Louisiana is the site for education dramas. Today began a new one. Governor Bobby Jindal announced that the state was pulling out of Common Core and the PARCC assessment consortia. PARCC is one of two federally funded testing consortia aligned to the CCSS.
No sooner did Governor Jindal make his announcement than State Commissioner John White issued a press release affirming that the state was continuing with Common Core and PARCC.
What next?
Here, Mercedes Schneider reviews the battle, the documents, and the state of play.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Neither Jindal nor White matter because they are playing good cop/bad cop.
In the end, they are great supervisors but very bad leaders.
Jindal is politicking this to death, and he probably has an agreement with White as to how they are going to play this out theatrically to the public. Some kind of deal has been cut between these two dybbuks, and it’s less than kosher.
They are both playing the public like an electric guitar, but the wiring has been messed with so much that the guitar might just backfire and electrocute one or both of their careers.
As if no one is going to figure them out? . . . . .
LikeLike
Bobby Jindal is on the right side of an issue?
LikeLike
This sort of thing is entirely unbecoming of public officials.
Look, standards should be voluntary, recommended guidelines for educators. Professionals–those who actually know something about teaching and learning in the various domains within the various subject areas–scholars, researchers, curriculum developers, and classroom practitioners–should put forward recommended guidelines, learning progressions, frameworks, suggestions for pedagogical approaches, lesson plant templates, and so on. These should be vigorously researched, discussed, and debated, on an ongoing basis, by the community educators in the various subject areas. Officially adopted guidelines should be broad frameworks that allow for ongoing testing and refinement and should provide the degrees of freedom within which innovative curricula and pedagogical strategies appropriate to particular subject matter and particular students can be developed.
It’s a terrible mistake to submit such matters to the vicissitudes of political winds.
The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts recommended several broad “instructional shifts.” These are
1. Emphasis on both substantive informational and literary texts.
2. Building knowledge in the subject areas through reading and writing about content (in science, history, and technical subjects).
3. Reading at each grade level texts of a complexity such that at the end of the K-12 sequence, students will be ready to read college-level texts, and use of scaffolding to make on-level texts accessible.
4. Close reading of texts to inform evidence-based discussion and writing about texts, with decreased emphasis on extra-textual material–background information, for example.
5. Writing using evidence from sources to inform and to make arguments.
6. Building general and subject-specific academic vocabulary (which can most effectively be done by reading, discussing, and writing about related texts–ones dealing with like subject matter at increasing levels of complexity).
Now, it is certainly the case that knowledgeable educators can disagree about these general guidelines. We have seen, for example, a great deal of debate on the following issues:
1. Whether it is appropriate to shift our focus, in English classes, toward increased emphasis on nonliterary texts and decreased emphasis on literary texts.
2. Whether English teachers are properly trained to oversee subject area reading (e.g., to choose appropriate readings in science, history, and technical subjects).
3. Whether it is appropriate, with readers not working a grade level, to subject them to texts of grade-level complexity, whether scaffolding is always sufficient to make a given text accessible to a given student, and what kind of scaffolding is necessary.
4. Whether the New Critical approach of treating the text as an isolated artifact (a world unto itself) is appropriate and the extent to which it is necessary, as an aid to comprehension and interpretation, to create motivation to engage with a text, and to establish the significance of a text, to treat extra-textual material–such as the biographical, historical, or sociopolitical context of a text.
5. Whether writing programs should be narrowly focused on constructing evidence-based arguments or should cover other types of writing as well (e.g., as much as 80 percent of all writing done in the real world is narrative fiction or narrative nonfiction, and narration is one of the primary means by which humans make sense of the world, so shouldn’t it receive major focus? And what of writing exercises devoted to other matters besides construction of arguments–to stylistics, for example?)
6. Whether the specific recommendations for vocabulary work in the new standards (study of roots and affixes, instruction in types of context clues, instruction in word origins, etc.) are effective in achieving the goal of developing general and subject-specific academic vocabulary.
As controversial as these “instructional shifts” are, they, in themselves, provide a broad framework within which one can have enormous flexibility to innovate in curricula and in pedagogical approaches.
