"Don't you think there are things that every educated person should know?"
I hear this fairly often, generally in response to my stated disinterest in having Common Core standards in particular and national education standards ever in general. It's an eye-opening question for me , because even just a few years ago, I'm pretty sure I would have answered yes. But the current toxic educational status quo and its foundation of Making People Prove They Know Things has forced me to really examine my thoughts in this area.
The issue breaks down into three parts for me.
I. The List
In the English teacher biz, we wrestle with The Canon all the time, and that master list is always a work in progress. If you're old enough, you can remember the struggle surrounding the recognition that we might want to expand beyond the traditional list of Dead White Guys, but there have been many mini-arguments over the years, none of which have been conclusively settled.
But that's content. What about skills? Well, we agree on reading-writing-speaking-listening in principle, but in English-land there's ongoing debate about the usefulness of knowing grammar, and the process of writing (which was only "discovered" in the last forty years or so) is still metamorphosing. And in most places, the speaking-listening piece is a haphazard Rube Goldberg stapled to the airborne seat of our pedagogical pants.
And that's just my field. Multiply that by every other discipline. Factor in all the parents and taxpayers who believe that What Kids Should Learn is roughly the same as What We Studied Back In My Day.
But I do believe there are things students should learn, don't I? I mean, how else do I make decisions about what I should teach (because in my district, I make many of those decisions myself)?
Turns out, when I think about it, what I really have is a list of Things I think It Would Benefit a Person To Know.
I think any person would be better off knowing some Shakespeare. I think every person would benefit from being able to express him/her-self as clearly as possible in writing and speaking. I think there's a giant cargo-ship-load of literature that has important and useful things to say to various people at various points in their journey through life.
But this is a fuzzy, individual thing. Think of it as food, the intellectual equivalent of food. Are there foods that everybody would benefit from eating? Wellll.... I would really enjoy a steak, but my wife the vegan would not. And given my physical condition, it might not be the best choice for me. On the other hand, if I haven't had any protein in a while, it might be great. And a salad might be nice, unless I already had a salad today, because eating a lot of salad has some unpleasant consequences for me. Oh, and I do enjoy a lobster, which is fairly healthy, unless I'm have to eat while I'm traveling-- lobster makes very bad road food in the car. You see our problem. We can agree that everybody should eat. I'm not sure we can pick a menu and declare that every single human being would benefit from eating exactly that food at exactly the same time.
Ditto for The List. I mean, I think everybody should learn stuff. Personally, I'm a generalist, so I think everybody would benefit from learning everything from Hamlet to quantum physics. But then, I know some people who have made the world a better place by being hard core specialists who know nothing about anything outside their field.
So if you ask me, can I name a list of skills and knowledge areas that every single solitary American must learn, I start to have trouble. Every mechanic, welder, astronaut, teacher, concert flautist, librarian, physicist, neurosurgeon, truck driver, airplane pilot, grocery clerk, elephant trainer, beer brewer, housewife, househusband, politician, dog catcher, cobbler, retail manager, tailor, dentist-- what exactly does every single one of those people have to know?
II. And Why?
Let's pretend there is a list. What is it for?
Do we want people to be more productive workers? Do we want them to be more responsible parents? Do we want them to be kinder, more decent human beings? Do we want them to be better citizens?
Then why aren't we trying to teach them those things?
One of the most bizarre disconnects in the current toxic ed status quo is the imaginary connections between disconnected things. We have to get students to score better on standardized tests, because that's how we'll become the economically dominant Earth nation. Ignoring for a moment the value of either of those goals, what the heck do they have to do with each other?
Reformsters are constantly telling us that we must drive to Cleveland because that's the only way we'll make it to St. Louis. If you want to drive to St. Louis, first, let's discuss whether we really want to go to St. Louis or not and next, if we agree, let's map a path to St. Louis, not Cleveland.
III. Enforcement
So even if I have my tiny list of things I think absolutely every person must learn, the small irreduceable list of content and skills that every educate person should know, I have another hurdle to climb.
Do I think the full force of law and government should stand behind forcing people to learn those things?
Should the federal and state governments say, "We think you should learn these things, and we will put the full weight of law behind that requirement. You will not be allowed to proceed with your life unless you satisfy us that you have learned the stuff on this list."
What is X such that I would stand in front of a diploma line and say, "Since you have not proven to me that you know X, I will not let you have a diploma."
"Don't you think there are things that every educated person should know?" seems like such a fair and simple question, but by the time I've come up with a short list of skills and knowledge for every single solitary human being, and then filtered it through the question of what deserves to have the full force of federal law behind it, my list is very short and extremely general.
Maybe you think that makes me one of those loose teachers who lets his students slop by with whatever half-assed work they feel like doing. You will have to take my word for it-- my students would find that assessment of my teaching pretty hilarious.
But The List approach is, in fact, List-centered, and I'm well-anchored to an approach to teaching that is student-centered. It is, I have become convinced, the only way to teach. We cannot be rules-centered or standards-centered or test-centered or teacher-centered or list-centered, even though we need to include and consider all of those elements. How to weigh and balance and evaluate all these elements? The answer has been, and continues to be, right in front of us. We balance all the elements of education by centering on the student. As long as we keep our focus on the students' needs, strengths, weaknesses, stage of development, hopes, dreams, obstacles, aspirations-- as long as we stay focused on all that, we'll be good.
What does every educated person need? Every educated person needs-- and deserves-- an education that is built around the student. Everything else must be open to discussion.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Sunday, May 4, 2014
NY Explains Worst VAM Ever
A reader pointed me at an extraordinary piece of educational in-house PR from our good friends at engageNY*, the uber-reformy wing of the NYSED.It's extraordinary because, if accurate, it explains clearly and simply exactly how VAM-style evaluation can be made even worse.
Carol Newman-Sharkey linked me to this short informational video. You know it's going to be fun, because it's stylish cell animation (I'm a sucker for traditional art forms), and it actually turns out to be quite easy to understand, which makes it that much more terrible.
The video wants to explain New York's student growth measurement to teachers. It starts by reminding us of a True Thing-- that the system where we were judged on a student's single context-free score absolutely sucked. You remember those days under NCLB, where we all worried about receiving students whose limitations guaranteed that they would never have a sufficiently high score.
I mean, let's be honest-- when we started to hear about the idea of a growth model, a model that gave us credit for "growing" a student's ability instead of simply marking his level, most of us were pretty okay. Oh, but the devil in those damned details. We wanted more sensible measures of our work. Instead, we got VAM.
Here's how the video explains NY's system.
We look at Pat's score this year, and we compare it to Pat's score last year. Then we look at those pair of scores, and we compare the improvement only to other apples-- to other students who are just like Pat. That means students who got the same score last year, and who have the same characteristics on NYSED's list of characteristics.
