Sam, George and Eduardo entered the room. They folded the bodies honed on weight lifting and hoop shooting into the one armed classroom chairs designed for people honed on classroom instruction and studying. Nonetheless they squeezed into three chairs in a row.
I moved them (unwillingly) around. I collected cell phones. I gave out sharpened number two pencils. I read a long pink sheet about electronic devices. The long pink sheet is required reading. It uses terms like beepers and PDAs, archaic terms for the cell phone age but no one questioned me and anyway the cell phones where already tucked into plastic bags with printed identification. Yes NYC does not allow cell phones in school. No one wants to use that argument, though when being asked to pay for a lost cell phone.
For three hours, I stood by the over- sized windows, the kind that were put into large community high schools in an age when one electric bulb needed to be supplemented with the sunlight that poured through ten foot high windows. The school building crests a hill surrounded by a community of row houses interspersed with Old Victorians that once housed the workers for the mills and the factories that dotted the neighborhood. The elevator train brought waves of European immigrants into the neighborhood to work those jobs. The high school educated their children and sent them out to work those jobs too.
The El train still rumbles through. The mills and factories have closed. The European immigrants have moved on and have been replaced by immigrants from South America and Southeast Asia. And the high school stills tries to educate their children. But with no mill and factory jobs we are charged with making them college ready.
We are told that Common Core Standards is the way to do this. Make the standards rigorous. Then develop exams aligned with these highly rigorous standards. (By develop - I mean purchase) Then administer the tests.
And so this week, I entered the age of Common Core testing. I have too much invested in retiring from my job without problems, to go into too much detail about the content of the test. Pearson doesn't want us sharing. But suffice it to say I was familiar with the authors of the texts used. I have consistently scored in upper 90% of literacy exams my entire life, and yet I am not sure I would have gotten the majority of the questions correct.
It did not matter that I did not allow Sam, George and Eduardo to sit next to each other. Within the first ten minutes Sam was reporting out loud that this was bullshit. I told him to do the best he could. I told him to be quiet. Another ten minutes passed and everyone was asking when they could leave.
In an hour's time Sam and George began conversing. They weren't talking about the test, they had no idea what was on the test. They couldn't read it. I had no choice but to get a dean in. They wouldn't quiet for the dean. He called for the head of testing. She threatened to call the principal. Now George panicked. "Stop acting so special ed", he told Sam. The head of testing removed Eduardo who was pressing on despite the noise, to a quieter room. The dean left. With George out of the discussion Sam went back to work. Then it was possible to leave. Sam handed in his test, George handed in his test, Eduardo came back to our room to hand in his test.
"Do you want to finish it here, it's quiet now?" I asked.
"No," Eduardo answered. He was late for an appointment with his parole officer.
It is a meaningless test. We are not counting it for promotion, graduation requirements or anything else. The rationale for giving it was to see what work we need to do.
And I suppose, when the test results are released to the press, with no indication of what the test actually looked like, to report how badly we are doing educating children.
The El train will bring these children out of the neighborhood of closed mills and factories, past the gentrifiying neighborhoods of Brooklyn to Manhattan. There they can compete for jobs with the purchasers of new high-rise condominiums and warehouse turned lofts because the higher standards will force us to be better teachers and them better learners, they will be able to compete in the global market. It least that's what I am told.
Or they won't.
Sam was right.
This is bullshit.
I moved them (unwillingly) around. I collected cell phones. I gave out sharpened number two pencils. I read a long pink sheet about electronic devices. The long pink sheet is required reading. It uses terms like beepers and PDAs, archaic terms for the cell phone age but no one questioned me and anyway the cell phones where already tucked into plastic bags with printed identification. Yes NYC does not allow cell phones in school. No one wants to use that argument, though when being asked to pay for a lost cell phone.
For three hours, I stood by the over- sized windows, the kind that were put into large community high schools in an age when one electric bulb needed to be supplemented with the sunlight that poured through ten foot high windows. The school building crests a hill surrounded by a community of row houses interspersed with Old Victorians that once housed the workers for the mills and the factories that dotted the neighborhood. The elevator train brought waves of European immigrants into the neighborhood to work those jobs. The high school educated their children and sent them out to work those jobs too.
The El train still rumbles through. The mills and factories have closed. The European immigrants have moved on and have been replaced by immigrants from South America and Southeast Asia. And the high school stills tries to educate their children. But with no mill and factory jobs we are charged with making them college ready.
We are told that Common Core Standards is the way to do this. Make the standards rigorous. Then develop exams aligned with these highly rigorous standards. (By develop - I mean purchase) Then administer the tests.
And so this week, I entered the age of Common Core testing. I have too much invested in retiring from my job without problems, to go into too much detail about the content of the test. Pearson doesn't want us sharing. But suffice it to say I was familiar with the authors of the texts used. I have consistently scored in upper 90% of literacy exams my entire life, and yet I am not sure I would have gotten the majority of the questions correct.
It did not matter that I did not allow Sam, George and Eduardo to sit next to each other. Within the first ten minutes Sam was reporting out loud that this was bullshit. I told him to do the best he could. I told him to be quiet. Another ten minutes passed and everyone was asking when they could leave.
In an hour's time Sam and George began conversing. They weren't talking about the test, they had no idea what was on the test. They couldn't read it. I had no choice but to get a dean in. They wouldn't quiet for the dean. He called for the head of testing. She threatened to call the principal. Now George panicked. "Stop acting so special ed", he told Sam. The head of testing removed Eduardo who was pressing on despite the noise, to a quieter room. The dean left. With George out of the discussion Sam went back to work. Then it was possible to leave. Sam handed in his test, George handed in his test, Eduardo came back to our room to hand in his test.
"Do you want to finish it here, it's quiet now?" I asked.
"No," Eduardo answered. He was late for an appointment with his parole officer.
It is a meaningless test. We are not counting it for promotion, graduation requirements or anything else. The rationale for giving it was to see what work we need to do.
And I suppose, when the test results are released to the press, with no indication of what the test actually looked like, to report how badly we are doing educating children.
The El train will bring these children out of the neighborhood of closed mills and factories, past the gentrifiying neighborhoods of Brooklyn to Manhattan. There they can compete for jobs with the purchasers of new high-rise condominiums and warehouse turned lofts because the higher standards will force us to be better teachers and them better learners, they will be able to compete in the global market. It least that's what I am told.
Or they won't.
Sam was right.
This is bullshit.
Yay, loved this post, you are the first person in any of these blogs not related to education activism that has talked about the Common Core as it really is, total meaningless bullshit, meant to make non-educators rich and destroy unions. I wish they would just let us teach! I teach students with Autism at a middle school on the opposite coast and our best buddy Duncan now wants my students to join his college and career ready ranks. Sure, I'll get right on that, after I teach them to use the restroom, and stop hitting other people.
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