Common Core Standards Miss the Mark

Ohanian Common: Admittedly, I don't grant the major premise of the Common Core, but if one accepts that all children should be college- or career-ready, then this is an accurate and devastating analysis.

Has anybody asked the other members of the Validation Committee why they approved the Common Core:

The members of the Validation Committee are:

* Bryan Albrecht, President, Gateway Technical College, Kenosha, Wisconsin

* Arthur Applebee, Distinguished Professor, Center on English Learning & Achievement, School of Education, University at Albany, SUNY

* Sarah Baird, 2009 Arizona Teacher of the Year, K-5 Math Coach, Kyrene School District

* Jere Confrey, Joseph D. Moore Distinguished University Professor, William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, College of Education, North Carolina State University

* David T. Conley, Professor, College of Education, University of Oregon CEO, Educational Policy Improvement Center (Co-Chair)

* Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University

* Alfinio Flores, Hollowell Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Delaware

* Brian Gong, Executive Director, Center for Assessment (Co-Chair)

* Kenji Hakuta, Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Stanford University

* Kristin Buckstad Hamilton, Teacher, Battlefield Senior High School, NEA

* Feng-Jui Hsieh, Associate Professor of the Mathematics Department, National Taiwan Normal University

* Mary Ann Jordan, Teacher, New York City Dept of Education, AFT

* Jeremy Kilpatrick, Regents Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Georgia

* Dr. Jill Martin, Principal, Pine Creek High School

* Barry McGaw, Professor and Director of Melbourne Education Research Institute, University of Melbourne; Director for Education, OECD

* James Milgram, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University

* David Pearson, Professor and Dean, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley

* Steve Pophal, Principal, DC Everest Junior High

* Stanley Rabinowitz, Senior Program Director, Assessment and Standards Development Services, WestEd

* Lauren Resnick, Distinguished University Professor, Psychology and Cognitive Science, Learning Sciences and Education Policy, University of Pittsburgh

* Andreas Schleicher, Head, Indicators and Analysis Division of the OECD Directorate for Education

* William Schmidt, University Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University

* Catherine Snow, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

* Christopher Steinhauser, Superintendent of Schools, Long Beach Unified School District

* Sandra Stotsky, Professor of Education Reform, 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality, University of Arkansas

* Dorothy Strickland, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor of Ed., Emerita, Distinguished Research Fellow, National Institute for Early Education Research, Rutgers, The State University of NJ

* Martha Thurlow, Director, National Center on Educational Outcomes, University of Minnesota

* Norman Webb, Senior Research Scientist, Emeritus, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin

* Dylan William, Deputy Director, Institute of Education, University of London

National Association of Scholars
2010-06-21
http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=1388

Editor's introduction: NAS board member Sandra Stotsky wrote the following statement as an explanation for her decision not to endorse the Common Core State Standards, a new set of K-12 standards that were released in March as a draft for public comment. Last year Dr. Stotsky was appointed to the validation committee which approved the Common Core State Standards this month. Dr. Stotsky's absence from the list of signers, as well as that of another committee member, James Milgram (a Stanford mathematician), go unremarked in the committee's official report.

Dr. Stotsky elaborates her position on "College and Career Readiness Standards" in a recent Pioneer Institute white paper with NAS member Ze'ev Wurman, The Emperor's New Clothes.

You can find out more more about the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) and read pro and con reactions to it here and here.

The opinions expressed in this guest article do not necessarily reflect the official position of the National Association of Scholars.

* * *

June 6, 2010

Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of Education, Massachusetts
Charles Quigley, Center for Civic Education
Susan Wolfson, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers
Vance Ablott, Triangle Coalition
Michael Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
William Gorth, Pearson Evaluation Systems
David Saba, American Board for Certification in Teacher Excellence
Peter Wood, National Association of Scholars
Barbara Davidson, StandardsWork
Leonard Sax, National Association for Single Sex Public Education

Gene Wilhoit, Council of Chief School State Officers
Dane Linn, National Governors Association

Dear Gene and Dane,

I feel that I owe you, as well as all the individuals and organizations that recommended me for Common Core’s Validation Committee, an explanation for why I could not sign off on the final version of the Common Core State Standards. I did not sign off because I could not "validate" the criteria we were given to affirm. All members of the Validation Committee were asked to affirm that the final version of Common Core’s mathematics and English language arts standards met the seven criteria below. My reasons for not signing off relate to the standards for English language arts [ELA}, with a focus on the secondary grades, 6-12.