Once we've set up the group of similar apples, it's just straight percentiles. If Pat scored better than 90 students in Pat's group, Pat's SGI is 90. And then we average all the SGIs in Pat's class to get a number for Pat's teacher. Actually, engageNY seriously muddies the water here by saying that Pat's score is 90% even though it's not actually a percent of anything. Of course, if I had created a system this dumb, I'd want to keep it hidden behind a big muddy cloud, too.
There are two stupid things happening here.
Stupid Thing #1.
Somewhere in some office in Ny is an official whose job it is to determine what makes students "similar." The video references learning disability, English language learner, and socio-economic background.
If we knew exactly which characteristics influenced student learning in exactly what way across all learners, would we not be using that information to create a perfect education system? If we could say, "Yes, this much poverty causes this much difficulty with learning exactly these skills," would we not be able to correct for this in regular teaching?
This phenomenon deserves its own post, but the short version is this: We keep building dumb systems on an assumption of a particular piece of knowledge where, if we actually HAD that knowledge, we would be using it for something other than the dumb system. If we really knew exactly how certain factors effect all student learning in pretty much the same way, the last thing we'd use the knowledge for is this dumb evaluation system.
Furthermore (what a great word-- you can just hear the high dudgeon in my voice), such a system of mapping student similarities is based only on solid-state steady characteristics. It factors in "Chris has poor parents" but not "Chris didn't get to eat for twenty-four hours before The Test" and certainly not "Something made Chris really upset on Test Day."
The assumption that we can map similar students by mapping all the pertinent factors that affect their education is a dumb assumption, but it is the same dumb assumption that lies at the core of ordinary VAM foolishness. To make SGI stand out, we need another brain-impaired cherry to put on top of the nincomboobulous sundae.
Stupid Thing #2
Do you know what percentiles are when you use them like this? Stack ranking.
Stack ranking 's most notable quality is that it requires winners and losers. You might think that teaching a classroom so effectively every single student grew and learned and excelled would be a Good Thing, but in New York, you would be wrong. In New York State, if 100 "similar" students find a cure for cancer, the student whose cure works most slowly has an Student Growth ranking of zero. If you teach 100 "similar" six year olds to read and write best-selling novels, the six year old whose novel comes in lowest on the NYT best-sellers list earns a student growth score of zero. Stack Ranking by percentile creates undeserving losers.
To be fair, it also creates undeserving winners. If 100 "similar" students all fail to learn anything from, say, the sort of canned and scripted curriculum favored by engagaNY, the student who displays test mastery of the greatest amount of the least amount will still by ranked 99%.
I suspect that engageNY will claim that these issues will be evened out by using student data from all across the state. I suspect my response would be, "What?! Where the students live is not one of the factors that makes them similar?"
The video is not new, so perhaps my work here is moot. Cooler NY heads have already said, "Yeah, that's messed up. Let's rewrite this and do better." Course, the video is still live on their website, so maybe not. I kind of wonder what John Q. Parent would think about this cartoon if he saw it.
(Incidentally, wikipedia doesn't have an entry for engageny. Perhaps some enterprising NY teacher could lend a hand.)
Carol Newman-Sharkey linked me to this short informational video. You know it's going to be fun, because it's stylish cell animation (I'm a sucker for traditional art forms), and it actually turns out to be quite easy to understand, which makes it that much more terrible.
The video wants to explain New York's student growth measurement to teachers. It starts by reminding us of a True Thing-- that the system where we were judged on a student's single context-free score absolutely sucked. You remember those days under NCLB, where we all worried about receiving students whose limitations guaranteed that they would never have a sufficiently high score.
I mean, let's be honest-- when we started to hear about the idea of a growth model, a model that gave us credit for "growing" a student's ability instead of simply marking his level, most of us were pretty okay. Oh, but the devil in those damned details. We wanted more sensible measures of our work. Instead, we got VAM.
Here's how the video explains NY's system.
We look at Pat's score this year, and we compare it to Pat's score last year. Then we look at those pair of scores, and we compare the improvement only to other apples-- to other students who are just like Pat. That means students who got the same score last year, and who have the same characteristics on NYSED's list of characteristics.
Once we've set up the group of similar apples, it's just straight percentiles. If Pat scored better than 90 students in Pat's group, Pat's SGI is 90. And then we average all the SGIs in Pat's class to get a number for Pat's teacher. Actually, engageNY seriously muddies the water here by saying that Pat's score is 90% even though it's not actually a percent of anything. Of course, if I had created a system this dumb, I'd want to keep it hidden behind a big muddy cloud, too.
There are two stupid things happening here.
Stupid Thing #1.
Somewhere in some office in Ny is an official whose job it is to determine what makes students "similar." The video references learning disability, English language learner, and socio-economic background.
If we knew exactly which characteristics influenced student learning in exactly what way across all learners, would we not be using that information to create a perfect education system? If we could say, "Yes, this much poverty causes this much difficulty with learning exactly these skills," would we not be able to correct for this in regular teaching?
This phenomenon deserves its own post, but the short version is this: We keep building dumb systems on an assumption of a particular piece of knowledge where, if we actually HAD that knowledge, we would be using it for something other than the dumb system. If we really knew exactly how certain factors effect all student learning in pretty much the same way, the last thing we'd use the knowledge for is this dumb evaluation system.
Furthermore (what a great word-- you can just hear the high dudgeon in my voice), such a system of mapping student similarities is based only on solid-state steady characteristics. It factors in "Chris has poor parents" but not "Chris didn't get to eat for twenty-four hours before The Test" and certainly not "Something made Chris really upset on Test Day."
The assumption that we can map similar students by mapping all the pertinent factors that affect their education is a dumb assumption, but it is the same dumb assumption that lies at the core of ordinary VAM foolishness. To make SGI stand out, we need another brain-impaired cherry to put on top of the nincomboobulous sundae.
Stupid Thing #2
Do you know what percentiles are when you use them like this? Stack ranking.
Stack ranking 's most notable quality is that it requires winners and losers. You might think that teaching a classroom so effectively every single student grew and learned and excelled would be a Good Thing, but in New York, you would be wrong. In New York State, if 100 "similar" students find a cure for cancer, the student whose cure works most slowly has an Student Growth ranking of zero. If you teach 100 "similar" six year olds to read and write best-selling novels, the six year old whose novel comes in lowest on the NYT best-sellers list earns a student growth score of zero. Stack Ranking by percentile creates undeserving losers.
To be fair, it also creates undeserving winners. If 100 "similar" students all fail to learn anything from, say, the sort of canned and scripted curriculum favored by engagaNY, the student who displays test mastery of the greatest amount of the least amount will still by ranked 99%.
I suspect that engageNY will claim that these issues will be evened out by using student data from all across the state. I suspect my response would be, "What?! Where the students live is not one of the factors that makes them similar?"
