Many people who post on this blog–including me–have expressed grave doubts about the Common Core standards–about how they were created, funded, evaluated, and promoted, as well as their connection to high-stakes testing and evaluation of teachers by test scores. Others, including me, worry about the Common Core testing and the fact that the two federally-funded testing consortia decided to align their cut score (passing mark) with NAEP proficient, which guarantees that most students will fail. We have heard the many criticisms, but we have seldom heard a strong defense of the standards.
In this post, Bill Honig explains why the Common Core standards have won broad support in California. Bill was state superintendent of California in the late 1980s and early 1990s and is a personal friend. California has not yet implemented the testing that has proved so upsetting to students, parents, and educators in other states. Will California be able to avoid test-based teacher evaluation? Can the state decouple the standards from the tests and the other parts of the market agenda?
Bill Honig writes:
Common Core Standards, YES
High-stakes Testing, Rewards and Punishments, and Market-based Reforms NO
The California Story.
This article is a plea not to let legitimate hostility to pervasive high-stakes testing, rewards and punishments based on junk science, and privatization measures aimed at delegitimizing public education, which too often accompany the adoption of Common Core Standards, blind you to the value of the standards themselves. In California, there is strong opposition to such “reform” efforts, yet widespread, enthusiastic support for the standards. The standards are seen both to embody the kind of education we have long desired for our students, as well as providing a tremendous opportunity to stimulate much-needed discussions on how best to improve practice at each school and district and develop the collaborative capacity to support such efforts.
Leaders in the Golden State have spoken out forcefully against the current batch of “reforms” being peddled nationally and in many other states. Our governor, Jerry Brown, has repeatedly decried heavy test-based accountability attached to severe rewards and punishments. He has expressed concerns about the resultant narrowing of the curriculum, gaming the system, and demoralization of the teaching profession. Our State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, unlike superintendents in many other states, has argued against many of the proposed reforms and the overwhelmingly negative rhetoric accompanying them. He has proposed that the primary goal of any testing should be gathering information for instructional improvement and has offered strong suggestions for placing instructional improvement and school site team and capacity building at the center of school improvement efforts. To that end he commissioned a broad-based task force chaired by Linda Darling-Hammond and Chris Steinhauser, the Long Beach superintendent, which issued an excellent report arguing for positive alternative strategies for revitalizing instruction and the teaching profession, Greatness by Design: Supporting Outstanding Teaching to Sustain a Golden State http://www.cde.ca.gov/eo/in/documents/greatnessfinal.pdf
Our State Board of Education president, the governor and the state superintendent have repeatedly refused to knuckle under to Arne Duncan’s demands that the state institute teacher evaluations based in large part on test scores. Despite threatened fiscal punishment by the Feds, the legislature, supported by state leadership, suspended state-wide testing with student results for at least two years to give schools and districts a chance to implement the Common Core Standards. The legislature also revamped future assessment in the state to conform to the superintendent’s vision. Finally, educators in the Golden State have been heavily influenced by Michael Fullan, Jal Mehta and Richard Elmore’s beliefs and the successful experience of such school districts such as Sanger and Long Beach that an alternative strategy of placing instruction and collaborative, continuous capacity building at the center of any reform efforts is key to success.
At the same time, in California, there is widespread, deep, and enthusiastic support for the common core standards among teachers, administrators, educational and teacher organizations, advocacy groups, and political leaders. What gives?
THE KIND OF INSTRUCTION EDUCATORS HAVE DREAMED ABOUT
The first explanation is that the standards are seen to embody the kind of teaching and instruction that our best teachers and educators have been advocating for years. In math, based on what such organizations as the National Council for the Teaching of Mathematics and the National Research Council have been proposing, the standards move away from primarily a procedure-only driven instruction to also stress conceptual understanding and application. They place more emphasis on problem solving, critical thinking, and projects. The math standards also stress practice standards and their integration into daily instruction by calling for modeling, discussing, and explaining. The standards are bench-marked internationally and shift from the current mile-wide and inch deep approach to a more in-depth attention to fewer topics comparable to what the high-performing countries and jurisdictions do. All in all, the standards envision a much more active and engaging classroom which when presented to teachers is immediately perceived as a major change for the better—a difficult change, but necessary.
Similarly, in English Language Arts the standards also encourage a much more active and engaging classroom– more writing, presenting, discussion, and research projects and performances. They propose increased attention to the steady build-up of knowledge of both the world and the disciplines. They underscore the importance of being broadly literate and well-read as well as being able to understand complex literary and informational text.
THE STANDARDS AND CURRICULAR FRAMEWORKS BASED ON THEM HAVE BEEN THOROUGHLY VETTED IN THE STATE
Secondly, there has been widespread discussion of the standards and frameworks based on them in the state and extensive opportunities to offer suggestions. While, originally in 2010, the Common Core Standards were adopted by the Republican appointed State Board of Education which included many “reformers”, primarily in order to qualify for No Child Left Behind, the new State Board, heavily populated by educators appointed by Jerry Brown, readopted them with some changes in 2012.
Next, the new California State Board recently unanimously approved a new California Mathematics Curriculum Framework which offers advice for curriculum and instruction to implement the more active curriculum envisioned by the common core math standards. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/draft2mathfwchapters.asp. This document also contains extensive connections to other national and state resources which support this effort. For example, the math framework relies heavily on the well-respected progressions blog by Bill McCallum. http://ime.math.arizona.edu/progressions. I’d encourage readers of this blog to examine this framework and make an independent judgment on whether its advice is sound and whether the instruction being proposed wouldn’t be a significant step forward.
As for the English standards, the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC), which recommends frameworks to the State Board, has just approved the draft of the ELA/ELD framework incorporating both the board adopted Common Core English Language arts standards and the English Language Development standards. The framework is undergoing a sixty day review (please feel free to offer us some advice) but the document is also extremely useful now in giving guidance to those currently developing local ELA/ELD curriculum and instruction based on Common Core Standards. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/elaeldfrmwrk2014pubrev.asp
The ELA/ELD framework stresses not only the goals of college and career readiness but also education for citizenship and producing broadly literate individuals. It emphasizes the need to carefully attend to what students read, discuss, and write over their school careers to accomplish these goals both in class and in an organized independent reading program. The framework is structured around five interrelated strands common to both ELA and ELD (with ELD instruction helping EL students master the common core standards)—making meaning such as drawing inferences, language including vocabulary, syntax, academic language, and text structure, written and oral expression, a build-up of content and discipline knowledge, and foundation skills including the skills of decoding, understanding syllabication and morphemes, becoming fluent, and writing and spelling conventions.
These frameworks were created after first obtaining comments in state-wide focus groups with teachers and other educators. The framework committees which worked on the drafts consisted of a majority of teachers. Each framework will have had two 60-day review periods, completed for math and underway for ELA/ELD. Many teachers participated in the math vetting and many more are expected to participate in the upcoming ELA/ELD reviews. Both the math and English drafts were or are being evaluated by some of the most prestigious educators in the country such as Karen Fuson, Carol Jago, and David Pearson and many offered extensive suggestions which were incorporated.
The Instructional Quality Commission also had several public hearings on the documents. Of the numerous comments that were received in all these efforts, only a handful had objections to the Common Core Standards or the frameworks based on them. As an example, the California Mathematics Council at their well-attended annual meeting in October heard presentations on the math framework and members were solidly behind the document unlike the widespread controversy surrounding the previous math framework.
I know many of you have taken issue with various aspects of the standards. Some of the concerns relate not to the standards themselves but to unwarranted classroom practices based on a misunderstanding or misreading of them. Such examples include over-scripted instruction, assigning inappropriate activities to kindergarteners, or abuses at the state level, such as NY state arbitrarily setting cut levels on tests so high that huge numbers of students failed. Others are misinterpretations of what the standards actually say such as stating that the advice that 70% of high school reading should be informational text means English classes will devalue literature. The 70% refers to all high school reading so there is plenty of time in English classrooms for a full literature program. And what is wrong with incorporating some powerful essays, biographies, and books such as The Double Helix into the English curriculum?
Still other objections didn’t stand up to scrutiny in the vetting process such as the argument that some of the math standards were developmentally inappropriate. Not so, said our primary teachers on the framework committee as well as Karen Fuson, one of the most prominent primary math researchers in the country, who went over the framework with fine-toothed comb. Finally, the ELA/ELD framework committee and the IQC were also sensitive to the potential for the English standards to be misinterpreted as overemphasizing instrumental knowledge at the expense of encouraging students be well-read and developing broad content knowledge (even though the standards were heavily influenced by E.D. Hirsch’s insistence on the importance of the “what” as opposed to the “how”). Strong language in our frameworks should dispel that notion.
This is not to say that the standards are perfect or that they shouldn’t be continually reviewed and modified as the schools across the country implement them. Our math framework committee has already suggested several changes which were adopted by our state board. Undeniably, some large issues remain such as whether it is appropriate to force all students into Algebra 2 or its equivalent. For many students, who are not stem bound but tech-prep oriented, a demanding statistics or quantitative reasoning course might be much more useful. Our math framework raised the issue and several states are already moving in this direction.
