I haven’t paid that much attention to the Common Core debate. I’m fairly agnostic on curriculum and standards matters. I don’t really care whether students are learning math one way or another, as long as they are learning it. I don’t care if students learn to memorize the state capitals or whether they work on group projects on immigration patterns in America. As long as they learn something. Because I have a political science background, I tend to think that other factors – community involvement, financial support of the school district, a qualified and happy staff, smart leadership — make a bigger difference in educating kids than one type of curriculum or another.
And then Arne Duncan opened his big trap and blamed “white suburban moms” for the Common Core backlash.
He had just told a gathering of state superintendents of education that “white suburban moms” were rebelling against the Common Core academic standards — new guidelines for math and language arts instruction — because their kids had done poorly on the tough new tests.
“All of a sudden, their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought … and that’s pretty scary,” Duncan said at the event Friday.
Now that Duncan brought politics into the Common Core debate, I’m paying attention.
Because we moved once and Ian switched public school autistic programs, I’ve seen three elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school close up as a parent. There weren’t huge differences in the curriculum between the two middle schools. One middle school studied US government in the 8th grade; the other studied world history. Whatever. Not a big deal. There were differences between the two middle schools in terms of leadership, teacher happiness, and so on, but the curriculum was roughly similar. However, there were major differences in the curriculum among the three elementary schools. One emphasized memorization and tests, the other emphasized group projects and learning “experiences,” and the other was a mix of the two. The kids with the more progressive education do have some troubles adjusting to the more traditional education approach in the middle school, so parents hire tutors to help their kids catch up.
Other than a few complainers, everyone is pretty much satisfied with their kids’ elementary schools. I’m a sucker for local involvement in education, so I think it’s interesting to see how different communities with their differing preferences help shape these schools.
And then comes the Common Core, which sets uniform curriculum goals and assesses progress with standardized tests. For the schools that already had regular tests, this isn’t a big deal. For schools that have fewer tests and less of an emphasis of memorization, this is a huge change in business. It pits one group of parents against another.
Frank Bruni, in the Sunday Times, said that kids are being coddled. They need to fail some tests. They need to learn to work hard, like kids in other countries. We’re too worried about their self-esteem and not worried enough that they are learning important skills.
And now I’m going to be a lazy blogger and step back. No conclusion here. I’ll let you all weigh in instead.
Apt. 11d 
Yes, I think kids, in general, are being coddled too much, that there’s too little feedback on performance. Feedback on performance is an important part of most learning theories. But, another known part of learning theory is that constant failure is not useful information. When failure is constant, or too frequent, the learner doesn’t know a path to improvement, to the learning and so no learning occurs.
After having close experience with a number of kids, I think the coddling question is also kid-specific. There’s the right level of failure and success to find for each child. Some will work under a stricter regime (i.e. with more challenge) than others. Some children shut down with even minor failures. Working to move them from that mindset isn’t coddling, it’s teaching a different skill, one that learning the “common core” would then build on
I am with you on not being wedded to particular curricula, and, more broadly, to specific content. I think people tie themselves up into knots imagining what they think every kid needs to know. I’m more concerned with skills than with content, though I do believe that content is a way of expressing those skills, so I do want to see evidence of content learning, but not for the content itself, but because it demonstrates the learning of the skill.
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I saw Frank Bruni’s piece. (Does he have children?) As a modern mother, look, there’s no way the children not invited to the party didn’t know they had been left out. Thanks to social media, they may have even seen pictures of the festivities while they were happening. The principals’ job is to create and defend a calm academic space for learning. The kids shouldn’t be boasting by wearing party swag to school anyways. If it’s disruptive, it’s disruptive.
I am not sold on the idea the Common Core will be more rigorous. It may be more rigorous than the curricula currently in place in many schools. I’m pretty sure it will be less rigorous than the Massachusetts Frameworks, which our state has misguidedly abandoned.
Changing any curriculum, at any time, is disruptive. If I had a child subjected to this, would I be in favor of it? No, because the first year will be the equivalent of every teacher being rendered a first year teacher. Only in the fourth year might you see some improvement. We lived through a curriculum change some years ago. It’s not pleasant. Teachers are being forced to abandon things which work. Even if the change will be better–which has been asserted, but not proven–there is a loss.
I worry about the students who will be sorted out. That will happen. More tests give more opportunities for schools to decree “these” students smart, and “those” students not smart. I learned recently that parents in our town do hire tutors to prepare their children to make the grades necessary to get into the honors track.
Just like height, I believe children have different, individual intellectual trajectories–and they aren’t straight lines. What of the kids who are late bloomers? Who’ve had a family change? Who change school districts? Who start reading for fun in middle school? There’s just this temptation to USE measurement.
I am not a fan of “more learning though overwork” model which we seem to be hell-bent on importing from Asia. I am not one of Duncan’s “white suburban moms,” though, as we’ve opted to send all our children to private schools. My kids work hard. They are challenged in their courses. They write essays frequently. They read novels and poetry in English class.
Moving narrative fiction largely out of English class won’t produce better-educated citizens. How could it? It will, however, fit perfectly with the trend I observe in our society, of ever-fewer literate citizens, that is, people who enjoy reading, and do it frequently, without prompting.
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I’m mildly in favor of the Common Core but recognize that it is definitely not a perfect policy tool. Its strongest detractors seem to focus heavily on the “common” part and not much at all on the “core” part choosing to interpret the goal of the policy to be a top-down mandate to use one curriculum administered in one way when really the attempt is to ensure that all children receive some shared instruction at a very basic level. Since most UMC districts are doing fine in this regard already, I doubt it will change their curriculum or teaching methods much it at all.
