Angie Sullivan teaches kindergarten in Nevada. She writes often about the harm done to 5-year-olds by developmentally inappropriate demands inspired by Common Core.
State legislators don’t think twice about piling on impossible demands. Apparently none of them have children, none was ever a teacher. They think if you raise a standard, no matter how out of reach, it will be met. The Legislature might start with themselves: they should take high school graduation tests and publish their scores. They should run a four-minute mile, in public. Why not?
Angie Sullivan writes:
https://m.facebook.com/KTVN2/posts/808196485870280
John Eppolito on News 3 – What’s Your Point
Rory Reid and Amy Tarkanian:
As a school teacher and a liberal Democrat – I also oppose common core. I have joined John Eppolito’s group.
I have to teach common core because I am mandated. And I do my Kindergarten job as best I can . . . but common core is crazy.
For Example: There are no writing standards in common core for Kindergarten. So they pushed down third grade standards to teach in Kindergarten. My writing standard for my at-risk 5 year olds is . . . write a fact and opinion paper. Yep – one standard, write a paper. There is not one good kindergarten teacher out there that thinks THAT should be the standard for five year olds who need to learn to hold a pencil and write their name first.
As a primary teacher, I also speak out against common core because it is not developmentally appropriate. Obviously, no one was involved from the Early Childhood Community in writing these standards.
Across the nation Kindergarten Teachers are protesting against common core. Something is very wrong when you push down standards for second and third grade and they end up in a Kindergarten classroom.
National Early Childhood Experts have spoken out:
Click to access joint_statement_on_core_standards.pdf
When I have tried to speak to Nevada Democratic legislators about my concerns – I was told I was annoying. I don’t give them anything to work with? My opinion is not valued.
Noted.
And it is not stopping me from speaking out for my kids.
The support my lawmakers profess for common core – renamed Nevada Academic Standards – is blind to the reality in the classroom. Teaching almost everyone far above the place they are able to learn – at their frustrational level – does not work. And that strategy is in direct conflict with best teaching practice which would demand teaching at instructional level.
We have to implement common core because everyone else is doing this? Have you followed the national trend closely? Common Core is dying.
When the Nevada Standards became political and mandated by legislators . . . and you took standards out of the hands of teachers, the education experts — what did you think was going to happen?
How do I change a bad standard in Nevada now?
I’m also a mandatory reporter. My at-risk students are being harmed. So I report – is anyone listening?
The testing connected with these standards is ridiculous and useless. And this is what we spend our limited funds on now? Millions of dollars spent to test and fail – rather than to support and instruct students.
And yes – common core and testing are a package deal . . . and both do affect curriculum – and it’s a lie to state otherwise
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And all of the above leads me to fully believe this is about money and not about kids.
I am convinced that there has been a huge national campaign to invalidate educators and years of real education research — so that corporations can make a profit implementing junk science like common core.
Someone is making millions and billions — it is not helping my Nevada students.
Angie
Kindergarten Teacher
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“So they pushed down third grade standards to teach in Kindergarten.”
Yes, and they took freshman college assignments and shoved these down to grades nine/ten.
The process is called backmapping or reverse engineering.
One of the specific examples in the CCSS for ELA, grades 9-10, is comparing a painting by Bruegel and poem by Auden, a test item recycled from the American Diploma Project (forerunner of the CCSS).
The example is so hackneyed for college English courses that the following key words will get you about 40,000 hits and a roster of some of the colleges that include this assignment. bruegel + auden
The backmapping technique was given a high profile in training troops during WWII and in the earliest days of computer-based programmed instruction.
Of course, the creators of the CCSS had zero qualifications to think about education, least of all kindergarten.
And that standard always makes me smile (or cringe, not sure) because it uses those two works as an example of two different treatments of the same event, but the relationship between them is more complex; it’s not just two different works about Icarus. Auden’s poem is specifically about Breughel’s painting, so that is an example of one work of art that responds to another work of art. Not two works of art that happen to be about the same (mythological) event.
Gloria. Thanks for spelling correction. Agree 100% on the slip between the standard and the example. I had a brief conversation about this item with someone at CCSS, just after the draft standards were produced. The person who responded acknowledged the example was recyled from The American Diploma project and not at all concerned that it had been shoved down from college to grades 9/10. As I recall she said it was “just an example.”
I ran into that Auden and Breugel pairing in the Scott, Foresman literature anthology issued to me as a senior in high school back in 1967.
