Anthony Cody has discovered that there are many organizations that have published a list of “myths and facts” about Common Core standards.
There seems to be a concerted effort to convince educators and the public that the standards were written by educators, or by the states, or by a huge collaboration of educators and administrators and governors, all working together.
As Cody shows, there was not a single educator included in the writing of the standards. Educators were brought in to review the first draft, not to participate in writing it.
The purveyors of “myths and facts” seldom mention the involvement of major corporations and the testing industry. Representatives of both were at the drafting table from the get-go.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Our principal presumably went to several meetings concerning the CC. However, we were never told of her input or anything other than, “You are going to have to change (this or that) to comply.” She never stated what she did, contributed, supported or objected to. So, we don’t really know, other than she attended meetings, maybe once a month or less. This was in Ohio.
Special credit goes to Mercedes Schneider for tracing the real roots of the Common Core project back to a corporate project called Achieve, and a project of theirs called the American Diploma Project. They published a report back in 2004 that reads like every press release ever written for the Common Core. If ever there was a seminal document for the Common Core, this is it: http://www.achieve.org/ReadyorNot
You’re not kidding!
This from “About Us”:
Created in 1996 by a bipartisan group of governors and business leaders, Achieve is leading the effort to make college and career readiness a priority across the country so that students graduating from high school are academically prepared for postsecondary success. When states want to collaborate on education policy or practice, they come to Achieve. At the direction of 48 states, and partnering with the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve helped develop the Common Core State Standards.
And when you read through the staff, one wonders where are the educators.
Thanks to those of you who have followed the stench back to its source!
Dr. Schneider has done wonderful work there–basically picking up the slack for education reporters who simply reprint Gates Foundation and Achieve press releases as news.
One of these myth and fact videos with an accompanying handout was our first professional development meeting this year. I nearly had a stroke, especially since I work at a parochial school that has the option of disregarding this folderol.
‘So grateful to Anthony Cody, Mercedes Schneider, Diane Ravitch, and so many others who painstakingly review the facts to communicate the truth about Common Core etiology.
Randi Weingarten should be REMOVED now!
Especially after watching Pasi Sahlberg streamed live from Rhode Island University last night. He actually includes a short video of Randi visiting the schools in Finland. She knows exactly what should be the response to CC propaganda. But she chokes on the $5 million she took from Gates and never quite tells the truth.
Thank you to Mercedes and Anthony and don’t forget Professor John Seddon who does a great critique of Sir Michael Barber and Deliverology. Pasi makes it clear that this GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) that has infected many countries began in England in 1988. It is not new. Sir Michael Barber and David Coleman worked at McKinsey & Company together before Coleman went to work at Achieve. McKinsey is a huge consulting company where lots of shenanigans and shysters originate such as Jeffrey Skilling and the ENRON scam. This CCSS heist was hatched and plotted just as every other scam has ever been. Why we take it seriously as if it has anything to do with children’s education or well being is beyond me.
I guess that depends on what you mean by educators. Richard Scheaffer is a renowned statistician and statistics educator. And he was definitely involved in the writing process. I knew that before asking him because most of the examples of the statistics questions come right from some of his books.
Well, is this R. Shaeffer a true statistician or an edumetrics kind of guy?
You mean this guy: http://www.stat.ufl.edu/~scheaffe/scheaffe.html
How much experience does he have working with kindergarten and primary school pupils? Inquiring minds would like to know.
That I don’t know. But you’ll have trouble finding someone more knowledgeable about the teaching of statistics anywhere on the planet, or someone who cares more about it. And, Duane, he’s a true statistician.
The bottom line is that if Dick Scheaffer says it’s age appropriate, my first reaction would be to trust him.
One thing research has shown, both with geometry (The Van Hiele’s) and statistics (research by Cliff Konold) is that age is not as big a factor as people tend to think. Experiences are more important than age. There’s a lot of complaint that the standards are not developmentally appropriate. I’m not at all convinced that’s the case. If kids have the kinds of experiences to lead to the ideas in the standards, the correct scaffolding, I suspect (though I don’t actually know) that most students would be able to do the kinds of things the standards describe. — But look at the examples. Sometimes the descriptions of the standards sound really advanced, but when you look at the examples of the kinds of questions kids would be expected to answer, they seem totally appropriate.
By the way, in a different post, I shared a link to an essay in the Washington Post. Dick was one of the signers of the essay. There were many other notable mathematics teachers and mathematics educators, most of whom I’ve heard of in the mathematics education circles and a few I know personally. It’s worth a read.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/06/the-future-of-high-school-math-education
Corey, I would suggest you ask people who are actually knowledgeable about childhood development rather than relying on a “statistics educator”. I honestly can’t take your position seriously at all. Are you writing satire here?
Thanks for the info, Corey!
Lou, we’re talking about a statistics educator who has spent the later years of his career working on statistics education at all levels. I dare say he knows a bit about what he’s talking about. That doesn’t mean he’s infallible. Nobody is. But I know him well enough to know he’s not just coming up with stuff off the top of his head. I think maybe you should rely a bit more on research by knowledgable and reputable educators.
But it’s fine if you don’t take me seriously. It sounds like you’re simply looking for reasons to dismiss the common core rather than consider that you might not know what you’re talking about. You’ll pardon me if I have trouble taking you seriously.
I am sure this educational statistician is sincere in his research and his results should be analyzed and taken into account. However, it cannot take the place of our personal experiences working with our students. A number on a page can only take you so far.
Corey, I guess it all comes down to the questions of theory vs practice. In theory kids should be able to do things (although according to educational psychologist Piaget, there ARE age appropriate limitations), but in practice, experience differs from the supposed reality we have been given to believe by these statisticians.
And I would even be willing to accept your premise, if the statistics themselves didn’t belie your statements. In the real world, if the curriculum were appropriate, over half the kids should be proficient or better. The fact that two thirds are “failing” indicates (at least to me) that these assessments, and the curriculum, do not pass the smell test. Statistically, they are not appropriate.
Plus, when you talk about pre-K and Kindergarten, how many past educational experiences do these children have?
I’d like to know your background in education which leads you to make such definitive statements.
I am still trying to understand “age appropriateness” and it’s connection to what should be taught in a grade were students might easily be more than one year different in age. What percentage of 6 year olds would have to be able to understand a concept for it to be labeled “age appropriate”? What percentage of first graders must be six years old for a concept to be first grade appropriate?
Ellen, theory is based on work with students. That’s how such research is conducted.
As far as your statement that the statistics belie my statements, they don’t. Students being unable to do something doesn’t mean they can’t. And since the CC just came out, and the students at the younger ages haven’t had time for the scaffolding to be in place (the teachers haven’t even had time to figure out what that scaffolding would look like!) all we can say is that the students don’t know how. That doesn’t mean at all that the curriculum is inappropriate.
Also, the assessments and the curriculum are not the same thing. I agree on many of the assessments we’ve seen so far. But not on the curriculum. Again, look at the examples of the kinds of questions kids should be able to answer. They seem pretty appropriate to me. Here are some examples of questions at the K level:
“For example, directly compare the heights of two children and describe one child as taller/shorter.”
“Can you join these two triangles with full sides touching to make a rectangle?”
I think the technical language of some of the standards (which are written for the adults, not the kids) make it sound like more is expected than actually is.
In K and PK, they’re starting from scratch, more or less. They are beginning to develop the ideas. But kids generally have intuitive ideas about “bigger” and “more” and the teachers help guide that intuition and build on it.
