Common Core

A New Year’s Resolution: Justice For Kids

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

As we are thinking up our New Year’s resolutions, how about justice for our kids?

National standards do not make for justice. Multiple choice testing does not make for justice. Ignoring the effects of race and poverty on children’s ability to learn does not make for justice.

Kids’ backgrounds are not equal. Their test scores will never be equal. But their education can be equitable if we help all students to grow from where the are and to develop fully as engaged learners and strong thinkers .

Intentions matter. Let’s resolve in 2018 to educate all kids, not just test them.

Please watch this two minute video:

P.S. How The Common Core Hurts Kids As Readers And Writers

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 4 Comments

 The New York Times, whose  writers have seemed to lack knowledge about the Common Core, has been a PR firm for those misbegotten and ill-conceived educational standards. But finally on Sunday, July 24th, the newspaper published ” The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students” by Diane Ravitch that is critical of the Common Core.

Diane Ravitch, Assistant Secretary of Education under George H. W. Bush and the author of The Life and Death of the Great American School System and Reign of Error, pointed out that the Common Core has accomplished nothing that it promised and does not meet the educational needs of children. Ravitch explained that, as a country, we have spent billions to implement the Common Core, to prepare students to take the Common Core aligned tests, and to buy the technology to administer those tests online. The results are that math scores on National Assessment of Educational Progress  declined for the first time since 1990 and reading scores are flat or decreased, the achievement gaps based on race and income persist, teachers are demoralized, causing teacher shortages, and, most tragically of all, children are receiving an education which harms them. 

I would like to add a P.S. 

Diane Ravitch writes about the damage that the Common Core does to children with disabilities, English language learners, and children in the early grades. I know that to be true. My Post Script focuses on the damage that Common Core is doing to all students because, with Common Core, they are not taught to be thoughtful readers and effective writers and to develop as creative and critical thinkers and increasingly independent learners.

There has been false advertising about the Common Core, calling those standards “rigorous”. They are not at all rigorous. If they were, the National Council of Teachers of English would have endorsed them. After careful review, NCTE did not endorse the Common Core due to the content of the standards and the way they require reading and writing  to be taught. It is preposterous to think that English language arts standards have been mandated for all k-12 students without the endorsement of the professional organization representing all elementary, middle, high school, and college teachers of reading and writing in the country.

And what is the objectionable Common Core content?

First of all, the amount of literature is restricted. We are the only country on the planet that specifies limits on reading literature. That means we not only limit the range of ideas with which students become familiar but we also reduce their opportunities to think divergently and create individual meaning in ways that only reading literature provides. Secondly, the kind of writing taught with Common Core severely limits the thinking students do because Common Core prescribes formulaic, impersonal writing. All Common Core writing assignments, according to David Coleman, the chief writer of the Common Core English Language Arts Standards, must let students know  that ” no one gives a **** what they think and feel”. And thirdly, the volume of the grammar to be taught at each grade level requires that grammar be taught separately, not as part of the writing process, even though all research for the past 30 years says that is a waste of time. Worst of all, none of the standards are about teaching students to be engaged, active, thoughtful readers or effective writers for a wide range of purposes and audiences. 

And how must teachers teach the Common Core?

Common Core teachers are purveyors of information. They teach as if the meaning of any piece of literature is “within the four corners of the page”. That outdated and discredited approach to teaching literature is called New Criticism- but “new” was the 1930’s. With it, Common Core teachers do not teach students to make personal connections, create their own interpretations, evaluate the ideas, or consider the cultural assumptions in what they are reading. The Common Core teacher requires students to dig out the one meaning from what they are reading, a meaning  the teacher already knows. Since there is only one answer, there is no point in teaching students how to discuss their initial thinking with others, question the perspectives of others, and reconsider their original thinking, maybe even changing their minds because of questions or ideas offered by their classmates.

Also, writing is not used as part of the learning process to foster individual thinking because that thinking is not sought. And revision is, as the standards state, only “as needed”, not as a mandatory part of the writing process although revision always strengthens a writer’s thinking and makes the writer more effective.

 And why is all this so bad?

