Mercedes Schneider has been an outspoken critic of the Common Core standards.
After she read Bill Honig’s explanation about why California educators support the standards without the testing or market reforms, she wrote the following:
Should California Embrace Common Core? My Response to Bill Honig
deutsch29.wordpress.com
Yesterday, California Instructional Quality Chair Bill Honig published a letter on Diane Ravitch’s blog in which he carefully details his reasons for supporting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in California.
In his letter, Honig encourages California districts wary of CCSS to reconsider their positions. He notes, “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.”
When I read Honig’s letter, I wondered how it could be true that CCSS would be so well received in California. I have recently blogged about CCSS unrest in California; namely, that the California Republican Party formally drafted an anti-CCSS resolution and that California Governor Jerry Brown is opposed to “government controlled standards and testing.” Brown has been consistent on his criticism of standardized testing.
I would like to address the context in which Honig’s appeal rests. It is a context unique to California. I also offer some cautions in “embracing” the politically-loaded CCSS.
California: It’s the District That Matters
First, let us consider the context of Honig’s letter:
The letter is an appeal to California districts regarding CCSS. California is a local control state. As such, California school districts may reject CCSS. It is not a state-level decision, as is the case in other states.
In California, the district is the entity that decides whether or not to adopt the CCSS endorsed by the state. This means that districts have the right to opt out of CCSS.
A second point: Even though California’s State Board of Education (CSBE) formally adopted CCSS in August 2010, California as a state did not contract with USDOE for Race to the Top (RTTT) funding.
US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan apparently does not care for California’s local control. In 2011, seven California districts banded together to apply for RTTT funding. The California application was the only one rejected:
In another cockfight between California and Washington over education, the U.S. Department of Education has rejected California’s application – and only California’s application – in the third round of Race to the Top. The denial exasperated the seven California school districts that led the state’s effort and were counting on $49 million earmarked for California as critical to do the work they had committed to do.
In a recent statement, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and State Board of Education President Michael Kirst each criticized the federal government’s inflexibility in not accepting what they described as California’s “innovative” approach of giving control of the reforms to local school districts. Seven unified districts, including Los Angeles, Fresno, and Long Beach, formed a coalition known as CORE, the California Office to Reform Education, to compete for round three and work together on the reform.
Apparently Duncan prefers to draw entire states into his RTTT reformer web. However, in 2012, USDOE began a RTTT funding competition for districts. Three California districts won money. All three agreed to evaluate teachers using student test scores.
The freedom afforded California districts by the state must really irritate Duncan, who desires to nationalize his slate of reforms without calling his effort a federal push.
Moreover, those federal-but-don’t-call them-that reforms are meant to be inflexible. As such, the CCSS Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) requires states to not remove any CCSS content. In her discussion of CCSS “flexibility” with North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest in December 2013, North Carolina School Superintendent Jan Brewer responded, “If any state wants to change those standards, that’s just fine. It’s just that you do not say that you are implementing the Common Core….” 19:15 -19:24, 12-17-13, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZrMgNJqjh8 ).
In contrast, in his letter, Honig discusses implementing the Common Core, yet he also refers to Brown “readopting [the standards] with some changes, in 2012.” Further in the letter, Honig notes,
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. [Emphasis added.]
Logically, the right to opt out of CCSS brings with it the freedom to modify (i.e., if a district is not pleased with CCSS, it holds the trump card to dropping CCSS entirely). The ability to modify CCSS is evident in Honig’s discussion of the CCSS California consortium and “much of the policy making” being “devolved to local districts”:
…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. [Emphasis added.]
California districts have power. That is why some of them are able to directly deal with Duncan, who apparently decided it a better strategy to contract with “some” of California rather than “none” of California regarding California’s request for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers. In August 2013, Duncan issued such waivers to eight California districts provided they would agree to evaluate their teachers using student test scores, among other conditions:
In addition to using test scores to evaluate teachers, the eight California districts pledged to use other measures to determine school performance, including student growth, graduation rates, absenteeism, school culture and student surveys.
Therefore, for better or worse, California districts have power that school districts in other states do not have. For example, my school district in Louisiana, St. Tammany Parish, formally drafted an anti-CCSS resolution in October 2013. In it, the district reaffirms that it did not agree with the state’s decision to adopt CCSS in the first place and that St. Tammany considered its standards rigorous.
