New technology, new insight
Just shared this with a favorite history teacher down the stairs from me– and thought I’d post it here, too.
Interesting what new technology can do to add insight to history.
Another perspective on the Common Core
Today I read Laura Thomas, a proponent of critical thinking and authentic learning, in her post “The ‘Monster’ at the End of the Common Core.“ I have to say I agree with it. There will be more room to play with interdisciplinary units. There will be great projects, and kids will be stretched. I, too, welcome “the common core as a stepping stone to better outcomes for all of our kids” and I know the Core does “represent what we know to be good teaching.”
I also, however, agree with Nancy Flanagan that the Standards may be great. The industry being build around them, particularly the testing agency, is dubious.
But for now, I will nostalgically remember Grover hugging himself at the end of his book while doing what I can to nail down my pages so that other industry aspect doesn’t ruin it all.
Not so easy to be flippant to their faces
Last week I had the remarkable honor of being with a friend as she received a Rockwell Award from the University of Madison, and I had the privilege of listening to Madison’s new superintendent, Jennifer Cheatham, talk about her entry into the school district. She identified the achievement gap as Madison’s number one problem, but stated that a subtext to the problem is that no one defines or perceives that gap the same way.
Today I read a very good New York Times opinion piece, “No Rich Child Left Behind,” that highlighted those comments about definition and perception. There are some interesting facts in piece by Sean F. Reardon, Stanford professor.
- While I have always known test scores can be predicted by the type of cars in the student parking lot, “the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.”
- “The rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor.”
- “The economists Richard J. Murnane and Greg J. Duncan report that from 1972 to 2006 high-income families increased the amount they spent on enrichment activities for their children by 150 percent, while the spending of low-income families grew by 57 percent over the same time period.“ The investment by the middle class was not noted.
I really enjoyed the article. The comments, on the other hand, made me a little ill. Comments about high IQ being inherited smacks of the superiority complex that makes it easy to ignore the contexts we all enjoy or we all survive. Dismissive comments lauding how one family members’ values instilled a love of learning assumes much.
I have been thinking about this gap for years. The gap isn’t impersonal. There are real kids in my life who are amazingly wonderful and amazingly blessed. There are real kids in my life who are amazingly wonderful and awfully stretched. So I wrote a comment as well:
Image by Javier Jaen and taken from NYT “No Rich Child Left Behind”
I have students who have tutors for the ACT. I have students who have tutors for writing. I have students with multiple tutors, each earning a significant hourly check.
I have students who rush home to take care of siblings while mom works her third job. I have students who work multiple jobs just to help the family or to pay for that AP or ACT test themselves. I have students struggling with life events no one- no adult let alone a child- should face.
One tutored boy remarked that he wished school could be divided into those who cared and those who didn’t. I somewhat wondered how that demarcation would go: while there are many of my students for whom education is indeed an afterthought, I additionally have many with deep dreams and work ethics who also have so many issues that I go between discussing thesis statements and how to go about not getting the utilities turned off.
It is easy to say that IQ is inherited. It is easy to pat yourself on the back and say your value system is superior.
It isn’t so easy to be face to face with kids of depth and talent who really didn’t have a fair chance from the beginning. It isn’t easy to be so flippant about the effects of an income gap when you see it play out in the lives of kids you love.
Interestingly, I just read this article about the rise of tutoring programs in the UK tonight as well. Global issues.
Either you are for us or against us: Pathways to the Common Core
In Heinemann’s Pathways to the Common Core by Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman, the first chapter states that we can read the Core as a “curmudgeon” or we can read them as if they are gold.
In other words, there are only two choices here. Oh, my, how that premise makes me angry. Let’s see, what does it remind me of…
I choose, instead, to read the Core as I teach my students to read: as an argument. With an argument, there is what is on the page, what is off the page, and what is in the context.
I do agree there is gold in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). I love them as a framework, and I agree most heartily that we must all raise our expectations for students.
My worry, though, is the CCSS are not true gold. In fact, they are only gilded, and a potential gilded Trojan horse at that.
Lucy Calkins and group employ effective argument skills when, starting on page 3, they address critics’ arguments against the CCSS. They acknowledge the argument that we should be talking about poverty, citing that the US child poverty rate went from 16% in 2000 to 21% in 2009. They note the initial mystery of the Common Core authors and ratification process. They note the expense of this process.