Well, first of all, kids are not receiving an education that sparks their minds and touches their souls. Secondly, students are not learning the skills they need for their future. Tony Wagner, lead scholar at Harvard University’s Innovation Lab, has written two books (The Global Achievement Gap and Creating Innovators), which discuss the skills students will need in the workplace. Wagner says that our future as a nation depends on our capacity to teach students to have the curiosity and imagination to be innovators. He says the competencies that students must learn in school are:  

  • To approach problems as learners as opposed to knowers
  • To ask provocative questions
  • To engage in dialogue which explores questions with diverse people
  • To deal with ambiguity instead of right answers
  • To trust oneself to be creative and take initiative
  • To communicate orally and in writing by expressing ideas with clarity and personal passion
  • To analyze information and identify a path forward
  • To be curious, to be engaged with and interested in the world

You can’t get there from here when “here” is the Common Core.

Diane Ravitch is right.  We must stop hurting students. The Common Core must go.

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Fact Checking Candidate Cruz, Candidate Kasich, and Candidate Trump about K-12 Education

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

There has been no substantive conversation about K-12 education in the Republican debates, town hall meetings, or candidate rallies. Attention has been on other issues, but education is crucial both for the individual future of each of our children and for the future of our nation. We voters deserve to know what the candidates will do as President about K-12 education. What follows are key topics about K-12 education and what the candidates have said about them so far.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

No Child Left Behind was federal legislation that controlled K-12 education in the United States from 2001 to its replacement by the Every Child Succeeds Act in December 2015. With it, students’ scores on standardized tests were the only means of measuring student achievement and the worth of a school. It punished schools, based on test scores. All schools in the United States were required to reach 100% proficiency by 2014 or receive sanctions from the federal government, which meant the withholding of federal funds. Given the wide range of student abilities, including students with special education needs and students whose primary language is not English, 100% proficiency was out of range for almost all schools.

None of the Republican candidates were in Congress when the Congress passed NCLB in 2001. All three Republican candidates oppose federal government mandates about education and favor local control. They have reservations about the replacement for NCLB, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which was signed into law in December 2015.

Ted Cruz voted against the initial draft of ESSA in July. He was not present for the final vote but opposed a cloture motion to advance the bill on the day before the vote. In a press conference, Ted Cruz commented, “The ESSA, unfortunately, continues to propagate the large and ever-growing role of the federal government in our education system.”  Ted Cruz also said, “If I’m elected president, I will direct the U.S. Department of Education — which should be abolished — I will direct the Department of Education that Common Core ends today. Instead, I will restore power back to the states and to the local governments and ultimately back to the parents — those closest to our kids who have direct responsibility for raising our children, each and every one of us moms and dads.”

Donald Trump has said, “I’m a tremendous believer in education, but education has to be at a local level. We cannot have the bureaucrats in Washington telling you how to manage your child’s education.” At another point, Donald Trump said, “I may cut the Department of Education.”

John Kasich is criticized by other Republicans because he does not reject the federally supported Common Core, which is integral to the federal program Race to the Top. He does not reject the role of the federal government in education as much as Mr. Trump and Senator Cruz do. As a member of Congress, he sponsored a bill to reinstate prayer in public schools and voted YES to giving federal aid only to schools which allowed voluntary prayer.

Questions to ask the candidates are:

  1. Do you think that states or local should create their own standards, as ESSA permits, rather than use the Common Core Standards which are recommended by the federal government?
  1. What are the immediate changes you will make to the U.S. Department of Education?

PUBLICLY FUNDED AND PRIVATELY MANAGED CHARTER SCHOOLS

Publicly funded and privately managed charter schools are funded with taxpayer money but are privately managed without transparency or accountability for how the tax dollars are spent and without the same oversight as traditional public schools. All three of the Republican candidates are avid advocates of publicly funded and privately managed charter schools.

Donald Trump claims that K-12 education would benefit from competition and enthusiastically embraces the competition with public schools that he thinks charter schools offer. Ted Cruz said at a CNN-hosted debate at the University of Miami, “The most important reform we can do in education, after getting the federal government out of it, is to expand school choice.” He called for the expansion of charter schools, and home schooling. He often says school choice is the “civil rights issue of the 21st century”.

