Bianca Tanis is a parent and teacher in New York, and a member of the board of the New York State Alliance for Parents and Educators.
She reviews the new new new brand-new Next Generation standards of New York State.
There are a few nice tweaks here and there, but overall it is the same old Common Core with a new name.
The most glaring issue is the State’s refusal to veer from the flawed Common Core Anchor Standards. Given what we now know of the Common Core–the lack of grade level practitioner input, the lack of a basis in research, and the lack of any pilots or studies–the commitment to these anchor standards reveals the State’s commitment to a failed reform agenda and a misguided adherence to the belief that “rigor” will ameliorate the impact of poverty, under-funded schools, and institutionalized racism.
For many months, parents and educators have been expressing concerns regarding the PreK-2 standards. These concerns were well-founded. The newly adopted prekindergarten standards require that 3 and 4 year-olds display “emergent reading behaviors with purpose and understanding.” The prekindergarten standards also require that preschoolers make “connections from read-alouds to writing.” I would imagine that nothing kills a 3 or 4 year old’s love being read to than being asked write a reading reflection.
Many young, vulnerable children are being set up for failure. May children will be considered “behind” on day one of kindergarten. These children are not lagging behind according to developmental norms. Rather, they have failed to live up to a standardized expectation that has nothing to do with their needs. Children are meant to move and explore, and sadly these standards ensure an increased focus on direct instruction and rug time.
Universal PreK programs will likely be obligated to adopt these standards, either by future regulation or by the need to meet expected outcomes. By creating a situation where only those who can afford private preschool programs will have a developmentally appropriate school experience, we are widening the opportunity gap and setting impoverished students up for failure and to be falsely identified as having “behavior issues.”
Don’t be fooled. It is the same rancid wine in the same old bottles.
It is the curse of David Coleman, who is determined to crush the joy of learning with standardized, lockstep inappropriate mandates.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My comment relates to what I observed from working with kindergarten ELLs for many years. Some K students are new arrivals that have to start at the very beginning in English. Moreover, some of these students enter from very poor or war torn countries all of which influences what they know, do not know and, to a large extent, how they feel.
Some ELLs are students that may have been born here, and they may have attended Head Start. However, all of the students live in homes where English is not usually the primary language. Most of these students have basic interpersonal communication, but still lack cognitive academic language. They have problems following directions since they may not know sequential and spatial words. These children already face language, content, experience and sometimes a social-emotional differences from most middle class students. Most do not live in homes where print and hands-on materials are available. They are still young children that need to learn from play, not from a two dimensional substitute.
While we do need to screen them in order to help them, nothing is gained and more can be lost by subjecting them to a lengthy, frustrating standardized tests. It occurs to me that many of those that promote charters because they reduce bureaucratic control are the same people that load public education up with useless, cumbersome testing.
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Every Child is different. When we respond to that we have no choice but to change the 18th century system of education. It is unethical and even immoral for those who open charter schools and others to pretend they are doing something different when they are not.
It is also unethical and immoral for those who go into the classroom every day to be forced to follow and outdated system that forces every child to be the same. According to Howard Gardner ¨The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all students as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same.”
The only way to accomplish this is to change the system to allow teachers to teach and students to follow their pathway to success. It is time for teachers to subvert the system from within. Stand up and take action in your classroom. To not do this is also unethical and immoral.
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Teachers and students were better off before the federal government got involved, and before the corporate assault. Teachers could devote their instructional time to truly helping students. Testing was not a club that hung over everyone’s head. Teachers had a say in the direction that schools and curricula took. Since “reformers” figured out they could make a profit from young people, decisions about education have been removed from the educators. Everything that comes from “reform” is a top down, bad idea.
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“we have no choice but to change the 18th century system of education.”
The schools have evolved quite a bit from those of the 1700s. To suggest that they haven’t as you have done caplee can easily be seen as unethical in that it is promoting a falsehood, really no different than the many falsehoods those charter operators.