Many substantive issues arise, however, in the translation of these general instructional guidelines into grade-level “standards.” Here are a two of the big ones:
1. Educational publishers have a tendency to take the specific standards as the curriculum and to build lessons that focus not on the texts themselves and what they are saying but on the standards per se. This is pedagogically unsound and undermines the PURPOSE of reading and writing by treating by not treating whatever is being said by texts as the primary focus of lessons but, rather, treating texts as mere interchangeable vehicles for exercising some skill described by a standard.
2. The standards tend to be vague, abstract descriptions of explicit outcomes related to general skills, and as such a) ignore attainment of declarative knowledge in the subject areas, b) are too vaguely formulated and insufficiently operationalized to allow for valid assessment, and c) preclude other, better approaches to achieving the overall goals than those that happened to have been imagined by the standards authors–including approaches appropriate to particular students who, after all, differ.
I think that we should all be able to agree that it does no one any good to have have this matter of standards become highly politicized and for the standards that teachers and students will be using be a matter of who happens to hold power this carnival season.
For the foregoing reasons, I think it would be extraordinarily wise to DECLARE A TRUCE in the “standards wars,” the terms of which would be the following:
1. We all agree to follow the general guidelines instantiated in those “instructional shifts,” recognizing that those will be subjected to vigorous debate over the coming years and that at some time in the future, a national forum will be held to revisit them.
2. The specific grade-level standards become VOLUNTARY, and all teachers, curriculum coordinators, and curriculum developers are ENCOURAGED to work with them, adapting, modifying, replacing, extending, or transcending them where they see fit in order better to achieve the general goals of the instructional shifts. A national portal would be created for posting of lesson modules, suggested learning progressions, lesson plan templates, standards for particular domains, and so on, in keeping with the instructional shifts, or general goals, as alternatives to the specific grade-level standards of the CCSS.
3. Summative standardized testing based upon the general goals (rather than on the specific standards) would become ONE OPTION that students and teachers could choose to use to demonstrate achievement, and other options–in particular, performative assessment portfolios–would be made available as an alternative.
Clearly, the current situation–all this heat without light–is unsustainable and counterproductive. No one is well served by all this petty wrangling–by the “standards war.”
And that is why I have suggested this alternative, which has as a major merit that the work that has been done to date under the CCSS aegis would not have been in vain but would become one of a number of options for particular schools, teachers, and students going forward.
LikeLike
Bob: this is outstanding… thank you so much … every point is valid. I chose one to quote onto another site this morning… in their comment section because a “bitter” debate has occurred and, as Cantor says, it cheapens the dialogue when it gets so bitter.”
If I have made incorrect inferences let me know but every point you raise should be a part of the dialogue occurring in the states with teachers. In Massachusetts, the social studies teachers, in particular, were shut out of the discussion and vast funding then went into Pearson/PARCC which is a direct insult to the profession.
quoting: quoting Bob Shepherd: ” Whether writing programs should be narrowly focused on constructing evidence-based arguments or should cover other types of writing as well (e.g., as much as 80 percent of all writing done in the real world is narrative fiction or narrative nonfiction, and narration is one of the primary means by which humans make sense of the world, so shouldn’t it receive major focus? And what of writing exercises devoted to other matters besides construction of arguments–to stylistics, for example?)”
inference this is where the discussion should be taking place not Fordham Institute attacking the Teachers’ college writing programs. Whenever you take anything and make it formulaic (writing, teaching phonics etc) you have made it so reductionistic that it is set up to produce only dissatisfaction and further gaps…. then we throw the baby out with the bath water and ideologies set in (as they have at F.I. and E.N. with Chet Finn, Smarick etc)
LikeLike
I apologize for reposting this, but the original contained too many infelicities of expression and typos, and I think the post valuable, so here is a corrected version. Again, my apologies for the infelicities in the first version:
This sort of spat about the Common Core that is currently raging in Louisiana is entirely unbecoming of public officials.
Standards should be voluntary, recommended guidelines for educators. Professionals–those who actually know something about teaching and learning in the various domains within the various subject areas–scholars, researchers, curriculum developers, and classroom practitioners–should put forward recommended guidelines, learning progressions, frameworks, suggestions for pedagogical approaches, lesson plan templates, and so on. These should be vigorously researched, discussed, and debated, on an ongoing basis, by the entire community of educators in the various subject areas. Any OFFICIALLY ADOPTED, MANDATORY RULES OF THE ROAD should be not a long list of specific grade-level “standards” but, rather, A BROAD FRAMEWORK that allows for ongoing testing and refinement and that provides the degrees of freedom within which innovative curricula and pedagogical strategies appropriate to particular subject matter and particular students can be developed.
