Susan Ochshorn read Robert Pondiscio’s post “Is Common Core Too Hard for Kindergarten?” (he thinks not), and she felt impelled to respond, even though she is on vacation. Ochshorn is the founder of ECE Policy Works. She is the author of the forthcoming book, “Squandering America’s Future – Why ECE Policy Matters for Equality, Our Economy and Our Children,” about critical policy issues in early childhood education (Teachers College Press, 2015).
Susan Ochshorn writes:
Leave the country, and all hell breaks loose. A couple of days ago, in the “Common Core Watch,” the bully pulpit for the conservative Fordham Institute, Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow and vice president for external affairs, asked if the blessed academic standards were too hard for kindergarten. The short answer: no.
The occasion for his musings—and supreme irritation—was the publication of “Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose,” a report of Defending the Early Years (DEY Project) and the Alliance for Childhood. The paper debunks the common belief that reading earlier is better for future academic success, and warns of the deleterious effects on children of what Pondiscio calls a “perceived shift” from play-based, experiential learning to more academic approaches.
Perception is relative, of course. But where has Pondiscio been? Apparently, he’s heard nothing about the research of Daphna Bassok and Anna Rorem—empirical proof on the shift, from the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Working with two national datasets, which straddle the introduction of No Child Left Behind, the authors sought to fill in the gaps about the changing nature of kindergarten in the United States between 1998 and 2006. They discovered that even before the adoption of the Common Core standards, pressure among principals and teachers had accelerated considerably, with high-stakes assessments leading to academic and accountability “shove down.”
For some of that time, according to LinkedIn, Pondiscio was employed in public relations and communications at Time magazine, Hill and Knowlton, and Businessweek. Just as NCLB got going, he spent four years teaching fifth-graders in the South Bronx, before moving on to the Core Knowledge Foundation, and Democracy Prep, a network of charter schools based in Harlem, where he taught seminars in civics, citizenship, and democracy.
Civics? For someone who calls himself an expert on the machinations of our precious democracy, Pondiscio couldn’t be more disdainful of those who would raise their voices in protest—those who do know something about early child development and education. “The authors make much of the fact that no one involved with writing the standards was a K-3 teacher or early-childhood professional,” he writes. Not important, he concludes.
And then there’s Valerie Strauss. The Washington Post and “Common Core-averse education blogger” has been championing the report in her space, and running pieces by parents and teachers “arguing that ‘forcing some kids to read before they are ready could be harmful.’” What unmitigated nerve!
But let’s get down to the nitty gritty here. Before Pondiscio became a PR guru and a civic society expert, he picked up a bachelor’s degree in cultural studies. Nowhere on his curriculum vitae do I see anything related to kids’ development. Nada.
Yet he has no trouble weighing in on the fine details of the subject—including developmentally appropriate (or inappropriate) practice.
It’s “not as scientifically clear-cut as many suppose,” he writes. “There’s little evidence to suggest that a child’s readiness to learn occurs in the discrete, stair-step phases that Piaget theorized about long ago.” He then goes on to cite cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham, who has apparently noted—wisely, I might add—that “children’s cognition is fairly variable day to day, even when the same child tries the same task.” Indeed. The very argument made by the authors of “Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose!” Kids are not universally ready to read at five.
Pondiscio’s in way over his head here. Children’s development is exceedingly uneven. Anyone who knows anything about child development would tell you that—including the Finns, who don’t push their children to read when they’re five, who hold off on standardized testing until much later, and, by the way, are up there with the world’s highest scorers on the PISA tests of academic mastery. Another thing: the Finns revere children, and see early childhood as a time for play, exploration, and the foundation for equality, and citizenship in a democracy.
As Finland’s minister of education, Krista Kiuru, told an interviewer in the Atlantic last spring: “Equal means that we support everyone and we’re not going to waste anyone’s skills. “We can’t know if one first-grader will become a famous composer, or another a famous scientist,” she said. “Regardless of a person’s gender, background, or social welfare status, everyone should have an equal chance to make the most of their skills.”
But Finland’s not cramming kindergarten readiness assessments and reading down the throats of five-year-olds. And Finland doesn’t have alarming rates of preschool expulsion, as we do in the U.S., mostly among little boys of color. Children’s social-emotional development is inextricably linked to their acquisition of cognitive skills. And play is where the cognitive and social-emotional come together. Yes, kids are capable of amazing things—they are, in fact, our littlest innovators—but play, as neuroscientist and anthropologist Melvin Konner wrote in his epic work, “The Evolution of Childhood,” is the primary engine of human development.
Pondiscio says that nothing in the Common Core standards precludes the creation of “safe, warm, nurturing classrooms that are play-based, engaging, and cognitively enriching.” Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so? But such classrooms are rapidly disappearing, given over to learning blocks dedicated to discrete subjects, which sideline the kind of imaginative play on which children thrive. They’re part and parcel of the Common Core package, over which teachers have no control. He also urges early childhood advocates to push “aggressively for teacher education and professional development,” enabling them to meet the Common Core benchmarks. They are pushing, like Sisyphus—but the rock weighs a ton. And as states develop evaluation systems that rate teachers based on student test scores, their very livelihoods are at stake.
I’d suggest a semester of child development 101 for the Fordham Institute’s VP for external affairs. NYC has plenty of terrific programs, and he’s got huge gaps in his own core knowledge.
My daughter teaches preschool in a Head Start program. She often talks about “wish lists” that she and her fellow teachers develop as they discuss what they would like for their students:
toy vehicles and train sets
blocks
floor puzzles
puppets
dress-up clothes
dolls and doll clothes
play pots, pans, dishes, and pretend food
CDs with dance music, nursery rhymes, and folk music from many cultures
magnifying glasses
flannel stories
art supplies
board games
books, books, and more books!
What impresses me is the way that these dedicated teachers talk about how their students use these items during play … they learn to share, take turns, resolve conflicts, tell stories, use language, enhance creativity, observe nature, learn about cause and effect, develop motor skills, develop an understanding of sequencing … and so much more.
Preschool should be about learning, not test prep. Reading will emerge from a rich experience that involves all kinds of play and social interaction. Reading is not an isolated “skill” that can be forced to develop.
“Play is the work of children.” (Jean Piaget) They learn more from constructing and using their imagination than we can cram into them. Reading to children is one of the best things a parent or teacher of young children can do. Children bond with the reader while increasing language and thinking skills. We need to nourish their sense of wonder, not crush it with pencil and paper tasks too early.
..and play is not just child’s play.
As Einstein said, “Play is the highest form of research.”
Pondiscio and Fordham, including Chester Finn, will beat the dead horse of “standards” until there is little left but bloody pulp because it is their reason d’être and the foundation of all that they propose.
Despite the fact that their ‘standards’ movement has utterly and completely failed to do anything they promised and has not created an equal playing field, nor ended poverty, or decreased the ‘learning gaps’ one iota (we are at record high levels of hungry, poor, and homeless children in the USA and even on worthless standardized tests we are ‘stagnant’ re ‘growth’) they cling stubbornly to ‘standards’ as only a conservative can cling to a disproven theory.
One wonders how long this charade will be able to continue now that the whole nation can see that the standards emperor is quite naked and has been all along? They have convinced many that ‘standards’ need to be defended and to assume that ‘standards’ are important (without a shred of evidence proving so) and that will probably guarantee them a lingering, long drawn out dissipation.
They should simply be ignored at this point.
If you enter Pondiscio’s name into Wikipedia, you get a page about mixed ability grouping. “Educator Robert Pondiscio has argued that mixed-ability grouping in the classroom creates problems of its own, especially the neglect of higher-functioning students. He also points out that “tracking,” the practice of grouping students by ability, is routinely used in school sports programs, and questions whether educators are more concerned about athletic achievement than they are about academic achievement.”
So we know he’s in favor of tracking and he’s worried about the “achievement” of those at the “top” and that he doesn’t much care about those at the bottom (and that he doesn’t understand the differences between academic programming and athletic programming). Really not impressed so far.
I went to Wikipedia hoping to find out what sort of school he went to, whether or not he has kids and, if so, what sort of school he sends them to. I couldn’t find out for sure, but I’ll bet he went to an elite private school or a very elite public school and that his kids, if any, are in progressive/Montessori-type schools.
I started out teaching French in a junior high with homogeneous groups. It was the era of audio-lingual (canned) instruction. It was such a drag I thought I would lose my mind. The slow groups couldn’t get the meaning from the visual cues, and I had to adapt to survive.
Then, after an master’s, I became an ESL teacher, It was a “light bulb” moment for me. I had to use every iota of creativity and training to teach a very diverse multi-age beginning class of ELLs with little formal education. It was like a one room school house! It worked because I varied instruction from whole group to small group to individual instruction. The older students, that felt like failures in mainstream classes, became the “knowers” in this family like setting. I spent hours planning for so many groups, but students and parents never complained that their more capable children were being stymied in any way. It was tricky management for me, but everyone learned.
See below: Dunning-Kruger effect. Time to publicize this syndrome to expose its practitioners.
He need not have an elite background to feel he is correct. He only needs to misunderstand the. Significance of each individual’s framewmork. Teachers are responsible for scaffolding on that framework. I personally am not against a kind of tracking. To me what matters is who chooses the track. I was part of a program in a high school in which the student and his/her parent chose being aware of the academic standards of the classes chose the level.