These PARCC sample test items for 10th grade ELA try to milk the Daedalus-Icarus story, very lamely in my opinion, with an excerpt from an old fashioned translation of Ovid and a poem by Anne Sexton:
http://www.parcconline.org/samples/english-language-artsliteracy/grade-10-ebsr-literary-analysis-task
Basic literary terms I introduced or reviewed with students in 9th grade a decade ago are now being introduced to kids as young as six. This sort of “backmapping” really is mindbogglingly stupid.
Yes, absolutely stupid.
I don’t understand how the nation can just turn it’s back on decades of valid developmental research . . .and do any of this?
Reblogged this on logging entries in my life and commented:
I had to share this one with you all… Please pressure your representatives to reconsider and reject Common Core. There is nothing common about it. No common sense has been used in its formulation, no real world experience in teaching has been used in the planning. Not one of those who have funded it are actually real-life teachers. They are rich, ignorant, arrogant and have no thought except to “program” their future employees so that they will not object to being slaves. I can cite several artists, writers, and futurists who would be appalled at the realization of their collective Worst Case Scenarios. Fight the tide back. Take back controls of our schools. Replace any legislator who backs this crap.
On the other hand, just to play Devil’s Advocate, I wish my daughter’s HS honors English teacher would take a look at the Common Core, and stop giving them assignments like “write a one page letter to someone about something you would like to explore some day–you may want to do some research!” or “drawing on passages from chapters 4 and 5 in Frankenstein, make a visual representation of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as he created and animated the monster.” So my daughter, joker that she is, wrote to the deceased Joan Rivers about whether or not there is a heaven and hell (grade: 44 plus 5 points for “humor”, major deductions for absence of “research”) and for the Frankenstein assignment, cut and pasted pictures from the internet. My dining room table looks like it did when my kids were in elementary school–paper scraps, glue sticks, colored pencils everywhere. When my daughter has to write (e.g. a lab report for biology, or a social studies essay), she cries “I don’t know how to write! They never taught us how to write!” I am dreaming of the day when she comes home with an English assignment along the lines of “prepare a thoughtful and sustained discussion, drawing on a variety of rich informational and literary resources, in which you develop and advance an original point of view [about some juicy question]. Revise, edit and polish your work.” Only in my dreams . . .
You make an important point here. CCSS is in some ways a reaction to the vapid pedagogy that you describe. It reminds me to be more judicious about which parts of the CCSS I attack and which parts of the past I defend.
My approach to this is to have each child cite something that they like, such as…”I like apples”, or “I like pizza.”. That is, after all, an opinion. We write it on a shared writing chart, or make a book/collection of each of our “I like” writing. We just have to stick to our knowledge about best practice and the nature of the child. If we don’t, then there is no use….at all. Why would we be required as teachers to have highly accredited status requiring early childhood degrees if we would so readily enact classroom practice that was counter to that knowledge and experience base? Simple…either a. don’t, or b. design a narrative that explains the execution of the standard in the best light according to early childhood development. Alter the experiencing of the standard to fit the learner.
PS…the only true opinion that most four and five year olds can have is “I am the center of the known universe”. I always chuckle at the “consider the viewpoints of others” standard. This is about development, pure and simple.
An article I wrote, titled,”Warning: The Common Core Standards May Be Harmful to Children was published in the Phi Delta Kappan in 2013.
Joanne Yatvin
There’s no link to the Kappan article, but here’s one to the Network for Public Education where the article was re-published. I hope it is helpful to Angie sullivan and other elementary grade teachers.
http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/news/warning-the-common-core-standards-may-be-harmful-to-children-kappan/
I retired in 2012. This year I decided to begin subbing. I have subbed in all grades K-4. It has been interesting to see what each grade is doing/required to do. CCSS is posted in each room, reflecting content and standards being taught that day/week/hour. The content HAS been shoved down to lower and lower grade levels. There is no doubt.
As a 4th grade teacher, I presented a very demanding, rigorous curriculum to those students. Now, with the onset of CCSS being full blown, and with my subbing experiences ongoing, I can verify that teachers are required to teach developmentally inappropriate skills and content.
Examples: 4th grade – Constitution Day – concepts and vocabulary that are unfamiliar to most adults. If they can’t read it or pronounce it, how do they understand it, esp in a very intense lesson taking place without background knowledge.
2nd grade- expecting students to understand and explain 3 digit additon and subtraction problems with and without zeroes and regrouping (during the first 9 weeks), 2nd grade – stressing out about writing details for the main idea when rushed for time due to having 15 minute reading groups, requiting teacher attention to assist but no real time to do what needs to be done, kindergarten – moving on with reading, writing a letter per day, along with Phonics Dance, moving ALL kids along as if they are ALL mastering the concepts and skills…they aren’t. Not having time to really establish skills of neatness, accuracy, fine motor skills, etc to establish good habits because students need to move forward every day with the students in all 5 rooms.
