Anthony Codybexplains here why the Common Core standards lack legitimacy.
The developers were in a hurry. They ignored the democratic process. They took shortcuts. Consequently, they lack buy-in and legitimacy.
The democratic process is slow and messy but it works better in the long run than authoritarianism. It gains the consent of the governed. Without the consent of the governed, there is coercion, compulsion, distrust, animosity.
That is why the Common Core is in trouble. That is why it may fail.
Democracy matters.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Anthony Cody is wrong on this. The process for the math standards was not hurried, and there was a good deal of feedback as Bill McCallum explained to me, and I shared here in a comment earlier in the week.
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Who’s Bill McCallum and what’s his vested interest?
Anthony Cody and Mercedes Schneider have laid out their cases rather convincingly, with evidence. If you or Mr. McCallum can refute their cases, with evidence, I think people on this blog will be willing to listen. But “Anthony Cody is wrong on this” isn’t terribly convincing.
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Explain the democratic process the NY DOE used to include parents before adopting Hirsch’s Core Knowledge also known as Common Core Curriculum promoted on the EngageNY website.
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Yes, The process by which the legislature elects the Board of Regents is arcane to say the least. When legislators find is baffling and abstain from voting as a protest (2011 elections) you know that it is a seriously flawed process, and since the Regents choose the Commissioner of Ed it is very disturbing, I’m beginning to find that those with all the power to shape educational policy in NY serve at the pleasure of the Governor, How can this be?
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Some standards mightn’t look so bad on the surface. The real —-is hitting the fan when teachers are having to use common core-aligned curriculum ans tests.Neither teachers nor children vetted those. You know if something is age appropriate by trying it out with REAL kids, but Pearson et al were in too big of a hurry to bother with that. Bucks to be made.
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I am trying to remember what the democratic process has been in adopting any local curriculum. What would a democratic process for curriculum adoption look like? In my state it is determined by the state school board, a rather frightening situation after some elections.
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TE, In my district, curriculum has always been written locally. Teachers with their supervisors and the director of curriculum have done this in the past. After it is written and approved by the Superintendent’s office then the LOCAL Board of Education adopts it.
We never had a problem with buy in because WE wrote it.
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Perhaps in states where the curriculum has more often been under the active control of the state level government, substituting a national standard does not seem, in principle, to be such a bad idea.
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What would a “democratic process look like?
In Virginia in the early 1990s, the state Department of Education led the development of performance standards for a news state curriculum.
Hundreds of people across the state were directly involved, For example, in the area of social studies. a 60-plus-person task force was created to write new standards. The task force included college faculty, classroom teachers, administrators, members of professional organizations (like the Virginia Council for the Social Studies), testing and assessment specialists, and even representatives from groups as diverse as the Boy Scouts and the Eagle Forum.
Performance standards were written for various levels (elementary, middle, high school), and were tailored to be developmentally appropriate. A lot of care, and time, and study. and research went into the effort. In fact a theoretical and research-based “concept paper” guided the process. It was produced within the Department of Education and validated externally by experts (for example, at the Universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Washington, among others).
The writing task force produced a solid piece of work. But a state election put a new governor (Republican George Allen) in charge, and he appointed a new state superintendent and a small group of conservatives to what was called the Champion Schools Commission. That small group seized control of the standards-writing process and discarded what had been developed in favor of their own preferences. Research was discarded. At the elementary level, they simply copied E.D. Hirsch’s core knowledge curriculum. When they were done, they brought in an outside “expert” to bless their work.
Some members of the Champions Schools group were “promoted” to the state Board of Education. There was dissension across the state. When public hearings were held later, the governor’s office asked the state Moral Majority to flood the meetings with their people. Eventually, the standards were modified a bit. But what resulted was a massive state testing program.
The process that started was inclusive, and democratic.
It surely didn’t end that way.
Maybe the Common Core will work in the opposite way.
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TE. In many states, the standards were broad enough for local districts to develop their own standards, which aligned with state standards but were more fleshed out. Schools and teachers had a lot more curricular decision-making ability and autonomy than permitted by national standards and associated high-stakes tests.
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I teach a downstream class that makes use of high school algebra, so I thought I would take a look at the Common Core Standars for high school algebra. These are the top level headings:
Seeing Structure in Expressions
Interpret the structure of expressions
Write expressions in equivalent forms to solve problems
Arithmetic with Polynomials and Rational Functions
Perform arithmetic operations on polynomials
Understand the relationship between zeros and factors of polynomials
Use polynomial identities to solve problems
Rewrite rational functions
Creating Equations
Create equations that describe numbers or relationships
Reasoning with Equations and Inequalities
Understand solving equations as a process of reasoning and explain the reasoning
Solve equations and inequalities in one variable
Solve systems of equations
Represent and solve equations and inequalities graphically
This does not seem especially proscriptive to me. How much could you add or subtract from this topic list and still be able to call it algebra?
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TE:
Interesting. I only looked at the 5th & 6th Grade Math and compared it to the Massachusetts curriculum. The semantics make it look more different than I think it is. There is certainly a big and potential confusing emphasis on word problems.
Did they not mention matrix or linear algebra at the HS level or is this another semantic thing?
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With the Common Core, education is one-size-fits-all. If Algebra is designated only in the CC high school math standards and associated tests, how can schools provide Algebra for advanced 8th graders who are ready to learn it?
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CT,
If your concern is the tracking of students by age rather than ability to handle the material, I don’t think the common core standards are worse than existing state or local standards. The CC has yet to be adopted in my state yet the range of classes individual students are allowed to take is limited by local standards and local resource allocation.
If memory serves, the principal of the year in the state of New York has every student take exactly the same classes through tenth grade in the high school, the same English through eleventh, and limits mathamatics study to the Calc BC in the senior year. It seems to me that this is very much a one size fits all high school.
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The NY school you described is not representative of those in my area, but they are likely to become like that very soon here due to the CC.
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Feedback is very different from field tested.
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Here in Michigan, some did give extensive feedback. It doesn’t mean they were listened to. There is no local control. Plus, it should have been phased in, grade by grade. Instead it is hurriedly implemented.
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An atheist in a land of Christians learns to be concerned with “local control”.
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Detroiter:
A rolling implementation makes sense to me where there are real substantive differences from what has gone before. The approach to implementation appears to have been a version of what I would term “52 Card Pick Up”.
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Those math standards were thrown at the teachers with zero resources.
Chaotic spinning..not spiraling as they claim…
Pure Chaos…
A co-worker f mine summed it up perfectly
Let us build a House…using the Common Core
1. Throw every single item you need to build that house in one huge pile….nails, screws…lumber..bricks..powdered cement, wires cabinets, fixtures, shingles, pipes, etc etc etc…and
2. Let us also throw the tools into the pile with the materials…Hammers, Drills, Cement Mixers, Big Tools, Little Tools, etc etc
3. Teacher’s Job Description
Teacher facilitates as students discover how to jump into a pile
of ????? and build a perfect house…
4. Student success will be determined using a paper test .
Tests will consist of questions generated by Big Publishing Company on “How to build a House from the Top Down”……
Top DC to the Bottom of the Totem Pole Teachers
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Sandra Stotsky, from the Common Core validation committee, has been providing a lot of insight into the CC process, including the lack of transparency and accountability. She says those writing the standards were chosen by Gates, in a brief statement in the link below, but there are more detailed videos of her, including Stotsky’s testimonies to state legislatures across the country, so do a search to see additional tapes on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bDQHLBFjXY
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I was a member of the Wisconsin Mathematics Council board of directors from 2004 to 2010. During that time Wisconsin was updating and rewriting their state standards, but the Common Core was coming out. We were given an opportunity to see the standards and give feedback. I can’t imagine we were the only ones.
I’ll repost what Bill McCallum said about public input:
“CCSSO and NGA appointed teachers to the original Work Team, on recommendation of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association. There are 5 practicing teachers in this list, plus many other formerly practicing teachers.
Lead writers met repeatedly with teams assembled by AFT and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). AFT in particular assembled teams of practicing teachers by grade band to come in on a weekend and meet with us. Their feedback was detailed, intensive, and influential.
The standards went out for two or three rounds of review to the 48 states who had signed on to the initiative. These states were really our clients, and we paid close attention to their comments. Many states assembled teams of teachers to review our work (for example, I know that Arizona did something similar to AFT, at least twice).
As for public comment, a public draft was released in March 2010. It attracted about 10,000 comments. These were compiled into a spreadsheet of actionable comments by Grade, and I personally went through the whole thing. This led to further substantial changes in the standards before they were released in June.”
(Me again) I had made the comment that it seems to me that field testing doesn’t really apply to standards. Standards are what we decide students should know and be able to do. His response:
“This is eminently sensible. Standards are an agreement; you can’t field test an agreement. You can field test curriculum and assessment based on the agreement, and at some point you may want to revise the agreement as a result of what you learn. But field testing the standards themselves would have meant not having common standards; and so would have told you nothing about the advantages or disadvantages of having common standards. The only way to field test the standards would be to have some parallel United States, just like ours, but where different common standards were adopted. And follow it for 10 years.
In fact, we did do the closest thing we could do to field testing: we looked carefully at standards of high achieving countries and states. You could think of this as a sort of observational study, which is what you do when a field test isn’t feasible.
The other question my reader had was about the role of teachers in developing the standards, and the opportunity for public comment. I’ll answer that one tomorrow.”
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Corey:
Thank you for the additional background. Do you know of any plans to solicit feedback on the curriculum now that it is actually in place in some States?
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I don’t know of any such plans.
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Corey:
From your perspective, should there be such a plan?
