Roz Linder is tired of reading uninformed rants against the Common Core standards. She says most of the comments come from people who have never read them.
she says that it would be a worthy exercise to read the Common Core standards as informational text before making unfounded claims about what they recommend.
You can find them here. Please read them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I agree with her. I lot of the criticism that I’ve seen seems to intentionally misunderstand what informational text can and does include.
Roz, I don’t pretend to know anything about the “English” common core standards but,
For my 42years of teaching in NY and NJ (and even when I was a 9th grader), 9th grade algebra has been basically the same material or standards(except in 70’s with Sets and then later scientific notation).
It seems like the NYS common core assessment is saying that they will improve Education by taking everything that is taught in 9th grade (+some) and stick it into
8th grade. Now, for some reason, they think that everyone will become “smarter” by ramming everything into the lower grades. Even if we can handle this, what would be the cost, reduced Music, Art, Band, Recess, Gym etc. in the lower grades. Is this what we really want for our children or grandchildren?
I’m no expert on the standards and I’m agnostic about whether they’re ultimately good or bad. My issue is the fact that it seems like the ink is hardly dry, yet there’s already a rush to implement them, build shiny (and pricey) new curricula around them and, worst of all, base standardized tests on them. The rush to implement and test rather than taking time to think and do it sensibly strongly suggests to me that the real goal is more about disruption than it is about improvement.
The real questions are:
Who controls the curriculum?
Who evaluates whom on its basis?
The main problem with the current common core is that the content — good, bad, or indifferent — is being used as a tool to shift the locus of control from educators to corporations and corporate-owned politicians.
The curriculum is controlled by the politically powerful, unless you can choose another curriculum.
Communities of inquiry — the researchers and scholars who give us what little genuine knowledge we have of anything — know what wields the ultimate control. That power belongs to reality, a force that just keeps thumping us in the head until we are either suitably impressed or else die of our density.
That sets their prime directive, their second task is to communicate that knowledge to those who will impress it on the public and the generations to come.
So those who know, know what’s in charge and know whatof their charge consists.
But those who have political power in the absence of knowledge seem to believe they have the power to create a bubble of belief insulated from reality.
Those people are not our friends …
I wrote this post, but fully understand your key questions Jon. The problem is that those are questions of critical theory. The concept of who controls curriculum is always a nasty debate because we know it is unfair. The problem is that as teachers we have to deal with that curriculum and make heads and tails of what students have to learn. Theoretically–I am with you. In practice, I cannot afford to be because kids will be impacted NOW. So–I applaud you and agree with you in many ways! I just am a lemonade out of lemons girl–I have got to make the best of it so kids can learn, regardless of the curriculum. Great book on Unstandardizing Curriculum might interest you. I did a spin on it (lemonade, again) here: http://www.rozlinder.com/a-review-of-un-standardizing-curriculum-multicultural-teaching-in-the-standards-based-classroom-by-christine-sleeter/
No, this isn’t the Whose Knowledge question — it’s the Who’s In Charge question.
In my role as a lifelong student, I have survived wave after wave of curriculum reforms, going back to the days of The New Math and continuing with a panoply of Acronymanias all through college. Those old-fangled reforms were driven by bodies of scholars and teachers who were responding in good faith to the problems of substance and pedagogy that forced themselves on their attention.
Yes, the publishers of textbooks and other media have always been a part of the process, and I much appreciate the Visible Man™ and especially the Visible Woman™ and all the other innovations they added to enrich the learning experience. But they were not the main drivers of the curriculum and when they become that, then we shall know that things have been driven far off course.
I think that claiming that SOME critics haven’t read the CCSSI is no defense against valid, point-by-point or even general but accurate criticism of those standards. And it isn’t a defense at all against criticism of the arguments proponents use to justify the standards in the first place, which is to say defense of the VERY IDEA of a national framework handed down from on high, for which the vast majority of educators and parents had no input. Note, too, that holding a few public sessions in DC, etc., is hardly proof of a mandate from the general populace. Most people had no idea these sessions were going on, and most of us who did had ZERO opportunity to take time off from work to fly halfway across the country at our own expense to protest or offer input.
