Robert D. Shepherd has been in the education publishing industry for many years. When I was writing The Language Police a decade ago, Shepherd was a reliable guide to the vagaries of the publishing world. I also found him to be an acute observer of language and literature. I am happy he wrote this to share with you:
I would like to point the would-be reformers of American education to the work of that great political and social theorist Robbie Burns, who wrote in “To a Mouse” that “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley.”
A bit of old-fashioned Scots skepticism with regard to this latest attempt at centralized planning of education, the Common Core State [sic] Standards, is in order. If history is any guide (and what other guide do we have?), the latest top-down reform efforts will fail miserably, and for predictable reasons.
The theory behind the latest “reform” efforts comes to use from the business community. In 1992, Robert Kaplan and David Norton published an article in the Harvard Business Review called “The Balanced Scorecard—Measures That Drive Performance.” Kaplan and Norton picked up on and refined a business truism—that you get what you measure and reward—and gave it a new spin: You shouldn’t rely simply on financial measures, which are backward-looking, but, rather, should create key performance indicators (KPIs) in four areas—finance, customer satisfaction, processes, and knowledge, and follow those carefully. The article set off a revolution in American business. Suddenly, everyone was talking analytics and performance measures and employee evaluation based on those, and it was only a matter of time until business people and politicians, ever thick as mosquitoes over a swamp, got together to apply the same reasoning to education. The theory was simple: Create standards and hold people accountable for achieving them. Thus NCLB was born. The Common Core State [sic] Standards can be thought of as NCLB v2.
So, what could be wrong with holding people (teachers, administrators, students) accountable to standards? As is so often true, the devil is in the details. If you read closely the supporting documentation coming from the CCSSO, Achieve, and the two testing consortia, you will find that in English Language Arts, the intent of the new standards is to make texts, and responding to texts, primary. The whole point is to produce students who, upon graduation from high school, can read, understand, and respond to college-level materials. The standards themselves, however, are simply lists of skills and concepts to be mastered. Since teachers’ and administrators’ jobs will be on the line, they will be incentivized to do everything in their power to make sure that students are working down the lists, mastering standard RL.1.1, then standard RL1.2, and so on. However much the standards-touting organizations attempt to communicate that there is a difference between standards and curricula, the whole apparatus of assessment and data-crunching will focus on the standards themselves, in isolation. How are African-American female students doing on standard SL.3.2a, according to the tests? In other words, states and local districts will inevitably treat the standards as curricula. We are already seeing, across the nation, online curriculum development tools cropping up for use by districts in their curriculum planning, and these tools inevitably begin, at the top of the page, with the standard to be covered.
In the old days, a teacher of 11th-grade American literature would do a unit on the American transcendentalists, in which students would read the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson. Teachers and students would focus on the ideas and texts of the transcendentalists—self reliance, communion with nature, the Oversoul, etc., and in the course of reading, discussing, and writing about these authors and their stimulating ideas, students would learn some concepts and skills. That’s as it should be. People’s brains are networks, connection machines, and new learning occurs when that learning is attached to an existing semantic network. You take a class in oil painting at a local community center. In the course of a week, you learn what gesso, a filbert brush, stippling, and chiaroscuro are. And the new learning sticks with you because it is connected in an experiential network that is meaningful to you. If, on the other hand, you tried to memorize a telephone book, you would mostly likely fail because brains are not good mechanisms for learning facts, concepts, and skills in isolation.
Now, to their credit, the various standards-touting organizations are aware of this, and they have issued a number of documents, like the Publishers’ Criteria from the CCSSO, emphasizing that skills and concepts listed in the standards should not be taught in isolation, that students should deal with related texts, with texts in related knowledge domains, across a school year and across multiple years. However, the elephant in the room is the standards themselves, which are JUST lists of concepts and skills. In practice, the tendency will be to force teachers into scripted work in which they know that it is November 28th because they are “doing,” today, standard RI.5.7. Just today I received in the mail a catalog from a textbook publisher containing its new Common Core State Standards offerings—workbooks that “do” one standard at a time, in order, treating the standards themselves as a curriculum.
So, that’s the first problem. Standards are not a curriculum, but in practice, that’s how they will be treated.
The first reason why the new standards regimen is likely to fail has to do with how people learn: they learn in semantically connected contexts that they care about in which the content is primary.
