Common Core State Standards
Bill Gates Loves Common Core and also Arne Duncan who is now retired. Betsy DeVos now Secretary of Education who hates public schools but loves Vouchers and Charters.
"Common Core is a total
disaster. We can't let it continue" - Trump His statement reflected a misunderstanding that the
Common Core standards are mandated by the federal government, ultimately it is up to states whether or not
to adopt them. Betsy DeVos on Common
Core, 'I am not a supporter - period'
"Under her leadership we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is
holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all
families," Trump
Michael Petrilli, president of the Core-supporting but conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute doesn't think "any president has much say over — academic standards are under the firm control of the state." but "Race to the Top is over, and No Child has been replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)."
Can a President Trump actually scrap them? "The writing of education standards is still, and always has been, up to the states," says Chad Colby, spokesman for Achieve, a national nonprofit that helped develop the Core so that more money can be spent on testing $$$.
“Reform” policy makers like Bill Gates compares the Common Core to standardization of electrical plugs and outlets, and to the gauge of railroad tracks. This is not a new metaphor from him. He used it several months ago when he explained the need for Common Core to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The question of the day, therefore, is this: is your child an electrical outlet, an electrical plug, or an electrical appliance? Is she a toaster or a lamp?
Bill sends his children to Lakeside Academy in Seattle. The school has small classes, experienced teachers, a beautiful campus, a wonderful arts program, foreign languages, a fabulous gymnasium, a well-stocked library, the latest technology. That's where I want our children educated. Not as toasters but as human beings.
Not Everything Counted Counts
"Privileged Information" Passed from student to teacher, parent
to
child, or colleague to colleague, privileged information encodes knowledge derived from experience. There
is
a special, valuable communication that occurs between teacher and student, which goes beyond what can be
found in any textbook or raw data stream.
Teaching Me Softly, Whisper Metaphors Into Their Ears.
An Example of Data-less Decision Making
The Graves of
Academe
by Richard Mitchell
THE SEVEN DEADLY PRINCIPALS CHAP. 4
AFTER SOBER and judicious consideration, and weighing one thing against another in the interests of
reasonable compromise, H. L. Mencken concluded that a startling and dramatic improvement in American
education required only that we hang all the professors and burn down the schools. His
uncharacteristically moderate proposal was not adopted. Those who actually knew more about education
than
Mencken did could see that his plan was nothing more than cosmetic and would in fact provide only an
outward appearance of improvement. Those who knew less, on the other hand, had somewhat more elaborate
plans of their own, and they just happened to be in charge of the schools. <SNIP>
In 1892
In 1892, the National Educational Association (NEA) organized a committee charged with determining what should be taught in high school so students from different schools would have a more uniform preparation for college (NEA, 1893). Although the Committee of Ten was particularly influential in the history of U.S. education (see e.g., Atkin and Black, 2007), its recommendations were suggestive rather than binding on high schools.
Essay: High School Biology Today: What the Committee of Ten Actually SaidThe Committee of Ten actually recommended "Physics First" THEN Biology or Botany or Zoology and chemistry.
This is the main report of the Committee of Ten, according to Richard Mitchell 1893
1) CHARLES W. ELIOT, President of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Chairman.
Charles W. Eliot's first wife was Ellen Derby Peabody, Her Great grandfather Elias Hasket Derby, Salem
opium drug smuggling pirate was among the first to send ships to China. John Derby, Esq. was the
banker in the family.
2) WILLIAM T. HARRIS, Commissioner of Education, Washington, D. C. who said: Our schools have been
scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening... The average American [should be]
content
with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role."
3- JAMES B. ANGELL, President of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
4- JOHN TETLOW, Head Master of the Girls' High School and the Girls' Latin School, Boston,
Mass.
5- JAMES M. TAYLOR, President of Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
6- OSCAR D. ROBINSON, Principal of the High School, Albany, N. Y.
7- JAMES H. BAKER, President of the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.
8- RICHARD H. JESSE, President of the University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.
9- JAMES C. MACKENZIE, Head Master of the Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, N. J.
10- HENRY C. KING, Professor in Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.
Common Core State Standards: An Example of Data-less Decision Making By Christopher H. Tienken 2/1/2012
From AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice, Vol. 7, No. 4 Winter 2011
http://aasa.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/Newsletters/JSP_Winter2011.FINAL.pdf
We may know the disparate facts, but here they are presented in a readable, coherent whole.
