On January 11, I spoke to the annual meeting in Chicago of the Modern Language Association about the Common Core. My talk was titled “Common Core: Past, Present, Future.”
I think readers of this blog will find it of interest.
It is about 17 pages long, so sit down.
I explain the background of the standards and explain why they have become so controversial, with critics and supporters on all points of the political spectrum–right, left, and middle.
I recommend decoupling the standards from the testing. And I recommend that the standards be reviewed, corrected, and updated on a regular basis by panels of teachers and scholars. No set of standards should be considered so sacrosanct that they can never be revised. These arrived encased in concrete.
To open the speech, click here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great speech..
Now take a look at this
http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/16/can-you-solve-this-grammatically-incorrect-impossible-common-core-question/
and click on Included to get this
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sQNOm035nvkJ:www.carrollk12.org/Assets/file/ElemMath/CountyBenchmarks/JB.4.2014.doc+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
The above is not rigor…It is the most disgusting garb of questions ever written…
Pay close attention to
Dec 19
Dec 23
Dec 28
Jan 9
This is garble…
Oh..and December 11 is the worst question that I have ever seen in my lifetime..
Wow. Every single problem with the boxes is just baffling. Might as well be written in Chinese.
“41÷5 = ___
Solve using a strategy other than the standard algorithm.”
What does the request mean? What’s “the standard algorithm”?
And this is for 4th graders?
Why not just use good ol long division?
You could use repeated subtraction. That is the latest strategy that I just taught to my third grade students. Or you could think of it as a multiplication problem. Although it would not work very well in this case, because it does not divide evenly. This is “new math.”
The words in your speech..every word..every syllable…every adjective..every noun..phrase…sentence.verb…predicate…subject….should be posted on every site on the internet..
It is the truth..You speak the truth…..
Page 5..I copied just a portion…..
Because of these federal programs, our schools have become obsessed with standardized testing, and have turned over to the testing corporations the responsibility for rating, ranking, and labeling our students, our teachers, and our schools.
The Pearson Corporation has become the ultimate arbiter of the fate of students, teachers, and schools.
Thank You
Excellent review of the issues with the Common Core! Your blogs help in keeping us informed of the consequences this reform has had across the US. Thank you!! I’ve already forwarded it to others in my district.
What makes these standards so problematic is that they are not just indicators of content but also pedagogy. The common core not only directs teachers what content to teach, but also influences how they teach it. And much of the methodology is suspect.
If you don’t believe we’ve stopped the unstoppable trainwreck, just search the Google News for Common Core. Set your search filter for the past 24 hours, and behold Cuomo and many other political hopefuls backing away.
Here’s just one typical local feature story:
http://www.lohud.com/article/20140116/NEWS/301160084/
There’s a video of a little girl, Olivia Vataj, reading her letter to John King:
“Are you the musher and are the students just dogs pulling the sled, trying to get to the finish line of knowledge which we will never cross?” she asked. “We are too tired of the Common Core to keep pulling.”
And running down the side of the page are links to additional stories and resources, starting with Diane Ravitch’s New Bedford speech.
Diane, you promised us you’d remember you’re not indestructible. I think, when the response is the most intense (as it is right now), we are inclined to keep pushing harder. No, don’t do that. Rest today.
chemtchr: thank you for your contribution.
And I couldn’t agree more with your last paragraph.
Last verse of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
To the owner of this blog: you have more than kept your promises to us. And logged in all the miles needed and then some. Time to refresh yourself and share some quality time with those closest to you.
Heed the advice of a celebrity doctor:
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [Charlie Chaplin]
¿? A Doctor of Laughology, of course. After all, if Steve Perry can put Dr. in front of his name and “America’s Most Trusted Educator” after it, then the Little Tramp deserves an honorific too…
Of that, I have a better than 98% “satisfactory” [thank you, Bill Gates!] chance of being right even without having to wait for ten years [thanks again, Bill Gates!] to see if I am correct.
😎
Bravo!
Diane what was the response from the attendees?
The Thursday night speech was received marvelously. Students, teachers, administrators, board members, and parents were all wowed, informed, and inspired. Diane’s wealth of knowledge and research and passion for learning and the basic (dare I say core) values of public education and democracy came across loudly and clearly.
And… objectively. She illustrated the ills of current reform but did not lower the bar. She spoke of the value of professional evaluations designed correctly, the value of testing when used to inform curriculum and planning (not label and rank), and the value of standards when designed by educators and vetted before implementation. And, she exposed the ills of poorly run and/or profit motive charters, TFA, and the states that are killing public education (I still contend that with some key adjustments in ours it could all work well).
link to speech http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid2864903832001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAACNCxHpk~,ZomDDi5uoNOU9Gi_Pd_vADA_RlpSDjy5&bclid=2864085057001&bctid=3064565879001
or go to http://www.lohud.com and click on videos
Thank you, Diane, especially, for this:
“Today, most sectors of our economy have standards that are open-sourced and flexible, that rely upon the wisdom of practitioners, that are constantly updated and improved.”
