A third-grade class of children in upstate New York were upset by the Common Core exams.
Their teacher and principal encouraged them to write to the Governor.
Many complained that they didn’t have enough time to finish.
One wrote, “”I know the governor wants us to be ‘college ready,’ but we are only in third grade for heaven sakes.”
Out of the mouths of babes, more wisdom than one hears from the New York State Education Department.
You can find their bureaucratic responses to the children at the end of the article.
We do want our third graders to be college and career ready, don’t we?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Third graders are emotionally immature and unable to credibly evaluate what and how they are taught, or so I have been told.
The purpose of the letter writing was not for the third graders to evaluate what and how they were taught… but nice try. Your attempt at ‘turning the table’ fell flat.
As usual.
And yet, they are tested on “one-size fits all” material???
They are tested and tested and tested to see if they will be college ready????
TE, I’m confused.
The children are too immature to evaluate and change the system: agreed.
But the purpose of this letter was for them to express their feelings about their frustration with the system and how it impacts them. This is feedback for NYSED and Cuomo.
Feedback is neither corrective nor neutral many times. But it serves as a forum to air the perceptions of people affected by policy and as more data for policy makers.
As someone who teachers, are you not at all curious as to why over 95% of EDUCATIONAL policy makers on state and federal levels have little or no background in education? 12 of our 17 Board of Regents members in NY state don’t have degrees in education and have never taught a class K-12. Of the remaining 5, 2 taught in tony private schools and one was a psychologist in a public school. The president herself taught for 5 years in a Yeshiva and the commissioner has had three years between teaching and principalship altogether in a charter, and one school he served in was a private facility in PR.
You teach in a university. Should a barrage of standardized testing and evaluations that goes with it come to higher education in the same manner as is has in public schools? Or in any shade of it?
Do you professors make up your exams, perhaps with some filtering by your chairs? Or do you get tests from Pearson?
Should your students’ test scores determine your worthiness to the university?
Are your students there at the university because they want to be or because the law compels them to be?
If they impede the process of teaching in an abusive manner, can the university opt to remove them permanently?
I think the reason that educational policy makers are not generally people experienced in education is that public education is a branch of the state government. Ultimately it is the state legislature that makes educational policy or chooses to delegate that power to others.
In my discipline at least, the undergraduate curriculum has evolved to be fairly standardized. While individual faculty members make up their own exams, I suspect that it would not matter if my exams were exchanged with most introductory classes around the world.
My students performance in subsequent classes and my students and colleagues evaluation of me have determined my worthiness to teach at the University. I am, and always have been, an at will employee.
The law does not compel my students to be at the university. An unfortunate number are compelled to be here by their parents.
I do think that state compulsion to attend a particular public school requires the state to more heavily regulate the school than would be necessary if students had affordable options to attend alternative schools.
Students can be removed from the class if they impede the process of teaching, though there is currently a movement afoot in my state to allow concealed carry by students on campus, and that might make removing them more dangerous. I believe there is an alternative school structure set up in most school districts to deal with abusive students as well. In my local district, for example, there is a virtual high school.
“I think the reason that educational policy makers are not generally people experienced in education is that public education is a branch of the state government. Ultimately it is the state legislature that makes educational policy or chooses to delegate that power to others.”
TE, you’re restating facts here that are already common knowledge. Being a branch of state government does not make it defacto, automatically a sound policy to allow non educators design and enforce policy. Do surgeons have this situation? Or litigators?
“In my discipline at least, the undergraduate curriculum has evolved to be fairly standardized. While individual faculty members make up their own exams, I suspect that it would not matter if my exams were exchanged with most introductory classes around the world.”
Such an evolution that has come up through the ranks of self-created exams is not qualitatively or even psychometrically the same thing as exams that are created and mandated in a top down fashion from a testing corporation. The former is grassroots and organic; the latter is factory produced and efficient, but altogether not nearly as reliable or valid. I’d also like to see your suspicions of global interchangeability in testing with some empirical data.
“I do think that state compulsion to attend a particular public school requires the state to more heavily regulate the school than would be necessary if students had affordable options to attend alternative schools.”
The state mandated compulsory education for children of a certain age range, and such a mandate is not at all dependent on the type pf school attended. States do not force compulsion to attend public school; they force compulsion to attend school, period. Please state your facts accurately.
“My students performance in subsequent classes and my students and colleagues evaluation of me have determined my worthiness to teach at the University. I am, and always have been, an at will employee.”
