Dr. Amy B Hollingsworth Berkhouse
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Why do I believe so strongly in Common Core standards and testing?

4/1/2014

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Why do I believe so strongly in Common Core standards and testing?

First, if you are not aware of the Common Core, here is a crash course from NPR.


Then, several articles featuring reasons for the Common Core, and what they do.

The Common Core and the Common Good: Our educational system is not keeping up with that of many other industrialized countries, even as the job market becomes more global and international competition for jobs becomes steeper. “American students rank 25th in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading compared to students in 27 industrialized countries.” That same report found that fewer than half of our students finished college. This ranked us 14th among O.E.C.D. countries, below the O.E.C.D. average. In 1995 we were among the Top 5.

Some rightly point to the high levels of poverty in our public schools to adjust for our lagging performance, but poverty — and affluence — can’t explain all the results away. One strategy of changing our direction as a nation is the adoption of Common Core State Standards, meant to teach children the skills they need to be successful in college and careers — skills like critical thinking and deep analysis.

The problem is that, in some states, Common Core testing has been implemented before teachers, or the public for that matter, have been instructed in how to teach students using the new standards.

Bill Gates: Commend Common Core: Right now,45 states are implementing new academic standards, known as the Common Core, which will improve education for millions of students. Unfortunately, conversation about the standards is shrouded in myths.

The standards are just that: standards, similar to those that have guided teachers in all states for years, except these standards are inspired by a simple and powerful idea: Every American student should leave high school with the knowledge and skills to succeed in college and in the job market.

Today, 80% of students say they expect to go to college while only 40% of adults have an associate's degree or higher. Clearly, the old standards didn't help them achieve their goals. Common Core was created to fix that. And at least 75% of teachers support them, according to several surveys.

Inconsistent standards like the ones we've had until now punish students who have to switch schools. Either they're expected to know material they've never been taught, or they're re-taught material they already know. But with standards that are not only high enough but also consistent, students will be able to move without falling behind.

Myth: Common Core was created without involving parents, teachers or state and local governments.

In fact, the standards were sponsored by organizations made up of governors and school officials. The major teacher unions and 48 states sent teams, including teachers, to participate. 

Myth: Common Core State Standards means students will have to take even more high-stakes tests.

Common Core won't necessarily add to the number of annual state tests students take. States will introduce new math and language arts tests based on the standards to replace tests they give now. 

Myth: Common Core standards will limit teachers' creativity and flexibility.

These are standards, just like the ones schools have always had; they are not a curriculum. They are a blueprint of what students need to know, but they have nothing to say about how teachers teach that information. It's still up to local educators to select the curriculum.

Six Ways the Common Core is Good For Students:

1. Common Core Puts Creativity Back in the Classroom

2. Common Core Gives Students a Deep Dive

3. Common Core Ratchets up Rigor

4. Common Core is Collaborative

5. Common Core Advances Equity

6. Common Core Gets Kids College Ready

Student success is the outcome every education professional works so tirelessly toward, and the Common Core will help them get there if it’s implemented well, according to the panel of educators.

“Yes, it’s an extra workload as a teacher, and it’s difficult…but it’s for the betterment of the students,” says Davis-Caldwell. “And if we keep that our focus, I don’t see why we can’t be successful.”

The Common Core's Unsung Benefit: It Teaches Kids to Be Good Citizens: The Common Core has started to take political flak from the right and the left. Conservatives worry about the overreach of federal incentives, while unions don’t want the standards connected to teacher evaluations. What is being lost?  The standards’ significant emphasis on reinvigorating the democratic purpose of public education. Making good on this promise presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine and reprioritize the special role that schools play in preparing students for active civic participation.

The Common Core identifies three texts—and only three texts—that every American student must read: the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution (Preamble and Bill of Rights), and Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. 

