And not so long

While I was polishing up the other one, I received a call asking me to focus more on the Common Core, so I rewrote it like this (with some help from my friends Therese and Isabella Pacheco).

Hello. My name is Carol Singletary and I am a National Board Certified teacher with 25 years’ experience teaching high school English and journalism in New Mexico. Last year, I left Clovis high school to teach English at a university. Many of my teacher friends, including my husband, would love to be here today, but if they used one of their leave days, they would be penalized by the new teacher evaluation plan.

So, you have me. And I have never done anything like this before. I hope you don't mind if I read this to you. As an English teacher, reading is my comfort zone..

When I began teaching in 1986 my principal gave me some textbooks, a key to my classroom and the professional autonomy to teach what was best for each group of students.  

Then NCLB, and Race to the Top, and finally, the Common Core State Standards happened. And it all changed.

The Common Core, designed by non-educators and adopted by most states BEFORE they were even written, are a national set of standards for K-12 in English and math meant to ensure all students are college and career ready. Hardwired into these standards, are new tests designed to measure schools’ compliance with the standards.

Do we really want standards designed to ensure kindergartners are “college and career ready”? Because that is the goal of the Core.

They took some arbitrary endpoint desired by business --because as Allan Golston said,   Businesses are the primary consumers of the output of our schools.   outputs?  Our kids are outputs? --They took this endpoint and worked backwards to kindergarten, creating tests all along the way to judge the students' readiness.

Supporters of the Core promote it as a way to more efficiently produce education. As one proponent said “When you have common standards, the result is you can develop all kinds of appliances, materials, that plug into it [just like 110 electricity]… Productivity should increase.”

Just like assembly line manufacturing did for the auto industry in the last century.

But no one seems to be asking why it is a good thing to treat our children like widgets on an assembly line.

Supporters of the Common Core say they are not a curriculum, and they do not dictate how or what schools must teach.    That's not entirely accurate.

Schools may technically be allowed to create their own curriculum, but since our students must be able to pass the newly designed, all-important PARRC tests, the curriculum must align with what will be on the test.

For years I set aside Fridays in my sophomore English classes for self-selected, independent reading. Students read what they cared about, then talked with me about the books they read.

Parents told me it was the best thing for their kids.

Students told me it was their favorite day of the week.

Then my principal told me I was wasting time doing this, and I needed to start teaching close reading of excerpts, because that was what would be on the Common Core tests.

Did you hear that? Reading books in an English class was a waste of time.

Instead, Common Core instructs us to teach Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail without discussing the civil rights movement at all.

Now, more and more days are spent on more and more tests made by outside, for-profit companies. If students do poorly on these tests, the teachers and schools are labeled as failing. The result, of course, is that schools demand their teachers focus only on what is tested.    Last year my school spent forty days on these tests and test prep.

Forty days. . . Eight weeks.. . One quarter of the school year.

And because the Core only covers English and Math, electives are forced to teach to those standards as well, creating literacy based lessons in art, PE and welding classes.

So don't tell me The Common Core does not dictate curriculum.

I can hear Ms Skandera’s reply to my concerns now. She will say, as she says over and over, that I am clinging to the failed status quo.

She keeps using that term but I don't think it means what she thinks it means.

The “status quo” is continuing to use standardized tests, which date back to the Industrial Revolution, to measure students, teachers and schools.

The “status quo” is ignoring the poverty which has plagued our students in New Mexico for decades. Study after study show the only thing standardized tests accurately measure is the socio economic level of the parents. And New Mexico ranks at the bottom of the nation for child welfare.

The “status quo”, at least under this administration, is spending millions of our education dollars on out of state corporations. Heck, out of country corporations like London-based Pearson. And treating our students as outputs for business.

Let me leave with you with one last thought. It is rather ironic that I was asked to come and speak with you about my personal thoughts regarding the Common Core and educational reform. Because when David Coleman, the non-educator and lead “Architect” of the Common Core was promoting the “rigorous objectivity” of the Core he said, “As you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.”

Thanks for listening.

Been a long time. . .

I was asked to present a speech before a group of state senators (and press, who never actually showed up due to snow) about education. Here is my first version.