If this one aspect were applied to Common Core–and states, schools and teachers were allowed to choose–many objections to CCSS would go away (though the disgust of how it came about may never go away).
Standards (and tests and materials) should be a set of an ever-changing, flexible, transparent set of OPTIONS from which states, schools and teachers may choose:
http://www.openschoolstandards.org/
The one one clarification we’d make is that California has, in fact, seen success in raising scores the past ten years across demographic and economic groups, with its own standards and tests. But even California’s should be improved, made more flexible, made more useful, etc. Yet with all of CA’s proven success, like Massachusetts, CA is throwing this out for the likely failure called Common Core.
Ironically, in chasing their nationalized dream, the reformers are destroying all evidence of their own greatest examples of local success.
Whoa, wait a minute – I just chose one state randomly to see what their description on CC is: According to Utah’s fact sheet (http://www.schools.utah.gov/core/Parents/coreStandardsPamphlet.aspx), not only is CC state-led, but the citizens of Utah had say in their development (“Utah parents, educa- tors, and subject-area experts participated in the creation of the Common Core State Standards.”)
I am now reading in detail Utah’s FAQ’s ( http://www.utahpublicschools.org/ ), and I have to say they are impressive. Any other readers take the time to read what their state boards had to say about CC? It would appear that Utah has taken a very descriptive, transparent approach. If I read their FAQ’s correctly, they adopted CC math and english, but didn’t accept federal funding, and retain the right to alter CC by 15% and still be able to say they are consistent with CC, all the while maintaining their own standards (and integrity).
Utah had nothing to do with the writing of the Common Core standards. If they are limited to 15% alterations, that means they have accepted the CC intact, because it was the developers who copyrighted the standards and imposed the 15% limit on alterations. Sorry, Utah bought the whole package as created and promoted by Gates.
Joe, the states have to accept the CC$$ as is, and each can add more–15% more. Diane says in her speech precisely what is the case: These standards are written in stone. Achieve and David Coleman have spoken, and ours is but to obey. There is no mechanism for revising these in light of scholarly critique and classroom practice.
Help!
I can’t get the link to open. I get a message that says “invalid menu handle” (whatever the hell that means).
Any help, thanks in advance
Duane
Dr. Ravitch, I hope I am not over reacting, but the way your speech opens for me, I would be able to change anything I wanted. It opens as though I am the one typing it. Is there any way to change the way it is posted? I would not want someone to change it.
Haven’t read the whole paper yet but for now … this excerpt from above says it all.
“I recommend decoupling the standards from the testing. And I recommend that the standards be reviewed, corrected, and updated on a regular basis by panels of teachers and scholars. No set of standards should be considered so sacrosanct that they can never be revised. These arrived encased in concrete.”
Diane echoed a critical aspect of CCSS in her speech Thursday night. She explained in all its simplicity that you don’t write standards in a vacuum and use them immediately. You field test with teachers – this standard is not developmentally appropriate for this grade – this standard fits better in another grade – this standard just doesn’t fit – then and only then do you roll them out.
In spite of the pedagogy embedded in standards – professional teachers (not teach for awhilers and script followers) are shrewd enough to get the direction and design their own units and lesson.
Here’s Diane’s speech Thursday night.
Video:
Author Diane Ravitch speaks at Fox Lane High School in Bedford Jan. 16, 2014. Her new book attacks many of the unpopular education reforms taking place. ( Video by Peter Carr / The Journal News )
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid2864903832001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAACNCxHpk~,ZomDDi5uoNOU9Gi_Pd_vADA_RlpSDjy5&bclid=2864085057001&bctid=3064565879001
(if that doesn’t work – go to http://www.lohud.com and click on videos – you’ll see the box with Diane at the podium
I just read the total speech, lying down with two pillows and did not fall asleep. Great thoughts. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I see the solution as what we did at Milwaukee Village School from 1995 – 1998. We had proficiency check lists as assessments with kids demonstrating what they knew. We had no letter grades formally used to cover up what kids had or hadn’t learned. We had exhibitions of learning for kids to demonstrate learning on a regular basis. We had small pre and post tests that helped determine how kids did in your school in your class. Along with teacher input they gave immediate results that supported the education plan of the child.
We called their plan, My Action Plan (MAP). It was an IEP for all. And the plan would follow them through out their years if implemented on a systemic basis. And failure was a positive experience, aiding learning as the student could pass proficiencies many times throughout the year.
Were we successful? Not really. as it is today there were self serving power mongoring bureaucrats intent on destroying us from day one. But we saw enough to see that it would have a great chance of working. It just needed field testing to tweek it.
Although we don’t claim to be the be all and end all, the reality is your school is your school. However, we do claim to have a concept worth exploring. If it were only allowed under the current system. It was not allowed under the system in Milwaukee when we tried to implement but we had a supportive superintendent Dr. Howard Fuller, and Deputy superintendent Bob Jasna. Until they were pushed out, we were on the track for success.
Remember, we were fully public, fully union and fully in charge of our own destiny. For those interested, the philosophy is desribed in our two books at http://www.wholechildreform.com
A great article Diane, together we must come up with an alternative in order to be fully credible.
