Arthur Camins is director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. After reading Bill Honig’s post about Common Core in California, he wrote the following comment:
Bill Honig makes an argument to consider: Maybe there is a potential alternative to having to choose between accepting tight linkage between the Common Core State Standards and high-stakes testing or no standards at all. I argued in The Past Gets in Our Eyes(http://www.arthurcamins.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Past-Gets-In-Our-Eyes1.pdf), that total opposition to standards in any form is a function of being trapped by our individualist history. In NGSS: A Wave or a Ripple (http://www.arthurcamins.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/NGSS_Wave-or-Ripple2.pdf), I made a plea to not undermine the new science standards with a rush to consequential testing. Decoupling standards from expensive and destructive consequential testing systems makes them less subject to mindless prescriptive curricula and rushed implementation and thus more open to critical review, experimentation and revision. I hope California turns out to be a successful example for the rest of the nation. Is there potential for New York City’s new leadership to follow suit?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
California is going to have Smarter Balanced testing. It has just been put off for a while.
The last thing that we need is involuntary, mandated standards. There is an alternative: Voluntary, competing standards, frameworks, learning progressions, curricula, and pedagogical approaches put forward by experts with differing ideas.
Why anyone would think that mandating one vision is a good idea entirely escapes me. That way lies ossification, the death of innovation, disaster.
Let me be concrete about this. Suppose that deep familiarity with current scientific research in language acquisition leads one to believe that grammar is mastered not through explicit instruction (e.g. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.8.1a Explain the function of verbals (gerunds, participles, infinitives) in general and their function in particular sentences.) but through interaction with syntactically sophisticated spoken language–with spoken language instantiating the full range of grammatical forms in common use in the language. Suppose that one wishes to create a curriculum emphasizing such spoken language in the early grades. Such an approach is HIGHLY WARRANTED by what we now know about language acquisition, but it is PRECLUDED by the CC$$, which assumes prescientific notions about how the grammar of a language is acquired.
But the more general point is this: Approaches to instruction should not be mandated because they ossify–they preclude innovation based upon new and better ideas.
The issue of how to enable students to develop competence with the full range of syntactic phenomena in their native tongue–in English, for example–is a significant one. A program based in current scientific understandings of language acquisition would be radically different from any we are now implementing, but it’s a waste of time even to begin discussing what such a program might look like because IT IS PRECLUDED BY THE CC$$, by that amateurish bullet list, which DRAMATICALLY NARROWS the possible design space for curricula and pedagogy to that which was assumed by the authors of these ignorant “standards.”
And the same point applies to every domain and to almost every standard [sic] in the CC$$ in ELA. There are better alternatives that are precluded by the assumptions made by the inexperienced authors of the standards [sic].
Continuous improvement comes from having competing visions continually debated and revised, not from establishing a centralized regulatory authority to make these decisions for all of us.
Robert,
Your example is quite pertinent to second language acquisition as there are generally two camps: one camp–just say it, have the students parrot it and they will learn it, no translation (it meaning both the language and the syntactical structures) and those who use a more grammatically oriented approach: learn what a noun is, learn how the subject effects the form of the verb, learn that in Spanish (or whatever language if they have this structure/concept which English doesn’t) nouns have gender and number, etc. . . .
Now I contend that the underlying problem with the first camp is that it assumes that learning a second language is done basically in the same way as learning one’s first language (with which I don’t agree for many reasons). Those in the second camp acknowledge that it can’t be the same and then use “grammar” instruction and terms to link the two languages in a logical fashion so that one can utilize their native language to acquire the second.
And although you state “which assumes prescientific notions about how the grammar of a language is acquired.”, I’m not so sure that those “scientific notions of how the grammar of a language is acquired” are as scientific as they may seem to be. And I’m not quite so sure, either, where the thought that learning a “grammar” of a language is such a bad thing as it seems to be as proclaimed by the proponents of the first camp above. To me “grammar” is the study of how a language works. What’s wrong with that?
