Common Core Testing: Embarking on a Brave New Endeavor

Common Core Testing: Embarking on a Brave New Endeavor

By Jill Jenkins

          Last year teachers across most of the United States embarked upon a brave new venture, implementing the Common Core Curriculum.  Armed only with the learning goals, they set out to prepare students for the new examination.  If you were a teacher in a state like the one that I taught in, you had no idea what that new examination looked like because that state had just fired the company they had worked with for two years to create these tests and hired a new one.  Meaning for two years teachers developed lesson plans and activates to prepare students for the new tests, only to learn that the test  that the state had presented  in workshops was not the test we would be giving at the end of the year.  That fact shouldn’t frustrate teachers or worry parents.  This should prevent teachers from teaching to the test because the test had not been invented.  Several times during the year, the district called me (as a department chair) to a meeting to reassure me and present some ideas about the format of the new test, but they couldn’t give me too much information on how to best prepare the students because the test was still in the process to being created.  Being the bearer of this bad news made me very popular with the other Language Arts and Reading teachers.

            A month or so before our assigned date to take the test, they showed me practice tests I could use with my classes, but by then other departments are scheduled all of  the computer labs for their state tests, so I couldn’t actually use the practice tests and neither could my anxious staff.  However, I assured them, they could use their I-Pads and their I-TVs to show the webpage to their students so at least they had some idea what was going to happen on the day of the test.  This did not alleviate their fears, because after all teachers' performance and maybe someday soon their salary might be based on their students’ performance on this test.    

            Finally, the day arrived for my classes to take their examination, the writing portion of the test which the district assured me the students could easily complete in just three class periods.  This was not my first rodeo, so knowing how things usually work I had asked the counselor to reserve the computer labs for each of my teachers for five days in the event things didn’t go as planned and to make up any absent students’ tests.  I was right.  The state computer servers froze several times making it impossible for the students to work.  The schools’ band-width was too small for the number of students using it so the systems not only worked really slowly but dropped students like hot potatoes.  The writing selections requires M.L.A. documentation, but the reading selections that the students were given did not provide all of the information to do this correctly.  By law, I am not allowed to help them, so all I could do was smile and tell them to do the best they could.

             The good news is I retired, so I will never know how my students did on the test, but all of my students assured me they did an outstanding job so I could go out with a bang.  If you are unhappy with your schools performance on the Common Core Curriculum Tests, remember that teachers prepared your child without any substantial knowledge about the test.  In the past, tests have been tested on a select group of students to determine the validity of each test question.  This test was given “cold-turkey.”  Teachers were asked to throw their students in the deep end of the pool and hope they taught them how to swim well in the kiddie pool.  Teachers were asked to in the words Star Trek, “ to boldly go where no man has ever gone” and “embark on a brave new adventure” (if you will excused the split-infinitive.)

Teachers Should Not Be Blamed For Society’s Problems

Teachers Should Not Be Blamed

For Society’s Problems

          Two law suits one in New York and one in California attack teachers and tenure claiming that students in inner-city schools get substandard teachers and as a result a substandard education.  These law suits approach a complicated problem in a simplistic manner.  Simply because test scores are lower in an inner-city school is not an indication that teachers are not doing their job.  Blaming all of the problems of a broken society on teachers is not fair.  Teachers who work in the trenches of our inner-city face many obstacles daily and need the support of our population, not accusations.  Taking away teacher’s tenure is taking away teacher’s opportunity to have a fair and just procedure for termination.  No one would take away a doctor’s medical license without a fair procedure because they are professionals. No one disbar an attorney without a hearing.  Likewise, teachers are professionals and deserve to be treated fairly.

          I have also taught in both inner-city schools and  upper-middle class schools in the affluent suburbs where all of the children, even the special education students, are expected to go to college.  In these neighborhoods, parents are advocates for their children.  There is no difference in the intellectual ability of the students in the lower-social economic neighborhoods, but there is a difference in the expectations of the students and the demands of the parents.  The parents in the more affluent neighborhood demand that their child receives all of the services he is entitled.  They pay for outside tutors, voice lessons, dance classes, and athletic programs.  The students in these schools are often over-worked and anxious from their parents’ demands and scheduling, but they achieve and they achieve at high levels.  Maybe the real difference between the students in upper-middle class and affluent neighborhoods and the students in inner-city schools is their parents have the luxury to spend quality time with their children, the luxury of having time to go to school and demand services and the money to pay for enhancement lessons for their students.

