-We can't get rid of Common Core because we have spent so much implementing it in our schools
-The people who are criticizing Common Core are ignorant and have not actually read the standards (the implication being, of course, that once you read them, you will love them).
-We are setting our own curriculum. No one else is doing it for us.
-If you are opposed to Common Core, you are one of those paranoid people who think the government is out to get you.
That same attitude is obvious in comments from Cape Girardeau's assistant superintendent in an article in today's Southeast Missourian:
Formative assessments are administered on a frequent basis -- such as daily or weekly -- to ensure students are on track in their learning.
Summative assessments are for the end of a unit, end of a semester or end of a year to make sure students learned what they needed to during those time frames.
(Assistant Superintendent Sherry) Copeland said students are doing much better on the assessments than they have in the past.
"We determine curriculum; we decide what textbooks, if any, we use, [and] what resources we use," Copeland said. Many of those resources are online with the advent of the district's 1:1 initiative at Central High School, where students were given laptops that could be converted into tablets.
That initiative will be moving down to Central Middle School in the fall.
"People who don't understand Common Core and are posting on Facebook and Twitter and really haven't read the standards," Copeland said. "That's concerning to me."
"We are constantly changing and improving as a society and education has to keep up with that. Missouri was right: We want our students to be college and career ready," she said.
It would be hard to fit in any more educational buzzwords in a passage. Districts are spending millions on 1:1 initiatives because Common Core requires that standardized tests be taken online. Even more technology has to be purchased because the tests begin in the lower elementary grades well before keyboarding instruction normally begins. And with the addition of the now-necessary keyboarding classes for elementary students, we are eliminating other instruction that would be far more valuable to them at that age.
The buzz words "college and career ready" are thrown around. Perhaps all of these computers will make it easy to step into the workplace, though I have my doubts, but please stop the nonsense about them making the students college ready. How many colleges and universities do we see that are providing the same kind of technology to all of their students? Not only is it not being done, but for most institutions of higher learning it is not even on the agenda for the distant future.
Cape Girardeau, Joplin, and other schools that have completely immersed themselves in the 1:1 philosophy and are totally changing teaching styles in order to make every lesson about the machines are not preparing the students for college where many of the classes will be done by lecture, a style that is considered disgraceful by the proponents of 21st Century education.
When the Cape Girardeau official talks about constant assessments, she is hitting on another of the problems with Common Core. While it is true that teachers are making assessments all the time and did even in the days before Common Core, this is not what is meant by assessments nowadays.
When it comes to today's educational landscape, everything is about the standardized tests and the testing companies are making a killing off Common Core. The students are being forced to take boring practice standardized tests that not only take away from valuable instructional time and destroy the joy of learning, but they have little educational value. Standardized tests were always meant be just one weapon in the educational arsenal. When everything revolves around them, education suffers. The Joplin R-8 School District, for example, has used McGraw-Hill's Acuity practice tests for years, taking them eight times a year to give the district an idea of where the students are when it comes to preparing for the end-of-the-year tests.
Even worse, I sat in on meetings in which we prepared curriculum based on the Acuity tests. Joplin is not the only school that thought it could game the system by buying practice tests from the company that prepared the annual MAP tests.
Now the entire state is being forced to do this since DESE (the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) has signed an $18 million contract with McGraw-Hill to not only provide the Common Core annual tests, but also to provide its practice Acuity tests to the entire state.
In other words, we will have all state schools building their curriculum around the tests and the practice tests. Missouri's schools will soon follow Joplin's example and not only have practice tests for the standardized tests, but also practice tests for the practice tests (yes, it happens on a regular basis).
With the Obama Administration's Department of Education basing the awarding of millions of dollars on whether states are implementing Common Core and whether evaluation of teachers is being based on standardized tests, you will not only see a sameness in the curriculum of all schools, despite the protests by Common Core supporters who know so much more than the rest of us, but you will also see more and more teaching to the test because the jobs of teachers and administrators are going to depend on it.
History does not look with kindness on Common Core supporters' argument that it would be horrible to eliminate Common Core because so much money has already been spent to implement it.
