We hear a lot of talk about standards. Everyone likes to have standards but what do they mean? In history we have gone to many meetings to write standards. The results? We took the old standards and listed them by priority. Instead of having a list of weekly expectations we divided the year up into quarters and had general material to cover. Smoke and Mirrors.
The priorities we already had. I have the standards listed as A, B, C and *. I have had that for years. The quarter approach is the one that we threw out fifteen years ago in the last attempt at “reform.” As far as rigor goes, you be the judge. I have my students write a 5-10 page term paper. I teach research techniques, note taking, outlining and the final product. I have them give an oral report. The new standards want me to have them do travel brochures. Which do you think is designed to challenge and which is designed to dumb down? So far I have been able to ignore the lower expectations.
States already have standards. We have scope and sequence. We have been doing it for years. When I started teaching I was handed an inch thick document that had everything I needed to know in order to teach the subject. They had them for every subject. The problem is not the written standards. The problem is the lack of applied standards. Educators talk about rigor and raising the bar. At an assembly early in the year our students were told that the official school board policy for middle school would be that a student could fail two out of their four core subjects in the last semester and still be eligible for promotion and all the activities. This is their idea of rigor.
Talk is cheap. I am a history teacher. I know that after the Civil War, freed slaves flocked to classrooms to learn and get ahead. It didn’t matter if the class met under a tree. They learned to read. They learned to write. They did it with lots of talk from the Federal government and no financial help. In the one room school house days children learned to read and write in small rooms with little equipment. They did it without long lists of standards and Project Based Learning. The problem is not that we don’t have standards, the problem is we keep making excuses and refusing to enforce those standards.
So in regard to education, Jeb Bush is on the liberal plantation. On other issues? Time will tell.
homo unius libri
Common Core is criticizing your standards when it comes to reading and talking in class. Which of course never seem to work.
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed how hard it is to win the lottery if you don't by a ticket? Have you noticed how hard it is to win the lottery if you buy a ticket? Have you noticed how hard it is to read if you never read? Have you noticed how little you learn if you don't read?
DeleteMany times the problem is in the student, not the teacher or standard.
Grace and peace.
I didn't care much for his dad, I didn't care much for his brother, and I doubt if I'd care much for him. The problem is, the competition in the fall is ten times worse.
ReplyDeleteI hear you. I keep hoping that the real conservatives would sit down at a table, draw lots and see which one was going to gather all our support.
DeleteI keep hoping.
Grace and peace.