PARCC Results are all about Learning

       2010 - Common Core Standards go public
       2010 to 2014 - School systems throughout the country align courses to these updated standards
       2014 - PARCC Field Test takes place in all "PARCC" states
       2015 - First full administration of the PARCC assessments
       Fall 2015 - We get to see the results of the PARCC assessments

       I feel like I'm the only person who is happy to see the results from these new tests.  Once again, the press is constantly talking about bad results, bad tests, bad schools.  To me, these results are all about learning.  They tell us how well our students are learning based on the world-class standards that are being taught in our classrooms.  Isn't this what we really want???

       It doesn't help to compare our students to each other in their school or to the students in the school on the other side of town.  The comparison that matters is the comparison to the standards.  This comparison will help us to know if our children are ready for the academic demands of college level work and for the societal demands of a career.

       School is supposed to be about learning.  The PARCC results give us a measure of this learning.  This is a good thing.  Up until today, we've had far too many students graduating from high school and believing that they were ready for college only to face a harsh reality that their high school did not prepare them as well as they thought.  Too many students begin college and don't finish college.

       Today, thanks to PARCC results (and other data points), our students and their parents will get a true measure of their ability--as early as in third grade.  And there will be time while our children are still in P-12 school for them to get help and for them to raise their abilities.

       PARCC results are a good thing.  Learning is a good thing.

       Don't you want to know if your child's true level of learning?

Open Letter to Parents

 This is the third of a three-part series of open letters to the three most important stakeholders in our educational system: students, teachers, and parents.  All three of these groups play a vital role in the education of our children.

Dear Parents,

       The school year is about to begin.  This is an exciting time for your children; but I know that it is an exciting time for you too.  And well it should.  As parents, you are an important part of the educational process of your children.  You encourage your children to do their best and you help them as much as you can.  Your children need you as they navigate their way through the P-12 system.  Thank you for supporting your children.

       I'd like to offer a few suggestions on this topic that you might not have ever heard before.  I say this because these suggestions tend to go against popular thought on the best way for parents to help their children.  Here goes:

1) It's OK to let your children struggle a little bit while they are learning new things.  It's OK if they don't "get it" the first time.  It doesn't mean that they are slow or below average or any other negative buzz word you might want to call a person who doesn't learn new things quickly.  True learning takes time; it takes a little trial and error.  Be sure to let your children know this. 

2) Education is not a competition.  I know that this sounds like a funny thing to say--especially to people who believe that everything in life is a competition.  But education should not be a race for your children to win.  Who cares if your child is a better speller than other kids in the class?  Who cares if your child gets a better grade than other kids on the geography test.  

       Teach your children to do the best they can all of the time.  If they feel that they have to surpass everyone all of the time in everything that they do, then the first time this doesn't happen (and it will; often) they will feel like a failure.

3) Instead of saying "Get good grades!", you should say "Learn well today!"  School is about learning; it's not about getting good grades.  Especially in elementary and middle school; grades should absolutely be secondary to learning.  Students who strive for high grades tend to learn how to "play school".  They do what their told and they turn things in on time.  But they only do things because of "the grade".  They don't care about learning; they only care about following the rules to get a good grade.  Don't be impressed by your children's good grade.  Stress the importance of learning.  What is the point of getting through school with good grades if you haven't learned anything more than following rules and doing what your told?

4) Lastly, make sure your children understand that hard work and studying and practice lead to success in everything that they do.  Making mistakes is OK; in fact, making mistakes and learning from mistakes helps children to learn.  Let your children know that it always OK to make mistakes.  

       Learning is a pursuit for perfection, it is a lifelong journey of wonder.

Educational Testing Should be Compared to a Health Check-up

       There's a lot of talk about testing in schools these days.

       Should we test students?  Is there too much testing?  What should be on the tests?  Are the tests too easy?  Are the tests too hard?  Do tests measure student ability?  Are high-stakes tests fair?  Standardized tests, the new SAT tests, college-readiness tests, ...and so on and so on.

     On a purely surface level, some students (and parents) do not like the big, end-of-course tests or the big standardized tests because they don't score well on these tests.  And that bad score leads to other negative and uncomfortable issues:

• students feel bad
• students feel not smart
• course grade is negatively affected
• looks bad on high school transcripts
• negative affect on grade point average (G.P.A.)
• negative affect on class rank

This opposition to this sort of testing has nothing to do with learning or the student's (or the parent's) feeling toward the test representing the quality of learning that took place during the course.  This opposition is purely about how the "after-effects" of the test will effect the student's stature, ranking, or reputation in some way.

       On a much different level, some people are concerned about the ability of the "big test" to accurately measure a student's academic ability in a particular subject area.  Alfie Kohn stated his many concerns about standardized testing in his 2000 article titled The case against standardized testing: raising the scores, ruining the schools.  In it, he offers a history of the origins of current-day standardized testing and lays out some of the problems with our current system.  On the other side of the debate, is the book Defending Standardized Testing (2005) edited by Richard Phelps.  This book examines testing via multiple points of view such as: research on standardized testing, misconceptions about large-scale testing, high-stakes nature of some assessments, and the issue of the growing testing industry.

