Though 46 states and Washington, D.C. are backing the creation of common math and English standards, figuring out what all high school graduates should know is a challenge, reports Politics Daily. Experts are trying to meet an end-of-July deadline.
The goal is for students to be career and college ready, meaning that they could make a C or better in first-year college classes without having to take remedial courses. Expanded groups of experts will set standards for grades K-12 by the end of December.
Federal standards efforts went awry in the past. This campaign was started by governors.
“What’s really changed is that it’s almost always now teachers who say, ‘When are we going to get over this nonsense that math in Mississippi is different?’ “from math in another state, says Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has “pledged up to $350 million to help develop tests that would measure whether students are meeting the new standards.”
ACT and College Board experts are trying to develop fewer, clearer and higher standards than in most states. They’re looking at freshman course syllabi and exit surveys to determine what students need.
“They’re really looking for what students should be able to do to truly be ready for college,” says (Chris) Minnich of the Council of Chief State School Officers, one of the groups overseeing the process along with the National Governors’ Association and a Washington-based group called Achieve. “It means taking out some of the things that aren’t really important, including, he says, “whether or not kids should read Shakespeare. Most of the studies say Shakespeare is not critical.”
We’re going to dump Shakespeare? Lynne Munson of Common Core at the eagerness to “throw out possibly the brightest star of our literary heritage and replace it with … well, we don’t yet know.”
Of course, in a few years the loss will hardly be noticed, as someone wise once pointed out: “He that is robb’d, not wanting what is stolen, / Let him not know ‘t, and he’s not robb’d at all.” (Othello, Act III, scene 3)
Massachusetts’ standards are the best we’ve got, Munson argues. If common standards aren’t that rigorous, why bother?
Gadfly’s Mike Petrilli wants a broad liberal arts curriculum that goes beyond “the utilitarian and narrow drive toward college and work readiness,” which has been embraced by Democrats and Republicans.
While the right celebrates anti-intellectualism, “the left remains uncomfortable saying that there is a body of knowledge that all young people need to master in order to be prepared for life in our democracy.”
Before you know it, Shakespeare’s as dead as a royal Dane in the last act of Hamlet. History, being unessential for college or work, is history.
About Joanne
What tripe!
The only reason they want to drop Shakespeare is that minority groups can’t shoehorn in an claim to “really” own him. He is the master.
However, other excellent classic authors have already been dropped from the college curriculum. The trouble is, when are the kids ever going to get exposure to the classics, if we don’t at least whet their appetites in high school?
I tell the kids:
You like The Sopranos? Try Macbeth – he’s another goodfellow.
You like The Bachelor? Try As You Like It.
You like Twilight? Try Romeo & Juliet.
Ya’ get comedy, romance, drama – all of the best – in one sweet package. No dummying down, all very higher level thinking-friendly.
I dunno. I was fortunate – during my school years, the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival was located in the high school. From 7th grade on, we were taken on field trips to see the plays, at least 2 a year. I can’t believe that we were more cultured or smarter than today’s kids, but we were hooked on Shakespeare. We laughed, we cried, we were on the edge of our seats – ALL the kids, not just the “upper elite”.
I’m going to a reunion in a few weeks – I’m going to talk to the attendees, and ask what they remember. When I return, I’ll post about it.
The “standards” fad will waste time and money. Nothing good will come of it. Children are not standard.
“What’s really changed is that it’s almost always now teachers who say, ‘When are we going to get over this nonsense that math in Mississippi is different?’ “from math in another state, says Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust.”
Trust the Education Trust to promote centralization of the education industry at every opportunity. Some years ago, they maintained that Hawaii’s State-wide school district promoted “equity”. In their dope-induced hallucinations! Some schools receive nearly twice the per-pupil budgets as others. Outcomes vary more than in most States (as measured by the difference between 90th percentile scores and 10th percentile scores, NAEP 8th grade Math). To the nitwits at the Education Trust, “centralized” means “equal”. They are convinced, and facts do not matter.
Math may not be different in Mississippi, but the Math a prospective carpenter will need will differ from the Math a prospective actuary will need. Furthermore, even given the (wildly optimistic) outcome of a curriculum which allows for variations in the pace at which students move through the material, a uniform Math curriculum would almost certainly impose a uniform sequence. Again: students are not standard. Where does Set Theory and Logic appear? Where does Geometry appear? Where does Group Theory or Congruence Arithmetic appear?
A measure on a set S is an order relation on S.
A test is a procedure or device used to establish a measure.
A standard is a unit of measure.
A kilogram weight is a standard. A meter stick is a standard. Academic standards are to intellectual growth what meter sticks and calibrated bathroom scales are to physical growth. Platinum measuring rods will not make children any taller.
Standards are a distraction, and Kati Haycock is a socialist twit.
“While the right celebrates anti-intellectualism, “the left remains uncomfortable saying that there is a body of knowledge that all young people need to master in order to be prepared for life in our democracy.””
Now here’s more tripe. What most people of the right object to are the lack of intellect by these so-called intellectuals. While most people favor schooling, they have a hard time having “experts” explain in multi-syllabic words what they have known all their life.
Case in point; when my wife and I were in college, we took a survey in Latin American politics attended by and taught by Ph D professors and candidates. We were the only undergraduates in the class.
To irritate them we would speak in Spanish about the various South American politicians we had met in our year and half living in Colombian, Venezuela and Argentina.