The second reason why the new standards regimen is likely to fail has to do with how people work. Let’s go back to business management theory for a moment. There is a body of theory in management called Social-Technical Systems Theory, the basic premise of which ought to be obvious: almost everyone wants to do a good job, to be able to be proud of what he or she does, to have his or her work recognized, and in order for that to happen, people have to have autonomy. Theodore Roosevelt put it this way (and here I am paraphrasing): If you want to get something done, find someone who knows how to do it and get the hell out of that person’s way. In other words, good managers don’t micromanage. They specify goals, but they don’t specify how the work is to be done. Suppose that you hire someone to clean your house or apartment and then stand over that person and tell him or her how to pour the water and cleaning solution, how to move the mop, and so on. Chances are that however much you are paying for this work, that person will not return again, for you have violated a fundamental law of human nature: we all HATE to be micromanaged because we value our freedom and autonomy. The blueprint for the new ESEA (the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) calls for 50 % of the evaluation of every teacher and administrator in a district receiving federal funds being based on improvement in test scores. So, inevitably, with their jobs on the line and fancy electronic data-collection systems in place, administrators will micromanage classrooms. Today is November 28th. You and your students need to be following this script so that the students can master standard W.3.2a for the test.
It’s not the INTENTION of the best of the standards makers to have teachers treat the standards as curricula or to have their work be micromanaged and scripted, but inevitably, that’s what will happen, and inevitably, a few years down the line, we shall see the new reform that throws out the old reform and starts all over again, promising another miracle cure for what ails the country’s education system. The best-laid plans of mice and men go often astray.
There’s one more problem that I would like to mention. The whole idea of a top-down, standardized education system is incompatible with fundamental principles of liberty and pluralism. There are no standardized teachers. There are no standardized students. And there shouldn’t be. No one’s five-year plan will work, and if it did, God help us. We wouldn’t end up with the diversity that we need. We need, very much, to get out of teachers’ way, to let them do what they, idiosyncratically, do. Let tens of thousands of flowers bloom. If you think back on the best teachers that you ever had, you will inevitably find that not one of them was following a script. Instead, their interests, and what you learned from them, were highly idiosyncratic. This person was PASSIONATE about Beowulf or analytic geometry, and you caught the windfall of that person’s passion. You got the bug. And that’s what we need in a pluralistic society, not robot students coming out of schools-as-factories, identically machined to have the same concept and skill sets, but, rather, the bustling, blooming variety of interests, inclinations, passions, and abilities that a complex contemporary society requires—some who are passionately interested in graphic design, some who are passionately interested in equity trading, some who are passionately interested in prenatal development, and so on. You can’t get rich diversity of skill sets from ANY list, however well vetted.
Teachers will be required to write the ‘standard of the day’ on the board. Students will be asked to recite the standard in unison every day. Then if the principal or a higher up visits the classroom every student will be able to recite the standard when called upon. The student’s response or lack thereof will be noted in the teacher’s evaluation.
How stupid! What kind of answer can the reformers give to this? How does the ability to recite a standard have anything to do with what they are learning? How does this reflect the effectiveness of the teacher?
Not will, we already are. I have art standards posted on my white board everyday. I don’t ask the kids to recite, but it is in our new evaluation stuff. 😦
Both of these are excellent reasonings. Standards are becoming curriculum and those of us in an RTTT State have to demonstrate progress quarterly in how we are implementing CSSS. Practically, the standards have become a checklist for teacher input – there isn’t enough money or time to have true integrated teacher planning teams to make a rich, student centered curriculum from the CSSS. Veteran teachers already see that they must enter this game, though it isn’t best for students and demeans the value of their own work. In Daniel Pink’s book Drive, he describes that true motivation comes from having “Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose”. (He also demonstrates evidence that a carrot and stick reward system only work for rote, repetitive tasks. When there is a higher degree of cognition required, financial incentives, etc. actually inhibit motivation). What is future for the role of educator when it involves little autonomy and diminished personal purpose?
Thank you for answering my unasked question! When I first read Robert D. Shepherd’s comment, I asked myself, “who is this wise, knowledgeable person?” I returned to his comment and reread it several times.
He explains the core madness in all of this: that the starndards are not curricula but will be (and are being) treated as curricula.
He makes important points about autonomy and pluralism too.
I only question his assertion that the current reform movement can be traced back to the business “revolution” inspired by the 1992 article he mentions. It was afoot well before then.
I’m not just talking about the old antecedents, such as Taylorism. Much closer to the present, around 1990, people were excited about the idea that we had been focusing too much on inputs and should now focus on outputs. Checker Finn discussed this rapturously in his 1990 article “The Biggest Reform of All” (Phi Delta Kappan 71, no. 8). From his article:
“Under the old conception (dare I say paradigm?), education was thought of as process and system, effort and intention, investment and hope. To improve education meant to try harder, to engage in more activity, to magnify one’s plans, to give people more services, and to become more efficient in delivering them.
“Under the new definition, now struggling to be born, education is the result achieved, the learning that takes root when the process has been effective. Only if the process succeeds and learning occurs will we say that education happened. Absent evidence of such a result, there is no education—however many attempts have been made, resources deployed, or energies expended.”
