"Common Core" as a curriculum may or may not be good or bad, I don't know. But so long as schools build their entire year around high-stakes standardized testing, the students in our public schools are suffering. It's bizarre to me that many (most?) states in the US require their teachers to get graduate degrees, yet give them little if any control over the curriculum they use. Are they highly trained professionals or just robots?
Today's standardized tests, given on computers, require typing skills the students aren't taught. The computer systems fail or links are wrong, and schools have so few computers that the testing process can take days, during which time the entire school is disrupted. Spending a day or two a year on a standardized test used for statistical purposes is a reasonable investment of time and money. But spending weeks multiple times a year on tests that determine the fate of teachers and schools is a massive failure.
It was obvious when NCLB was proposed that it was an end-run attempt to gut support for struggling schools. That's played out as was easily predictable, but now we seem to be doubling down. At some point, we have to learn as a society that just because someone puts data into a computer and a number pops out doesn't mean that number _actually_ has meaning.
Today's standardized tests, given on computers, require typing skills the students aren't taught. The computer systems fail or links are wrong, and schools have so few computers that the testing process can take days, during which time the entire school is disrupted. Spending a day or two a year on a standardized test used for statistical purposes is a reasonable investment of time and money. But spending weeks multiple times a year on tests that determine the fate of teachers and schools is a massive failure.
It was obvious when NCLB was proposed that it was an end-run attempt to gut support for struggling schools. That's played out as was easily predictable, but now we seem to be doubling down. At some point, we have to learn as a society that just because someone puts data into a computer and a number pops out doesn't mean that number _actually_ has meaning.