The CCSS train is speeding onward. The train roars ahead, failing to be worried or concerned for those students flung from it and those who willfully jump from it. In fact, the majority of students no longer remain on the train. The passengers are dispensable. The train speeds callously onward without them.
In this system, teachers and students will go down together. As Perdido Street School reports, there appears to be no flexibility in the largely test-based N.Y. teacher evaluation formula. Teacher evaluations are strapped to student test scores. They will be thrown over the CCSS cliff together, all because NY State was one of the first to sign onto and implement Common-Core-based testing. When inflexible junk-science idiocy speeds forward no matter the misguided stakes, I seriously wonder where the education of the "reformers" failed.
The CCSS train speeds onward despite the children on the tracks. It speeds onward despite the parents and teachers flailing their arms to try to alert the conductor that human life is in danger. The conductor presses his foot to the pedal. There's lots of money to be made and the train must keep to its schedule, regardless of human cost.
Testing is the engine of the train. It powers what will be taught in schools. Old questions become the best way to game future tests. Students do not learn how to think creatively or love learning so much as how to mimic old material.
The children of the ed. reformers, of course, never board this train. They have their own luxury coach, rolling gently across green pastures of music, art, drama, creative writing and all those good things in life. Something in society has derailed.
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