Classroom
testing the CCSS
As the standards were
written, there was no provision made for field testing of the
standards in K-12 schools, probably because this would have added
additional time to the development process. The Gates Foundation and
Arne Duncan believed that public education in the U.S. was performing
at such a low level compared to other industrialized countries (Diane Ravitch shows that this is a myth) that a
quick implementation of new standards was essential. Regular
classroom teachers were not asked if they believed that the teaching
techniques necessary for proficiency in Common Core standards were
practical and effective. Only after the standards had been written
were a few teachers asked to give only a cursory review of the
standards. No teacher was ever actually allowed real input into the
standards. Lack of field testing of the standards in my opinion has
been a serious mistake. Millions of students across the nation are
now serving as guinea pigs for a very crudely designed and flawed
system.
Louisiana's
experience with standards implementation
Another flawed assumption of the Common Core adoption in
my opinion, was that it is assumed that the new standards are more
rigorous and will somehow automatically produce higher level
learning. There is no evidence whatsoever that student achievement
will be improved because the CCSSS have not been tested. For
Louisiana in particular, I don't think that any consideration was
given to the environment surrounding our students at home and in
their communities. No consideration was given to the educational
level of our parents, the number of our students with disabilities,
and the preschool opportunities (or lack of opportunities) of our
students.
In Louisiana, our education
leaders (who are mostly non-educators) have pointed to the fact that
since the state adopted high stakes testing for our students over 10 years ago and for
the rating of our public schools, student performance on
state tests has improved significantly. They believe that Louisiana
has proven that if we simply raise the academic bar that students
will rise to the challenge and meet the new higher standards. But the
reality is much more complicated than that. While performance on
state LEAP tests improved fairly significantly after several years of
testing, performance on national tests such as the National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) only improved slightly.
The
LDOE states the following:
“First, the state
has shown steady increases on the LEAP, the state’s main
assessment. Next, the difference between LEAP scores and NAEP scores
have increased, showing the need to raise expectations.”
I have to seriously
question this conclusion, because the adoption of LEAP standards was
a raising of expectations, and it did not result in improvement
compared to other states.
What the DOE is really
saying is that our student scores on NAEP in the last ten
years have not increased as much as they have in other states. Our
nationwide ranking stayed near the bottom of all states. (47th or
48th out of 50). For high poverty students in Louisiana, the
performance gap with the national average has widened. Raising
the bar in Louisiana has not produced improvement compared to other
states.
It is clear instead that a
large part of the improvement on LEAP tests can be attributed to the
fact that students were taught test taking skills and teachers got
better at teaching the test. There was some improvement in actual
achievement in the basic skills of math and language arts, and some
improvement in the high school ACT testing, but that was because so
much more emphasis has been put on those limited areas. All other
subjects and activity areas have been severely curtailed in Louisiana
to make more time for test teaching.
Yes, test teaching. That's
what we do now in Louisiana education. We have not only
prepared for the LEAP test each year but we have also given pretests at
various times to identify areas of weakness, and we teach students
all year to test better in those areas. Our end-of-course test
averages in high school have improved in part because teachers have
learned to teach those questions that they know will be asked on the
test each year. So much of the learning has not been real student
learning but
teachers learning what to emphasize and what to
leave out to prepare students for the annual testing.
In Louisiana in recent
years, almost all students have been encouraged to take the college
prep Core 4 curriculum for high school graduation.
What has
been the result of all this “raising the bar”? Many
educators believe that the teaching of true college prep courses has
been watered down to accommodate students who were not really ready
for or interested in college prep. Our 6 year college completion
statistics have decreased from 23% ten years ago to only 19% today.
Parents were never consulted as Louisiana moved to this new
philosophy of education. I wonder if they would approve of all this
emphasis of teaching to the test.
So what we have really
proven in Louisiana is that raising the academic bar makes no
difference in the performance of our students compared to other
states. In fact there was less of a gap between the performance of
our students and that of students in other states before we raised
the bar. How will another round of “raising the bar” benefit our
students?
The answer is:
It will
not benefit our students. It is likely to increase our
student dropout rate. John White is aware of this. That's why he is
now proposing that Louisiana relax its standards for student
promotion from 4
th to 5
th grades and from 8
th
to 9
th grades. High school principals know that this will
increase the number of unqualified students entering high schools.
Yet the grades assigned by our state to the high schools depend more
and more on the graduation rate for students of those schools. So the
high schools will now be pressured to graduate thousands of students
who will not be doing high school level work. I don't think this is
what the business community expected when they signed on to the
Common Core Standards.
How will CCSS change
Louisiana education?
So the new CCSS actually
doubles down on the idea that we should put maximum emphasis on
English language arts and math and that everything in our schools
should be driven by the tests. In addition, the curriculum in those
two subjects has been reduced to what the non-classroom “experts”
who developed Common Core consider the most essential concepts.
Yes,
the Common Core reduces the number of concepts to be taught even in
those basic skills subjects.