That aside, it was a completely democratic process. Just like Snyder’s recent end run on democracy in Michigan, and many other smooth operations being pulled locally and nationally. Which is to say, not in the least democratic.
So frankly, I don’t care HOW tired CCSSI defenders are of hearing criticism. They’re going to hear it for a long time, first because there was little opportunity for criticism before these ‘standards’ had the force of law (and monetary bribery, high stakes testing, etc.) behind them. Second because there is much that deserves criticism in them (and any thoughtful person involved with their creation should WELCOME constant critical feedback on them. You know – the whole “living document” idea? And finally, because we have to live with these things despite the undeniable fact that there is ZERO research to support the idea that these standards are effective. I am 100% certain that at the 10 year mark from initial implementation, every criticism of US public education, valid or not, that has been raised prior to the CCSSI, will continue to be raised. That our kids’ “performance” on those holy international competitive exams will not live up to our fantasies of “USA #1!!!” and that the media, politicians, pundits, and profiteers will be calling for another utter revamping of the process, at huge cost to the public.
Is that tiresome of me to say? Tough bananas, Ms. Linder.
What he said, with Parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper on top.
Amen to that.
“(and monetary bribery, high stakes testing, etc.) behind them”
Pearson stands to make Billions off new texts and materials based on the new common core!
Ditto!
I have read them. And read them. And read them. As standards go, they get, from me, a “C+,” but the quality of the standards themselves is not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is that people will confuse these standards with curricula because of the testing regime. This is inevitable, and it’s a disaster for American K-12 education.
Double ditto on the problems with the very existence of CCSS.
Furthermore, the content of the literacy standards themselves are less worrisome than the content of the various appendices. For the most part, the appendices were published after states agreed to the standards. (Do I have my timeline right?) From what I read, people are taking the appendices to be as authoritative as the standards themselves, and the publishers will follow them pretty closely when they decide what texts students will read, what teachers will and won’t say about those texts, and what worksheets students will fill out.
Roz, I did not get a response on your blog, so I repeat some of my concerns here:
I am glad you are teaching analysis of text, and agree that critical thinking needs to be a part of how we approach literature–certainly makes it more interesting. I, too, am in favor of common core if it adds this dimension to more English classes.
I do not understand your use of “deconstruction” as the purpose of that analysis, or as synonymous with analysis, which it seems you are saying here? And I would disagree that approaching literature analytically is anything new for many of us teachers–even some of us who are veteran teachers (veteran teachers sure are getting stereotyped negatively a lot these days). Most good teachers I know do motivate by asking questions, using previewing, etc., and always have. I also think content is important. If you aren’t teaching books with universal, important ideas, there isn’t anything worthwhile to apply all that analysis to.
Glad you care about rigor, too, and are reaching all kinds of students.
Thanks for responding on your blog! I correct my statement above. Sorry.
I am just a little slow!
These kinds of discussion are what we need to be having!
For me the problem is not the common core standards, it is the amount of detail in them.
All of the Finnish National Standards for Math grades 1-9 fit on just 9 pages. In contrast, our K-8 Math Common Core Standards fit on 70 pages along with another 145 page appendix of requirements for grades 8-12. You could say that the US is easily 10 times more controlling in their standards.
This amount of detail reduces flexibility, ownership, and increases dependency on publishers and corporation produced curriculum and assessment. It leaves little room for education; to draw out and support the development of student’s unique talents. It leaves little time for teachers to realistically prepare thoughtful curriculum or accomodate for developmental differences. Instead it promotes a highly prescribed training of children.
In practice, preparing to be tested on the common core standards will now become the sole agenda for school. Micro-managing teaching and learning in this way invites a shallow, cursory covering of topics.
In contrast, Finland trusts its teachers and communities to continually develop and improve their own curriculum and assessments guided by broad, simple standards. National testing is only done for diagnostic purposes and has absolutely no implications for individual students or teachers.
This trust and broader leeway invites ownership and flexibility. It gives time for teachers to deeply know the developmental needs of their learners and for students to fully and robustly master concepts, rather than covering a huge unrealistic laundry list that can only happen in a perfect world with perfect students.
The effort to bring clarity and purpose to our educational system as a whole is important. But as every parent and teacher knows, over-controlling, micro-management results in lack of engagement and growth. Trust and simple, ongoing, predictable structure foster responsibility, engagement and optimal growth.
Do we want a nation of highly trained children, or highly educated children?
Steve,
I am not sure that even in a “perfect world with perfect students” there could be mastery (eeeww…I hate that word) of the subjects addressed by the Standards. From what I have observed, possibly incorrectly, the pace goes at warp speed with the assessments being the goal. I learned lots of things for tests as a young person but do I remember them? Probably not.
At the elementary school level Science and Social Studies are skimmed over and then it’s on to the next topic – think back to flip books, when the pages were flipped the picture “moved”. Illusions all.
Roz Linder’s defense of the CCSS exemplifies one of my greatest concerns: that teachers will be under pressure to put skills first, works second. She writes:
“English teachers lament all across the nation that they cannot teach their poetry unit as is. And they can’t. We, English teachers, no longer just teach content. We teach skills so that kids can tackle any content. If you are just teaching the content of books as the center of your curriculum, shame on you.”
No good teacher of literature “just” teaches “the content of books” as “the center of the curriculum”–but the works do occupy a place at or near the center. One teaches Donne’s poetry because Donne’s poetry is worth reading, pondering, and memorizing, not primarily because it’s a “tool” for the development of skills. Yes, students do develop skills along the way, but they do so through attention to particular poems. The works of literature are not merely vehicles. They are not interchangeable.
The same is true for nonfiction. When my students read Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and Mill, they a devoping skills of analysis. Sometimes we spend an entire lesson on a paragraph. But each of these works has its own life and peculiarity—and there is meaning in the combination, too.
Roz Linder writes: “Just because you spent a month on 1984 does not mean that you have helped a child learn any of the Common Core standards. The reverse, however, is true. If you spend a month on the nine—yes only nine—standards you need to teach in literature and use 1984 as one tool to do it, you have helped your students. The message: You teach skills, not book content.”
This is a false opposition, but if one has to lean one way, I lean toward teaching the works. Standards, no matter what their merit, do not hold a candle to subject matter. If course subject matter includes ways of thinking about it; it is not static “content.” But one thinks about particular works, ideas, and problems–and it matters what they are.
I am becoming warier of the CCSS–primarily because of their overreach. I have no problem with them as working principles; I address a number of them every day. But they are principles in the service of something greater. They should serve literature and not the other way around.
I will write about this at greater length on my blog.
I am becoming warier of the CCSS–primarily because of their overreach. I have no problem with them as working principles; I address a number of them every day. But they are principles in the service of something greater. They should serve literature and not the other way around.
YES!!! THANK YOU FOR SAYING IT! From: A Kindergarten teacher who is sick of boring books that serve the standards.
I hate to sound like a “grammar Nazi,” but I can’t take seriously the objections of a person who presents herself as a Language Arts Specialist, but whose own bio includes incredibly confusing language, typos, mistakes in punctuation, and grammatical mistakes. Had these errors appeared in individual posts, they might have been more understandable, since individual posts are sometimes written under time constraints, but when the bio that appears alongside every post is written so poorly, I question whether that writer has the right, or indeed, the skills, to assume responsibility for teaching other English/Language Arts teachers how to do their jobs.
Taken directly from the link provided:
This is the official blog of Dr. Rozlyn Linder, an academic, Language Arts Specialist, former elementary, high schojournalism teacher, and all-around rabble rouser. Interested in with how we equip students to compete in an global community that grows increasingly flatter every millisecond, this blog is about exploring the practical application of digital communication pedagogy and Common Core standards.Situated at the intersection of cultural, racial, social, and digital literacy, this blog is all about fostering and supporting the recognition that we don’t teach in your grandad’s America, and being happy about that. Let’s stop telling students what to think or belive, but prepare students to think critically and often. Knowledge. Get some.