My main concern about tracking is that sometimes the decision comes from the school and not always in the best interest of the student. Children that are culturally different sometimes get overlooked, and doors close in their faces. When I taught high school years ago, I had to fight to get my bright ESL students a slot in the algebra class, especially if they came from Haiti. The assumption was that they would fail and didn’t deserve to waste a spot in the class. I had a much easier time convincing the math department that my European students were worthy of a slot in algebra. My Haitian students took the class and didn’t fail so they proved they were up to the challenge.
Those of us who have actual real life experience and an educational background in early childhood education know how harmful this CCSS movement is for our youngest children. We know that children are not standard nor common in their developmental progress, especially at the earliest years. We also know that real life social experiences and interacting with concrete, hands on materials sets the stage for later abstract thinking required in the upper grades. Piaget and Vygotsky, among others, lay the groundwork for our most basic understanding of early childhood development. The misconception that very young children are just mini versions of older students is damaging and abusive when applied by misinformed non-educators who spout their misinformation as truth, with nothing to back it up. The sad part is that they use their affiliation with “institutes” as a backdrop for spreading their uninformed “opinions” while uninformed non-educator readership believe it. As long as we continue to use data points as our sole judge of academic proficiency, we will continue to miss the mark by focusing only on tests that can be easily scored. The problem is that what has been identified as the most important skills of the future, creativity, collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking, are not tested by a standardized PARCC or a Smarter Balanced test that requires a one correct choice or best guess answer. Again, doublespeak prevails when we allow Gates and Koch brothers money determine what is educationally relevant for our children, when what they are really pushing is what is financially relevant to them.
Excellent points!
We can’t force feed children literacy and a love of reading starting in kindergarten as if children are turkeys or geese to be fattened before the slaughter and the feast that follows.
The love of reading succeeds best when it is encouraged and promoted in the home by the parents/guardians starting soon after birth with children’s books designed to be chewed on by infants who are teething. Even before the baby says the first word, parents should start reading to their child from books to imprint the importance of reading on the child as they grow. develop and mature.
Literacy and a love of reading doesn’t start in kindergarten. It starts years earlier, and it’s what parents do in Finland—it’s cultural there—where a love of reading is fostered starting as late as age two and the children don’t start school until they are seven. This leads to a minimum of five years of reading with their parents leading the way as roll models.
Common Core bubble tests designed to fail, rank and punish children and teachers will NEVER make up for parents who rely on TVs as pacifiers instead of spending the time a parent MUST spend fostering a love of books and reading.
Mr. Lofthouse ,
You are absolutely right about the importance of parents.
But what happens when parents do not do what you prescribe?
Should we scold them? Yell at them? Fine them? What is your plan to ensure that they do as you say?
The fact is that poor parents have little emotional energy to do all those things you suggest and which truly would have a huge impact on their child’s learning. But they don’t. Now what?
I suggest that good early childhood education that involves lots of storytelling, reading, playing, block building in a literate environment populated by dedicated teachers who talk with children and more importantly, listen to children, can go a long way to help children get a sure footing once they enter kindergarten.
You asked, “But what happens when parents do not do what you prescribe? Should we scold them? Yell at them? Fine them? What is your plan to ensure that they do as you say?”
The answer is NO to all but the last question. We can’t change the parents without their cooperation. We can force them to do what they should be doing.
For the last question, I think the answer is a national early childhood education program modeled on successful programs that are used in other countries. For instance, France, where early childhood education is part of the public education system and to become a teacher requires higher standards than the U.S. currently has. A French teacher in an early childhood education class has a masters degree and spends one full year as a full time intern in a master teachers classroom before they have their own classroom—and this includes follow up support.
The result: In the last thirty years, poverty in France has dropped from more than 16% to less than 6% today. But that doesn’t mean what France does is perfect but it is a lot better than nothing, because about half of U.S. states have no early childhood education programs and in the other states these programs are all over the place in quality.
I meant to say, “We can’t force them to do what’s right for the future of their children”. Sorry I said “can”.
Susan ~
Excellent article and exposing the non-educational backgrounds of Fordham Institute. More journalists, economists, poliSci majors and public policy wonkers on the Billionaire payroll, paid to abuse kids and their teachers. Such a noble outfit – NOT! What a joke!
Have only one thing to add: since when do credentials, degrees, research, knowledge, experience & skills EVER MATTER to these undereducated, play-a-teacher, anybody-can-teach, thinky-tank Fordham Institute skit-meisters, get paid highly for decimating teachers, children and public education…and all the poor children in glitzy, selective, cherry-picked, no accountability charter schools?
The Finns and many educated countries understand children and education.
Maybe with global warming, Canada & Finland will become more of a destination for parents and RealTeachers from the USA.
Seems more like Ochshorn is the one defending ignorance. The only purported evidence she cites is a paper claiming that the time spent on kindergarten literacy has risen from 5.5 hours a week to 7 hours a week.
Well, heavens to Betsy, let me faint for a moment at the awfulness of the thought that kids in kindergarten are now spending an entire EIGHTEEN more minutes per day on reading, leaving as little as 6 hours a day for the creative play that Ochshorn and apparently Dr. Ravitch find so crucial that kids must be allowed to do nothing else. (Correction: it’s other people’s who must be allowed to do nothing else; you can rest assured that middle class and rich parents will teach their kindergarteners the alphabet and much more, so the real point being made here is that schools must not try to help poorer 5-year-olds catch up with their peers — schools must be the instrument for keeping poor kids behind.)
But as Pondiscio might aptly point out, there is absolutely no evidence that spending 18 more minutes per day on reading is harmful in any way whatsoever to even one single child anywhere in the nation.
WT, rightwing tool extraordinaire, YOU are the one showing your ignorance. I suggest you step into any Title I Kindergarten class in any district in the country. There will be no play, no toys, no joy at all. There will be worksheets and the expectation that 5 year olds write paragraphs and read books by the end of the year.
Pretending that forcing poor children to ‘catch up with their peers’ as your privilege puts it, will not, cannot, and does not solve the problems of racism, generational poverty, and the utter failure of trickle down economics to help anyone who is not already rich, although right-wingers cling to that myth like a baby baboon clings to its mother’s fur.
Your skill at avoiding the original arguments and choosing false dichotomies shows a long involvement in rightwing politics but it also shows your basic ignorance of the realities of public education and your defenses of the worst of the worst rightwing false educational ‘reform’ memes is pathetic and sad. I pity you.
If teaching kids to read is “right wing,” that is very embarrassing for me as someone who is far more on the left than Ravitch is. If you think of yourself as a leftie too, please stop humiliating yourself by acting like it is oppressive and “right wing” for schools to do the same thing that middle-class and richer families virtually all do anyway. Their kids often arrive at kindergarten having been taught the alphabet at age two if not before, and knowing how to read simple books. As one of those parents, none of my kids resented having to learn the alphabet at age 2 — in fact, they enjoyed it and thought of it as a puzzle about shapes.
Poorer kids start kindergarten 2 or 3 years behind, so it’s only natural that people who actually care about those poorer kids want to teach them something more than just playing with Play-dough and puppets.
It is really telling that some so-called “progressives” seem to think of learning and having fun as inherently inimical to each other — as if we must necessarily choose between classrooms where kids may learn to read but are taught by the equivalent of a Gradgrind who drives out all the joy of learning, versus classrooms where kids learn nothing about reading but at least they get to play with toys all day.
For heaven’s sake, try to learn from classrooms where teachers actually teach the 5-year-olds something, but are still somehow able to make it fun and interesting. Such teachers do exist, you know.
WT,
If the parents haven’t done their job to foster a love of reading in their child starting by at least age two, then that extra 18 minutes a day in kindergarten is mostly wasted.
Research that was used to promote the Whole Language Approach to teaching literacy was based on the fact that for children to become highly literate they had to read at least 30 minutes or more at home after school for pleasure—-reading that had nothing to do with school work.
And for that reason, the Whole Language Approach to reading and writing that was all the rage in the 1980’s halfway through the 1990s before most schools abandoned it, FAILED, because parents with children who read below grade level weren’t offering support to make sure the child was doing recreational reading at home for at least 30 minutes a day 7 days a week—rec reading is never linked to grades, written assignments or bubble tests that rank and fail.
If reading isn’t fun, the child will not buy into it, and reading is mainly an isolated event difficult to pull off in a room full of sociable kids who want to talk and play.
For instance, when I was teaching 8th grade in the early 1980s, I had a concerned mother come to me and ask what she could do so her daughter, who was reading five years behind grade level, would catch up.
My advice was to turn off the TV and have a family hour every night 7 days a week where you read books for entertainment. You read while your daughter is reading. By the end of that school year, her daughter’s literacy level was tested at grade level and the mother, who had reservations, was metastatic.
The key to catching up for most of the children who are behind is not an extra 18 minutes a day reading in school but parents who turn off the stupid tube and implement recreational reading time at home with regular visits to the library for reading material the child is interested in. If the parents are not doing that, it is an uphill battle to engage children who are mostly disconnected with reading and see no reason for it in their lives. It just isn’t important to them.
