Standards, oh joy!

Today, it feels like there is so much pressure on students and school teachers to prepare their students for the basic test standards and benchmarks they should pass. As you can see, Minnesota Educational Standards has lists of where the benchmarks and standards are for each grade in each subject. Future and current teachers are expected to teach their students enough for them to reach these marks! That is a lot of pressure for one teacher that has to teach 20+ students enough for them to retain the information and for them to test up to the standards!

Here is a video talking about the common core standards:

 

I feel like there are a lot of different opinions about how testing and standards play a role into how children are actually learning! I was able to be a volunteer helper in a kindergarten class for a couple weeks this past month. This happened to be around the time when they were preparing for the Minnesota State tests at each level. I was able to go with the kindergarteners to the computer lab and observe them taking the math test! Do you want to know what blew me away the most?! Basically EVERY SINGLE CHILD was able to do the problem presented on the screen every time, but the problem was that they could not TYPE IT IN! I felt helpless when the students were raising their hands and saying I don’t know how to do this yet I knew that they actually knew the answer. I felt like it was more a test of their computer skills then their actual math skills.

Standards, in my opinion are very essential to keep students up to date and competitive with other students around the world. I like the fact that students are tested on content that they will need to know for the future and the testing will actually help their retention as well. I do not like that fact that there is so much pressure on these standardized tests that a lot of the time, teachers forget to teach other subjects and life lessons. In my opinion, subjects such as art, physical education, music, and such are just as important for a child as is math and reading.