Mathematician Finds P21’s New Math Skills Map “Does Nothing to Help Teachers”

May 15th, 2012

Readers of this blog are familiar with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), a collaborative of technology and education companies that aggressively advocates for reorienting K-12 education around the teaching of “21st century skills.”  We’ve been on P21’s case since 2009, when three scholars who we asked to conduct an in-depth study of P21’s program found it lacking in almost every way (to watch a panel where they presented their analyses, click here).  Common Core shares these scholars’ chief concern: That P21’s materials display a lack of concern for getting the basic content of K-12 education right, no matter the subject.  We’ve already critiqued P21’s “skills maps” in science, geography, and ELA.  They contained sample exercises in which students listened to speakers to determine which of them “sound scientific,” use globes and maps to create corporate logos, and translate Shakespeare into a text message. 

Now P21 has taken on the subject of mathematics.  So we asked another expert to take a look.  The critique below is written by Ben McCarty, Ph.D, assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Memphis.  Prof. McCarty has taught mathematics to first, second, and third-graders and to pre-service elementary teachers at Louisiana State University.  In addition to being deeply knowledgeable about mathematics, he also knows what a useful curriculum tool for the teaching of math should look like.  Not only did McCarty find nothing useful about P21’s new math skills map, he found the vast majority of exercises in it “ill-defined, lack content alignment, and possess a general lack of precision.”  According to McCarty:  “In fact, out of the 80+ examples proposed in the document, I count a grand total of 6 that I would consider relatively good math problems for the cited grade level.”  Prof. McCarty’s full analysis appears below.

-Lynne Munson

Einstein once said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”  This may seem like a pretty straightforward statement, but there’s real substance to it beyond the obvious humor.  It takes sophisticated expertise and true mastery of a subject to adhere to Einstein’s sage advice and present content in a clear, concise manner without “dumbing it down.”  Unfortunately, oversimplification is one of many mistakes made by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills Math Map.

In this resource, Mathematics content is gutted to make room for interdisciplinary topics, and the resulting problems are not, and in many cases cannot be, aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  In its current form the math map does nothing to help teachers with their day-to-day jobs of teaching mathematics.  Moreover, the interdisciplinary approach conveys a fundamental misunderstanding about what mathematics is—a discipline that is the study of what is common to all of the sciences.  The lack of content in some problems may be attributable to simple ignorance while others come across as blatant propaganda, and all for the sake of problems that fail to actually teach mathematics.

The document starts on a high note:  the very first set of examples presents 3 problems that get at key concepts and teach important mathematics.  However, from that point forward, the level of quality, and indeed, the level of mathematics, drops off precipitously.  In fact, out of the 80+ examples proposed in the document, I count a grand total of 6 that I would consider relatively good math problems for the cited grade level.  Granted, some of the remaining problems could be modified slightly to produce effective problems, but the point is this:  the overwhelming majority of the examples in the P21 Math Map do not effectively teach mathematics at the intended grade level.

At first glance, I thought the Map’s lack of alignment to the content standards was a mere oversight.  However, after determining that P21 leads with the most mathematically sound page in the entire document (page 6), it seems to me that the authors are well aware of the lack of content.   The 8th grade example on page 12, for instance, engages students in a wonderful discussion about the health content of a typical fast food meal, but mathematically, students are only computing percentages and comparing them to daily values.  That’s it.  This activity is well below the 8th grade content standards in the CCSS.   Worse still, the 4th grade example on page 21 has students tallying the number of various types of media messages they are exposed to on a daily basis.  Based on the description of the activity, no analysis is done with the data beyond basic counting–a Preschool/Kindergarten skill.