Please specify: student scores on tests in subsequent classes taught by your colleagues? By you, as in a sequence of coursework? You are an at-will professor, but were you on a tenure track or are you adjunct? Does your universty offer due process in the firing scenario?
Would you find it advantageous if a truly disruptive student were to be removed from you class?
What is your class size? Name of University? Tuition per year? Public or private school?
“I believe there is an alternative school structure set up in most school districts to deal with abusive students as well. In my local district, for example, there is a virtual high school.”
This is supposed to be the new approach in public schools in New York state, but would you happen have any statistics or data showing how many districts throughout the United States actually practice the “alternative school” approach? Are they all qualitatively similar?
“Students can be removed from the class if they impede the process of teaching, though there is currently a movement afoot in my state to allow concealed carry by students on campus, and that might make removing them more dangerous.”
I sincerely hope you are never involved in a crossfire.
I suppose you are technically correct that any parent in the country does have the right to send their child to Phillips Exeter, but as a practical matter most parents in a traditional zoned school system will send their children to a school based on the location of their home. Every realestate advertisement in my town lists the elementary, middle, and high school district the house is located in. Is it different in your town?
My position is best described as a lecturer at a large state research university. In state tuition is around $9,000 (though students can automatically qualify for scholarships based on high school GPA and ACT/SAT scores). Early in my time teaching my contract was on a semester basis funded by a variety of uncertain sources. Now the funding for my position is part of the annual budget. I have taught classes as small as 7 students to as large as 500. The size of the class depends on what I am assigned to teach in a given semester.
The prevalence of alternative high schools in the US is perhaps better answered by other posters. I remember one poster from Connecticut complaining that his school system had stopped the practice and as a result his classes were becoming impossible to teach. Perhaps poster Joe Nathan could comment as he has spent some time teaching at an alternative school. My school district has one, but at 10,000 total students it is about the tenth largest school district in the state. Smaller districts might not be able to afford it.
TE,
Thank you for your thought out yet still incomplete response to my questions.
I appreciate what you chose to answer and am confused by the rest of the omissions.
Your list was long. What would you like for me to expand on?
You appear to have time to comment on this blog rather more frequently than not: please answer all questions posed.
Perhaps you could ask them one at a time? I have found that Dr. Ravitch deletes my responses if they are too long.
TE,
It’s more efficient to answer the remainder of questions rather than me having to pose them individually.
I have done graphics work for Diane and have been in communication with her web administrator. No response is censored unless it involves cursing or calling Diane a liar.
Other then that, she does not censor. I will forward your note to her web guy and see what might be happening to your responses.
Of course, it you are writing literally 2500 words per response, it may (and the operative word is “may”) be an issue unless you are doing it infrequently. Of this, I am not sure but will attempt to ascertain something for you.
More efficient for you perhaps.
I do not know about anyone elses experience, but I can assure you that Dr. Ravitch has deleted my posts because she felt they were too long. That is why I now keep my posts very short.
Has she told you that? DId she state that?
How would you define “efficient” in this case?
Yes.
By my time.
TE,
Can’t you just answer the questions one at a time?
The list is long. Perhaps one at a time would be best.
Great then. I’ll look for your answers, one at a time.
Sounds good.
I don’t see any answers.
Did I miss something?
I don’t understand.
Did not see any questions. Where did you post them? They are not in this thread.
I don’t understand.
Are they not in the original post?
What I had in mind was that you could ask the questions you felt I did not answer one at a time to make it easier for me to give you answers. I understand that this does put the majority of the burden on you, but you seem very anxious that I answer all your questions and I am not especially interested in answering them, so it seems reasonable.
I don’t get this at all.
I thought this was a collegial nd professional discourse we were having?
Why would you not be interested in answering questions?
I’m confused.
But I bet you think it’s fine that third-graders’ survey feedback will be part of a teacher’s evaluation, despite it being from kids who are “emotionally immature and unable to credibly evaluate what and how they are taught,” right?
Are you asking me, or Teaching Economist?
I think that it is fine for third-graders survey feedback to be part of a teachers evaluation AND it is find for third-graders survey feedback to be part of a curriculum evaluation.
I have trouble understanding why third-graders feedback about curriculum should be a part of curriculum evaluation but should never be part of teacher evaluations.
teachingeconomist writes sensibly just often enough to perhaps succeed in inoculating himself against charges of being a troll by some readers, but in fact the overwhelming majority of his comments and questions are intended for misdirection and diversion from the topic at hand, as this one is.