The video is not new, so perhaps my work here is moot. Cooler NY heads have already said, "Yeah, that's messed up. Let's rewrite this and do better." Course, the video is still live on their website, so maybe not. I kind of wonder what John Q. Parent would think about this cartoon if he saw it.
(Incidentally, wikipedia doesn't have an entry for engageny. Perhaps some enterprising NY teacher could lend a hand.)
A Real Race
My wife is a runner. I love my wife. That's why I woke up this morning at 4:45 in a Pittsburgh hotel.
We did this last year, but last year she ran the full marathon; this year she's a first-year first-grade teacher who lacks the time to train, to put in the 147 hours of prep required for six-year-olds, and to occasionally hang out with me. So this year she ran the half marathon instead.
I've been to many races to cheer and hold a coat, but the Pittsburgh Marathon is about the realest race I attend. And since some folks really like a race as a metaphor for the ed biz, I thought it was worth noting some of what I saw.
The marathon allows lots of different people to race in different ways. One of the most exciting moments comes before the runners start, because ahead of them are the "wheelchair" racers. These folks use recumbent hand-pedaled three-wheelers, and they get to go first because they move like bats out of hell. They take on the course with their own equipment and their own separate set of rules.
The marathon also includes a blind runner or two. These guys run with a partner, a sighted runner tethered to them wrist-to-wrist.
Don't they all run the same course? Well, no, they don't. The full marathoners and half marathoners start together, but along the way the fulls turn left and the halfs turn right and they each take their own route to the finish line, depending on what sort of challenge they have set for themselves.
Pace is wildly variable as well. At the front of the pack are people who run at speeds I don't even like to think about. But at the back of the pack are runners who will take half the day to finish. The city opens the streets up again behind the six hour pace, but runners are free to continue if they wish (just watch out for traffic) and as we left the city today, there were two determined runners still loping slowly up the sidewalk. It seemed clear that they would finish on their own terms, whatever time it took.
The race has roughly 30,000 entrants. You might think that this means there are 29,999 losers, but that doesn't seem to be how it works. True, there can be some tight competition-- this year's men's winner of the half-marathon won by two seconds. But every runner runs for reasons of his/her own. (You can look at all the reasons on twitter under #runfor.) And that means every runner has his or her own definition of success. My wife wanted to break two hours. My friend the choir director wanted to 1) finish and 2) not die. They were both successful and both came home feeling entirely winner-like. Because at this real race, your own definition of your own success, based on your own understanding of your own strengths, weaknesses and goals, is the only definition of success that matters.
So a racing metaphor like Race to the Top seems like it would be pretty clear cut-- everybody completes the same task on the same path to the same destination, and those racers are easily sorted into winners and losers, because to race means to subject yourself to the strict judgment of an outside authority. Simple and clean, cut and dried, macaroni and cheese, right? (Sorry-- rule of threes demanded something).
But when you're actually there, it turns out to be not so simple at all. For some it is the order in which they cross that finish line. Others race against themselves. For some it's just the journey, a rambling trip across bridge and river, through neighborhood after neighborhood, surrounded by music and beauty, cheered by friends and strangers-- the finish line is one of the least important parts of the race. The runners select the challenge they feel best fit to meet, train, practice, make the modifications they need to make, and enjoy an achievement of their own making-- and their own measuring.
I've written elsewhere that a race is a terrible metaphor for education. It's possible that I was wrong.
We did this last year, but last year she ran the full marathon; this year she's a first-year first-grade teacher who lacks the time to train, to put in the 147 hours of prep required for six-year-olds, and to occasionally hang out with me. So this year she ran the half marathon instead.
I've been to many races to cheer and hold a coat, but the Pittsburgh Marathon is about the realest race I attend. And since some folks really like a race as a metaphor for the ed biz, I thought it was worth noting some of what I saw.
The marathon allows lots of different people to race in different ways. One of the most exciting moments comes before the runners start, because ahead of them are the "wheelchair" racers. These folks use recumbent hand-pedaled three-wheelers, and they get to go first because they move like bats out of hell. They take on the course with their own equipment and their own separate set of rules.
The marathon also includes a blind runner or two. These guys run with a partner, a sighted runner tethered to them wrist-to-wrist.
Don't they all run the same course? Well, no, they don't. The full marathoners and half marathoners start together, but along the way the fulls turn left and the halfs turn right and they each take their own route to the finish line, depending on what sort of challenge they have set for themselves.
Pace is wildly variable as well. At the front of the pack are people who run at speeds I don't even like to think about. But at the back of the pack are runners who will take half the day to finish. The city opens the streets up again behind the six hour pace, but runners are free to continue if they wish (just watch out for traffic) and as we left the city today, there were two determined runners still loping slowly up the sidewalk. It seemed clear that they would finish on their own terms, whatever time it took.
The race has roughly 30,000 entrants. You might think that this means there are 29,999 losers, but that doesn't seem to be how it works. True, there can be some tight competition-- this year's men's winner of the half-marathon won by two seconds. But every runner runs for reasons of his/her own. (You can look at all the reasons on twitter under #runfor.) And that means every runner has his or her own definition of success. My wife wanted to break two hours. My friend the choir director wanted to 1) finish and 2) not die. They were both successful and both came home feeling entirely winner-like. Because at this real race, your own definition of your own success, based on your own understanding of your own strengths, weaknesses and goals, is the only definition of success that matters.
So a racing metaphor like Race to the Top seems like it would be pretty clear cut-- everybody completes the same task on the same path to the same destination, and those racers are easily sorted into winners and losers, because to race means to subject yourself to the strict judgment of an outside authority. Simple and clean, cut and dried, macaroni and cheese, right? (Sorry-- rule of threes demanded something).
But when you're actually there, it turns out to be not so simple at all. For some it is the order in which they cross that finish line. Others race against themselves. For some it's just the journey, a rambling trip across bridge and river, through neighborhood after neighborhood, surrounded by music and beauty, cheered by friends and strangers-- the finish line is one of the least important parts of the race. The runners select the challenge they feel best fit to meet, train, practice, make the modifications they need to make, and enjoy an achievement of their own making-- and their own measuring.
I've written elsewhere that a race is a terrible metaphor for education. It's possible that I was wrong.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Not One Size Fits All
I often criticize the core (and other standards-- while I know some decent, intelligent people like the idea of some sort of national standards, I do not) by calling it a "one size fits all" solution.But I'm wrong.
It's a handy shorthand phrase-- just four words and everybody knows what you mean. But it's not precisely correct.
"One size fits all" imagines a world where tailors make suits in just one size. People come put on the suit-- the suit is too small or too large or not correctly shaped for them. So the tailor says, "Oh well, you'll just have to make do," and we have a world of people walking around in misshapen ill-fitting suits.
But that's not what's going on.
