After reading a letter by a student named Grace, this reader pointed out a crucial diggerence in purpose: the authors of the Common Core want to rank and rate everyone, but many educators have a humane vision, not of winners and losers, but of self-directed human beings.
“Even kids like Grace know that an individualized, self-directed, self-paced approach is the real future of education. Helping kids learn how to live happy, healthy, and fulfilling lives in support of themselves and others should be our real educational goals. If kids leave the public school educational system knowing how to make informed decisions, knowing how to solve real problems, knowing how to get along with themselves and others, knowing how to take care of themselves physically and emotionally, and with their curiosity and creativity still intact, they will be able to accomplish whatever they set out to do. Common Core does not promote any of these outcomes; we need to create a system of education that does.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Amen!!!! Try this plan for starters http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2014/02/put-this-on-standardized-test.html
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Cap Lee, you stole my “Amen”! hope you’ll share.
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And along with the Common Core comes those “21st Century Skills,” which are fine to augment things, but not to supplant them. Here’s an example of how they can warp a kid’s perspective.
10 year old is looking up his vocabulary words (all dealing with the prefix “post”) on the I-pad. The I-pad really belongs to our 4 year old (for games and his shows) because our older two boys have both I-pod Touches AND Tablets. I asked him why he needed his little brother’s I-pad and he said because his other two gadgets are not charged up. Upon discovering that older brother is using his I-pad, of course little brother wants it back. So I suggest that 10 year old use the dictionary for his vocabulary (we have several prominently housed on the book shelves in our study). Reluctantly, he does so, but first he shares his sentence using the work “postpone.”
“We had to postpone our baseball game,” he said.
And I suggested that he add more to the sentence, because as it is we cannot gather any meaning from context of the word “postpone.” He does so, and seems a little hurt. So I explained that if he wants to go to one of the military academies (which lately he says is his goal), that he should be in the habit of going above and beyond in his school work. And he said (and this is unbelievable to me and an example of the “21 Century Skill” bit going awry):
“I was going above and beyond by using the I-pad to look up my words instead of a Dictionary.”
I find that troubling. Anyone else? Really? Is it more academically superior to look up vocabulary on the internet than in a dictionary?
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amen
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a vision of self-directed human beings
What a novel idea!!!
Or, instead, we can have Education Deform, Son of NCLB, in which learning is reduced to mastery of the items on the mandated bullet list in preparation for summative test. Intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic punishment and reward.
Two visions. Two radically different futures.
Which do you want for your children?
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Just wait for the thrilling release, coming soon, of “Daughter of RaTT and Son of NCLB Marry”.
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May be I was attacking it from the wrong angle as I have emphasized the overt & covert behaviors in schools and how we need to fix these problems first before learning can take place.
Now I see that may be we can teach social skills through CCS. We know for sure that common core does emphasize content areas and forces inappropriate developmental skills too early. However, we can put the Speaking & Listening standards to good use by incorporating social skills along with content.
As one example: ELA– Read a Patricia Polacco or similar to teach empathy, acceptance, social justice, etc., which would be the theme. Do a close reading for that purpose. Discuss, reenact, debate, agree to disagree, make insightful comments, so that students have a purpose to their everyday life at home and at school. Many students don’t understand “Code Switching” in the elementary grades, so they bring their baggage from the streets to school.
I agree that kids need to develop good character traits, but it doesn’t happen by hanging posters on classroom walls and through osmosis. It is an intentional ongoing everyday event. It’s like helping kids to speak for the first time.They acquire it by listening, mimicking, and acting it out every waking minute. Kids need to acquire the hidden code, social norms, and formal language to be successful in the work place. I always go back to how language skills are essential to social development and today I add character.
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Correct
Been doing so for YEARS
Before Common Corporate Core was ever written
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…and before NCLB.
Seems like this is about the time when we had to abandon building character traits for high-stakes tests that promoted an array of behavior problems.
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This letter is an example of what’s right in education. Teaching to the test doesn’t create a writer like this. She learned to think, solve problems, had wonderful models of writing and my guess is she was exposed to quality literature – all so much deeper than the tests being forced upon all of us.
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Once a task requires even rudimentary cognitive skill, larger extrinsic rewards lead to poorer performance, Daniel Pink:
Grace understands that reward has to be intrinsic. She doesn’t want to be a rat in a maze seeking that reward of the score on the standardized test.
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