Nice to hear your true sentiments, Lloyd — that we should just write off most of the poorer kids in this country as beyond all hope by the age of 5.
WT,
It’s obvious that you either missed my other comment in this thread or ignored it when someone else brought up how to deal with parents who aren’t good parents when it comes to a child learning to love reading.
Since I went in to more detail in that comment, I’ll keep it short here.
The U.S. should have a national early childhood education program starting as early as age two and it would be a good idea to study what they did in France more than thirty years ago, because the evidence says it worked. They should also keep that program out of the hands of the profit motivated private sector and keep it in the transparent, democratic public schools.
OK, sorry. But that still doesn’t address: 1) what should kindergarten be like now, and 2) even in your world, the schools are still actually teaching kids about reading, which is more than some commenters seem to want (they obviously have some rudimentary literacy skills themselves, yet seem to think that empowering kids to read is somehow “right wing”).
The most important person in a child life when it comes to acquiring a love of reading is a parent/guardian who models reading to the child as the child grows up and witnesses them reading books, magazines and newspapers. In most cases, it isn’t a teacher.
This is how it works for most children in Finland where it is culturally expected that parents will start modeling a love of books with their children as early as age 4, and the child doesn’t start school at five—the child starts school at seven so they have two more years of play, and the play time continues.
What do we do with those children who don’t have parents/guardians who foster a love of reading at an early age years before kindergarten? We start a transparent, public sector national early childhood education program that is designed to foster a love of reading as painlessly as possible without homework or tests that are designed to rank and fail teachers or children.
Reading would become part of the play time for those young children to introduce them to books in an atmosphere of enjoyment and not by drilling and killing the fun of reading.
Have you ever had a five year old, WT? Eighteen minutes a day is a LONG time for five year olds. As a middle school teacher, I see the deleterious effects all the time. Most of the kids LOATHE reading and will not do it for any reason. How sad.
ToW, Your middle school students have been in school while NCLB testing ruled. Do you think that influenced their perception of reading? I remember visiting schools when kids welcomed completing a task so they could delve into a Harry Potter book.
As someone who taught all day Preschool, Kindergarten and 1st Grade classes for decades, observed in a lot of Early Childhood Education (ECE) classrooms as a school administrator and teacher educator, as well as reviewed a plethora of teachers’ lesson plans, I have seen way too many examples of play being excluded and replaced with highly structured teacher-led academic activities, so I do not believe the teacher reports about an 18 minute per week increase in the time devoted to ELA could be accurate.
Frankly, if someone asked me about that in my own classroom, I would have just given an estimate because it would be impossible to provide an accurate response to my “time use,” since rarely do planning and reality match, because adhering to a schedule does not take priority over having to deal with all of the issues that arise when you are working alone with so many little kids. On a daily basis, you have to adjust your plans so you can deal with the child who pooped in his pants, fell off her chair and hit her head on the table, etc. Not to mention all the social issues that come up on an ongoing basis.
In my experience, the primary focus of academically oriented ECE classes is on ELA, with a lot of time spent on drilling, including requiring children to write letters and words repeatedly. I think an increase of less than 4 minutes per day for ELA is a bad joke.
WT:While the ability to read and write does not come naturally — it must be taught explicitly, teaching these skills to early learners requires a deep understanding of and sensitivity to how young children learn. Here is the position of the experts on the teaching of reading: a joint statement of the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Sorry, here is the link: https://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/PSREAD98.PDF
18 more minutes per day on reading WITHOUT LOVE for reading is without a doubt harmful to kids and WT(Wasting Time).
Thanks for Wasting Time showing your ignorance, WT.
And once again, it’s the false dichotomy rearing its ugly head — a commenter so cynical about education that he think I am the one who is ignorant, just because I think that teachers could actually help generate that love for reading, rather than waiting for it to strike like lightning from the sky while the kids are playing with puppets.
Willingham is over-rated. ECE addresses the needs of the whole child because each developmental domain (physical, cognitive, social and emotional) is critically important to optimal growth and development and all domains are interrelated. Cognitive psychologists don’t have the same expertise and appreciation for each domain of child development that developmental psychologists, neuropsychologists, educational psychologists and school psychologists have, including understanding the impact of mental and physical pressure on living organisms, such as how stress results in increased levels of cortisol and that prolonged exposure to cortisol causes tissue damage.
When you are dealing with health or safety issues that can impact all of your bodily systems, you don’t go to a foot doctor.
Didn’t know you were there. Knock, knock, W(ho’s)T(here?)
Mr. Pondiscio belongs to an ever-expanding cohort of those in the so-called education “reform” industry. Their cognitive bias goes by the name of Dunning-Kruger effect, where the individual is convinced of his/her expertise and extensive knowledge, despite evidence to the contrary. To find countless examples of this disorder, simply read the pronouncements of the people profiting from the lucrative charter/testing businesses.
Margaret M. Nolan: excellent points.
If I may, an up-to-date version of a Mark Twain observation about such folks:
“All you need is ignorance and confidence and the $tudent $ucce$$ is sure.”
And we didn’t even need an old dead Greek guy. Homegrown talent sufficed.
😎
Mr. Pondscio appears to suffer the traits of over-confidence from limited education and limited experience. There is a big difference between K and fifth. Many teachers I have known who teach sixth grade complain that if those fifth grade teachers had done their job that their own job would be easier. Perhaps that is how he felt about K- 4 teachers.
Learning is exponential and teaching is perceived as difficult when the student does not already know what you are “teaching.” Scaffolding for a mixed group is time consuming. Charter schools are just another way to track. And from what I hear from kindergarten teachers Common Core will do that early on. I am so happy my son, capable of above average college work in the sciences, went to school before all this nonsense. His reading ability in Kinder was limited. When the teacher wanted a child tested for Special Education, the parents just kept him out of school for another year. When he started school, he went to the top of the class. I recommend this strategy to all parents whose child will not score well in Kinder.
Fordham a day late and a dollar short. The K shift from play to academics was already well underway in the early ’90’s when my eldest entered K. I was advised (by the local K teacher) to hold my youngest back until he was 6-1/2. She helped me understand by explaining that K in the mid-’90’s was equivalent to 1st grade in earlier decades. It was good advice; he’d begun talking 2 yrs later than his elder brothers. The variable age of that sort of milestone (as well as when they get their front teeth, & many others) alone debunks the theme of the Fordham Institute writer.
The recent Bassok & Rorem study cited by Ochshorn makes clear that the current concern is broader: the ill effects of doubling down with NCLB & Common Core. The shift away from K play, deplorable as it may be, already happened. The shift to be concerned with now is focusing on 3rd-gr tested skills in K/1/2, with its accompanying minimizing of PE, science, soc stud, music, and art.
Not only does K need to be rolled back and re-thought. PreK has been part of the same trend. In the early ’90’s structured play was already beginning to be replaced by teacher-directed lessons & academically-oriented activity– to ‘make kids ready for K.’ As an enrichment teacher for all-day PreK’s daycares over the last dozen+ yrs, I can eyeball the trend by watching rug space give way to table-&-chair space. Even in early ’90’s you could see 1/3 rug at traditional 2-1/2 y.o. programs vs 90-10 rug at Montessori. At the opposite end, a new preK director at an employee daycare instituted ‘pre-reading’ circles for 2’s 4 yrs ago! She explained the move: she was following state guidelines in hopes of beef up enrollment w/gov-subsidized students…
Terrific points!–ones that I have been making for awhile at my own blog, ECE Policy Matters, and at Huffington Post, and wherever I can find a soapbox!
I worry, though, about the advice to ignore Pondiscio. He is not alone. And his ignorance and disdain for the expertise of early childhood educators is extremely dangerous. Those who do have the knowledge and experience must continue to make the case otherwise, those who haven’t a clue will continue to dominate the conversation at the policy tables. The evidence base couldn’t be more robust, and we know what works for children. If early childhood educators continue to accept the status quo, and don’t step up the plate, the repercussions for our young kids will be severe.
As I wrote in the post, the paper in question was published by Defending the Early Years (deyproject.org), which is working to identify, connect, and strengthen a growing group of early childhood activists. Find them, and point all early educators you know in their direction!
Daniel Willingham and E.D. Hirsch are the go-to guys for “reformers” who think they can justify denying the need for developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) with young children, promote direct instruction and mandate (Corporate) Core standards for all. Too bad few people have noticed that a cognitive scientist and an English professor are not exactly experts in child development or Early Childhood Education, though they would have you believe they are. They are yet more examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Susan, thanks for the great article! When I said to ignore Fordham, et al, I didn’t mean forget they exist but rather stop lending them legitimacy as education ‘experts’ because they are not experts. They are fools. I have a long history with them, going back to EDDRA, where I first met Diane and the late Gerry Bracey, many years ago. We’ve been having this discussion around standards for a long, long time now.
A car salesman has HIS car to sell. Information about competing cars is immaterial. Information about the car’s flaws is immaterial.
High stakes testing is analogous to a car The tech industry pays salesmen, politicians, tank “thinkers”, university researchers, astroturfers, etc., to sell high stakes testing.
A salesman will never agree that his product is bunk.
In stopping the products’ sale, trying to convince a salesman that he is wrong, is pointless. Feeling and expressing outrage at him, is cathartic but, pointless.