Kids today are not coddled, Bruni is just engaging in some old-fashioned cane-shaking. I mean, yeah, I don’t parent the way my parents’ did back in the 70’s and 80’s. I don’t spank my kids with a wooden spoon, or allow them to crawl around the car while we’re driving, and I didn’t leave them in a playpen for hours on end when they were babies and I don’t chain-smoke around them (or smoke at all). My own parent agree that parents today are actually much better at parenting than they were 30 years. Perfect? No, but better. And I fully expect my own children to be better parents than I am.
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In reading the Bruni piece I believe he’s conflating stress over excessive testing (especially testing that directly leads to life-altering consequences, such as whether or not to get into a better school) with the common core. He talks about parents reporting children with suicidal tendencies, so stressed over testing, and then says these children are coddled?
I think there is coddling going on but it’s not coming from the curriculum. I work at an IT firm that hires quite a few new college grads, and I work with these new grads all the time. Many of them are coddled in the sense that they have been unwisely shielded from honest feedback for waaaaaay too long. It’s just easier. Frankly some of it seems to be stemming from parental anxiety – and there’s plenty of that going around.
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From Kitchen Table Math, a quote with a very interesting question:
“Question: Garrett Fryer American Youth Policy Forum Was there ever a discussion, when you all were designing it, to implement it on a kindergarten level and letting it grow with the students as they aged on through each grade, as oppossed to implementing it with the entire school system nation wide?”
That would make a heck of a lot more sense, but that’s not how we do these education roll-outs, do we?
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2013/10/an-interesting-common-core-exchange.html
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I haven’t been over at Kitchen Table Math recently, and I see I’ve really been missing out. From a post from the great and glorious Catherine Johnson about a month ago:
“So, where Common Core is concerned–Common Core as understood by a public school curriculum director–we are ahead of the curve.
“Which means that after 10 years of strife over Math Trailblazers we have unceremoniously dumped Trailblazers and adopted the engageny math modules, which are being written and posted as we speak. No teacher has ever taught engageny math, no student has ever learned engageny math, engageny math does not yet exist in toto, and the vast set of engageny material has to be downloaded from the internet.
“And this is what we’re using.
“Because, you know, COMMON CORE.
“Those are the magic words, COMMON CORE. Once an administrator invokes the name of COMMON CORE, s/he is absolved of all responsibility for children actually learning math.
“So here we are:
The children have no math textbooks
Because Trailblazers was so slow, children in later grades don’t have the skills to begin grade-level engageny units, but they have all been forced to begin grade-level engageny units anyway, regardless of preparation
Because we’ve never had a scope and sequence for any subject in the district (this state of affairs finally came to light at the last board meeting, after I requested a copy of our scope and sequence) no one has any idea what skills the kids are supposed to possess
Because the district has never held itself responsible for children actually learning the content being covered in class (and retaught at home by parents & tutors) there is no mechanism in place to figure out what skills kids are missing
Because no one apart from high school math teachers has any expertise in math, neither teachers, building principals, nor the curriculum director has any idea what the proper sequence of skills actually is & thus no idea how to assess the kids’ “gaps” (lots of gaps talk amongst parents and teachers; calls to mind the early days of ktm)
Although engageny promises a year-long “scope and sequence” for its curriculum “modules,” the promised scope and sequence for math either: a) does not yet exist or b) does exist but is unusable by people absent a deep and hands-on knowledge of K-5 math and math curricula.
I attended Thursday night’s Common Core meeting, and the atmosphere in the room was pretty much one of controlled pandemonium.
“No one knows anything, and, very clearly, no one is going to know anything any time soon.
“I’ve seen a lot of bad math teaching in my day (a whole lot), and a lot of bad math curricula, but I’ve never seen anything like this.
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2013/10/common-core-math-standards.html
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Note: Catherine Johnson is a “white suburban mom.”
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Here’s a rather dismal piece from Katharine Beals on the subject of ESL and Common Core. The Common Core is being taken to mean that ESL should be incorporated into the regular classroom, rather than having pull-out ESL classes for students. Beals says:
“In principle, ESL students can learn English vocabulary and grammar without special pullouts—but only if they experience sufficient immersion. Those who end up in ESL classes often do so because they aren’t getting enough immersion opportunities—perhaps because they choose to do most of their socializing with fellow immigrants who share their language; perhaps because their native-English speaking classmates fail to fully include them in their social interactions—or, worse, are deliberately exclusive and nasty.
When it comes to this kind of English Language Learner, the Common Core Standards for English and Language Arts are totally unrealistic. Making them the instructional goal for ELLs will backfire in at least two directions. If our ESL programs are to succeed in teaching English to non-native English speakers, then, absent full immersion, the next best thing is direct, intensive, and systematic instruction in vocabulary and grammar.”
Beals also says, “Part of the problem in the American education establishment is a failure of imagination. Because so few Americans have ever really attempted to learn any foreign language beyond a superficial elementary level, it’s hard for many of us to imagine how much the grammars–word orders, word endings, etc.–of different languages vary from one another, and therefore how little of a foreign language you can comprehend and produce without learning its specific grammar rules. Even fewer of us have experienced what it’s like to be a foreign language learner in a foreign school system.”
Amen.
http://oilf.blogspot.com/2013/11/is-america-jeapardizing-its-esl-industry.html
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Laura I feel exactly as you do about Common Core…I just don’t care. But my attitude comes from a place of privilege, where my kids go to top public schools with fantastic teachers and extremely active parents. I suppose, like anything else, socio-economic status makes the most difference, not the curriculum.
On another note, I’ve actually had to remove people from my Facebook feed, they are so vitriolic about Common Core. Just today someone posted a link that showed a teacher using some math to get the wrong multiplication answer. People are going bat-shit crazy about it.
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And from our local paper…. http://ridgewood.patch.com/groups/schools/p/benefit-of-state-school-standards-draws-questions-in-ridgewood
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