Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus wrote an interesting article about the Common Core in Sunday’s New York Times. They don’t usually write about K-12 education, so their perspective is different from that of educators who complain about the speed and secrecy with which th standards became national.
A few tidbits:
“It is the uniformity of the exams and the skills ostensibly linked to them that appeal to the Core’s supporters, like Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Bill and Melinda Gates. They believe that tougher standards, and eventually higher standardized test scores, will make America more competitive in the global brain race. “If we’ve encouraged anything from Washington, it’s for states to set a high bar for what students should know to be able to do to compete in today’s global economy,” Mr. Duncan wrote to us in an e-mail.
“But will national, ramped-up standards produce more successful students? Or will they result in unintended consequences for our educational system?”
Hacker and Dreifus say that the Tea Party is leading the pushback against Common Core, but, they conclude, their critique contains “more than a grain of truth to their concerns.”
They add:
“The anxiety that drives this criticism comes from the fact that a radical curriculum — one that has the potential to affect more than 50 million children and their parents — was introduced with hardly any public discussion. Americans know more about the events in Benghazi than they do about the Common Core.”
Yes, process matters in a democratic society.
In another article in the New York Times on Sunday, an English teacher Claire Hollander took a swipe at the Common Core for its indifference to emotion..
She writes,
“The writers of the Common Core had no intention of killing literature in the classroom. But the convenient fiction that yearly language learning can be precisely measured by various “metrics” is supplanting the importance of literary experience. The Common Core remains neutral on the question of whether my students should read Shakespeare, Salinger or a Ford owner’s manual, so long as the text remains “complex.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Using a mix of tests and indifference to emotion in order to social engineer… Now WHY does this sound familiar?
There was also an interesting article in the NYT on the revival of grouping students by ability levels.
Ability levels for what..Just academia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is more to these students than just academia and their talents need to be funneled in the right direction for a productive life.
I have seen children with so-called learning disabilities go out into this world and become the most successful in the community!
Why????They developed their innate talents and interests to be able to live a successful and a very productive life!!
Innate talents are not always academic and these fruit loopies that wrote these CCSS standards think that all students should do the same in all academic areas..
They throw their scores on a bell curve in academics.
Grading them on their talents is unheard of if non academic.
Take these same students…grade them on their talents and they would be the head of the class..
Education is not not not not all academia..
NY, NC, Tenn so so so bad
Actually some argue that the poor performance of boys relative to girls in teacher assigned grades is because of the inclusion of a comportment component in grading.
Perhaps there needs to be a richer evaluation system than the traditional grading system used in high schools.
Perhaps there doesn’t need to be any evaluation system in the teaching and learning process. A teacher/student feedback component but not necessarily a “system”.
“Process matters in democracy” and it matters in education which is why, to me, the Common Core should be nothing more than a suggested list of skills etc (like the National Standards for various subjects used to be). Performance matters, but I have always believed the process of learning matters more. I love the quote “never let school distract you from your education.”
I cannot believe our country is having to learn these wisdom lessons this way. I guess I just always surrounded myself with philosophy majors who did not suffer fools.
Lotta fools. A lotta fools.
A fool and his money are soon parted. It certainly is a great time to be a “fix-it-up chappie”!
It never ceases to amaze me that otherwise intelligent people would think that it makes sense to create ONE recipe for the education of EVERY student,
1. despite those students’ differences,
2. despite all the differences that might exist in conceivable high-quality educations,
3. despite the differences needed in the people who will be the products of our educational systems (plural, not singular).
People are NOT machine parts to be identically milled. The idea of a single recipe for the education of all is prima facie absurd, and it amazes me that anyone would take it at all seriously.
I love this comment Robert!!!!!!!!!!!!
How many different forms might the education of the young take? One of the problems with issuing a single set of standards for all is that those standards are INTENDED to reduce the amount of variation (synonym: innovativeness) in the system. But variation, innovation, competitive models, models with many, many different tracks is precisely what a complex, pluralistic society needs.
The notion of a single set of standards for all appeals to authoritarian types with a rage for order, uniformity, predictability that is, at its core, inhumane.
SO AGREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
It’s no accident that all extremely authoritarian states have rigid standards and curricula. Think: INGSOC.