       I view educational testing in the same way I view going to the doctor for a health checkup.  The two extremes are too extreme.  Never seeing a doctor is bad because you might never know if you are developing a serious health issue until its too late.  And seeing a doctor for a full physical checkup everyday is not necessary because your health isn't going to change on a day-to-day basis.  But seeing a doctor (perhaps annually) and following his/her advice is necessary for good health.

       Educational testing is necessary because there has to be some sort of measure of academic ability so that we can fairly compare a student's ability with other students.  If students never take advantage of standardized testing they could go through 12 years of formal schooling believing that all is well only to enter college and to discover that they are unprepared for college-level work.  Educational testing should not be used to rate schools as if they were in some sort of horse race.  They should be used to measure true learning--which is the purpose of schooling in the first place.  They should be used to provide students, parents, and teachers with good information on what students know and understand and what they don't.

       We don't have competitions with other people on who has the lowest cholesterol level or the highest pulse...We shouldn't have competitions on who gets the highest grade on standardized tests.  They should be used for individual results.

How Do You Define "Winning"?

       Expectations play a large part in our perceptions of just about everything.  If you go shopping and expect to pay $75. for good pair of running shoes and find out that they only cost $50. you're happy because it was less than you expected.  If, instead, they cost $125. you're not happy because it was more than you expected.  But what if your expectations were not reasonable?  What if the average cost of good running shoes is $135.?  Compared to this average, it seems like a pretty good deal to get a good pair of running shoes for $125.

       How do you define "winning" when it comes to the education of your child?  What are your expectations?  To what do you compare your child's progress?  Some people look at the comparison of their child's test scores with other students in the class.  In high school, some people look at their child's class rank (which is a comparison of your child with other students in his/her grade).  Other people might look strictly at letter grades.  Are these legitimate measures of comparison?  What if your child always earns the top score in his/her class, but the class is below average when compared to the achieve of all students in the school?  Is your child really "winning" if everyone that he/she is surpassing is below average?

       This competitive nature of ours is misplaced if the goal is to win (or to appear to win) without any concern towards actual learning.  This is why education has standards.  Standards tell us--grade-by-grade--how we are doing compared to where we should be (academically speaking).  When these standards lead to a college-ready status, they tell us that our children are on the path towards being ready for the rigors of college-level work when they are still in middle and high school.

       This comparison is important because too many of our students are graduating from high school being told that they are "winners" because of some lesser standard that they've achieved only to find out that they are not prepared for college.  Less than 50% of students who enter college ever earn a college degree.  If our high school graduation rate was this low, there would be a national outcry from every corner of the country.  But, for some reason, at the college level, this figure is considered acceptable.  Why?

       Our high schools have to be willing to give our students (and their parents) the hard truth about their academic ability.  We should help them as much as we can and we should be compasionate when we give them this news.  But we have to make it clear exactly where they stand when compared to the standards.

       High standards are not an insurmountable barrier.  Most students rise to the challenge when they are pushed to think harder and do more.  If "winning" is important to us, then let's win for real.  Let's push our students to reach their potentials.  They can do it with our help.

Comparison to the Standard

     

            Recently I saw my doctor to check my cholesterol level.  This is something that I don’t worry about enough and (hence) know little about.  As my doctor went through the various numbers for my LDL, HDL, triglycerides, and glucose I became very confused because I didn’t know which numbers were “good” and which were “bad”.  I asked him, “Is 90 high?”  His response was intended to be helpful but instead I found it to be completely useless.  He said, “It’s better then most men your age.”

            Now I realize that we live in America and competition is at the heart of many of our activities, but everything in life is not a competition.  Why should I care if my cholesterol is better than “most men my age”?  I’m not going to win a prize for having better cholesterol than the next guy.  I happen to know that two-thirds of Americans are overweight.  What would it matter if my doctor said that my weight was better than “most men my age”?  I was hoping my doctor would give me a range of numbers that some team of professional cholesterol doctors had determined was reasonable.  I was hoping that my doctor would tell me the standard for cholesterol.

            We do the same thing in our schools.  We want (for instance) all students to be proficient in reading and mathematics.  But the only thing that many educators seem to care about is whether or not we are doing better than school X or district Y.  I think it makes people feel good to be able to say that they are better than some other school down the road.  But the truth is, the only comparison that matters is the comparison to the standard. 

If (for instance) we want all students to read on grade level by third grade, than that is the only comparison that should be made.  For example, let’s say that last year 63% of the 3^rd graders in our school read on grade level and this year 69% of our 3^rd graders read on grade level.  We are approaching the standard.  That’s it.  We could say we are succeeding in approaching our standard or we could say we have not succeeded because we have not yet reached our standard.  But there is no good reason to compare our results with other schools as a measure of our school’s success.

When we allow a school to compare its students’ proficiency rate with that of another school, we create an illusion of progress and a false sense of pride.  

You can always find some school somewhere that is doing worse than your school.  But that may only mean that your school sucks less than that other school.  Student achievement isn’t a soccer game.  We don’t “win” just because we got a higher “score” than someone else.  If there is any winning at all, it comes when education professionals set high standards and students meet (or approach) those standards.  That is the only comparison that matters. 

As for me, I need to start eating less and exercising more.  If there is a standard for cholesterol, I really, really want to reach it!