Any of you’re thoughts on this will be appreciated.
Duane, I agree that learning how a grammar works is fascinating and valuable. To that end, I have devoted years of my life to doing just that. But there is a difference between understanding how the grammar of a language works and being able to use and understand the phonological, morphological, semantic, and syntactic structures of the language. For example, every English speaker knows that
The great, green dragon
is grammatical and that
The green, great dragon
isn’t.
But that’s not because each speaker has been taught explicit rules for the order of precedence of adjectives in English. These are ALMOST NEVER explicitly taught (they are explicitly taught almost exclusively in ESL classes). It is a matter of scientific fact that people develop extraordinarily sophisticated, complex internalized grammars without explicit instruction. It’s also an undeniable fact that the grammars that people develop vary quite a bit–that some are considered by a lot of people to be “nonstandard” and that some do not include the entire range of significant syntactic, morphological, and semantic structures in the language as it is commonly used.
We could have a long discussion of this, but this blog isn’t the place. The more general point that I was trying to make is that the CC$$ are based upon prescientific understandings of language acquisition. We’ve learned a LOT about that in the past few decades, but the authors of the CC$$ clearly didn’t know that.
Kids come into our schools from dramatically different linguistic environments, some of them dramatically impoverished. If those kids are to catch up, they need compensating spoken language environments in which the innate language acquisition device has exposure to the data–the full range of significant morphological, syntactic, and semantic forms–of the language. Instead, we are expose them almost exclusively to written language that is INTENTIONALLY impoverished in the range of forms that it presents, and so there is no chance at all for them to catch up. A little familiarity with the advances in understanding of language acquisition made by linguists over the past forty years would make this clear to people.
But the more general point, again, is that the CC$$ delimit the design space for possible curricula and pedagogy in really dramatic fashion because they make so many unwarranted assumptions. The CC$$ in ELA are basically a list of unexamined, hackneyed preconceptions about a) each of the domains of the English language arts and b) thinking .
Trying to teach kids to avoid nonstandard grammar in their writing by teaching them explicit rules is a lot like trying to teach a kitten to get up a tree by flying.
Let me be absolutely clear that I am NOT advocating cutting grammar instruction from the curriculum. I am advocating for a different understanding of what “grammar instruction” means–several different understandings, in fact. Unfortunately, syntactic fluency is a really significant component of decoding ability that is almost entirely overlooked by the professional “reading” establishment.
But I’ve just singled out, here, ONE of many, many issues that I have with the CC$$ in ELA, which seem to me to be extraordinarily amateurish and uninformed.
What I mean by that is that the kitten and the child have other means that they have been endowed with by their biology for accomplishing this task. As educators, we have to understand the biological endowment for language and work with it.
But we can’t even begin to do that under the CC$$–we needn’t even bother to broach the issue or thousands of other issues–because the specific learning progressions and assumptions about the various domains made by the CC$$ preclude those innovations. They draw a tiny circle in the vast design space of possible curricula and pedagogy and say, in effect, “Anything in here you can do. Anything outside–any new ideas you might have–forget about them. Lord Coleman has spoken.”
The amateurs who put these standards [sic] together are so ignorant of ELA pedagogy and curricula that they do not even know or understand how dramatically they narrow the possibilities for both.
I think of these people and am reminded of these words: “Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Some people actually can benefit from explicit instruction — usually people, adults, with prior familiarity with systems with rules. But on the whole people do learn best through interaction.
I was a language teacher years ago and I had a professor of mathematics in my second year accelerated class who seemed hopeless — until I lent him an old fashioned grammar book, which he mastered in a week! In no time, he was fluent, spoke with impeccably correct grammar (though with a strong accent), and ultimately married a native speaker.
