Julie’s Blog

I drew several parallels between the circumstances mentioned in the article and issues that Georgia teachers contend.  First, the five day trainings in which teachers were to attend leaving their students in the classroom with substitutes reminded me of the initial Georgia Performance Standards training.  Teachers planned to miss up to eight days in a given year as the standards were being rolled out.  The plan was eventually altered and online assignments were expected to be completed in place of the training.  What’s worse for busy teachers eight days of sub plans and lost instruction or redundant and irrelevant online tasks that serve to prove they know how and are qualified to teach?  Second, the frequent text-based assessments mentioned in the article that took up to 20 percent of instructional time is similar to the frequent benchmark assessments that many counties are requiring of all grade levels.  When your first graders are playing school and you overhear them pretend to distribute benchmarks it becomes evident of how much time is really spent given these assessments.  Lastly, the article referred to the No Child Left Behind Act.   Jaegar describes how in actuality the result of the act is that more children are being left behind than ever before and this is due mainly in part to an emphasis of standardized curriculum over teacher’s professional judgment.  I feel very strongly that the same is going to result from the state’s new Response to Intervention protocol.  All of the time consuming paperwork, data and statisitical information is viewed as more important and insightful than a teacher’s professional reasoning and analysis.