A comment arrived on the blog with a link to a great idea for standards: Open source them.
Right now, the Common Core standards are mired in controversy, and the controversy seems likely to grow worse as more states begin to test the standards and most parents discover that their children have failed.
The criticisms come from right and left and middle, from parents and educators of all stripes.
The blog called Uncommon California looks at the issue in the context of standards found in other walks of life and asks, why not open source the standards and the tests?
- Seed a growing and ever updating list of standards, drawn for the best from state standards, around the country and around the world. Encourage standards experts, to participate, evaluate, score them, encourage or discourage them. Provide an open forum for standards to be evaluated, questioned, commented upon, rated, etc. Include parents, teachers, education experts.
- Provide ways to classify, group and sort them, by subject, recommended grade(s), ratings. When standards are similar or identical, they could be combined to reduce redundancy. Groups can work to evaluate, combine, rate them to “narrow” the list down or put forward their “recommended” set of standards. States and schools should just not be monetarily incentivized or forced to use any particular set.
- For each standards, test and materials publishers (see below) could “claim” alignment for their tests and study tools. Users would be able to “rate” and/or question this alignment (or lack thereof).
- Even the Washington D.C. lobby groups that created Common Core could “donate” their copyrights to the Common Core standards by putting them into the public domain & OSS!
- States and local school districts would be able to pick and choose which standards they would adopt and in which grade level and even within grade levels. Schools could have 2-3 levels of standards, based on below proficient, proficient and advanced levels. To take it further, schools might have a different set, customized to the level of the child in each subject. Want a particular math standard in 5th grade instead of 6th grade? No problem, just drag and drop it into your set. Truly “plug and play” standards.
What a fabulous idea.
Similarly, Uncommon California says that the tests could be open source as well.
Open Tests:
- Any company or individuals should be able to create software and/or paper tests that reference and draw from referenced open standards. This site is a great example of how aspects of how “open source” tests could work: http://quizlet.com/
- With software, each school and/or state would have their own, customized test based on their selected set of standards. Again, could be customized down to grades, subjects, proficiency levels, and even each student.
- Like the standards, groups could advocate their software or tests, allowing each state and school to choose. Smarter Balanced and PARCC could even become options, so long as they create tests that are chosen by each state and/or school, customized to their standards and open parent and teacher feedback mechanisms were in place.
- Reliability of the providers, especially the tests, would need to be well-monitored, especially to prevent sharing of test answers, etc.
And materials could also be open sourced.
As for privacy, any parent should be able to opt their child out of data-mining. “Like just about every other company, surveys and sampling can be used to normalize results if needed, without having to have data on EVERY SINGLE child.”
The Common Core standards as they now exist represent the best thinking of the industrial age. They might have been developed and imposed 100 years ago, in precisely the same manner as they are now.
The industrial age would have demanded that every worker in every factory operate in precisely the same way. How early 20th century!
The 21st century is characterized not by uniformity and standardization, but by processes that are flexible, dynamic, and open to continual improvement.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How would this impact the misuse and overuse of high-stakes testing?
Very interesting suggestion, particularly because the test could be developed to correspond directly to the selected standards. Imagine having fiction and voice once again. KC
Sent from my iPad
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Three quick notes:
#1. Much to the chagrin of many, I continue to state that Standards are not the problem. We’ve always had them – even “national” standards and guidance from NCTE, NCTM, NSTA, NCSS and other professional organizations. Even some state’s standards were sound and rigorous. They guided us. We tweaked them. We “unpacked” them. We dismissed some. The standards were not the curriculum nor the dictates of what were on nationally normed, benchmark standardized tests.
#2 Mike – you are right – there will still be excessive standardized testing that gets used for all the wrong reasons. The arguments against CCSS are about who wrote them, whose money was behind it, how they are being misused for the kool-aid drinkers to suck the life out of schools, how publishers are making billions off them, how they are driving curriculum with no flexibility, etc. etc. Sure – most schools aren’t used to or eager to shift a focus to non-fiction and some standards need a lot of work – – – how many versions of math standards have we had over the years?
# So – are we talking about Wiki-Standards?
As long as states “allow” the federal government to meddle in state education decisions, this will NEVER happen.
You’d probably have to demonstrate how Gates, chief funder of the Common Core, could still profit from CC and related materials, since he fought Open Source for years, until he figured out how he could make a profit from supporting it.