Even though my district formally resolved to reject CCSS, we are still tied to CCSS since in Louisiana it is the state, not the district, that has the power to commit to CCSS via RTTT.
California: Pushing Against Arne
I previously noted that Californiahas accepted no state-level RTTT money. This poses another advantage that California has over other most other states. The states that did accept state-level RTTT money are tied to the federal government’s will regarding the spectrum of reforms promoted by RTTT– including CCSS, its assessments, and the tying of testing results to teacher employment. California’s Governor Brown would not agree to evaluate teachers using student test scores. Thus, California was not eligible for either RTTT funds or NCLB waivers.
California is also unique from many states facing CCSS in that neither governor, nor state superintendent, nor school board president, is a die-hard privatizer. As Honig notes:
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.
After considering what I have detailed above– that California districts have control over accepting or rejecting CCSS, and that the governor, state superintendent, and school board president all refuse to grade teachers using test scores (and thereby evidence a healthy distance from the federally-controlled puppeting Duncan so desperately desires of all states)– I understand how it is possible for California teachers to positively receive CCSS.
Indeed, there is still one more important–perhaps the most important– component to CCSS popularity in California: Dislike of the California state standards.
California: Dissatisfaction with Former Standards
According to Honig, California teachers view their previous standards as deficient. As Honig notes regarding California’s math standards:
The standards (CCSS)… shift from the current mile-wide and inch deep approach…. All in all, the standards envision a much more active and engaging classroom….
And California’s English Language Arts (ELA) standards:
Similarly, in English Language Arts the standards also encourage a much more active and engaging classroom….
Here’s an issue to reconcile: According to Honig’s letter, CCSS is a great improvement over California’s standards. However, in its oft-cited 2010 review of all state standards and CCSS, the CCSS-pushing Fordham Institute gave California’s standards higher grades than it gave CCSS– A’s for both ELA and math– as compared to the Fordham CCSS grades of B-plus for ELA and A-minus for math.
This is Fordham’s 2010 overview of California’s ELA standards from its 2010 report:
California’s well-sequenced and thorough ELA standards explicitly address all of the essential content that students must master in a rigorous, college-prep K-12 curriculum. With very few exceptions, the standards are clear and concise and exhibit an appropriate level of rigor at each grade. Minor flaws are noted below, but overall, these standards are exceptionally strong.
And here is Fordham’s overview of California’s math standards:
California’s standards could well serve as a model for internationally competitive national standards. They are explicit, clear, and cover the essential topics for rigorous mathematics instruction. The introduction for the standards is notable for providing excellent and clear guidance on mathematics education. The introduction states simply, “An important theme stressed throughout this framework is the need for a balance in emphasis on the computational and procedural skills, conceptual understanding, and problem solving. This balance is defined by the standards and is illustrated by problems that focus on these components individually and in combination. All three components are essential.” California has provided a set of standards that achieves these goals admirably.
Amazing that Fordham refers to the same standards that Honig believes require replacing.
Whereas Fordham’s review is (bafflingly) considered expert information on the issue of state standards evaluation, the real, front-line “experts” are teachers– those who must convert the standards into a meaningful learning experience for their students.
Fordham forms its opinions from the tower of its own high opinion of itself, not from the classroom.
This begs the question: What does the High and Lifted Up Fordham consider to be “ideal” in a set of standards?
It seems that Fordham places its highest value on standards that are “mile wide, inch deep”– a phrase that former California middle school teacher Anthony Cody has used recently in an email exchange to describe his experience with California’s standards.
Cody’s sentiment is echoed in an October 2013 Los Angeles Daily News article:
The Common Core has also attracted fans because it’s viewed by teachers as “more realistic and smarter” than California’s 1997 standards, which are often criticized as a mile long and an inch thick, says Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association.
“It was impossible for teachers to cover everything,” he says, adding that teachers view the new national standards as “a breath of fresh air” because they require much less regimentation than the earlier standards. Districts have more freedom, this time around, to choose their own curriculum, instructional materials and teacher training programs. [Emphasis added.]
To at least some California teachers, CCSS looks like freedom. For California’s sake, I am sorry that CCSS is inescapably politically infused.
District Danger of Test Worship
In his letter, Honig acknowledges that districts determined to use student test scores in keeping with the privatization agenda will still do so and that such a practice ought not be attributed to CCSS adoption:
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.
