Last week, I wrote about our upcoming Parent-Teacher-Student conferences for my youngest daughter as well as my concerns over the assessment process and grading. I went into the meeting as calm and focused as I could be at the time. I had some questions, and I feared that I wouldn’t be able to articulate them in the time allotted. 15 minutes to discuss our daughter, her learning objectives, her progress, and the bigger picture of what the new methodology means seemed like an impossibly short amount of time.

We arrived early to the conference, not something we’ve managed to do in the past. Heck, we seldom arrive early anywhere. We’re not the Hectic Family for nothing, you know. But my daughter and I arrived early. My wife was tied up at work, and we didn’t know if she would be able to join us. I’d outlined my concerns to her in an e-mail, but frankly I still didn’t know if she’d had time to read it.

At the school, they have an announcement every 15 minutes when one conference is supposed to end and the next begin. The announcement for the ending of the prior conference was made, but the family in there didn’t come out. 5 minutes passed, and that was OK with me…I’m sure they had things to talk about. 10 minutes passed, and I was getting a bit anxious. 15 minutes passed and they still hadn’t come out. The next family had arrived, and they were already grumbling about having to wait. Little did they know, we were actually scheduled ahead of them, and I didn’t think we were going to go all that quickly. Fortunately, I’d already looked at the schedule and knew that there was an hour gap after them, so at least there wouldn’t be two (or three) families waiting.

Finally the prior family completed their conference and we went in. We got the standard spiel about what the kids were doing, the upcoming science fair (my daughter’s first, my zillionth as a supporting but not overbearingly involved parent…more on that another time), the upcoming State Assessments, and then some of the areas where she needed to make some improvements. I quietly listened and digested what the teachers were saying. Quite frankly, they seemed a little bit on edge.

I finally pointed out my concerns over the fact that my daughter was merely perfoming at grade level, and that in our family our goal is for the kids to perform well above grade level. In the past, our 5th or 6th graders have been reading at the 11th or 12th grade level. Her objective testing seems to put her on that track, but the numerical assessments didn’t reflect that. In fact, in a separate method of ascertaining their reading (called Accelerated Reader in our district), she was reading just barely above grade level books. The books are selected together by the student, teacher, and librarian using a color-scheme. I’d noticed that she was reading in the lower end of her range, and even asked her about it previously. She replied “those are the only books I’m allowed to take out”.

So, in an effort to condense my questions about CCR/Common Core (CCR is College and Career Ready Standards and is the Kansas variant of Common Core) I asked about her reading level as well as her performance at grade level. I wasn’t surprised (albeit disappointed) when the teachers (she has a split day with two teachers) replied that their goal was to get all the kids performing at grade level. They further explained that lots of kids were not anywhere close, whereas our daughter was solidly performing at grade level. They even explained that she was one of their top performers. We then began to discuss the process to get her performing above grade level and the teachers became a bit move vocal.

As the short discussion progressed, it became apparent that they are between a rock and a hard place. They have to get all their kids to grade level performance or there will be some sort of teacher evaluation repercussions. Kids that reach that level earlier in the year are being somewhat plateaued and left on there own to some extent. The kids with lower performance (and therefore in need of more instruction) are getting more attention.

To make matters worse, the nature of the assessment of the kids progress is onerous. You used to get a grade in each of your subjects. For instance, you got a single grade for English. the new report card has 68 areas that are to be measured and scored. I asked the teachers if all this measurement and scoring was impacting their ability to teach. They did agree that it was a lot of measurement and assessments were hard to make. They pointed out that it takes a ton of time, but most of it is outside their regular instructional time. Further, they pointed out that it helps that the two of them share one teaching position. We discussed how hard it must be for a full-time teacher to do all this grading.

The bell rang and we were now at our 15 minutes, but our discussion was nowhere close to complete. We talked for a few minutes more, and I got a feeling for how hard it is on the teachers. They explained that the same content they have always been teaching is still being taught, although they know that other teachers have reduced content to teach closer to the grading rubric. These two are a bit on the maverick side. They continued to have vocabulary and spelling tests, while almost all the other teachers have dropped spelling. It’s not measured, so it’s not being taught in many other classrooms. The teachers lamented the fact that there is no way to include the fact that an assignment is turned in late. There are no repercussions, as long as the assignment is turned in. They expressed their concern that they are being backed into a corner with the kids in their classroom, and the apparent goal is to get the same level of achievement out of all of them…achievement at grade level. There is apparently no reward, nor time, nor actual incentive to help those kids who could achieve above grade level.

When I expressed my concern that my daughter, as one of the more academically advanced kids, was getting lost in a system like CCR, they agreed. They said they’re doing what they can, but the standards and measures as well as the incentives and testing do not give them much room to work above and beyond anymore.

So I left the PTS conference with several thoughts floating around in my head. Firstly, I was reassured that the particular teachers my daughter has are great people, love what they do, and are well-suited to the teaching profession. They want to help each of their kids achieve at the level they can. Unfortunately, the flipside is that the system that we now have in place is even less conducive to their ability to help all their kids than what we had before. It was also apparent that they are uncomfortable with the implementation of CCR/Common Core in the classroom, are concerned about the State Assessments (which will happen at the end of March), and are worried that there will be repercussions if all their students don’t do well on the tests. They did pretty much beg us to make sure that our daughter was there on the day of assessments. If she’s not, she will still take the tests, but her scores won’t count towards the class averages and results. Their implicit statement was that she would help the averages in a positive way.

As a final note, one of the teachers asked if we had heard that the honors classes at the middle school were being disbanded in lieu of more standardized learning environments. I walked out of the PTS conference in shock. Honestly, I understand why we need to expend resources to make sure kids with learning issues achieve. But I also know that if you don’t have honors classes, kids at the other end of the spectrum will not achieve at their full potential. Frankly, if you put enough academically gifted kids into an environment where school is no longer challenging or rewarding, they will seek out other avenues for challenge and reward. And unfortunately, creative and talented kids without sufficient work on their plates will find ways to do all sorts of creating, talented, and sometimes destructive things.

So now I’m on another crusade to figure out what the plan is for the honors classes at the middle schools in our district.

It just seems like this is a never ending process…