And really? “for those who go into the classroom every day to be forced to follow and outdated system that forces every child to be the same.”
I know of no public school that “forces every child to be the same”-none!
I understand your desire to see a more student centered education but promulgating false accusations to get there is. . . unethical.
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Perhaps CapLee was simply suggesting that applying CCSS & its assessments to youngest learners is akin to turning the clock back toward 18thC methods. (And, as he noted, charters peddling ‘something different’ is a lie). “Forcing every child to be the same”– tho not how we’ve run public ed up thro ’90’s– is arguably the mentality at work behind the public ed policy changes of the last 15 yrs.
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The 18th century system and philosophy of education was defined by Thomas Jefferson as “raking a few geniuses from the rubbish” The geniuses go to college and the rest are thrown into the streets as rubbish.
Because there are letter grades that are a lie, a failure system that destroys children who aren’t at the same place at the same time on the chapter tests. a grade level system that forces teachers to either pass kids w/o learning or fail them into oblivion, a system that if they don’t graduate on time they are pushed into the streets, all force kids to be the same.
Unless public schools change they will perish. Wait a minute, I said that 10 years ago, and I was right. Traditional public schools are forced into a system that assures failure and then they blame the public school for failing. We need a system that lets teachers do their job.
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Okay, I see now what you meant by 18th century education. That certainly wasn’t clear at all from your statement.
And I agree that “grades are a lie”. No doubt.
And yes, public schools need to change from the standards and testing regime back into the direction they were heading at the end of the last century. This century has been a nightmare for the children in schools, unless the child’s parents have the resources to pay for private education with lower pupil to teacher ratios, a broad curriculum, and the other amenities we do not provide for the average student.
What I hear you railing against with this clarification is the absurd malpractices that have been foisted upon the public schools.
And until the teachers, for it won’t be the adminimals, stand up and say no more, well, students will continue to be abused, and abused is the right term.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
For many months, parents and educators have been expressing concerns regarding the PreK-2 standards. These concerns were well-founded. The newly adopted prekindergarten standards require that 3 and 4 year-olds display “emergent reading behaviors with purpose and understanding.” The prekindergarten standards also require that preschoolers make “connections from read-alouds to writing.” I would imagine that nothing kills a 3 or 4 year old’s love being read to than being asked write a reading reflection.
This sounds like the perfect recipe to teach children “how to hate school” in a few lesson.
We have a similar problem here in Texas at the high school level. We are forcing kids into classes they are not developmentally ready to be in. Then when they struggle it is the teacher’s fault.
This is what happens when non-educators make up education standards.
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It really is the teacher’s fault…but not just that 1 teacher, but the previous teachers also. As a parent it is frustrating to me that my children are subjected to poor curriculum pushed by the county/state and the teachers choose to teach that poor curriculum. I know it’s hard, but teaching to the test and drill and kill of skill sets is not teaching and teachers know this. If more teachers would just close their doors and teach like they know what is right, this wouldn’t be a problem when they get into HS and the grades really do matter. I’m waiting for teachers to start to take a stand and do what is right for children instead of just following the rules. The parents are interested now…..we need teachers to lead the way.
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As much as I like what you’re saying, that is not the reality we live in currently. If we don’t play the game then we are out of a job.
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Not just out of a job, but the school is in danger of being turned over to a charter. I teach in a school that was put into receivership. Common core, data collecting and analysis, and non stop testing is the gold standard. We worked our butts off (staff and students) and survived Cuomo’s threat to close our school. I wasn’t just trying to save my job. My kids deserve a neighborhood school that cares about them.
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I have to side with Lisa M on this point.
Until the teachers, for it certainly won’t be the adminimals, stand up and refuse, until the teachers actually do something to stop the madness nothing will change. But don’t count on the teachers unions to help in that regard either.
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But you will be out of a job soon enough anyway. CBL is creeping in and pretty soon the few teachers that remain will just be a “guide on the side”. If you want your job and love your profession, the time is NOW to start taking ownership. Speak out and shut your doors and teach what is right for students.