1 "Reflective of the core knowledge and skills in ELA and mathematics that students need to be college- and career-ready."

In my judgment, Common Core's standards for grades 6-12 do not reflect the core knowledge needed for authentic college-level work and do not frame the literary and cultural knowledge one would expect of graduates from an American high school. The standards do require familiarity with foundational
U.S. documents in grades 9-12, foundational works in American literature in grades 11/12, and a play by Shakespeare in grade 12, but there is little else with respect to content in lower grades. These minimal requirements, laudatory in themselves, would not be considered adequate to frame a literature and language curriculum in any country. In addition, the distribution of literature and informational standards indicate about a 50% division between imaginative literature and informational texts in the English language arts/reading class at all grade levels, a division that is inappropriate at the secondary level given English teachers' academic background and what they are prepared to teach based on their undergraduate or graduate coursework. Moreover, there is an implementation issue that is not addressed; Common Core does not make it clear that English teachers will need to take academic coursework (or a significant amount of specific professional development) in history and political science to understand the historical context, philosophical influences, unique features, and national and international significance, historically and today, of the foundational documents they are being required to teach students how to read.

2. "Appropriate in terms of their level of clarity and specificity."

Many standards are paraphrases of the "anchor" "college and career readiness standards." Many others are unclear in meaning, not easily interpretable, or unteachable. The "college and career readiness standards" that govern all grade-level standards have no discernable academic level; for the most part, they are simply a set of poorly written, confusing, content-empty, and culture-free generic skills with no internally valid organization of their own. They cannot serve the function academic standards are intended to serve—to frame a curriculum with common intellectual goals that build coherently from grade to grade. Nor can they (or do they) serve to generate academic grade-level standards in coherent learning progressions. (See Milgram and Stotsky, 2010, for a detailed explanation.) Moreover, they dictate a muddled and prescriptive approach to vocabulary study.

3. "Comparable to the expectations of other leading nations."

The two English-speaking areas for which I could find assessment material (British Columbia and Ireland) have far more demanding requirements for college readiness. The British Commonwealth examinations I have seen in the past were far more demanding in reading and literature in terms of the knowledge base students needed for taking and passing them. No material was ever provided to the Validation Committee or to the public on the specific college readiness expectations of other leading nations in mathematics or language and literature.

4. "Informed by available research or evidence"

No evidence was ever provided to the Validation Committee supporting the specific "college and career readiness standards" as a group and their use as an organizing scheme for generating grade-level standards. In fact, the evidence that can be located is either counter-evidence or misinterpreted evidence (see Stotsky and Wurman, 2010). Nor is there clear evidence that career readiness is similar to college readiness.

5. "The result of processes that reflect best practices for standards development."

I am unaware of any study providing information on "best practices" for standards development aside from my own published work in a Brookings Institution publication (Stotsky, 2004) and a Peter Lang collection of essays (Stotsky, 2000) and my own recommendations to Senate and House Committees on Education in the Ohio and New Jersey legislature (Stotsky, 2009a; Stotsky 2009b). Based on my experience in the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999-2003, where I was in charge of the development or revision of Massachusetts K-12 standards in all major subjects, and on my extensive experience in local government on a variety of committees for different boards, my judgment is that almost every aspect of the process in which Common Core's standards were developed profoundly violated almost all civically appropriate procedures for the development of what would become a major public document (see Wurman and Stotsky, 2010, for details, as well as the model procedures used by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel on which I served from 2006-2008, outlined from p. 79 on in its final report of March 2008).

6. "A solid starting point for adoption of cross state common core standards."

For the reasons given above, I cannot affirm that Common Core's final standards are worthy of being our "national" standards.

7. "A sound basis for eventual development of standards-based assessments."

Based on the analyses cited above, Common Core's standards are an unsound basis for the development of common assessments. Moreover, in order for test developers to develop "curriculum-based" assessments, they will essentially remove control of curriculum from the local level if not the state level.


Sincerely yours,

Sandra Stotsky
Member, Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
Professor of Education Reform, University of Arkansas

References

Sandra Stotsky. (2000). The state of literary study in national and state English language arts standards: Why it matters and what can be done about it. In S. Stotsky (Ed.), What's at Stake in the K-12 Standards Wars: A Primer for Educational Policy Makers (pp. 237-258). NY: Peter Lang Publishers.

