My National School Curriculum Course

The third standard is, teachers understand and use varied assessments to inform instruction, evaluate and ensure student learning. To apply this standard in my practice I will have to try give the students assessments to see if they understand the content that they are required to know. To demonstrate that I am adhering this standard, I will have to make sure that I create an assessment that I can use to test the students and to see if I am teaching them the way they need to be

A study conducted in 2003 by Ofsted that involved England, Denmark and Finland, showed England’s national curriculum compared to the other two countries was:

Like an epidemic terrorizing the western hemisphere, the Common Core State Standards program has swept across our nation, and at each stop, threatened a new way of thinking and learning. These standards were created to ensure that more students graduated from high school with the skills to succeed in college, life, and career, no matter where they might live (“About the Standards”). In 2009, this fresh new take on education was launched to each state’s educational leaders in the U. S. The officials of each state decided whether the implementation of the program was beneficial for them, or if the current techniques were the best option.

“Common Core State Standards Initiative” is a result of the “Standards and Accountability Movement” which began in the 1990s in the United States. This particular branch of education reforms was geared towards expectations of learning at each grade level. The Standards and Accountability Movement not only brought attention on what students were expected to learn, but on teachers as well – focusing on how teachers were to implement lessons and able to teach for student achievement which would be measured in

Launched in 2009, the Common Core state standards have done nothing to help students progress their learning abilities, and have even harmed their ability to be educated. With Common Core, teachers must follow strict guidelines on what to teach and how to teach it, but this one-size-fits-all ideal does not apply to the real world. Former teacher, Susan Rakow,

So much emphasis is placed on standardized testing, and whether students obtain all the information they need throughout their class to do well on a test is based upon the teacher. If a teacher lacks the power to successfully get their students to absorb their curriculum, then the students may fail to do well on their tests or in the class. If the students happen to do poorly on the standardized tests, there is no way of knowing why because they do not provide any feedback on how to perform better. This makes it hard for teachers to know how and where to improve. Test scores determine teacher evaluation and salary along with whether the school is doing well as a whole. Because of this, teachers have started planning their curriculum around state tests according to a study performed by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (Evans). This is known as “teaching to the test", which means focusing on the content that will be on the test and using the format of the test as a foundation for the teacher’s curriculum. Doing this also narrows the curriculum, forcing teachers and students to concentrate on memorization of isolated facts instead of digesting them. Most of classroom time consists of either taking the tests or preparing for the tests, and this shuts out the possibility of learning anything new or significant. Whether a

Remember when you were in 5th grade? Your teacher went over the material in class, you went home and had some sort of homework paper to do, you took a test in class later that week, and you either passed or you didn 't. Do you remember comprehending any of that material? Or did you simply just memorize the material and move on with your life? The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) not only standardizes education, but it makes comprehension and intricate tool of the learning process. When it comes to American public education, the diagnosis has been offered that our schools suffer from a lack of consistent standards from coast to coast about what our kids should leave school knowing. The fix that has been adopted in a number of states in the last few years is a set of standards called the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which have become the most contentious issue in American education in the last generation with disputes about who drew up the standards, whether they result in kids being over-tested, and even whether standards make sense that they have to be common. Are we fixing the right problem (Donvan, 2015)? Throughout the U.S., more and more states have been enacting the Common Core State Standards. Despite opposition from politicians and educators alike warning of dismal results, these standards appear to persist as a result of mostly positive outcomes.

High stakes assessments are damaging our education system because all the important decisions are being made base in one assessment and not taking under consideration other evaluations. I would like to see a change in the way students, teachers and schools are being evaluated, I want to see a balance between the decisions that is affecting students. I want our schools to teach the curriculum and not a test. I don’t want students feel pressure and stop learning because of the fear of one

First, within the context of the video discussions, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) represents a top-heavy approach to education with the federal government mandating reform and placing emphasis on testing outcomes. Indeed, NCLB is part of the accountability movement that has led to the development of ongoing measures that are designed to create statewide assessment systems to measure student performance in mathematics and reading and thus address areas for improvement among students not performing at passable levels in such subject areas (Ravitch, 2014). This framework has extended into the Obama administration (i.e., Race to the Top – RTTT), with an even greater importance attached to outcomes, where high-stakes testing remains the basis by which student success is defined (Ravitch, 2014). Second, measuring student progress has historically been a prevalent feature of the American public education system with respect to policy and practice. However, the underlying assumption of present accountability systems is that attaching consequences to education reform will elevate student achievement (Hursh, 2010). Using high-stakes assessments to retain/promote students and to withhold a student’s graduation diploma for not passing an exit-level examination are examples of how the current NCLB/RTTT accountability framework supposedly ensures that high school

One of the most imperative objectives of the Common Core State Standards is that it gives the needed information and assistances essential to thrive while in undergrad and or graduate school, profession, and life. In order to decide and or see if the standards meet this objective was determined with relating them to the best state ethics, observing them in affiliation to formerly established college and career willingness standards, and having them revised by postsecondary teachers who teach entry-level courses (Conley, D. 2014). The academic impact will help to prepare students for college and post-secondary education and or jobs. The new standards gives the teachers a chance, to measure each students growth during the course of the academic year, and gives assurance that they are on their way into future, that paves the way for their academic life, to be a success while in college and when they

Overall, standardized tests are being used to make educated decisions they should not make, causing stress on students and their teachers and ignoring differences in learning styles. As a result of decisions being based on one test score, students stress to do well on the test. Everyone does not comprehend the same information the same way or at the same pace. As an alternative there should be a test based on each child’s reading and comprehending skills, not the same test for every

Why does England have a National Curriculum for primary education? To what extent does the National Curriculum 2014 for English, mathematics or science reflect current theories of teaching and learning?

The staff at Willows High School is in a transition from the old state wide assessments to the new Common Core State Standards. The collaboration time has been focused on curriculum review and instruction to ensure their students will be prepared for common core assessments. Collaboration time is also used to focus on critical reflection and goal setting. They are making critical decisions on what to “let go” and what instructional strategies are no longer effective in ensuring students will meet the proficiency standards.

Currently, instructors are pressured by state education department to adjust school curricula to meet the expectations of the standardized test. Educators alter the curriculum to “match the [standardized] test” (“How Standardized”). Therefore, instructors are limited and classroom instruction is focused around test preparation for the annual standardized test. Teachers are forced to abandon their creative lessons and “teach the test,” or concentrating only on the material that will be evaluated (“How Standardized”). This frequently involves taking multiple choice tests that are formatted identically to the standardized test and only memorizing facts, formulas, and items included only on the standardized tests (“How Standardized”). Even though test scores may improve, students are not learning how to think critically and perform better in other subjects that are not on the test (“How Standardized”). Instructional time is limited in the other subject areas such as science, social studies, music, and art. Instructors feel “handicapped” and plead to state officials abandon these standardized tests for the sake of the “quality of the instruction in American schools” (Zimmerman 206). School curricula are being modified only to prepare students for a single test, not for education the students need in the future.

When creating classroom assessments, Thomas Guskey (2005) suggested that “teachers need to do two important things: (1) translate the standards into specific classroom experiences and (2) ensure that classroom assessments effectively measure that learning” (Guskey, 2005, p. 32). In other words, teachers must learn now to “unpack” standards so as to better link them to what is happening in the classroom (Guskey, 2005, p.