- “What happens in childhood, like a child’s footprint in wet cement, leaves its mark forever.” ~ Dr. Vincent J. Felitti, director, Adverse Childhood Experiences Study
- “As the Common Core makes its way into real-life classrooms, I hope teachers are able to adjust its guidelines as they see fit. I hope, for instance, that teachers will be allowed to introduce the standard method for addition and subtraction in second grade rather than waiting until fourth. I also hope that teachers who favor direct instruction over an inquiry-based approach will be given this freedom. Unfortunately, the emails and newspaper articles I’ve been seeing may herald a new era where more and more students are given a flimsy make-believe version of mathematics, without the ability to solve actual math problems. After all, where the Common Core goes, textbooks are probably not too far behind.” ~ Bary Garelick, math teacher
- “For all intents and purposes, ‘literacy’ became synonymous with ‘reading’ and writing became the stepchild of literacy rather than an equal partner.” ~ Andres Henriquez, Carnegie Corporation
- ‘”The nation’s drive to develop standards-based accountability for schools has led to tests that, with only few exceptions, systematically over-represent basic skills and knowledge and omit the complex knowledge and reasoning we are seeking for college and career readiness.” ~ The Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education
- “At the elementary level, [value-added] is a pretty reliable measure in terms of predicting how teachers will perform the following year. At the high school level, it is quite a bit less reliable, so the score for using this to improve student outcomes is much more limited.” ~ C. Kirabo Jackson, Northwestern University