The Thomas B. Fordham Institute –a conservative think tank in D.C. where I was a trustee for many years–is a staunch defender of the Common Core State Standards. It has received a lot of money from the Gates Foundation to evaluate the standards. I know my former colleagues, and I know they would not be swayed by money to change their views. Nonetheless, having evaluated them, the Institute now loudly defends them against all critics.
Today, a writer for the Institute criticized me because I said I was withholding judgment on the Common Core Standards until I see how they work in practice. I said two years ago that they should be field-tested before national adoption. The critique says I am wrong, that the standards needed no field-testing, and that they should be adopted as is without delay. We know enough already.
I don’t agree.
I wrote the other day that I was neither for them nor against them because they have never been given any field test. No district or school or state has ever given them a trial. I withhold judgment until I see how they work. TBF says that field testing is not necessary; field testing offers “false promise.” That is nonsense.
Apparently, among the cheerleaders for these untried standards, no one is allowed to remain on the sidelines.
I have worked on standard-setting efforts in several states–in California, where I helped to draft the history-social science standards, and also in Georgia and Texas.
This is what I learned: Standards are words on paper until they are implemented.
When the words on paper are brought to life in classrooms by real teachers teaching real students, we learn a lot. We find out that some expectations are too high for that grade; some expectations are too low. And some make no sense.
We learn what is developmentally appropriate. We learn what is realistic. We learn what works. Teachers know because they do the work of bringing the words to life. If the words don’t come to life, they know that too.
Any group of academics and experts and policymakers can sit around and write standards. But that doesn’t mean they will make sense in a classroom or in 10,000 classrooms or in 100,000 classrooms.
The Common Core Standards may raise achievement; they may lower achievement; they may have no effect on achievement. They may reduce achievement gaps; they may increase achievement gaps; they may have no effect on achievement gaps.
How will we know unless we run trials to find out?
Suppose we find that the standards raise the achievement of high-performing students and increase the gaps? Wouldn’t we want to know that before we impose the standards on all the children in 45 states?
I am disturbed by the zealotry espoused by the advocates of the Common Core standards. The standards will have to prove their worth. It can’t be assumed. It can’t be imposed or asserted or bought. No matter how much they shout down the critics or belittle them, at some point, the standards will be judged not by how many people like them but by how they affect our students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One would think that the leadership of the AFT/UFT would display the same caution. No such luck as they fully endorse the Common Core Standards.
Excellent point. Chester Finn and the union sold out and have lost a lot of credibility in the process.
Totally Agree! Can’t believe I am paying unions dues to these people… They are all in this to advance themselves….sort of like Politicians who cross over to K Street
There you go being rational and using common sense again, Diane. Silly.
I find it unusual that caution and field testing would be opposed by a “think tank”…more like a “not thinking” tank. “Go ahead and jump-I know we’re up pretty high but I’m sure the water is deep enough”. Easy to say when it’s not YOU jumping and you aren’t a swimmer. True educators have seen movements come and go. They know that, put into practice, strategies and standards have to flex to adapt to the material, the learner, and to the style of the practitioner. This headlong rush causes me to suspect opinion tainted by ideology.
I would just disagree with the statement that Fordham is Conservative. No Conservative supports centralized education.
There are Conservatives who oppose Common Core. The American Principles Project, Jay Greene, even many in the Tea Party are opposed to the Federal intrusion on local schools.
Susan Ohanian, from the left, is also speaking out against Common Core Standards.
I tend to think that over time, this will be another “No Child Left Behind” disaster. Where you will see bi-partisan support for dismantling another failed fad that did nothing to improve education but gave more power to the bureaucrats in D.C.
I tend to think that over time, this will be another “No Child Left Behind” disaster.
I could only hope as much, MOMwithABRAIN, but CCSS does something no other act or program has ever tried to accomplish, and that is to justify the need for a national database on all students. That is to say, within a generation, all citizens. This is too big and too important of a ball to drop, unless it is replaced by a better ball.
In true Orwellian style, the common core will provide the oligarchy with a much needed tool to control the masses. The information gathered, justified by the CCSS, will be powerful enough to start a war. And not a war on another nation, but a war on our own lower class which, as automation increases, is no longer needed in such great numbers.
I realize I sound like a conspiracy theorist when I say this, and I’ll admit, everything you read above is made up. The questions remain, though, why does the federal government want such a tool this badly, and why would be submit it to them?
Great final questions! They are my questions too. I am puzzled by CCSS’s implementation, but perhaps that is simply because I haven’t read enough. I am waiting for the national curriculum that will be propagated next. I assume it is in the offing and that CCSS is meant to pave the way for it. I fear that education will have to be destroyed in this country before enough people begin to move an act; we’re darn near there.
