Common Core Mathematics in New York

August 27th, 2012

Earlier this month Common Core conducted its first professional development workshop in mathematics. Our math team traveled to Albany, New York where we engaged more than 300 educators in a discussion about the math content in Common Core’s forthcoming PK-5 mathematics curriculum, titled “A Story of Units.”

New York’s Commissioner of Education, John B. King Jr., kicked off the five-day session. The audience included teachers, representatives from Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), instructional coaches, education consultants, and superintendents. The training featured Jason Zimba, one of the authors of the Common Core State Standards for mathematics; Ken Gross, director of the Vermont Mathematics Initiative at the University of Vermont; and Scott Baldridge, lead writer and mathematician of the Common Core Curriculum Maps in Mathematics. Each presenter offered a unique perspective on three key “shifts” embedded in the CCSS. These shifts involve intensifying the depth and focus of instruction and learning, enhancing coherence within and between grades, and stepping up the rigor of what students will be expected to know and be able to do.

Those “shifts” formed the basis for a series of dynamic gradespan-based training sessions that were conducted by several of the curriculum’s teacher-writers and professional development leaders, including Catriona Anderson, Bill Davidson, Janice Fan, Melanie Gutierrez, Lisa Watts-Lawton, and Johnette Roberts. This team demonstrated lessons taken directly from drafts of Common Core’s curriculum. A highlight for one teacher was “actually seeing a lesson in action – especially seeing a kindergarten lesson and having an upper grade teacher bridge the concept to those grades.”

New York educators participate in a Kindergarten lesson modeled by Melanie Gutierrez.

Educators began each day by completing a stimulating math fluency activity, known as a “sprint,” designed to establish and enhance fluency by developing students’ number sense through a focus on patterns. Educators later had the opportunity to create original fluency activities and practice their delivery. One teacher noted that “practicing the fluencies and sprints will make it easier to use [this activity] in my classroom.”

Participants worked in small groups on various occasions throughout the training. They enjoyed opportunities to work though numerous models that can be utilized throughout the primary and elementary grades, including the use of the “bar model” to solve word problems.

New York educator presents his solution to a word problem.

Participants also had the opportunity to use tools such as place-value number disks, 2-sided counters, and rekenreks, chosen specifically to compliment the curriculum Common Core is developing. These tools will soon be available through Common Core’s website. The teacher-ambassadors who attended the training are now charged with the task of bringing their knowledge of this new content and pedagogies back to their colleagues in districts around the state.

The participants’ candor and willingness to share their experiences in the classroom enabled Common Core’s facilitators to gain a tremendous deal of insight into the challenges faced by teachers in implementing the CCSS. The teacher-writers of the mathematics curriculum will incorporate this knowledge into their work as they continue to develop this teacher-friendly tool.

In a gesture of enthusiasm and appreciation, New York’s teachers concluded the five-day training with a standing ovation. This sentiment is reciprocated by Common Core’s team, who looks forward more than ever to working directly with teachers throughout the development and implementation of Common Core’s mathematics maps.

Hillary Marder

Posted in Curriculum, Math and Science, Standards, Uncategorized | No Comments »

I Can’t Read My Watch! Algebra Is to Blame.

August 6th, 2012

I visited a Swatch store last week.  I was at a train station, heading home from a trip, looking for gifts for my children.  I decided it was a good time to buy my two toddlers their first watches.

After selecting a gold-faced timepiece with a dinosaur wristband for my son and a Rapunzel watch with pink and purple hands for my daughter—I stepped up to the counter.  Tucking my purchases into their bags, the salesman commented on the fact that I’d not selected watches with digital displays.  Sure, I said, I want to teach my kids how to tell time.

He explained that an increasing number of customers have been asking for digital watches.  Swatch is of course known for taking the traditional, round watch and interpreting it in beautifully hip, colorful ways.  The Swiss company offers a seemingly endless variety of designs—in neon, metallic, with pop culture references, or rather plain.  Some display the hour or even minute numbers, while others have completely blank faces or little slashes called “tick marks,” as the salesman explained.

I asked what he does when a customer wants a digital watch.  He asks them why, and when the answer is that they cannot tell time, he tries to teach them how.  He says that he’s rarely successful.  And that he typically ends up selling them one of the handful of digital watches that Swatch now sells.

Since I was returning from a professional development workshop on mathematics, I could not help but spend the cab ride home reflecting on what the salesman’s story said about these customers’ lack of understanding of mathematics.

Now telling time is not doing math.  But it does require knowledge of math fundamentals.  You cannot tell time on a traditional clock without knowing that numbers are symbols that represent units, or without some basic grasp of estimation and ratios.  In other words, if you cannot tell time, it most likely means that you would still struggle with third and fourth-grade math concepts.

***

This watch salesman’s experience made me think more about a New York Times op-ed I and countless others read last week by Queens College political scientist Andrew Hacker.  Hacker argued that it is not just wrong but unfair of our high schools and colleges to assume that all students should understand Algebra.  He claims that the math demands in our schools are responsible for upping dropout rates and pose a barrier to college attendance.  Hacker’s op-ed attracted 477 comments in 48 hours—nearly all of them critical.

Hacker isn’t the first and won’t be the last to make the untenable argument that teaching less math is what American students need.  This way of thinking, that we need to be creating “escape routes” for underachieving students, is becoming the new mantra.  It is the 2.0 version of what President Bush rightfully called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”  And it crops up not only in discussions of math but in talk about how the entire latter half of high school might be repurposed for career-bound students.  This is pernicious.  Before we know it we will be hearing people propose “escape routes” out of middle school, too.

With regard to mathematics, the problem is not that we are teaching too much of it—but that we are teaching math ineffectively.  The expectations and architecture of the new Common Core State Standards in Mathematics can help to remedy this.  Faithful implementation of those standards will support districts that want to adopt curricula that unfurl mathematics in a rational, coherent program and that jettison approaches that are illogically sequenced and that overuse and abuse manipulatives.

As mathematician Scott Baldridge, the leader of Common Core’s own curriculum mapping project in mathematics, has said:  “Teachers are starving for rational approaches to teaching mathematics.”  So let’s stop talking, like Hacker does, as though the best we can do is to find ways to manage our failure.  Instead, let’s give teachers the quality curriculum materials and content-rich training they need to effectively teach students Algebra and much, much more.

Lynne Munson

 

Posted in Curriculum, Math and Science, Standards | 1 Comment »

*UPDATE* California Dumps Arts, Foreign Language—Now Science

June 15th, 2012

Governor Jerry Brown is at it again.  In a move that spells disaster for California’s students, Brown’s recently revised state budget retains a proposal he made in February that would reduce the state’s high school graduation requirement in science from two years to one.  When Brown first released this ludicrous proposal, Common Core responded with the following blog entry in protest, and encouraged others to join the fight.  The need for immediate public action is even more pressing this time around given that the proposal survived the latest round of budget revisions.  Our stance remains firm: No matter what the monetary savings may be, California cannot afford to lower its standards in science, and its students deserve better.  We urge you to revisit our previous post on this matter, and check back here for new updates.

Lynne Munson & Emily Dodd

California Dumps Arts, Foreign Language—Now Science

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.

This is not the first time that Governor Brown has endeavored to diminish or eliminate core requirements.  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 vocational education courses instead.  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 rush 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.

Emily Dodd, Hillary Marder, and Lynne Munson

Posted in Curriculum, Math and Science | 1 Comment »

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 | 6 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 | 3 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

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

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 »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »