Recent Polls have indicated that the majority of parents are in favor of the Standardized Testing. They are in favor of teachers being evaluated for their effectiveness & that these tests should be used as a part of their evaluations. They are in favor of ineffective teachers getting help & being let go if they don't improve. But the Majority of parents are not aware of the Common Core & what they are.
Essentially, the Common Core are designed to assure that children across are country will be given the same education and the standardized tests are designed to see if they are learning what they are supposed to learn.
I say, fine, as long as each child has the same background & goes home to the same nurtured learning environment. Since we know this is not & will never be true, then we need to do the next best thing. 1.) Make Pre-School & Kindergarten manditory & make an after school program where kids do their homework & get help, manditory. Now you're going to say...What? That's the parent's job & you know, you are absolutely right. But let's be honest, many parents for one reason or another, just aren't doing their job.
Just visit a first grade classroom. You'll find 6 year olds that can read and write. They can write their whole names and draw pictures of their family with details. They can say & write their ABC's & count & write to 100. In the same classroom or in other classrooms of First graders you'll find children who can't read or write a single word. They can't count to 10. They can draw only stick figures. Some can't or won't speak.
You see, some children come from that nurturing home environment where education is a priority & parents take an active roll while some come from a home where nothing is nurtured. I've seen homework folders that come back empty because parents have looked papers over while others come back full because parents never look at anything.
The GAP is wide to begin with. How can we expect those children coming from the home where no one cares, to catch up? The Gap just widens as the years pass. Yet we expect all children to take the same tests and do well.
The only help I can see, since we can't force parents to take active rolls in their child's education, is to make Pre-School & Kindergarten manditory and to offer all children an after school program to get extra help & do homework. Get all kids in school by age 3 & hope for the best. Then maybe just maybe the Common Core will do what it should do and Test Scores will show that it is.
Just One Old Teacher's Two Cents.