Sidebar ads. 😛
Geeez.. Your CCSS is in one word..CHAOTIC….It is a vehicle for the Greedy #oliticians and $ook companies to Get Rich Quick….
This has nothing to do with what is best for the Children..it is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Crowd-sourced Wiki standards and assessments make a lot of sense… they would be free and could be amended in the same way wikipedia is… the crowd-sourced assessments wouldn’t need to be devised for comparative purposes: they would be mastery assessments reflecting the collective wisdom of many teachers and vetted by people with knowledge and understanding of psychometrics… students could navigate their way through the sequenced wiki-assessments with guidance and support provided by teacher/coaches… Pearson wouldn’t make a dime, neither would ETS… we’d be out of the mindless benchmarking based on bell curves… kids could proceed at their own pace… the factory school would close… the network school would begin…
“the factory school would close . . . . the network school would begin”
That’s magnificent! Exactly!
Absolutely! But I’m a little upset wgrersen… You stole my thoughts, almost word for word! (insert applause here-damn it!) 🙂
Excellent. Expect the owners of Common Core’s copyright to respond to this idea with lots of indignant walrus noises, if anything at all.
LOL. Yes. That is entirely predictable. The monopolists have a lot of money at stake. They need to ensure that this stuff be invariant, top down, totalitarian. Otherwise, they will actually have to spend resources thinking about how kids learn, developing innovative materials that instantiate the best of new thinking, and competing with folks with materials that instantiate ideas that differ from theirs.
Creation of the Common Core is like the business executives of companies that provide parts and build space shuttles get together and build a shuttle (each one pushing to get their parts into it) and give it to NASA with no testing or research and tell them to use it. The results could be the same.
These are the best points for killing the common core: open source is the future–top down from the rich to the rest is SO 19th century.
And it will drive those who think of themselves as disruptors and innovators nuts.
Exactly. These architects of creative destruction don’t want to have THEIR IDEAS, THEIR PLANS disruptive. Oh, the irony.
disrupted
Although I have been critical of the development and implementation of the common core, I have also made the observation that school leaders, as professionals,should have”open sourced” them in their buildings. As a former principal, I never allowed an external mandate (except for the state testing program) enter my building without the faculty becoming actively involved in their interpretation and application. We are now in the 4th or 5th generation of some form of standards, beginning with the NCTM math standards in the 80’/90’s. Each of these standards or in the case of California they were called curriculum frameworks contain goals and content that are well worth discussing. For example, the mathematics focus on conceptual understandings or language arts on the important of argumentation. In our school, we cherry picked what was worthwhile and left the other parts of the mandate at the school house doors. As I have stated before,all professional communities have their knowledge and skill base which will evolve over time from that communities research community — this is a good thing. Each professional community publishes these findings in a variety of journals, papers, etc. that continually inform professionals in the field, who then lend their practical knowledge to these theories and ideas — this is the definition of professionalism. While acknowledging the ham-handed implementation of the common core, I have always viewed it as one contributor to each academic communities professional discourse. I know, I know, along with the common core comes a lot of testing baggage, etc., but that does not abdicate the responsibility on the part of school leaders to assume the role of instructional leader and engage faculty in a continual cycle of reviewing curriculum, which would include a look at the standards. Having said that, I do understand the frustration of teachers in buildings with what I term instructional managers, whose definition of instructional leadership is telling-allocating-inspecting. Sending a memo out to a faculty stating that they are now a standards base school along with a curriculum chart from curriculum r us is not instructional leadership. I elaborate on how an instructional leader would treat external mandates, like common core, in my book: Becoming A Strong Instructional Leader: Saying No to Business As Usual (Teachers College Press–Amazon/Kindle book).
Sending a memo out to a faculty stating that they are now a standards base school along with a curriculum chart from curriculum r us is not instructional leadership.
Amen to that.
Alan, your point about the knowledge, understandings, etc., the come out of research communities and that evolve over time is extremely important. See my suggestion below, which addresses this very point.
