Now here is a first for this blog. A comment that appeared
on the blog by Robert Rendo was picked up and posted by blogger
Jonathan Pelto. It was indeed a brilliant statement, and somehow I
failed to turn it into a post. So
I am taking the post from Jonathan Pelto’s blog and
posting it here so everyone can read it. Rendo explains how Common
Core and the high-stakes testing mandated by No Child Left Behind
and Race to the Top have degraded schooling and education. Here is
a sample: In fact, we have stepped a long way back into a
new epoch of factory style education, where every student is a
widget, and every widget is hyper-inspected along the conveyor belt
to see if its frame will hold up once sold to the consumer, who is
now the future employer. And if the person hired to do the assembly
messes up just a few times, they are fired and replaced. This
process happens knowing full well the conveyor belt is moving at 45
MPH, up from 10 MPH several years ago. Who can
really produce that many widgets when the belt is rolling by so
quickly? It conjures up the imagery of the classic factory
chocolate making scene from “I Love Lucy”. But
it’s anything but cute or funny. Students are
not widgets. Teachers are not robots. The process of teaching and
learning is a humanistic endeavor. There are bonds to be forged,
even while measuring situations and outcomes with data. The data
used to help contribute indispensably to that human bond.
Presently, the bonding has been devalued, thrown aside, and the
data has become the new humanism.
FairTest says that the new Common Core tests do not live up
to the claims by proponents about a new era of tests that measure
higher-order thinking and really show what students know and can
do. FairTest
National Center for Fair & Open Testing for further
information: Dr. Monty Neill (617)
477-9792 Bob Schaeffer (239)
395-6773
DISSECTING
COMMON CORE ASSESSMENT MYTHS AND REALITIES;
DESPITE HYPE, PLANS CALL FOR MORE
HIGH-STAKES TESTS, COST AND STRESS;
MORATORIUM ON NEW EXAMS
NEEDED
A new fact sheet shows
that the Common Core Assessments, which are being rolled out for
widespread implementation in the 2014-2015 school year, are not
significantly different from the standardized exams currently
administered in many states. At the same time, plans call for more
high-stakes tests with even greater costs. “Despite proponents’
claims that the Common Core would lead to a new breed of
assessments that focus on higher-order, critical thinking skills,
the planned tests are predominantly the same-old multiple-choice
questions,” explained Dr. Monty Neill, Executive Director of the
National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). Dr.
Neill continued, “Rather than ending ‘No Child Left Behind’ testing
overkill, the Common Core will flood classrooms with even more
standardized exams. Their scores will continue to be misused to
make high-stakes educational decisions, including high school
graduation. They will also end up costing taxpayers millions more
for new tests and the computer systems required to deliver them.”
The FairTest fact sheet also challenges the notion that harder
tests are automatically better. It states, “If a child struggles to
clear the high bar at five feet, she will not become a ‘world
class’ jumper because someone raised the bar to six feet and yelled
‘jump higher,’ or if her ‘poor’ performance is used to punish her
coach.” Scores recently plummeted in New York State and Kentucky
where Common Core tests were initially administered. Based on its
analysis, FairTest is calling for an indefinite moratorium on the
Common Core tests. “As the prestigious Gordon Commission of
educational experts recently concluded, these exams are not the
better assessments our schools need,” Dr. Neill concluded.
“Instead, a system of classroom- based performance assessments,
evaluations of student work portfolios, and school quality reviews
will help improve learning and teaching.”
–
– 3 0 – –
The fact sheet is online at: http://fairtest.org/common-core-assessments-factsheet
I first learned about the Common Core standards while attending a briefing for Congressional staff at a conference sponsored by the Aspen Institute in 2009. it was held at Wye Plantation, a lovely and isolated conference center in Maryland. Dane Linn of the National Governors
Association described the development work. I was invited to talk about the history of standards in the U.S.
In the discussion following Linn’s presentation, I recommended field
testing. In my experience in working on state standards in California, the standards needed to be vetted by experienced teachers. There needed to be a feedback process in which teachers used the standards and had the chance to tell someone in charge what worked and what didn’t, what was placed in the wrong grade (too hard or too easy), and which expectations were unrealistic.