Imagine instead a world where the tailors only make suits in one size. One tall man comes in to try on the suit, and it's too short for him. "We will fix that," says the tailor, who pulls out a saw and cuts six inches out of the middle of the man's legs. Another man comes in who is, well, fluffy. The suit is tight. "You," says the tailor sternly, "you must go sit in the basement. You may not have a job or go out into the world until you fit in that suit." Another man comes in and he's too short. The tailor calls up the police, gives the man's address, and sends the police to arrest his mother for giving birth to a too-short man.
Education under a CCSS regime is not "one size fits all." It's "all must fit one size." It's not "We'll ty this on for size and if it doesn't fit, it sucks to be you." It's "You must fit this, or there will be consequences. You will be punished for not fitting what we made for you."
What is sold as "individualization" is not an offer to re-tailor the suit to fit, but a series of protocol for teaching tall customers how to slouch and fluffy customers to suck in their gut. Personalized education programs are not about adjusting the one size at all.
The CCSS is the worst kind of regime, the kind that views individual strengths and weaknesses and interests and skills as a problem to be fixed. We are not centered on the needs of the students; we are supposed to make the students serve the system, the standards, the test. We will not measure the success of education by how well it meets the students' needs; we'll now measure education by how well it makes the students adjust to the needs of the system.
"One size fits all" would actually be an improvement. What the CCSS regime offers is far worse.
It's a handy shorthand phrase-- just four words and everybody knows what you mean. But it's not precisely correct.
"One size fits all" imagines a world where tailors make suits in just one size. People come put on the suit-- the suit is too small or too large or not correctly shaped for them. So the tailor says, "Oh well, you'll just have to make do," and we have a world of people walking around in misshapen ill-fitting suits.
But that's not what's going on.
Imagine instead a world where the tailors only make suits in one size. One tall man comes in to try on the suit, and it's too short for him. "We will fix that," says the tailor, who pulls out a saw and cuts six inches out of the middle of the man's legs. Another man comes in who is, well, fluffy. The suit is tight. "You," says the tailor sternly, "you must go sit in the basement. You may not have a job or go out into the world until you fit in that suit." Another man comes in and he's too short. The tailor calls up the police, gives the man's address, and sends the police to arrest his mother for giving birth to a too-short man.
Education under a CCSS regime is not "one size fits all." It's "all must fit one size." It's not "We'll ty this on for size and if it doesn't fit, it sucks to be you." It's "You must fit this, or there will be consequences. You will be punished for not fitting what we made for you."
What is sold as "individualization" is not an offer to re-tailor the suit to fit, but a series of protocol for teaching tall customers how to slouch and fluffy customers to suck in their gut. Personalized education programs are not about adjusting the one size at all.
The CCSS is the worst kind of regime, the kind that views individual strengths and weaknesses and interests and skills as a problem to be fixed. We are not centered on the needs of the students; we are supposed to make the students serve the system, the standards, the test. We will not measure the success of education by how well it meets the students' needs; we'll now measure education by how well it makes the students adjust to the needs of the system.
"One size fits all" would actually be an improvement. What the CCSS regime offers is far worse.
Pearson Eats PARCC
Relax and stop resisting. You will be assimilated.
Yesterday PARCC, one of the two giant consortia of high stakes standardized testing, announced that they will become part of the giant corporate beast that is Pearson. PARCC's negotiator described the contract as having "unprecedented scale." Pearson has promised a price cut ($24 per student, marked down from $29.50) but the scale of this product sale will be so huge. So huge. And really-- if you're producing a single standardized test for tens of millions of "customers," what does it really cost you to produce per unit? What is Pearson's markup on this product? I'm guessing that's information we won't have soon.
There were no competing bids. As Mercedes Schneider points out, we have now achieved the "economies of scale" that Bill Gates touted as one of the reasons to have education reform.
This has always been part of the point. It's so pesky to have to deal with all those different school districts as customers. Let's rig the system so that every customer must buy the same thing. Think of how much easier, how much more profitable the auto industry would be, if federal law mandated that we all buy the same make and model car with the same features in the same color. It would suck for us as customers, but it would be great for the corporations trying to make a buck.
Historically, robber barons love the free market until they don't. John D. Rockefeller loved the way the free market allowed him to scarf up pieces of the oil industry until he had them all, at which point the Standard's corporate goal was to make sure that no other players could get on the field. This has always been the pattern (a good read on that subject is Matthew Josephson's 1934 book The Robber Barons), from Vanderbilt through Gates. Competition is healthy-- until I'm big enough to crush it.
Pearson is achieving the kind of vertical industry dominance that Rockefeller dreamed of, but the Standard Oil Company fell victim to a US Congress that actually passed anti-trust laws. Pearson, like any good 21st century corporation, has nothing to fear from the US Congress. Pearson publishes the books, writes the tests, writes the programs. You may have missed this one, but Pearson now owns the GED and runs it for a profit. Pearson owns the programs for certifying teachers. And now it runs the PARCC.
So our children will learn the name of Pearson from cradle through career. All our children. And when they screw something up (as they've already done many times) they will screw it up for everybody. Because our children are increasingly growing up in a standardized world.
There are so many things wrong with this. So many things.
We used to complain about how the Japanese were buying our country. Then we got all patriotically incensed about how much US debt is owned by the Chinese. How about having the entire United States education system owned and operated by a British company.
Biologists have been sounding the alarm about biodiversity. Crops like bananas have been engineered down from a wealth of varieties to just one basic "version." The lack of biodiversity is an "all your eggs in one basket" kind of threat-- if something happens to that one strain of banana, the entire world's banana crop is in danger.
Lack of economic diversity is even worse. When one banana becomes a dominant strain, it doesn't travel the world trying to snuff out the life of other strains. But if the next Bill Gates comes along today, he will have a hell of a time getting his start-up launched. Giant corporations raise the admission fee for playing the game to unimaginable heights.
I can find you several hundred teachers who could all create better teaching and testing materials than Pearson. What I can't find you is the giant pile of money they would need to enter the market.
If there were no other criticism to be leveled against the Common Core, if there were no other issues with that push for national standards, if the Core were actually educationally sound, this alone would still be enough reason to fight against it. The CCSS, the push for national standards, has made it possible-- actually, more likely-- for one giant corporation to buy American public education from top to bottom. That alone is enough reason to oppose it.
Yesterday PARCC, one of the two giant consortia of high stakes standardized testing, announced that they will become part of the giant corporate beast that is Pearson. PARCC's negotiator described the contract as having "unprecedented scale." Pearson has promised a price cut ($24 per student, marked down from $29.50) but the scale of this product sale will be so huge. So huge. And really-- if you're producing a single standardized test for tens of millions of "customers," what does it really cost you to produce per unit? What is Pearson's markup on this product? I'm guessing that's information we won't have soon.
