Remember all the bold promises about Common Core? Remember the claims that it would increase achievement for all students and close the achievement gap? That’s what David Coleman (architect of the Common Core and now president of the College Board, maker of the SAT) claimed, along with a plethora of Gates-funded advocates for Common Core.
Never happened. National NAEP scores flatlined, and scores for the poorest kids dropped.
Here is the latest from New York, which embraced the Common Core wholeheartedly.
Since the introduction of the Common Core, the proportion of students in New York who scored zero on the state writing tests has doubled. In addition, the achievement gap has grown.
An alarming number of NYC students have scored three or more “zeroes” for their writing answers on the statewide English exams, a new study reveals.
On the English Language Arts exams between 2013 and 2016, in addition to multiple-choice questions, students had to read nine or 10 short stories or texts, then write responses aimed at showing their ability to think critically and cite evidence to support their answers.
A score of zero (out of 2 to 4 possible points per question) means a student wrote something “totally inaccurate,” “unintelligible,” or “indecipherable.”
“Kids were stupified by these questions,” Fred Smith, a former test analyst for the city Department of Education, told The Post.
Smith and Robin Jacobowitz, the director of educational projects at the Benjamin Center, a research unit of SUNY New Paltz, were forced to use the Freedom of Information Law to obtain the data for their report titled, “Tests are Turning our Children into Zeroes: A Focus on Failing.”
Of about 78,000 NYC third-graders, they found the number who scored zeroes on three or more written answers doubled from 10,696 (14 percent) in 2012 to 21,464 (28 percent) in 2013, when the state tests were redesigned to fit the tougher Common Core standards.
But in the next three years, city third-graders — who were taught nothing but Common Core curriculum since kindergarten — still racked up zeroes at the same high rate, the study found.
The percentage with three or more zeroes on the ELA exam was still 28 percent in 2014, 29 percent in 2015, and 27 percent in 2016, the last year data was available.
That year, the state eliminated time limits, but the effect on zeroes was slight.
“We can’t say this is just kids getting used to the Common Core curriculum. This is all they’ve ever known,” Jacobowitz said. “It did not get better over time.”
What’s worse, the racial achievement gap widened. In 2013, the number of black kids scoring three or more zeroes was 10 percent higher than white kids. In 2016, the gap grew to 18 percent. The white/Hispanic gap grew from 11 percent to 20….
State officials denied the exams — which cost taxpayers $32 million in a five-year contract with testing vendor Pearson — were poorly designed.
“In general, zeroes would not imply a flaw in the test; rather, it would demonstrate students struggled to master the content being assessed,” a spokesperson said.
Another vendor, Questar, produced the exams for 2017 and 2018, given last spring, under a new, five-year $44.7 million contract.
The state has so far withheld data showing how many kids got zeroes on those test
Time for New York State to release the data for 2017 and 2018.
Be sure to read the study by Fred Smith and Robin Jacobowitz.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“In general, zeroes would not imply a flaw in the test; rather, it would demonstrate students struggled to master the content being assessed,” a spokesperson said.
Yes, of course it’s not the 30 year olds failed to think like an 8 year old, the 8 year olds failed to think like a 30 year old.
Thank you for latching onto the glib response by an SED flack. It needed to be refuted.
My rebuttal is that sharp increases in zeroes demonstrate inappropriate exams and a clear disconnect between standards, curriculum and the tests.
Therefore, Diane’s conclusory comments are perfect–before parents in New York City are led blindly into the 2019 Questar exams:
“Another vendor, Questar, produced the exams for 2017 and 2018, given last spring, under a new, five-year $44.7 million contract.
The state has so far withheld data showing how many kids got zeroes on those tests.
Time for New York State to release the data for 2017 and 2018.”
As I recall, the head of Questar came out of Pearson.
New boss is same as the old boss.
Footnote to Peter Townshend? The Who? Or does this have another origin to which wont get fooled again referred?
Master content ? There is so little content and context ! You can not just teach math and reading to pass tests…the content and context are in science and social studies and a full curriculum.
When assessing reading the content should not be in Social Studies and Math. Honestly, the topic of the selection should be grade level appropriate and of some interest to that age group of students. Also, there needs to be some diversity in those selections as well.
I wrote about this a few years ago, in two of my Rowman & Littlefield books:
THE WRONG DIRECTION FOR TODAY’S SCHOOLS: THE IMPACT OF COMMON CORE ON SCHOOLS ON AMERICAN EDUCATION (Award winning); and
COMMON SENSE EDUCATION: FROM COMMON CORE TO ESSA AND BEYOND.
Common Core was the wrong direction and our students are not only being affected, it is also affecting teacher attrition.
Thank you for adding your books to my list.
The state writing tests are standardized, no? So we’re judging the effectiveness of Common Core by scores on a standardized test, when we all acknowledge that standardized tests aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, most especially not standardized writing tests?
This is in no way a defense of Common Chore, but can we please acknowledge there is no way to “measure” (sic) student performance in writing (or any other subject, really)? The questions we should be asking have more to do with the effects of Common Chore on student interest in writing and the effectiveness of student writing for various purposes as assessed by teachers and others who read student writing. Are students better or worse at getting their point across in a persuasive essay, for instance? Are there stories more or less creative and readable? Are their research papers more or less informative?
In fact, if students are indeed less able to turn out a formulaic, standardized five-paragraph essay to be scored by computer or low-paid grunt, then that actually might be to Common Chore’s credit.
Obviously politicians know more about education than the people who have studied it in depth. Likewise with climate change, a Chinese hoax.
A key paragraph from the posting:
[start]
“We can’t say this is just kids getting used to the Common Core curriculum. This is all they’ve ever known,” Jacobowitz said. “It did not get better over time.”
[end]
And what will the movers and shakers of the corporate education reform crowd learn from all this? Canned responses have become an automatic reflex. For example, variations on such sugary sound bites as “this obviously shows we need more time” and “obviously all the data isn’t in” and “obviously we’re very concerned about this” and the ever-popular “obviously our underlings didn’t properly implement our disruptively creative and innovative mandates.”
Change course? Oh please…
The noun “self-correction” has a word and a hyphen and a word. Those high and mighty titans of [fill in the blank] know the word “self” because that’s what their world revolves around, but the word “correction”? In their “minds” correction is applied to those ever-in-need of improvement, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, i.e., us.
So forget about them engaging in “self-correction.” We’re the ones that need to be corrected!
Rheeally! But not really…
😎
Petrilli recently hosted a podcast on this subject–what ed deformers should do since the test scores haven’t shown “much” (lol, any) improvement? The answer? Double and triple down on all this.
According the Smith and Jacobowitz the numbers of zeros “raises general questions about the efficacy of this kind of test for such young students.” In other words the test is developmentally inappropriate for such young students. This assertion is in conflict with the belief of the NYSED that claims that students need more experience with the testing in order to become competent on the tests.
In addition since there are no insights made available on how the scores are derived, there is no way to challenge the validity of the test. Changing from Pearson to Questar will not improve access to this information since Questar is even more secretive about their data than Pearson.
Two subgroups with increased zeros in grade three are ELLs and LD. “The average for ELLs rose from 1.0 to 3.3 zeroes and from 1.1 to 3.4 for students with disabilities.” As an ESL teacher, I know that students that have had only one, two or three years of English language instruction are not ready to take a test that requires such as sophisticated, nuanced comprehension in English. The NYSED’s requirements are unrealistic for ELLs. Research states that it takes at least five to seven years to become “proficient” in English. The tests based on the CCSS are unfair to ELLs and requiring them to be subjected to these tests is pedagogically unsound practice.
“the belief of the NYSED that claims that students need more experience with the testing in order to become competent on the tests.”
I hate that argument in whatever context I see it. It essentially says, “there is no such thing as age-inappropriate.” Here: start testing early [earlier than appropriate, earlier than informative scores are possible] so by the time it counts, they’ll be used to it. Same argument is used by idiot PreK directors who replace open play space, large hands-on play tools, & area rugs with long tables/ multiple chairs/ look-alike cut&paste activities & ‘workbooks'[/pencils!]. Legs don’t reach floor yet? Fingers ready for neither scissors nor pencils? Let them ‘get used to it’! The same logic backs CCSS down step-wise from 12th-gr goals so we have absurdities like distracting K-3 from reading comprehension w/ “close reading” & “critical thinking”.