In 2010, I was invited to the White House to meet with
three top officials–Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy
Council, Rahm Emanuel, the President’s chief of staff, and Roberto
Rodriguez, the President’s education advisor. We talked for an hour
(Emanuel got bored and left early). They asked many questions, like what do you think of merit pay? i told them it had been tried repeatedly and failed every time. they responded that the Obama administration was putting $1 billion into merit pay.
Another of their questions was:
“What do you think of the Common Core standards?” My answer: “They
should have a trial in a few states for a few years before they are
made national standards. You need to find out what needs fixing.
They might be so rigorous that they increase achievement gaps and
hurt the kids who are not doing well now, especially poor kids and
kids of color.” I had a suggestion: “Why don’t you try the
standards out in three to five states, offer grants to those that
want to do it, and see how they work and what consequences they
have?” They were not interested. I left the meeting at the White House feeling that I had just spent an hour talking to people who heard nothing that I said. They told me what they planned to do, but they never engaged in dialogue about whether it was a good idea. Oh, and before Rahm Emanuel abruptly left the meeting to do more important things, his first question was “What can we learn from Catholic schools?”
For four years, I sat on the fence, waiting for evidence one way or the other about the Common Core standards. It really bothered me that no one cared to find out how they worked in real classrooms before imposing them. Then, earlier this year, I wrote a post
explaining that the way the standards were imposed, with
no trial, no feedback, no way to update them, made it impossible
for me to support them. Critics responded that standards need no evidence, but I don’t believe it. No big corporation would roll out a big product without field testing. Why should an entire nation accept education standards without finding out how they work?
Now we do have evidence. This is what
we know: the Common Core tests cause a huge decline in test scores.
Passing rates fell 30% in Kentucky and about the same in New York.
What is worse is that the achievement gaps grew larger. As
Carol Burris recently wrote, the test results were
especially devastating for black and Latino children. “The results
expanded the black/white achievement gap. In 2012, there was a
12-point black/white achievement gap between average third grade
English Language Arts scores, and a 14-point gap in eighth grade
ELA scores. This year, the respective gaps grew to 19 and 25
points. In 2012, there was an 8-point gap between black/white
third-grade math scores and a 13-point gap between eighth-grade
math scores. The respective gaps are now 14 and 18 points. The gap
expansion extended to other groups as well. The achievement gap
between White and Latino students in eighth-grade ELA grew from 3
points to 22 points. Students who already believe they are not as
academically successful as their more affluent peers, will further
internalize defeat. “The percentage of black students who scored
“below basic” in third-grade English Language Arts rose from 15.5
percent to 50 percent. In seventh-grade math, black students
labeled “below basic” jumped from 16.5 percent to a staggering 70
percent. Nearly one-third of all New York children scored “below
basic” across the grade level tests. Students often score “below
basic” because they guess or give up. Principals and teachers
cannot get accurate feedback on student learning. Although Ms.
Tisch [chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents] may say
that “this does not mean there’s no learning going on,” what will
parents think? Students will now need to be placed in remediation,
or Academic Intervention Services. Schools that serve a
predominately minority, poor student body will be fiscally
overwhelmed as they try to meet the needs of so many children.
Those who truly need the additional support will find that support
is watered-down.”
Maybe the standards are okay, but the tests are
not.
Who is in charge? By law, the U.S. Department of Education is not
allowed to interfere with curriculum or instruction. Who
can find out what went wrong? Or will we feel okay about imposing
reforms that widen the gaps? In New York, the charter schools did
no better than the public schools. Where are we heading? It won’t
do to keep saying, as Secretary Duncan likes to, that only
extremists oppose the standards. Reasonable people question them as
well. To whom should we turn for a careful, thoughtful analysis of
what is going terribly wrong?
Randall Hendee is a English teacher in Illinois. He wrote the following comments about E.D. Hirsch’s views about the Common Core. Hirsch is the founder of the Core Knowledge curriculum and author of several books on the importance of establishing a sequential, specific, knowledge-based curriculum.
