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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Marsha Ratzel

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Marsha Ratzel

Moving at the Speed of Creativity | What We Can Learn from Oklahoma's Repeal of Common ... - 0 views

www.speedofcreativity.org/...klahomas-repeal-of-common-core

CCSS CCSS_implementation

shared by Marsha Ratzel on 15 Jun 14 - No Cached
    • Marsha Ratzel
      Marsha Ratzel on 15 Jun 14
       
      This article would be a good supplement to the ones listed int the TLI guide.  It gives specifics to a state case and could help folks imagine what might be happening in their state.
  • Parents like Melissa, unfortunately, ascribe far too much importance and power to academic standards
  • We NEED more participation and advocacy not only from parents in our state, but especially from classroom teachers who have the best perspective on the impact of many policy decisions which others can simply “armchair quarterback
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • 2. Many Parents Are Mis-informed about Educational Policies and Practices
  • High stakes testing is the enemy. If you’re filled with joy today at the repeal of Common Core in Oklahoma, you may be misdirecting your frustration and anger over educational policies in our state and nation. It’s not too late to open your mind to this reality: High stakes testing has and continues to create a toxic learning culture in our schools for students and teachers, and must end as soon as possible.
  • 3. Misconceptions Can Be Called Out Without “Attacking People”
  • t’s both possible and important for all of us in education (but especially current classroom teachers) to continue calling out misconceptions… and to do that without personally attacking individuals.
  • 1. Parental Voices, Even When They are Misinformed, Can Be Powerful
  • 4. We Need More Great Teachers In Oklahoma, Not More Standards, And That Takes MONEY
  • he quality of the educational experience comes down to one thing: The teacher.
  • Let’s focus on attracting, nurturing, retaining, and celebrating great teachers, instead of mis-placing our faith in “rigorous academic standards.
Marsha Ratzel

Diane Ravitch: Wrong on the Common Core - Top Performers - Education Week - 1 views

blogs.edweek.org/..._wrong_on_the_common_core.html

CCSS CCSS_implementation Pro_on_Core

shared by Marsha Ratzel on 14 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • But the Common Core State Standards are not a program, like a new drug, to be field-tested.  They are a statement of what we want our children to know and be able to do when they graduate from high school and what they ought to know and be able to do at key points along the way to graduation.
  • oor and minority students in the United States will score lower on assessments based on any internationally benchmarked standards than majority students, because we do not educate poor and minority students to the same standards as majority students in this country.  So this blast from Ravitch is not a criticism of the Common Core standards.  It is a blast against any serious standards. 
  • We will not improve the performance of poor and minority students by suppressing standards.  It will only improve when we make the implicit standards explicit, which will then ratchet up the pressure to do something about the "disparate impact" of the kind of education those students now get.
Marsha Ratzel

Commentary: Creating conditions for Common Core | Chalkbeat - 1 views

co.chalkbeat.org/...ect-conditions-for-common-core

CCSS CCSS_implementation

shared by Marsha Ratzel on 14 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Teachers will be able to seamlessly incorporate the common core standards into their everyday practice if districts give teachers: 1) differentiated time, 2) plenty of feedback, 3) and the opportunity to struggle with the new standards.
    • Marsha Ratzel
      Marsha Ratzel on 14 Jun 14
       
      These are the most important elements of implementing almost anything...the time to come to understand and the company with which to process how instruction/assessment must shift.
  • What we need is more of what Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, calls “purposeful practice.”
    • Marsha Ratzel
      Marsha Ratzel on 14 Jun 14
       
      So how can we create these purposeful practice.  This might be a terrific phrase to use during the 3-Day....how would our folks measure their PD & how would they know if it had been purposeful practice?
  • It comes down to time.  Time for teachers to collaboratively make the standards coherent – to decipher the myriad levels of standards. (I’ve
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • write assessments that will evaluate students’ understanding of the new standards
    • Marsha Ratzel
      Marsha Ratzel on 14 Jun 14
       
      Here's another spot that I think is ripe with possibilities...so many tchrs assume we have to wait and see what the consortiums come up with.  Bunk.  Who cares? What we should be focused on figuring out is how to assess these standards since (I hope it's obvious to everyone) multiple choice won't cut it.  Writing complex assessments or performance assessments is tough...needs lots of field testing/revision. Do you think this would be a neat ?
  • will never be done “working” with the new standards
  • Benchmarking, where teachers identify student work that correlates to proficiency, gives teachers the opportunity hone their understanding of what the standards are asking of students. 
    • Marsha Ratzel
      Marsha Ratzel on 14 Jun 14
       
      Will we be talking about this concept at all?  It seems like it is at the heart of what LDC and MDC are about.
Marsha Ratzel

Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards | Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 views

dianeravitch.net/...port-the-common-core-standards

CCSS Con_on_core

shared by Marsha Ratzel on 14 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • hey should be thoroughly tested to see how they work in real classrooms;
  • they should be free of any mandates that tell teachers how to teach because there are many ways to be a good teacher, not just one.
  • I can’t wait five or ten years to find out whether test scores go up or down, whether or not schools improve, and whether the kids now far behind are worse off than they are today.
  • ...8 more annotations...
    • Marsha Ratzel
      Marsha Ratzel on 14 Jun 14
       
      I do think she has a point here....they say it wasn't a national effort but what they mean is that it wasn't a federal government effort.  Gates definitlely wanted naitonal standards b/c of their beliefs it would improve education
  • hat no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools.
  • Common Core standards effort is fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted upon the nation.
  • They were developed by an organization called Achieve and the National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states.
  • but in this case the Department figured out a clever way to evade the letter of the law
  • The flap over fiction vs. informational text further undermined my confidence in the standards. There is no reason for national standards to tell teachers what percentage of their time should be devoted to literature or information. Both can develop the ability to think critically. The claim that the writers of the standards picked their arbitrary ratios because NAEP has similar ratios makes no sense. NAEP gives specifications to test-developers, not to classroom teachers.
    • Marsha Ratzel
      Marsha Ratzel on 14 Jun 14
       
      I really disagree with this.  In my humble experience of two decades, ELA teachers love their fiction, book studies and poetry units.  Not so much on non-fiction...definitely not technical or strictly informational reading.  Since CCSS, I have gotten more assistance from my ELA people than in all other years put together.   Without this push, I don't think ELA teachers would have migrated to science (social studies is a slightly different thing) as easily.
  • is that I am worried that they will cause a precipitous decline in test scores, based on arbitrary cut scores, and this will have a disparate impact on students who are English language learners, students with disabilities, and students who are poor and low-performing.
  • Now that David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards, has become president of the College Board, we can expect that the SAT will be aligned to the standards. No one will escape their reach, whether they attend public or private school.
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