Your note, Alan, is one of the sanest things I have read on this blog. These are key ideas that have not been understood by the collaborators with the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
The best experiences I had as a Principal, was sitting in department meetings and listening to teachers discuss/debate topics like should factoring be included in our math curriculum or the canon vs. multicultural literature or thematic units vs. chronological approaches to history, etc. I was fortunate to have a very talented and knowledgeable group of department chairs who expertly guided these conversations, but these conversations were the foundation of what I name, a professional learning culture. I know I have said this before, but the use of production/manufacturing terminology, “standards,” for an intellectual domain continues to be the achilles heel of the entire standards movement. Having spent sometime in the academic community, I can’ imagine our philosophy department, or science department stating that these are the philosophy/science standards for this university —now that would be a department meeting to sit in on.
Outstanding, Alan. That is, indeed, true instructional leadership. It’s really, really sad how little of this happens now. Instead, we get meetings in which the administrators sit with their teachers and review their test score data.
The one sentence in this blog post needs to be amplified and emphasized: “And materials could also be open sourced.” I wrote a lengthy email to NPE on this very point – can we harness the power of those retired teachers and administrators to create the materials, first electronic and the hardbound, that teachers could freely use. Why do we need to spend billions on textbooks and software programs when these could be created, owned, distributed for little to no cost by an entity like the NPE. While I appreciate the 20 blog posts per day about all the changes going on in the U.S. (doom and gloom!), one at some point has to fight entropy by making a clear plan, and building and organizing. That time is now.
My daughter’s 6th grade math teacher is going to the internet everyday during this year (or two) of transition to CC Math. We do not have defined curriculum and we don’t have the materials.
Can NPE take the lead and create the materials in an open source way? I figure with some organization and drawing on the amazing Diane Ravitch/NPE community, it can be done before the beginning on the next school year.
The time is now.
The creation of a single set of national standards was driven by a desire on the part of monopolists and would-be monopolists to have what Arne Duncan’s Chief of Staff called “a national market” for “products that can be brought to scale.” A single set of standards enforced on every district creates huge economies of scale for monopolist creators of educational materials, shuts new entrants and smaller competitors out of the educational materials markets, and effectively kills essential innovation in approaches to instruction in the various ELA domains.
To avoid this and have true innovation, districts need to have the flexibility to choose from among competing visions for standards and frameworks. At the same time, these standards and frameworks need to be credible and to reflect the entire range of the best thinking about approaches to instruction, outcomes to be measured, and learning progressions in each of the covered domains and for particular groups of children with particular needs.
Crowd sourcing is, of course, extremely valuable as a way to get at the best of contemporary thinking. And it presents a stark contrast to having some unelected group appoint a single arbiter to come up with a single set of standards to be foisted on everyone in the country with no vetting and no learned critique.
So, imagine this:
An online, open portal (a wiki) for competing, non-mandatory standards, frameworks, learning progressions/curriculum maps, suggested reading lists, and model lesson plans, divided by domain (reading, literature, nonfiction, history of thought, vocabulary, grammar, research, use of reference works, writing (general), creative writing, nonfiction writing, thinking, media studies and journalism, listening, public speaking, discussion, oral interpretation, and debate) but allowing for cross-domain postings (postings that deal with multiple domains).
Juried grants to teacher-led workgroups, scholars, and groups of scholars to develop competing materials to be posted to this clearinghouse (but no limitation of materials to be posted to the site to those approved by the juries, for one never knows where the best ideas are going to come from)
Mechanisms (blogging and annotation threads) for crowd-sourced discussion and debate about all materials posted
Imagine having the free teachers and administrators of free districts in a free country being able to use such a portal to draw upon the best thinking that the country has to offer about, for example, how to build their students’ vocabularies, syntactic fluency, or understanding of currents in American literature and thought.
Or we could allow the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth to relieve all the rest of us of the burden of thinking for ourselves.
Which would one do in a free country?
cx: forced on, not enforced on, of course.
As we slowly but surely teak the system to try to fit needs, sooner or later we will stumble into what some have suggested 20 years ago. It is not surprizing that we are backing ourselves into a corner, stumbling and bumbling but being scared to death of systemic change.
Soon there will be sufficient student failure to demand systemic change. There will be no way out. Of course there is good information in this article, but it is essential to take it one step further.
Get the courage to jump through the window of opportunity and simply ALLOW individualized schools, based on demonstrated proficiencies with failure as a learning tool rather than a tool of devastation. And standards as guidelines for success rather than deadlines for failure.