Furthermore, consider the 8th grade example on page 26, which has students create a weeklong lunch menu with the goal of minimizing water usage (that’s the “math” part).  Forget for a moment that once again the calculations done here amount to simple addition and comparisons, what constraints are we expected to use?  The stated constraints are that the menu be both “appealing and nutritious.”  What does that mean with respect to water usage?  Finally, the 12th grade example on page 23 has students collect and display data on developing countries, as well as build a webpage to display the information.  The students don’t generate the data.  They don’t do calculations with the data.  They merely read about a poor country, and publish data on it.  Sure, these examples might be interesting to students, but as mathematical exercises they are frequently ill-defined, lack content alignment, and possess a general lack of precision that flat-out contradicts P21’s claim that these problems will encourage students to “attend to precision.”  Does P21 or its supporters really believe for a minute that simple arithmetic problems and routine data collection assignments will prepare students for professional careers as engineers, doctors, software developers, and the like?

P21 has chosen to focus more on projects than problems in their curriculum.  Indeed, a few of the projects are quite good, and would be valuable for students to spend several weeks or a month working on.  A few of the projects actually go so far as to introduce students to some graduate level mathematics.  A 12th grade example on page 19 has students explore knot theory.  This is a high-quality task, even if it can’t be aligned to any of the content standards of CCSS.  However, if the point of the math map is to help teachers plan, it should be observed that very few of the problems put forward by P21 are very helpful for this.  In fact, there is very little guidance within the P21 Math Map to assist teachers in building their day-to-day lesson plans, and the map does not provide any structure to help them plan out their year.  Instead, snapshots are presented which show a few examples of problems that teachers could use in their planning.

Even if these snapshots were good, solid problems, the P21 document only presents examples at the 4th, 8th, and 12th grade level.  Are the rest of the grades not worth addressing?  Of course, the real problem goes deeper than this, as the snapshots fail miserably to shed any light on how to make such projects fit into an actual curriculum.  For instance, the 8th grade example on page 16 has the students investigating potential causal relationships between crime rates and other factors.  This example certainly fits with 8.SP.4 of the CCSS.  However, the collection and presentation of the data represents large investments of time, and all for the sake of a minor mathematical issue that addresses only one content standard.

Beyond their disappointing lack of usefulness in teaching the CCSS effectively, P21 problems are often over simplified and appear to be written with an obvious bias or agenda in mind.  Simplification of an interdisciplinary problem to motivate and model abstract mathematical operations is an accepted practice in teaching mathematics. For example, engineers do not solve actual “spring problems” in their work, but they often do solve problems like spring problems.  The intuition gained from studying simple spring models in college helps them create the 2nd order differential equations needed to solve real engineering problems.  However, many examples in P21’s document are not used to discuss simple, general models or features common to all disciplines—one of the main values of learning mathematics as a discipline.  Instead, the problems focus on the discipline itself with mathematics as an afterthought.  For example, the 12th grade example on page 14 has students engage in a discussion about the allocation of seats in the US House of Representatives.  This is a great discussion to have, but I have to ask, was the problem chosen for its value in teaching a mathematical topic, or has a little math been used to justify a civics discussion within math class?

I suppose one might argue that education should include an emphasis on solving a wide array of unrelated, domain-specific problems.  In this view of education, however, simplification of the issue being discussed can be irresponsible.  Oversimplification of the issue can run the danger of becoming propaganda—where information is presented, or withheld, in order to influence someone to reach a pre-determined conclusion.  For instance, the 8th grade example on page 14 invites students to investigate the “cost effectiveness of buying a hybrid versus a non-hybrid car.”  This activity is certainly interesting and relevant today, and it even involves some linear functions.  However, the description of the students’ work focuses only on fuel economy and upfront cost.  While these are major factors, they are far from the only ones:  maintenance costs, longevity, and battery replacement immediately come to mind.  All of these affect the cost comparison, and should be addressed if we want to claim this problem teaches “financial literacy.”

The problem also claims to teach “environmental literacy” (even though it contains no thought-provoking questions about the environment).   I can only assume that they mean to somehow measure and compare the environmental impact of a hybrid versus non-hybrid car.  If that is indeed the intent, then the one factor that is considered, namely, fuel economy, is only one of many relevant factors, such as:  the environmental cost associated with producing a vehicle in the first place, differences in longevity between hybrid and non-hybrid cars, differences in the environmental impact of the batteries used in such cars, and the generation of electricity to charge the batteries of some hybrids (most of which involves burning coal or other fossil fuels).  All of these factors have a significant impact on the environment.  With this example, it appears that the P21 authors have oversimplified (by choosing only one yardstick—fuel economy) for the sake of having students conclude hybrid cars outperform conventional cars.