(To get the full flavor of this quote, read the original, since certain words are italicized. I quote it with formatting here: http://open.salon.com/blog/dianasenechal/2012/03/31/the_problem_with_outcomes).
The great error of this “outputs” movement was its dismissal of anything that didn’t translate directly into results. It cripples itself because of its lack of perspective. Some of the best results require bearing with lack of results for a while–and of course results come in many forms.
Thank you, Diane Ravitch, and Roger D. Shepherd, for this thoughtful and thought-provoking critique. I am convinced by your concerns, especially about how Common Core will be implemented under today’s teaching/learning/judging-teachers environment.
I think Christine Ladd gets that just right, for so many many classrooms.
Thank you Diane Senechal for your perspective and focus. Good to see the “outputs” focus described so clearly, and in such a deservedly devastating way.
A question for each of you, and anyone else. In its Winter 2011 issue, the American Federation of Teachers magazine, “American Educator” carried several articles and an editorial touting the benefits of Common Core. One argument in particular grabbed my attention and made sense, at least on the surface. The point was, if we are concerned about children in underfunded schools and in isolated (rural) settings, should we not embrace Common Core national standards and curriculum (by whatever name) to ensure that these children’s education gets taken as seriously as those in more well endowed schools? Without Common Core, won’t some children necessarily be faced with lower expectations from teachers and communities? How would you answer this? (although I think you’ve already shed some light on the implementation side of things)
The “American Educator” editorial in this issue (http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/winter1011/Editors.pdf) is so glowing re Common Core. Would any of you be willing to take it on in its specifics?
Thank you for this essential conversation. Truly.
Kipp,
Please follow along this year as we explore just why standards are a fallacy and constitute “miseducation” as refenced in my post below.
Thanks,
Duane
One response would be this: If children are in underfunded schools, and they get the Common Core standards, where will the money come from for professional development and new materials? If the schools don’t get more funding, there will be even less money for instruction and class size reduction and other essentials. Don’t you think? CCSS doesn’t supply the funding that is needed.
In “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” Wilson has shown the inherent errors involved in “standardizing” the teaching and learning process. Any one of his 13 identified errors in the concept, production and results of standardization is enough to render standardization invalid, or as he says the results are “vain and illusory”.
I invite all here to read and follow along as we read and discuss Wilson’s work on my blog “Promoting Just Education for All” at revivingwilson.org .
Wilson’s work completely and logically/rationally destroys the concepts of educational standards, standardized testing and grades/grading students. Until we educators understand just how flawed the whole process is and begin to fight against it we will be at best treading water if not trying to go up s$&t’s creek without a paddle.
Diane,
This sounds like the beginning of a great new book. Go for it!
One of the best of your posts! The clarity.of the presentation, the respect for education, and the concern for student learning are so rare in today’s world. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could truly raise the bar of the discussions everywhere?
Undermining the learning of standardized skills, of course, is the realization that the skills taught are likely to become dated. As was the case in vocational education — when the technology changed the older skills were useless.
Exactly! In the past a list of “what every _th-grader needs to know” may have made more sense when it was much more difficult to learn things outside of school, but there has been an important shift–one that the “reformers” and those touting the wonderfulness of the Common Bore as a source of “equity” (?) have not dealt with squarely.
In this day and age, information is available literally at one’s fingertips; anyone can learn specific skills on the Internet or even take a whole class online for free; and there are no age restrictions. Did you miss Computers101 in school? No problem–you can take it for free online. My daughter learned vibrato on the violin by watching and re-watching an excellent YouTube video. BUT her passion for the instrument and its music she got from her teacher.
Specific content is less important than other overarching habits of mind that students need to gain at school such as learning how to learn, learning to problem-solve, and developing a passion for learning (among others). Students should be thought of as apprentice learners who need to work with master educators (in fully-resourced classrooms) to become lifelong learners.
I agree with Mr. Shepherd 100%, but one important element which hasn’t been emphasized enough in critiques of the Common Core is that standards don’t have to be written in such a narrow way. This was immediately obvious when the first draft of the “college and career readiness standards” was released with a comprehensive international benchmarking document.
The Common Core ELA standards are fundamentally different from their international peers. I would argue that Common Core is not even a set of skills, but a set of specific tasks. Despite whatever admonitions are added to the appendices, the most obvious approach to teaching from the core is to give students lots of practice on those tasks. In fact, if you read the objectives on Student Achievement Partners exemplar lessons, they are always some variation on the theme of “students practicing skills.”