I don’t think this takes into account the underlying flaw with measuring student performance via a test. Students are graduating high school less and less able to write coherently. I score the NYS ELA exams. All a student has to do to score a 2 (full score) on the short constructed response questions is to make a “claim” and copy two quotes from the reading supporting the claim. Students can write one run-on sentence with numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes and receive a full score. They can literally copy the whole passage and receive a score of 1 out of 2 because they copied the correct text evidence. The writing exam is a farce and is not preparing our students to actually write in the real world.
As far as the achievement gap growing for Hispanic students, New York changed the law for ELL services three years ago. Students are getting less English instruction than ever before. Like testing, ELL services have also become a farce initiated by the bureaucrats in Albany without any regard to teachers’ voices. Teachers of ELLs in New York have been speaking about this injustice since the changes but to no avail. They fall on deaf, bureaucratic ears.
“I don’t think this takes into account the underlying flaw with measuring student performance via a test.”
And what is that underlying flaw?
A professionally trained teacher assessing writing growth (and deficits) through an ongoing portfolio model.
Are you saying that teachers cannot do that assessing and that only standardized tests can? I’m quite confused about exactly what you are trying to say.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin…
About the same as looking at metrics (including zeros) generated from standardized tests, when these are based on dubious standards.
No. I’m saying that teachers are the only ones qualified to assess students via authentic, teacher created assessments.
Thanks for the clarification. I was definitely confused. And you are surely correct in stating “The writing exam is a farce and is not preparing our students to actually write in the real world.” (Except for the “real world” part as schooling is the “real world” for students and teachers. I believe that you mean “post-secondary education or in the business sector.”)
Out of my expertise, however, I am shocked simply shocked.
Do not expect a surrender anytime soon.
October 8, 2018
“Why do parents opt out? They understand that the tests are not diagnostic and serve no purpose other than to compare their children to other children, a function of no value to the children.”
Wilson:
” At this point it is worth mentioning that the whole paraphernalia of normalising scores
and otherwise fiddling with them has two purposes: One is to try to magick a linear scale
out of an ordinal one by making various sorts of assumptions about the distribution of
the “something” that is being “measured”; the second is to produce “measures” that are
mathematically pliable, that are accessible to the manipulations and pleasures of
mathematicians; that will, in short, turn a horse race into a profession…”
Is STOPPING the use of “normalising scores”(a function of no value to the children),
a function of USING scores?
“the proportion of students in New York who scored zero on the state writing tests has doubled…”
“Of about 78,000 NYC third-graders, they found the number who scored zeroes on three or more written answers doubled …”
“In 2013, the number of black kids scoring three or more zeroes was 10 percent higher than white kids…”
Just more of the same–wasted time, energy and monies attempting to make sense of utter nonsense.
Duane, I’m shocked, shocked to learn that you remain adamant and inflexible on all matters of testing. [lol]
No, Fred, not “inflexible on all matters of testing.” I believe in local made by the teacher tests, assessments, whatever that are meant to help the students learn about their own learning and where they are in regards to the curriculum for the class.
Now, standardized tests? Yes, guilty as charged!
Amen, Duane.
Rather than providing any information useful to the instruction of students, the main objective of the tests based on the CCSS is to provide a wide net of failure in order to privatize public schools. The testing company aids the process by keeping technical information about the tests shrouded in mystery.
They used FOIA for obtaining the numbers? Good grief, I thought they fought tooth and nail to obtain actual questions and actual answers as well as expected answers as well as grading algorithm and such, which would allow to make sense of the test and the answers. But all they got are numbers. And this blog, of all places, compares these numbers and based just on numbers paints Common Core as failure. I thought that most visitors of this blog including Diane herself are against testing in general and against meaningless numbers.
I will be the second one after Duane to say these numbers and this “research” mean nothing to me without actual questions and answers.
BA,
You are not a careful reader. Teachers are not allowed to see the actual test questions or answers. They have zero diagnostic value. The reports consist only of numbers.
The post you mock said that students received zeroes. News flash! Those are numbers! Zero is a number!
The article in the Post displayed examples of answers.
If you are disappointed, you really should go elsewhere. I am tired of your constant sniping and whining.
“You are not a careful reader. Teachers are not allowed to see the actual test questions or answers. They have zero diagnostic value.” — I can read all right. I was surprised that FOIA was needed just to get the numbers. Should Russian hackers be asked to obtain the actual questions and answers. I am actually in agreement with you that the tests have zero diagnostic value.
“If you are disappointed, you really should go elsewhere. I am tired of your constant sniping and whining.” — I don’t see you showing Duane the door. Not sure why you are labelling my comments as whining, and I do not expect you to reply to every comment I make, sometimes I simply reply to other blog visitors. I am just suprised that you use numbers from a standardized test to denigrate Common Core despite your aversion to standardized tests, that is all. As I mentioned before, the point of view of anti-reform crowd lacks consistency, which makes your position more shaky. The reformers on the other hand push forward like a nuclear ice breaker.
Actually BA, you are wrong.
“Reform” is having a complete breakdown.
Hess asks why the Bush-Obama reforms were a failure.
Duncan publishes an editorial in WashPo saying that “reform hasn’t failed,” contrary to popular opinion.
Voucher research shows failure.
No one thinks that “reform” (charters and vouchers and Common Core) has succeeded.
And you are very annoying.
You can’t stop criticizing teachers collectively, and your insults are intolerable.
Before he goes, would BA report back on questions to Bill Gates. Why didn’t the know-it-all Bill Gates attack the problem of global warming instead of dismantling the common good? Why didn’t he stop the financial sector’s drag of 2% on GDP, instead of replacing public schools with “different brands on a large scale”? Why does he think he’s called a philanthropist, when his position on the richest men lists has been solidified for decades?
To whoever BA is:
In 2013 and 2014, the State Education Department started dribbling out information about a few selected questions and writing samples that defined zero scores or were used to train and guide scorers. This was a forced concession intended to let some steam out of the opt out balloon. In effect, SED was trying to reveal as little as it had to, give a nod to transparency and make a virtue out of necessity. In recent years they have provided more examples. Still the information is incomplete, fragmented and hard to trace on the web site. The covert way the state and vendor (Pearson) operated during the common core era shows their joint commitment to perpetuating an atrocious testing program and stands as proof that the program had no educational legitimacy.
A defender of the NY testing sent me the sheets of data his school gets from the state to show how much he learns from the tests. There were no questions or answers. Just numbers. See?
BA,
Have you read Noel Wilson’s destruction of the standards and testing malpractice regime?
May I suggest that you read and understand it:
“Education Standards and The Problem of Error”:
https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
“I will be the second one after Duane to say these numbers and this “research” mean nothing to me without actual questions and answers.”
One doesn’t need to see the “actual questions and answers.” The whole standards and testing process is so rife with onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudging that render the usage of results for anything to be COMPLETELY INVALID. Why would one want to rely on falsehood and error for anything?
See my other response to you BA, about Wilson’s work.
TL;DR. Only at chapter 9 he starts talking about actual measuring, and he gives incessant examples as if his reader is an idiot and cannot get from a definition first, then a single example later. He is sloppy in his definitions and analogies. For example, he writes: “the definition of electrical power as the product of voltage, amperage and time”, which is wrong.
Electrical power is a product of voltage and current.
Kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy, and this one is indeed a product of voltage, current and time.
For three pages he drones about standards and measurements and mathematical theories. His writing style is quasi-academic, I mean borderline unreadable. Not once within these three pages he uses a word “comparison”, but this is what all these measuring is about: compare things easily without comparing all the zillion things between themselves – they can be compared to the measuring stick instead.
His long-winded inanities may sound technical to a non-techie, but to anyone with minimal knowledge of math and physics he comes across as an amateur.
“Electric power is the rate, per unit time, at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. . . Electric power is usually sold by the kilowatt hour (3.6 MJ) which is the product of the power in kilowatts multiplied by running time in hours.” (per wiki and other sources)
Seems to this non-electrical engineer that Wilson’s definition is correct.