Once high expectations become individual, success will be near as students can follow their own MAP to their own future like this http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html
A suggested motto for an online, crowd-sourced wiki of for competing, non-mandatory standards, frameworks, learning progressions/curriculum maps, suggested reading lists, and model lesson plans:
“Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”
–John Milton, Areopagitica
The past forty years have seen a revolution in our understandings of the cognitive psychology of learning, language acquisition, and thinking, but ALMOST NONE of what we have learned in these areas has been instantiated in new curricula and pedagogical approaches. We now have scientific models of English grammar, for example, but our new standards [sic] use a prescientific folk model that has been entirely discredited.
Why are things so backward? Well, in the English language arts, that’s because we have a few monopolist educational materials providers slapping together curricula based upon hackneyed, backward state and now national standards that reflect lowest-common-denominator consensus thinking done by committees of educrats, and our academies have become insular fiefdoms in which the cognitive psychologists, linguists, and professors of literature and rhetoric don’t work with the folks in the education schools.
The last thing that one of the monopolist providers wants to think about is some truly innovative approach based, in, say, what we now know of the linguistics of first language acquisition. Why? They have a formula for churning out profitable product for the masses–white bread product. I actually had the CEO of one of these education companies say to me, “Look at those cars out there in the parking lot. You see how similar they are? People don’t want innovation. They want what they are familiar with already.” Now, imagine that we took that approach in, say, physics: “People are already familiar with the theories about the ether. They don’t want to hear about relativity.”
That would be crazy, of course, but that’s what we are doing with our professionally produced curricula.”
The top-down, invariant CC$$ will just make this situation much, much worse. That’s why we desperately need an OPEN SOURCE alternative and CONTINUAL REVISITING of our ideas about teaching in the various domains based on CONTINUAL CRITIQUE in light of new understandings.
Or we could just let Lord Coleman do the thinking for everyone else in the country.
So, yes, let the CCSSO post its standards [sic] for particular domains to such a site, and let people comment on parts of them in annotation threads. And let the Core Knowledge Foundation post its Sequence and have people do the same. And let many other groups do this as well. And let these differing ideas compete with one another for the hearts and minds of educators in local districts who can debate them and choose from among them. And may the best ideas win out. That’s how you get real innovation. You don’t get it from top-down mandates by a centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth. That’s the model followed by totalitarian states. We don’t have to be a totalitarian state.
Diane,
In my political experience, I have learned the lesson that you can’t beat something with nothing. One has to answer the question asked by politicians: what do you want. It is insufficient to say that one is against Common Core and not have the better plan and strategy ready to go. Open source is a perfect alternative that can catalyze and make coherent opposition to Common Core. It needs to move from a brilliant idea to a political strategy.
Bob Weiss
Vice President for Administration
Meadows Foundation Inc.
3003 Swiss Ave.
Dallas, TX 75204
(214)826-9431 xt. 8109
bobweiss@mfi.org
Well said, Bob!
“So, imagine this:
An online, open portal (a wiki) for competing, non-mandatory standards, frameworks, learning progressions/curriculum maps, suggested reading lists, and model lesson plans . . . .”
This is such a valuable idea that we should not just imagine that it exists.
Diane! You can’t be serious! (btw, the link doesn’t work?)
How could you be serious, Diane, about drawing upon the expertise of educators and scholars nationwide to do continuous refinement of standards, frameworks, pedagogical approaches, and the like? That’s just crazy. It makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE to give the job to a couple of amateurs with very little experience or understanding of the options and have have their hackneyed ideas foisted on everyone in the country.
Ok…let me revise my comment: Supporters of this idea should absolutely do it. Just start. Won’t cost a thing. Then, when states are ready and like what they see, they can just switch over to the new standards. In the meantime, the commentary can take shape as next generation standards.
You can do history and science too.
Bill, it is always a delight to read your comments. You are one of the most thoughtful of the supporters of the existing standards, and I appreciate, very much, reading what you have to say. My apologies for the snideness of my comment. Warm regards.
No problem, Robert. There have even been moments when I’ve thought we might not be that far apart on some of it.
I have thought this, too, Bill. I have read some of your articles about the standards. You have a good mind and the interests of kids at heart. That’s abundantly clear.
Here’s the link to the proposal from Uncommon California:
http://www.uncommoncalifornia.org/
I have not evaluated this. My own proposal for an Open Source approach is described, briefly, above.
