Teach to the Test or Help Children Deeply Understand the Concepts? Which Matters?

So often as a society we forget how fantastic our people in the classroom are. It's not that we don't think highly of them, we do. If you aren't there each moment of each day, you don't have a chance to notice the little things like the moment a teacher kneels next to a child and hands them a kleenex or the 11pm email to a parent saying I'll look into that first thing tomorrow. We forget when we hand out information about PARCC or Smarter Balanced that those very same people will be spending hour perseverating on what they need to "teach" their children in order to "ensure" they will be successful.

When administrators talk Common Core, immediately they talk assessment. We aren't learning Common Core because Common Core is good, we're learning it because the hammer is coming, 2014-15, we will be assessed. It will be digital. Are you ready? Are we? Should we be? Will these assessments actually meaningfully measure meaningful information?

Our teachers are questioning. They are thinking of those little ones. They are thinking about what it is their children need to learn, not because I tell them to or the state tells them to, but because they are kneeling next to that child, emailing that parent and asking themselves what will this child need to be a happy successful adult in the future. Is it just ELA, Mathematics, and Science or is it more? Will preparing them for a standardized test prepare them for the real world? Is our goal to fill their brains or help them become good citizens of our world? These questions are real and legitimate.

There are many good things in the Common Core. Like all documents, it's not perfect. Explicitly, I believe that several of the ELA Anchor Standards broaden our view of literacy. However, this conversation is lost as we focus on the tests. So much effort, energy, and finances are being focused on compliance assessments that the quality learning may be lost. If we think back to final exams. All the studying, all the cramming, all the energy preparing. We took the test. It never covered all that we studied all that we "learned." A tremendous amount of human capital went in. How many of our students remembered that content a week later, a month later, a year later, a decade later? I am sure three of my former students reading this jumped up and shouted "Electronegativity." And that's the point, lets focus on improving learning, adding value, and creating deep understanding. If we simply focus on the assessments the learning will be lost and meaningless.