Sandra Stotsky, with Lisa Haverty. (2004). Can a state department of education increase teacher quality? Lessons learned in Massachusetts. In D. Ravitch (Ed.), Brookings Papers on Education Policy, 2004 (pp. 131-180). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Sandra Stotsky. (2009a). Why Ohio needs world-class content standards for K-12, and how to get them. Invited written statement and testimony for a Hearing of the Ohio Senate Education Committee on April 15, 2009. http://edexcellence.net/ohio/Stotsky2.pdf

Sandra Stotsky. (2009b). How to develop internationally benchmarked mathematics standards (as well as standards for other subjects). Invited written statement and testimony for a Hearing of the Joint Committee on the Public Schools, New Jersey State Legislature, June 3, 2009.

Ze’ev Wurman and Sandra Stotsky. (February 2010). Why Race to the Middle? Pioneer Institute White Paper No. 52. Boston: Pioneer Institute. http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/pdf/100223_why_race_to_the_middle.pdf

R. James Milgram and Sandra Stotsky. (March 2010). Fair to Middling: A National Standards Progress Report, Pioneer Institute White Paper No. 56. Boston: Pioneer Institute. http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/pdf/100402_fair_to_middling.pdf

Sandra Stotsky and Ze'ev Wurman. (May 2010). The Emperor’s New Clothes: National Assessments Based on Weak “College and Career Readiness Standards,” Pioneer Institute White Paper No. 61. Boston: Pioneer Institute. http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/pdf/100520_emperors_new_clothes.pdf

— Sandra Stotsky
National Association of Scholars
2010-06-21
http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=1388

National PTA Supports Final Draft of Common Core State Standards

Press Release

The following statement should be attributed to
Charles J. "Chuck" Saylors, National PTA President

CHICAGO (June 2, 2010) –National PTA enthusiastically supports the adoption and implementation by all states of the Common Core State Standards, which were released in final form today.

The K-12 standards for math and English Language Arts are challenging and clear, and states that adopt them will be on their way to graduating more of their high school students ready for college and career.

The standards form a solid foundation for the high quality education systems that states must build. If states adopt the standards and align their curriculum, assessments and professional development to the new standards, many more of their students will graduate with the skills they need to succeed in college or a career.

National PTA urges all states to adopt the standards. The association is focusing its work in support of adoption and implementation in four critical states, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina; four additional states will be named later this year.

National PTA continues to encourage its millions of members to get behind this important campaign. We also encourage chief state school officers and state boards of education to include parents and PTA representatives in the adoption and implementation process. Parents and PTA members can provide valuable perspectives and can be key partners in advocating for standards adoption and implementation at the local level.

Adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards will not only mean that our young people will be better prepared for college and a career; it will make our economy stronger over the long term.

About National PTA
PTA comprises millions of families, students, teachers, administrators, and business and community leaders devoted to the educational success of children and the promotion of parent involvement in schools. PTA is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that prides itself on being a powerful voice for all children, a relevant resource for families and communities, and a strong advocate for public education. Membership in PTA is open to anyone who wants to be involved and make a difference for the education, health, and welfare of children and youth.

— Press Release
National PTA
2010-06-02
http://www.pwrnewmedia.com/2010/pta_00602/index.html

This is a list of the people most directly involved with drafting the core standards: http://www.corestandards.org/Files/K-12DevelopmentTeam.pdf

You can go here to find out which of these people has a working relationship with Achieve.

Action in Vermont










Informing the Public about the Common Core Standards in Burlington.


Action in Colorado

 

• Take some of the comments from here and other sites and copy them onto a flyer, then hand them out at your school's parent meeting. Add your email address where they can contact you and also the Facebook group links where they can join.
• Surely such comments will resonate...they probably have their own stories too. You could also compile some comments and deliver them to the chamber of commerce president, your local schoolboard members, anyone you can think of who might be moved by what they read. The movement against NCLB and test score focus needs to grow. Also share the link for this group with other educational Facebook groups.
• Additionally encourage parents to opt their kids out of the state testing and look out for their children's well-being. Say no to too much, or useless homework. A child who hates going to school is under stress that can lead to depression. It happened to my own daughter so I know what that is like. 
• Encourage parents to sign up for email information that you provide them about upcoming laws and other things pertaining to education. You can mobilize them to send emails to their legislators etc. Make sure you do the legwork for them and provide them with the email addresses of lawmakers, schoolboard members etc. The problem is that many parents today are busy with jobs, so make it easy for them.

The Problem with Common Core Standards

A Lesson from Northern Ireland for Secretary Duncan: If You Want Success in School, Young Children Need Quality Play, Not Direct Instruction and Tests

Dear Secretary Duncan,

I am writing to voice my concerns about the deeply misguided route down which you are taking early childhood education in the United States.