Suppose the same thing had been said about the integration of America's schools.
In fact, it was. Those who wanted to maintain the separation of the races in southern schools often cited how much money it was going to cost to change things and how much money had already been spent to build the system they had.
When something is wrong, keeping it because you have already spent so much money doing it, is not an intelligent argument.
7 comments:
The people that are against common core are the ones that have had to help their child/ren with their homework and what used to be one to two steps is now 10....to get the same answer! I'm not stupid by any means but I feel like a complete idiot when I can't help my child with his 3rd grade homework! It's ridiculous!
Those 24 Common Core 2009 Work Group Members
April 23, 2014
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/those-24-common-core-2009-work-group-members/
Another Common Core Standards link.
The Common Core License: Open for NGA and CCSSO Alteration
April 2, 2014 http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/the-common-core-license-open-for-nga-and-ccsso-alteration/
"Let us not forget that proponents of CCSS have repeatedly noted that CCSS is “not a curriculum.” Technically, they would still be able to say as much even if NGA and CCSSO expand their dictatorial reach and require that curriculum be submitted for their review prior to earning some CCSS “seal of approval.”
NGA and CCSSO could alter *their* CCSS copyright to require their approval of curricular materials used in school districts across the nation.
CCSS is all about sameness, for sameness can be mass produced and rake in phenomenal dolares for contemporary education profiteers.
Sameness is important for making money.
Some CCSS proponents, like Springfield, Missouri, school board member Annie Busch, call this sameness “consistency.”
Here is how “consistency” works:"
-We can't get rid of Common Core because we have spent so much implementing it in our schools
The Fallacy of Sunk Costs
-The people who are criticizing Common Core are ignorant and have not actually read the standards (the implication being, of course, that once you read them, you will love them).
Nope, looked at the accusations that it doesn't even reach pre-calculus by 12th grade and found them to be true. Knowing more than a bit about this sort of thing, that's unconscionable. But, hey, maybe the nation has too many people with STEM knowledge.
[...]
-If you are opposed to Common Core, you are one of those paranoid people who think the government is out to get you.
Yes, and your point is?
(That is, you can believe this, in my case have objective evidence it's true, although "it's nothing personal", but that has no bearing on this issue; it's an attacking the messenger, not the message.)
A few rebuttals to the arguments posted above:
"We can't get rid of Common Core because we have spent so much implementing it in our schools"
It would be one thing to pull the plug on the CC if you had data or results that suggested it was a bad idea or that students couldn’t succeed with more rigorous standards (in relation to past state standards). However, it’s incredibly irresponsible to sink so much time and money into the effort, only to abandon it because of political ideology or the fact that lawmakers “didn’t have a say” (re: they weren’t paying attention when the Common Core Initiative started in 2009, or when standards were put out for public comment in 2010, or when the state board adopted the standards in 2010, or when they (the legislature) appropriated money for implementation in 2011-2014.).
“The people who are criticizing Common Core are ignorant and have not actually read the standards (the implication being, of course, that once you read them, you will love them).”
I think there are legitimate critiques of the CC (one of the posters above cited the path to precalculus). However, as alluded to by the Cape asst. super, when people post on Facebook copies of HW that is “Common Core” but the HW does not reflect the CC at all, it is clear they do not understand what the Common Core is (for example, nowhere in the CC does it require students to subtract multi-digit numbers using a number line, the poorly written problem from an unknown textbook that has circulated and that has been painted as emblematic of CC).
Additionally, some rail against the Common Core tests. I firmly believe we over-test our students and would love to find a ways to diminish the influence and repercussions of these tests in school and teacher evaluations. However, the Common Core IS NOT a specific assessment or tests. These exams are created by separate entities using the CC as their basis. The Common Core IS NOT a specific textbook or textbooks—these are created by publishing companies and authors using the CC as a guide.
