Education Week has an article by Catherine Gewertz saying that defenders of the Common Core are out in full force to quell the uproar about whether CC will mean less fiction.
It is interesting that the two loudest voices defending CC are Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, both quite conservative groups.
The way the issue is framed unfortunately misses the point, at least the point that I and others have raised.
Why do the CC standards mandate a proportionate split between fiction and non-fiction?
Who thought it was necessary to turn NAEP’s instruction to test developers into a mandate for teachers?
Who will police the implementation of the arbitrary ratios of 50-50 or 70-30?
If the ratios apply to all courses, can’t we assume that students will read “informational text” in math, science, civics, history, and other subjects, leaving teachers of English language arts to assign as much fiction or non-fiction as they want?
In the interests of clarity, here’s what I want: the ratios should be eliminated. They are an overreach. They have no basis in research or experience. There is no justification for imposing them.
I urge this not as a partisan of fiction or non-fiction, but as a partisan of common sense.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are moe probelems than nonfiction–the dea of high stakes testing on the basis of a standadized trst in math, science, history scares me ev4n more.
You are right the whole thing is non-sense. With the Math part they are just shoving topics into lower grades. To me that is like reading Macbeth in 5th grade.
The worst part is that the CC is insignificant to all the other issues taking place in today’s Education but I guess it keeps the classroom teacher focused on that instead of the “outflanking” by the corporate billionaires!
Diane,
Sorry to hijack this post, but I wanted you to read this. “Sandy Hook man has idea to help teachers elsewhere.”
Knowing that people are bringing kindness for beloved teachers in their own towns would make people in the tight-knit community of Sandy Hook happy, Seri said.
“There are hearts that are still broken,” he said of his own town. “Just because all this goes away doesn’t send the pain away.”
But they have each other – and enough donations and cards and goodwill. It’s time to share with special teachers outside Sandy Hook, sending a message of love with them in mind, he said.
“I guarantee,” he said, “if you feed school teachers in honor of these people, they will feel connected to this.”
Read more: http://www.ctpost.com/newtownshooting/article/Sandy-Hook-man-has-idea-to-help-teachers-elsewhere-4156420.php#ixzz2Gf7UfhdK
Common Sense: the Great Divide
Only someone who knows no mathematics could read the standards and some of David Coleman’s pronouncements and believe that literature won’t be squeezed out of public schools. But of course, educational conservatives and neoliberals are VERY clever in their claims to the contrary. “Classical” texts won’t be eliminated. Okay, then since there’s an expectation that ENGLISH teachers will suddenly be teaching non-fiction to a very significant amount, SOMETHING has to go. And it’s obvious from the fact that supporters of “The Canon” like E.D. Hirsch aren’t screaming bloody blue murder, that what will go is all the diverse, multiicultural literature that he and many like him have been trying to get rid of for a couple of decades.
This has to be one of the sleaziest end-runs I’ve ever seen. Hirsch should be ashamed of himself. But since he’s getting his way, more or less, he won’t be.
I don’t think the expectation is that English techers will be assigning less literature. The expectation is that the other subjects will be assigning more reading.
Whose expectation are you discussing? There would not be any controversy whatsoever if the suggestion were that history teachers have kids reading the Constitution or Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and in fact, many already do that. It would be lovely if science teachers had students read some essays by Gould or excerpts from original works by Darwin, Newton, etc. Math teachers could certainly find writings by great mathematicians. But does ANYONE seriously believe that the Common Core barons want time taken away from math instruction as usual for that sort of thing?
Pull the other leg, t.e., it’s shorter.
You might want to read Darlene’s post in this thread: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/30/common-core-nonsense/
Perhaps the CCSS confusion comes from the architects.
There is conflicting information about the CC classroom required % of fiction/non-fiction text on the national CC website, on the PARCC website and in our district’s newly changed ELA curriculum.
Yes, even in English class, we have a 60% non-fiction and a 40% fiction requirement.