                Students in inner city school face other obstacles that negatively impacts their chances of performing well on tests.  Often both parents of these students are busy working two jobs to support their families or they are single-parent families.  Some of these parents do not speak English or fear deportation if they make demands on the schools.  There are a myriad of real reasons that becoming involved in their child’s education is difficult for them.  Being economically disadvantaged and culturally different creates huge obstacles for most of these students.  Their families do not have the resources to provide tutoring or voice lessons.  Some of these students work part-time or full-time jobs to help support the family.  Some of these students care for younger siblings while their parents work.  Some of these students have parents who cannot read or write and cannot help their child.  These are the parents who are embarrassed about their own lack of education and do not attend parent-teacher meetings least someone discovers.  Some of these students have families that have been involved in gangs for four generations.  These students often lack the resources that more affluent students.  They may not have a computer or the internet.  There may be few books in their homes.  Their parents lack the vocabulary to help their child build a strong vocabulary.  These students rarely travel the globe like their more affluent counterparts, so they lack a vision of the world outside their five block radius.

          Furthermore, most parents and students really appreciate the work teachers do, so I strongly suspect the parents and students in this lawsuit do not represent the views of the majority of parents.  Regardless of which school I was teaching I have always received letters, emails, and personal remarks of appreciation from both parents and my students.  I still connect on Facebook with students I taught in the 1970s.  When I retired, I had one parent who came in during my lunch period to personally thank me for teaching her two children.  I had one young man bring me a big bouquet of flowers in a beautiful vase with a touching card and two girls who created a lei of candy bars that they placed around my next with a wonderful warm Polynesian thank you.  I have known Chinese-American students who have brought me special gifts during Chinese New Year and when I lost a parent students brought me letters and cards of condolence.   At the end of every school year students hug me and whenever I meet a former students I am greeted with a warm hug and a thank you.  All of the notes I have received from parents and students over the years are stored in a large box.  The media always hypes the negative view of teachers, but most of the public appreciates the job our teachers do.

          The schools in inner cities face obstacles that are unheard of in suburban schools.  When I taught at San Bernardino High School in the 1980’s, the school had to repaint every building on campus every day before school to remove gang tagging.  After I left, I heard the school added metal detectors to keep knives and guns from entering campus.  The campus also had a staff of security guards in the halls to keep the gang activity off campus.  Whereas, when I taught at South Jordan Middle School in Utah, an upper-middle class suburban neighborhood, the school had one hall monitor for the 1,582 students, just to make certain that a student with the hall pass visiting the rest room would remember to return to class in a timely factor.  There were no gangs and only on rare occasions graffiti. The expense of protecting children from violence and gangs add considerably to costs of education in an inner-city school.  

               The teachers in the inner-city schools spent more of their own money and time to ensure their students’ success than the teachers in the suburban schools.  For example, I had a student whose parents could not afford to pay for his A.P. exams, so all of his teachers chipped in and paid for them and the principal helped the family find a legal counselor to help them stay in the country legally.  Another student who was on my debate team could not afford appropriate attire for debate meets, so the teachers pooled together and one of the teachers provided one of her husband’s old suits.  Another young lady was living with her grandmother on welfare when she became pregnant.  Members of the staff donated their children’s baby clothes, so this young lady could continue her education and care for her child.  Educators are greatest asset that these families have.  Attacking the teachers who are helping these young students overcome huge obstacles is like biting the hand that feeds you.