He has HIS car to sell.
Points that do the most damage to the products’ image, matched with the best target audience, can be an effective strategy.
A panel truck or bus, with no glitz, driven by real people, passing out information, is cheaper than traditional media advertising and the tech industry’s current campaign.
Nuns on a Bus had a lot of impact with little money spent.
You can listen to Robert Pondiscio, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, and a reading specialist talk about the DEY report on KQED’s Forum program from Friday, January 30. The host is Mina Kim, who does a pretty good job of moderating.
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201501300900
From what I remember of the broadcast . . .
Pondiscio almost sounds reasonable at times, but there’s no question he doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about. What’s more, he doesn’t care. Toward the end of the segment, he says something like, Instead of worrying about who wrote the standards, we should worry about whether the students can attain them. To me, that’s ridiculous on its face. But he apparently doesn’t want decades of research and teacher experience in early childhood education to interfere with the so-called reform agenda he’s being paid to promote.
Nancy Carlsson-Paige gives a clear and unstinting critique of both the “standards” and the way they were created. The reading specialist, Collen Rau, is more inclined to accept them but gives practical reasons why they’re likely to be a problem, especially in the way many schools will use them. Although they appeared to agree on some points, as I remember, her views didn’t exactly square with Pondiscio’s. She was adamant that kids be treated as individuals, that they can’t be standardized, and that as such they will progress at different rates. Teaching intended to force them to “catch up” is likely to backfire. (I hope I’m representing her accurately–no time right now to listen again–but I do recommend the broadcast it to anyone who’s interested in the subject!)
Just completed the hour long radio interview and found it amazing how Pondiscio has pat answers, well rehearsed, and full of fluff!
He claims to be a highly qualified elementary level teacher at the MEd level (after 20 yrs of Journalism) without having had coursework in how to teach reading – blaming teacher ed programs. All of them, no doubt.
Robert, most likely you were certified under some alternative certification program, typically with much less rigor and content. Since you work with poor children who often exhibit reading difficulties, it is your professional responsibility to take the coursework necessary to teach those kids – especially READING, and not rely on 2nd rate certification. Most teachers go back to universities and add to their expertise. No, not you! You rise to the level of a national EdEggspurt and tell RealTeachers what and how to teach.
As a teacher and teacher trainer, I also find it rather difficult to listen to your spoken words riddled with continuous disfluency and stammer. This can impact students’ learning negatively in the classroom. You may want to get some professional assistance.
The content covered by the other Reading experts was right on target and the education of our children should be addressed by such educators. Not by those who play one on the radio.
To receive money from Gates/Walton et.al., groups and individuals are performing the marketing functions of branding, promotional communication and sales, for the product
” Common Core”, which has the property protections of copyrighted material. When Microsoft announced a deal with Pearson to develop curriculum for Common Core, there ceased to be any differentiation between those purporting unbiased expertise and those selling a profitable product.
As such, there’s an ethical obligation for Fordham, the PTA, unions, NCSS, E4E and, all groups endorsing Common Core, to disclose, at the beginning of their communications, their financial interest.
Gates failed in the most important marketing strategy, he didn’t produce what the customer wanted, not parents, not students, not employers, not professionals who use the product, not taxpayers and, not politicians. Gates produced the product he wanted to sell.
Gates produced the product he wanted to sell, just like Henry Ford II, produced the Edsel.
Pondiscio may be off-base with respect to kindergarten (I’m agnostic on this issue), but that doesn’t mean one should write-off everything he says. We all make errors. I find much of his (and Hirsch’s and Willingham’s) writing very convincing. I doubt many of their critics here have actually read any of their books. Susan, have you read Hirsch’s The Knowledge Deficit? It convinced me that there is one important insight about literacy development that is not being taught in our ed schools and professional development sessions–to wit, that systematically building a knowledge base is essential for true literacy. Unlike a lot of reformers, these men are smart, sincere and thoughtful –and I might add, civil –contributors to our national dialogue about education.
Ah, even the ‘tone’ argument! If you criticize me and the things I say and the people I like, no matter what they may say, do, and profit mightily from, then you are not smart, you are insincere, and you are uncivil. Good to know!
I’ve read all their work. I’ve argued and dialogued and disagreed with all of them for nigh on 20 years now, give or take a few years.
Hirsch’s arguments are racist, classist, and do nothing to change the rich white male hegemony; rather he claims that those outside the desired demographics can sneak in with secret handshakes and passwords that he calls cultural knowledge. Turning black and brown children into articulate white cultural literates isn’t my cup of tea, I’m afraid. I find his theories lacking in many ways and now that he has paired himself with the direct instruction crews I am completely opposed to his approaches. I will give him credit in being one of the first outsiders, with no knowledge whatsoever about teaching and learning outside of the context of his college English classes, who boldly walked in the door and told the entire educational field that he knew more than they did, he had the answers to their most perplexing problems, and they should all sit down and listen to his wise and thoughtful pontifications just because.
Pondiscio suffers from conservative rightwing hubris more than anything. Some of his ideas have merit but he comes across as being incapable of even thinking that something he believes might be wrong or that there might be something even better out there. He is deaf to his critics and those he disagrees with. Very civil and polite though, and that’s what counts to many.
Gillingham simply doesn’t interest me at all.
How I wish dear old Gerry Bracey were still alive and writing his devastatingly polite and civil critiques of the Fordham Foundation crew! He could blow down their houses of cards without even winding himself.
“Hirsch’s arguments are racist, classist, and do nothing to change the rich white male hegemony;”
If Hirsch is racist, why do Harvard Professors Henry Louis Gates and Orlando Patterson endorse his ideas and the Core Knowledge curriculum? Why did the late William Raspberry, columnist for the Washington Post, also endorse Hirsch’s ideas as the best way to educate poor black kids?
All three of those men are/were African-Americans, a fact which you didn’t know before now. Try actually being informed before branding someone a racist.
Ponderosa ~
What do you mean, institutions and educators are not systematically building a knowledge base? I’ve heard it all! Teachers have been doing this forever! FOREVER!
What these so-called reformers want us to believe is that their handpicked bits of knowledge, parceled out pellet by pellet to our students, preferably, on the same day at the same time, and tested at the end of each lesson to post the data. Please!!!
Dictating every kernel of facts, collected facts, zillions of facts, non-fiction ONLY for more facts, is the only way to condition our children for the life THEY want our children to lead.
Yes, poor children have many experiential and skill deficits, but now we make sure that THEY know how far behind they are in comparison to rich kids. We immediately DIBBLE and data dive to fill in every splinter skill, from minute 1.
None of these ego driven, ego addicted, money mongers would ever think about educating their own children this way. They are the chosen ones who get to explore, delve into, ponder, wonder, become interested in, become experts in all-things children…while poor children are sitting behind CC plexiglas and work for banana pellets.
Gates’ assembly line educational industrialization of OUR children, and we are letting HIM do it.
What is wrong with us?
We know what’s wrong with this picture…clear as a bell!
It’s bad enough for teachers to be accused of being “common and ordinary” by an industrial psychologist, and that so many politicians evidently assume this about us as well, but now other educators are accusing teachers of forming opinions about curriculum without reading anything about it?
My guess is that it’s the teachers with limited training and experience, such as TFAers and Teaching Fellows, and those with their own severe knowledge deficits in child development and the content areas, who think an English professor is qualified to tell them what to teach every child in every discipline, including Math, Science and Social Studies, in all grades from P-8.
The rest of us already know what to teach children. We prefer to use the standards from specialized professional associations that were written by genuine experts in the field as guidelines, over being dictated to do lists that are not developmentally appropriate and/or are irrelevant to the populations we serve which were created by out-of-field know-it-alls like E.D Hirsch, David Coleman et al.
Is the term “developmentally appropriate” ever used in a way that actually strengthens and boosts what is taught to kids? I only see it being used as a reason to water things down, to teach less, etc. But if there is such a thing as “developmentally appropriate,” I’d expect (given how educational outcomes differ so widely) that in many cases, schools and teachers should be criticized for NOT teaching as much grammar, spelling, literacy, math, etc., as kids are developmentally able to handle.
It seems as inappropriate to teach too little as to teach too much (perhaps more so). So why don’t we see the “developmentally appropriate” crowd ever saying, “Look at this school still using picture books for kids who should really be reading short chapter books by their age–it is appalling that the schools haven’t managed, despite years of instruction, to teach something as basic as that.”
When I want to know more about the practices in any given field, including in different areas of education, I look into what the international and national specialized professional associations (SPAs) have to say, since they are the experts who create standards for their fields based on research.
The SPA for Early Childhood Education in the US is the National Association for the Education of Young Children and they have many resources about developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) on their website. My time is way too valuable to waste on know-nothing critics and haters, so look it up yourself: http://www.naeyc.org/DAP
None of that answers my question, and I don’t have time to deal with people so stupid as to use the word “hater” just because I’m not sure why it’s a bad idea to teach poor 5-year-olds the alphabet in school the same way that richer parents already do by age 3 at home.
WT, I have devoted the last 20+ years of my life to teaching poor children of color how to read, write, do math, science, and social studies. What are your credentials?
I watched this year as my state and district did away with recess for these poor children because their test scores are not up to whatever political cut score happens to be floating around this week.
