This commentary is by Susan Ohanian of Charlotte, a longtime teacher and author of a dozen books on education policy and practice.
In October, the Vermont Agency of Education informed us that Cognia will be Vermont’s new Statewide Assessment vendor.
Cognia offers a muddle of self-identification, saying it has “standards and processes that conform to conditions specific to Charter School Authorizers, Corporations, Digital Learning, Early Learning, Education Service Agencies, Postsecondary Schools, Special Purpose, and Systems.”
My question is: “How many seventh-graders have they talked to?”
My second question: “Why so many name changes?”
Cognia was formerly AdvancED, which merged with Measured Progress. AdvancED was formed by consolidation of the Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and the Council of Accreditation and School Improvement of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Enough, already: How many seventh-graders have they talked to?
Anyone with more sensibility than a pumpkin worries about the plight of our children. And we worriers have at least an inkling that the current attempt to create hysteria over standardized test results is, at best, misinformed, and at worst just offering one more piece of corporate-politico offal. Or, citing Henry David Thoreau’s wisdom, we have here the output of people whose appreciation of children is “not much more than a piece of putty.”
For a better look at today’s schools output, I recommend a recent letter to the editor, “Stepping into the best part-time job ever,” by a Vermont bus driver. This fellow is very enthusiastic about the 100 public school kids who ride his bus, noting they are “endlessly entertaining, full of hope, positive energy, enthusiasm for life,” adding, “they have strong opinions and when given the opportunity are thrilled to share their thoughts.”
Claire Nader has written just the book for these kids: “You Are Your Own Best Teacher! Sparking the Curiosity, Imagination, and Intellect of Tweens.”
Nader provides a positive direction for kids’ energy, and for their worries, too. She invites tweens to follow Greta Thunberg’s advice, “You’re not too young” — specifically, not too young to be an active citizen and change the world. With inspiring accounts of student activism ranging from Benjamin Franklin to Frederick Douglass to Ruby Bridges and present-day Salt Lake City and Chicago fifth-graders, Nader offers stirring vignettes of kids changing their worlds.
The book offers warnings to tweens (and their parents) about the dangerous domination of mega-corporations sending out “hundreds of thousands of ads on television, your computer, and your cellphone,” all with the urgent message Buy! Buy! Buy!
She cautions that excessive consumerism isn’t the only evil. Social media exacerbates peer pressure, isolation, confusion, addiction. As Andy Borowitz puts it in “Profiles in Ignorance,” “Liberals and conservatives alike get some of their nuttiest ideas from social media.” He advises his adult readers to stop checking their phones and get to work.
Nader speaks directly to tweens, asking them to think about who is manipulating them and for what purpose. As a longtime teacher, I’d recommend that parents read this book, too. Read it and take to heart Nader’s warnings about the commodification of childhood.
Claire Nader preaches what her family practiced. All four Nader siblings — and their mother — have led remarkable lives of public service. In writing an article for the local paper, “How to Tour Your Own Home Town,” the Nader family matriarch offered a great starting place for today’s tweens, their own community. Following up, Claire Nader encourages tweens to make a list of things in their town they’d like to find more about.
I can testify that my seventh-graders agreed that the best field trip ever was right outside our schoolhouse door. Kids investigated what the block around our center-city school had to offer.
This is a good place for all tweens to start: When they go outside and take a close look at what’s there, they’ve taken the first step in changing the world.
This may be too dangerous for Cognia lovers to contemplate, but we must take to heart what stellar educator Deborah Meier wrote in the foreword to my book about teaching seventh- and eighth-graders, “Caught in the Middle: Nonstandard Kids and a Killing Curriculum”: “The purpose of education is producing not higher test scores but more thoughtful young people….”
Helping kids become more thoughtful is at the heart of Claire Nader’s book.
