An e-mail from a teacher that I received this morning in response to this Chester Finn piece on standards:

As a math teacher (in Michigan) for 17 years now, my biggest irritation is the fact that I believe the standards are wrong.
I have always believed that if left alone, I could teach the kids the necessary material. If it was Algebra, I could teach them algebra, if it was Geometry, I could teach them geometry. We (our department) kept in contact with other teachers in the area, we talked to college professors and we knew what was expected of kids. We decided when topics were old or out-dated (such as synthetic division) and we removed or minimized them.
One of the results of the standards (I feel) is that it no longer lets me concentrate on individual students. Because our funding is tied to our success on the MEAP test (our Michigan test), I must cover a certain amount of topics because each student will be tested on them. So, if I think a particular student is weak and would benefit from more instruction in fractions, percents, “checkbook’ math…I can’t always give them that extra instruction because he needs more statistics and probability (yes, I agree with Finn, it’s overemphasized)
Additionally, they keep moving more and more stuff into lower levels. One of the proposed changes is to have 7th graders understand one proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. While this is a nice thought, some kids are just not ready for this. And furthermore…how does it really help them? They really need to spend more time on algorithms, understanding what division actually means, being able to compute fractions correctly and efficiently.
And yet, if you complain about this, it will come back to you as not caring about kids, not having high standards, etc. I have a student who is totally unmotivated, comes to class and does nothing. I isolated that student because they were disruptive to some of their friends, but otherwise, they do nothing. Now, I have tried talking with the student, etc. but their goal is just to do nothing. According to the literature, maybe if I restructured my class, made it more exciting…more appealing, then presto, she would be successful. But instead, I have decided that my method works, the kids who want to learn do learn, the kids who struggle can still learn.
I really feel for the kids who struggle with math. We not have to test a certain percentage of our kids in Special Education. This might be nice for a big school, but for a small school, our percentage who can opt out might end up to less than one student. Knowing how to do fractions and work a checkbook will be more important in the life of these students than knowing what a box and whisker plot is.
I actually have very few problems with “high-stakes” testing…if I feel the standards and the test are worthwhile. I would rather (in our district) come up with our own minimum competency test. We can identify and track individual students easier, see how we need to adjust our curriculum to meet our students needs. And, I think you would find, we are still giving our students a quality education. They might not all know what a box and whisker plot is…but then, I (never) see this method of reporting data used, but it claims a very high place on the MEAP test.
Oh, I think I’m past the rambling stage now, but I’ve just been dying to vent and get this stuff off my chest. I feel like I’ve been compromised and if I don’t teach to the test (or in this case, they like to say…the standards) I jeopardize my school/students with loss of funding.