Poor children, like rich and middle class children, need to run, play, scream, laugh, and learn to be with each other. All of the reforms that you claim sound so damn reasonable rob these precious children of their childhoods. All in the name of test scores and unproven, untrue beliefs in how children should learn and be taught, cruel and unusual things that you keep cheering for in your insipid posts.
You throw straw man arguments and false dichotomies into every post you make. There never has been and never will be an experienced ECE teacher that has or will argue against teaching the alphabet or how to read to poor children. We argue against prison-like conditions straight from Gradgrind in Dickens that make the lives of these children unbearable.
Your postings show hostility, ignorance, obstinance, and a tendency to mansplain that is insulting and unwanted. Learn some humility and respect for others and then you won’t be defended against so hotly.
I believe your heart is in the right place but your personality gets in your way.
A link to the joint statement of the International Reading Association and the National Association for the Education of Young Children on “Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children” was provided to you a couple days ago here https://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/PSREAD98.PDF yet you have persisted in passing along incorrect information which mischaracterizes and condemns my profession, such as the silly notion that kids are not taught the alphabet in ECE classes that are DAP. Those kinds of assumptions sound like disdain for ECE teachers based on personal bias to me, certainly not educated critiques.
If you had bothered to do any leg work before issuing baseless proclamations about what goes on in ECE classrooms, such as by reading the documents linked to here, you would know that intentional teaching in order to attain challenging but achievable goals is integral to ECE classes that are based on DAP principles. Not only is the alphabet taught, but phonological awareness, letter-sound correspondences and sight words are often taught to children in PreK onward, regardless of their economic background. (Yes, that includes classes with low income students, such as in the Head Start programs where I have worked.)
In DAP Kindergarten and PreK classrooms, children are taught emergent literacy skills in language-rich and print-rich environments. They are taught primarily within meaningful contexts, as they occur naturally, such as during children’s play and interactions, as well as arranged by the teacher, such as through daily messages and during read-alouds. ECE teachers are trained to include a literacy component in every activity –as I was taught in my ECE Teacher Ed program decades ago and as I have continued to train teachers to do as a Teacher Educator myself. Young children in DAP classes are not taught through drilling because that is stressful to them and it undermines motivation. That is also unnecessary when we have so many effective methods that promote the joy of learning. Nuff said.
“against prison-like conditions straight from Gradgrind in Dickens”
Good for you. I agree. But no one anywhere is arguing for that. And it certainly isn’t what is contemplated by Common Core. If anyone ever bothers to read or refer to the actual kindergarten standards, they include such things as “print most upper and lower case letters” (not even all!), or “With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.”
I believe teachers are much more competent than you suggest — I think that most teachers are creative professionals who should have no problem teaching to these standards (and probably were already doing so) in a fun and interesting way, while still allowing plenty of time for fun and play. I do NOT agree with your cynical view that teachers are so hopelessly incompetent that when they think of getting kids to print their letters and learn how to tell an oral story, they see no alternative but to be a Gradgrind.
I’ve been teaching the Common Core 1st grade standards for 3+ years now so I am more than familiar with what they say and we continually compare the K and grade 2 standards with ours to align what we teach.
Again, you are obstinately ignoring what actual teachers in classrooms are saying is happening: CCSS combined with RTTT and its VAM component and ALEC legislation designed to destroy teacher unions have all combined to produce a horrible disaster in ECE classrooms.
Desperate districts have purchased tons of CCSS drill and kill curriculum materials and forced teachers away from DAP in order to ‘prepare’ for the coming storm of PARC and Smarter Balanced CCSS assessments. That is why recess is gone and in our poorest schools with the lowest school ‘grades’ art and music have also been replaced by test prep curriculum.
The theoretical Common Core State Standards do not exist in a vacuum and they are highly influenced by Race to the Top, Value Added Measures, School Grades, ALEC legislation, and ill-informed and, more often than not, ill-intentioned ‘advisors/donors’ who buy political influence and promote horrible teaching practices in the name of their ideology. This is happening all over the country, even in ‘union strongholds’ like MA, NY, CT, and NJ, and all through the South, especially in republican-controlled states where it is accelerating at warp speed.
Your defenses are hollow and without merit.
As to ‘creative’ teachers — they will soon be fired during one of the many Danielson checklist and/or Marzano checklist walkthroughs and observations. Play is taboo and not allowed under any VAM system. Children must be actively engaged in the production of CCSS knowledge at all times or you get marked down.
You are far, far from the reality of today’s classrooms.
Unnamed ECE Professional: If you argue against a set of kindergarten standards without naming a single specific objection, and one of the main things in those standards is teaching kids to print letters, then it is reasonable to assume that you are against teaching kids to print letters.
Perhaps it would help if commenters learned how to distinguish between 1) what the Common Core kindergarten standards actually say, and 2) a bad teaching practice that they have seen from someone who was totally incompetent (hopefully unlike most teachers). Those two things are not the same at all. Being against bad teaching practices doesn’t mean you have to be against a standard that says teach kids to print letters.
WT,
I think you are arguing against a straw man. The DEY report does not say that children should not read before or during the kindergarten year. It says that children learn to read at different ages and times. Some start kindergarten already reading. Some learn to read in kindergarten. Some in first grade. There is a range of what is normal. The CCSS say that children in kindergarten should learn to read. That is what ECE professionals object to. And yes, it does matter that there was no one on the CC writing groups that had ever taught little children. Expert opinion matters in education as in medicine or law.
Stop projecting your lack of reading onto others, WT. As educators, we actually do read, including the Common Core.
As indicated in the original posting and links provided there, the issue is that the CC standards require Kindergartners to read with purpose and understanding. That’s a pushed down curriculum which had been in 1st and 2nd grade for decades, until non-educators were given the power to implement “creative disruption” in our nation’s schools. THIS is the issue that was raised, not learning letters, and because reading is associated with high stakes testing, the result that you keep ignoring which many have observed and reported are classrooms where play and recess have been eliminated and replaced with academic drilling.
That’s not due to the competencies of teachers, who no longer have autonomy in their own classrooms. It’s because of expectations and requirements from the federal government on down to school principals. Many administrators have demanded a regimented schedule in Kindergarten and ordered the removal of play equipment, because those kids are now tested locally in a lot of areas and, with teacher evaluations tied to student test scores, people’s jobs are on the line. Kindergarten is now all about drill and kill and it is indeed joyless. A lot of us have seen what that looks like and it’s not pretty (except to those aiming to create armies of compliant soldiers and low wage Walmart workers.)
It’s time to walk away from and ignore WT. He/she continues to attempt to silence the voices of experience coming from actual classrooms.
This commenter clearly does not want to let teachers have their voices but would rather argue in favor of CCSS no matter what the reality on the ground.
An ideologue troll. Something new on the Intertubes, eh? LOL
Planned ignoring of WT’s nonsense is a great idea, Chris. Since that is exactly what WT has been doing to professionals here, time for “shoe on the other foot.”
Still waiting for anyone to give me a logical explanation that ties 1) what is actually in Common Core kindergarten standards, with 2) being a Gradgrind.
I continue to think that educators are not as hopelessly incompetent as you claim, and that expecting them to do something as basicas teach kindergarteners to read shouldn’t have the effect of making them all freak out as if such a thing had never been done before.
WT, you might try listening to the teachers on this blog who teach kindergarten and first grade and are implementing the CC standards.
If any of them could quote the CC standards and explain what is actually wrong with the standards (as opposed to what is wrong with other irrelevant things), that would be a start.
WT,
You reveal your intent—which is to spread conflict and confusion while pretending that no one knows what they are talking about.
The Common Core Crap has been studied, compared and dissected too many times to count, and that has been mentioned in posts and comments on Diane’s Blog many times with links to the original sources.
For instance, there is a documentary that goes into the history of the Common Core that reveals the crap was there from the start. There have also been books written about the flawed Common Core crap and the politics and corporate greed behind it.
As for books, let’s start with this one for you to read that has more than 100 Amazon customer reviews and a 4.6 star average.
The books description:
“A former Common Core insider and current public school teacher, Brad McQueen, delivers a compelling firsthand account of coming face to face with the inner workings of the Common Core. When he discovers what it has in store for our children’s minds and our country’s exceptionalism, he decides to work towards the destruction of the Common Core beast.
“Written in a concise, easy-to-read style, The Cult of Common Core will inform you, alarm you, but it will also arm you with the necessary facts to intelligently and forcefully fight for your children and your country before school boards or arrogant politicians who voted it into your life. Using humor, and plain, mostly acronym-free language, Brad takes you with him to Chicago as he works with the Common Core high command. Brad takes you through a history of the Common Core and identifies all the key players, as well as warns you of the Common Core’s true intentions for your child and our education delivery system.
“Brad takes down each of the Common Core’s talking points on one by one. Common Core is more “rigorous”?….no. Common Core has overwhelming support of teachers?…..no. Common Core was a “state-led” initiative?….no. The federal government has no role in Common Core?….hell no. Brad also details the intimidation from his State Department of Education as his anti-Common Core message became public.
“Just as we are moving from theory to implementation with Obamacare and discovering its true goals with healthcare, so too shall America begin discovering Common Core’s true goals for education and your child’s mind.
