Common Core

The thoughtful conversation found in Rick Hess’s interview with Student Achievement’s Jason Zimba about the challenges of CCSS implementation is a welcome reprieve from the noise generated by CCSS critics lately. The idea that the CCSS do not allow you to get to Algebra in 8th grade, or to teach great literature in EVERY grade, is ludicrous. I know this because my organization, Common Core, has created extensive curriculum materials based on both the ELA and mathematics standards. And when you write detailed curricula you get to know the standards on which they are based quite well.

That said, standards are just standards. And even world-class standards like the CCSS will succeed only if they are implemented with fidelity. High-quality curriculum and effective professional development are the keys to our students’ success. How about we have a discussion about how to do those well rather than continue this navel-gazing conversation about standards that teachers are already putting in to practice in almost every state? While wonks bicker the forces of establishment mediocrity are struggling to keep their stranglehold on classrooms and cement low achievement for another generation. The standards present an opportunity to—and a world-class platform for—truly changing what happens in America’s classrooms. It would be tragic to miss that opportunity. Let’s get in the game.

Dr. Tim Shanahan, director of the University of Illinois’ center for literacy and chair of the department of curriculum and instruction, knows the secret for teachers to successfully put into practice Common Core ELA standards. Buy better books. He pens in his blog, Shanahan on Literacy: “I can’t imagine schools reaching the common core without making changes to their texts (how big those changes will need to be will depend on what is in place now, of course).”

As a K-4 ELA teacher in a Title One public school, I attest to the great need of thinking differently and more critically about text acquisition. Simply covering a topic with a non-fiction leveled reader, or reading a story because there is already a set of multiple copies in the closet down the hall, does not create a palate for a Common Core lesson. The writers of the standards did NOT place an illustrious set of text exemplars in Appendix B simply to pump up text levels. Rather, they are there so teachers like me are reminded how wonderfully complex a text can be at all grade levels and how much more fulfilling these engaging texts are for students.

Elegantly written and illustrated texts allow teachers to pose deeper, richer questions that engage students and stir deep thinking over the “big” issues. When the text is not written in a way that is sculpted for literary value in addition to gushing with content, little, if any, meaningful learning occurs. Nor can you require “close reading” when students learned all there was to learn in the text during their first read.

This week in fourth grade, I was working with myths and the treatment of similar themes and topics (e.g., opposition of good and evil). Cynthia Rylant’s use of language in her retelling of “Pandora’s Box” (The Beautiful Stories of Life: Six Greek Myths), brought me to tears. Her words wrapped our minds around “hope,” gave my students a glimpse of a universal theme, and hurtled them into thoughtful analysis.

…And with that one small act, Pandora changed the fate of mankind. For what she caught and returned to the box was Hope….

But Pandora reached out and she captured it and did not let it go. Because she did so, and placed it back inside the box, hope is alive today. It lives in darkness.

And in darkness man finds it.

It takes money from a budget somewhere to purchase this lovely book and some may point me, instead, to an online version. But read through this shallow, and cartoonish, description the students would have read about hope if they had read just what was readily available online:

“Hello, Pandora,” said the bug, hovering just out of reach. “My name is Hope.” With a nod of thanks for being set free, Hope flew out into the world, a world that now held Envy, Crime, Hate, and Disease – and Hope.

The difference in text is earth-shattering. And, the level of text-dependent questions I could pose for Rylant’s magnificent book attain a level of understanding and provoke an examination of text that could never occur when using that leveled reader from the well-stocked classroom book closet.

So, yes, Dr. Shanahan. You’ve unlocked the secret. Schools cannot reach the “common core without making changes to their texts.”

Lorraine Griffith

Common Core trustee Carol Jago  is on a roll.  Not only did she recently write (in the Washington Post) the smartest thing we’ve read about the literary vs. informational text “debate,” but now she’s published a New York Times piece that provides any educator with an excellent lesson in how to write the sort of  “text-dependent questions” that are at the heart of Common Core State Standards implementation.

Carol is first and foremost a teacher, as well as past president of the National Council of Teachers of English and current chair of the College Board’s English Academic Advisory committee.  In her NYT piece she took Richard Blanco’s inaugural poem, “One Today,” as her anchor text, providing educators with helpful background information on the history of the Inaugural poem, as well as on the genre of the “occasional poem.”  But her most valuable guidance is the marquee illustration she provided of how to write a series of text-dependent questions (TDQs) that encourage students to mine a text at a level of rigor that meets the expectations of the new Common Core State Standards.

The value of Carol’s piece extends far beyond its utility as a single lesson plan.  The ELA field is hungry for examples of how to create great TDQs, and Carol’s work here should be studied widely.  Well-written TDQs are a first step toward driving students’ understanding of essential details in a text and in honing their ability to make logical inferences.  These questions can help to ensure that students read a text closely and understand (especially in the case of a poem) how form contributes to meaning.  TDQs are the spine of Common Core’s forthcoming “Curriculum Maps in United States and World History,” and of the next generation of our ELA maps.

Lynne Munson

Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, and Yong Zhao, associate dean for global education at the University of Oregon’s College of Education, agree that labor markets continue to go global and that it is unclear what new jobs could emerge for today’s students, raising the question of how best to educate students today. In a Washington Post blog, however, Tucker challenges Zhao’s claim that “standards mean standardization…[which] lead to an inability to produce creative solutions.”