No matter how much the world around us may change, mathematics still works.  The same principles of mathematics that Pythagoras and his contemporaries were discussing 2500 years ago still apply today.  This is the power of mathematical abstraction:  that the mathematics of ancient Greece is still incredibly useful in our modern world.  To be effective in the 21st century, or any century, students need a strong knowledge of the content that P21 seems intent on ignoring.  The lack of content found in the examples presented in this article should not be viewed as exceptions.  These examples were chosen because they illustrate flaws that may be found throughout the P21 Math Map.  While the document contains a few decent examples, any teacher reading P21’s map should exercise a healthy amount of skepticism and ask themselves if the mathematical content of the problem is worth the time involved.  I would encourage teachers to look elsewhere.

Ben McCarty, assistant professor of mathematics, University of Memphis.

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Curriculum, Math and Science, Teacher Preparation | No Comments »

From Shakespeare to Steinbeck, Literature is Losing Value in School

April 24th, 2012

“Hamlet” or “ELA Test Prep 101”?  Today’s teachers often have to decide whether they will teach works of literature or test prep materials. Increasingly, test prep is winning.

Claire Needell Hollander is a middle school reading enrichment teacher in New York City.  Of Mice and Men,  Sounder, The Red Pony, “A Raisin in the Sun,” Lord of the Flies, The Catcher in the Rye, “Romeo and Juliet” and “Macbeth” are just a few of the classic works of literature she has taught her classes in recent years.  As a result of their exposure to these important books, Hollander’s students have experienced significant educational transformations.  For example, she describes witnessing one student’s “historical perspective broadening” and “sense of his own country deepening” as he read “The Grapes of Wrath”.  Additionally, Hollander writes that “year after year, ex-students have visited and told me how prepared they felt in their freshman year as a result of the classes.”  And yet, Hollander has a big problem: in today’s data driven assessment culture, how do you measure this kind of impact?

In her opinion piece Teach the Books, Touch the Heart for the New York Times, Hollander describes her struggle to preserve the use of classic literature in her classes due to increasing pressure from administrators to prove their effectiveness on raising student test scores.  She writes,

 As student test scores have become the dominant means of evaluating schools, I have been asked to calculate my reading enrichment program’s impact on those scores. I found that some students made gains of over 100 points on the statewide English Language Arts test, while other students in the same group had flat or negative results. In other words, my students’ test scores did not reliably indicate that reading classic literature added value.

As a result of this finding, Hollander had to cut two of the three classes to which she teaches classic literature, replacing them instead with a “test-preparation tutorial program.”  Now, only the highest-scoring students are allowed to keep taking her enrichment class and are the only ones in the school being exposed to high-quality texts with depth and substance.   The rest of the students are given “watered-down news articles or biographies, bastardized novels, memos or brochures — passages chosen not for emotional punch but for textual complexity.”

This scenario is illustrative of one of the most outrageous and deeply unfortunate consequences of the data-driven accountability movement that has consumed our education system in the past decade.  It has become increasingly common for mediocre, contrived test-prep materials to be seen as preferable to the works of Shakespeare and Steinbeck because such works are more efficient vehicles for teaching to state tests.  This is not only absurd, it is unnecessary, and is likely doing more harm than good.  At Common Core, we encourage all policymakers, educational leaders, and teachers to evade this regrettable outcome and fight to preserve literature’s purpose and place in schools.