Just as an example, here’s the first reading standard for grade 10 “prescribed learning outcomes” in British Columbia:
B1 read, both collaboratively and independently, to comprehend a variety of literary texts, including
– literature reflecting a variety of times, places, and perspectives
– literature reflecting a variety of prose forms
– poetry in a variety of narrative and lyric forms
– significant works of Canadian literature (e.g., the study of plays, short stories, poetry, or novels)
– traditional forms from Aboriginal and other cultures
– student-generated material
Here’s the CC equivalent:
10. By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literature, including stories,
dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 9–10 text complexity band
independently and proficiently.
See the difference?
Here’s another example. Victoria, Australia:
1.1.4. construct a response to a text, including the use of appropriate metalanguage to discuss the textual features and textual evidence to support the response;
3.1.3. discuss and compare possible interpretations of texts using evidence from the text;
CC:
1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text
says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining
where the text leaves matters uncertain.
The problem isn’t just standards. THESE standards are a problem.
Tom,
“The problem isn’t just standards.”
Yes the problem is the “standards”. Please follow along this year as mentioned in my post above to understand why the “standards” are THE problem.
Duane
Duane,
Do you agree that Finland has national standards and is a successful system?
Finland’s standards are broad and non-prescriptive. Every school designs its own curriculum within the national expectation that all children will have access to a rich and varied curriculum.
Tom,
No, I don’t know as I’ve not looked that closely at Finland’s public education sector.
I think what is confusing for most is the difference between what “standards” are and what “curriculum” is. It seems to me that people confuse and conflate the two. By using the term standards one implies some sort of measurement, which in terms of the teaching and learning process is an impossibility as teaching and learning fall under the category of quality/aesthetics. Quantity, i.e., measurment is a separate logical category and cannot be logically used to describe “quality” (other than to say that something may be x size, weight etc which are not descriptions of quality).
Curriculum is the “course of study” of which there usually are goals/objectives to be attained/learned/applied.
Yes, this is a big mess. It is clear that CC considers what it is doing to be the same kind of thing as, say, Finland’s curricular outcomes and objectives. They claim that one can be benchmarked against the other. The rhetoric is alignment with high performing countries, not “We’re going to do something fundamentally different and better.”
It is equally clear that in ELA, CC, Fordham, etc. ARE actually opposed to the kind of standards/outcomes that virtually every other country uses. They just can’t say that out loud.
It seems to me that there is sufficient precedent conceptual space to make your “standards” reflect whatever you want students to know and be able to do, regardless of measurement.
This all gets particularly weird when you consider that, say, Finland’s curricular outcomes are both much more progressive generally, AND much more content focused than the CC, despite the fact that content-hawks have generally embraced CC. Those folks could never abide the progressive aspects (starting with the focus on studying each student’s “mother tongue”), however, so it would be a non-starter in the US, content-focus or not.
Motorola employees got it right. While trying to meet the Six Sigma standards employees would often say, “be careful what you measure” and “the metric becomes the goal.” The original Motorola no longer exists. Standards that narrowed the company’s outlook to the point where the company failed.
I think we finally have the right name for the current craze —
Educational Phrenology
Or Educational Eugenics??
I wish my district would listen to this. The Powers that Be have decided to have a new, twice-yearly social studies standardized tests. These are not mandated by the state. The reasons (excuses) given for these tests is that they will be a “powerful” item to “greatly inform (our) teaching.”
I have been fighting these tests for five years, using expense and time wasting as arguments. I know there are more powerful arguments against these tests, but I am using arguments that I think are most likely to stick. I feel like I’m tilting at windmills.
Some of the teachers even support these tests, stating that if social studies is tested, it will be seen as “important.” I keep arguing that the idea is to fight AGAINST these tests, not give in to these detrimental practices.
I have heard both sides. Some social studies groups support the tests for fear that if the subject is not tested, it will disappear.
Being tested with bad tests may be worse than disappearing.
Well put! If it’s okay with you, I will use that last line as I fight my district.
“they will be a “powerful” item to “greatly inform (our) teaching”
I’ve heard that one before. I tell them (administrators) to quit insulting me. I let them know that I am constantly evaluating/assessing my teaching on an hourly, minute by minute, daily etc. . . basis and to assume otherwise is an insult. A standardized test tells me nothing as it is usually a multiple guess format. I assess my students on written quizzes/tests, just as I constantly assess their speaking skills every day.
Also a good argument that I will use. Thank you to everyone for the ideas and suggestions. We need to support each other every way we can…
Back in 1993, I worked on a World History OBE guide. It was treated as the course curriculum. Since that time, all standards and all standards guides that were created and written in DC Public Schools were treated as curriculum. Pretty ironic if you think about it, – standards. The variance of what was taught and how, not only differed from school to school, but also from classroom to classroom. Sad to say, but CCSS is the “new” curriculum.