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Your national teachers unions have already sold you out. Your local school board is pushing the garbage. Your own school admin won’t speak up. Teachers…..speak up, do what’s right for your students, start talking to parents, start educating your students. You need to read Anatomy of a Betrayal by Emily Talmage
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I am a teacher. Union leadership is not
perfect, but my union is the reason I am able to enable to engage in activism and write pieces like this one. My fellow educators have been beaten down by years of ridiculous mandates and by having top down reforms forced down their throats. For years we have been told that we are to blame for the effects of poverty, that we have low expectations for our students, and that we must defer to the “experts.” It is not easy to change this culture of compliance.
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HORRORS! “The newly adopted prekindergarten standards require that 3 and 4 year-olds display “emergent reading behaviors with purpose and understanding.”
My response to the above: TOTALLY stupid. Good grief. How ridiculous. I personally don’t only read with purpose and understanding all the time. That is NOT MY ONLY GOAL and nobody can MAKE ME DO THAT STUOIDITY.
Will the deformers ($$$$$$$$$$) force 3- and 4-year olds to comply and have kids throwing up, crying, peeing, and acting out their frustrations?
Can we just encourage a LOVE OF READING?
This is a recipe for: How to “WRECK” LOVE of Reading 101 and produce kids who HATE reading.
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I just took a tour of the NY Common Core Preschool standards. Some time ago I analyzed all of the Common Core standards and created a spreadsheet to show how many standards in which categories and subcategories were allocated to each grade level. That exercise revealed the lack of rhyme or reason for grade-level placements. I started that exercise when some of the first “curriculum maps” for the CCSS were being published, and included checklists for teachers to show anyone that they had “covered” each grade level standard.
The impulse to make standards into checklists for accountability will no doubt be very strong, given that NY is all in for accountability.
Although there is a discussion of the importance of play in the introduction to the standards, I found fewer than 20 of the 227 standards explicitly referring to play as the context for children to demonstrate the behavior called for in the standards.
Given the mind-less faith in data-driven and standards-based instructionI tin NY and other states, I think some for-profit company will be selling a data dashboard and management system to help document the performance of every child on every standard.
How else can we possibly know if the preschoolers are properly standardized and on time for graduation to Kindergarten? How else can they be launched into and a long career of demonstrating they can meet the rest of the standards, grade-by-grade, and on time?
Nearly 100 people are credited with “contributing” to the preschool standards. I could find no documents speaking to their qualifications.
I hope that other states will not follow the lead of NY State. The Common Core is being rebranded, but it the cosmetic changes and impulse to specify behavioral indicators in such great detail is just a hair’s width away from specifying what to teach, what to have as curriculum resources, and what to test for.
Click to access nyslsprek.pdf
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There are already lots of individual differences among students starting kindergarten. If we think of kindergarten as a starting point in a race, there are many children already starting off three hundred yards behind. This is the unfortunate reality.
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Yes.
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A race, a stair–what terrible metaphors these deformers use!!! These completely warp their thinking. Where were they in English class?
School should be a garden with many paths.
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“the lack of rhyme or reason for grade-level placements”
indeed
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Kids differ. Standards do not. Anyone who cannot grok this should, for the safety of our children, be barred from schools.
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Then, the one size fits all tests based on the one size fits all standards blame the teachers when the poor students lag behind. This is given the euphemism of “accountability.” All of this testing does nothing to improve outcomes for poor students.
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Amen, Bob.
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This is another money-maker for the few. Sick!
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Three things about NY – we have the greatest economic disparity and we have a campaign finance system that turns politicians into servants of billionaires. We also have a “revolving door” that ensures officials who push testing, CC and charter schools are elevated into positions of power.
This is a bipartisan corporate takeover, going on for over a decade, and if you have any doubts this is true, watch this video where they admit it all: FULL VIDEO: 42 min – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWafXFPZWJQ
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