There were no competing bids. As Mercedes Schneider points out, we have now achieved the "economies of scale" that Bill Gates touted as one of the reasons to have education reform.
This has always been part of the point. It's so pesky to have to deal with all those different school districts as customers. Let's rig the system so that every customer must buy the same thing. Think of how much easier, how much more profitable the auto industry would be, if federal law mandated that we all buy the same make and model car with the same features in the same color. It would suck for us as customers, but it would be great for the corporations trying to make a buck.
Historically, robber barons love the free market until they don't. John D. Rockefeller loved the way the free market allowed him to scarf up pieces of the oil industry until he had them all, at which point the Standard's corporate goal was to make sure that no other players could get on the field. This has always been the pattern (a good read on that subject is Matthew Josephson's 1934 book The Robber Barons), from Vanderbilt through Gates. Competition is healthy-- until I'm big enough to crush it.
Pearson is achieving the kind of vertical industry dominance that Rockefeller dreamed of, but the Standard Oil Company fell victim to a US Congress that actually passed anti-trust laws. Pearson, like any good 21st century corporation, has nothing to fear from the US Congress. Pearson publishes the books, writes the tests, writes the programs. You may have missed this one, but Pearson now owns the GED and runs it for a profit. Pearson owns the programs for certifying teachers. And now it runs the PARCC.
So our children will learn the name of Pearson from cradle through career. All our children. And when they screw something up (as they've already done many times) they will screw it up for everybody. Because our children are increasingly growing up in a standardized world.
There are so many things wrong with this. So many things.
We used to complain about how the Japanese were buying our country. Then we got all patriotically incensed about how much US debt is owned by the Chinese. How about having the entire United States education system owned and operated by a British company.
Biologists have been sounding the alarm about biodiversity. Crops like bananas have been engineered down from a wealth of varieties to just one basic "version." The lack of biodiversity is an "all your eggs in one basket" kind of threat-- if something happens to that one strain of banana, the entire world's banana crop is in danger.
Lack of economic diversity is even worse. When one banana becomes a dominant strain, it doesn't travel the world trying to snuff out the life of other strains. But if the next Bill Gates comes along today, he will have a hell of a time getting his start-up launched. Giant corporations raise the admission fee for playing the game to unimaginable heights.
I can find you several hundred teachers who could all create better teaching and testing materials than Pearson. What I can't find you is the giant pile of money they would need to enter the market.
If there were no other criticism to be leveled against the Common Core, if there were no other issues with that push for national standards, if the Core were actually educationally sound, this alone would still be enough reason to fight against it. The CCSS, the push for national standards, has made it possible-- actually, more likely-- for one giant corporation to buy American public education from top to bottom. That alone is enough reason to oppose it.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Is This CCSS Criticism Fair?
The supporters of Common Core have eaten so much cheese with their whine that we may have to call a whaaaambulance.
Their complaints have been percolating for a while, but the heat of the Louis C.K. flame-up has brought their big bowl of treacly tears to a roiling boil. The criticisms are not fair. Those stupid examples of bad assignments have nothing to do with the Core, and the terrible tests are separate from the Core, and an idiot misprint could happen to anybody no matter what federally-coerced education program they were trying to implement.
Do the Core supporters have a point?
Yes. Yes, they do.
All along, people have been holding up bad assignments and worksheets and lessons as examples of Common Core that could have come from anywhere. When supporters say that CCSS do not mandate particular stupid instructional strategies, they are correct. Reformsters who decry the linkage of standards and The Test are not technically wrong. And pinning a bad print job on the Core, as if no printers error could have occurred in a land of local control, is kind of silly. In short, trying to act as if no teacher or school district ever did anything stupid in the days before Common Core is a ridiculous argument.
However.
However. The Core supporters asked for this.
First. First, the creators of the CCSS wrote the damn things and then just walked away. They promised publishers and ed corporations a massive payday for anyone who would slap "CCSS Ready" on teaching materials, and then they walked away. And when those corporations started cranking out all manner of sloppy crap and calling it CCSS material, there was nobody minding the store. Instead of standing over their creation and saying, "Woah woah WOAH! Let's just all take it slow. You fellas line up and let us make sure you're getting this right," Coleman and the rest had clocked out and headed off to their own big payday, pausing just long enough to toss a "Have fun, boys" back over their shoulders.
Second, because the CCSS Reformsters made sure they had control of the playing field since day one, they made the rules. These are the rules they made:
* Making up shit to sway the public is okay (e.g. "You can trust the Core Standards because they were written by professional teachers")
* Using people who control large audiences but have no actual expertise in education is fine. If they have a large audience, that's all the right they need to speak on subjects in which they have no professional expertise. Bill Gates and US Chamber of Commerce, meet Louis C. K.
* Blur the line between standards, curriculum and lessons as it suits you. CCSS supporters have referred to the Common Core Curriculum, touted Common Core Lessons, and talked incessantly about how the Core will guarantee that students in Alaska, Tennessee and Maine will all learn the same thing (a promise that sounds like it's about lessons and curriculum to most anybody). How did the public get the idea that the Core and all these lessons are different parts of the same big elephant? The people busy trying to cash in on CCSS told them so.
* Link the CCSS to the Big Tests. The federal gummint made testing and CCSS part of the same get-out-of-NCLB-jail-free card. Advocates for the Core told states that they HAD to have high stakes testing in place for the Core to do any good.
* Link the standards to teaching. Keep claiming that the standards will fix all the crappy teachers, that teachers will be held accountable for their work by the use of the Common Core. Publish glowing articles about how the Core has made Mrs. McUberteacher do the best teaching of her life because the core has transformed her classroom.
* Inflate the importance of piddly shit when it suits you. Throw around obscure baloney like PISA scores and keep telling the public that it's hugely importance. Blow up the statistical importance of classroom teachers to students success. Basically, establish the rule that any small detail that helps prove your point can be magnified a thousandfold.
* Directly connecting what the Core says and what students do. We've been told repeatedly-- the Common Core Standards mean that students will do more rigorous work. It will be hard. they might cry. But this Common Core work will be good for them. This rhetoric, repeated repeatedly, has established a clear and direct link between the standards in the Core and the worksheets on Johnny's desk.
* Teachers must teach to the test. You didn't mean to make this a rule, but you couldn't help yourselves. But how else will any sentient being interpret, "Your students will do well on this test, or we will flunk them and fire your ass." Nobody-- NOBODY-- thinks the next line in that poem is, "So don't teach to the test."
* Mock opponents rather than engage them. As in, characterizing all CCSS opponents as tin hat crazypants tea partiers or whiny moms or lying teachers.
For years, CCSS supporters established that these would be the rules by which we conducted all discourse about the standards and their attendant complex of core-created crap. And now, those same rules of discourse are being used against them. Aspects of education that they repeatedly linked to Common Core? They would like those unlinked now, please. Stop calling us names and just talk to us! And let's start sticking to facts. Sorry, but that's not following the rules that have been in place for the past several years.
