I believe in State Rights. The federal government should not be sticking its hand in the education pot and stirring it up. NCLB and these Common Core State Standards, if directly related to receiving federal dollars is constitutionally illegal or if not illegal, it is teetering on a very fine line. Coming from Alaska (though not any more), I know that there are many ways of knowing and the native Alaskan way of learning and knowing is severely under-represented and misunderstood in our country. It wasn't so very long ago we were forcing them to abandon their native languages (now almost extinct) for English only. Just because the majority believed in that doesn't make it the right thing to do. I am sure that many other under-represented populations have a different way of learning and knowing that can not be tested under a system that is run by the over-represented.
Education needs to be FAIR, not equal. The major difference being that since each student is so different, one student may need extra help and another student may need extra challenges. In order to treat those students fairly, we try to give each student what they need on an individual basis. To treat those students equally would be to hold back one student and to thrust another into something s/he is not yet ready for. Standards are equal but not fair and are a blatant disservice to all of our children.
If individual states would like to adopt a well-researched standard they should look to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Focal Points. These Focal Points provide emphasis for each grade level and advise that these key areas should and can be addressed through a problem-solving-based curriculum.
CEEI has created an (out of the box) exciting way make students to pay attention to subjects that are now off the radar scope. Mainly in dealing with the climate. It has found a way to navigate through the internet and back to the students themselves to get excited about further research and assessment. For further info:
See the www.ceei-news.org. It offers another way to tackle the problem of too much information. (We deal with it one category at a time). CEEI would welcome your comments and suggestions.
Max Casebeau, CEEI Director/ send my attention at ceei@cox.net
Sun Valley, ID 83353
PO 1778
Schools have been laying out the basics for years in curriculum guides and mainly all of the general topics are included: math, science, social studies,reading, writing, and in the last few years technology skills. Why do we need any group to specify exactly which of these should have more priority or significance? We just need rational classrooms of reasonable size, with socializing and talking permitted, and a general sense of a facilitating teacher/instructor/co-learner who strives to create a learning environment where kids can "do" things that matter and make sense while embedding basics. When an overarching group sets what "should be" taught and how it should be taught, and rewards those who create better test takers, we all lose. This is the fast track to the decline of innovation.
The CCSSI "College Readiness" standards for math which were released in September, 2009 do not address the needs of students who want to pursue STEM fields as the document openly admits. As if this were not bad enough, they also do no address the needs of students seeking entrance into a four year university. Most such institutions require 3 years of math in high school: Algebra 1 and 2, and geometry. The standards omit many topics that are covered in Algebra 2 courses, and the geometry standards are very weak. States need to realize that the CCSSI standards are not the only game in town. Why not band together and decide on a set of standards that have already been written and are proven to be effective? California's and Massachusett's standards are very good. Why is everyone in a rush to jump on a bandwagon which has as its primary goal the elimination of the achievement gap, but reducing the achievement of the students at the higher end? This tactic of dumbing down the curriculum has been tried since the early 20th century as a means of accomodating a growing body of students from rural areas and immigrants who were thought not to be smart enough to benefit from a rigorous education. Raising the age at which students could legally drop out from 14 to 16 also increased the student body, and in the eyes of the administrators, increased the need to dumb everything down. Why are we repeating the failures of the last 100 years?
I agree with AFT and NEA advocates that classroom teachers should play a larger role in formulation and execution of education policy. I was asked to vet the common core standards for English, and found them lacking in depth and relevance. As written they serve as a simple list of skills readymade for the formulation of standardized testing. Imagine that. At any rate, I hope they will be rewritten to serve as a guide for curriculum and instruction because if done well they could be quite useful. Had teachers and teacher organizations, such as NCTE, been more involved in the early phase of development, I think the English standards would be more effective, better known and more widely supported. Education continues to suffer from good ideas poorly done, so that reforms tend to smell a little like gimmicks. How many times does it need to be said? Involve classroom teachers in a meaningful way. I hope that reformers learn to work around the well-intentioned but somewhat parasitical and politicized education bureaucracy and work more with educators who see students every day.
I'm new to this discussion, but the overall concept seems like a good idea. Textbook companies could make one version for each grade/subject which could be used by all students across the U.S. Online versions would be available for all to use, too. The savings by the textbook companies should be passed on to the schools.
Students could master the basic content/skills in each subject and these items could be assessed via automated systems. If a student transfers to another school, either within the state or to another state, the student would be able to quickly adjust.
If we all agree that certain basic content/skills (nouns, verbs, adjective, punctuation, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, basic geometry, and basic algebra) should be learned by all students, then why not standardize the basic content/skills?
