Education System Flaws

The first thing that stood out to me was how standardize testing doesn't necessarily meet all standards or prove that standards are met. I think this really is something that needs to be brought up upon the education world because students may meet the standards but not perform well on standardized tests. There are many reasons for this. A lot of times students are pressured to do well on a standardized test and can let that judgement cloud their opinions and performance of the specific knowledge.

    I also like the point that she brings up how these standards were set into place by white people and didn't take into consideration students of color when these standards were formed. I think this also plays a big role into a lot of the inequality we see in school systems because they don't cater to the abilities and differences that students of color face. This feeds again into the structural racism that is found in society when it comes to schools and school systems.

    The podcast also brings up the redoing of the common core with new approaches. These new approaches would cater to the students of color who are affected by the common core because when it was written students of color were not taken into consideration when it was written. This is the call for change that we need to see when it comes to improving the structural racism that we see in the world. 

    I also really like the idea of questions and when writing and exam or formal assignment, not asking "Is it tough?" but instead asking "Is it possible?". I feel as if with this then you are creating a more positive mindset for all of the students because they won't have questions that are not attainable and will be replaced with questions that you as an educator know that they should be able to do instead of really drilling into their head that the material is difficult and that they need to worry and stress about the exam or whatever is being given as a summative assessment.

    These points that are made I think help contribute to ending the structural racism that we see in society especially when it comes to the education system. We as educators should be more aware of standards and how they contribute to the structural racism that is built into society and how that affects our students. We need to be more mindful also about the way that we create summative assessments to where we are using a more attainable mindset for the assignments to better cater to the needs of all of our students. For example by using the question "is it possible?" we are basing our questions, as educators not on the difficulty of a question but if the question itself is something that the students would be able to answer based on what was taught to them in class.

The speaker goes into discussing there are four key components to this breakdown. The four key components are identity, skills, intellect and criticality. Each one is explained as follows:

Identity- Helping students discover who they are in regardless to race, gender, class and religion along with other aspects. By using materials of a wide range of identities it allows for students to feel a sense of pride and acceptance not only in the classroom but also in the world and with themselves.

Skills- We as a society find it of importance to test students ability to do things, do them well and do them correctly. We do this to determine not only the success of the pupil but also the educator.  The speakers suggests that we use skills supplemental to other important lessons to measure students success. 

Intellect- This is what knowledge and skills are when put together. With all of the knowledge and skill students will be able to build upon the prior knowledge and expand what they know. This helps to develop certain things like critical thinking and also the ability to formulate strong opinions and questions.

Criticality- This will allow for students to see the truth, lies and injustice that is in the world around them. It will also allow for them to be able to do something about it. It will allow for them to make each day a little better and push for reforms and change. It will allow for them to see and determine what they can and can’t believe in the world around them.