A reader writes:
As an early childhood teacher I saw first hand last year the effects of the Common Core on my pre-k students. The ELA was not so dreadful. It was more or less consistent with what I had been doing. The math was another story. Asking 4 year olds to master addition and subtraction while they were just trying to grasp basic math concepts such as one to one correspondence was stressful; not just for my students, but for me as well. How to make teaching concepts beyond their understanding without stressing everybody out.
That, however, was the least of it. The performance tasks that came with the lessons were not only stressful for teacher and students but it was so incredibly labor intensive as to take away precious instructional time. Time that I might have better used providing opportunities for my students to learn how to share and be kind to each other and maybe recognize the letters in their names.
Instead I had to take 4 children at a time and tell them we were going to play a game although they saw that I had papers and a pencil in front of me so they knew I wasn’t telling the truth, and read a script which would ask children to do addition and subtraction problems while I manipulated little mice or small cubes or counting bears. Some children cried, some refused to respond, and some didn’t mind at all. The accompanying rubric did not allow for children whose experiences may not have been the same as those children attending Sidwell.
In the end, we wasted a ton of time, the data was copied and sent to suits in far away places and i went back to teaching.
We had to do this twice last year. Who knows what this year will bring.
One of my goals is how to give the suits what they want without stressing my students and not taking away from instruction.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The last sentence says it all: One of my goals is how to give the suits what they want without stressing my students and not taking away from instruction.
Yes, survive the hideous CCSS workshops: nod and smile. Close your door and teach the kids, have canned lessons ready when the suits show up, give them the data they seek even if only on paper…they will never know.
Teachers are very good at being subversive when we feel our students are being harmed. Another reason why they want to get rid of the experienced and bring in the new teachers. They are easier to manipulate and control and without union protection it will be easier to maintain the revolving door. And they call this education reform?
Linda, you are so right that we as teachers need to nod and smile and then do what is best for the students. We have been doing this for some time.
Additionally, we also need to confront the suits with the facts and deal with them head on. If enough teachers, administrators, parents, and students do this, positive change will occur. Let’s teach courageously this year!
Simply put….that should be our motto:
Teach courageously!
A thought about the “nod and smile” approach…
If teachers nod and smile and do their own thing and turn out succesful students, can’t that be used to validate the suits arguments that the suits way is best?
Maybe if a LOT of experienced teachers did this and publicly proclaimed their actions when scores came out?
Of course, I realize that the other option is throwing the students under the bus of bad ideas, which no one wants…
That’s exactly what I do Rachel! But, you’re right; not many teachers do. After 35 successful years in the classroom, I have no qualms about telling the “suits” what I think. I will look at what has been mandated and tailor it to my students. If I don’t think it will benefit my students, I won’t use it. I have a very smart, innovative and supportive principal. Hopevully, I’ll be able to continue to teach!
Teach Courageously! I love it, and all that it implies:)
It’s sad. It’s frustrating and it hurts children.
There are no PreK CCSS math standards. The first set of standards are for K- perhaps that is why your PreK students were struggling- you were teaching them things not meant for them.
Race to the Top allows states to modify a certain percentage of the standards to suit their needs without losing the funding. This includes adding as many standards as they wish. You just can’t subtract, however, without risking loss of money.
My state has also been working on PreK standards “aligned” to the CCSS and started the “Pre-K Assessment” process last year.
You are very, very wrong.
The CCSS are a monster let loose and they will grow and change through interpretation into something they may never have been meant to be but that’s par for the course when you don’t pilot something and can’t control it because you risk loss of buy-in.
This is very informative. I’d like to add another perspective to this post though. Parents have become frustrated because their kids are not learning math facts. Schools have decided drilling is now a NO-NO. Rote memorization is a NO-NO.
Yet parents know how important it is to memorize math facts.
At 4 years old?? That’s absurd. However at some point, these facts need to be memorized.
The schools dropped the ball on this important task because many of them accepted grants from the National Science Foundation who pushed fuzzy math on the schools. The NCTM’s fuzzy math recommendations also aided in the dumbing down of mathematics in the schools.
So now you have the “suits” coming in the rescue these kids from a dumbed down math education.
It’s a lousy “fix”, but when schools put $$$$ before children this is the dire result.
These grant foundations do more to harm the education in our schools than just about anything else.
Now we have the feds dictating what food can be eaten by the kids. IF you don’t follow their guidelines, they cut off funding to the schools. So what do they do, they do exactly what their master tells them to do.
I haven’t taught preschool since 2001, but I know we would not have received accreditation a decade ago had we been teaching to these standards. They are not developmentally-appropriate!
MOMwithAbrain,
I agree completely about the math. I have said for years that children can’t do math because they don’t have math fluency.
We have children memorize letters in the alphabet so when they look at a word they recognize each letter instantly.
I have always had my pre-k students memorize numbers. Counting by rote is very important. Once they recognize the numbers in an instant we can move to to understanding what each number actually represents.
Like most knowledge, math is a process.
My argument with the pre-k CC and btw, not all states have CC for pre-k; New York has chosen to include it even though pre-k is not mandatory, is that they are putting the cart before the horse.
The assumption is that my students are coming into school with a good sense of numeracy. This may be true at Sidwell although I doubt it. Not all of Piaget holds true, but the development of abstract thinking takes time. Math requires much abstract thinking.
And, so what if we manage to ram addition and subtraction into 4 year olds? Will they be able to do calculus at 5?
We are sacrificing more important life skills that they will need as they move through the grades and in life: being able to attend, listening, following directions, empathy, collaboration, cooperation, extreme curiosity, love of learning, a sense of self. These are just a few skills that “suits” don’t consider important because they can not be charted on a graph.
