A teacher wrote this comment in response to the ongoing debate about the value of the Common Core standards:
“I was one of those who was very leary of the push for non-fiction in high school, but through nearly three years of working with the Common Core in St. Paul, Minnesota, I have come to understand the importance of forcing non-fiction into English classrooms as well as forcing social studies and science teachers to teach literacy related to their content. While the ratios, as you pointed out, are hard to enforce, they play an important role in pushing teachers out of the same old content. No one who has worked with the Core literacy standards sees them as anti-intellectual. In fact, we see them as rigorous and designed to foster critical thinking. What I have come to realize over the years is that I teach discreet genre-related skills for poetry, drama, “the novel and memoir. Why was I sending kids off to college and work without teaching them how to engage in complex, informational and non-fiction text? Now I have partners in that effort in other content classes down the hall. it makes sense.
“I am not paid by Coleman. In fact, I am a recently added member of the Core Advocates team he previously planned because I challenged him. I also serve on a national team through the American Federation of Teachers. I came to this work a skeptic set on buffering my students from the damage of one more ill-conceived “reform.” I have become an advocate because the more I work with the standards, the more I respect them. I suggest that those throwing bombs from the sidelines roll up their sleeves and learn. As for textbook companies, they will always try to dumb down content. Well-trained teachers are the answer to a poor textbook, as always.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think that the Common Core standards have become intertwined with RTTT. Many teachers can not separate the actual standards from the hammer that is being used to enforce them.
It is going to become an assessment program to evaluate teachers and children. That will be the primary purpose: rank, stack, shame, close and privatize.
Linda,
You are correct. The core standards themselves will become almost irrelevant once the testing dolts launch the PARCC and SMART weapons.
While the CCSS call for 60% non-fiction and 40% fiction, our district is expecting teachers to implement 70% non-fiction and 30% fiction. Teachers do not see the wisdom of this approach. It remains unproven.
I’m not an English teacher. I’m not familiar with the terminology, but I have seen this before.
Guess who is now on the administrative track.
Your opinion regarding those of us who ‘throw bombs’ tempts me to respond with a quote from David Coleman …. but we all know that statement well.
David Coleman is considered the chief architect of the Common Core, so I guess we could consider him the expert, right? We’ll there are several things I picked up in this transcript that raises deep deep concerns for me. First of all, his association with Michelle Rhee’s Student First group should raise concerns for anyone mandated by the Common Core . Diane Ravitch clearly lays that concern on Mr. Coleman’s doorstep in her blog.
Mr. Coleman states,
‘remediation is a trap from which very few students escape’.
I find this statement troubling. Is he suggesting that all of the recent research on differentiation, inclusion,and special ed is hog wash? The tremendous effort every district has undertook over the last 2 years implementing Response to Implementation ( RTI) is for nothing. Just what is he suggesting?
Mr. Coleman also states:
‘So the core standards for the first time demand that 50% of the text students encounter in kindergarten through 5th grade is informational text, meaning primarily text about science and history, text about the arts, the text through which students learn about the world.’
Then he goes on to condemn us all “
That is a major shift and if you think about what’s happening in this country unintentionally literature and stories dominated the elementary curriculum. And then we expanded the literacy block. So we made the literacy block 80% of the time. Guess what that meant? We destroyed history and science in the elementary school.
So reading literature has destroyed science and history in elementary school.
Mr. Coleman fails to recognize that high stakes testing destroyed science and history in elementary school. He further fails to define the term informational text. Would reading ” Number the Stars’ be considered non- informational? Does he consider any literature as informational? Will be forced to have our students only read ‘approved non- fiction’ 50% of the time?
What really bugs me about David Coleman is this statement concerning writing;
“It is either the exposition of a personal opinion or it is the presentation of a personal matter. The only problem, forgive me for saying this so bluntly, the only problem with those two forms of writing is as you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a sheet about what you feel or what you think. What they instead care about is can you make an argument with evidence, is there something verifiable behind what you’re saying or what you think or feel that you can demonstrate to me. It is rare in a working environment that someone says, “Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.”
