Testimony to the Board regarding Common Core testing

To members of the Board of Education,

My name is Diane Aoki. I am a 5th grade teacher at Kealakehe Elementary School in Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii. I understand you will be discussing the Smarter Balanced Assessments at your Tuesday, May 6th Board meeting. I am submitting testimony to ask that you seriously consider the harm being done in the implementation of the Common Core Standards and it's accompanying "Smarter Balanced Assessments." 

As you evaluate the implementation of Common Core in our school system, I ask that you consider the reality of life in the classroom versus what you have been told should be happening in theory. I ask that you not base your decisions on what some highly paid "reformer" lobbyist has told you (someone possibly funded by the Gates Foundation), but consider in your heart of hearts, what type of education you would want for your own child. 

Wouldn't you want your child to thrive in a school that offered small class sizes, a well-rounded education, a school with a mission to encourage social and emotional development, that offered art and music, that made sure science was inquiry based, that put a high priority on civics and civic engagement. That's what I would want for my child, and it is not happening in our schools. The reason it is not happening in our schools is because of test-based accountability. Test scores go up when the test is made the priority above all else, above a well-rounded approach to education.

I have seen the released items for the SBAC. I can only imagine, since my school did not pilot the test this year, how most students would have done. Very few would have done well, even my good students. Most would probably have turned off just glancing at the wordiness of the problems. You may say that it is something they need to learn how to do. Who says that these tests correlate with anything worthwhile ?  Who says that they are valid in anyway? And perhaps with enough training, we can get some improvement over time, but at what cost? 

The cost is a well-rounded education. The cost is time, energy, and money going into test prep, when it could go into assuring that all children are valued and nurtured for their individuality, be it in art, music, science, writing, or academics. 

The only people who are advocating for staying the Common Core SBAC course seem to be people who don't have their heart, soul, and their own children in the system. Isn't that ironic? Isn't that telling? People, like business folk, who tell you to stay the course, ask them what school their child attends. If they say a private school, then ask if that private school has adopted the Common Core. If not, why are they trying to tell us what is the right thing to do? Oh, they're trying to make sure they have a skilled work force. If that is their answer, don't take it at surface level, ask them what skills they need. And then think, is this Common Core and SBAC, really relevant to those needs? 

Too many decisions have been made without this type of relevant analysis. What was the debate in the adoption of the Common Core? Was it pressure from the federal government, in securing Race to the Top funds? Or was it the Common Core public relations rhetoric that convinced you? It definitely was not brought to public forums for debate and discussion. 

You, Board of Education, have the power. You have the power to turn this ship around. After a decade of test-based accountability, you must realize that it does not work. You may say that it's not the same as No Child Left Behind. You may say that now that you are making teacher evaluation tied to student test scores, it will be a tactic that hasn't been tried yet, in Hawaii. Yes, it will be different, it will be worse. You will have spent all this time and resources, on something that is doomed to fail. 

End this madness. Open up the adoption of the Common Core to scrutiny. Consider that it may not be in the community's best interests to forge ahead. Standards themselves can be helpful, but tying it to high-stakes testing destroys any possible positive benefits.

Be brave! Make the implementation of a well-rounded education for children the priority. 

Progressive educator, John Dewey, said it best in 1900 and it remains true today: " What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.  Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.“

Thank you for seriously considering my thoughts, 

Diane Aoki

Kona, Hawaii

Negative ? Moi ?

       I have been told that the reason I am so critical of No Child Left Behind and the public school testing culture in general is that I am a terrible teacher with a negative attitude and I am afraid of being exposed. Therefore, it's my fault (as well as my colleagues at my school) that my school is in restructuring, or whatever term is used as the euphemism for failing. Because I dare to question top-down mandates, I have been accused of being negative. More than once it was words, something to the effect of: Why don't you just do what you're told. Mostly, it's looks that say it all: Don't rock the boat, just do it because we're supposed to, because "they" tell us to. You're wasting time complaining, being negative. 

I must say that my principal has never said these things to me by word or by looks. I so appreciate her because she is always willing to engage in dialogue with me. The other day, she  saw me looking disengaged at a Common Core/ Smarter Balanced Assessment training and asked me if I was all right. I shared my concerns. 

We were given sample questions for English/Language arts from the smarter balanced assessment that we will be taking next year. I teach Math, which was one reason I was not engaged, but it was also seeing the sample questions that discombobulated me.  We were to analyze the questions to determine what the skills and concepts were being addressed and what the instructional implications were. There was one sample that really got my goat.  Students were expected to read an opinion piece and determine out of 4 choices which one was a good revision for a passage in the piece. I totally agree that students should read and write opinion pieces, but why should they have to know which revision matches another passage? Getting them to develop a reasonable opinion is a challenge for a lifetime. As you get older, you have to take on more and more complex issues. This is education. It is our job to help them to help them to make better and better arguments for their opinions. Why should we waste time on teaching kids the ability to analyze whether or not a revision is appropriate for an opinion that they may or probably do not care about.

My principal tried to give me the rationale as she saw it, that it is not about writing as much as it is about analyzing, which is a higher order thinking skill, which is what the Common Core is about. She tried to convince me that there was a valid purpose, and I shared my opinion, disagreeing that this kind of activity is meaningful to the goal of analyzing. I believe we had a respectful discussion. 

Okay, now on the positive side - if I were teaching Language Arts or Social Studies, I would focus on the writing and speaking aspect of arguing for their own opinions based on reasonable evidence. If I knew I did this, and I knew that my students could do this and understood what it was to base your opinion on evidence, I would feel I did my job, whether or not it translated to a good test score. 

The Common Core and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium development and implementation was top-down. For Hawaii and other Race to the Top awardees, we had to accept it in order to "win" the competition. If it was helpful and truly for the common good, like seatbelt and drunk driving laws and speed limits, I would be okay with it. But based on the sample questions, I do not know if this is literally a "smarter" "balanced" assessment or just another tool to discredit public education by creating unreasonable questions.

I will continue to look for evidence one way or the other. Our time with our students is precious. We must guard it as much as we can with meaningful and engaging work. We don't have time for less than that.