I was inspired yesterday by Neil Abercrombie, the Hawaii congressman running for governor. His mother and brother are/were teachers. In the ’80s, working under DOE Superintendent Charles Taguchi, he helped start School Community Based Management — I worked on it when our kids were at Haiku School. He calls for school-based control and for the governor to take responsibility for education by directly appointing the DOE superintendent. He sees the need to move Hawaii into energy and food self-sufficiency and the need for educated people to meet these goals.
This morning I watched the standards based report card video for parents from the Hawaii Dept. of Education. Kudos to the DOE for providing a parent video and for providing an informative website.
But OMG.
The design sucks. The DOE shouldn’t be in the design business.
Any adult should be able to understand and use first grade standards. First grade is not that hard.
But I don’t understand what the standards in the report cards mean and I have an M.A., I have extensive experience as a parent, and I’ve tutored many many kids.
Over the last months, I’ve been translating Hawaii standards from “Students will. . .” to “I can. . .” It takes real research to translate them into simple language. If I can’t understand them, how can a parent who hasn’t finished high school be expected to understand them?
The other problem is that, whether a child is ready or not, school and the report card marches on. If a child doesn’t get his times tables down in third grade, then how is it going to show up in fifth grade, when the standards have moved on? Once the child is behind, the child, parents, and teachers can’t see what the child really knows and doesn’t know.
Check out the writing standards under language arts for fourth graders. Those standards are ongoing challenges for accomplished adult writers–and they won’t show up again in eighth grade standards.
It’s time for a child-centered system that children and parents can understand and that simplifies our teachers’ workload. It’s time for a system that is lifelong, K through gray.
It’s time for a system that can help Hawaii achieve economic, energy, and food self-sufficiency.
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