Alan J. Singer of Hofstra University has studied the Common
Core closely and suggested not only flaws but ways it could be
improved. Unfortunately there is no feedback process to make
changes or to upgrade content. Michael Shaughnessy interviews Singer
here for Education News. Here is a good question and
answer: 2) What is this concept called ” text complexity ” and who
developed it? “If you look deeper you realize books are assigned to
the boxes based on something called “text complexity.” Text
complexity is defined on the Common Core website as a combination
of “levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality and
clarity, and knowledge demands”; “readability measures and other
scores of text complexity”; and “reader variables (such as
motivation, knowledge, and experiences) and task variables (such as
purpose and the complexity generated by the task assigned and the
questions posed).” Fortunately you do not have to worry if you
cannot understand what they are talking about, I certainly can’t,
because they start with the assertion that “A number of
quantitative tools exist to help educators assess aspects of text
complexity that are better measured by algorithm than by a human
reader,” although they also concede that “the tools for measuring
text complexity are at once useful and imperfect.” “One thing that
always makes me suspicious is that Pearson Education is marketing
the Pearson Reading Maturity Metric. They claim it is “a new and
more accurate measure of the reading difficulty of texts” that was
“developed by scientists at Pearson’s Knowledge Technologies
group.” It is supposed to be a “new computer-based technology” that
“measures how close an individual students’ reading abilities are
to what they will need to succeed in college and careers.” “Do you
remember the scene from the “The Dead Poet’s Society” when Robin
Williams’ character is trying to follow textbook guidelines for
measuring the value of poetry and ends up having students rip the
pages out of the textbook. He shouts “Rip! Rip! Rip!” I think we
need to do some ripping here.”
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Diane, Your response was appropriate. I’ve only recently become aware of Common Core since my children are grown and I’ll be a great grandmother in a matter of weeks. I research before taking stands on issues, and I began on the Common Core site by printing and reading their information and standards. It was the most pedantic writing ever. I wondered if there was a prize for using the most words not commonly used in a text. Personally, I love “big” words and teach some of my favorites to students in after-school classes where testing is not necessary. However, using them to make it look like you know what you are talking about, when you don’t understand how children learn, is a whole other game. It’s one I cannot support.
As a second-career teacher, I am constantly taken aback at the “master of the obvious” aspect of much educational theory. I realize it needs to be written down and discussed in the textbooks, but the more I read the more I shake my head. Why can’t we keep this simple?
The CCSS for history are a case in point. If you don’t include specifics (dates, places, people), what you teach could be anybody’s guess, or measure.
Oh boy, look up Louise Rosenblatt’s work. She points out that the text is just ink on paper until a reader reads it. The “complexity” of the reader plus the text results in a transaction between the reader and the text. Meaning exists in the transaction. I think we need a measure of a reader’s complexity – brain scans for all!
I’ll take Louise Rosenblatt over Cleanth Brooks any day of the week! I’m with you in your beliefs.
A transaction between the reader and a reader-posited author, mediated by a text that designed to create an experience with significance. That’s my take, for what it’s worth. We must not discount the importance of the imagined experience. When we read a literary text, we enter into an imaginary world. We fall down the rabbit hole, step through the wardrobe, slip through a wormhole in the space-time continuum, and have an experience in that imaginary space, and that experience is what then has meaning as significance, that changes us. All this emphasis on skills, ironically, devalues the text as communication, as transaction across an ontological gap, and it devalues the experience that engaged reading creates and the significance of that experience.
Now you are so right, right, right.
Thank you, Harlan.
But these are discussions WE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO HAVE AND TO ACT UPON.
We shouldn’t have to follow, instead, the prescriptions of the amateurs of the thought police who presume to tell us how we should approach our subject.
Ripping is, indeed, in order.
Readability tools and other comptuerized text measurement are useful but extremely limited. Most of the readability formulas simply use some combination of sentence length and word frequency.
So, Dylan Thomas’s
“Time held me green and dying.”
Would be at a very low level of readability. Perhaps first or second grade.
I recently ran a Lexile on Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride,” and the poem was beyond 12th-grade level, even though it is routinely included in fifth-grade textbooks.