Are these rules fair? No, of course not. We've been saying so for years now. But you supporters always replied, "Tough shit. We're winning, so tough shit." Only as the tide has turned against you have you started saying, "Hey, let's talk about the quality of discourse in this conversation."
Too late, boys. I actually agree with you-- we do need a better quality of conversation to rescue public education from the Reformy Status Quo you've saddled us with. There are so many reasons of substance, importance educational reasons that CCSS etc should be scrapped beyond the sometimes-trivial odds and ends currently being torn apart. But you never created any way for that discussion to be had, no method for revision or review ever, and anyway, there aren't that many reasonable folks like me around, and for the time being, we're not going to carry the day.
Karma's a bitch, isn't it.
Their complaints have been percolating for a while, but the heat of the Louis C.K. flame-up has brought their big bowl of treacly tears to a roiling boil. The criticisms are not fair. Those stupid examples of bad assignments have nothing to do with the Core, and the terrible tests are separate from the Core, and an idiot misprint could happen to anybody no matter what federally-coerced education program they were trying to implement.
Do the Core supporters have a point?
Yes. Yes, they do.
All along, people have been holding up bad assignments and worksheets and lessons as examples of Common Core that could have come from anywhere. When supporters say that CCSS do not mandate particular stupid instructional strategies, they are correct. Reformsters who decry the linkage of standards and The Test are not technically wrong. And pinning a bad print job on the Core, as if no printers error could have occurred in a land of local control, is kind of silly. In short, trying to act as if no teacher or school district ever did anything stupid in the days before Common Core is a ridiculous argument.
However.
However. The Core supporters asked for this.
First. First, the creators of the CCSS wrote the damn things and then just walked away. They promised publishers and ed corporations a massive payday for anyone who would slap "CCSS Ready" on teaching materials, and then they walked away. And when those corporations started cranking out all manner of sloppy crap and calling it CCSS material, there was nobody minding the store. Instead of standing over their creation and saying, "Woah woah WOAH! Let's just all take it slow. You fellas line up and let us make sure you're getting this right," Coleman and the rest had clocked out and headed off to their own big payday, pausing just long enough to toss a "Have fun, boys" back over their shoulders.
Second, because the CCSS Reformsters made sure they had control of the playing field since day one, they made the rules. These are the rules they made:
* Making up shit to sway the public is okay (e.g. "You can trust the Core Standards because they were written by professional teachers")
* Using people who control large audiences but have no actual expertise in education is fine. If they have a large audience, that's all the right they need to speak on subjects in which they have no professional expertise. Bill Gates and US Chamber of Commerce, meet Louis C. K.
* Blur the line between standards, curriculum and lessons as it suits you. CCSS supporters have referred to the Common Core Curriculum, touted Common Core Lessons, and talked incessantly about how the Core will guarantee that students in Alaska, Tennessee and Maine will all learn the same thing (a promise that sounds like it's about lessons and curriculum to most anybody). How did the public get the idea that the Core and all these lessons are different parts of the same big elephant? The people busy trying to cash in on CCSS told them so.
* Link the CCSS to the Big Tests. The federal gummint made testing and CCSS part of the same get-out-of-NCLB-jail-free card. Advocates for the Core told states that they HAD to have high stakes testing in place for the Core to do any good.
* Link the standards to teaching. Keep claiming that the standards will fix all the crappy teachers, that teachers will be held accountable for their work by the use of the Common Core. Publish glowing articles about how the Core has made Mrs. McUberteacher do the best teaching of her life because the core has transformed her classroom.
* Inflate the importance of piddly shit when it suits you. Throw around obscure baloney like PISA scores and keep telling the public that it's hugely importance. Blow up the statistical importance of classroom teachers to students success. Basically, establish the rule that any small detail that helps prove your point can be magnified a thousandfold.
* Directly connecting what the Core says and what students do. We've been told repeatedly-- the Common Core Standards mean that students will do more rigorous work. It will be hard. they might cry. But this Common Core work will be good for them. This rhetoric, repeated repeatedly, has established a clear and direct link between the standards in the Core and the worksheets on Johnny's desk.
* Teachers must teach to the test. You didn't mean to make this a rule, but you couldn't help yourselves. But how else will any sentient being interpret, "Your students will do well on this test, or we will flunk them and fire your ass." Nobody-- NOBODY-- thinks the next line in that poem is, "So don't teach to the test."
* Mock opponents rather than engage them. As in, characterizing all CCSS opponents as tin hat crazypants tea partiers or whiny moms or lying teachers.
For years, CCSS supporters established that these would be the rules by which we conducted all discourse about the standards and their attendant complex of core-created crap. And now, those same rules of discourse are being used against them. Aspects of education that they repeatedly linked to Common Core? They would like those unlinked now, please. Stop calling us names and just talk to us! And let's start sticking to facts. Sorry, but that's not following the rules that have been in place for the past several years.
Are these rules fair? No, of course not. We've been saying so for years now. But you supporters always replied, "Tough shit. We're winning, so tough shit." Only as the tide has turned against you have you started saying, "Hey, let's talk about the quality of discourse in this conversation."
Too late, boys. I actually agree with you-- we do need a better quality of conversation to rescue public education from the Reformy Status Quo you've saddled us with. There are so many reasons of substance, importance educational reasons that CCSS etc should be scrapped beyond the sometimes-trivial odds and ends currently being torn apart. But you never created any way for that discussion to be had, no method for revision or review ever, and anyway, there aren't that many reasonable folks like me around, and for the time being, we're not going to carry the day.
Karma's a bitch, isn't it.
Petrilli's Kool-Aid Stand Still Open
I have a confession to make-- I kind of like Mike Petrilli. I've never met him. I've never met any of the big names in the ed biz, because I'm a high school English teacher in small town USA (isn't the internet cool), so I depend on long-distance close-reading of all these folks, and while many of the Reformsters seem lost or confused or walking in that kind of dull cloud that people fall into when they practice self-delusion for long periods of time, Petrilli always seems sharp and peppy, like he really gets a charge out of running a marketing group pretending to be a thinky tank and bouncing around the country to sell folks (particularly the conservative ones) on the glories of the Common Core. I admire his pep and his occasional flashes of wit (the House of Cards parody in which he plays an evil genius who dupes the Secretary of Ed into making a dumb comment about white suburban moms is kind of funny).And he is sometimes willing to check the kool-aid for seeds before he drinks it.
But at the end of the day, he drinks it. And TBF has made a good living selling that same CCSS kool-aid to others.
Take this latest entry on the School Administrator website. His thesis-- there hasn't been enough change under Common Core. It's one of his longer trips around the block, so it will take me a few words to unpack the fertilizer.