I would like to invite everyone to read Paul Lockhart’s brilliant “A Mathematician’s Lament” and then think about whether a K-8 mathematics education designed by Mr. Lockhart, who is no fool, would look ANYTHING like the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. So, what would a set of K-8 math standards designed by Mr. Lockhart look like? Answering that question will cause one to begin to recognize the immense variation that is possible in educational systems design. But the standards crowd wants to ELIMINATE that variation, all creativity, all innovation in standards design. One ring to rule them all.
If you have not read “A Mathematician’s Lament,” treat yourself. It’s one of the most profound pieces of writing that anyone ever did on the subject of education.
Click to access lockhartslament.pdf
Thanks for the link! Will have to read it later as am getting ready to go do some weeding and planting in our “community” garden out here in rural MO.
Look around you at the adults you know. How many of them remember the mathematics they learned in school? How many of them are for all intents and purposes innumerate? These are the products of what has been, for many, many decades now, a basically one-size-fits-all mathematics education. Almost any radically different course of K-12 mathematics instruction would produce results as good or better.
I believe that some few children are born with, or develop within the first few years, the neural hardwiring that will make them extraordinarily mathematically gifted. Those kids need entirely different mathematics curricula than those foisted upon everyone today. For everyone else, I think that it’s clear that the neural centers that handle very abstract reasoning do not start developing until quite late, but what we’ve been doing for years now, and what is attempted in the new mathematics standards, is to increase the level of abstraction and generality at the earliest grades. I think it demonstrable that most people younger than about fourteen simply lack the neural machinery to do sustained abstract thinking and that we subject them to a mathematics education that makes no sense to them, that seems like a lot of manipulation of meaningless symbols according to rules (because they don’t understand the meanings of those symbols because their brains are not yet sophisticated enough to do so). So, for most people, it would be best to delay the onset of instruction in mathematics per se until about age fourteen. Prior to that, they should be doing exercises that develop fluid intelligence–basically exercises in a wide range of pattern-recognition activities. Then, with those well developed, and with the neural maturity necessary for abstract reasoning, they could THEN begin to study mathematics itself and would learn much, much more in three or four years than they now learn in twelve.
However, such an idea won’t even be tested in a country in which everyone is required to follow the same program dictated by the same set of standards.
Here’s a completely different idea: I can imagine designing an entire K-12 mathematics curriculum around teaching concepts and skills applicable to computer programing. Such a curriculum would have standards that look very different from the CCSS in mathematics, as you can well imagine. But it would have the immense value of being, at every turn, operational, useful for producing concrete results. And it would likely produce a populous that was actually interested in math, that believed math to be valuable, that had basic skills and inclinations necessary for pursuing other areas of mathematics outside the K-12 programming math program.
I would never dream of saying that every kid should follow some single program. I know what happens as a result. We get, for example, a nation of innumerate adults who have learned, mostly, in their mathematics classes that mathematics is of no interest to them whatsoever. We get what we have, in fact, gotten. What a loss!!! What a horrific consequence of applying a one-size-fits-all, generalist philosophy to education of children!!!
I raise these points because math is the subject area where we have had to MOST standardization in the past. It’s no accident that it’s also the area in which we have most completely, most utterly failed. That failure is measured by the fact that most adults HATE mathematics and know very little of it.
Remember the Stepford Wives..and now they are attempting..though very unsuccessfully, to create the Stepford Educational System..
When I say that our ability to do generalized abstract reasoning develops only later, it’s important to recognize that there is thinking that we model as generalization that is present from the beginning, that is hardwired into the brain. For example, all normal human children are born with hardwiring of certain grammatical universals and for distinguishing boundaries based on differences in value (light and dark). So, I am NOT saying that ALL ability to think abstractly is a latter development. What I am saying is that GENERALIZED ability to think abstractly is based in parts of the prefrontal cortex that do not even start developing until around age fourteen or so and that are not fully developed until people are in their mid twenties. So, basically, by trying to get younger and younger children to grasp mathematics CONCEPTUALLY, we are asking them to perform tasks for which they do not yet have the tools. It is as though we were asking them to turn a Phillips screw with a hammer.
A lot of studies have shown that general fluid intelligence can be improved considerably by early training in pattern recognition activities. For most people, for those not born with brains wired like, say, that of Srinivasa Ramanujan or young Leonhard Euler, we should not be teaching mathematics per se until quite a bit later and that, instead, we should be doing fluid intelligence activities with those children to develop the neural machinery that mathematics will require. Then, when they do encounter mathematics, it will be wondrous to them because they will actually have the ability to understand it conceptually.