EVERY MAJOR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION IN CALIFORNIA HAS ADOPTED THE IMPLEMENTATION OF COMMON CORE AS A KEY POLICY INITIATIVE
A third reason for the broad support for the standards in California has been the extensive and widespread local discussions over the past several years with teachers and administrators of both the standards and sample assessment questions from Smarter-Balanced based on them. In my opinion, one of the reasons for the lack of opposition to the standards and frameworks in California has been not only their quality but also the fact that most educators have seen, thought about, and approved of the direction the standards are taking us.
As evidence of this support, key educational leaders and organizations in the state have banded together to implement common core in an informal network, the Consortium for the Implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CICCSS). They did so, not because of heavy state or federal mandates, since, as discussed below, much of the policy making has been recently devolved to local districts. They did so because they have determined that common core standards reflect the kind of curriculum and instruction they support, that the local districts are now primarily responsible for successful implementation and need help, and that in a time of local control it was important to develop cooperative efforts to support local efforts.
Members of CICCSS include state policy institutions such as members of the State Board of Education and California Department of Education, district and county offices, the California Teachers Association, the school boards association, the association of school administrators, the PTA, the LA Chamber of Commerce, and advocacy groups such as MALDEF, Californians Together (an ELD advocacy group), and Ed Trust West. At the same time, the Governor and the legislature have provided a major increase in school funding through a weighted pupil formula and a specific allocation of $1.25 billion directly to districts for common core implementation available for professional development, new materials, and technology. These political leaders have also instituted a shift towards more local control by eliminating most categoricals with their state compliance baggage, leaving policy and instructional implementation decisions to local districts.
This consortium, in partnership with the County Superintendents Educational Services Association, has just produced a 60 page leadership planning guide to support common core implementation. Topics include such areas as developing curriculum and instruction based on common core, team building at school sites, developing on-going capacity at schools and districts for continuous improvement based on collaboration, creating social and medical support for students, and using assessments for on-time decision making adjustments in instruction. http://www.scoe.net/castandards/multimedia/common_core_leadership_planning_guide.pdf Significantly, the groups participating in the consortium have agreed to use this planning guide in local implementation efforts.
EDUCATORS VIEW IMPLEMENTATION OF COMMON CORE AS AN INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY TO INITITIATE A MUCH NEEDED ON-GOING DISCUSSION AT EVERY SCHOOL AND DISTRICT OF HOW TO IMPROVE INSTRUCTION
Finally, and probably most critically, educators in the Golden State view the need to implement the Common Core Standards as a crucial catalyst to engender a widespread and much needed discussion at each school and district about how best to teach our students. The implementation effort puts on the table a broader liberal arts curriculum much richer than envisioned by NCLB and demands local collaborative management structures as the only feasible method for implementing such a complex instructional set of standards. This is what the most successful jurisdictions in our country and world-wide have done.
As many of you writing on this blog have chronicled, jurisdictions which have gone from mediocre to world-class systems have not primarily pursued a high-stakes testing, reward and punish strategy, or a privatization agenda (Sweden and Chile are at the bottom of PISA scores). These high performers have come to agreement on a strong curriculum, built cooperative capacity to support continuous improvement for the long haul, supported student safety-nets, and adopted measures to support and revitalize the profession. That is what most of us want for California. Even most of the fairly small subset of our districts, which have adopted some of the high-stakes and market-based reforms, believe in the primacy of placing instruction, capacity building, and team building at the core of reform efforts.
I know some of you believe that the Common Core Standards are a stalking horse for the detrimental policy measures which have been connected to them and, consequently are so tainted that they can’t be separated. I would plead with you to revisit that question. If a district is hell-bent to use test scores to evaluate teachers for personnel decisions based on flawed assessment assumptions or narrow the curriculum and instruction to look good on tests, the presence or absence of Common Core Standards and their associated tests will not change that district’s direction. It will just use off-the-shelf tests and continue to practice these injurious practices.
Further, politically, you can’t beat high-stakes, market-based reforms with nothing. Using common core standards as a powerful catalyst for initiating an alternative set of reforms that actually work– deep discussion of practice, attention to improving instruction at each school over time, and developing the support structures and atmosphere to bolster that effort– is just too great an opportunity to ignore. It would be a shame to miss the chance to get it right after years of misdirected efforts.
Bill Honig, former elementary school teacher, local superintendent, and California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and currently chair of the California Instructional Quality Commission
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
NH, like CA, is on board with the CCSS… but NH, like CA, has not administered the tests that accompany the CCSS. After reading your blog, though, I am not as confident as Dr. Honig that the CCSS is not “…a stalking horse for the detrimental policy measures which have been connected to them”. From all appearances there are many pro-privatization politicians who have used the test results from the common core to undercut the public’s support for public education… and from all appearances USDOE is part of the group “…hell-bent to use test scores to evaluate teachers for personnel decisions based on flawed assessment assumptions”.
I commend Governor Brown, the CA legislature and the CA education establishment for standing up to USDOE on this issue and— so far— getting away with it. I hope that NH and other states who are on board with CCSS and have accepted the assessment timetable USDOE issued are not burned when the results of the assessments developed by the consortia are released.
I took Honig’s comments as a diplomatic warning and recommendation to break the standards-testing-data collection links.
Of course, it that happened the who reform business model would collapse to the great disappointment of the 1%. Perhaps that’s why he couldn’t just come out and say it.
“This pressure to conform to CCSS and its attendant outcome (in this case, the Smarter Balanced assessment [SB]), is a national pressure brought on by a federally promoted portfolio of reform.
CCSS cannot be divorced from such federally-promoted pressure. It’s too late for that.”
-Mercedes Schnider
http://atthechalkface.com/2014/01/07/should-california-embrace-common-core-my-response-to-bill-honig/
“Eventually, 46 states signed on to the Common Core. They coalesced into two consortia, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Both consortia have contracted with vendors to develop, administer, and score their elaborate Common Core assessments, contracts which will channel annual billions of public dollars to private corporations even as schools are forced by budget constraints to cut teachers and services.
Among their advisers and staff, these consortia do include some representatives from member states’ education bureaucracies, but we’re literally miles away from your local school and school board when it comes to determining what your children will be learning and how they’ll be taught and tested. States themselves as “voluntary” consortium members have surrendered considerable authority over the governance of their schools and the education of their students.
PARCC’s “project management partner,” for example, is Achieve Inc. Achieve has received millions of Gates dollars, was the cosponsor of the 2005 National Education Summit where Mr. Gates delivered the keynote address outlining his plans for America’s schools, and in its own words was active in the “development,” “writing and review” of the Common Core.
Similar Gates interconnections exist within the Smarter Balanced consortium. Smarter Balanced awarded an assessment contract to a vendor in partnership with the Educational Testing Service, which is now headed by David Coleman, the “acknowledged architect” of the Common Core. Coleman devised the Common Core while at the helm of Student Achievement Partners, an enterprise he founded, which received substantial Gates funding.
Both consortia have hired Pearson to oversee the transition to “next-generation” online assessments. Pearson is also in partnership with Gates to develop and market online curricula. In the name of “personalized learning,” Gates furnished $100 million to establish a database of individual students’ personal and school information. Identifying each student by “name, address, and sometimes Social Security number,” the database furnishes details ranging from a student’s hobbies and interests to his test scores and learning disabilities, information which according to the U.S. Department of Education can be distributed without parental consent to “private companies selling educational products and services.” Nine states are thus far participating in this commercial data-mining. Pearson software, already employed in many public school systems, routinely collects this data.”
http://rutlandherald.com/article/20130516/OPINION04/705169963
What does a common core trustee do?
“Bill Honig is a Common Core Inc. trustee according to the IRS 990.”
Exactly what he did in the post! Shill for CCSS!
That’s supposed to be in response to Rangoon 78’s question at 10:19.
Common Core Inc. is not the official CCSS group.
Trustees
Erik Berg
Barbara Byrd-Bennett
Antonia Cortese
Pascal Forgione, Jr.
Lorraine Griffith
Jason Griffiths
Bill Honig
Carol Jago
Richard Kessler
Lynne Munson
Juan Rangel
http://commoncore.org/trustees
We know Mr. honig has had his problems with the law; now it looks like at least one of he’s fellow Common Core trustees is in hot water:
Juan Rangel out as head of charter-school giant UNO | Chicago Sun-Times ← NPE News Briefs
“Juan Rangel, longtime leader of the politically powerful United Neighborhood Organization, has stepped aside from his $250,000-a-year post as UNO’s chief executive in the wake of a scandal that cost the group millions of dollars in state funding and led to a federal investigation of its bond dealings.”
http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/news/juan-rangel-out-as-head-of-charter-school-giant-uno-chicago-sun-times/
Rangoon78,
CommonCore.org is not connected to the Common Core standards. I should know. I was one of the founders and was a co-president of Common Core, Inc. It was created before there were Common Core standards. Its purpose was to promote the liberal arts in the schools, in reaction against NCLB’s narrowing of the curriculum. Since I left the board, it has received large contracts from the Gates Foundation to develop curriculum for the CCSS. But that was not its purpose.