I agree with Honig’s determination. Nevertheless, CCSS and its tests are promoted as part of a package of Duncan-promoted reforms. I cannot emphasize this enough. CCSS is not neutral. It is not “just” a set of standards. Duncan is pushing CCSS precisely because it is part of a determined reform package.
As for the issue of districts being “hellbent” upon using scores, the “hell bending” precedes the testing. Here is an excerpt of the CCSS-test-anticipated goings-on in one California district (unnamed) (full comment can be seen here):
In my high school district, the preparation for the upcoming tests in California are having a devastating impact on both the more challenged incoming 9th graders and the higher achieving math students. The Superintendent and the Principals of the 8 high schools have decided, against the wishes of almost ALL district math teachers, to narrow the curriculum to fit both the high school standards and the NEW Smarter Balanced Assessment. Thereby, they have eliminated ALL math course offerings below Algebra 1 and therein, forcing ALL students to enroll in an Algebra 1 class even though they may have fallen two or more years behind in their math levels according to where the CCSS would expect them to be when entering high school.
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.
Advice to Honig and All of California: Watch Out for Arne
If required to choose between Fordham’s assessment of California’s standards and Honig’s report of California assessment of California’s standards, I would defer to Honig– since his career has been tied to California education for decades– which means he is certainly closer to the reality of public education in California.
And even though both Fordham and Honig appear to be on the same side of the issue– with both promoting CCSS– Fordham’s motives are suspect for its having taken millions from Gates– even for operating expenses– and Gates– a very rich man who is purchasing his view of education for an entire nation–really wants CCSS.
However, I disagree with Honig’s urging California districts to dismiss concerns about the role of CCSS in advancing a spectrum of reforms:
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.
California has delayed CCSS testing via the Smarter Balanced consortium (SBAC)— but the tests will come. And even though Brown is fighting Duncan on the (mis)uses of standardized testing, do not underestimate Duncan in pushing the set of reforms for which he has been fighting since 2009.
Those SBAC test scores will be his leverage.
He will insert himself into district affairs. He has done so recently regarding new New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s choice of schools chancellor.
Duncan has repeatedly inserted himself in state and local elections since his appointment as US secretary of education in 2009.
Don’t think he will stop now.
In the case of California, where the power over education policy is at the district level, Duncan will insert himself there. He wants California to be subject to the entire privatizing spectrum of reforms. His foot is already in the door in several California districts.
In Closing
I applaud Honig for his interest in California education and for his detailed accounting of his reasons for promoting CCSS. Whereas one might try to extend Honig’s appeal beyond California’s borders, doing so does not work. As far as other states are concerned that have accepted RTTT funding, the flexibility to alter CCSS to suit a state’s own determined needs in the name of local control is nonexistent.
As to the process of comparing state standards to CCSS and making informed judgments based upon such comparison: This should have been an opportunity provided to all states absent any pre-completion, federal financial bait. The premature federal CCSS lure bespeaks an intent to ensnare– and ensnare it has.
As for the current atmosphere of CCSS unrest in at least half of the states that adopted CCSS: Any individual or group pushing for unquestioned CCSS allegiance has a hidden agenda. Honig is not pushing for unquestioning allegiance– a refreshing statement for me to write. However, his failure to view CCSS as a component of an overall design to completely privatize American public education is not wise given the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I wish California my best regarding its decisions about CCSS, wherever those may lead.
Just watch out for Arne.
Put this in the right place:
Dang, that Schneider gal sure can put together an argument.
(Glad I’m not married to her-ha ha!!)
Said in an astonished country tone.
You should be so lucky, Duane! 🙂
TAGO!
Don’t think she’d be that foolish!
It is time for Obama to replace Duncan, perhaps with Diane Ravitch.
What makes you think he would do that?
Don’t hold your breath until that happens!!!
It’s time to replace many world and local leaders with Diane Ravitch . . . . .
Honig is not pushing for unquestioning allegiance– a refreshing statement for me to write.
Indeed.
Many of the most egregious aspects of the CC$$ would become moot if these new standards [sic] were voluntary and if local districts had the freedom to adapt them to the extent that they see fit based on ongoing scholarly critique of them.
