Teacher: I am not against Common Core or testing — but here’s my line in the sand
Julie Campbell is a fifth-grade teacher in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. She recently completed “Scorer Leader Training” for the English Language Arts Common Core test given in her state to fifth graders, and she says that what she discovered shocked her. Because she signed a confidentiality agreement regarding the current test, she can’t discuss it, but she did take what she learned from her training and applied it to last year’s publicly released fifth-grade English Language questions and “anchor papers” that were released by the New York Department of Education. This is her report.
By Julie Campbell
What do I do as a teacher when asked to perform an act that goes against my conscience?
Let me begin by saying that I am not against Common Core. I think that there are plenty of good ideas inherent in these standards. I am in favor of the rigor, of the push for critical thinking skills. Certainly I have a few qualms. I wish that educators had had more of a say in their development. I do worry about how the focus on English Language Arts and math negatively impacts the arts and humanities – particularly, the teaching of social studies. I am a bit queasy about the emphasis on nonfiction texts at the expense of literature, and I also have some concerns about the developmental appropriateness of the Common Core Learning Standards as they apply to our youngest learners in grades K-2. All that being said, as a fifth-grade teacher, I find the standards a great starting point for high quality, deep, meaningful instruction. I am not anti-Core.
Additionally, I am not opposed to standardized testing. I think that a good deal of information can be garnered through standardized tests. I started my teaching career working for a nationally renowned SAT prep company, and I learned a whole lot working in the testing business. Standardized tests certainly have their place in education, but they also have their limits. The marriage between standardized testing and Common Core is not a happy one. If the Common Core standards are truly about deep learning and critical thinking, these qualities are some of most difficult to assess using a standardized measure like a multiple-choice test.
While there has been a great deal of “buzz” in the community, in the state, and in the social media about testing lately, it is not my intention to rehash the surfeit of issues already in play. I don’t want to talk about Common Core, the opt-out movement, the length of hours kids sit testing (particularly special education students), the reading level of the passages, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo, or the inefficacy of VAM (value-added model), which uses student standardized test scores in questionable ways to evaluate teachers. I don’t want to talk about unions or politics, Michelle Rhee or Eva Moskowitz.
I want to talk about the test itself. It is a fundamentally flawed tool that will only debase the good work we teachers do in the classroom, the work that districts do in designing and implementing quality curriculum, and the work our students do in learning to become enlightened critical thinkers.
Read the newspapers, read your twitter feeds, and you will find lots of people talking about testing but not about the actual test. There’s a reason for that, of course: security. Since the new Common Core tests were put Teacher: I am not against Common Core or testing — but here’s my line in the sand - The Washington Post:
