pessimisticThe same old lies are here. They are also present on the new TV commercial which I saw the other night from NEA. In an interesting juxtaposition, the NEA reps are at the Education Nation taking some sort of stance against assessments but for the CCSS. They are basically echoing what many professional organizations have done of late: we are not against standards, but we need to slow down and look at these assessments. Thanks for that, at least.
But let us once more set the record straight here:
1. CCSS was not state-generated. States did no get together and decide on the standards. The standards were scripted by many outside of the profession and outside of the classroom to boot.
2. The funding strings attached to RttT monies had a little something to do with the states "rushing" to accept these new standards.
3. International comparisons are conducted without controlling for some factors, poverty chief among them.
4. There is nothing new in these standards. I do not see how they will guarantee that students who move from one place to another will be in the same place unless they are to be taught lock-step with identical materials, lessons, etc. And THIS frightens me.
5. These standards are flawed. The assessments I have seen thus far are not any different from the tests of the past.
A note to the professional organizations who support CCSS and not the assessments: your support of the standards was the first step down that slippery slope. I believe in being a member of my professional organizations, but lately I have begun to question the value of the membership fees when I feel as though the VOICE you could wield seems somehow muted. It is past time to point out the flaws, to do so often and in the most public forum possible. We need to be the professionals if we want to be viewed as professionals. If our voices are silenced much longer, I fear they will cease to carry any weight at all.
Thus far, most of what I have been hearing is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."