These are just a sampling of things that I feel will impede the advancement of real learning. It will definitely produce insecurity and frustration for students and teachers. The expectations are unrealistic.
I am not saying that ALL students are struggling. I am saying that when expectations are demanded of EVERY student, we aren’t allowing those who struggle the right to learn at their own pace. I think it is cruel.
We are also, by law, (and by conscience), supposed to have time to deal with bullying, depression, child abuse, sex abuse, health issues, violence. Somehow, these things are expected to be absorbed almost instantly or by osmosis.
Then we have the expectation that kindergartners, who don’t know the alphabet, can perform keyboarding skills and take MAP tests to show their skills …and the teacher’s skills.
Why? Why? Why?
As an aside, for training as a sub in Ohio, we have to complete “modules” about drugs, alcohol, sex, physical, and other forms of abuse, about depression, about airborne pathogens, etc. These modules are 45-60 minute slideshows with about 500-700 bullet points listed, with an instant follow up test of 20 questions. I am sorry, but without my experience and background, I wouldn’t have scored so well. To bombard a person with intensive lists and ideas to memorize does not offer proof of understanding or knowledge.
Is this the manner in which we will learn for all future time? If so, absurd.
It sounds like the students are receiving a very fragmented, disconnected day and that the goal is to “cover” everything without taking the time to learn anything with any depth of understanding.
Well, there is daily continuity. I feel that there is an expectation of covering information as fast as possible. Then remediation takes place afterwards at intervals. I suppose those who “get it” at the first go around will advance and the needed remediation takes place by the end of third grade. I just think that there is little time to master what is needed during the allotted time. With further expectations each subsequent year, I wonder what will happen to those who just can’t “keep up”,
“Examples: 4th grade – Constitution Day — concepts and vocabulary that are unfamiliar to most adults….”
…including our President and a majority of Supreme Court Justices.
Hey, that gives me an idea: maybe Harvard Law School should have a “Constitution Day.”
For anybody who is interested, this evening in Richmond, VA, the staff of GH Reid Elem. School, will be fighting to retain their principal, Mr. Vincent Darby. The School Board meeting is at 6pm. Apparently, the administration wants to remove him (found out one week ago) because our data has moved to Priority status. Removing him would mean upheaval of a community just beginning on the Leader in Me Program by Stephen Covey and access to a fat federal/state fund check for continued technology upgrades, professional development, etc.
Sound scammish? I think it is money talking and not human. It is the tip of the iceberg. If you know anyone in this area or any news official, please inform them and let’s make this a Win-Win situation for all!
It appears that Nevada pols really want to destroy a child’s self esteem, a parent’s sanity and a teachers career. Oh, and destroy public education and a child’s love of learning and curiosity. I’m not fazed by this. I’ll just go back to reading Alice in Wonderland. Then perhaps it will all make sense. Perhaps.
The law of diminishing returns is also a corporate model……
Pertinent information for Kindergarten Parents:
Alliance For Childhood Tips for Parents: When Kindergarten Testing Is Out of Hand
Click to access tips_on_testing.pdf
Common Core seems to be designed for an entire population of Hermoine’s from the Harry Potter books. Somehow we’ve lost the diversity of an entire range of students.
And I find the parents who are clueless to this reality are most often parents whose kids exhibit that kind of test oriented perfection or who still believe their more complex kids should become Hermoine’s – whether they are or not…
CCSS promoters and policymakers who force 5-year-old kids to write opinion paper are way dumber than kindergarteners.
“All I really need to know I learned in smoke-filled back rooms.” (apologies to Robert Fulghum)
0. *****Always accept grant money from Bill Gates.****
1. Test everything that moves (even the classroom goldfish)
2. Play with cut scores.
3. Don’t hit teachers (Just fire them)
4. Always leave things in more chaos than when you found them.
5. NEVER (EVER!!) CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS.
6. Never admit you are wrong and never (ever!) say you are sorry.
7. Wash your hands of everything that goes wrong.
8. Flush after each school closing.
9. VAMs and failings (students, teachers, schools) are good.
10. Unions and teacher independence and creativity in the classroom are bad.
11. Mandate a Fair and Balanced (TM) curriculum – teaching some Common Core math and some close reading and never (ever) allowing students to draw or paint or sing or dance or play or go out for recess and making sure they do a minimum of 4 hours homework every day (especially in kindergarten)
12. Take a shot of whiskey every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for Diane Ravitch, hold secret meetings, and stick together.
14. Beware the American Statistical Association. Remember Vergara: The student test scores go down and the teacher firings go up and nobody really knows how or why, but we all like that.
