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

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

Click to access reading09.pdf

“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.”

In response to the discussion about the time allotted to fiction and non-fiction in the Common Core standards, a teacher writes:

One of the things that really bothers me about this mandate is the devaluing of fiction.

Right now we are foolishly engaging in a short-sighted culture of thinking that the only things that matter are “practical” and “measurable”.

Hence, the importance of non-f. Yet, in many ways I have learned more about science, math and history from fiction than I ever did from non-fiction.

Exploring fiction allows readers to imagine themselves as someone else. It teaches them about the world around them and what it means to be a human being. To read things like the Odyssey, even though it is nearly 3000 years old, or the Aeneid, or the plays of Sophocles, or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, or Shakespeare’s plays, gives students a sense of the timelessness of some questions and traits.

It gives us a gateway into discussing the meaning of honor, virtue, love and other things. It encourages us to ask questions, to explore, to be curious.

It gives us the ability learn from mistakes without damaging consequences. These are skills that are useful in any endeavor in life, from the professional to the personal. To assert that this type of learning is less valuable than learning to decode a non-f text is to assert that the human and idealistic is less valuable.

Moreover, no one can point to where inspiration comes from. Think for example of the role of a calligraphy class in Jobs’ development of the Apple aesthetic.

The skills one learns in working with fiction texts are ones that can be transferred to any area. For example, if one could explore and analyze the meaning of violence in the Aeneid (I’m a Latin teacher, so I tend to cite fiction from my content area) and of Roman culture in general, one can certainly explore and analyze the meaning of violence in our entertainment and our society, a topic particularly relevant in light of the Sandy Hook tragedy.

The deepest thinkers are the ones who can draw from a variety of sources and areas to approach things in new ways; yet, by depriving our students of these rich cultural texts by whittling them down to very small portions, we deprive our students of that deep well.

A post about the Common Core standards “No One Opposes Reading Non-Fiction”) was followed by a lively discussion among readers. Among many excellent comments, this one stood out. Written by Robert D. Shepherd, it raises important issues about how publishers will interpret the standards. And even more important, why do we want to read?

Back in the 1960s and ’70s, many educators around the country implemented Phase Elective Programs. Students would take mini-courses, six or nine weeks long, on specific topics like American Transcendentalism or The French Revolution and read a bunch of related materials–fiction, poetry, plays, and nonfiction–on those topics. These programs came under heavy fire from conservatives because many of the topics dealt with popular culture or left-wing politics (e.g., Superheroes, The Literature of Protest, The Haves and the Have Nots). What was wonderful about Phase Elective Programs, however, was that the curriculum was designed based on the areas of study rather than based on lists of skills to be learned, types of texts to be covered, etc. Such curricula put the topic of study first, recognizing that the reason for reading is to learn about, to understand more about, something interesting and important. To their credit, the creators of the Common Core State Standards have called for reading of connected texts across the school year and across multiple grades. However, that call comes in footnotes, appendices, and white papers issued after the fact, such as the Publisher’s Guidance.

Think of the plight of the editor sitting down to design a new 8th-grade literature textbook based on the new standards. Now, what he or she is supposed to do is a) make sure that the text covers this long list of skills given in the standards and b) make sure that the balance of types of texts is exactly what was called for. Decisions about what texts to include and in what order will be made by this editor not on the basis of which texts are the strongest contributions to some topic of study or interest but, rather, on the basis of which can be used to teach the skills listed in the standards and which will meet the genre quotas for the grade level. Already, we are seeing lots of new textbook programs based on the new standards. And these programs are taking a predictable form. To meet the call for connected texts, these programs organize selections (50% literature, 50% informative texts) into units dealing with what are erroneously called “themes” (e.g., “Challenges,” “Weather”). These “themes” tend to be VERY vague and broad, so the texts in a given unit do not really build a body of knowledge or understanding about a subject of study. They are “connected” texts in only the most superficial senses. A text is chosen for a particular spot in a particular unit not because it is intrinsically interesting or valuable, not because it is the best texts for building knowledge or understanding of some area of interest, but because a) it has an appropriate “readability” according to some mathematical formula (such as an appropriate Lexile level); b) activities can be constructed, based on that text, to “cover” the next few skills in the list of standards (the standards call, here, for treatment of hyperbole and allusion to Greek myth, so we need a text that contains those); c) it contributes to the required “balance” of literary and informative texts (gee, we already have three literary texts; we need three informative texts now); and d) it is vaguely related to the unit’s vague “theme.” With all these criteria determining their choices of texts, it’s little wonder why so many textbook publishers opt for creating written-to-order texts (and paying small change to freelancers to cook those up).

All these criteria lead to an egregious outcome: the whole point of reading is ignored. The reason why anyone bothers to read to begin with gets lost. We read because we become interested in something and want to know about or understand it, or we read simply because we want to be entertained. In the former case, we become interested in, say, vegan cooking or rock climbing or Mayans or space travel or the Holocaust, and we search out the best, most informative, works on the topic and read those. In the latter, we read particular works because we, as individuals, have a taste for science fiction or mysteries or popular science or pop sci self help, and we choose to crack the most interesting titles in those areas that we come across. We do NOT choose our reading because we need to work on our “identifying metaphors” skills. That skills learning happens incidentally because we are readers, and we are readers because we want to know or want to be entertained.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. People MEAN WELL when they put out these standards and other criteria for text selection, but taken together, the criteria undermine the whole purpose of the enterprise of instruction in “reading” and “literature,” which is to create readers.

Roz Linder is tired of reading uninformed rants against the Common Core standards. She says most of the comments come from people who have never read them.

she says that it would be a worthy exercise to read the Common Core standards as informational text before making unfounded claims about what they recommend.

You can find them here. Please read them.