The discussion would then move to which basic content/skills are standard and what are the different ways to teach them to the different types of learners. Then, determine how much time is left in the school day for all of the other great types of learning activities (project-based learning, group activities, writing, singing, movement exercises, etc.).
In my teaching credential program, we learned about Balanced Literacy -- students need to learn basic phonics and other reading skills but they also need to read books (whole language). For math, students need to memorize their times tables but they also need to use their basic skills in problem solving activities. Is there such a thing as "Balanced Education" -- balancing the need to MASTER basic content/skills (like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) with project-based and/or problem solving activities?
The CCSSI says this is a state led effort. It is state led in terms of the NGA and CCSSO leading the effort. How do you get 49 states to so readily agree and commit to something like this---and give away their rights and responsibilities as states? Strong arm them? Coercion? Bribery? Dangle the $$$ carrot in front of them? Such a great scramble for the money with lots of talk---little, if any, of that talk has had anything to do with what really works or is good for students.
It is interesting that the PTA, with a Gates grant no less, signed on board big time to support the common core state K-12 standards---sight unseen. Unbelievable! Incredible! Or is it just Gullible! Evidence based or evidence debased? People need to be aware of the PTA's blind support for this. What did the PTA see to support? Did they see (without ever seeing them) a world class set of standards? or did they see $$$$? This has more to do with $$$ than it does with students.
It depends on what the standards specify. If they address all of the points that a student "should learn," then no. If they are broadly written to describe the kinds of tasks that a student should be able to do, then yes. By this I mean the ability to locate and evaluate the strength of evidence, analyze that evidence by reasoning using widely accepted tools, and then arrive at conclusions based on the reasoning. This is what critical thinking is all about. Armed in this way, our graduates will be able to do whatever they want. They can re-build the U.S. through creative and innovative thinking. Unhampered by conventional wisdom as to how a task should be done, they can use the Internet to find information, assess its validity, and devise solutions that we, their teachers, might never have conceived. This is the approach we built into our "game": http://dsihome.org.
Massachusetts has the highest test scores of any state in the nation, yet 54% of its schools fail to meet academic goals posited by NCLB content standards. Ironically, this does not mean that poor "performing" schools are performing so poorly and are so concentrated in key locales that the average scores are not truly quite high. It means that the standards are different from the achievement, and confusing the two ignores the failure of the standards and the value of that achievement.
For far too long we have viewed education as either/or - either project or sequential, either affective or cognitive, either emotional or rational. In fact and in truth the paradox of opposites both being right has been lost. Poor students teach better students, and Horace Mann's Common School (invented in this same high achieving state, and for the very good reason of assimilating and acknowledging diversity) is quite alive and more critical now than ever to America's future.
The significance of the Massachusetts condition goes further. This was the first state to anticipate the NCLB assessment process, with state-wide testing against negotiated content standards, in 1993. It is a state with large (up to 65%) minority populations of immigrants with different languages and skill sets and goals in key districts. It is a state with a well organized system of teacher unions, many of whose locals sponsor local innovations with broader significance. It is also a state with the highest concentration of private four year colleges and universities, as well as a relatively few but significant public universities with a still developing statewide network of teacher education resources for which state standards have had declining impact. And it is a state with a long and strong tradition of local control and innovation, including independent School Councils authorized by that same innovation legislation of 1993 to establish local priorities and School Improvement Plans.
Some of these conditions have had more impact than others. Just as some of the state's Charter Schools have had more impact. Yet their cumulative effect, in spite of NCLB and federal intrusion, has been substantial diversity - in approach, in form of delivery, in use of data for school, principal, teacher, and student evaluation, and in programs, budgets, and planning. The state departments of education (Elementary and Secondary, and separately Higher Education) have declined in authority and in consequent impact with the increase in the role of state content standards to measure school effectiveness. Some may see that as positive. I do not.
Let us look, at the outset, at the role and rule of those NCLB-like standards. They embrace academic subjects only, and they measure annual changes only in the middle grades. There is only one MCAS cycle (NCLB-like) test in secondary schools, and that cycle includes two or three, sometimes four subjects. It deliberately excludes vocational subjects, since the state can't figure out how to establish and monitor those standards.
Those are the standards held highest among immigrant groups. Those are the standards that measure - for them - the "productivity" of schools. Do schools empower their children to make more than their parents? It is not such a bad, irrelevant, or obscure standard. And it is truly at the center of Horace Mann's Common School. That is, such a standard is both more central and "higher" than how many years was the seven years' war or solving the square root of two. And such a standard, central to the social mobility that is one of the core purposes of public education, is totally, culturally, and racially ignored.