15. Statistics and standardized tests and VAMs – they all lie. So do we.
16. And then remember the Common Core books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – Test”
No writing standard, so they just randomly picked one? I’m a certified tutor in a high-risk elementary school. Our kindies are expected to write a topic sentence with supporting details, I think by the end of the year. Most of these kids come in not knowing a single letter in their names. I think all this Common Core and pushing the standards to lower grades are a perversion of the “hold high expectations, and kids will rise to them” mantra.
Tress are green. I like green trees. There, Done!
my spelling is like a 5 year old, sorry
“Millions of dollars spent to test and fail – rather than to support and instruct students.
And yes – common core and testing are a package deal . . . and both do affect curriculum – and it’s a lie to state otherwise.”
Bravo! Great points, beautifully stated.
There are Common Core writing standards for kindergarten.
W.K.2 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative texts….name what they are writing about…supply some information.
W.K.3 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event…
W.K.5 With guidance and support from adults, respond to questions and suggestions…
W.K.6 With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools…
W.K.7 Participate in shared …writing projects…
W.K.8 With guidance and support from adults, recall information …to answer a question…
Even in third grade, there is not a standard that says, “Write a fact & opinion paper.” Opinion pieces are one standard (W.3.1) and informative pieces are another (W.3.2).
Bravo Angie from Nevada! I emphatically agree with you! I teach 3rd grade in a Title 1 school, and this is our first of three years as a Priority school, or SIG school (school improvement grant). I am not only offended that our district leaders demonstrated their ‘buy-in’ that teachers are the problem, so let’s get rid of them. I’ve been telling people, including district personnel, that we were made to be a failing school with the boundaries that the district created. We are not a neighborhood school – we have 6 overcrowded buses that transport some 500 students 1 hour a day; 30 minute ride to and then from school. Those students are immigrants, refugees, legacies of gang families, drugs, violence, abuse, neglect….I’m sure you recognize those family environments. We have the highest rate of mobility in the state at 51%. We have the highest rate of chronic absenteeism in the state at 30% or more. Our numbers change weekly, not monthly or quarterly, weekly. We have over 40 different languages spoken (not 40 students) and a part-time ESL instructor. We just got a full-time psychologist, a full-time social worker, and thanks to an outside non-profit agency dedicated to helping our school, we will get 2 more social workers who can case manage with students and their families.
For years teachers at my school have been speaking out almost screaming for help! We’ve been asking for interpreters, full-time psychologists and social workers, help with our chronic absenteeism, and the extremely high rate of students with mental health issues and behavior problems. I had a 3rd grader a few years ago bring a gun to school. (And people think teachers should carry a concealed weapon?) on top of all that and more, rumors have cycled around that teachers at my school were so bad that they were fired or surplussed to other schools. Far from the truth! Due to the dedicated and influential association, they bargained with the district to give teachers the option of staying at our school, or being surplussed. We made our decisions based on what wa explained to us, are the requirements of the grant.it was the most difficult decision t make for all of us; I had the pleasure of working with highly deducted and committed teachers with almost no turn-around rate.
So now we are a few months into the school year. Every week teachers have been pulled out for half day or full day trainings, meetings, or PLCs. When do we get to really teach all the great new things we are learning? We aren’t in our classes long enough to master implementing a new approach! Phrases like “building the plane as we are flying”, or “it should work”, or “teach smarter not harder” or any other, are being very monotonous and and worthy of a sarcastic laugh. The relevant training and collaboration that are participating in, is exactly what we’ve been screaming about for years! And now, because of a label and a grant, we get it. But what puzzles me is that these trainings we are attending, include several other schools in my district, who are not SIG schools! I know they are Title 1, but not a SIG school. Some of those teachers don’t even know what a SIG school is! I don’t understand this at all! Those of us who are veterans in the field, and at our school can see the writing on the walls and understand the red tape issues; but the 7 first-year teachers are already crying behind closed doors. I don’t know if they’ll make it to the end of the year?
I have a mission as an advocate for education, students, and teachers. I will speak up as much as possible, where ever possible, to get my schools’s story out there. I know my school is not alone in this situation, but every story needs to be heard so others can begin to see and understand what our big businesses and self-righteous politicians have done to public education. It’s time that teachers take back our profession and own it like the experts we are! Unfortunately, we are bullied into believing that we could lose our jobs if we speak out. It’s happened already!
My favorite phrase of all, “You might not be interested in politics, but politics is definitely interested in you.”
Kindergarten teachers need to report CCSS to DCFS as “child abuse.” Children are being harmed. Is this even possible? It would be amazing if millions of complaints were filed.