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From Shakespeare to Steinbeck, Literature is Losing Value in School

Tuesday, 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 »

What we’re reading…

Friday, 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 »

Not even 10 minutes for Social Studies

Monday, November 28th, 2011

You can’t even make this stuff up.  The Dallas Morning News reports that teachers at Field Elementary School in Dallas have been fabricating social studies, science, music, art, and physical education grades for students. Was it because students were doing poorly in those subjects?  No.  It was because Field’s principal simply would not allow teachers to teach those subjects.

According to Field teachers they had to give students phony grades because the principal required them to spend all of their instructional time on math and reading.  A third grade science and math teacher told investigators his request to teach science for 10 minutes twice a week and social studies for 10 minutes once a week was denied.  Field’s principal told the teacher that students would “pick up” science knowledge though math lessons on creating and interpreting graphs.  According to a school counselor:  “I do not know of science being taught in 3rd or 4th grade, and I am unaware of social studies being taught at all.”

Many Field Elementary students also missed out on art, physical education, and music classes because they were pulled out of these “specials” for extra tutoring in math and reading.  A music teacher reported giving students all a grade of 95 because after the first six weeks of school she “never got to see them in music again.”  In one affidavit a math instructional coach reported “90 percent of third graders did not attend specials because of TAKS [Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills] tutoring.”

Field has earned the state’s highest school rating–“exemplary”—the last two years.  That judgment is based significantly on students’ performance on state reading and math tests, of course.

So, is what happened at Field a singular, potentially criminally extreme example of educational negligence?  Perhaps.  But the pressure that spurred Field’s principal is felt by public educators nationwide.  And this is far from the first time we’ve seen folks buckle under that pressure and do the wrong thing.  We’re reminded of the well-documented cheating scandals in DC and Atlanta.

Pressure can be an effective source of motivation.  It can also be used as an excuse to do the wrong thing—and to get others to go along.  As we begin to implement the CCSS and the new assessments to come we need to keep these stories in mind.  With its emphasis on informational text, academic vocabulary, and research, the CCSS in ELA provides an opportunity to fight curriculum narrowing, not an excuse to give in to it.  Social studies, science, and the arts are among a wide array of core subjects that can be taught in powerful ways via the new standards.  They should also continue to be taught in their own right, in part because no student will become a strong reader, writer, or researcher without the key knowledge those subjects impart.  No one should make the mistake Field did—and many other schools are likely doing in less dramatic ways–and set these subjects aside.

Lynne Munson

Posted in Assessment, Curriculum, History/Social Studies, Teacher Perspective, What We're Reading | 1 Comment »

Teachers and Reform

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

As students across the nation head back to school, their teachers have a bigger than usual lift ahead. They bear the brunt of many recent education reforms: from new standards and assessments to changes in teacher evaluation. Yesterday, we listened to none other than AFT’s Randi Weingarten and AEI’s Rick Hess discuss “When Reform Touches Teachers.” It’s an issue that we, as an organization focused on what gets taught, consider often.

Not shocking to find that Weingarten, a union leader, and Hess, a right-leaning education thinker, find little common ground on the macro issues, such as the role of unions like the AFT. But encouraging to hear them agree on one important issue: Both Weingarten and Hess believe teachers must be deeply involved in decisions about teaching and pedagogy.

As Weingarten puts it: “What are the tools and conditions teachers need to do their jobs?”

With this in mind, we recently surveyed teachers across the country to learn how policies have impacted their classrooms. We asked teachers on the front lines of reform to provide detailed reporting on what they see happening in their classrooms and schools. How are they spending class time? How does state testing affect what they do? Which subjects get more attention and which get less?

The answers augment what was previously only anecdotal evidence: Teachers—for both better and worse—are experiencing a policy-driven shift in how and what they teach.

Look for a full report on our findings, coming this Fall.

Stephanie Porowski

 

Posted in Assessment, Curriculum, Teacher Perspective | 1 Comment »

Assessing, for What?

Friday, March 11th, 2011

This blog is written by Emma Bryant, a New Tech High School teacher who is describing her first-hand experience with 21st century-skills education. Emma Bryant is a pseudonym.