One justification for learning Latin and Greek was that it prepared people to deal with languages as systems in this way — and indeed it does work much of the time — for those who can master Latin and Greek. Nevertheless, I agree that the common core is appalling on this issue. Young children especially learn best through interaction — and young children are the most prone to develop psychological blocks from being taught the wrong way, which is precisely the way the common core recommends.
It is a train wreck of arrogant overreach.
Harold, I agree that explicit instruction is OFTEN valuable. However, that’s not how kids acquire the internalized grammars of their languages. There is an inborn, innate, biological mechanism for that. Every child is born with hardwired principles for language, and then parameters are set based upon the specific language that he or she encounters. In fact, almost NONE of a child’s internalized grammar of his or her native tongue–a vast grammar, btw–is learned via explicit instruction. This may seem like an odd notion, but it’s really no different than the notion that we are born with the ability to see certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
There is some evidence that the innate language acquisition device for intuiting syntactic structures from the ambient spoken language environment breaks down at around the age of 14. But that we are born with an innate grammar acquisition device that operates implicitly, below the level of conscious awareness, is unassailable. If English teachers were made to learn some linguistics, they would understand this, and they would be horrified by the approach assumed by the CC$$ in ELA. If I may, let me recommend a book to you: Rhyme and Reason: An Introduction to Minimalist Syntax, by Juan Uriagereka.
Harold, if I may, let me recommend a book to you, which explains, in a fascinating, engaging manner, the biological endowment for acquisition of a grammar:
Juan Uriagereka, Rhyme and Reason: An Introduction to Minimalist Syntax. MIT Press, 1998.
Thank you, Robert, I would be very interested in reading this book. Perhaps in recounting my anecdote I gave the impression that I didn’t agree with you about language acquisition among children. I do agree. (I was talking about a man who happened to be a professional mathematician — obviously an exception to the rule). But teachers do need to be alert so they can tailor their approaches to the needs of particular students. And we all need to avoid dogmatism. I don’t think absolutely all the evidence is quite in yet about language acquisition — to say nothing of other forms of learning.
Thanks, Harold, for that clarification. You make an extraordinarily important point–one that goes to a basic difference between the deformers and the rest of us. We believe in the inherent dignity of people who are different. We respect difference. Kids differ. Invariant standards, even ones not as idiotic as the CC$$ in ELA, do not respect those differences. The technocrats can’t see why we feel this way. I sometimes think that they are incapable of understanding why we do, and I feel sorry for them that that part of them is missing.
Robert, agreed. We’re not education experts, but we put forth some thoughts on another, more open approach, would like to hear your thoughts:
http://uncommoncalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/01/Open-School-Standards.html
How very important it is that teacher retake their profession from the usurpers. That’s why I advocate for MUCH MORE prep time for teacher that they can spend doing Japanese-style lesson study to subject their own practice to continual critique and improvement. Continuous improvement works from the bottom up, not from the top down.
However, and this is important: There should not be ONE set of standards that is continually revised but, rather, alternative proposals that compete with one another. Individual districts should be free to choose from among these AND to combine or revise them at will. That way lies innovation.
However, the spirit of what you are doing I enthusiastically endorse. Continual, very public critique of suggested learning progressions, curricular frameworks, curricula, and pedagogical approaches–that’s how we get real improvement.
The only decent thing that I’ve seen out of the whole misguided CC$$ deform movement is that some teachers have gotten together to create LDC learning modules that are, in some cases, quite good.
Innovation flows from the bottom up. $@&$@&*&*!! flows from the top down.
A comment on my response to Honig’s letter (posted on my site):
“Thank you for your response to Mr. Honig’s blog on Diane’s site. I am a teacher in Ca and an outspoken anti-CC$$ activist. I am worried that with the passage of SB484, which removes the former state testing and slowly implements the new Smarter Balanced tests whereas scores will not count towards school ratings for 3 years, that teachers are relieved too much. They are relieved that the curriculum seems deeper and less wide, indicating that the standards may be more easily mastered by our students because they have more time to digest them. They are relieved that it seems like they can use their own best practices to develop their lesson plans rather than read from scripted textbooks, implying that the CC$$ may be more engaging to students. They are relieved that since the CC$$ seem fewer that they may be able to reintroduce parts of the curriculum that have been narrowed due to the NCLB constraints. Too much relief worries me because we become complacent and less likely to look deeply at the implications of these standards and how they have impacted other school districts throughout the nation. I can only hope that the New York parents, teachers, and students make enough noise that their reverberations can be felt here in California.”
