Watching the discussion on this blog about how the Common Core Standards might affect the pre-school years (pre-K and K), veteran educator Deborah Meier sent the following comment to me:
If counting to a hundred by ones and tens are appropriate skills for all 5 year olds, and children should read by sounding out words before they enter kindergarten, then Karen Nemeth might be right.
But to say that such standards do not prevent teachers from responding creatively is…nonsense. The most efficient way to do it is by repeated forms of rote learning, which interferes with both a solid mathematical education rather than furthering it and consumes the time otherwise spent in more appropriate activities–art, music, dance, science, block building, water play, planting, caring for animals, story telling, learning about one’s surrounding neighborhood, and on and on.
Furthermore we know that children learn to read in many ways (some by “mere” extensive exposure). We’d be wise to pay attention to one of the best studies of reading I know of–Inquiry Into Meaning: An Investigation of Learning to Read by Edward Chittenden et al. (Teachers College Press.) The authors (researchers at ETS) document the range of ways in which children learned to read–regardless of how they were taught. We don’t have to settle on one way, but can provide opportunities to best match each child’s approach–which can be done easily under the right circumstances. Apparently delaying any form of direct reading instruction until children are 7 hasn’t hurt the schools and nations who follow such a course. But the Common Core prescribes a different developmental path.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you Deborah
It is easy to say that standards are just standards but when the staff developers for the NYC DOE have mandated PD for pre-k teachers and make us sit through an entire day of a scripted power point and remind us that our students are failing and we must embrace the common core and provide performance assessments for each child in both math and ELA twice a year, it is difficult to believe that the Common Core is just a set of standards for teachers to use as guidelines.
I am not opposed to rote learning for some things. I still remember to run the little song about how many days of the month are in each month. I still recite the alphabet in my head when I’m trying to file middle letters in my files. I still remember the parts of the grasshopper’s leg because my high school science teacher had us sing it. There is no way to get a good handle on the alphabet or numbers in sequence without memorizing. This should not be confused with actual learning. Memorizing number facts and the letters of the alphabet in sequence is just a tool to enhance actual learning.
Children and adults learn by doing. A medical student can memorize many facts. But in the end, she must practice on a person. She must learn how deep to make an incision and what pneumonia sounds like when you listen to someone’s lungs.
No one can learn to play tennis just reading about it and memorizing the rules and steps in playing. You have to play and notice the work “play” We play tennis to improve our game. Again, notice the word “game”
Adults spent untold amounts of money in play for enjoyment, to learn a new skill, and to release stress but we deny play to children.
I don’t know if it’s our Puritan foundations that prevent people from understanding the importance of play or various hidden agendas.
What I know for myself is that after the first half hour of those 6 hours of power point PD’s I am no longer listening. Based on conversations after these sessions I know that I am not alone.
I think some people think if learning is enjoyable it can’t possibility learning.. I also believe that some people who secretly have low expectations of some populations believe that they are capable only of low level, rote learning.
If those in charge believe that rote learning and absence of play (art, music, dance, etc.) must be removed from schools in order to have 120 minute blocks of literacy and math, why do their own children not attend the same schools that they want for other people’s children?
There is a serious disconnect between what those in power profess to be the best education and the education they provide for their own children.
Setting standards for 4 & 5 year old children is just plain nuts!
Take 5 year olds born 6 months apart- One is is a full 10% older than the other. Considering they are only 5 that’s huge as far as intellectual and emotional development is concerned. To set standards, this early in the lives of our nation’s children is an abusive form of social engineering, that quite frankly frightens me to the core.
Thank you Anne Harvey (and Deborah Meier, one of my heroes since “The Power of Their Ideas” — still a must-read book). Not only have you hit on essentials for young children, but you remind us of basic realities for older children as well. Anne, you got so much in your brief comments. As a middle-school teacher I especially embrace your concern that those who are engineering teaching from outside now expose for themselves, and play on for others, low expectations for “some” of our children. Not seeing the amazing potential in the eyes of each and all of our children of all ages, despite challenges of poverty and discrimination and all that each brings to them — that blindness has led to horrid limitations on how our children should spend their school-time hours. Horrid. Thank you, Anne, for turning off to that wretched PD and turning on to the real PD, the exchange among the teachers who know and care and are about to start a school year where that knowing and caring will be battling with the order from above, in too many cases. May we bond ourselves together nationally, support one another, as we battle FOR our children and do all we can to take back our profession. We have to prevail. The children are depending on us. So we will do what we have to — and keep one another posted, and support one another. Here’s to a good school year, despite all the obstacles, and with one another.
In the previous remarks by Karen Nemeth (https://dianeravitch.net/2012/08/25/will-common-core-change-pre-k-and-k-no/), she wrote:
” NAEYC did not write, promote, or implement the Core Curriculum State Standards and there really does not seem to be any value in complaining about one’s personal grievances in this context or of promoting an unrelated facebook page of a small local chapter.”