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Yes, there should be, but I don’t think it would serve any purpose until they’ve been put into use and we can see them in action. Otherwise it would be a continual cycle of arguing and they’d never be used.
If these standards stick around for any length of time (those in education know how quickly things get abandoned for the next great idea) there should, and probably will, be a revision process at some point. And then, yes, such a plan should be in place.
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“Standards are what we decide students should know and be able to do.”
Is a standard what they should know or what they should do? Are those two concepts the same? Is “standard” then not the same as “curriculum”?
Does not “standard” imply/connote measurement of some sort? Can one accurately, logically and validly “measure” the teaching and learning process? If not then why have “standards”?
What is the purpose of using the term “standard” and not curriculum? And/or what is the difference? What is the great need for a “national” standard for the teaching and learning process?
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A curriculum is more specific than a set of standards. The standards are a framework around which a curriculum is built.
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“CCSSO and NGA appointed teachers to the original Work Team, on recommendation of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association. There are 5 practicing teachers in this list, plus many other formerly practicing teachers.”
This is contrary to the list of those published by NGA. Only one practicing teacher is listed at all, a middle school math teacher, Vern Williams, Mathematics Teacher, HW Longfellow Middle School, Fairfax County, Virginia Public Schools, who was listed on the Math Feedback Group. No practicing K-12 teachers were listed in either of the Work Groups that actually wrote the standards: http://www.nga.org/cms/home/news-room/news-releases/page_2009/col2-content/main-content-list/title_common-core-state-standards-development-work-group-and-feedback-group-announced.html
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Cosmic,
Thanks for adding valuable info to the conversation.
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CT:
But there are an additional number of former HS teachers.
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My pleasure, Linda. Thank YOU!
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Over 3 million practicing public school teachers in this country and they could only come up with 1 practicing middle school teacher –and just for a Feedback Group, not a Work Group that wrote the standards? I don’t think it’s enough to have retired teachers. It sends the message that practicing teachers are know-nothings who don’t matter, when they are the ones in the classroom who have to implement standards that were written by other people. And there was not even one professional in any of the groups representing Early Childhood, practicing or retired.
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Bernie, I think you may be reading more into the bios than I’m seeing. I see only one “retired” teacher listed and she worked at a very unique residential school for highly gifted kids. One would have to make assumptions about the K12 teaching background for the others listed.
David Coleman and Jason Zimba have never worked as K12 teachers and they are known as the chief “architects” of the Common Core.
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Cosmic,
One reason that practicing teachers don’t get involved in projects like writing the Common Core is that we don’t have time. The time commitment for such a project can be quite large. College faculty have time built into their schedule to meet the expectation that they publish. Most practicing teachers don’t even have adequate time built into their schedule to plan their lessons and grade papers.
On top of that, committees like this generally involve travel and meetings, which are very difficult for practicing teachers. They have to get released from school, which most districts are not happy to accommodate, then they have to create plans for their substitute teachers, also a rather large job.
It’s not that practicing teachers aren’t valued. It’s that they can’t do it.
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Corey @ 12:53,
Excuses for non-inclusion of teachers? Could those not all be overcome?
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I’m not making excuses, it’s just a reality of the job. I don’t know how hard they tried to get active teachers on the committee. But having been a member of committees, working around the schedule of high school teachers poses some pretty big challenges.
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Don’t fret…they really wouldn’t have wanted us anyway. We would get in the way of their preconceived notions. Teachers and kids are an after thought.
I don’t believe this is about improving teaching and learning, but I know enough to pull it off for the walk throughs and the formal observation and then go back to real teaching once the iPad leaves.
It’s is survival of the fittest.
Kids are happy and productive. Parents are proud. I am teaching.
Just ignore and dismiss the haters and the over-abundance of self appointed edufrauds.
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Sorry, I should have said secondary and elementary teachers, not just high school teachers.
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If the process for the math standards was not hurried etc. then how did it and the CC$$ as a whole come out being so developmentally inappropriate for K-3? A truly open, democratic process would have preempted such failures, and in fact the organization that is the brain trust here on early childhood education did chime in but was ignored.
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CitizensArrest: you stated in two sentences why the whole CCSS project is not only undemocratic and anti-democratic, but is turning out to be a tremendous waste of time, energy and resources.
To expand on your comment a bit: let’s say they had conducted a test run in a select number of school districts [picked to be representative in such ways as small and large, urban and rural, relatively homogeneous and heterogeneous re SES and race/ethnicity, etc.], working closely with educators at all levels, with parents and with concerned members of the communities involved. Not only would they have worked out the bugs at much less cost and aggravation, but after making all the necessary adjustments in order to make it as successful as humanly possible, they would have created many thousands of enthusiastic supporters of their project who would attest to the virtues of CCSS.
The self-styled “education reformers” chose another path because they have a completely different mindset than the vast majority of those concerned about a “better education for all.”
State Commissioner John King’s recent performance is but the latest public example of how they operate—not by caprice or chance, but because they simply don’t see us.
Why? Just think how their whole High Holy Church of Testolatry operates, with its deep faith in mathematical intimidation, exemplified by the Sacred EduMetrics of Assessment.
They literally don’t take account of us—because in their eyes we don’t count.
So don’t count[=rely] on them—count[=rely] on yourselves.
Don’t agonize, organize.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” [Frederick Douglass]
Still mighty good words to live by.
🙂
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DEMAND to see the Pearson tests.
DEMAND to stop APPR and its test score teacher evaluations
DEMAND to let teachers and early childhood experts vet the CCSS
DEMAND an end the punitive nature of CCSS/RTTT
DEMAND an end to endless testing
DEMAND an apology for the damage inflicted to children and parents
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Yes, they forgot about “the people.”
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They know it’s a problem:
“Education Reform Becomes Dirty ‘R-Word’ To School-Focused Mayors”
“Even so-called reformers have recognized the shortcomings of their good-vs.-evil narrative. John White, the schools chief of Louisiana who made his name as a New York City deputy education chancellor under Joel Klein, recently gave a speech arguing reformers must adapt to survive. He said America’s inherently populist tendencies will topple the movement if it doesn’t move beyond the same old fights and self-righteous justifications.”
Although they are starting to get a clue that there IS a problem, they (sadly) think the solution is “rebranding”:
“But for the touring mayors, the shift may be more marketing than substance. The tour is being underwritten by Education Reform Now, the 501c(3) group created by Democrats for Education Reform, a political group often credited with the bipartisan appeal of the reform movement.
“We must not get caught up on the reform word,” said Hancock, of Denver. “Reform has connotations.”
So the intent is to do the exact same things they’ve been doing for a decade, but call it something else because they’re starting to worry about getting either elected or re-elected.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/18/education-reform-mayors_n_4119868.html?utm_content=buffer03454&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer
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Look at all of the spins that are being used to justify the Common Core State Standards at Jeb Bush’s “Chiefs for Change” summit this weekend and on his website at http://excelined.org/common-core-toolkit/ The”research” for speaking about the CCSS is weak. On the matter of career readiness: Between 2000 and 2002, Achieve conducted interviews with prospective employers and higher education officials in a few states to gather examples later cited as “evidence” to support various claims about college and career readiness. This work, undertaken under the banner of American Diploma Project, is dated and limited in scope. Some of the ELA examples in the CCSS were initially written for Achieve’s American Diploma Project (high school), and were straight-up swiped from community college assignments. Example on request. For information about Achieve’s Research see http://www.achieve.org/Research.
For the list of studies “consulted” in support of claims that the Standards are internationally benchmarked, see the CCSS for Mathematics (pp. 91-93). A high proportion of these studies are not peer reviewed publications, and some are not fully annotated. Comparable information on international benchmarking of the ELA Standards appears in Appendix A, p. 41.
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when i went to the achieve link, the page was not there,,,,
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I think it’s a basic cultural and philosophical difference, so rebranding won’t work.
If one comes from a perspective that is grounded in “choice” one will have a hard time understanding the perspective of public school parents because “choice” means if one doesn’t like or agree with a school’s policy, one doesn’t advocate to change it, one simply “chooses” another school. If I’m in a chain charter, I can’t ask THEM to change. I have to go. The same is true in private schools. I can’t demand our local Catholic school change. They’d simply ask me to leave if I was unhappy.
The public school parents in NY aren’t going anywhere. They think those schools belong to them, and they are correct.
They would expect Dr. King to go, actually, if it comes down to them or him.
It’s not personal. It’s a different mindset 🙂
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Could someone steer me to the information that stated that the Common Core was developed without early childhood experts? Thanks for any help here.
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The following link leads to the list of the Common Core Work Groups –the people who actually wrote the standards– on the National Governor’s Association’s website Many people from testing companies wrote the standards, such as ACT, The College Board, and America’s Choice (their website redirects to Pearson). Not a single early childhood expert, child development expert or K-3 teacher is listed on the Work Groups. In fact, only one practicing teacher is listed at all, a middle school math teacher. (Note: Achieve was also represented a lot, which is an organization that was created by governors and big business) http://www.nga.org/cms/home/news-room/news-releases/page_2009/col2-content/main-content-list/title_common-core-state-standards-development-work-group-and-feedback-group-announced.html
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William McCallum is an Australian-born mathematics professor at the University of Arizona who developed the mathematics curriculum in conjunction with the Education Department of the University of North Carolina. As I recall, from googling their literature, they had teachers give “input” for a weekend (or several weekends?). Exactly who these teachers were is not quite clear.
What input was sought and obtained for the reading curriculum I do not know.
One would like to see some transcripts of that input, that’s for sure.
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I also seem to recall that the advisers to the Common Core curriculum’s main writers had to sign confidentiality agreements. Why was this, inquiring minds would like to know?