This post and others has infuriated and inspired me at the same time. I was reminded of Paul Lockhart’s article (then, book) The Mathematician’s Lament.
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematicians-Lament-Keith-Devlin/dp/1934137170
In the book, Lockhart said that while someone who has been talk math could use spreadsheets, this “relevant” application squeezes beauty from the real mathematics in the same way that learning to read and write will let you complete a form with the DMV, but in not way is that the length and breadth of being literate and articulate.
Diane, thank you for another thoughtful and reasoned discussion about the impending Common Core initiative. I have attended statewide professional development workshops to learn about this new curriculum. My hesitations about the Common Core standards are because they have not been vetted beyond a few pilots here and there. I do not understand how educational decision-makers can back such an untested national effort, which will affect so many unwary students, parents, and teachers. I cannot respect the stand that many, especially those who are prominent in the field of education, have taken in their blind support of the Common Core.
The more I know about the standards the more “sick in the gut” I feel. They seem so banal in context and dehumanize, in a sense, quality-teaching efforts.
My schooI district is saying that teachers, while implementing Common Core, must use informational text 70% of the instructional time and fiction only 30%. It seems that part of teaching today requires one to consider what is ethical in the face of enormous pressure to conform to national standards. I, for one, will make sure the instructional needs of my students are met, regardless of the current educational top-down dictatorial mandates.
As outlined in the CCSS for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, and Technical Subjects, p. 5, “Teachers of senior English classes, for example, are not required to devote 70 percent of reading to informational texts. Rather, 70 percent of student reading across the grade should be informational.” Make sure your administrators get this right. Students also take social studies and science classes which no doubt require this type of reading. The idea of adding informational text to accompany the study of fiction is not new. We begin with some context for the study and later or during the study often “texture” it with commentaries, news stories, films, etc. But you will not be required to replace fiction with nonfiction.
I am aware of the CC guidelines for fiction and non-fiction but or county decision makers can decide what our district will do. This is why CC is such a mess.
The standards preceed the standardized test. Pearson can’t wait for the field test to sell their new “stds based” textbooks and assessments. The tech world is also floundering since dot.com death and needs edtech to revive. Just ask Bill Gates.
This was really well said by Diane. I agree 100%
The problem of having too much specificity (mandated even!) in what must be taught and asked, (yes, there are even prescribed “Inquiry Questions”) is that kids will turn off to learning even more. Such curriculum, especially when taught lock-step in all schools, leaves no time for interest-based learning.
When our children entered school we could choose the school and the teacher. Some teachers did hands-on projects; others were more traditional in their teaching. Now, in our city, all teachers follow the same lockstep schedule and use the same textbooks so there is no more room for great teachable moments. In fact, no teacher can plan their own lesson anymore. They all follow the prescribed scope and sequence designed by the text book publishers.
The common core will keep students from flourishing according to their own needs, desires and interests. Now, more than before, it’s even more important to involve children in hands-on projects. Many already lack patience and seek instant digital and visual gratification. Will they really be up to passing courses with material that is no longer relevant to the world they will live in?
A mom of two responded to my blog post on the subject with: “I don’t like any of this and anything at the national level is going to be harder to change”. So true! The common core will truly drive the final nail into the coffin of variable education.
Find the post “Common Core Creating Common Kids?” here: http://www.buildbetterschools.com/?p=510
I am a supporter of Common Core Standards but the idea of not field testing these is insane.
The argument I have heard most often for pressing ahead with Common Core without field testing is that we cannot wait for another 2 or 3 years – it means losing a generation of children. (Presumably the children taught under existing state- and/or district standards will all move on to a life of crime).
However, if Common Core has not impact on student outcomes, or, worse, negatively impacts student outcomes, it might be 10 years before the data convinces people in power that we want down the wrong path.
Absolute craziness. Diane, thanks for posting this.
Thanks, Ed. These standards were rolled out in the spring of 2010. If they started then, we would know much more now than we do.
As usual, the comments for and against Common Core wallow in bland rhetoric. And to think people get paid to write such crap. If there’s one lesson we’ve learned about writing, it’s BE SPECIFIC.
ccssimath.blogspot.com
What? No one is paid to write anything on this blog. If you can’t be civil, go away.
We meant the Chester Finns of the world and their anti-matter counterparts. Touché, we weren’t specific. We’ve read a lot of commentary and no one has made supported or supportable arguments for or against. So we agree it’s safest to sit on the fence, but we’ve declined to stay there.