We are told to shoot for 70% – 30%, I guess to make sure the 60%-40% requirement is achieved,
If the experts are now saying otherwise, then they have recently changed the narrative and/or they are employing “doublespeak”.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The ratios are being interpreted, at least in Florida, as a requirement. We have been told repeatedly to honor the ratios in the primary grades in my district with proof in our collected and monitored lesson plans. I started receiving catalogs and emails last summer from publishers hawking “Common Core Ready” classroom libraries and text collections that reflect the ratios. The defenders can proclaim their intent all they wish but the actual day-to-day implementation was so rushed by being tied to Race to the Top funds that states and districts scrambled to do the easiest roll out and implementation possible due to very limited time to read, discuss, and interpret the CCSS. Policies were implemented before this important step and it’s not exactly easy to put the toothpaste back in the tube, to borrow another cliched metaphor for CCSS.
Absolutely dead on, Brian. I doubt Florida will be an exception. This whole boondoggle is about standardization (not standards), and getting everyone to march to the same tune and beat. Those who don’t run the risk of losing federal $$, which is why almost all states were quick to kow-tow and sign on.
After living through NCLB & RttT, administrators and pols know precisely what’s going on, even if teachers aren’t at all sure. They’re going to err on the side of caution almost without exception. We’ll see how many superintendents, curriculum coordinators, department chairs, principals, and teachers have the chutzpah to say, “No!” or to at least not say anything and go their own way.
On the other side of the coin, I fully believe that a) no one at any level – state, federal, or district – has the funds or resources to enforce this bullshyte. It’s like math teachers I worked with in Detroit for a couple of years who were terrified that if they strayed from the district pacing guide, they’d be found and and summarily fired. Thing was, there’s no one in the jobs that used to go around checking on things like that: no money to pay them; and b) if there were an organized national revolt (or even a really good one in any given state), the feds would crap their boxers. Easy for me to say, as my job currently doesn’t REALLY depend on the Common Core. But I thought everyone was going to tell the feds to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine regarding NCLB, AYP, and the rest. Didn’t quite happen, and I started to realize that we’ve moved into an era of cluelessness and gutlessness. Of course, the deformers have helped create that, but lots of individuals who’ve stayed quiet and who knew better are also culpable. ‘Nuf said.
Indeed, it’s all in the interpretation!
The origin of the nonfiction/fiction ratio renders the ratios absurd, but as Diane Ravitch pointed out, common sense would tell you that there’s no way to patrol what teacher is assigning what.
I’m an author, editor, and ghostwriter in nonfiction, but I learned many of my foundational skills in literature class. Clearly, people who know nothing about the nuanced interplay between writing and reading and between fiction and nonfiction have imposed their biased, uneducated opinions on the ELA standards.
The biggest problem with the Common Core is not the standards themselves (woefull as I think they are) but the ASSESSMENTS.
No one really knows how the tests will “audit” the standards yet the scores will cause orgasmic glory in some circles and misery in others. The linkage between real year over year learning and PARCC/SMARTT scores will never exist yet the mania over the test results is not even close to reaching a peak!
In four years the idiocy of the common core will be pretty common. Tough road ahead though…….
Can someone explain how this issue helps poor kids to read on grade level? Kids I talk to want more from their education and are bored. Why? Because they tell me they are bored and not engaged. let’s take all the money that the interest groups will make on this issue and give it to funding poor schools. Please help this educator who talks to poor kids everyday.
Common Core will not help struggling students read on grade level, poor or not. Common Core calls for text complexity to “stretch” one to one and a half grade levels in difficulty. Ridiculous!
The hope lies in using great books. Start by reading “The Book Whisperer” by Donalyn Miller. I have applied her methods and my student readers have been transformed. She cites direct research to support her program.
http://www.bookwhisperer.com/
Sure,…let’s teach everyone at frustration level and see how that goes. I’m sure that will create a lot of lifelong readers. Do we have to stretch them in science and math and social studies reading as well? Great! We can screw up the whole system. I can’t wait for the art, music and physical education standards. Just think of all the benchmark assessments we can give!
The Common Core simply reports the ratios as they appear on the NAEP exams. All mandates or interpretations are based on the reader(s). While it is a good idea for students to exposed to and specifically have instruction around more powerful vocabulary, it is the language of the “shifts” that is more important: students should read more content area/informational text but not at the expense of losing the literary. It boils down to reading period–read more.
Also of note: many of the modules that states, like NY, are paying outside companies millions of dollars for are really getting on the informational text bandwagon, but not in a good way. They have great units with fantastic assessments that are going to bore the pure hell out of kids. How many of you have read the Declaration of Human Rights published by the United Nations in 1948? Sounds exciting, huh?
