A draft of the newly developed common core state standards purports to offer “sufficient guidance and clarity so that they are teachable, learnable and measurable,” however the ELA guidelines offer almost no specific content and little that would be of use to teachers in planning lessons–or parents in understanding what their child is expected to know.
Copies of the draft, an effort spearheaded by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA) have begun circulating among reviewers. A copy found its way to me without any restrictions on its use or circulation. I have posted the draft document here. (Trouble with the link? Try here instead)
The draft insists that the voluntary standards be “coherent” but defines coherence to mean they “should convey a unified vision of the big ideas and supporting concepts within a discipline and reflect a progression of learning that is meaningful and appropriate.” Framed as a series of benchmarks students must reach “to be college and career ready,” the draft enumerates standards such as the ability to “determine what text says explicitly and use evidence within text to infer what is implied by or follows logically from the text.”
To put this as blandly as possible, this is neither a revelatory insight nor a meaningful standard. Educators hoping for guidance on what particular texts are expected to be taught, or how to get students to reach the bland and obvious standards will be disappointed. On specific “texts” the draft says merely:
The literary and informational texts chosen should be rich in content….This includes texts that have broad resonance and are referred to and quoted often, such as influential political documents, foundational literary works, and seminal historical and scientific texts.
“At first glance, these language standards are, despite the brave descriptors, very similar to the dysfunctional state standards already in place,” notes Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr. “Like most state standards, they naively take a formalistic approach to language ability. They assume that the ability to understand literary and informational language is chiefly a how–to skill, whereas it is chiefly a topic-dependent skill that varies with specific topic familiarity.”
A sample scientific text on covalent bonds in the draft document, Hirsch notes, is a “a good illustration of this general point. Will it be more useful for understanding such texts to spend class time teaching some will-o-the-wisp language proficiency or to impart a good general education in science and the humanities?
“One begins to despair,” Hirsch concludes.
One may be despairing, but another may be breathing a sigh of relief, assured that a handful of content experts are not at this moment deciding that every 11th grader in America ought to read “To His Coy Mistress.”
I would hardly label determining what text says explicitly, and using evidence in the text to infer what follows logically, as a “will-o-the-wisp language proficiency.” After all, someone has to select substantive texts that support important learning goals. Perhaps selecting the most appropriate texts might be best done by the educators who actually know the students? A good general education in the science and humanities is not entirely dependent on a canon.
Once again, we have confused “standards”–what students should know and be able to do–with “curriculum” and “instructional strategies.” Our next point of contention will undoubtedly be confusing standards with benchmarked assessment data. All of these are separate things, however.
Comment by Nancy Flanagan — July 22, 2009 @ 6:33 pm
Why you ever thought for a second that national standards would help your cause has always been a mystery to me.
Comment by Tom Hoffman — July 22, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
I have too much respect for Nancy Flanagan’s expertise and experience to disagree with her adamantly in public. But I will say that one of the most difficult things for well educated people to understand is the countless ways their own background knowledge comes into play in every sentence they read, write or speak out loud. Using evidence in the text to make inferences is simply not something for which you can learn a “strategy” then apply it to all future nonfiction texts one encounters. The broader and more robust your education, the more likely you will be successful in making connections, inferences, etc. in a wide number of knowledge domains. So it’s not about a canon, but doing our best to ensure the broadest education possible, hence the broadest competency possible. Insisting on seeing reading and writing and transferable skills and relying on strategy instruction — because if you are silent on content, you are in effect saying one text is as good as another — will guarantee our children will not be well educated OR good readers.