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You are right!…Diane, I appreciate your fighting to get the word out on “all of this.” Nancy Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 18:35:55 +0000 To: nancyturnbo@hotmail.com
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Not only Common Core is this way but iPads or other electronic devices which are bankrupting school districts but the California LCFF, which I busted them on illegally doing it in Bakersfield and as a result the comments which were to end that day at noon are open ended which still does not address the rush and illegal way it was done by a private organization for the State. What!! Yes, an organization which represents 4 states and has 4-700 corporate donors is running the states business. Joke time on us. They could not even run the video properly. When I spoke of this the loser who ran the video and the loser superintendent of Kern County both got in my face on this and I ran it home on them. You have no respect for an important event. You did not check out the connection even after the failure the day before. Your person did not check the batteries or connections and there was the wrong microphone on only a 4′ cord. Who do you think you are kidding. Want to be professionals and treated like professionals then be professionals and stop complaining because I pointed out the lack of any ability at all to do the simplest things. Your responsibility, not mine.
This is how all of this is run. Last night, and checked today, is the point that a legislator in California is working to have hearings on iPads and other electronic devices as to their legality to use bond funds, It is illegal to use that money for that. and the possibility of them bankrupting schools as they are saying. I have the articles and documents. No one does Due Diligence anymore and that is why it is so easy for me to bust them. Amateurs, is what they are.
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It is a real shame. Even E.D. Hirsch’s core knowledge, which I basically approve of, is grotesquely developmentally inappropriate. Yet he and those working for him totally refuse to acknowledge this. He is a poet with a serious involvement in literature and ought to have some legitimate expertise. It is a case of self-interested over-reach.
On the other hand, the idea that a national curriculum ought to be farmed out to private contractors (I mean textbook publishers and testing companies) is a profoundly wrong, anti-intellectual and ethically troubling way to go about things, however much national standards are to be desired.
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Common core standards offer a framework for learning. Teachers and school leaders need collaborative time to build local curriculum that exceed the CCSS. State tests with unusually high cut scores for students attached to teacher evaluations are destroying a good effort to raise US curriculum . Oppose false testing models like those in New York.
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WRONG. The TESTS ARE THE CURRICULUM. Ten years of punitive NCLB law have demonstrated this already.
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Wrong. School leaders make the tests the curriculum. Regents exams never were the curriculum except in schools that bought test prep booklets that teachers were told to use for the second semester. Same is true now. School leaders set the tone for test prep.
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Wrong. HS Regents tests have been the curriculum since the Civil War. Can.t tell you how many teachers have told me, “Oh no, I don’t teach that, its not on The regents test. Ask any HS student what they do in math, SS, or science during the month of May. Got news for you, AP test are also the curriculum. Ask any AP student what they do in April. Got more news for you. The new APPR has made all tests the curriculum. Some exceptions? Of course. When it comes to CCSS math and ELA – these new assessments are the curriculum.
Again. Ten years of NCLB and its punitive AYP requirements have proven this. One hundred and fifty years of Regents testing has proven this. AP testing has proven this. There is no debate here.
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It’s associating high-stakes to test outcomes that make the tests drive curriculum, which has been intentionally accomplished by politicians, not educators –who’ve had virtually no say in the matter for well over a decade.
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See those four wrongs and raise two more as two wrongs make a right, eh!
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Recipes for educational disaster:
1) Ignore experienced teachers; instead let non-educators control top-down decisions
2) Ignore cognitive learning theory and understanding of brain/child development
3) Ignore parents after conducting a surprise attack by CCSS
4) Ignore a decade of high-stakes (NCLB) testing reform failure
5) Ignore your own ignorance and arrogance
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Disaster Solution: What about a Class action suit against the CC Authors: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers on behalf of all school children who are experiencing pain and suffering as a direct results of these standards. Any lawyers out there?
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Send lawyers guns and money – the tests have hit the fan.
A slam dunk legal case.
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They are way ahead of you. The NGA and the CCSSO already included a disclaimer. They cannot and will not be held responsible.
When you have time watch this Arkansas teen pull back the curtain.
Who said our kids aren’t smart?
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FYI-“Having a disclaimer is no guarantee that a person or entity won’t be sued on a matter. It will go to the basis of determining liability because of such. CC Not research based, no field test, teachers from every state not represented, no school psychologist in development, documented stress on teachers and students, democratic process ignored= an attorney with knowledge to sort this out.
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Teachers, parents, and students did not sign any waiver.
They can take their waiver and use it for toilet paper.
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The pain and suffering is not a result of the standards. It is the result of the testing, and the out-of-line approaches some districts take to the standards out of fear of accountability. The standards are not the issue, so the authors are not the ones to sue. Maybe the state legislatures who put such high stakes on the tests, and require so many tests?
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It is NOT just about the tests. A lot of the pain and suffering experienced by children and described by parents and teachers is the result of standards that are not developmentally appropriate, because not a single child development expert or early childhood specialist was on the CC Work Groups.
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Cosmic, what evidence do you have that the standards are not developmentally appropriate? I keep hearing that phrase. But, while there may not be enough teachers on the standards writing team for your taste, there certainly are educational researchers who know more than I (and, I suspect, you) about what is developmentally appropriate. If these standards reflect what is done in other successful countries, and they work, then it seems reasonable that the problem isn’t about developmental appropriateness, it’s about experiential background of our students.
If teachers are suddenly asking students to do things way beyond what they’ve done before, they’re not going to be successful. Scaffolding is needed first.
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Corey:
Thanks for hanging in and providing additional information. My understanding is that the CC were built in part off of existing curriculums from a number of States. Is it possible to say which States’ existing curriculum are closest to the CC at K-3 levels?
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The Crisis in Early Education: A Research-Based Case for More Play and Less Pressure
Click to access crisis_in_early_ed.pdf
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Bernie, I don’t know the answer to your question. I have not looked at all states’ standards. McCallum said they also looked at what is done in countries who are more successful than we are, so you’d probably need to look there, too.
Cosmic, from CCSS:
Kindergarten:
“Students use numbers, including written numerals, to represent
quantities and to solve quantitative problems, such as counting objects in a set; counting out a given number of objects; comparing sets or numerals; and modeling simple joining and separating situations with sets of objects, or eventually with equations such as 5 + 2 = 7 and 7 – 2 = 5. (Kindergarten students should see addition and subtraction equations, and student writing of equations in kindergarten is encouraged, but it is not required.)
Students choose, combine, and apply effective strategies for answering quantitative questions, including quickly recognizing the cardinalities of small sets of objects, counting and producing sets of given sizes, counting the number of objects in combined sets, or counting the number of objects that remain in a set after some are taken away.
(2) Students describe their physical world using geometric ideas (e.g., shape, orientation, spatial relations) and vocabulary. They identify, name, and describe basic two-dimensional shapes, such as squares, triangles, circles, rectangles, and hexagons, presented in a variety of ways (e.g., with different sizes and orientations), as well as three-dimensional shapes such as cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres. They use basic shapes and spatial reasoning to model objects in their environment and to construct more complex shapes.”
What in here is age inappropriate? I’m not being snide, I saw that you work in ECE and I do not. So I’m asking.
It seems to me that everything in here can be done in the context of play, and nothing in here requires pressure. “What shape is that? What else has that same shape? How many? If we put these sets together, how many will there be?” This does not require worksheets or tests. It outlines the types of conversations that will help students develop number and spatial sense.
I pulled out one cluster that seemed like it might be age inappropriate:
“Describe and compare measurable attributes.
1. Describe measurable attributes of objects, such as length or weight.
Describe several measurable attributes of a single object.
2. Directly compare two objects with a measurable attribute in common, to see which object has “more of”/“less of” the attribute, and describe
the difference. For example, directly compare the heights of two
children and describe one child as taller/shorter.”
Describe and compare measurable attributes seemed heavy for kindergarten. But then I looked at the standards under it. “Describe measurable attributes” is a bit of a mouthful. But those words are meant for the adults, not the kids. Look at the example for number two. “Compare the heights of two children and describe one as taller or shorter.” All they’re doing here is seeing what kinds of characteristics an object has. It has size, it has weight. Which is more?
Is it possible (again, legitimately asking) that you are interpreting the cluster headings as asking for more than is intended? Look at the “For example” sentences in italics in some of the standards. That may help clarify.
Another set of documents is being developed to help teachers ‘unpack’ these standards. They are called Progressions Documents. The drafts are available for viewing and comment. Here is the one for measurement in K-5. http://commoncoretools.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ccss_progression_gm_k5_2012_07_21.pdf
I think if you look through this it might relieve some of your anxiety about inappropriateness. Or it may confirm them. But I think you’d find it informative. The home page for the Progressions is here if anyone would like to see those for other areas. http://commoncoretools.me/category/progressions/
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As I said TWICE already, after Bernie asked about Math, ““My concerns are more about ELA standards”
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CCSS are not developmentally appropriate for the early childhood grades!
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Alabama:
Folks here keep saying this, but can you some specific examples where the CCSS requires K-3 teachers to do something that is not developmentally appropriate?
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I teach second grade. Right now our new “Common Core Aligned!” math program would require me to spend 90 minutes a day or more teaching math, IF I actually had that much time in my schedule to teach it. We spent last month counting by sixty to determine how many minutes there were in a day. I’m still trying to figure out why this is important for second- graders to know. By the way, I lost the majority of them at 120, and all but one at 180.