John Kasich seems to have a mess on his hands with scandal- ridden charter schools in Ohio and is now trying to strengthen oversight of charter schools in the state. According to The Washington Post, Ohio state auditors discovered that, since 2001, $27.3 million has been improperly spent by charter schools. Also in February 2016, it was discovered that charter schools had falsified their records regarding student achievement. Ten times more Ohio charter schools are failing than had been previously reported. In addition to those scandals, John Kasich made budget cuts in traditional public schools while at the same time increasing taxpayer funding of charter schools and vouchers. Since John Kasich took office in 2011, traditional public schools, which educate 90% of Ohio’s kids, are receiving $515 million less in state funding while charter schools have an increase of 27% in taxpayer funding. Charters also receive more state money per pupil than traditional public schools.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. With shrinking state and local budgets, do you favor taking taxpayer money from the traditional public schools, which educate most of the students, in order to support charter schools, which educate a select population?
  2. What regulations would you put in place for charter schools in order to enforce transparency in terms of the use of taxpayer money and to insure the delivery of student services, such as special education?

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

The Common Core State Standards were written in secret by employees of testing companies, not by educators. They are not research-based, not internationally benchmarked, and not outcome-validated. States were coerced into adopting them in exchange for being released from sanctions imposed on them for not meeting the NCLB mandate of 100% proficiency. The National Governors Association approved the standards,  before they had even been written, in order to not lose federal money. Educators criticize the content and pedagogy. Five hundred prominent early childhood professionals, psychologists, and researchers issued a public statement that the Common Core Standards are harmful to young children, and the National Council of Teachers of English did not endorse them. The more teachers work with the Common Core Standards, the more they oppose them. 

John Kasich doesn’t seem to understand that the Common Core Standards claim to be a product of the states but really are not. On Fox News, he said, “The Common Core was written by state education superintendents and local principals.”  In reality, Bill Gates, a private citizen, funded the writing of the Common Core Standards and then the federal government appropriated them as part of the conditions given to the states to avoid reduction in state aid from the federal government. Bill Gates’s money allowed the federal government to skirt the law which prohibits the federal government from funding and establishing a national curriculum or national standards but, at the same time, use those standards to give or withhold federal money from the states.

Ted Cruz has said that on his first day in office, he will “repeal every single word of the Common Core in order to get the federal government out of the business of dictating educational standards”. At the Heritage Foundation Conservative Policy Summit in January 2015, he said that education is too important to be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Washington.

Donald Trump repeatedly calls The Common Core a “disaster” but has not explained specifically how the content and the accompanying pedagogy of the Common Core are a disaster. He also has said that education should be “local and locally managed”.

The Republican candidates have not addressed in any way why the standards that they oppose (Ted Cruz and Donald Trump) or support (John Kasich) are bad or good education. They have not discussed if the learning students receive with those standards is meritorious and developmentally appropriate or if it is not.

Some questions to ask the candidates are:

  1. Do you think it is developmentally appropriate for kindergarten to be “the new first grade” in order for children to meet Common Core Standards?
  1. Do you think it is good that we are the only nation that limits the amount of literature read and asks students to read excerpts of great literature instead of whole books?
  1. Do you think it is good for students to read without connecting the ideas they are reading to their own life experiences or to the historical and cultural background of the text?

 HIGH STAKES STANDARDIZED TESTS

Paul Thomas, a professor of education at Furman University recently wrote:  “In addressing education issues candidates are likely to remain trapped inside the failed accountability mindset for reforming schools — one that privileges ‘standards’ and ‘tests’ as the central means of closing the infamous achievement gap. But there are better ways to approach what plagues us. Instead of focusing merely on ‘accountability’, presidential candidates should be challenged first to confront and then address the tremendous social and educational inequities that plague our public schools.”

Ted Cruz voted in favor of a Senate bill (S.AMDT 2162), which addressed the right of parents to opt their children out of standardized tests. Although John Kasich has been a strong supporter of Common Core, he withdrew Ohio from PARCC, the Common Core-aligned testing consortium, due to pressure from teachers and administrators who complained that the tests took up to much class time and the online exams had too many computer glitches. The state, instead, awarded the contract to the American Institutes of Research, which currently administers Ohio’s social studies and science exams.