Perhaps if we had more people in our society that gave a “sheet” about what other thought and felt, just perhaps our society would be a little better. Perhaps when a company such as Bain, wants to take over another, a little thought would go into the personal impact. Perhaps, the next time we go into war, more thought would be given to the personal impacts of entering into a war. Maybe just maybe, before a legislator passes a law restricting the voting rights of others, or a law requiring unions can’t negotiate for their members, that legislator would consider the human impact.
I want my students to do much more than just be college and career ready.
Yeah, the Common Core frightens me. Any social experiment that wants everyone to learn via a common core should frighten all of us.
Remediation is a trap….read the research on the accelerated schools movement, Hank Levin.frankly, I think that RTI is crap. It is the ultimate test/teach/test system around developed by psychologists not teachers.
I’m no fan of RTI, I think it prevents students from getting the remediation they deserve in a timely fashion. It’s a tool to prevent districts from classifying students with special needs. Unfortunately it’s a mandate that districts have invested in.
Coleman’s dead wrong when he says remediation is a trap. Coleman says to let students struggle through texts that are beyond their abilities. Does he really think that somehow, magically, these kids are going to comprehend these more difficult texts without some sort of remediation.
It’s a clue into his elitist attitude.
I am in agreement with this teacher. I am working with the CCS this year in my Language Arts classes and I have found them to be far more rigorous in that they require more depth than breadth. These standards are far more richer and intellectually challenging than our previous ELA standards. I am not in agreement with them being used to build assessments, which are biased in nature, or evaluations because that was not the original intent behind the creation of these standards. I don’t find them to be too far from the National English Standards. The testing fascination has to stop because it is affecting the teachers and the students in a negative manner. Personally, my daughter who has ADD and an Central Auditory Processing Disorder, has had a difficult time trying to pass these tests. She has, finally, passed the State Grad Reading test after taking it 3 times. She has yet to pass the math test. She is not a test taker because those skills that most of us have to look at a test and see the order of it don’t exist with her. She needs a list to go shopping or she will be overwhelmed because she doesn’t see order. Her brain is still processing information from the day long after we have gotten home, cooked dinner, and sat down to relax. When other classmates used to say mean things about her she didn’t respond because it didn’t hit her that the comments were rude until she got home and finished processing the days events. Is she dumb or stupid? No. Is she special education? No. Can she go to college and be successful with the right amount of support in place? Yes. It is my hope and dream that another child similar to my child will not have his/her confidence shaken because the tests dictate their intelligence.
Pia I could not agree with you more. The standards are fine, it is the testing that is the problem. Good luck with your daughter ….she will go to college and do well.
I wonder why my high school in northern NJ in the 1960s, which had as fine an English Department as one is likely to find anywhere in the country, didn’t think it needed to take time out from teaching literature in order to “teach” students how to interact with non-fiction texts. . . And yet 80% of the senior class went to college, many of them to very prestigious colleges indeed. In college, I met some students who’d gone to high schools not far from me. They, too, managed to graduate high school without special instruction in non-fiction prose reading.
Now, if someone cared to argue then, or now, that the vast majority of what we were given to read in history was utter baloney (or at least carefully culled white-washing of actual US history, they would be correct. And two of the three history teachers I had would have kicked such folks out of class for daring to challenge the “eternal truths” of America’s goodness and greatness. Does anyone seriously believe that David Coleman or any of the other Standardistas is advocating for teaching children to “read critically” in history classrooms? I VERY MUCH DOUBT IT.
When David Coleman starts calling for THE PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES to be read in US high schools, I’ll start believing he gives a fig for critical reading and thinking.
Clearly the K-12 education we all received 40-50 years ago was optimal.
That was hardly my point.
But it was the evidence you presented.
And once again you deflect the point of an argument in order to do what? Was the education we all received adequate for success or not? If you are an economist, as your name implies, please be a little less economical with your own arguments and supporting points. They are nearly non-existent.