My background is as a high school teacher for 18 years. I’m not sure what definitive statements you’re referring to. I haven’t made any claims that the CC are appropriate at all ages, just that you also don’t know that they’re not. I said I trust Dick Scheaffer’s judgment. And not passing the smell test means nothing more than you don’t like it.
Corey, unless you have a background in early childhood development, I would suggest that you don’t really know what you are talking about. The idea that K students can simply pick up particular kinds of knowledge if they are properly exposed to it is pap nonsense. Specialists in this area will tell you it’s just not the case.
Corey, I actually think that the way math is being taught might work. I’m reserving judgement.
I also think that some of the topics chosen for the primary grades are a bit of a reach. A good teacher can modify any subject to meet her students’ needs, but there is just too much curriculum to cover.
And those early grades need time to “play”, especially kindergarten. They need to paint, and draw, and role play with others their own age. They need music, art, gym, library, recess.
I am not against the idea of Common Core. I just think it needs to be looked at and adjusted.
High School is not grade school. I’ve worked with both ends. I love them equally, but they are not the same.
Ellen, you may be right. Some may be out of reach. But when I look at those standards I see much that can be learned from play. A teacher can guide play by asking some questions and getting kids to think.
If some of the standards are out of reach, they should be adjusted. But first I think we need to give them a try. The problem is the high stakes tests attached to the standards. Without those, I think we have a great framework from which to start.
Lou, I have worked with plenty of teachers at the high school level that tell me “These kids can’t do that.” And they’re wrong. Just because they don’t know how to help kids understand it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. So, yes, people with experience working with early childhood education should be a part of the process. But what they do should also be informed by research. Dick Scheaffer has done research. He’s not doing any of this lightly. I know him, and I know his knowledge of and commitment to statistics education at all levels. I’ll take his word over yours.
Corey, I suppose it is easier to identify what is not age appropriate. Most first graders can’t read Harry Potter, but a few can. Should they? That’s another issue.
In the past, curriculum has been based on the research of developmental psychologists such as Piaget. Basic concepts build – you need to understand one to one correspondence before you can add. It’s difficult to write your name if you can’t hold a pencil. You need to have a certain level of physical coordination before you can skip. You need small muscle skills before you can tie your shoe. It could be at four or six or eight, but usually by the age of five.
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel – the skill sets have already been determined by those who went before us. We can tweak things a little – that’s why they invented differentiated instruction. However, the basics should be taught for the average age with remediation for some and enrichment for others. That is the ideal.
Your statement that “However, the basics should be taught for the average age with remediation for some and enrichment for others. That is the ideal.” Is an interesting one and goes towards something I have been trying to understand about how the age appropriate term is being used by folks here. Is your ideal to teach concepts that are reasonably appropriate for the middle 50% of students and allow enrichment and remediation as appropriate for the other 50%?
TE – I suppose I do think that’s the best way. I was a smart 5 year old in first grade, but I still needed to learn how to socialize and skip and hold a pencil. I needed to do what the average child did.
There are alternatives. Separating classes according to ability. Reading and Math groups either within the class or with other teachers participating. Gifted Programs for enrichment. Pull out or push in for remediation. I’ve seen them all.
When I taught second grade I switched my groupings around all the time, depending on the unit. Everyone had their own take home packet determined by their individual needs. And they all had numerous needs, but they all had something special to celebrate.
Education is more than what is learned on a given topic. It is more about building up a child’s self confidence and developing a love for school so that they can learn. The CCSS, in its current state, seems to do the opposite.
It seems to me that increased tracking by ability and decreased tracking by age would be appropriate.
Hi Ellen, we have similar backgrounds as teachers. I think that the most important words posted on this topic were posted by you:
“Everyone had their own take home packet determined by their individual needs.”
When I started teaching, “individualization” was the word of the day. Understanding the science of different learning modalities was essential, as well as the skill of writing behavioral objectives and lesson plans.
I had to spend a minimum of three hours a night, going over student papers, and turning the crank on my mimeograph machine.
I believed that my contract with the district demanded that I know the needs of each child as an individual, and create lessons to meet that need.
Now, I find myself responding as a bull surrounded by flapping capes. Arne says “x” and I make my charge. Michelle Rhee says “zed” and here I come.
I should be pointing out that “standards based” education has some selling points, but it doesn’t work as well as “person based” education, for children in pre-k through grade eight.
As you have pointed out, during those years, children need to learn skills that are not electronically testable. Cooperation. The ability to form relationships. Fluency and expression in speech. Enthusiasm for learning. Leadership skills.
Essential qualities for having a successful life.
The tragedy of the reformist movement is that it distracts and detracts from better educational practices.
In “Freedom to Learn for The 80s” Carl Rogers described his visit to my class in 1981. A child-centered class. He mentions that the children had exceeded expectations on their year-end standardized test.
So, Ellen, I was hoping that you might read Rogers’ description. I posted it at denverfreeschool.com, also I posted references from twenty years later, confirming the efficacy of Rogers’ “child centered” approach.
I would love to get feedback from you, as well as from other members of this community.
I asked Rogers why he was so worried that the educational pendulum was going to swing too far to the right. His life had been dedicated to teaching us a better way. Why would society choose a less effective approach. “Don’t other people care about our children just as much as we do?” I asked?
“Yes,” he answered, “But they won’t see it.”
Michael
In the excerpt below, Jefferson explains that “our work would have been compleat,” (sic) if the Virginia legislature had passed his bill dividing the state into school districts.
He had already served as a Governor, a minister to France, a Secretary of State, the Vice President, and the President of the United States. He had founded America’s first university. And he had written one of mankind’s greatest documents.
You only need to read the final sentence to understand that he was addressing the core issue of every post on this blog.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813
…”For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents… There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society…May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?…
These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the root of Pseudoaristocracy. And had another which I prepared been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been compleat.
It was a Bill for the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed to divide every county into wards of 5. or 6. miles square, like your townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects to be compleated at an University, where all the useful sciences should be taught.
Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and compleatly prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.”
Wonderful to revisit this. Thanks for posting it, Michael. Quite appropriate.
To Michael Rottman:
Thank you for sharing your web site. It was both informative and entertaining. I would have loved to have been the librarian at your school. We would have made a great team.
I was trained in Madeline Hunter. I believed in the teachings of Piaget and Maslow, as well as the dictates of learning styles and the seven (eight if you include children who learn best outdoors) intelligences. I was not trained in Montessori, but I did find merit in the Summerhill model. I would have embraced Rogers.
The year I taught second grade I was out of my element. My position as librarian had been eliminated and, since I had a BS in El Ed, my supervisor found me a job. I had little guidance, besides a couple of curriculum books, so I invented my own teaching style. It wasn’t until later that I discovered my tactics had names. We started every day with music – songs to match the theme. We went on lots of field trips. I engaged every parent in some way (even the one who was deaf). I read them stories, we played games, I invented strategies to help them read (they were all below level), I invented songs and kinesthetic games to help them learn math. Each child was assigned a special day once a month and we did holidays up BIG time. I taught them how to do research – the whole process, including a trip to the science museum. I taught them empathy by doing hands on buddy science with a low functioning special ed class (who also went with us to the science museum). Plus more. I did everything I could to compensate for my lack of experience. We all had a great year. I was told I did too many arts and crafts activities and not enough worksheets. I went back to being a librarian.
