Robert Shepherd, author, textbook writer, curriculum designer, writes:
“How many different forms might the education of the young take? One of the problems with issuing a single set of standards for all is that those standards are INTENDED to reduce the amount of variation (synonym: innovativeness) in the system. But variation, innovation, competitive models, models with many, many different tracks is precisely what a complex, pluralistic society needs.
“The notion of a single set of standards for all appeals to authoritarian types with a rage for order, uniformity, predictability that is, at its core, inhumane.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The notion of a single set of standards for all appeals to authoritarian types with a rage for order, uniformity, predictability that is, at its core, inhumane.”
Well said.
As a traditional public school teacher, I’m tired of crazy.
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Me too, M. Schneider, I am also sick and tired of crazy. Crazy making is happening in schools…and of course, for profit and to destroy public schools. It’s all nuts. Rebuff the politicians, standardistos, people like Gates, and orgs. like ALEC. Sheez…education is not a business. Duh…do people GET this? I know the politicos, standardistos, and people like Gates, Jeb Bush, Duncan, Rahm, etc. want to destroy our jewel, public education. Low academic acheivement is about poverty. So many articles have been written about this. But, the yahoos refuse to address poverty.
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You can have a set of standards and many different ways of getting to the same outcome. This is creativity. This is why we need the arts again in our schools and to the youngest children so that we light up their thinking processes and train the right and left brain to work together. I am also tired of crazy.
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Great George!!
I so agree!!
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Of course, George, you can have many different ways of getting to the same outcome, but there are a couple of problems with that argument. First, why on earth would we want the same outcomes for every child? And second, when you have a set of standards that is supposed to be comprehensive, it dictates the curriculum to an unacceptable extent because all that material has to be dealt with, and other material that a particular teacher or curriculum coordinator or textbook writer might think is important will get short shrift. And third, people end up designing ourtrageously awkward curricula because their minds are on “covering” all these standards, not on what makes sense pedagogically.
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You are right on the money Robert!!!
Covered is what the teachers have done and are told to do.
You must COVER the curriculum at the expense of losing all of the children in the mire..It is a big pile of mire and everyone is trying to hold their head above the sludge..
Lost are the talents that are non-academic.
Smart is not just academic smart.
When will the Testing Hierarchy understand that human beings are a diverse group with diverse talents and all of their talents are just important to a productive society as academia!
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What are “standards”? Don’t standards define “where we want to go”? Don’t standards help to develop curricula?
Personally, I don’t have an issue with standards. They provide me with a starting point in curricular development (not the ceiling). What I do have an issue with is the assessment connected to those standards that, in effect, drive curricula. It’s an assessment tied to these standards that stifle innovation and creativity.
Robert, I agree with much of what you say. I do not agree, however, that it is the “fault” of having standards. We all know (in this day and age)–assessment drives instruction, not standards.
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“Personally, I don’t have an issue with standards.”
You should as your first question indicates. There is no set definition for what an “educational standard” is. Standards do not drive instruction for how can something (educational standards) “drive” education when there is no agreement whatsoever on what that term even means?
I challenge you to read and understand Wilson’s work “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 as to why educational standards are a chimera, a false way of looking at education, are not the solution to the supposed problems of public education but are part of the problem of stifling the teaching and learning process.
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Eloquently Said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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It is time to follow TEXAS and put these A-B-C-D-F’S to rest.
THE CCSS does the opposite of what they say it does.
Teachers have been asking critical questions and have been analyzing for years and years..
Teachers know that all of the students have different yet very important strengths..
Teachers know how to build on the strengths of these children and utilize to the fullest extent the talents and interests of all.
What a boring world to expect every person to be the exact same..
It is wrong to expect KID-A to be equal in academia to KID-B and therefore be judged for the rest of their lives as not being important to this world.
It is wrong to portray the non-academic talents as unimportant..and 2nd fiddle to academia..It is very wrong…
It is a travesty to our children to toss aside their interests and talents for the sake of “One Size Fits All’
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It is also true that Teacher-A will not have the same strengths and interests as Teacher-B. Teachers need to have the freedom to use their own strengths to teach their students in the best way for all of them.
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The same is true foe students, yet the traditional public school system assigns them to schools based on geography rather than the students strengths and weaknesses.
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I guess we could call this a psychosophical argument. Yes, that’s a word (even if I just made it up). Think it through:
it “appeals to authoritarian types with a rage for order, uniformity, predictability .”
This argument is a distraction because it misses the real “appeal” of the Common Core, and that cripples our fight to educate people about the nature of the onslaught.
The Common Core is a specific control point, which can reach every child in the public schools through tablet-delivered, continuous proprietary assessment services. It can hold him accountable to businesses that can force him to consume their own proprietary remediation for any defects it identifies.