The point of the argument was that reading non-fiction is not necessary for academic success. The evidence that reading literature is all that was necessary to succeed in college was that posters experience in the 1960’s when 80% of his high school went to college ( a good deal higher than the national average at the time, perhaps it was a high school in a very wealthy area).
I’ve yet to encounter an English class that didn’t incorporate essays, nor a history class that didn’t assign non-fiction.
“No one who has worked with the Core literacy standards sees them as anti-intellectual.”
I’m impressed that this writer knows every single person who has worked with these standards. I don’t know a single one. Nonetheless, I find the prescription of 70% non-fiction preposterous and distinctly anti-intellectual. Most avid readers I know love fiction, as do I. Nothing makes better readers than a love of reading. That’s what I try to instill in every kid I teach.
I’m certain David Coleman and his arbitrary, largely untested mandate will be no help at all.
Is A TALE OF TWO CITIES fiction or non-fiction? It’s a good deal harder than a lot of non-fiction.
One can learn quite a lot reading great fiction. What is absurd is for a government committee to tell English teachers what % of their reading assignments must be fiction or non-fiction.
It is absurd to mandate a percentage. My guess is that it was a response to students struggling with college texts. However, good reading is good reading. All they needed to do was to ask teachers to move from a focus on literary elements to close reading techniques. It also made sense to emphasize reading across the curriculum, and perhaps a requirement for one non fiction text a year in ELA.
Using a broad brush seems to be almost required on blogs.
Blog posters almost always paint with a broad brush.
RR & AG have made great points so I can only add one thing; If Common Core is such a great idea, why don’t we see private schools rushing to adopt?
Experiment on children of the wealthy? Ha!
Good point, Chris and Linda. Standards and percentages for them. The freedom to develop our own curricula is for the elite.
Mine has – for math and English. I like using them – but then again, I’m designing my curriculum to fit the needs of my students, not churn them through a test. I think the math standards are age-appropriate, for what it’s worth.
Hearing from folks doing the work is always helpful. Another issue, is that depending on the age/grade level, teachers will have different experiences finding if the standards are workable and serve students well. The title Common Core Standards leaves the impression that these core skills are achievable in addition for time to meaningfully engage students in a broader, richer experience. If they are unrealistic they will not serve children well and robust, useful, engaged learning suffers.
“I have come to understand the importance of forcing non-fiction into English classrooms as well as forcing social studies and science teachers to teach literacy related to their content. While the ratios, as you pointed out, are hard to enforce, they play an important role in pushing teachers out of the same old content.”
One of the deep issues with the CC ELA standards is exactly this, one of their main purposes is to force changes in curriculum (and provide a specification for new tests, etc). But that’s not really what standards are for. Standards should focus on what students should know and be able to do.
There is little if any evidence that any current problems we have are caused by standards. We don’t read too much fiction because of standards. If we want science and social studies teachers to teach more literacy skills, we don’t need new ELA standards. If a teacher was were putting too much emphasis on “genre-related skills” it probably wasn’t because of standards. I doubt, for example, that their high school reading tests were comprised entirely of fiction texts.
The problem is that standards are a crude lever for “forcing” curricular changes. In the case of CC, we’ve ended up with a much different, and significantly narrower, set of expectations than those of other high performing countries and states, since to “force” teachers to do less of the things CC supporters *think* are now over-emphasized, they’ve removed many things entirely.
At best, we’ve got some unproven, if plausible, ideas for a new kind ELA/Literacy instruction, but we don’t know — at all — how it will play out over time.
In a parallel universe, or at a minimum another place and time, it might almost conceivably be possible to see the Common Core Standards as something other than a strategic asset for those intending to monetize students and schools. But this is not that time or place.
Reading the standards and their implementation contextually, adding all the new tests, VAM and gotcha evaluation schemes, and the Common Core comes into focus as a lucrative vehicle for control over how schools are managed and what happens in the classroom.
I am curious about your use if the word monetize in relation to students. Could you elaborate?
