This teacher explains: She loves teaching. She loves her
students, but she wants the high-stakes testing and the Race to the
Top to stop. She knows that her students are set up to fail. It is
all so wrong, so mean-spirited, so cruel. This is what she knows:
“I am a NYS certified public school teacher teaching 3rd grade in
an economically disadvantaged school district in rural upstate New
York. I happen to be one of the unfortunate teachers in a “test
grade” and am in fear of loosing my job, my livelihood, and the one
thing I used to enjoy waking up to every morning (my students)!!!!!
I went into teaching to teach precious little minds to learn and
not fear the consequences if they do not get something. “That has
all changed in the last several of years as state and federal
politics have stepped in to tell us how poorly our students are
doing. We, as teachers, are so under pressure to make a round peg
fit into a square hole with these new core standards. The people
who write these tests and demand that all students achieve at the
same level have never stepped foot into a classroom to see the
diversity of the students we work with everyday. “Last year during
the first year of the common core testing, I had students who were
crying because they did not understand the question, did not have
time to finish under the allotted time, or were just simply
overwhelmed by the complexity of the test. Is that why I became a
teacher, no it is not! I teach because I want to see my students
learn, but as more and more pressure comes down on us as teachers
so too does it in our students! “There has to be a time when we
stop thinking about the race to the top and start thinking about
the children we are supposed to be encouraging to want to learn!
The only thing we are doing with these common core state tests is
setting them up for failure and in the same process making teachers
look like they are not doing their jobs. “I’m tired of people who
have never stepped foot into a classroom telling me that I am not
“effective” because my 8 year old students can’t pass a test that
even a college graduate has difficulty completing!!!!!!! Whether I
am effective should not depend on how my students do on a three day
test, it should be based on whether they show growth from beginning
to end, just like they should not be considered as not meeting an
impossible state mandated goal in a three day test!!! Enough is
enough, let us get back to teaching and let our kids be kids,
after-all your childhood only lasts so long!!!!!”
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Hello Diane, I just wanted to share this opt out letter from Texas: http://kyledmassey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/opt-out-letter.pdf Sincerely, Texas Parents Opt Out of State Tests
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 15:00:17 +0000 To: edy63ford@hotmail.com
Every child would be lucky to have these parents. They have obviously done their homework. The tide is turning and parents are the key to taking back our public schools. Public schools need to work together with parents. It’s the only way. In numbers we will find success.
This may be off topic, or maybe not, but I am concerned at the recent message from Mr. Duncan. He claims the recent data from Office of Civil Rights shows the so-called school to prison pipeline begins as early as 4 years old. He blames schools, of course. What he fails to recognize is that the high numbers of students struggling behaviorally to fit in, in our public schools, is a symptom of the high poverty home environment from which they come. Mix high poverty with the current tunnel vision on standardized testing, and the developmentally inappropriate CCSS, and you have a recipe for failure. If 4 year old begins school unprepared, then I suggest it is a home to prison pipeline. As an Early Interventionist in a public school system who spent 9 years working in the homes of high poverty at-risk families, I can tell you without a doubt that the pipeline begins way before they enter school. Until we are willing to acknowledge and address the devastation wrought by growing up in extreme poverty, and stop blaming schools, we will continue to face the problems of high poverty students being successful in school.
Yes, the high numbers of suspensions and expulsions are unacceptable. But that is what happens when teachers’ livelihoods are tied to student achievement. Students are tired of standardized tests and a narrowed curriculum that leaves no time for creativity, music, physical activity, and other enrichment, so they misbehave. Then teachers worry that they will lose their jobs because a student’s behavior interferes with their instruction. It is a vicious cycle. Everyone is set up for failure. But then again, I guess that was the plan all along.
Rating teachers as ineffective does nothing to help children succeed if one does nothing to deal with the real root of the problem- Poverty. Blaming teachers is so much easier than dealing with the real problems that are created when a nation turns it’s back on the embarrassingly high number of children growing up in poverty in a nation of vast wealth and resources. We can spend 3 million dollars searching for a missing plane over the ocean, and another few million to help poor kids in Africa, yet we have no problem taking food stamps and other social supports from poor families without blinking an eye. We continue to reduce resources for public education, while we increase funding for defense in non-existent “wars”.