Sorry, that link was to the general Uncommon California website. Here is the link to their Open Source proposal:
http://uncommoncalifornia.blogspot.com/
Hello Bill. Funny, that was actually my reaction when I learned about Common Core: “You can’t be serious?!”
Yes, realize it might be hard to believe that good ideas can come from parents and teachers vs. lobby groups and bureaucrats locked in conference rooms in Washington, D.C.
Good luck in New Hampshire. Would NH stay in CCSS if more than half the nation’s schools dropped out of it in 2014? At that point, what’s the point?
Let folks in Manchester NH know that Open School Standards might be a great fit for them in the future.
UnCommon, I say you should go for it rather than just talk about it. Where’s the site, so parents and teachers can get started?
One small step changing common core forward, however, it is only a small step in the process.
Include authentic assessments and demonstrations of learning to the list. Assess students in science as we do science fairs.
Make standards guidelines not to fail schools but as ultimate goals allowing kids to move forward and using that forward motion as the indicator of success
Allow teaching flexibility as background knowledge of students is critical
eliminate letter grades and use statements of learning to show parents real learning
eliminate grade levels as kids progress with failure for learning and many chances to pass proficiencies thru out the year.
Agreed, Bill. It’s just a placeholder, more to come…
http://www.openschoolstandards.org/
Cap Lee, thank you for the great suggestions. And agree, standards, test and materials are all just components.
Love the open source idea, but it has to be viewed as an alternative to CCSS for the later is an implement of control, not an implement of reform.
So, yes, let’s gather together a think tank of educators, child development experts, and related types to create an open source ALTERNATIVE to Common Core State Shackles!
I really like the idea of open source standards, but I still don’t get the fascination with testing them. How can you test standards? You don’t teach standards; you teach curriculum that reflects the concepts expressed in the standards. Test locally for mastery of curriculum derived from the standards.
absolutely, and make that testing, as much as possible, formative testing
As a special ed teacher, it was all formative assessment. I was terrible at giving final summative grades because I always felt like we were “in progress.”
Diane, thank you very much for the kind words and for posting our ideas on this. Also big thanks to all your readers for the excellent feedback.
Will come back to post some specific replies. Hopefully this could help motivate folks in schools and states to consider moving to a more open model and away from Common Core.
Uncommon California, it is amazing that Silicon Valley was built on the idea of open sourcing, and it created vast fortunes. Why should education be organized around the idea of “standards” that are written in concrete, with no way to update them or correct them? That is so 19th century industrial age.
Precisely
Agreed and we’ll see what we can do to attract a few silicon valley friends to this more modern & collaborative approach.
Uncommon California, you have done brilliant work here. Your ideas deserve to be heralded far and wide. The notion of setting standards in stone could only occur to people who have no clue about the extent to which scholars and educators and independent curriculum designers, nationwide, are continually developing powerful, new, sophisticated and effective approaches to teaching and learning in each of the domains covered by the standards.
We need a nation of teachers engaged in what the Japanese call Lesson Study–in continually subjecting their practice to collaborative critique, refinement, and revision based upon their own discoveries in the classroom and the best ideas coming out of the research and development communities. And teachers need the time in their schedules to do this.
The last thing we need is the CC$$ approach–to set this stuff in stone (e.g., Here is how you will teach vocabulary. You will have students learn common affixes, Greek and Latin roots, and context clues, and you will give them lists of common academic words to memorize the definitions of for the test–$&&*$#*&!!!). There is much, much that is known in the wider education community about teaching in these domains that is NOT known by ANY individual (and clearly a LOT more than was known by the folks who put together the backward CC$$ “standards” in ELA). And we’re continually learning and developing our ideas. That’s why a crowd sourced model makes so very much more sense.
I have long said that it was as though Achieve had handed Coleman and Pimentel a copy of the 1858 edition of Gray’s Anatomy and told them to write new standards for the medical profession.
How darkly ironic it is that this nineteenth-century model of the invariant list should be touted by folks who claim to be attempting to reform U.S. education to prepare students for life in the 21st century!
Hello Robert. Thank you for the kind words.
We’re just parents who have become involved out of necessity, so will definitely need help from you and others to move this forward.
This site could be a place to start:
http://www.openschoolstandards.org/
The Old Course, or Open Source? Which will foster autonomy and learning communities and continuous improvement? The answer is clear.