Many on this thread, including myself, will agree with the points you are making here. I will still agree with you in threads that discuss traditional geographically zoned public schools. Most of the others that agree with you here will be in favor of the one size fits all public school in that thread.
Unfortunately, it is indeed the case that many in the public schools have long championed one-size-fits-all approaches, and those people share much of the responsibility for bringing the current deform upon us.
I do not understand why anyone even needs to go this much in depth to explain to the word in the simplest way possible.
DIVERSITY does not equal “One Size Fits All”
“Different Stokes for Different Folks”
Education needs to unleash the talents of all as we are all different.
I could never write your paragraphs above as you have so eloquently written them but I know I have other talents.
It is tome for me to watch Forest Gump again. I so love themessage!!
Robert, you seem to be missing that much of corporate education reform is really faith-based, despite (or perhaps evidenced by) the constant insistence that the reforms are “data-driven”. The feeling that corporate reformers have is that if you don’t BELIEVE that kids can grasp higher order math at a very young age, then they never will. You have to BELIEVE.
And those who do not BELIEVE have no place in the classroom.
It will all work out — if you just have faith. And NEVER give up!
Education in a democratic republic has a special place and purpose. At least it’s supposed to, and public education’s purpose is most certainly NOT to make a society “more competitive.” Aristotle argued for a system of public education in ancient Athens, noting that “each government has a peculiar character…the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarch creates oligarchy, and always the better the character, the better the government.”
Democratic governance is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.” By contrast, oligarchy is government by a relatively small – usually wealthy – group that “exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” Considering who funds the Common Core, and who supports it (think the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce), and the process by which it was brought to fruition, is there really any question as to the purpose behind it?
Early state constitutions in the U.S., like those of Massachusetts (1780) and New Hampshire (1784), set up and stressed the importance of a system of public education. The Land Ordinance of 1785 provided for public school financing in new territories. In Virginia, Thomas Jefferson sought a publicly-funded system of schools, believing that an educated citizenry was critical to the well-being of a democratic society. In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1794), Jefferson wrote “The influence over government must be shared among all men.” The earliest advocates for public schools –– Jefferson, George Washington, Horace Mann, for example –– agreed that democratic citizenship was a primary function of education.
There are those who don’t believe in the fundamental purpose of public education. They are not interested in the developing the “democratic citizen,” one who understands and is committed to the core values and principles of democratic governance; one who is imbued with the “character of democracy.” There are certain people and groups and special interests who’ve felt threatened by education for “the masses,” especially Mann’s view of public education as “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society. And this begs the question, is the Business Roundtable committed to the core values and principles of democracy? The Chamber of Commerce? Bill Gates? Jeb Bush? And what about Arne Duncan?
All of these people and groups make two false claims about public education in the United States. First, they say that public schools are in “crisis.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
As I’ve noted repeatedly, the data (which these folks claim to care about) have shown and continue to show that there is no general “crisis” in public education in the United States.
The Sandia Report (Journal of Educational Research, May/June, 1993), published in the wake of A Nation at Risk, concluded that:
* “..on nearly every measure we found steady or slightly improving trends.”
* “youth today [the 1980s] are choosing natural science and engineering degrees at a higher rate than their peers of the 1960s.”
* “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause.”
* “The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
The critics like to cherry-pick international test data to buttress their call for “reform.” I suppose if –– like the Roundtable and the Chamber – you’re willing game the economy for profit at the expense of the nation, while calling for more top-end tax cuts and the axing of social safety net and public programs, then you’re also quite willing to lie about a set of numbers.