The emphasis on “close reading” of challenging text flies in the face of how we know children learn to read. Before we give them material way over their heads, shouldn’t they be able to decode and build comprehension skills? Children’s personal experiences with a subject no longer matter: responses must be text-based. Anyone spending any time at all with the primary set know how egocentric they are. Tying into personal experience is one way we can help children hook into a book.
Computerized assessments do not tell me anything I don’t know already about my students.
Administrative pressure to teach the curriculum so that all classes at a grade level are at the same point ignores the very real fact that, just as all children are not the same, neither are all classes the same and some classes may be quicker to grasp new material while others are slower at it.
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Perhaps it would be helpful to look at the common core standards in math for the second grade. Here is the top level list:
Operations and Algebraic Thinking
Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.
Add and subtract within 20.
Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication.
Number and Operations in Base Ten
Understand place value.
Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.
Measurement and Data
Measure and estimate lengths in standard units.
Relate addition and subtraction to length.
Work with time and money.
Represent and interpret data.
Geometry
Reason with shapes and their attributes.
Poster Lerher will no doubt be pleased to know that the authors of the common core agree that skip counting by 60 is not something second graders need to be able to do. The CCS ask that second graders skip count by 5, 10, and 100, a much more natural requirement for students working with nickels, dimes, and dollars.
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And there’s the rub: programs are coming out which are purportedly aligned with the Common Core. Districts adopt these programs at considerable cost. Curriculum coordinators enforce the implementation of these programs, sometimes to the point of teacher abuse. Of course, it will be the children who ultimately pay the price for the CCSS.
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I don’t think you should blame the folks who wrote the common core standards for states and districts that are adopting some other set of standards and claiming that they are adopting the common core standards.
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Read closely TE…Lehrer didn’t say “other standards”….she or he said programs. Think.
RTT is a stimulus plan designed to siphon taxpayer $$ to fund eduschemes to support the national standards. And when this flops, and it will, guess who will be blamed?
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Linda,
Poster Lehrer was concerned that the second grade students had to skip count by sixty in a thread about the age appropriateness of the common core standards. The fact that the common core standards do not ask that students skip count by 60 would seem to be relevant to the discussion.
It appears that the curriculum poster Lehrer is being told to teach includes things that are not in the common core standards and criticism of those things are not criticisms of the common core standards but of the state or local standards that poster Lehrer is having to use in the class.
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They’re not standards….it’s a program sold to support national standards. A top down initiative forced on disrespected, demeaned front line workers is doomed for failure.
Spin it however you want to make yourself feel better….not interested.
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Linda,
The thread is about the age appropriateness of the Common Core standards. Skip counting by sixty was supposed to be evidence of the age in appropriateness of the Common Core standards. That the Common Core standards do not ask that students skip count by sixty suggests that skip counting by sixty is not evidence that the Common Core standards are age inappropriate. It may well be that it is evidence that the curriculum poster Lehrer is being asked to teach is age inappropriate.
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Lehrer:
Coordinators and Principals are more involved with what is going on in your classroom with CCSS than previously?
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Yes, yes, and yes! It was bad before, but it has definitely gotten worse.
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That is my read as well, though using the notion of 60 minutes does not seem inappropriate in and of itself given notions of time and, for boys, football and ice hockey.
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We were determining, in essence, what 24 x 60 equaled over the course of a month. I do not consider this to be a constructive use of time for second-graders.
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Lehrer:
I agree that this is not a good way to spend their time. However, as TE and Corey indicated this is not an issue with the CCSS.
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Yes it is. Corey and TE are NOT the deciders.
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Linda:
Nobody is saying anybody is a “decider”. I am still interested in actual examples of non-age appropriate elements in the K-3 CCSS. It is as simple as that. What has surfaced from Lehrer’s examples are that his/her school or district management appear to be introducing activities that are not part of CCSS. Do you have examples where the CCSS components are not age appropriate?
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Yes. I will communicate with the parents of my students.
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Linda:
I have to infer from your last comment that you cannot point to an example of a component of the K-3 CCSS in either mathematics of ELA that is age inappropriate.
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Wrong again…you can infer that I don’t want to take the time to share it with you.
Bone up:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.1 Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.2 Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
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Linda:
That is from the guidelines for Grade 6. Do you want to switch the discussion from K-3 to 6th Grade?
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Reading skills, literature and informational, are peppered throughout the document and the same skill exists with simpler verbiage and obviously the demands increase.
It’s very easy to find Bernie.
Teach yourself as compared to demanding others educate you.
Be proactive IF you want to learn. You want to argue.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.1 Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.2 Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.
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Linda:
Let’s take a look at the items you quoted.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.1 Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.2 Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.
Let’s use the fable the Little Red Hen
The first element seems to suggest that the 3rd Graders need to be able to answer questions like “Who planted the wheat” “Who baked the cake?” “Who wanted to eat the cake?” The second element boils down to answering ” Why did the Little Red Hen not give cake to the Dog and the Cat?”
Do you have a different interpretation of what these elements mean? Surely a better question would be to identify the books or stories that the 3rd Graders are expected to read?
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Lehrer:
Can you point me to an example of “close reading” that you feel is inappropriate for your 2nd graders.
Would not any curriculum also set an expectation that classes would be tracking together through the curriculum?
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I cannot find “close reading” spelled out in the CT Common Core, but it’s there, because we have been repeatedly hit over the head with it. Again, not necessarily opposed to common standards, but in the interpretation of how to implement them.
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When states signed onto Race to the Top, they had to agree to adopt the Common Core (CC) standards verbatim. They may not revise, edit or delete any of the standards. They are only permitted to add up to 15% more standards on top of the CC.
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CT:
I simply do not see the CCSS K-3 standards being so specific that they are restrictive in some way and I am still waiting to see examples of what is seen as age inappropriate for Math or ELA. Concrete examples are going to be far more persuasive than general statements.
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What part of this did you not understand? “My concerns are more about ELA standards, including the expectation that all 5 year olds will be reading with purpose and understanding in their first year of formal schooling. I taught Kindergarten for many years and a lot of children are just not ready for that –and they should not be pressured to do so”
That includes the following Kindergarten Common Core ELA standards, which is content that used to be taught primarily in 1st Grade AND in 2nd Grade:
Print Concepts
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1 Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1a Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1b Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1c Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1d Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
Phonological Awareness
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2 Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2a Recognize and produce rhyming words.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2b Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2c Blend and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2d Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words.1 (This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/.)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2e Add or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable words to make new words.
Phonics and Word Recognition
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3a Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3b Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3c Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3d Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.
Fluency
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.4 Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.
Requiring all of that of 5 year olds, along with high-stakes testing, results in a lot of drill for skill teaching and ensures there will be no play in Kindergarten –which is how kids that age learn best:
Crisis in the Kindergarten:
Click to access Crisis_in_Kindergarten.pdf
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When you’re not the one to implement it with live children everyday you just speculate and opine from afar on a device. Don’t waste anymore of your time. Go for a walk. Bernie and TE can figure it out and then they can start their own school.
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You’re right, Linda. Time to move on. (The thought of that school is rather frightening because I don’t think they will ever figure it out!)
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CT:
Who is high stakes testing K-3 children?
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In order to be eligible for funds from Race to the Top, states had to agree to hold teachers accountable for student achievement. This typically meant that states had to pass new laws mandating more tests which could then be tied to K-12 teacher evaluations. Despite being very controversial, in my area, testing now starts in Kindergarten, as well as in many other places across the country, such as in TN: https://www.tennessean.com/article/20130629/NEWS04/108190001/
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To make myself clearer: I believe that standards written top-down makes no sense from an early childhood perspective. I think the programs coming out will do more harm than good. I do believe in high standards for students (ask my own: they’ll tell you!) I do not think testing kids to death will improve how much they learn or make them view education as an exhilarating process. Forgive me if I’m rambling: I am operating on four hours sleep.
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I don’t know which state you’re in Lehrer, but this document has a list of states that chose to add more standards on top of the CC as of 3/2012:
State Adoption of the Common Core State Standards: The 15% Rule http://www.mcrel.org/~/media/Files/McREL/Homepage/Products/01_99/prod17_15PercentRule.ashx
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How does the 15% measurement get tracked? 15% of what? Words?
Is there a national standards police? How do they monitor states, districts, schools, classrooms? This is laughable.
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According to the MCREL article on the 15% Rule, there were no details provided by the federal DoE about how states were to augment the CC. MCREL included examples of standards that states have added.
Good point about policing. I’m not sure how DoE is ensuring fidelity to the CC at all, beyond the required high-stakes standardized tests.
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Thanks, CT. I live in Connecticut (also CT!). And, TE, your point is well-taken. The Common Core standards look innocuous and doable when you see them on paper. The wide and varied interpretation of these “standards” by states, school districts, and publishers seems to be where my gripe is. Unfortunately I am caught in the middle, trying to do what’s best for my students as well as keeping administrators off my back.
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Bernie, thank you!
Everyone, I posted a link elsewhere in this thread to the Progressions documents that are being developed to help teachers interpret and “unpack” the standards. They are coordinated (for mathematics) by some of the same people who wrote the CCSS, so we don’t have to wonder if the standards are being interpreted correctly. They are in draft form and are open to commentary at the following site:
http://commoncoretools.me/category/progressions/
I hope any who comment will be constructive and not use the forum as an opportunity to vent. Read a document before commenting, please! 🙂
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TE and I are not the deciders. Apparently Linda is.
I think I gave some pretty good support for my points, including quotes directly from the CCSS and links to the progressions documents, to show that the CCSS are not the source of some of the practices and problems being discussed. But Linda says “Yes it is.” So I guess she’s right. She’s the decider.
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I’m not fawning for your approval Bernie…get over yourself. I will see many children tomorrow. You will not, other than your own. Keep speculating. The rest of us will keep teaching.
