Kay McSpadden, a high school English teacher in York, S.C., was told by school officials that English classes would have to stop teaching literature due to the new Common Core standards. She knows that isn’t true, and David Coleman (“the architect of the Common Core standards”) has said it isn’t true. But the word reaching the field is that informational text is supposed to replace literature.
For no good reason, the Common Core standards decree that the balance between literature and informational text in elementary school should be 50-50, and in the upper grades it should be 70% informational text and 30% literature.
This is nutty on its face. First of all, the ratios have no rhyme or reason (oops, forget the reference to rhyme, that’s literary!). Since the National Assessment of Educational Progress uses these ratios as instruction to test developers, that is somehow holy writ. But it is not. The ratios were never intended to dictate what is taught.
Second, if you add up all the reading that students encounter across science, mathematics, history, and other subjects, English teachers could teach no informational text at all, and the student would still get at least 70% informational text. (Heaven forbid that a history class should read The Grapes of Wrath to learn about the Depression!). In short, there is no reason, NO REASON, for any English teacher to stop teaching literature.
But what David Coleman meant and what is being told to schools across America are not the same thing. Teachers and textbook publishers are not hearing what he said.
David, I think you need to revise the Common Core standards and loudly proclaim that you are personally canceling out the 50-50, 70-30 ratios. It was all a terrible misunderstanding.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Who knighted Coleman to tell teachers what to teach in the first place? ANY mention of decreasing the study of classic literature in school should be looked upon as ignorant. Come on teachers…just go back to providing a comprehensive balance to both contextual and literary studies so that students are at least exposed to the greats. I cannot imagine life without having studied fine literature in school. Giving one man and his minions power to change all that is irresponsible & abusive to the next generation. Now that the money grubbing textbook factories are in on the scam, it will be harder than ever to do so. My heart aches for young learners today. Joyless, robotic lcurriculums will turn them away from learning. Bet the elite schools where Gates, Emanuel and Duncan send their children are offering all kinds of enriched curriculum that public schools would die for!
I don’t think it is Coleman telling teachers anything, it is the state governments exercising their control over K-12 public education.
Go to achievethecore.org, where David Coleman and other Common Core experts educate us about these standards and how they should be implemented. There is a huge emphasis on non-fiction.
Click to access E0702_Description_of_the_Common_Core_Shifts.pdf
My point is that the reason K-12 public schools are implementing this curriculum is because governments are asserting their control over public education, not because any individual has been knighted. I am not disputing any claim about reading content in the CC, though i do fail to see why requiring students to read in science, social studies, history, art, music, or even math classes is a terrible idea.
Wrong again TE. You seem to read with a filter.
Your comment confuses me. States did not adopt the common core standards? How is it that some states did not adopt them?
This is also being applied to the new 2014 GED! Except it’s 75% informational text.
This is not an uncommon response to the Common Core. I am seeing in schools all over that they are using the Common Core as a curriculum and locking themselves into little boxes. I sat with some 6 grade teachers and they were lamenting the loss of their poetry unit.
SO much is lost in translation and in that is fear. Fear that is driving districts into the narrowest definitions of teaching I have ever seen.
Why are we so quick to throw the baby out with the bath water every time a new initiative arrives?
Thank you for all of your posts. I am an avid reader and often spread your word with others!
Tomasen
You nailed it. I also see just plain stupidity from district level administration. These would be people like district curriculum coordinators and literacy coordinators.
This is one of the most troublesome things about the Common Core to me, as an English teacher. I point out the footnote in the CCS that specifically says that the fiction/nonfiction ratios are supposed to take ALL student reading into consideration and I get “the look” — you know the one, the one that makes you think the person you are talking to thinks you have three heads or something. Because “everyone knows” it’s meant to apply to English classes, and we need to be cutting back on fiction. “Everyone knows”, and if it wasn’t true someone important would have said something about it.
Even worse is that CC appears to have killed American Literature courses. AmLit doesn’t fit into the glass slipper of Common Core, so we’re hacking it up and offering McCourses like CC English I, II, III, and IV.
I agree, Ron. I’m beginning to doubt the reading skills of supervisors in my district and at the state DOE.