It’s a terrible mistake to submit such matters to the vicissitudes of political winds. And it’s a mistake to be too directive and so to stifle innovation.
What might such a broad framework look like? Well, we already have one in the CCSS for ELA.
The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts recommended several broad “instructional shifts.” These are
1. Emphasis on both substantive informational and literary texts.
2. Building knowledge in the subject areas through reading and writing about content (in science, history, and technical subjects).
3. Reading at each grade level texts of a complexity such that at the end of the K-12 sequence, students will be ready to read college-level texts, and use of scaffolding to make on-level texts accessible.
4. Close reading of texts to inform evidence-based discussion and writing about texts, with decreased emphasis on extra-textual material–background information, for example.
5. Writing using evidence from sources to inform and to make arguments.
6. Building general and subject-specific academic vocabulary (which can most effectively be done by reading, discussing, and writing about related texts–ones dealing with like subject matter at increasing levels of complexity).
Now, it is certainly the case that knowledgeable educators can disagree about these general guidelines. We have seen, for example, a great deal of debate on the following issues:
1. Whether it is appropriate to shift our focus, in English classes, toward increased emphasis on nonliterary texts and decreased emphasis on literary texts.
2. Whether English teachers are qualified to oversee subject area reading (e.g., to choose appropriate readings in science, history, and technical subjects).
3. Whether it is appropriate, with readers not working at grade level, to subject them to texts of grade-level complexity, whether scaffolding is always sufficient to make a given text accessible to a given student, and what kind of scaffolding is necessary in what situations.
4. Whether the New Critical approach of treating the text as an isolated artifact (a world unto itself) is appropriate and the extent to which it is necessary, a) as an aid to comprehension and interpretation, in order to create motivation to engage with a text, and in order to establish the significance of a text, to treat extra-textual material–such as the biographical, historical, or sociopolitical context of a text.
5. Whether writing programs should be narrowly focused on constructing evidence-based arguments or should cover other types of writing as well (e.g., as much as 80 percent of all writing done in the real world is narrative fiction or narrative nonfiction, and narration is one of the primary means by which humans make sense of the world, so shouldn’t it receive primary focus? And what of writing exercises devoted to other matters besides construction of arguments–to stylistics, for example?)
6. Whether the specific recommendations for vocabulary work in the new standards (study of roots and affixes, instruction in types of context clues, instruction in word origins, etc.) are effective in achieving the goal of developing general and subject-specific academic vocabulary.
As controversial as these “instructional shifts” are, they, in themselves, provide a broad framework within which one can have enormous flexibility to innovate in curricula and in pedagogical approaches.
Many substantive issues arise, however, in the translation of these general instructional guidelines into grade-level “standards.” Here are a two of the big ones:
1. Educational publishers have a tendency to take the specific standards as the curriculum and to build lessons that focus not on the texts themselves and what those texts are saying but on the standards per se. This is pedagogically unsound and undermines the PURPOSE of reading and writing by treating the standard instead of whatever is being said by by the text as the primary focus of a lesson–by demoting texts to the status of mere interchangeable vehicles for exercising skills described by standards.
2. The standards are inflexible and invariant and tend to be vague, abstract descriptions of explicit outcomes related to general skills, and as such a) largely ignore attainment of declarative knowledge in the subject areas, b) often mistake abilities that are acquired for ones that are explicitly learned, c) are too vaguely formulated and insufficiently operationalized to allow for valid assessment, d) are not sufficiently adaptable to students with differing needs, and e) preclude other, better approaches to achieving the overall goals–approaches not imagined by the standards authors, including approaches appropriate to particular students who, after all, differ.
I think that we should all be able to agree that it does no one any good to have have this matter of standards become highly politicized and for the standards that teachers and students will be using be a matter of who happens to hold power this carnival season.
For the foregoing reasons, I think it would be extraordinarily wise to DECLARE A TRUCE in the “standards wars,” the terms of which would be the following:
1. We would all agree to follow the general guidelines instantiated in those “instructional shifts,” recognizing that those will be subjected to vigorous debate over the coming years and that at some time in the future, a national forum will be held to revisit them. In other words, these OVERALL GOALS, not the grade-level standards, would become the mandated national material, subject to modification in the future.