E.D. Hirsch, Jr., of the Core Knowledge Foundation, has spent decades writing books and articles about the idiocy of reducing education to mastery of a bullet list of abstract skills. Now the Foundation he created has embraced the CC$$, which is precisely such a bullet list. It saddens me that this has happened.
I do not mean to imply in this post that attention to learning of skills is unimportant. I believe that we need to attend both the world knowledge (knowledge of what) and to procedural knowledge (knowledge of how), and that both have to be intrinsically motivated–that what we most should be teaching is that education is not something that you do, not something that is done to you.
But it’s not for me to make these decisions for everyone else in the country. That prerogative rests solely, it seems, with Lord Coleman, who has been chosen to relieve us of the burden of thinking for ourselves.
I know I’m known for snark, but I’m honestly not trying to be snarky here. I’m not a teacher, so this is an honest question. If the Common Core represents the kind of teaching that teachers have always dreamed of, what in the past has prevented them from teaching that way? Why did they need the standards if this is what they wanted all along? Have there historically been mandates requiring math to be taught as a series of procedures?
You are not being snarky and the question is a good one Dienne. In the past, teachers have been introduced to new concepts but at the end of the day, they could close their doors and follow what their professional expertise told them was best. I have an 89 year old relative who was a lifelong teacher who spoke to this effect! The “corporate ed reformer” strategy is to speak a false dialogue on behalf of teachers and then to run with it. I can remember an end of the year staff meeting where a principal eagerly introduced the coming of common core with all its miraculous pedagogy and it made my stomach turn because I knew it was yet another “reform” and we were being told that if we do not immediately embrace EVERY CHANGE (every year basically) we are part of the problem. We were even given corporate books to read with allegories to this effect. And while this “new miracle” common core was being introduced another fellow teacher of like mind to me commented that everyone looked like a bunch of clapping penguins. And the big problem is that teachers no longer can pick and choose from a variety of methodologies and theories that work best for their teaching style or the learning styles of the students before them.
“What in the past has prevented them from teaching that way?”
Under NCLB there have always been extremely restrictive curricula, where math teachers, for example, have an exact calendar of what page they should be doing in the state-test-aligned textbook on which day of the marking period. Depending on your administrators, and the extent to which they were under the gun to follow a school improvement plan after low test scores, you could absolutely be disciplined for doing things outside the official curriculum.
The problem is, now most states are just doing the same thing with “Common-Core-aligned” materials, because they are so afraid of PARCC. It’s a crazy-making mandate: use open-ended, student-directed, question-based teaching; don’t rush through material just to get through it if students don’t really understand; slow down and go deep; make the learning meaningful and authentic…but also get the students ready to take a standardized test that will be pretty much like the old one, but harder. And the new teacher (and administrator) evaluation systems are there to make sure everyone focuses almost exclusively on the test and on quantifiable benchmarks instead of any other indicator.
Just wanted to amend my comment because I made it sound like the CCSS would be just great (or at least not so bad) if it weren’t for that pesky test and evaluation system attached to them. I realize that this isn’t the case, because all three were meant to be a package from the beginning, and the “distortion” caused by the testing system is by design. The CCSS can’t just be separated out from the rest of the package. Nor can the better parts of the standards be kept while the bad parts are deleted or altered, because no one seems to have the authority to do that, also by design.
I’d like to follow up on deepasducks reference to the bad NCLB promoted. It reflects a sentiment I’ve heard frequently from NH teachers. Here, for instance, Sue Hannan, middle school English teacher in Manchester, NH, says, “Our teaching became illogical with the advent of No Child Left Behind because we were so concerned with adequate yearly progress. It became a data circus – became useless, really….Now it’s clear what students should know and be able to do by the end of the year. We can move through the year in a logical way.”
I have seen Dienne’s comment made frequently when a teacher says that CCSS released her to teach well again. I’m never quite sure what the real meaning of that comment is. It seems to discredit the teacher and disregard the role of the principal, superintendent and state and federal policy in driving instructional practices in a school.
I would just add that the judicious and thoughtful comments of the well known and widely respected Bill Honig about the experience in the hugely important state of California feel to me like a turning point in the Common Core debate. NY is the example everyone uses of everything that can go wrong when CCSS is implemented alongside punitive education reform policies.
California is now the example of how it can go well (NH is too, but we’re soooo small). Bill Honig’s testimony will become a touchstone from now on.
oops, sorry: “bad teaching NCLB promoted.”
Well said, Bill!
Common core would be tolerable if it were one theory in many that a professional educator could draw upon based on his/her professional decision-making capacity in the classroom. Regrettably many teachers are constantly “top-down told” what they must follow in the classroom and it is always billed as THE NEW BEST WAY. And most of the country must treat Common core as CURRICULUM not basic standards because of the insidious attachment of CC to high stakes testing. I for one, have a brain that I would like to use it in my teaching responsibilities and am sick to death of being told what to do at every turn by people who never step foot in my school let alone any classroom. This is especially insidious when it involves a form of teaching detrimental to students and not flexible for students or teachers. And while my salary stagnates due to a supposed lack of funding and while class sizes get bigger and bigger due to lack of funding, there is always money for common core consultants, pd’s, publications… yes.. I would like to see common core stopped in its tracks before it gains any more traction unless there is a change and it is another tool (not directive) in a teacher’s toolbox on which he/she can draw from. But alas, it is a cookie cutter directive. There are many ways to teach and we need to embrace this.. I hate to use the “corporate ed” lingo but will… differentiation for all! Let teachers teach. Oh yes.. and let us begin with that evasive discussion on the effects of poverty first and foremost.
“If it were one theory among many”
But it is not. Achieve appointed David Coleman and Susan Pimentel absolute monarchs of education in the English language arts in the United States and ours is but to obey.
“There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.” –Edward Tufte, “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint”
Thank you for turning me on to this essay, Robert.
One of the odder moments in the CC is the brief cameo by Edward Tufte’s mother.
artseagal:
Mr. Honig may be a sincere and effective bandwagoneer, but in painting his fanciful picture of how well they’re going to work in California, he ignores both the faulty assumptions behind the “Common Core Standards” and the obvious roadblocks they throw up. You put your finger on two of the obvious roadblocks: 1) a further loss of autonomy for teachers, and 2) insufficient funding.
To be effective, teachers need options. And they need the freedom to make decisions, just like anyone in any professional workplace. The less the autonomy, the worse the job performance and the worse the job satisfaction. To improve their practice, teachers have to be learners, but with more restrictive mandates, the fewer incentives they will have to seek out knew knowledge, and to put that knowledge to use.
As for the Common Core promising “the kind of instruction educators have dreamed about,” I’ll bet that California English teachers have been dreaming of smaller class sizes, not more top-down mandates that will cost billions to implement–billions that could be used to hire more teachers. Even if the CCS were brilliant–and I don’t think they are–they would not alleviate the crushing burden of trying to teach 175 students how to write. That job just can’t be done, not if it’s taken seriously, and not without risking the teacher’s health.
Also, you can’t really talk about education in California without talking about Proposition 13: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%281978%29
What’s not plausible from Mr. Honig’s report, on the ELA side, is that the CC is necessary because there was a problem with their previous standards, at least as he describes it, i.e., it simply isn’t clear that the CC demands “more writing, presenting, discussion, and research projects and performances” than California’s previous standards.
I certainly don’t unreservedly trust Fordham’s scoring of standards, but they did give an “A” and perfect 10/10 to California’s previous ELA standards. I haven’t spent too much time with the CA standards, but they’re fundamentally not that different than the CC standards. That would certainly explain why they apparently have been relatively easily accepted. But at the same time, it is hard to then argue that they will really make a big difference.
Agree Tom. We have spent time comparing the CCSS and CA standards and, for example with math standards, Common Core actually puts kids almost a year BEHIND California’s state standards–effectively failing kids in math for a whole year.
You are right, they won’t make a difference. Yet we are spending billions in precious school funds that could be used more effectively elsewhere.
billions
wasted
Tom, it is true that the Common Core standards are very similar to California’s previous standards which among other ideas tried to balance literary and informational text with two major differences. The new draft ELA framework (which gives guidance–not mandates–on thinking through the curriculum and instruction necessary to help students master the standards) is combined with English Language Development standards to put more emphasis on addressing language issues such as vocabulary and syntax, written and oral expression, and expanded discussion. It also places a greater stress on independent reading. Most importantly, however, is that implementation of the standards is seen as a helpful catalyst to engender the collaboration and capacity building at schools and districts necessary to continuously improve practice.
If anyone really wants to know how the CCSS impacts our children and their learning experience, ask the kids. I think this country has had enough expert debate. There are thousands of children (including my own) learning under this new initiative. They come home from schools stressed, bored, frustrated given multiple choice/computer based practice tests, pre-tests, benchmark tests, formative tests, summative tests… and my kids are honor roll students. Although this post seems to be written from the heart, it has no basis in the daily experience of students. If we want our children to develop a love of learning, of literature, of writing and math, etc., we need to stop treating them differently than the kids at the fine private schools where politician’s children attend. Period.
