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The Common Core places an extraordinary emphasis on vocabulary development

Teachers are engaged in practices like these because they are pressured and afraid, not because they think the assessments are educationally sound. Their principals are pressured and nervous about their own scores and the school’s scores. Guaranteed, every child in the class feels that pressure and trepidation as well.

I am troubled that a company that has a multi-million dollar contract to create tests for the state should also be able to profit from producing test prep materials. I am even more deeply troubled that this wonderful little girl, whom I have known since she was born, is being subject to this distortion of what her primary education should be.

When all is said and done, kindergarteners will have spent up to 60 days of class time—or a third of the school year—taking various standardized tests. And you wonder why so many wealthy people send their children to private schools.

to hold teachers accountable for how much their students learn—or at least how well they score on standardized tests, which is not always the same thing. But the idea is that high-scoring "good" teachers will keep their jobs and low-scoring "bad" teachers will be fired, presumably to be replaced by the thousands of "good" teachers eager to come to Illinois to give more tests.

"Most of the kids just look at me," says another kindergarten teacher who asked not to be identified. "They're five. They don't what a 'main character' means."

A simple and popular workaround for awkward or potentially unprofessional interactions is to use Facebook pages, groups or separate accounts in the classroom. Pages are essentially separate profiles that students can Like in order to receive updates, and you can add students to groups in order to stay connected. Creating a separate profile for yourself is an easy way to prevent students from seeing any personal information that you would normally have on Facebook.

When you set a social media policy for your classroom, it’s important to delineate clear guidelines with your students on how they should and should not interact with you.

“During the term, I perceive that friending a student creates uncomfortable boundaries for the student-professor relationship,” she says. “After all, students post information about their personal lives and vice versa.”