As a librarian I invented my own curriculum. I helped the teachers, I befriended the students and many of their parents, I made library fun. They did not know I was teaching them library skills at the same time. My curriculum was scaffolded – I had some of the same kids from K to 12. I never stopped teaching them and I still give some of them advice. I touched over a thousand lives. When I retired one child said they liked library better than lunch. It doesn’t get better than that.
I thought I did a great job, but I was also undervalued by the administration (but not the teachers). They just didn’t get it. I guess I made it look too easy. It really didn’t matter, because my joy came from the children. They were my raison d’être and our mutual love and respect continues to sustain me, even in my retirement.
Michael, you were lucky to have your worth be recognized. Continue sharing – you have much to offer.
Common Core Creation Myths. Well said, Diand!
Every governing regime in the history of mankind has a “Creation Myth” including the USA.
The deform cult has its myths (these are “standards,” they were created by the states, they are core, U.S. schools are failing), and it has its creed/its articles of faith (you get what you measure; we know better than you do how to do your job; the problem with schools is those lazy teachers and their excuses; unions are the spawn of Satan; greed is good; the only way to get anything out of these lazy kids is to threaten and reward). One could go on and on.
“If it is profitable, it must be good”
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Here are a few important GENERAL reasons why we shouldn’t be implementing the standards-and-testing deforms:
a. The standards on which they are based are badly conceived. The CCSS in ELA, in particular, seem to have been written by amateurs with no knowledge of the sciences of language acquisition and little familiarity with best practices in the various domains that the standards cover.
b. Having national standards creates economies of scale that educational materials monopolists can exploit, enabling them to crowd out/keep out smaller competitors.
c. Kids differ. Standards do not.
d. Standards are treated by publishers AS the curriculum and imply particular pedagogical approaches, and so they result in DRAMATIC distortions of curricula and pedagogy.
e. Innovation in educational approaches comes about from the implementation of competing ideas; creating one set of standards puts important innovation on hold.
f. Ten years of doing this stuff under NCLB hasn’t worked. The new math standards are not appreciably different from the preceding state standards, and the new math tests are not appreciably different from the preceding state high-stakes math tests. It’s idiotic to do more of what hasn’t worked and to expect real change/improvement.
g. In a free society, no unelected group (Achieve) has the right to overrule every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer with regard to what the outcomes of educational processes should be.
h. High-stakes tests lead to teaching to the test–for example, to having kids do lots and lots of practice using the test formats–and all this test prep has significant opportunity costs; it crowds out important learning.
i. A complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs kids to be variously trained, not identically milled.
j. The folks who prepared these standards did their work heedlessly; they did not stop to question what a standard should look like in a particular domain but simply made unwarranted but extremely consequential decisions about that based on current practice in state tests.
k. The tests and test prep create enormous test anxiety and undermine the development of love of learning.
l. Real learning tends to be unique and unpredictable. It can’t be summarized in a bullet list.
m. We are living in times of enormous change; kids being born today are going to experience more change in their lifetimes than has occurred in all of human history up to this point, so they need to be intrinsically, not extrinsically, motivated to learn; high-stakes tests belong to the extrinsic punishment/reward school of educational theory.
n. If we create a centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth, that is a first step on a VERY slippery slope.
o. The standards-and-testing regime usurps local teacher and administrator autonomy, and no one works well, at all well, under conditions of low autonomy.
p. The standards and the new tests have not been tested.
q. The standards and the new test formats, though extremely consequential in their effects on every aspect of K-12 schooling, were never subjected to expert critique; nor were they subjected to the equivalent of failure modes and effects analysis.
r. The legislation that created the Department of Education specifically forbade it from getting involved in curricula, but as E. D. Hirsch, Jr., pointed out on this blog a few weeks ago, the new math standard clearly ARE a curriculum outline, and the federal DOE has pushed this curriculum on the country.
And these are just a few general observations. I haven’t even begun, here, to speak of problems with specific standards and guidelines within the standards.
So why isn’t anyone suing?
Who is taking action against this course?
Can you turn this list into resolutions to be filed as a complaint?
When are these type observations going to be taken to the next level? And by whom?
Thanks for the response, Joanna. I post these things and wonder who, if anyone, is bothering to read such a long list. Or being bothered by the fact that the list is so long and so substantive. One would think that the teachers’ unions would be leading the fight against this usurpation of teacher authority and autonomy, in league with organizations on the left and the right (The American Civil Liberties Union and CATO spring to mind) that oppose centralized, totalitarian mandates. But alas, that’s not happening with regard to the standards part of the deform–even though it is the standards that are the engine of the deform juggernaut–what makes it work. I have puzzled about this. I don’t think that it just comes down to money. I think that some people are moved by aspects of the new standards that they like and that they haven’t looked at the whole carefully enough. I, too, am very fond of the CCSS emphasis on close attention to what’s actually in texts, for example, and on the CCSS call for kids to do extended reading, over time, in a given knowledge domain. But these are the sorts of guidelines that should appear not in a standards document but in a curriculum framework–as guidelines, not mandates, and there are so many problems with specific standards and with approaches taken in various domains–very serious problems–that these far outweigh, I think, the good that might come from such positive guidelines included on the periphery of the new standards [sic] themselves. The big point, however, is not MY reasons for liking or disliking the standards [sic] but that the standards [sic] were not subjected to learned critique by the entire education community. Linguists knowledgeable about how kids acquire grammar and vocabulary, for example, would have ripped to shreds the stuff in the CCSS about those topics and would have suggested sane, scientifically warranted approaches very, very different from those implied by the CCSS. Scholars who have actually studied writing and who know something of what competencies have actually been mastered by people who write well would have suggested writing standards completely different in kind than those found in the CCSS. Many specific CCSS standards would not have survived close analysis by informed persons. But none of this sort of thing ever happened. Achieve chose its authors. They looked at existing standards and, basically, collated them and tossed in a couple of ideas of their own. The heedlessness of the process is mind-blowing given how consequential the work being done would be. If people built airplanes this way, only insane people would want to fly.
Robert, you are wrong. Not all unions are sitting by quietly. The Buffalo Teacher Federation (BTF), part of NYSUT, has been a bug in King’s craw since this whole nonsense started. BTF President, Phil Rumore, has called the plan “Race to the Bottom” since day one. The delegates barely passed their APPR guidelines, and only after a lot of tweaking, plus some concessions from the state (so King could save face). King and the BTF have continually been at war. Here is how the BTF is currently handling the issue:
A letter to Buffalo Public Schools Superintendent, Pamela Brown, speaking against hiring individuals from Teach for America.
A commendation to Diane Ravitch.
A letter to Mike Deely calling for a three year moratorium on CCSS standardized testing for student and teacher evaluations. Further, a total ban on testing for grades K to 3.
A petition calling for the resignation of John King.
A call for teachers to join parents in the protest rally (to start momentarily) at the Buffalo Teacher Canter where King is meeting at 6:00. The weather in Buffalo is really bad today – cold and snowy. Teachers will wear their ski gear.
The BTF made a motion at a recent NYSUT Board of Delegates meeting calling for legal action against the APPR. Although the motion did not pass, the BTF is seriously considering going ahead with the lawsuit anyway.
They haven’t met yet in December, but I know the fight continues. The BTF does what a union is supposed to do – fight for reasonable work conditions for the teachers and a positive work environment for the students (We went on strike in the 1970’s to make sure every child had access to music, art, and gym. We recently fought to get instrumental music back in the schools – a budget cut supposedly necessary due to the expense of the APPR).