But they don’t debunk the arguments. They don’t address them or counter them. They simply acknowledge them on the page.
Let’s take a look at what is not on the page.
They didn’t mention the 8-10 hours this test will take, as recently published in Education Week. They didn’t talk about the centralized data base or the Brooking’s Institution Report that found that standards won’t influence NAEP scores.
They didn’t mention the loss of singing time that makes time for vocabulary work, as written in the Washington Post by Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in New York and the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. They didn’t mention the stress on students, including kindergarteners facing a loss of playtime as posted in the New York Post.
They didn’t mention the questions of developmental appropriateness as written in the Huffington Post by Mark Rice, professor and chair of the Department of American Studies, St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York. And they didn’t question if the CCSS advocate a “one right answer” approach, such as found in this post by Vicki Vinton, author and New York literacy consultant.
And they didn’t address teacher concerns, such as this post by Colette Marie Bennett, the English Department Chair at Wamogo High School in Northwest Connecticut, where she wonders about the time demands indicated in these close readings and how we will keep kids interested for that long.
And they sure didn’t address Susan Ohanian’s questions about the research and ratification.
And so while the Calkins group present a false choice of reading the Standards as a curmudgeon or seeing the Standards as gold, I will continue to see the Standards as an argument, questioning them, but still addressing and implementing them, and working to do so always with my full integrity and expertise, because in the end, it is experience and heart that is gold.
PS. As I tweeted this post, the next Tweet was a post from Diane Ravitch’s blog, which also notes that the hostile relationship between states and teachers/lack of funding complicate implementation.
Why the Core is Gold
In Heinemann’s Pathways to the Common Core by Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman, the first chapter states that we can read the Core as a “curmudgeon” or we can read them as if they are gold.
I agree there are aspects of gold.
Taken from Bill David Brooks Flickr Photostream
Pathways asserts that an asset of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is they demand higher-level skills than ever before, and the CCSS organizes these goals “through time, across years, and across disciplines.” I admit it; that is gold.
Pathways also asserts that the CCSS places equal weight on reading and writing. Agreed. No Child Left Behind did not address writing, which evolved into an imbalance and neglect.
Pathways further notes that the CCSS stress “the importance of critical citizenship,” meaning that “The Common Core document asks us to bring up a generation . . . who listen to or read a claim and ask, ‘Who is making this claim? What is that person’s evidence? What other positions are being promulgated?” Agreed. In the age of internet and in corporate-owned media empires, we owe this skill to our children and our democracy.
And most of all, yes, absent the testing movement that surrounds it and the mandated programming that frightened districts are enforcing to meet the test, the CCSS appears to respect the professional judgement of classroom teachers.
So there are reasons to think of the Core as Gold.
And I applaud the stated motive of David Coleman when he observes that we live in a “country [where] students who pass their high school courses and get their high school diplomas still, in their first year of college, are not ready for the demands of college-level work, and many of these kids do not [stay in] college or they fail” in this interview. I get some of our school’s test results for college remediation; it breaks my heart and spurs me to work smarter.
I also think David Coleman is right when he promotes that “teachers will be sharing their best work and improving their profession, and doing it across state lines.” We need this. In the age of internet, we need to do more to share with and learn from each other.
So there is no denying that there is gold. But let’s remember that gold is always complicated and often dirty, and quite often what appears to be golden is not gold, but gilded, as this post examines.
Susan Ohanian is my new hero.
Wow. I just read the most amazing post by Susan Ohanian. Passion. Research. And simply fine writing. Wow. My heart is racing.
My last two posts were on similar topics, angry with both David Coleman and the Common Core’s clarification of literature standards, but I got really truly angry at this part of Susan’s post:
A national movement of parents opting their children out of standardized testing started when Professor Tim Slekar and his wife went with their son Luke to a school conference to learn why Luke’s grades were slipping. The teacher showed them a sample paper, with a test-prep writing prompt: Write about the two most exciting times you have had with your family. Luke’s response, started, “Whoo-hoo! Let me tell you about my great family vacation trip to the Adirondacks.”