This is exactly what worries us. Thanks for posting it here. 2-3 years off from any accountability and billions in school money wasted shouldn’t relieve anyone. It should signal what is likely to be the beginning of the slow, but sure, decline of public education when parents realize what’s happened and pull their kids out.
My response to his earlier posting:
“There may ber a potential alternative to having to choose between accepting tight linkage between the Common Core State Standards and high-stakes testing or no standards at all.”
But Arthur, there can’t be that disconnect as by definition standards imply measurement which, however illogical and invalid it is, implies tests that measure the standards. Different sides of the same coin so to destroy/ignore one is to destroy/ignore the coin. And unfortunately it’s not being ignored much less destroyed—yet!
This would confirm exactly what the Republican Governors must have feared when signing on to Common Core. They likely feared that eventually, all the tests would be peeled away, leaving federal-controlled education with no measurement of results.
We have had a decade of success in California with state level standards and tests.
Now we want to go to lower, nationally-controlled standards…. and no tests? If this happens, watch for other states to reverse course and throw out Common Core altogether. If CA sticks to Common Core standards, but no tests, we can then watch for the slow, but sure decline of the best public schools in CA as parents flee to private, virtual or home school.
I am in favor of “standards,” so what if we were to take each state’s standards and make them our own, I mean they are “state” standards, no? Rigorous review with parental involvement by teachers and administrators, etc. I wonder how the testing companies woule like 50 different sets of state standards as I am pretty sure that they would come out all the same … like they are now?
The issues of testing and teacher evaluations have always been separate issues. The “tie” to the CCSC was made for political leverage. We need to “untie” it.
“The issues of testing and teacher evaluations have always been separate issues.”
They may be “separate issues” but they are as intertwined as yin/yan, warp/weave, up/down, fetus/mother, chicken/egg and/or life/death.
No hope for the current “leadership”: thinkers they are not.
The process was not legitimate. We should not embrace anything if teachers and parents are not central to producing curricula and assessments. Teachers should grade all assessments, not machines or consortia. We should embrace a process that is not for profit and that is completely transparent, accountable to local school communities. Title money to create equitable education should not be held hostage. We should start over by thinking about how to construct a legitimate process.
Paul AFT Local 2063
YES! Scrap it all, and invest in doing it the right way…first and foremost include teachers at all levels, administrators, superintendants, college subject professors, professors of education, education researchers, business researchers, employment researchers…then, and only then, get for profit business involved.
Our local school superintendent put out an online video purporting that Common Core was somehow “created by… parents”. I guess perhaps David Coleman is a parent?
This the kind of absurd propaganda that has been fed to unsuspecting parents the past year or so.
I have just finished a teaching credential program in order to become a high school math teacher. I think people are missing California’s history. We had standards in California before Common Core and we had high-stakes testing in California before Common Core. We spent money before Common Core, and we made mistakes before Common Core.
The standards we had were different enough from the rest of the country that they required textbook publishers to create “California” versions of math textbooks. This limited the options of districts. Yes, the state is going to spend money on Common Core, but the state was spending money on textbooks, materials and training with the old standards. For the last few years as districts have been waiting to hear how Common Core would be adopted, so there is a backlog of worn out books to be replaced, professional development to be conducted, and more.
