Common Core

We’ve mostly criticized NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein in the past.  We’re not enthusiastic about much that he’s done.  But he just announced a limited pilot program to improve reading at 10 of NYC’s failing schools.  CC board co-chairman Diane Ravitch discusses the program in today’s New York Post.  The program, which was developed by the Core Knowledge Foundation, stresses phonics along with students’ need to have broad content knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences.  This is the sermon we’ve been preaching all along–that students can only learn to read and read better when they know something.  We’re glad Joel Klein agrees, and hope that students at far more than just 10 of NYC’s schools will soon benefit.

Alex Nazaryan, an English teacher who works with Common Core’s Board of Trustee Jason Griffiths at the Brooklyn Latin School, is a writer and blogger on the New York scene.  Common Core asked him to share his thoughts on the importance of a liberal arts education. In these charged political times, words like liberal have an unnecessarily strong connotation, but we would do well to remember that the classical definition of liberality recalls open-mindedness and wide learning, a mastery of many areas of intellectual devotion at once - a sort of mental ambidexterity. At Brooklyn Latin our understanding of a liberal education stems from the conviction that nothing readies a young person for the world better than a secondary education that takes our students to many places (ancient history, chemistry, Latin) without setting them down in any one for too long.  We would rather our students leave Brooklyn bewildered by the richness of choices before them - having spent four years reading Aristotle, solving algorithms, analyzing Dutch Renaissance paintings - instead of heading to college with the unshakeable faith that life has one profession, one specialty, in store for them.  We can offer them no better gift for the road ahead, in my opinion, than a liberal education and an open mind.

by Jason Griffiths 

I recently had the pleasure to travel to Italy to attend a friends’ wedding outside of Trani, a small city on the country’s southeastern coast. Yes, the landscape was beautiful and the food divine. What was also memorable, however, was repeatedly discovering the values of my liberal arts education. I have always pointed to my introduction to the liberal arts (including the study of Latin and Greek) in ninth grade as the turning point in my life. But it was on this trip, my first to Europe as an adult, that I fully cherished my exposure to a liberal education in high school and college.  When we awoke on our first morning in Trani and looked out over the crystal blue water, I knew we were looking at the Adriatic Sea. When we traveled to Rome, I was able to place the Roman Republic, the rise of the Roman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire in historical context as I viewed ruins, which were thousands of years old. I understood the role the Medici played in the Renaissance, the symbolic power Michelangelo’s David draws from the Biblical story, and how the small town of Assisi could remain virtually impervious to the changes of the past seven hundred years. By the way, I was also able to figure out the complicated European rail system maps! Sure, most of my friends also possessed a deep understanding of the sites that we visited, but only because they too had a liberal education.

by Lorraine Griffith

Toward the end of this last school year, I had an “AHA!” moment as I listened to a folk singer lead our rural school faculty and student body in “This Land is Your Land.”  It was awesome to see all the subgroups that comprise our student body—the kids who come from poverty, various ethnic backgrounds, our special needs children, etc—finally relieved in the midst of the stress NCLB testing season brings and singing as one!  Everyone had been sweating the coming of the big test all year long and now it was May, only a few weeks before the test, and they were singing as if they had no cares in the world.  And it occurred to me, we should sing more!  So I jumped up and ran to my principal shouting:  “Carmen!  We should sing more!  The songs that kids should know and the songs that help kids read.” So this next year, all 800 students and faculty in this rural North Carolina community are going to sing more.  We’ll sing songs in the public domain like “Do You Know the Muffin Man” and good old southern songs like “Goober Peas.”  Just for the educational fun of it, we are also going to compile some data – especially for our ESL students who may store up vocabulary words in songs like “America the Beautiful” or the struggling readers who may begin to recognize  sight words that melodically float by as they sing “There’s a Hole in the Bucket.”  I can’t wait!

