Help Me Understand – A Case for Common Core Sanity

jackparkertcb2 Comments

Please help me understand…I seriously want your help.

I will make assertions based on what I have heard and begun to understand. I’ll admit that my assertions may be wrong and I would greatly welcome your challenge and explanation of why I’m wrong. Here I go…

We are not doing Common Core in Indiana because we are better than other states.
– Really? I’m proud of Indiana and our work, but humility over arrogance seems a better way to model change for our children. Are we going to spend time and money to creating something that is already created and paid for just because we want to do it ourselves?

We are not doing Common Core in Indiana because we want our sovereignty from the federal government.
– I agree that education should be led by states. I wouldn’t mind if the federal DoE was dissolved; however, does the federal government have a duty to ensure that all states are equally preparing students? I don’t know.
– Is something wrong just because it is from the federal government?

We are going to write our own standards in Indiana.
– We must have College and Career Readiness standards… Are we going to spend three years creating an item bank of questions when that work has essentially already been completed by those who wrote CC&R standards?

We are going to create our own assessment in Indiana.
– We are going to spend $20,000,000 to $40,000,000 to write a test that has already been written and paid for by the federal government.
– We’ll contract with a company who has already written questions aligned to Common Core. They are going to use the same questions that are being used in the Common Core assessment. These companies will get to charge Indiana for work that they have already done…they will just put a different name on it.

Indiana has NO plan for formative assessments aligned to the future state assessments.
– Where is the money coming from to do this?
– Again, the federal government has already done this.

Help me understand folks!

The Process of Change Doesn’t HAVE to be Stressful

jackparkertcbLeave a comment

Thanks to Twitter, I came across an article from the Business Insider dated November 15 titled: The 14 Most Stressful Jobs in America. In a comparison study of 747 different occupations, it was found that education administrators had the 3rd most stressful job right behind first line supervisors of police and mental health counselors. Surgeons rated 9th!

Anyone who has worked in the field of education knows that the job of an education administrator is stressful. Budget cuts, broad demand, high expectations, long days, sleepless nights, mandates and ambiguous laws are just a part of what school administrators experience in a day. I am not complaining, it’s a wonderfully rewarding job and the kids and teachers really make it worth the while.

The current path of education in Indiana certainly is not helping to make our jobs any less stressful. While our state’s standards of the past were always rigorous, they were also too numerous to clearly test. We have long been saddled with determining each year what the ISTEP+ test was going assess as it couldn’t possibly cover all of the standards evenly. It was a bit of an educated guessing game. Now, due to the pause and other squabbles, we don’t even know what standards we should be focusing on. Do we focus on current Indiana standards or Common Core? A guessing game seems to be a bit of an understatement for primary teachers who have had students studying Common Core for K-2 and the third grade ISTEP+ test is looming in their future.

With recent issues surrounding the state board, governor and state superintendent, pundits in Indiana have even talked about creating new Indiana-only standards that meet College and Career Readiness goals. Don’t get me wrong, I want to get this whole thing just as “right” as the rest of us does, but deciding what standards should be taught while students are being prepared to take a high stakes assessment that may or may not test what teachers taught them is hurting our schools, teachers, administrators and students. We have put teachers in a dark room, blindfolded them, and now we are talking about spinning them around and telling them they have to hit the target. That is stressful for teachers.

Teachers are looking to their administrators for leadership. We need to be able to say to them that if you do X, your results will be Y. We know what Y looks like…it’s measured by the IDoE. We just have much less of an idea what the future of X is and it is hurting our schools. Yes, it is much more complex than that, but at this point, teachers can perform their instruction at a very high level and have no assurance that their students will succeed on the high stakes ISTEP+ test. We need to help our teachers…they need us more than they ever have. That is stressful for administrators.

We need to set a direction and stick with it. Any significant change must be well planned in advance…years in advance. If we set off on a path, and part-way through our journey decide to sit for a year, and then look for a different path, not only will we arrive at our destination much later, we will find our energy depleted when we need it most.

I’m a proponent for change. Education is change, so I see leading that as the natural role of a school administrator. While change in itself doesn’t bother me, the process of poorly managed change can be horrible. We know that process is just as important as content as they go hand in hand. A good process can’t make a bad change good just like a poor process can’t make a good change successful. I don’t care how it is going to happen, but we all need to get on the same page. Indiana needs to choose College and Career Readiness able standards that are most akin to what we were expecting. We’ve already swallowed the pill and we survived. Let’s move forward as closely as we can in the direction that we had planned. It’s best for children.