My students are not data points.
Also, according to Coleman, from what I have read, business doesn’t want the employees’ opinion. You are to be a good worker bee and produce. You are not supposed to think and propose.
Curiosity? Love of learning? Sense of self? That is for the children of the wealthy “reformers” who send their children to private schools.
“In the end, we wasted a ton of time, the data was copied and sent to suits in far away places and I went back to teaching. We had to do this twice last year. Who knows what this year will bring. One of my goals is how to give the suits what they want without stressing my students and not taking away from instruction.”
–Original Post
“Teachers are very good at being subversive when we feel our students are being harmed. Another reason why they want to get rid of the experienced and bring in the new teachers. They are easier to manipulate and control and without union protection it will be easier to maintain the revolving door. And they call this education reform?”
–Commenter
I’m seeing a common thread between both of these opinions, and I have a few thoughts of my own.
Data collection during the introduction to a piece of education reform is, in theory, an opportunity for “the suits” to observe how implementation of a piece of reform (e.g., formative assessment lessons) is occurring in the field. Though I’m skeptical that this can be done effectively by popping into a classroom semi-annually, I’m even more skeptical about the validity of data that’s collected by observing “canned lessons” delivered in isolation.
The commenter quoted above is right to call this kind of practice subversion, and she’s also correct in saying that some administrators have butted heads with subversive teachers in hope of filling their ranks with young blood (e.g., the exodus of the Bronx Science math department in my current home New York City, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/bronx-science-complaints/). Specifically, she mentions a “revolving door,” an metaphor often used when discussing the teacher tenure process. But there are other cycles in education, and I think all contributors/commentors to this post thus far have shied away from any involvement in the perpetuation of another, conspicuous revolving door: the door that ushers in new waves of education reform.
I have two questions:
First, how can we expect to improve an education system that is convinced, in part, that experience trumps anything a suit drops on our desk?
Second, specific to the posts above, how can we as teachers expect to evaluate a reform item by delivering a handful of “reformed” lessons a year?
These two ideas seem at odds with one another.
To be clear, I’m not calling into the question any of experience and hard work of the teachers I have quoted. I’m commenting on the unfortunate reality of the need teachers feel to “protect” students from new reforms by rejecting such reforms outright.
(All of the thoughts above are in the making. As a high school algebra teacher, I’m always looking for ways to improve my craft, and this includes conversation with other teachers. So, please, do respond!)
James,
I should clarify. When I refer to “suit” I think of the adminstrator who taught for a relatively short period (a few years at most) and is now a self-appointed expert. They wouldn’t know good teaching if they saw it. If the expected teacher behavior isn’t on checklist on their ipad, they are unable to evaluate. They don’t know the kids or they subject matter. They institute changes without giving them time to be implemented and then they make changes to the changes. There is a constant state of confusion. Experience does matter and it certainly trumps these “suits”.
And I guess I honestly can’t answer your second question because I don’t consider the new standards to be reforms. Despite what they now say, teachers were not involved in the development of the CCSS. It is another top down approach being shoved down our throats. There isn’t even the choice to disagree or question. We are all to follow along, be good worker bees and submit to Stepford test
prep. If this doesn’t happen, then you are the status quo, another
term that needs defining.
The bottom line, they do not respect teachers and they do not care what we think. Getting to know the students as individuals doesn’t really matter either. Kids are cattle; teachers are test scores.
Diane, can you ask the reader who was the source for this post where this is happening ? Also, is it statewide or just within a district or school ? I have seen some states developing learning guidelines for pre-k that are supposed to be getting these children ready for kindergarten and perhaps these are supposed to connect to the Common Core but I don’t think they are part of the Common Core.
If these are as your reader says, we all owe it to these kids to express our outrage over this to the people dumping this on teachers and young children. I’d rather do something about this than just talk about it.
To help get me through my last year of teaching, I made a laminated sign that I could flip over in front of my computer screen in class, and flip over and out of sight whenever the suits showed up. The words are from Deborah Meier:
“…push the envelope as far as we can; find the cracks, close our doors, and creatively resist the madness.”
Hang in there.
A simple Google search for “Pre-kindergarten and Common Core State Standards” brings up 4,100,000 matches. Here are just a few interesting links:
New York State’s “P-12 Common Core Standards” document:
Click to access nysp12cclsmath.pdf
From “eye on early education” regarding Massachusetts Pre-K Common Core initiative:
http://eyeonearlyeducation.org/2010/12/22/frameworks-include-pre-k-and-common-core-standards/
Maryland’s “Common Core State Curriculum Framework” beginning with PreK Math Standards:
Click to access CCSC_Math_grpk.pdf
Connecticut’s PreK Common Core State Standards:
Click to access pk_to_kindergarten_mathematics_continuum.pdf
I could go on and on with Louisiana, Ohio, and the rest but I won’t. Those who claim that the CCSS are not for PreK are sadly misinformed and out of touch with the reality on the ground in the public schools of America.
Florida has its own newly adopted (2011) PreK standards for 4-year olds that are for sale to interested states and co-developed with the Workforce . The document is amazingly long (247 pages!) and complicated and said to be aligned to the Kindergarten Common Core State Standards, developed by the FDOE and the Agency for Workforce Innovation, now called the Office of Early Learning. Interesting connection there between workforce innovation and 4-year olds, isn’t it?
Click to access ListofStandardsandBenchmarks.pdf
The genie is indeed out of the bottle. Next in line: infant CCSS? In-utero CCSS?