“If we want our children to develop a love of learning, of literature, of writing and math, etc., we need to stop treating them differently than the kids at the fine private schools where politician’s children attend. Period.”
AMEN.
The old Zen comment applies: When the standard is ready, the test will come.
LOL. Well said, Alan!
The fact is that these amateurish standards [sic] end up driving curricula, pedagogy, and assessment, narrowing and distorting it, pushing out better ideas and better practices, and preventing new, competing ideas and practices from being tried.
Every publisher of educational materials in the United States now begins every project by making a spreadsheet with Coleman and Pimentel’s amateurish bullet list in one column and the place where that standard [sic] is “covered” in the next.
I wish one could edit these posts. Need semicolons to separate items in a series in the comment above. Alas, haste is the enemy of the good,
as the work of Coleman and Pimentel so amply illustrates.
“Our State Board of Education president, the governor and the state superintendent have repeatedly refused to knuckle under to Arne Duncan’s demands that the state institute teacher evaluations based in large part on test scores. Despite threatened fiscal punishment by the Feds, the legislature, supported by state leadership, suspended state-wide testing with student results for at least two years to give schools and districts a chance to implement the Common Core Standards”
It’s a good piece, so thank you Diane.
The problem is, Ohio doesn’t have a state government that supports public schools. We enthusiastically “knuckle under” to any and all reform gimmicks in this state, and have for more than a decade.
As far as I can tell, the only governing entity that supports my local district is the school board.
We’re dealing here with gutted public school budgets, a state “reform” government that is all but openly hostile to public schools, yet another new school grading system, teacher grades (also new) and a huge lobbyist push for “blended learning”. Our local teachers are demoralized, and they just came off a sustained political attack on their due process employment rights, another “reform” initiative.
I think Common Core is inevitable. All of the powerful players support it, but I’m honestly hoping we just survive it. I know we won’t get any meaningful support from state or federal leaders. I have no idea how we’re going to pay for the online testing component, alone, frankly. Ed reformers have limited the ability of public schools to raise funds locally here, and they’ve cut our state share of funding. I don’t think we can afford Common Core.
Diane, nearly speechless. Friend or not, this is so one-sided, don’t even know where to begin. California is spending the next decade and BILLIONS of dollars–which could have been used to hire more teachers and many other priorities–just to downgrade our standards to Common Core.
California Gov. Schwarzenegger approved Common Core in Aug of 2010, when the state desperately needed the Race to the Top “incentives” and when parents hadn’t a clue what was going on. Parents still don’t have a clue thanks to the state gov, media, school district administrations and articles like this which have have fooled us all. Parents (and many teachers) are only now waking up to the Common Core disaster.
Notice Mr. Honig only uses the word “parent” once in his entire article and then only to say they’ll somehow be more upset over Common Core Smarter Balanced tests than they were over Star tests, which were actually more advanced than Smarter Balanced, esp. in math. The Common Core standards effectively “fail” kids a whole year, putting many a year behind where they were under CA standards, esp. in math.
Does Mr. Honig think that teachers want millions of California parents, once they have realized what has happened, to pull their kids out of public schools?
The Common Core standards can be revised? Really? They can’t and likely won’t be, especially in the nationwide political environment we are now in. When California reviewers saw the standards in 2010, they found actual mistakes. There is no Common Core 1-800 hotline to “call” and no one can fix them. California tried to modify them and we cannot. The copyright is owned by two private Washington DC lobby groups.
Many, if not all, of the groups mentioned above that support Common Core, one way or another, got money–from Gates or from the multimillion dollar California state PR budget–to promote Common Core. The list of groups that didn’t get money are probably shorter than the ones that did. Where are the parent groups? (outside of the PTA, which also got Gates money)
Like Massachusetts, California has had a decade of success in public school results, including college-readiness scores, across demographic groups and even in places like Compton. All of this despite very high immigration of English language learners. And little if any teacher “high stakes” have been needed.
Common Core and the feds are introducing the high stakes, not California’s current, superior state standards.
Many of the positive aspects Mr. Konig advocates, critical thinking et al, have ALREADY been a part of California public schools. We know, our kids have experienced it. Has Mr. Konig been in CA classrooms within the past 10 years? And if parents and teachers want more of this and the other positive aspects he mentions, we could have easily modified our own existing and superior CA state standards, tests and materials–and saved billions of dollars in the process, which could have been more wisely spent on more teachers and other priorities.
California is making a huge mistake spending so much time and critical school dollars to promote the Gates, Coleman, Duncan dream…. a dream that will end up a nightmare.
We’re just parents, but would be happy to debate Mr. Honig on this issue. With all respect, he’s got it all wrong.
California tried to modify them and we cannot. The copyright is owned by two private Washington DC lobby groups.
I’m still waiting for an explanation of this. Having had some experience with copyright law, I’m not sure how strong or broad any copyright in CCSS would be. Copyright extends to orignal works of human expression; the scope of a copyright can’t be determined until a court reviews the work and a whole variety of factors like “fair use”. Generally fact-based works are not given broad rights for reasons of public policy and the reality that certain expressions can only be made in a few ways.
Overall, I suspect the whole “copyright” issue is a canard to deter states from modifying the Standards, which would break the business model.
Not an attorney, but agree with you. Seems not as much of a legal issue as it is a business model issue. You can’t have “national” standards when every state modifies them to become their own (even though that would make this truly “state led”).
In California, the 2010 changes likely got nixed to avoid disqualification from RTTT and to avoid federal scrutiny, probably not because of true legal concerns.
However, this doesn’t prevent NGA and CCSSO from continuing to claim a copyright on their website:
“Copyright Date: 2010”
http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards
We advocate more Open Standards, no copyright needed:
http://uncommoncalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/01/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html
Exactly, mns. If these were voluntary guidelines that could be modified or replaced by people who are knowledgeable about instruction in the various domains covered, that would be an entirely different matter.
But they are not. Achieve appointed a couple of amateurs to make these decisions for every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer in the country, thus stopping real innovation cold.
If one started delineating the idiocies, inaccuracies, and unwarranted assumptions of the CC$$ in ELA, one would be on this blog “from dawn to doomsday,” as one of Diane’s readers recently put it.
Thanks, Robert. I think we can change the standards, if we’re willing to call bull$hit on the CCSO. The states only signed an MoU; there’s no penalty for quitting. The copyright is just a paper tiger. So, only fear keeps us from breaking the spell.
The issue of not modifying CCSS is a stipulation of the CCSS memorandum of understanding (MOU) governors and state supers signed with USDOE as part of the RTTT applicaiton. The CCSS MOU states that CCSS an be added to by “15%” but not subtracted from.
And the penalty for breach? If a state didn’t get RttT funding what’s to lose?
But the fact that there is no debate about these standards [sic] is, from the point of view of the folks who paid for them, a feature not a bug. They want a uniform set of national standards so that they can achieve economies of scale in the educational materials market, and nothing will stand in their way. The last thing they want is continual innovation, competing ideas. That makes being or becoming a monopolist quite difficult.
As Arne Duncan’s chief of staff pointed out in a Harvard Business School blog, the real purpose of the Common Core was to create “national markets” for “products that can be brought to scale.”
The Walmartization, the Microsofting of U.S. education is unfortunately being abetted by well-meaning but misinformed cheerleaders like Mr. Honig.
Also, this comment: “The standards are bench-marked internationally…” is not accurate, though it has been repeated by Common Core supporters many times.
The standards were not bench-marked internationally when they were created. When the Common Core validation committee members asked for verification of this claim, none could be provided to them. This was a key problem as international benchmarking was required by the Race to the Top challenge– so it seems even Common Core failed its own test.
Now Common Core’s website no longer claims that they were internationally bench-marked, but rather “informed”:
“The standards are informed by the highest, most effective models from states across the country and countries around the world”
This is along the lines of what I hear in NC from many folks (our state sup included). My principal says that without these standards, teachers get mediocre.
I still think CCSS is the one area where some meeting ground is workable. There is room to grow with CCSS as a starting point. We can’t simply ignore reform as a hiccup. We have to come away with learning something from it to guide us (even if a lot of it gained momentum by market appeal and the drive to make money). Our states have to thrive, so we cannot very well just ignore the entire movement. CCSS, to me, is where there is wiggle room for growth and bridge-building. But we have to be stalwart in other areas (such as VAM and high stakes testing, over-testing of children and over-reliance on technology).
” My principal says that without these standards, teachers get mediocre.”
Yep, that kind of thinking gets one a principalship!
Pure porcine excrement of a thought, stinking ten times as bad as bovine excrement.
How could anything that was introduced with such lies and coercion be of any value?
In 36 years Advisories, Common Core, Inquiry Learning, New math, Old math, No Math, The 5E’s, Constructivist Theory, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Maslow’s Hierarchy, I and IE, 1000 Ways to Praise, Discovery Learning, Authentic Portfolios, Thinking Skills are the programs and concepts that I can remember being impelemnted and reinforced in my buildings.
