Every time a Delaware citizen talks about our “failing schools”, it gives the Delaware Department of Education fuel. They absolutely love it when people say this. Because what so many of our citizens are forgetting, any label of success or failure is based on standardized testing. This year, it is the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Last year, it was DCAS. A few years ago it was DSTP. Everyone loves to put an easy Band-Aid on a deep flesh wound. This is what our DOE has done. They have allowed and brainwashed the public into believing their own fallacies.
It sickens me what the DOE has done to our communities and schools with their ideology that only puts more of OUR taxpayer money into the hands of companies that aren’t even incorporated in our state and make them rich beyond our wildest dreams. All in the name of “progress” and erasing the “status quo”. Failure is the Delaware DOE’s favorite word. We need to STOP using this word as a measurement of our schools, and by default, our teachers and students. We can talk about education, especially in the most impoverished and high-crime statistics. But don’t for one second believe our children are failing based on the DOE’s measurement. Because then you have fallen into their trap.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment is bad. It’s very bad. Refuse this test for your child. Write a letter today and let the DOE know you will not let your child be their guinea pig for one day longer.
The Season Of Myths 
I don’t think the schools are failing kids, I think the curriculum is failing. Partly, because there is just no time to teach due to all the test prep. Then there’s common core….
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Appo Mom.
In everything if you go back in time there is always one point where if someone had acted, things would have turned out differently. That moment for this issue is Greg Lavelle’s switched vote to OK the Smarter Balanced Assessment. And we know he was bribed to do so by Gov. Markell giving him a spot on his buddy’s Chuck Todd Show… on which Greg Lavelle appeared the Friday after he’d changed his vote….
Had the Senate not approved the Smarter Balanced Assessment, we would not be here… So you are right, it is not our schools failing our kids. It is our dumb, deaf, and blind General Assembly that automatically follows orders and does not look at the consequence of their vote… And to make a point… almost every other of the 50 state legislature has challenged their governor on Common Core, Standardized Testing, and the individual tests… All but one… It is on them, whom all the blame must fall……
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