New textbooks have already been adapted to the Common Core standards. That is just one way. Consultants and new tests designed to adapt to the CC are another.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_11?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=common%20core%20curriculum%20maps%20in%20english%20language%20arts.%20grades%20k-5
Most textbooks that claim to be Common Core ready are not.. buyer beware
Students are data, and data is for sale.
Since the CCSS are still a bit of an unknown to me, I much appreciate the discussion here and elsewhere. I await results from the field to see if the reality matches the idea[l].
However, one thing I am sure of is that David Coleman [based on his own statements] might think broad and wide but not very deep. In real life, for example, if your boss was, say, someone from NYC or NY state and was hopped up on truth serum, s/he might say “I need a report that uses only verifiable evidence—and if that is lacking, random irrelevant data stuck together any which a way—to support my policies. Even if you see me about to walk off a cliff and take every child in New York with me, you are not to use your own critical thinking skills to save me and everyone else. Now get out there and make me look brilliant!”
Of course, in real life they simply assume you would be smart enough to anticipate [read: sufficiently compliant and ready to abandon any shred of dignity in the pursuit of their approval] to come up with morally damaged goods to fit their grandstanding political maneuver du jour.
While I love non-fiction—and produced a bit of it myself—fiction is an immeasurable help in thinking broad and wide and deep.
I can’t really comment on the Common Core standards themselves, as they are having a very slow roll-out at my school. However, as a 12-yr social science teacher I can’t let pass the implication in this post that up to this point students in social science classes have not been exposed to “literacy through…content.” My students have always read, critically analyzed and responded in writing to nonfiction text from quick response paragraphs to critical short-form essays to formal research-driven argumentative term papers. Our curriculum is based on nonfiction text (we used to call them history books) and primary sources. What else would it be? What on earth does he/she thinks happens in a social science classroom?
We can argue about what content is specifically included in the current social science standards in my state pre- and post-Common Core, the textbooks themselves, supplemental materials and/or the choices social science teachers are making in supplementing on their own…that’s all fair. We also can and should continue to share techniques to help our kids become better critical thinkers and writers through a content-rich academic curriculum. But the claim here that Common Core is finally “forcing” social science teachers to teach nonfiction reading and writing skills is utterly ridiculous and more than just a little arrogant.
I agree. Another question is the real purpose of “common” in the standards and how this purpose will be revealed in actual practice. Our they common standards so that teachers can share materials, strategies, with time to actually collaborate or are they “common” so that they we now have a way to to compare/blame/assume/and imply?
Lori, thank you for this: “But the claim here that Common Core is finally “forcing” social science teachers to teach nonfiction reading and writing skills is utterly ridiculous and more than just a little arrogant.”
it’s more of the same, from Cole, a non-teacher. As another social studies teacher who obviously assigns non-fiction (unavoidable in a history class), the teaching of literacy strategies just happens.
This seems to come up every time this is discussed, but can someone please verify for me — that 70/30 split between non-fiction and fiction IS “across the board”, as pointed out in an often-overlooked footnote, isn’t it?
As I read it, English classes can still have a solid majority of fiction texts so long as the student’s total required reading is 70% nonfiction (counting history, math, science, etc.) — right?
I understand that administrators across the country have been missing the footnote, and setting up systems where English teachers are ordered to teach 70% nonfiction in high school courses. It happened in my own district. But that’s not the fault of CCSS, it’s the fault of administrators who don’t read the rules of the game. Right?
For my part, the truly disturbing thing about Common Core is that it appears to have killed courses like British Literature and American Literature. I believe that American Literature, taught hand in hand with American History, in rough chronological sequence, is an important way of imparting our historical culture to the youth of the nation. CCSS has all but blown “American Literature”, as a course, to oblivion. That is a problem.
Ron, great observation. American lit hand in hand with American history in rough chronological sequence is exactly what we do in the 11th grade yr at our very large comprehensive high school. I would hate to see this go as it is logical, culturally-relevant and ripe with critical thinking, reading and writing opportunities.