So, you see, not all unions are remaining silent. Watch for further action from the BTF.
I inquired of NCAE as to whether any pending action in terms of legality were being contemplated and they told me no, because states agreed to it. I guess you can’t agree to something and then go back and sue. You can’t get knocked up, marry the dude and then sue for rape, huh?
So it has happened. Now what? We’re pregnant and we’ve gotten married. Are we going to make it work? (sorry the crass analogies, but it seems there’s no going back now. Only forward. So what will that look like?)
I’m trying to get readers here to “break on through to the other side. . .” (to quote the Doors). We’ve uncovered the secrets of the tryst. But now we’ve got the reality of the baby (CCSS) and a marriage (RttT) to figure out. What are we going to do?
Joanna,
That is a great question, and one I have been wrestling with for some time. For me the fatal flaw in the Common Core is directly connected to its conception as a system of standards tightly linked to measurable outcomes, and of course, tests to measure those outcomes. When I argue against Common Core it is in the context of rejecting this measurement-driven paradigm.
A first step would be for the Federal government to step back, given that it is prevented by law from interfering with or offering national standards. The second step would be for the Gates Foundation and other corporate philanthropies to likewise step back, because this is a civic function that should be conducted in a democratic fashion. Then there should be a process at each state to determine what standards are appropriate, and how to measure student learning. We should be careful to apply the lessons of several decades of standards-driven reform, and make standards loose enough so that teachers and schools have autonomy.
If there are elements of the Common Core that people really like, then of course they could be included. But we need to back up and create a democratic process if the product is to have any legitimacy.
Ellen, thanks for that. Wonderful to hear!
Ellen, I think it very important that educators start grokkiing the difference between LEARNING and ACQUISITION. There are many, many abilities of the mind that are not learned but acquired. Here’s an example:
Every speaker of English knows that
The great, green dragon
is grammatical
and that
*The green, great dragon
is not.
There are rules governing the order of precedence of adjectives in English. But these are ALMOST NEVER explicitly taught. (There are some exceptions. It’s sometimes done in ESL classes.)
Robert, I have learned so much from you today. I consider myself a decent writer, but I do make mistakes. Given time, I might be able to correct them, but in a blog . . .
Anthony–thank you for the answer.
I find that when I ask principals and teachers about Common Core, they acknowledge there is over-testing going on BUT they say they like the data and the standards (for the most part) and they like seeing the growth in kids. Some schools even have kids track their own growth in “data notebooks.” I am told kids like it and teachers like it.
I do not get the feeling most teachers are reading blogs like this one or keeping up with the politics behind what they have been handed (I’ve been saying for a while that teachers are so used to new trends coming that they are extremely well inclined to adapt to what the higher us want them to do). And at the end of the day, principals know their buildings are being judged on scores and growth within those scores based on subgroups and diasaggregated various ways to show that teachers are having effective impact. I believe that if the stepping back by US DOE and state levels occurs, it will simply be considered right in time for the next trend (that during this period we were crowding in a little), just as Sputnik is now considered an influential period that we learned from. Maybe tiny breakthroughs will happen here and there (already are, I think, in terms of states backing away from some of what is associated with CCSS) BUT I do not predict a day where the “good guys” are given back the reigns and the “bad guys” ate told to stay out of education. I think as the economy improves, business minded folks will lose interest in the education arena (also once they see it is not an investment type scenario like oil or other commodities) and they will move on, leaving behind this notion of data and tracking growth in subgroups and the next bit of research will come through. I predict this because I see schools trapesing on through this right now and doing the best they can, just like with any other set of mandates.
And in areas where schools have had a reputation for struggling (like KCMO, for example) I don’t see private foundations giving up entirely on influencing things because they have an interest in their city looking good and having schools to boast about, etc. I simply do not think that this notion of “you are not an educator, keep out” will ever be an accepted one. And while tweaks in process and better measures against questionable agreements on behalf of public schools can and should come about from this, I believe there will never be a day where states close business communities out of educational planning. I think it is silly to imagine that day ever happening. In fact, I think it a far more worthwhile mental and emotional endeavor to wonder what it was that motivated “business” to want to get involved in the first place. (I think it is the economy–and there is a giant mix of motivation out there, I am sure). But I also think we should ask ourselves what education would look like if the “business world” had gotten involved fifty years ago.
Reformers are not going to go away and be quiet anymore than those who value certain aspects of public education that reformers threaten are. And even if they did, I do not believe it will be with their tails between their legs.
And so we have to consider what we want things to look like with these realities in mind.
What is it that regulars on this blog want to see happen? What does the USDOE stepping back look like? How does it come about?
“Chance favors the prepared mind”. (Pasteur)
And the pendulum will swing back. What was old will be new again.
Couple typos, namely “higher ups” not “higher us”
PolitFact has put out a contrary story on this issue. Not taking sides, just pointing out what’s out there: http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/politifact-rumors-blacken-common-core/2148256
Someone using a different cryptic name posted the same link on my blog. Here is the response I posted.
(wdf1) shares a report from Politifact that I do not find convincing.
They have a teacher who, like Mike Archer, whom I quote above, was a participant in the Common Core review process. As I noted in my essay, there were different perspectives among the teachers who participated. Some, like the teacher quoted by Politifact, felt they had meaningful impact. Others, like Mike Archer, did not. In any case, this was a feedback process, AFTER the original draft Common Core standards were written. That is what the word “review” means. To be clear, I am drawing a distinction, which I think most teachers would agree with, between the original drafting of the Common Core standards, and the feedback process that followed. This is what “creation” means to me. I do not think Politifact wins the point by conflating these two processes.
There is a HUGE difference between involving the K-12 education community, including teachers and scientists and scholars with particular expertise, in considering, first, what we are to mean by a “standard” in the various domains of ELA and math (what various forms those might take); second, what effects standards so conceived might have; third, what particular standards might say–between having informed national discussion and debate about these matters and, instead, having Achieve choose a few amateurs to correlate the state standards to create a document and then asking a few teachers to make suggestions about that document.
A big difference. What was done, here, is obscene.
It appears to me that they bothered to involve teachers at all, after the fact, only to the extent that doing so would enable them, when challenged about the presumption of what they were doing, to make the preposterous claim that teachers were significantly involved.
For make no mistake about it, there was astonishing presumption, astonishing hubris involved here. Basically, a small group of unelected folks at Achieve decided to overrule every teacher, every curriculum coordinator, every curriculum developer, every education theorist and scholar in the country–to say to them, in effect, we don’t give a $@$@&$&(!!! what you might think about these matters or what you might want to do instead. We have made these decisions for you.
For that is precisely what happened. It’s breathtaking.
It is also breathtaking that New York education policy and implementation has been taken over by “Regents Fellows” (not the Board of Regents) who are unelected and not educators by any stretch of the imagination. They are lobbyists for corporate education investors well paid by Bill Gates and Merryl Tisch and appointed by the esteemed John King.
In short, Achieve appointed David Coleman and Susan Pimentel absolute monarchs of education in the English language arts in the United States. Then they handed the edicts of these monarchs to a few teachers, who made a few comments on them, and then they were implemented with no national debate, no learned critique, and no testing.
Thanks for posting this.
The deform propaganda machine is quite efficient.
Someone using a different cryptic name posted the same link on my blog. Here is the response I posted.
(wdf1) shares a report from Politifact that I do not find convincing.
