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?

World-Class Education

       I'm not a competitive person.

       I'm one of those people who sees the value in the journey and believes that there is something to be learned from every situation.   And, "Who Cares" if I did better or worse than the next guy.

       As our public schools are taking their first steps to endeavor to teach our students at the same academic level with the highest performing countries in the world, we stand to learn much from our colleagues.  True learning is a complex process and enabling true learning via classroom instruction is an evolving process.  No single teacher can do it alone; we need the expertise that we can only gain from working together.

       This isn't going to happen if we are constantly concerned with gaining some sort of higher ranking than our neighboring school.  This can only be accomplished through hard work and constant dialogue with the teacher across the hall in-between classes; and during department and team meetings; and in the evenings via twitter chats and reading blogs and paging through journals and taking classes and...

       We are at a major turning point in public education in the United States.  We are making an honest attempt to raise standards and examine our teaching strategies.  We know that change is hard.  In fact I believe that the difficulty involved in this process of change is the piece that has prevented us from moving forward in the past and what may halt the process this time as well.

       The struggle to raise standards requires everyone to take an honest look their current abilities: teachers and students.  We can't be overly concerned about grades and we certainly can't be concerned about beating the next guy (or the next school) in some sort of artificial competition.  We will have a few years of teachers and students with the same abilities that are judged on different standards.  We are truly "raising the bar" and we have to expect some period of time before we are all able to clear that bar.

       It will happen, but it will take time and cooperation and hard work.  It isn't enough (anymore) for students to merely "do what they are told" in school.  They have to actually learn and use what they learn during the learning of future topics.  Teachers need to not only teach but also determine how well their students are learning--everyday.  Parents need to accept the results of standardized testing and encourage their children to ask questions and to spend more time reading and practicing and understanding.

       No one every became an olympic athlete without years of training.  That's what we are trying to do.  We want our students to compare with the best students in the world.  We want them to leave high school with multiple opportunities because they have the abilities to truly do whatever they want to do.  It's a marathon, not a sprint.

       So start stretching--we are in "training" mode.  And we need time to improve.