                Those of us who have taught in the inner-city schools have known the seventeen year old girl pregnant with her second child who misses school to care for her children working eight to ten hours a day in the fast food industry.  Those of us who have taught in the inner-city schools have known the teenage boy who is running drugs to support his siblings because his only parent is incarcerated.  We have heard him rationalize that even if he does graduate, he is unlikely to find any job and if he does find a job, it will probably be a minimum wage job in fast food.  These are problems that students in suburban schools do not face.   Because of the problems of gangs, and violence, schools in the inner-city spend a large portion of their funds keeping the gangs off campus and keeping the students safe.  These schools like the neighborhoods where they exist face a myriad of problems, but blaming all of these problems on teachers and treating these teachers like the characters in Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, maids who are unfairly blamed and unjustly discharged, is not the answer. The problems in inner-city schools are complicated. When society solves the problems created by poverty, we will solve the problems in those schools. Low test scores in inner city schools are caused by a myriad of reasons.  Don't blame the teachers.

 

Why Should Teachers Motivate Students To Do Well on Their Common Core Tests?

Why Should Teachers Motivate Students To Do Well on Their Common Core Tests?

            As a teacher you have covered every learning goal on the new Common Core; you have modeled argumentative and informative writing; you have reviewed M.L.A. documentation and given your students apple opportunities to practice.  What more can you do to prepare them for the dreaded Common Core Tests?  

            There will be those few renegade students who even though they have mastered all the learning goals will purposely do poorly on their Common Core Tests.  Why would they do that? Don’t they care how this will look on their permanent records?  Actually they don’t.  They know they will not have to repeat the grade based on their test score.  They know the test will not affect their grade in your class.  This is their moment to take control, to show you that you are not the boss of them, to act completely independently, to show you that they are really in charge.  What their test score does affect is their teacher and their school.  As their teacher you may have become their arch-enemy, their nemesis, and this is their change to take revenge. Maybe you called their mother or maybe they are angry because you didn’t let them sit next to their best friend.  You will never know.  As a school, they may be angry because their parents made them attend this school instead of the one where their friends attend.  My dear husband was sent to a Catholic School for his eighth grade. He wanted to be with his friends in public school.  To communicate his anger to his parents and to prove to his parents that he didn’t want to be there, he failed every class.  Your student may be making a point to his parents.  To middle school students achieving a high score on the Common Core Tests is not a priority.

            Why should a teacher care how her students perform on the Common Core Tests?  Parents might tell you that they do not care how the school performs on these tests; they are only concerned about how their children perform.  Nevertheless, these parents have a choice and when it comes to selecting a school, they all look at the test scores and select a high performing school.  Public schools are competing for students with charter schools.  Charter schools can create sophisticated advertising on television and radio to lure parents to their schools making them a very visual alternative for parents.  Public schools only have those test scores.  Charter schools spend a considerable amount of money making their campus look attractive.  They become an attractive alternative for many parents.  When a public school loses a large number of students to a charter school, the district is forced to reduce its staff.  Since in most school districts seniority may not be the only factor in determining which teacher will lose his jobs, your job could be lost.  If you are a novice teacher, it is even more likely you will lose your job.  If your test scores are not as high as other teacher’s scores, even though you taught the core curriculum, your job is still in jeopardy.

            So how do you ensure that all of your students do their best on the Common Core Tests? Use a tactic that coaches have used in athletics for decades.  From the beginning of the school year, establish a “team’ or “community” feeling in your classroom.  The students need to be told repeatedly the famous words from The Three Musketeers, “It’s all for one and one for all.” When you are using peer editing tell them, “Friends don’t let friends turn in bad papers.” When they work in small groups, remind them to “use the circle of help” to solve a problem before they ask you.  Finally create a little friendly competition with another school.  I use a friend who teaches in a school with a similar student-body and of course she uses my school.  We tell our classes that they need to score higher than the other school so I can tell their teacher, Marcia at Fort Herriman Middle School, “In your face, South Jordan Middle School is better than you.”  The students laugh, but they take the challenge seriously. Both schools benefit from this friendly competition and it serves to unite the school into team.  Most of them take their test seriously and their scores are higher. 