You stated that you were up to Ch. 9.
Which three pages does he “drones about”?
What is the difference between “academic” writing and “quasi academic” writing? Who has determined those definitions?
“Not once within these three pages he uses a word “comparison”, but this is what all these measuring is about:”
Notwithstanding the grammatical errors, without knowing exactly what passages you are referring to I am having a hard time responding to your accusations of his writing.
At this point we know you have a problem with Wilson’s defining of electrical power. . . which has very little to do with the overall thesis. I appreciate you taking the time to read his work as very few do. Is it the easiest of reads? No.
And I sense that it isn’t easy because Americans in learning English have been taught that shorter is sweeter and every sentences must be to the point. Having read a fair amount of Spanish literature wherein a sentence can easily be a whole paragraph or fill a page, I don’t find Wilson’s work to be all that difficult. And as with most good writings one ought to read and reread multiple times to more fully understand.
You accuse “long winded inanities”, yet you do not cite any. Without knowing precisely that to which you find objectionable it is quite difficult to respond to your accusations, which by the way as your response is written are just bland generalities of accusations with little meaning.
I also sense you don’t understand that what Wilson is getting at, that onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods that we find in the standards and testing malpractices are never addressed by those who support and promote said malpractices. And, BA, neither have you so far with what you have written here.
And if I may respond with my own thoughts on supposed measure of student achievement:
The most misleading concept/term in education is “measuring student achievement” or “measuring student learning”. The concept has been misleading educators into deluding themselves that the teaching and learning process can be analyzed/assessed using “scientific” methods which are actually pseudo-scientific at best and at worst a complete bastardization of rationo-logical thinking and language usage.
There never has been and never will be any “measuring” of the teaching and learning process and what each individual student learns in their schooling. There is and always has been assessing, evaluating, judging of what students learn but never a true “measuring” of it.
But, but, but, you’re trying to tell me that the supposedly august and venerable APA, AERA and/or the NCME have been wrong for more than the last 50 years, disseminating falsehoods and chimeras??
Who are you to question the authorities in testing???
Yes, they have been wrong and I (and many others, Wilson, Hoffman etc. . . ) question those authorities and challenge them (or any of you other advocates of the malpractices that are standards and testing) to answer to the following onto-epistemological analysis:
The TESTS MEASURE NOTHING, quite literally when you realize what is actually happening with them. Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”. The same by proximity is not a good rhetorical/debating technique.
Since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is no exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable”?
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
The basic fallacy of this is the confusing and conflating metrological (metrology is the scientific study of measurement) measuring and measuring that connotes assessing, evaluating and judging. The two meanings are not the same and confusing and conflating them is a very easy way to make it appear that standards and standardized testing are “scientific endeavors”-objective and not subjective like assessing, evaluating and judging.
That supposedly objective results are used to justify discrimination against many students for their life circumstances and inherent intellectual traits.
C’mon test supporters, especially you BA, have at the analysis, poke holes in it, tell me where I’m wrong!
You have been warned. I will not post any more comments from you insisting that Common Core does not prescribe 70% informational text in high school.
You have stated this many times and I have refuted it many times.
The stats about dividing time between literature and informational text are in The Common Core guidelines, copied from NAEP guidelines for test developers.
The Common Core tests adopted NAEP definition of “proficiency,” essentially an A is needed to pass. Anything less than an A is failing.
One more time and you are banned forever.
@Duane: ” “Electric power is the rate, per unit time, at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. . . Electric power is usually sold by the kilowatt hour (3.6 MJ) which is the product of the power in kilowatts multiplied by running time in hours.” (per wiki and other sources)
Seems to this non-electrical engineer that Wilson’s definition is correct.”
This is a prime example of lack of comprehension exhibited by many a visitor of this blog who blame the techies like Bill Gates for promoting non-fiction in schools. You like to re-read Wilson multiple times to fully understand his writing (by the way, I do not agree that most good writing should be convoluted), why would not you re-read the exact words you quoted from Wikipedia and comprehend what they say. Even simpler, look at the formulas.
I will reply later with a longer response, a little in a hurry now.
I appreciate your responses to my queries, BA. If I could make a point though, your generalization of “lack of comprehension exhibited by many a visitor of this blog” due to my supposed lack of comprehension is not warranted. Focus on what I have written and blame/criticize/castigate me. I’m a tough ol critter, I can take it.
Duane,
BA is finished here. Almost every comment included a hostile or insulting remark, either about how stupid teachers are or how dumb I am. BA is gone.
Awww. So far he was one of a few who have attempted to refute/rebut Wilson’s work. Not that what he had written so far actually rebutted/refuted what Wilson has proven. But I was truly interested in his thoughts on Wilson so that I could get a better insight into the thinking of those who insist that the standards and testing malpractice regime is fine and dandy, scientific, objective, etc. . . .
At the same time I wish everyone would use their true names and stand behind their own thoughts. Yes, I understand that some are afraid that they may be tracked down and harassed by someone, perhaps in authority over them.
That fear is rather distressing to me. What, are we in the old E. Germany, Soviet Union, etc. . . . wherein society was based on terror and fear?
But hey, that’s me and my way of thinking, nothing more. To each his/her own I suppose.
Duane,
I appreciate readers who use their own name, as you and I do. I understand teachers and principals and others who are afraid of retaliation. Not long ago, I was asked to find a comment from years ago and delete it because the individual had used his real name and a Google search turned up the comment and caused him to lose a job.
BA doesn’t seem to be a teacher. He/she is a know-it-all who kept poking me in the eye with snarky comments about how dumb I was. And many of his/her deleted comments were of the sort that insulted teachers as a collective.
No reason not to use the real name. Unless he or she works for Education Post or the 74.
Duane, if only you knew the hoops I have to jump through to increase the chances of my reply to get through 😉 But I meant what I said: re-read exactly the words you quoted and see that Wilson’s definition and your understanding of electric power and energy are presented incorrectly. This requires – gasp! – some close reading, which many a visitor on this blog are either afraid or incapable of.
BA,
Every time you write an insulting comment about teachers in general or me in particular, your comment will be deleted. That is not a very big hoop to jump through. If it is too much for you to handle, go away.
You even insulted every other reader of this blog in this comment. One more like that, and you are permanently asked not to return.
RE: BA: I, like Duane, would like to give BA some more rope: it is refreshing to hear other viewpoints– & not be an echo-chamber– because it really helps me to sharpen my pencil & hone in on my own viewpoint when challenged.
RE: real names. I like to use a faux-nym because it allows me to talk freely about my experience as a Mom– [2 out of 3 kids in SpEd; eldest deceased at 23 y.o. from combo of lifelong mental & autoimmune disease — illnesses complicated & compromised by combo of ’90’s/’00’s protocol of mental & pain meds] — w/o any affect on my family.
When a commenter repeatedly insults me, and continues to do so after warning, he leaves. Them’s the rules.
“I don’t see you showing Duane the door.”
No debo decir nada, eh.
2018 Released test items and scoring guides (Grades 3 to 8):
https://www.engageny.org/resource/released-2018-3-8-ela-and-mathematics-state-test-questions
In Ohio the written portions of the ELA tests are graded by computers. What else is there to say?
Have you seen Google’s presentation of human talking to a computer? Computers get more human-like, while humans get less intelligent. Just you wait. What Skynet?
Sorry, I can’t resist.
If computers are getting more human like while humans get less intelligent, does that mean that computers are also getting less intelligent?
Ask kids what they’re learning in Common Core classrooms. I’ll bet they’ll tell you “nothing”. They know they’re not learning, because they’re not being taught anything. They’re bored out of their minds. They are DOING. Doing, doing, doing. Mental chore upon mental chore. But is there any residue? Very little. Common Core is premised on the idea that school is a gym for exercising thinking muscles. This is the wrong metaphor. School should be a feast of knowledge that grows the mind.
insightful analogy
This right here. I was recently thinking, I can’t remember the last time I heard a student ask a question in class. A real question. A question that isn’t “how many sentences do I need, how do I do this(worksheet), is this for a grade, etc?” As an intervention specialist spending most of my time in reg ed classrooms, I’m just as bored as the kids. We need to do better. This isn’t working.
