It's every teacher's favorite thing to hear:
"DESE will be tracking student data more this year than in years past."
DESE, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in Missouri, needs not to meddle so much in local schools. Give respectful guidance, not dictatorial oversight. Trust the professionals to do their jobs. Believe it or not, DESE, most of us want our students to succeed. Stop turning them into data points!
Here is what I wrote two years ago along these lines:
Here is what I wrote two years ago along these lines:
A million assessments - whether formative or summative, whether pretest or posttest, predictive or summative, common or unique - cannot give a complete picture of a child, adult, or anything in between. I constantly remind myself that our children are more than numbers on a data document and much more than a line on a graph. Educators are in the business of inspiring human beings to want to improve themselves; we should not be in the business of plotting points and constraining students to a single position on an assembly line. I do not believe all students are the same, like the same things, or are motivated in the same manner.
Yet, every year, the mandates come down the pike, stricter than the year before. Those people who should know better continue to insist on reducing children into data points. Even though we address state or national standards (not to mention local leanings), and even though we continue to regularly assess our students and track their progress, our friends at the state level insist on looking over our shoulders, searching for defiance or negligence, crusading to find issue with anything that falls out of line. They know that our "products" are people, and yet they insist on turning them into numbers.
Why such a heavy hand? Why such scrutiny? And if it's not this, why does it feel like it is? Are there districts, schools, and teachers who do not teach the state standards - teachers who ignore grade level norms? Then, DESE, feel free to give those some extra guidance, but by no means must you make blanket mandates to every other teacher, school, and district in the state.
What have we done to give anyone the idea that we are not tracking student success? It is unnecessary redundancy to take scores from a simple document and place them into a more complicated one - for the sole purpose of unenlightened judgment by faceless bureaucrats who know nothing of who our kids really are. Is it the purpose of testing entities to provide fodder for constant policing? Is that the real reason they put these tools into our hands?
These bureaucrats don't know my class! They don't see them as people. They seem to only care about one thing - feeling the power of position, reducing human beings into lines and dots and then making more rules. The thing is, educational decisions cannot be made based on lines and dots. We're not trying to improve gas mileage or reduce emissions. We're trying to motivate, inspire, and encourage. We're trying to console the bereaved, counsel the disturbed, coach the misguided. My students will never be written as if/then statements in some computer language. They are not robots, directed by a program. They are people who need human guidance and love. They need compassion and strong relationships. They need mentors. They will resist programming. They must resist becoming slaves to masters. They will push back against anyone who treats them like they are animals to be trained.
Parents, I will not treat your children like numbers on a graph, though I will expect to see achievement.
Students, I respect you too much to hinge every bit of your success on standardized tests.
Teachers, don't let red tape stop you from being a human being among human beings.
Why such a heavy hand? Why such scrutiny? And if it's not this, why does it feel like it is? Are there districts, schools, and teachers who do not teach the state standards - teachers who ignore grade level norms? Then, DESE, feel free to give those some extra guidance, but by no means must you make blanket mandates to every other teacher, school, and district in the state.
What have we done to give anyone the idea that we are not tracking student success? It is unnecessary redundancy to take scores from a simple document and place them into a more complicated one - for the sole purpose of unenlightened judgment by faceless bureaucrats who know nothing of who our kids really are. Is it the purpose of testing entities to provide fodder for constant policing? Is that the real reason they put these tools into our hands?
These bureaucrats don't know my class! They don't see them as people. They seem to only care about one thing - feeling the power of position, reducing human beings into lines and dots and then making more rules. The thing is, educational decisions cannot be made based on lines and dots. We're not trying to improve gas mileage or reduce emissions. We're trying to motivate, inspire, and encourage. We're trying to console the bereaved, counsel the disturbed, coach the misguided. My students will never be written as if/then statements in some computer language. They are not robots, directed by a program. They are people who need human guidance and love. They need compassion and strong relationships. They need mentors. They will resist programming. They must resist becoming slaves to masters. They will push back against anyone who treats them like they are animals to be trained.
Parents, I will not treat your children like numbers on a graph, though I will expect to see achievement.
Students, I respect you too much to hinge every bit of your success on standardized tests.
Teachers, don't let red tape stop you from being a human being among human beings.