Neither Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, nor John Kasich addresses the question of whether standardized tests assess skills that students need for their future or whether the tests should be used to make judgments about students, teachers, and schools or whether standardized tests are helpful in closing the achievement gap.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. Scores on all standardized tests correlate with family income so how will standardized tests help students in impoverished areas?
  1. Do you feel that there are problems with teaching to the standardized test?
  1. How will standardized tests assess the skills needed in the 21st century, such as asking probing questions, collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, and effective written and oral communication?

RACIAL INEQUITIES

The Civil Rights Project reported in 2010: “While segregation for blacks among all public schools has been increasing for nearly two decades, black students in charter schools are far more likely than their traditional public school counterparts to be educated in intensely segregated settings. At the national level, seventy percent of black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority charter schools or twice as many as the share of intensely segregated back students in traditional public schools. Some charter schools enrolled populations where 99% of the students were from under-represented minority backgrounds.”

With the increase in charter schools since 2010, the percentage of students in segregated schools also increased.

There is a large body of relevant research showing that charter schools, on average, don’t have an academic advantage over traditional public schools, but they do have a significant risk of leading to increased segregation. Sixty-two years after Brown vs. the Board of Education, here we are in 2016 with segregated schools in our large cities.

The Republican candidates for President, all of whom are strong advocates for charter schools, have not publicly addressed the racial and economic segregation of charter schools.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. What steps would you take to increase diversity in public schools?
  1. How will you address the pervasive racial and economic segregation in charter schools?

PRIVATE MONEY IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

Private money is currently affecting public education in three ways. 1) Private citizens are funding policy and practice for all U.S. schools. Bill and Melinda Gates paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the Common Core Standards, including money to the media to promote the standards as “rigorous” and “cutting edge and money to professional organizations to implement the standards. 2) Rupert Murdoch has pointed out: “Public education is a $500 billion dollar sector” so there are countless efforts to privatize public education in order to make financial profit for venture capitalists and marketers. 3) Wealthy philanthropists, such as the Walton family (Walmart) and Eli Broad, are using their money to establish charter schools that drain money from traditional public schools.

Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Donald Trump all favor the privatization of pubic education. They regard competition as healthy and public education as wasteful and inadequate.

In his book, The America We Deserve, Donald Trump advocated for school choice, charter schools, and vouchers. He argues that together they create a competitive system that improves education and offers an alternative to a public education model which “would set off every antitrust alarm bell at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission if it were a traditional business”.

John Kasich has greatly expanded Ohio’s investment in privately run education, despite existing problems with it. On August 8, 2015, Innovation Ohio, an Ohio think tank, reported that “Ohio’s charter sector is a national joke, while spending on school vouchers has more than doubled. The ‘Youngstown Takeover’ is Kasich’s latest effort to “reform” an urban school district, which typically means more school privatization.”

The future of education as either a public institution established for the common good or a private enterprise established with competition and profit at its roots is the underlying question to all of the current educational issues.

Questions to ask the candidates:

  1. What steps will you take to further privatize public education?
  1. What steps will you take to strengthen traditional public schools?

K-12 education is too important for silence on the campaign trail. Candidates must address K-12 education in the public forum and answer pivotal questions. Voters are asking. And the children are waiting.

 

It’s All Over But The Cheering

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

 

Right before an institution dies, things get a little crazy. Think of the days before the fall of Rome and the days before the French Revolution. That is where we are now in terms of the misnamed education “reform” in Connecticut.

Things are getting crazy.

When the Connecticut State Department of Education threatens to withdraw needed funds from school districts in which some parents decide to not have their children participate in unreliable, invalid tests, then we know the end is at hand. When a governor prioritizes the opening of new publicly funded but not publicly accountable charter schools for a few over the funding of public schools for all, then we know the end is at hand. When the State Board of Education champions the Common Core as “far better than anything we have done before” although those standards were written by employees of testing companies, not educators, and contradict literally all research in how children learn best, then we know the end is at hand.

