As arguments about Common Core abound, Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, recently called for a moratorium on “the stakes associated with Common Core assessments until the standards are properly implemented and field-tested.”
Here is more from the AFT press release:
Weingarten delivered this call in a speech sponsored by the Association for a Better New York, where she made clear that if implemented properly and in partnership with educators, the new, deeper Common Core standards for math and English language arts can transform teaching and learning and provide all children with the problem-solving, critical-thinking and teamwork skills they need to compete in today’s changing world.
“If we’re able to step on the accelerator of quality implementation, and put the brakes on the stakes, we can take advantage of this opportunity and guarantee that deeper, more rigorous standards will help lead to higher achievement for all children,” Weingarten said.
Weingarten said a moratorium is necessary on the consequences of high-stakes tests to allow for midcourse corrections, as needed, in aligning the standards, curriculum, teacher training, instruction and assessments.
Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards, but some states and districts, including New York, are giving students assessments based on the standards before they have been implemented, without giving teachers the tools and resources they need to make these instructional shifts, and based on content students may have never seen, Weingarten said.
Weingarten made clear that this is not about stopping the tests, it’s about decoupling the tests from decisions that could unfairly hurt students, teachers and schools. Right now, nationally and in New York, test scores may be used to determine if a student advances or is held back, to designate a school’s performance, to evaluate educators and even to decide school closures.
“The fact that the changes are being made nationwide without anything close to adequate preparation is a failure of leadership, a sign of a broken accountability system and, worse, an abdication of our responsibility to kids, particularly poor kids,” said Weingarten. “These standards, which hold such potential to create deeper learning, are instead creating a serious backlash as officials seek to make them count before they make them work. They will either lead to a revolution in teaching and learning, or they will end up in the overflowing dustbin of abandoned reforms.”
The AFT has also made available a form which allows individuals to tell Education Secretary Arne Duncan and their state education commissioners how they feel about Common Core: http://action.aft.org/c/44/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=6281
For more commentary about Weingarten’s speech, see:
