Post Pandemic Resolution
Background: It’s clear that the pandemic has seriously disrupted the education of most students. While there may be some who have actually prospered under emergency online learning instruction, the vast majority have missed out, and it seems reasonable to assume that many of those students will never make up what they’ve missed. With the best of intentions, the social inequities emphasized by the pandemic cannot be erased overnight, and those students most dependent for their futures on schools and the range of services they provide will be left further behind.
The pandemic has revealed, even to those families best equipped to cater to their children’s educational, social and mental needs, what a central role schools play in creating pathways to successful futures, and what a central role teachers play in creating school environments in which students can thrive. Emergency online learning can deliver many benefits, but it cannot replace the sense of being in a supportive academic community, the immediacy of sharing other people’s lives, and the bonds that form when students and teachers engage in meaningful work together in a shared space.
Be it therefore resolved that CATE commend the work of teachers, especially those who find ways to make the language arts powerful and vivid to students who most need education to help them address the social inequities they encounter.
And be it further resolved that CATE urge those in positions of power and responsibility to provide all the resources necessary to enable schools, their teachers and their staff, to recover from this terrible year and to continue to play their part in creating a better life for their students.
CATE Opposes California State Standardized Testing in the 2020-2021 School Year
Background: Throughout California, since March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers in California have made every effort to effectively continue educating students. The subsequent mix of in-person, hybrid, and emergency online instruction, as forced by the pandemic, has further exacerbated the digital divide, and the social and racial inequalities plaguing our school system. To attempt to measure student learning in such an environment, and to believe that any kind of standardized state testing can be valid and reliable in the current educational situation, is appalling and absurd.
Be it resolved that the California Association of Teachers of English (CATE) opposes the attempt to hold traditional yearly CAASPP standardized testing to measure and judge student achievement and growth this year.