2. The specific grade-level standards would become VOLUNTARY, and all teachers, curriculum coordinators, curriculum developers, schools, districts, scholars, researchers, think tanks, and professional educational organizations would be ENCOURAGED to work with the model standards–adapting, modifying, replacing, extending, or transcending them where they see fit in order better to achieve the general goals of the instructional shifts. A national portal would be created for posting of lesson modules, suggested learning progressions, lesson plan templates, alternative standards for particular domains and particular student populations, and so on, in keeping with the instructional shifts, or general goals, as alternatives to the specific grade-level standards of the CCSS. These would include any alternatives developed by particular districts, states, and organizations (such as the NCTE). So, the specific grade-level CCSS standards would become, under this proposal, ONE option among many.
3. Summative standardized testing based upon the general goals (rather than on the specific standards) would also become ONE OPTION that students and teachers could choose to use to demonstrate achievement, and other options–in particular, performative assessment portfolios–would be made available as an alternative. In other words, individual students would be able to opt to demonstrate proficiency via one of the new national exams as one among various alternatives for demonstrating achievement. Professionals would be encouraged to develop and post for national use performative assessement portfolio guidelines for specific domains within the subject areas.
Clearly, the current situation–all this heat without light–is unsustainable and counterproductive. No one is well served by all this petty wrangling–by the “standards wars.”
And that is why I have suggested this alternative, which has as a major merit that the work that has been done to date under the CCSS aegis would not have been in vain but would become one of a number of options for particular schools, teachers, and students going forward.
I don’t know about all of you, but I am tired of this civil war over the new standards. Thus my suggested compromise.
As Rodney King said, “”Can we all get along?”
LikeLike
quote: ” Whether English teachers are qualified to oversee subject area reading (e.g., to choose appropriate readings in science, history, and technical subjects).”
I have spent my entire life with this goal…. there are debates within the college faculty when the NCATE (CAEP) standards are discussed. There is so much worthy of discussion and dialogue here but the policy wonks reduce it to the “fish ” or “cut bait” , etither/or, and the faculty become more polarized (as I have seen in the decades of teacher preparation in Massachusetts) and then we end up with an NCTQ ranking of our university programs. I could go into specifics here on the program of one of the colleges where I have worked on NCATE but I will spare you the details.
Bob Shepherd has given us a lot to think about in the field and working with teacher candidates, school staff in their buildings as part of staff development , and even working with parents to encourage them to support the high school students through this “swamp” created by A. Duncan, Mitchell Chester (governing board), and yes, Dave Driscoll (former commissioner of MA)….
I can’t thank you enough Bob; you cut through a lot of the verbiage to the heart….
LikeLike
So, how would my suggestion play out in a place like Louisiana?
1. The state would adopt the “instructional shifts” as general guidelines.
2. The state would declare the CCSS ONE alternative that a given school might adopt to indicate that it is taking the instructional shifts seriously.
3. The state would work invite educators to participate in development of alternatives to the CCSS also aligned with the instructional shifts (but taking into account critiques of those). Those alternatives might include a set of voluntary, alternative, state standards aligned with the instructional shifts.
4. The state would make the summative standardized tests available as a voluntary option that a student may choose to demonstrate his or her proficiency. The state would develop an alternative involving performance portfolios to be prepared by students, with help from the teachers, on an ongoing basis, to be submitted in lieu of demonstrating proficiency via the standardized tests . Educators around the state would be paid to do evaluation of these portfolios, which might include a wide variety of materials–writing, projects, summative classroom tests, etc.
LikeLike
quoting Bob S1. The state would adopt the “instructional shifts” as general guidelines.
Currently, in Mass. this has not happened… it is “everybody get on the band wagon” or else.
And, it started out with the (a) NCLB where Ted Kennedy gave over too much in an effort to be bipartisan (b) and now Arne Duncan with his withdrawal of funds when a state does not comply. In order to “comply” the Mass. Governor and the Commissioner (M. Chester) who were the only two signing the RTTtop application), were brought into the corporate fold …. that is why I say that Jindal was used as a “chump” and FL (with Jeb Bush) was promoted as a “lead state”?????
