For decades, Iowa school officials misled the public about the quality of education through the manipulation of data and false rationalizations. By regularly lowering the standards and not testing students whose learning style and lowered expectations did not do well in a system of memorization, it artificially appeared Iowa students were doing well when they were actually becoming less globally competitive.
The theories used in the teacher training programs for that dysfunctional system are still at work today, continuing their discriminatory work by holding back improved teaching methods and by diluting the concept-based Common Core with remnants of the system of memorization. No Child Left Behind attempted to put a stop to the discrimination of lowered expectations, but many Iowa educators find themselves unable to abandon these deeply entrenched forms of prejudice. Similarly, teachers utilizing the Common Core continue to include elements of the dysfunctional curriculum of memorization, thus diluting the potential effectiveness of the Common Core.
While Iowa is implementing new tests to replace the manipulated Iowa Assessments, attempts to determine the standards for these tests have turned up some interesting results. School officials have no idea whether the test standards are grade level (which Iowa has not used for decades), and, it turns out, the Iowa Department of Education does not know either. The designated contact person for Measures of Academic Progress did not know of any standards for Iowa, but a math individual who writes state reports had the information I was seeking (which I passed along to the unknowing individual). I next requested a spreadsheet of FAST (Formative Assessment Systems for Teachers) test results for all Iowa districts. The individual furnishing me with the spreadsheet of data told me Iowa had no standards. I forwarded that response to Dr. Ryan Wise, Director of the Iowa Department of Education, who sent it to a designated person to answer my question. That person mentioned benchmarks but was unable to relate benchmarks to grade level.
I forwarded that response to both Dr. Wise and the governor’s office because it is not good when the state has no idea what state standards are. This also means the schools have no idea what the standards are when they talk about “benchmarks” for the elementary grades.
How do you make plans for improving the effectiveness of teaching and stopping the diluting of the curriculum when you do not know where you stand?
Sue Atkinson
Baxter