Public School Success

By Miriam Carey Brown

When my oldest son Jackson was in third grade, he came home at the end of the year and told me to prepare myself because he probably wasn’t going to graduate third grade. I asked him why he thought that and he said that they had given him a big test to see how much he learned that year and he didn’t even understand most of the questions. He said in math they were asking questions about letters instead of numbers and he said he tried his best, but he was pretty sure he failed. I explained to him that the test probably kept on going past third grade math and that using letters in math was called algebra which he would learn in high school. Sure enough, I later got a call from his teacher saying that he scored proficient on a 10th grade level, proving that he was a really good guesser since he had no idea what he was doing and I certainly hadn’t been teaching algebra to my third grader. I don’t believe in pushing kids to learn more than their grade level goals, but most parents don’t even know what their students are supposed to know at each grade. The grade level goals are called standards, but based on the conversations that I see happening on social media, there is a lot of confusion about standards and standardized testing and curriculum..

The words are similar so it’s easy to see why they would be confusing. I think the confusion has led to a lot of miscommunication and controversy. Educators, parents and politicians aren’t even speaking the same language so how can we work out our differences?

“Every single person I have ever heard complain about the common core standards, has never really read them. “

One day I was talking to my brother Richard about education and he asked what I thought of the common core. He was not a big fan but wanted to get my take as a teacher. I asked him if he had ever read the common core and he admitted that he hadn’t. He later read it and told me it wasn’t as objectionable as he thought it was. Every single person I have ever heard complain about the common core standards, has never really read them. They will show a picture of a weird problem on a worksheet and complain about “new math” but they aren’t really talking about the standards. So if you hate the common core, I encourage you to google the actual common core standards and read them. I promise that you will probably get very bored, but I doubt you will find very much that you disagree with. 

The common core is really just a list of things that educators want kids to know by the end of each grade. They are really normal things that parents, even very conservative parents, would want their child to learn. The goals for skills kids need to learn are called standards. They use a lot of technical terms and can be confusing. Yogi’s teacher just sent home a newsletter, and she had listed what they are learning. She had translated the standards into easier words like “I can write a personal narrative.” The way it is described in the common core is “Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.” It is written this way to let teachers know exactly how to help them write a personal narrative. They can break up that standard into smaller lessons that teach how to start a story, and then maybe do a lesson on adding details, and then another lesson on putting things in an order that makes sense. So for parents it all gets a little tedious to read, but would any parent get mad and say “I don’t want my child to write stories!” That would be silly.

“If the grade level standards are based on the assumption that kids start kindergarten knowing their letters and numbers and that assumption isn’t true, then you are setting them up to fail.”

That being said, there are actually some valid critiques of the standards. The purpose of the standards is to make sure that no matter where you are in the country, every child learns the same basic skills. However, not every child comes to school with the same knowledge base. In fact, most kids are behind before they ever even start kindergarten. According to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics since the pandemic 70% of kindergarteners don’t know what they need to know to start kindergarten. But guess what it was only 60% before the pandemic? If the grade level standards are based on the assumption that kids start kindergarten knowing their letters and numbers and that assumption isn’t true, then you are setting them up to fail. The study showed yet again that children who are poor, whose parents don’t have a college education are more likely not to be “ready” for kindergarten so is it any wonder that there are achievement gaps? The business world has learned a lot about setting achievable goals, but education often prefers to set idealistic goals. Even before the Common Core, the states that were doing really well in education were having less than half of their students meet the educational goals in math and reading, So instead of using actual data to figure out what students can be expected to learn in a real-world scenario, they made the common core standards even higher hoping that if they raised the bar the kids would magically learn more. So for me the problem is not that the common core is forcing my kids to learn stuff I don’t want them to learn, it is that setting unrealistic standards of achievement causes anxiety for teachers and students and leads many very intelligent kids to conclude that they aren’t smart. Society pays a price when we lose great minds because we were unwilling to meet them where they were at. So if I had three wishes for our education system, my first would change the standards to be more realistic.

