Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I don't what the big deal here is... they changed the cutoff for proficiency and therefore a lot less students are marked as "proficient." If we were to use last year's standard, then we would get numbers more like last year.
Though I'm very sceptial about assessing student's proficiency over a single test, but I do remember the tests being pretty basic...
From what I understand, that isn't at all what they did. I believe the tests themselves are quite a bit different. Nothing basic about them.
Status:
" Charleston South Carolina"
(set 8 days ago)
Location: home...finally, home .
8,815 posts, read 21,280,851 times
Reputation: 20102
I read several books (and MAD and Cracked) a month (the North Babylon Public Library was a home away from home). The side effect of no video games or 100 TV channels.
I read several books a month too (still do). The Emma S Clark Library was a wonderful place when we were growing up ; it was so cozy and welcoming with lots and lots of books . The children's room then was in the alcove with the fireplace.
__________________ ******************
People may not recall what you said to them, but they will always remember how you made them feel .
Requiring students to read books outside of the class has gone through many changes in names to the program, but it's been around for many years. Certainly, I had to do that in the NYC schools. Most Long Island schools also assign summer reading lists from elementary through high school.
From what I understand, the wording of the questions on these tests were ambiguous as were the answer choices. Remember when DBQs were the latest fad? Teachers had to learn how to teach the students to organize and word their answers to meet that set of grading practices. Now they have to do it again and in a few years, for the next generation of students, there wil be a new fad with different educational mumbo jumbo jargon, new tests, new grading practices.
It's been going on for quite a while that kids have to keep a reading log starting in 1st grade. That's nothing new. And if you're really reading 20 minutes a night you're going to plow through several books a month.
Personally I'd rather see them doing more reading and discussing of the books and writing in response to that...that improves their writing and critical thinking skills. I do see more writing with the common core. But the curriculum is so drilled down it's ridiculous. The 3rd grade curriculum called for them to write an intelligible 3 paragraph essay with all the required elements (topic sentence, etc) - my DD's teacher missed that requirement and had them writing 5 paragraph essays. The other teachers were joking she was making them look bad, but why not set the bar high and if some fall short, hell they are probably churning out a great 3 paragraph essay...but then the grades go down and that makes the teacher look bad. Such a vicious circle.
I did hear that the questions were pretty ambiguous this year.
It's been going on for quite a while that kids have to keep a reading log starting in 1st grade. That's nothing new. And if you're really reading 20 minutes a night you're going to plow through several books a month.
Personally I'd rather see them doing more reading and discussing of the books and writing in response to that...that improves their writing and critical thinking skills. I do see more writing with the common core. But the curriculum is so drilled down it's ridiculous. The 3rd grade curriculum called for them to write an intelligible 3 paragraph essay with all the required elements (topic sentence, etc) - my DD's teacher missed that requirement and had them writing 5 paragraph essays. The other teachers were joking she was making them look bad, but why not set the bar high and if some fall short, hell they are probably churning out a great 3 paragraph essay...but then the grades go down and that makes the teacher look bad. Such a vicious circle.
I did hear that the questions were pretty ambiguous this year.
The common core website actually shows the questions.
I guess this revolutionary new curriculum is necessary (that's what they keep saying, after all), but I always thought I got a good enough education with the old one. I went to HS in the 80s, passed all my classes, went to college, walked out with a degree, and then got a job. What magic is going on now that everything has to be reimagined, redesigned, and reformulated? Did math, literature, or physics change since I went to school? I may be a bit suspicious (thinking of my wallet now), but why is it that the curriculum I got 3 decades ago isn't valid any longer?
I'm just putting this out there, it's a comparison of Virginia's SOL with the CCSS. I'm putting it out there because it is not by the CCSS folks, shows a side by comparison with a non-CCSS curriculum breaks what they are expecting by grade.
This is not an advertisement to move to Richmond or throw rocks at Long Island. We've been through the SOL method and it is somewhat different than how we learned in the NBSD.
The reality is that current US education is not producing smart kids. This is evident from how US students rank on worldwide exams. You may say that its because in other countries they put too much emphasis on education blah blah.... and I would agree with that view because if you take out the students of foreign origin from the US, its standing is going to really do a nose dive.
So it is cultural, but we don't necessarily need to go to the extremes, like send off the students to distant boarding education schools etc, but I think its high time we encourage our citizens to push our kids a little more and not back out from the effort.
I see too many parents complain that their 4th grade kid has to work a bit harder under the new system....
I guess this revolutionary new curriculum is necessary (that's what they keep saying, after all), but I always thought I got a good enough education with the old one. I went to HS in the 80s, passed all my classes, went to college, walked out with a degree, and then got a job. What magic is going on now that everything has to be reimagined, redesigned, and reformulated? Did math, literature, or physics change since I went to school? I may be a bit suspicious (thinking of my wallet now), but why is it that the curriculum I got 3 decades ago isn't valid any longer?
Jobs are more competitive because of the number of available/qualified candidates these days? I'm sure that's not the specific reason it's changed, but it can help in that case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zulu400
I see too many parents complain that their 4th grade kid has to work a bit harder under the new system....
How many times have you seen people remark that kids these days are too much into their video games and iToys these days? Well here you go - reason to get them to hit the books some more.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
