A 2nd Grade Teacher, Steven Round, with the Providence Public Schools in Rhode Island read his resignation letter on camera and posted it to YouTube when he wasn’t permitted to read his letter at a recent school committee meeting. He quit over how the educational system in his community had changed. Instead of creating life-long learners he says they are churning out test-takers.
Round stated, “The school system in which I had so much pride drastically changed. Rather than creating lifelong learners, our new goal is to create good test-takers. Rather than being the recipients of a rewarding and enjoyable educational experience, our students are now relegated to experiencing a confining and demeaning education.”
He cites the how a one-size-fits-all curriculum has lead to the loss of creativity, the inability to address individual needs in the classroom, and severe behavior problems.
At the end of the video he tendered his resignation in rather dramatic fashion, “I would rather leave my secure $70,000 job, with benefits, and tutor in Connecticut for free than be part of a system that is diametrically opposed to everything I believe education should be.”
Good for him. Expect to see more teachers take steps like this as the Common Core State Standards are implemented. This may be a consequence unforeseen by the educrats foisting the standards upon us.
Be sure to watch the video below:
SJ says
Good for him! My father is a retired high school teacher, and, unlike a lot of educators,
he was very opposed to gearing teaching toward tests. That took so much courage for Round to make his decision and speak out like this. I hope it all sends shock waves throughout the educational community.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with standardized tests, they should not be overemphasized, and should never be the focus of the curriculum. Looking back on when I was a student, I realize that I cared way too much about the SAT, etc. I don’t necessarily regret doing a lot of reading and stuff to prepare for it, but my goal should have been more toward doing the reading and study just for the enjoyment of it, not for what it could do to bolster test scores. In one sense, learning itself should be the end, not simply the means to an end. Furthermore, the range of skills measured by standardized tests is very narrow–for instance, it’s great to have a healthy vocabulary, but exactly how important is that one skill to success in college? And how well do such tests truly measure reading comprehension when you often barely have enough time to read the passage and answer the questions, much less give them deep thought? The tests of verbal ability are often very subjective as well. In addition, if one person scores in the 99th percentile on a standardized test and another person scores in the 90th percentile, is the first person really likely to do much better in college?
There’s an article from several years ago about spelling bees that explains what’s behind this educational phenomenon:
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Joel Westheimer, professor of education at the University of Ottawa
and specialist in education trends, says spelling bee mania is part of
today’s social obsession with quantifiable measures of success.
“The desire for standardized and quantifiable measures — whether in the
push for more and more standardized tests, rote assessments or spelling
bees — is symptomatic of a society that would like its schools to
measure something — anything — to gain a comforting sense of progress.
If we can’t measure what we truly care about, we just start caring
about what we can measure. Bring on the spelling bee.”
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So, whether it’s standardized tests, the spelling bee (which I could go on an extended rant about, but will save for another time ;), etc., our culture’s obsession with quantifiable measures of success is doing great harm to our kids IMO.