The test-and-punish era of education “reform” in Connecticut will soon meet its end because its craziness has become evident to so many.

It is clear that standardized testing can never close the achievement gap, that the Common Core Standards are not good learning and do not give students the skills they need for their future, and that the education “reform” effort is not reform at all but a way to remove public education as a right for all while it provides substantial financial profit for the investors.

So what is the path forward?

David Kirp in a recent New York Times piece points the way. He analyses why the schools in Union City, New Jersey improved while the efforts in Newark failed. In Newark, huge infusions of money, most notably 100 million dollars from Mark Zuckerberg, and outside talent did not bring success. In fact, they might be the reason for the failure. In Union City, by contrast, the school improvement efforts were led by a team of principals and teachers within the district who focused on how students learn best, how teachers teach most effectively, and how parents can be engaged in the schools. Through this process, learning took center stage, the culture of the schools changed, and the achievement of the students took off.

The Harvard School of Education report,” How High Schools Become Exemplary”, also points the way. It describes how 15 high schools improved the achievement of their students. In all 15 schools, the improvement was a result of a team of educators within the school recognizing what their students needed to learn and how they could learn best and accepting responsibility for meeting that need. They created a mission and determined priorities for their school, designed a plan for adult learning, developed criteria for judging student work and teacher practice, and provided resources and incentives. In all 15 schools, the leaders for the school improvement came from each school and overcame some teachers’ resistance to change because those teachers trusted the motives, the competence, the reliability, the collegiality, the intellectual diligence, the courage, and the hard work of the leaders.

The way forward is clear.

Here is what we must do in Connecticut:

1. Make school improvement a local enterprise. It must begin with the leaders having trust in the staff to grow and learn. As Michael Fullan, a leading expert in school improvement, has said, the first principle of school change is to “love your employees”. That comes from knowing them.

2. Set up authentic and focused collaboration among the teachers so that they become the kind of open, questioning, active learners they will teach their students to be.

3. Analyze the needs of the students. Determine how they learn best and what is it they need to learn. Design ways to assess both what they learn and how they learn.

4. Conduct adult learning experiences focused on improving instruction.

For many years, I have been part of creating positive change in Connecticut’s schools, both in suburban and urban districts, in schools with high standardized test scores and those labeled as “failing schools” due to their standardized test scores. I know for sure that collegial leadership, collaboration, and attention to how students learn and how we can best teach by the educators in an academic department, a school, or a school district offer the only path forward for increased student achievement.

Let’s give the test-and-punish version of “reform” a good burial and move on.

The kids are waiting.

Replacing SBAC with Real Learning

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 1 Comment

Yes, of course, the SBAC tests must go.

All of the comments about doing away with SBAC made by teachers on the video produced by the Connecticut Teachers Association, called “Connecticut Teachers Share Concerns About SBAC”, are true. (Scroll down on CEA link for video.) The tests stress children out. The tests take too much time away from real learning and replace it with test prep. The data collected is useless. The SBAC use of technology as the testing format is inequitable because children use different kinds of devices to take the tests, some of which are more user friendly than others, and the children vary greatly in their familiarity with technology. The tests deplete many children, especially those with special needs or recent English speakers, of their confidence as learners and deprive them of their motivation. Teacher after teacher testified that the tests and the inordinate time given to preparing for them prove only one thing: how good a taker of the  test the student is.

The SBAC tests have established cut scores and are designed to fail between 56-68% of students, depending on grade level and subject matter. The SBAC tests are invalid and unreliable, as even the former Executive Director of SBAC asserted when speaking at the University of Connecticut on March 31, 2014, because there is no data to prove that success on SBAC tests merits “college and career readiness”. We also do not need SBAC tests to gather information about the achievement gap. We have NAEP, a test which accurately reports on the achievement gap, does not punish individual students, and costs districts and the state of Connecticut nothing, that does that for us. We also know that the high stakes of the SBAC tests which deem students competent or not, determine the fate of schools and the careers of school administrators, provide PR for school districts, and measure the competencies of teachers, determine what is taught. The SBAC test is the curriculum.

