Common Core Standards Research

I just want to give a quick follow up to my blog about the Common Core Standards.  The Brookings Institute released a report found here that questions whether or not the standards will have any positive impact on student achievement. Interestingly enough, the report does not talk about student learning; rather the conversation revolves around student achievement. I believe achievement and learning are two separate entities.  A student may learn a lot but achieve very little if they cannot translate their learning to a test. I assume that the author is using "achievement" and "learning" interchangeably and that the Common Core will not increase either one.

Standardized Tests

I will talk today briefly about standardized tests.  Currently, test scores are used to judge States, school districts and schools.  Increasingly, there is pressure to use test scores to evaluate teachers.

The standardized testing movement is another facet of the market-driven education reforms that I discussed in a previous blog.  Test scores are viewed as necessary because they “measure” what a student has learned in a school year.  Again, to measure students from different States all of the students must be taught the same curriculum. Furthermore, under-girding the belief that standardized tests are good is a theory that schools are factories that produce test scores.  Those test scores are produced by teachers teaching a certain curriculum.  Notice that there is no mention of students.  Although proponents of testing claim to have the best interest of the children at heart, the very fact of the matter is that test scores are their #1 priority not what the children learn (which are two separate issues) .  The children are simply the container to produce the test results.  

Standardized testing proponents also are encouraging the use of the scores to judge individual teachers.  They believe that teachers can prove their “worth” by how students perform on standardized tests.  Although this may sound intuitive on the face of it, research indicates that merit pay for teachers based on student test scores simply does not work.  Market-driven education reformers also believe that test scores can be used to measure the “value” a teacher adds to the student each year.  In other words, if a student “grows” and improves on their test scores then the teacher will be viewed as a success.  

I believe that test scores can serve as a valuable piece of information when judging a teacher’s performance, but it cannot be the only measure.  On a factory floor you may be able to measure a the performance of a widget maker by the amount of widget’s they produce.  However, students are not widgets and we must use an approach to teacher evaluation that is more in-depth.  To that point, Penn-Trafford has developed a teacher evaluation tool that is ver.  y comprehensive and in-depth.  A group of teachers and administrators developed the evaluation tool that will increase support for teachers while also increasing the focus to student learning and achievement

2012-2013 School Calendar

At the meeting on Monday night the School Board also tentatively approved the 2012-2013 school calendar.  The approved calendar has the students starting on Thursday, August 23^rd and getting out on Friday, May 24^th.  This is a slight change from what is traditionally approved for the school calendar.  If the district were to adopt a more traditional calendar the students would start on Monday, August 27^th and get out on Wednesday, May 29^th.  You can find a copy of the tentative calendar here.  Another change in the calendar that I believe will help our school district is that there are more professional development days for the teachers.  These days are vital for the students as the school district moves toward customizing educational experiences for our students.