There are fewer math skills
to be taught but the ones that are taught are supposed to be taught
more in depth with emphasis on methods of problem solving just as
much as on getting the right answer. Also in math, the CCSS introduce
new methods for teaching the basic concepts of division,
multiplication, decimals and fractions that many classroom teachers
are finding more cumbersome and less productive than the old methods.
In reading, the emphasis has
been shifted to more technical reading that would prepare students
more for reading technical instructional manuals than what may be
classified as classical fiction reading.
Even though the promoters of
Common Core stress that it is not a curriculum, the CCSS drives
educators to create a curriculum that will attempt to produce success
on the Common Core tests. Those tests will begin next school year in
Louisiana (the testing has been moved up by one year in Louisiana).
The new tests are called the Partnership for Readiness for College
and Careers (PARCC). Here again everything we do in our schools will
be driven by the almighty annual testing and retesting of students.
So even though according to
State Superintendent John White, Louisiana is in the third year of a
five year phase in of Common Core, (Note: lately he has changed some
standards associated with Common Core to a 10 year phase in) this is the first year that parents
have actually been exposed to the effects of the new system on their
children. This is the first year that most parents have even heard of
the Common Core because no effort has ever been made to reach out to
parents and prepare them for the new system. We learned recently that
the Gates Foundation had made a sizable grant to the National PTA to
help sell the common core to parents, but little information got to
parents in Louisiana since most parents here have no connection with
the PTA.
Problems
with the Common Core
The more we study the design
and the roll-out of the Common Core, the more it resembles the
disastrous roll-out of Obama Care. (The Affordable Healthcare Act).
Here are some important glitches that have developed:
-
John White in his
application to the Federal Government for the ESEA Waiver (which got
federal approval for the switch to CCSS among other things) stated
that the State Department of Education would develop a state
approved curriculum for implementation of the Common Core standards.
Later he changed his mind and simply stated that he wanted to
empower individual teachers to develop their own curriculum that
would teach the CC. This put most local school systems into a
terrible bind to scramble around and gather materials and text books
that would prepare students for the new testing starting in 2014.
Some parishes borrowed half baked materials developed by other
states like a program called Engage NY at this website which turned
out to have reading materials considered inappropriate by many
Louisiana parents. This has caused a major uproar in some local
school systems. (Note: in the latest development in this area,
State Superintendent White announced on November 19 that the
Department of Education will after all, provide a curriculum guide
to all public schools and will phase in over a ten year period the
accountability sanctions resulting from Common Core to students,
teachers and schools rather than to expect immediate performance at
the original target levels proposed.)
Perhaps fortunately for
Louisiana, Kentucky and New York were the first states to implement
the testing for the Common Core. It turns out that the creators of
the test greatly over estimated the levels of proficiency that
should be required by the testing. As a result, over 70% of New York
state students were considered failures in the first round of
testing. No one really knows at this point what is the proper level
of mastery that should be expected because the standards were not
tested prior to implementation. Louisiana Superintendent John White
has recently announced that Louisiana will initially use the
achievement of a 3 on a 5 point scale as satisfactory for Louisiana
students instead of the 4 out of 5 used by New York. We don't know
how this will be viewed since the Common Core is supposed to compare
the performance of students across all the states that have adopted
it. How can you compare students in different states if you use
different standards for passing grades?
One of the biggest
controversies that has developed, also probably because of the lack
of field testing, is what is considered by many experts in early
childhood education as inappropriate standards for K-3 students.
When you read through the reading and math standards for K-3 you can
only ask: "What were they thinking?" Some of the levels of questioning
and the analysis required of very young children is totally
inappropriate. Parents must be shocked at what is being expected in
the area of reading comprehension of children who have barely
started to read.
Part of the plan for
implementation of Common Core was the requirement for extensive
individual tracking and sharing of student data throughout a
student's schooling and beyond using the InBloom system. I believe
the developers of Common Core originally envisioned the sharing of
student profiles which would include socioeconomic factors,
disabilities, as well as testing data with selected providers who
could possibly tailor educational programs and interventions to
individual students. Some of the major corporations which have
supported development of the Common Core such as Pearson and
NewsCorp envisioned immense profits as parents were forced to come
to them for preparing children to succeed on the testing mostly
developed and owned by those private companies. Software companies
such as Micorsoft stand to make huge profits as they design computer
software to address highly specialized instruction systems to be
purchased by parents not wanting their child to fall behind. Many
parents are absolutely appalled about the implications of such a
system of tracking, privacy violations, and profiteering with their
children's education.
One of my biggest
concerns about this whole scheme is the damage that will be done to
individual children by the attempt to standardize and over simplify
the education of all children. This is a one-size-fits-all plan that
is destined to fail many many children who just do not fit the mold
for education created by the College Board staff and other academic
elitists who wrote the standards. Gone is the American tradition of
encouraging creativity and of identifying unique talents of
children. It is all about getting every child to perform at grade
level or above (which is statistically impossible) in certain
preferred basic skills. Forget about music, forget about art, forget
about the performing arts, forget about vocational skills, forget
about teaching students how to work with tools, how to appreciate
fine literature, helping students understand the functions of
government and the history of our form of government, so they can be
informed and active citizens. These other more creative
characteristics are the very special characteristics of the American
educational system that have been so admired in other parts of the
world.
