We often hear such simple sounding statements; however, do we ever stop to truly think of the consequences? Our children and/or students come to us with diverse backgrounds, with wide ranges of prior knowledge, and developmental levels. Effective teachers create lessons with acceleration strategies and then often follow up with necessary remediation. This is an every day occurrence in our classrooms; however, the standards remain the same for all students and for all schools. Our assessments test students on these standards. There is no more "bell curve" on standardized assessments; there is only a bar that must be attained by all students in all schools.
This seems like a mismatch to me and; therefore, a no win situation for our children and our schools. The struggles to meet annual yearly progress surmount each day. Administrators and teachers are constantly looking to improve curriculum, instruction, and local assessments; however, in the end, students must complete massive standards based assessments.
Take some time here and maybe in your next PLC to address this topic. I'd love to hear from teachers and administrators - join our discussion now!
Right, lose lose unless you figure out what your student's definition of success is. Help them create it, help them move towards it. When someone else defines your success you often don't follow through.
ReplyDeletewho has the right to identify 'standard'? i'm with ryan. success is purely personal. we all know that what works is to aim to be better than yesterday, determined on our own timeline. learning is such a personal journey. any kind of reasonable 'standard' would depend on ones ability to learn, and the method of presenting new material. it's different for each of us, and the best education would be offered to small groups of kids with similar learning abilities and styles by a teacher that knows when enough mastery has occurred to move forward into the next consecutive skill.
ReplyDeleteI can appreciate your agreement with Ryan; defining success is different for each of us. More importantly, the road we travel to get there is different; therefore setting an artificial bar to reach is unrealistic. Thank you for sharing with us on the blog!
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