“Don’t be on the sidelines in the fight for your children’s minds and our country’s exceptionalism!”
There are also other books to consider that reveal the Common Core Crap for what it really is:
This is just a sample. I dare you to watch the documentary and then read your way through these books and educate yourself on the Common Core Crap.
People who come here to proselytize have no intention of listening to educators or of reading the facts. The issues have been spelled out repeatedly by many here and in a lot of resources linked to above. That includes the primary document from DEY from which this whole discussion stems, “Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose” provided above: http://www.slc.edu/cdi/media/pdf/ReadinginKindergartenreport.pdf
A lot of research is cited in that paper and, as stated there, as well as by others here, the problem is the Common Core standard which states that Kindergartners are to “read with purpose and understanding.” Anyone who trivializes the process of learning how to read and characterizes teaching reading to 5 year olds as “basic” is clearly clueless about the complex cognitive processes involved in reading, the developmental levels and needs of young children or of what Kindergarten is like.
Typically, Kindergarten teachers work alone, without an assistant, with as many as 30+ kids in a classroom where there is often a six year spread in development, with children functioning at developmental levels ranging from 3 to 8 years of age. Many kids have never been away from home or in group care before, and they are frequently in half day Kindergarten programs.
It’s easy for non-educators to cavalierly claim it to be “basic” to get 30 children functioning at widely diverse developmental levels on the same page on the same day of their lives, in their first year of formal schooling, when they have many diverse needs that must be addressed. However, the reality is that this spread in development is an indicator that a lot of children are just not ready to read yet and they should not be pressured to do so just because some non-educator “reformers” and their billionaire sponsors decided they should.
Do these people force their own kids to sit on the toilet for hours when they don’t have to go, even though it will be much easier for the children later on when they are ready, or is pressuring kids just necessary for other people’s children, especially poor kids of color?
Nice try, Lloyd, but I wasn’t looking for ignorant bile that not-so-subtly compares Obama to Nazis (the first book you recommended, which has the subtitle “Obama’s Final Solution”).
Seems to me that when the Common Core has enemies on the far right (who think Common Core is a progressive curriculum that goes against God) and enemies on the left (who think Common Core is the enemy of the Play-do and puppets that constitute good progressive education), the truth is probably much more mundane and middle-ground.
And I continue to note that no one can specify why, exactly, it’s bad for kindergarteners to learn to write their letters, or how to tell a story, or anything that is actually in the standards.
WT,
You ran up your flag and your biased arrogance is visible for anyone to see. To dismiss that many books and make no mention of the video in a matter of minutes tells me enough about who you are to know that engaging with you is future and a waste of time.
Elder Wise — you linked to a document that actually discusses some of the standards, complete with direct quotations. This is progress. But the document is quite inflammatory and ill-supported. For example, page 6 says this about a few of the standards:
“there is no evidence that mastering these standards in kindergarten rather than in first grade brings lasting gains. To achieve them usually calls for long hours of drill and worksheets”
There is also no evidence that mastering these standards in kindergarten is a bad idea, or that it is harmful, let alone that the only way to master them is “long hours of drill and worksheets.” Perhaps the authors should be directing their attention at any teacher or principal who is so inept as to think that “long hours of drill and worksheets” are the only way to get kindergarteners to know anything.
WT, A link to that article has been sitting at the top of the page in the original post since day one. And, once again, you are just ignoring whatever you don’t want to hear, such as this on page 4:
“Rebecca Marcon found negative effects of overly-directed preschool instruction on later school performance in a study of three different curricula, described as either “academically oriented” or “child-initiated.” By third grade, her group of 343 students — 96% African American with 75% of the children qualifying for subsidized school lunch — displayed few differences in academic achievement programs. After six years of school, however, students who had been in the groups that were “more academically directed earned significantly lower grades compared to children who had attended child-initiated preschool classes. Children’s later school success appears to have been enhanced by more active, child-initiated early learning experiences.””
Because Kindergartners are now required to read, we are seeing a domino effect, with the pushed down academic curriculum evident in many preschools across the country as well. It’s naive to think that a national mandate that all children in Kindergarten be reading “with purpose and understanding” would not result in the same kinds of drill for skill activities for younger children that are used to get older kids to show less variability and meet academic demands. It should be expected that school leaders would buy workbooks, flash cards and test prep materials for Kindergartners, to comply with standards that are not optional, especially when people’s livelihoods are at stake.
If you and your ilk want to force your own babies to ride a two wheel bike before their feet can reach the peddles, just because some strangers said so, even though they know nothing about child development, learning or the needs of your children, that’s your prerogative, but leave other people’s children alone and let them develop at their own rates.
WT’s argument might carry more weight, if the Gates children attended a school with Common Core testing, curriculum and standards.
Spending an estimated $1.5-$2 bil., for a great advancement plan, aimed at the children of the poor and middle class, while allowing his corporation to accumulate $76.4 bil. offshore, to avoid taxes, undercuts anything Gates says about public education. And, that’s without mentioning his opportunity to profit from Microsoft’s development of CC$$ curriculum,
Looking at the Common Core standards for Kindergarten, I can see why Ochshorn objects Pondiscio’s post about the standards being perfectly suitable for young children. The standards are overwhelming upon glance and I think they would stress out both teachers and parents. How much do parents need to formally teach their children before sending them off to kindergarten? As mentioned in the post, each child develops differently, making it very difficult to quantify his/her developmental stages and academic progress.
With that said, I don’t necessarily think that academics should be pushed off as late as possible for young children. Although parents don’t need to formally instruct their kids, children do benefit from being read to, practicing math skills, and building their knowledge of language. According to Barnett (1995), early childhood care and education programs can produce long-term cognitive and academic benefits for disadvantaged children. These programs aren’t particularly focused on academics and include things like home visits, child-directed play, and tutoring. Even informal, day-care focused programs like these can benefit a child as they begin their learning journey as a student.
I agree that children benefit mostly from an integration of classroom routines and play-based pedagogical approaches (Deluca & Hughes, 2014). Although standards may provide a “goal” for education, they also limit the student and teacher in the classroom. Early childhood education should focus on the student, through a “whole-child teaching approach” that utilizes developmentally appropriate activities. These play-based pedagogies also provide opportunities for teachers to observe students’ growth as they learn not only “academic material” but about interacting with peers and learning about the social world around them.
Barnett, W. S. (1995). Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Programs on Cognitive and School Outcomes.
Deluca, C. & Hughes, S. (2014). Assessment in Early Primary Education: An Empirical Study of Five School Contexts.
Hirsch’s product, the copyrighted Core Knowledge, lists in the 2013 annual report, as the first funder, Chester Finn (Stanford Hoover Institute). John M. Olin’s “philanthropy” appears to have degrees of separation from another Core funder, the Dillon Foundation. Willingham is on Core’s Board of Trustees.
I was reviewing the 2010 – 2012 Core Knowledge Foundation 990s at Guide Star the other day and Finn is also listed as a trustee. I was surprised to see that it looks like Finn replaced Diane in that role (especially since it was so recent).
Teacher Ed
None of us foresaw the educational devastation wrought by the hedge funds and the tech industry’s self-appointed saviors.
With hope, you are not one of the disingenuous who compare- the vast Koch spending, to the comparatively, paltry Soros spending,…. villainthropies, driven for profits, to philanthropies working to help the vulnerable,….. salesmen, hawking Common Core, to selfless advocates of middle class and poor children,…. oligarch exploitation to free enterprise,…. the corporate speech of Citizen’s United to democracy?
Money is a major component, but this is also about ideology and power. I’ve been working in education since the 60s and I have long seen Hirsch as a “self-appointed savior” and, in recent years, integral to the Common Core impetus, as well as homeschooling. I see nothing “self-less” about him profiting from all of his books with lists of what he decided every child from P-8 should learn, as if he is an authority on children, learning and all disciplines when he is an English professor. I did not agree with his testimonies against DAP in the 90s and I still disagree with him and his lists. I also disagreed with much of what Diane wrote in the past.
No one has yet managed to give the slightest reason or evidence to disagree with Robert Pondiscio’s eminently reasonable claim here:
“Nothing in Common Core—not one blessed thing—precludes schools and teachers from creating safe, warm, nurturing classrooms that are play-based, engaging, and cognitively enriching. If teachers are turning their kindergarten classrooms into joyless grinding mills and claiming they are forced to do so under Common Core (as the report’s authors allege), something has clearly gone wrong. Common Core demands no such thing.”
I wonder if WT appeared here soon after TE was blocked by Diane. Is WT a sock puppet for TE?
I’ve been thinking the same exact thing, Lloyd. I wonder if Diane would be able to find that out.
WT has an anonymous email address (someoneiswrong@gmail.com) so I can’t identify him. A troll.
Diane — I also use an “anonymous” email address, partly out of habit, and partly because of a generalized fear about how the information I type into Web forms will be used. I generally do not expect that blog administrators will intentionally post my email address or other information on their blogs, but I suppose that was naive. What is your policy on when you will disclose the email addresses of commenters? I, and perhaps others, would appreciate the guidance.
I wouldn’t recommencement publishing anyone’s e-mail address or IP number for their computer. I wouldn’t’ even ask Diane to reveal any. In fact, every time I leave a comment, I also leave the IP address for the computer I’m using right now.
