Common Core State Standards in Language Arts K-12: The Good ...

Common Core State Standardsin Language Arts K-12: TheGood, The Bad, and the UglyAmerican Reading Forum MeetingSanibel Island, FLDecember 8, 2011

The Good

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE GOOD The CCSS approached the design process with the“end in mind” (Covey, 1989). Students must be college and career ready sostandards were reverse engineered to produceidentified and desired outcome. No set of inputs has been identified that canaccurately predict achieving the desired outcomes. Places the focus in education on standards rather thanon a testing.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12:THE GOOD The CCSS encourage teachers to use effectiveinstruction and evidence-based practices. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater! What teachers, researchers, and publishers havelearned in the past decade will not become ipso factoobsolete with implementation of the CCSSs.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12:THE GOOD The CCSS place greater emphasis upon the teaching ofwriting in K-12 classrooms (narrative, information,explanation, description, argumentation)! Are we using what we know about the teaching ofwriting in today’s classrooms?Writer’s Workshop (Pritchard & Honeycutt, 2006; Graham& Sandmel, 2011) Strategy Instruction (Graham, 2006)

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12:THE GOOD The CCSS include clearly identified and evidence-basedfoundational skills in reading and writing Even though these appeared as “after thoughts” wheninput was sought about CCSS from primary grade teachers,the inclusion of these is critical to firm up the foundation ofthe house of literacy that the subsequent grade levels willbuild upon. Writing foundational skills are a bit obscured by beinglisted under language standards. Inclusion of oral language standards in listening andspeaking so that these language processes get sufficientattention early on and throughout the grades.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12:THE GOOD CCSS are descriptive of desired outcomes ratherthan prescriptive of the means to the outcomes. Skills, strategies, and concepts to be taught arethought to be a means to an end and not an end inthemselves. Knowing is not enough, performance throughproduction is the objective. Students must be able toshow what they know by producing something(writing, PowerPoint, model, etc.) and sharing it withothers. Instructional practices or the “how” to obtainoutcomes are not prescribed.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE GOOD The CCSS demand greater attention to reading andwriting informational text beginning with a 50/50ratio in elementary schools up to a 70/30 ratio inhigh school. Narratives have dominated elementary schoolclassrooms and secondary English classrooms. A focus on narrative runs counter to the types ofreading most adults do in their lives. Most readingand writing is done for informational purposes.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE GOOD The CCSS provide specific examples of: Increasingly complex reading texts by grade level Increasingly complex writing texts by grade level Standards from one grade level build upon those ofthe past grade level to “stretch” students’ currentlevels of text processing and production. Stretching text levels will ensure that U.S. studentsgraduate from high schools reading and writing textsof similar complexity to international comparisongroups.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE GOOD The CCSS require that students read and write a greaterrange of text types and complexities. Reading and writing across genres and multiple discoursepatterns is required. Teachers and publishers will need to become conversant inthe use of “Lexile” leveling or similar leveling approaches(http://cohmetrix.memphis.edu/cohmetrixpr/index.html)used to discuss and measure text difficulty levels and otherqualitative factors related to text content, structure,vocabulary, etc. Teachers and publishers will need to continuously re-teachcomprehension and composition concepts, skills, andstrategies because these are learned “genre” specifically.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE GOOD CCSS not only focus on knowledge acquisition fromtexts, but also on crafting texts as demonstrations ofthat learning. Teachers will need to teach towardproducts and performances. Students will be required to demonstrate learningthrough the ability to present orally and/or writedigital-visual texts that include presentations, reports,charts, graphs, etc.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE GOOD The CCSS demand that teachers and studentsincrease the use of digital media and technologies inteaching and learning. Teachers will need to give more than lip service to theuse of “on-line” and “off-line” digital reading andwriting. States and schools will need to invest heavily inproviding students and teachers access to the web andother digital media. Teachers will need to teach students “on-line”location, evaluation, and authentication strategies forinformation – see http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE GOOD The CCSS require that teachers, publishers, andstudents learn to collaborate effectively with othersto solve problems of social, economic, ecological andpolitical consequence. Teach students will learn to work in teams to useproblem solving strategies and processes. Teachers will need to use engaging and effectiveinstruction approahes and interesting texts in readingand writing, e.g., CORI.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE GOOD The CCSS require students to support theirarguments, and verify their facts when discussingtexts, answering questions about texts, and whenwriting or presenting their thoughts to others. Finding multiple sources of supportive informationfor assertions and arguments in texts, traditional anddigital will become an expectation.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE GOOD The CCSS will require that content area teachersinduct the novice learner into an understanding ofthe structures of their respective disciplines byteaching students how to read and writedisciplinary texs. This will require content teachers to integrate morediscipline specific language arts content into theircontent instruction. This will require language arts and English teachers tointegrate more content specific texts into theirlanguage arts instruction.