I’ve worked in educational publishing for thirty years. I know the extent to which standards drive and distort curricula. As the making of educational materials has become concentrated in a few companies, this tendency has grown exponentially. Few publishers are interested, at all, in implementing innovative, research-based ideas. Publishers don’t want to hear about what is now known about, say, how kids learn vocabulary and how that might change and improve curricula and pedagogy. They are simply interested in showing that their materials are “aligned with the standards.” And, if those standards are national, it means that they don’t have to experiment at all with different approaches aligned with differing standards. As a result, producing a new program becomes simply an exercise in doing the minimal amount of work necessary to shove a new product out the door. No publisher wants to waste time thinking about innovative new ways to educate kids. The standards, meant to improve education, end up simply ossifying it, enforcing a mediocre status quo.
In the past forty years, there has been a revolution in our scientific understandings of language acquisition and of the cognitive psychology of learning and thinking. ALMOST NONE of what we have learned has made its way into new curricula, and the reason for that, ironically, is the standards that are meant, by their well-meaning but confused proponents, to improve the quality of curricula, pedagogy, and assessments.
I’ve sat in these product planning meetings in ed book houses for years. In the old days, when we started work on a new product, a grammar and composition, reading, or literature text, for example, an enormous amount of time and energy would be spent discussing how the new program might differentiate itself from the competition by instantiating new thinking about learning in the domain. That era is gone. Anyone who daree to bring begin a statement with, “But here’s what we now know about how kids learn this . . .” would be looked at by the suits around the table as some sort of freak. The making of textbooks is now a recipe. Pick up as much of the old material as possible. Do a correlation to the new standards. Slap a “New, Improved, Updated for the xxx Standards” label on it.
And so, nothing of the real progress that we are making in learning how kids learn actually makes its way into products. The state standards helped to bring that about. The CC$$ are making this even worse.
An extremely important aspect of the move to national standards is that having a single set of national standards creates economies of scale. The monopolist educational publisher can print a single book, aligned with one set of standards, in enormous quantities at very low unit cost. And, of course, a smaller publisher or new entrant can’t afford to do this. So, national standards effectively shut out smaller publishers and new entrants. There’s a reason why the big publishers love these standards. They effectively kill any future competition. They mean the death of competition and innovation in educational materials, and proponents of the national standards seem clueless about this. Some of these proponents, however, are not so naive. They are quite aware of the economics driving all this, for they’re on some big publishers’ payroll.
There is much to like in what Honig is trying to accomplish. His opposition to high-stakes testing and VAM are very, very important. His support for local curriculum development and continual critique by teachers of their own practice are key. And he is to be lauded for his support for the right of local district autonomy. Kudos to him for all of this.
If all the CC$$ guys were like him, I could ALMOST get on board. But this is what would hold me back: Real innovation comes from having competing visions, instantiated in competing standards, frameworks, and learning progressions, that are continually debated and refined in light of research and practice. We need for teachers to have a lot more free time to devote to Japanese-style lesson study–to continual critique of their own practice. And we need a lot more innovation.
Innovation in educational publishing has been effectively dead since the beginning of the push for state standards. National standards will be the final nail in the coffin.
cxs: “his opposition . . . is,” “his support . . . is”
I wish one could edit these posts!
These standards lists–the new ones and the state ones that preceded them–tend to be extraordinarily backward. They are consensus documents that reflect lowest common denominator thinking. That’s fine with monopoly publishers because, after all, they are not interested in innovation. They are not interested in how best to teach kids–in, for example, how kids learn to read. They are interested in churning out the product that will get the maximum sales, period. And if you have a consensus document that reflects a lot of unexamined assumptions–a set of standards–you have your blueprint for producing your white bread product, no thought required.
But what you do not get is the innovation that comes of having competing, smaller publishers vying with one another for pieces of the market.
Again, the past forty years have seen an explosion of research in the cognitive psychology of reading, language acquisition, thinking, and learning, but ALMOST NONE of what we have learned has been translated into new curricula and pedagogy. If our physics texts were as backward as our language arts texts are, they would still be teaching kids about the ether, phlogiston, and how bodies use up their inherent motive force as they move. Real innovation is dead in educational publishing, and the reason for this, ironically, is standards that instantiate backward ideas, that turn these into Holy Writ. The few remaining educational publishers can ignore thinking about how kids learn and concentrate, entirely, on marketing efforts and on pushing out the new product at the minimum cost.
If I am not mistaken, Robert– speaking only as a lowly parent/ taxpayer/ part-time educator– what you are doing here is definng a market.