As for why I thought national standards wold help education? Well, I still do. But I will confess to a hope that when you accumulate enough information on one side of a question, and note the absence on the other side, people will ultimately accept the question as settled. There’s a name for this process. It’s called education.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — July 23, 2009 @ 12:21 am
I should also add I agree completely with Nancy on the confusion of standards with curriculum. That’s a big problem. When parents and other non-educators (Heck, even some educators!) hear “national standards” they almost certainly assume we mean a “national curriculum.” I think we owe it to the public to be crystal clear that standards, if that’s all we are to have, are aspirational guidelines and that what your child actually learns in school may or may not be the same as another kid across town, across the country, or even across the hall. Personally, I think that would be a surprise to most people. And not a pleasant one.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — July 23, 2009 @ 12:31 am
Robert – I think by agreeing with Nancy about distinguishing standards from curriculum, you (and Nancy) have answered Hirsch on the subject. Isn’t he hoping for curriculum rather than standards? Or, is he hoping for standards that will be so specific and binding that certain curricular elements will essentially be predetermined?
Nancy never said that her background knowledge is disconnected from skills and abilities. No one could argue that, I think. The problem is that Hirsch and others like him seem determined on a particular canon, on giving the stamp of approval to certain authors and texts. In formulating curriculum and following standards, I don’t object to content suggestions from national experts – among whom there should be ample teacher representation. I do think that schools and teachers should have conversations about some core knowledge that has value, but at the risk of sounding like a relativist, there are no absolute right answers. (To wit, don’t almost all of us have major gaps or omissions in our canonical knowledge? True confession – I haven’t read Dante! Somehow, I get along in life. But if you can’t distinguish among Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles – as I can – then I feel sorry for you).
It’s all well and good to preach from the ivory tower about the preservation of Western Civilization. The fact is that when real communities, schools, teachers and students confront the question of which authors and texts should be read by everyone, the fabric of society will actually be strengthened by the diversity of answers that arise. The process itself is part of what we hope to preserve of Western Civilization, isn’t it? Do we trust appointees of the state to come up with the answers for all of us (assuming there are any)? Hopefully there will be some commonalities in the answers worked out on more local levels – I’m sure there will be – but they need to arise organically, because people continue to find meaning and relevance in the works they select. If THE LIST comes down from on high and is not subject to lively local debate and discussion, and we accept it, then I would argue we are actually in a weaker educational and cultural position for having abdicated and submitted. We will be teaching certain works because we were told to, which is a far inferior reason to do something, compared to the rationale that emerges when there is local ownership and local accountability for the decisions made about education.
Comment by David Cohen — July 23, 2009 @ 1:10 am
David: I’m not trying to waive the bloody shirt here, but unless you’ve taught low-SES inner city children with virtually no background knowledge on any subject (and little likelihood of gaining it at home) you can’t fully appreciate how absolutely beside the point most reading instruction is. Many states have specific content standards in science and social studies. I see no reason why we can’t do the same for reading. The draft even says “this includes texts that have broad resonance and are referred to and quoted often, such as influential political documents, foundational literary works.” That sounds promising. So why not go the next step and name some? The included the Declaration of Independence as a sample text. One down. Next?
I haven’t read Dante either, but when someone refers to a circle of Hell or says “abandon all hope ye who enter here,” I get the reference and don’t offer up a blank stare. That is to say sometimes shallow knowledge has its place as the glue that makes ideas stick and communication possible.
That brings me to Hirsch. I think it was Dan Willingham who described Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy as the most misunderstood education book of the last half century. If you think Hirsch is preaching preservation of Western Civilization, then I submit you are as familiar with his work as I am of Aeschylus. It has nothing to do with The Canon. His work addresses the fact that there is a body of common knowledge that makes reading, writing and speaking function. Shared knowledge is what makes reading comprehension happen. And unless we explicitly teach it, those who lack background knowledge — especially poor and minority children — are doomed to spend their lives saying “I read it. But I don’t get it.”
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — July 23, 2009 @ 1:35 am
A question to see how much consensus there would be even here, if we had to get to specifics. Thinking just of “literature,” if you had to pick 3 books per grade, K-8, that you felt kids needed to read, what would they be?
Comment by Rachel — July 23, 2009 @ 2:50 am
Let me revise my question above not include books read aloud by teachers in the early grades.
Comment by Anonymous — July 23, 2009 @ 2:54 am
“A copy found its way to me without any restrictions on its use or circulation.”
