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Common Core reading: Too hard? Too factual?

February 29, 2012 By

The new common standards for K-2 reading are too hard, “harsh” and “dreary,” writes Joanne Yatvin, a former president of the National Council of Teachers of English, in Education Week. The standards “overestimate the intellectual, physiological, and emotional development of young children,” Yatvin writes.

This amounts to meeting children where they are and keeping them there, responds Robert Pondiscio on Core Knowledge Blog. He lists the standards’ “three big ideas.”

1. Students should read as much nonfiction as fiction.

2. Schools should ensure all children—and especially disadvantaged children—build coherent background knowledge that is essential to mature reading comprehension.

3. Success in reading comprehension depends less on “personal response” and more on close reading of text.

The standards call for teaching vocabulary and background knowledge. It’s too much academics too soon, writes Yatvin. She thinks children should “learn words connected to their everyday lives and their interests rather than to things and experiences as yet unknown.”

We learn most words in context, Pondiscio replies.

So while it certainly it makes sense to connect words to kids “everyday lives and experiences” it’s something very close to educational malpractice not to make a concerted effort to expand a child’s knowledge base beyond their immediate experiences.  If there is anything that ensures a low-level of academic achievement it is the idea that kids can only learn from their direct experiences.

Yatvin also disagrees with the standards’ call to teach non-fiction as well as fiction. Young children have “limited experience in the fields of science, geography, history, and technology,” she writes. “It is one thing for a child to read The Little Engine That Could for the pleasure of the story and quite another for her to comprehend the inner workings of a locomotive.”

Actually, many children, especially boys, enjoy reading about science, nature and technology, including trains. I was a huge fan of history and geography — anything that wasn’t about the boring suburb where I lived.

Little Engine That Could “is ripe with opportunities to build background knowledge” about “colors, mountains, trains and transportation, to name but a few,” writes Pondiscio.

I’m all for reading for the pleasure of the story.  But start building background knowledge of the world beyond a child’s immediate surroundings today, and you geometrically expand the number of stories a child can read for pleasure tomorrow.

Very few kids have personal experiences with dinosaurs, dolphins, pirates or superheroes, yet many enjoy reading about them.  The first graders I’m tutoring in reading love the Magic School Bus series, which teaches science. They can’t read the book I’ve got (about kitchen chemistry), but they’re longing to be able to.

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No pressure

February 24, 2012 By

The U.S. Department of Education is not pressuring states to adopt Common Core, claims Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who goes on to denounce a South Carolina proposal to block implementation. Yesterday, a state Senate subcommittee sent the bill to the full committee with an unfavorable recommendation.

In short, resistance is futile for any state that wants federal grants or waivers, responds Greg Forster on Jay Greene’s blog. He includes the perfect video:

Cato @ Liberty headline: ‘Say I Threatened You Again and You’ll Really Be Sorry’

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Pioneer: $16 billion to adopt new standards

February 22, 2012 By

States will need to spend $16 billion to implement Common Core Standards, estimates a report. by the Pioneer Institute, the American Principles Project and the Pacific Research Institute of California. That includes the cost of textbooks and instructional materials, testing, professional development, and technology infrastructure. California alone will incur additional costs of $2 billion.

Pioneer’s earlier report, The Road to a National Curriculum, questions the legality of the Obama Administration’s push for national education standards and assessments.

Update: WashPost columnist Jay Mathews has hopped off the common standards bandwagon, persuaded they won’t make much of a difference.

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Obama, the education president

February 17, 2012 By

Obama’s Education Record includes some success stories — and soft spots, write Mike Petrilli and Tyson Eberhardt in Education Next.

His Race to the Top (RttT) initiative catalyzed a chain reaction of legislative action at the state level, securing key reforms on issues ranging from charter schools to teacher evaluations to rigorous standards. His stimulus and “edujobs” bills seemed to maintain a critical level of investment in the public schools during a time of difficult budget cuts and financial strain. His administrative action to provide flexibility on No Child Left Behind’s most onerous provisions bypassed a paralyzed Congress and partially fulfilled his campaign promise to lift the law’s yoke off the backs of decent but maligned schools. . . .

. . . both the Common Core State Standards effort and the move toward rigorous teacher evaluations could lead to dramatic increases in student achievement, if implemented faithfully by states and school districts. Neither of these reforms would have been adopted so quickly, in so many places, were it not for the president’s leadership.

But the stimulus wasted a lot of money, they write. Race to the Top states have back-pedaled on reforms.

And Washington keeps tightening the screws on the states, while promising flexibility. Race to the Top required states to “develop plans that complied with federal guidelines set forth in excruciating detail.”  No Child Left Behind waivers required more hoop jumping. Now the Education Department has declared that “a disproportionate percentage of white students in Advanced Placement (AP) classes constitutes evidence of racial discrimination.”

“Obama and Duncan have been good on education reform” compared to their Democratic predecessors, write Petrilli and Eberhardt.  But “the administration deserves to be pressed on the cost-effectiveness of its education system bailouts, on the results of its Race to the Top initiative, and on the wisdom of its approach to federalism and separation of powers.”

 

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Brookings: Common Core won’t boost achievement

February 16, 2012 By

Common Core standards “will have little to no effect on student achievement,” predicts Tom Loveless, in How Well are American Students Learning?, a report by Brookings’ Brown Center on Education Policy. The quality or rigor of state standards doesn’t correlate with students’ reading or math performance on NAEP, Loveless concludes.

“State standards have really never been able to penetrate down to the classroom and affect teaching and learning.  Common Core advocates believe this time is different.  I’m skeptical that their project has some secret ingredient that previous standards lacked.”

Standards represent the intended curriculum, “what governments want students to learn,” Loveless writes. Then there’s the implemented curriculum, “what teachers teach.”

Two fourth-grade teachers in classrooms next door to each other may teach multiplication in vastly different ways and with different degrees of effectiveness. State policies rarely touch such differences. The attained curriculum is what students learn.

Standards peak in popularity when first proposed, then nosedive when “tests are given and consequences kick in,” Loveless writes. Common Core is already losing support.

The report also looks at achievement gaps on NAEP and the tendency to misinterpret international test scores.

Education Next is hosting a discussion on Common Core math standards today.

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New standards require new ways to train teachers

February 5, 2012 By

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

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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