Common Core

Astonished at the slip in student performance in recent years, Japan is reconsidering its now ten-year-old experiment in “pressure-free” education.  “There’s a sense of crisis,” said a professor of education in Tokyo, “there are serious concerns about whether our education system is working … .”

Yet, in contrast to the United States’ relatively abysmal performance on PISA (29^th in science and 35^th in math), Japan’s scores (6^th in science and 10^th in math) remain well above the OECD average, and its education system is consistently heralded (for good reason) as one worthy of emulation.

So why the “shock”?  Japan’s drop (from first in math in 2000 to 10^th in 2006) has coincided with a dramatic move away from the so-called “cram education” to a more “student-centered” approach, as educators slashed content requirements and focused instead on supporting students in their application of knowledge to real-life situations.  At the expense of fundamentals, Japan added electives and spent more time exploring students’ questions, like “Why doesn’t a sleeping bird fall from its perch on a branch?”

Japan’s current situation is especially interesting in light of the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for math and English, which of course seek to raise US standards.  But, with the CCSS, American students will learn how to determine the area of a trapezoid in sixth grade, a full year after Japanese students learn the same concept. So we’re still behind.

Japan’s bravely called its failed education experiment what it is ‒ a “huge failure.”  Japan should be applauded for moving back to its roots in deep content.  As US educators create curricula in response to the CCSS, we hope we will avoid Japan’s costly mistake.

Lynne Munson and Stephanie Porowski

Arne Duncan used an address to state policymakers this week to shill for 21st century skills.

He promised that new assessments would measure how students “analyze and solve complex problems, communicate clearly, synthesize information, apply knowledge, and generalize learning to other settings.” And Duncan’s speech blurred the line between the common state standards initiative and the 21st century skills agenda: “[M]any so-called experts questioned whether states could work together to set rigorous, globally competitive standards or collaborate to develop assessments of 21st century skills. But resolute governors, state education chiefs, and committed stakeholders across the country have proved the skeptics dead-wrong. Your collective courage today will transform educational opportunity for decades to come.”

The Secretary didn’t elaborate on what assessments of 21st century skills might look like, so allow us to offer you a preview: “For example, one possible assessment of 21st century skills would focus more on a student’s operational skills, such as her expertise in using multiple sources appropriately and efficiently, rather than on whether or not a correct response was submitted.” (Emphasis added; see full document here.)

Answering a question correctly: not a 21st century skill.

James Elias

We opened the new ETS report, The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped, assuming that it had something new to say about this persistent problem. Perhaps too optimistically we hoped it might address curriculum, and even student background knowledge development, at least as areas of interest, if not as possible elements of a solution.

Instead ETS has produced a predictable info dump on every topic that is believed to be related to student achievement except for what children are taught.  These topics are familiar:  poverty, fatherlessness, nutrition, technology access, etc.  You can finish the list.

Is it possible that ETS and the many other parties interested in finding a solution to the gap have been looking in the wrong places all along?  And that a look into the content of what black and white (and poor and wealthy) children are being taught may be an area worthy of research?  If there is a difference in the content of what children of different races and levels of wealth are being taught in America, isn’t that not only important information for investigators, but a real cause for concern among parents and others?  Wouldn’t such a difference, fundamentally, represent what is meant when we talk about a child being left behind?

At Common Core we’re confident that every student will succeed if they are provided with a rigorous, content-rich curriculum in the liberal arts and sciences. Yes, it would be marvelous if every student lived in a wealthy, two-parent family, ate three square meals each day, and had his own computer.  But the fact that a student may not have an ideal home life does not negate his ability learn.

Lynne Munson and Skye Frontier

This is strange. P21 is being subsumed into CCSSO. There’s nothing to be read about this on either CCSSO’s or P21′s websites. But according to Fritzwire the two organizations have formed a “strategic management relationship” that will commence December 1. The relationship sounds pretty one-way, though, with CCSSO providing “financial and resources management services as well as hous[ing] P21 employees” and CCSSO getting nothing in return. This all comes at a time when P21 continues to look for an executive director (Ken Kay will depart sometime this fall). It is difficult to believe, in light of the largess represented on P21′s star-studded board of tech foundations, that they have fallen on hard times. But stranger things have happened.

Lynne Munson

In March, EdWeek’s Catherine Gewertz ran a long article on the race to develop supporting materials for the new common standards. Now that 36 states (and counting) have adopted the standards, it’s worth revisiting what’s meant by “alignment,” since everyone’s begun claiming that their product or service is “aligned” to the CCSS.  That’s exactly why, in Gewertz’s piece, Jack Jennings and Russ Whitehurst advised everyone to exercise caution when encountering the phrase “aligned.”