The teacher stopped Luke and asked him to explain to his parents why this opening was unacceptable. “Whoo-hoo! isn’t a sentence,” he acknowledged, adding that the first sentence to a writing prompt must begin by restating the prompt. The teacher said that according to standards, Luke’s response would have been scored a zero, and her obligation was to prepare children to pass the state test. Feeling that education shouldn’t be about preparing students to write answers in a format low-paid temp workers can score, the Slekars decided to opt Luke out of future standardized testing. “We would not allow our son to provide data to a system that was designed to prove that he, the teacher, the system, and the community were failing.” Tim found people of like mind– Peggy Robertson, Morna McDermmott, Ceresta Smith, Shaun Johnson and Laurie Murphy–and together they founded United Opt Out, a national movement to opt students out of standardized testing. Its endorsers include John Kuhn, an outspoken Texas school superintendent, who says, “Parents and students have the power to say when enough is enough.”
I am sick and sad. Voice, creativity, and choice in writing… I strive to teach those, to nurture them. Whoo-hoo is the perfect sentence. The perfect start.
I also love how Susan says that some of the pieces on education read like satire. When she mentioned this young author, I couldn’t help think back on what the NYT Times said in my post on computer grading. Satire indeed.
So whoo-ooo, Susan. Giddyup!
Defending Captain Underpants Against David Coleman
In exploring for my last post, I came across a Diane Ravitch post examining David Coleman, and David Coleman posted a response to her comments. The part that caught my attention is this:
To clarify, when we say there is an increased focus on “informational text” which I agree is not the most beautiful word, we mean that in elementary there is more time for history, science and the arts – along with a rich exploration of literature in those grades. In later grades, a great deal of informational text is explored in classrooms in history, social studies, science and technical subjects. In 6-12 grade ELA, the only change is that there is more room for literary non-fiction, although the classroom remains focused on literature.
Now here is the irony: Mr. Coleman is now president of the College Board, creator of Advanced Placement, and I am going to use my AP Lang teacher skills to dissect his words.
When Mr. Coleman states that there is “more time” at the elementary school for “history, science, and the arts,” please note two things: one is that the arts he is referring to are not opportunities to paint, dance, or sing, as the testing movement curtailed those significantly, but rather proposed reading about those activities; and two is that there are no time turners in elementary schools, except in the pages of Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban. There is no “more time for X” without there being “less time for y.” What gets sacrificed to read those informational texts?
In both the Ravitch post and the NYT article, David Coleman’s opposition of literature is pointed out. This opposition is further echoed by others in the movement (see my last post).
In some ways I do not object. I watch my children, 8 and 10, get intrigued by many non-fiction books, though I wonder if a favorite, Poop Happened, would ever make the Common Core’s recommendations list.
But I think about this week when I helped my son’s Cub Scout meeting learn about libraries and genres of books. Each child had to bring his favorite book and we did a tally of books according to genre and then a culminating post-it note chart of genres. In the end, fantasy books had 8 “votes”, realistic fiction had one, and informational text had one. Strange that when kids choose favorite books, no one brought the Common Core’s recommended books about whales or senses of Ben Franklin.
Kids fall in love with reading with Captain Underpants, a book held up by one boy. They love the oddities in My Wierd School. And the super readers catch fire with Harry Potter.
Kids love fiction. They fall in love with reading because of stories. Sports stories (fictional and informational). Ghost stories. Animal stories. Literature matters, as this great argument in schoolbook.org makes.
In the end, I agree with Eric Ferencs as posted in a comment here, when he asserts there is a more important bottom line. All we should really be concentrating on is teaching kids to love reading:
As an English teacher, I have found a strong connection between student writing and students’ reading for pleasure. Students who read because of a love of reading perform better on written assessments that their non-reading counterparts. We must teach students to love to read. It does not matter if we focus upon literature or informational texts. Such categorization may sound professional and appropriate in a government report, but it fails to recognize the most difficult and pertinent of hurdles: teaching a student to love to read.
We may lambast the common core. We may embrace it. But, we must prioritize. This article reeks of bureaucratic language that only alienates teachers, parents, and students alike. You want results? Teach them to love reading. That’s the truth.
Related articles
- David Coleman, Please Speak Up! (dianeravitch.net)