by Diane Ravitch

When I read this article about the Ohio principal who apologized to his students and staff for subjecting them to endless, mindless testing and test-prepping, I was reminded of a similar story from a Florida paper a few months ago. In that article, the reporter said that all instruction stops in Florida schools for weeks before the state tests. Instead of instruction, students are subjected to day after day of test preparation. I doubt that anyone in Florida has apologized to the kids who lost a good chunk of the school year to prepare for the state tests. Listen, folks, this testing stuff is getting out of control. The test should be a genuine assessment of what kids know and can do, not an ordeal that forces schools to give up recess, the arts, history, geography, civics, and everything else that is not tested. It was interesting and depressing to read the comments that followed this article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Person after person berated the principal, the teachers, the students, the unions. There was a distinct tone of hostility towards all of them, a belief that kids today and teachers today are getting away with murder, and that the little beasts and their teachers need to have a dose of unpleasantness in their lives. Take away the summer break! Make them suffer like we did! Think life is easy? Think again! I don’t think education is going to get any better when such angry, punitive attitudes drive public policy.  

An article today in Teacher Magazine spotlights parents teaching their children math–such as long division–that their son or daughter is not learning in school.   According to the Associated Press, long division and other familiar formulas have been supplanted, in an increasing number of schools, by concept-based curricula aiming to teach the ideas behind mathematics rather than rote procedures.  The battle over the best way to teach math, or the “Math Wars,” is between those who think the primary emphasis should be on teaching students basic operational mathematics—including long division and multiplication tables—and those who call those methods “rote” and prefer students learn the concepts behind mathematics.  While educators debate these issues, it is clear where most parents are coming down on the matter.  According to Victoria Morey, who teaches her 9-year-old son long division at home:  “Would you want to go to a doctor who’s learned about the concepts but never done the surgery?  Would you want your doctor to say I had the right IDEA when I removed your appendix, though I took out the wrong one?”  In math, as in history and other subjects, it helps to have a base of knowledge before moving on to conceptualizing and critical thinking. 

-          Jacki

Jacki and I attended a panel at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday on the Jay Greene report I blogged about earlier this week.  Marcus Winters, co-author of the report, was presenting along with Jane Hannaway from the Urban Institute and David Figlio from the University of Florida.  It was a very collegial affair, even though the report attracted substantial criticism.  Figlio lauded the researchers for the positive trend they found in science proficiency.  But he added that the report didn’t prove that the increase in science test scores was causally linked to the increase in math and reading scores.  He characterized as “modest” the strength of the authors’ correlation of science scores with those in reading and math.  That correlation is the key evidence the report puts forward to assert that testing in high-stakes subjects doesn’t hurt students’ performance in low-stakes subjects in the state of Florida. 

When the Q and A began, I suggested that calling science a “low-stakes” subject in Florida was misleading (which was sort of a position the panel had coalesced to in the course of its deliberations).  After all, a school’s overall performance on the FCAT (Florida’s Comprehensive Achievement Test), which tests students’ reading, math, and science proficiency is a key factor in determining what grade the school receives under the state’s A+ assessment system.  Science scores started counting toward the A+ determination just this year but—as Hannaway pointed out—”the writing was on the wall” for some time with regard to science scores carrying real stakes in Florida.  And Figlio, who lives in the state, noted that students’ performance on the science part of the FCAT has made front page news since the test began.  Marcus didn’t disagree with my assertion that science was a high-stakes subject in Florida, but suggested that reading and math were “higher” stakes. 

A little later Amber Winkler, research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, questioned the validity of using prior reading and math scores as a proxy for prior science scores. Basically, in order to gauge whether or not an increase in science scores had occurred, Greene and Winters constructed a faux science “score” using 2001-2002 math and reading results so that they would have a measure to compare with 2002-2003 science scores.  Asked by Winkler how commonplace it was in studies such as these to construct prior scores in one subject from those in another, Winters responded that he “wasn’t sure as they’d never had that problem before.” Winkler told me she wondered why the researchers hadn’t just waited until they could compare science scores to science scores.

