Bulletin: School test scores are down. Students aren’t learning math. Students can’t read very well. Students come to college much underprepared. The United States scores near the bottom at many assessments of math competence (e.g. PISA test*). (Gee, even Washington politicians speak at the 10th grade level.)
The alarm is raised. Educators from the highest levels in Washington to the States, to the School Districts are concerned. They are lost on what to do. They are lost on how to repair these problems. They suffer a decline in the number of capable teachers entering the field; they endure the exodus of teachers from their ranks; they embrace alternatively certified teachers hoping some of them will last. All write scholarly white papers, convene meetings, try to link the schools and colleges. Nothing works very well. They are truly lost.
What does a huge infrastructure do when faced with insoluble problems, with conditions they don’t understand, with issues that keep embarrassing them in the newspapers? What every huge infrastructure does… They make a new plan. In the field of Education they rewrite the Standards. In Education, Standards comprise the roadmap for what topics should be covered in what grade. They are suppose to graduate the learning, grade by grade, and set some measure of the level at which subjects should be taught.
And this is what has been done, more than once. Not unlike the nature of a Papal Council, the great powers in Education convened a Council, discussed issues, wringed their hands, and finally commissioned the new standards. Millions upon millions are spent on forming high level committees, assigning specific tasks to educators, reviewing submissions, most importantly assembling the new Standards into a glossy full-color book, and finally rolling out the new Standards to great fanfare. Job well done! We have fixed the problems! They claim.
Just for math, though other subjects are affected, this was done in Texas a few years ago, and lately we’ve seen the so-called Common Core Standards created by a consortium of forty-two states. They are now in the implementation stage. Although the Common Core standards are supposed to be voluntary, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan last year (2010) made adopting the frameworks a condition of state eligibility for $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top grants. Note, these standards are currently not tested and not validated. They carry only the imprimatur of this Council. There are no end-of-course examinations, no clarifying examples, and little by way of curriculum design. Naturally, not everyone agrees. The disagreement comes substantially from higher education that maintains the new Standards are insufficient for producing college ready students. The most organized disagreement comes from yet another Council of folks**.
What is wrong with this top-down approach? There is more than one reason. Here are a few.
1. There is a huge core of math teachers already teaching math in the schools, and fundamentally teach the same thing year-after-year. One teacher told me once she has used the same transparencies for twenty years. (Several cycles of standards in this interim.)
2. To bring teachers up to speed would require probably billions in professional development grants.
3. The list of the attributes above, no end-of-course examinations, no clarifying examples, and little by way of curriculum design, yet with some institutions implementing the standards as early as this year, seems ominous.
4. The lack of attention by Colleges of Education, nationwide, to instruct new pre service teachers in the new standards is remarkable. Actually, this has usually been the case for any set of standards.
5. The possibility that a one-size-fits-all, centrally controlled curriculum for every K-12 subject may not make sense for this country or for any other sizable highly diverse country. This is, not to mention, transferring even more power to Washington.
6. There is little personal responsibility among students to learn anything more than the minimum.
Basically, most standards now and in the past are more-or-less adequate. The key point is that teachers need to know how to teach them well and at a level that will support college readiness far beyond the “Ready for College Algebra” desideratum now in place. Good schools already do this. Under performing schools do not. Doing a re-mix of standards does not actually solve a much deeper problem.
As an analogy… Think of the Education Structure as a huge oil tanker, slowly moving along. Think of new enthusiastic teachers as little speed boats full of energy trying to change its course (they get absorbed); think of new Standards as an order from the on-shore commodore to change directions (they get ignored).
* U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html.
For a more recent collection of data see: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19_HanushekPetersonWoessmann.pdf
** See: http://www.k12innovation.com/Manifesto/_V2_Home.html
The alarm is raised. Educators from the highest levels in Washington to the States, to the School Districts are concerned. They are lost on what to do. They are lost on how to repair these problems. They suffer a decline in the number of capable teachers entering the field; they endure the exodus of teachers from their ranks; they embrace alternatively certified teachers hoping some of them will last. All write scholarly white papers, convene meetings, try to link the schools and colleges. Nothing works very well. They are truly lost.
What does a huge infrastructure do when faced with insoluble problems, with conditions they don’t understand, with issues that keep embarrassing them in the newspapers? What every huge infrastructure does… They make a new plan. In the field of Education they rewrite the Standards. In Education, Standards comprise the roadmap for what topics should be covered in what grade. They are suppose to graduate the learning, grade by grade, and set some measure of the level at which subjects should be taught.
And this is what has been done, more than once. Not unlike the nature of a Papal Council, the great powers in Education convened a Council, discussed issues, wringed their hands, and finally commissioned the new standards. Millions upon millions are spent on forming high level committees, assigning specific tasks to educators, reviewing submissions, most importantly assembling the new Standards into a glossy full-color book, and finally rolling out the new Standards to great fanfare. Job well done! We have fixed the problems! They claim.
Just for math, though other subjects are affected, this was done in Texas a few years ago, and lately we’ve seen the so-called Common Core Standards created by a consortium of forty-two states. They are now in the implementation stage. Although the Common Core standards are supposed to be voluntary, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan last year (2010) made adopting the frameworks a condition of state eligibility for $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top grants. Note, these standards are currently not tested and not validated. They carry only the imprimatur of this Council. There are no end-of-course examinations, no clarifying examples, and little by way of curriculum design. Naturally, not everyone agrees. The disagreement comes substantially from higher education that maintains the new Standards are insufficient for producing college ready students. The most organized disagreement comes from yet another Council of folks**.
What is wrong with this top-down approach? There is more than one reason. Here are a few.
1. There is a huge core of math teachers already teaching math in the schools, and fundamentally teach the same thing year-after-year. One teacher told me once she has used the same transparencies for twenty years. (Several cycles of standards in this interim.)
2. To bring teachers up to speed would require probably billions in professional development grants.
3. The list of the attributes above, no end-of-course examinations, no clarifying examples, and little by way of curriculum design, yet with some institutions implementing the standards as early as this year, seems ominous.
4. The lack of attention by Colleges of Education, nationwide, to instruct new pre service teachers in the new standards is remarkable. Actually, this has usually been the case for any set of standards.
5. The possibility that a one-size-fits-all, centrally controlled curriculum for every K-12 subject may not make sense for this country or for any other sizable highly diverse country. This is, not to mention, transferring even more power to Washington.
6. There is little personal responsibility among students to learn anything more than the minimum.
Basically, most standards now and in the past are more-or-less adequate. The key point is that teachers need to know how to teach them well and at a level that will support college readiness far beyond the “Ready for College Algebra” desideratum now in place. Good schools already do this. Under performing schools do not. Doing a re-mix of standards does not actually solve a much deeper problem.
As an analogy… Think of the Education Structure as a huge oil tanker, slowly moving along. Think of new enthusiastic teachers as little speed boats full of energy trying to change its course (they get absorbed); think of new Standards as an order from the on-shore commodore to change directions (they get ignored).
* U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html.
For a more recent collection of data see: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19_HanushekPetersonWoessmann.pdf
** See: http://www.k12innovation.com/Manifesto/_V2_Home.html
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