Tom Loveless is an experienced education researcher who taught sixth grade in California. He has long been skeptical of top-down solutions to classroom-level problems. In this post, he explains why Common Core failed.
The theory of standards-based reform is that if everyone has the same curriculum and the same instruction, no one will fall behind. Thirty years ago, I wrongly believed that, and I supported the idea of national standards written by those in the field. But it is perfectly obvious that students in the same school with the same teachers using the same curriculum and having the same instruction do indeed have different outcomes. Having the same standards, curriculum, and instruction does not assure equal outcomes for all students. David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core, and Bill Gates, who funded the standards, did not know that.
He writes:
More than a decade after the 2010 release of Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics, no convincing evidence exists that the standards had a significant, positive impact on student achievement. My forthcoming book next month—“Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core”—explores Common Core from the initiative’s promising beginnings to its disappointing outcomes.
While the book is specifically about Common Core, the failure of that bold initiative can only be understood in the context of standards-based reform, of which Common Core is the latest and most famous example. For three decades, standards-based reform has ruled as the policy of choice for education reformers.
The theory of standards-based reform rests on the belief that ambitious standards in academic subjects should be written first, guiding the later development of other key components of education—curriculum, instruction, assessment, and accountability. By promoting a common set of outcomes, standards-based reformers argue, the fragmentation and incoherence plaguing previous reform efforts could be avoided.
The approach is inherently top-down and regulatory, with standards developed by policy elites and content experts at the top of the system. The other components, all of which are bolted to the academic standards, grow in importance downstream and are often under the control of practitioners. The book focuses on curriculum and instruction, the what and the how of learning. They are key to the production of learning in classrooms.
Despite the theory’s intuitive appeal, standards-based reform does not work very well in reality. One key reason is that coordinating key aspects of education at the top of the system hamstrings discretion at the bottom. The illusion of a coherent, well-coordinated system is gained at the expense of teachers’ flexibility in tailoring instruction to serve their students. Classrooms are teeming with variation. An assumption of Common Core advocates is that variation in learning occurs primarily because of schools and classrooms possessing disparate, and all too often, indefensibly low standards—that if schools were brought under a common regime of high expectations, children who are falling behind would catch up or never fall behind in the first place.
Please open the link and read the rest of the article.
This line made me laugh aloud at Common Core: “[T]he reading abilities of students entering kindergarten cover about a five-year span, from that of a typical three-year-old to that of a typical eight-year-old (based on the 90th-10th percentile gap). Previous years’ slack standards or inept teaching cannot affect the learning of youngsters entering school for the first time.”
The cause of low expectations is classist and racist biases about students’ capacity to learn and what they need learn. Those prejudices are supported and created by a society that accepts inequity and competition for scarce resources as unalterable. Standards and high stakes tests won’t fix that. That’s the job of a united multiracial movement of working people.
In an early childhood longitudinal study, “the gaps associated with family socioeconomic status (SES) were enormous. As reported in “Inequality at the Starting Gate,” test scores of students in the top and bottom SES quintiles differed by 1.24 standard deviations in math and 1.17 standard deviations in reading.”
Supporters of standards fail to account for the fact that students are not uniform. There is a huge academic gap between the middle class and the poor. No amount of standardization will change this fact. What is worse is that tests based on standards do nothing more than highlight this disparity. In the hands of some politicians the data are used to pigeonhole students, fire teachers and takeover or close schools. Closing schools is considered a helpful solution that targets mostly poor, minority students. Disruption is harmful, and there is zero evidence that privatization is a boon to poor students. Yet, in state after state politicians continue to steam roll and fleece public schools. There is not an iota of equity in the decision to place poor, minority students in separate and unequal schools. This process appears a lot more racist than helpful.
The privatization movement uses the “achievement gap” to paint schools as failures. The fact is that there is an achievement gap in every school and every district and it reflects social inequities. Reformers have no ideas about addressing root causes.
Standards-based education morphed into a quest for standardized education, a factory model of assembly-line education with exaggerated importance attached to on-time performance (by grade level) and for maximum efficiency in ACADEMIC learning.
Recent efforts to keep an image of standardized education in place are troubled by attention to SEL–social emotional learning, which is not strictly academic.
I look forward to another book on the dreadful Common Core. I hope Tom Loveless can persuade the publishers to ramp up a huge campaign to kill this example of reformist misdirection.
Read Tom’s book. He eviscerates CC
Or if you like Common Core, read just one part of one chapter fromTom’s book without any context, then reread just that part, then reread it again, and then take a multiple choice test that questions whether you would have the “skill” to understand the the reading if you were to ever actually read the whole book. Learn next to nothing. That is Common Core.
I was disturbed by the way he characterized the debate over reading instruction. I was also leery of his call for more scientific research into effective teaching methods, etc. “Scientific research” led by whom? Kinsey and the data gurus? He still seems to be caught by the idea that there is one best way to do things. I am more than open to other points of view since I only read it once rather quickly, so these are just impressions rather than critical analysis.