Researching NAEYC I found this press release from 2010 promoting CCSS:
Click to access NAEYC-NAECS-SDE-Core-Standards-Statement.pdf
Here is 2012 NAEYC’s agenda for Professional Development Summit:
http://www.naeyc.org/policy/ecwsi#peer
It’s rather chilling what this summit is addressing. . It’s entitled “Early Childhood Workforce Systems Initiative”. That’s the issue I’ve had with common core. It’s the foundation for assessments to be fed into the statewide assessment data bases…to then be fed into the DOEd, the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services and various other agencies and private corporations determined by the DOEd. This information isn’t to improve education…it’s to provide data to determine workers for the workforce.
Take a look at this from 2011 and tell me that NAEYC is concerned about education OR receiving funding for more infrastructure to track students:
Click to access 2011_NAEYC_SummitRoundtableSummaryNotes.pdf
Here is one of its strategies:
“There is a fear of ―assessing children‖ through quantitative data that is often necessary to attract funders. This is why it is even more important to establish uniformity in what we are seeking to fund and why. It is important to build a strong argument that convinces and informs both funders and those seeking funding.”
Is this “assessing children” just another term for “tracking children” for the workforce? Based on what I’ve read about NAEYC, while it may not have written the CCSS, it does support Common Core and it is heavily invested in its successful implementation.
As an Early Childhood Educator with decades of experience teaching pre-primary and primaary aged kids, as well as in preparing ECE teachers in higher ed, my understanding of the Early Childhood Workforce Systems Initiative is that it’s about improving the qualifications of ECE teachers, as well as the quality of programs for children.
This is necessary because the field of ECE, which serves children from birth through age 8, is situated in many different arenas, where there are vastly different teacher qualifications (depending on the state and setting), various funding streams and different agencies providing regulatory oversight. Not all states have established collaborative systems between these disparate entities. (RTTT-Early Learning Challenge requires that though.)
Since before Obama/Duncan, states have been working on initiaves to strengthen the ECE workforce through Professional Development (PD), which is not just workshops, but a variety of opportunities for teachers to study ECE and gain credits for that, increase their credentials and advance through the career lattice, as well as Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) –which, in most areas, is for staff working with ages birth – 5 in child care centers. I think this initiave is to the advantage of our field and the children we serve.
However, I had not encounterd the notion before of administering standardized tests to young children just to obtain funding for teachers’ PD and QRIS. While assessment may be the zeitgeist in K12 public education, I don’t agree with the test mania that’s been going on there, let alone for the even more vulnerable 0-5 population.
That NAEYC would be suggesting it’s fine to tie standardized tests to funding for PD and QRIS is very disconcerting to me, but perhaps I’ve misinterpreted the documents.
So, If anyone else in ECE can shed some light on this, I would greatly appreciate it.
I just wanted to come back in to thank Diane for providing a forum for this rich and thought-provoking discussion. This is such a critical topic for all of us. While it centers on preschool, it actually affects our nation’s entire education system so educators at all levels can benefit from reading the information provided here. We may not all agree on the details, but we do agree that meeting the unique learning needs of preschool-aged children is a matter of national concern. Success depends on giving as much respect to the voices of preschool educators as we do to K-12 educators and the voices here have certainly elevated the discussion.
Ms. Meier,
Finally, Someone who understand the importance of letting 3&4yr old be their age. And not pushing them to soon. This is Why I am currently paying for my daughter to attend the school she is currently attending in Newarj, NJ rather than putting her in an Abbott school for Free. I think Abbott District Schools are pushing kids too soon. And I think this is happening because they receive funding. And this is their way of trying to justify not having their funding cut.
Thought I replied to Deborah previously, but I guess I did not.
Thank you for your important contribution to this discussion!
“If counting to a hundred by ones and tens are appropriate skills for all 5 year olds, and children should read by sounding out words before they enter kindergarten, then Karen Nemeth might be right.”
They are not developmentally appropriate expectations of Kg and PreK. Should be end of story, but…
If this assertion by Nemeth is true, “I do believe it is possible to address the preschool skills and knowledge that lead up to what is expected in K and 1st in a hands-on, creative, project-based, child centered way.” then why do you suppose public schools have been dropping project-based curricula, such as the Project Approach and Reggio Emilia? Something about quantitative data and standardized testing requirements, I suspect…
States already had standards that were developed by educators who are specialists in their fields and which were developmentally appropriate for designated ages, including Early Learning Standards for 3 – 5 year olds. States did not need new standards, especially standards developed in a Gates funded project by non-educators. Educators know child development, not Duncan, Gates and the other crony non-educators on their payrolls.
Unfortunately, we have yet to see how banking on the unproven CCSS/RTTT/RTTT-ELA will play out and, if NCLB is an indicator, we are likely to be stuck with them for a very long time regardless of efficacy, if something is not done immediately to alter the course.