Weekly Reflection, Week 2

As I continue to read and learn about the Common Core Standards, I am beginning to realize how a) blessed I have been to have always had top-notch teaching that was never focused on "high stakes assessment" and b) how fortunate I have been that I have not felt forced to teach to these tests. This is not to say I have not worked in "data driven" schools, I certainly have. At a pervious employment each teachers test results were hung in the main hallway for all to see, and scores were discussed at length at staff meetings. I suppose that I thought the testing of four and five year olds using GRADE and GMADE was so outlandish and ridiculous that I was more then happy to simply not care. I knew my students where learning what they needed to learn, and the testing that I used to show their progress showed just that, continually steady progress for my students. It is definitely a challenge to find well written nonfiction text that is age appropriate, as I mentioned in the past, it is hard to find nonfictional text that is written for our youngest readers. If you establish at a young age that students should be expecting to hear fiction text, then when you introduce nonfiction as they get into older grades, you would see a backlash to this introduction of something “different.” As the book states, it will take time for teachers to develop such expanse libraries of nonfiction text that they can match to students reading ability. I would also feel that students reading ability of a fiction vs nonfiction text may very well be different, requiring that a teacher have additional time to assess and match students. Teachers who have access to technology should have more success in accessing free nonfictional text for their students to read, and in later grades reading the daily newspaper would be a wonderful way to help students in multiple academic areas. Part of what is so interesting, and challenging, about the these new standards is that they are really working at getting to almost an unmeasurable aspect of learning. In a time where politics is controlled by four year election cycles, we have become a society in which we demand immediate data. The fact is that what the common core is really getting at is learning that will take place over decades, not months. However I do not believe that is bad news for the common core or education in general. I have heard many stories of the new millennial generation entering into the workforce and management finding these millennials are difficult to train, have little teamwork skills and lack in other skills that make one a good employee. I do not think that the blame should fall completely on the schools, rather that the function of society to demand accountability and progress based on misguided, misleading short term goals has failed a generation in regards to becoming “college or career ready.”