Emily Dodd

Posted in Assessment, Curriculum, English/Language Arts, Teacher Perspective, What We're Reading | 2 Comments »

Taking the Fun out of Reading

March 30th, 2012

It’s not everyday you hear a veteran teacher advise her colleagues to “Stop telling students that reading is fun.”  However, in her article Opening the Literature Window, Carol Jago does just that.  Jago argues that under the category of “fun,” reading stands a shaky chance against its flashy competitors, namely video games and television.  Besides, she argues, the job of the teacher is not to make reading fun.  Instead, it is the teacher’s responsibility to employ reading as a vehicle for deeper learning.  Jago writes, “Literature study…offers students windows onto other worlds, other cultures, other times.”  The act of reading itself does not have to be enjoyable, but the content students learn from reading should be meaningful and stimulating. High-quality and challenging texts are an integral part of a rich education, and teachers are charged with the task of helping students to navigate and glean meaning from such texts.  Thus, Jago implores educators to amend the “reading is fun” mantra, and re-frame reading as a challenging and intellectually edifying activity that is deserving of students’ time, effort, and persistence.  We wholeheartedly agree.

Emily Dodd & Hillary Marder

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Event Highlights: “Truant From School: History, Science, and Art”

March 20th, 2012

On Thursday, March 15, Common Core hosted a panel discussion titled “Truant from School: History, Science, and Art”.  Among the topics discussed were the results of Common Core’s national survey of public school teachers titled “Learning Less“.  Common Core also announced that we will be creating CCSS-based curriculum maps in history and geography.

Full video of the discussion will be available soon.  Here are some outtakes from the event:

David Coleman, a founding partner of Student Achievement Partners and a lead writer of the CCSS in ELA.

[CCSS co-author] Sue Pimentel and I think if fundamental changes are not made to the quality of curriculum, and the quality of assessment, following the [CCSS], they will not have been worthy of the work that was put into them.  Period.

There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in Kindergarten through 5th grade without coherently developing knowledge in science, and history, and the arts.  Period.  It is false.  It is a fiction.  And that is why NAEP scores in early grades can improve slightly but collapse as students grow older. Because it is the deep foundation in rich knowledge and vocabulary depth that allows you to access more complex text.

Let’s not get confused here that [the CCSS] are adding back nice things [history, arts, science] that are an addendum to literacy.  We are adding the cornerstones of literacy, which are the foundations of knowledge, that make literacy happen.

There is no greater threat to literary study in this country than false imitations of  literature which do not deserve to be read.

States in this first year of [CCSS] implementation, we beg you, to turn back mediocre or low-rate materials, rather than buy them stamped “Common Core.” If we must wait, it is better than to misrepresent the Standards with second-rate stuff.  Please support states and districts in being brave and holding the line on excellence and giving time for a better generation of materials to take hold.

Lynne Munson, President and Executive Director of Common Core.

A sea change has occurred, largely unintended, that has stripped public education in America down to merely its nuts and bolts. We know students need a full education, particularly those who are perhaps unlikely to acquire knowledge of history, or the arts, or the wider world outside of the classroom. How can we use the levers of change available to educators right now, to bring some of these key subjects back into the curriculum?

Common Core is very happy to announce that – with the support of the Louis Calder Foundation – we will be creating a series of curriculum maps in history and geography.  These maps will be based on content drawn from the best existing state social studies standards and they will address the new CCSS literacy standards in history and social studies.  They will be a guide that elementary and middle school teachers can use to build their students’ knowledge in history andgeography as they address and reinforce standards.  These new maps are another concrete step CC is taking toward addressing the problem of curriculum narrowing.

Carol Jago, a veteran teacher who has taught English in middle and high school for 32 years and directs the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA.  She is currently past president of the National Council of Teacher of English.

Across the nation, teachers say “I don’t have time to teach literature and literary nonfiction anymore”  Why?  Because the focus turns to the behaviors that students need to perform on assessments.  What’s wrongheaded about this is that, with every fiber of my body, I know that the best prep for any kind of assessment in reading is to read and that students who read 20, 30, 40 books a year are probably going to have a pretty good vocabulary, understand complex syntax, and know what to do when they meet challenges in text.

The real heart breaking part of this though, is that the students who find themselves most often in the classes that are literature lite [and] reading lite, are those students who are most disengaged from school.  So what are they experiencing? They experience a content-free curriculum. And the result is that instead of what we hope is a meaningful day in education, it’s meaning-less. And so it reaffirms these students’ belief that school is about nothing. English– that’s about commas and stuff– and that is the opposite of what those of us who love literature, love teaching students about literature, and love engendering those rich conversations about literature, would love to happen.