As for the argument that the Common Core standards put students behind the old California standards, the old standards required all 8th graders to attempt algebra. Most 8th graders are not developmentally ready for that level of abstract thinking, and almost half of them failed the class, and many who passed the class nevertheless did not master the material. The Common Core plan to introduce algebraic concepts in 8th grade without cramming in a high school algebra class is certainly an improvement. In fact, the Common Core 8th grade math standards provide opportunities for projects and connecting math to the real world that was lost during the forced algebra years.
The previous tests in California were about procedures and definitions. They were fair and reasonable tests of procedures and definitions, but combined with the 8th grade algebra requirement, this was an invitation to teach math superficially. At least the Common Core standards call for students to demonstrate deeper knowledge and important intellectual habits.
Math teachers in California are hoping that we will now have access to the same textbooks and other resources that math teachers across the country can use, tests that are not so superficial, and a pace, particularly for 8th graders, that is more developmentally appropriate. It would be a shame to lose those improvements just because there are good arguments to be made about the profiteering on the new tests, the way the test companies have gotten schools to buy their computer testing infrastructure for them, the improper federal meddling in setting standards, and the ongoing debate about standardized testing in general. For all I know, the English standards and the standards for K-6 are horribly misguided and incompetent, but the middle and high school math standards were taken from what the NCTM has been publishing for years. “Common Core all bad” is too simplistic to be a fair judgment.
Hi Brian. Yes, people are missing California’s history. A few of the most important things they are missing: 1). California has succeeded in increasing proficiency and college-readiness for the past decade under the current state standards, across all demographic groups and in spite of large immigration rates and ballooning class size 2). Parents and most teachers were not at ALL brought into the discussion. We adopted Common Core, with probably less awareness in 2010 than just about any state (in my opinion). 3). Voters of Prop 30 likely did NOT want billions spent on merely changing out our standards. 4). we have ALREADY had lots of critical thinking layered on top of the existing standards prior to Common Core –we see it firsthand tested every week in classrooms. Didn’t need new standards or tests, this was already happening in abundance.
CA was not spending billions to implement the CA standards. The current standards were adopted 13 years ago and have, despite their “age” been rated as some of the best in the nation. The current price tag for Common Core is $1.3B and the state is now looking for more. Will likely be billions and many years. Much of this, unfortunately, is simply the PR campaign to win over parents. The fliers, the websites, the emails, the videos, we’ve seen all of it… just nothing that actually ASKS parents if they even want to spend the money on new standards and tests.
We have compared the standards and so did the CA committee team that evaluated them. Despite their evaluation, politicians had to come to the forgone political conclusion prior to the committee review.
With math, CA kids will be repeating many of the same topics next year under Common Core that they may have already mastered this year under CA standards. It’s like an entire generation of kids, even straight A students, will be held back a year in math.
What is the cost to redo an entire year of education in California? Must be massive.
it there are improvements you like, please explain why it is better to spend billions and years to just implement Common Core and abdicate all control to Washington DC lobby groups, vs. spending a portion of that cost to update, improve CA-owned standards and tests and also have money left over to reduce our ballooning class sizes (and perhaps hire more educators like yourself)?
Have not heard a single argument how this makes any sense in CA, let alone any good ones. But would love to hear your thoughts.
The new math standards are, indeed, very like the NCTM standards. In both cases, in ELA and in math, the authors of the CC$$ attempted to rationalize and take the best (in their opinion) from existing state standards, and the existing state standards in math were already based on the NCTM standards and remarkably uniform.
The ELA standards are another matter. Those varied a lot around the nation, and the CC$$ authors had, there, a more difficult problem. But, because they were amateurs, they went at it with certainty and gusto, for a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
New York State had well-developed standards – embedded in gatekeeping exams such as the Regents – in place years before Bill Gates used David Coleman as his beard to impose a monoculture of all testing, all the time, in sole service of the employing class.
The notion that we either accept the Common Corporate Standards or have none at all is a false choice, akin to the false choice so-called reformers pose between submitting to their venal and punitive policies or reverting to the “failed policies of the past.”