Thank you, Lori. And for the record, American Literature or no, they can take Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” out of my classroom when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!
I’m with you on that…along with Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”
I think that is some of the non-fiction that people are so upset about having students read.
I doubt that. But for me the issue here is the clear implication in the original post that this type of reading and writing is not taking place right now in social science classrooms…that as a result “force” is necessary. Very wrong. Very unfortunate.
You are right about that, Ron. The Florida Dept. of Educ has told our county this very thing — plenty of fiction can still take place in the English classroom because the standards are across the board for the core subjects. Good science and social studies teachers have always used nonfiction — and very often fiction — texts to teach. This will require those teachers not doing so to get on board. We have worked with the common core in my ELA dept. for the past year and
we have found them much more useful than the Sunshine State Standards we had been trying to implement for years. I agree with others on this thread who mentioned that testing and teacher evaluation based on these standards is going to be the real issue.
If administrators were not properly monitoring the implementation of the curriculum before (content area teachers, reading and literacy) what makes you think they will now? Why will “those teachers” now get on board if they were not on board before?
First off, I’m leery of an English teacher who’s “leary” instead of “leery” of the CCSS.
Secondly, many MANY science and social studies teachers are already doing their damnedest to include reading in their subjects from elementary school through high school; it’s when students come in with reading deficiencies as early as kindergarten (when there is still a good chance of help IF there is funding and staffing for it!) or as late as senior year (and what is the teacher of ANY subject going to do about it THEN?!?!) that there are problems with the across-the-board one-size-WILL-fit-all mandate of fiction-vs-information-text percentages grade by grade. Why on earth is my second-grader getting MORE informational texts that she was already getting for science and social studies? Her weekly French Immersion magnet course (I know, but magnet programs are another subject for another post) USED to include poetry with appropriately-repeating refrains designed to accustom students to use of language and to substitution of subjects and predicates in sentence “formulae” in a delightful manner (which also was endearing to us non-Francophone parents who struggle to learn what we can), but now includes dry informational texts. What 2nd-grader really REALLY needs to know that “Kenya is a democracy?” How the heck does a parent or teacher explain THAT? Ah, but hey, it fits the “informational text” mandate, so who cares?
The CCSS looks great on paper. Really, it does. The idea that we can set standards and help even the hardest-to-teach kids along that path looks GREAT! If it actually WORKED that way, I would LOVE it. What I see instead are teachers who have this curriculum shoved at them the last week of the previous marking period, get a day of in-service to absorb it all, get 9 weeks of team meetings over lunch (which is often uneaten) to try to work out how to implement it, and oh, yeah – the kids who are behind don’t get any extra help, and the kids who are ahead (mine is one who is sick and tired of doing the same thing after the third day but still has to suck it up three WEEKS later!) get assigned to “help” the struggling students while the teacher struggles with whatever assessment his/her district/county/state has mandated be done throughout the year to keep track of kids’ progress in reading and math. (And we wonder why subjects outside those two are often left by the wayside? SERIOUSLY?)
So in principle, I don’t necessarily oppose the idea of a common curriculum, BUT I also know there there are very VERY few “common” kids, who fit a pre-determined mold, who have an optimal life n an optimal neighborhood with happily-married parents who are able to provide a violence-free warm home and 3 squares a day. Once we take care of getting ALL our students the same access to safe care, to healthy food, to heated homes, or to homes at ALL, THEN maybe we can start realistically talking about a common core as a starting point from which to build. But as a be-all and end-all? Please – no.
JMHO, just my two cents, worth what ya paid for it.
There are also too many variables being tossed about and thrown at us at the same time or within a few years of each other: new evaluation systems that are extremely time consuming, new standards, two more years of the state tests, then the switch to either SBAC or PARCC, full inclusion, differentiation, reduction in sped. Services for all, especially the neediest, increased class size, CCSS materials, blended learning (code for save $ by reducing the teaching force, so teach yourself while looking at a device) and who knows what other educrap is coming our way. It feels like we are being set up for failure. How much more can we juggle and maintain our sanity?