            In a perfect world, teachers should not have to worry about how their students perform on a single test.  In a perfect world teachers should not have to worry about students transferring to charter schools.  We don’t live in a perfect world.  We live in a real world where test scores matter and a drop in enrollment does negatively impact teachers. Always remember the words of Vidal Sassoon, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”

The Common Core and the Dreaded Research Paper

The Common Core and the Dreaded Research Paper

                In an effort to prepare students for the academic writing required to perform successfully on the end-of year tests required in the new Common Core, teachers are going to have to go beyond the traditional once a year research paper.  What problems do teachers face preparing students?   First, students often have depended on the old copy and paste format, a collage of plagiarism, to prepare these reports and strongly believe this is an acceptable technique.  Secondly, the internet provides a plethora of ready-to use essays that are available to all students for a nominal fee.  Third, parents are more than willing to write their child’s essay, but have not been trained in the use of parenthetical footnotes required in M.L.A. citations and still use end-notes.  (Should we just retrain parents?)

                As a Language Arts teacher, I have received an assortment of plagiarized or even fabricated essays over the years?  One was just three pages printed from Encarta with the copyright still printed at the bottom.  Most have been a collage of stolen quotes and data simply pasted together without footnotes or any form of analysis.  When I have confronted these children, they seemed surprised because their other teachers have always accepted these creations.  (Seriously, I doubt that.)  When I offered them an opportunity of “re-do” the assignment at a reduced rate of credit, their parents were often angry.  Some even removed their child from my class.  The most humorous paper I ever received was a research paper on an historical figure who had behaved honorably.  The student had selected George Washington as his topic.  He wrote about Washington’s valor in the Revolutionary War, The French Indian War, the Civil War, World War I and World War II.  (I suppose I should have been happy that he didn’t include The Korean War, the Viet Nam War and the Gulf War.)   When I confronted this student about his lack of footnotes, lack of accurate information and his outrageous fabrications, he replied that he didn’t know teachers actually read their essays.  (I think he was testing me to see if I read student papers.)

                How do we teach students to select appropriate and accurate information, synthesize it into a paper as supporting evidence with proper parenthetical citations required by the M.L. A. documentation method that supports their analysis of a problem or a situation? To do this well, the teachers needs to spend a lot of time and break the process down into small steps.  By developing assignments that are unique with specific guidelines, the student is not as likely to find an on-line essay to purchase.  Teachers need to communicate to parent that performance on the test is the real goal, not performance on a particular assignment.  Without completing the practice assignments, it is unlikely that the student will gain the skills he needs to do well on the state writing test. (Since the state test does not count on the student’s grade or determine his advancement to the next grade level, convincing the parents of its importance may be difficult.)

                Another problem the teachers faces is that student needs to be in attendance every day because each skill the student learns builds on the next skill and they are all needed to write this type of essay.  Not only are students excused by parents due to chronic illnesses, but the parents often take students out of school to go on cruises or visit and ill relative in another state.  When you combine those absences with the band is playing a concert in New York, the school play needs five dress rehearsals, the choir will be out for a week singing at every mall in Utah, the basketball team is in the state finals, and countless other assemblies, dances, and activities, it becomes increasing difficult to give each student enough practice to master every skill required to write a research paper. 

                 Some methods that I have discovered work well is to begin the first day of school preparing students for this test.  Begin your first quarter with argumentative writing.  Get a copy of the book, Teaching Argument Writing by George Hillock, Jr. It has great exercises and writing activities and provides a structure to combine facts with analysis, a skill that most students struggle with.  Second, write a research paper together as a class showing how evaluate reliable sources and cite them correctly using M. L. A. documentation.  After they have successfully created a paper as a group, have them write their own paper. During the third quarter give them bi-weekly writing assignments requiring them to read two of three articles, synthesize the appropriate information into a five or six paragraph essay that includes parenthetical footnotes and a works cited page.  Most schools give the writing section of state test at the end of third quarter.  Invite as many other departments to give similar assignments.  Even though it is time-consuming, fewer students plagiarize essays; even fewer parents compose their student’s essays.  Because their quarter practices are in-class writings, all students get some practice for the test. 

                To be successful on these state tests, language arts teachers need the support of administrators, parents and actual time in the classroom to develop their students’ skills.  Treating plagiarism seriously would be a great help, communicating with parents that being successful on a single writing assignment is not the most important goal.  Helping students develop the skills they need to pass the state tests and perform well in their future academic career is the most important goal.  Remember helping students become critical thinker, better communicators, and an effective writer is the entire school’s responsibility.