The Common Core standards have arrived.
Some love them. Some hate them.
It’s time for a debate.
Marc Tucker thinks they are necessary and appropriate in an age of globalized commerce.
Yong Zhao thinks they will standardize minds and crush creativity, which is needed in an age of globalization.
What do you think?
A reader writes in response to debate about Common Core in Indiana:
Common Core and the PARCC Assessment can only be described with one word in Illinois: daunting.
Illinois school districts are losing resources yearly, state aid being among them. Last year the state prorated its aid to schools at 94%. This year it is expected to be at 89%, and next year it could be as low as 80%. All this as expectations go up.
The little glimpses we’ve received in our numerous staff meetings of the possible PARCC assessment have left us feeling overwhelmed to say the least. Next week the Illinois State Board of Education will vote on whether to increase cut scores on the ISAT test to better align with the rigorous Common Core Standards. This will result in a significant decrease in the number of students meeting or exceeding state standards.
I teach in an Illinois Spotlight School (defined as high poverty schools where high academic performance is closing the “achievement gap”). We have faced many challenges with the lack of funding coming into our school. We used to be on the cutting edge of new technology but now we are faced with an outdated computer lab where large groups of students will gather to take the future PARCC assessments. This will present a huge challenge not only with our infrastructure but with many of our students as well. Many students will not have the skills to take on-line assessments as they have been working in small RtI groups during computer classes (a sad reality). Many students still don’t have computers at home.
I believe strongly that students need good, solid foundation skills and a wide range of experiences before they can think critically. The lack of funding has caused our school to limit field trips to one per year. I predict that number to go down to zero in the near future.
I hope Illinois follows Indiana’s lead in having a serious discussion about the Common Core and especially the timing. Our teachers have been scrambling to find resources that align to the Common Core. And now our students will be tested before full implementation?
I have no objection to high expectations for students and accountability for students and teachers. But we must be given time, resources, and a seat at the policy table. I
feel like I’m on a sinking ship. A moratorium on any new assessments until we have implemented, developed resources, and made reasonable changes to the CC sounds like a good life raft to me right now.
A report from Indiana:
Vic’s Statehouse Notes #106– January 17, 2013
Dear Friends,
Yesterday’s committee vote on Senate Bill 184, the voucher expansion bill, was delayed until next Wednesday’s meeting. This gives us all more time to send additional messages of opposition before the vote.
Voucher Expansion
Senator Kruse announced at the beginning of yesterday’s Senate Education Committee meeting that the vote on SB 184, the voucher expansion bill, as well as on two other bills would be taken at the January 23rd meeting. The only bill voted on as scheduled was Senate Bill 189, which was passed 9-0 with bipartisan support after being amended.
I have no inside information about SB 184, but sometimes bills are delayed in this manner because the sponsor doesn’t have the votes lined up to pass the bill and wants more time to try to find the votes. Whether this is true in the case of the sibling voucher bill is up to speculation, but the net result is that the bill still has not passed the committee and public school advocates have until January 23rd to reach more Senators, especially those on the Education Committee, to share your deep opposition to sending more public money to private schools through an expansion of vouchers for siblings. In many legislative districts, this weekend will be the first “Third House” or “Crackerbarrel” meetings in which legislators meet with constituents back home. I hope public school advocates will show up at such meetings with the message that public schools need more support and supporting private schools with more vouchers is the wrong priority. Go to it!
Common Core
Senator Kruse then turned yesterday to a hearing on SB 193, the Common Core bill, subject of two rallies and much debate prior to the hearing. Many of us in fighting the voucher bill in 2011 argued that private schools should not want vouchers because the strings that come with public dollars will take away the independence of private schools. That is exactly what has happened in this case and should prompt a reassessment of the full consequences of the voucher law.