Hendee writes:
“I hope everyone who reads Hirsch’s article on Common Core testing also reads his strong endorsement of the CCSS in his previous piece: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/e-d-hirsch-jr/why-im-for-the-common-cor_b_3809618.html
“Part of that endorsement hinges on a belief that we can’t predict whether the standards will work or not. To which I’d answer 1) That’s what pilot projects are for, and 2) there’s such a thing as “highly predictable unintended consequences,” such as the ones that played out in Iraq, and in the implementation of NCLB. It’s not just that well informed people predicted them in advance but were drowned out by the poorly informed herd. It’s that we can analyze the assumptions behind the Common Core Standards right now and identify the logical–and ideological–fallacies that point to failure.
“Check out this paragraph from Hirsch’s earlier piece (dated August 27):
“Not even most prescient among us can know whether the Common Core standards will end in triumph or tragedy. That will depend on what the states actually do about developing rich content knowledge ‘within and across grades.’ To do so will take the courage to withstand the gripe-patrols that will complain about the inclusion of say Egypt, in the second grade. But who can be sure that the required political courage to withstand such gripes won’t be forthcoming once the absolute need for specific, cumulative content is understood. As Niels Bohr said: ‘Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.’ If just one state or district shows the way, with big, unmistakable gains resulting, those results will influence many others.”
“Gripe patrols? Is he referring to the early childhood experts that had no role in writing the standards? Anyway, Hirsch is saying that the Common Core Standards might not work, but if somebody CAN get them to work, everyone else should follow their lead. This might have been a tenable position BEFORE almost every state adopted the standards (if you believe in standardization, that is). Still, he has no problem at all with running a long-range experiment using the bulk of the nation’s kids as test subjects!
“Also note his reference to Egypt for second graders, which I take to be a slap at Diane’s blog post that questioned a crazy list of outcomes expected of six year olds from their study of Mesopotamia, Egypt, comparative religion, ancient languages, and what all: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/23/can-you-explain-the-code-of-hammurabi-and-a-ziggurat/comment-page-1/ based on this… http://www.engageny.org/resource/grade-1-ela-domain-4-early-world-civilizations
“I don’t share Mr. Hirsch’s belief that intense, sequenced instruction in all prescribed content areas is the key to helping young children improve their reading comprehension, or to inspiring a lifelong love of learning, for that matter. I don’t believe in “the absolute need for specific, cumulative content.” I think it’s impossible, and counterproductive, to conjure up a body of knowledge that every child has to master–that is, a detailed scope and sequence of facts, concepts, and vocabulary–in order to be considered educated. (Now, if we’re talking about training–in neurosurgery or air traffic control–that’s a different story.) Admittedly, that’s a philosophical difference. But I think we should look at research, too. Here’s the comment I left on his Huffington Post entry on Common Core Testing:
“Where did you get the idea that forcing advanced subjects on young kids is the best way to improve reading comprehension? I got good at English by reading what I liked. This has been borne out by research. Stephen Krashen reports on the value of “sustained silent reading”: http://successfulenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/81-Generalizations-about-FVR-2009.pdf and the importance of “narrow reading”: http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/narrow/all.html
“Looks like background knowledge is more effectively built when a student selects his own reading material within a limited range (than when the teacher assigns a variety of unfamiliar short passages). I went through phases as a kid: mystery, adventure, nature, war. Sure, I also read the encyclopedia, but it wasn’t just learning academic subjects that built my background knowledge. It was all those Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and We Were There books.
“You’re right that “value added” models shouldn’t be used to evaluate teachers, but really good teachers will finesse the bad mandates as best they can. Their main concern isn’t to keep their jobs. It’s to help children learn. The “many teachers” that you report “were still going to do test prep, as any sensible teacher should” might not represent teachers as a whole. I’ll bet there are just as many trying to subvert the ill-conceived testing regimes and other bad practices. Lots of teachers will either keep trying to do right by their students, or reluctantly quit.”
Joy Resmovits has posted an admiring article about David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards and now head of the College Board.
It tells you much of what you need to know about the man whose ideas are reshaping what almost every public school students in the United States will know and be able to do.
Note that Coleman tried to be a teacher, he says, but didn’t get hired. And now he will direct almost every classroom in the nation!