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I’m not Bernie. And, yes, I will see classrooms full of kids tomorrow. And I’m about to start grading their tests today (Sunday) like so many teachers do. So I won’t be able to spend any more time on this thread.
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I am curious as to why parents, most of whom, I presume, have no background in education should be allowed to comment on standards? What will probably happen is the squeaky wheels will get their way and they usually don’t see past the needs of their own child(ren) – also censorship will be an unwanted by-product. Just like I would tell my pediatrician how to care for my child, I don’t think it is wise to ask parents to chime in on standards.
Diane,
I recall in one of your books you wrote about a national curriculum that you were involved in years ago that got sidelined early on because some folks (in Texas I believe) didn’t like the history portion.
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You don’t need to be an automotive engineer to comment on a new car that steers itself off the road. Parents are not suggesting that they should re-write the CCSS standards. They instinctively understand that what is happening under CCSS and APPR (especially K – 5) is wrong. They don’t need masters degrees in education to know that their children are being harmed by current top-down reform policies.
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However, qualified automotive engineers should be given the task to to redesign the steering and not just a bunch car owners with no experience in automotive engineering.
I am not qualified to say whether these standards are appropriate or not – however, based on your ID, I trust that you are qualified to criticize these standards and I would want teachers and other education professionals to work on developing them and providing feedback.
Should parents be involved in the development of standards even at the comment level? My answer is no. My child (in 2nd grade) is doing fine with the standards and his teacher seems to like them. Is my opinion worth anything if I state the standards are fine?
I have also witnessed and read about parents complaining about content they found offensive. I just hope everyone is careful before they join forces with the censor happy portion of the parenting world.
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It sounds like you are not concerned that a curriculum has not passed through a “democratic process”. Have I interpreted your comment correctly?
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That’s the problem The reformers who built this car ignored the qualified automotive engineers. And now its steering itself off the road.
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TE, yes you read my comments correctly.
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You are changing the subject. No one has said that parents should write the curriculum. What parents are saying is that the tests are inflicting demonstrable damage on their children and that the writers of the common core should come clean about their qualifications and whether they consulted specialists and teachers, and what those specialists said, and if they raised an alarm, why such alarms were disregarded.
For many, many years specialists have told us that tests of this kind have no validity when given to children under eight or nine. They have said that the brain is not developed (the two halves are not joined in most children until about six or so). They have said that children’s small muscle control is often not sufficiently developed and that the focus should be on the large muscles. They have said that there is a big difference between expressive speech and imitative speech. This is not exactly top secret information. It is common knowledge to anyone who can pick up a book, including parents. What has happened exactly in the field of developmental psychology to change this opinion?
All I hear is crickets from people like Corey Andreasen and Bill McCullum.
.
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The title of the post concerns democracy when choosing public school curriculum. It does not seem surprising to me that parents think they might be included in a democratic decision process. Do you believe that it is obvious that there is obviously no role for parents in a democratic process?
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Crickets. Sorry, I have a job that requires me to do things other than post on blogs all day.
“What parents are saying is that the tests are inflicting damage. . .”
I agree. But that’s a different issue from the quality of the curriculum itself. I am strongly against the increased testing, the use of these tests to evaluate teachers, etc. I’m not even convinced of the need for a national curriculum. (Which these are technically not, but they might as well be.) I responded to the idea that the standards were rushed an completed without input from educators. That’s false.
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You have to have a background in education in order to comment on educational standards?
So as a parent, I shouldn’t have noticed or pushed back hard on the fact that my son’s elementary experience was almost exclusively focused on being able to answer multiple choice reading comp questions and math questions for state tests? I am incapable of noticing he couldn’t spell, let alone compose a paragraph or write because why focus on that which is not tested?
That the NC social studies curriculum were cleverly disguised watered down state reading practice tests that repeated and kill drilled the same question types over several years?
I couldn’t comment on the fact that due to the big reading push, there was no science introduced on a daily basis until 5th grade because that is the year the state gives a science test?
Or That art is simply now do something that can be done cheap, in one day, in an hour vs. an opportunity to explore, create and learn about the great masters of painting, sculpture and architecture?
I wasn’t smart enough to figure out that math standards that push early algebra on young kids at a time they probably (many) haven’t developed those higher order thinking skills – and introducing spiral mathematics vs. mastery of the basic skills first overall left my son understanding bits of broad math but didn’t allow him to master the underlying computational skills?
I am so insulted by educational experts who think a parent has nothing to contribute to the dialogue. As if our own life experience of what we needed in college and thereafter couldn’t possibly form an important viewpoint for helping prepare our own children academically.
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LT:
To assuage some here I apparently have to declare that I am not a K-12 educator, merely the father of 3 kids and husband of a former HS teacher.
I agree with you. It seems to me that if the phrase “democratic process” means anything it means that all interested parties are entitled to some kind of input into the curriculum design process. How that gets organized and managed is something else. Certainly it seems to me that once parents and teachers have been exposed to the actual implementation of the core curriculum, school districts and State DOEs should collect, consider and, where appropriate, incorporate their feedback.
As an antidote to some of the sentiment here, I recommend a book by Veteran HS teacher, John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down.. Your local library should have a copy.
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Not every parent is against the CC, if the consensuses of the parents is the CC is fine, are you going to be OK with that?
What you needed in college may be far different than what others needed. Some argue what is needed for college is besides the point. You may well know what (y)our own children need, but please don’t speak for mine.
I stand by what I said. Is teaching a profession that requires a high degree of education and experience? If the answer is yes, then parents really have a small to nonexistent role in commenting on standards. I have read more than once on this blog using medicine as an analogy. I had a healthy childhood and excellent medical care in my childhood, does that make me qualified to comment on recommendations of the AAP?
I honestly cannot remember details of what was taught to me in my early years of school so I can’t even draw on my own life experience to comment on what my child needs. I do have fond memories of finger painting with pudding and running across a length of paper after stepping in pie tins of paint in K, but I digress. I feel children don’t need/ shouldn’t to learn to read in K, many parents and teachers would disagree with me. I am probably wrong, should my voice be heard?
I understand your point and frustration, but I worry about letting the masses have much of say.
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@LT.. I am a teacher and PARENTS have everything to do with joining the dialogue on education ( http://parentsacrossamerica.org/ ). And the teachers I see day in and day out want to know what parents think, what they see and hear from their children outside the school environment… we desperately want parents to understand what “reforms” are requiring of teachers nowadays… and that we teachers have not been part of the process at all! Any teachers (as well as “corporate ed reformers” like John King demonstrated in Poughkeepsie) who do not want your observations should be suspect! As far as setting policy, current “ed reformers” have worked hard to “sell their product” to parents via a very tight and highly organized PR machine that works relentlessly through the media and they have worked equally hard at keeping public school teachers away from policy setting dialogue. Someone commented that everyone always brings up the “medicine analogy”… i.e. just because we go to a doctor does not mean we should be setting medical policy etc… Well, everyone has a role to play in setting medical policy – some roles are direct and some less so. A patient can certainly let the medical community know things that do not work so well from a patient perspective and this will help set policy as to how patients should be dealt with so they feel comfortable. But do we want the patient to determine how the MRI machine is operated? Or how much anesthesia should be given to a patient? Sure hope not! Bill Gates, David Coleman, Eli Broad and a host of others have way over-stepped their bounds by creating and implementing education policy!
As a teacher, I dream of parents, students, teachers and fed up administrators joining hands and putting a stop to the “educational” abuse of our nation’s youth through “corporate ed reform” policies. If your child used to love school but no longer is excited about it, if your child is throwing up the night before a high stakes test or getting sick and not wanting to go to school during high stakes testing season… or is afraid to express an opinion on something for fear of “being wrong” or spending way too much time on a take home “vacation packet” designed to help them do better on high stakes tests thus having a stressful “vacation week” at Christmas etc…, join teachers in fighting the nonsense of corporate “ed reform” and find ways to get fellow parents to join in. I sure wish the middle and upper class parents whose students are failing under common core would realize and join hands with low income parents whose students have been suffering a lot longer due to the high stakes tests pre “common core” that their students struggle to pass.
So LT in addition to the cite referenced above http://parentsacrossamerica.org … also take a look at this cite: http://unitedoptout.com/
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@LT parents are an all-important part of the process and in no way should be discounted. There are all-important parent advocacy groups which you should join! And do not trust anyone who tries to silence your voice (think John King in Poughkeepsie recently)! The “coporate ed reformers” have been silencing the voices of public school teachers and seasoned administrators for far too long.
http://unitedoptout.com/
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/
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My greatest concern with the CCSS is the top-down approach they took regarding the standards themselves. By determining what students need to know to be “college and career ready” and writing standards for it beginning in twelfth grade and working down to kindergarten, they have ignored the conventional wisdom of starting with what children already know and building off of that. I am now seeing very frustrated six and seven year-olds who like school even less than they did before. One little guy pulled me aside to tell me he was mad at me for his math homework because it was too hard and he cried trying to do it. I spent ten agonizing minutes on Friday trying to help another student doing a “close reading” assignment that was miles above his current reading and comprehension level. At one time the focus of the primary grades was to teach the foundational skills and ignite a love of learning. Now we seem to be turning them off from school even earlier. My students told me about their best day of second grade so far: it was the day I was in a meeting and they had time to get caught up on work and read books at their independent reading level.
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As an educator, I believe that weight should be given to the professional opinions of education experts on matters regarding educational policies and practices. However, there are multiple stake-holders in education and input and feedback from other perspectives can be very valuable, too, provided each person discloses their involvement. This was done in my state when standards were written. Before approval, there was a public comment period and every commenter was required to identify themselves and their role(s). I think this is both fair and beneficial. (Thanks, Bernie!)