I feel this more strongly now than ever having just returned from Belfast, Northern Ireland, where I took Wheelock College students on a service learning program looking at the reconciliation efforts currently underway in schools.

My students, all of whom will be working with children and families when they graduate, were amazed to learn that the new curriculum for Northern Ireland, which aims to promote tolerance and decrease violence, has an increased focus on play in the early grades. The teachers there are eagerly embracing this shift because they see the positive effects of this new curriculum in their classrooms—children are better problem solvers and are more engaged with educational activities and each other.

Over and over again, my students commented on how self-regulated, engaged, and competent the children they observed were, beginning as young as 3-years-old. This was especially striking when they saw 75 children ages 5-6 happily playing for 30 minutes on an asphalt playground with no equipment or play materials—and not one obvious instance of adult intervention was needed.  In contrast to the one-size-fits-all model so often used in the U.S., they saw classes busy with diverse activities like writing and drawing.  And, as the teacher circled the room to work with individuals, they witnessed how the children helped and shared with each other.  The teachers said they believed that the emphasis on play nurtured these vital life skills, a conclusion which is supported by a growing body of research that focuses on the educational value of play.

Mr. Duncan, my students voiced distress that your proposed Common Core Educational Standards for children as young as kindergarten in the United States is going in the opposite direction from the model they experienced in Northern Ireland. They are worried that these new standards will undermine play and put more focus on testing, which will ironically doom your admirable goal for introducing the standards—reducing the achievement gap between the black and white, rich and poor children.

My students began trying to answer an important question.  Why do the Northern Irish educational policymakers understand young children’s needs so well, while you and your policymakers here in the U.S. refuse to understand and promote young children’s optimal learning and wellbeing?  One key factor at the heart of your current misguided effort seems to be that policymakers in Northern Ireland listen to early childhood educators, the experts in the learning and development of young children, when determining educational policy. You, Mr. Duncan, do not seem to be doing so.  Only one member of the group creating the new U.S. standards has any clearly identified early childhood experience.

Now, more than ever, I believe that U.S. children are doomed to miseducation and worse if you do not heed the voices of those best trained to foster the wellbeing and education of young children—early childhood educators. It is not too late.* Listening to the advice of leading early childhood educators in the U.S. is your best hope for creating policies that will reverse the disastrous course on which you are currently taking our young children and their teachers.

*Please see the Official Position Statement of the Alliance for Childhood voicing grave concerns about the new standards.  This statement has been signed by leading early childhood educators from around the country.

 E.D. Hirsch Jr., founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several acclaimed books on education issues, including the best-seller "Cultural Literacy."

By E.D. Hirsch, Jr.

The results of the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress recently released were as predictable as they were dispiriting. Reading scores for the nation’s 4th graders are unchanged since 2007. Eighth graders showed a one point uptick, but scores remained essentially flat.

Facts must be faced. We are making no progress at all in teaching children to read in the United States. Our massive and well-intentioned national effort to focus the work of our schools on improving reading instruction has failed. But our failure is less one of education policy, than the simple fact that we are wedded to a demonstrably flawed model of how to teach children to read.

There is a way we can sail out of the reading doldrums.

The recently released English Language Arts Standards drafted by the National Governors Association Center and the Council of Chief State School Officers may provide desperately needed wind we need to move forward. Released for comment several weeks ago, the document has been criticized by many observers as offering little improvement over the broad and insubstantial individual state standards they would replace. Indeed, stating that children should be able to “determine central ideas or themes of a text,” for example, would seem to offer little guidance on what teachers should teach, or how to reach this laudable, if obvious goal.

But look closely. Note the unusual title it carries: “Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies & Science.” The title shouts that language mastery requires knowledge of history, and science, (music and fine arts I hope will be included in due course) not just fiction and poetry. It states explicitly that these non-literary subjects should be generously represented in the long classroom hours devoted to literacy.

This emphasis on non-literary content is defended on the grounds that building “a foundation of knowledge in these fields will give [students] the background to be better readers in all content areas.”

That is an especially important consideration for the early grades, which now spend up to half the school day on literacy. Here is something new under the sun. It resists the infamous narrowing of the curriculum. And it is an important reform also for helping to overcome the test-score gap, which is essentially a knowledge gap, between racial and ethnic groups.

A second advance this document makes over existing ones is to recognize its own limitations. A whole section is devoted to “What is not covered by the Standards.” This turns out to be a lot, including teaching methods and the curriculum. But the concession is critical.