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I will make an amazingly bold, perhaps unbelievable claim. If a school district would hire me as “The Common Core Director,” within four years – if allowed complete control over the system – I could take any low-performing district, and get them to over 80% passing the graduation tests. This would be without firing ANY teachers, with ANY population of students (poor, rich, white, black, brown, ESL), and without expending ANY additional funds. How much do I believe I could be successful? I’m willing to stake my paycheck on it. An average Ohio school superintendent makes $150,000 a year. As a teacher, I made $50,000 a year. Pay me $50,000 a year for a director’s position for those four years, putting the extra $100,000 in a savings account for me. At the end of four years, if I have been successful, everyone wins. The students see success, I get the paycheck. If I have been unsuccessful, take that money and provide free tutors for the students.

How do I know I would be successful? I have done it all before, as part of the science department in Eagle Pass. We went from a 39% passing rate on the state science tests, to an 89% passing rate in four years.

I believe in the Common Core. A bare minimum helps all kids get at least a rigorous education, and a shot at college. Schools are always free to extend education, and should – teachers can still teach fun and exciting lessons in their content area, while providing each child with a quality education. And every teacher in the public school system is being paid using taxpayer dollars. Those teachers can teach however they choose, as long as they provide AT LEAST the common core that every other teacher is responsible for. It just makes sense.


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Test Bashing is Here to Stay

3/2/2014

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***Original posting to Facebook, but since I went into such detail, I figured I'd post it here, with a few more details


This article is in response to an article in the Washington Post entitled "Your kid is being bullied at school - and not in the way you think." The basic premise is that your kid is being bullied into taking standardized tests, because teachers shouldn't be judged by standardized tests. (First, I will admit to being irked by the use of the word "bully" here. If your kid is being bullied, that implies he is being hurt. Your child is not being hurt by standardized tests. If anything, he's being hurt by sub-standard teaching) People have complained about tests since the beginning of tests themselves. Math test hard? Complain about the math test. Writing essays for English make you stressed? Complain about English. Can't remember how to translate a verb? Complain about foreign language. And when someone doesn't pass a test - OF COURSE, it is the test's fault. Note that we never hear complaining by people who are successful at tests.

I've taken, made up, and given tests to just about every level of student. I used to date a guy who taught at a different college than the one I teach at. He didn't get any "course pack" (with pre-made tests) with his textbook, so he used to make all his own tests. They were these essay questions, that sometimes I couldn't figure out what he was asking for. He asked odd, rambling questions, that were difficult to figure out. He asked true and false questions that could have been true or false, depending on how much you knew about biology. He asked fill in the blank questions that he later couldn't answer himself.

His students' answers were terrible. The answers proved the kids couldn't read or write. I used to help him grade, and I would take a stack, and he would take a stack. At first I would laugh about some of the terrible answers. I would be shocked at the poor spelling and grammar. I would be confused. I would be amazed at how the answers showed how little his students knew about anything, much less biology. By the end, I would be in despair and depressed.

At the end, the stack I graded were all F's. The students's answers were wrong. There was so much red, I was horrified.The stack he graded? Everyone got a B or A. He just felt bad for them, and wanted to take into account that they were having a rough day, didn't write well, couldn't spell, or just put the wrong word "by mistake" (because he knew what they meant).

I get it that people see the bad in standardized tests, because they want to focus on the bad. I believe, however, that standardized tests give us real information, and diagnose a huge problem in education these days. Instead of believing students or teachers are the problem, I think it's the fault of people who complain about tests. We are being given the opportunity to learn where the system is broken, and told how to fix it.

If teachers spent half the time learning to collaborate and make the education of their students better, instead of wasting energy and taking the easy way out and giving up, they could fix entire districts. We did it in the one I taught at. Not one of the people in my department EVER said, "This test isn't fair! Let's write about how bad this is!" We said, "If we work together to teach the best, do the best labs, give the best assignments, tutor kids, and prepare them, we'll get more to pass!" And voila - Our passing rates shot up by over 50%. We went from a 38% passing rate, to a 89% passing rate.

