Valerie Strauss reports on an important statement signed by more than 100 education researchers, asserting that the Common Core standards will not improve the achievement of the neediest students and will not reduce the achievement gaps between haves and have nots. Furthermore, the education researchers recommended that high-stakes exams should be abandoned, because they are not reliable, valid, or fair.
She writes:
“The researchers, from public and private universities in California — including Stanford University, UCLA, and the University of California Berkeley — say that the Common Core standards themselves do not accomplish what supporters said they would and that linking them to high-stakes tests actually harms students.
The brief says:
Although proponents argue that the CCSS promotes critical thinking skills and student-centered learning (instead of rote learning), research demonstrates that imposed standards, when linked with high-stakes testing, not only deprofessionalizes teaching and narrows the curriculum, but in so doing, also reduces the quality of education and student learning, engagement, and success. The impact is also on student psychological well-being: Without an understanding that the scores have not been proven to be valid or fair for determining proficiency or college readiness, students and their parents are likely to internalize failing labels with corresponding beliefs about academic potential.
More specific to California: a recent study on the effects of high-stakes testing, in particular of the CA High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE), found no positive effects on student achievement and large negative effects on graduation rates. The authors estimated that graduation rates declined by 3.6 to 4.5 percentage points as a result of the state exit-exam policy, and also found that these negative effects were “concentrated among low-achieving students, minority students, and female students.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
Hype and the “engineering of consent” aside, was Common Core ever about helping students, or was it just another so-called reform scheme (and business opportunity) to punish public schools and public school teachers, and thus open the way to privatizing them?
“The Crumbling Core”
The Common Core’s imploding
And won’t be worth a dime
The main support’s eroding
And will collapse in time
The House of cards is leaning
The Queen of spades is gripped
The King of clubs is screaming
As Crumbling Core is tipped
“Common Core Inspires Critical Thinking”
The Common Core
Inspires critiques
And many more
Than old techniques
Inspires critiques
Of Common Core
Of VAMmy geeks
And Coleman lore
Of reading close
And standard test
Reformer boast
And all the rest
is Valerie straus the only honest education reporter in America?
Jeff Bryant. There are a few others. Strauss is probably the only one writing for a mainstream publication, though.
Years after test-score abuses have devastated an all-student inclusive education in our inner-city district (we are now one of the most achievement-segregated districts in the nation) you’ll still find that the overwhelming majority of mainstream “journalists” in our city not only still adamantly support test-score reform, but throw an undisguised disdain onto anyone who advises against it.
“Take a Memo”
Broadly speaking, “journalist”
Is “one who takes dictation”
Truth and fact are simply dissed
With focus on sensation
Yup! Great
Sent from my iPhone
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CCSS and high stakes testing are NOT the same thing. Yet, this article links them throughout. Can we please separate these two different things? Standards are standards. Tests are tests. Sure, high-stakes testing is flawed in many ways. Just because these tests are based on the CCSS doesn’t inherently imply that the CCSS are flawed.
And no, of course standards themselves do not improve achievement. Teachers, well trained in the standards that are being used, help improve student achievement. In order for teachers to be well-trained, teachers/schools/districts need time and resources to train them. If the implementation of the CCSS is “botched,” it is because the resources for adequate training has not been forthcoming.
Teachers who have adequate time and resources improve achievement. Teachers who have support to help their students through issues such as poverty, hunger, trauma, can improve achievement. Teachers who are fighting against all of these things, while simultaneously having to defend their professionalism, are getting more and more demoralized.
When I have gone to core training, I have been given the idea that no one tried to get much out of the students before common core. This is insulting to all who have gone before who have tried their best to get students to do this sort of work. Then when the core is accompanied by testing, the implication is that the only reason students are not learning at a high level is the teachers. If the core standards were appropriate for all students, good teachers would have been largely successful already. They are not. These standards have failed because experienced teachers had nothing to do with their creation.
Kirsten, no one said standards and tests were the same thing. Because research proves the tests harm kids and were botched from the start, there seems to be an effort to salvage CC and distance the standards from the tests that bear their name.
I submit to you that CC is just as bad though. There is nothing wrong with good standards and CC includes some, but the bigger issues are:
1 – standardizing every school in the nation with benchmarks tied to age instead of functional ability. This philosophy has been part and parcel of CC from the start, failing to recognize established science in the natural pace of child development, as well as disability, language, absenteeism, trauma and more. In short, CC is an effort to verticalize education, an efficiency practice best suited for businesses.
