WTFH – All children can learn; can they?

All Children can learn; can they?

Is every child receiving a proficient education in our schools? What does basic mean? What does proficient mean? what does advanced mean? How many levels or proficiencies are being tracked by the assessments? What is a state sponsored curriculum? What is a unit of instruction? Letter grades or grouped percentages?

The government that funds your education system believes that all children can learn. When you read that phrase, what do you think it means?  Twenty-five students in the classroom with one teacher. Four students are learning disabled, one student has been assessed with a proficiency level of 4.5, ten students read on a basic level, three students speaks Spanish, one speaks Korean, one student has Autism, two students cannot speak at all, and three students have repeated the same grade once and just transferred into this class; one from across town, one from out of state, and one from another county.

The teacher is paid based on her ability to reach a certain performance outcome for the school year. It is the second semester and assessments are 90-days away. All children can learn? Really? How does she manage this class? How does she get everyone on the same reading level so that they all reach proficiency on the State Assessment? What if she is required to reach 75% proficiency? Given the number of students and each having their own issues – not including hunger, health, hygiene,  or abuse, etc…in this scenario, if you were this teacher under these strict mandates, what would you do?

By the way, this scenario is average for most urban schools. The federal mandate is that all schools reach this goal – see President Obama’s education plan named: “Race to the Top”.