The Common Core IS a set of learning expectations that outline what a student should know and be able to do at each grade level. It is a state-led initiative—there was no federal involvement in the writing of the standards (the feds came in after the 2010 release to assist states—ironic that some lawmakers blast the standards for the federal involvement, but I don’t recall them rejecting the federal money that came to assist in implementation). In the past, if students moved across state lines, there was no guarantee they would have had similar experiences to learn the same material. (So say if you moved from Pittsburg, KS to Joplin, MO, you may have already learned some material that your peers would be learning for the first time, or be behind your peers because they had already covered the material and you hadn’t). With the CC, there is now a set of common learning expectations that are taught at any specific grade level—regardless of the state in which you live (presuming your state adopted CC). It still doesn't guarantee you will be at the same point in the school year as your new peers or would have equivalent learning experiences if you move across state line, but that disparity should be greatly reduced.
More rebuttal to the earlier post:
“We are setting our own curriculum. No one else is doing it for us.”
The CC outlines a common set of expectations detailing WHAT students should learn. Decisions regarding HOW and WHEN these standards are taught, as well as additional material that states want to add to the CC, are left up to state and local officials. As of early 2013, 35 of 45 states adopting CC chose not to add additional standards to the Common Core. However, some of the states that have been “opting out” (IN, OK) have been now adding their standards to the CC and rebrandishing them as their own (which arguably they should have been doing in the first place, and what some states, including CA and AL, did originally).
“If you are opposed to Common Core, you are one of those paranoid people who think the government is out to get you.”
It’s not lost on me that many of the people cited on this blog and elsewhere in favor of the Common Core are education officials—teachers, administrators, education specialists. Why would so many education experts/insiders (people who live it, study it, work in it every day) favor this? I work with teachers across the K-12 spectrum, and overwhelmingly (but not unanimously), teachers were tired of the old system of low-level, procedural standards that did not force their students to think but rather memorize and cram for tests. These teachers are excited to be able to spend more time with fewer standards (past state standards were known for helping with the “mile wide and inch deep” curriculum) and to focus more on the meaning and conceptual foundation of what they are teaching rather than hurrying through the “this is how you do it” process.
On the flipside, so much (but not all) of the opposition is from education outsiders—pundits, idealogues on both sides of the aisle, and those who may be fearful of what the standards will change from past educational “successes”. The reality is there never has been “the good ol’ days” with regards to education. You can find report after report from the past century plus that have discussed the problems in education. The Common Core WILL NOT FIX THESE PROBLEMS but they are a small step in the right direction. The fact that bright people are struggling with helping their elementary students with their math HW (and I do not doubt for one minute that intelligent people might) suggest that they may not have understood the concepts as much as they learned a rule and made it through. Math is so much more than rules!! Unfortunately that’s the way it’s been taught (and I confess, I’ve taught it this way too), and so if you didn’t learn the rules, you weren’t good at math. And we accept this excuse!! (No one says ‘I was never good at reading/writing/English’). The reason it may be taking longer is that conceptual learning is much more involved than just memorizing a rule (which many students will end up confusing or forgetting). Wouldn’t you want your child to understand why and how something works the way it does rather than learn a slick rule? Yes, eventually you want your child to be efficient and know a formal algorithm (which by the way the CC prescribes, but only after students have spent time developing the concept).
In 2013, the MO house held a hearing to discuss the CC. Opposing the CC were national figures, some from DC think tanks, stating their opposition to CC. When asked by one legislator if the CC was better than the previous MO standards, one “expert” said she had never looked at the MO standards! Speaking in favor of the CC were two from the state dept, a nationally prominent math educator from the U of MO, and a teacher from Willard, MO. The teacher pointed out that those in opposition were from outside MO and by their testimony showed they knew little about MO education. The composition of these two groups should speak volumes regarding this debate!
In the end, Common Core is but one piece of a complex education system, and even with much better standards, the teacher is the most prominent factor in student success. Even if legislators kill CC, it will not go away (how many districts have CC aligned textbooks? How many teachers have now seen through CC professional development an alternative to rote, procedural methods of instruction and learning and see the power of teaching conceptually?). The hope is that, with a clear idea of WHAT they should be teaching, teachers can devote their energies and creativity to HOW they will teach the standards—which is why many teachers entered the field in the first place.
Post a Comment