Today Common Core released its curriculum maps for K-12 ELA. These entirely new maps, drafted by teachers, are based on the common standards. Not merely aligned to them.  We did not take a pre-existing document and alter it to claim standards alignment.  With encouragement from NGA and support from the Gates Foundation we took the standards along with the recommended exemplar texts and used them as the basis for creating new curriculum maps that we believe teachers today will be excited to use.  We even tapped the same expert who worked on the reading standards for the CCSS to create a new pacing guide for the teaching of reading customized to our maps. And of course our maps address every standard (we’ve included grade-by-grade standards checklists to prove it).

We didn’t merely align something with the CCSS.  We took our inspiration from the high bar the CCSS set, and tried to create curriculum materials worthy of the new standards.  Please look at the maps and tell us if you think we’ve been successful.

James Elias

The New America Foundation’s Lisa Guernsey has surveyed the latest research on learning and early childhood development for the Washington Post and concluded that “American public education is out of whack.” This has been true for quite a while, but Guernsey’s piece outlines just how little has been done to address the problem.

Guernsey explains that American schools essentially ignore student development and achievement until after third grade despite the regular appearance of books and studies stressing the importance of a student’s earliest years (birth to age 8). Guernsey’s radical proposal is to “give all American children – especially those in poor circumstances — exposure to language-rich and cognitively stimulating environments in their earliest years.” Yes: give all students a content-rich education beginning in kindergarten. That’d be a good start.

James Elias

The New America Foundation’s Lisa Guernsey has surveyed the latest research on learning and early childhood development for the Washington Post and concluded that “American public education is out of whack.” This has been true for quite a while, but Guernsey’s piece outlines just how little has been done to address the problem.

The National Research Council has released what they call a conceptual framework for new standards in science (read the whole thing here), and a quick read of the document has left us concerned. The writers stress that “th[e] framework is intended to guide the development of standards, curriculum, and assessments for science” by providing “a broad description of the content and sequencing for student learning and skill development in science, but not at the level of detail of grade-by-grade standards.” 

Broad, indeed. The NRC’s insistence on vague, big-picture thinking about science has created a document that is practically useless. To provide a “broad description” of science knowledge, the writers identify core ideas so general (e.g., “What is energy?”) that it’s possible to imagine any quality of standards, curriculum, and assessments (everything from excellent and clear to shoddy and vague) spinning off of this framework.  When it comes down to it, the NRC document’s just a list of stuff.  And maybe not all of the most important stuff, either.  We’ve caught wind of concern among some of the nation’s most prominent scientists that sections of the framework are not current with the latest science.  And by “latest” we mean knowledge that has already been around for a hundred years or more. 

So broad and full of holes. We hope NRC’s next draft is better.

Lynne Munson and James Elias 

Randi Weingarten’s keynote address to the AFT convention in Seattle (read it here) identifies three “foundations” for lifting student achievement: good teaching, curriculum, and accountability. Sara Mead, writing at Eduwonk, takes exception to some things Weingarten has to say about education reform, but she agrees with Weingarten’s emphasis on high-quality, coherent curriculum. So let us now praise the AFT for its hard work improving school curricula and promoting the importance of good curricula. (Curriculum, Mead points out, is something reformers tend to ignore.)

Take a close look at Weingarten’s section on curriculum. She begins by actually naming the subjects that make up a comprehensive education: “All students need rich, well-rounded curricula that ground them in areas ranging from foreign languages to phys ed, civics to the sciences, history to health, as well as literature, mathematics and the arts,” but Weingarten also points out that solid, liberal arts curricula “aren’t routinely in place” and that teachers are “forced to [make up curriculum] every single day.”

That doesn’t make sense and it isn’t what high-performing nations do. Weingarten suggests that America take a good look at countries – she names Finland, but there are many others – that outperform us on international assessments. None have narrow, ad-hoc curricula. All have strong, coherent, comprehensive liberal arts curricula. Maybe America should dare to try something that works?

James Elias

The take on our friend (and board co-chair) Diane Ravitch’s latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, is that it is all about how she changed her mind about reform ideas such as choice and charters.  But there’s another storyline embedded deeply throughout the book, and it’s not about what has failed, but what would work:  a comprehensive, content-rich curriculum for all students.  

This week Diane spoke before 10,000 teachers at the NEA convention.  And at least twice during her speech she talked about the need for every student’s education to include not just basic skills but also…and here she began listing the subject that comprise a complete education:  the arts, history, geography, civics, foreign languages, mathematics, science, physical education, and health.

But she could never complete the list because, as Diane explains, “they were applauding so loud that I never finished the sentence.  This happened each time I enumerated the subjects that were sacrificed to high stakes testing and test prep. I would start naming the subjects and the applause grew and grew and no one heard me mention physical education and health because of the din of applause.”

I wonder if they were applauding loud enough for Arne to hear.  Because, despite talk about wanting to address the narrowing of the curriculum, the only policies his Dept of Ed has proposed would narrow it more…

Lynne Munson