Real reformers know that there is much that can be improved in our public schools, especially those serving poor children, but that it requires more imagination and resources than a binary straight jacket will ever provide.
There are some general notions in the CC$$ in ELA that I would support IF the CC$$ were a voluntary framework, a starting point for vigorous debate about how best to go about teaching in the various domains and what the outcomes for instruction in those domains should be. The supporters of the CC$$ in ELA almost always point to these generalities from the material accompanying the standards [sic]–kids will read complex texts, they will attend closely to those texts, etc.–and ignore the fact that this is a long list of more or less specific skills to be taught and tested, and that specific list makes hundreds of controversial, often egregiously backward assumptions about teaching and learning in the various domains that were NEVER SUBJECTED TO EXPERT CRITIQUE. Those assumptions will have, are already having, dramatic effects on the curricula being produced by educational publishers, and those effects are, for the most part, NOT GOOD.
One reads the CC$$ in ELA and asks,
were the authors of the “standards” simply unaware of how much learned, expert dissention there is from the assumptions that they make in almost every standard?
or
were they aware of some of this and simply didn’t care, at all, what experts in these various domains think?
The CC$$ seem to have been prepared in blissful ignorance of the important and healthy debates about how to approach instruction in the various ELA domains, ignorance of the fact that there are many, many deeply learned people who have devoted their lifetimes to study of these and who dramatically dissent from the positions implied by these amateurish “standards.”
The way forward is NOT to cut off all debate, NOT to put an end to all alternative approaches to education in these domains but to embrace and foster competing visions adopted and adapted voluntarily.
So, yes, let’s debate the merits of the general ideas behind the CCSS. But let’s not mandate them.
THE LAST THING WE NEED IS COLEMAN’S (or anyone’s) MANDATED BULLET LIST.
“There’s not bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.” –Edward Tufte, “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint:
Diane,
Did you see this article from today’s Politico?
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/common-core-conservatives-education-101796.html
I am curious to know if you see your concern with the Common Core Standards and its impact on teachers being used by the politics mentioned in this article.
Bob Weiss
Vice President for Administration
Meadows Foundation Inc.
3003 Swiss Ave.
Dallas, TX 75204
(214)826-9431 xt. 8109
bobweiss@mfi.org
Bob, read my comments, just posted as part of Anthony Cody post.
This article is really scary and confirms my unease upon hearing that the koch brothers had come out in opposition to CCSS. They see defeating CCSS as a prelude to pushing a conservative agenda that dismantles public schools and renders teachers voiceless.
Our political lives are shot through with these contradictions. The Repugnicans claim to be all about small, limited government but support broad and deep government surveillance, a vast military and corporate welfare state, putting the government into people’s bedrooms, telling adults what other adults they can and cannot marry, vast police powers, etc., and the darlings of the right–Reagan and Bush Jr., sent to the hill, in every year that they were in office, the largest federal budget to that time. The Dimocrats claim to be for the little guy but bail out the bankers and not the homeowners who had lost their jobs and were going to lose their homes, and out-Bush Bush in their support for the surveillance state. And on privatization of education, it doesn’t get more neoliberal than the policies of the Barry O administration.
Both the Repugnicans and the Dimocrats have proven themselves to be nothing but wind-up toys for the oligarchy. They’re a couple of criminal gangs vying over who gets the graft.
My reading is this: The Kochs have a principled aversion to centralized federal government authority. They don’t like regulation of business, and they don’t like regulation of what people can think (The CC$$ is regulation of the thought of teachers, curriculum coordinators, and curriculum developers). Theirs is a consistent position. You can certainly agree with them with regard to the latter while disagreeing with them with regard to the former, and for principled reasons. Hell, even Hayek, in the Road to Serfdom, calls for regulation of negative externalities like pollution of other people’s drinking water. I welcome their opposition to the CC$$. Thoughtful people across the political spectrum should stand together against totalitarianism.