And that brings up the most pressing reason that the SBAC tests must go: The SBAC tests measure the wrong things. The SBAC tests do not measure the learning that students need.

What learning do students in 2016 need?

They need to learn to ask questions of their own and explore their questions in depth. They need to learn to collaborate with others in order to grow as broad and deep thinkers. They need to learn creative problem solving. They need to learn how to innovate. They need to learn how to express their thinking, using effective oral and written communication in a wide variety of forms and in both personal and academic voices. They need to be motivated. They need to be engaged. They need to love to learn.

The Common Core teaches none of these skills. The SBAC tests do not measure them.

Learning and the assessing of that learning do not have to be that way.

The first speaker on the CEA video, Paul Coppola who is a social studies teacher in Madison, CT, explained how educators in his district designed indicators of academic growth and development for their students and assess their students on their achievement of learning objectives, based on those indicators. The indicators are:

  1. creativity
  2. collaboration,
  3. communication
  4. problem solving
  5. global perspectives

Similarly, I have worked for many years with teachers to design assessments that require students to:

  1. Engage in a new challenge that is a learning experience in itself.
  2. Use critical thinking to identify and analyze the key concepts of a course.
  3. Apply and integrate knowledge and learning strategies developed in that course.
  4. Think creatively to explore ideas or problems that pull the course together.
  5. Collaborate to increase individual achievement by having their original ideas broadened and deepened through dialogue with others.
  6. Demonstrate effective written communication.
  7. Reflect upon and assess their own development as learners.

These are but two examples of conversations that have begun. There are as many conversations going on in Connecticut about learning and assessment as there are dedicated educators. We are ready to dialogue about what learning is and how we will measure it.

Jennifer Alexander, CEO of ConnCAN, could not be more wrong when she said that we as a state should stay with SBAC because ” we’ve already invested millions into its implementation”. By that logic of not changing what we have invested in, we would still be fighting in Vietnam and would still have segregated school districts.

Revision is at the heart of learning. And growing. And getting things right.

Questions about SBAC have been raised. It’s time to explore those questions. It’s time to collaborate. It’s time for creative problem solving. It’s time for innovation.

It is time for real learning to take center stage in Connecticut.

Bring on the best people to lead the exploration of those questions. Bring on those who know what it is to teach and what it is to learn. Bring on the educators.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Put Education In The Hands of Educators

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

Right now, we in the United States have put education in the hands of people who have no understanding about how children and adolescents learn and what children and adolescents need to know and be able to do in order to have productive, fulfilling futures. We have put education in the hands of people who have either unlimited money, inordinate political power for a democracy, or uncontrolled arrogance. Or all three.

If we, instead, put education in the hands of educators, then we will have solutions and innovations that actually make a positive difference. Here is an example of an educator setting worthy goals for student achievement and putting students in the position to be successful. Please watch this video in which a principal talks about the learning that matters.

If you cannot see this video, please click here. 

 

The Common Core State Standards: A Thing Of The Past

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 2 Comments

The Common Core State Standards, which promise to make all students college and career ready are way behind the times and will not give our students what they need for their future. At the end of the two-minute video, which I invite you to watch, the competencies that will really make students “college and career ready” are quickly flashed on the screen. Not one of those competencies is a Common Core Standard for English Language Arts.

The competencies are:

  • Exploration
  • Creativity
  • Responsibility
  • Cultural Awareness
  • Collaboration
  • Accountability
  • Problem Solving
  • Innovation
  • Civic Engagement
  • Productivity
  • Communication
  • Initiative
  • Leadership

We English teachers know how to develop those competencies. Let’s do it. Reject the Common Core.

If you cannot see the video,  click here.

Common Core Squashes Early Learning

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

On April 25, 2015 at Network for Public Education Conference in Chicago, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, professor emerita of early childhood education at Lesley University, spoke passionately about the need for real learning for young children. She is co-founder of Defending the Early Years (www.DEYProject.org), which is an organization dedicated to promoting vibrant and healthy education for young children.

She said that love of learning is being squashed in young children due to current practices in many schools. In those schools, teachers are pressured by the demands of the Common Core State Standards to help four and five year old children to be “college and career ready” instead of engaging these young children in learning experiences which develop their minds and foster their love of learning.