If people - students, parents, admin, teachers, and professors - quit complaining, and worked at passing, we couldn't stop the leaps and bounds our educational quality would take. But we all know that won't happen, because some people refuse to take tests as what they are - indications that something has or hasn't been learned. Test bashing is easier than admitting failure. Test bashing is here to stay. And with the advent of social media, people who want to believe testing is all bad, find the verification that is invented to justify their feelings. Just like those who believe vaccines are evil - only believe what verifies "what you already know." I find test bashing to be such a waste of precious energy on the part of students, teacher, parents, and the schools.




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Why I love standardized testing (you heard me right!)

1/20/2014

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Life is full of tests. To be a doctor, you take many exams through medical school. You take the MCAT to even get into med school. In fact, EVERYONE who goes to med school must pass the MCAT, and almost every US and Canadian medical school requires it. I went and clicked on one of the six topics and skills that are assessed by the test. Just the Biology section had 17 pages of outlined topics you would have had to have studied for YEARS in your undergraduate program. Even as a Biologist myself, there are some topics I would want to go back and review before I’d ever take that kind of test. I am glad that every one of my doctors has had to pass that test, and tests like it, in order to take on the responsibility of being a doctor.


If I want to get into law school, I have to take the LSAT. The LSAT is a standardized test that measures reading skills, analytical skills, and logical reasoning. This test is described as “providing a standard measure of the acquired reasoning and reading skills of law school applicants.” When a student has taken and passed the LSAT, the law school has a reasonable understanding of what this applicant is able to do - read, and reason. I am glad that every lawyer has had to take that test, in order to understand and comprehend the law, and all it's intricacies. 


What, then, do we want from the professionals that are part of our daily lives - our teachers? When I wanted to become a teacher, in Texas, I took the TExES, or the Texas Examination of Educator Standards. As I remember, there were two parts - one part about the subject matter, and one part about understanding teaching. I actually remember the day I took that test. I was living on the Mexican border, and I had to drive to San Antonio for the proctored, secure examination. There were two other teachers with me in the car for the 2 ½ hour drive - one was a teacher’s aide who had completed her coursework, and wanted to move up into a teaching role. The other was an “emergency certified” teacher, like me, except that this was his third time taking the test, and his last try before he would be let go from his teaching position. When you were on an emergency certification (I was, because I had a Biology degree, but no teaching experience. I took all the classes while teaching full time) and you had three years from when you started to pass all the classes, and take the test. If you couldn’t pass the tests, you lost your job.


I had always accepted that this was how the system worked. I was never angry that I had to pass a test. I was never mad at the test, or fearful of the tests. I knew that if I did all the practice tests, reviewed the materials, approached my professors at school about anything I was unclear of, and just took care of business, I’d pass the test. Sure, it wasn’t fun to study. It was tedious. It was boring. It got in the way of some fun stuff I wanted to do on the weekends. But, if I wanted to be a teacher, and I did, I would pass that test. I invited friends over to study. I made binders full of material about each topic, flashcards, even read my study material out loud so I could record it and play it in my car on the way into work. I knew I had it.


(Beware, this paragraph has swearing in it) At the time, I was living with a person who wanted to become a federal agent. He also had to pass a test. He went through 3 months of intense academy to learn to shoot, learn the law, learn the job, and learn Spanish. Then, he had one year from when he started working as a recruit, until he took the test, and would either pass, or get fired from his job. Our attitudes about “the test” were a million miles apart. My attitude was “If I want this job, I take this test. Obviously it’s a test I can pass, because most of my fellow teachers have passed it, so I just need to buckle down and do this.” His attitude was “I hate this f**king test! It’s so unfair that some of these guys are Hispanic, and we are both being tested the same way on if we know Spanish. It’s not fair. If you’re a native speaker, you have an advantage. And what if I’m having a bad day, and can’t shoot? What if I’m sick? What if I can’t remember a stupid little law, or mix it up? I mean, I know the laws in general, but what if they pull out an obscure law and I miss it? This whole test is bulls**t! And my job depends on it! What if I fail, and I have to go get another job? People will know I failed. F**k this, no F**K THIS!!!!”