Common Core has managed to demolish one of the great motivators for learning: curiosity. So rare to get a sincere, spontaneous, curious question. It’s as if we managed to lobotomize a generation of children.
I blame the standards-based methodology even more than the tests.
“I blame the standards-based methodology even more than the tests.”
Bing, bing, bing, bing. . . Give that man a Kewpie Doll!
The problem is that Common Core standards are restricted to math and ELA – two school subjects that were never known for in depth content knowledge. The real problem is that the two subjects that did focus on content knowledge – science and social studies/geography – have been placed on the way back burner with the flame off. Struggling students often get assigned extra math and ELA in lieu of elective subjects. The promise of deeper meaning and 21st century skills that would produce college and career readiness was an extraordinary claim produced by a perfect storm of arrogance and ignorance. Students don’t even get basic parts of speech or literary devices in ELA. Math students still can’t complete the simplest arithmetic without a calculator. Deep understanding? Just ask an 8th grader what pi means.
Rage: an interesting angle I’d never thought of. But there must be others like me. Tho like someone standing under a waterfall, I kind of enjoyed the cascade of scientific & historical facts in midsch/ hisch– & probably needed to know that spectrum of facts was out there to be made sense of– it overwhelmed my nascent reasoning power, which was in my case built step-by-step, thro analyzing literature. For me, it was only thro post-K12/ college lived experience that I came to understand the need to apply my reasoning power to the [continuing] cascade, working backward from current technology and politics to learn/ understand scientific & historical pinnings.
I expect there is a mirror-image process for those who grasped the logic underpinning scientific & historical facts in midsch/ hisch/ college, & only later began to line up & read corresponding lit to gain deep understanding of their relationship to human emotion/ motivations/ actions. My book club in fact is full of scientists/ mathematicians/ historians who seek to fill in those blanks.
And if you think Common Core has undermined the acquisition of content knowledge, watch how the Next Gen Science Standards decimate content knowledge using the failed and debunked discovery and constructivist methods.
Thank you to Ponderosa ! School should be a feast of knowledge that grows the mind. – but it is not in a common core classroom.
“Common Core is premised on the idea that school is a gym for exercising thinking muscles.” Perfect.
No, Common Core is based on the idea that if all students study the same topics in the same order and take the same tests, all students will learn the same things at the same pace and all gaps will close.
Total nonsense.
And the lamb will lie down with the lion.
True enough, Diane. I just love the quote cuz, well, the brain doesn’t have any muscles 😉
I used to say this all the time to my principal, Ponderosa: In lesson after lesson now, in these English classes, the student leaves the classroom knowing NOTHING that he or she did not know before.
well said, as usual, Ponderosa
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Test Prep for high stakes rank and punish tests do not teach critical thinking and problem solving skills. With high stakes tests, real teaching is trashed.
Where I work (also where I tendered my 30-days notice of resignation last Wednesday), n we assign five- to ten-page research papers to students who don’t have the faintest idea of what a grammatically complete declarative sentence is. Over the years, I have worked to develop a writing curriculum for students, particularly for those students whose first language is not English. It hasn’t really gone anywhere in this school.
This fall, as I prepare my departure, I’m teaching senior English Language Arts for the first time ever. I have decided to approach this by calling the work I’m doing with these students “How to Keep Yourself Out of Your College’s Writing Center.” We’re dealing with subject verb agreement–students didn’t know the term or the concept it represents, let alone how to write so that subjects and verbs agree.
Next up? Pronoun-antecedent agreement, another poorly understood and seldom properly executed basic writing skill.
I worked my way through college and graduate school tutoring in writing centers, so I know whereof I speak.
But this shouldn’t be happening in a school system that holds itself in such high esteem. Kids really do need to learn English usage and syntax. Otherwise they will produce gibberish–like the memos New York City principals write.
I’ve had a number of students tell me that they learned more English grammar in taking Spanish with me than they learned in English, oops, I mean Language Arts, classes. They aren’t being taught any grammar at all, which I find atrocious. Whatever happened to diagramming a sentence?
Grammer ? Rafe Esquivel in one of his books said he had these old outdated grammer books from LAUSD that really worked and they kept wanting to take them away from him.
Spelling matters too.
One of the big questions I ask students when we start out on a grammar unit is “Where else might an understanding of grammar help you in your education?” Answer? In foreign language classes.
I always loved diagramming sentences. That’s why I understand syntax.
So true. It’s been 40+ yrs since I taught French to high-schoolers, but I remember the divide between 11th-12th-graders who’d learned Lang Arts the ‘trad’l way,’ & 9th-10th-grader victims of ‘whole-language’ [reading acquired by osmosis] methods. I was very young & had been in hisch/ college during the whole-lang craze. Was caught up short & clued-in by the plaintive Q, “But Madame, what IS an adjective?” In English, there is no need to discuss noun/ adjective conformance; for adjectives, there is neither gender nor number distinction between “a blue shirt” and “blue pants.” But– so efficient in moving to other languages– if you at least understand which word is the adjective!
“Otherwise they will produce gibberish–like the memos New York City principals write.”
Well, just more fine examples of adminimal behavior, eh!
Pretty much, yeah.
Those who haven’t subscribed to markstextterminal’s blog should consider doing so. He posts GREAT resources for teachers all the time–material from his teeming brain, his own pen, his own considerable scholarship. Good stuff!
Wow, Bob, thank you. Your praise means a great deal to me (and thanks for your essay on Columbus; I read de las Casas in high school).
I meant what I said. There’s treasure trove on Mark Feltskog blog of extremely well-vetted, substantive, engaging material for use by high-school teachers. And he has made this material available, there, for free for many years. One of the education associations really should compile these into a book. His blog, markstextterminal, can be found here: https://markstextterminal.com/about/ I highly recommend it.
Mark Feltskog is also a great model of what a teacher should be–himself a passionate, life-long learner. He is deeply learned, yes, but not some ivory tower intellectual. He is both a scholar and a committed worker in the trenches. I can only imagine what windfall his students, over the years, have received from his passion for his subjects. Every teacher, ofc, confronts a lot of failure, and it’s all too easy for someone in the trenches to become utterly discouraged. This man is someone I look up to and admire. More like him! Many, many more!
Wow–are you talking about me?!?
Some people, Mark, walk the talk. I get your blog on my phone and read it regularly.
Thank you for your kind words, Bob. I’m getting better at it, but I never learned how to accept compliments. These words coming from you mean a lot.
Screw compliments. I’m trying to make a point here. LOL. The best thing that a teacher can do is to be a model for students of what a real learner is. I had this guy back in 5th grade, Mr. Schimezzi. Freaking lectured to us.. Broke all the rules there. But his lectures were full of his own amazement and curiosity. Confronted with such people, students inevitably think, damn, give me a piece of that. I want some of what he or she’s got.
Fair enough! And I do try to model what the life of the mind looks like.
And here’s the other point I want to make: It makes a difference if a teacher actually knows his or her subjects. One shouldn’t have to say this. It ought to be freaking obvious. But evidently, it isn’t.
Oh, I could tell you some stories (did you know, according to a social studies teacher who taught here a few years ago, that the New Deal was a program initiated by Theodore Roosevelt?) about the ignorance I’ve seen in the New York City schools.
The high-school English Department Chairperson who asked me what a gerund was? The Reading Coordinator who sent the English teachers a memo saying that they had to teach not just parts of the Odyssey, but the whole novel, and referred to this as a novel several times? The English Department
Chairperson (different one) who asked me who YEETS (that’s how she pronounced it) was and explained that she HATED poetry? The District Language Arts Coordinator who referred, again and again, in her presentation on the Jin-ruhs of literature? The Reading Specialist who, when I asked her what she liked to read, said that she didn’t like to read and, at any rate, was too busy for that? The History teacher who was telling by students that Americans were really concerned about Sputnik because they didn’t want the Russians putting nuclear devices in space? The state Science Education Coordinator who ruled that the line in one of my textbooks that said “Humans and other mammals lactate” was false because humans weren’t mammals?” The state Language Arts Coordinator who said that my textbook had material on Induction and Deduction but didn’t treat making inferences? Our French teacher who would read the next chapter in the text so that she could learn the vocab and grammar so she could teach it? The Science teacher who, when I asked him which sciences he was most interested in told me that he didn’t like science? I could go on all day with examples of this crap.