Not to split hairs, but the draft does say “draft/confidential” at the top of every page. That sounds like a restriction to me.
Comment by Mark — July 23, 2009 @ 10:25 am
From this writer’s standpoint, the standards are an example of obfuscation. Instead the first standard under “reading informational and literary texts” could be revised as follows.
Original: Determine what the text says explicitly and use evidence within the text to infer what is implied by or follows logically from the text.
Revised: Understand explicit meanings and infer implicit meanings from a text.
The tasks the student is asked to do is expressed clearly by the verbs, understand and infer, not by determine and use. Aren’t explicit meanings also derived from “evidence in the text”? The word “infer” means “to derive by reasoning; conclude or judge by evidence or premises,” thus making the rest of the statement (“what is implied by or follows logically from the text”) unnecessary.
Poorly written standards do not bode well for the whole process.
Another example:
Original: Interpret data, graphics, and words in the text, and combine these elements of information to achieve comprehension.
Revised: Understand and interpret data, graphics and words in a text.
Darcy Pattison
Comment by Darcy Pattison — July 23, 2009 @ 10:37 am
The draft standards appear to be as promised. They promised mathematics, and delivered. They promised language arts, and the term itself revealed that they think reading can be divorced from content knowledge. They never ever promised literature, history, art, or biology. For what they set out to do, it’s a sturdy first draft with potential for improvement in the remaining planned work steps.
You disagree with the central premise about what allows learners to make sense of text. You seek a fundamental shift in paradigm, to a view in which mature literacy could not be discussed in abstraction from substantive content understanding. You are right to seek that.
Yet you write as though there is merely a problem of which details are included and which phrases convey them.
Please don’t do that. It does not advance your cause,and it does not serve students well.
Please admit openly that no effort to prepare language arts standards as such, combine them with mathematics, and call that college readiness would be acceptable given your analysis of the nature of learning.
Please be explicit about the shape and scale of your disagreement.
Comment by Susan Weston — July 23, 2009 @ 10:43 am
These “standards” have “raced to the top” and gone over the “higher order” cliff.
“Success” is defined as “C or better” in college freshman courses. To contend that the standards are “research and evidence based” gives a whole new meaning to “research” and evidence.”
I’d bet the farm that few members of the Obama administration, the Congress, or Fortune 500 executives could pass the sample math items. My favorite is “Your job is to find a good approximation to the length of a roll of paper.” That’s an easy one. The label will give you the exact length.
The document should put the final nail in the standards movement that started in 1989 and that has failed more fundamentally at every step. I don’t know how to “turnaround” the failed policy, but it seems a worthy “aspirational goal.”
Comment by Dick Schutz — July 23, 2009 @ 11:21 am
On the comments of David and Nancy: The distinction between “standards” and “curriculum framework” can be viewed as an evasion. The experts make this (for them) convenient distinction, while the public thinks that the word “standards” implies a curriculum framework. So “standards” has been a politically expedient word that raises no hackles although standards like the ones proposed offer no concrete guidance for a grade-by-grade framework, even while they incorrectly imply that verbal ability is a how-to skill. So I think the misleading use of the word “standards” should be challenged at every opportunity.
The topic of an imposed literary canon is a (similarly convenient) red herring. The connection of “literature” with “language arts” was a historical contingency that (as Jeanne Chall proposed) should be resisted. The real issue is verbal ability, which depends on general knowledge much more than on any specific works of literature. In fact you can’t understand literature (or any other body of language) without broad general knowledge. So language arts or verbal ability needs to be intellectually disjoined from literature and from the wholly distracting subject of a literary canon. If the curriculum framework for verbal proficiency (language arts) left literature entirely up for grabs, that would be a useful political trade off in return for grade-by-grade curriculum frameworks for the knowledge that will be needed for high verbal proficiency by grade 8 or 12.
Comment by don hirsch — July 23, 2009 @ 12:31 pm
It seems to me that the draft “voluntary national standards” proves the point about the importance of background information.