What should
we do in Louisiana instead of Common Core?
If we care about preparing
our students for the true workforce opportunities in Louisiana, we
should be putting more emphasis as early as possible on teaching
skilled crafts and voc-tech
as well as implementing a true college
prep curriculum for the college bound. Our students do not need
standardization. They need training in many exciting career pathways
as well as good basic training in citizenship skills.
High tech skills and
vocations; that's where most of the high paying jobs are in Louisiana. But
instead of training our young people, Louisiana is importing welders
from Tiawan and paying them wages averaging $50 per hour for jobs our
students are not trained to do!
With our aging population
there are many opportunities in health care careers that require
specialized training requiring far less than for four year degrees.
Service industries need dependable highly trained workers in
hospitality, food service, office work and management. None of these
require university degrees.
With all its emphasis on
college prep for all in the last 10 years, Louisiana has succeeded in
almost destroying our once effective voc-tech and Agricultural
sciences training that were once offered in all high schools.
Building and construction trade training is now almost non-existent
at the high school level.
In some school systems such
as the one exemplified by the New Orleans Recovery District there are
now what I consider only two education tracks: College prep and
dependency prep. Many of the students that fall into the dependency
prep category actually end up in a prison bound cycle. The RSD
charter schools tout their goal of preparing all students for
college, yet almost none of their students will ever complete a four
year degree after graduating from high school. That's because their
low ACT and SAT scores exclude them from most scholarship programs.
Most of these graduates end up with no salable skills because there
are almost no vocational programs in these schools. The best most of
these students can expect is to end up at the lowest levels of
service work where they will go from one dead end job to another.
Others will get involved in petty crime and drug dealing. This is not
at all the image being sold to the many philanthropies that are
pouring millions into the charter school system in Louisiana.
Many of the great
opportunities for our young people lie in the fact that Louisiana is
experiencing a boom in industrial development caused by the new
technologies that allow production of oil and gas that was never
before producible. Cheap natural gas in Louisiana is spawning the
construction of new facilities that use natural gas as a feedstock.
There is a growing demand for highly trained construction workers and
then operators and technicians in the new plants along the
Mississippi and gulf coast as well as the oil industry itself. The
extensive new oil and gas drilling operations are occurring over the
entire state. The complaint from these industries is that they cannot
find dependable well trained workers locally. To allow our young
people to cash in on this boom, Louisiana should develop a strong
cooperative effort between our high schools, our voc-tech and
Community colleges and Louisiana business. Students should be
involved in career exploration activities as early as middle school.
Starting as early as 10
th grade, students who choose these
pathways should be enrolled in career training either in cooperation
with local industry or in our voc-tech or Community colleges.
Louisiana should study the vocational technical training provided to
students in European countries such as Germany and Finland as models
for development of high tech career training in Louisiana.
Instead of enrolling all of
our students in a college prep curriculum such as that fostered by
the CCSS, Louisiana should develop practical math and ELA courses
that prepare students for work and citizenship. Students should have
the opportunity to study literature, social studies, art, music,
citizenship and government. All courses should be rigorous and
demanding, but students should be able to connect their school
training to real life applications.
China and Korea have tried
standardization of their education program for years and are now
trying to adopt the more productive parts of the American system that
we now seem determined to dismantle. Finland which is recognized as
having one of the most successful education systems in the world does
not put this insane emphasis on test based standardization of the
curriculum. There teachers are not just test teachers but are
expected to inspire and to encourage diversity in their students.
What we are about to do to our education system with implementation
of Common Core is just wrong and educationally unsound!
As a person who has enjoyed
a wonderful long career in Louisiana education, I am appalled at what
we are allowing the so called “reformers” who have little
experience in education to do to Louisiana education. I can only
encourage parents and teachers to join hands and demand that our
legislature free us to develop a truly productive and creative
education system for our children. One that does not attempt to
standardize children but instead attempts to nourish and encourage
the many talents and interests of our children. We must return to the
principles formulated for public education by Horace Mann, the father
of public education in America, who believed in educating the whole
child, respecting them as individuals, and preparing young people to
be good citizens.
Go to the following
Louisiana Department of Education web site to view all 132 pages of
Common Core State Standards:
http://www.louisianabelieves.com/docs/common-core-state-standards-resources/louisiana-state-standards-(ela-math).pdf?sfvrsn=2
Go to the post by education
blogger Crazy Crawfish to get a parents view that is also hilarious
of the math standards for very young children
at this web address.
See also
this Diane Ravitch blog about the demand for students trained in tech fields rather than 4 year colleges.
Posts