They have a teacher who, like Mike Archer, whom I quote above, was a participant in the Common Core review process. As I noted in my essay, there were different perspectives among the teachers who participated. Some, like the teacher quoted by Politifact, felt they had meaningful impact. Others, like Mike Archer, did not. In any case, this was a feedback process, AFTER the original draft Common Core standards were written. That is what the word “review” means. To be clear, I am drawing a distinction, which I think most teachers would agree with, between the original drafting of the Common Core standards, and the feedback process that followed. This is what “creation” means to me. I do not think Politifact wins the point by conflating these two processes.
Several teachers I have spoken too really thought they “helped draft the standards”.
Upon further investigation/questioning, it was apparent they attended some early meetings and “gave suggestions/feedback” and “discussed the standards in break out groups”.
But they had already been written.
There is no evidence substantive changes were made based on meetings attended by anyone I have encountered.
If actual teachers helped write the standards, lets have a list of folks and minutes from meetings showing their contributions.
And even if those teachers did “help” draft the standards, how does having “over a dozen” teachers nationwide help prove the deformers point? 12 teachers helping write a national curriculum is hardly a ringing endorsement.
After reading the politifact article with a close eye, it seems as if the team of teachers met to discuss the 15% that each state could add to the standards (the ones not tested). It is not the same as having a team of teachers who helped craft (or appropriate) the 85% that will be tested. There is a big difference there.
sorry about the sloppy referent in that last post. Responding, here, too quickly.
If we hadn’t had 10 years of federally mandated state standards, under NCLB, to inure people to this crap–if Achieve had tried to pull this stunt without that priming–there would have been a mighty roar of outrage, at this presumption, sufficient to awaken even the slumbering dolts and toadies of the oligarchy in Washington.
When George Bush, Sr., floated the idea of national standards and tests back during his presidency, this notion was met, and rightly so, with horror from people of every station and of every political persuasion, left and right. This insane notion was quickly, very quickly, put aside and not spoken of again.
Except in private, among the plutocrats and oligarchs, who have long loved the idea of creating their national curriculum commisariat and ministry of truth.
When are people going to acknowledge that the Common Core is Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 come to life? That 40 chapter harangue was published in 1992. It was signed onto by Bush Sr. and 172 other countries. It is a plan to inventory and control every resource on the planet, including people. CC is the prerequisite to people control. The oligarchs will not be successful at taking away our sovereignty if they don’t start the brainwash young. The CC itself is not the brainwash, but the CC aligned tests and materials are. Teaching students that there is no such thing as truth, that the “right” answer, even in math, can be arrived at by consensus is more than a cruel hoax. It is a part of the plan to take down the U.S. and destroy its creative and productive capacities.
The British Monarchy and all of the elite super controllers who pull the strings behind the closed doors are all eugenicists. They do not want to share the world with 7 billion people. They think 1 billion or less would be about right. This is on record, not some theory. The CC is just one step in the process of sorting and culling the herd. They are not looking for brilliance. They are looking for sheep. They are looking for people who are willing to put children through harmful programs and not say a word.
Who was one of the queens favorite visitors to the palace? Oh, that’s right, Jimmy Savile, the pedophile they didn’t even allow the newspapers to out until after he was dead. There are 32 hospitals under investigation now for allowing child abuse and covering it up related to this man. England does not have a mandatory reporting law. Police were complicit in not taking reports of abuse, saying that no one would believe them, because Savile was such a darling of the monarchy.
You may say, what are you talking about? How did you go from the CC to Savile in one breath? Abuse is abuse. And when the same people have been perpetrating it for years it is easy to recognize and make connections. You will ignore these connections at your own peril and the peril of a generation of students. Wake up.
It is pretty clear that there is no “text-based evidence” for this. Shouldn’t this lead us to believe, due to lack of evidence, that the CCSS are not valid? We know they are not vetted. If they are truly valid, show us the meeting notes.
This is one of those the Emperor has no clothes situations where nobody wants to stand up at a faculty meeting and say, “I am not interested in getting proper training or proper materials to implement the Common Core because it is an invalid set of standards that are not educationally sound and should not be implemented.” I do it. But I am alone, not in my opinions of the CC, but in my willingness to express it publicly. Luckily, I am not a classroom teacher and do not have to teach this dreck. Although, I am partially evaluated by how all of the students in my school do on the tests.
Even when test scores go up, some cognitive abilities don’t
MIT neuroscientists find even high-performing schools don’t influence their students’ abstract reasoning – let alone high-paid charter schools
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/even-when-test-scores-go-up-some-cognitive-abilities-dont-1211.html
This all makes me wonder what CC might have look like if it had started from the ground w/ teacher input in its creation.
Suppose, instead, that it were one set of many sets of voluntary guidelines and that local teachers COMPARED AND DEBATED THOSE, continually, and came up with their own documents based on those comparisons and debates, on their knowledge, and on their experience, to be continually revised in light of their ongoing learning about their craft.
Again I just want to point out that standardization of schools is the inevitable outcome of using street addresses to make school admission decisions. The only way to defend arbitrary school assignments is if the school board can make the claim that it really does not matter which school you are assigned to attend.
Your point is a profound one, TE, deserving of careful consideration.
No, Robert, there is nothing profound about ignoring magnet schools and rephrasing the “reformer’s” claptrap about zip codes determining destiny, though they use it ostensibly for poor kids and then don’t address poverty. That is the rallying cry to push forward the “school choice” agenda, which actually means eliminating the choice of well-resourced neighborhood schools, so they can be closed and replaced with charters and voucher schools, so democracy in education can be eliminated, and so the privatization business plan can move forward and entrepreneurs and corporations can profit off public funds.
There was nothing standardized about the neighborhood schools that many of us attended for decades, when teachers had autonomy in their classrooms. Finland has neighborhood schools, a lot of teacher autonomy and education is not standardized. Expand magnet schools, and give teachers more autonomy and smaller class sizes so more differentiation can occur.
I don’t ignore magnet schools. They are not the traditional zoned public schools I was commenting about. I include them in the category of choice schools, and I think they arouse from the desire to have access to the differentiated approaches to education that are not possible with traditional zoned schools. Meaningful differentiation in schools needs to be accompanied by choice.
When you complain about “zoned schools,” you don’t advocate for improving those neighborhood schools, so that teachers can differentiate more to meet individual needs, such as in smaller classes, when given more autonomy or even by adding more electives. Your focus is on school choice, as well as ability tracking. And you don’t mention magnet schools or magnet programs until after others do.
What is very clear is that, like corporate “reformers,” you don’t care that “school choice” today ironically means getting rid of the ability of families to have the choice of a neighborhood school that will accept all children, or that democratic representation in education is eliminated by privatization. That is not about promoting the common good, but it can expected from most brands of “economist” who have their hands in education these days.
Robert can correct me if I am wrong, but what I think he has in mind is far more radical than allowing teachers more “space” in a classroom or a wider set of electives. In his responses about the CCSS in math, he advocates a early age math curriculum that focuses more on the logical relationship between objects than on arithmetic. I have no doubt that there is a significant minority of families in my town that would support this type of math curriculum, but the do not all live in the same catchment area. The idea will never get off the ground unless the households that support it are able to band together to provide a program that would be open to all that want that kind of education. It would be fun to see. I could even break out my old WFF’N PROOF game I used as a kid. I think I lost my On Sets game over the years.