Did I mention that none of these experts spoke Spanish, had lived in South America or even left the state of Minnesota?
Does that mean I’m an anti-intellectual nutcase?
And that situation is by no means uncommon.
For the record, I have both undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics and educational psychology. They required at least a knowledge that 3/8 is more than 1/4.
Reading Shakespeare is like reading the screenplay and camera directions of a TV series. Who in the world does that?
One (of the many) ways Shakespeare is not like reading a screenplay of Three’s Company is that his drama, in fact, does NOT contain stage directions. One has to figure out who is on stage and where they are/what they’re doing through a very careful reading of the dialogue.
Allow me to go way out on a limb here and state that careful reading is a useful 21st Century skill.
Knowing your Duncan vs. your Mercutio may not be all that important, but the skills picked up in learning about them are crucial. They are also a part of our cultural heritage.
Kirkpatrick
What the hell did you mean?
“Allow me to go way out on a limb here and state that careful reading is a useful 21st Century skill.”
Wow, Lightly Seasoned, you are way out there!
) Unfortunately, there are those who think that reading is not a late 20th century skill, much less a 21st century skill. At my college, it’s all about “multiple perspectives” and “different ways of knowing.” Those of us who assign reading(s) are generally considered to be the antiques because “that’s just not the way students get their information anymore.” Of course, many students who come to college don’t read well and then complain when they are assigned readings, so the easy way to placate the students is not to assign readings.
Of course, if students were still permitted to read the Bible in school, they would know that “In the beginning was the word….” (John 1:1), Lynne Munson of Common Core has it right with her quote in Joanne’s post.
(Mr. Cook): “Kirkpatrick, What the hell did you mean?”
“Kati Haycock is a socialist twit” looks clear enough to me. When most of us feel the urge to inndulde a control fantasy, we buy a ticket to a Bruce Willis or Steven Segal movie. Kati Haycock dreams of pushing taxpayers, students, real classroom teachers, and principals around.
“Reading Shakespeare is like reading the screenplay and camera directions of a TV series. Who in the world does that?” also looks pretty clear. Shakespeare wrote stage plays, not novels.
“One standard shall rule them all”. Hmm. Our children are cookie cutters? No, rather, movements for national standards, a core curriculum in English and math, underway by the CCSSO and NGA, are ever so privately embarking on another one size fits all, equal education.
These two groups together with the US DOE who have yet to name the “Validation Committee” are working toward one set of rules. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, clearly states he wants an internationallly benchmarked, rigorous education for a child in Mississippi as well as in Connecticut. No one wants to argue with this. That is, we want to see all our students have the opportunity to receive a world class education whether we live in a city, a rural area, are home schooled or attend a private institution. However, the opportunity is one issue, setting a curriculum designed and mandated to create cookie cutter students is another issue.
Amazingly absent from the process are the voices of the mathematically literate parents whose only bias is to find an education leading to the development of the necessary skills for a higher education. In other words, a solid K-12 foundation. Taking math education as an example, it is clear that students from high performing countries such as Singapore, South Korea and Finland are taught math in a traditional manner allowing each student to develop computational fluency, automaticity as well as a deeper understanding of how to apply these critical skills. these students are able to complete algebra which is viewed as a bridge to understanding higher level math. However, US students of a constructivist philosophy are left to construct the foundation on their own. It is likened to constructing a bridge with a faulty set of plans. And, the bridge collapses.
We know that many parents realize the issues with education and take matters into their own hands. We know that many use expensive tutors and home school children. We also know our more indigent students are not able to do this and fall further behind. Thus, perpetuating these poor programs furthers the educational divide among the haves and the have nots. It creates a falicy.
The secret process occurring in the government clubhouse might not actually lead to a solid K-12 education. The very people involved in the process right now are cause for concern. The writers of the core curriculum, some with a vested interest in the development of this ‘curriculum for all’, without an aparent eye on the critical foundations necessary certainly throws a monkey wrench into the problem that surely needs to be fixed.
The voices of our parents, teachers and college mathematicians needs to be heard. States, not a one viewed central secret society, need to decide to adopt what works best for their students with an eye on developing a solid K-12 education.
http://www.usworldclassmath.org
Amazing how so many of the very same people who are warning that you don’t want a Washington bureaucrat telling you what medical treatment you can or can’t have do not hesitate to tell you a Washington bureaucrat should be able to tell you child’s teacher what to teach and how to teach it.
“ACT and College Board experts are trying to develop fewer, clearer and higher standards than in most states.”
Can you say, “teaching to the test”? Well, on the bright side, parents would save a bundle on ACT/SAT prep.
More seriously, does anyone really think that 46 governors would accept rigorous standards? If they really wanted that, they could accept Massachusetts’ Curricular Frameworks and be done with it. This is rather a game of setting low (really, really low) expectations.
In addition, “studies show” that Shakespeare isn’t critical? Which studies? There are a lot of “studies” out there which are merely assertions dressed up in fancy covers. Ironically, if we truly want to move to a multimedia future*, Shakespeare should be front and center. Just a wild guess, but I’d bet that Shakespeare’s plays have been the most widely adapted for stage screen. Add in the playwrights whose plays and films rework Shakespeare’s plays (Ran, Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, to name a few), all of whose works are easily available to use in a classroom, and I’d venture to say that not teaching Shakespeare would be foolish.
*I’m not enamored of this goal, but others are.