Mercedes, I appreciated your comments. We will probably continue to disagree on the merits of the standards themselves and their potential use in engendering collaborative, capacity-building efforts at schools and districts (to me the key to continual improvement of practice). I do want to clear up one point; The article I wrote and Diane published was not a letter written to California school districts (almost all are already on board with the common core standards) but aimed more to the rest of the nation to explain what we are doing in the state. Your point that states which have signed up for RTTT would have a tougher time doing what we are attempting may be accurate, but still many of them could do some of what we are undertaking and undo some of the detrimental policies they have adopted and, of course, their leadership could change, as just happened in NY city.
“and their potential use in engendering collaborative, capacity-building efforts at schools and districts (to me the key to continual improvement of practice)”
This is, indeed, the best part of what I have seen coming out of the movement to implement the CCSS.
Now, let’s move a step further and recognize that in that collaborative effort, new ideas will emerge, based upon new understandings, and that those should not be limited by standards that are set in stone.
Let me give an example. There is a now a great body of psychological research that shows that our previous understandings of how people form categories was wrong. Aristotle thought of categories as natural kinds. You listed the properties of things, and they were placed into groups, sets, categories,based on shared properties–e.g., things with bills and webbed feet are ducks. Much, much recent research has shown hat that’s not how people for categories. Children learn prototypical examples (A robin is a prototypical bird), and then as they grow up, place things into categories based on greater or lesser similarity to the prototype. Now, this new understanding of category formation–the theory of natural prototypes that has replace the theory of natural kinds–has very, very dramatic implications for how we go about teaching, among other things, literature, and so much of the kinds-based thinking that informs the CC$$ in ELA is antiquated. It doesn’t reflect psychological realities and realities about learning that are now extraordinarily well understood by cognitive psychologists studying learning and by many professionals students of literature. So, local teachers, learning about this, and learning about curricular and pedagogical approaches that reflect a more contemporary, more scientific understanding than is reflected in these amateurish “standards” should be able to adapt or replace those “standards” with ones that are not as backward.
Our newer, scientific understandings of the psychology of category formation have dramatic consequences for teaching ELA, of course, because much work in ELA (and much of the CCSS in ELA) is rooted in taxonomy (e.g., epic v. lyric v. dramatic poem).
See, for example, this essay:
As a high school English teacher in Los Angeles for nearly thirty years, it is clear to me that writing the standards is the easy part. We have had many sets of standards over the years, all of which had their strengths and weaknesses. The problem has been and always will be one of implementation. What does mastery mean? How do we judge mastery? What supports are needed, by both students and teachers?
Mr. Shepherd above correctly stated that teachers need more time to work together to figure these things out (lesson study). We have to have time to try things out, refine them, and then try them again. The obsession with testing all year long, culminating in the “big test that counts for everything” is absurd.
I would also submit that unless we reduce ELA class sizes dramatically (right now I have 175 students in 5 classes), we are kidding ourselves and the public. Anybody remember Ted Sizer? in the 1980’s he suggested that no high school English teacher should be responsible for more than 80 students. What happened to that standard?
Further, in California at least we have had 5 years of budget cuts, which only now seems to be easing. But easing of cuts does not equal restoration of programs and materials. Before I want a new 1000-page textbook, what about a few class sets of novels and plays. You know, actual books? I’m sorry, but asking individual teachers to write Donors Choose proposals won’t cut it.
I’ve looked at CCSS. Not bad, on paper (or even on-screen). Better or worse than the “old” standards? Who knows? I’m willing to try, but give me and my students the support we need!
Lesson study–time for teachers to work together collaboratively to subject their own practice–their curricula, their curricular materials, and their pedagogical techniques–to critique–is extraordinarily valuable. This is something that we can learn from the use of quality circles in industry. That’s how we get real continuous improvement–by respecting teachers’ autonomy and putting them in charge of that continuous improvement. It’s amazing what happens when people are so empowered.
We don’t get continuous improvement from top-down mandates.
Robert, thank you for your kind comments. I agree with your major point that many of the large publishers have tended to resort to superficial checklists and consequently miss important aspects of pedagogy. For example, in mathematics, presenting percentage as four pages of cross-multiplication procedures, which has been all too common, will not work. The research base is clear that most students need four to five works of comparing this to that and that to this in multiple applications and situations with heavy language mediation to master percentage. (Only about 40% of adults understand and can use the concept). Or in ELA loading up textbooks with incessant strategies does not square with what we know about how students learn, as you point out.