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At my school, we expect our students to become proficient in skills that, presumably, will aid them in the 21st century. We assess our students’ mastery of several skills-based learning outcomes: critical thinking and innovation, communication, work ethic, collaboration, information technology, and technological literacy. We also assess students’ content knowledge (which usually accounts for 15-20% of a student’s overall grade).

But, looking over my students’ grades, I notice odd disparities between students’ content performance and their performance on the six skills. For example:  several students had overall grades (the average of all seven learning outcomes) in the 80s, but their content grades were down in the 60s.  And, while the class averaged 82% in “critical thinking and innovation,” the average content grade fell a good seven points lower.

Having first hand experience of the assessment process, I would argue that the grading schema at my 21st Century School masks a failure to deliver content knowledge effectively.   And that the schema overlooks the fact that acquiring deep content knowledge means thinking critically about content. Knowing the content well, as something other than a laundry list to be remembered, involves interpreting it and engaging it at a deep, critical, and meaningful level.

Proponents of my school’s approach to learning would argue that students are thinking critically and communicating even if it is about things besides content. They will say that students are thinking critically about the latest recording software, or that they are raising their communication grades through learning to make better eye contact with an audience.

As a teacher I wonder constantly about the value of substituting these skills for content. Would I rather see my students have a deep understanding and appreciation for a particular scientific principle, or a working knowledge of this year’s edition of a specific brand of photo editing software?  One is lasting, while the other can be rendered irrelevant by a single upgrade. To me the choice is simple.

Emma Bryant

 

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Teacher Perspective | 2 Comments »

Science Manuals—For English Class

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Over the course of the coming months Common Core will be publishing a series of guest blogs by Emma Bryant, a New Tech High School teacher who will be describing her first-hand experience with 21st century-skills education.  Emma Bryant is a pseudonym.

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This year, tenth graders in my “21st Century School” aren’t suffering the annoyances that accompany studying poetry, fiction, or even non-fiction texts. Instead, students are writing instructional manuals, describing scientific processes, and using a science textbook to learn literacy skills in a joint English/Science class. No, these students are no longer plagued with requirements to read boring literature ‒ there’s simply no use for it in the utilitarian 21st century.

The process begins with students being asked to design a new piece of science equipment for use in the lab of a fictional company’s research and development unit. Using pieces of information gathered primarily from internet searches, a handful of journal articles, and much team work (95% of class time), students set out to complete their task.

Once the new equipment is created, students wrote about how to use it. With just a little imagination, the students’ “user’s manual” satisfied state English Language Arts requirements. In all fairness, I did not study each and every manual. So who knows ‒ there could have been a real literary gem hidden away. But somehow I doubt it.

Teachers facilitated the development of literacy skills with passages of the science textbook, as well as portions of manuals. Students read sentences on scientific subject matter and details on user instruction. Teachers administered vocabulary tests on scientific terms and instruction manual jargon.

In the end, students created some interesting designs and, to varying degrees, applied basic elements of science to the design process. On the whole, however, science content played second fiddle to other requirements ‒ the use of specific design software, credit for communication and collaboration, and the hard-to-define, but still-assessed, “innovation.” And “English” fared even worse.

With a world of literature waiting ‒ a world of human experience for the reading ‒ it’s a travesty for dry (but useful!) manuals to take its place.

Emma Bryant

 

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Teacher Perspective | 3 Comments »

Need Content? Just Google It!

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Common Core’s critique of the 21st century skills movement has highlighted the opinions of a host of scholars including Dan Willingham, Diane Ravitch, and E.D. Hirsch, each of whom exposed deep flaws in the program put forth by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Today, we’re bringing you the observations of another expert. And, this time, it is someone tasked with delivering 21st century skills-based education every day.

Emma Bryant is a pseudonym for a teacher at a New Tech High School. There are 62 New Tech High Schools in 14 states across the country. Substantial funding from corporations and foundations ensures that these schools are outfitted with all of the best and latest learning technology. And, even though the New Tech Network’s website says that the schools’ mission is to help students gain both ”the knowledge and skills they need,” skills take top priority–at least according to Emma.

Over the course of the next few months Common Core will be publishing a series of guest blogs by Emma, who will be describing her first-hand experience with 21st century-skills education.