Professor Carlsson-Paige is one of 500 early childhood educators who have authored a position statement entitled ” The Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative” (here) in opposition to the Common Core because they believe that those standards will harm young children. A mother in the audience at the conference spoke for many others in attendance when she said: “My kindergartener is NOT college and career ready because…….he is a child.”

In ” The Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative”, the most notable professionals in the country in the fields of child development objected to the Common Core State Standards because:

  • The didactic instruction the Common Core mandates is antithetical to how children learn.
  • The Common Core leads to inappropriate and unreliable standardized testing of young children.
  • The Common Core content crowds out other important areas of learning for young children.
  • There is little evidence that Common Core standards for young children lead to  later success in literacy and numeracy.

This four-minute video defines real learning as Professor Carlsson-Paige and the other signers of the statement against the Common Core standards  for young children define it. If you are not able to view the video here, you can access it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e53S8dnh0IM%5B/

You also may want to read the fuller definition of real learning for young children that is on the DEY website (here).

Rigor Or Not

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 2 Comments

Bulletin: The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts are NOT rigorous!

How can that be? Everyone says they are.

The truth is that what is called rigor depends on who has the power to say what rigor is.

David Coleman, the chief author of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts who, however, has never taught English, has that power. He says that a chief reason that the Common Core has rigor is that narrative writing is cast aside in high school and not tested at all on Common Core–aligned tests for high school. He makes fun of narrative thinking and writing by saying that in the work environment no one is going to say to you, “Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday, but, before that, I need a compelling account of your childhood.”

David Coleman’s and, therefore, the Common Core’s, definition of narrative is that it is a story, either true or fictional, written to entertain. And entertainment is not consistent with being “college and career ready”. All of the emphasis, therefore, in the Common Core high school English curriculum is on writing arguments in which a thesis is supported with evidence and developed by linear, deductive reasoning. Arguments do not explore multiple ways to look at a question or explain the story of how the writer came to think about a topic or develop an idea.

The Common Core specifies that arguments must be written in an anonymous, impersonal voice devoid of any personal story. David Coleman repeatedly has said that high school students must realize before they get to college or the workplace that: “ No one gives a **** what you think and feel”.

The National Council of Teachers of English has a much broader definition of narrative. The theme of the NCTE annual conference in November 2014 was “Story as the Landscape of Knowing”. There were 642 presentations at the conference, and only 19 of them were about implementing the Common Core with its limited definition of narrative.

Presentations at the NCTE Conference were about narrative as a way of fostering student engagement and motivation, narrative as a way to understand other people’s cultures or environments, narrative as a way to create student voice, narrative as a spur to innovative thinking, narrative as a way to learn any academic discipline, narrative as a form of persuasion, narrative as a way to create personal meaning and new knowledge, narrative as an impetus for social change, narrative as a way to inspire creativity, narrative as the beginning of inquiry, narrative as an expression of imagination, narrative as a reflection on one’s own process of learning, and narrative as the basis of collaboration among those with multiple perspectives.

It is no wonder that NCTE did not endorse the Common Core. The Common Core’s treatment of narrative does not come close to the concept of narrative expressed in hundreds of presentations at the NCTE conference. Those presentations explained narrative as a way of thinking and a way of knowing. Now that is real rigor!

Not only is narrative as a way of thinking and a way of knowing rigorous for high school students, it is precisely the skill needed for our future as a democracy and an economy. In his recent book, Creating Innovators, Tony Wagner of Harvard University points out that our future as a nation depends on our capacity to teach students to have the curiosity and imagination to be innovators. Fostering curiosity and imagination begins with students knowing their own stories and being able to tell them, engaging with a diversity of perspectives offered by the stories of others, seeing the stories implicit in theories and concepts, and envisioning new stories and new possibilities. We can teach students to be innovators, but we can’t do it without narrative thinking.

Human beings are hard-wired for stories. It is how our brains work. We think in stories. We are moved by stories. We create new ideas through stories. We need to unleash that brainpower in our students so that they live empowered lives and contribute to their society in meaningful ways.

