To each and all I hope for a moment of reason from the perspective of a person who has endured education since my beginning as a first grade teacher in Point Pleasant, N.J. in 1974
Premise one: I hope there is not a single person in this PARCC debate who does not love children. My favorite mentor taught me to always have a vision of a child at the center of every conversation.
It saddens me to think how confused our children must be. The PARCC discourse must make them wonder if they should pursue or fail. Imagine how they are feeling tonight as we adults grapple with PARCC and Common Core, and a political climate that fails our children because we speak from divisive windows without facts or a full understanding of the words we so freely communicate
Premise two: If we love our children then we better start researching before we take on crazy positions. Common Core promoted critical thinking and problem solving. It did not dictate curriculum. It simply stated exemplars of text that were complex so we could all understand that over time we have dumbed down the complexity in books that children were exposed to. Common Core simply gave examples of complexity. It did not dictate curriculum. We adults turned that into something we should not have. We simply want to challenge children, in supportive environments, to read things that are complex.
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Premise three: Think about it! How do we measure growth? If our children wrote an essay in the fall and another in the spring we could readily see evidence of growth. Our teachers already have criteria to measure this. This is not rocket science. This is simple logical thinking.
Premise four: The people running our schools love children and they love learning. The mandates are killing that love. Under the guise of PARCC we have created “soldiers” who march to a discordant drum. They are tired, they are worn, and they know that the children they love have lost the love of learning and discovery. Instead of hands on science and the love of grappling with issues in social sciences they watch children march off to PARCC preparation. Is this really our vision?
I am a fan of higher level thinking, problem solving and scientific inquiry. I simply think we need to trust our schools to establish growth models so when we walk in the door, as parents, for a conference we can see evidence in student work samples, not in some nebulous PARCC score that can’t possibly be normed because children are taking it on different platforms with different levels of experience in test taking.
Could we please just consider supporting and encouraging children to love the journey of learning, discovering and thinking? From the perspective of a long time educator, quite frankly we are missing the boat and our poor children stand confused and stressed as we adults attempt to figure this out. Shame on us!
Anne Grall Reichel
Reichel’s Essential Curriculum
Lincolnshire