_________________

I teach in a school that typifies skills-based education. We practice project based learning, utilize the latest technology, and hold to a mission of helping our students acquire “21st century skills.” We work diligently to replace traditional classroom norms with those of corporate culture so that our students will someday thrive in an increasingly competitive global marketplace — a new world demanding innovation, collaboration, and critical thinking.

Unfortunately, bowing to the norms of 21st century business interests leaves little room anything else. Literature, poetry, music, theater, or even a solid understanding of history are either omitted or given short shrift in favor of developing skills. Utility takes precedence over “fluff” and most content, after all, can be Googled anyway.

So, how does my school help build the much-hyped 21st century skills? Roughly once a month we present students with a new project which must result in a “product.” According to our model the more “real world” the product, the better. Real world, meaning the product mirrors what could reasonably be demanded in a corporate setting — from a redesigned company logo and slogan to a promotional video or a press release. Students work in small teams to complete projects, with each team member receiving the same grade at the end. After all, it’s not about what individual students learn but the final product. Students are assessed on a handful of learning outcomes — collaboration, communication, innovation, work ethic, technological literacy, information literacy and content. Content usually makes up between 15 and 30 percent of a student’s grade.

So, what is the role of content in a 21st century classroom? Content is a shopping list of rubric indicators to be applied to the product. For example, students might work a quote from a short story into a reworded company slogan. Or perhaps they might work with Photoshop to create a company logo depicting an event from European history. They might write a press release in the style of a founding American document or create a user’s manual for a product using a particular rhetorical device mentioned in our state’s English Language Arts standards.

Apart from being grafted onto “real world” products, content is rarely discussed in the classroom. Instead, students deal with content in teams or individually, with little to no scaffolding from the teacher. Dialogue, questions, critical thinking, and debate surrounding content are low on the list of things you will see in a 21st century classroom. And so students end up with convoluted ideas about history, a cursory understanding of and appreciation for literature, and a shaky foundation in math and science.

Emma Bryant

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Teacher Perspective | 23 Comments »

History, a Subject Only a Teacher Could Love

Friday, January 21st, 2011

A recent CNN article highlights the struggles of social studies teachers dealing with convoluted expectations and insufficient classtime.

“In the 1860’s, the United States was caught up in the Civil War. The 1960’s are remembered for social revolution, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Beatlemania.

But high school teacher Davide Plonski notices that some students have a weak sense of time, are unable to picture the different characteristic of these eras and often confuse events a century apart.”

Teachers blame a slew of factors – less time spent on social studies at the elementary level, technological distractions, and lack of required history testing under NCLB. Whatever the case, teachers see a startling lack of historical literacy among their students, who can point to a Declaration of Independence but don’t recognize its significance.

“In a lot of districts, social studies and science have been removed from the curriculum, per se, because of math and language arts testing,” says a Wyoming elementary school teacher.

It’s encouraging to see teachers work to counteract this trend: Elementary teachers use social studies texts as “informational texts,” fitting them into their language arts curricula. High school teachers sift through the disjointed details required by their standards to help their students see history in context.

Once again, teachers have it right. But, I wonder, is their battle winnable? Are they fighting an impossible fight against an increasingly basic-skills-obsessed education system?

Stephanie Porowski

Posted in History/Social Studies, Teacher Perspective | 3 Comments »

Impressive Start

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

We are always interested in hearing about what’s important to teachers. So the Gates Foundation and Scholastic deserve major kudos for their new report out today. Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s Schools collects the results of a survey of 40,000 American teachers and provides a useful snapshot of teacher opinion on a number of topics, including merit pay, teacher retention, and raising student achievement.

Gates and Scholastic say that the survey’s goal is to “plac[e] teachers’ voices at the center of the discourse around education reform.” The survey makes clear that teachers believe that curriculum – the content of what’s transmitted to students – needs to be at the center of that conversation.

From the report: “Regardless of their views on the single most likely reason for their students’ lack of preparedness, teachers are largely united in their views on the in-classroom resources necessary to sustain academic success. Nearly 9 in 10 teachers agree that a high-quality curriculum ensures academic success for their students (88%). Ninety-three percent agree that digital resources like classroom technology and Web-based programs help academic achievement, with a similar percentage (91%) agreeing that classroom magazines and books other than textbooks do the same.”