Reading is considered to be a key to learning and school achievement. Below are PISA reading scores (disaggregated for the U.S., which has an incredibly large, diverse, and increasingly poor student population:
Average score, reading literacy, PISA, 2009:
[United States, Asian students 541]
Korea 539
Finland 536
[United States, white students 525]
Canada 524
New Zealand 521
Japan 520
Australia 515
Netherlands 508
Belgium 506
Norway 503
Estonia 501
Switzerland 501
Poland 500
Iceland 500
United States (overall) 500
Sweden 497
Germany 497
Ireland 496
France 496
Denmark 495
United Kingdom 494
Hungary 494
OECD average 493
Portugal 489
Italy 486
Slovenia 483
Greece 483
Spain 481
Czech Republic 478
Slovak Republic 477
Israel 474
Luxembourg 472
Austria 470
[United States, Hispanic students 466]
Turkey 464
Chile 449
[United States, black students 441]
Mexico 425
[Note: data can be gleaned at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2009highlights.asp ]
The common refrain among the current crop of “reformers” is that their brand of “reform” is necessary to “make America more competitive” in the global economy. Bill Gates says it. Jeb Bush says it. The U.S. Chamber says that ““Common core academic standards among the states are essential” U.S. competitiveness. The Business Roundtable resurrects the “rising tide of mediocrity” myth of A Nation at Risk, saying (falsely) that ““Since the release of A Nation at Risk in 1983, it has been increasingly clear that…academic expectations for American students have not been high enough.” And Arne Duncan parrots what they say.
However, as I continue to point out, the U.S. already IS internationally competitive.
The World Economic Forum ranks nations each year on competitiveness. It uses “a highly comprehensive index” of the “many factors” that enable “national economies to achieve sustained economic growth and long-term prosperity.”
The U.S. is usually in the top five (if not 1 or 2). When it drops, the WEF doesn’t cite education, but stupid economic decisions and policies.
For example, when the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in 2010-11, four factors were cited by the WEF for the decline: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) suspect corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt.
Last year (2011-12), major factors cited by the WEF are a “business community” and business leaders who are “critical toward public and private institutions,” a lack of trust in politicians and the political process with a lack of transparency in policy-making, and “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits especially deficits and debt accrued over the last decade that “are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth.” The WEF did NOT cite public schools as being problematic to innovation and competitiveness.
And this year (2012-13) the WEF dropped the U.S. to 7th place, citing problems like “increasing inequality and youth unemployment” and, environmentally, “the United States is among the countries that have ratified the fewest environmental treaties.“ The WEF noted that in the U.S.,”the business community continues to be critical toward public and private institutions” and “trust in politicians is not strong.” Political dysfunction has led to “a lack of macroeconomic stability” that “continues to be the country’s greatest area of weakness.”
[Note: data on 2009, from the 2010-1011 competitiveness report can be found here: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalCompetitivenessReport_2010-11.pdf ]
The critics continue to point the finger of blame and responsibility, though, at public schools and teachers. Seriously, you’d almost have to be a moron to buy into this stuff. And yet……
The problem in American public education is largely one of poverty. The data show it. Indeed, PISA scores (the scores usually cited by public education critics) are quite sensitive to income level. If one disaggregates U.S. scores the problem becomes clearer: the more poverty a school has, the lower its scores. The presumed do-gooders seem to think that more “competition” and ambitiousness will cause the schools to fix the effects of poverty. Those effects are pernicious.
A technical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics on the damaging effects of toxic stress in children – the kind of stress found in high-poverty urban areas – finds that such stress involves “activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis and the sympathetic-adrenomedullary system, which results in increased levels of stress hormones, such as corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), cortisol, norepinephrine, and adrenaline. These changes co-occur with a network of other mediators that include elevated inflammatory cytokines and the response of the parasympathetic nervous system, which counterbalances both sympathetic activation and inflammatory responses.”
The result is that “toxic stress in young children can lead to less outwardly visible yet permanent changes in brain structure and function….chronic stress is associated with hypertrophy and overactivity in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex, whereas comparable levels of adversity can lead to loss of neurons and neural connections in the hippocampus and medial PFC. The functional consequences of these structural changes include more anxiety related to both hyperactivation of the amygdala and less top-down control as a result of PFC atrophy as well as impaired memory and mood control as a consequence of hippocampal reduction.”
See: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/1/e232.full.pdf
In plain speak, alleviating poverty and its pernicious effects, and providing children with high quality environments before they get to school, and following up with health and academic and social policy programs while they are in school, results not only in high-quality education but also in a high-quality citizenry….and in promoting the general welfare of the nation. This is surely not what the “reformers” want. It might – will – require a cessation to the gaming of the “markets” and the tax system.
The public education system in a democratic republic is supposed to develop and nurture democratic character and citizenship. That’s the kind of reform we need.
And it’s exactly the kind of reform the “reformers” detest.
How do they define “Complex?”