The matter of educational standards, objectives, and curriculum statements has a history that goes back to at least 1918 with Franklin Bobbitt’s book “Curriculum.” This early work was far more sophisticated and thoughtful than the present draft, but the quest has really netted nothing more than instructionally-insensitive standardized achievement tests that yield detrimental unintended consequences.
“’standards’ has been a politically expedient word that raises no hackles although standards like the ones proposed offer no concrete guidance for a grade-by-grade framework.”
Precisely. However, they provide a very convenient basis for constructing multiple-choice test items of the sort that ETS and ACT crank out mechanically. Who are drafted the standards? One guess should provide the answer.
“The topic of an imposed literary canon is a (similarly convenient) red herring. The connection of “literature” with “language arts” was a historical contingency.”
But it still rules. Instructionally, “language arts” is an empty term and it fosters an endless regress. If children are not taught how to read by grade 2-3/age 8-9, they will have acquired so many faulty behavior patterns that it’s unlikely that they will ever acquire that expertise. Look at the evidence. Students can reliably taught the rudiments of spoken, written, and electronic communication, but not as “arts.”
Certainly, a “literary canon” is anachronistic. In the age of the Internet, however, a “grade-by-grade” framework is also anachronistic. Certainly also, the matter of “background information”=knowledge is paramount. But the question of what knowledge should be within the student’s head and what can be left to access on demand would seem the important issue.
The draft standards are in the context of the 19th-20th century, not the 21st.
Comment by Anonymous — July 23, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
Robert – I think our viewpoints on teaching and learning might be quite compatible overall. I have no quarrel with the idea of building background knowledge. I just don’t approve of a top-down process where certain people are given the undeserved privilege of making decisions for the rest of us about the content of that background knowledge. I trust localities to see the benefit of crafting a curriculum that balances local and national perspectives, and to the extent that standards are useful for literary study, they might inform and guide that decision-making process rather than usurp it.
Comment by David Cohen — July 23, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
RP: “I will say that one of the most difficult things for well educated people to understand is the countless ways their own background knowledge comes into play in every sentence they read, write or speak out loud.”
NF: I certainly understand how comprehensive background knowledge is central to all aspects of literacy, and numeracy. For example, I learned what a “will-o-the-wisp” was by reading “Jane Eyre” and thus was able to make my earlier argument.
And while I believe that the public does confuse “curriculum” and “standards” (as well as “assessments” and “benchmarks”), much of that confusion has been spurred and supported by the sharp rise of universal, standardized testing and media pieces on international competitions. Perhaps our job ought to be promoting a rich curriculum for every child, selected by the people in charge of his/her education, rather than a national panel of test-makers.
I have never understood the desperate need for standardization, uniformity and comparisons. And–by the way–it’s looking as if I owe Robert a dollar. Glad to pay up.
Comment by Nancy Flanagan — July 23, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
Don,
I think there’s a fairly important distinction between the research on the general importance of prior knowledge, on the one hand, and the specification of what knowledge is important. From your comments above, one would never have expected that you would have specified precisely the type of knowledge you think 6 years olds should know. Yet your research and the general literature suggests only the first point, not the second. I have no idea whether third-graders need to know what the Egyptian pyramids are to understand most of what they read or whether that’s a higher priority than knowing about the two women arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955 for refusing to move to the back of the bus… before Rosa Parks was arrested that December, why their arrests didn’t start a one-day boycott that had been planned by the Women’s Political Caucus, and how the one-day boycott plans eventually lead to the MIA and King’s leadership. And I suspect there is no research demonstrating which bit of stuff is more important to children’s academic success. The point about prior knowledge in general is persuasive. But which knowledge? On that, I’m skeptical.