Lewis Huffman, Education Associate for Social Studies at the South Carolina Department of Education.

(Referring to Learning Less survey statistics) 71% of high school teachers surveyed said that students will have rad the Constitution by the time they graduate.  My question is, but will they understand it?  Another statistic, 92% of those teachers said students will know who fought whom in WWII.  My question: But will they know why?  And I think those are critical things.

Social Studies classes especially in Elementary schools have been reduced or eliminated.  In [South Carolina] a couple of years ago we were talking about the possibility of eliminating social studies assessments.  Within a week, I had teachers calling me, telling me that their school administrators werealready telling them “you don’t have to teach as much social studies” or “you maybe don’t have to teach social studies at all.”

 

Emily Dodd

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Three Cheers for Core Knowledge!

March 12th, 2012

A study released today shows that students made significant achievement gains in reading when they were taught with a content-rich curriculum.  The data comes from a 3-year pilot study of Kindergarten through 2nd grade students taught with a curriculum created by the Core Knowledge Foundation (CK), founded by Cultural Literacy author E.D. Hirsch, Jr.  The pilot involved 1000 students across 20 New York City public schools.  Half of those students were taught with CK’s curriculum, half with some version of “balanced literacy,” a hybrid, whole language-inspired approach to teaching reading that is used in most NYC public schools.

According to the New York Times, “The study found that for each of the three years, students in the Core Knowledge program had greater one-year gains on a brief reading test than their peers in the
comparison schools.  The difference was most pronounced in kindergarten, when the scores of children following Dr. Hirsch’s method showed increases that were five times those of their peers.”

As CC watchers know, we’ve long been fans of CK’s curriculum materials, which put core subjects including history, science, and art, at the heart of the process of learning to read.  Core Knowledge’s sequence was one of many sources of inspiration for the teachers who wrote our CCSS-based Common Core Curriculum Maps in ELA.

Lynne Munson

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Virginia Calls Off the Attack on Science and Social Studies!

March 9th, 2012

This past January, the Virginia State Senate passed a bill (SB185) that would end state history and science testing for all 3rd graders.  In response, Common Core posted this blog, in which we expressed our concern that this bill could cause these two critically important core subjects to be granted less prominence in Virginia’s school curriculums. Common Core shared this post with every state legislator in Virginia, in the hopes that the delegates would heed our arguments and abandon any effort to move forward with the bill.

Today, Common Core is excited to report that we have just received an update on the status of SB185 from the offices of Virginia delegate Bob Tata.  We were informed that the Virginia House Committee on Rules has voted to table the bill and that SB185 will not be passed in the 2012 legislative season.  We are extremely grateful to Delegate Tata for this update, and are pleased that Virginia’s lawmakers have taken this step to ensure that the teaching of essential core curriculum content remains a priority in Virginia’s public schools.

Emily Dodd

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California’s Governor Cuts Arts, Foreign Language—Now Science. What’s Next?

March 5th, 2012

California Governor Jerry Brown is proposing to cut the state’s already minimal high school graduation requirement for science in half.  Currently California students must complete two courses – one in the biological sciences and another in the physical sciences – to graduate.  Brown has released a budget that replaces this with just one class.  That means California high-schoolers could graduate having taken only an earth science class and have no knowledge of the basics of biology, chemistry, or physics and zero exposure to laboratory practice.  

Brown’s pitiful proposal is not worthy of the Silicon Valley state, or any state for that matter.  Most states require at least 2 years of science as a minimum graduation requirement.   However, many states, such as Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Virginia (whose 4th and 8th graders performed above the national average on the 2009 NAEP science exam) require at least 3 years of science for graduation.  In contrast, California’s fourth graders tied Mississippi’s for the lowest scores on the 2009 NAEP exam.  Based on this evidence, the logical response would be to increase California’s science requirement, not reduce it.