As I listened to the story of how the fight against the Common Core began in Indiana, I learned that private school independence has already been corrupted by the voucher program. Senator Schneider, in introducing his bill to take Indiana out of the Common Core program, described how two parents in his district came to him greatly concerned that their voucher-accepting parochial school was changing its textbooks and curriculum to comply with the Common Core curriculum and the new assessments to come, since voucher schools must take the state assessments. These parents were greatly distressed by the changes they traced back to the Common Core curriculum, especially in math, and thus, a movement to overturn the 2010 decision of the Roundtable and the State Board was born.
Without the voucher program requirement that schools accepting vouchers must take the state tests, the private school could have ignored the Common Core and used textbooks and tests that fit its preferred curriculum. Now this huge public policy debate with national implications is being driven by private and parochial school parents and the outcome will impact every public and private school in Indiana. The voucher law has thus entwined public and private schools in an unanticipated way through the Common Core curriculum battle.
The hearing, which Senator Kruse noted began at 1:37, went on until 7:00pm last night. The Senate Chamber and gallery were standing room only and some 50 chairs were filled in the hallway outside the Senate Chamber. The vote on SB 193 is scheduled for the next meeting, January 23rd.
House Education Committee
The first meeting of the House Education Committee was held this morning at 8:30am. House Bill 1012 amending the law governing the transfer of surplus buildings to charter schools was passed 12 to 1. The bill reduces the four year waiting period to sell a building to two years and includes a 30-day fast track procedure when a ready buyer is available. House Bill 1060 amending the law governing criminal background checks on teacher applicants was passed 12 to 0.
Chairman Behning announced that House Bills 1005, a complex bill regarding high school remediation, and 1295 regarding the IU School of Public Health would be given hearings at the next meeting on Tuesday, January 22nd. The new schedule for the House Education Committee is to meet every Tuesday and Thursday from 8:30 until the House convenes around 10:30.
Contact Senators
Senators need to hear again this week from the grassroots about Senate Bill 184. Please let them know of your opposition to expanding the voucher program in a way that will for the first time add new and expensive fiscal costs to the program. Other voucher bills have been announced, and strong resistance to this first one, SB 184, will help us fight the others down the road. The Senators on the committee to contact are as follows:
Chair: Sen. Kruse
Republican Members: Senators Yoder, Banks, Buck, Kenley, Pete Miller, Leising and Schneider
Democrat Members: Senators Rogers, Broden, Mrvan, Taylor
Thanks for all you are doing to support public education!
Best wishes,
Vic Smith vic790@aol.com
ICPE is working to promote public education in the Statehouse as efforts are made to take public money away from public schools through an expansion of vouchers. We are well represented by our lobbyist Joel Hand, but to keep him in place we need all members from last year to renew and we need new members who support public education.
Go to http://www.icpe2011.com for membership and renewal information.
Some readers have asked about my background in Indiana public schools. Thanks for asking! Here is a brief bio:
I am a lifelong Hoosier and began teaching in 1969. I served as a social studies teacher, curriculum developer, state research and evaluation consultant, state social studies consultant, district social studies supervisor, assistant principal, principal, educational association staff member, and adjunct university professor. I worked for Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools, the Indiana University Social Studies Development Center, the Indiana Department of Education, the Indianapolis Public Schools, IUPUI, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, from which I retired as Associate Director in 2009. I hold three degrees: B.A. in Ed., Ball State University, 1969; M.S. in Ed., Indiana University, 1972; and Ed.D., Indiana University, 1977, along with a Teacher’s Life License and a Superintendent’s License, 1998.
—
Julian M.Smith
4th Grade
Scipio, Elementary
Carol Jago is an experienced English teacher, author, and former president of the National Council of Teachers of English.
Jago writes here about what high school English classes should look like in the Common a core era.
She served on the NAEP assessment committee that set the ratio of 70-30 for test developers.