I confess I've been wondering why nobody talks about Japan any more. Remember when we teachers were asked why we couldn't be more like the Japanese? As Christopher Tienken points out: They've had national curriculum standards and testing for over 30 years. Japanese students outran other nations on math and science tests, but their economy has been in shambles for almost two decades.
This paper has great lines as well as great research: Size matters because size brings complexity. Finland, the country that usually ranks in the top five on international tests has 5.5 million people. In the U.S. we call that Wisconsin.
Quisling approach A traitor who serves as the puppet of the enemy occupying his or
her country
This is the kind of research-based paper my professional organization, NCTE, should have written. Instead, they took the Quisling approach of
remaining neutral about the Common Core. Neutral in the face of evil that will destroy children's
lives
and put the teaching profession into the trash bin.
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative continues to move forward. As of October 2010, 37
states
and territories made the CCSS the legal law of their land in terms of the mathematics and language arts
curricula used in their public schools.
Over 170 organizations, education-related and corporations alike, have pledged their support to the
initiative. Yet the evidence presented by its developers, the National Governors Association (NGA) and
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), seems lacking compared to the independent reviews and the
available research on the topic that suggest the CCSS and those who support them are misguided.
The standards have not been validated empirically and no metric has been set to monitor the intended and
unintended consequences they will have on the education system and children (Mathis, 2010). Yet most of
the
nation's governors, state education leaders, and many education organizations remain committed to the
initiative.
Surely there must be more compelling and methodologically strong evidence available not yet shared with
the
general public or education researchers to support the standardization of one of the most intellectually
diverse public education systems in the world.
Or, maybe there is not?
A Bankrupt Argument
As colleagues and I presented previously (Tienken & Canton, 2010; Tienken & Zhao, 2010), the major
arguments made by proponents in favor of the CCSS collapse under a review of the empirical
literature:
(a) America's children are "lagging" behind international peers in terms of academic
achievement, and
(b) the economic vibrancy and future of the United States relies upon American students outranking their
global peers on international tests of academic achievement because of the mythical relationship between
ranks on those tests and a country's economic competitiveness.
The persuasive, and to this point, effective argument made by proponents combines the classic combination
of
fear and falsehoods. The Roman Poet Seneca wrote, "We are more often frightened than hurt, and we
suffer more from imagination than reality" and in this case he was correct.
Unfortunately for proponents of this empirically vapid argument it is well established that a rank on an
international test of academic skills and knowledge does not have the power to predict future economic
competitiveness and is otherwise meaningless for a host of reasons (Baker, 2007; Bracey, 2009; Tienken,
2008).
However, fortunately for proponents it seems as if some policy makers, education leaders and those who
prepare them, and the major education associations and organizations that penned their support for the
CCSS
did not read the evidence refuting the argument or they did not understand it. The contention that a test
result can influence the future economic prowess of a country like the United States (U.S.) or any of the
G20 nations represents an unbelievable suspension of logic and evidence.
The fact is China and its continued manipulation of its currency, the Yuan, and iron-fisted
control
of its labor pool, has a greater effect on our economic strength than if every American child scored at
the top of every international test, the SAT, the ACT, the GRE, or the MAT. [emphasis
added]
According to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, China's
undervaluation of its currency cost the U.S. almost 1 million jobs and over 200 billion dollars in lost
economic growth and 1.5% of its gross domestic product last year (The Washington Times, 2010).
Economic strength of the G20 countries relies more on policy, than education
achievement. Tax, trade, health, labor, finance, monetary, housing, and natural resource
policies,
to name a few, drive our economy, not how students rank on the Trends in International Math and Science
Study (TIMSS or the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
To believe otherwise is like believing in the tooth-fairy. The U.S. already
has one of the highest percentages of people with high school diplomas and college degrees compared to any
other country and we had the greatest number of 15 year-old students in the world score at the highest
levels on the 2006 PISA science test (OECD, 2008; OECD, 2009; United Nations, 2010).
We produce more researchers and scientists and qualified engineers than our economy can employ,
have
even more in the pipeline, and we are one of the most economically competitive nations on the
globe [emphasis added] (Gereffi & Wadhwa, 2005; Lowell, et al., 2009; Council on
Competitiveness, 2007; World Economic Forum, 2010).