Rather off-topic, but while we’re talking about literature, it seems CPS is busy banning it: http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2013/03/book-banning-in-our-time.html#comments
Yes, I’m supposed to be converting to the CC, but I actively refuse to give up literature, short stories, and poetry. What is English without literature? Exposing the ignorant to the classics is what education is about! Seems like the conglomerates who have created Common Core were poor English students and now have the power to get rid of the things that they disliked in school.
David Coleman was once a classicist, but never a teacher. I think he might have misinterpreted the part of Plato’s Republic where he says poets should be banished.
I can’t imagine not reading Great Expectations, Vanity Fair, Tale of Two Cities, and Death Be Not Proud in high school. I loved reading those books and having big discussions about them with my friends. I read The Sound and the Fury and Death of a Salesman, but didn’t care as much for them. I wish I had read others like Grapes of Wrath.
To a boy in a small town in West Virginia, these books took me away to far lands and distant cultures, to see things that I never would have seen in my home town. They broadened my mind and they helped shape my values.
Kids read informational text all the time on the Internet. They don’t get Dickens or Thackeray or Twain on the Internet. If anything, the ratios should be reversed.
I can easily imagine not reading Vanity Fair in high school. I never finished it even in college. I guess I was a bad English major. My main interest was poetry, but I really should have switched majors, since my interest was never really in analyzing literature.
Informational text vs literature? Perhaps its semantics but I don’t see the difference as a problem because literature is also informational. In this age of social media, informational text falls under the category of literature unless we stick to a definition that ignores our world.
Further, many awesome stories from the classics or literature (I don’t know what that is anymore) can be starting points to dialogues where children struggling with social and family problems share their stories. A safe positive classroom can be the ears to many sad tales.
The term “informational text” is just flat-out depressing. I don’t want to get all anti-intellectual, but I often feel like K-12 would be a lot better off if teaching, er, I mean pedagogy, weren’t subject to so much analysis.
I agree with you 100%.
Mine is a different concern. The vision of CCSS is all core teachers will teach close reading and analytical and argument writing within their content. Thus, ELA classes could still concentrate on literature. This is a huge shift in the other content areas — one it seems few are talking about.
In reality, many core teachers will refuse to teach literacy, citing their need to teach their content, or citing their lack of training/PD in literacy. I fear the responsibility for informational texts will fall back on ELA teachers by default. Does this mean two English classes a day — one for literature and one for informational texts? What WILL happen when other core teachers either openly or covertly refuse to teach close reading and writing in their content?
This is what happens when you roll out new standards along with high stakes testing. Administrators panic, teacher’s feel like they are in the cross hairs, and the public get’s suckered into believing that reformers are right.
Everyone ignores the real data that our graduation rates are at historical highs, our standing in the world has never been stronger, and a huge majority of our nation’s students are college and career ready.
Coleman’s credibility should have been suspect the minute he started to use the Common Core as his own annuity. His current position on the College Board should be viewed as his opportunity to benefit financially from the Common Core.
Now we know why, ethics is not a standard
@ rrato, I thought the complete opposite. If grad rates are up, I ‘d like to know where and why? Are we just giving kids a certificate now to improve our stats?
Nancy, Some brain reading for you. Common Core standards are being piloted in Thompson and we were all trained the summer before I retired. I only went for the credit and money!! More crazy shit!! Glad you had such a fun day with the kids! Deb
Written about this twice…. Once, about the “footnote” that explains the 70% -30% ration BUT NOT for English. http://usedbooksinclass.com/2012/04/13/dear-ela-common-core-english-teachers-should-have-more-than-a-footnote/ Second, about this myth that we need to drop literature: http://usedbooksinclass.com/2012/08/23/english-teachers-need-to-defend-literature-from-myths-of-the-common-core/
Why one person, specifically David Coleman, has been allowed to determine a nation’s curriculum without any research or evidence is beyond me. Adding to the chaos he has created in curriculum has been his recent promotion to head the College Board and his intent to change the SAT. (wrote about that, too! http://usedbooksinclass.com/2012/09/28/coleman-and-others/)
Coleman’s CCSS will eventually turn out to be “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, but I will take little pleasure in saying there is nothing there. He has opened the nation’s public school coffers to educational con-men…. Too much money will have been wasted on implementing the unnecessary requirements of the CCSS.