They all suffer from the same problems: the administrative desire for immediate improvement (a year or less) and lack of longevity. The most brilliant professor I ever had got it right (Elaine Davis, JHU) , it doesn’t change: Learning comes from practice and failure, practice makes permanent, not necessarily perfect.
David Coleman is no doubt much smarter than I am, which instantly means he cannot understand how to teach the majority of the population. Firing/promoting/demoting/paying teachers based on student test scores will turn the profession into a minimum salaried entry level job ala WalMart. Firing people (the bottom 10%, the worst, the most expensive) isn’t a business strategy, it is a failure of management. After they are done firing the “deadbeats”, what makes HR departments think they will hire any better that they did before? What steps did they take to make their hiring practices better? And what will they do when they have to fire/downgrade all ESOL and SpEd teachers since there is little chance they will ever be considered successful based on test scores given the populations they serve so well?
A national curriculum makes sense, but not this one. From what I’ve read and been told so far it is beyond the younger kids and too easy for the smartest older kids.
I teach chemistry. There is no common core for me and yet I will be evaluated on the English and math performance I have no control over. I’ve always judged myself on grade distributions and tailored my teaching from there. I work in Maryland, we have taken RTTT bait and have a series of Broads infesting our system. Between SLO,FFT, Common Core and an incredibly weak union, teachers are burned at both ends and overall it has had a deleterious effect on our system.
Not a bad idea, terrible implementation, should have been phased in rather than all at once which guarantees a giant initial failure rate for kids and their teachers that have no experience. It will be hysterical when schools that have enjoyed stellar reputations (for more than 30 years where I work) become full of failed an failing teachers overnight. Doesn’t reflect the reality of the talent.
“I’ve always judged myself on grade distributions. . . ”
Wow, really? That’d be one of the last things I would judge my teaching on. No, it wouldn’t be one of the last, it wouldn’t be used at all other than to give me a hint to expect an administrator come talk to me about the “grade distribution” so that I could have my answers ready before he/she asked.
Yes, really, without talking to admins. If 25-100% of the kids in your classes are failing you need to fix yourself or what you are doing. I’ve always resented teachers who curve/scale grades. It seems to be the lazy way out of self improvement.
Hideous Bureaucrat,
If the tests are designed, like PARCC and SBAC, to fail 70% of th students, why is it the teacher’s fault? As I have documented many times on this blog, the test developers decided to align the cut score (passing mark) with NAEP proficient. This is an absurdly high pass mark. On NAEP, only one state has ever had 50% reach NAEP proficient.
Diane the Unshaken; grade distributions are calculated per grading period and used in supervisory improvement suggestions and evaluations Not talking about failing tests, talking about failing courses.
I had a discussion yesterday with a cirriculum director who made similar points—Yes, CCSS provides some good in its uniformity and change of focus; but we have to retain local control to make the standards work for the community, not the other way around. She agreed there is a real danger of a standards-testing-data collection-canned material trap that would be a disaster for public schools.
We both agreed that local boards should start acting now to take on the testing and data collection efforts. Parents should start pressuring the state boards where they don’t have local boards. We can also demand that school budgets not include funding for purchasing “aligned” materials.
If you can’t be ’em, then emasculate ’em.
When just about all materials now claim to be “common core aligned” not sure how anyone can avoid them? What body or process exists to evaluate any such claims? None. [By the way, this blog reply is Common Core aligned]
I think this is where local boards and the public have to demand more control and refuse to pay for materials. Over time, as the standards weaken, the “alignment” will weaken too. (And I expect much of the claimed “alignment” is just a marketing ploy.)
There is a context to Honig’s letter. I discuss here:
In posting this, Diane is only presenting another viewpoint on CCSS.
She has been accused of being “one sided” by her detractors.
Well, here she posts aonther “side.” Let them come and congratulate her.
Hi Mercedes, point well-taken and agree. Should clarify to say that Mr. Honig’s article is one-sided, not that Diane is one-sided by posting it. Agree that Diane has presented various viewpoints on her blog and can appreciate that. At the same time, we should not also assume that pro-Common Core articles, which just happen to include protests against “high stakes tests” have valid arguments within them, especially when it comes to California.
Now for your article… it is fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to research and write it. Hope everyone on this blog will read it.
Your blog response to this letter is great. Forwarding it to all my math friends who say similiar things.
Thanks, Mercedes! The distinctions are very important, especially to those of us in states that signed the MoU but did not get RTTT funding.
deutsch29: I am not holding my breath for the leading charterites/privatizers and their edubully underlings to congratulate the owner of this blog for engaging in the kind of open and wide-ranging discussion they fear and loath.
But your comment is a good reminder why this blog—and yours and so many others—are critical in the ed debates.
If I may, permit me to point viewers here to a recent posting on your blog re the critical connection between CC, the scores generated by high-stakes standardized testing, and VAM [among others]. Not your words, but those of a very well informed and savvy insider of the pro-charter/privatizer movement, Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. This may be the money quote of 2013 re CC:
[start quote] In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes. [end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
$tudent $ucce$$ anyone?
😎
Mr. Honig’s letter suggests that he has not read the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts but has simply read about them and believed the hype. Otherwise, he would not be making statements like, “They [the standards] propose increased attention to the steady build-up of knowledge of both the world and the disciplines.” The new standards [sic] are almost exclusively a list of abstract skills. That’s one of the many issues that I have with them. But the more general problems are that the CCSS in ELA were prepared by amateurs; that they instantiate many, many prescientific notions; and that the bring to a halt development of alternative visions for education in ELA possessed by people who, unlike Coleman and Pimentel, actually know something about teaching English.
If the CCSS were simply a suggested framework, then much of what Mr. Honig has to say would make sense. But they are not. They are a very specific list of those skills to be measured at each grade level, and that list instantiates and/or assumes just about every hackneyed, misconceived, halftruth and outright falsehood one can think of about teaching and learning in the various ELA disciplines. They are precisely the sort of work that one would expect if one had given the job of preparing these to a group of college freshmen with no knowledge of the sciences of language acquisition and no familiarity with best practices in the teaching of English.
You are probably right about Mr. Honig. He talks an exceedingly good talk but he can’t walk. Worse, he doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Twenty five years ago, when he was the Superintendent of Public Instruction in California, Whole Language took over California in a storm, and Fuzzy Math celebrated there. In mid1990s, when his chickens came to roost and California slid to the bottom of the nation, Mr. Honig recanted and claimed he was “misled” by his subordinates and that he was “guilty of being over-enthusiastic and gullible.”
Well, at least in his case age didn’t make him wiser. Given renewed access to power he — yet again — repeats all the slogans he’s being fed, waxes enthusiastically about his new frameworks and committees, and pens brightly-worded memoranda in their defense. With little more behind them.
There is no fool like an old fool.
In Mr. Honig’s defense, back in the day, a lot of people in the ELA establishment–professional edupundits–were touting Whole Language because they had have listened and half understood what the linguists were saying about language acquisition. The linguists were saying that kids are born with dedicated structures for intuiting the parameters of the grammar of a language to flesh out an innate model of language that is a biological endowment, like the ability to see electromagnetic radiation in the visual wavelengths. A lot of edupundits at the time, not having actually learned any linguistics themselves, thought that that meant that language learning, generally, would take care of itself if kids were attending to meaning. They were fooled into believing that this was so because in fact, many adults who are competent readers, including many of these edupundits, did, in fact, learn to decode with minimal explicit phonics instruction, based on general pattern recognition abilities. However, if those edupundits had really understood what the linguists were saying, they would have known that it applied to learning the grammar of a spoken language. Writing is a relatively recent cultural creation. On evolutionary time frames, it’s a recent blip. There are no dedicated neural structures for intuiting sound-grapheme correspondences. Those have to be learned. And for most kids, they have to be explicitly taught. The edupundits didn’t bother to learn enough linguistics to figure that out, and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But, back then, those folks–the proponents of Whole Language and Constructivist Mathematics–were widely believed to represent the vanguard of thinking in their respective fields, and a LOT of folks, not just Mr. Honig, were misled by them. BTW, it’s actually quite true that one can’t learn anything that one might call REAL mathematics, as opposed to mere symbol manipulation, without that learnings’ being all about construction, and what that means is that instruction in mathematics proper should be delayed until the mental equipment for doing that is in place and that in the early grades we should be doing, instead, fluid intelligence activities to build the necessary underlying neural architecture for doing real math, but that’s another discussion entirely.
I don’t think the Whole Language approach is a bad thing. It was developed by serious researchers working across several disciplines. Some were university professors, some were school teachers. They spent countless hours studying how children learn and how teachers can work to create optimal conditions for learning.
Back in the 80’s I became a fan of Jerome Harste, one of the main Whole Language advocates. He spoke at an NCTE conference on the connections between reading and writing, along with Donald Graves, Jane Hansen, Rand Spiro and others. The conference influenced my teaching for the better, for years to come.