Why the International Test Scores Are Meaningless
Data from the PISA international tests say more about American society than about American schools. The biggest problem for our society is #poverty, which affects test scores.
2016 #Poverty in the US Be Compared to the World's Poorest Countries
But the test scores are the least of what matters. Inequality and poverty threaten our future and blight the lives of millions of Americans. The lucky few live in splendor; the desperate poor live in squalor. Public schools are not responsible for the disparity. At this point in history, the blame lies with the politics of greed.
19th Century Skills
The vendors of the CCSS claim that the standards address critical skills necessary
to
compete in the 21st century. If so, why do they repackage 19th century ideas and skills? We only
need to look at the mid 1800's and the Lancasterian Method used in London and some of America's
cities and the Quincy, Massachusetts schools to see how the idea of standardization will play out. It did
not work then and it will not work now.
The language arts and mathematics curriculum sequences embedded in the standards are nothing more
than rehashed versions of the recommendations from the Committee of Ten in 1893 and the Committee of 15
in
1893; hardly 21st century innovations. [emphasis added]
The standards do little to promote global literacy through cultural collaboration and cooperation. They do
not stress socially - conscious problem-solving or strategizing. In fact, a conscious is not even
necessary
because there is not any authentic, critical thinking in the standards. They are inert, sterile, socially
static, and in stark contrast to what the United States Council on Competitiveness called for:
At the beginning of the 21st century, America stands at the dawn of a conceptual economy in which insight, imagination and ingenuity determine competitive advantage and value creation. To succeed in this hyper-competitive, fast-paced global economy, we cannot, nor should we want to, compete on low wages, commodity products, standard services, and routine science and technology development. As other nations build sophisticated technical capabilities, excellence in science and technology alone will not ensure success (p. 10).
The results from the 2010 Global Chief
Executive
Study conducted by the IMB Corporation made several recommendations that call into question
the use of 19th century curriculum standards to address 21st century issues.
After analyzing data from interviews with 1,500 of the worlds CEO's the authors stated that to remain
competitive in the global economies CEO's and their employees must:
(a) use creative leadership strategies;
(b) collaborate and cooperate globally amongst themselves and with their customer bases;
(c) differentiate their responses, products, and services to "build operating dexterity (p.51);
and
(d) be able to use complexity to a strategic advantage."
The vendors of the CCSS have a problem: They have no data that demonstrates the validity of the standards
as
a vehicle to build 21st century skills nor as a means to achieve the things the business leaders say will
be
needed to operate in a diverse global environment. The CCSS are stuck in a time warp. A curricular time
machine, if you will, set to 1858.
Evidence Please
School administrators are encouraged to make decisions based on data. The word data appears 230 times in
the
No Child Left Behind Act (No Child Left Behind [NCLB PL 107-110], 2002). The websites of every state
education agency include references to data-driven decision making.
Many school districts or schools have "data committees" that make school-wide decisions based on
some type of data. Surely there must be quality data available publicly to support the use of the CCSS to
transform, standardize, centralize and essentially de-localize America's public education system. The
official website for the CCSS claims to provide such evidence. The site alleges that the standards are
"evidence based" and lists two homegrown documents to "prove" it: Myths vs Facts (NGA, 2010) and the Joint International Benchmarking
Report (NGA, 2008).
The Myths document presents claims that the standards have "made use of a large and growing
body of knowledge" (p. 3). Knowledge derives in part from carefully controlled scientific experiments
and observations so one would expect to find references to high quality empirical research to support the
standards.
When I reviewed that "large and growing body of knowledge" offered by
the
NGA, I found that it was not large, and in fact built mostly on one report, Benchmarking for Success, created by the
NGA and the CCSSO, the same groups that created these standards; hardly independent
research.
The Benchmarking report has over 135 end notes, some of which are repetitive references. Only four of the cited pieces of evidence could be considered empirical studies
related
directly to the topic of national standards and student achievement. [emphasis added]
The remaining citations were newspaper stories, armchair magazine articles, op-ed pieces, book chapters,
notes from telephone interviews, and several tangential studies.