It would help to ask Early Childhood specialists about such matters, which the “architects” of the Common Core failed to do.
“early age math curriculum that focuses more on the logical relationship between objects than on arithmetic” is a great idea, but it’s neither radical nor new. This has been typical of Piagetian-based ECE curriculum in Pre-Primary and Primary Education for decades and includes a lot of hands-on learning, games and real-life problem solving, such as in Math Their Way and Work Jobs by Baratta-Lorton for PreK and Primary Ed, which came out in the early 70s. thee is also the University of Chicago Everyday Math program which was first published in the 80s, which is now implemented in many districts. Those who don’t appreciate developmental appropriateness and Constructivism have been highly critical of it.
When kids stop being engaged and start being intimidated by Math has tended to occur after Primary Education, when hands-on manipulations of real objects are often eliminated, even though kids are still concrete learners then. Everyday Math includes hands-on through 6th Grade. Abstractions should not be the primary focus for children who are in the sensory-motor, pre-conventional and conventional stages, however, based on what I’ve seen in CC math books, it looks like that’s been pushed down and is occurring a lot in Primary Ed now, too. (2D pictures do not count as hands-on learning.)
Is it done in public schools? Would you get broad teacher and parent buy in to implement this kind of math curriculum district wide? The issue is a political one. District wide policies require broadly based agreement with those policies. While many might like that approach to math education, they are not densely populated in any particular place, and thus will always lose to the advocates to traditional math that the parents understand.
While I agree that traditional public schools and districts should offer more choices–in fact, they should be forced to–the broad and open advocacy of anything-but-my-neighborhood-public-school approach to choice opens the doors to even more problems. Although it may be fine for the few who have the wherewithal to move out and on, the evidence is clear for the others who are left behind with even less than they had before. Look at what happened in Missouri or look at what is happening in Louisiana. We haven’t wiped inequality off the map in any place. The ABMNPS approach opens doors for some students but it also opens doors for more instability, more malfeasance, and more inequality. The ABMNPS approach is a “choice” for the few that hurts the many.
We should be advocating for more magnets; more choices in curriculum at our address-assignment schools; more charters that work with and work in the district; more choices beyond college preparation; and more charters to take on special problems in innovative ways instead of everything boiling down to test scores.
“Arouse”? If I can still blush at my age, then I am healthy, I guess.
TheMorrigan,
I certainly agree with your middle paragraph.
The people with the wherewithal to move out ended up in the suburbs of the major cities long ago. When the street address determines which schools your children will attend for the next 12 years, you reinforce the tendency for SES segregation in housing.
Yes, it was adopted by my large urban public school district about five years ago. The complaints I’ve heard about it tend to come from suburban parents who want Saxon (i.e., traditional) Math instead –though not in my area, as we have a lot of progressive education in the suburbs around here.
Very interesting. Would you be willing to share an outline of the curriculum?
I am a fan of public schools. When I read what the Constitution of the state of Massachusetts says about public schools, it brings a tear to my eye. I do believe, however, that public schools can do a better job of providing alternative tracks than they have been doing, in keeping with the fundamental principles that a) kids differ and b) a diverse, pluralistic society needs people who are variously educated and trained, not students who are identically milled. I don’t think that any sort of case can be made for taking public funds and giving them to private corporations so that they can run for-profit schools. That sort of thing, which is happening a lot, seems to me completely obscene and illegal (as the judge’s decision in Washington State, today, made clear).
Here’s what I think was profound in that comment: There is a tendency, when an institution is paid for by all and must serve all, to seek a spurious average. Well, there are no average kids. Fortunately, there are public school systems that do a pretty good job of providing alternative tracks. But there are some–many–that do not, and there is much more that we could be doing there. TE’s comment raises what I believe to be a real issue for public schools, not one that we should pretend doesn’t exist. Does that mean that we should give up on the notion of public schools? Emphatically not. I believe that we can have public schools that provide varied educations for varied kids. TE doubts this. That’s our area of disagreement. But his question is a valid one and raises a significant issue.
Actually, ECE, I was talking about something VERY different–about an intense program of fluid intelligence-building activities, in the early years, of a very different kind than those you are describing. But you can see some of what I am talking about here:
and you can read about other kinds of activities like these in Richard Nisbett’s superb book Intelligence and How to Get It.
ECE, I am NOT talking about doing constructivist math in elementary school. I am talking about stepping WAY back from that and doing pattern recognition activities that involve manipulation of graphics and objects–sorting, sequencing, classifying, comparing, analyzing, contrasting, recognizing and extending the pattern, finding the odd one out, doing transformations (rotations, reflections, translations, skewing, inverting, etc), negation, adding to and subtracting from figures, dividing and multiplying figures, combining shapes, tesselation, making inductions, making deductions, making abductions, and so on–without, emphatically without, ANY formal terminology or ANY attempt to teach or derive explicit rules. A good place to see the kind of thing that I’m talking about is on any standard intelligence test.
In short, I am talking about graphical manipulation to build neural circuitry to be harnessed, much later in the child’s school career, for abstract generalization. The sort of program that I am talking about has not been done, to my knowledge, anywhere, except in a few trial studies that Nisbett talks about.
And I am not, emphatically not, slamming constructivism. Math IS construction and discovery. My argument, which TE is referring to, and which I posted elsewhere, is that if we want kids to approach math as construction and discovery, we need to delay teaching of of the stuff we are currently teaching as math until later, when kids are cognitively developed enough to be able to UNDERSTAND what they are doing (rather than simply shoving symbols around in some memorized ways). And to get them there, to build those underlying cognitive abilities, I am suggesting replacing what we’re calling math in the early grades with something very different–with play to build underlying fluid intelligence.
Sorry, Robert, but I beg to differ. Constructivist math programs like Math Their Way, which I taught for many years, is very much about pattern recognition and manipulation. Since symbols are abstract, including pictures, everything in that curriculum starts with the real before progressing to the symbolic, so patterning activities begin with recognizing and comparing patterns on real objects in the environment, such as the grain on wooden furniture and blocks, stripes on clothing and toy animals, etc.
When recreating patterns (and graphs), the first place to start is with the children themselves, such as by demonstrating and then having children repeat the sit/stand and boy/girl patterns.
Body movements are integral to the process, too. So for example, kids stand in a semi-circle and are shown a two part pattern, with the teacher starting off by demonstrating part 1: clap hands and then asking the adjacent child to complete part 2: jump. Then each successive child must do what comes next in the pattern. Of course, complexity is increased when more components in the pattern are added. Children are also encouraged to be creative and provide their own ideas for creating patterns.
TE, You can get an idea about the University of Chicago Everyday Math Curriculum at their website here: http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/
As a parent, I personally did not like Every Day math. Some of the tasks seemed silly and irrelevant. The homework assignments were difficult to understand and fulfill.
That said, my two children who participated in the program were able to pass Algebra or Math A. However, that’s as far as they got, since NYS only requires one regents exam in math. My other daughters, with no Regents requirements, took and easily passed, Courses 1, 2, and 3. Of course, now these classes are called Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry (the same as when I went to High School).
The pendulum swings and what was old is new again.
Math Their Way can be found here: http://www.center.edu/MathTheirWay.shtml
I wish that Math was taught like this when I was growing up in the 50s. Many kids were turned off to Math then as early as 1st Grade, when introduced to number operations, because there were no manipulatives at all and, in fact, we were told that if we could not just do Math in our heads, then we were stupid. And we were humiliated if we tried to use our fingers. I’m not dumb, but that was too challenging for this young 6 year old, so I felt stupid. To this day, I often get headaches from Math.