Reblogged this on The Skud Report and commented:
These new standards are going to make for an interesting year. I just hope that the test results from the pilot year(s) are not used to award or punish schools.
Agnosticism agreed. As I first heard about CC, I thought to myself, this is what we already advocate in teacher education: the goal is not just to know stuff, but to be able to do something useful with the stuff we learn. That would be some powerful learning and produce folks capable of serious personal autonomy. Not so sure that’s the intended outcome. Not sure what will happen in practice governed by high stakes and technical rationality. Hanging on to the silver lining.
“We learn what is developmentally appropriate. We learn what is realistic. We learn what works. Teachers know because they do the work of bringing the words to life. If the words don’t come to life, they know that too.”
Yes, but I believe that there are prior experiences that teachers have had with standards that we can learn from as well, because standards for children’s learning are not new. They have had different names over the years, such as curriculum “frameworks”, and there have been varying expectations for implementation.
I followed my public school district’s standards when I taught all day Kindergarten (9 am – 6 pm) in a private child care center in a diverse urban community, where I had a lot of freedom to determine my own curriculum. However, my kids went on to many different public schools for 1st grade, and some of those schools had all day Kindergarten where children were taught to read, while others had half day programs where they were not, and I felt I needed to be able to reach my kids where they were at and provide appropriate challenges for them.
I really liked my district’s standards, because I thought they were developmentally appropriate, as they were geared to the predominance of schools having half day Kindergarten programs, so I used them as guidelines in my class. There was so much diversity in my classroom, as children had had many different prior experiences and developmental needs, and I felt those standards enabled me to make sure that advanced kids were not bored and other kids were not pushed too hard, yet continued to develop.
I recognized that skills are emergent, including literacy skills, and I tried to reach each child where they were at, while fostering their interests and teaching them new skills, primarily through games, in-depth projects and in their play. It was not realistic to have the expectation that they would all be in the same place when they completed Kg. Fortunately, the Kg standards did not expect them to all be reading etc. upon completion and most kids were where they were expected to be when they went to 1st Grade. For advanced kids, it was more appropriate for me to follow the standards designated for primary grades and many of them went on to gifted programs.
Some area public schools were so glad to get my students that they would call me each year to ask if I had kids for them. My former students often returned to tell me about their positive experiences there, so those were the schools that I urged parents to send their kids to after leaving me, since they were magnets. Some parents did not want to send there kids to public school yet, so sometimes I taught a combined Kg/1st Grade class.
While you could argue that private schools have more control over which kids they teach, this is not as clear cut in child care centers, as they are regulated by city and state licensing standards –which do not condone discrimination. Also, government eligibility requirements for meal programs and subsidized child care require that programs have a certain percentage of low income students, and the ADA requires reasonable accommodations for students with special needs. Owners of child care centers often don’t want to lose tuition dollars and government fundiing, so many will hold onto kids just for the money. So, I had many challenging children over the years, including a lot of ELLs, and they typically remained in my classroom –where I had up to 30 kids (which I learned in later years was in violation of licensing regulations, because the owners did not share those regulations with teachers) and I had no teacher’s aide.
There were times when I attended PDs where public school teachers stated they did not implement the standards that I was following –some had not even known about their existence until I told them!– so I understood when the standards became a requirement. It wasn’t until the Common Core, however, that I saw 1st Grade officially pushed into Kindergarten, and that is what concerns me most, as I mentioned in a previous post.
I am not against standards. I followed standards when I was not required to do so. I am against standards that are not developmentally appropriate, standards that push younger and younger children into academics, standards that do not allow much room for teachers to differentiate instruction, and standards that involve high-stakes testing.
In the end, should schools be locally controlled, by their communities? Or should government–be it in the form of a corporate puppet or genuinely representative–control them?
Diane, I agree with you that field tests are important. In the business world wouldn’t they field test first before rolling out a new drug, consumer product, software, etc? It really makes you wonder what their ulterior motive really is?
“It really makes you wonder what their ulterior motive really is?”
Centralized, social control! It is not a conspiracy….there is lots of evidence for it, but since the corporate media are complicit in this plan, the word on it will never get out to the people destined to become serfs again. See my response under the Naomi Klein post where I posted some interesting links to clips to help people get that awareness of how the world functions and who’s in control!
In my opinion, excellent teachers will find ways to teach the students as they have through all the crazy fads and mediocre teachers will rely totally on the Common Core Standards and the teaching material already available and create mediocre students.
