Common Core Sample: Plumbing the Dark Mysteries of National Standards

Right, you said you teach 3rd grade (8 and 9 years of age), so what does the last part of that sentence mean? You refer to them in the past tense "when they were just 10 and 11."

I completely agree! I keep looking at standards like the ones you note and I can't come up with a single lesson. My students are in 3rd grade and live in a poor rural environment. I'm still working on prior knowledge. I tried to come up with a topic they could debate and/or support a position on, but it isn't easy. They aren't real up on domestic affairs, world history, US history, etc. The best I could do was more recess or different lunches. Okay, I may be exaggerating a little- I did come up with a few other ideas, but my point is that when do we teach foundational skills like comprehension, fluency, math facts, etc and get all of this higher level thinking in at that age. Let me give them the foundation so that when they get to middle school and up, they can do those higher thinking assignments instead of the teacher having to remediate most of the time. By foundation, I don't mean low level thinking-I want to push my students to think, but let's be realistic.

I meant what was here to be a reply so I reposted it.

Because they aren't 2 years behind. They are 8 and 9. We are just trying to suddenly teach them things that they were learning when they were 10 and 11. Plus, in Indiana students who are slow learners get no IEP nor are they exempted from any AYP standards. They are targeted the same as any other student. I differentiate everything in my room. I have a total of about 40 minutes of whole group instruction a day, but they still have to learn the 3rd grade standards or fail the test. Now we are moving to the common core standards that are much harder than we have now. My students with IEP's and who are slow learners are pretty much being left completely behind now because they will never get a highschool diploma. Grade school curriculum is highschool prep and highschool curriculum is college prep. There is nothing in between that and no diploma. My son has an IQ of 84 and is dyslexic. He is in 7th grade and it has been suggested to me three times this year to put him on a non-diploma track. How many of your life skills students come to you with those credentials?

Please explain why this is is a problem for your school to match their cognitive level to the proper grade level standard. I am assuming that your district has testing data on each of your students, so in LA and math, you create groups based equivalent grade level. If they are at least two grade levels below chronological age, they should have been tested already for possible learning disabilities.

A friend said: Something just hit me as I read your response, Nancy Merrill Sayed. Is the link between test results and socio-economic status the chicken or the egg? I answered:

That's a really good question. But at this point, I'd say that SES came second. My reasoning? Before the Industrial Revolution, more people had a solid place in society. People of all walks of life were respected if they did their jobs well and had a solid moral code. After that (at least according to John Taylor Gatto, in his Underground History of American Education), schools were used to divide the movers and shakers from the factory workers and consumers. The upper six or seven percent (industrial titans, then the professionals such as doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc.) were effectively in the lead from the beginning. The rest were trained to be good factory employees (be punctual, sit down, shut up, don't question authority, do repetitive meaningless tasks, etc.) and unquestioning consumers of the masses of goods made in the factories. We have effectively been funneled through chutes in a slaughter house, and never really asked why. Many people didn't want to be CEOs, and were content to put in their forty years and get a good retirement package. So, what better way than to design the chute through which we'd be funneled, to make people believe that only the "top" students were to be rewarded with plum additional education and primo jobs, than by making people believe that the means by which we assessed students was just the fairest of them all?

In truth, norm-referenced tests, which we are still using in the state of Missouri (the MAP and other end-of-course tests) may be CALLED criterion-referenced, but they are also norm-referenced. This is not only very bad educational practice, but is prejudicial, since it then makes it impossible to tell with any kind of clarity and measurability, just exactly what is being tested. That is the point of it. In other words, a norm-referenced test may not in any way, shape or form, be used to diagnose or measure student achievement. It is strictly against the law, and is punishable practically with death. Never mind that zillions of the tests are passed out each year, in every school. Never mind if teachers and schools copy those tests and either a) use them to teach the test, or b) marginally better, use them as a backbone of the curriculum and teach TO the test. I taught for thirty-five years, and I am very certain, that most if not all schools do this, from private to public. Children of a certain SES and/or upbringing (i.e. they've been taught to read by being bathed in language since they were born, cuddled and read to, with letters, words being pointed out, etc.) could stay home and watch cartoons all day, then take the test at the end of the year and do well on it, up and until they reach the limits of their parents' knowledge. Children learn what they see.

The educational systems then hijack the parents' SES and upbringing, as if THEY were the ones who did it, bragging about how well their schools do. The only way to obviate the SES factor is to do a thorough curriculum audit and deep alignment (Fifty Ways to Close the Achievement Gap, by Drs. Fenwick English and Betty Steffy); they show exactly what is needed, which is to spell out the educational objectives with crystal clarity, being fully measurable. For example, rather than say that a student will know how to add, we need to be specific in the variables: students will know how to add three-digit plus three-digit numbers with regrouping, in vertical format (and this is being very simple--it can and does get quite complex, but is very doable, and much better than pretending we've done something--and receiving money for it--and not actually doing it). When we test the one, saying they either do or do not know how to add, well, fine for the ones who do know; but then what with the ones who don't? If we're going to test it, we need to respect students enough to show them exactly where their knowledge is breaking down. And not to say that this is the be all and end all. It is surprisingly easy to teach and test the "basics". Higher level thinking skills are not magic, and just as easily taught. As a matter of fact, most kids couuld probably teach themselves (AND us) in this online age.