2- the federal government had no authority to leverage states to adopt CC, which was only forced on us through economic blackmail/bribery. This tips us off that this is a top-down program which brings us to:
3 – corporate funding rained down on politicians in order to get them to support education reform including CC. Ironically CC was never actually voted on in Congress or state legislatures, rather it was “forced” onto state Ed officials and governors in competing for cash incentives. When actually put to votes, CC lost. But the main mechanism used to push CC is the “revolving door”, or plum jobs offered to Ed dept officials who serve the CC bankrollers. Center for American Progress is an example, run by John Podesta who is the chief advisor to the Clintons.
4 – Common means common denominator which harms schools by slowing high performers (for example calculus disappearing since CC) and asking too much of low performers (how do higher standards help schools not meeting the previous standards?). CC has upended top schools who have decades of proven success, wasting time and money in transitioning to something lesser. In struggling schools, the increased rigor has expanded the number of “failing” schools, benefiting the corporate backers of CC who want closures and receivership to advance conversions to charters.
5- Besides standardizing and hamburgerizing students, CC is also being used as a vehicle to standardize teaching, a profession that used to welcome and value creative, out-of-the box thinkers who teach a million different ways. John Podesta himself said that the key to Ed reform success is amplifying the voices of compliant, younger teachers who don’t know how it was before.
I teach in a high needs inner city middle school with almost 100% poverty and about 90% of kids living with documented trauma and CC has been a joke, forcing teachers to concentrate on age-based content even though our population needs to go way back to lower grade fundamentals. The tests do not allow us to teach on the right level, and displace funding for all the needed services you mentioned. It’s become obvious from the rich, corporate backers who astroturf and buy elections that withholding adequate time and training for teachers to implement CC was a feature, not a bug.
Finally, the it’s a travesty that the researchers mentioned above had to go through all this. it means we are still “playing stupid” in using facts and data to continually whack-a-mole policies that were obviously, deliberately designed to make kids fail, make schools fail and set the stage for privatization. The best way forward is not clinging to CC’s arbitrary, narrow set of standards, but restoring teacher autonomy, cutting the “strings attached” so schools have local control, and recognizing that struggling students need wraparound services, not increased academic rigor pegged to the performance of the Massachussetts suburbs.
All the labeling associated with standardized testing fails to help the bottom quintile of students. The labeling impacts their self image the same way retention does. It is better to measure their progress against themselves, and not compare them to others. Reminding them they are on the bottom is similar to beating them with a stick. It does more harm than good.
CCSS and high stakes testing are NOT the same thing. Yet, this article links them throughout. Can we please separate these two different things? Standards are standards. Tests are tests. Sure, high-stakes testing is flawed in many ways. Just because these tests are based on the CCSS doesn’t inherently imply that the CCSS are flawed.
And no, of course standards themselves do not improve achievement. Teachers, well trained in the standards that are being used, help improve student achievement. In order for teachers to be well-trained, teachers/schools/districts need time and resources to train them. If the implementation of the CCSS is “botched,” it is because the resources for adequate training has not been forthcoming.
Teachers who have adequate time and resources improve achievement. Teachers who have support to help their students through issues such as poverty, hunger, trauma, can improve achievement. Teachers who are fighting against all of these things, while simultaneously having to defend their professionalism, are getting more and more demoralized.
Maybe theoretically, in some alternate universe, it’s possible to have standards and tests that are separate from each other. But in this universe, the CCSS are inextricably linked to the purpose they were created – to make sure that all students are learning the same things. The only way to ensure that is the tests that were created to be aligned with the CCSS. You cannot decouple the tests and the standards.
Kirsten,
Are you sure the CCSS standards are good ones? Yes, they are hyped as the key to critical thinking, problem-solving and high level literacy, but how do you know this is not just hype? You speak about training –but are we sure we know how to train teachers to teach the skills that the standards delineate? I am doing some critical thinking myself: I see that these standards are untested. I see that they are leading to a radical new pedagogy that has no track record and could easily turn out to be a waste of time. I see fourth graders spending months on “point of view” and ELA curriculum that fixates on inane tasks like “Explain how the difference between Johnny’s and Sally’s points of view impacts the development of the plot” Yes, this is rigorous. But it also may be pointless. If it is pointless, then we’ve just flushed a whole generation of American kids’ education down the toilet.