Since he couldn’t be a teacher, he went to work for McKinsey, where Big Data is a religion.
Then he founded the “Grow Network,” a company that provided data analysis about assessments.
McGraw-Hill purchased the Grow Network, for what insiders say was $14 million.
Then Coleman founded Student Achievement Partners, which played the leading role in writing the Common Core standards, which received $6.5 million from the Gates Foundation for this work.
At the same time that he was writing the Common Core standards, Coleman was treasurer of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst in its first year of operation. The board had two other members: Jason Zimba, who wrote the Common Core math standards, and a third person who was an employee of David Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners.
Now, Coleman is reshaping the SAT and the AP tests to align with the Common Core.
Obviously, Coleman is an incredibly brilliant and well-educated man. He went to the very best universities. His parents were highly educated (his mother is president of Bennington College).
Since he has never been a teacher, what we must wonder about is his ability to understand that not all children will score over 700 on their SAT, no matter how hard they try. Not all children will go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Not all children will go to Oxford.
We have a federal policy today that seems to have been written by people who got very high scores on their standardized tests and lack empathy for those who can’t do the same.
If you read about education, you are sometimes tempted to think that all common sense has departed this nation, its leaders, and its mass media.
They keep looking for quick fixes, miracles, turnarounds, and magical answers as “solutions” to education problems.
Here is Ray Strabeck, a retired school superintendent in Mississippi, who reminds us that there are still people who know what they are talking about and who are willing to speak up.
He reminds his readers of the fads that came and went over his 50 years in education.
He reminds them of the limitations of standardized tests.
As for all the weeping and wailing about how “our schools are failing,” “we are losing the race to nations with higher test scores,” Strabeck has a few wise observations about the goal of “beating” other nations:
I find such a motivation ridiculous. Who first landed on the moon? Americans trained in American public schools. Who has orbited Earth more times than any other nation? Americans who were educated in public schools. Who has probed deeper in the sea than anyone else — maybe excluding Jacques Cousteau? Again the answer is Americans who began their learning in public schools. Solar energy, fossil fuels, electronic technologies, social programs, jurisprudence — and the list goes on and on.
If history is to be examined regarding Common Core, it is a program that might last some four to eight years. Having been involved in public education for nearly 50 years, I have watched this timeline remain fairly constant across the years: both politicians and educators finally conclude that the latest fad is not working, and something new arises they want to try.
What, then, assures good schools and higher student achievement? Economics, pure and simple. Find me a good school, and nine times out of 10 there will also be found a flourishing economy in that school community.
Our plea that good schools bring good industries is a misnomer, a case of getting the cart before the horse. Make sure that parents have good jobs, that small businesses are flourishing in the neighborhood and that people take pride in where they live and one of the unfailing outcomes is good schools.
And he adds:
If we would spend the money currently being spent on Common Core on economic development and sustain that kind of effort for, say, four or five years, we would soon see “good” schools emerging.
Please read the whole article.
Howard Schwach taught for more than 25 years, developed
test items for the state, and worked on curriculum development for
special education students. He
recently reviewed sample items from New York’s Common Core tests
and professed astonishment.
He wrote:
From the
first moment that I looked at some practice tests for the English
Language Arts tests that were given recently, I knew that the kids
and their teachers were in trouble. In his long
experience as a teacher and test writer and curriculum developer,
he said, “there was one guiding principal: never test
students on skills or material that you have not taught and
practiced. To do so not only would have been
unfair to the students, but it would have made the tests unreliable
and downright useless at a measure of student ability and
knowledge. That is why, when I looked at the
practice test, my first thought was that the questions were in the
deep end of the pool when the kids were just learning how to
swim. One that stuck in my mind was a passage
from a 1920’s magazine about aspirin. Because
the source article was written nearly 100 years ago, it contained
some archaic language and syntax that would have been confusing to
today’s adults, nonetheless eleven-year-olds.