In fact, Common Core conducted an analysis of the NAEP science data in 2009 and found that the number of courses students took appeared to have a significant impact on their performance.  Here’s the key data from that analysis:

Students who took both biology and chemistry scored 15 points higher than those who just took biology or any other single science course, and those who took physics in addition to biology and chemistry scored 33 points higher than single science course-takers.  A quick analysis shows that this amounts, approximately, to an 11% improvement for each additional science course taken.  So students who took three science courses scored 22% higher than those who took just one.

Governor Brown is establishing a track record for lowering expectations for California public school students. Just last year the Governor put the arts and foreign languages on the chopping block.  In October, Brown signed a bill into law that eliminates the requirement for all students to take either a foreign language or arts course to graduate.  Students can now take career-technical education courses instead.  At the behest of Common Core and California-based arts and foreign language advocates, former Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill containing this same proposal in 2010.

Brown’s curriculum proposal would guarantee that thousands of students graduate high school unqualified for admission to California’s public universities.  CA’s state schools mandate that students take at least two years of a foreign language, and one year of art to qualify for admittance.   The California State University system requires applicants to have two years of science, while the University of California system recommends three science courses and mandates laboratory experience.  Thus, lowering the bar to only one year of science, while also eliminating any coursework in foreign language or the arts, puts California high school students at a terrible disadvantage.  If this trajectory continues, we hate to think what subject could be next on Brown’s hit list.   

Senate President Darrell Steinberg indicates he is in no hurry to validate the Governor’s budget plan: “We’re not going to rush to make any of these decisions, especially on the cuts side.”  This delay is an opportunity for concerned parents, teachers, and students to voice their opposition.  In fact, some districts, including Vacaville Unified School District and Travis Unifies School District, have taken an immediate stand and announced that they have no plans to reduce the 2-year science requirement.  We hope Governor Brown heeds these warnings and retracts his proposal.

Lynne Munson, Emily Dodd, and Hillary Marder

 

Posted in Arts, Curriculum, Foreign Language, Math and Science, Standards | 3 Comments »

I ♥ “Curriculum Matters”

February 22nd, 2012

 

I’m not trying to butter up the folks at Ed Week.  Really.  I’ve been meaning to mention for a while how much I love the title of their blog that follows all things curriculum — “Curriculum Matters.”  Obviously, we agree.

Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution deserves the credit for reminding me how much I like it.  Curriculum Matters’s Catherine Gewertz posted a blog about his 2012 Brown Center Report on American Education, released last week.  Loveless addressed a range of topics, including reminding the world that the data suggests a tenuous connection if any between the quality of standards and student achievement.  By extension, Loveless argues that “despite all the money and effort devoted to developing the Common Core State Standards—not to mention the simmering controversy over their adoption in several states—the study foresees little to no impact on student learning.”

That seems like a big jump. We agree that standards aren’t enough.  So what does matter?  Well, curriculum matters.  And what, increasingly, is the task of curriculum-making based on?  STANDARDS, of course.   It seems to me a bit of a silly shell game to walk around talking about how standards don’t matter when every educator knows that quality standards can be a crucial ingredient in improving education. Having bad standards certainly doesn’t help.  And it seems like more than just a shell game, but a real exercise in putting one’s head in the sand, to dismiss the CCSS as unlikely to have impact because they are merely standards.

Are the CCSS perfect?  Of course not — no standards are.  But they are far better than what most states had.  The mere existence of the standards does not guarantee that students will do better.  But their mere existence has created an unprecedented opportunity to enhance the content and improve the quality of instruction in every classroom in 46 states and DC.  The standards have caused districts to look closely at curriculum, professional development, and much else that hasn’t been working and to consider big changes. Could all of this school and district-level focus on improving the content and quality of classroom instruction leverage meaningful improvement on a significant scale?  I hope even the most seasoned DC education wonk would say “yes.”