Hello. My name is Carol Singletary and I am a National Board Certified teacher with 27 years experience teaching high school English and journalism. After 24 years at Clovis High School, I left last year to teach English at a university. Why am I, who no longer teaches in K-12 speaking to you? Because my colleagues can not  miss school to come here today or they will be penalized by one of the “multiple measures” of the new teacher evaluation plan. If they use one of the 9 days they are given contractually each year to come here and discuss education with you, they will be penalized.

So, you have me. And I have never done anything like this before. I hope you don't mind if I pretend you are all sophomores in high school.

When I began teaching in 1986 my principal gave me some textbooks, a key to my classroom and the professional autonomy to teach what was best for that group of students. I designed lessons to help them get better at reading, writing, speaking and listening. I got into this profession to help students become a better version of themselves, to help them find a way to be informed citizens of this country. To give them a voice. And for the first fifteen years that's what I did..

And then No Child Left Behind came. . .and things began to change.

Before NCLB, I did my best with each student, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Sometimes I was the very best teacher for a student, and sometimes I was the worst. That is simply the nature of the interaction between two unique human beings..

After NCLB, we were all rated by a test. One standardized test determined whether my students were successes or failures, and whether they attended a good school or a failing school.

And now, after Race to the Top, that same test will be used to determine whether or not a teacher deserves to lose her job or get a raise.

This latest proposal by Martinez to offer merit pay to the “best” teachers is particularly offensive. For the entire 27 years I taught, I always did my best. I used every method I came across that I thought would work to help my students. I never held back. I never said, “Well, if they just paid me more to be successful then I would use this cool idea to teach my students.”

Setting aside all the studies that show extrinsic rewards, like merit pay, do not work for intellectual activities; or that teachers are not puppies who will roll over if they know they will earn a biscuit for doing so; how is Martinez going to determine these exemplary teachers who deserve to make more money?

She will use her new teacher evaluation plan to measure this. A plan that relies 50% on the Value Added Method which is such a confusing and complicated method even scientists from Sandia Labs couldn't figure it out. AND, it is based exclusively on standardized test scores.

My husband taught special education for 18 years, and is now in a new position teaching industrial arts. He is creating a new Power Mechanics class as well as teaching metals and woodworking. He goes to work at 7 am and comes home at 5 pm every day, then goes back and works some more every weekend. He just won a grant to combine his students with the AP Physics students to build hydrogen fuel cells. College students have heard about this class and want to take it.

Will any of this be reflected on his evaluation? No. Instead he will be ranked based on the school's test scores in reading and math, over which he has absolutely no control. Oh, and on whether or not he uses his leave days. (Which is why he is not here with me today)

If I were reading about this press conference in the newspapers, especially the ABQ paper, I would probably read Skandera's reply about how sad it is that I am clinging to the failed status quo.

So, to paraphrase the Princess Bride  She keeps using that word but I don't think it means what she thinks it means.

The “status quo” is continuing to use standardized tests to measure students, teachers and schools. Standardized tests date back to the Industrial Revolution as an easy way to evaluate large numbers of children quickly. The earliest version of the machine-graded bubble test dates to 1936. Horace Mann introduced the concept of using exams in the 1800's to collect “objective information about the quality of teaching and learning in urban schools, monitor the quality of instruction, and compare schools and teachers within each school.”

The “status quo” is ignoring the poverty which has plagued our students in New Mexico for decades. Study after study show that the only thing standardized tests accurately measure is the socio economic level of the parents. And New Mexico ranks at the bottom of the nation for child welfare.

The “status quo”, at least under this administration, is spending millions of our education dollars on out of state corporations. Heck, out of country corporations. Since Pearson gets so much of our money and they are a multinational corporation headquartered in London.

And finally, the “status quo” is assuming that because teachers work with young people, that we are too stupid to know what should be done.

Last year I was forced to step back and take a hard look at my job. I remembered why I had gone into teaching, to help students get better at reading, writing, speaking and listening;  to help them find a way to be informed citizens of this country; To give them a voice. And I asked myself if I was still able to do that.

I realized the answer was no. I counted up the amount of time spent testing and preparing students for more tests to see if they were ready to take the next test. And I came up with 8 weeks. We spent forty days on testing instead of learning.

I couldn't do that any more. I moved to the university where, at least for now, I can still help students be the very best versions of themselves they can possibly be.

Thank you.