The new math books submitted for approval in California (we advise only, districts can still purchase what they want) actually are surprisingly better and move toward the more sophisticated approaches used internationally. I give the standards, our recently adopted mathematics framework and our communicated strong commitment to use the framework in the review process some credit for that–especially the practice standards, the emphasis on conceptual knowledge, and the insistence on applications in complex situations. If purchasers and review committees insist on the more sophisticated instruction envisioned by the standards and many of the supportive resources, the baleful situation you describe should start to change.
On another point, I believe local districts have potentially much more flexibility now. It used to be that the textbook was the curriculum. But today, they can adopt texts, they can adopt open source materials or supplement with open source materials, and they can mix and match from a variety of sources. This situation should encourage some of the innovative efforts you would like to see from both the large and niche publishers. Hopefully, our framework (and others in the country) provide the architecture to support this flexibility.
Finally, an important point for readers of this blog. Standards are not the curriculum and are not all equal in emphasis. Obviously, they have a major influence on curriculum and instruction but, if done right, much of the nuts and bolts of instruction is left to the schools and teachers. Most of them are not particularly controversial. For example, a 7th grade common core math standard says students should be able to use proportional thinking in solving problems. That’s all it says and I don’t think anyone is going to argue that the standard is not legitimate or should be able to be ignored. How much time to devote to reaching that standard (actually quite a lot) and what strategies to employ are left up to professional decisions. In my experience, most teachers don’t mind receiving some advice on how best to approach that kind of broad standard.
Well said, Bill. But alas, the publishers are treating the standards as Holy Writ, are treating them as the curriculum. This is not in the spirit of the standards as expressed in the Publishers’ Criteria, but it was entirely predictable. It sounds as though you have, Bill, an exceptionally enlightened approach to implementation of these standards, and best of luck to you in your efforts to create real collaborative continuous improvement communities among teachers in California. The implementations of Plan-Do-Check-Act, coupled with worker empowerment to implement changes, had dramatic effects in Japanese industry and can have the same liberating and powerful effects on U.S. education. Continuous improvement flows from the bottom up. We all know what flows from the top down.
And, alas, I don’t think that that baleful situation is likely to change until structural changes make possible, again, real competition among providers of curricula. The creation of national standards unfortunately creates enormous economies of scale for the remaining educational materials monopolists. New entrants with innovative approaches simply cannot compete against those economies of scale. We’ve seen, now, many decades of M&A in the educational publishing industry, and national standards will simply solidify the stranglehold that the remaining big three have on the industry. This is very, very sad, indeed, for we could have been on the cusp of real competition in that industry on an unprecedented scale.
“Standards are not the curriculum and are not all equal in emphasis. Obviously, they have a major influence on curriculum and instruction but, if done right, much of the nuts and bolts of instruction is left to the schools and teachers.”
Theoretically your statement is correct but these “standards” become/are the curriculum as they are discussed and implemented now. And when one talks of “standards” by definition one is implying measurement. The standard and the measurement (test being the supposed measuring device) are the different sides of the same coin and to take one away is to destroy the coin. So that the standardized testing and its effects come into play in this discussion.
I have no problem with curriculum as developed and implemented by the classroom teacher, school and/or perhaps even district level. But the “standardization/homogenization” of curriculum through standards, what Robert rightly rails against, is the path to mediocrity, really wors. Hasn’t this country thrived without homogenous curriculum and “standardized/homogenized testing up to this century?
Bill, don’t remember if I’ve asked this of you but have you read Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and/or “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review”, his review of the “testing bible”, the American Educational Research Association; American
Psychological Association; National Council on Measurement in Education. (2002). “Standards for Educational and Psychological
Testing”? If so your thoughts, please.
Thanks in advance,
Duane
.
Duane, I have not yet read Wilson’s essay but if you have a link, I will or maybe just Google it.
“much of the nuts and bolts of instruction is left to the schools and teachers” — ah, were it only so, this blog would not be needed.
Bill,
Here is the link and a brief summary of mine (with Wilson’s approval) but don’t just take what I say as there is so much more to the study than my very brief synopsis. I’ve read it over a dozen times and each time I get more out of it.