And it is not coincidental that most of the "failing" schools have high ratios of immigrant children, at least at admission. That ratio declines with increasing dropout rates each year. And that reflects both linguistic and (almost universally ignored) cultural barriers.
It is not only vocational subjects, however, which are ignored in content measures. It is interpersonal, group, and collaborative skills - those now cited by 21st Century Skills advocates - that many vocational programs teach to both vocational and general academic students enrolled - when they can. The breakdown of the measure, incidentally, coincides with the increasingly performance based segregation of regional vocational technical schools, and the consequent decline in bilingual and special education enrollment in those schools. Were we to revisit "busing" we would surely find that "schools of choice" now segregate by many more variables than race, and fail to meet that Common School standard for which they were funded in the first place. There are now only three, for one example, blended vocational-academic schools in the entire Commonwealth. Before waving flags about standards, look first at these few who show the impact and value of blended standards. They teach everyone - teachers, students, and parents - a shared goal of productivity and process, while ignoring neither content nor skills standards. And they usually embrace both teacher led and student led learning activities. They have to. Vocational skills - the 19th century's version of 21st century skills - take more than one on one applications of knowledge. Those skills take hands as well as heads, and produce wiser, more engaged, and more collaborative learners.
This is one very visible exception to the "Common Core" standards business. It is significant in terms of both student learning and the failure of standardized tests - as we know them - to measure that learning. It is also significant in terms of that Common School foundation for public education. Why must we sacrifice such significance when asked to spent, for example, over $150,000,000 on a state MCAS exam that does just that? Why and how can we ignore the priority standards for the most productive (in terms of personal economic growth) population in our state? How in the world can narrow academics have undermined our trust, faith, and commitment to Common Schools that goes back almost two centuries?
We did it. We should stop doing it. We should re-examine the entire question of testing. Not abandon tests, but give them the context the legislature first intended - in this state - with MCAS. Every year the line item that funds the test is entitled "Portfolios," but every year for nearly two decades our divided state authorities have ignored the most critical elements of those portfolios. The failure is not the students, the teachers, nor the schools, it is of a system deliberately intended to undermine both.
Comments (11)
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Minimum Standards
It has always been my experience that if you ask for the minimum, you will get the minimum. I never advocate that the floor become the standard.
Re-inventing the Wheel
I believe in State Rights. The federal government should not be sticking its hand in the education pot and stirring it up. NCLB and these Common Core State Standards, if directly related to receiving federal dollars is constitutionally illegal or if not illegal, it is teetering on a very fine line. Coming from Alaska (though not any more), I know that there are many ways of knowing and the native Alaskan way of learning and knowing is severely under-represented and misunderstood in our country. It wasn't so very long ago we were forcing them to abandon their native languages (now almost extinct) for English only. Just because the majority believed in that doesn't make it the right thing to do. I am sure that many other under-represented populations have a different way of learning and knowing that can not be tested under a system that is run by the over-represented.
Education needs to be FAIR, not equal. The major difference being that since each student is so different, one student may need extra help and another student may need extra challenges. In order to treat those students fairly, we try to give each student what they need on an individual basis. To treat those students equally would be to hold back one student and to thrust another into something s/he is not yet ready for. Standards are equal but not fair and are a blatant disservice to all of our children.
If individual states would like to adopt a well-researched standard they should look to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Focal Points. These Focal Points provide emphasis for each grade level and advise that these key areas should and can be addressed through a problem-solving-based curriculum.
CEEI Center fOr Environmental Education and Information
CEEI has created an (out of the box) exciting way make students to pay attention to subjects that are now off the radar scope. Mainly in dealing with the climate. It has found a way to navigate through the internet and back to the students themselves to get excited about further research and assessment. For further info:
See the www.ceei-news.org. It offers another way to tackle the problem of too much information. (We deal with it one category at a time). CEEI would welcome your comments and suggestions.
Max Casebeau, CEEI Director/ send my attention at ceei@cox.net
Sun Valley, ID 83353
PO 1778
Basics of another sort
Schools have been laying out the basics for years in curriculum guides and mainly all of the general topics are included: math, science, social studies,reading, writing, and in the last few years technology skills. Why do we need any group to specify exactly which of these should have more priority or significance? We just need rational classrooms of reasonable size, with socializing and talking permitted, and a general sense of a facilitating teacher/instructor/co-learner who strives to create a learning environment where kids can "do" things that matter and make sense while embedding basics. When an overarching group sets what "should be" taught and how it should be taught, and rewards those who create better test takers, we all lose. This is the fast track to the decline of innovation.