I then took a look at some individual posts, and it didn’t take long to find many examples of the same language problems. Here are just three:
“We want them to focus their time on interrogating multimodal text and analyzing what the text is doing and how it is positioning them.”
“Students are expected to handle the 5ws and Hs as the form their own questions with an enhanced focus on details. This is where a rich text with extensive vocabulary, adjective use, or multifaceted information offer students opportunities to do just that.”
“As Common Core demands multiple cultural perspectives and a critical cultural examination of text, a pedagogical shift seems to be looming. Often defined as a dominant culture of White men, few minorities see themselves as any more than a sidebar or window dressing for this worldview.”
I really don’t think I am picking petty examples of such things as overlooked typos, but rather, examples of problems with structure and diction, as well as mechanics and conventions.
Physician, heal thyself.
Good points. Anyone can make errors, but hers are a bit over the top.
Just a Teacher: I am Just a Librarian but I too was dismayed when I read her autobiographical infomation. Two PHDs?? Scary!
As a parent and teacher, I am particularly concerned that these standards were so rushed into production that kids have been thrown into the middle of the standards. As a result, entire math concepts are being skipped over and kids are getting lost. If we were going to do this, then we needed to start with the youngest couple of grades and work our way up instead of throwing every kid in the deep end. My son was already struggling in math, and this has put him over the edge.
Diane says “You can find them here. Please read them.”
Wonder if her tongue was in her cheek as she typed that 🙂 Or if she’s waiting patiently for the next several days for people to slog through the massive documentation of the CCSS (sic – they are NOT state standards. They are federal standards purposely misnamed).
Most teachers have read them as part and parcel of preparatory professional development. And we will be tasked with rereading them numerous times as they roll-out.
Frankly, I’m sick of the Common Core buzzword “unpack.” Give me a smaller suitcase, please, Mr. Coleman. Maybe a carry-on? A handbag? Coin purse?
CCSS is a pushdown of content to earlier grades and the selling of “merch” to cash-strapped districts. And then there are the tests…
Read them and was named a “specialist” at one of my schools. Here’s my take…freshly pressed: http://mgmfocus.com/2012/12/18/this-is-how-democracy-ends-an-apology/
I have read the CCSS for NY. I printed them out and gave them to every parent at Open House.
As I sat in Primary Grades meeting the other day, discussing how we reach our struggling readers, how to help them reach their full potential, how to get them on “grade level” by Grade 3, several times we agreed that the problem doesn’t necessarily lie with the “standards”, but with the fact that the end goal is that every child will be “proficient” in ELA and MATH at the same time. That idea flies in the face of everything we know as educators about child development. Children are not standard, and shouldn’t be. The end goal of doing well on a test that is essentially full of “gotcha” questions does not encourage the development of life-long learners.
My problem isn’t necessarily “standards” – we’ve had them in NY for a long time. My problem is that it seems OK in the public consciousness that we are indeed “building the plane as we fly it.” I’ve grown to detest that phrase and begun to ask “Would you put your child on THAT plane?” The wholesale adoption, without training or time for educators, has asked us to just that. We are being asked to put ourselves and our students on a plane that is in the air, but isn’t QUITE completely built. No one with any common sense would walk into an airport, see a plane with no wings and get on it!
It sounds to me that you think the common core highlights the problem of using age based tracking in schools rather than ability based tracking. Would you be more comfortable with a set of standards that a student must reach in order to advance from one level, say primary education, another to jr hi, and a third to high school?
In fact, one of the other things we discussed was an idea of “ungradedness”, where children would move according to their development and not their age! So, I guess my answer is YES!
Although I’m not crazy about the word “tracking” , I think a better approach is to look at children’s natural development and tailor instruction to that, rather than their chronological age.
I think the word “tracking” is appropriate in that it is a criteria that sends students to one curriculum or another based on some aspect of the student. It is just so common that we usually don’t think of it as a way to track students, we just think of it as normal.