I posted this morning about the “standards” for pre-schoolers in Connecticut.
The teacher I quoted added this comment:
Click to access Pk_to_Kindergarten_Mathematics_Continuum.pdf
Sorry Dr. Ravitch, I put in two links to the language arts standards and didn’t include the link to the math standards. The above link takes you to the math standards. I love the one about preschoolers being able to describe real graphs. Also the one which expects preschoolers to “discuss strategies to estimate and compare length, area, temperature and weight.” Have any of these people read Piaget?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My wife taught K-2 for thirty years (now retired) and absolutely hates the standards movement, though she says a “real graph” is a legitmate pedagogical tool for 4/5 year olds (putting a fruit drink in the least, moderate, or most-liked drink group or putting one’s favorite-colored apple on a graphing map) and is actually based upon Piaget.
Love your blog. Keep up the great work.
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Are you aware that at the most recent ECS conference, a presenter from Hawaii referred to the P in “P-20” as “pre-birth.” This should give folks pause. Pre-school truly can mean anything before kindergarten, I guess.
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Diane,
The email does not have the link to the math standards. It appears on your site, but did not come through in the email. K teachers all over will want to see this.
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I added the link and reposted it.
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We’re give 4 standardized assessments in Chicago. Plus through Tahm’s “Ready to Learn” program, which they neglected to inform CPS principals about, they may end up losing most of the public school preschool programs which for years have been high quality programs with certified teachers. Why is he doing this? Simple, privitize preschool and get rid of all the union teachers and aides. He started this in June when all the ed coaches were laid off. The privitization of preschool is on the CPS BOE agenda this Tuesday. Get there at 6:30 a.m if you want to speak against this horrendous travesty to our inner city childlren. I spoke last month so I’m ineligible.
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“discuss strategies to estimate and compare length, area, temperature and weight.”
T- How do we know that it is hot outside today?
Pre-K1 – I feel warm.
Pre-K2 – I don’t have to wear a sweater.
Pre-K3 – Look at the themomomometer. My mommy always does.
T – Which weighs more a pumpkin or an apple, how can we find out?
Pre-K1 – We can use the balance thing.
Pre-K2 – We can use our hands and feel it.
Pre-K3 – A pumpkin is always hard to carry but not an apple so the pumpkin is really really really heavy.
I believe those two conversations will meet the Common Core Standard for Pre-K. Common Core is subject to interpretation.
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I hope everyone is realizing that the centralized education system does not work. Public schools were set up to be run by local communities. Where parents and educators could work together for the best way to educate their children. They could make the necessary changes quickly if something wasn’t working well.
Now we have this bloated bureaucracy taking a large sum of tax dollars, wasting it on “best practices” and telling everyone how to educate their kids.
Until you start to take the power back to the local communities, this is what you can expect.
When the school boards were eliminated in NYC that should have had every parent and teacher on the street protesting.
Keep allowing them to grab power, and they will use that power against you.
Socialists should wake up to this failed policy. There are no “saints” in govt. and the sooner you realize that, the better.
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MomwithaBrain,
Arne Duncan is proving you right
Diane
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They didn’t read Piaget… but they did read Terman… He’s into numbers and quants LOVE numbers!
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Here another one of my assessment stories from when I was teaching Head Start a few years back.
DIAL an answer—wrong number
I was the special education teacher in a blended model Head Start. We were required to give the children a beginning of the year assessment called the DIAL-R. One section involves asking the child to identify and explain the purpose of series illustrations of objects.
I was giving “Eloisa,” a bright typically developing 4-year-old English-language learner, the DIAL. I showed her a picture of the kind of thermometer used to indicate the temperature outside, and asked what it was. The drawing was of a long thin thermometer framed in black. She answered that it was for the bus. That answer confused me until I asked how it was used for the bus? She explained that it told what time the bus would come.
Bus schedules are posted in long thin black frames high on the bus stop signs in my city. The drawing of the thermometer reminded Eloisa of the schedules she seen her parents refer to especially looking up from her 3 ½ foot vantage point. I am certain that she would not have confused a real thermometer with a bus schedule. I am also certain that she had not encountered a weather thermometer before. She may have encountered a traditional body temperature thermometer, but those are not in black frames. Eloisa misinterpretation of the picture made complete sense.
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