These people are not lightweights. Graves was a giant in his field. So is Harste: http://jeromeharste.com/ (I just googled Spiro and was very interested to read about Cognitive Flexibility Theory, described here: http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/constructivism/spiro.html)
The Whole Language approach has a lot to offer. Rejecting it means fewer authentic literacy experiences for children. Less story sharing. Less creative expression. Less movement. Less free play. What do they get instead? More boring skills instruction. Bubble tests. Torrents of worksheets. These trends won’t enhance cognitive growth in children–they will inhibit it.
Why not bring back the best of the Whole Language approach? At the very least, we might save some money on workbooks and standardized tests. All right. I think I just answered my own question.
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.
Robert, excellent points, an education in themselves.
Bill Honig makes a cogent argument to consider: 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. 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?
“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!
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?
I noticed that Honig made NO mention of the cost of implementing CC. The billions spent on new materials and testing was ignored. But worse, he did not discuss the need for computers for interim and yearly assessments. All these costs should have been included in the discussion but weren’t. After all, if the state of California spends this much money on the implementation, that’s money not available for other basic needs. This is a discussion I have yet to hear.
Also, there is the data collection issue that will also accompany CC. This too should be a part of the discussion.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.”
—— Albert Einstein, Saturday Evening Post interview, 10/26/1929
It is EXTREMELY interesting and important that even Mr. Honig, a Common Core trustee, recognizes that it’s a tragic mistake to implement high-stakes standardized tests and VAM based on the CC$$ “standards.” Mr. Honig is intelligent enough to recognize that when these new CC$$ tests are rolled out nationwide, they are going to be an unmitigated disaster, as they were in New York.
Now, if he would just go one step further and throw his considerable reputation behind making these standards [sic] voluntary so that local districts, based upon informed critique of the standards by experts in the various domains that they cover, could adapt or replace them in the interest of real innovation and continuous improvement, we would really be getting somewhere.
Exactly right. Such massive imposition of standards undertaken without the consent or consultation of local authorities has no right to be mandatory. Declare this boondoggle optional and the fuss will go away.
In other words, education is something that one undertakes, not something that one undergoes. But that’s not the deform view. The deform view is that
Learning is mastery of someone else’s bullet list.
Teaching is punishment and reward (applying those external motivators).
I am worried that with the passage of SB484, which removes the former state testing and slowly implements the new Smarter Balanced tests whereas scores will not count towards school ratings for 3 years, that teachers are relieved too much. They are relieved that the standards seems deeper and less wide, indicating that these may be more easily mastered by our students because they have more time to digest them. They are relieved that it seems like they can use their own best practices to develop their lesson plans rather than read from scripted textbooks, implying that the CC$$ 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, principals, and students make enough noise that their reverberations can be felt here in California.
The “Marketing” continues. More and more trees are added to hide the forest. Give the
“Pups” more places to “Bark Up”. More barking, more blinking between barks,helps hide
the gap between professed values and actions.
Public Education indicates a “Professed Value”…To educate the Public.
Democracy indicates a “Professed Value”. Look at the “Actions”. Do you see
equality, fairness, or truth?
The word “Democracy” is used to describe the management concept favored by
the Elites who hold the Political and Economic power. The same “Management
concept” established Public Education.
When people are drawn into a make-believe world, and convinced the make-believe
is a good approximation to the real world, the differences between “Official Policies” (What the Gov, SAYS it is doing)
and
“Actual Policies” (What the policies actually accomplish) present a conflict with their imagined function compared to their intended function.
You intend to Educate, but the Gov. hired you to School or to condition.
Sad reality, but reality none the less. If Education WAS/IS the function of
Public Schools, a Fed Reserve key-stroke could fund it to functionality. An FR
key-stroke could fund higher Ed as well. The FR has no problem key-stroking
Bonds or “Fighting for our Freedom”…Actions = Values, not the endless stream
of Pseudo Platitudes.
Bill Honig is one of my great hopes. He “gets” the importance of learning content. But I was disheartened to read the ELA draft frameworks he pointed to. A quick glance reveals 250 pages of conventional literacy gobbledygook –warmed over literacy pedagogy from the NCLB era (perhaps I’ll spend the weekend trying to digest this tome). Sadly such fruitless pseudo-education is the “kudzu” that is likely to take over our curricula. We won’t read Keats to learn Keats; we’ll use him as grist for demonstrating our ability to use textual evidence and make inferences. There is a FUNDAMENTAL flaw at the root of BOTH the old NCLB-era and new CC English/language arts standards –they are largely based on the faulty idea that you build literacy by teach and practicing literacy skills such as “making inferences”. Making inferences is not a skill we need to teach. The brain makes inferences automatically, naturally. The reason kids may fail to do this when reading Brown vs. Board of Education is not lack of skill, but ignorance of the vocab and context of the text. They can’t “read between the lines” when they don’t know what the “lines” say. So relentlessly “teaching” skills like making inferences is a waste of time. We’re “teaching” something kids already know (more or less). Instead we need to be teaching kids about segregation, civics, etc. to build up their world and word knowledge. Today’s conventional literacy instruction is a tragic distraction from the main work of schools. Kids who learn a lot about the world can read and write. Those who don’t cannot. It’s almost as simple as that. Tragically, since most teachers don’t get this, they lack the intellectual wherewithal to argue against the standards.
Very, very well said, Ponderosa!!! Exactly!!!
Spot on!
You, too, Cynewulf. You are guilty of casting doubt on the absolute wisdom of Lord Coleman. Report to Miniluv for rectification immediately.
However, Ponderosa, your ideas, here, are no longer allowed. Lord Coleman has spoken. It’s his way or no way. Please report for rectification immediately.
That CC$$-based kudzu is, indeed, the same warmed-over crap, and it is already having disastrous consequences for curricula, crowding out innovative and engaging teaching for more skills practice in preparation for the test. There are some notable exceptions. I’ve seen a few superb LDC modules (and a lot of dreadful ones). But for the most part, the CC$$-inspired curricula is more of the same crap–all skills, all the time–flitting from one topic to the next, with no curricular coherence, no reading Keats to find out what Keats had to say but, rather, to practice CCSS,RL.11-12.x.
Ponderosa, thanks for your comments. I have read many of your blog entries and they have had an important influence on me in our drafting of the ELA framework. Please give us some specific advice on the draft and we will take it seriously. Many of us working on the draft absolutely believe in the centrality of what is being read and the steady build-up of knowledge (a la E.D.Hirsch). We tried to say this forcefully in the draft framework. How much to emphasize skills, along is controversial and tricky. I don’t agree with you that some skills shouldn’t be taught. I had to help my 5th and 6th grade students learn how to make inferences, even the brightest ones. But, your concerns are well-founded, because there is a tendency among many educators to over-emphasize analysis and skill development (we can thank many of our universities for this problem) at the expense of understanding and connecting to what is being read. Sometimes, just reading a story for the pure joy of it is enough. You don’t necessarily need much discussion to get the power of O’Henry’s story The Gift of the Magi. That is also why we stressed the need for an organized independent reading program for each student. Finally, I agree with you that a purely analytical approach to ELA is a huge turn-off to many youngsters who never deeply encounter our best literature which should be our major goal. We are having Carol Jago, past president of NCTE write an appendix just on this point.
Mr. Honig, I’m honored that you have taken my thoughts into consideration. I will give the ELA framework a closer read and try to offer some constructive feedback soon.
E. D. Hirsch’s notion of how to help students build knowledge is highly suspect. And so is David Coleman’s application of it. Neither of these writers truly recognize that background knowledge is something that is built organically through all of a child’s experiences, not something to be academically grafted onto a student’s knowledge base via direct instruction. Hirsch’s approach valorizes the curriculum and diminishes the importance of the teacher. As such, his knowledge modules are recipes for boredom–good teachers will ignore parts of them and modify the rest (unless, of course, they are forced to do otherwise). And Coleman has said that what teachers need to do is teach enough operational (or academic) vocabulary so that then the teacher can start augmenting the child’s background knowledge. I don’t think that’s how it works.
Yet I haven’t found anything in the standards or discussions about them that emphasizes the child’s own agency in building knowledge, or the fact that building tacit knowledge may be even more relevant to school learning than being exposed to discrete facts and concepts. Concepts that some curriculum writer decides the child must know, or that somebody like Professor Hirsch and his followers decide ought to be taught at a given grade level. (It’s great that you’re in favor of independent reading, but in doing so, aren’t you undermining the main thrust of the actual standards?)
As long as you’re working on this, please pay attention to people like Stephen Krashen and John Seely Brown (see, for example, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, written with Douglas Thomas). I believe they all live in California. Why don’t you give them a call?
Right now I’m looking at a fresh copy of The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, by Jim Burke (author of The English Teacher’s Companion). I’m almost afraid to open it, because I’m pretty sure it will annoy me. There are endorsement blurbs from Grant Wiggins and Carol Jago. Now, my philosophy of teaching and learning doesn’t square Wiggins’s–his approach seems overwrought, reductive, and teacher-centered. (Yes, I own a copy of his book, too, and I don’t like it.) I bought Jim Burke’s book so I could be better informed on the subject, but I don’t think he’s going to convince me to buy into the Common Core. As a retired English teacher I won’t have to worry about actually using the standards in the classroom. These writers, on the other hand, have a vested interest in the standards themselves. They may mean well, but I think they’re barking up the wrong tree. Or the wrong forest.