The opportunity cost for these skill-centric standards is not teaching knowledge –in other words, accepting that our kids will remain ignorant (unless their parents enlighten them). Instead of kids learning about the Supreme Court, Islam, slavery, the toxins in our environment, trade policy, where Syria is on a map, Spanish, the principles of good nutrition, how to avoid concussions, the flora and fauna of one’s region and of the Amazon one learns about “point of view”. It galls me every time I hear reporters say Common Core teaches the “skills and knowledge” required for college and career. Take out that “knowledge”! Common Core is anti-knowledge. There is no knowledge except of a handful of fetishized concepts like “it’s important to find evidence for claims”. The rest of the world of knowledge counts for nothing in Common Core.
Ponderosa, The CCSS exist for 2 subjects only: Math and ELA (English Language Arts.)
(No worries, I am betting you are not the only one who didn’t know that. Probably lots of Washington Post readers don’t know that.)
So, no, students won’t be receiving instruction on the Supreme Court, Islam, slavery, the toxins in our environment, trade policy, where Syria is on a map, Spanish, the principles of good nutrition, how to avoid concussions, the flora and fauna of one’s region and of the Amazon and so on in their MATH or LANGUAGE ARTS classes.
Now, if we want our students to be able to understand those aforementioned topics well when they are directly studying them in their Social Studies, History, Science, Health, Botany, etc classes, you can be sure that being able to read texts critically and with deep understanding will certainly benefit them.
Diane, do you see what I mean? The public are misinformed. Be careful what you post.
“So, no, students won’t be receiving instruction on the Supreme Court, Islam, slavery, the toxins in our environment, trade policy, where Syria is on a map, Spanish, the principles of good nutrition, how to avoid concussions, the flora and fauna of one’s region and of the Amazon and so on in their MATH or LANGUAGE ARTS classes.”
Well, of course, but since the standards are so inextricably linked to the tests, and since schools’ and teachers’ futures depend on the test scores, there really aren’t any other classes besides math or language arts these days.
Incidentally, if the point of reading is to learn about the world, don’t you think reading should be part of the other subjects, rather than a subject in and of itself? At least after third grade or so.
What Kirsten doesn’t seem to understand is the degree to which the content rich subjects (science and social studies) have been pushed aside and given short shrift, tn favor of the empty skill sets prescribed by the CC standards and their conjoined twin the “test”. So by emphasizing skills that really can’t be taught and certainly can’t be tested, we have produce a dangerously large null curriculum.
Please stop dragging out the “implementation” excuse. There isn’t enough time in the world or enough resources in state ed coffers to improve upon the bogus snake oil standards that are the Common Core.The Common Core standards and their prescribed pedagogy now have a inarguable record of FAILURE.
Kirsten,
I am a teacher and I am informed. What I see is ELA crowding out other subjects –especially in elementary school. You trust that kids are learning to “read texts critically and with deep understanding”. I do not. You trust that practicing analysis of random texts makes you an advanced and capable reader. I do not. I agree with E.D. Hirsch and cognitive scientist Dan Willingham that reading comprehension is mostly a matter of deploying background knowledge of vocabulary and world knowledge and that therefore the only true reading instruction (after teaching decoding) is teaching content. Please get informed yourself: there is considerable controversy about the best way to teach reading and Common Core represents only one view (and in my estimation, it’s the wrong view).
Oh Ponderosa! The CCSS does not “represent one view” or any view about how to teach reading. It is a set of standards. They do not prescribe any particular way/method/curriculum for teaching reading. I, too, agree with E.D. Hirsch and his emphasis on content knowledge. Was ELA not crowding out other subjects before the CCSS in your state? It was in mine. Why? High stakes testing. That is the problem here. Not the CCSS.
Kirsten,
It seems to me that the CCSS, through the way they’re written, strongly imply that learning to read well means practice at making inferences, exposure to complex texts, analyzing point of view, etc. In other words, learning to read equals practicing the skills enumerated in the standards. I’d guess that 99% of districts are going whole hog on this skills-centric approach to teaching reading because of the CCSS’s skills-centric verbiage. True, most of the old state standards were skills-centric too, and the skills approach has become the (wrong-headed) orthodoxy in America, but the CCSS perpetuates this error. Show me one district where the CCSS is interpreted to mean that kids need to systematically build their background knowledge in order in improve their “complex text reading skills”.