A phrase of Diane’s – “the Common Core standards are mired in controversy” – just caught my eye. They are definitely the subject of a large scale controversy. And I hope the all-consuming nature of the controversy is not just leaving the privatizers to make further progress unnoticed.
But “mired” is not the operative verb. And I noticed that Anthony Cody is selling the similar narrative the other day, something about the standards being on their last legs, I think.
As Bill Honig made clear, CA is full speed ahead (uncommonCA notwithstanding), as are NH and WA and ID TN, MA, KY, CO, AZ, LA, IL, GA, MD, DE, CT and many others. Sure you can find opponents everywhere, but that does not equal “mired” or last legs at all.
Changes, maybe large changes, could happen in how the testing is done and used, but even if IN or another state finds a way to pull back from the Common Core in this legislative season, little harm will be done to the standards and the standards effort.
But (true story) when a 6th grade grandchild from a deeply rural American school is visiting his grandparents and telling them proudly and with a hitherto unknown level of confidence, enthusiasm and articulateness about the argument paper he just researched and wrote and delivered as a talk on to his class – CCSS concepts deeply embedded in his idea of what he is doing even though he or his grandparents had never heard of the Common Core – then the Common Core is deeply ingrained, not mired or on it’s last legs.
So set up the wiki – Robert Shephard and Diane and uncommon could do it tonight – and get started on a better open source alternative. But I wouldn’t do it on the premise that the current standards are in a weak position.
Not so fast on CT sir.
Common Core State Shackles have not been in place long here.
You can be sure that once CT’s children live what NY’s children have lived under CCSS “full speed ahead” will hit bumps, slow, and then come to a screeching halt.
Keep an eye on those other speed racers you list too.
Part 2
You really think MA and MD, arguably 2 of the best education states in the nation, are going the stay with the CCSS trash and watch their schools and students spiral into “college and career readiness” mediocrity?
I don’t. They will give back the RTTT funds and get back to what already works in much of America, LOCAL CONTROL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION.
Eventually all of America will.
I know. There’ll be someone to disagree with most of my picks. But I’ll stick with them. In fact, I’ll guarantee (not that it’s worth much) that CT will not back out of the Common Core.
Do you guarantee that CT parents wont back out of the CC?
It’s amusing that people would think that English teachers didn’t have students doing research and writing arguments until David Coleman came along. I wrote a book for high-school kids about Writing the Research Paper–what was it?–twenty-five years ago. I think that a few hundred thousand copies of it have now sold. It’s breathtaking that these neophytes should show up on the scene and assume that their stale idea is something new. Kind of like someone showing up and saying, “Hey, I have this really Earth-shattering new idea. We can all build houses to live in instead of living in caves.”
A child did research and wrote a paper. Yeah, that’s really a big change.
Give me a break.
One encounters this ridiculousness from deformers all the time. We need to have kids read texts closely. Seriously? English teachers never had kids read texts closely before? Hm. I guess I we all just imagined the billions of papers written by kids in which they explicated texts. I guess that we are all hallucinating when we think we remember the New Criticism movement and textbooks like Brooks and Warren’s Understanding Poetry. People make these kinds of comments and it simply shows that they haven’t a clue what people have been doing all along. But that’s the defining characteristic of almost everything that comes out of Coleman’s mouth–ignorance of actual practice by English teachers combined with breathtaking arrogance. Let me tell you what you need to be doing. You need to have kids writing arguments for a change. You need to have them looking closely at texts. As if those things had never been done, weren’t being done–as if there weren’t thousands and thousands of instantiations of approaches to those very matters in curricular materials dating back over decades.
It is characteristic of the neophyte to state the obvious or the commonplace and to think it a revelation.
You’d better be sure no neophytes log onto your wiki-standards. Have you thought about how you’re going to prevent that? Maybe you should interview each applicant for participation?
“It is characteristic of the neophyte to state the obvious or the commonplace and to think it a revelation.”
To them it is. We all gotta start somewhere although typically no one puts us in charge when we have no idea what we are talking about. 🙂
Throughout the late 80s and early 90s, every literature text in the United States had questions in the margins next to the selections, in addition to the questions following the selection. The questions in the margins were identical to what are now being called “close reading” questions in CC$$ materials. And the questions following the selections typically followed the format treated as some Earth-shattering revelation in the Publishers’ Criteria published with the Common Core–start with facts from the selection and then build to the higher-order-thinking questions–analysis, then synthesis. But you would think, listening to these CC$$ advocates talk, that no one had ever sat down with a work of literature and thought about how to teach it before. It’s idiotic how the same old stuff gets repackaged, given a new name and a new format, and treated as the GREAT REVELATION.