The word “standards” has misled the public into thinking that these documents represent curriculum guides. Yet not even the best of the current state standards defines a curriculum.

This document is, I believe, unique in stating that it is neither a curriculum nor a curriculum guide. Rather, it concedes explicitly that proficiency in reading and writing can only be achieved through a definite curriculum that is “coherently structured to develop rich content knowledge within and across grades.”

There is not a thing wrong with wanting young people in every state of the country to know how to do the same important skills and understand the same key concepts.

If knowing the Pythagorean theorem is important for kids in Florida, it should be important for kids in Hawaii, too.

That is the reasoning behind the Common Core Standards, which as my colleague Nick Anderson, wrote today, are being released today in a blueprint for what all students should learn in English and math, in each grade, from kindergarten through high school.

The national standards are meant to replace the individual state standards now in place, some of which are said by educators to be essentially useless to guide instruction because they are too vague, poorly written and/or incomplete.

Many educators and parents oppose national standards, fearing that this will lead to a national curriculum and national assessment test that would take away local control of education as well affect how teachers operate in the classroom.

But even assuming that you don’t share those views and believe that national standards make sense, there are legitimate concerns about this Common Core effort and the notion that it is reasonable to ask every kid in every grade to know certain things.

The fact that it took well less than a year to write these very important standards doesn’t necessarily mean they are inadequate, but it makes me wonder.

The fact that few if any classroom teachers were involved in the drafting of the standards--(none were asked to help draft theNo Child Left Behind law)--doesn’t necessarily make them inadequate, but it makes me wonder.

The fact that much of the drafting process was done in secrecy doesn’t necessarily make them inadequate, but it makes me wonder.

What I especially worry about is a stepping up of what we have already seen happen with curriculum in the NCLB era. The “push down” effect has essentially pushed into lower grades the things kids are supposed to be able to do and know.

Once, schools gave youngsters a chance to learn how to read according to their own development. Now, a child who still can’t read by the end of first grade is in deep trouble from which it can be hard to emerge.

With the proposed standards, what happens to these children in fourth grade when they are expected to explain major differences between poetry and prose, and to refer to such elements as stanza, verse, rhythm and meter when working or speaking about a poem?

What about eighth-graders who fell behind in fifth grade math and, try as they might, don’t understand how to use linear equations to solve for an unknown and explain a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem on properties of a right triangle, as the proposed standard demands?

I know people who didn’t really start to enjoy reading into late in elementary school and even middle school, but later became voracious readers because a teacher was able to reach them and spark an interest. I know people (myself included) who didn’t understand Algebra until 10th grade.

Telling teachers that they must teach certain things to each child in a specific grade ignores this notion of individual development.

Another concern about the new standards is that they are only for math and English. The emphasis on those subjects in No Child Left Behind's assessment scheme led to a dangerous narrowing of curriculum in public schools; the arts disappeared in many systems, science and history and physical education took a back seat too.

As education historian Diane Ravitch wrote in her new book "Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education:"

"Our schools will not improve if we continue to focus only on reading and mathematics while ignoring the other studies that are essential elements of a good education... Our schools will not improve if we value only what tests measure... Not everything that matters can be quantified."

There is a common notion in American education reform circles that we are falling behind other countries with high-achieving school systems in large part because we don’t have national standards.

But in her new book, “The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future,” Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who served as Barack Obama’s chief education adviser duringn the presidential transition, makes clear that this isn’t the case.

She explains how Finland--now widely hailed by U.S. policymakers--turned around its school system. But, contrary to popular belief, it didn’t do it by establishing a highly centralized national system with detailed national standards.

It “shifted to a more localized system in which highly trained teachers design curriculum around very lean national standards,” she wrote. All assessments are school-based, designed by teachers, rather than standardized.

For promoters of national standards, it is important to remember that standards alone may be useful, and even necessary, in education, as cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham wrote here recently.

But they are not enough. Both Willingham, a University of Virginia professor, and Darling-Hammond make clear that no set of standards has much meaning without equitable resources to ensure that teachers are trained well enough to reach kids who live in all circumstances.

If the organizations that were so gung-ho to produce the national standards don’t see that their job has just begun, and that the next, even larger, effort is to secure equitable resources for schools, then the document being released today will have little meaning.

• "Allegory of the Cave" from The Republic by Plato (380 BCE) translated by G.M.A. Grube

• "Address to Students at Moscow State University" by Ronald Reagan (1988)