Writing for the Common Core Tests

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1. Cindy Wolff says:

   June 13, 2013 at 11:41 am

   I think that their suggestion to use a Microsoft product to determine age-appropriate vocabulary is insulting to people who have made a career out of writing and teaching age-appropriate material. They can’t help but squeeze out a profit at every step of this process.

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2. Robert D. Shepherd says:

   June 13, 2013 at 11:51 am

   Back in the early part of the twentieth century, textbooks typically had a particular author. They were usually written by university professors, who produced all the copy themselves, cover to cover. For a time, in the mid- to late-twentieth century, most of the ed book houses were run by people who had come up through the editorial ranks, and authorship was respected. Then, there was a massive consolidation in the industry, a few large houses gobbled up the rest, and upper management in these houses was replaced, almost to a person, with business professionals (nor former editors). If you pick up a big basal textbook program these days, the program will typically list several big-name “authors” and contain their pictures and bios, and usually, these people have not written a single word or, at most, have contributed a few paragraphs somewhere, generally in the front matter. Committees of people study the leading program, do focus groups to find out what’s hot on the education Midway this carnival season, and draw up extraordinarily detailed guidelines and templates telling the large teams of writers on the projects precisely what they are to do, feature by feature, paragraph by paragraph. These guidelines are primarily about copying as closely as possible the leading program while capitalizing on the latest fad (“new Common Core edition”). What goes into the guidelines, increasingly, is driven entirely by business considerations. The last thing anyone wants to hear when the committees meet to discuss the organization and design of the new program is anything about, say, the content of the program or what might actually work for teachers and students. The questions are, always, what is already being done by the leading competitor, what is expected, what are the adoption criteria, what will sell and not be at all innovative or controversial.

   In the big houses, the writers, the people who produce the copy, now typically do not even work directly with the lead editor at the publishing house. Instead, the editor gives the project to a development house (with all those guidelines), and the development house hires writers, and the lead editor at the development house deals not with the “editor” of the textbook program but, rather, with someone in the textbook house’s project management office–a business person whose specialty is project management (e.g., workflows). And, increasingly, the guidelines specify that the writers are to “repurpose” existing material from the publishers’ databases of junk they have produced in the past.

   If you wonder why your textbooks are extraordinarily colorful and feature-filled and, at the same time, unreadable, completely lacking in coherence, authorial voice, and innovativeness, you have to look no further than this current textbook development process.

   And largely, this process is driven by standards. The committee that draws up the guidelines that go to the development house may not care a whit about what we have learned about how to teach, say, vocabulary, but they do care about giving correlations to their marketing people. The standards drive everything, and the writer is no longer able to make any but the most minor decisions about what will be taught to whom and when. His or her expertise simply doesn’t matter. What matters is what the development guidelines say, and those say what they say because people have made business decisions, not pedagogical ones.

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3. Robert D. Shepherd says:

   June 13, 2013 at 11:56 am

   In short, major textbook programs are now produced by formula. They are the literary equivalent of painting by numbers. The writer is now, typically, reduced to being the person who fills in the blue areas.

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   • Chris says:

     June 13, 2013 at 12:18 pm

     Thanks for this enlightening confirmation of what teachers have long suspected. I was at a district PD yesterday and asked one of the district employees involved in the process about textbook adoption for the next school year in ELA.

     Florida has a 5 year rolling textbook adoption scheme where one year we get new reading programs, the next year math programs, the next year science programs, etc. As a major purchaser the state gets special treatment from the publishers with “Florida” editions and lots of campaign donations to state legislators.

     I was told that several districts in the state are not happy with the choices being offered because they are obviously old materials with “Common Core Aligned” tacked on. These districts have petitioned the state for permission to purchase large classroom libraries of trade books, both fiction and nonfiction, instead of the required basal textbook programs.