Many of the teachers I have discussed this with do indeed say that they have taught along these lines before (at least before NCLB), but this is better and deeper and good guidance for teachers with good judgment. And it’s the lingo, the combination of terms and requirements, that makes it clear that that student came from a Common Core classroom.
Mr. Duncan,
You sit here and attempt to convince multitudes of seasoned teachers and education experts that the crap dreamed up by a bunch of non-educator think tankers hired by billionaires to custom design the ultimate 21st century worker bee is the end all be all of education in America. No one here is buying what you are selling. We know the truth, and we are resolved to defeat the billionaire boys club that is very obviously more interested in the financial returns of ‘reform’ than the enlightenment of humans via education. You aren’t changing any minds here. But thanks for hanging around and keeping us whipped up. We will put the energy to good use
JonBoy
“this is better and deeper and good guidance for teachers with good judgment.”
With no basis for comparison, I find your claim (better and deeper) to be rather hollow.
Bill, I really think you mean well, but try not to fall for the false claim that this small group of non-educators (CC framers) has suddenly invented the wheel – and now teachers are supposed to bow down to their brilliance. CCSS it just the newest shiny thing that we veterans yawn at, after which we close our doors and continue teach are asses off like we’ve been doing forever.
I think we’ve chatted here before, NY teacher, and I thought we got somewhere then. Maybe not.
Anyway, I don’t feel as if I’m falling for any rap. But after talking with many, many NH teachers and curriculum directors, I have the observations I’m sharing, fwiw. On the other hand, most of what I get in return in ad hominem and patronizing stuff about how I’m not a 30 year teacher. But I don’t take it personally. Bill Honig gets the same treatment.
I think these posts are self-validating. I don’t expect to convince you, but I’m content with any skeptical-but-open-minded-about-CCSS reader looking at these posts and those from teachers and others on my site (anhpe.com) and others and forming an opinion.
“Many of the teachers I have discussed this with do indeed say that they have taught along these lines before (at least before NCLB), ”
I stand corrected, yet any teacher you discussed this with who taught along these lines “before NCLB” was relying on what are probably vague, 12 year old memories. Their comparison and claims require the unreasonable assumption that 12+ additional years of teaching experience would have done nothing to improve their programs.
CCSS framers and advocates are so blinded by their own brilliance I’m not sure that they realize how embarrassingly ignorant they are.
Really, NY Teacher!
Common Core reform doubles down on the failed notion that coercion, threats, and standardized testing will somehow produce better teaching – and better learning.
Really Bill. Robert Shepherd has spelled out the embarrassing ignorance of reformers with perfect clarity. Re-read his posts here and try to wrap your head around the truth. CC advocates are the ones who patronize teachers and we are growing weary of their demeaning arrogance. Any NH teacher who really needed David Coleman to tell them how to properly teach reading and writing isn’t worth listening to.
Bill, on your comment regarding not having neophytes log onto the site:
You don’t seem to understand what we are suggesting. We are suggesting a free and open, ongoing debate, not a totalitarian mandating of standards.
What we are suggesting here is VERY different from what Achieve did. It chose a couple of amateurs and then forced their work down the throats of every teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer in the country. I would WELCOME the entire range of commentary on such a site. The BIG DIFFERENCE HERE is that we are not talking about mandating what every district in the country must do!!!!
My comments had just been discounted as those of a neophyte. That response was meant to be ironic – how would you keep neophytes like me from messing up the standards? Of course I know the answer. Those with the greatest investment in the outcome of the crowd sourced standards would win.
Bill, NY teacher is correct. The CC$$ in ELA are breathtakingly backward and amateurish.
I really tire of people saying that these moronic standards, as shot through with backward notions as they are, represent some sort of advance. I cringe every time I hear someone talk about this amateurish bullet list as being more rigorous, setting the bar high, and so on. What utter nonsense. These standards [sic] appear to have been written by complete beginners. They are common alright. They are a list of every hackneyed half truth and misconception about teaching English held by people who know very little about it. They are full of unwarranted assumptions. They are characterized by glaring lacunae. They assume a lot of prescientific notions about language learning. They seem to have been written in complete obliviousness with regard to the past half century of studies in cognitive science, language acquisition, rhetoric, and literary theory.