The CCSSI "College Readiness"
The CCSSI "College Readiness" standards for math which were released in September, 2009 do not address the needs of students who want to pursue STEM fields as the document openly admits. As if this were not bad enough, they also do no address the needs of students seeking entrance into a four year university. Most such institutions require 3 years of math in high school: Algebra 1 and 2, and geometry. The standards omit many topics that are covered in Algebra 2 courses, and the geometry standards are very weak. States need to realize that the CCSSI standards are not the only game in town. Why not band together and decide on a set of standards that have already been written and are proven to be effective? California's and Massachusett's standards are very good. Why is everyone in a rush to jump on a bandwagon which has as its primary goal the elimination of the achievement gap, but reducing the achievement of the students at the higher end? This tactic of dumbing down the curriculum has been tried since the early 20th century as a means of accomodating a growing body of students from rural areas and immigrants who were thought not to be smart enough to benefit from a rigorous education. Raising the age at which students could legally drop out from 14 to 16 also increased the student body, and in the eyes of the administrators, increased the need to dumb everything down. Why are we repeating the failures of the last 100 years?
I agree with AFT and NEA
I agree with AFT and NEA advocates that classroom teachers should play a larger role in formulation and execution of education policy. I was asked to vet the common core standards for English, and found them lacking in depth and relevance. As written they serve as a simple list of skills readymade for the formulation of standardized testing. Imagine that. At any rate, I hope they will be rewritten to serve as a guide for curriculum and instruction because if done well they could be quite useful. Had teachers and teacher organizations, such as NCTE, been more involved in the early phase of development, I think the English standards would be more effective, better known and more widely supported. Education continues to suffer from good ideas poorly done, so that reforms tend to smell a little like gimmicks. How many times does it need to be said? Involve classroom teachers in a meaningful way. I hope that reformers learn to work around the well-intentioned but somewhat parasitical and politicized education bureaucracy and work more with educators who see students every day.
concept of common standards (for basics) makes sense
I'm new to this discussion, but the overall concept seems like a good idea. Textbook companies could make one version for each grade/subject which could be used by all students across the U.S. Online versions would be available for all to use, too. The savings by the textbook companies should be passed on to the schools.
Students could master the basic content/skills in each subject and these items could be assessed via automated systems. If a student transfers to another school, either within the state or to another state, the student would be able to quickly adjust.
If we all agree that certain basic content/skills (nouns, verbs, adjective, punctuation, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, basic geometry, and basic algebra) should be learned by all students, then why not standardize the basic content/skills?
The discussion would then move to which basic content/skills are standard and what are the different ways to teach them to the different types of learners. Then, determine how much time is left in the school day for all of the other great types of learning activities (project-based learning, group activities, writing, singing, movement exercises, etc.).
In my teaching credential program, we learned about Balanced Literacy -- students need to learn basic phonics and other reading skills but they also need to read books (whole language). For math, students need to memorize their times tables but they also need to use their basic skills in problem solving activities. Is there such a thing as "Balanced Education" -- balancing the need to MASTER basic content/skills (like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) with project-based and/or problem solving activities?
The CCSSI says this is a state led effort. It is state led in terms of the NGA and CCSSO leading the effort. How do you get 49 states to so readily agree and commit to something like this---and give away their rights and responsibilities as states? Strong arm them? Coercion? Bribery? Dangle the $$$ carrot in front of them? Such a great scramble for the money with lots of talk---little, if any, of that talk has had anything to do with what really works or is good for students.
It is interesting that the PTA, with a Gates grant no less, signed on board big time to support the common core state K-12 standards---sight unseen. Unbelievable! Incredible! Or is it just Gullible! Evidence based or evidence debased? People need to be aware of the PTA's blind support for this. What did the PTA see to support? Did they see (without ever seeing them) a world class set of standards? or did they see $$$$? This has more to do with $$$ than it does with students.
President, inDepthLearning
It depends on what the standards specify. If they address all of the points that a student "should learn," then no. If they are broadly written to describe the kinds of tasks that a student should be able to do, then yes. By this I mean the ability to locate and evaluate the strength of evidence, analyze that evidence by reasoning using widely accepted tools, and then arrive at conclusions based on the reasoning. This is what critical thinking is all about. Armed in this way, our graduates will be able to do whatever they want. They can re-build the U.S. through creative and innovative thinking. Unhampered by conventional wisdom as to how a task should be done, they can use the Internet to find information, assess its validity, and devise solutions that we, their teachers, might never have conceived. This is the approach we built into our "game": http://dsihome.org.
