Illinois Raise Your Hand and Park the PARCC

Well, since my last blog post, we've had two family weddings--one of them being mine. It wasn't a big to-do or anything, so I thought I could just sort of carry on with everything else in life, but guess what? One actually gets pretty immersed in such things. Everything is settled down, now. Please pardon the absence.

Now then: I recently(ish) had the pleasure of speaking with Wendy Katten of Illinois Raise Your Hand. This organization, headed by Wendy and run by a host of amazing and dedicated parents, does an incredible job of bringing substantial, high-quality, well-researched, real information to parents and the public about issues in education.

That was a lot of gushing, there. But they deserve it. The group is amazing.

IL Raise Your Hand is currently working to delay the new state test, PARCC. There are many reasons to delay this test, including your most basic cart-before-the-horse problem: Illinois and other states have not completed the implementation of the standards the PARCC is correlated to, so, even if the test itself were ready (it's not) it could not possibly capture a valid and reliable picture of students' progress.

If you've been following my blog you know that I think the violent rejection of the Common Core State Standards is largely a misdirected result of immense frustration and grief related to longstanding unresolved inequities in education. I don't hate all things Common Core. But I do hate illogical, meaningless, unnecessary high-stakes testing that could not possibly result in useful information. All this testing can make a person very nervous--and I'm not even the one being tested. I support the movement to park the PARCC. Here is Raise Your Hand's position paper and a petition to sign.

http://ilraiseyourhand.org/content/park-parcchttp://petitions.moveon.org/sign/isbe-acquire-a-waiver-1

Pass it on.

The Common Core crucible

Can we talk for a second about that kindergarten show that was canceled so kids could cover the academic imperatives outlined in the Common Core? Here's the letter to parents:*

There's a lot of angry scoffing going on in my Twitterverse about this. It's held up as Exhibit A of the  Common Core's hatefulness.

This letter does not show us that the Common Core is bad or inappropriate. It shows us that the school principal's judgment is awful. Yes, a main principle of the Common Core is to prepare high-school graduates for college and career. Yes, there must be a continuum of learning from K to 12. But obviously best practices for teaching kindergarten include providing a developmentally appropriate curriculum. Having kindergarteners do a show for their parents is developmentally appropriate. Having them "study" for academic readiness is not developmentally appropriate.

The Common Core does not ask that educators make kindergarteners study. The Common Core asks that educators provide environments for kindergarteners to play, draw, ask questions, listen, experience art, and relate to others.

The Common Core is a core. A starting point. It leaves ample room for teacher expertise--its point is to leave ample room for teacher expertise. The roll-out was handled badly.

The assessment component has been handled naively. They should have recognized that standards that ask for deep, authentic, critical thinking cannot easily be captured in a standardized test.

Implementation and training has been handled bad, bad, badly. This should be local, in my opinion--but god knows schools, districts, states needed the time, space, and money to come up with something intelligent and helpful, and none of those things were forthcoming. MONEY is needed. TIME is needed. TRUST is needed. SPACE is needed. Legislators and educational-services providers need to understand this and step back. Like everything else in our country's operations, we have forgotten all about Process and gotten distracted by the shiny parts of Product. Then we don't understand why complicated things break down.

The Common Core is not evil or stupid. It seeks to emphasize critical and deep thinking.  It prioritizes children. It prioritizes teachers' expertise. Except for some insanely difficult exemplars at the lower grade levels (where'd they come up with those?), it is reasonable. It's not perfect. But it's a framework, not a prescription.

Here's an idea: Screw the tests. Have kids take the PISA and let all the rest of the standardized tests go; instead spend the next two years developing an intelligent, respectful, and fully funded roll-out of the Common Core. Don't have politicians do it. Don't let educational publishers get involved. Find master teachers and curriculum directors and pay them to take the time to do this. Make the Common Core implementable.

Then, after that, like five years from now, or ten years, THEN come up with tests, if we must. But I bet by then we'll find they're unnecessary, a dangerous and useless appendage left over from NCLB, like an infected appendix.

Educators know what's good for kids. AND the Common Core is not evil, but rather a lightning rod for the helplessness that both educators and parents feel right now, for different reasons. AND the people who run that kindergarten made some weird and terrible decisions. All these things are true. Can we stop yelling now?



*Courtesy of Washington Post; at least, I hope so.