Many of the citations were linked to a small group of standardization advocates and did not
represent the larger body of empirical thought on the topic. [emphasis added]
The Joint International Benchmarking
Report,
the primary source of evidence provided by the NGA and CCSSO, draws most of its conclusions from one
report,
The Role of
Cognitive Skills in Economic Development (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2008). The use of that report is
troubling because it has several fatal flaws in its logic and methodology. [emphasis
added]
Questioning the Evidence
The Role of Cognitive Skills report is the primary piece of evidence used by the National
Governors
Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to support their claim that achievement on an
international test causes future economic growth and that national standards will improve international
test
scores for U.S. students.
The report is methodologically and logically flawed on several levels.
First,
the basis of the argument supported in the Role report about a cause and effect relationship between
standardized test results and national economic growth is derived from a different, yet unsophisticated
economic argument that an individual's grades in school and performance on standardized tests predict
his or her economic growth later in life. That sounds logical at first, but the cause and effect
slight-of-hand associated with that logic and the leap from individual effects to national effects of
grades, test scores, and rankings are untenable.
Most economists understand that the variables that drive individual income growth cannot be applied to an
entire national economy. They are two different units of analysis; two different scales if you will. It
would be like claiming that because a certain teaching method was effective with one student in a very
small
school in Maryland that we should make national education policy for all students in all states based on
the
results of that one method, with one student, in one small school (See Baker, 2007 & 2010 for more
complete economic examples.).
Connecting an individual's education achievement on a standardized test to a
nation's economic future is not empirically or logically acceptable and using that mythical
connection
for large- scale policymaking is civically reckless. When education leaders and those who prepare
them parrot that argument they actually provide credence to that anti-intellectual myth. When school administrators implement programs and policies built on those faulty
arguments, they commit education malpractice. [emphasis added]
Size Matters
When trying to extricate the facts from fiction in terms of the relationship between education and
economic
strength at the global level, it is important to understand that not all economies are created equal
(Baker,
2007, 2010; Rameriz, Luo, Schofer, & Meyer, 2006; Tienken, 2008).
It is not methodologically correct to include every country from the TIMSS or PISA testing samples into
the
same economic or education pool. The size of the economy matters. Correlations between test rankings on
international tests and economic strength can be statistically significant and moderately strong when all
the small or weak economies like Poland, Hungary and the Slovak Republic remain in the sample with the G20
countries. Whereas the relationship between international test ranks and economic strength can be
non-existent or even negative when only the G14 or G20 economies, the strongest economies in the world,
form
the sample (Tienken, 2008).
The authors of The Role of Cognitive Skills (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2008) do not cluster the
samples to compare "apples to apples," and they simply place all the countries in the same
analysis pot and act as if size does not matter. Of course there is a positive relationship between
rankings
on international tests and economic growth when one includes 18 countries with weak or collapsing
economies
but who have international test rankings above those of the U.S.
The inclusion of very small economies with very large ones is statistically deceptive and actually
demonstrates that rankings do not predict economic success. To think that Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, or
Hungary, all countries that outscored the U.S. in math on the 2006 PISA test, will ever eclipse the U.S.
in
economic prowess based on its education output on international tests defies reality.
Economic Realities
Nations with strong economies (e.g. the G20) demonstrate a weaker relationship between increases in
education attainment (e.g., output on international tests, percentage of population with at least a BA
degree) and economic growth.
Japan provides an example of this phenomenon. Japan's stock market, the Nikkei 225 Average,
closed at a high of 38,915 points on December 31, 1989 and on October 15, 2010 it closed at 9,500 points,
approximately 75% lower, but Japan ranked in the Top 10 on international tests of mathematics since the
1980's and has always ranked higher than the U.S. on such tests. Yet Japan's stock market and its
economy have been in shambles for almost two decades. They have national curriculum standards and testing,
and have for over 30 years. Japanese students outrank students and most other nations on math and science
tests.
In contrast, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke 1,200 points for the first time, on April 26, 1983,
the
day A Nation At Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) was released. The Dow
closed at 11,691 points on January 4, 2011, over a ten-fold increase. The U.S. consistently outranks Japan
on the World Economic Forum's Growth Competitiveness Index.
So I am still wondering, where is the connection? (See Tienken, 2010).