Spedukatr, I agree on the reading part. The whole section (especially if you read Moats context linked—eyebrow-raising! – comments are good) seemed to be a re-hash of the usual ‘stupid teachers screwed up the CCSS implementation’ line, not to mention reviving the faux argument on decoding vs reading for comprehension. Yet based on other things he says, I doubt this is his intention. Perhaps one has to read the book.
Of course we have to read the book to comment fairly and critically. I hate the way whole language techniques are denigrated. Phonics is a great tool, but I’ve run to enough word callers in my day to know that a balance is needed. The whole problem with standardization is the attempt to mandate one and only one way to teach. Has anyone run into a standardized child yet?
I agree wholeheartedly that the top-down practices used in Common Core implementation were critical mistakes. As I attended various PD on the subject it also became clear that school based educators were perceived to be part of the problem which created greater frustration and distrust among teachers. Our focus going forward has to not only include teachers in the change process, but to provide the resources that will encourage the best to enter the profession.
From Tom’s post:
“One of the most highly replicated findings of education research is that a good predictor of how much students will learn tomorrow is how much they know today.”
It’s too bad that the authors of the CCSS ignored this.
Instead, success on the CC tests in ELA were completely dependent on a lifetime of language exposure and acquisition.
Funny we don’t hear much about math . . . ?
I guess that inch wide and a mile deep approach needs some re-thinking.
The big push in our district to raise achievement, especially among our black and brown students, is to focus on “rigor”, a word that makes my skin crawl, since its root meaning is ‘stiff’ or ‘rigid’. I feel that while rigor may be the goal, the way to reach it is by focusing more on the pedagogy of Bloom’s Taxonomy, since it clearly defines different levels of thinking from the lowest (remember and understanding) to the highest (analyze, evaluate, and create). “Rigor” is just the latest buzzword being thrown around these days. Before that it was “grit” and before that we talked about “college readiness”. I’d be curious to hear others’ thoughts around rigor. Thanks.
Ah “rigor” in testing was also referred to as the the civil rights movement of the 21st century! One of the greatest cons in US education history.
It was the politically correct way of covering up for CC standards and tests that were designed to produce hyper-failure rates in 8 to 13 year old kids. Ignoring cognitive learning theory and our understanding of brain development in children was all too convenient for the cheerleaders of “rigor”.
The origins of “rigor” go back to GW Bush and the “soft bigotry of low expectations”. This of course laid the groundwork for NCLB ushering in the standards based, test-threaten-and-punish reform movement that remains lodged in the ESSA.
Nothing (nothing!) exemplifies “low expectations” any more than narrowing the focus of the school experience to just two (2!) subjects while producing an unprecedented expansion of the null curricula. Depriving the underprivileged of a complete and varied and enriched curricula has been a proven failure.
The Resistance should be demanding a return to that which has been denied those who’s only chance of such experiences is in the school setting.
“The Rigor Chorus”
Rigor chorus
Rigor for us
Rigor Core is
Rigor mortis
Rigor is de rigueur
Rigor is de rigueur
Common Core’s the norm
Test score is the figure
By which they gauge reform
And by that gauge, it failed miserably.
De rigormortis
Hearing “rigor” in reference to learning makes my teeth hurt. When I first heard the term I wondered who in their right mind would choose a term automatically associated with “rigor mortis” to describe a condition we want to associate with the process of learning. A stiff death really does describe what has been promoted for the past couple of decades.
Maybe it’s actually spelled “rigger” as in someone who rigs a result.
That would be very apt for the deformers who have been rigging the system (eg, by setting test cut scores to make students and schools look bad) for years.
Above all else, Deformers are dishonest.
Most of them knew exactly what they were doing when they did it.
Mole555,
What would be a better word for curriculum and teaching that is rich, precise, and demanding of excellence?
I have thought of ‘rigorous’ differently:
rig•or•ous rĭg′ər-əs►
adj. Characterized by or adhering to strict standards or methods; exacting and thorough.
Strictness does not have to equal mean or cruel. Strict adherence to the appropriate use of periods and capital letters aids communication. Precision in thought and word choice does as well.
I agree that Bloom’s Taxonomy is an excellent means of engaging deeper thought; using it enables more rigorous thinking on a subject (in this sense, precise and thorough).
Every Child Left Behind
Every kid
Is left behind
When software bid
Is Ed defined
Curiosity Left Behind
Every Child
Was left behind
When test defiled
The open mind
There is nothing a school can do to educate a student without parental support. There are some students who manage to succeed despite parental neglect. Why do some schools turn out great basketball players who are lousy mathematicians? Because there are immediate rewards for winning basketball games and not much praise for the kid who does well in math. Consequently, the kid who will spend hours perfecting a basketball shot won’t spend five minutes on math homework.