But there is no reason, out of curiosity, that Diane couldn’t ping IP numbers of suspected trolls to see where they might be located. Pinging an IP number is not an invasion of privacy because the information seldom if ever reveals an actual physical address unless they have they own server and don’t go through a provider, but 85% of the time you will get within 25 miles of the location.
Diane, can you give me any assurances that you won’t publish any commenters’ email addresses again?
It’s possible. Comments left on WordPress Blogs come with their IP addresses and most providers are within 25 miles of where the comment came from.
There are sties that allow you to pink an IP address for free to find out the location within about 25 miles of the device. Ever computer comes with its own unique IP address. It isn’t the same as a mailing address.
For instance, if the same person had three devices: laptop, desktop, tablet and used each for one of the three two letter anonymous ID’s known as sock puppets, it would appear that they are all different people, but most people don’t pay extra for the sort of service that hides location and about 85% of IP addresses will identify the area that the message was sent from.
I had a troll pestering me once and his messages were all coming from four different IP addressees but all in the same county around one small city in eastern Canada close to the Atlantic. I even asked him why he was moving around sending his hate mail to me. Canada has harsh laws for internet bullies so I told him to stop or I’d share his IP addresses with the authorities in Canada. I suspected he might have been bulling other people through is IP addresses. He stopped.
I use an anonymous email address, too, because I don’t have tenure and I could be readily fired for speaking my mind. However, I don’t consider it a violation of my privacy if that email account is shared publicly BECAUSE it’s anonymous.
I understand. If I were still teaching, I might want to be anonymous too. But I’m not. And because of my books, all of my blogs are linked to my real name. I have thought of setting up an anonymous sock puppet account for comments on other forums and Blogs, because there have been times that being open about my identity has backfired on me when anonymous trolls have punished me for my opinions by attacking me work.
Sometimes, all you need is one anonymous email address to find someone, because things lead to other things, as your example of TE’s college demonstrates.
If Diane wants to ping him, I don’t mind sharing that I figured out long time ago that TE is in KS, based on info that he shared on a few occasions about his college. Google searches indicated they were direct quotes from the catalog at the university where he teaches.
Flerp! I understand your concerns because my brother has had them as well, ever since he became a lawyer in a specialty area where other practicing attorneys have been murdered. Except that I didn’t find TE from his email, and I also don’t know his name. I suppose that someone more interested and determined could probably pursue it further and ultimately identify him personally though, which is why I didn’t mention his city.
It takes a determined obsession to attempt to track down an anonymous troll. As for me, I just don’t have the time to throw away. It’s best to ignore the trolls and move on. In Florida, there was a woman who actually took an anonymous Troll to court for harassing her on-line, and after several years and about a quarter million dollars she won in court, and the judge ruled in her favor to discover who it was that was tormenting her.
All of the attention she gained from her victory resulted in a flock of anonymous trolls showing up to torment her on the internet. She won but she also lost.
Trolls are mostly narcissists and sociopaths who are mentally ill. There have been a number of studies of this behavior on-line and the studies discovered that these Trolls actually get high—a rush similar to an orgasm—from being a Troll. If you allow yourself to be sucked into a debate with one and you stay in the often one sided debate where the Troll calls all the shots as the judge, jury, executioner and mob, you will lose because you can’t win. An impartial audience watching one of this one-sided debates might vote in your favor but the Troll will almost always find you wrong no matter what.
There is a site for debating people who are willing to follow rules and it may be found at Debate.org
Debate.org is a free online community where intelligent minds from around the world come to debate online and read the opinions of others. Research today’s most controversial debate topics and cast your vote on our opinion polls.
http://www.debate.org/
I wonder if any Trolls like TE have ever been willing to move a debate to that site and continue a discussion following the rules on Debate.org where there would be an audience of judges watching and then voting. I don’t think Debate.org would be a supportive battle ground for a Troll.
Interesting to see so much talk of “trolls,” coming from a guy who posts of his admiration for a book comparing Obama to Hitler.
WT, some people on this blog don’t use their real name for fear they will be fired. What is your reason for anonymity?
WT,
Trolls—just like corporate education reformers—often twist and put words in other people’s mouths.
Please provide proof that I wrote that I “ADMIRED” any of the books I listed as a possible source of information for you to educate yourself and answer your own question.
What about the video? Did you watch it? I’ve watched that video, and I recommend it. I even admire the producers.
I don’t want employers to be able to Google my real name. Same as most other commenters here, I suppose. Now can we stick to substance? Debates are better that way, and I think Dr. Ravitch of all people might appreciate the distastefulness of a muckraking inquiry into someone’s personal life.
WT, I am sorry but I don’t understand your point about a “muckraking inquiry into someone’s personal life.” Was that an insinuation? I have nothing to hide. I do not go into anyone’s personal life. I don’t expect others to. That’s called civility. There was a nasty undertone to your comment that I don’t appreciate as buried within it is an implicit insult.
WT,
For your information, pinging an IP address does not invade anyone’s privacy. It doesn’t reveal your real name, your real street address, your telephone numbers, your SS number, where you work, etc. All pinging an IP address does is possibly identify the general location where a comment originated and even then there is only an 85% chance of that being accurate. If pinging an IP address is accurate, all it does is get you to within about 25 miles of where the comment originated—pinging an IP address offers a Blog host the ability to possibly uncover anonymous Trolls who use sock puppets to create multiple accounts using different anonymous IDs.
Pinging an IP address is not against the law. It is not stalking anyone, because there’s still no way to ID who that person actually is. But there is an 85% chance of identifying the general location of where that person lives within a 625 square mile area and discovering if that person uses anonymous sock puppet accounts.
I dunno who he is. But all I know for sure is he’s jeopardizing his status here for his potentially insulting remark through an anonymous IP–which is common among apologists. These kind of people soon find no place but an oily snake pit where such kind of people gather.
What I said was not remotely an insult — quite the opposite. I said that Dr. Ravitch has suffered through arguments where people insult her and try to make it personal, rather than sticking to substance. By the same token, I would appreciate it if people could stick to the substance rather than worry their heads about who I am, as if that matters.
WT
Substance is not asking questions and expecting someone to spend their valuable time answering them to WT’s satisfaction. Substance is engaging in discussion, making points and supporting those points with valid facts/evidence.
For instance, I don’t have the time to chase after answers for WT’s question—I learned that people who pop questions like Tums usually have nothing to share but questions and rejections. If you have a question, find the answer and then post it with links and let others respond to the evidence WT found that supports WT’s thinking.
Well, this is all very interesting, but it just goes to show that no one can refute the statement I quoted. If anyone could refute it, they wouldn’t need to waste time speculating about who I am. (Look up the definition of “ad hominem” — the identity of the person making an argument doesn’t validate or refute the argument itself.)
“Nothing in CC precludes nurturing…. classrooms”. The practice of CC$$ involves the triad, standards, curriculum and testing. Tech oligarchs “invested $2 billion in research and data systems to improve student achievement.” Altruistically, why didn’t they promote the Massachusetts standards, which are considered the best in the nation? It would have been a lot cheaper, but then. the copyright issues might have been dicey in terms of the protection of profits in developing curriculum.
The Director of the Ohio Council on Social Studies admits teachers asked for mandated testing to assure social studies would be in the curriculum, Teachers were teaching to the high stakes testing, in math and English, which left the other subjects, out.
The law of unintended consequences? There’s a bridge in Florida for sale….
Also, as many other commenters would probably agree (whatever their political disposition), there are lots of legitimate reasons to be anonymous online (one’s employer and so forth). Trying to out someone just because you can’t answer their arguments is dirty.
Then, you are the one to be counted out in your logic.
Begone.
That’s the best you’ve got, WT? Plugging away with the same script, denying the truth when it has, in fact, been told repeatedly, and continuing to promote Pondiscio’s PR tricks, are getting you nowhere fast. There is already a very long and clear record of evidence here, for all to see, which is contrary to your bogus assertions. You have only succeeded in making yourself look like an ignorant lackey.
It’s great that we keep seeing these kinds of desperate efforts from faux “reformers” who are trying to prevent their house of cards from falling –way too little, too late, before the inevitable implosion!
“Something has clearly gone wrong here”. The mandate for internment of Americans, of Japanese descent, during WWII, did not “demand” that their real estate, end up in the hands of profit seekers, it just happened.
Lloyd,
WT sounds just like TE, MP & RP from FI.
Same relentless circular repetition and ignorant questioning of those who know little, just enough to be pesky biting nats. Their tactics and continued blog threads gives them more information shared by RealEducators.
I am convinced that MP & RP at FI get their education from Twitter, since they have little to none.
Let’s stop swatting these pesky nats. RAID!!!
Only someone like TE would find credibility in a teaching fellow that did a 5 year stint as a middle school teacher in a charter school who is trying to pass himself off as someone who knows about practices in Early Childhood Education.
Of course, this is happening because, as already mentioned, teachers do not have autonomy in their classrooms. The joke is that if anyone would know the truth to this, it’s charter school teachers, since they are typically given scripted curricula that is heavily loaded with drill and kill and they are not permitted to veer off script or be creative –and they’re closely monitored for fidelity. Coming from the charter world, Pondiscio would know this very well.