Let’s begin here in Connecticut demanding real rigor for our students and not allowing them to settle for the limited education offered by the Common Core.

An Invitation to Connecticut Educators

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

There is a lot of conversation about public education going on.

Politicians are talking about the Common Core in regard to federal vs. local control. Billionaires with no understanding of child or adolescent development are mandating what education should look like in every grade from kindergarten through high school graduation. Testing companies are dictating that what is taught is limited to what they know how to test. Entrepreneurs are saying that schools should be enterprises from which they make a profit. Journalists are writing about the worth of standards they have never read. State legislators require students to take tests which determine promotions and graduations although no one has any idea if those tests measure what it takes to be successful in higher education or the workplace. The chief writer of the English language arts standards tells teachers exactly how to teach although he has never taught himself and is shockingly unfamiliar with good pedagogy. Proponents of the standards claim that the standards are evidence-based and internationally benchmarked although they are neither.

All in all, the ongoing conversation is dominated by a combination of those who have not read the standards, those who have never taught, and those who have little or no knowledge of child development, including how children and teenagers learn.

The Common Core and the accompanying tests are not receiving the scrutiny they deserve so implementation marches on. As a result, students do not experience the passion for learning, the engagement with ideas, or the substantive content to which they have a right.

It’s time for public school educators to reclaim the conversation so that Connecticut’s students receive the education they need. In Connecticut, we have innumerable educators who are experts in their academic disciplines and practice effective pedagogy. We have many excellent teachers and administrators who mentor inexperienced teachers and administrators. We have renowned educators in both our public K-12 schools and at our universities who are experts in child and adolescent development and who know how to shape instruction that fits that development. We have many accomplished administrators who know how to create collaborative school environments in which both students and teachers grow and learn. We have an untold number of teachers in our public schools who know how to inspire students to be critical thinkers, pose pivotal questions, read thoughtfully, communicate effectively, construct individual meaning by interacting with other thinkers, and gain the skills of learning how to learn. We have educators in Connecticut who prepare our children for the future instead of equipping them for the past as Common Core does.

If we educators start talking about what we know, perhaps the public, the politicians, and the journalists will listen and give the Common Core and the accompanying testing the scrutiny they warrant. Our conversation, however, will not deter corporate “reformers” and test makers because their interest is in making a profit off our children, not in the quality of their education.

This blog provides a space for educators to talk to one another and to the public about what real learning is and how excellence can be provided for all Connecticut students. If we educators share with one another what we know from our teaching, from our research, and from what we have learned from our students, there will be no stopping us, no stopping what we can do for Connecticut’s students.

Let’s aim big. Let’s make real learning available to all Connecticut’s students. Let’s join with other educators across the nation as two University of Arkansas professors of education, Jason L. Endacott and Christian Z. Goering (read here), rally us together with this summons:

Let’s take back the story on education by any nonviolent means necessary… Just when it seems that all of the money and all the of the influence is stacked up against us, we can absolutely recapture our schools for the sake of our children. Stand together and say it: Our children aren’t products, aren’t numbers, and aren’t for sale.

Let’s start talking on this blog. Let’s explore key questions and highlight current issues. I invite you to offer your own posts – posts you write yourself or articles, photos, or videos you find provocative. I urge you to take the surveys and comment on the postings. I especially ask you to submit descriptions of a moment or activity or unit of study from your classroom that demonstrates real learning.

We will then do more than reclaim the conversation about education. We will shape that conversation. We will elevate that conversation. We will focus that conversation. At last, the conversation will be about what we know best and what students need most: real learning.

Here are some conversation starters for you:

What is real learning?
How can all of Connecticut’s students have real learning opportunities?
What is the content or the substance of the Common Core standards?
How are the Common Core standards related or not related to real learning?
What do we know from research and from our experience as teachers about the cognitive development of children and adolescents?
How do we engage students as learners and thinkers?
How can we, as the state with the largest achievement gap, close that gap?
How can we, as a state, promote equity?
Do the SBAC tests measure real learning?
How do we best prepare students for their future?
What do you think? Let the conversation begin…