Standards-based education is the asresult of trying to define exactly what we are teaching. It is life in search of science, instead of the true path which is science looking for life. When we say “all students should…” we create artificial categories of people based on entirely arbitrary ideas. When we do that, we invite the fallacy of generalization: all _____ are _____ is a falsehood always in the natural world unless the blanks are filled in with the same individual organism.
The result? Prejudices based on the most immediate discernible visual characteristics of the person. Frustrated math teachers wonder why girls cannot learn math. English teachers decide that boys cannot read. This race or that geographical area produces bad apples or good based on unreasonable expectations that are taught to smart people in college by professors who made A in their subject but flunked common human understanding of other humans.
The range of human behaviors is far too broad to limit human behavior by a failure to invest in the potential that appears in humans as they age. When America felt it needed engineers in a world facing the Cold War, it put money into places that sent company representatives scampering across the country to find possible minds to train. It worked, of course. From the watch repairmen and the radio fixers came people who became the technicians of the defense department. Whether one agrees with the creations in general or not, the effort was effective.
Really want the best education for all our students? Flood the profession with money and hire smart kids to teach. Make sure they can have time to do the job they are doing. Then go drink coffee where, according to Oppenheimer, all important scientific discovery occurs.
Novice learners need a lot more than smart, young “kids’ (like TFAers?) who decide what and when to teach over coffee.
Good science standards are essential for guiding science curriculum development, science textbook writers, and science test developers.
Good science standards have age appropriate scope and sequencing built in. Bad science standards like the current NGSS do nearly irreparable harm and take a generation to fix.
It is truly unAmerican to require that all students fit into the same narrow mold.
But then again, what a large fraction of Americans (including in our government) say and do is completely contrary to the principles upon which our country was founded.
America is supposed to emphasize individual freedom, but what it really emphasizes is collective obedience to a central authority.
The Commie Core
The Commie Core
Was built by Gates
And what it’s for
Is sealing fates
Just look at the bill that the Florida House just passed to criminalize speech in order to silence people.
And it is hardly an anomaly.
And Florida has turned into the Soviet Union.
Having the same standards, curriculum, and instruction does not assure equal outcomes for all students. David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core, and Bill Gates, who funded the standards, did not know that.”
Oh, I think they did know that but the outcomes they were concerned about were actually not those for students but those for businesses.
And having the same standards, curriculum and instruction does assure po$itive outcome$ for businesses providing software and hardware to schools. And it has the added benefit of producing a populace who can’t think for themselves and are easily bent
to the will of people like Coleman, Gates and Trump.
Unlike the Common Core and the NGSS, objective, developmentally appropriate educational standards are meant to provide equal learning opportunities. Well written standards ensure that teachers are not left to their own whims and preferences.
Standards must be decided upon by someone(s).
And standards dictate curriculum and teaching, despite claims to the contrary.
So the central question comes down to who decides?
A national committee of self styled ” experts” to develop national standards?
Or local teachers?
In my opinion, a fundamental problem with Common Core was the assumption that there need to be NATIONAL standards that everyone MUST adhere to.
A math teacher who used to post here under the pseudonym Mathvale once suggested that standards be developed like open source software for which individual teachers can make contributions AND that teachers be free to use what works for them .
As an aside, Mathvale(a retired engineer who pursued teaching as a second career) was effectively driven out of teaching by crap like Common Core , VAM and the rest.
I wonder how many thousands of teachers have gone the same way as Mathvale.
People like David Coleman and Bill Gates have done incalculable damage to education in the United States but have suffered zero personal consequences .
As an aside , I was once a math and science teacher and found that some of my most successful and popular lessons were actually not part of the standard curriculum.
For example, I took time out of my classes on standard Euclidean geometry to teach about geometry of curved surfaces and fractal geometry.
If I had been forced to adhere to a strict set of standards and curriculum, I suspect that I would not have been allowed to teach those things.
Apart from that, there is no better way to turn off a teacher and even drive them out than to place them in a straight jacket.
I left Jason Zimba, developed of CC math standards off my list of those who did profound damage.
Zimba might know math (I say might because he’s basically a failed physicist) but he knew next to nothing about teaching.
And like David Coleman, Zimba made a small fortune off of Common Core.
Nothing prevents a teacher adding valid and interesting instruction to their curriculum. I did it frequently – with plenty of time to cover standards as well. Bit of a strawman here, no?
Not a strawman at all given what happened with Common Core purely because it was a national standard enforced on individual teachers — not because it was a poor standard .
The fact is, when teachers are forced to teach to national standards with tests, they don’t have time to deviate.
But i don’t know whether you support national standards and actually did not assume as much.
All I know is what you wrote “Well written standards ensure that teachers are not left to their own whims and preferences”.
I would point out that with optional standards, teachers would still be left to their own whims and preferences.
Science must be our guide, as Loveless says. Our profession is mired in pseudo-science.
Pretty far down the knowledge-free rabbit hole.