Oh, ok! Funny, but tragic.
Bob, you might be interested to hear that I just received an “ineffective” rating or “Coherent Instructional Design” from a particularly callow and dimwitted assistant principal at this school.
Great comment.
Even if you like the CC standards, the testing on them has generally been so vague that the testing was not sophisticated enough to discern between students who could not answer questions correctly for the lack of one thing or another. In practice tests in geometry some years ago, I noticed that students with a modicum of understanding were generally lodged in the same category with those whose understanding was nonexistent. If a test cannot tell us why a student missed a question, it should jettison that question.
Wouldn’t be any questions left, Roy!
I am a retired ESL teacher who worked in a K-8 building. Between proctoring the elementary NYS math and language arts tests, followed by proctoring the middle school NYS math and language arts tests — and then all the ESL students had to take the NYSESLAT — four parts of it, including a speaking test that had to be administered individually to each students, and reading, listening and writing tests that could be given in small groups. After that, I’d usually get pulled a few days to score tests, and then we’d have to give a field test. My colleagues and I lost an average of 30 or more teaching days a year to testing.
The ESL teachers, resource teachers, librarians, art, music and gym teachers — we all got pulled out of our classes to proctor the New York State tests. The school building essentially shut down for test days — even the kindergarten, first grade and second grade kids who had no New York State tests, did not get ESL, art, music or gym, and could not go to the library or computer room on test days. And what for? Tests that told us nothing that we didn’t already know about our students.
When I proctored the NYS tests, I did look at the ESL students’ written answers. The kids did faithfully follow the formula that their teachers taught them in test prep. They wrote the test question as a statement for their introduction. In the next paragraph, or paragraphs, they copied quotes from the text of the reading. They then recopied their first sentence as their conclusion.
They followed the format perfectly — and for the most part, their answers made absolutely no sense in terms of actually answering the question — because they had arrived so recently and were still beginners in terms of reading and understanding English.
My administrators insisted that I teach test prep skills like this even to beginners who’d just arrived and couldn’t speak a word of English. I told them about the test answers that I had read, and asked, “Wouldn’t it be better if we actually taught them to comprehend spoken and written English first?”
I was told “Absolutely not! They must have test skills! You just don’t get it! They have to have test skills!”
Right. It doesn’t matter if they can’t speak, comprehend what they hear, read, or write in English….as long as they can write an answer using the recommended format….even though it may make absolutely no sense.
the deepest irony for many of us working in our district’s most invaded schools, schools which had a high number of language learners, is that to “fix” teachers, teachers were sent to training and program after training and program where books and articles actually flat out said that teaching to the test was highly detrimental for language learners. Teachers would be forced out of their classrooms to read this, but then come back to angry, blustering administrators all set to find and punish ANY teacher who did NOT teach to the test…
“And what for? Tests that told us nothing that we didn’t already know about our students.”
Bingo, bangle, boingo!
“My administrators insisted that I teach test prep skills like this even to beginners who’d just arrived and couldn’t speak a word of English. I told them about the test answers that I had read, and asked, “Wouldn’t it be better if we actually taught them to comprehend spoken and written English first?”
I was told “Absolutely not! They must have test skills! You just don’t get it! They have to have test skills!””
There is a reason I label almost all administrators with the disdainful epithet “ADMINIMAL”. What you have explained there is reason/example #1,587.
You want to know what the reality is of the so-called accountability system in the US? This. This retired teacher’s post nails it.
ROFLMAO. Anyone who ever took these tests at all seriously should not be in a responsible position in our schools. They are based on ELA standards so vacuous and vague as not to be reliably or validly tested. And the question formats are ridiculous. The whole business was a scam from Day 1. But it certainly did sell a lot of tests and online instructional programs to prepare kids for them! When, when do we learn?
BTW, Gates should ask for his money back. When Lord Coleman (the decider for the rest of us) got to the writing section of his puerile “standards,” he must have been up against a deadline, so he simply wrote one ridiculous set of incredibly vague writing standards and copied them with very slight rewording from level to level. And what do they deal with? Modes. As if the existence of distinct modes (which are a classroom fiction–as fictional as are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fairies in the garden) were all a writer might need to know in order to fire off Moby Dick or The Voyage of the Beagle. LMAO!!! WHEN DO WE LEARN FROM THIS CRAP? HOW MANY DECADES OF UTTER FAILURE OF THIS NONSENSE ARE REQUIRED?
Years ago, I was working in my office, and I heard a loud, repeated pounding. I walked to the front reception area, which had a large, glass window overlooking a deck and a marsh. There, an enormous seagull was bashing his beak, repeatedly, into his own reflection in the glass. Over and over and over again. I had to go scare him away to keep him from killing himself.
Well, that’s what we’ve been doing with this testing-and-accountability movement for many, many decades now. The whole thing was a scam from Day 1. Enough. Basta!
Too busy yesterday to comment on this, but now I have a minute. This should be obvious. Test prep doesn’t work. Standardized tests take time and focus away from instruction. Annual testing of every student is harmful. Annual testing is harmful to education.
This week begins for me what is turning into an annual exercise, opting my classes out of standardized, computerized, interim assessments mandated by district officials, as per their signed agreement with Bill Gates. Wish me luck. I will need it this time around.
I don’t teach ELA, but I have students do a lot of writing in my classes. And I have to tell you, the last five or six years, the writing has become more and more awful. Whatever “skills” are being “taught” through CC makes for either boring or absolutely incomprehensible writing. I work with the kids to improve their writing, but I tell you, I’m sure how much more of this vomitting on a paper I can take.
In the last 5-6 years, the standards, and the administrators who love them — pooh-poohed the teaching of basic skills that students need to be effective writers — things like handwriting, spelling, phonemic awareness, grammar and syntax. Teachers were told that they had to be constantly pushing “higher level skills.” The result is that kids were being pushed to write multi-paragraph essays when they couldn’t even print very well (and forget cursive writing; in the schools that I know of, that hasn’t even been taught in years.) Certainly, having good printing, or cursive is not the end-all of writing instruction. However, if students are struggling to even form letters, that’s less attention and energy that they’ll have to think about main ideas, supporting details, connecting ideas, point of view, etc. If writing, syntax and grammar are more automatic, then there is attention and energy available for thinking about what you really want to get across to your reader. Our students, both ESL and nonESL, could not get to “Who is my reader and what do I want him/her to know or think?” because they were struggling so with a poor grasp of the basics of printing and grammar. Writing, to them, was just a frustrating, miserable chore that they just wanted to get through as quickly as possible. The barely legible, ungrammatical gibberish that students produced demonstrated that.
I have a special dislike for “seven-up sentences.” Our administration insisted that we teach kids to write sentences of more than seven words….before they even knew what a sentence was. As you might expect, kids produced strings of unrelated words that made no sense, and thought it was good writing. I insisted that my students start with three word sentences, with a noun and verb, ie, The cat ran. When they were good at producing these sentences, we started talking about adjectives and adverbs (What does your cat look like? How does he run?), and then prepositions (Where is the cat going?), followed by clauses (Why is the cat running? Where does he want to go?) My students were making progress with this, but I was still told that I didn’t get it…the kids needed to be writing more word salad. I pointed out that the Common Core had not been written by elementary, or ESL teachers. The administration didn’t care. It was the word of God and I needed to follow it.
Our administration insisted that we teach kids to write sentences of more than seven words….before they even knew what a sentence was. . . but I was still told that I didn’t get it…the kids needed to be writing more word salad. I pointed out that the Common Core had not been written by elementary, or ESL teachers. The administration didn’t care. It was the word of God and I needed to follow it.”
More wonderful examples of adminimal behavior.
“I insisted that my students start with three word sentences, with a noun and verb, ie, The cat ran. When they were good at producing these sentences, we started talking about adjectives and adverbs (What does your cat look like? How does he run?), and then prepositions (Where is the cat going?), followed by clauses (Why is the cat running?)”