     It will interesting to see how this plays out. Our former state Commissioner of Education (I believe this was 2 or 3 commissioners ago) severely limited our choices during the last adoption and actually made the choice for us in the last math adoption. The cynic in me predicts that the districts will not be granted permission to deviate from the politically motivated choices and that sooner, rather than later, there will be no choices allowed at all — the state will choose all materials in the interest of CCSS “fidelity” and “rigor”.

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   • Bill Bradley says:

     June 14, 2013 at 11:17 am

     Except that they very often color in the Blue area Green. The number of complete inaccuracies, misconceptions, and contradictions in these “Work for hire” textbooks is astonishing.

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4. TC says:

   June 13, 2013 at 11:57 am

   No references to controversial things like evolution or Memorial or Veterans Day, good god.

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   • Robert D. Shepherd says:

     June 13, 2013 at 12:12 pm

     That’s only the beginning. Here’s one of my favorites that appears over and and over again in English Language Arts textbook project guidelines: Avoid material with which students and teachers are not already familiar.

     In other words, avoid teaching them anything.

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     • TC says:

       June 13, 2013 at 12:34 pm

       Yes, it does make one wonder who writes these guidelines which are basically gibberish.

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     • Michael Fiorillo says:

       June 13, 2013 at 2:48 pm

       Exactly, and in that same vein, David Coleman is also adamant that context not be provided to students grappling with texts, further hindering the ability to teach.

       Then again, it’s about testing and selling, not teaching.

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5. Robert D. Shepherd says:

   June 13, 2013 at 12:09 pm

   Questions like, “How might one teach writing effectively?” simply don’t matter. What matters is “What do the standards say, and can we show where, exactly, that is covered?” and “Does the program contain all the features from the state adoption criteria?” and “Does it contain all the parts that the leading competitive program contains?” The guidelines that the writers, at the absolute bottom of the totem pole, receive envision a program fully planned, beforehand, so that any adoption committee will be able to check off all the boxes on the extensive adoption criteria lists produced by state departments and all the boxes on the standards correlation. Under these conditions, it is IMPOSSIBLE to produce a coherent, focused product of the kind that might result from a knowledgeable professional actually writing something, with assistance, from beginning to end.

   One can attend meeting after meeting to plan these new textbook programs, and one will never hear someone say, “Well, if we did this, it would work for kids. They would actually learn something.” The extensive standards and adoption criteria that the publishers must meet effectively ensure that no real innovation in pedagogy will appear in any textbook (though every product will be “new,” “now aligned to x”) and that no textbook will instantiate an authorial vision or have an authorial voice.

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6. Robert D. Shepherd says:

   June 13, 2013 at 12:18 pm

   It is very common for a writer to be asked to write a 500- to 700-word piece and to receive 40 pages of guidelines for writing it. I am not exaggerating.

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7. Dienne says:

   June 13, 2013 at 12:25 pm

   From the link: “Did they think that after 90 books I need their tips? Do they have any idea how these “tips” flatten text and clip the wings of a talented writer? Do they understand that these are the same kinds of rules that make textbook prose so deadly?”

   Yes, they are aware. It’s a feature, not a bug.

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   • Robert D. Shepherd says:

     June 13, 2013 at 12:30 pm

     yup

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8. Galton says:

   June 13, 2013 at 12:51 pm

   Ok teachers, now since your lively hood (and those of your fellow L A teachers) will depend on the test score growth, pleas do not waste any time on :
   “passages may not have references to drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling, magic, holidays, religion, violence, or evolution, and that topic ideas should not lend themselves to passages which would require such content.”
   And still some Chiefs and dolts do not understand how curricula get narrowed!

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   • Robert D. Shepherd says:

     June 13, 2013 at 1:22 pm

     See Diane Ravitch’s superb “The Language Police” for more on this topic. That list is just the beginning.

