What
bothers me most about the education process is two things. The first is that it matters. Outcomes need to be clearly defined and
demanded and progressively improved for all students. It is not good enough to accept student
failure and not immediately rechannel that student to optimize talents and
overcome weaknesses. Today we are barely
identifying brain talent as per separated skills. The truth remains that the best and the
keenly motivated develop their own work around when it becomes necessary.
The
second issue that I have is that we appear to have a studied lack of curiosity
regarding what constitutes good teaching, or more seriously, have been
unwilling to produce a culture of competitive teaching which swiftly rewards
the top third, and dismisses the bottom third.
There are plenty of jobs out there for passed over teachers, civil
servants and similar job for life seekers and they need not be welcomed in what
needs to become our most competitive enterprise..
I
have long understood that I am what I am because of a handful of gifted
teachers and my own incessant self-training.
Both are critical, but the latter must also be enabled. There are crisis points in which a child must
be taken aside, his time managed and asked to up his game. I had the luxury of social isolation which
drove me to focus of the material at hand.
This needs to become possible for effective self training. That also includes and particularly includes
tool usage skills.
Americans
are getting testy about testing and Common Core curriculum
Parents in New Mexico, and elsewhere in the
U.S., are waking up to Common Core curriculum.
FRIDAY,
DECEMBER 06, 2013
BY STEPHANIE BLOCK
You know, it wasn’t
that long ago that Johnny – and Juan – could read. They could recite the
multiplication table, too, and could quickly make change, tally a ledger, and
calculate simple percentages.
Their teachers didn’t
teach to a test; they taught basic, academic content. Johnny’s score on
standardized tests – and Juan’s –measured the level to which they had mastered,
with their teachers’ help, these basic academic skills.
Public school systems
such as the one in New York City, while far from perfect, managed to educate
enormous numbers of students – sometimes as many as 60 to a classroom – from
diverse backgrounds, including ghetto descendants of slaves and non-English
speaking immigrant children. Some children did better than others but
most learned how to read, despite disadvantaged backgrounds.
In 1955, educator
Rudolf Flesch saw this changing. He published Why Johnny Can't Read: And What You Can Do
About It, demonstrating the disastrous results of a particular reading
pedagogy called “look-say” in which students simply memorized entire words
rather than learning how to sound them out phonetically. Traditional
introduction to the fundamentals of phonics, he argued, almost universally
produced readers; “look-say” produced a startling percentage of
non-readers.
Flesch’s thesis,
that we have to tools to teach people to read and aren’t using them, has proved
increasingly poignant as the decades pass. The steady drop in
standardized test scores (even as the tests themselves
are “dumbed down”) is heart-breaking because it’s difficult for a
person without fundamental academic skills to function productively in the
world.
Sixty years and many
scores of pedagogical experiments later, Johnny’s inability to read well is
epidemic. Bad pedagogy, of course, isn’t the only factor. Children
from unstable families have always had a harder time concentrating on their
studies and this is an era of overwhelming social instability.
And yet, there are
contemporary educational models that prove academic failure isn’t inevitable.
In 1990, the principal of a predominantly black, Baltimore inner-city
school, Barclay, decided to address her school’s high truancy rate and
declining academic achievement by introducing a very traditional curriculum
into her school. Within three years, reading scores of the third grade
were 20% above the national average, and math scores and writing skills were
rising.
Barclay’s teachers
were not teaching to the test. They were teaching children from
“disadvantaged” circumstances basic academic skills using proven pedagogy.
The standardized tests proved that the children had acquired those
skills.
So, what are we to
think of the supporters of “education reform” – pushing nationalized education
that uses the consistently failed pedagogy of “mastery learning” (outcome based
education/Common Core) – who decry the use of standardized tests?
For example,
“hundreds” of complaints have reached the office of Democrat Senator Tim
Keller, New Mexico Senate Majority Whip who is a staunch Common Core advocate,
he tells us in a recent editorial.[i] The complaints “stress deep
objection to the continuing trend of out-of-state, for-profit testing
companies’ intrusion into the classroom.”
“New pedagogy,” Keller
writes, has “changed the way we learn and the way we teach.” There’s just
too much testing, driven by those with a nefarious “incentive to make the case
for more testing.”
And one Albuquerque
School Board member is encouraging a grassroots rebellion, encouraging parents
to opt out of the end of course evaluations. “This is a prime opportunity
for New Mexico parents to tell the public education department ‘we reject your
idea of reforming our schools based on standardized tests’.” [ii]
Yet another voice
comes from the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) –
an Alinskyian “community organizing” network that has been pushing
nationalized education “mastery learning” reforms for decades. In New
Mexico, Kip Bobroff, lead organizer of the IAF local Albuquerque
Interfaith, received special thanks (along with others) for his contributions
to “Positioning for the Possible: Investing in Education Reform in New Mexico,”
by Chris Sturgis (1-2011), a “discussion paper for the philanthropic sector” to
explore ways it could help implement Common Core. The IAF has
expressed a long-standing animus against standardized testing, holding that few
– if any – should be administered. [iii]
Yet Common Core is all
about assessment. Crazy, endless assessment. While it claims it
tests math and English language arts only once a year in grades 3-8 and once in
high school, either in the 10th or11th grade, the fact is that
every step of the curriculum is tested.