It appeals to monopolists who can force billions of dollars of worth of unwanted products and iron control on our public schools and the children in them. It appeals to businesses with a rage for market domination.
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The tests at the end of Common Core are terrible, forcing standardization, and with the same outcome for every child as its goal. I think the math Core, on the whole, does this, and that it is unrealistic for the vast majority of students. However, I disagree that all of the Core does this.
As a social studies teacher, now studying to become a media specialist, I see that the language arts and related social studies and science media standards as very skill-based and very flexible with regard to coverage. Although some of the standards for the younger grades seem unrealistic for a great majority of children, the high school standards, for the most part, get at the heart of what makes a questioning, thoughtful, and thought-provoking citizen.
Quite the opposite of creating automatons, it demands that students be able to read primary source documents and write for a variety of audiences. The Core demands depth of analysis and logical expression of this analysis in myriad writing and presentation styles. The linking of the three subjects shows that the Core expects that science and social studies will take on the informational text reading role, for the most part, still leaving literature study for the realm of English class.
When I see total bashing of the Core, it just reinforces for me the need for the Core. Let’s analyze and evaluate. What parts are a huge step forward in saying that kids really need to think at the highest Bloom’s levels? Where does it go too far or demand too much too soon?
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I do not give a flip about that engine in my car. “I just want to know how to drive it’
A student then shows me how to take apart and put back an engine and I am totally amazed…
The student then uses all the math he needs to perform his skills…and the math he needs to deposit his check for possessing such a skill.
The student then goes further and shows me the software he uses to help him learn what he needs to learn..
The students math skills are beyond belief considering that he made an F in his math class and an F in English..because of his end of year tests..
The next student …then the next student..then the next student…
How proud I am of Joe Know-Nothing today running a very successful and thriving business……but I remember him sitting in the back of a Math Class drawing beautiful pictures of the CAR ENGINES while the teacher yells at him telling him he will amount to nothing if he does not pass the end of course exam…
And this is the way it is..
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Not only in humane, one might argue unnatural, as it is variation that is the natural world’s strength.
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I meant INhumane; not only INhumane but unnatural.
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How many different forms might the education of the young take?
The answer to this is one form. That form is determined by the school catchment area in which the student lives. If you want students to have a variely of forms available to them, you need to allow students to choose from a variety of schools.
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No, the answer is however many students there are at a given time.
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Common Core standards are great if you use the E.D. Hirsch Jr. curriculum. I would love to hear reference to Sir Ken Robinson. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a lot of ideas that would teach kids science as an explorer would. I hate to think we are raising kids to be robots, unless your kids go to an expensive private school where creativity is nurtured. Learning should happen because of curiosity and guidance from gifted teachers. We already have a lot of those. What if these teachers could teach something that fascinates them and all of a sudden the student understands a concept in Literature or Algebra or Physics? It does happen.
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Again, would someone please provide me with a generally accepted definition of what an “educational standard” is.* Until basic terms are set it is impossible to have a logical rational discussion of the issue.
*There isn’t one but please try.
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“Coverage” reminds me of a textbook pilot I took part in. It was a precalculus book, and it was written to help students figure out how the functions worked, and how the technology we used worked. There were high school teachers and a college professor involved. One time when we were discussing where we were in the book, we high school teachers were amazed at how far the professor had gotten. “How did you get that far?” we asked.
“It’s easy,” he said, “You just divide the number of pages by the number of classes, and then make sure you keep to the schedule.”
One of my high school colleagues asked, “So you’re on page 342 — where are your students?”
The curse of being a teacher who cares is that you DO care where the students are. It doesn’t matter what the standards are, or what the textbook says, you want to bring all your students to a level of understanding that will allow them to use the math they need in whatever future they choose. This, while the students have no idea of the math they will need or use, and fervently believe they will not need any…
I see the mathematical practices in the common core standards as a positive way to engage students in understanding the concepts of mathematics enough so they can see how the mathematics might be useful. If they at least remember that mathematics exists that will help them deal with something, they can always look it up and relearn it. But they have to know it exists and what it is good for! If you don’t get there, it doesn’t matter what a test shows.
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Concerning the “idea” that if you have 360 pages and 180 days to teach them, has anyone considered what to do when a student misses one of those days? Where is the time for reteaching and remediation, let alone catching up if the student was absent. What about the student who misses a day every two weeks? Or what about the student who takes a vacation in the middle of the school year? Also, with the tests taking place about 4-5 weeks before the school year ends … how is that supposed to be a year’s progress, particularly if you are following some regimented schedule of “covering” the material? So, even in you subtract 20-25 days … you have to teach all those standards before the tests, with more difficulty getting through it all.
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