“But, your concerns are well-founded, because there is a tendency among many educators to over-emphasize analysis and skill development (we can thank many of our universities for this problem) at the expense of understanding and connecting to what is being read.”
And now I think you’re going to have to thank the writers of the Common Core Standards, too. Over-analysis–and a very skewed version of close reading (in CCS terms, cold reading, out of context)–is at the heart of the standards for literature study, even in the lower grades. Just what we want for third graders! It sounds to me like you don’t actually believe in the ELA standards as written, or as espoused by David Coleman. I assume you’ve listened to his speeches on YouTube…
Bill Honig: let me leave to one side my POV on the issues under discussion on this thread and get right to the point—
Thank you for coming into “Diane’s house” and engaging in discussion.
😎
Well said!
“I agree with you that a purely analytical approach to ELA is a huge turn-off to many youngsters who never deeply encounter our best literature which should be our major goal.”
That is very well said. Unfortunately, I have been seeing an enormous amount of new CC$$-based curricula that is all about reading the story to determine what method of expository development the author used in paragraph 12–the kind of terrible literature teaching that reduces “Sailing to Byzantium” to a list of the symbols that the author used. The major publishers are turning out vast amounts of this crap curricula that doesn’t start with the work but with the bullet list of skills from the CC$$, in which an encounter with the text is reduced, entirely, to viewing it as an exemplar of some subset of techniques mentioned in the CC$$ bullet list. Of course, that’s precisely what the material incidental to the CC$$ in ELA tells people NOT to do (e.g., in the Publishers’ Criteria document, in Appendix A), but it was entirely predictable that publication of this amateurish bullet list would spawn such terrible curricula, that the bullet list would become, in most cases, the curriculum. We end up with dramatically distorted curricula and pedagogy–with literature teaching that skips over the experience of the literature and goes straight for the stuff that will be on the test. Anyone who didn’t understand that that would happen doesn’t know much about how educational publishing works. Every publisher in the U.S., just about, is now starting every ELA project by making a spreadsheet with the amateurish CC$$ in ELA in one column and the places where those standards are covered in the next. I call this the Monty Python approach to teaching English. Any text will do as long as it is an exemplar of some skill on the list and is at the correct Lexile level. And now for something completely different.
Wiggins built a thriving consulting business on the concept that summative testing was a terrible thing–that testing should disappear into instruction and take the form of formative assessment and feedback. And then, when the CC$$ dollars started flowing, he completely reversed himself and pretended that he had been a standards-and-summative-testing guy all along. Sickening.
Why Common Core is so called “accepted in CA”? Here are two reasons:
1) I have to say that majority of CA teachers and students still did not really get a chance to try Common Core Standards.
This year STAR test was due in Spring (which had high stakes attached to it) so majority classes still followed the old standards as to be ready for STAR test. Only a few CC things were tried such as mixed subjects projects, discussion groups for English study, etc.
2) There are very many Common Core writers and SBAC writers who reside in CA.
They are invested in its success. One Berkeley professor, for example,(writer of standards) insisted that the only way to study Geometry is through transformations. In Russia, from where the idea is derived, it was only used in one experimental school (for gifted children) for a brief period of time, and even for gifted children it failed, because even if they were gifted they are still human kids, not gods, and this method is simply developmentally not appropriate. Russia actually has a very good system of study for Mathematics. They test every new method before implementing it. There are special Experimental schools of Academy of Pedagogy Sciences. Only in case of success method is widely implemented. Since 1985 Geometry is taught as a separate subject for four years. That is right, it is four year course for 6-10 grade along with a separate subject of 4 year “Algebra and Beginning of Calculus” (including all of US Algebra I, II, Trigonometry, Precalculus and Calculus A and B). These two four year courses are taught at the same time. So as soon as a topic is learned in Algebra, the Geometry has a tool to apply. The Geometry taught is mostly Euclidian Geometry. The most popular Geometry textbook that is used already for 40 years with only few changes, and which won recently again in the competitions with other textbooks contains 22 chapters, out of which only chapters 9 and 11 are dedicated to transformations. These two chapters on transformations belong in year 3 of study of geometry. They don’t belong to year 1 or 2. And this is the program that worked for the last 40 years. It is used in regular schools, gifted schools (with supplements from other more advanced books), and in vocational schools where they use slightly different version of the same textbook that has more practical applications to demonstrate each topic. Students of vocational schools (texnikums) are eligible to enter the same universities as regular high school graduates, and many of them do, and they make fine engineer and scientists. They also make fine professionals if they choose not to pursue college education. Because math courses in Russia are very much developmentally appropriate, tested and clear in expectations.
So how did Common Core writers sell Common Core? Everybody in their own way.
But local people are trusted more (common core is not tried yet remember, it is just propagated).
Anyways why I am so upset? Because I am afraid this is beginning of the death of mathematics as we know it. I saw a few modules on Geometry from EngageNY and they are full of obvious mistakes right from the start. The students on forums on East Coast suggest each other that the only way to figure out transformational geometry is to get full collection of books published in 1960s on the topic . Note that this collection presumes that the student completed at least 2 -4 years of Euclidian Geometry course. It is advanced level course that follows/supplements the regular course towards its end.
What is the purpose of all these?
Interesting discussion. I need help with finding research on “how well do 9th grade students do in an algebra 1 class if they have not done well in their previous math classes such as pre-algebra or a traditional 8th grade math course.” Our high school district has 7 high schools and our Administration is telling us that next year ALL incoming 9th graders will be placed in a Regular Algebra 1 course using Common Core Standards. When asked about the students who are two or more years behind in their math development and understanding and if this plan is in the best interest of these students, then the answer we get is “The new test requires that ALL students must be in an Algebra 2 class during their 11th grade year and the only way to do this is for ALL students to start in 9th grade Algebra 1.” Thank you.
But all of this discussion is moot. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Achieve has appointed David Coleman and Susan Pimentel, by divine right, absolute monarchs of education in the English language arts in the United States, and ours is but to obey. As Mr. Coleman so colorfully puts it, “No one gives a $*($#*($!! what you think.” That is, no one who matters–no member of the golden oligarchical circle. There was no vetting, no informed, scholarly critique of these “standards” because what others think about teaching and learning in the various domains of the English language arts doesn’t matter. Achieve and Lord Coleman have spoken.
Reblogged this on Advancing New Hampshire Public Education and commented:
Since the Common Core is doing so well in New Hampshire, opponents use New York as their example of the negative impact the standards have on students. But New York has made the Common Core part of its punitive, teacher-bashing education policy, a world away from New Hampshire.
And California, apparently.
Here, the judicious and thoughtful comments of the well known and widely respected Bill Honig about the experience in the hugely important state of California feel to me like a turning point in the Common Core debate.
Bill Honig’s testimony will become a touchstone from now on.
I agree that Mr. Honig’s comments are extremely important. If we are to have these egregious standards–worse in ELA than in mathematics, by far, in my opinion–then we should have them on the sort of terms that Mr. Honig has outlined. And it’s extremely important that specifics of the standards be subject to critique and debate and revision, which means that states need to have the right to do much more dramatic revision of them than they are currently allowed to do. I still cannot for the life of me understand why someone influenced by the ideas of E.D. Hirsch, Jr., someone who supports knowledge-based education, would be at all happy with the CC$$ in ELA, which is a list of abstract skills of precisely the sort that Hirsch has railed against in article after article, book after book, for decades. Yes, I understand that the material around the standards calls for extended reading in knowledge domains, but the standards themselves are a list of abstract skills, and a backward list at that, reflecting no understanding of the sciences of language acquisition and little familiarity with the past half century of scholarship in literature, rhetoric, and composition.
Sorry, Bill.
Your “explanation” doesn’t fly.
The chief purpose of the Common Core standards –– one cited by the Common Core initiative, and repeatedly echoed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Business Roundtable, and Arne Duncan and the like –– is that the standards are necessary to enable American students and the American nation “to compete successfully in the global economy.”
That’s demonstrably false.
American economic competitiveness is not tied to test scores; it is inextricably linked to stupid decisions made by politicians and corporate America.
When the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in the 2010-11 World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings, four factors were cited by the WEF: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) suspect corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt.
More recently major factors cited by the WEF are a (1) lack of trust in politicians and the political process, with a lack of transparency in policy-making; (2) “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits and debt accrued as a result of boneheaded economic policies; (3) gross income inequities; and (4) political dysfunction.
The fact that the most ardent avid supporters of the Common Core are also
those most responsible for our nation’s economic problems is not very comforting.
Nor is your endorsement of the Common Core.
“At the same time, in California, there is widespread, deep, and enthusiastic support for the common core standards among teachers, administrators, educational and teacher organizations, advocacy groups, and political leaders. What gives?”