Here is the key point:
“What seems to be causing confusion are the comparative recommended percentages for informational and literary text cited in the Common Core’s introduction. These percentages reflect the 2009 NAEP Reading Framework http://www.nagb.org/content/nagb/assets/documents/publications/frameworks/reading09.pdf . I served on that framework committee and can assure you that when we determined that 70% of what students would be asked to read for the 12th grade NAEP reading assessment would be informational, we did not mean that 70% of what students read in senior English should be informational text. The National Assessment for Educational Progress does not measure performance in English class. It measures performance in reading, reading across the disciplines and throughout the school day.”
I would clarify further to say that NAEP was not designed to tell teachers what to teach or how to teach. That ratio of 70-30 is an instruction to test developers, not to teachers.
Friends and foes of the Common Core standards packed a meeting room in Indiana to discuss its future.
This issue creates strange alliances. The new state superintendent Glenda Ritz opposes them. So does the Tea Party. But other hard-right conservatives like former superintendent Tony Bennett and Jeb Bush are strong advocates for CC.
Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute urged the legislators to stay the course because the CC will raise performance (how does he know?), the states started the standards (not really), and the states will get lots of innovation once there is a national marketplace (a new era for edu-entrepreneurs).
It is impossible to know how the CC standards will work, since no one knows. Most people think scores will drop, since that happened in Kentucky. New York state’s leaders have already predicted a big score decline. Will there be more and better academic achievement? No one knows.
Stephanie Sawyer gives her view of the flaws of the Common Core math standards:
I don’t think the common core math standards are good for most kids, not just the Title I students. While they are certainly more focused than the previous NCTM-inspired state standards, which were a horrifying hodge-podge of material, they still basically put the intellectual cart before the horse. They pay lip service to actually practicing standard algorithms. Seriously, students don’t have to be fluent in addition and subtraction with the standard algorithms until 4th grade?
I teach high school math. I took a break to work in the private sector from 2002 to 2009. Since my return, I have been stunned by my students’ lack of basic skills. How can I teach algebra 2 students about rational expressions when they can’t even deal with fractions with numbers?
Please don’t tell me this is a result of the rote learning that goes on in grade- and middle-school math classes, because I’m pretty sure that’s not what is happening at all. If that were true, I would have a room full of students who could divide fractions. But for some reason, most of them can’t, and don’t even know where to start.
I find it fascinating that students who have been looking at fractions from 3rd grade through 8th grade still can’t actually do anything with them. Yet I can ask adults over 35 how to add fractions and most can tell me. And do it. And I’m fairly certain they get the concept. There is something to be said for “traditional” methods and curriculum when looked at from this perspective.
Grade schools have been using Everyday Math and other incarnations for a good 5 to 10 years now, even more in some parts of the country. These are kids who have been taught the concept way before the algorithm, which is basically what the Common Core seems to promote. I have a 4th grade son who attends a school using Everyday Math. Luckily, he’s sharp enough to overcome the deficits inherent in the program. When asked to convert 568 inches to feet, he told me he needed to divide by 12, since he had to split the 568 into groups of 12. Yippee. He gets the concept. So I said to him, well, do it already! He explained that he couldn’t, since he only knew up to 12 times 12. But he did, after 7 agonizing minutes of developing his own iterated-subtraction-while-tallying system, tell me that 568 inches was 47 feet, 4 inches. Well, he got it right. But to be honest, I was mad; he could’ve done in a minute what ended up taking 7. And he already got the concept, since he knew he had to divide; he just needed to know how to actually do it. From my reading of the common core, that’s a great story. I can’t say I feel the same.
If Everyday Math and similar programs are what is in store for implementing the common core standards for math, then I think we will continue to see an increase in remedial math instruction in high schools and colleges. Or at least an increase in the clientele of the private tutoring centers, which do teach basic math skills.
Will Fitzhugh created The Concord Review to publish exemplary historical research by high school students.
He has long waged a struggle to persuade teachers and schools to assign histories by leading scholars, not just cut-and-paste, pedestrian textbooks. Since many state standards emphasize coverage, not depth, this has been a hard sell. Real histories are exciting to read, but they take time. Few teachers, unless they teach advanced students, have the time for 400-page books.