If you think about it at all, you will recognize that text complexity involves many factors that cannot be instantiated in a readability algorithm–a) all possible world knowledge that might be necessary for understanding the material; b) all possible transactional knowledge (knowledge of relevant relations between the writer, the reader, the subject matter, and the context) necessary to interpretation; and c) all considerations of genre, discourse structure, and argument structure relevant to interpretation.
Linguistic signs do not have meaning in and of themselves. Their meaning is contextual. The context and structure of the utterance, broadly construed, are major determinants of meaning and of complexity.
Consider this. If I say to you, “Are you going to town today?” the sentence will have a completely different meaning if I place stress on a given word.
ARE you going to town today?
Are YOU going to town today?
Are you GOING to town today?
Are you going to TOWN today?
Are you going to town TODAY?
If I write that sentence instead of speaking it, and the spoken stress is not available as a clue for interpretation, knowledge of the transaction situation will be required for interpretation to take place. Otherwise, you won’t have a clue what the sentence means. It will elude proper interpretation because there is a transactional complexity of which you are not aware.
Consider Emily Dickinson’s little poem “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died.” It uses brief phrases. There is nothing particularly difficult about the vocabulary. It’s not difficult to parse. That is, the sentences and phrases are not extremely long and complex. The situation is familiar enough. But I have seen readers struggle and struggle with this poem. Its complexity lies in part outside the poem, in its subtle violation of expectation based upon a body of belief external to the text. The reader has to be familiar with that body of belief to grok what’s happening in the poem. If the reader is not familiar with that body of belief and with the expectations that it creates of the situation being described, then he or she will not understand how the conclusion quite shockingly and disturbingly violates those expectations. The poem will be too complex.
Or, consider this passage:
Eyes see what they can see. Ears hear what they can hear. Brains think about what they can think about. But there is much more to the world than that. The apple you see is not what is. It is what your brain makes of something you do not and cannot know. Think of the “folder” on your desktop and the real stuff behind that. They are not the same. The gap between what is and what you can see and think about is likely as great.
Now, that passage uses very, very simple words. But it presents a sophisticated argument for the existence of a noumenon beyond phenomena. Any readability or complexity formula would say that it’s elementary school or, at most, middle-school stuff. But it’s a difficult argument, a subtle and complex one. Grasping it requires philosophical sophistication and REALLY grasping it requires turning it round and around for some time. It’s pretty mind-blowing once you figure out what it is saying.
All this stuff about computers that assess readability and complexity better than people can is a complete crock.
And typical of the technocratic philistinism of ed deformers.
You, Mr. Shepard, are wicked smart. Here’s hoping TFAers, State Legislators, Department of Education folks, DFEers, Michelle Rheers, Stand for Childreners, Gatesers, Arnie Duncaners, turnarounders, and the Education “reporters” giving equal credit to everyone who wants to weigh in on our profession are reading this!!!
Oops. I should have written, in that last example,
Think of the “folder” on your computer desktop.
What being described in that sample paragraph is the “interface theory” of human cognition advanced by Donald Hoffman.
I have been previewing Readers Front and Center by Dorothy Barnhouse online until it becomes available. She makes the point that we need to focus on how the reader’s thinking intersects with the complexity of the text. When it’s all about only the text, then we’re just dragging the students along with no assurance they’re mastering any of the complexity.
JOE didn’t steal that hat Joe DIDN’T steal that hat. Joe didn’t STEAL that hat.
Joe didn’t steal THAT hat. Joe didn’t steal that HAT. Good old 1960s illustrations, popularized by gurus of General Semantics Theory as I recall, with great illustrations of several principles in a slim volume called “Communication” published by Kaiser Aluminum to educate their managers.
Readers of this blog may want ot know that a recent issue of Education Researcher has punched the CCSS language arts writers in the face, popped the balloon filled with hot air about the hype for texts selected by Lexile scores.
These reseachers focus on the false claim that the passages in reading texts are less demanding than ever. This claim is supposed to provide the reason for demaning that students have more complex, difficult, rigorous readings—the sooner the better.
This study examined texts going back to the fabled McGuffey readers, decade by decade, developing the largest scanned data base for analysis ever.