Learning and engagement go hand in hand. The best way to diminish learning and engagement? Test the kids. Re-Test the kids. Over-Test the kids. Oh, and boring content. Pretty soon, all the research we have on education will prove whether or not a teacher can circumvent the system well enough to make it look like their students can pass the test.
Sigh. We are over a decade into the 21st Century. When are we going to start acting like it?
Mike Fisher
@fisher1000
The NAEP ratios are instructions to test developers. No one at NAEP ever imagined they would be imposed on teachers.
“How many of you have read the Declaration of Human Rights published by the United Nations in 1948? Sounds exciting, huh?”
Yes, it does sound exciting. Have you read it? If taught in the proper setting, with the right (whatever right means) emphasis and context it could be quite exciting.
Maybe some USAans would learn that it’s not okay to go around bombing, killing and maiming others in their own country.
The issue isn’t whether it’s valuable for kids to read that document, but WHERE it’s appropriate to have them do so: English classes or history/social studies classes?
I contend that forcing/pressuring/bribing/cajoling English teachers into including a lot of non-fiction prose because David Coleman says it’s important to do so is an enormous crock; no self-respecting literature teacher should heed this requirement/suggestion.
If someone wants to argue that history teachers should teach kids to read historical documents and speeches critically and analytically, with emphasis on style, rhetoric, logic, etc., that’s fine. Just as math teachers need to have some understanding of applied math and the context in which things are used, but . . . it isn’t hard to show that such things are relevant and even necessary. I have a hard time making the same argument for pushing out literature so that English teachers can do that for which they were not trained nor were they committed to teach when they pursued their profession.
Of course, some of these concerns would fade away to some extent were curricula organized differently: around problems students want to understand and solve in their lives, rather than around arbitrarily separated disciplines. But nothing that radical is in the Common Core or in the thinking of a David Coleman.
The broader question is whether these standards were developed as a consensus of educators and education researchers, or whether they were developed like so much in Washington, where those who stand to make a buck from the rules write them.
The “argument” that I keep seeing and hearing is exactly what one commenter has said (to summarize) – Students will read MORE in History, Science and so on. While I understand that would most likely mean that these arbitrary percentages are not the responsibility of the English teacher, the reality is that right now, ONLY the English teacher’s evaluation is based on a VAM score from a TEST with those percentages. So, we can all smile and say it’s being “taken care of” in other academic areas, but the reality is that students are tested only on ELA and MATH!
Yes, these percentages are being taken as REQUIREMENTS! Even in my Elementary school, we are being asked if we are meeting the 50/50 split for fiction and non-fiction – for kids as young as 4 years old! For those who will argue that it is happening because an administrator doesn’t “understand” the CCSS, remember that Principals (in NY at least) are also EVALUATED based on student test scores in ELA and MATH!
The flaw may not be with standards of any type – the flaw is in the misuse of TESTING!!
“The flaw may not be with standards of any type – the flaw is in the misuse of TESTING!!”
Well, the flaw definitely is with “standards of any type” as shown by Noel Wilson in “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
or the total misuse of standards and testing as shown by Wilson in
“A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at:
Click to access v10n5.pdf
http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5index.html
Well presented!
Yes, the reality is that the CCSS percentages are requirements. It is also true in my district that only the English teachers are held accountable for these requirements. In addition, only English and math teachers are accountable for student performance on our state test scores as part of their teacher evaluations.
At this point, it does not matter if the national CCSS experts “back peddle” on the CCSS reading percentages. Our school board has already voted to approve these requirements. The damage has been done.
Indeed.
The hope lies in teachers continuing to speak out about the instructional realities of the CCSS. I do believe that, eventually, common sense will prevail.
The funny thing about literature is that it IS informational.
As a young horse lover, where did I learn the dangers of a pony loose in an apple orchard or tying out with a long rope to a tree? Jean Slaughter Doty’s “Summer Pony”… not the non-fiction horse books I read. The non-fiction told me not to do those things. The fiction showed me what could happen if I did.
In my years as a voracious reader, I’ve learned more about the world and the things in it from literature than from all the non-fiction. It’s the story that gives retention. So the novel about sailing a ship, or being a chef, or working as a doctor taught me a lot about those lives, and the day to day aspects of each of those professions. The novel set in Russia or London or France or the Alps informed me about those environments in a way an encyclopedia never could.
Exactly, el, exactly.