The closer we got to his year, the more angry, aggressive, and paranoid he got. He didn’t settle in to study - he spent a lot of time bitching with the other recruits. His first topic of conversation at every meeting with another recruit would be “The test… blah.. blah… angry blah.” I noticed that several people, especially the native Spanish speakers, stopped hanging around us. He was mad all the time. He would take his weapon with him everywhere - to the grocery store, to Walmart, to friends’ houses. He treated me in an increasingly hostile manner, because I would ask him if he wanted to study together for our tests, go out to meet new friends I had at the school and their husbands, or go to the gym and exercise (he said all the walking from the job made him miserable and tired). He became known as “Amy’s angry boyfriend.” I made excuses, “He’s just upset about this test. It will pass. He’ll pass the test, and then everything will be fine.” Finally, I broke up with him three months before his test, because I couldn’t live like that. Being surrounded by hostility about the test, anger over studying, constant anxiety about failing, fearfulness about losing a job, and test-aggression was making me physically sick. It was like a disease to all those around us. It weighed on our lives, and broke us apart.


Friends, there are teachers who's attitudes are like mine, and teachers who have an attitude like my boyfriend in your child’s school, who's emotions feed into your child, who are preparing them to take their tests, and ultimately, to graduate. I actually used to be the one designated science teacher who would be assigned every student who hadn’t been able to pass their graduation exam. I worked with these students a period a day, after school, and on Saturdays. I had material for them on EVERY CONCEPT that would be on their tests. I meticulously scoured through old, released graduation tests, figured out which standard the question applied to, and then made mini-tests for my students to take on each assigned topic. I bought them all green highlighters (somewhere I read that if you liked green, you were smart, I don’t know if there is a smart color, but it sounded good) and peppermints (I read that peppermints helped you concentrate), and so any time you came to me for test prep, you got a green highlighter and a peppermint. Somewhere I read that yoga helped people de-stress and focus, so on test days, I would lead my class in yoga pre-test.


One semester I started off with 128 seniors who had failed their senior science graduation exam. I read, re-read, practiced, encouraged, cheer-leaded, and gave them tips and tricks to beating multiple choice tests. I became known as the test whisperer - I could help you pass the test. I knew everything there was to know about that damn test, and I knew how to help students pass it. That year, I got every student to pass except SIX. And I remember those six, very vividly. One girl had such negative talk, that she refused to even read the test. She marked her scantron, and then fell asleep, every time she took the test. She repeated to me often, “I’m a failure. It’s OK, I know I’m not going to graduate. I don’t care anymore.” She set herself up for failure, and no matter what I did, she refused to even try. Another girl refused to speak English. We were on the Mexican border. Even though I never taught in Spanish, I understood it, and she understood me in English, but she would never answer any question in English, no matter what I did. All her other teachers just allowed her to speak Spanish (80% of the teachers on the border are Spanish speaking also), so she refused to do anything but speak Spanish. Another boy was a gang leader, and was only at school to attempt to sell drugs. He was suspended so much that I barely got to see him. When I did have him in class, he was sulking, in a foul mood, and staring into space. He was preoccupied, and wanted nothing to do with me or the class.


Even the best of teachers can’t reach everyone. I consider myself one of the best, most professional teachers there is. I was part of an amazing group of teachers in my department who worked together the make the science experience amazing for our students. And by everything you hear on the news today about students, we should have had utter failure in our school. We had 99% Spanish speaking students. Most of our kids were on free lunch. We had gangs, drugs, students with children, and troubled students. But we all said, “there is no reason we can’t get everyone to pass the graduation tests.” And we were right. We pulled our resources, at our department meeting each week we would each bring our best lessons on a given topic, and then make a plan so that each teacher in the department did that best lesson, and then we revised it together to make it better, make rubric answer keys, make common powerpoints, find labs that worked with that lesson, and made sure it aligned to the standards. We got to be so good at it, that in three years, we went from 39% passing the graduation tests, to 89% when I left the school. We were professionals at getting kids to pass the tests.