The immediate problem, for both teachers and students, is time but the deeper problem is our vision of teaching and learning, which now values the right answers on standardized tests, not the ability to read a book or construct an essay based on research. Changing books does not solve the problems inherent in a cramped and narrow vision of what education should be.
This is what Will wrote last spring:
History Books
Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
10 April 2012
I majored in English literature at Harvard, and had such wonderful professors as B.J. Whiting for Chaucer, Alfred Harbage for Shakespeare, Douglas Bush for Milton, Walter Jackson Bate for Samuel Johnson, and Herschel Baker for Tudor/Stuart Drama. In my one year at Cambridge after graduation, I had the benefit of lectures by Clive Staples Lewis, F.R. Leavis, Joan Bennett, and R.T.H. Redpath.
But in high school and in college I didn’t read any history books and I didn’t think twice about it. Many years later, when I was asked to teach United States History at the high school in Concord, Massachusetts, I panicked. I read Samuel Eliot Morison’s Oxford History of the American People to get started and I have been reading history books ever since (thirty years), but I never knew enough history to be as good a history teacher as my students deserved.
Since 1987, (I left teaching in 1988) I have been the editor of The Concord Review, the only journal in the world for the academic papers of secondary students, and we have now published 1,044 history research papers by high school students from 46 states and 38 other countries. This has only increased my understanding that high school students should be not only encouraged to read complete history books (as I never was in school) but assigned them as well. It is now my view that unless students in our high schools get used to reading at least one complete history book each year, they will not be as well prepared for the books on college nonfiction reading lists as they should be.
In addition, as adherents to the ideas of E.D. Hirsch know well, understanding what one reads depends on the prior knowledge of the reader, and by reading history books our high schools students will learn more history and be more competent to read difficult nonfiction material, including more history books, in college.
When I discuss these thoughts, even with my good friends in the education world, I find a strange sort of automatic reversion to the default. When I want to talk about reading nonfiction books, suddenly the conversation is about novels. Any discussion of reading nonfiction in the high schools always, in my experience, defaults to talk of literature. It seems virtually impossible to anyone discussing reading to relax the clutches of the English Departments long enough even to consider that a history book might make good reading material for our students, too. Try it sometime and see what I mean.
I realize that most Social Studies and History Departments have simply given up on having students read a history book, even in those few cases where they may have tried in the past. They are almost universally content, it seems, to leave the assignment of books (and too much of the writing as well) entirely in the hands of their English Department colleagues.
One outcome of this, in my view, is that even when the Common Core people talk about the need for more nonfiction, it is more than they can manage to dare to suggest a list of complete history books for kids to read. So we find them suggesting little nonfiction excerpts and short speeches to assign, along with menus, brochures, and bus schedules for the middle schoolers. Embarrassing.
Nevertheless, if asked, what history books would I suggest? Everyone is afraid to mention possible history books if they are not about current events, or civics, or some underserved population, for fear of a backlash against the whole idea of history books.
But I will offer these: Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough for Freshmen, Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer for Sophomores, Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson for Juniors, and The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough for Seniors in high school.
Obviously there are thousands of other good history books, and students should be free to read any of these as they work on their Extended History Essays or the very new Capstone Essays the College Board is beginning to start thinking about. And of course I do realize that some history took place before 1620 and even in countries other than our own, but these books are good ones, and if students read them they will actually learn some history, but perhaps more important, they will learn that reading a real live nonfiction history book is not beyond their reach. I dearly wish I had learned that when I was in high school.
———————————
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
http://www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
http://www.tcr.org/blog
Education Week has an article by Catherine Gewertz saying that defenders of the Common Core are out in full force to quell the uproar about whether CC will mean less fiction.
It is interesting that the two loudest voices defending CC are Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, both quite conservative groups.
The way the issue is framed unfortunately misses the point, at least the point that I and others have raised.
Why do the CC standards mandate a proportionate split between fiction and non-fiction?