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Off-topic — Lawrence Summers, Joel Klein, and Michelle Rhee all on the board of the Broad Foundation? I can’t imagine what would happen when all those egos get together in one room — (I’m surprised not to see General Petraeus’s name on there, too!)
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I heard they had to widen the doors just so their heads would fit through.
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The very notion that we should have national standards was not subjected to national debate. There are VERY good reasons for opposing these. And, of course, these standards, cooked up in the Achieve echo chamber, were not vetted and were not subjected to national discussion and debate. The CCSS in ELA CLEARLY would have have survived expert analysis. They are breathtakingly backward and amateurish.
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Just heard on the local news that Commissioner King is coming out of hiding and will be conducting 11 town hall meetings across the state. He is asking that participant keep things civil.
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NY Teacher: if what you heard is true, then it is another sign that the tide is slowly turning in favor of those struggling to ensure a “better education for all” and against those who want to leave OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN behind. Of course, left up to the “education reformers” alone, it is not automatic that these meetings will be true exercises in participatory democracy.
My hunch, though, is that parents in particular will make this ‘public servant’ act like a ‘public servant’ or the whole enterprise will turn out to be even more of disaster than the initial cancellings.
Finally, I am hopeful that perhaps State Commissioner John King will finally learn that Montessori schools are not leading the charge for the Common Core. And also it is possible that pigs will grow wings and fly…
Hope springs eternal. But I am not holding my breath.
Thank you for your info.
🙂
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It will be the repair John King’s rep. tour….they still won’t listen and do not care. They will look for ways to mischaracterize the people. They may even organize like the Rhee/Perry side show and utilize the Delphi technique or a rendition of it:
http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/acf001.htm
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Now King says he has changed his mind, he plans to have 11 meetings, open to parent feedback. But what do you want to bet they will be strong security force there, and they will try to escort out any dissent.
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They will also have planted stooges cheerleading for CCS, testing, etc. someone will be there to make King feel better about himself.
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The information is also on the New York State Dept. of Education’s website.
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If I heard that doctors gone back to prescribing blood letting and wouldn’t let the public or patients know why, and that the guidelines had not been prepared by specialists, you’re damn right I would raise a stink. Believe me, doctors have to be able to openly justify their practices. They don’t do it in secret with non-disclosure agreements.
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“In some ways this is the most egregious abuse of process of all. A decision to completely overhaul the way millions of students would be taught and tested was made by TWO people in each state…”
Until I read Schneider, I didn’t realize who had to sign onto RttT and thus agree to the Common Core. When you consider that each one of the two signatures required were for people from the same two organizations that sponsored the Common Core, the governor, from the National Governor’s Association, and the state superintendent, from the Council of Chief State School Officers, clearly, from the outset, there was a plan to stack the deck in favor of hegemony and deny democratic participation, in order to adopt national standards.
What a thorough, manipulative abuse of power that was for the governors who colluded to quash democracy and cede states’ rights to the federal government. What state constitutions permit this?
It should not be difficult to prove collusion between the federal DoE and the governors, or to follow the Gates money trail. Why this has not gone to court is beyond me. All involved should be censured, impeached and jailed. (The last two governors in my state went to prison for fraud regarding other matters.)
ACLU and Common Cause: Where the heck are you?
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The fact that the Common Core standards had not even been written, let alone piloted, when so many governors and state superintendents both planned and then agreed to sign off on them, makes this probably the greatest snake oil sale in our nation’s history.
You have to ask about the true motives behind governors and superintendents with so much blind-faith in something that did not even exist yet.
KaChing…
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By the time students get to High School. they realize that these tests are a joke….
Keep it Simple…all we need to say is..
“Your tests are one Big Joke”
The Mandated Tests are in no way are a determining factor as to the success of each individual student as a productive citizen on this planet during their one life.
They measure only a student’s ability to take a test….
They serve no purpose except for the Political Gain of a huge number of Greedy Politicians as we have witnessed -first hand-during the past 15 days..
Stop Toying with our students….
It all fits after seeing the Chaos of the last 15 days..
YOUR TESTS ARE A JOKE…ONE JOKE FITS ALL OF THE TESTS!!!!!
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Exactly. The students know the only test that matters is the SAT. I am not convinced that one carries as much weight anymore.
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This is what the high school students have reported to me, but it is not consistent with the many many posts that report that these tests create large amounts of stress for the students. Perhaps we should be careful to distinguish between the impact on younger students and the impact on older students.
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Exactly. Younger students see themselves as failures when they don’t understand a test item. Their psyches get damaged easily. As a parent of three, all who are out of high school, I can say that at least in my small study group, some high schoolers take these tests seriously and some don’t.
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Teach for America
“They know more than they understand”…….
It takes more than just winning a trivia contest to teach…….
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**********I posted this under the wrong article…so if you read it twice..sorry
I feel so much better about the entire CCSS situation after listening to the politicians during the last 15 days of our Government Chaos.
I learned so very much from the Political Fiasco
It is all about Power, Money, Elections, and Greed…….
Either you accept this nonsense or you fight them with all of your power..
THE CCSS is ONE BIG JOKE…It is POLITICS…IT IS MONEY..IT IS GREED…
Top Down management of our Children
They need to stay out of education and leave it to the experts..
I know now that I am fighting with some very ignorant people…
People who do not believe in evolution or the constitution.
People who can not even use correct grammar.
People who twists all of the facts to make Political Gains..
It is Plastic..It is Political..
We want our schools back from these Greedy-Money-Hungry- People who use Tests as an Election Tool and Teachers as their Pawns
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Where is Corey Andreasen’s response to all of the comments posted here?
Corey?
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He’s waiting for Gates and Coleman to give him his talking points.
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No, actually I have a job. And a family. So I do things other than comment on blogs all day.
I didn’t read all the comments, but I read some and commented on a couple.
One thing I do see in many comments on here is a list of complaints about the testing. I agree with most of those. I don’t support the additional testing. It’s not good for kids and it’s not good for education. I oppose the use of tests to evaluate teachers. It can’t be done effectively. I am concerned about the questionable motives behind the funders of the testing. I share those concerns. My comment was that the writing of the standards did involve input from educators and parents. From Bill McCallum (in case you missed it):
“As for public comment, a public draft was released in March 2010. It attracted about 10,000 comments. These were compiled into a spreadsheet of actionable comments by Grade, and I personally went through the whole thing. This led to further substantial changes in the standards before they were released in June.”
You may say there wasn’t enough input, and that may be correct. Did the authors do too little to publicize the opportunity to give feedback? Maybe. But I think it’s also likely that people didn’t bother or weren’t interested. Maybe they didn’t see where things were headed with the increase in testing/accountability. I didn’t see it all coming, though I should have. But public input and educator input were both solicited and used in the process.
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See his response above. It looks like he was waiting for his talking points from Achieve –same thing (Bill McCallum is one of those the NGA listed from Achieve). Achieve got a pretty penny from Gates: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/k=%22achieve%2C%20inc.%22
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Cosmic, do you actually have anything to add to the conversation?
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Don’t take at face value what anyone says about Common Core, including hearsay testimonials, and follow the money. Very BIG money when it comes to CC and Gates.
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That I agree with. There is ridiculous money and there are questionable motives involved with this. Great amounts of money to be made in the tests. Schools and teachers are being hamstrung so they can’t meet the needs of their students, and that will show up on these tests. Then for-profit private schools can come in and save the day. I don’t dispute any of that. I think some of the pushes are well-intentioned but misguided, and others are interested in their own pocketbooks.
My comment was on the process of writing the standards themselves, which was done by some good people with admirable motives. I knew Bill McCallum by reputation before the CC. I personally know a couple of the mathematics and statistics people that were involved. And, while I’m not saying the CC standards are perfect, they are pretty good. As good as other sets of standards we’ve had. And they’re not that drastically different! So the idea that the standards are some catastrophe doesn’t make sense.
Having said that, I also agree (and have said repeatedly in this thread) that the testing side of this is a catastrophe, and I do believe that is deliberate on the part of some. (And well-intentioned but misguided on the parts of others.
It’s important to identify the actual problem, which is the tests and accountability, not the standards themselves.
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If Bill is an honorable person he should stand up and speak out against the testing that will destroy the standards and children. Or maybe this was part of the plan all along and he was played by the malanthropists. This isn’t going as smoothly as planned.
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What are “malanthropists” Linda, and give an example or two please.
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All the credit goes to Mike F from NYC….they are self-appointed destroyers of public education and the teaching profession who pretend to give to education but you have to follow their rules once you accept their “donation”: Gates, Broad, Waltons, Bloomberg, etc.
See Eli Broad’s manual on how to close schools:
http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/127292372
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Corey says “It’s important to identify the actual problem, which is the tests and accountability, not the standards themselves.”
Can they reasonably be separated, Corey?
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I’m a specialist in Early Childhood Education (ECE) and I can attest to the developmental inappropriateness of the Common Core standards for young children. Due to the lack of representation by ECE professionals in the Common Core Work Groups, as well as the impetus for a pushed down curriculum in schools, my colleagues have established Defending the Early Years: http://deyproject.org/
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CT:
Can you map where the current K-3 math core most curriculum is out of synch with your view of what is developmentally appropriate? A few examples will suffice to concretize the discussion.
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My concerns are more about ELA standards, including the expectation that all 5 year olds will be reading with purpose and understanding in their first year of formal schooling. I taught Kindergarten for many years and a lot of children are just not ready for that –and they should not be pressured to do so..