The Bad

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD The CCSS standards continue the current focus onbasic skills, reading, writing, and mathematics, atthe potential expense of developing a broad, rich,and balanced curriculum focused upon studentslearning the content and structure of a variety ofacademic disciplines.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD The nature and content of CCSS assessment remainto be seen. This decisions now rests in the hands offederally, NOT STATE, funded groups, SmarterBalance and PARCC. Federal influence on CCSSassessment could lead to another round of “oldwine in new bottles” where the currently mandatedhigh stakes testing and accountability culture iscontinued.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD The CCSS rely upon the assumption that contentteachers know enough about literacy and literacyteachers know enough about content to be effectivein addressing the desired outcomes withoutsubstantial professional development.

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD CCSS may lead to a neglect of literature studies. This raises the question…is literature and languagestudy a content discipline of its own apart from howliteracy is used to process information? Should we expect that the study of language andliterature will get content area or disciplinary statusunder the CCSS or will these be swept away into theservice of content area studies. What support will be given to secondary Englishliterature teachers when no longer teach muchliterature and instead teacher mostly technical andinformation reading and writing?

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD The CCSS assume that teachers are competentwriters themselves. What supports will be needed to improve teachers’writing abilities? What supports will be needed to improve teachersknowledge of the teaching of writing – especially asthis pertains to an expanded range of informationwriting?

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD The CCSS provide NO specific guidance to teachersas to “best” or “evidence-based” instructionalpractices in literacy or in content disciplines. Without such guidance are teachers sufficiently wellgrounded in the research literature around effectivepractices to know and use such practices? Will this assumption lead to yet another round ofmandating the use of published materials that claim toaddress the CCSS at local levels?

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD The CCSS focus on outcomes and not inputs. Assuch, no particular educational or preparatoryexperiences are presumed necessary to effectivelyteach the CCSS standards. Do teachers need anyprofessional knowledge or preparation to teach? Orare the CCSS simply taking up the popular federalposition, similar to Chef Gusteau in Ratatouille –Any One Can Cook!

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD The CCSS assume that content and literacy teachersunderstand elements of text complexity, bothquantitative and qualitative, in order to be able tomatch complex texts to student capacity. What makes a text difficult to read? Topical or Thematic Knowledge Top Level Structure/Features Vocabulary Readability

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD The CCSS failed to carefully integrate the languagearts, e.g., reading comprehension and writingcomposition, in ways that support and sustainstudent learning as reciprocal language processes.For example: Text structures taught for comprehending informationtexts: description, sequence, cause effect, comparecontrast, and problem solution. Text types in information text composition instruction:opinion, persuasion, description, explanation, etc. Does reading serve as a model forwriting and vice versa?

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12: THE BAD Will the CCSS text examples and titles result in anational required lists of books to be read ratherthan encouraging teachers and students to expandthe types of texts to be read in classrooms? Will future CCSS testing reinforce the potential forexample texts becoming a required reading list?

The Ugly

How the Once Common Core StateStandards May Become FederalStandards

THE UGLY“Our Nation is at risk. Our onceunchallenged preeminence incommerce, industry, science,and technological innovation isbeing overtaken by competitorsthroughout the world.”

The UGLY“If an unfriendly foreign powerhad attempted to impose onAmerica the mediocreeducational performance thatexists today, we might well haveviewed it as an act of war. ”

The UGLYWhile We Were Asleep“Change is hardest on those caughtby surprise. Change is the hardeston those who have difficultychanging too. But change is natural;change is not new, change isimportant.”

The UGLYTen Forces thatFlattened theWorld: A CausalChain at Work?