Maybe Japan's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) benefited from the high rankings on international tests
more
so than the U.S.? Since 1984 the GDP of Japan and the U.S. have grown at basically the same rates. The
U.S.
posted third-quarter GDP in 2010 that was approximately 3.74 times larger than in 1984 whereas Japan's
2010 third-quarter GDP was 3.48 times larger than in 1984. Advantage U.S. regardless of what some call
poor
international test rankings. The U.S. had approximately two-times the number of 15 year-old students who
scored at the top levels of the 2006 PISA science test compared to Japan. The U.S. accounted for 25% of
the
top scoring students in the world on that test even though the U.S. did not outrank Japan overall.
Economic Competitiveness
The education system needs the economy more than the economy needs the education system in the G20
nations. [emphasis added] Competitive, nimble, and expanding labor markets in countries with
strong economies drive the citizenry to seek higher levels of education. This was known over 50 years ago
when Harbison and Myers (1956) noted, "Education is both the seed and flower of economic
development." (p.xi).
Somehow those who continue to proffer the mythical relationships between international test rankings and
economics and sell the idea of centralized curricular and knowledge standardization have not yet
discovered
this. Neither have those who continue to believe the worn out ideas and slogans about international test
ranks and nationalized curricula.
Nations functioning at high levels economic growth and education attainment require larger changes in the
education levels of a majority of the citizenry to have a statistically significant influence on the
economy
(the ceiling effect). But they need strong economies to stimulate the population to continue their
education. Rameriz, Luo, Schofer, & Meyer (2006) found that, "School achievement levels appear to
have a greater influence on economic growth in countries with lower levels of enrollment" (p.14).
Those
are countries like Chad, Honduras, and Sudan.
The U.S. has ranked either first or second out of 139 nations on the World Economic Forum's (2010)
Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) eight out of the last 10 years and never ranked below sixth
place during that period, regardless of results on international assessments and without adopting national
curriculum standards.
No other country has ranked better consistently on the GCI. The U.S. workforce is one of the most
productive
in the world and best educated. Over 70% of recent high school graduates were enrolled in colleges and
universities in 2009 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010). Approximately 30% of U.S. adults between ages
25-34
years-old have at least a bachelor's degree. Only six other industrialized nations have a higher
percentage of their population holding at least a bachelor's degree (OECD, 2009) but their economies
pale in comparison to the U.S.
The U.S. leads the world in what are known as utility patents or patents for innovations. In 2009, the
U.S.
was granted 95,037 patents whereas Japan, the country with the next greatest number, was granted
38,006.
The countries of world combined were granted only 96,896 such patents (U.S. Patent
and
Trademark Office, 2010). The U.S is home to over 28% of the patents granted globally (resident patents);
the largest percentage of any country. Japan is second with 20%. The U.S. is second behind Japan for the
number of Trademarks, 1.7 million versus 1.4 million.(World Intellectual Property Organization,
2010).
The World Economic Forum (2010) stated that the U.S. has an outstanding university system. It is home to
11
out of the top 15 universities in the world; the United Kingdom is next with three out of 15 (The Times
Higher Education, 2010). It seems illogical that the country with the best university system in
the
world can have a failing PK-12 education system that needs to be placed under centralized curricular
control. [emphasis added]
The World Economic Forum attributed the fall of the U.S. from second place to sixth place on the 2010-2011
GCI in large part to increased weakness in auditing and financial reporting standards and a lack of
corporate ethics. The overall trust in the U.S. market sophistication has dropped from ninth in the world
to
31st place during the last two years due to the fact that the global economic meltdown was created by the
U.S. financial markets and vended across the globe.
Conspicuously missing from the list of reasons for the U.S. drop in competitiveness was the quality of its education system because education does not drive the U.S. economy (World Economic Forum, 2010).
Test rankings simply do not correlate to economic strength when one compares apples to apples. Baker (2010) found a -.48 correlation between a country's rank on the First International Mathematics Study (FIMS) in 1964 and its Purchasing Power Parity Gross Domestic Product (PPP-GDP). Rameriz et al., (2006) found very weak positive relationships ranging from .048 to .142 and those positive relationships were mainly for small and weak economies -- size still matters.
Tienken (2008) found no statistically significant relationships between the Top 22 performing economies
in
the world and their ranks on international tests of math and science going back to the FIMS. Salzman and
Lowell (2008) documented that 90% of the variance in test scores on the PISA is explained by factors
within
countries, not between countries. Why do we focus on a solution that at best will provide only up to a 10%
improvement?