 

Lynne Munson

 

 

Posted in Curriculum, Standards, Uncategorized, What We're Reading | No Comments »

Dumping History in the Home of Washington and Jefferson

January 30th, 2012

Earlier this week the Virginia Senate passed a bill that would end state history and science testing in 3rd grade.  The reasons?  You can guess—money.  Dumping the tests would apparently save 920k in fy2013.  And, according to the bill’ sponsor Sen. John Miller, a desire to intensify elementary schools’ focus on reading and math instruction:  “I believe it makes common sense to concentrate on reading and math, and give a good basic foundation in those two core subjects for our students.”

Miller does not understand how children learn to read.  You simply cannot teach reading effectively if you aren’t building students’ academic vocabulary in history, science, and other core subjects. Students’ reading skills will stagnate after 4th grade if they have not been fed, and do not continue to get, a hearty diet of literature, social studies, and the sciences.  So sending the signal—as dropping assessments does more clearly than perhaps anything—to Kindergarten through 3rd grade teachers that history and science are less important than reading and math skills is perilous.

Unfortunately, most other states already have sent this signal.  The home of Washington and Jefferson is among the last holdouts that put a strong emphasis on history testing at the elementary level.  A 2008 report by StandardsWork found that they were one of just six states that that had mandatory social studies testing every year between 3rd and 8th grade. Things have only gotten worse since. And not just at the elementary level.  Last year we wrote about Maryland’s decision to scrub – again, supposedly for budgetary reasons – its high school graduation exam in Civics and Government.  These short-sighted decisions at the state level, along with national level threats such as the recent move to drop required science testing from NCLB, paint a grim picture for the content of public education.  And they do so at an odd and perilous time.

Forty-six states and DC are in the throes of implementing the new Common Core State Standards in ELA and Mathematics.  The full name of the ELA standards is the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (my italics).  These standards are not intended to drive history, science, and other subjects from the curriculum.  In fact, because of the strong emphasis the standards put on the importance of using informational (non-fiction) books, they are a wonderful platform for teaching students MORE about history, science, the arts, etc.  The standards are intended to be implemented in the context of a “well-developed, content-rich curriculum” (a quote from the CCSS’s preface), not in an intensely narrow, skills-only context.

While legislators in Virginia and elsewhere insist that elimination of the tests in no way minimizes their support for the content, we know from studies, including a recently completed study by our organization, that “what gets tested gets taught.”   Ninety-three percent of respondents in Common Core’s recent national survey of school teachers blamed high stakes tests in math and reading for the narrowing of the curriculum they see occurring.

Let’s not treat education like an expendable piece of infrastructure that can be mined for cuts when the budget gets tight.  In the end, narrowing our children’s education is the most costly mistake any state can make.

Lynne Munson with Emily Dodd and Barbara Davidson

Posted in Curriculum, History/Social Studies, Math and Science, Standards | No Comments »

What we’re reading…

January 20th, 2012

Kathleen Porter-Magee at the Fordham Institute has written excellent blog post in which she highlights an important difference between two schools of thought in the education reform movement.  Those that advocate for big picture “structural reform” in schools- essentially changing the way a school, district, or state education system is run, and the more detailed and nuanced “classroom level” reforms that involve what students learn, and how they are taught.  In her post she reviews a new book titled The Tyranny of the Textbook: An Insider Exposes How Educational Materials Undermine Reform by Beverly Jobrack, who argues that the latter approach is being overlooked, to the detriment of student performance and school improvement efforts.  Porter-Magee effectively conveys the merits, and challenges of this policy position.

The essential premise of the book- that the most important component of school reform that will drive student achievement is the choice of curriculum that they are taught- is one that Common Core supports and is working actively to promote.  Indeed, Porter-Magee astutely articulates this position in her post when she writes “standards alone will do little to drive student achievement if they are not implemented via, among other things, a thoughtfully designed curriculum.”  Though this solution is neither quick, nor easy, Common Core believes that an internal approach to school reform that focuses on the content students are taught, the methods and practices teachers use, and the effective implementation of this content is what truly effects student achievement, and ultimately creates better schools.

Posted in Curriculum, Standards, Teacher Perspective, Teacher Preparation, What We're Reading | No Comments »

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