“It would be more helpful if the test results told students how much progress they had made that year…and recommendations for specific skills they need to work on.”

So now that we have talked about the goals or standards let’s talk about standardized tests. A test is a way to measure what someone knows. However, anyone who can remember school knows that some teachers make hard tests and some teachers make easy tests. Teachers receive surprisingly little training on how to design test questions. For example, some kids learn pretty early on that “all of the above” is almost always the right answer because it is a really easy type of question for teachers to write, but poorly written questions aren’t really the best way to tell if a kid has learned the material. So a standardized test is a way to take the teacher’s test writing ability out of the equation. Instead, professional test writers are giving every kid an equal chance to show what they know. Some parents and educators get mad about standardized tests because it takes up classroom time that could be spent learning. It can cause anxiety for students and teachers and schools get evaluated on the results. Often these evaluations are unfair. As a teacher, part of my salary was based on the results of all the students in my grade, even if they were not in my class. The test-related job evaluations also didn’t take into account the students’ skills before they came to my class. So standardized testing can be really frustrating, but I do think it should play a role in school. We need to have some way of knowing how kids are doing so we can know how to continue teaching them appropriately. If a genie granted my second wish, I would change the tests to give out more than just a number and a rank. It would be more helpful if the test results told students how much progress they had made that year. I would also like to see it give both teachers and students recommendations for specific skills they need to work on.

“Districts are trying to “dummy proof” education by giving new and unqualified people a script to follow.”

The last term we need to talk about is curriculum. Many districts give their teachers pre-made lesson plans called curriculum. These lesson books are very costly so districts tell teachers they have to use them. This can be frustrating for teachers because sometimes those purchased lesson plans are too far above what the students in the class are ready to learn. Sometimes, they are too far below the students’ level. Often they are scripted and not very engaging. So why do districts demand that teachers use them?  Part of the reasoning is because there are so many new teachers. It is overwhelming to learn how to manage kids and preparing lessons is really time consuming. Having a prepared curriculum takes that off their plate. Also, since new teachers are getting hard to find, they often hire people who aren’t certified to . the empty slot. Not very many people want to pay for a college education that won’t pay enough to cover your student loans. Districts are trying to “dummy proof” education by giving new and unqualified people a script to follow. Educators are trying to do the best they can under the circumstances because nobody wants to pay more taxes so that we can recruit more qualified teachers. So I guess you just get what you pay for.

“New Math” is sometimes just trying to help kids understand math on a deeper level. But that can be frustrating for parents who don’t see the purpose of the new methods. 

Often those silly questions you see on social media come from these pre-made lesson plans that make no sense to the students that are using them. Although sometimes they are silly things that teachers made themselves or bought on teachers pay teachers. Parents get mad at the “New Math” that is getting taught. But math is math. It’s a universal concept. It is just that some curricula teach in a different way than parents are used to. Sometimes it is good that new ways of teaching math are getting explored.  When I was a kid, I was really good at plugging numbers into a formula- if you told me which one to use- but if you gave me a story problem, I would be completely lost, because I didn’t really understand what I was doing. “New Math” is sometimes just trying to help kids understand math on a deeper level. But that can be frustrating for parents who don’t see the purpose of the new methods. So for my final wish, pay teachers more so that the very brightest, most charismatic and caring people would want to become teachers and the district would feel comfortable letting them adjust their lesson plans or create new ones to meet the needs of the kids in their class. 

Unfortunately, I don’t actually have three wishes, so if you are a parent who is frustrated about your child’s education, maybe it is time to write to your senator and your congressman and explain why you think public education is important to your family and what you would like to see change. Now you have some fancy new vocabulary words you can use to describe what you are seeing. Are you upset by the grade level standards or goals? Would you like to see a change in how student learning is measured by standardized tests? Or maybe you would like your child’s teacher to have more flexibility with their lesson plans so that they can better meet the needs of the kids in their class so you want to see changes to standardized curriculum. But whatever you do, make sure if you post on social media try to communicate the problem without making your child’s teacher feel bad. But hopefully, right now you just want to put down your phone and go play with your kid.