ECE, I am quite familiar with those constructivist programs. They are a very different beast from what I am talking about. Their goal is to have kids arrive at explicit principles via discovery processes, and they typically are attempting to have kids arrive at mathematical principles per se (e.g., what do the angles in a triangle add up to?) rather than attempting to build more fundamental prerequisite abilities. Those programs are about learning. I’m talking about acquisition. This is an important distinction that comes to us from study of the cognitive science of language acquisition. The goal of constructivist/discovery mathematics is learning–the discovery/construction of explicit principles. I’m talking about acquisition, which is implicit, not articulated. The great discovery of cognitive science in the past forty years is how much of human mental ability is NOT explicitly learned but, rather, involves innate functional structures with parameters that are set not through explicit instruction but implicitly, through exposure to the right sorts of experiences.
I still use my fingers. So shoot me.(PS – I got an A in first year Calculus at SUNY at Buffalo – better than most of the engineering students).
ECE, I should have said, “how much of human ability is NEITHER learned through explicit instruction NOR discovered in the form of explicit principles but, rather, is acquired as the result of innate functional machinery in the brain responding to particular experiences and setting the parameters of that machinery.
But the more important general principle is that kids seem to be on a developmental clock. Some functions of the brain they are born with. Some they develop latter on. My hunch is that the ability to do some types of highly abstract formal reasoning explicitly formulated, whether by direct instruction or through discovery, depends upon development of parts of the prefrontal cortex that do not start developing in most kids until around the age of 16 and are not fully in place until around the age of 25. However, the brain is extraordinarily plastic, and it is possible that we could hasten this process along. And that that is so is suggested by the sorts of studies of practice with fluid intelligence activities described by Richard Nisbett in Intelligence and How to Get It.
I am not saying that constructivist/discovery programs contain NONE of what I am talking about. I am saying that their goal is explicit formulation via discovery, which is a different sort of thing.
Piaget referred to this often unknown concept called “The Leaky Beaker Theory”. Three year olds are presented with two glasses, one short and fat, one tall and thin. Two beakers, with obviously identical amounts of water, are used to fill the glasses. When asked which glass has more water, the children will point to the tall, thin glass. Even after pointing out that the beakers used to fill the glasses had the same amount of water, their answer remains the same. However, if one of the beakers has a crack, the children will recognize that both glasses have the same amount of water. The reason they look different is because the one beaker had a flaw.
That is the whole key to education. You need to find that leaky beaker to explain difficult concepts to your students.
We are born with brains that are hardwired to make inductive inferences that we are not even aware that we are making, as bats are born with brains that do the functional equivalent of the calculus necessary to pluck a moving insect out of the air. But just as those bat are not aware that their brains are doing calculus, the brains that kids are born with are not aware that they are doing inductive reasoning. The ability to formulate explicit principles that describe what we are doing automatically develops late, is dependent upon neural machinery that develops on a biological timer. That’s my suggestion.
So, by attempting to get kids to arrive, via construction and discovery, at explicit principles, the discovery/constructivist programs are making the same mistake with regard to little minds that the explicit instruction programs are. They are assuming that the neural machinery for such high-level, explicit formulation is in place before it actually is.
And I think that teachers using constructivist programs often THINK, incorrectly, that their kids have arrived at explicit formulations for the same reasons that people thought that Clever Hans was doing mathematics. The kids happen onto the right answer. But ask them a few days latter to apply that general principle to a different situation, and you find that it never was really formulated. Instead, all that happened was that something like the general principle was elicited. What I am saying here accounts for the dramatic failures of constructivist programs that have been witnessed all around the country. Those programs are NOT, I think, wrong about how we should be approaching math instruction. They are simply being used too early, before the appropriate mental machinery is in place.
Funny, corporate “reformers” such as Gates et al. like to trot out cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham to refute developmentally appropriate practice based on the same principle you promote, Robert. Willingham argues that since children may have learned a rule one day but are often unable to recall it the next day, then developmental principles should not be used to determine what is and is not appropriate for children’s learning. Hence, the “reformers” feel justified that no child development experts or ECE specialists were involved in creating the developmentally inappropriate Common Core.
I am not usually in the camp which agrees with Willingham. In fact, I believe very strongly that exposure to rich experiences is what matters most and I did not implement Math Their Way with much fidelity and found what worked best for my students and me instead. (I did not implement Everyday Math, except for some games.) There are many blackline masters with numbers, operations signs, fact families, etc. that come with Math Their Way and I did not want to impose them on 5 year olds. So I just copied, cut and placed them in a container for children to use only if they chose to do so and I provided guidance when students inquired about them. I kept them on a shelf right next to the many “subtraction cards” that I made by gluing items on large index cards, which had a second card that folded over the first card and could be used to show real-life subtraction, as can be seen on page 194 here: http://www.center.edu/MTW-book/07-NumberConcept.pdf
I like those cards a lot, because they demonstrate subtraction more plainly and realistically than anything I’ve ever seen before or since, because quantities really can be taken away and remain sight unseen, rather than expecting kids to imagine that something is gone. I also like that the process can be reversed to demonstrate addition. As it happens, that was one of the most used Math manipulatives in my classroom –which children selected.on their own during free play. I was surprised by how many kids chose to use the numbers etc. from the blackline masters with it, too –and correctly.
I did Piaget’s Conservation tasks ETK referred to with my Kindergarten students many times and there were always some kids who really wanted to learn what was going on and did so. And yes, most remembered the rule days later –so there went my strategy of using the narrow juice glasses to serve the same amount of milk to kids who said they wanted less, because then they would call me on it…
I don’t believe in pressuring kids to learn concepts they’re not ready to grasp, but I also think it’s a mistake to underestimate the capabilities of children and not provide appropriate challenges for them, even if they are outliers, and constructivist strategies enable skilled ECE teachers to differentiate.
You can teach the young child almost anything (modified at times) if you find the right “hook”. All my pre-K students knew the difference between fiction and nonfiction.
Yes, ETK, the right “hook” can serve us well. For example, I did not follow the Math Their Way instructions and put colored dots on the “subtraction cards,” using matching colors for the same total amounts, because that creates fact families that can be readily matched by color instead of by engaging in Math operations. And I thought the cards would be of more interest to children with real objects instead of dots. So, I had a card with popcorn kernels, another card with pennies, another with paper clips etc., and I think it was all those different objects that initially served as the hook for kids. Then, when they chose to also use the blackline masters materials, I could encourage them to sort and label cards by fact families and they actually figured that out instead of just color matching them.
I also did not dumb down language, as suggested in the book. I typically use rich language and provide comprehension asides to foster vocabulary development, which is pairing new and sophisticated words with brief definitions, synonyms, etc., to promote understanding. So, for example, I would say, “minus, take away.”
ECE Teacher – You are a natural! I especially like the fact you do not dumb down your speech. I agree with you. It is important that children hear appropriate words during relevant teaching and conversations with adults. Otherwise, how are they going to develop a good ear and learn new vocabulary? It’s especially important in the inner city, rife with poverty. We are their role models. And even the little ones respond. They like being treated with respect.
Kinesthetic and tactile learning are always a good “addition” to any new topic. It not only gives children a feeling of empowerment, it also helps them visualize the concept. Which, I know, you already knew.