The UGLY#1. When the wall came down and the windows went up.#2. When Netscape went public.#3. Work flow software.#4. Open sourcing.#5. Outsourcing.#6. Offshoring: Running with Gazelles; Eating with Lions.#7. Supply Chaining: Eating Sushi in Arkansas.#8. Insourcing: What the Guys in Funny Brown Shorts are Really Doing.#9. In-forming: Google, MSN, Yahoo Web Search#10. The Steroids: Digital, Mobile, Personal, andVirtual

The Ugly" My advice to you is: “Girls, finish yourhomework – people in China and India arestarving for your jobs.”" Bill Gates, “the more educated you are, the moreoptions you will have in a flat world.”" Have we really been investing in our future andpreparing our children the way we need to for therace ahead? The answer is: NO.

Don’t Miss theSequel!

The Ugly…And the theme continues with publiceducation (and teacher education) in the crosshairs…Five Pillars of Prosperity" Public education" Building and modernizing of infrastructure" Open doors to immigration" Government support for research anddevelopment" Necessary regulations on private economicactivity

The Ugly“As a country we have not yet adapted to thisnew reality. We don’t think of education asan investment in national growth andnational security because throughout ourhistory it has been a localized, decentralizedissue, not a national one. Today, however,what matters is not how your local schoolranks in its county or state but howAmerica’s schools rank in the world.”

The Ugly“America needs to close two education gaps atonce. We need to close the gap between black,Hispanic, and other minority students and theaverage for white students on standardizedreading, writing, and math tests. But we have anequally dangerous gap between what theaverage American student and the averagestudents in many industrial countries that weconsider collaborators and competitors includingSingapore, Korea, Taiwan, Finland and those inthe most developed parts of China.”

The UglyAND THE THEME CONTINUES WITHA FEW FACTIODS…" Thirty years ago, ten percent of California’s generalfund went to higher education and three percent toprisons. Today, nearly eleven percent goes to prisonsand eight percent to higher education." China is now second in the world in its publication ofbiomedical research articles, having recentlysurpassed Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany,Italy, France, Canada and Spain." In 1998 China produced about 20,000 research articles,but by 2006 the output had reached 83,000 . . .overtaking Japan, Germany and the U.K.

The UglyAND THE THEME CONTINUES WITHA FEW FACTIODS…" Forty-nine percent of United States adults do notknow how long it takes for the Earth to revolvearound the Sun." Youths between the ages of 8 and 18 average sevenand-a-halfhours a day in front of video games,television and computers—often multi-tasking." In 2007 China became second only to the UnitedStates in the estimated number of people engaged inscientific and engineering research and development.

The Ugly “Clearly our Asian counterparts have taken a verydifferent – in fact, opposite – approach in theireducation reforms. While the U.S. is movingtoward more standardization and centralization,the Asian countries are working hard to allowmore flexibility and autonomy at the local level…While the U.S. is raising the stakes on testing, theAsian countries are exerting great efforts to reducethe power and pressure of testing…

The Ugly “In this spirit, schools should offer acomprehensive, balanced curriculum that includesopportunities for students to explore and… tolearn math, science, technology, history,economics, geography, government, reading,literature, music, foreign languages, and art; todevelop global awareness and appreciation fordifferences; to develop understanding of andability to interact within the digital virtual world;and to develop a healthy body and mind.

The Ugly

The Ugly “…great teachers are the key. Research shows, infact, that the single most important factor inimproving student achievement is great teaching(pg. 53).” “The only thing that matters is results for kids! (pg.56).” “There is irony in that we encourage creativity in ourkids here in the United States and yet we don’t encouragecreativity in how we run our schools. This is anotherreason we are not producing results…(pg. 56).”

The Ugly “There is no doubt that family is very important ininfluencing a student’s preparation for learning.But, family is not destiny. The estimates of teacherperformance we’ve cited suggest that having threeto four years of good teachers (85 th percentile) in arow would generally over come the averageachievement deficit between low-income kids andothers…Unfortunately the current school systemdoes not ensure any such three- or four-year run ofhigh-quality teachers (pg. 84).”Eric HanushekPaul and Jean Senior Hanna FellowHoover Institute of Stanford University

The Ugly “Recent efforts to develop common standards andtesting across wider groups of states appear verysensible (pg. 97).”Eric HanushekPaul and Jean Senior Hanna FellowHoover Institute of Stanford University

The Ugly“The whole education system is built onthree pillars of mediocrity: lockstep pay,life tenure, and seniority. Until we buildit on a foundation of performance,accountability, and excellence, we won’tsucceed.” Joel Klein“Schools are not adult employmentcenters.” Michelle Rhee