Setting Up the Case
Petrilli leads off with a popular new talking point-- the debate about CCSS is all about politics, and not that responsible professional educators think the CCSS complex is bad education. He also nods to conservatives-- "to be sure" we have to keep the feds from meddling in curriculum and messing things up as they have in other areas.
And here's a cool new argument. Top down centralized reforms never produce uniformity anyway, so the complaint that CCSSetc is a top-down centralized reform can be dismissed. And when people try to shoot other people with handguns from over fifty feet away, they usually miss, so if someone is shooting at you, you shouldn't be alarmed.
Moving Testimony
Petrilli tells the story of some moving anti-CCSS testimony from a student in Ohio, and he pulls no punches. But his point ultimately is this: while what happened with the student sucks, can it really be blamed on CCSS? Sure, the materials involved were sold by Pearson as "written entirely to the Common Core Standards," but given the time frame, is it possible that Pearson was fibbing a tad there?
The political problem is that everything bad is being blamed on CCSS, just as ten years ago everything bad was blamed on NCLB. This might be a good place to discuss just how much these two initiatives do in fact deserve to be blamed for much educational malpractice, but that's not where Petrilli is going.
But it also highlights the fragmented, decentralized nature of Common Core implementation. In a system that prizes local control over curricular decisions, 10,000 school boards will be making the most critical calls over Common Core implementation. Will they make good choices?
Short Answer: No
The Fordham Institute published a study finding that while many teachers think they are aligning to CCSS, they are not.
Petrilli's first example is a great illustration of how many real problems intersect. He points out that the standards clearly indicate that elementary teachers should assign texts based on grade level, not reading level, and yet teachers keep assigning texts "leveled texts."
There are several problems with Petrilli's point. One is that assigning texts based on grade level without regard for the student's reading level is educational malpractice. There isn't a shred of evidence on the planet that teachers can improve reading ability by demanding that students read texts above their level. Teachers don't require third-graders to do that for the same reason they don't require third-graders to be five feet tall-- it's developmentally inappropriate, which is a fancy way of saying that it doesn't do any good. Challenging, sure. Above a student's frustration level, simply destructive and demoralizing.
But here's the other problem-- the standards do not clearly indicate any such thing. Just to be sure, I went back and looked just at the third grade standards for reading literature, non-fiction and foundational skills. None mention text complexity level at all-- except to say that the students should reading and comprehending texts "at the high end of the grades 2-3 text complexity band independently and proficiently" by the end of the year.
Petrilli and I agree on one thing here-- the universe is loaded with people who see things in the CCSS that are not there. Petrilli, for all his thinky tank standards-studying wonkery, is one more of those people. And he goes on in that same paragraph to contradict more CCSS conventional wisdom.
Furthermore, the standards encourage teachers to focus on text selection first and building skills second. Yet most teachers continue to do it the other way around, picking a skill to teach and then finding a text to help them accomplish that.
I think it's hugely arguable that the standards "encourage" any such thing. But why do people think otherwise? Because the alignment process in schools all over the country is the same-- it is, in fact, the same process that high-priced "consultants" hired by states and districts come fully packed and prepared to implement.
Step One-- Look at the standard and "unpack" what skill it's really talking about.
Step Two-- Find the box in the chart next to that standard/skill
Step Three-- Fill in the box with whatever content you're going to use to teach that standard
Pick the standard-- the skill-- first, then plug in some content to go with it.
The problem, it appears, is that the standards are turning into something of a Rorschach test for educators. Many of us like to see the standards as endorsing our own view of effective teaching and learning. So we focus on the parts we like and overlook the parts we don’t. We revise and adapt them to our own priorities and preconceptions.
Well, yes. Of course. That's what we've always done. That's especially what we do when the standards are imposed top-down style, because a guaranteed feature of any set of standards is that only the people who were in the room to write them know for sure, exactly, what they meant. So all reforms of this sort come filtered down through layers of thinky tanks and consultants and college professors and administrators and department chairs until they finally arrive on the desk of the classroom teacher who must, as always, look the actual children in the eyes and decide what is in their best interest. This is just one of many reasons that it's best to have a seasoned, trained professional educator at the bottom of that chain (instead of, say, a dewy eyed untrained product of a five week training session).
But we should set aside our own priorities and preconceptions and replace them with the priorities and preconceptions of the writers of the CCSS because.... well, nobody ever has a good answer for this. A teacher's professional judgment is not okay, but David Coleman's amateur judgment should be the law of the land. Because, standards.
The Test
Petrilli correctly identifies the other part of this problem: "...educators might be setting themselves up for a rude awakening when their students face the new Common Core–aligned assessments—and they’ve only been prepared for a fraction of the items."
We are all waiting on The Test, because The Test is the curriculum.
We know the Test will be a rude awakening. You can already hear the noise from the many people who have been rudely awakened just in the last couple of months.
We already know that portions of the CCSS won't be on the test. Collaboration will not be on the test. For all the talk about content-rich text, students will not be reading anything longer than a page or so, and for all the talk about deep close reading, what students will actually have to do is pull deep understanding out of a text in 10-15 minutes.
So while the CCSS may tell me that building a curriculum around three or four great novels that we study at considerable depth over a great deal of time, working in groups, and writing extensive papers built around long careful study of the text, what the CCSS Test tells me is that I better drill my students on how to mine a few boring context-free paragraphs for particular types of details to answer multiple choice quickly, and do it quickly.
It is one of the huge disconnects under CCSS, as it was under NCLB-- the assessments do not line up with the standards. In fact, national assessments don't line up with much of anything useful at all. But suggesting that working the standards real hard will lead to great test scores is like suggesting that combing your hair every day will lead to stronger thigh muscles.
Helpy Things
Petrilli's advice is aimed at school administrators. It comes in two parts.
1) Study the standards carefully.
2) Buy some consulty materials from an outfit like, say, Student Achievement Partners (an outfit founded by CCSS writers David Coleman, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba to help cash in the artificially-created demand for educational Core and curriculum consultants).
Stay true to the spirit of the Common Core and prepare students for what comes next. What he fails to acknowledge is that those are two separate and unrelated activities.
Did I Mention "No National Curriculum"
Petrilli closes with a reminder that CCSS will not lead to a national curriculum, and local control is still the rightful Boss of All Education.
What Did We Learn
Don't fear CCSS, because it won't actually work. But do be concerned because it's not working properly now. Use your local judgment, but only after you've infused it with the nationally-based judgment of Wiser Persons. And beware the test.
Petrilli's writing always leaves me with the same odd feeling-- the feeling that he's just made another convincing argument for dumping the Core, and yet he seems to be sure he's done the opposite. Hey. At least he's well paid and having a great time.
But at the end of the day, he drinks it. And TBF has made a good living selling that same CCSS kool-aid to others.