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Bill,
And the other link for his takedown of the “testing bible”, a much shorter read is:
“A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at:
How different things would have been if the new ELA standards had consistent entirely of the suggested framework (fleshed out quite a bit) instead of the bullet list of abstract skills to be mastered! A critical mistake was made, there, based on previous practice. There are really valuable ideas in the general framework (close reading, reading of connected texts within a knowledge domain, vocabulary learned in semantic groupings in context), but the specific standards instantiate and set in stone many backward, hackneyed misconceptions about teaching and learning in the various domains covered and so set us back tremendously. We now have, for example, a lot of understanding that we didn’t have, before, of how first language acquisition works, and NONE OF THAT is reflected in these standards. NONE OF IT. And so, in ELA, the new standards perpetuate a mediocre status quo. And this is true in each of the domains covered, not just in the language standards. That’s a tragedy.
I’m furious with the implication that the CCSS math standards are so much better than the old ones because they replace the “mile wide and inch deep” old math curricula. My husband, a math teacher counted 190 different math standards in the new CCSS between 7th and 12th grade. That seems to still be mile wide and inch deep to me.
Los Angeles Unified School District is lock step on Arne’s path to privatization.
For math curriculum which is not mile wide and inch deep I highly recommend this book
Russian Mathematics Education: Programs and Practices (Series on Mathematics Education) [Hardcover]
You can use amazon “look inside” feature
http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Mathematics-Education-Programs-Practices/dp/9814322709/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389247789&sr=8-1&keywords=Russian+Mathematics+Education%3A+Programs+and+Practices
Free online chapters here (quite a lot of content including Algebra chapter)
I hope US education can benefit from this extensive education research that lead to success in Russian math education. China, Singapore, and India all use Russian math and physics textbooks. India uses them extensively for school and universities.
Mir publishers in 1980s had special large orders from India, those books are now reprinted again by Indian publishing companies. Many textbooks went to Spanish speaking countries.
I think the whole book is posted here, actually…
There are two very important points related to education “reform” –– and to the Common Core, which is the latest iteration of it –– that are not addressed in comments here, or in Bill Honig’s endorsement of the Common Core standards.
First, the “need” for “reform” is fallacious. American public education is not “broken” nor is it “in crisis.” As I’ve noted repeatedly, the Sandia Report (1993) took apart the mythical hype of ‘A Nation at Risk,’ which warned that a “rising tide of mediocrity” threatened our national security. Sandia researchers concluded that:
* “..on nearly every measure we found steady or slightly improving trends.”
* “youth today [the 1980s] are choosing natural science and engineering degrees at a higher rate than their peers of the 1960s.”
* “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause.”
* “The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
Second, the imperative for public eduction “reform” is “economic competitiveness.” It was at the heart of ‘A Nation at Risk,’ and it’s the central rationale for the Common Core.
The Common Core mission statement says that the standards are necessary to enable American students and the American nation “to compete successfully in the global economy.” This nonsense gets repeatedly echoed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Business Roundtable, and Arne Duncan and the like.
But it’s not true.
American economic competitiveness is not tied to test scores. It is, however, inextricably linked to stupid economic 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.
Common Core standards will do absolutely nothing to ameliorate such problems.
The fact is that some of the most ardent and avid supporters of the Common Core are also those most responsible for our nation’s economic problems.
Common Core supporters insist that “critical thinking” is the essential component of its standards. Why then are they so reluctant – or incapable – of practicing it?
I still fail to understand why the States are allowing Arne Duncan to control, or even meddle in, their domestic affairs. It boggles my mind (and, quite frankly I find it highly disturbing) that the States have not banned together to legally restrain him, or to insist on a Congressional investigation of him and his master federal plan. Why are we letting his actions go unchecked? Absolute power corrupts…..
Deborah, the reforms are a package, and Duncan is promoting the package and doling out money. Plus, I’m sure “agreements” have been reached behind closed doors.
YECH.
Here another 5 million coming from Bill Gates
Gates Foundation considers major Common Core grant program in California
http://edsource.org/today/2014/gates-foundation-considers-major-common-core-grant-program-in-california/55740#.Us9ZX8jTn5o
Fresno Unified and Long Beach Unified are the first of a half-dozen urban school districts nationwide that Gates is awarding with a three-year, $5 million grant for innovative ways to pursue training in the new math and English language arts standards. Impressed with Fresno’s and Long Beach’s proposals, Gates will decide by late spring whether to expand that initiative to networks of districts that may affect 25 percent to 30 percent of California’s 6 million students, Don Shalvey, Gates’ deputy director of U.S. programs, said in an interview this week.