Why the Common Core Standards WILL/WON'T Fix Education: Take Your Pick

Why it WON'T Work

We have a history of school reforms that haven't made much difference in educational outcomes: Sputnik, Nation at Risk, NCLB. How can the expectations of a narrow curriculum that assesses only literacy and numeracy lead to the kind of transformation that is predicted?

We have learned from the research on cognition and development that education is much more complex than one set of standards

All learners bring different backgrounds, experiences, and abilities to the classroom but differentiation is not evident in the rigorously sequenced and lock-stepped standards

Creativity, collaborative problem solving, digital literacy, global understanding, and other 21st century skills are weak links in the standards

If we want to model fairness and equity in education, let's start with a comprehensive and balanced teacher evaluation system and a fair and balanced assessment model

In the past, higher standards have started out being popular until the scales adjust and the consequences kicked in

Why it WILL Work

The new Common Core State standards provide coherent sequential guidelines specifying the knowledge and skills students will learn as they progress through the grades.

The Common Core curriculum and tests are grounded in evidence from research and practice

Their consistency will ensure that teaching and learning is constant across states, neighborhoods, and schools

The standards provide curricular guidance and support that will enable all students to achieve at the highest levels of literacy and numeracy

As students build world class literacy and numeracy skills, the result will be a long term improvement in standardized test scores

This will make our students better prepared for college and career, 21st century skills, and be more competitive globally

The Loss of Creativity

In their article “The Creativity Crisis”  (Newsweek, July, 10 2010)  Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman reported that in an IBM poll of 1500 CEO’s, creativity was identified as the number one leadership competence of the future. At the same time, scores on the Torrance Test, a long standing measure of creativity, are down.

How can this dichotomy be resolved? Well, it's not easy when the Common Core is honing instructional content to a narrow slice of literacy and numeracy. There is little evidence in the Common Core released test items that creativity is valued. Oh, sure, we can say that collaborative discussions (SL.1) have the potential for this and writing narratives (W.3) may allow some creative ideas as long as they align with the required elements of the standard.

But creativity can be assessed. Dividing it into its key elements: Fluency, originality, elaboration, and flexibility makes this possible.So, what’s to be done? Let’s start “Innovation Fridays”, like they do in the business world. Spend some time every Friday (or any other day) letting your students imagine, visualize, create their dreams, and design schemes. Guide them in asking questions and finding the answers. Be sure to extend every Common Core standard into a 21^st century skill. Make reading and writing about imagination. Don’t stop with the Common Core; rather use it as the springboard to creativity.

A Leap in Text Complexity

In response to the Common Core tests, the reading lexile ranges have been raised.The new 6^th to 8^th grade lexiles are higher than the previous 9th to 10^th grade lexiles

According to  Achieve 3000, students will take a baseline test to determine their lexile level. Then they will be given reading passages matched to their lexile and then they will take the grade level lexile-based test. How will this raise their reading ability?

Reading Harder

It’s hard to learn to read. According to the Oxford Dictionaries, “English has more words than other comparable world languages”. And, I would add, more quirky irregularities. I can remember coming across the word pariah in high school and thinking it was a piranha and that the person was exiled, maybe because they were a vampire.

I also recall a classroom where a struggling reader was working his way through “A Bad Case of Stripes”. When he got to the word “contagious” and could not figure out if it was a soft or hard g, the teacher said “Read Harder”   

Reading harder doesn’t make it more comprehensible. It only increases reading and test anxiety. The lexile levels on the Common Core have being raised to unprecedented levels; ahead of the developmental capability of some students. (The 6^th to 8^th grade lexile is now beyond the former 9^th to 10^th grade lexile)

The importance of differentiation, scaffolds, and reading support cannot be overemphasized, but with budget cuts, it is the teachers who will now be teaching harder.