The current Race to the Test environment leaves teachers hands tied from doing what is needed to support our students’ success. We are educated professionals who are treated with a level of disrespect that is unprecedented in the history of education. This administration speaks with empty rhetoric about supporting early childhood initiatives and behavioral supports for struggling students. I can tell you that this is empty talk, and will probably result in some new business model for skimming more public dollars into the pockets of some new private corporate enterprise. Stop the Madness!
They’re clueless, Bridget. They’re going to deliver a stern, finger wagging lecture on civil rights just as they’ve done with every other issue in public schools.
US Dept of Education @usedgov 1h
New Civil Rights Data Collection shows nationwide, one in five high schools lacks a school counselor. http://go.usa.gov/KpNP #CRDC
What did they think all those parents in Philadelphia and Chicago were yelling about? They were complaining because their public school budgets were cut. They lost counselors.
Duncan did nothing. Not advocacy, not nothing. He’s pushing applying to college while public schools all over the country have to get rid of counselors. Brilliant. Order schools to accomplish a goal, but make sure they don’t get there! There’s just a complete disconnect with reality.
Are public schools stronger and better under Arne Duncan’s watch? If not, then he’s a lousy advocate for public schools.
The only way to stop this madness is for every school district in every state to stand together and refuse to give another state mandated test. We have not yet figured out that there is strength in numbers. There are more of us as teachers and parents, yet we can’t figure out how to stop this Race to the Test. We need our local superintendents to organize and for teachers and parents to support a boycott of all tests that are not generated at the local school level. We are scared to lose our jobs, but if we don’t take control, we will not have jobs anyway. We need strong leaders at the local school district level to band together and agree to stand strong against unnecessary testing.
It has to be led by superintendents and school boards. Teachers are too afraid to do it at the classroom level. Even principles can’t do it at the building level. It has to be the top brass of each district stating that they will not cooperate with harmful practices that are educationally unsound.
Wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the suups to take a stand. The vast majority are not critical thinkers but educrats who only know how to say yes to the state mandates. The money they make is far more than what they would make as a teacher and heaven forbid that they might end up back in the classroom (heaven have mercy on the children in that case.)
Here’s a piece about how Duncan’s DOE has abandoned equity in school funding while delivering stern lectures to public schools about equity:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/education_law/2014/03/does-us-department-of-education-care-about-funding-fairness.html
Amen!!!! I live and teach in North Carolina. It seems as though each year, a new test comes out. If our students already perform 46 out of the 50 states, what is a new test going to prove?
“I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless, robots who protect them and their property.”
― Assata Shakur
Professor Yong Zhao says it best. He states that China now realizes it has been doing the wrong thing. Although China has four times the population of the U.S., so that statistically Chinese schooling should have produced four Steve Jobs by now, they have not produced even one. Although Chinese students score higher on the PISA tests (international benchmarks) than U.S. students, they have a much lower level of confidence. Professor Zhao points out that if you test children often, attach a score, and rank them, this process produces a lack of confidence, lack of enjoyment and lack of interest. Chinese students do not celebrate their successes and do not end up using their skills to innovate. “A new paradigm is needed that will celebrate individual talents and enhance everybody’s strengths, not fix their deficits. If you look behind everybody’s deficit you will find their strength.” In the U.S. we should not be testing our students constantly and ranking them in some mechanistic way having no relation to their real talents and interests. “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.”(Albert Einstein) Why can’t we teach our children how to think about people in other countries as partners in innovation, as potential consumers of yet to be invented products, as resources for ideas and skills that may help solve world problems? Human creativity is every nation’s greatest treasure.
Focusing on the children and ignoring the tests is the only way to be a good teacher in todays corporate driven world. If my job is threatened because junk science has been used to evaluate my work, there will be a law suit filed immediately. I will not be forced into bullying the children that I teach.
Let teachers teach!