Thank ou for this, retired ESL teacher! I have been doing something similar in helping PreK Span students to converse, but this puts a very precise spin on it, which I will use.
Ahhh…, the Common Core rears its ugly head again. I can feel my blood pressure go right up, just looking at those stinking words. It’s like that part of a monster movie where you think the thing might be dead. Then the creature jumps out of the dark again, and attacks. If only I had a wooden stake or silver bullet that would work.
John, you just defined the current thing called “Reform”
It is crazy to see that even when these students are getting taught exactly what they will be tested on and common core curriculum, a lot still get zero’s. This shows that something should be changed with common core. Maybe it should be taken out. Whatever they end up doing, I hope these students get the support they need and the standards that will help them succeed.
“and the standards that will help them succeed.”
Standards that will help them succeed???
How can standards help a student to succeed?
How about the curriculum and teaching that curriculum in a manner that helps the student succeed.
As the unavoidable frustrating outcomes of using the unwarranted CCSS appear, let’s not forget that aside from Obama’s Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, billionaire Bill Gates, and the large coalition of corporate reformers committed to create and promote CCSS for their own interest and benefit, our own teachers associations leaders had a significant role in their acceptance and implementation.. NEA and CTA leadership not only accepted CCSS, but promoted them using their logistic capabilities. By endorsing and promoting CCSS, leadership automatically lent credibility and gave tacit validity to a major project that was improperly created and imposed by coercion. While doing so, teachers associations leaders automatically discouraged, dismissed, and effectively suppressed dissenters among their ranks –they fabricated consent. Leadership even went as far as “surveying” members during the early stages of implementation, and using their so called results to show that a significant number or percentage of teachers “liked” CCSS.
Who wins, who loses, who cares,
In solidarity,
Sergio Flores
Gates made it possible by awarding millions of dollars to every education organization to endorse and generate support for CC. Few will say no to an offer to of millions of dollars to get on the train. Best to know where the train is going.
Thank you for making the point, Sergio. Hacked and leaked Podesta/campaign e-mails showed Randi volunteered to be the Center for American Progress’ attack dog against Bernie Sanders supporters.
CAP (1) advocates for privatization of public education. (2) recommends school revenues be increased, not with taxes, but with advertising on buses (3) posts papers with citations from people associated with Arnold-funded organizations and who receive awards from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (4) posts papers with the dubious claim that instructional materials have equal to or greater impact than teacher quality and (5) posts papers supporting legislation that ushers in private entities as a layer in state education departments (Maryland).
I presume that Randi knows CAP’s VP of Education Policy, prior to the 2016 presidential campaign, during and, the two years following, is former TFA and that CAP has been described as a sister organization to DFER.
Despite the scare title, the article is neither a claim that CCSS is turning K12 students into terrible writers, nor a critique of CCSS, nor anything about writing essays. The article/ study focuses on writing-question [Extended-Response] scores for 3rd & 4th grade, where 0’s doubled w/the implementation of CCSS-aligned tests. (Writing section is weighted, and 0’s pull the whole ELA test score down). Over the next three years 0’s stayed high or increased, & ELL’s, LD’s & minorities fared worse than others.
The study indicates: even tho testing co’s keep most Q’s/A’s out of sight so they can’t be analyzed, it’s obvious from FOIA’d answer scores alone that the writing portion of tests is bad – most likely age-inappropriate, & clearly not testing what’s being taught. Tho this may be obvious to us (& LI parents!) just from the handful of released Q’s, it needed to be called out w/stats, because testing co has rebutted every criticism w/generalities like “expectations are too low.”
I took a swipe at trying to analyze some 2018 released Q’s at Rage’s [10/9 6:58pm] link. And I am unqualified in reading instruction so feel free to jump in if I’m off base. Hinshaw Patent, author of Talking Parrot excerpt, has many books which have been lexile-leveled (but not this magazine article). Those falling w/n the median range for 3rd grade (say, 750L-850L, such as “Bold and Bright, Black and White Animals” at 830L) appear to be simpler than this one, which I’m guessing is more like 1100L), so there’s that.
But more striking to me– and this is just the mult-choice section!– (a) it’s a long read for 8-y.o.’s, & there are two of them in this sitting; (b) only one of the 6 Q’s assesses reading comprehension. Reading teachers, correct me if I’m wrong. Third grade is often used as the cut-off point for having learned to read. To my mind, that means being able to glean the content of an [appropriately-leveled] excerpt. It does not mean being able to critically analyze its content, such as [just two examples]: being able to define a cause-and-effect relationship; being able to choose “recognize” as best meaning for “identify” objects– not feel, look at, or pick up (all of which parrot does in order to identify objects).
On to the “writing” section. Both reading passages seem appropriate in syntax and vocabulary for 3rd-grade readers to glean content. But let me count the ways these questions are inappropriate for 8-y.o.’s, or – anybody.
“How We Use Glass,” trumpets the big-font bold title. Yet nearly the entire excerpt is about “How We Make Glass.” But Q2 wants them to write at length on ‘the main idea of How We Use Glass’ as expressed in Para 5, which addresses – windows only. Confusing. And Q1 is incomprehensible: how does Para 3 connect to Para 4 (use 2 details to support)? No idea what they’re looking for.
As for “The Great Horned Owl,” only 1 of 3 Q’s addresses reading comprehension. The other 2 elicit spurious Coleman-style non-information: how are these 3 paras alike? How are these other 2 paras related? Personally, I would give a perfect score to any student who could legibly write something along the lines of, “This was an interesting article. I liked learning about the great horned owl. I am not sure how these paragraphs are alike or related, but the author did a good job.”
Thank you, Bethtree5 for understanding what Robin Jacobowitz and I did and what we had to go through to get information. Glad you, too, are making the effort to delve into the situation. The point that SED doesn’t release information and then says that criticisms are just unsupported assumptions cannot be repeated enough to show what an intellectually bankrupt and shameless, alt-fact world they want us to live in.
Keep pulling away the curtain SED is hiding behind.
Test scores suggest to average, un-informed adult that NY elementary and middle school students cannot read. Maybe they even infer, inaccurately, that they can’t comprehend information in a text. That’s what being un-informed does for you.
Instead NY’s youngest students can’t analyze what they read and draw the subjective conclusions chosen at the whim of an adult test writer constrained by un-testable Common Core Standards. Big difference
Right on, Rage.
Questar Assessments blaming “low” expectations. That’s rich.
So, let’s imagine that the new, rigorous, Next-Gen physical education standards require ALL 4th grade students, even the physically disabled, to run a 5 minute mile, complete 30 push ups, and 60 crunches in 60 seconds. Now when few, if any 4th graders can meet such a standard, even after a year of serious training, the powers that be want to blame the phys-ed teacher for having “low” expectations.
This is the direct result of well educated, affluent, professional adults conflating the abilities of their privileged children, nieces, or nephews with the academic expectations for we should have for ALL children.
bethree5
Excellent analysis! If you look at sample items across grade levels you begin to understand just how impossible it is to develop ELA tests that are precise enough to accurately distinguish between adjoining grade level proficiencies. What exactly is the reading and writing difference between 3rd and 4th graders. Not even David Coleman could offer a coherent explanation.
When you set unrealistic expectations, no one can meet them. If you expect an entire class of children of any age to run a four-minute mile, it will never happen. Never. Like NCLB. By 2014, ALL children will be proficient. Didn’t happen. Or the current federal law, which declares that “every student” will succeed. Just do what the law says. That won’t happen either.
I think there is something more insidious going on than simply expecting all kids to reach “an unreasonable goal.” That could be interpreted as: young kids learn at such different rates, there is no testable, reasonable goal at age 8. But there is the alternative of expecting all 3rd-graders to achieve a reasonable goal. It is not unreasonable that all [non-ELL] kids learn to read by the end of Grade 3– i.e., be able to read and comprehend a median grade-3-lexile-level passage.