So the kids were at a disadvantage right away, trying to
figure out the words they had never seen before, working them out
through context. Then, the question called for skills that have
never been tested before, nor taught by the teacher who showed me
the sample questions. She admitted that she had been “teaching to
the old test” for the past several years, trying to keep her kid’s
all-important test scores up while trying to keep her
job. “Education has nothing to do with what we
have been doing for the past couple of years,” the teacher admitted
with a nervous laugh. “It has been all about the
numbers.”
He found questions that had two right answers.
He found questions that would send the kids into tears. And he
wondered, “What in the world was the state thinking?” Indeed, what
were state officials when they tested students on material they had
not been taught, using unfamiliar vocabulary, having ambiguous
answers, with the certainty that most students would fail? Was it
John King’s inexperience that led him to align the state cut scores
with NAEP’s proficiency levels? Did he not understand that NAEP
proficiency is not a “passing” mark but a measure that connotes
“solid academic performance”?
What were they thinking?
The U.S. Department of Education on its official blog asked
for help and advice in evaluating state testing systems aligned
with the Common Core. Forget the fact that the U.S. Department of
Education is barred by law from doing anything to control or direct
curriculum and instruction. How about offering your help?
Here is a suggestion posted as a comment:
“First of all let’s address the
standards you are referring to (Common Core). These standards are
ridiculous in every sense of the word! You want 6 year olds to know
what ziggurats are and a kindergartener to know what molecules are
(look at NY ELA modules)? They are developmentally inappropriate!
They are learning their name and the names of their classmates. Be
realistic. “Secondly, we are testing too much! My kids sit through
hours and hours of useless testing. Assessments are important when
they can inform the teacher on a student’s growth. Tell me how
standardized tests do this? They don’t ….the results come out 5
months after the test. They give a score, but nothing else.
Teachers can’t see the tests, so how can they see what Junior
answered? How was Junior confused? Then, there is the expectation
that a 4 year old can sit in front of a computer to take a test.
This is child abuse! It is child abuse for a 3rd grader to sit
through hours of testing. And it is in poor judgement that a
special needs student be tortured with these as well. “All of this
has resulted in kids hating school. If all they are ever told is
they are a failure, then why would we wonder why they drop out of
school? Kids need choices. Maybe they aren’t cut out to be a rocket
scientist, but would make a great carpenter. Let’s foster that
talent and stop thinking “one size fits all”. “Why do states have
to have testing? To compare with other states? To compare with the
rest of the world? How much does this testing cost? Lots! Why don’t
we take that money, put it into programs that foster economic
growth, like art and music? Offer children after school activities
that are inspiring, like music, dance, art, sports. You know,
things that are fun, but foster student worth. “We are not moving
in the right direction with education “reform”. It is causing more
problems. If you want to improve education so the US compares to
other countries, like Finland, then take a good hard look at how
they do it! We will not get the same results by trying to implement
the opposite ideas! Stop demoralizing teachers and students! You
are getting nowhere on that stationary bike!”
E.D. Hirsch, Jr., the founder of the Core Knowledge curriculum, wrote an article opposing value-added teacher evaluation, especially in reading. Hirsch supports the Common Core but thinks it may be jeopardized by the rush to test it and tie the scores to teacher evaluations. He knows this will encourage teaching to the test and other negative consequences.
Hirsch believes that if teachers teach strong subject matter, their students will do well on the reading tests. But he sees the downside of tying test scores to salary and jobs.
He writes:
“The first thing I’d want to do if I were younger would be to launch an effective court challenge to value-added teacher evaluations on the basis of test scores in reading comprehension. The value-added approach to teacher evaluation in reading is unsound both technically and in its curriculum-narrowing effects. The connection between job ratings and tests in ELA has been a disaster for education.”
He is right. Will the so-called reformers who recently became Hirschians listen?
Michael Paul Goldenberg, a frequent commenter here, has entered the blogosphere on his own by writing for the Chalkface, a site for lively and controversial opinion.
In his first entry, he questions the logic of introducing the Common Core to all grades simultaneously. Doing so, he cogently argues, defeats the purpose of assuring coherence and continuity across the nation.. The child in fifth grade will never be exposed to what was taught in fourth grade.
A sensible rollout would have started in first grade only, then added a grade a year.
But hubris knows no limits.
Diane Ravitch's blog 