Take this latest entry on the School Administrator website. His thesis-- there hasn't been enough change under Common Core. It's one of his longer trips around the block, so it will take me a few words to unpack the fertilizer.
Setting Up the Case
Petrilli leads off with a popular new talking point-- the debate about CCSS is all about politics, and not that responsible professional educators think the CCSS complex is bad education. He also nods to conservatives-- "to be sure" we have to keep the feds from meddling in curriculum and messing things up as they have in other areas.
And here's a cool new argument. Top down centralized reforms never produce uniformity anyway, so the complaint that CCSSetc is a top-down centralized reform can be dismissed. And when people try to shoot other people with handguns from over fifty feet away, they usually miss, so if someone is shooting at you, you shouldn't be alarmed.
Moving Testimony
Petrilli tells the story of some moving anti-CCSS testimony from a student in Ohio, and he pulls no punches. But his point ultimately is this: while what happened with the student sucks, can it really be blamed on CCSS? Sure, the materials involved were sold by Pearson as "written entirely to the Common Core Standards," but given the time frame, is it possible that Pearson was fibbing a tad there?
The political problem is that everything bad is being blamed on CCSS, just as ten years ago everything bad was blamed on NCLB. This might be a good place to discuss just how much these two initiatives do in fact deserve to be blamed for much educational malpractice, but that's not where Petrilli is going.
But it also highlights the fragmented, decentralized nature of Common Core implementation. In a system that prizes local control over curricular decisions, 10,000 school boards will be making the most critical calls over Common Core implementation. Will they make good choices?
Short Answer: No
The Fordham Institute published a study finding that while many teachers think they are aligning to CCSS, they are not.
Petrilli's first example is a great illustration of how many real problems intersect. He points out that the standards clearly indicate that elementary teachers should assign texts based on grade level, not reading level, and yet teachers keep assigning texts "leveled texts."
There are several problems with Petrilli's point. One is that assigning texts based on grade level without regard for the student's reading level is educational malpractice. There isn't a shred of evidence on the planet that teachers can improve reading ability by demanding that students read texts above their level. Teachers don't require third-graders to do that for the same reason they don't require third-graders to be five feet tall-- it's developmentally inappropriate, which is a fancy way of saying that it doesn't do any good. Challenging, sure. Above a student's frustration level, simply destructive and demoralizing.
But here's the other problem-- the standards do not clearly indicate any such thing. Just to be sure, I went back and looked just at the third grade standards for reading literature, non-fiction and foundational skills. None mention text complexity level at all-- except to say that the students should reading and comprehending texts "at the high end of the grades 2-3 text complexity band independently and proficiently" by the end of the year.
Petrilli and I agree on one thing here-- the universe is loaded with people who see things in the CCSS that are not there. Petrilli, for all his thinky tank standards-studying wonkery, is one more of those people. And he goes on in that same paragraph to contradict more CCSS conventional wisdom.
Furthermore, the standards encourage teachers to focus on text selection first and building skills second. Yet most teachers continue to do it the other way around, picking a skill to teach and then finding a text to help them accomplish that.
I think it's hugely arguable that the standards "encourage" any such thing. But why do people think otherwise? Because the alignment process in schools all over the country is the same-- it is, in fact, the same process that high-priced "consultants" hired by states and districts come fully packed and prepared to implement.
Step One-- Look at the standard and "unpack" what skill it's really talking about.
Step Two-- Find the box in the chart next to that standard/skill
Step Three-- Fill in the box with whatever content you're going to use to teach that standard
Pick the standard-- the skill-- first, then plug in some content to go with it.
The problem, it appears, is that the standards are turning into something of a Rorschach test for educators. Many of us like to see the standards as endorsing our own view of effective teaching and learning. So we focus on the parts we like and overlook the parts we don’t. We revise and adapt them to our own priorities and preconceptions.
Well, yes. Of course. That's what we've always done. That's especially what we do when the standards are imposed top-down style, because a guaranteed feature of any set of standards is that only the people who were in the room to write them know for sure, exactly, what they meant. So all reforms of this sort come filtered down through layers of thinky tanks and consultants and college professors and administrators and department chairs until they finally arrive on the desk of the classroom teacher who must, as always, look the actual children in the eyes and decide what is in their best interest. This is just one of many reasons that it's best to have a seasoned, trained professional educator at the bottom of that chain (instead of, say, a dewy eyed untrained product of a five week training session).
But we should set aside our own priorities and preconceptions and replace them with the priorities and preconceptions of the writers of the CCSS because.... well, nobody ever has a good answer for this. A teacher's professional judgment is not okay, but David Coleman's amateur judgment should be the law of the land. Because, standards.
The Test
Petrilli correctly identifies the other part of this problem: "...educators might be setting themselves up for a rude awakening when their students face the new Common Core–aligned assessments—and they’ve only been prepared for a fraction of the items."
We are all waiting on The Test, because The Test is the curriculum.
We know the Test will be a rude awakening. You can already hear the noise from the many people who have been rudely awakened just in the last couple of months.
We already know that portions of the CCSS won't be on the test. Collaboration will not be on the test. For all the talk about content-rich text, students will not be reading anything longer than a page or so, and for all the talk about deep close reading, what students will actually have to do is pull deep understanding out of a text in 10-15 minutes.
So while the CCSS may tell me that building a curriculum around three or four great novels that we study at considerable depth over a great deal of time, working in groups, and writing extensive papers built around long careful study of the text, what the CCSS Test tells me is that I better drill my students on how to mine a few boring context-free paragraphs for particular types of details to answer multiple choice quickly, and do it quickly.
It is one of the huge disconnects under CCSS, as it was under NCLB-- the assessments do not line up with the standards. In fact, national assessments don't line up with much of anything useful at all. But suggesting that working the standards real hard will lead to great test scores is like suggesting that combing your hair every day will lead to stronger thigh muscles.
Helpy Things
Petrilli's advice is aimed at school administrators. It comes in two parts.
1) Study the standards carefully.
2) Buy some consulty materials from an outfit like, say, Student Achievement Partners (an outfit founded by CCSS writers David Coleman, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba to help cash in the artificially-created demand for educational Core and curriculum consultants).
Stay true to the spirit of the Common Core and prepare students for what comes next. What he fails to acknowledge is that those are two separate and unrelated activities.
Did I Mention "No National Curriculum"
Petrilli closes with a reminder that CCSS will not lead to a national curriculum, and local control is still the rightful Boss of All Education.
What Did We Learn
Don't fear CCSS, because it won't actually work. But do be concerned because it's not working properly now. Use your local judgment, but only after you've infused it with the nationally-based judgment of Wiser Persons. And beware the test.
Petrilli's writing always leaves me with the same odd feeling-- the feeling that he's just made another convincing argument for dumping the Core, and yet he seems to be sure he's done the opposite. Hey. At least he's well paid and having a great time.
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