The “insidious” part: (a) give them instead a passage a few notches higher– OK, it’s a stretch– but then, (b), expect them also — at age 8, when brain is just beginning to move out of concrete toward abstract modes of thinking– to not only comprehend content, but be able to apply “critical thinking,” i.e. abstract concepts such as cause-and-effect– & “close reading,” i.e. “how are these paras ‘alike’ or ‘connected’?
I call it “insidious” because the obvious age-inappropriateness suggests these tests are designed to deem perfectly age-appropriate results “failing”: only possible motivation would be (a)sell test-prep matl for next yr; (b)claim pubschs are “failing” [to chase folks to privatized but publically-supported alternatives; (c)both….
Or, we could just chalk it up to backwards-scaffolded stds/aligned testing, a common failing of well-meaning billionairesw/no stakes in the game, just trying hard to improve the lot of those poor pubsch kids… (!?) [& I gotta bridgeto sellya]
Don’t. Common Core is a set of standards. New York is responsible for the curriculum. Common Core if taught effectively prepares students to be competitive in a global market. Stop using our children’s education as a political volleyball.
No one is using children’s education as a political volleyball. Why would anyone do that? What would be the point? Most of those commenting here are teachers who teach Common Core.
Common Core math and ELA actually “prepare students to be competitive in a global market”.
Ms. Griffin, that is one outlandish claim. Can you list just one CC standard that if “taught effectively” would accomplish this goal?
And then explain how mastering the standard would make a student globally competitive.
And the please define “global competitive”. Competitive in all fields and disciplines? Competitive in college? Competitive at work?
“Stop using our children’s education as a political volleyball.”
Breaking News:
The folks at USDOE (NCLB/RTTT/NCLBW), and NYSED (AYP/APPR) are the people responsible for *politicizing public education. Responsible for the abject FAILURE of standards-based, test-and-shame reform policies.
Please don’t pass the Kool-Aid.
“Please don’t pass the CCSS Kool-Aid.”
Yeah, it makes for a funky colored effluence.
You will notice that whenever a Common Core cheerleader is asked to back up one of their outrageous claims with some reasonable evidence, silence is their only response.
And here’s why: Common Core ELA standards are list of vague, subjective thinking skills that cannot be taught. Common Core math is just the old NCTM standards decorated with a lot of unnecessary crap, pretending that children well entrenched in the concrete level of brain development can master deep and abstract understandings.
Barbara,
Have you reviewed the Common Core ELA Standards lately? I had the privilege of teaching with them. The recycling of standards from grade level to grade level is appalling. Are you competitive in a global market? It is difficult to compete with the wages paid in China and elsewhere.
So true. Here’s just one example of the same ELA standard written across grades 3(A) to 8(F). Now imagine writing test items precise enough to accurately assess each grade level.
A
Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series)
B
Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics (e.g., opposition of good and evil) and patterns of events (e.g., the quest) in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures.
C
Compare and contrast stories in the same genre (e.g., mysteries and adventure stories) on their approaches to similar themes and topics.
D
Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres (e.g., stories and poems; historical novels and fantasy stories) in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics.
E
Compare and contrast a fictional portrayal of a time, place, or character and a historical account of the same period as a means of understanding how authors of fiction use or alter history.
F
Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.
Barbara,
This post is about a study of the writing portion of NYS ELA exams linked to CCSS, which finds the tests wanting, as regards 3rd-4th-gr students. That requires looking into: why did 3rd-4th-gr “0” writing scores double when CCSS-ELA-aligned exams were implemented, & why have ‘0’s continued to proliferate even for later 3rd/ 4th-gr students weaned on CCSS-ELA? …So it is not a ‘dis’ on all CCSS, nor even precisely a critique of 3rd/ 4th-gr CCSS-ELA, but it sure points up problems w/the aligned assessments.
Does your allegiance to CCSS as an aid to global competitiveness mean that even an examination of whether aligned 3rd/4th-gr CCSS-ELA-aligned tests need improvement is tantamount to making a political volleyball of CCSS? If so, it is you who are politicizing the issue.
OTOH, not to dissemble: there are many Eng/Lang Arts teachers (& parents of LA students) here who have studied the CCSS-ELA exhaustively, & have found them to be a tortuous re-formatting of previously-sensible state ELA stds into a non-sensical attempt to break down organic reading/ writing- teaching/ learning into testable skill-bytes which [coupled w/aligned stdzd exams] hinder rather than assist the process. You will find many thoughtful explanations going back 8 yrs, by searching the archive.
But many of us CCSS-ELA critics come from states that had excellent ELA stds pre-CCSS, w/student scores to match. Naturally we are bitter to see our stds warped & dumbed down. You may be from one of the many states that had little or no state-std guidance pre-CCSS, & welcome some definition. I get that. But what I don’t get: why did we need some natl conf writing mediocre stds for the nation? Even the powers that be admitted their CCSS draft was not as good as certain states’ pre-existing stds– which were free for the copying!?
Oh my Lord. You actually believe that nonsense? Please. Common Core is a puerile mess. Anyone who takes the CCSS in ELA at all seriously should not be teaching English or administering people who do: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/
Diane in the new NYC teacher contract potential teachers are going to given a psychological assessment before being hired. So ed schools will take people’s money, give them a degree, and then they may fail a psychological assessment in order to get a job. Any bets they Pearson or Questat will get the multi-million dollar contract to write the assessment? At the Delegate Assembly last night, Mulgrew said the city was within their rights to require psychological profiling and the UFT can do nothing about it.
Instead of dealing with systemic racism and poverty, yet another barrier is being placed to fill positions when we already have a critical shortage of teachers.
What? That’s bizarre!
Melissa,
I checked with Arthur Goldstein, the chapter chair at Francis Lewis High School and he says he took careful notes at the meeting, and he heard nothing about a psychological assessment.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/10/11/new-york-city-teachers-will-be-screened-for-suitability-under-new-union-contract/
A link to an article in Chalkbeat discussing “prescreening.”
I’m surprised that no one mentioned that zeroes can also reflect students who refused to respond to the writing prompts in the first place.
No one in the common-core, accountability machine ever considers student buy-in. Most hate this test prep movement. Their only act of rebellion through which they can express their frustration is through noncompliance.
I’ve taught writing for many years, or I should say I’ve tried to. Academic writing is often not authentic to the students’ lives, but rather only a task they do in English class to satisfy a requirement. Writing that students might buy into is often not easily pigeonholed into the standardized assessment model. It is a reflection of cognitive and emotional development, which varies greatly within age groups
Diane, this is such a profound piece! I scratch my head wondering why talented, dedicated teachers feel so confused about teaching writing these days! The answer is that CC was so scripted in every area, that teacher creativity and best practice was sucked out from them…it’s so sad to see. What school districts need is focused, intensive PD on what was working before CC came to town. If districts focus on best instructional practice- religiously- through the next few years, and forget CC and the threats regarding ESSA, and remind leaders to close their eyes to APPR because we know it’s a sham, our kids might have a fighting chance. Add in play based learning, extended recess time, and yoga for K-12 and we’re on our way. We’re experiencing all of this right now at Tremont in Pat-Med. It’s a long road… but why put off til tomorrow, what we can start today!
Diane,
The topic of writing and common core – this article might be of interest
http://theconcordreview.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-washington-post.html?m=1
Jay Matthews posted this from the Concord Review: “Will Fitzhugh has been struggling for more than 30 years to persuade high schools to let students do something they rarely do—write.
His weapon in this battle is his quarterly publication, The Concord Review. It is the only journal in the world devoted to scholarly papers written by high school students.
The more than 1,300 history research papers he has printed have shown how much schools are missing by not encouraging lots of composition. In a new essay on the problem, Fitzhugh points out this is not only a blow to writing instruction but to what should be the center of any education—reading…“But reading and knowledge never seem to find their way into discussions of Literacy in Our Time,” he said. “When teaching our students to write, not only are standards set very low in most high schools, limiting students to the five-paragraph essay, responses to a document-based question, or the personal (or college) essay about matters which are often no one else’s business, but we often so load up students with formulae and guidelines that the importance of writing when the author has something to say gets lost in the maze of the processes.”
Many writing classes discourage much writing. The nonprofit Education Trust found that only 9 percent of 1,876 literacy assignments in six urban middle schools asked students to write more than a single paragraph. Fitzhugh’s 2002 research found that 81 percent of high schools never assigned a paper of more than 5,000 words.