It’s hard to imagine how anyone who asks such obtuse questions or reliably inserts red herrings and non sequiturs in a discussion could be hired and retained as a professor of economics, or anything else.
Then again, given the track record of mainstream economists in recent years, perhaps that’s a condition of employment, in which case he’s perfect for the job.
Anyway, don’t feed the trolls.
Wow! THEY’RE telling him that if he wants to know what they know, they need MORE TIME! And college ready? Writing to the governor is a good start! Expressing their frustrations appropriately… also a good start! Making cogent arguments… another good example of becoming college ready… and these are 3rd graders indeed!
Bet the teacher will get an “F” for allowing students to express their opinion..
Teachers get the “F-Fired” for stating their opinions..
If it is not on the test …you can not go there
(creativity is definitely not on any of these practice test sites across this country.).
I work in the North Rockland Central School District…this teacher will have no problems in our district because our Superintendent and School Board “gets it”.
The Governor’s response was patronizing and showed disrespect for these third grade students. If Cuomo were a seasoned educator and had valid research behind his over-generalized comments… at least this would be more respectful. What a disgrace. Children clearly don’t even matter n this equation… the ultimate irony.
If students are too emotionally immature to understand judge the relationship the have with their teachers, how is it that we should take notice of their opinions about statewide education policy?
What we SHOULD do is understand their emotional, social and physical development as the adults in charge, and clearly understand their signals that this whole process is distressing and unhealthy for them.
I think the people who put this entire draconian plan actually must despise children and childhood!
There are no high stakes attached to the students reflections on the testing. Taking the information in aggregate, may suggest a pattern that is worth examining further. I doubt that teachers have an objection to student surveys or reflections taken as a whole that are meant to inform a teacher’s practice. Even individual students may have useful insights for a teacher. I’m not sure the child who called his/her mother a “poopy head” when facing discipline should be considered ready to give a professional evaluation of the qualifications of his/her teacher.
Changing the states educational policy is not high stacks? I had thought folks around here thought it very important.
One of the students letters focused on both the length and difficulty of the tests saying that the reading level was above their grade level. I don’t doubt it because that’s where ours students tests have been for the last couple of years. and now next year we’re moving into Common Core in a very big way. I’m in agreement with the other student I think that the administrator and governor should be taking these tests each year too.
Our tests began in April this year a week after we returned from Spring Break. For at least a month before we began getting practice tests from the district to coach our students on how to best to take the tests.
It’s been feeling for the last several years that what we are doing is teaching to the test, and in much of our curriculum what we teach is not relevant to the test, hence we take practice tests beginning a couple months before.
I am a 2nd grade teacher.
They are doing this all over the country and offering workshops on how to improve test scores!!!
Nothing about lifetime learning….just about test scores…
Strange days in education. Crazy
From the “Mouths of Babes”
They speak the truth and since they have only been exposed to material on a test, they have not been educated…just taught how to take a test..
The problem with sending letters from third graders to the governor is that frog-faced Andrew Cuomo probably does not have the reading comprehension level or the emotional intelligence level of a third grader.
He’s still catching up to these children. Poor Mario and Mathilda.
I love this partial response from the bureaucrats: “Many students have told us that they like these learning standards.”
I’m betting they haven’t talked to ANY students, let alone “many” students, and I’m fairly certain that there aren’t classes of kids who LIKED this stuff writing to the governor’s office.
I could be wrong, I suppose.
“Many students”. . . .
Where’s the data, the study, the sample size, the wording in the questions?
Crunchy, I had the same thought. Which students in the real world except those at a very affluent school (and even then I am skeptical) would be able to say that they like any learning standards? That is such a patronizing answer from the state. Cuomo will probably not answer but have one of his highly paid henchmen to it for him.
crunchydeb, I’m sure you’re right, in fact if a betting woman I’d make a fortune. It’s baloney to say that children like these learning standards, the two words “learning standards” aren’t even anything a child would say.
A former principal of mine (and a bully too) would always say that the children want to know the benchmarks before every lesson. She wanted to come into a class and ask the children which “benchmark” they were on, and I said you’ve got to be kidding. It would take an additional 15 to 20 minutes to teach a benchmark before each lesson, maybe even an hour…there goes the lesson on any particular REAL subject.