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New standards require new ways to train teachers

February 5, 2012 By 4 Comments

Teachers aren’t prepared to teach the new Common Core Standards, writes Stephanie Hirsch of Leaning Forward in Ed Week.

Because the common core focuses on the application of knowledge in authentic situations, teachers will need to employ instructional strategies that integrate critical and creative thinking, collaboration, problem-solving, research and inquiry, and presentation and demonstration skills. They will need subject-area expertise well beyond basic content knowledge and pedagogy to create dynamic, engaging, high-level learning experiences for students. They will need greater data literacy as we shift from current accountability systems to more granular ways of assessing student learning. And, their leaders will need to champion professional learning in their buildings and back the teachers who coach and support each other.

The traditional “spray and pray” method of professional development doesn’t work, Hirsch writes. What would?

Why not let teachers teach teachers?, asks Nancy Flanagan of Teacher in a Strange Land. “Professional Development assumes that someone knows better than a teacher” what teachers need to know.

. . .  teachers aren’t considered true professionals–and policy is leading us further away from a professional work model. We’re still talking about “training” teachers, rather than drawing on their wisdom.

Finally–probably the most significant reason–professional development is an education market. What would happen if teacher development happened internally, entirely site-based and tailored to particular schools and populations? It would require demonstrated, deep teacher expertise in instruction and curricular issues. Which could shift the balance of power. And it would cost very little.

The GE Foundation is giving $18 million to Student Achievement Partners, a nonprofit which is working with teachers to develop an online library of resources for teaching the new standards at achievethecore.org.

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States aren’t ready for Core Standards

January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Most states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards believe they’re more rigorous than current standards. While the vast majority have started trying to align curriculum and assessments, most do not expect to fully implement the standards until 2014-15 or later, according to the Center on Education Policy’s implementation report.

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Fewer states require exit exam

December 10, 2011 By

Fewer state are requiring students to pass an exit exam to earn a high school diploma, reports the Center on Education Policy. Instead, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee now count a student’s exit exam score as a percentage of the final grade in a course required for graduation. Alabama will make this change in 2015.

However, testing is on the rise.

. . . in addition to the 31 states that administer an exit exam, 11 states require students to take the ACT or SAT college entrance exam, and 16 states administer, or at least offer to all students, assessments intended to assess students’ readiness for college and/or a career. But although many states are using college and career readiness assessments to determine how well students are being prepared for success after high school, very few colleges and universities actually use these assessments for college admission or placement.

Common Core Standards adopted by most states will require new tests.

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What will common standards cost?

November 11, 2011 By

It will cost $800 million for California to implement Common Core Standards, down from an earlier estimate of $1.6 billion, according to the state education department. That includes training, learning materials and testing.

Other states are starting to worry about the cost. Washington state estimates it will take  $300 million to prepare teachers and principals and buy new textbooks; updating the state’s testing system will be extra.

Massachusetts should know what it’s getting into, writes Jim Stergios on Rock the Schoolhouse. Massachusetts got $250 million over four years to implement the new standards and will require much more, even if California’s revised estimate is accurate.

Under federal pressure, both California and Massachusetts decided to trade well-regarded state standards for the Common Core.

 

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Protesters ‘occupy’ standards meeting

October 30, 2011 By

A chanting crowd stopped discussion of common standards at a meeting of New York City’s Panel for Educational Policy on Tuesday night, reports Curriculum Matters.

This YouTube video shows Chancellor Dennis Walcott trying to start the meeting, which was intended to explain how adoption of Common Core Standards will affect curriculum in city schools. The “Occupy the DOE” protesters said the decision was made without input from teachers and parents.

Demonstrators also chant that the city wants to raise standards without the supports that students need to reach them.

As they file out the front door of the building, the demonstrators chant, “Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!”

After the meeting was canceled, Walcott and the other panelists met with parents in upstairs classrooms.

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Study: Common Core aligns with leading standards

October 29, 2011 By

The new Common Core Standards are aligned to leading state and international standards, concludes an analysis by the Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) in Eugene,Oregon.

Researchers compared the content and curriculum standards for California and Massachusetts; the Texas College and Career Readiness Standards, the International Baccalaureate standards and the Knowledge and Skills for University Success.

The new common standards cover the same topics and content, but demand “a bit more cognitive complexity in some topics, particularly English/language arts,” the report says.

The study checks whether Common Core’s contents matches the comparison set, but doesn’t say “whether everything in the comparison set is found in the Common Core,” writes  Ze’ev Wurman in the comments.

This is akin to writing a bunch of fragments on a paper and then claiming that since most of the fragments are found among Shakespeare’s works, hence that page is “aligned” with, and “as rigorous as” Shakespeare’s works.

. . . Yet another example Common Core sponsored advocacy research, paid for by Bill Gates.

Also in comments, Sandra Stotsky, who led Massachusetts’ standards initiative, quotes a critique by the Massachusetts Department of Education, which questioned the rigor of Common Core’s high school math and English standards.