I Guess You’ll Have to Teach!

jackparkertcbLeave a comment

In my teaching days, I attended an annual music conference where I enjoyed finding new gems in middle school music literature.  It was December of 1994 and I’ll never forget the lesson that I learned while not attending a speaker’s session.  I enjoyed frequenting the displays and speaking with publishers and composers about their new music.  This was very helpful.  One day while speaking with Ann McGinty, (a very popular composer) I shared a problem with my band’s trumpet section because Yuki, my 1st chair trumpet player, had just moved back to Japan and she was my rock.  Without her, my trumpet section’s ability was depleted to a degree that they were my weakest section.  I was in a spot.  I had the students for only one more semester and state contest season was upon us!

In speaking with Ms. McGinty, I expressed that I was searching for a composition that met certain criteria, but didn’t feature the trumpet section much because mine was rather weak.  After lamenting the loss of Yuki and sharing my desire to find an arrangement that would “hide” the less than stellar section, Ms. McGinty said something to me that I’ll never forget.  She said:  “I guess you’ll have to teach.”

After I picked my ego up off of the floor and stumbled through a few excuses, she kindly directed me to some great music; however, her assertion has haunted me ever since.  That is when I learned that I had power in every situation.  That is when I understood that I could make a difference.  Ms. McGinty taught me that where there were weaknesses, there were opportunities.  She reminded me that I needed to roll up my sleeves and get to work on my “problem” because I already had the answer…I had the power… I could teach.

The book, Motivating Students Who Don’t Care by Allen Mendler, contains many great pearls of wisdom and practical strategies for teachers.  One bit of wisdom is found on page 28. “Although we cannot make it impossible for students to fail, good teaching requires that we make it extremely difficult for students to fail.  This attitude enables us to emphasize success while maintaining high expectations.”  Before we can motivate students who don’t care, we as teachers must be motivated to help them.  I know that it is very frustrating as many have tried every trick in their bag and sometimes success just seems to be elusive.  What we sometimes forget is that we are only willing to implement strategies that are within our personal comfort zone.  If we have tried and failed with all of the strategies that we are comfortable trying, perhaps it’s time to try some other ideas.  This premise has application to many situations.

Teaching difficult/struggling learners is a challenge, but it is also an opportunity.  Perhaps those teachers who find their own learning easy have the most difficulty understanding this concept.  Wouldn’t it be nice to teach only students that had great families and were already set up for success?  Wow, think of what I could have done back in 1994 if my students’ previous teacher would have just taught them better when they started out in trumpet class.  I could have done some even cooler stuff if the students were stellar before they came to me.  Think of all of the great performances we could have had if I didn’t have to do any teaching!  (Oops…I forgot that I didn’t conduct the Boston Philharmonic…)

I firmly believe that there are two characteristics that set the very best teachers apart from the good to mediocre teachers.  One of those is that the very best teachers have an undying sense of hope.  That hope is transferred to a belief that as a teacher, one has the power to affect any student’s life that they choose.  The most powerful teachers will continually try different tactics and will never give up…even if he/she doesn’t see success during that school year.  Will you be one of these teachers?

There are no “bad kids,” but there are kids that we may not have reached yet.  You don’t know the impact you have on students until they have had a few years and other adult advocates in their lives to put a few things together.  Learning is as much about timing and prior knowledge as it is about anything else.  Perhaps your job is to simply create that prior knowledge about character and effort.  Maybe the experience of having SOME success will stick with a child and s/he will subconsciously remember that with effort comes success.

Teaching is a process, not a product.  We will not and we cannot expect students to fail; however, some students will.  My question to you is: what impact will you have on that student’s life in 3, 7, or 9 years?  I promise that you do have an impact on that student.  I learned from Ms. McGinty that teaching wasn’t always fun, but teaching is a must.  If I am unhappy with a situation involving students, I have the power to teach.  I am a teacher.  In the end how much impact you have on each student, especially those who are less served by their families or your colleagues, is really up to you.  You have great power.  You…are a teacher.