Am I Mad? Maybe. Probably. Definitely: Project 180, Day 130

“If they all carried the same meaning, then I should be able to challenge the standardized measure with another if I find it out of sync with my findings from the 180 days that I have spent in direct contact with the student, drawing from one or more of the other measures to support my position. Shouldn’t I? If not, then what the hell am I even doing?”

Never quite settled on what learning is and what learning is not, I try to be careful of coming from a place that suggests that I know–definitively–what learning is. I don’t. And that plays a big part in my Project 180 approach. Seeking to better understand the complexities of learning and the diverse needs of the little humans I serve, I attempt to turn upside down conventional approaches, and if there is one convention that I would love to leave on its back, it would be standardized testing. Much reviled but nonetheless regarded as the measure that determines learning in public education, standardized testing sits atop the bench with its gavel stamping success and failure on the foreheads of kids and teachers, schools and districts. At the end of the day, despite some of the eduspeak that would suggest otherwise, it is the measure that holds sway in education. It’s mad. I’m mad. And recently, I tweeted my mad rantings into the Twitterverse.