Teachers were equally certain of a content-rich curriculum’s role in retaining good teachers. “Access to a high-quality curriculum and teaching resources” was ranked as “absolutely essential” in retaining good teachers by 49% of survey respondents, “very important” by 41%, and “somewhat important” by 10%. When asked to choose only the top two most important factors for retaining good teachers, 26% of respondents chose “access to high-quality curriculum and teaching resources” as one of the top two, just below supportive leadership (52%), higher salaries (45%), and time for teachers to collaborate (28%), and ahead of professional development, work environment, and working conditions.

Disappointingly, the survey does not ask teachers about how test-based accountability affects their classroom practices or their management of time in the classroom. These are questions that deserves close scrutiny. The Gates report is a good start.

James Elias

Posted in Curriculum, Teacher Perspective | No Comments »

The Question Teach For America Forgot To Ask

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

In “What Makes a Great Teacher?” (The Atlantic, January/February 2010), Amanda Ripley tells us that Teach for America has succeeded in linking certain personality traits with teacher “greatness”-that is, the ability to drive up test scores. According to Teach for America staffers, those teachers who achieved “big, measurable goals” in college – particularly grade point average and “leadership achievement” – have a greater chance of bringing up their students’ scores than others. “If you not only led a tutoring program but doubled its size,” Ripley explains, ”that’s promising.”

But Ripley’s article neglects to ask: What makes a great education? Teach for America, too, has forgotten to ask this question. The researchers seem indifferent to the purposes of school, the content of a curriculum, or anything beyond the test results. Worse, their findings directly affect their admission practices:

Last year, Teach for America churned through 35,000 candidates to choose 4,100 new teachers. Staff members select new hires by deferring almost entirely to the model: they enter more than 30 data points about a given candidate (about twice the number of inputs they considered a decade ago), and then the model spits out a hiring recommendation. Every year, the model changes, depending on what the new batch of student data shows.

If the “new batch of student data shows” that those who were presidents of clubs in college are likelier to bring up test scores, then apparently Teach for America will give preference to former presidents of clubs. By their reasoning, if the data showed that thieves and bandits brought up test scores, then TFA would recruit thieves and bandits.

Do we really want our teaching faculty to consist entirely of a “perfect” personality type, be it leader types or others? Let us say we filled a school with straight-A leaders. Wouldn’t we be missing something? Don’t we also want teachers who love to delve into their subject, who would rather read Far from the Madding Crowd than lead a club? Don’t we need a few teachers who in college stayed up all night debating a philosophical question and got a B on their chemistry test the next day?

Such a system operates on an empty conception of education. The only meaning lies in the results. So we are letting the results on dumbed-down tests determine who our teachers should be? We think the “right” sort of teachers will make our schools right? Let us instead begin by defining education. Is education preparation for a test? Yes, but it is much more. It should give students knowledge, ideas, and works that will stay with them throughout their lives. It should teach real subjects, not watered-down versions. Literature, not literacy; history, not social studies; biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, languages, music, art, and drama should fill the curriculum. Teachers will seek out this sort of school.

In a school with an excellent curriculum, students respond to both the teacher and the subject. The teacher brings knowledge, insight, and a special way of conveying the material. Some do it with humor, others with solemnity. Some are structured in their presentations, others ruminative. Some are stern and formal, others less so. Some lead solitary lives; others have large families. Some may be organizers, others quiet contributors. A liberal arts education teaches us that there is more to humanity, even within ourselves, than we have recognized before. There is room for many personalities in a great school; what unites them is their knowledge, passion, and contribution to the school’s endeavor.

Teach for America’s attempt to identify the personality traits of a successful teacher-and to select candidates possessing those traits-amounts to social engineering. It reflects a lack of educational vision. It is deadly for the teaching profession and for our schools.

Diana Senechal

Diana Senechal taught for four years in the New York City public schools and has stepped back to write a book. Her writing has appeared in Education Week, GothamSchools, the Core Knowledge Blog, Joanne Jacobs, and Common Core. She has a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale.

Posted in Curriculum, Teacher Perspective | 4 Comments »

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