 

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A vote for new math standards

October 7, 2011 By

Common Core math standards are as good as the best state standards and correct common math misperceptions, writes Hung-Hsi Wu, a Berkeley math professor emeritus,  in the cover story in American Educator.

Dr. Wu, who helped write California’s math framework, praises the ”mathematical integrity” and logical progression of topics in an interview with Rick Hess.

The standards teach fractions over grades three to five, giving students enough time to learn and internalize the material, says Wu. He also likes the standards approach to learning negative numbers and moving from middle school geometry to algebra and high school geometry. Delaying algebra instruction till high school is not a problem, he argues.

However, he’s not confident teachers will be able to teach the standards.

. . .  we need better teacher preparation and improved professional development in order to stay educationally afloat no matter what the standards may be. If we cannot get better teacher preparation or improved professional development, then we would be better off with a set of standards that is at least mathematically sound.

Wu is wrong, responds Ze’ev Wurman, another veteran of California’s battle for math standards and a fierce defender of eighth-grade algebra.  Wu changed sides because he concluded “American elementary and middle school teachers are incompetent to teach algebra or prepare for it,” Wurman writes.

“School mathematics in this country is a sad joke,”, comments Michael Goldenberg, a math coach. “Knowing procedures and manipulations and calculations is great for standardized tests (which drive just about every contemporary education deform scheme) but say very little about mathematical reasoning, thinking, and or understanding.”

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Core Standards in math don’t add up

September 28, 2011 By

Common Core math standards are terrible, writes Grant Wiggins, president of Authentic Education and co-author of Understanding By Design and Schooling By Design in Ed Week.

National standards will be a blessing, Wiggins writes. The English Language Arts standards are good. But the mathematics components “are a bitter disappointment.”

In terms of their limited vision of math education, the pedestrian framework chosen to organize the standards, and the incoherent nature of the standards for mathematical practice in particular, I don’t see how these take us forward in any way. They unwittingly reinforce the very errors in math curriculum, instruction, and assessment that produced the current crisis.

Few students encounter real, challenging problems that require real thought, he writes. The new standards won’t change that.

“Many ‘standards’ address picayune topics,” he writes. The big ideas in math are ignored.

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ObamaFlex isn’t very flexible

September 28, 2011 By

ObamaFlex — the reform-linked waivers for No Child Left Behind — claim to be tight on goals and loose on strategies, but the plan is heavy on tight and light on loose, writes Mike Petrilli on Flypaper.

States would have to adopt Common Core Standards or prove their own standards prepare graduates for college. But states want waivers now and it will take time to prove  standards are “college ready.”

If a state decides to back out of Common Core Standards — perhaps because the standards-linked tests are inadequate –will the feds withdraw the waiver? Cut off funding?

A state can propose its own approach to accountability, for example – as long as it includes “annual measurable objectives,” “priority schools,” “focus schools,” “reward schools,” and on and on and on. This is kind of like Henry Ford’s approach to car colors.

The teacher evaluation mandate sets out six rules for all school districts to follow.

If we’ve learned anything from No Child Left Behind, it’s that to mandate a good idea is to kill it.

There’s a better way to fix No Child Left Behind, argues Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, in the New York Times. Alexander, a former Education secretary, has introduced a set of bills in Congress.

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GOP on NCLB: Rollback or reform?

September 15, 2011 By

States would have more say in school reform under a No Child Left Behind rewrite proposed by key Republican senators, led by Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, a former U.S. secretary of education. The GOP leaders are introducing five bills to reauthorize NCLB, also known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

It’s a “stunning retreat on two decades of education reform,” blasted Democrats for Education Reform.

Senate Republicans to poor and minority children: Fuggedaboutit, headlines Dropout Nation.

Don’t “roll back hard-won progress in student achievement,” responded Education Trust.  “When left to their own devices, states have a long, well-documented history of aiming far too low and shortchanging the schools that serve our most vulnerable children.”

It’s a rollback of NCLB’s excesses that preserves education reform, writes Mike Petrilli on Flypaper.

The reform package . . . would eliminate “adequate yearly progress,” hand “accountability” back to the states, and undo the law’s “highly qualified teachers” mandate. But it doesn’t abdicate Uncle Sam’s interest in reform, or in the country’s neediest students. States would still be required to take dramatic action to turn around their very worst schools. Title I funding would continue to flow to the highest-need schools and districts. Students would continue to be tested in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and the results would continue to be reported widely and by subgroup. The approach is tight-loose, incentives over mandates, transparency over accountability. It’s “reform realism” through and through.

The bills require states to adopt college-and-career standards, but don’t push Common Core Standards.

One bill is modeled on the pro-charter school bill that passed the House this week.

Republicans are winning the education debate, writes Joan Richardson in Phi Delta Kappan. In the PDK/Gallup Poll numbers, “Americans favor charter schools (70%), favor allowing parents to choose a child’s school (74%), believe unionization is bad for public school education (47%), and that natural talent is more important than college training (70%). Any way you slice it, those ideas have been part of the Republican reform agenda.”

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