One New York City high
school principal examined a Common Core math test designed for first grade and
wrote: “Take a look at question No. 1, which shows students five pennies, under
which it says ‘part I know,’ and then a full coffee cup labeled with a ‘6’ and,
under it, the word, ‘Whole.’ Students are asked to find ‘the missing part’ from
a list of four numbers. My assistant principal for mathematics was not
sure what the question was asking. How could pennies be a part of a cup?
Then there is Question No. 12. Would (or should) a 6 year old understand
the question, ‘Which is a related subtraction sentence?’ My nephew’s
wife, who teaches Calculus, was stumped by that one. Finally, think about
the level of sophistication required to answer the multiple-choice question in
No. 8 which asks students to ‘Circle the number sentence that is true’ from a
list of four. Keep in mind that many New York State first graders are
still 5 years old at the beginning of October, when this test was given.”[iv]
Another example comes
from a third grade English language arts “research simulation task” in which
students must produce four “evidence-based selected response” items, two
“technology-enhanced constructed response” items, and one “prose constructed
response” item after reading about Eliza Scidmore who first proposed planting
cherry trees in Washington, D.C. If they accomplish the first task
correctly, they read a second story about George Washington Carver after which
they are told to use the computer to write an article that synthesizes aspects
of both texts.
The questions
(assessments) that accompany this lesson shape how students are to understand
it. The point isn’t just to measure the student’s comprehension of
complex reading – which is a marvelous objective - material but to draw the
“right conclusions.” For instance, students are first told:
Part A Question:
The article includes these details about Eliza’s life:
·
She wrote newspaper articles to tell others about what she saw in Alaska
to inform those who had not been there. (paragraph 1)
·
She wrote the first guidebook about Alaska. (paragraph 1)
·
She was the first woman to work at the National Geographic Society,
where she wrote many articles and books. (paragraph 11)
Then they are asked:
What do these details
help show about Eliza?
a. They show
that she shared the benefits of her experiences with others.
b. They
show she had many important jobs during her lifetime, but becoming a
photographer was one of her proudest moments.
c. They show
that her earlier travels were more exciting than the work she did later in her
life.
d. They show
that she had a careful plan for everything she did in her life.
The “correct” answer
is “a.”
If you are baffled,
proponents of Common Core will explain that this isn’t about just recalling
facts from a text to answer a question. Instead, the student must
synthesize several ideas and identify the author’s main idea.
Of course, that’s not
what the question asks nor does it acknowledge the context of a more detailed
reading. Given the answer Common Core has identified is “correct,” the
question should have been: “were Eliza’s experiences valuable to anyone besides
herself?”
Asking “what do these
details help show” about her – coupled with the text read minutes earlier –
show that Eliza did have many important jobs during her lifetime, that becoming
a photographer was for National Geography was a source of great pride for her,
and that she did find her travels very exciting.
The “correct” answer,
therefore, is a trick because it doesn’t really seek what it asks. In the
first place, the child is unreasonably expected to ignore what he has just read
in the story and to only look at the three details provided…though this isn’t
explained.
Then, he must understand
that the question is not to discover what this shows about Eliza but to
understand the subjective conclusion the tester wants him to draw, namely, that
one’s personal experiences may have benefits beyond oneself.
Should the child
refuse to accept “a” as the only correct answer, he will be unable to continue
with the lesson, to read the second story about George Washington Carver, or to
write about the commonality of these two stories. He must agree that
these details show that Eliza “shared the benefits of her experiences with
others” if he is to succeed at this task, making this an awfully manipulative
assignment.
How does this madcap
sort of education “reform” affect real reading comprehension and math skills?
In New York and Kentucky, two states that are a year into the Common Core
State Standards curriculum, student scores on the standardized tests plummeted.
It’s not really
surprising. We know how to teach Johnny to read.
We just aren’t doing
it.
Spero columnist Stephanie Block is the author of the four-volume
'Change Agents', which is available at Amazon.
Notes
[i] Tim Keller,
“Over-testing takes focus away from curriculum,” Albuquerque Journal, 12-5-13.
[ii] KOAT Youtube
video: “Kathy Korte Letter To Parents,” 12-2-13:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuZj7ZkfpDo
[iii] See, for
example, the Memorandum to Alliance Leaders from the Northwest IAF region’s
Education Research Action Team, 9-28-11.
[iv] Valerie Strauss,
“A Ridiculous Common Core test for first graders,” Washington Post, 10-31-13 –
discussing a letter by Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New
York.
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