Who thought it was necessary to turn NAEP’s instruction to test developers into a mandate for teachers?
Who will police the implementation of the arbitrary ratios of 50-50 or 70-30?
If the ratios apply to all courses, can’t we assume that students will read “informational text” in math, science, civics, history, and other subjects, leaving teachers of English language arts to assign as much fiction or non-fiction as they want?
In the interests of clarity, here’s what I want: the ratios should be eliminated. They are an overreach. They have no basis in research or experience. There is no justification for imposing them.
I urge this not as a partisan of fiction or non-fiction, but as a partisan of common sense.
Diane
An English teacher explains that she always teaches non-fiction in her courses. What she can’t understand is the mindset of those who want to impose a statistical straight jacket on teachers. She wonders if the people who did this have sound educational values.
“The argument that English teachers are opposed to non-fiction because they love literature is an unsubstantiated generalization. Just because you love English doesn’t mean you don’t love non fiction as anyone of my English colleagues could attest to. One does not have to have a bias against non fiction to find arbitrary percentage points embedded in a badly conceived aspect of Common Core suspect. In fact, what interests me is the notion that pointing out weaknesses in the Common Core is a bias of any kind. Is the Common Core so well conceived that it would never need to be refined or reconsidered in any aspect? Really?
“I am an English teacher that does not fit the generalization against non fiction. In fact, I have a specific preference for non fiction feature and argumentation which is evident in my classrooms and my own personal reading. In my middle school classes, students read good writing (both fiction and non fiction), although they write mostly non fiction. They write non fiction feature, argumentation and research papers. They write and read for a meaningful purpose: including for magazines created in class, for debate, for a wikipedia style encyclopedia…all of which requires substantial non fiction reading. I use fiction as a focal point of some units, but always I support those units with related non fiction (now called paired passages in our brave new world). I do not, because I love English, have an overwhelming love of literature above all other forms of quality writing. However, I do love quality reading and writing over read a passage answer some multiple choice questions about it, although that kind of instruction is necessarily a part of my teaching now.
“From my point of view, the reform movement is a failure not because it won’t ramp up some teachers’ efforts but because it doesn’t actually know what to value in education. The absurdity of requiring or inquiring about specific percentage points of fiction to non fiction as a means to insure rigor just illustrates the idiocy of data idolatry and the somewhat studied attempt of non educator reformists to nail down learning to a specific, codifiable set of skills and guides for teaching them. I think that is the case that needs to be made and the one that real reform minded people would not reject out of hand.”
In an earlier post, I complained about the arbitrary ratios embedded in the Common CoreStandards for fiction and “informational text.” I asked who would police whether Mr. Smith and Ms. Jones was teaching too much or too little fiction.
Please read this exchange.
A reader commented as follows:
“You ask at the end of your post – “Whose wisdom decided on 50-50 and 70-30? Who will police the classrooms? Where is the evidence that these ratios are better than some other ratio or none at all?”
“If you read the ELA CC Standards in the introduction it clearly states the source which is:
Source: National Assessment Governing Board. (2008). Reading framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
“Here is the link to the Reading Framework from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress
“When you read this – you will notice the variety and depth of the educators that worked on this assessment and document.
“So Yes, Virginia – there is a place where the numbers come from:)”
I replied to this comment as follows:
“I was on the board of NAEP for seven years. Those proportions were created as a guideline for publishers constructing assessments, not for teachers.
“There is no valid reason in the wold to tell teachers that they must tailor what they teach to match a completely arbitrary ratio inserted into NAEP, with zero scientific validation, years ago.
“If kids are reading “informational text” in science, history, math, civics, and other subjects, their English teachers should be free to teach whatever they love, whether it is fiction or non-fiction.
“The ratios are nonsense. Utter and complete nonsense.
“I repeat: what administrator will have the stopwatch to police this travesty in all the classrooms?
What brave soul will call it what it is: nonsense.”
