don’t pass a certain test. Then, you will see real anxiety and drop outs. I plan on moving my kids to private schools, if it gets too extreme (which is what the people in control want anyway). Sorry, but I am not going to let them experiment on my kids with their bubble tests and my kids’ personal information on the computer. If you can’t afford to send your kids to private schools, just homeschool them. It isn’t so weird anymore. By keeping your kids in the “system” you are just being complicit in a crime, really. Obviously our society is going to do nothing to protect the children (let alone the teachers), so it is up to the parents to protect and shield their children from these psychos.
While you’re on the way to enrolling your kids in that private school, or gathering up the home-schooling materials, better call a real estate agent. Get ready to sell while you can still get a decent return.
When we bought our house, we paid a premium because it’s in a well-regarded school district. But once the district isn’t “Excellent with Dinstinction” anymore, well, there will go our property’s value. There’s nothing inherently attractive about a 1970s ticky-tacky house in a suburb full of other houses just like it.
And the middle-class shrinks some more…
OPT your kids OUT!!!
The one above is for john, the one below for Barbara.
Sorry–much like misplaced modifiers!
OPT your kids OUT!!!!
More and more, it is starting to look like it’s about more than just killing public education. It must also be about creating a permanent underclass, who will work for very low wages. That’s the only thing that really makes any sense.
How can we stop it? I have visited many different websites on the problems with school ‘reform,’ and nobody seems to have a coherent strategy to fight it on a national level. Everybody just seems to be battling their local schools district, hoping for a waiver. Not to be dramatic, but totalitarians don’t give waivers or make exceptions for anybody.
Is there a group lobbying Congress to stop Common Core?
Join the Network for Public Education. http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/
Join Parents Across America.
Parentsacrossamerica.org
Join your state or local grassroots group.
Come to DC on April 4-7 to join Occupy the DOE.
Many of us are missing two important points. First, as a teacher I must make a choice. I must teach my students so they can be successful on the test, thus making CCSS look good. Or I can teach my students as the CCSS outlines knowing they will fail. If they fail I put my own position in jeopardy which is exactly what the “reformers” want. This leads to the second, and most important, point. The ultimate goal here is to crush teachers. The largest portion of education cost is teacher salaries/benefits. Constant attacks on teachers is destroying the “profession” of teaching. They want teachers to quit. If they don’t quit they can use testing or refusal to teach CCSS to remove teachers. Teaching will become an hourly job with a scripted curriculum. Teachers will last 3-5 years before burning out. Online learning will replace many and education becomes much less expensive. Of course the biggest losers will be the poor as they wont have the access to even the technology for learning.
And who might the biggest winners be???
Every PD I’ve attended over the past 10-15 years, regarding new curriculum, has included the phrase, “…and you don’t have to do anything! It’s all written out for you!!”.
I told the proctors that I WANT to do something and they acted like I’d just landed from Mars. They started to include “differentiation”, which was scripted out, as well.
Impeach Arne Duncan is right. And send a message to Obama that he’s not looking too good in this arena, either.
The fox is running the chicken coop. They’re eating us up. I can’t tell you how sad this original post was to me. It’s so true.
Even though Common Core doesn’t technically begin til next year, teachers are feeling this in Oklahoma right now. Our 5th and 8th grade state writing tests are coming up this week. The prompts are passage-based and modeled off of common core. My 8th graders have really grown in their writing skills this year, but the practice prompts have been very difficult for them to do on their own. Here’s an example: http://ok.gov/sde/sites/ok.gov.sde/files/OCCT_GR8_Wr_s13.pdf. I work at a large, suburban school in a college town. We usually have a passing rate of 98% on the writing test, and I’m quite positive that will go down by at least 30% this year. My 5th grader has cried in frustration several times over this. He loves to write creatively, but he has no idea how to form a thesis statement and use subtopics drawn from 2 passages on some topic that is not interesting to him. I have been trying to reach out to other ELA teachers in the state, and parents as well. I’d like for us to somehow try to educate the public BEFORE the test results make front-page news. I’m just now sure how to do that.
The only people I can relate to are on this blog. I see PARENTS and TEACHERS buying into this sick testing mania. They believe there needs to be a way to get rid of “bad teachers”. I think I’m viewed as the psycho. They believe their “stature” in their district will save their job here in suburbia.
Oh, and they are the Principal’s “buddies”.