I have a heuristic for determining whether anyone knows the first thing about teaching English: Does he or she support these mind-blowingly amateurish “standards.”
What one finds in these “standards” is
the completely obvious put forward as though it were the new revelation brought down from the top of the mountain top,
combined with a lot of idiotic prescriptions that informed teachers have left behind them decades ago and a lot of prescientific notions about language acquisition.
The CC$$ in ELA are the work of amateurs.
Incompetent, ignorant, and intellectually lazy amateurs.
Lets not give all amateurs a bad name Robert.
Bill
As a strong supporter of CCSS maybe you could give us two or three specific standards in ELA that really are game changers. Give us your best first grade standard and your best 12th grade standard and please expound on how they will (if implemented properly, of course) vastly improve student learning.
I won’t blame you if you can’t respond.
Give us your best “better and deeper”!
You are absolutely right about that, NY teacher. The root of amateur is, of course, amo, amat–to love. There are amateurs and then there are amateurs.
Hi Bill, grandkids across California, including places like Compton and Fresno, have been showing their grandparents papers they’ve written, just like the one you reference, for years under CA standards & concepts. Nice story, though.
Unfortunately, yes, as you say, most have never heard of Common Core and that is a very bad thing for democracy and for our kids. We shouldn’t hold up low awareness of such a massive change as a positive aspect. If all parents had as much awareness about Common Core as you and I, and they STILL want it for their kids vs. using same dollars and time for more local, open standards etc., that’s great. We’d support that all the way. But we are FAR from a transparent, fair, open process and we are FAR from any alternatives to Common Core (on equal time/funding footing) being evaluated.
Common Core took 3-5 years (decades if you really go back to its roots, including NCLB) and billions in funding from Gates and the Feds. So, perhaps we can give this idea a bit more than a few days to see if it is worth putting more thought and effort into it.
To that end, would love any constructive feedback you have!
This could be a start… more to come:
http://www.openschoolstandards.org/
All the best to you
Apologies for the broken link, had updated the permalink and old link became broken.
However, the old link and the new, updated one both should be working now
Here’s the new link:
http://uncommoncalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/01/Open-School-Standards.html
Thank you for letting us know.
Great news about the Open Source project idea.
But we will probably need Open Source schools as well at least in some places. Otherwise teachers won’t earn their bread unless they submit to Common Core and Bill Gates. We have wide public support against the corrupt system, so why not create non-profit organizations and contribute tax deductible money to these organizations, then use these money to open schools that use open source standards, where teachers and students can be true to their aspirations. And teachers can get salary. If schools are centers of community there has to be a way for the community to support them. The non-profit organization can be a way to do it. I hear all the time tax dollars going here and there, lets put them to work for open source non-profits… But it has to be a very transparent non-profit, or else it might be hijacked by the same corrupt force.
But need to hurry up.
because Mr. Gates is going ahead full force:
Gates Foundation considers major Common Core grant program in California
http://edsource.org/today/2014/gates-foundation-considers-major-common-core-grant-program-in-california/55740#.Us9ZX8jTn5o
Yes, this fellow is going to continue to try to ram this down out throats. His arrogance is breathtaking.
Yes, maybe we are getting Mr. Gates attention? =)
Thank you for your input!
Perhaps parents/execs who work for Microsoft foes, like Apple, Oracle (look at Java, for example) or Google, might like the open source approach vs. closed, old school MSFT approach.
Agreed, though, has to be transparent and we may form a non-profit that works to be uncorrupted by large dollars from single sources. Perhaps a cap on donations per person/per org.
This could be a starting place:
http://www.openschoolstandards.org/
Once again, Govt. and various organizations are misguided or dodging the real issues in education. The real issue is, for the most part, irresponsible parenting and a govt. that is all to ready to undermine, usurp responsible parents with their political agenda. No amount of testing is going to change this. In Asia and India class sizes are much larger and they do with much less in ways of facilities. What they have are populations where parents are involved in pushing their kids to learn. Until we go back to the old days where parents are shamed for irresponsible behavior the educational gap between who do well and who don’t will just widen. The other problem is an educational system all too ready to label our kids as ADHD, ADD etc. and drugging them.