NOTE:  When I wrote about this report earlier this week, I criticized Greene for asserting in a blog he’d written promoting the report that its findings would “debunk” and prove “unfounded” statements made by CC co-chair Diane Ravitch and Fordham President Checker Finn.  He’s now complained (see comment below) that he never used the words quoted above.  I of course never said he used those particular words and hence did not put quotes around them when I used them.  Any reader of his original posting (which he’s copied into his comment below) can see that that was precisely the inference he was trying to make when he quoted Diane and Checker at length on the narrowing issue and then asked people to read his report “to find out whether these concerns are supported by the empirical evidence from Florida.”  Well, we’ve read the report and our concerns are far from allayed.  Enuf said.

The Manhattan Institute came out with a report Tuesday that looks at gains in science achievement among a small group of Florida fifth-graders.  It was somewhat cheekily promoted earlier this week by co-author Jay Greene as offering evidence that claims of narrowing the curriculum under NCLB were unfounded.  I say cheekily because Greene specifically cited statements by Common Core co-chair Diane Ravitch and Fordham president Checker Finn as examples of the kind of claims this research would debunk.  But the study’s findings don’t back up Greene’s spin.  Not even close.   The study found that, for students enrolled in a school receiving an “F” grade under Florida’s A+ assessment system, science proficiency increased about a .08 standard deviation.  The authors claim that there is “some evidence to suggest” that that gain was enabled by increases in student math and reading.  But as their strongly qualified language signals, the evidence offered up is far from convincing.  And there are numerous other possible explanations for the increase in science proficiency—including the fact that performance on the science test carries stakes within Florida’s A+ system and that NCLB now requires science testing.  Even though performance on science tests are not “high-stakes” under NCLB (as scores don’t count toward AYP), the scores do count toward the grades schools receive within the state—and all of this testing undoubtedly affects the emphasis given science in Florida classrooms.  So science testing is “high-stakes” in Florida.  This could very well explain the increased science proficiency Green et al. identified.  The Manhattan Institute study might have been more interesting if they had looked at a subject entirely overlooked by Florida’s A+ system and by NCLB, such as history.  That would’ve been difficult to do but it would’ve really given us something to talk about. Lynne

My family participates in a nannyshare.  For those who might not be up on modern daycare arrangements, let me explain that a “share” is when families—typically two—share the services of a nanny.  One of the fun side-benefits of a share is that you get to know other families quite well.   The father of the other child in our share right now is a DC public school teacher.  He left a lucrative job as a corporate attorney a few years back because he loves learning—history, in particular—and thought he could make a great contribution in the classroom.  Anyone who meets him sees that he just oozes with the energy and enthusiasm that can make a great teacher.  But, in talking about my work for Common Core, he admitted that he’s been frustrated to see how the pressures of testing have thwarted his efforts to convey important knowledge to his students.  The way he explains it, every year after the winter break, word goes out across the school that the teaching of social studies must halt.  The reason is that early January is the point in the school year when every class turns into a test-prep class, no matter the grade and no matter what subject the teacher normally teaches.   He’s allowed to resume teaching social studies in April, after testing season has passed, but says that it is difficult to get his students to pick up the narrative once again.  Students undoubtedly also take the subject less seriously, since they see their school doing so.   No matter how many studies you read about the narrowing of the curriculum, hearing one teacher’s story is sobering.   Lynne

Last month Education Week reported on a study conducted by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes indicating that reading scores have improved for students in incentive programs.   These programs give students money, MP3 players, or other gifts for good grades, a good test score, or even just doing their homework.  The study found “an average of 4 percentile points in students’ performance on standardized state reading tests for each year they participated in a rewards program.”  Will these students continue to be motivated upon reaching college – or in the real world where they will no longer receive a free iPod for doing their job?  A related article appeared in the Washington Post Express print edition on Monday, June 16, where Edward Deci, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester, said “there is evidence that once a reward is taken away, people become even less motivated than they were before the experiment began… schools must make learning interesting, so children want to participate and do well.”  Indeed instead of bribing school children, let’s just get them to fall in love with art, literature and studying the past.  That’s the better strategy….in the long run.

- Jacki