Upshot: The big problem is not text complexity. It is the inability of kids to deal with the content of current and recent texts—a by-product of so much emphasis on skills with little attention to the content and life experience that kids need to have for comprehension. See Gamson, D. A., Lu, X., & Eckert, S. A. (2013). Challenging the Research Base of the Common Core State Standards A Historical Reanalysis of Text Complexity. Educational Researcher, 42(7), 381-391.
But there are cheerleaders. Experts associated with Metametrics hope to set growth velocity standards for reading. They describe their theoretical mapping of “aspirational trajectories toward graduation targets” in reading skills as analogous to “modifying the height, velocity, or acceleration respectively of a projectile launched in the physical world” (p. 63). That is their language and imagery, I kid you not.
They look at Lexile scores as a data for securing greater precision in setting targets and cut scores for grade-to-grade progress in meeting the CCSS. See Williamson, G. L., Fitzgerald, J., & Stenner, A. J. (2013). The Common Core State Standards’ quantitative text complexity trajectory figuring out how much complexity is enough. Educational Researcher, 42(2), 59-69.
Laura,
Thanks for the lead to the studies you have cited above. I will enjoy reading through this research. When at GE Developing Futures Conferences a couple of years ago, I had a very hard time sitting and listening to presenters from Student Achievement Partners–David Coleman and company–talk ambiguously about the research that supposedly undergirded their work in developing the standards. I was discomforted by their inability to cite the researchers or the studies when I pressed for more information. It was apparent that they expected the participants to accept their claims at face value.
I am glad that people are questioning the pronouncements irresponsibly promulgated by these paper tigers who have the arrogance to have set themselves up as experts in the pedagogy of our discipline. I am encouraged that research is being done that equips us with ability to call their claims into question.
Thanks again for the resources you’ve cited.
Well said, Laura!
The Gamson et al., is good stuff. I highly recommend it to all. It’s here:
http://edr.sagepub.com/content/42/7/381.full.pdf+html?ijkey=JV4K0MyCHPsyE&keytype=ref&siteid=spedr
Years ago, Roger Shank and his grad students set out to write a computer program capable of ordering a meal in a fast-food restaurant. He later wrote a book in which he described what an eye-opening experience that was, how incredibly complex it turned out to be because of the vastness of the world knowledge involved in putting together or interpreting the simplest utterances. Hundreds of thousands of FTEs later, Shank and his grad students were nowhere close.
Hold the pickles.
How would you like me to hold them, sir?
I meant, no pickles on the sandwich.
We never place pickles ON the sandwich, sir. They are always placed IN the sandwich, between the burger and the upper bun.
Look, can I speak to, like, a person?
Look at what, sir?
Look at my lips. PER – SON.
Now looking at your lips, sir. Is there something in particular about them that you wish to bring to my attention?
Read my lips. PER SON.
Would you like to order something for your son? We have 26 varieties of value meals for children ages 3 to 12.
Oh my God.
I am not authorized to discuss religious matters, sir. Would you like to continue with your order?
This is ridiculous.
(Robot considers the possible referents of “this.”)
And so on.
As a district administrator for K-12 English, Language Arts, and Reading, I have found myself in a true state of professional dissonance between what I’ve known, learned, and practiced for over two decades and where it fits with my obligation to lead the transition to the Common Core in our school system.
Within the past couple of months, I’ve begun to shift the way I speak about the CCSS-ELA & Literacy with our teachers and my fellow admnistrators. I’m looking to give credit to what has some potential for good in the standards, and–more importantly–I have made the conscious decision to work with my teachers in providing them opportunities to study the standards and to regain their confidence in knowing that I will support them in continuing to implement what they know works from their experience and practice in the classroom for years as successful teachers.
I’ve come to the resolution that I must reaffirm with my teachers that they are the experts, that I value the knowledge they bring to the table, and that a set of standards written by non-educators with limited knowledge of the pedagogy of our discipline will not be accepted blindly by us because we must maintain our position as the experts. I am trying to lead them to look at the standards with a critical eye, to question the standards, to hold the standards up to the pedagogy they know and understand, and to find solutions in how to maintain the practices that they know work with our students and to not risk losing those successful approaches while seeking to provide students with appropriate level of challenge in the classroom.