Let’s face it, the curriculum borne out of CCSS will evolve from THE TEST. One can take the high road (and the professional approach) and create engaging, relevant curriculum that challenges students while individualizing to suit their specific needs with pretty much any set of standards, but when the high stakes “standardized” test hits the fan standards will no longer represent a level of quality. It will represent the lowest common denominator required to score proficient or or make AYP or to be labelled “effective” on one’s eval.
Okay, this is offensive. This does make it clear that the Common Core designers have been hired to institute an apparatus of force, not a framework for teaching and learning anything.
This arrogant and ignorant person has “come to understand the importance of forcing non-fiction into English classrooms as well as forcing social studies and science teachers to teach literacy related to their content. ”
… and she doesn’t even know what literacy is. I’m now very well versed in the Common Core, thank you very much, and its architects have no idea how to interact with scientific text, let alone how to teach students to do so. The thing they call “literacy” is a set of mindless processing steps, to churn a stimulus item into a regurgitative essay, with rote features a computer scoring algorithm will check off as demonstrating “critical thinking”.
It’s probably related to the years s/he has spent teaching “discreet genre-related skills for poetry, drama, “the novel and memoir.” The Common Core is just such a drivel machine, and it cuts actual scientific thinking off at the root, before it even gets started.
During those years, science teachers have been working to teach students to access scientific content itself, through text, graphs, and images. The step of framing authentic ideas and questions, missing from the whole CC philosophy, is the starting point for deep understanding. A whole generation of science teachers has developed strategies and strengths she hasn’t even thought about, and what we want and need is opportunities to collaborate with our younger colleagues to carry that work forward.
I wasn’t fond of her word choice: forcing. Maybe this is really a Gates/Coleman plant trying to appeal to the lowly teacher. Evidently they think we are all stupid, but then again they don’t really give a $$it what we think.
I think it is very important to separate two different issues here: ‘forcing,’ or in other words a punitive approach to teaching to a given standard, and the standards themselves. I don’t know what percentage it should be, but I do know that analytical, critical writing is more intellectually challenge than writing narrative. And getting students to do analytical writing, and to get a lot of feed-back and guidance is I think one of the best ways to truly educate students.
The idea that high-stakes tests on common core standards will lift educational achievement is a completely different idea, and a bad one.
In my view high stakes tests should only be given by organizations that are recruiting people, whether they are colleges—the SAT etc—or businesses or the military. Tests in school should be to assess progress, and help students to move forward from their present proficiency level.
I too have been puzzled by the opposition to non fiction writing on this blog. I suspect it is because of the self selection of teachers. English teachers love literature, that is why they became English teachers.
I don’t think the opposition is to non-fiction per se but to a government mandate telling teachers what percent of your reading assignments must be fiction or informational text. That’s my objection.
Someone is going to determine the percentages of I suppose it might just be the lick of the draw.
Or, not of, and luck, not lick.
I haven’t read anything here that could be construed as opposition to nonfiction writing. Please explain what specifically here led to such a conclusion…
The general derision of the proposal that a student read 70% nonfiction and 30% fiction. Take a look at earlier posts about the common core.
Quite a leap.
Again — doesn’t the typical high school student read about 70% nonfiction anyway? If you actually READ the CCSS, there is an important footnote that specifically states that these percentages are “across the board”, including all coursework. If a student takes courses in Science, Math, History, English, Foreign Language, and a typical elective, and a quarter of their reading in English class is nonfiction, I think they’d probably be hitting the mark. Of course all of this depends on semantics (what is “reading”? What is a “text”?).
I don’t see anything particularly controversial about this CCSS “rule”. It has become controversial because too many people (including, most importantly, administrators who set local policy) failed to read and comprehend the rules in their entirety.
Again, the loss of courses like American Literature, which follows naturally from the specific demands of the CCSS, is much more problematic than mandated percentages of fiction vs nonfiction that no one within a school system is going to have the time to verify anyway.