For years I have heard the saying, “schools should be run like a business”. Would a business build a manufactoring line for a product that it didn’t test, tweak, and test again? As a teacher, I am expected to teach Common Core standards this fall. We were forced this year to teach a Common Core lesson as practice. There was no training, no discussion…just “do this”. If I am to understand it, the only aspect of business in schools is the profit end, and freedom to get rid of teachers as corporations do so frequently. When it comes to common sense business practices, they don’t seem to apply. So, we are now forced to implement a new curriculum, with very little guidance, that has not been tested or tried anywhere. I sense ulterior motives on so many levels.
In Indiana, Superintendent of Public Education, Tony Bennett-R has his name staked on the success of these untested standards and the yet to be released national student test, called PARCCS. When the common core initiative fails, which it will, teachers will be the group to take the heat- not the politicians and school boards who adopted them.
The Fordham Institute ranked Indiana’s former standards as clearly superior to the common core. Why would teachers in Indiana sit on the sidelines while our Superintendent implements standards we know are inferior? They will be the scapegoat when student achievement doesn’t blossom under common core. Publishing and testing companies will make off with their millions while Indiana teachers take the blame for poorly implementing these poorly evaluated standards. Teachers in Indiana should join the resistance that is growing in opposition to the common core. Legislation is being introduced next session to reverse it’s adoption. Visit: Hoosier Moms Say No to the Common Core on facebook.
The common core standards will not fundamentally change teaching and learning in this country. If improving instruction COULD ever be accomplished by handing out a new set of standards, wouldn’t we have already seen great improvements in teaching and learning? Traditions in schooling are not changed that easily. Another way to think about this– We have some really difficult set of standards in Indiana. Does it mean that our little Hoosiers are getting a superior education because our standard are more rigorous? Nope. Ask any Indiana teacher to list the concepts that nobody ever understands, no matter what she tries. When those standards are tested, a small percent get it correct and the rest do not. I WISH that the problems that are coming as a result of implementing the CC could be headed off by simply piloting the standards. That won’t work. The real problem is how students will be assessed on CC standards and how those results will subsequently be used to judge teachers, schools, teacher prep programs, etc. Don’t we already have a pretty good idea what is going to happen? It is not going to be pretty.
I am assuming that we will be using tests to determine the success or failure of the standards, so first we need a baseline year. Then, we can start watching for trends. Of course, will we just be setting up a new way of teaching to the test? If we are still bubbling in answers, we are still testing whether students can recognize the correct answers not whether they can independently generate those answers. We have to be very careful about what conclusions we draw from these results. U.S. students have apparently never been particularly successful on international bubble tests. Do we decide that students need more drill and kill? Despite what corporate America would have us believe an educational system that reduced learning to a data driven machine did not produce the creative and innovative enterprises that have drawn the attention of the world. Do we really want to define ourselves and our potential in such a limited way? The “success” of the standards may well depend on how well teachers teach and students learn in spite of the strictures.
I am in Georgia, and my biggest concern is that the teachers in my system have received no training in the new curriculum. A few of us have worked all summer on the new units, but looks like that work is for naught, as our work as received a red light, and we have been told to stop what we are doing and await further instructions. The suggested units are based around works of literature that we do not have. There is no money to purchase anything. Given those roadblocks, many if not most teachers will just continue to do what they have always done. If we are not going to take the time and resources to thoroughly train our teachers, there is no way the curriculum will do anything.
I stumbled on your blog after another frustrating day of writing curricula that will be aligned to these new standards. For nearly two decades, I have been creating new and engaging ways to challenge my urban kindergarten scholars to produce high quality work while maintaining a strong emphasis on play and socio-emotional development. I love my job.
Here’s a fact: most of my students enter my classroom knowing 14 or fewer letters and leave in June being able to write a few good sentences with a detailed illustration to match. These standards expect my students to write full phrases and sentences in October and a simple BOOK every DAY in December. Does this seem reasonable based on the skill set they bring in September?
These standards represent a change in the way I approach rich, interesting instructional practices such as storytelling, sketching and pretending. How do I guide my young people through their first year of formal schooling and meet these standards without making them feel rushed and totally incompetent? Where is the room for imagination and play?
Lisa shared “How do I guide my young people through their first year of formal schooling and meet these standards without making them feel rushed and totally incompetent? Where is the room for imagination and play?”
I am so sad to hear about such ridiculous expectations so soon and happy that you are one of the ever fewer teachers, it seems, who gets it that kids are kids and need to be kids for a lot longer than schools allow them to be.
I would like to see much more child oriented learning up until age 10 before they get hit with usually boring and certainly segmented academics. Of course, the reality of education reform is not to help kids thrive in life, but to justify employing those who falter in low wage jobs.