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means one-on-one testing.

Presumably, by the end of the year the child will know enough to say the bug feels anxious. At which point the teacher will get to keep his or her job, for at least another year.

that student's file her delightfully original take is marked: "Wrong!"

Here's the twist. All teachers record the answers. Think about this, folks: teachers get to grade their own accountability tests. Damn, if they had this for students back in the day, I might have passed chemistry.

re they being excited by breaking the code, figuring how words are making their meanings and thrilled to find that what they’ve learned about one word helps them solve another word?

Real learning occurs in the mind of the learner when she makes connections with prior learning, makes meaning, and retains that knowledge in order to create additional meaning from new information.  In short, with tests we see traces of learning, not learning itself.

Parents can expect that the other three will be neglected as teachers frantically try to prepare students for the difficult and high-stakes tests.

They see data, not children. 

The promise of the Common Core is dying and teaching and learning are being distorted.  The well that should sustain the Core has been poisoned.

Whether or not learning the word ‘commission’ is appropriate for second graders could be debated—I personally think it is a bit over the top.  What is of deeper concern, however, is that during a time when 7 year olds should be listening to and making music, they are instead taking a vocabulary quiz.

Data should be used as a strategy for improvement, not for accountability

A fool with a tool is still a fool.  A fool with a powerful tool is a dangerous fool.

But I would argue that’s the point: You can’t separate the technology from the rest of the learning process, because they are inextricably bound.

But technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum. For technology to have an impact on student achievement, schools also need sound teaching, strong leadership, fidelity of use, and a supportive culture, among other things.

In other words, technology can’t improve student outcomes by itself. Instead, it’s one of several elements that must work together in harmony, like a complex dance, to elicit results. Should it come as a surprise that test scores haven’t risen markedly in Kyrene, when the Times reported the district has had to cut several teaching positions in recent years? Who knows how much the district has invested in professional development, or tech support?

But the Times got it wrong with regard to the central question it invited readers to consider. Instead of examining whether technology is worth schools’ investment, the newspaper should have focused on two other, more relevant questions: Why are so many districts that invest in technology still failing to see success? And, what are the conditions that best lead to ed-tech success?

Funding constraints have been exacerbated by an ever-multiplying series of challenges, such as growing populations of ESL and special-needs students and the creeping effects of poverty on school district operations.

Problems such as poverty have always existed, but what hasn’t is the idea that schools should be responsible for educating every child, regardless of his or her circumstances. As a society, we’ve made this promise as part of No Child Left Behind, but we haven’t backed it up with the funding that is needed to make good on this promise—preferring instead what we think are quick solutions, such as merit pay for teachers … or technology in classrooms.

The real question isn’t how to improve public education, he says—it’s: Do we really want to? And that’s a question we’ve been avoiding as a society, because the answer might require a level of commitment we’re not prepared to make.

In the wealthiest country in the world, it would be nice to think that school districts like Kyrene shouldn’t have to choose between technology and teachers. It would be nice to think they could afford both.