“CCSS and high stakes testing are NOT the same thing. Yet, this article links them throughout. Can we please separate these two different things? Standards are standards. Tests are tests.”
The funny thing about that the source of this supposed “confusion — the folks who initially drew the linkage between standards and tests and tests and curriculum were the very people behind common Core.
the folks who were responsible for Common Core understood *****and actually counted on ***** the fact that “teachers will teach toward the test”.
David Coleman has even used those very words and indicated that tests should be designed and developed with that in mind.
And Bill Gates indicated back in 2009 that the end goal was basically to get the curriculum and tests aligned to the standards.
Alignment of everything (curriculum and tests with the standards) for the express reason that teachers will (and should) “teach to the test” is completely incompatible with the idea that teachers will somehow be free to teach what and how they wish and that the standards do
It’s not clear where the “mythology” that the Common Core standards “do not prescribe any particular way/method/curriculum for teaching” and that teachers will be free to choose whatever curriculum and methods they desire to teach the standards” came from, but it clearly did not come from Coleman and Gates, who “birthed” the Common Core — with Coleman being the mother and Gates the midwife.
“is completely incompatible with the idea that teachers will somehow be free to teach what and how they wish and that the standards do not dictate that.”
From an articulate, extremely well informed charter member of the rheephorm establishment.
Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute:
[start]
If the standards are better than those that many states had in place, swell. If more common reading and math standards make things easier for material developers and kids who move across states, that’s fine. But I don’t think that stuff amounts to all that much.
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end]
For the above, and much valuable contextual information, go to—
Link: https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
😎
But Diane, The first 6 words of the article say “Education researchers blast Common Core standards….” And you yourself decry high-stakes testing (as do I). The public who reads the Washington Post may not fully understand that the CCSS are an actual entity unto themselves. They are not inherently linked to any particular high stakes test. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, please!
I am not here to necessarily defend the CCSS. My knowledge of them as a K-6 Elementary Educator and a K-12 ESL Educator leads me to believe that the math standards are excellent and the Reading standards may be too much for some of our younger students. I have had a lot of experience teaching the 3-6 math and ELA standards, but could definitely use more training on them to be even more effective. Unfortunately, when foul weather cancels our district’s workdays, we end up losing this time. When our state (NC) budget is cut, there is not enough money to pay subs for teachers to attend trainings. See the connections???
You say: “CCSS are inextricably linked to the purpose they were created – to make sure that all students are learning the same things.” Yes, they were created so that students are learning the same things across the participating states, but more so that instruction will be driven by standards that demand more conceptual understanding of topics.
I really wish that you would learn more about the details of the CCSS – the actual minutia of the standards and how they drive instruction – before you post this article by Strauss without any criticism or comment on it.
I think you are confusing me and Diane (the blog owner). Diane always posts under her full name. I would never pretend to be Diane – I’m just a schmo with an internet connection and a passionate interest in education.
Anyway, I think you are rather arrogant assuming that you are the only one who understands CCSS and that the critics do not. Plenty of people have studied the CCSS in detail and come away with plenty to critique. You would do well do do a “close reading” of some of those critiques.
“I really wish that you would learn more about the details of the CCSS – the actual minutia of the standards and how they drive instruction –”
Perhaps many of us here speak in a sort of shorthand, having exchanged opinions at length in recent years on detailed examinations of the CCSS. I wish I could figure out how to search Bob Shepherd’s comments to various blog posts, because he has done critiques on a number of individual ELA stds. And Michael Paul Goldenberg provides a different slant on Bob’s problems with New Criticism theory that underlies Coleman’s overall approach. (Goldenberg also has lots of good stuff on the math stds, see his rationalmathed.blogspot.com).
But just for starters on CCSS-ELA discussions, try these two:
https://dianeravitch.net/2013/04/14/robert-shepherd-a-closer-look-at-the-common-core-standards-2/
https://dianeravitch.net/2015/12/13/eric-brandon-explains-the-origins-of-close-reading-in-common-core/comment-page-1/
Finally: some good news!
Dienne, I *am* confusing the two of you. Apologies to Diane Ravitch!