Tucker, instead, argues that “without broad agreement on a well-designed and internationally benchmarked system of standards, we have no hope of producing a nation of students who have the kind of skills, knowledge and creative capacities the nation so desperately needs.” And, he’s right. Standards are just that –just standards. Any set of standards–no matter their quality–can fail to improve instruction if they are not taught through high quality content. Curriculum, then, seals the marriage between great standards and great content.

Helping grow creative thinking young people is the job of a rich curriculum tied to standards that benchmark learning. The quality of texts selected, both literary and informational, the examination and analysis of works of art, the challenge and appropriateness of student assignments all blend together to produce rigorous learning with stimulating materials so students can gain knowledge while thinking about big ideas and universal themes. That is where creativity, innovation – “play” as Tucker and Zhao agree – will come from.

Providing such a solid school experience ensures that whatever jobs surface during the rest of this century, students will be prepared to apply the knowledge they absorbed and the thinking they developed in school to succeed in the global workplace.

Barbara Pape

Walk down memory lane with us as we revisit one of our favorite holiday blogs.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Had It Right

(Originally posted Tuesday, December 13th, 2011)

Sometimes a Christmas TV special delivers more wisdom than it intended. Like millions of other parents I watched “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” this past weekend with my kids. They absolutely loved it. My 5-year-old daughter was saddened when the other reindeer teased Rudolph, and touched by Clarice’s affection. My 3-year-old son shouted “SCARY” when the Abominable Snow Monster growled over the mountaintops and swatted at Cornelius. Both keep skipping around the house singing “Silver and Gold.” My kids’ reaction was no different than mine when I first saw the show not long after it debuted in 1964.
What strikes anyone who watches Rudolph today is how basic this stop-motion classic is. The set for the show appears to be made of little more than felt, foil wrappings, beads, and plastic snow. The characters are of course puppets, made of wood, wool, faux fur, and vinyl. If you look real closely you can see the lead wires on the puppets’ hands—and the dirt on Santa’s gloves. This is low-tech.
Rudolph is one of a handful of 60s-era shows that continue to dominate the Christmastime TV lineup. The others—you could name them—include “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” These shows are successful, of course, because they are beautifully crafted interpretations of great stories, either from books or from song. It is the quality of the storytelling that keeps these tales around. They not only don’t suffer from their low-tech-ness, but their simplicity helps us to focus on the story and characters.
Even though the broadcast and cable networks generate oodles of new shows every holiday season that they hope will enter this vaunted lineup, none has made it (though Polar Express appears to be making a good run for it.). Most of these shows are faster-paced than the old stand-byes and, needless to say, far more slick.
My point is that technology is no replacement for quality content. A great story—no matter how simply told—will still shine through. And a poor one—no matter how aided by special effects—will still fail.
One can draw a similar parallel between curriculum and education technology. A curriculum rich in literary, historical, artistic, and scientific knowledge can of course make good use of new technologies, as long as they are smartly used in the service of the content and skills a teacher is trying to teach. Such a curriculum also can work unaided. But a weak, content-free curriculum based on vacant ideas such as “reading strategies” and relying on dry, incoherent basals containing “leveled” excerpts will fail, no matter how actively one tries to animate this dead material on a SmartBoard.

Lynne Munson

Much of the virtual water cooler conversation launched by last week’s Washington Post article entitled “Common Core Sparks War over Words” has focused on who shoulders the burden for teaching the increased amounts of informational text called for in the Common Core State Standards. While important, this debate misses the far more interesting question of why folks insist on so narrowly defining informational text in the first place.

Rather than excising great literary works from the curriculum, Common Core believes the new standards might simply be calling on teachers to expand their repertoire. Evidence that the intent is not to exclude narrative nonfiction is found in the standards themselves (page 5): “Fulfilling the Standards for 6-12 ELA requires much greater attention to a specific category of informational text—literary nonfiction—than has been traditional.” Literary nonfiction, which includes biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies, also includes accounts of pivotal moments in history, recounted in narrative form, whose purpose is, first and foremost, to impart information. Common Core hopes the new call for informational text will grant teachers the opportunity to seek out engaging nonfiction, which, among other things, has the power to incite interest in otherwise disinterested readers. Exposing elementary school students to such age-appropriate books and stories that include rich illustrations will often engender a drive to learn that more traditional informational text, with technical language and a bunch of graphs, charts, and diagrams can’t.

Early next year, our organization will be releasing U.S. and World History Maps for grades K-5 that can be used to teach history content and ELA skills. The literary nonfiction works selected are as rich as any elementary school teacher could hope to find and yet they impart much needed background information to students. For example, Moonshot by Brian Floca tells the story of the flight of Apollo 11. It is a beautifully written story, full of information about America’s space exploration, but capable of captivating the minds of students in grades 3 to 5 for whom it is targeted.

Let’s seize this opportunity to expand what students read, and select engaging informational texts that encourage students to read to learn. If we seek to inspire our students with engaging texts, making nonfiction selections will not be a chore. It will be a welcomed adventure.

Barbara Davidson