A single detailed, authoritative example of how they imagine these ratios working out for, say, 10th graders in a specific school would go a long way. Why haven’t we seen one from CCSSI? That’s the bizarre part.
I don’t have any objection to non-fiction reading. I remember pretty substantial textbooks for history, for chemistry, for math, for biology – TWO of those! There always HAS been plenty of opportunity for informational reading in those subjects.
By and large, though, it was the English teachers, whose primary job was helping us parse deeper meanings in texts – as opposed to the biology teacher, whose primary job was the delivery of his own curriculum – whose primarily-fictional texts opened up worlds for us above and beyond other subject areas. Is there really a need for English teachers to change what they’re doing, at least in terms of a fiction-to-nonfiction balance? Maybe not where the rubber meets the road, but policymakers appear to have other ideas if even my 7-year-old is now reading less poetry and more informational text to meet those quotas. 😦 That I *definitely* object to. This is still a time when children are learning the mechanics of language organically, and there is plenty of quality children’s literature fills that bill beautifully, while informational texts either fail that task miserably or have to be contrived to do so. I’m having a hard time imagining her latest assigned reading about Kenya being written in an engaging way appropriate for a 2nd-grader (perhaps a Dr. Seuss rhyme that explains WHY Kenya is a democracy, or manages to explain what one IS to a 7YO). LOL
That is one teacher who needs to do homework. ANYTHING associated with the Gates Foundation is bad news.
That is too simple. Do you condem the Gates foundation’s efforts to combat malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS?
@teachingeconomist You can find experts in all those fields that say they have had their efforts hampered by the unqualified meddling by that so-called philanthropic foundation, which also donates to ALEC, and the Discovery Institute.
More to the point, rather than having a convicted predatory monopolist inflicting his odious ideologies in the form of pernicious pedagogy on the remains of the public commons, we should instead resist RTTT and CCSS for the corporate projects they are.
And experts that say the opposite.
What “experts”? Name them and their research. Post links here. Back up your assertion.
It appears “research” that praises or agrees with Gates was funded by Gates. All bow to the King of social experiments and this catastrophic movement is an experiment and nothing more.
Respond to the first four short requests or do not respond at all.
Malaria: There was a recent article – not sure where, maybe Scientific American or an article that someone sent, that some malaria researchers are upset that Gates has chosen a line of research that has the effect of sidelining other lines of research.
I don’t know enough to comment on the validity of that concern. Its resemblance to his intervention in education means that their concerns re malaria may be worth examining.
Vis a vis government funding, e.g. education, Gates views his grants as leveraging govt funding.
St Paul teacher wrote:
“I am not paid by Coleman. In fact, I am a recently added member of the Core Advocates team he previously planned because I challenged him. I also serve on a national team through the American Federation of Teachers.”
Just who are the Core Advocates? The name sounds like a cheerleading squad, like one of those top-down groups like Teach Plus (Teach +?) that get to invited to special insider “briefings” with the movers and shakers to help pre-roll-out new initiatives that they were specially privileged to know about before anyone else.
How did you get chosen for this group, when so many fellow skeptics were not?
Please provide website links to Core Advocates (structure, location(s), funding, meetings, etc. Please provide the same information for the AFT national team. And please identify yourself with all the relevant details.
When I served on one of the seven national history and social studies review panels in the early 1990s, all of our names and affiliations were posted. Please do the same: Full transparency!
And since we are talking about literature and literary devices, your advice, “.I suggest that those throwing bombs from the sidelines roll up their sleeves and learn,” sounds like a mixed metaphor: “roll up their sleeves” implies, in this context, come join in and help with the core and meaningful work. But you use it to tell readers to “learn,” not to work. When people who should be involved in a project of importance and told to “hurry up and wait” or “we talk, you listen,” you are inviting the criticism you call “throwing bombs.”
Why belittle those who, you have given us to believe, are doing what you did?