The UglyWhat do you know about these characters?Jon SchnurKati HaycockEli Broad Wendy KoppAlan BersinMichael JohnstonWhitney Tilson Randi WeingartenJoel Klein David GuggenheimEric Hanushek Democrats forEducational Reform

The UglyReformers included - “TFA alums andother reformers in Schnur’s network;academics like Kane; money people likeBroad, Gates, the hedge funders, andthe billionaires in the elevator; charteroperators; parents from Harlem to LosAngeles who saw that there was analternative... And Democrats who werewilling to join Republicans like JebBush in confronting the unions,including the Democratic presidentwho set off the imperfect but pivotalrace to the top”

The Ugly Speaking of NCLB . . . “For the firsttime, all across the country, studentperformance was being tied to everyschool, and demographics were beingtied to every measure”

The Ugly“By spring of 2011, an unlikelyconvergence of forces had madestunning headway in pushing an agenda…that A Nation at Risk warned nearlythirty years before was so urgent.”

And then there is traditional teachereducation….

The Ugly“The ideal is to encourage the development ofteachers and other educators who are truly‘reflective practitioners,’ able to draw on theoryto inform practice. The flip side of this aim isto encourage university professors to becomepractice-oriented theoreticians, able to draw onissues from practice in their theory buildingand to produce theories with potential usevalue. That is the ideal. But no one wouldargue that education schools come close tomeeting this ideal”

The Ugly“Oddly enough, the rest of the university couldlearn a lot from the example of the ed school…But it seems more likely that academics willconsider this a cautionary tale about how riskyand unrewarding such a strategy can be. Afterall, education schools have demonstrated thatthey are neither very successful ataccomplishing the marriage of theory andpractice nor well rewarded for trying.”

The Ugly“The education of teachers in the United States needsto be turned upside down. To prepare teachers for 21 stcentury classrooms, teacher education must shift awayfrom a norm which emphasizes academic preparationand course work loosely linked to school-basedexperiences. Rather it must move to programs that arefully grounded in clinical practice and interwovenwith academic content and professional courses…Inorder to make this change, teacher education programsmust work in close partnership with school districts toredesign teacher preparation to better serveprospective teachers and the students they teach.”

The Ugly“All teacher education programs shouldbe accountable for – and theiraccreditation contingent upon – how wellthey address the needs of schools andhelp improve P-12 student learning…This will require more rigorousmonitoring and enforcement for programapproval and accreditation …”

And the recent lamentations of aneducational reformer….

The Ugly“The standards movement died in1995, when the controversy overthe national history standardscame to a high boil…NCLB wasall sticks and no carrots. Testbasedaccountability – notstandards – became our nationaleducation policy.”

The Ugly“..we should attend to the quality of thecurriculum – that is, what is taught. Everyschool should have a well-conceivedcoherent, sequential curriculum. Acurriculum is not a script but a set ofguidelines…To paraphrase the Cheshire catin Alice in Wonderland, if you don’t knowwhere you are going, any road will get youthere. The curriculum is a starting point forother reforms.”

The Ugly“The Democrats for EducationalReform’s (DFER) vast financialresources imported the Republicanagenda into the Democratic Party.DFER’s interests and strategies, evenits membership, overlap with similargroups such as Education ReformNow, the Education Equality Project,and Stand for Children…”

Common Core State Standards:The Good, The Bad and TheUgly" Information technologies and social mediahave leveled the economic playing fieldinternationally." U.S. schools are not producing studentswho are competitive among otherdeveloped nations and economies for thejobs of the future." U.S. schools do not focus rewards oraccountability on adding to students’learning or on the quality of thecurriculum.

Common Core State Standards:The Good, The Bad and TheUgly" Change is coming to U.S. schools and theteacher education system from outside theeducational establishment." The “standards” reform movement washijacked by the testing, school choice, andteacher quality/effectiveness movement." Do the Common Core State Standardsrepresent a much needed course correctionin educational reform or one more stanzaof the same old song?

Common Core State Standards in Language ArtsK-12:The GOOD, The BAD, and The UGLYD. Ray Reutzel, Ph.D.Emma Eccles Jones Endowed Chair ProfessorUtah State Universitywww.cehs.usu.edu/eccPresentations Button Left Hand Side