     Drugs: Don’t teach Colerige’s “Kubla Khan” or stories about Sherlock Holmes or The Autobiography of Malcolm X

     Sex: Don’t teach Romeo and Juliet or “To the Maidens, to Make Use of Time”

     Alcohol: Don’t teach anything by Hemingway or Fitzgerald

     Gambling: Don’t teach The Merchant of Venice

     Magic: Don’t teach The Once and Future King, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Gabriel Garcia Marquz

     Holidays: “The Christmas Carol”? You have to be kidding

     Religion: No Bible, no Upanishads, no Rumi. This will be a VERY long list

     Violence: No unpleasantness, please. Nothing bad ever happened to anyone. Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front? Hardy’s “Channel Firing”? Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”? Wiesel’s Night? Hershey’s Hiroshima? Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five? Are you kidding?

     Evolution: So, we’re at a point in human history in which, via genetic means, people are on the cusp of taking control of their own evolution. This is far more consequential than was the invention of fire. But let’s make sure that kids are entirely ignorant of the mechanisms involved.

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     • Galton says:

       June 13, 2013 at 6:15 pm

       Yes, great book. I highly recommend it!

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     • neanderthal100 says:

       June 14, 2013 at 4:57 am

       Ok…Settle for “Run Spot Run”

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   • WordsMatter says:

     June 13, 2013 at 2:29 pm

     Yet, somehow Pearson’s NY ELA tests included trademark names. Marketing to the young allowed.

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9. Harold says:

   June 13, 2013 at 1:17 pm

   Thank you, Robert D. Shepherd, these conglomerates have long been the problem not the solution.

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10. teacherken says:

    June 13, 2013 at 1:23 pm

    so i note this paragraph from the guidelines
    “Keep in mind that passages may not have references to drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling, magic, holidays, religion, violence, or evolution, and that topic ideas should not lend themselves to passages which would require such content.”

    So evolution is in their mind the same as druges, sex, alcohol and gambling?

    And why exclude those subjects? For gosh sakes, you think the students were are testing do not know about them?

    and excluding violence? Gee, I guess that would eliminate much of both the Bible and Shakespeare (think of all those killed in Macbeth for example, which would also be excluded because the “Boil, boil” ladies who after all are witches. Oh, and that gets the Bible again – the witch of Endor, anyone?

    If we want authentic learning and authentic assessment, how’s about we use authentic texts, whether fiction, drama, poetry, or non-fiction, and not the pablum that has to get past this kind of screening.

    When I did SAT prep for Princeton Review before I decided it was unethical because it gave an even more unfair advantage to those kids from families who could afford it, we were told then in answering questions on critical reading passages to eliminate any answer that would represent a strong opinion or feeling, because were that the answer it might offend someone.

    How’s about we teach our students how to deal with strong feelings, how to dialog between two people with strongly held but opposing viewpoints?

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11. Robert D. Shepherd says:

    June 13, 2013 at 1:24 pm

    If you do teach Romeo and Juliet, make sure to use one of the editions published by the major educational publishing houses. A third of each play has been removed to get rid of any unpleasantness that might potentially bother someone. No “The bawdy hand of the dial is on the prick of noon” in those!” Thank goodness that our students are being protected from the Bard.

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12. Robert D. Shepherd says:

    June 13, 2013 at 3:20 pm

    Ms. Cobb’s piece is, as one would expect it to be, delightful.

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13. Dolly says:

    June 13, 2013 at 5:47 pm

    Diane, Cody et al:

    Did you see this at John Merrow’s website, “The Common Core and the End of the World”? http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6431

    He has fallen off the enlightenment wagon and is back to supporting high-stakes testing. At the beginning of his Rhee realizations, I suspected he might be too entrenched to change…

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14. Robert D. Shepherd says:

    June 13, 2013 at 7:47 pm

    Do not lay this entirely at the feet of the educational publishers. They work in one of the most overly regulated, most micromanaged of industries. There is a reason that the current process developed: Publishers compete with one another to provide their customers with precisely what they have asked for. Every time a publisher adds a new feature, state adoption committees add this feature to their list of requirements for adoption. Those lists have now grown gargantuan. They, along with the standards, to a large extent determine what the content of the publishers’ guidelines for writers are. What you end up with is a product that is so specified from the start that its creators could not have thought it through in a rational manner, from a pedagogical effectiveness standpoint, even if they had wanted to.

