The education reform analyst and well-spoken blogger Gary Rubinstein just applauded a 2012 CM for saying that he cares more about kids’ appreciation of the material and attitude than their test scores. Great! There’s so much more to learning than test scores, and fostering a true love of learning is definitely one of my goals as well.
But the 2012 CM took it too far. “It doesn’t matter what their test scores are,” he said.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaait a minute. Hold up.
I am the first person to hate on standardized tests. I try to tone it down online for the sake of respectability (and because I had to take an oral oath stating, among other things, that I would “never disparage the value of the test”…oh New Mexico…), but some of the tests my kiddos had to take last year were AWFUL. Especially the reading ones that are supposedly “Common-Core Aligned,” but are secretly…
Just a two second rant: we ended school on May 24th. As of today, June 14th, we still do not have an official calendar for next year, which means that WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT DAY WE GO BACK TO SCHOOL. We also don’t have a superintendent. These two things may be related. In contrast,…
read more »I had a student last year, one of my favorites, who did not speak to me until October. She really didn’t start talking to me regularly until January. This kid tested in the 0.5 percentile for oral language skills, which means if you put 2,000 kids in a room, she would be the worst of…
read more »Year 2 is done. I’m “done” with TFA. It’s kind of a weird combination of things. On the one hand, the majority of my fellow 2011 CMs are leaving, and I am so sad to see them go. There are facebook statuses full of poignant lessons learned and updates on next steps and new jobs.…
read more »Almost every teacher I know (well, at least the ones who like children) have a “take home” club. These are the kids who you love so much you would take them home in a heartbeat. I had one last year, and I have another couple this year. Let me tell you about one of them.…
read more »Here’s my favorite adorable kid thing that happened today. We are reading Holes as a class, and my kids LOVE IT. They keep taking it home to read ahead, and even though this is a book about a year above most of their reading levels, they are reading and comprehending it anyway through the sheer…
read more »Those of you who’ve been with me for a while may remember that my kids this year are an especially challenging bunch, with low attention spans and lower test scores. Today, 3 weeks from the end of their fourth grade year, we worked on the following concepts: story structure including conflict and climax, vocabulary words…
read more »It has been a REALLY long time since I’ve written, and I think it’s just because I am so incredibly busy and exhausted that I haven’t had the time. Rather than try to catch up on stuff since the last post, here are some little things that I am grateful for. The notes my kids…
read more »I was playing hangman with my kids in afterschool for a few minutes before the bus left. One of my kids chose, as her puzzle, “Ms. EMinNM love’s us!” and I thought it was so cute that I overlooked the improper apostrophe. My favorite was this one though. My puzzle was “Chicken Noodle Soup” and…
read more »Today we finished our read-aloud book that we’ve been reading for a few months now. It was fun, because the ending is very dramatic and involves a couple cliffhangers plus some false foreshadowing that our heroes lost the big game. But in the end they win, and it’s very exciting. My kids were too funny,…
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