I strongly suspect that the emphasis on informational text over works of literature is to make it easier to design online objective tests that don’t require as much field testing as well-designed objective questions about works of literature, so that they can be administered by “teacher technicians.” I suspect further that a part of the CC standards drive is to create tests to evaluate teachers and that the AFT has jumped on board in the hope that being on board will lessen the anticipated punitive outcome.
You wrote: “As for textbook companies, they will always try to dumb down content.”
So, who will be there to oppose the dumbing down – Core Advocates?
If standards are to mean anything, they would have to be high stakes for students, but I do not see that happening. Holding students accountable is politically incorrect. The high stakes tests for students will be used to hold teachers accountable.
If I am mistaken about any of the above, please provide specific details.
Thank you.
I, too am a teacher, and I do not support the Common Core Standards. I object to the marginalization of great literature and the fuzzy math and the slowing of Algebra and the deletion of cursive and many, many other things, but none of the curricular arguments hold a candle in importance to the elephantine fact that Common Core has laid the track for governmental control over all curriculum. It is anti-American. It is a communist paradigm for educating a populace or for indoctrinating a popluace, and cannot include the local voices because of the way it concentrates power in a tiny circle. The people have no voice. The people have no way to repeal Common Core administrators by a vote. Even if the Common Core were magnificent, it’s a snapshot of one small group’s vision of what education should be. I hope we can stop arguing about the flaws in the academics and focus on the much more devastating picture: there are no checks and balances; there neve was a vote; there is no amendment process, no voice for the individual under the Common Core Initiative.
I agree and it seems ripe for an anonymous blog…how to subvert the common core and keep teaching while advocating for your children.
Your thoughts on Common Core are legitimate but I’ve followed them closely from the start and see them in a different light. They were developed by a group from a number of informed state DOEs. They’re not from Washington and their not national standards; they’re common federal standards. The opportunity for feedback into their development throughout the process was infinite. The NGA and the CCSSO have been as above board as one could hope for in such an undertaking.
What was at the origin of the CCSS is perhaps the missing issue in this discussion. The governors and state school chiefs believed from the outset that one set of common standards nationwide would be an enormous improvement over fifty states going in fifty different directions, with fifty sets of standards, fifty sets of assessments, and fifty thresholds for proficient. Would students from Mississippi really be getting the same caliber of education as students from Massachusetts? Really? For the first decade of NCLB the answer was irrefutable – NO. Not even close. Governors and state school chiefs also believed congruent with Horace Mann and Thomas Jefferson that public education could prove to be the “great
equalizer” in America. It didn’t matter what color their skin or their family economy, an opportunity at a high quality education, one we would want for our own children, should be available to all students, coast to coast. Over the first four centuries of our history, this has never been the case.
I agree with Diane on the topic of non-fiction. While it’s important schools incorporate more non-fiction into student studies, the actual percent added could prove to be somewhat contentious.
” The opportunity for feedback into their development throughout the process was infinite.”
Really? From actual educators? I don’t believe that. These people know little about child development and teaching, which is a human interaction based upon relationships and developing relationships.
SO, this infinite feedback….how much of it was from on the front lines, in the trenches classroom teachers?
The standards were informed by the best state standards, teachers, and feedback from the general public. The draft college and career ready graduation standards were released for public comment in September 2009; and the draft K-12 standards were released for public comment in March 2010. The final standards were released in June 2010.
I don’t believe this at all. Released for comment doesn’t mean changes would be made. Coleman was chanted off the stage at an NYC gathering of parents. He had (and still has) no intentions of listening to anyone. Remember his motto. I do not know of any teachers anywhere that were included in their development. If anything happened it was after the fact to make it look good. Sorry…not buying it.
As someone who’ve been to a plethora of workshops featuring David Coleman and done some of the work around CCSS implementation, the only thing I have to say to this is the following: I suspect the same people who use the term “roll up their sleeves and work” are akin to those who think kids should “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” Anyone who isn’t skeptical about a set of standards that come along with a plethora of tests and wrong-headed mandates ought to reconsider. To wit, we should wonder what’s under certain people’s sleeves if this continues to be the case. Roll em all up, not just a few of us.