Content standards that ignore application standards fail, ALWAYS
Massachusetts has the highest test scores of any state in the nation, yet 54% of its schools fail to meet academic goals posited by NCLB content standards. Ironically, this does not mean that poor "performing" schools are performing so poorly and are so concentrated in key locales that the average scores are not truly quite high. It means that the standards are different from the achievement, and confusing the two ignores the failure of the standards and the value of that achievement.
For far too long we have viewed education as either/or - either project or sequential, either affective or cognitive, either emotional or rational. In fact and in truth the paradox of opposites both being right has been lost. Poor students teach better students, and Horace Mann's Common School (invented in this same high achieving state, and for the very good reason of assimilating and acknowledging diversity) is quite alive and more critical now than ever to America's future.
The significance of the Massachusetts condition goes further. This was the first state to anticipate the NCLB assessment process, with state-wide testing against negotiated content standards, in 1993. It is a state with large (up to 65%) minority populations of immigrants with different languages and skill sets and goals in key districts. It is a state with a well organized system of teacher unions, many of whose locals sponsor local innovations with broader significance. It is also a state with the highest concentration of private four year colleges and universities, as well as a relatively few but significant public universities with a still developing statewide network of teacher education resources for which state standards have had declining impact. And it is a state with a long and strong tradition of local control and innovation, including independent School Councils authorized by that same innovation legislation of 1993 to establish local priorities and School Improvement Plans.
Some of these conditions have had more impact than others. Just as some of the state's Charter Schools have had more impact. Yet their cumulative effect, in spite of NCLB and federal intrusion, has been substantial diversity - in approach, in form of delivery, in use of data for school, principal, teacher, and student evaluation, and in programs, budgets, and planning. The state departments of education (Elementary and Secondary, and separately Higher Education) have declined in authority and in consequent impact with the increase in the role of state content standards to measure school effectiveness. Some may see that as positive. I do not.
Let us look, at the outset, at the role and rule of those NCLB-like standards. They embrace academic subjects only, and they measure annual changes only in the middle grades. There is only one MCAS cycle (NCLB-like) test in secondary schools, and that cycle includes two or three, sometimes four subjects. It deliberately excludes vocational subjects, since the state can't figure out how to establish and monitor those standards.
Those are the standards held highest among immigrant groups. Those are the standards that measure - for them - the "productivity" of schools. Do schools empower their children to make more than their parents? It is not such a bad, irrelevant, or obscure standard. And it is truly at the center of Horace Mann's Common School. That is, such a standard is both more central and "higher" than how many years was the seven years' war or solving the square root of two. And such a standard, central to the social mobility that is one of the core purposes of public education, is totally, culturally, and racially ignored.
And it is not coincidental that most of the "failing" schools have high ratios of immigrant children, at least at admission. That ratio declines with increasing dropout rates each year. And that reflects both linguistic and (almost universally ignored) cultural barriers.
It is not only vocational subjects, however, which are ignored in content measures. It is interpersonal, group, and collaborative skills - those now cited by 21st Century Skills advocates - that many vocational programs teach to both vocational and general academic students enrolled - when they can. The breakdown of the measure, incidentally, coincides with the increasingly performance based segregation of regional vocational technical schools, and the consequent decline in bilingual and special education enrollment in those schools. Were we to revisit "busing" we would surely find that "schools of choice" now segregate by many more variables than race, and fail to meet that Common School standard for which they were funded in the first place. There are now only three, for one example, blended vocational-academic schools in the entire Commonwealth. Before waving flags about standards, look first at these few who show the impact and value of blended standards. They teach everyone - teachers, students, and parents - a shared goal of productivity and process, while ignoring neither content nor skills standards. And they usually embrace both teacher led and student led learning activities. They have to. Vocational skills - the 19th century's version of 21st century skills - take more than one on one applications of knowledge. Those skills take hands as well as heads, and produce wiser, more engaged, and more collaborative learners.
This is one very visible exception to the "Common Core" standards business. It is significant in terms of both student learning and the failure of standardized tests - as we know them - to measure that learning. It is also significant in terms of that Common School foundation for public education. Why must we sacrifice such significance when asked to spent, for example, over $150,000,000 on a state MCAS exam that does just that? Why and how can we ignore the priority standards for the most productive (in terms of personal economic growth) population in our state? How in the world can narrow academics have undermined our trust, faith, and commitment to Common Schools that goes back almost two centuries?
We did it. We should stop doing it. We should re-examine the entire question of testing. Not abandon tests, but give them the context the legislature first intended - in this state - with MCAS. Every year the line item that funds the test is entitled "Portfolios," but every year for nearly two decades our divided state authorities have ignored the most critical elements of those portfolios. The failure is not the students, the teachers, nor the schools, it is of a system deliberately intended to undermine both.