Prior to interviewing the Assistant Principal of Academics I was hoping for an open and honest conversation regarding assessment. Due to the answers I received that I decided to interview another faculty member, who had been at the school since 1992 under a variety of titles …show more content…
However, he did raise concerns about the new SAT début set for Saturday March 5, 2016. This is the third such change he has seen (previously changed in 1994 and 2005). His reason for concern is that the president of the College Board, the company that owns the SAT is David Coleman, and is one of the principal architects of the Common Core. So, he is changing the SAT to reflect the Common Core. He is worried about some of the terms, as he feels about 10 percent of high school students have actually heard of them, and while he never thought he would hear the words grammar and graph in the same sentence, the change is …show more content…
Ken also had no direct experience with Smarter Balance, but knew that it involved grades 3-8 and 11.
Both of the people I interviewed had not had much experience with CCSS or the Smarter-Balance, which surprised me seeing how one had her Doctorate degree and the other had been teaching for such a long time. Although we are an independent school, and if a person had not taught at a public school in the last 5-6 years, they may not know much about CCSS or Smarter-Balance, both of which have been in the works for quite some time. Having taught at public schools myself, I already had taken classes and attended workshops on the Common Core.
After having learned about assessments, validity, reliability, and bias, I was also surprised to see that none of them talked about any of those words until I asked specifically about them. I had tremendous respect for both of these people, but have relearned the old cliché, you can’t judge a book by its cover, meaning just because a person has a doctorate or has been teaching for over thirty years, doesn’t mean that they are up to date on