read and understood the answers, but something didn’t feel right. It took me awhile to figure it out. The answers of ‘not our call’. Is that true? Here is my thought process and please correct me if I am wrong. I am trying to understand why this has been so frustrating for me. Here are some of the assumptions I made, based on historical review and discussions with some teachers: 1) Testing is not about education, but about documenting or recording adherence/accumulation to the curriculum. So it is not necessarily a benefit for the child, but a marker to record progress for the educational system. 2) The tests chosen were chosen by the state (who, incidentally, are not teachers) because they show data as it relates to common core. 3) Common core is the most divisive educational system in 50 years 4) The state mandated to the superintendants, who passed it on to administration, who passed it on to teachers. 5) NWEA results are thought to be inadequate or lacking in some way, so it is being confirmed and tested by another test, PARCC 6) To challenge the imposition and counter-productivity of repeated and redundant teaching is risking funding, statistics, and our jobs, not student education. From these assumptions, my questions arise 1) If you don’t trust a test and the data it shows, why continue it? If you do, why have another test? 2) How come no level of the pass the buck game has said, “NO”? If the idea is education and so many tests are cumbersome and counter-productive to that goal, why do it? It seems to me the reality is that if admin and/or teachers of the district said, stop it or we walk, there would be no option but to change. APS needs 300 teachers and administrators. Every district in NM needs a minimum of 5 new teachers by my informal survey. 3) Several states have banded together and refused to do common core. They have also successfully maintained federal funding. If NM is the bottom or near the bottom of educational systems, why jump on the sinking ship? I woke up this morning debating the answer, “It isn’t our call.” It is. We may chose not to answer that call. We may chose to not raise our voices, but that is a choice. If we choose to go along to get along, we are saying that we support this current way of doing it. Not speaking up some times speaks louder than speaking up.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 03:05:30 +0000
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