CC Criticism

[Corey Andreasen]

Bill,
I’ve been a fan of Diane Ravitch’s recent work opposing the privatization movement in the schools. The Common Core is often in her sights. And I agree with her when she talks about the problems with the way it’s being implemented, the high-stakes tests and the school teacher accountability aspect of it. But I’m also seeing people complaining on her blog (and Diane does it, too) about the way the standards were developed. No teachers involved, no opportunity for public review, etc. And I don’t think those concerns are based in fact.

She also talks about how the standards were never field-tested. I may be wrong, but it seems to me there’s nothing to test about the standards themselves. It’s simply a decision about what we want students to know and be able to do.

A recent post (http://dianeravitch.net/2013/09/24/major-corporations-fighting-common-core-backlash/) brings up this point, and in the comments on reader said, “I suddenly hit in an aha moment. How can anyone, or any group, especially sans teachers, reach a consensus on what is appropriate for say, fourth grade?
Teachers would have difficulty agreeing, and they’re the experts.” I see this a great deal.

I’d like to be able to respond to these comments knowledgeably, but I don’t know enough about the development of the standards. I do know that, as a member of the Wisconsin Mathematics Council board of directors I knew about the Common Core years before they were implemented, and I seem to recall opportunities to give feedback on them.

Can you speak to any of this? Or maybe even answer Diane’s concerns on her blog, if you’re into that sort of thing! 🙂

Thanks,

[Bill McCallum]

I try to keep this blog focused on simply answer questions about what’s in the standards. These are all good questions, but I think I’ll answer them over at my other blog, isupportthecommoncore.net (it will probably take me a couple of days … I’ll post a note here when I have done it).

[Bill McCallum]

The first installment of my answer is now posted here.

[Corey Andreasen]

Thanks, Bill. I appreciate your responses.

I don’t know if you have any interest in responding to the conspiracy theories about the Common Core. There’s some stuff in the comments here: http://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/15/mercedes-schneider-who-created-the-common-core-how-did-it-happen/comment-page-1/#comment-332091

One comment starts: The Common Core is largely the work of – as Mercedes Schneider points out – three main groups, “Achieve, ACT, and College Board.” Toss in the Education Trust. All of these groups are tied tightly to corporate-style “reform.”

I don’t know anything about this. I suspect there’s truth involvement of these groups, but I don’t know the nature of it.

[Bill McCallum]

Thanks Corey. Maybe I will get around to giving a history on my other blog one day. Basically this mixes up two documents, the end-of-high-school expectations produced in summer 2009, and the standards themselves, produced in 2009-10. If you google “NGA press releases”, then search the press releases on “Common Core”, then read those in chronological order, you will get the bare bones of the story, including the composition of the various teams and the various organizations involved. Maybe I will say that over at Diane Ravitch’s blog.

[Cathy Kessel]

I did a little searching and found a description from Ravitch of “field testing.” From: http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/09/my-view-of-the-common-core-standards/

“I have worked on state standards in various states. When the standards are written, no one knows how they will work until teachers take them and teach them. When you get feedback from teachers, you find out what works and what doesn’t work. You find out that some content or expectations are in the wrong grade level; some are too hard for that grade, and some are too easy. And some stuff just doesn’t work at all, and you take it out.”

The comment above doesn’t mention education research at all, but it does help me understand the quote about reaching consensus. My impression after reading three Ravitch books (from 1995, 2010, and 2013) is that she’s not a user of subject-specific education research, so probably doesn’t see the relevance of work on learning trajectories for early grades and their implications for later grades. She does cite studies that use test scores as measures, noting sometimes that reading scores rose and math scores didn’t for certain studies. That’s about as subject-specific as she gets when reporting research—at least in those three books.

This Ravitch comment about development may also be helpful. From http://gothamschools.org/2010/10/29/city-official-and-biggest-critic-find-slivers-of-common-ground/#more-48933:

“I’m very supportive of the idea of developing new assessments, and I think it’s a very important thing. But it will take years.

Just as these common core standards were written in a little over a year — it took me three years working on the California history standards. I worked on history standards in other states, and it was never done in only a year. So I would like to think that it’s going to take a lot of time to do this well because anything that’s done hurriedly is not going to survive….

I’m very happy that there’s money out there to develop new tests, but don’t think that they’re going to be available next year or the year after. If they’re good tests, it could be three to five years. And then they have to be tried out….So this is not going to be in time for the next election.”

I can remember also being skeptical about the short turnaround for standards development. (I worked on PSSM in its third and last year as an additional writer.) I think that one difference is that people working on CCSS worked very intensely via email. A second difference is that PSSM had longer illustrative examples. PSSM is 402 pages. CCSS is 93 pages.

Ravitch worked on the CA history framework for 1997 and its 2005 update. The 2005 version is 249 pages long and has suggested courses and appendixes. I found no references to education research in it. That doesn’t rule out its use but does reinforce the impression that I gained that subject-specific education research isn’t one of Ravitch’s considerations.

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