And it’s the second type of question that’s one center of the debate over curriculum that you started, plus the question about a common culture that’s the overlap with Bloom. I suspect the only argument to be made for CK is one on the national culture question rather than the prior-knowledge issue. I read a substantially different bunch of literature from my wife. In high school and the first year of college she read Ibsen, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Dante, among others. In high school and my first year of college I read far more Shakespeare than she did, as well as Lawrence, Joyce, Crane, and Ellison, among others, and I got to Le Guin well before she did. I had a lot more exposure to history than she did. She had more exposure to 19th century novels than I did. Somehow, when we started dating (during my sophomore year), we had things to talk to each other about. Neither of us have read all the Tenach or New Testament all the way through, but we’re still able to get a bunch of references based on them.
One practical question is what is the “critical mass” of prior knowledge to making reading easier. I suspect you’d have a clinical sense of what that is, and I’d be skeptical of the specification without better research than currently exists.
The other question, which is as much political as practical, is what overlap is really required for a national conversation about culture or public policy. Webster, Jefferson, and Rush each had their ideas (each very different!), and somehow we survived and generally thrived without their ideas’ coming to fruition. MY historian’s sense of what is required is considerably less than yours, and I suspect you’d be as skeptical of my specification as I am of yours.
Comment by Sherman Dorn — July 25, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
In Seattle the k-12 Math Curriculum is believed by the school directors to be the WA state math standards. Thus the grade level standards are the curricula. When standards fail to resemble specifications the curriculum idea turns into vague Nonsense.
Singapore has well defined grade level Math Standards that are actually able to be covered during a school year.
The idea that a group of self appointed experts, many of whom are the authors of past USA math chaos, will produce something beneficial is naive. The USA’s math situation of internationally non-competitive will hardly be positively impacted by vague standards. USA math will continue to produce poor results because allegiance to ideology is more important than results. There remains little public recognition that top math performing nations have more time in class on task annually and use much more effective instructional practices than the USA. Math Standards Bahh Humbug.
Comment by Dan Dempsey — July 26, 2009 @ 7:14 am
Sherman,
I agree that it’s hard to say PRECISELY which knowledge we should fill kids’ brains with. But ROUGHLY, it seems to me, it’s much easier: a. a BROAD array of knowledge, so the kid is not myopic; b. knowledge of the roots of Western Civilization, since America is its offspring; c. knowledge of as many classics or Great Books (not just Western) as possible, to see the full scope of language and the human spirit; d. the fundamentals of the sciences; e. the fundamentals of math; f. the fundamentals of the other disciplines, if possible, to facilitate more advanced study in these areas, as well as to create well-rounded humans who can “ballpark” problems in realms outside their specialty. Do you (or others) disagree with these guidelines?
Comment by Ben F — July 26, 2009 @ 10:51 am
David wrote “I trust localities to see the benefit of crafting a curriculum . . .” Raise your hand if you know of a “locality” that has actually drafted a detailed curriculum for all of its students. Not seeing any hands, I’ll proceed. One problem with the push toward local control is that it’s a repeated regress: the feds won’t set curriculum, because states should do it; the states say we value local control, each “locality” should do it; but go to a school board and ask, and they certainly won’t deign to tell individual schools what curriculum to teach — that’s up to each school community; but aside from a handful of charter schools, principals will tell you they don’t come between teacher and student and tell the teacher what curriculum to teach their kids. And so, most commonly, each individual teacher in each individual class decides on a currculum, with no coordination of approach with teachers in other classes even in that school. That is not a shared curriculum, and it can’t teach shared background knowledge, which is what we’re really talking about. The answer is not, as Sherman seems to suggest, to throw up our hands because the task of figuring out what people need to know, and not make any choices about what needs to be learned.
Comment by James Mink — July 26, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
Ben,
a., d., and e. seem obvious (though there are a bunch of people in Florida who would want to excise natural selection from science). But what’s the “roots of Western Civilization,” and what’s “Great Books”? That’s not to say that children inherently won’t understand an idea that’s 500 or 2000 years old, but that gets us back to the question of canon… And more pragmatically, even if we agreed that the entire reading list of St. John’s was The Canon, how would you make selections from that for third-graders?
Comment by Sherman Dorn — July 27, 2009 @ 7:53 am