I’ll tell you what gives. These people either aren’t familiar with the Common Core Standards as written and promoted, haven’t scrutinized the assumptions on which they are based, don’t understand their real-life implications for teaching practice, or have a vested interest in promoting them. (Funding by the Gates Foundation isn’t the only such interest–book sales, speaking and consulting gigs, professional recognition and other forms of resume-building–all of these are ample motivation to tout the standards.) Political and business groups are LEAST likely to be familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the actual standards.
The bandwagon is on the move, but that doesn’t guarantee beautiful music. Here’s more support for my belief–opposite that of David Coleman–that narrative is more important than argumentation. While your post is structured as a reasoned argument for supporting the CCS (one that ignores a lot of the obvious and not so obvious flaws), this is an actual story of one LA teacher’s experience with CCS training for English teachers:
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2014/01/common_core_close_reading_come.html?r=1444472816
Thanks to Anthony Cody, Mercedes Schneider, Diane Ravitch, and others, we’re getting both the big-picture stories and the nuts-and-bolts stories that reveal the CCS for what it is. I want you to listen to as many of David Coleman’s speeches as you can. If you’re objective about it, you may agree with me that he isn’t very good at telling a story, and he isn’t very good at building an argument, either. And yet, on his say-so, teachers in LA are told to adopt practices that they know are stupid. Like you said, What gives?
To Randall:
“I’ll tell you what gives. These people either aren’t familiar with the Common Core Standards as written and promoted, haven’t scrutinized the assumptions on which they are based, don’t understand their real-life implications for teaching practice, or have a vested interest in promoting them.”
Really? You’re really saying this about Honig and the whole state of California?
I’m saying this about the people who are pushing the Common Core, in California and elsewhere. It’s a safe bet that business leaders and politicians aren’t actually familiar with the standards, except for the few who have made a special point of reading them. But do they have the experience or expertise to seriously evaluate them? Unions and professional organizations such as NCTE were paid cash to promote the standards, so that disqualifies their leaders as objective evaluators. As another commenter pointed out, many teachers still don’t know what the standards entail. As for the qualified professionals, I don’t know why people like Jim Burke and Carol Jago are embracing the ELA standards instead of fighting them. Maybe I’ll find out when I read their books.
I object to CCS on philosophical as well as technical grounds. I’m not a big fan of standards in education, especially national standards. And as written, I think the CCS ELA standards are a mess. Although I’ve used many of the practices prescribed in the ELA standards, my thirty-plus years in the classroom and my graduate school education tell me that the standards and accompanying documents (and Coleman’s “understanding” of teaching writing and literature, AND his insufferable sales job) are deeply flawed.
You’re a Common Core proponent, but are you an English teacher? Have you studied intertextuality? Are you familiar with the concepts of cultural and psychological determination of textual meaning? Have you spent much time thinking about how background knowledge informs reading comprehension, and how best to engage a student’s knowledge? If you answered yes to these questions, I’d ask you another one: Then why do you trust David Coleman and the CCS? I’d ask the same questions of any English teacher who is actively promoting the standards.
One of Coleman’s basic principles about teaching reading and literature at all levels is the importance of withholding of knowledge from students. I’m not against “cold reading” in high school, but not as a steady diet, and not at the expense of intelligibility. But Coleman’s prohibition against providing context for a reading assignment is just plain wrong. In this instance, you can’t separate the standards from the sales job, because in making his case against engaging the background knowledge of students before reading, he falsely claimed that standard practice before CCS was for teachers to tell students what to think about a passage before they started reading it. Listen to Coleman’s talks. They’re loaded with specious arguments just like that one.
Read the Anthony Cody guest post I linked to, and ask yourself if the LAUSD CCS “trainer” knew what she was talking about. (Or if she believed in the importance of teacher autonomy.) It didn’t sound like it to me.
Ok, I’ve read the guest post on Cody’s blog. But I don’t think it constitutes a challenge to Honig or the understanding California educators have of the standards.
And, in all honestly, I just don’t find a “no standards,” every teacher on her own, stance credible. That’s what we had up through the 60’s and 70’s – pretty random results in our schools.
Don’t get me wrong, the ed reformers’ corporate accountability approach is bankrupt. It’s killing American education. But the idea that teachers – or school districts, even – should just go it on their own just doesn’t make sense to me.
Bill Duncan:
‘And, in all honestly, I just don’t find a “no standards,” every teacher on her own, stance credible. That’s what we had up through the 60′s and 70′s – pretty random results in our schools.’
You must have me confused with somebody else. I said I’m not a big fan of standards. I’ve never taken a “‘no standards,” every teacher on her own, stance.” As for the “60’s and 70’s” comment, you might want to read a book called Reign of Error, by Diane Ravitch. Well funded schools in affluent parts of the country have always gotten “good results,” with or without uniform written standards.
Set aside the fact that “standards,” however the word is construed, haven’t actually been proven to be a key to student learning. The lists of standards that have been promoted in recent decades tend to be too detailed, too rigid, and too restrictive. The CCS ELA standards fit this description, but I would add “too uninformed” (i.e., too stupid).
I’m all for a setting up a homegrown framework for learning, built over time within a particular school or school district, as long as it’s easily modified, augmented, redirected, or reduced as needed. A knowledge management system of some kind–even something as simple as a story bank or a chronicle of policy initiatives–should be established in each school so that institutional memory isn’t lost and so that succeeding administrations can build on what came before.
This sort of local framing of teaching, learning, and school culture is always in danger of being crushed by prescriptive top-down mandates such as the Common Core Standards. Developing a homegrown school doesn’t mean the school has to “go it alone.” Professional organizations, state and regional educational service centers, and various other education consortia are available to help schools and districts chart a sound course. Unfortunately, these organizations have been torpedoed by the Common Core Standards.
If I was still teaching, “knowledge management,” would be a more congenial buzzword for me than “rigorous standards.” “Academic rigor” is used as a synonym for “difficulty tests” instead of something like “scrupulous care in scholarship, research, and argumentation.” By the latter definition, there’s nothing rigorous about the CCS.
As far as curriculum goes, I’m in favor of specific curricular guidelines for each course or grade level that give options to individual teachers, and I’m in favor of teacher collaboration to develop them. There should be room for student choice, too. You can have a great curriculum, developed primarily by local teachers, that doesn’t prescribe all the details or conform to a set of rigid standards. The CCS seems like an attempt to homogenize schooling in the US, and as such it is a huge step backward.
“Ok, I’ve read the guest post on Cody’s blog. But I don’t think it constitutes a challenge to Honig or the understanding California educators have of the standards.”
You didn’t notice a discrepancy between the bad practice the trainer was insisting on (mandated by Coleman and the CCS), and the teachers’ determination that it was, indeed, a bad practice? It doesn’t give you pause when Common Core trainers in LA are trained to suppress teachers’ professional opinions? According to your glowing reports, that’s not what they did in New Hampshire. I’m hoping more teachers will tell the true story of what’s going on in their home states.
Typo: “difficulty tests” should read “difficult tests” There may be others. 🙂
Bill, the ELA standards are extraordinarily amateurish. They were never subjected to expert critique, and they wouldn’t survive such critique in anything like their current form. They are shot through with halfbaked, hackneyed assumptions that serious students of the various domains that they cover are appalled by. They seem to be the kind of work that one would get from a committee of lay people vaguely remembering what happened in their English classes back in the day.
“my belief–opposite that of David Coleman–that narrative is more important than argumentation.”
It is so refreshing, Randal, to have very bright people like you coming to the defense of narrative. Of course, rarely is narrative NOT, itself, argumentation and rarely is argumentation not, itself, narrative, and that’s been a major theme in literary criticism of the past half century, though the authors of these childish “standards” seem to have missed that.
And, of course, Lord Coleman has no clue that narrative is one of the primary modes by which we make sense of the world–that we have dedicated neural structures for turning experience into narrative as a means of comprehending it, just as we have dedicated neural structures for interpreting 2D images on our retinas as a 3D world. Because much of how we understand the world is based in narrative, understanding how narrative works is extremely valuable and can be extremely powerful. There is even a school of thought in clinical psychology call cognitive narrative therapy which is all about teaching people how to tell generate more life enhancing narratives because narration is key to how we understand ourselves, others, the world. What are we but the sum of our memories? But those turn out to be very largely confabulation–stories that we reconstruct, on the fly whenever we call them up–and quite unreliable stories at that.
And, BTW, well over 80 percent of all writing–including writing for every conceivable purpose–is narrative. Coleman may be a reasonably bright fellow, but he is an amateur. He’s in way over his head. When he speaks on these subjects–on the teaching of English, on the various domains that constitute the discipline of the English language arts, he’s talking about matters that he knows very little about. It’s shocking, really, that Achieve put such a clueless, uninformed neophyte on this job.
Most teachers have not read them. When I bring up a standard for discussion, the other teachers And Administrators quickly ask to see a copy of them because they do not believe I am stated an actual standard. At our last leadership meeting, many Administrators in the room did not know high school students would only be tested in 11th grade! These are the people who are telling others that this process will improve student outcomes and they have little knowledge of what is actually going to happen. By the way, I teach in one of the highest performing districts in the state, so these people should be doing their homework and learn about what they are promoting.