I keep writing to Governor Patrick he has taken the state of Mass backwards and has harmed us greatly with the over testing and mis-use of tests. For another decade the students and teachers will just have to “freeze” or “run” when approached with anything called a “test.” In special education, the psychologist was taught to approach the child with “we are going to play these games” because it was well known that a “test” would have a reaction from the child.
LikeLike
This suggestion maintains accountability, saves the work that has already gone into the Common Core, provides a means for ongoing innovation, and preserves local, school-based autonomy.
Now, wouldn’t that be better than all this rancor?
We all need to put aside our egos and put the kids first.
LikeLike
And recognize that there are dedicated, well-intentioned educators on both sides of these “standards wars.”
I have been a critic of many of the specific CCSS standards for ELA. I do not think them the last possible word on what we should measure or what our learning progressions should be. And I am suspicious of centralization and regimentation that precludes innovation and the flexibility needed to deal with the very real needs of differing students.
I’ve seen some TERRIBLE CCSS materials. I have also seen some that were really superb–that innovatively attempted to achieve the goals articulated in those “instructional shifts.” I recently reviewed, for example, a new textbook product for challenged students that did an AMAZING job of providing scaffolding for some pretty sophisticated texts. And I’ve seen some truly SUPERB modules that have been created by teachers working collaboratively within an LDC format.
LikeLike
I very much want to see us get beyond all this yelling at one another across the aisle and start spending our time on matters like thinking about how to teach kids about how stories work and how to train them to be superb researchers.
On that last note, I recently read a GREAT study that reveals that it is basically a MYTH that kids, today, are “digital natives” who don’t need to learn how to use the Net. It revealed appalling unevenness and gaps in their familiarity with basic techniques and concepts in computer-assisted research. And though the study didn’t deal with this specifically–I suspect that those gaps are HUGE across the low-SES/high-SES divide.
LikeLike
I agree Bob. I am a special education supervisor of a Louisiana school district. While we will probably continue working with CCSS, we are happy to be out of PARCC. We have invested lots of money in new CCSS resources for teachers, while working with them to create a curriculum that works with our students needs. My biggest worry has been how our high poverty and special needs students would do on the computerized PARCC test. These students are definitely NOT digital natives. Our schools are also not even close to being prepared technologically to administer the tests. We have spent way too much money preparing for the PARCC test. This money would have been better invested in resources for our students. Can’t wait to see how this plays out. Seems like the Ed Deform movement is beginning to collapse upon itself. But not before doing much harm to our public education system.
On another note, here is an interesting read.
There is an interesting article here on how New Orleans miracle schools are really a slight of hand of data manipulation.
Click to access RSDClosingOpeningChangingCodes.pdf
LikeLike
quote: “MISCELANEOUS RESEARCH ON COMMON CORE IN LOUISIANA
Posted 5/19/13
user 9090133
Kenner, LA
Post #: 3,841
LOUISANA APPLICATION FOR 2009 STIMULUS (ARRA) FUNDS
Agreement for student data base etc
http://nces.ed.gov/pr…
this can be obtained from a google search of “Louisiana ” “MOU” “PARCC”
I am pointing it out not necessarily recommending the source….
LikeLike
i have some compassion for Jindal; Arne Duncan’s boys have made Jindal look like a “patsy” or a “chump”….. this is the statement from the PARCC Bylaws ….
quote:”Section 2.2 Governing States. Governing States, having agreed to make the strongest commitment to PARCC and its activities, therefore shall have the primary authority, responsibilities, and obligations for PARCC. The eleven founding Governing States, at the time of PARCC’s submission of an application to the US Department of Education for Race to the Top Assessment funds were: Arizona,

PARCC Bylaws Adopted: April 12, 2012 Page 2
District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Tennessee.”
I keep writing to the Governor of MA and telling him that M. Chester is over-stepping his role in trying to convince all the states to go with PARCC…. I imagine M. Chester will have a job with PARCC in the future.
But why is the Corporate of PARCC telling the governor of LA what he can and cannot do ?????? We have a failure of governance here. Only two people in MA signed off on the Race to the Top in our state the Governor and M. Chester.
LikeLike
re-read deutsch at:
also, re-read Edushyster’s “PARCC PLACE’ describing the MOU.
I think M. Chester wants Jindal to look like a chump anyway (democrat to republican) but this is not what I want for the public schools — just to make Jindal into somekind of “patsy” for Arne Duncan — they set him up.
LikeLike