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15. Robert D. Shepherd says:

    June 13, 2013 at 8:14 pm

    Suppose that instead of buying this blouse or that belt, this pair of shoes or that scarf, as you see fit, your government decided for you what complete outfits you could buy.

    In this scenario, each year, a state department committee draws up a specification for The Work Outfit, The Sports and Leisure Outfit, the Casual Fun with Friends Outfit, the Special Occasions Outfit, etc.

    A small group of manufacturers competes with one another to produce these complete outfits. One manufacturer, working within the current specifications from Texas and California and Florida for The Work Outfit, innovates a tiny bit: The manufacturer adds a cell phone pocket to the purse and do the blouse in purple. These prove popular. In the next round, all the state department committees add “Blouse must be purple” and “Purse must contain cell phone pocket” to their specifications of The Work Outfit. Over time, the purse grows to contain 3,600 compartments. Each is a great idea. There’s the cell phone pocket and the car keys pocket and the rain poncho compartment and the notebook and pen compartment and the change of clothes for the evening compartment and, and, and, and . . .

    Meanwhile, an “independent” organization set up by concerned philanthropists and the federal government, working in collusion to improve couture, issues its national standards: Outfits must be made of prewashed fabrics, must be wrinkle resistant, must have such and such density of weave in the fabric, and so on. The clothing manufacturer employs a “fashion designer.” That person oversees a committee to create a design for The Work Outfit. But that person is not free to design and is a designer in name only. The design must follow the state specs and the standards as precisely as possible, and those micromanage the design. And meanwhile, it’s become so expensive to produce these outfits, partly because of their overspecification, that the manufacturers can’t afford to make a mistake. So they do whatever the manufacturer with the largest sales did for The Work Outfit last time around, but they try to add a few new features.

    That’s how basal textbook programs are made these days.

    I know. It’s completely crazy. But that’s how it is done.

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16. Robert D. Shepherd says:

    June 13, 2013 at 8:21 pm

    Correction: Opening sentence should be

    Suppose that instead of your buying this blouse or that belt, this pair of shoes or that scarf, as you see fit, you had the benefit of having a government that decided for you what complete outfits you could buy.

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    • neanderthal100 says:

      June 14, 2013 at 5:04 am

      The have succeeded in suppressing my creativity.
      I am now their robot puppet .
      or
      I fight back

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17. stephaniedi says:

    June 13, 2013 at 9:26 pm

    http://thejoyofteachingblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/say-what-you-mean-and-mean-what-you-say/

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18. Robert D. Shepherd says:

    June 13, 2013 at 11:39 pm

    The answer to all this is to return to site-based decision making AND to give teachers the major voice in that decision making.

    Here’s what Theodore Roethke said (I might not have this exactly right; it’s from memory):

    “I long for the administrator who will pound the table and say, ‘What we need is some more disorganization around here.'”

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    • neanderthal100 says:

      June 14, 2013 at 5:07 am

      What appears to be disorganization can sometimes be creative minds that are multi-tasking and individualizing instruction.

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      • Robert D. Shepherd says:

        June 14, 2013 at 7:56 am

        neanderthal100: exactly

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    • teachingeconomist says:

      June 14, 2013 at 8:32 am

      How far apart will individual schools be for parents to object to being assigned to a school based on geography?

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      • Robert D. Shepherd says:

        June 14, 2013 at 10:56 am

        teachingeconomist, you raise great questions; you always do. But at least with local public schools empowered by site-based decision making (that’s key), the locals can raise a fuss and throw the bums out, and one can get the variety and competition necessary to drive innovation.

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      • Robert D. Shepherd says:

        June 14, 2013 at 11:01 am

        What we are seeing is not market-based reform that provides for school choice as an alternative to public education. That’s the rhetoric but not the practice. Instead, we’re getting crony capitalism–a different and even more insidious kind of totalitarianism.

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