And never would I say we “taught to the tests.” We taught everything that was ON the test, sure, but we also got to highlight the topics we loved (one teacher loved plants, and another loved evolution). The labs we did with the students were fun and hands on, and we loved that our lesson planning was a collaborative effort. We never felt alone, because we were professionals who met regularly and took each person’s strengths, and highlighted them. Some days, all the Biology teachers would meet in the lecture auditorium, and bring all their classes of students, and one of the teachers who was really good at the topic would put on an exciting production with multimedia presentations, an outline for the students to take notes, and the other teachers would be out in the “audience,” helping kids who had questions, kids who were sleeping (you all know it happens), or helping students who needed assistance. Mostly, though, these production days were looked forward to by the kids, because it was like watching a concert, with a rockstar teacher leading.


What it took to make this happen was a collaboration between our school, and the UT Charles A Dana Center at The University of Texas in Austin. We did what was called “The Professional Teaching Model.” I plan to write more about it in the future, because it was that program that helped us turn ourselves from troubled, tired teachers, to professional teachers. We were amazing. And it was HARD! But as we all know, teaching is HARD, whether you’re succeeding or failing - so why not make it successful?


And for parents, who would you rather have leading your class? Someone like me, a professional teacher, who is motivating and fun, and hitting every standard and getting your child to pass those tests? Or someone who is constantly bitching about how unfair the tests are, how they hate the standards, and how burnt out and angry they are? A teacher who feels hopeless and angry, or who works with their department and school to be part of a collaborative, professional, efficient, effective team? Who IS your kid's teacher? If you ARE a teacher, who are YOU?


There is a popular author who has a blog that I often see shared who I absolutely despise. I won’t even mention her name, but she’s an educational historian who is what I’d label as a “critical theorist.” She is critical of education, and spends all her time breaking down how bad education is, how bad teachers are treated, how bad politics affect education, how bad the common core is, how bad testing is, and basically how bad EVERYTHING is. She offers no solutions that are feasible. She makes teachers despair even more. She amplifies criticisms, finds faults in the system that she says make it hostile, and writes books to terrorize teachers, and make them afraid. She’s a s**t-stirrer, s**t-flinger, and an irresponsible, critical, worthless hack (in my opinion). And I feel sad for every teacher who climbs on board with her, ready to complain and waste their time fighting against standards. And I plan to write, teach, motivate, and educate until she goes away. I will talk louder, write more, motivate, encourage, and enable success in the profession that I LOVE. Because I believe every school district, every single school, every department, and every teacher is part of this amazing profession called EDUCATION, and that people would prefer to be lifted up, instead of held hopeless to the ground. We all got into this profession to make our lives, the lives of our students, and the education in this country get better. And I, friends, am just getting the ball rolling.


Who’s with me?
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    Dr. Amy B. Hollingsworth

    Author

    Dr. Amy B Hollingsworth has worked in education for over 20 years. Most recently, she was a Learning Coach at the NIHF STEM School in Akron. She served as the Executive Director of Massillon Digital Academy. She was the District Technology Specialist at Massillon. She also was the Natural Science Biology Lab Coordinator at The University of Akron. She specializes in Biology Curriculum and Instruction, STEM education, and technology integration. She has written six lab manuals, and an interactive biology ebook. She has dedicated her life to teaching and learning, her children - Matthew, Lilly, and Joey, her husband Ryan, and her NewfiePoo Bailey.

    What's Amy Reading?

    • College Insurrection
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    • HuffPo College
    • Girls in STEM
    • The Simple Dollar
    • Tim Ferriss
    • Edudemic
    • Mashable
    • Inside Higher Ed
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