The Washington Post just published an article about how English Language Learners in some parts of Virginia do not have to take the standard state reading test everyone else uses. Instead, they develop a portfolio representing their work during the school year and are evaluated on the whole body of their work.
The article says the federal government approved the change.
I’m amazed that such a common sense approach to evaluating student success is actually being implemented. Perhaps, someday, the same process can be used here in California with English Language Learners. And, hope against hope, perhaps with all students.
The foundations of what ‘they’ believed would be our ability to create our life and deal with what the world will throw at us are laid at an early age. We went to school to learn what we were told was the 3 Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic! In fact the three core subjects of our academic education, important as they undoubtedly are, would contribute very little to our learning, as most of the ‘learning process’ would be based on memorisation. And memorisation is not learning, it’s memorisation
It would be some years later, when leaving school, college or university that a quiet voice in the heads of many would whisper, “Thank God that learning stuff is over, now I can go and make some money”. Little did most of us realise we were just entering the real school otherwise known as ‘life’ and that our learning was about to begin…for real!
In the school of ‘real life’ we would be forced to focus our energy and learn to make decisions in areas where our academic education had not dared to go. We would quickly have to learn to manage the four things that no one ever teaches us… and fast. It is in the school of ‘real life’ that we encounter the 4 Rs – responsibility, relationship, roles and resources. It would probably be some time before we realise that this gap in our education would be at the root of all our stress. It could be many years before the penny drops and we wake up to the fact that we have been struggling, striving and stressing our way through life precisely because no one was able to teach us how to accept total responsibility for our self, relate to others appropriately, play the right role at the right time, and use the resources we already have within us in the most effective ways.