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Minnesota Teachers Divided Over New Standards
Ohanian Comment: Anyone who has lots of experience teaching the apostrophe knows how fatuous and futile skill requirements by grade level are. Anyone who had minimal experience teaching the apostrophe knows the same thing.
Minnesota's new education standards appear absolutely clear on the skills students must learn in math and reading. But those 50-page packages aren't meant just for kids or parents.
Teachers also will be faced with another round of learning the state's standards.
For the first time in Minnesota, teachers know grade by grade what the state expects in reading and math and they'll soon see similar detail for science and social studies.
Students will be tested on those standards and schools will be judged by how the students perform, and that may end up altering the way those subjects are taught in many classrooms.
Some teachers will embrace it; some will make only small changes to what they do now; others will chafe at what they'll view as another attempt by state bureaucrats to "tell me how to teach."
Much of it will ride on teachers' perception.
The new standards offer "a lot of pluses, and I think there are a lot of fears," too, among teachers, said Ann Markegard, a Houston, Minn., science teacher and one of the earliest vocal critics of the now-dead Profile of Learning. She and other teachers who fought the Profile saw it as both a state curriculum and a state Education Department demand to teach a certain way.
Markegard says she's excited to see the new science standards; "It sounds like they're not going to tell me how to teach." But it's still a worry. The standards will be linked to tests, and success on the tests will deliver more stars on the state's new five-star school rating system. The concern is that those things might drive instruction.
"I'm creative. Some of my best lessons have been not off my lesson plans but from what a student said" in class, said Markegard, who teaches high school physics and chemistry, eighth-grade earth science and ninth-grade physical science at Houston High School.
"Having a good, concrete list of science objectives is not a problem because I probably already have it," she said. "But if I have to hit that long list (of standards) to get my star … am I going to have to turn around to Susie and say, 'Sorry, I can't answer your question' because it's not on the test?"
Profile of Learning supporters once hoped those new standards would lead to a teaching revolution. Projects and performances would replace worksheets and copying notes off the board. Teachers would leave the front of the classroom, moving from on-stage lecturers to behind-the-scenes facilitators, getting students to think more on their own.
Some embraced it. Some made only small changes; others rebelled at what they saw.
Gene Stukel was one of those who embraced the Profile. A longtime teacher from Granite Falls, Stukel saw the Profile as the means to force kids to think more for themselves.
"At times, lecture is important," said Stukel, who works now for Southwest Minnesota State University helping mentor K-12 student teachers. But he worries that the level of detail will force teachers into delivering facts they know will be on tests. "Just standing and delivering is not the way to do it," he added. "I'm working with 10 student teachers. I've told them regardless of what happens with the standards, you still need to teach kids how to think."
It's hard to judge what will happen. Despite the publicity, many teachers saw the new standards for the first time in their orientations last week.
While Stukel worries about the long-term impact of the new standards on teaching, he says the worst scenario will be if teachers and schools get cynical and decide they can simply wait until the political winds change: The Profile died after five years, validating many teachers' belief that they can wait out what they don't believe in.
"I'm hoping that people just don't throw up their arms and say, 'I'm going to wait it out for four years until a new administration comes along,' " he said. "As professionals, we have to roll up our sleeves, have to go at this with good gusto. Somebody's decided that this is good for our kids."
Those who embraced the teaching ideals in the Profile of Learning, he adds, "who said that's a good way to teach because it involves students, I think they'll take the best of what they have and still use it, but follow the letter of the law."
— Paul Tosto
Teachers divided over new standards
Pioneer Press
2003-08-31
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/living/education/6652003.htm
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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