Grabbing The Megaphone

If the public hears the same message over and over again, that message will be accepted as truth.

Until someone grabs the megaphone and changes the conversation.

Are you ready?

To kick off this blog, here's a video of my most recent testimony before the board of the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

I am jumping in with other city residents to support public education. Actual public education. And we have allowed people who know nothing about education to call the shots for far too long. Testing students over and over again is like measuring your child every day to see if he will be tall enough for the cool rides at the amusement park. Punishing teachers for student performance on tests is like penalizing them for every child who is below the 50th percentile in height. Every moment spent testing is a moment that isn't spent on teaching and learning. Every dollar spent on tests--and they're not cheap--is a dollar that isn't spent on adding more staff. Every test battery we buy is a music or art teacher that we cut. Every time we hire consultants or pay exorbitant amounts of money for test-related professional development, we waste money that could be spent on upgrading technology, and we waste time when we underutilize the expertise of the faculty.

Common Core "State" Standards have been presented as a way to raise the bar for students. Outside of my son's classroom is a sign that says "College Begins with Kindergarten." While setting kids on a path of affirmation and positive reinforcement will help them orient themselves toward life goals, asking students to accomplish what is beyond their developmental scope is a guaranteed way to set them up for failure. The Gesell Institute of Child Development, founded by Dr. Arnold Gesell (the "father" of child development, who first articulated that children pass through stages of development but at their own paces), maintains that children have not changed and the rate at which they progress through milestones has not changed. This recent article, Best Practice for Common Core, talks about developmental appropriateness and that students should not be punished for not meeting benchmarks at exactly the same time as peers. And yet, Common Core and its associated high-stakes tests are doing exactly that.

Why has this happened? We must not have been paying enough attention. We, the parents. We, the teachers. We, the city residents.

We need to grab the megaphone and change the message from "Our schools are failures" to "Our schools can be great if they are set up for success instead of failure."

Are you ready?