It is far more important, I have decided, that I lead with integrity and remind our teachers that we have a duty to educate ourselves and others about what works in the classroom. We have a higher responsibility to our students and to our own integrity. With this change in approach, I can report that just a couple of weeks ago we had one of our most successful professional development days of any I had facilitated over the past six years working as their leader. We examined the standards, we discussed our practices, we looked at the underpinnings of what we do and believe, and we validated that we are responsible to our students. We have a renewed purpose. I have seen the burden lift from their shoulders as I gave them the space and the time to plan and dialogue and bring their ideas to the table in this way.
Even if it might risk my position as a district leader, I will continue to educate my fellow administrators on why it is appropriate that we advocate for what we know works in the classroom and the research upon which our ideas and practices are based. I do not want our teachers to be lemmings, and I must stand up for the research base that I know is valid with our students. Move over New Critics; the reader is the meaning-maker in our district’s ELA classrooms.
The Common [sic] Core [sic] draws constricted boundaries within the vast design spaces of possible ELA curricula and learning progressions and pedagogy and says, “What is within these boundaries you may think and do, and what is outside these boundaries, you may not.”
Defenders of the CC$$ in ELA typically refer, when they speak of them, to a few blindingly obvious generalities: kids should read substantive texts. They should (not always!) read them more than once. They should look at them closely. But the CC$$ are not just those generalities. The CC$$ document is a 1,600-item bullet list, and much of what is on that list is hackneyed, backward, pedestrian, confused, prescientific, and based upon assumptions that fly in the face of current research and of many of our best practices as English teachers. And, of course, one could drive whole K-12 curricula through the lacunae in these “standards.”
There’s a reason why the defenders of the CC$$ in ELA always talk about the general principles that informed their list and not about the list itself: the list is indefensible.
I am disgusted by the presumption of the amateurs who hacked these “standards” together, who did little more than collate the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the state “standards” that preceded them. By what authority did Achieve appoint David Coleman absolute monarch of instruction in English language arts in the United States and give him the right to overrule every teacher, administrator, curriculum coordinator, coach, and curriculum developer in the country with regard to what learning progressions we should follow, what outcomes we should measure, what matters in each domain, and how our measures, in each domain, should be formulated? By what authority? by divine right?
There are many ways in and out of texts. There are many ways in which to become a good reader, writer, thinker, speaker, and researcher. There is no one set of short-term or long-term goals appropriate for all. There are many, many paths.There are many ways to be a great teacher, and there is no such thing as a single formula for every good lesson. By all around the country, teachers are being forced to go to “trainings” (Sit up. Roll over. Good boy.) where they are to learn THE WAY to do a Common Core ELA lesson.
The Common [sic] Core [sic] was created for one reason and one reason only: Gates and Pearson wanted a single national bullet list to tag their new educational software programs to. Pixels are cheaper than paper, and they see this as the coming revolution, and they wanted on list so that they could create products “at scale.” And they clearly didn’t care, much, what that list was, as long as it was INVARIANT. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have approached the creation of the list in such a heedless manner. Their language standards wouldn’t, for example, instantiate a lot of prescientific notions about how kids acquire the grammar of a language, and they wouldn’t be plopped down in the grade-level progression pretty much AT RANDOM.
Ecologists are healthier than are monocultures. Teachers must think for themselves and submit their own practice to continual reflection and refinement within collaborative communities with their peers. Exactly as you are doing. And they should feel free to adopt and adapt the best that they come across in the work of other teachers and in proposals made by scholars, researchers, and curriculum developers, whatever these silly “standards” say, the substandard “standards” be damned.
Your post was a great pleasure to read. Thank you.
Here: a brief analysis of just two “standards” from the bullet list:
Yikes, many typos in that hastily written comment. I’ll settle for one correction:
Ecologies are healthier than are monocultures.
What a moving statement, Jean. Your district is fortunate to have someone this wise running that “transition.”
Very well spoken…I would love to be a teacher in your district.
I hope that every reader of this blog will take the time to read the interview with Singer. He says a lot that is wise and of use. This is what a real educator, as opposed to one appointed by Achieve to act the part at conferences, sounds like.
Minor caveat. Robin Williams’s character was not trying to follow the books introduction on how to evaluate poetry but to mock it, before getting the kids to rip the pages out. Standard dramatization tactic of “teaching as an art.”
wonderful. yes yes yes