Sadly, English teachers don’t have time to handle lengthy researched essays. They cringe at what Fitzhugh calls his Page Per Year Plan©: a five-page paper in fifth grade, adding a page each year until everyone does a 12-page paper in 12th grade. He wants students to address issues they have read about, maybe even tackling a nonfiction book or two, very rare in schools.
“Reading and writing are inseparable partners, in my view,” Fitzhugh said in his latest piece….
Teachers could use the class time now spent teaching general sentence structure, paragraphing, voice, tone and other mechanics that Fitzhugh and teenagers hate.
Hope this gets past your scrubbing it!
It would probably fail because even if administrators asked for it, the teachers wouldn’t want to do it, and the students would know it.
Like the CCSL, it would fail because of the lack of support and commitment needed to make it happen.
I have long thought that I should finally bite the bullet and write a book-length analysis of the Common Core State “Standards” in ELA. Because its very, very clear that the conversation has been almost entirely at a 50,000-foot level, but the devil, for certain, is in the details of this puerile, unimaginative, weirdly constricted, vague, innovation-killing, prescientific list of skills. I’ve written several pieces about specific “standards” as an illustration of what needs to be done. Here’s an example, but one could do this with ALMOST ANY of these appallingly ignorant “standards.”
I should have added to my list of adjectives, there, “almost entirely content-free”
Coleman didn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing. Gates wanted one set of national standards to make it easy for developers to correlate their online products to it. So he hired this guy to hack together a list based on a cursory review of the terrible existing state standards. Coleman had NO RELEVANT EXPERIENCE, and he did a hack job. Gates should ask for his money back. These standards remind me of what one would get if one put together a new list of “standards” for the medical profession based on a review of the 1948 edition of Gray’s Anatomy. They are incredible backward and uninformed. It’s just appalling that the reaction from the education community was not one of utter derision. Coleman and his puerile “standards” should have been laughed off the national stage a long, long time ago.
That URL was incorrect. Here is the correct one: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/
Here’s another brief analysis of ONE CCSS ELA “standard”:
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/what-happens-when-amateurs-write-standards/
Here’s an analysis of two standards, one in grammar, the other in literature. Also appended, to the end, is a brief list of suggestions for alternatives to Lord Coleman’s puerile list:
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/a-brief-analysis-of-two-common-core-state-standards-in-ela/
What Happens When Amateurs Write “Standards”
I am having a lot of fun identifying the howlers in the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] for English Language Arts. Here’s one for your amusement:
This is reading “anchor standard” 8:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
Amusingly, the “literature standards” tell us, over and over, that this anchor “standard” is “not applicable to literature,” that it applies only to “informative text.”
That would be news to the speaker of Milton’s Paradise Lost, who invokes the Holy Spirit, at the beginning of the poem, and asks this Christian Muse to help him, in the poem, present an argument to “justify the ways of God to men.”
Maybe it’s been a while since you read or thought about Paradise Lost. Go have a look at Book I. You will find, at the beginning of it, something the author actually calls “The Argument.” It’s a brief preface that serves as an abstract of the claims, reasoning, and evidence to be presented in the book.
Did the folks who put together these amateurish “standards” actually think that literary works never present arguments, make claims, use reasoning of varying degrees of validity, nor present evidence of varying degrees of relevance and sufficiency?
Do they actually think that Ambrose Bierce‘s “Chickamauga,” Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing” or “The Man He Killed,” Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” do not present implicit and explicit arguments against war, do not advance specific claims, and do not employ reasoning and evidence in support of those claims? And what on earth would they imagine such poems as Hesiod’s Works and Days, Lucretius’s De rerum natura, Pope’s “An Essay on Man” and “An Essay on Criticism,” Wordsworth’s The Excursion, and Erasmus Darwin’s The Temple of Nature to be if not, primarily, arguments?
And do they really think that arguments are not put forward in, say, Rumi’s “Like This,” Donne’s “The Sun Rising,” Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” “Gray’s “Stanzas Wrote in a Country Church-Yard,” Burns’s “Song Composed in August,” Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Tennyson’s “In Memoriam A.H.H.,” Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died,” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Yeats’s “Adam’s Curse,” Eliot’s “Burnt Norton,” Wallace Stevens’s “Credences of Summer,” MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica,” Frost’s “Directive,” Levertov’s “A Tree Telling of Orpheus,” Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day,” and Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry”?
Really? Seriously? I know, it’s almost unimaginable that they do.
But let’s do a little CLOSE READING of the “standards” to see what EVIDENCE we can find to help us answer those questions. Inquiring minds want to know.
If you turn to the writing “standards,” the suspicion will grow in you that the authors of these “standards” were, indeed, that naïve. The breathtakingly puerile Common [sic] Core [sic] writing “standards” neatly divide up all writing into three “modes”–narrative, informative, and argumentative–and encourage teachers and students to think of these as DISTINCT classes, or categories, into which pieces of writing can be sorted.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are reading an exposé on this blog or Mercedes Schneider’s or Diane Ravitch’s that tells the story of how some people got together in a backroom and cooked up a bullet list of “standards” and foisted these on the entire country with no learned critique or vetting.
Perhaps such a piece would only SEEM to be an informative narrative told to advance an argument. Perhaps writing consists entirely of five-paragraph themes written in distinct modes and we’ve been hallucinating JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE EVER WRITTEN, which doesn’t fit neatly into the categories advanced in the “standards.”
LOL
And, standard after standard, one encounters the same sort of simple-mindedness about literary types and taxonomy. One gets the impression, reading these “standards,” that a group of nonliterary noneducators–some small-town insurance executives perhaps–got together and made up a bullet list of “stuff to learn in English class” based on their vague memories of what they studied in English back in the day. (I don’t intend, here, BTW, to disparage the literary sophistication of all insurance executives; Wallace Stevens was one, after all, and he may well have been the greatest American poet of the twentieth century. On what other would we place the red cloak?)
Of course, what the folks behind these “standards” really did was hire an amateur who hadn’t taught and who knew very little about the domains he was going to work in to hack together a bullet list based on a review of the lowest-common-denominator educratic groupthink in the previously existing state “standards.” In effect, a few plutocrats appointed this person (by divine right?) absolute monarch of instruction in the English language arts in the United States. My feeling is that similar results would have been obtained if a group of plutocrats had handed David Coleman a copy of the 1858 edition of Gray’s Anatomy and sent him to a cabin in Vermont to write new standards for the practice of medicine.
And, of course, the plutocrats hired this guy to do this because they wanted ONE set of standards for the entire country to which to correlate the products that they planned to sell “at scale.” In other words, the single bullet list was a necessary part of an ed tech business plan. One ring to rule them all!
And that ought to be obvious enough, for surely no one who thought even a bit about these matters would conclude that
a) this CC$$ ELA bullet list is the best we could come up with or that
b) one list is appropriate for all students and for all purposes or that
c) these matters should be set in stone instead of being continually rethought and revisited in light of the discoveries and innovations made by the millions of classroom practitioners, scholars, researchers, and curriculum developers working in the domains that the “standards” cover.
Obviously.
Of course, it’s typical of a certain kind of philistine to divide the world neatly up into the objective (informative works) and the subjective (literary works) and so to think that simple-minded categorizations like the ones to be found in the Common [sic] Core [sic] make sense. The same sort of person thinks that one can reduce learning to a bullet list in a stack of Powerpoint slides.
And, it’s typical of such people to have a rage for order and an inclination toward authoritarianism. Such people admire regimentation and expect others–all those teachers, and curriculum coordinators and curriculum developers out there–simply to obey. In his Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defines arrayed as “drawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter hanged from a lamppost.” I suspect that the people behind these “standards”–the folks who claim that standardization, centralization, and regimentation will lead to innovation, as Bill Gates just did in a speech to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards–would approve of Bierce’s definition. And they would probably like to see folks like me so arrayed.
NB: Gray’s original title for “Stanzas Written in a Country Churchyard” used the word Wrote, a purposeful grammatical error, or solecism, of the kind that might be spoken by one of the subjects of his poem.