You say that plenty of people have studied and critiqued the CCSS. I wonder if those who have studied the CCSS in detail have taught it with real kids in the real world. Like, for several years, in the way that actual teachers do? And with students who struggle, like I have, and many of my colleagues who support the CCSS have? Or perhaps actual teachers and students don’t really come into the equation? That sounds familiar…
Of course math and reading are not the only classes that are taught in America. They are often the only ones *tested*, that is true. They do receive a disproportional amount of time spent on them in elementary classes as well. But what does that have to do with the actual standards of the CCSS? Again, that has to do with our country’s obsession with high-stakes testing, not with the standards themselves.
And yes, of course I think reading should be a part of other subjects. Never said I didn’t.
“I wonder if those who have studied the CCSS in detail have taught it with real kids in the real world. Like, for several years, in the way that actual teachers do?”
You’re new around here, aren’t you? Yes, plenty of actual, practicing teachers have critiqued CCSS, here and elsewhere. You could search Diane’s archives for several examples. You could also check out Peter Greene’s blog (Curmudgucation) for several more examples. You really think every teacher is as wild about CCSS as you are?
Incidentally, when life-long engineers and scientists are told that they “just don’t understand math” because they are baffled by their second grader’s ridiculous math homework, I think that’s a pretty good indication that there’s a lot to critique about the math standards as well.
Actually, lots of very knowledgeable people have studied the standards and find them “wanting.” (to put it mildly)
Bob Shepherd an English teacher who has also spent 30 years developing curriculum thinks they are of “poor quality” (at least the English ELA ones.)
Seriously.
Read some of the stuff he has written (eg, here)
“What standards [sic] like these do is impose a regimen from the top that everyone must follow. This is what we have decided is important. All the stuff we left out is not. In this way, the standards [sic] discourage creative development of competing approaches that are better thought through, that are more in line with what is now known about the domains covered and about pedagogy in those domains. Standards [sic] like these–ones that are, de facto, mandatory–hamstring textbook writers, curriculum developers, and teachers, forcing them to address topics at random that are not part of a more carefully conceived overall learning progression.”
As you have noted before , NJ is using PARCC
as a graduation requirement under a complicated, phased in plan that currently allows other tests like the SAT, ACT, etc. as substitutes until 2020 when these alternatives would fall away.
NJ could learn from CA and throw out this plan.
Ponderosa, In my district, elementary teachers design units based on SS or Science standards joined with ELA (and sometimes math) standards. In most instances in class, students are not just reading “random” texts with the sole purpose of reading them closely, etc. The ELA CCSS are being implemented in the context of a larger, content-based project.
My district is far from perfect, the units are not perfect, and teachers struggle to find time to improve the units. But I can say I have seen a huge improvement in the quality of instruction since these methods of instruction began. (For context, I am an ESL teacher so my role is to scaffold instruction and support students in these units).
I am sure that not all districts or schools choose to or are able to implement the standards in the way my district does. Which points back to my very first post towards the top of this page. The issues here are 1) high-stakes testing, which pressures many districts into all kinds of practices that are not good for students, and 2) lack of time and resources to adequately develop curriculum/units/lessons. The CCSS, while perhaps backed by evil corporate America, is actually a pretty good (overall) set of standards for Math and ELA. Standards don’t create units though. They just sit there, inert, until someone with adequate time and resources can make something really great out of them for students. That is my point.
Kirsten,
You’re an ESL teacher so you will probably understand this: ALL students are ESL students. That is, they’re all learning English. They know some basic English, but they are far from having a full command of the 200,000 or so words in English. When you have an ESL student from, say, El Salvador, do you tell that student “You cannot read English because you don’t know enough about reading strategies. You need to learn standards like CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.5:
Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, or section fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas.” Or do you say, “You cannot read English because you don’t know enough English vocabulary”? I bet it’s the latter. The same ought to be true for our native-born students! They can’t read because they don’t know enough English vocabulary. And just as the best way of teaching a foreign language is to immerse the kid in a topical unit, e.g. the kitchen, that gives a context that will accelerate vocab acquisition, the best way to teach English to English speakers is to organize instruction around topical units (not thematic units, which can be too diffuse) such as the three branches of government, sports injuries, Hinduism, the court system, marshes, etc. Topics that are unfamiliar to kids, but which need to become familiar to kids. By teaching such content, we’re doing far more to make good readers, writers and citizens than trying to teach CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.5
Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, or section fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas! Ugh!