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Cosmic, children in Finland start school at age 7.
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Diane, I understand they have high quality, developmentally appropriate, affordable Preschools, too. It all sounds good to me!
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Democracy asks, “Can standards and tests be reasonably separated?” The answer is absolutely yes. The standards, as a guide to what we should be teaching and what we should expect of students, could be fantastic. The NCTM Standards were an example of this. They were less prescriptive, which I thought was a strength (some saw it as a weakness), but they were meant to be a guide. And they were somewhat successful at changing how things were done in classrooms. Not successful enough, and not in enough classrooms, but there was a positive effect. Probably because there were no tests tied to them.
The tests are a separate issue, and they are what make this whole thing so problematic. If the standards turn out not to be developmentally appropriate, as Cosmic suggests, it would not be a crisis if students weren’t meeting them. It would be a simple matter of modifying those standards as they’re put into practice.
But when tests, and high stakes, are added to the mix it becomes a crisis.
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http://youtu.be/4fbIJ-2IqFc
If you can make it to the end of this, you will see how badly our “democratic” process has been being ignored for as long as I can remember. Don’t believe the hype.
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“Authoritarianism is characterized by highly concentrated and centralized power maintained by political repression and the exclusion of potential challengers. It uses political parties and mass organizations to mobilize people around the goals of the regime.
Authoritarianism also tends to embrace the informal and unregulated exercise of political power, a leadership that is “self-appointed and even if elected cannot be displaced by citizens’ free choice among competitors,” the arbitrary deprivation of civil liberties, and little tolerance for meaningful opposition.
A range of social controls also attempt to stifle civil society, while political stability is maintained by control over and support of the armed forces, a bureaucracy staffed by the regime, and creation of allegiance through various means of socialization and indoctrination.”
Public Pedagogy is fundamental in establishing consciousness through various
means of socialization and indoctrination.
Public Pedagogy was established by the Government, and is controlled by the
Government.
In theory, Democracy is about public purposes. Abraham Lincoln characterized democratic government as “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Other forms of government serve the few at the expense of the many, and their resources are marshaled to serve the private purposes of those on whom government has bestowed privilege.
The most fundamental feature of democratic government is equality under the law. Equality under the law hints that none can be viewed as having a greater right under the law than others. In other words:
What government does for one, it should do for all, and what government does not do for all it should do for none.
While beating on the “Democracy” drum may sound nice, telling me “It’s Raining”,
as you Pi$$ on my leg, sounds nice too. It DOESN’T hide the actions compared
to the words.
The perpetually rejuvenated illusion of “Democracy” serves the Government.
When our “Choice of Action” is based upon illusion, we get NOWHERE.
Is TODAY the result of TRUTH or ILLUSION?
.
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NoBrick:
And this means what for the Core Curriculum?
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Dear Diane, As a loyal follower of your blog I enjoyed your last evening’s visit to Politics and Prose in D.C. I would like to add, because I am a Professor of Neurology, Pediatrics and Psychiatry with 40 years of research into developmental disabilities of the “mild/nearly normal variety” ( allowing me huge control groups of typically developing children) that all of the initialives of the last nearly 15 years, not only Common Core, are failing also because they ignore the brains of developing children and all learning theories relevant to education. Because their eyes are on “benchmarks” they mistakenly think that pushing skills earlier at every level will hit the testing “benchmarks,” so they are entirely unrealistic about developmental readiness and essentially do the equivalent of “trying to get blood from a stone.” Gesell Institute experts addressed this, as cited in your blog, for early childhood. And it is equally true of starting middle school too early, giving homework too early in the school career, and starting Algebra in seventh grade, all of which reflect ignorance of where the executive functions of the majority of children are/are not ready for more time management, materiel management, organization/prioritization of study, and so forth. Needless to say, being neurodevelopmentally ill equipped to tackle skills thrown at them leads to hatred of school, anxiety and depression about themselves, and longlasting damage, even in affluent “good” schools. This ignoring of the developmental appropriateness of demands for skills at every step K-12 has worsened what were the “good” public school systems and certainly carry part of the blame for “failure to thrive” in those schools in which, as you so eloquently expressed last evening, poverty, instability and cultural deprivation carry the majority of the variance in which schools “succeed” and which “fail.” Do you think it would do any good to carry this message to the ignorant test obsessed “reformers” so that even complacently good schools can see the harm done to developing children and adolescents, how we are literally pushing more of them over the “learning disabled” border by “racing to the top” as much as with “no child left behind” ?
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I think it would be a WONDERFUL idea for a Professor of Neurology, Pediatrics and Psychiatry, who has had such extensive experience as you, to carry this message!
I have also seen many children’s spirits crushed by developmentally inappropriate expectations. We could really benefit from having someone with your expertise to help counteract the impetus for a pushed down academic curriculum. We are fighting an uphill battle, because Early Childhood Education and Child Development specialists such as myself were not invited to the table when the Common Core standards were written.
Please see what some of my colleagues wrote in the Washington Post, “A Tough Critique of Common Core on Early Childhood Education” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/29/a-tough-critique-of-common-core-on-early-childhood-education/
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CT:
I just finished the article – thanks for the link. I am still confused. What should the curriculum be for K-3? I understand the annoyance at not being involved and the fears many have about formal learning objectives for young children, but what guidance should there be for K-3 teachers and how does it fit with the expectations for 4th Graders?
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Bill McCallum may be a very nice guy. I hope he is.
But he’s been taking criticism of the Common Core pretty hard. He says that he’s tried to stay out of the “politics swirling around the standards.” McCallum then calls criticism of the Common Core a “swirling tide of insanity.” Insanity. Uh-huh.
McAllum disputes those who say that teachers were excluded from the writing of the Common Core standards. He provides a work team list of 135 people (from the Council of Chief State School Officers) that he says includes 5 teachers (see link below). That would mean that for the writing and feedback teams for education “reform” that will affect an entire profession, only 3.7 percent of the people intimately involved were teachers…..3.7 percent.
But at least a couple of those teachers were retired. And one, from Fairfax County, can hardly be described as a typical teacher. His “special interest is teaching traditional and rigorous mathematics to gifted middle school students.” Oh yeah. “Gifted” students, that his specialty. He’s done a lot of SAT prep, and he even set up a company to offer private tutoring and “math enrichment for gifted upper elementary and middle school students.” How rich.
In actuality, of all those most directly involved in the initial writing and development stages of the Common Core, 98.6 percent were not practicing, regular, common, classroom teachers.
Now THAT’s “insanity.”
Click to access 2010COMMONCOREK12TEAM.PDF
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Insanity is saying we need these standards to be college and career ready. Why? In part because colleges don’t want to offer remedial courses. I don’t recall any remedial courses on campus when I graduated in 1980. Perhaps the issue lies with the admission offices.
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I teach at a relatively open admission research state university. About a third of the first year students must take remedial mathmatics.
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Perhaps it is more about filling seats than it is about selecting scholars who will be successful in an academic setting?
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Corey Andreasen’s contention that the only problem with the Common Core is that it is a mistake to use them for high stakes tests and the evaluation of teachers is somewhat perplexing, in view of the fact that the language section in particular appears to have been created chiefly by people employed by the testing industry and “Achieve”, an advocacy group funded by Bill Gates to advocate for just such testing and assessment.
The one practicing teacher named as associated with the creation of the math standards, Vern Williams, seems singularly tepid in his endorsement of them.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/10/the-american-way-of-learning/standards-should-inspire-lagging-schools-not-hobble-the-leaders
Williams is a middle school teacher. Neither he nor Andreasen has anything at all to say about the question of whether children ages five to nine (say) require a specialized approach in view of the immaturity of their brains and bodies.
The common core is the equivalent of a car with square wheels.
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Williams is a middle school teacher who has a “special interest is teaching traditional and rigorous mathematics to gifted middle school students.” In fact, “gifted” and “honors” students are the only students Williams likes to teach….unless he’s tutoring and SAT-prepping them for cash.
I’ll guess Williams was picked for the Common Core team because, as he says on his website, “I have advised educational establishments such as The College Board (www.collegeboard.org/) and Achieve, Inc.(www.achieve.org) on various issues involving curriculum and testing.”
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in response to LT who states: “So as a parent, I shouldn’t have noticed or pushed back hard on the fact that my son’s elementary experience was almost exclusively focused on being able to answer multiple choice reading comp questions and math questions for state tests? I am incapable of noticing he couldn’t spell, let alone compose a paragraph or write because why focus on that which is not tested?”
Of course you should be able to voice your concerns and should not be silenced. John King demonstrated loudly and clearly in his recent “town meeting” in Poughkeepsie what the “corporate ed reformers” have been doing for a long time… silencing parents and teachers’ opinions and concerns! Do consider joining up with two organizations where parents have been actively voicing their concerns:
http://unitedoptout.com/
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/
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Let’s suppose for a minute that the math standards are developmentally inappropriate for younger children. And, let’s suppose curriculum based on the CCS continues to be implemented, unabated for 5 years. As a middle school math teacher, one of the greatest concerns I have is that the gap between the “haves” and “have nots”, those students who reach middle school with a deeper understanding of mathematics versus those who do not, will be wider and deeper than ever before. And, there may be many, many more of the “have nots.”
Oh, I wish I did not need to be worried.
Is anyone else concerned?
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JATS:
To assuage some here I apparently have to declare that I am not a K-12 educator, merely the father of 3 kids and husband of a former HS teacher.
You are kidding, right? I can see an argument saying that if the new core curriculum is a stretch, then additional appropriate resources have to be focused on inner city schools to ensure that they do not inadvertently fall further behind – but why would you hold any child back?
