In the first few weeks of the school year, I quickly realized that my plans would be a comical failure if I did not adjust for the unfortunate reality of the education system in which I was teaching. I saw firsthand that matriculation does not mean mastery. Some of my students had struggled in grasping the content of the previous years, yet progressed in grade level. This presented a difficult situation as I could not advance them along in the standards to which I was responsible at a pace that simply ignored where they were when they started the year.
For my students that struggled, it was largely due to a lack of reading comprehension skills. Students reading below grade level affected how I needed to approach instruction and how well they would complete tasks. This lesson from my first year remains with me to this day, especially as the problem persists.
Our system needs to advance students based more on content mastery, not on age. We need to place less emphasis on the quantity of education – how long has a child been in school - and more on the quality of education – is the child proficient.
We spend too much energy focused on testing that does not benefit our students. The State’s accountability system is driven by assessments that must be improved. While our tests are valid and reliable in providing what they measure - how well schools and districts are doing - they are failing our students.
We spend too little time on measuring what matters. Let’s spend less time testing and more time educating. We should shift our focus to measure how a child is doing over the course of the year and should intervene aggressively when they are not advancing properly.
Our students, parents, taxpayers, and State deserve a system that only advances students when they are prepared. Our system focuses on quantity not quality. We focus on how long a child has been in a seat and not on what they learned while there. Advancing children before they are ready is like continuing to build a house when we know the foundation is weak. Should we be surprised when the house falls?
As your next State Superintended of Education, I will fight to bring accountability to every classroom. It is time to move away from a quantity based system that has state and federal accountability to a quality based system that has student, parent, and teacher accountability. I will fight to create a proficiency based education system that allows each child to advance in each subject based on skill mastery, not birthdays.
For my students that struggled, it was largely due to a lack of reading comprehension skills. Students reading below grade level affected how I needed to approach instruction and how well they would complete tasks. This lesson from my first year remains with me to this day, especially as the problem persists.
Our system needs to advance students based more on content mastery, not on age. We need to place less emphasis on the quantity of education – how long has a child been in school - and more on the quality of education – is the child proficient.
We spend too much energy focused on testing that does not benefit our students. The State’s accountability system is driven by assessments that must be improved. While our tests are valid and reliable in providing what they measure - how well schools and districts are doing - they are failing our students.
We spend too little time on measuring what matters. Let’s spend less time testing and more time educating. We should shift our focus to measure how a child is doing over the course of the year and should intervene aggressively when they are not advancing properly.
Our students, parents, taxpayers, and State deserve a system that only advances students when they are prepared. Our system focuses on quantity not quality. We focus on how long a child has been in a seat and not on what they learned while there. Advancing children before they are ready is like continuing to build a house when we know the foundation is weak. Should we be surprised when the house falls?
As your next State Superintended of Education, I will fight to bring accountability to every classroom. It is time to move away from a quantity based system that has state and federal accountability to a quality based system that has student, parent, and teacher accountability. I will fight to create a proficiency based education system that allows each child to advance in each subject based on skill mastery, not birthdays.