I recently discovered one exception though. Apparently, charter teachers may infuse approved school practices like drilling and chanting into curriculum that is indicative of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP). I saw an example of this on youtube the other day. A TFAer teaching Kindergarten at a charter school took a truly wonderful DAP literacy curriculum that focuses on communication within meaningful contexts in building emergent literacy skills and she turned it into drilling, testing and chanting. Ugh. (And, poor babies, the college ready indoctrination begins very early there, because the word knowledge rhymes with college…)
College & Career ready is such a fluff phrase, especially when our nation has no real plan or vision of what we need now or 20 years from now.
We call everything an innovation, most of the time, it appears more like chaos – constant change, interruptions and not investing in methods or people long enough for ink to dry.
Chaos, wall-to-wall chaos! We have no idea which intervention works, because we are constantly dictated to by the BossMan!
The Reform movement would make for one hell of a B-Movie, if it were not so tragic.
Never been about educating children!
I am not a fuddy duddy, but I have enough experience to know that the infusion of 5week-wonder TFAtypes and BRIGHT not-trained administrators, must be part of the big picture of an employment agency for the Rich & almost famous. Sending little Susie to an urban school near her parents, saving the world one brown child at a time, going home to mom & dad who feed and do laundry for her, loans forgiven, and the world is wide open for her…No need to go to upper Mongolia and educate those little munchkins. The world is too dangerous. BTW, we live in the most dangerous country in the western world. Maybe, we owe TFAtypes a fruitful future because of their sacrifice in ‘those dangerous schools’?
What specifically is college and career ready? What careers for children with Moderate to Severe disabilities?Bagger at Kroger’s if they are lucky? Even these children are deprived of the proper education with CC. They are not receiving the curriculum of functional life skills necessary for the possibility of living in semi-assisted group homes.
Clemson Univ. is now offering college courses & college credits for these Mod – Severely disabled students by teaching them, you guessed it, functional life skills, the same skills special ed teachers used to teach. Now, mom & dad must pay high tuition costs for their adult child to finally get what they needed to be taught throughout K-12.
Arne would never know or care, these students live with family all their lives and parents worry about them every minute…one day they will not be there for them. Real Life! Wasting years of CC Crap on millions of SWD, ignoring their needs and skill levels, chasing an imaginary college/career…Insanity & harmful!
Arne & Co. ought to be brought up for charges of fraud!
FRAUD for harming millions of children and their teachers.
Agreed. Let’s stop swatting these pests who may all be the same person using sock puppets. Only Diane would know. Every comment left on a WordPress Blog comes with an IP address, and most IP addresses can be searched for free to determine location withing 25 miles of the computers, tablets or smart phones location. Of course, if the sock puppet is using a wireless internet connection from a coffee shop then the 25 miles would be near that location.
That way, Diane could determine of TE, MP & RP were all in the same state and/or city. It’s possible for this pest to use TE with a desktop, for instance, MP with a laptop and RP with a tablet so they all have different IP addresses for each device, but the location is much harder to hide.
➡️ RAID…….🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🔎💣🔜 👍
As schools become more standardized and stifling, more parents with the means to do so will turn to homeschooling. And that will result in more business for outfits like Khan Academy. In spite of the Kahn worship, this blog post makes a lot of sense to me:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/02/16/if-i-ran-the-school-things-would-be-different
Anyone who understands child development knows it’s simply not possible for all children to do and know the exact same things at the exact same age.
The average age at which children learn to read is 6-1/2 — 50% before and 50% after. Given the fact that child development cannot be accelerated, it’s clearly a mistake to require ALL children to leave kindergarten reading. Would we ask a 4-month-old to walk or a 10-year-old to possess the skills necessary to drive? Insisting that they succeed at such tasks would result in failure and frustration. The same can be said for insisting that every kindergartner meet the *90* literacy and math standards required by Common Core.
Children are born with a love of learning. But I hear stories from teachers and parents throughout the country about kindergartners who are already stressed-out, burned-out, and turned off to school. Sadly, it doesn’t surprise me anymore. When children are forced to do something — like reading — before they’re developmentally ready, we pretty much ensure they’ll come to loathe it.
Thanks so much for posting here, Rae!
Over the years, I have often shared your NAEYC articles and BAM Radio Network reports with my ECE students, especially those working in academically-oriented Preschool and Kindergarten classes, most of which were private until lately, who have submitted weekly lesson plans to me where no play whatsoever is scheduled.
The ones that have really left me shaking my head include a lot of daily “charting,” for kids as young as toddlers. These are frequently scheduled whole group sessions in that their programs promote, where the teacher writes words and sentences on chart paper for the class to observe. And don’t even get me started on the repetitive writing tasks I have observed that are required of Preschool and Kindergarten children in these programs. Then they wonder why kids don’t pay attention or act out.
OMG. In my experience, this has long been an issue in private for-profit preschools, but what an uphill battle we have on our hands now that it has spread to public education. As more private programs get public funds, including charters that want to add PreK, I think it is likely to become even worse.
Thank you for all that you do!
Thanks so much for your response! We most certainly have an uphill battle on our hands, but there is strength in numbers. We also have the passion and the will to keep fighting.
To that end, I’ve begun a new initiative that uses social media to call attention to all of the nonsense I come across. I hope you’ll share more of the stories like those in your response. You can find my initiative at http://raepica.com/wi.html.
Thanks for all that you do!
The one thing that I haven’t seen mentioned here is the physical ability of kindergarten aged children to a)sit still, b)focus on details of individual letters, c)hold a pencil correctly, d)move that pencil smoothly enough to make letters that others can read. Generally boys develop these skills at later ages than most girls. Expecting that children perform tasks that they are DEVELOPMENTALLY (here’s that word – it means according to their development) not able to do yields frustration and worse. This is one reason that people who know and understand children’s development should not have been excluded from the creation and adoption of the standards.
Five year olds are not smaller 10 year olds. For the most part, their muscles are not yet developed enough to do the sitting and writing demanded of misinformed “educators”. Crying, nightmares, upset stomachs, dread, and the like are more associated with going to kindergarten today than happy anticipation of a day of learning and playing. How sad.
Bravo, Susan, for writing this!
Yes, young children’s physical development is indeed very important, as is their emotional development and their social development. Maybe you missed it, but in one of my posts above, I emphasized that we address the whole child in ECE and I indicated that it is inadequate to rely on the opinions of cognitive scientists like Daniel Willingham, as “reformers” so often do, because cognitive development is not all that matters in young children’s development.
One of the most difficult things for me to watch in academically oriented ECE programs, which I have seen way too many times in my career, is young children being required to practice writing letters repeatedly, as in “Aa Aa Aa Aa…” on lined paper. It’s bad enough that drilling is used to teach this, but children’s physical maturity, emotional development and social needs are not even considered. Thus, wherever that occurs, it’s really important to look at what else is going on in the classroom.
For example, in a class in one all day program where I worked, this kind of drilled writing activity was required of at-risk preschoolers at various times of the day, including as soon as the children arrived in the classroom every morning. There were a lot of whole group lectures throughout the day, too, and, it turned out, even during the play times that teachers were required to include in their daily schedules each morning and afternoon, the teachers assigned children to centers, so kids never had any choices in that classroom. The class was highly regimented, included a lot of teacher led repetitive chanting, and it looked very much like what we are seeing in no-excuses military style charter schools, but I am talking about a class for low income 3 and 4 year old children of color!
Fortunately, this happened at a school which prevented that from continuing to occur, once administrators were informed of what was going on and the teacher was given guidance and chances to alter her practices (but refused to do so). However, not all school administrators are that conscientious or aware of the developmental needs of young children in each domain. This is one reason why I am so against allowing unregulated charter schools (which often have a lot of minimally trained TFAers and are eager to receive additional public funds and start their indoctrination early) to add PreK for our youngest and most vulnerable children to their programs.
Thanks so much, Ellen! Bravo to all who are weighing in on what I see as one of the most critical issues of our time. We need to keep the pressure on, and continue to make the case. Rae’s initiative http://raepica.com/wi.html and the work of Defending the Early Years (DEY Project), which is trying to strengthen the voices of early childhood educators give me so much hope. Onward!
Here’s the link to DEY Director Geralyn McLaughlin’s response to Robert Pondiscio at the Defending the Early Years blog: http://deyproject.org/2015/02/17/deys-director-responds/
I especially love how Geralyn dispenses with Pondiscio’s “poor and old piece of evidence.” I was so struck by the flimsiness of his argument, but there was so much to refute that I didn’t get around to it. So satisfying to see someone who prays at the altar of data and the evidence base hoisted on his own petard.
While some children will not learn how to read in kindergarten and others should not be forced to, there are some children who know how to read before entering kindergarten and their needs should be acknowledged as well. I had a very unfortunate discussion yesterday with a woman who is writing a book about kindergarten. She could not believe that my children love their G&T program. It clearly did not fit into her narrative of G&T programs as being joyless, academic mills. For some children academic work in kindergarten is appropriate. My children are excited and engaged whether learning at school or at home. What more could a parent ask for? That said, they attend a school which emphasizes learning as a fun activity and values the arts and physical activity. The real problem is schools with curriculum emphasizing rote learning with little downtime for the children.