Letter: Is the Education Oversight Committee Lacking in Critical Thinking Skills?

Dear Editor,

Recently I attended an Education Oversight Committee (EOC) retreat in Greenville, SC.It was quite an eye opening, frustrating experience for me. As a former public school teacher with 29 years experience and a Master's degree in education, I have never seen as many professionals at one meeting so lacking in critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking skills should be high on the list of skills needed for today's leaders. Critical thinking skills help our leaders decide whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true or just plain false. Critical thinking includes skills such as observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation and meta-cognition. It calls for the ability to recognize a problem and the ability to find workable means to address how to solve the problem.
After sitting though the entire two day retreat meeting, I became painfully aware the EOC is lacking in critical thinking skills. And it scares me that these are the leaders in charge of making decisions about the education of South Carolina's children.

A prime example of this lack of critical thinking skills was displayed when the committee came to consensus for the need to define “college/career ready.” They haven't actually defined this term yet and just decided they should define it sometime in the future. For those of you who follow the debate on National Common Core Standards, you know the developers describe these standards as preparing students to be college/career ready.

The irony is the EOC voted to accept the National Common Core Standards two years ago and they don't even know what college/career ready means. Really? Worse yet, these national standards have never been field tested anywhere! The EOC approved these standards without any evidence of their effectiveness for preparing students to be “college/career ready.” ...and NOW they want to define what it means! Can anyone say “tail wagging the dog”, or “pig in a poke”?

At one point during the retreat, the EOC decided it needed to establish a pipeline for “best teachers” who only have 3 years of experience in the classroom. The EOC Chairman recommended “best teachers” be put on a quick path to becoming principals. I don't think the EOC has a definition of “best teachers” yet either. Then their consensus moved to the fact they need to solve the problem of keeping “best teachers” in the classroom of low scoring schools.

If you are a “best teacher”,which the EOC members haven't defined yet, but are in a low scoring school, they want to keep you in the classroom... but at the same time they want to put you on a quick pipeline to being a principal? I failed to see the logic in this.

Next, the EOC agreed to hold off on choosing an assessment for National Common Core Standards. They quickly decided the option of creating our own state test was off the table for discussion. Superintendent Mick Zais' representative, Jay W. Ragley said creating our own test was too costly and too time consuming...but I did not see any data presented to prove Ragley's reasoning.

So the EOC is going to consider accepting either Smarter Balance or ACT for our assessment of whether Common Core Standards are working to prepare our students to be college/career ready...but they don't know what that really means...and they don't even know if National Common Core Standards are effective...but they are going to decide on an assessment which will drive what is taught and ultimately decide if a teacher is a “best teacher”... although the EOC hasn't really defined “best teacher”...and if a teacher is identified as a “best teacher” he/she will get on a fast track to being a principal, which will leave a low scoring classroom with an inexperienced,“not best teacher.” Is this enough lack of critical thinking skills for you? It was for me!

I don't know about you, but my critical thinking skills tell me National Common Core Standards are not the path for providing South Carolina students with excellent education. And I believe the EOC needs a new retreat on how to be critical thinkers.

The bottom line for me is...SC students are guinea pigs for these National standards. Do you want your children and grandchildren to be guinea pigs? If not contact the SC Board of Education at LJBayne@ed.sc.gov, the SC Education Oversight Committee at mbarton@eoc.sc.gov and your SC House and Senate representatives at www.scstatehouse.gov and tell them to PAUSE implementation of Common Core until someone with some critical thinking skills is involved in this extremely important decision involving the future of SC students...or better yet...tell them to Stop Common Core in SC and support SC Senate Bill 0300! For more information join in the discussions on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/StopCommonCoreInSouthCarolina and sign up for emails at http://www.scpie.org/