Dr. Ravitch, you did a phenomenal job of critiquing the Common Core in your address to the MLA Association even though you use the soft pedal. However, you missed two critical issues: the underlining philosophy and methodology of Common Core. The Behavioral approach of trying to pour facts into the students’ brains, underlines the instruction of CC in lieu of the Constructivist approach. The CC’s Behavioral approach starts with the curriculum instead of starting with the child. Constructivists, however, maintain that we must first start with the child- activate the students’ background knowledge to lay the ground work for the new concepts. Throughout a lesson, connections need to be made going beyond getting information from the text or the pure analyses. CC doesn’t want background knowledge to enter the picture. CC limits critical thinking skills of analyzing and comparing to “close reading.” Especially for beginning learners, it is crucial to activate and utilize background knowledge instead of overloading their memory resulting in their “blowing a fuse.”
Constructivists further maintain that standards must go beyond the information and want all the higher order thinking skills taught including the development of the imagination which CC doesn’t address.
One paragraph can’t begin to summarize the volumes that have been researched and written about the philosophy and methodology of education which the developers of CC ignored. So what can you expect when you don’t have educators at the helm?
Einstein maintained that, “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.”
There is some discussion in Dr Ravitch’s article about the concerns of early educators which touch on the subject mentioned in this article. Of course we don’t open minds and dump knowledge in as ,many seem to believe. However, the ability to think, analyze and fully used the mind is a process brought out by quality teaching methods and driven by assessment.
Even though some CC goals talk about these issues, they mandate that paper and pencil tasks determine proficiency. This is hypacritical at the least. To say we must analyze a story and then require it be done only with pencil in hand is outrageous and pushes students who learn differently, out the door. The issue is to analyze the story, not simply to do it on paper. We seem to have the necessity to develop more hoops to jump through rather than a strong focus on the issue
I don’t have as much of a problem with GENERALIZED goals tha I do with their implementation. Are the deadlines for failure or guidelines for success? And of course they don’t seem to be generalized. Specific goals must be local as learning is personal.
What if an exam is given with no right answer required? who really did discover America would have students finding different answers all of which are better than butcher Chris. .
I open minds and “dump” knowledge in my students’ heads. E.g. a lecture on the Aztec resistance to Cortez. That knowledge fuels creativity. Students then create immensely creative skits, illustrated journals,etc. Without knowledge there is no creativity and no higher-order thinking. I do not know how to teach creativity, yet my students evince it. Teachers CAN teach knowledge, but as much as they’d wish it to be otherwise, they cannot teach creativity or higher-order thinking or reading skills (we can lubricate these capacities by eliciting them; we can expand the scope of these capacities by imparting knowledge about new domains; but we cannot impart the capacities themselves). Those are all but the results of the alchemy between the biological brain and the knowledge that we put into it.The problem with the SBA and PARCC language arts tests is that they do not test what teachers can actually give kids (knowledge) but what only Nature can give –the raw processing power of brains. Mary is wrong –the tests do not test knowledge –I wish they did! If we teachers consent to be judged by these tests, we’re all destined to be judged failures because they test what we cannot give. Our forte is transmitting knowledge, not endowing brains with processing power. Conventional views on education are upside-down! Teachers, dare to think critically about what you’ve been told.
Ponderosa you continue to write the most cogent argument against the bass-ackwards approach of CC reformers. Why they can’t wrap their heads around this simple yet important idea is beyond frustrating.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.” Besides, the money’s good.
Thanks, NY teacher. I’m glad I’m making sense to somebody!
Your point can be proved with a simple example.
In this sample lesson, lets leave out the required knowledge and just keep the critical thinking piece:
Class, your assignment is to argue for or against a government proposal to slow the rate of global warming by building nuclear power plants in every state.
That guide on the side crapola has done much more harm than good.
Kids need us to be the sage on stage.
Excellent! I wish this could be broadcast on a national news show like CBS Evening News or 60 Minutes.
An outstanding speech about the greatest education crisis in our time.
Thanks Diane- this is very helpful.
Common Core sham: New research suggests that claims that the CCSS is more rigors in English Language Arts is false—indeed, it’s the only way around.
See here: http://edr.sagepub.com/content/42/7/381.full.pdf+html?ijkey=JV4K0MyCHPsyE&keytype=ref&siteid=spedr
This speech is simply brilliant. So, what was the reception?
I very much hope that it was met with a sustained standing ovation!
Magnificent.
Robert, you will love the Bedford, NY, video. Next week.
Hear, hear Diane! I really appreciate your fine synopsis of these complex issues. I want to ask a question though. Why have you given an uncharacteristic pass to your friend Linda Darling Hammond and the EdTPA? As a teacher educator, I am appalled by what this test is doing to teacher education. It must be subjected to the same kind of public scrutiny that the rest of the educational-industrial complex is getting. Here is a blog post that I wrote last fall that might start the conversation. http://oa4pe.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/mission-creep-teacher-educators-join-the-ranks-of-the-walking-wounded/.
Excellent.