On the other hand if the curriculum is age inappropriate, then it is age inappropriate for both haves and have nots, surely?
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Certainly this is a concern, but is the solution to design a curriculum that prevents the “haves” from having a deeper understanding of mathematics?
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I think that you have a reason to be worried. I run an inner-city tutoring service, and am constantly dismayed at the high number of students who are not on grade level in math, i.e., 4th graders who cannot add and subtract and have never been taught phonics and cannot break down simple words. So often, after an assessment, we are going back and repairing their academic deficiencies so that they can move forward.
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And were those students never taught how to add and subtract, too? Don’t assume that because kids don’t know something that means they’ve never been taught it.
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TeachingEconomist is right on with fear of the people the people have been electing to run things. This shows the true insanity of the public now in their self destructive mental attitude with their votes to ruin themselves. When that happens what to we call that behavior, well, self-destructive is what it is. That is who we are now as a nation. We are “Destroyers of Worlds” now. Remember the quote from Oppenheimer just after the first atomic explosion?
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@teaching economist wrote: “Is the solution to design a curriculum that prevents the “haves” from having a deeper understanding of mathematics?”
What does this mean, exactly?
Who are these “haves”? How many of them are there, where do they reside, and in what way exactly will age appropriate content harm them? Are we to understand that age-appropriate content at ages five, six, and seven, say, will by definition shortchange this particular population, blighting their prospects for life? And if so, how?
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Harold,
I was responding to just a teacher saying’s post. My interpretation of JATS post is that the standards may be appropriate for some students in elementary school, and that is what will create the larger gap in middle school. What is your interpretation of the post?
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Bernie,
Sorry, I must have ben too vague.
I do not view this as an “inner city” problem. I view this as a nationwide problem with standards and curriculum that may cause fewer students, not more, to be ready to handle the challenges of math in their colleges or careers. I am concerned.
“ALL” students should reach their potential. No standards should hold students back.
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JATS:
OK, but as a MS Math Teacher, which parts of the CC (a) are substantively different from what is taught currently and (b) are likely to interfere with a child’s development of the math skills need beyond HS?
I compared the Massachusetts 5th Grade Math Curriculum to the CC 5th Grade Math Curriculum and see them as substantively the same except for the increased emphasis on math word problems which presumably is designed to have students think more mathematically rather than simply to execute procedures. I would not anticipate the consequences of this to inhibit the development of math skills to any great degree. One look at an old commercial arithmetic grade school textbook would indicate that it is a case of “back to the future”.
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True, but if half of America can’t do the number problems, don’t count on them being able to do the word problems. Half the people are failing, so the solution is to make it more complicated so 3/4 of the people are failing. How’s that help?
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Standards need to be argued about. They are empty, vacuous statements that mean nothing and are geared toward standardizing education which is not what I think we want to do in America. There is nothing to be gained from making everyone the same and that is not how we were able to create a first rate education system in the past, in fact it is how we ruined it.
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The first thing to be considered is are they in school in elementary school. All of you should read the latest California Attorney General, Kamala Harris, report on the massive truancy in elementary schools. If they are not in class they cannot learn anything. Then let’s go to the Common Core (CC). All I am hearing is that it is a mess in all grades. They did not think this out as they did not in California with Local Control funding formula (LCFF). They are a bunch of jokers.
Then you have the iPad and other electronic devices. I have found that Apple does not give schools discounts but sells for more than you can buy one retail at Walmart. When you factor all the other additions it can and is often from $1,600-$2,500+/device. When schools use school construction bonds, which in California is illegal, yet who cares, to pay for any device like that which lasts 3 years they will soon be bankrupt from the interest and inability to replace after the originals have died and gone to electronic heaven or hell. Then what do you do. Why you should have purchased the $200 device with the 5 year guarantee as it says on page 16 of the Feb. 12, 2013 Jaime Aquino Power Point just one month after the Citizens Bond Give Away Committee approved, illegally, $1,598.57 each.
Common Core is just one part of the problem which will not matter if the district is bankrupt from iPads or most of the other suppliers to schools with their dramatically inflated prices. This is going to come to an end with what we have set up for fun for them.
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What teachers see are the consequences of the CCSS, whether intended or not. We are the ones left trying to figure out how to bridge the chasm between what children know and can do and what others who do not teach these children think they should be able to do.
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Perhaps teachers and the backers of the CCS could come together and campaign against the implementation and distortion of the CCS. Both you and the authors of the CCS agree that second graders need not skip count by 60. A more nuanced criticism of what is happening in schools might create more allies than opponents.
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Lehrer:
Let me be clear. I am not trying to put you on the spot. You comments have been helpful and civil and I appreciate your willingness to answer questions. Whatever Linda thinks, I am trying to understand the objections to the substance of the Common Core. I understand the objections to the process for developing them, the increase in testing, issues with teaching to the test and the use of test results to evaluate teachers. I am not sure I can say it any clearer than that.
I found a reasonably concise summary of ELA skills expected in grades K, 1 and 2 in Connecticut. Is there anything on this list that you think is age inappropriate?
Click to access cbra4555_01a.pdf
I also noted the following admonitions that were repeated for each grade level.
– competencies for the end of each grade
– for use as a guide in planning instruction, not a checklist for evaluating individual children
– many different instructional activities can be used in reaching each competency
These admonitions suggest that at the school and classroom level you can design the lessons and their specific content as you see fit.
One final point. This document was put together by a panel. It does seem that classroom teachers and specialists were well represented on the panel.
Click to access cbratvii_01a.pdf
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Those look pretty representative of the expectations of the time period in which they were developed, in the late 90s, and I don’t have a problem with them, because they are developmentally appropriate and also because they were not associated with high-stakes testing then, since NCLB came after that. The issue now is that they are no longer applicable because they differ from the Common Core.
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The issue as I see it is that, whereas once upon a time younger children were “exposed” to certain concepts, now they are expected to achieve mastery of them. There seems to be no awareness that young children do develop at different rates. For a specific example, let’s look at the concepts of main idea, author’s purpose and author’s message, difficult concepts for younger children to grasp.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.2 Identify the main topic of a multiparagraph text as well as the focus of specific paragraphs within the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.6 Identify the main purpose of a text, including what the author wants to answer, explain, or describe.
With scaffolding at first, many second-graders can do this. Some will struggle. I am assuming that since it is listed as a standard that mastery is expected. Some children are very literal and would have difficulty with these standards. I do work with them and help them as best as I can to grasp difficult concepts, but sometimes quite honestly all they need is another six months of development to get there. In my classroom right now I have a few six year-olds waiting to turn seven, seven year-olds who will turn eight before starting third grade, and an eight year-old. Some are struggling with decoding, comprehending, and reading with fluency. Again, I have no problem with high expectations, but we also have to be cognizant of the needs of the children we teach daily.
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I agree. I didn’t see those skills listed in CT’s previous standards either.
Also, I can readily imagine teachers thinking that with every reading, they are required to ask, “What is the main topic…? What is the main purpose…” “What was the author’s intent…?” etc ” Honestly, I don’t see how those questions are any different from the generic kinds of questions Coleman has claimed are useless for promoting close reading.
In Teacher Education, teachers are taught about the different kinds of questions that can be used to promote both lower and and higher order thinking, including making inferences, so I think it would have been best to leave the questioning strategies up to teachers.
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Lehrer, Do you ever use Jigsaw? I really like how it can be used with both fiction and informational texts. Though I don’t think you can ever really get away from asking a question like “What’s the main idea?,” with Jigsaw, teachers can generate a variety of different lower level and higher level questions for students to answer. Though that’s not demonstrated here, just to give you an idea of how Jigsaw works if you’re not familiar with it, here’s an example of Jigsaw in a 2nd grade class used with informational texts:
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/jigsaw/
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Great link CT…thanks…have a great day! 🙂
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Thanks, Linda! Yeah, Jigsaw works well with a wide variety of ages.
You have a great one,too!!
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Thanks, CT! I have heard of it, just have never tried it. It looks like something that the kids would really enjoy doing (and also learn something in the process!)
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My pleasure, Lehrer! Enjoy!!
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I just want to add that, in knowledgeable hands and with low stakes, in my experience, most typically developing children in these age groups can meet these expectations when they have skilled teachers who employ developmentally appropriate strategies, where skills are developed within meaningful contexts and the joy of learning is promoted.
However, I’ve also seen teachers with little training, such as in for-profit child care centers, using didactic drill and kill methods to teach these same skills to Preschool and Kindergarten age kids, which is not developmentally appropriate, places a lot of pressure on children and undermines motivation. So a lot depends on the skills of the teacher, the ages of the children and the stakes (including the profit motive).
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Berni1815,
” I understand the objections to the process for developing them. . .”
NO, I don’t think you do. I have explained the problems/errors involved in educational standards and standardized testing as outlined by Noel Wilson. You have agreed that there is no rebuttal/refutation to his analysis. He has shown how these practices cause harm to many students, yet you insist that there are no objections at the epistemological and ontological level that satisfy your need/criteria for a valid response as to why these practices are pernicious.
Help me out of this conundrum of your logic.
Duane
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Duane:
What I remember saying is that there are inherent and well known limitations in any effort to measure a complex construct using a simple assessment tool. So there is no such thing as a perfect test just imperfect ones. You continue to labor under the belief that a test has to be perfect to be useful. We disagree. That is the epistemological and ontological essence of it.
To the best of my knowledge Wilson has not shown that such tests have caused any more damage to students than say a driving test has. Neither Wilson nor you have come close to demonstrating that we should abandon the use of driving tests. Driving tests are certainly not perfect but they are useful.
I see no conundrum.
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