◼ The teacher’s heart ached for her children. She wanted to help explain the cryptic questions, but there was an observer in the room, insuring she could do no such thing. The Common Core tests had to be administered without assistance. - marniepehrson.com
...Developmentally, problem two was impossible for her entire first grade class. Mrs. Jones’ mind went back thirty years to her university days where she first learned Jean Piaget’s theory on cognitive development. Children’s brains develop in stages and her class hadn’t reached the stage where they could answer these questions.
Trying to teach her 6-year-olds how to answer a fourth of the problems on this test would be a cognitive impossibility. It would be like reasoning with a newborn that a ball you showed her still exists now that you’ve put it behind your back. For the newborn, it no longer exists. Her brain hasn’t wrapped around the concept of object permanence.
Mrs. Jones walked around the room, noticing some children haphazardly coloring in bubbles, not worrying about which answers they got right or wrong. But her brightest students were reduced to thumb-sucking and emotional upset, stuck on questions that their little minds wouldn’t be able to answer for several more years.
