Hackery McHackerson on testing and the #commoncore @educationweek
Marilyn Rhames is Charting Her Own Course at Education Week, this time in a sort of interesting and not so interesting defense of the common core and testing. This article is weak, man, very weak. Let me go through some particulars. Actually, all I need to do is underscore this early paragraph:
GUEST POST: Julie Gorlewski Responds to AFT
As annoying as it is to cut into my curriculum for two weeks of test prep and another week or two to administer this test, I realize that standardized testing does have a single valid purpose, which could lead to other noble things. My high performing kids usually perform high, my low performing kids usually perform low, and my average performing kids are usually somewhere in between. The test is not really designed to inform me-the-teacher, but the taxpayers.Rhames makes it plain that she doesn’t necessarily agree with the test. She’s annoyed that it cuts into her curriculum for a whole two weeks, even though I can assure you that these tests are cutting into a whole helluva
GUEST POST: Julie Gorlewski Responds to AFT
Julie Gorlewski, State University of New York at New Paltz
Response to Raising the Bar: Aligning and Elevating Teacher Preparation and the Teaching Profession (A report of the American Federation of Teachers Teacher Preparation Task Force, 2012)
As an educator who has dedicated my professional life to continuous improvement in the field, I appreciate the collaborative efforts of my colleagues in working to enhance teaching and learning. However, in the service of its claims of intended improvement, this report reinforces inflammatory, deceptive, and fallacious rhetoric – rhetoric that is damaging for students, teachers, and the future of the profession itself.
The document is grounded in the notion that the profession is ineffective, substandard, and intrinsically flawed. This assertion is emphasized through comparisons with other, presumably more authentic “professions,”
Response to Raising the Bar: Aligning and Elevating Teacher Preparation and the Teaching Profession (A report of the American Federation of Teachers Teacher Preparation Task Force, 2012)
As an educator who has dedicated my professional life to continuous improvement in the field, I appreciate the collaborative efforts of my colleagues in working to enhance teaching and learning. However, in the service of its claims of intended improvement, this report reinforces inflammatory, deceptive, and fallacious rhetoric – rhetoric that is damaging for students, teachers, and the future of the profession itself.
The document is grounded in the notion that the profession is ineffective, substandard, and intrinsically flawed. This assertion is emphasized through comparisons with other, presumably more authentic “professions,”