We know intuitively, as teachers and students, that something is wrong with the kind of assessment we're being asked to do, but don't know how to pinpoint where the "wrongness" lies. I'd say that it lies in a) in the "standards" we're being asked to assess too many variables (bad science, if this is indeed scientific, this kind of assessment) and
I could go on and on, and frequently do, but I think that makes my point.

I completely agree! I keep looking at standards like the ones you note and I can't come up with a single lesson. My students are in 3rd grade and live in a poor rural environment. I'm still working on prior knowledge. I tried to come up with a topic they could debate and/or support a position on, but it isn't easy. They aren't real up on domestic affairs, world history, US history, etc. The best I could do was more recess or different lunches. Okay, I may be exaggerating a little- I did come up with a few other ideas, but my point is that when do we teach foundational skills like comprehension, fluency, math facts, etc and get all of this higher level thinking in at that age. Let me give them the foundation so that when they get to middle school and up, they can do those higher thinking assignments instead of the teacher having to remediate most of the time. By foundation, I don't mean low level thinking-I want to push my students to think, but let's be realistic.

I had the same feeling when I looked at the standards for my 11th-grade English students. It's almost like dyslexia, the way all those numbers and periods an beaurocratese tend to jumble together.

This is the second years that I've been working at implementing CCS, and it has become much easier. Like the private school teachers in Mr. Hauck's example, I teach the lessons I love to teach, but the CCS helps me tweak them to meet the standards and ensure a top-quality, relevant education for the kids, who may not be as fond of, say, Moby Dick, as I am.

You're not wrong, Gaetan. The common core standards are just the newest scam to hit the market. Before that, REL, etc. had perfectly good standards. The only time the "standards" make a difference is when they have clear and measurable objectives (see Fenwick English and Betty Steffy for their work on curriculum auditing and deep alignment). The Massachusetts people hit the roof when the CC standards replaced their rigorous state curriculum. If you look at the "objectives", you'll see there are too many combinations and permutations to even be viable as variables. It is a con game, designed to grab more money from the Race to the Top candy jar. Fenwick English did his first curriculum audit in 1979, demonstrating without a doubt that the only thing norm-referenced tests measure is a student's socio-economic status, and are thus inherently inequitable and racially and economically biased. All the Acts that followed--A Nation at Risk, Excellence in Education, Goals 2000, NCLB, and now the Race to the Top initiative--have poured billions and trillions into educators' (and their attending parasites) pockets, with no result whatsoever.

Someday, someone is going to wake up and realize that this all deserves one of the biggest lawsuits that has ever been seen in history. People will realize that since 1979, the state and federal governments have been playing with our heads and pocketbooks, and someone will file a massive class action lawsuit that will drain the bank accounts of all those people who are sitting around with their thumbs up their behinds. I hope they end up broke, broke, broke, asking our students whether or not they want to supersize their cheeseburgers with that order.

I get it.

Once again, education faces some wholesale changes to the world in which we work and our students learn. And this can be nerve wracking and stressful -- especially for those of us tuned in to the coming tides, swept up in the gears of change, and mixing metaphors just to make sense of it all.

I get it.

And the Common Core fails to frighten. So far.

Why? Because no matter the language used, the standards seem pretty dang reasonable. None of the above examples are asking third-graders to do something beyond their reach or something beyond a reasonable, developmentally appropriate expectation. It’s just the language is written apart from its context and the language, for crying out loud, the language.

I’d love a corner seat in the ill-lighted smoke-filled room of Don Drapers who hash out this edu-speak; They do a dang fine job of making sure educators spend more time interpreting and parsing and less time planning meaningful instruction and effective assessment. And empowering students to be critical, metacognitive thinkers who are aware of what is being asked of them and how they are going about demonstrating that learning? Yeah, that is three weeks of lesson-planning and assessment right there. And they haven’t even begun working toward the standards yet.

All of this though is still missing the bigger concern for me: the how. So far, the Common Core appears to just make suggestions about the how, offering up suggested readings and exemplar lessons. Some states have greater reservoirs of CC-aligned resources than others.

So far, the situation has yet to become entirely prescriptive. Here are your meds, kids. Chew them, drink them, cram it into a Twinkie if you like. That’s all you. We just want you taking them. And I think they are harmless enough -- heck, maybe down right healthy.

I will start screaming other poorly considered analogies when the standardized assessments land and the Common Core system prevents educators from empowering students to demonstrate that achievement in ways that are authentic, relevant, powerful and meaningful.

Go ahead and tell the the what. That’s fine. Heck, tell the why. That’s cool, too.

Leave the how up to the experts: the students and the educators.