I am thinking, tonight, of Ray Bradbury, who passed away not too long ago. I don’t think that he was one of the greatest of writers. A lot of his stuff seems to me pretty simple-minded. cliched, breathless.. But he had one great gift. He could recall something from his childhood with astonishing vividness–the scent of sarsaparilla in a 1940s drugstore, the horror of looking at something freaky in a jar in a freak show tent at a carnival. And he would recall this thing with astonishment, with wonder, with delight, with curiosity, and his work, on every page. screams at us: pay attention, don’t miss these wonders all around you. And that’s one of the secrets to living a good life, isn’t it, and one of the things worth teaching to kids through literature, through teaching, for example, the stories of Ray Bradbury, which are accessible to kids, for the most part.
Find that in the CCSS for ELA. You won’t. And you won’t find billions of other aspects of literary experiences that are extraordinarily valuable. And you won’t find how very varied are the possibilities for becoming a literate person. You will find an inflexible bullet list of vague, general, abstracted skills, and a pretty hackneyed one at that.
The general cluelessness of the authors of the CCSS about why anyone would bother to read should be a red flag. These are not the folks who should be telling anyone else how to go about teaching literature.
The CCSS hack would say, clearly, Mr. Shepherd, you are talking about a theme in Bradbury. That’s covered in the CCSS. And thereby this person would be illustrating that he or she has missed my point entirely. The standards [sic] were not examined, critically, at their most basic level–at the level of the conceptualization of “standard”–at the level of what a “standard” should be.
As a librarian, I can tell you that many of the recommended books on the “list” are not appropriate for the given age level. I’ve seen this happen before – people using personal references and extrapolating them onto others. I read Shakespeare at ten – that doesn’t mean “A Midsummers Night Dream” is a good fit for fifth graders. Or, even worse, they’re pulling titles out of their ass – Yes, all twelve year olds should read “The Autobiography of Frederick Douglas” which they read (and hated) in their Junior year in high school. Rigor, you know!
And please note: Current contemporary novels are almost entirely left off the list – these books are unknown quantities to the CCSS creators. If they don’t know about them, they must not exist. (You know – that tree in the forrest.)
And I have experience in this concept. More than once I have spent HOURS creating the perfect suggested reading list for the district, only to have Administrators, with no knowledge of literature, destroy my list, switching grade levels around or adding their own favorites without regard to age appropriateness, lexiles, or student interest.
That is why I have an inkling into how the CCSS was created.
PS – I loved Bradbury and some of his work is BRILLIANT. Read “The Veldt” (a short story).
Yeah. And kids dig “The Veldt,” for obvious reasons. Well said, Ellen! Very, very well said.
Of course, there have been parents and school boards who have objected to “The Veldt” for the very reason that kids love it. Here’s a story about a couple of kids who . . . . well, I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t read the story.
A lot of Bradbury’s stories are GREAT for kids (“All Summer in a Day,” “A Sound of Thunder,” “There Will Come Soft Rains.” Some (the story about the Hemingway and the parrot) that are not. I read The Illustrated Man when I was still a small child. Totally blew me away.
It’s the best books which are banned. All are must reads.
I get weekly emails from Achieve stating these facts and myths.
My principal likes the Common Core.
Our state supe likes the Common Core.
It is hard to know what to think, as a parent.
But what I do know is that the emphasis in all conversations is on test performance and that is why I remain nervous enough, skeptical enough, to keep paying attention to critics of CCSS.
“It is hard to know what to think. . . ”
Well considering all of the errors and invalidities involved in the making, testing and disseminating the results of educational standards and standardized testing as shown by Wilson, I find it quite easy to know that to use these educational malpractices that definitely cause harm to and to privilege some students over others (discrimination by the government) is WRONG!
The propaganda machine is quite efficient. It always hauls off with the same falsehood (U.S. schools are failing) and then jumps to the same magic solution (standards and summative tests).
But remember that politicians are pulling these strings as they tap dance for voters who often want to see measurable proof that their tax dollars are being well spent and well stretched. State Boards of Ed and Departments of Public Instruction have to uphold what state and federal governments pass as law (in effect, what they tell them what to do). It is the politics of financial accountability. I agree with you both that testing is not ideal (even for that purpose), but I would ask you. . . what should schools offer up as evidence to their tap dancing politicians and their voters as proof of money well spent? Because to imagine that such proof would never be requested is not realistic. Education is not free. How can tax payers stay apprised and assured that their investment is a good one? And a sound one? And a wise one? And a responsible one? And a productive one? That is what is needed. And if testing is not it, what is? (I think portfolios and more direct interaction with students by those judging would be good). But these questions are as real as the dollars that come in a teacher paycheck, pension or classroom spending allotment. And that is what being in a civil society requires.
As I read through these comments, I’m struck by the awareness that the CCSS were drafted in the absence of any awareness of Piaget’s cognitive stages of development. Had they been, there would have been more of an alignment between what we might want students to be able to do at a particular age or grade level and what they were actually capable of doing or understanding or perhaps at least an acknowledgement of what was developmentally appropriate.
Piaget’s observations of intellectual development were no less profound than those of Charles Darwin on evolution and natural selection. Neither was privileged to have access to the scientific awareness and understanding we have today as to what is either happening genetically (Darwin) or intellectually (Piaget). And yet their observations were so perceptive so as to foretell what science would be able to corroborate and explain at a later date.
Piaget’s theories should have been required reading for those developing CCSS. That they were not is a colossal blunder. For a movement that touts being “data-driven” it actually lacks an awareness of or contact with reality.
Interestingly, we now know quite a lot about the cognitive processes involved in language acquisition and how timed these are. Surprisingly, it turns out that it is important that kids be exposed quite early to ambient spoken linguistic environments that are quite sophisticated. That needs to happen in order for kids’ innate language acquisition devices to intuit the parameters of the grammars (using this term in its broadest sense to describe the entire internal rule system that constitutes linguistic competence) of the languages they are learning.
Once again, my response is based on my experience as a librarian in an inner city PreK (as early as three) to 2nd grade school. Even the three year olds were behind in language development. So far behind, that the teacher was afraid they would never be able to catch up. A few had no language at all.
It was my job to reinforce language development via story time. We also sang songs and played simple word games. This was my first experience teaching library to those so young with so many needs. They taught me a lot and hopefully I helped them as well.
One if my students followed me to my next school assignment. I watched him graduate a year and a half ago. From three to eighteen, I had been his librarian. What an incredible experience to have watched him (and others) grow up. Some I still correspond with on Facebook. I feel blessed.
With all due respect, it isn’t so much Piaget as the children’s librarians, who now no longer seem to exist, now that children’s lit has been taken over by multi-national publishers, Disney, and Sesame Street. They knew, from working with children, what was age appropriate.
Thank you Harold, for your nod to the school librarian. Actually a lot of the CC are actually library skills (which many of the classroom teachers lack). A perfect curriculum would have the media specialist working hand in hand with the teacher to get optimal results.
It always amazed me when school districts called for better literacy rates for the students, then reduced school library services. According to those pesky statistics, scores go up when schools have a full time, experienced school librarian and access to free reading choices.
Go figure!
This has been an incredible blog. I have thoroughly enjoyed our discussions and appreciate all the feedback. It has given me the opportunity to really think about my own beliefs about education and re evaluate them in the context of today’s educational system.
I have given a detailed account of the doings at the public forum completed less than an hour ago in Buffalo, NY under the blog – Why does JohnKing stubbornly cling to his views?