A Decision in Search of Data
Where is the evidence to support the rhetoric surrounding the CCSS? This is not data-driven
decision
making. This is a decision grasping for data. [emphasis added]
The evidence offered by the NGA and CCSSO to make the case for a cause and effect
relationship, or any significant relationship for that matter, between test result ranking, economics,
and
the need for national curriculum standards (and eventually national testing) amounts to nothing more
than
snake oil.
Yet this nation will base the future of its entire public education system, and its children, upon this lack of evidence. Many of America's education associations already pledged support for the idea and have made the CCSS major parts of their national conferences and the programs they sell to schools.
This seems like the ultimate in anti-intellectual behavior coming from what claim to be intellectual organizations now acting like charlatans by vending products to their members based on an untested idea and parroting false claims of standards efficacy. [emphasis added]
Where is the evidence that national curriculum standards will cause American students to score at the top
of international tests or make them more competitive? Some point to the fact that many of the countries
that
outrank the U.S. have national, standardized curricula.
My reply is there are also nations like Canada, Australia, Germany, and Switzerland that have very strong
economies, rank higher than the U.S. on international tests of mathematics and science consistently, and
do
not have a mandated, standardized set of national curriculum standards.
McCluskey (2010) reported that for the 27 nations with complete data sets that outranked the U.S. on the
2006 PISA science test, 10 of those nations did not have national standards whereas 12 of the 28 nations
that ranked lower than the U.S. had national standards. The same pattern of mixed results held true for
the
2007 Grade 8 TIMSS mathematics results. Although the eight countries that outranked the U.S. on that test
had national standards so did 33 of the 39 countries that ranked lower (McCluskey, 2010). The students
from
the majority of nations with national standards ranked lower than the U.S. students. The same pattern held
true for the TIMSS science assessment. More countries with national standards underperformed the U.S. than
did countries without national standards.
Alternative Explanation
Perhaps there is another explanation for scoring high on international tests other than standardized
national curriculum standards.
I noticed that every industrialized country, 24/24, that outscored the U.S. on the 2006 PISA
mathematics test of 15 year-olds has some form of universal healthcare system for at least mothers and
children, whereas the U.S. and 40% of the countries that scored lower than U.S. students do not
[emphasis added] (World Health Organization, 2010).
Most of those countries that outscored the U.S. also have lower child mortality rates and most have longer
overall life expectancies than the U.S. (CIA, 2010). Only Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary have shorter life
expectancies and still outscore the U.S. on international tests. Many of the countries that outscore the
U.S. also have comprehensive fair housing policies. Housing policy has been shown to be a stronger
intervention for increasing test scores than nationalizing curriculum (Schwartz, 2010).
Perhaps it's not universal curriculum standards that make the difference. Maybe it's a comprehensive social system that provides a quality social safety net for children and mothers that has the greatest influence on ultimate education outcomes. [emphasis added]
The data point in that direction. Although this would not qualify as empirical argument, it does
highlight
some interesting relationships and also is just as strong as the evidence offered to support the
standards,
maybe stronger.
Centralized Curriculum Planning
The U.S. has a population of over 300 million and is more ethnically, religiously, and racially diverse
than
many of the smaller nations that outrank it on international tests. The U.S. has the third largest
population in the world behind China and India and it has the largest population of any country that
participated in the TIMSS and PISA testing. Japan ranks 10th in population and the other countries that
have
larger populations than Japan did not participate in the TIMSS/PISA or are not in the G20 set of
nations.
Size matters because size brings complexity. Finland, the country that usually ranks in the top five on
international tests has 5.5 million people. In the U.S. we call that Wisconsin. In fact, the top six
scoring
nations on the PISA 2006 math test have a combined population of only 240 million people. Singapore,
another
country commonly cited as one the U.S. should emulate in terms of mathematics and science curriculum and
testing has only 4.8 million people, a little more than half that of New Jersey.
To think that every student in this country should be made to learn the same thing is illogical--it lacks face validity. The U.S. is just too large and too diverse to engage in such folly. We should have learned from the Soviet Union that central planning does not work in the long-run. The diversity of the U.S. is one of its greatest strength. The U.S. economy is able to adapt to change because of the skill diversity of the work force. [emphasis added]
The intellectual, creative, and cultural diversity of the U.S. workforce allows it to
be
nimble and adapt quickly to changes in the marketplace. [emphasis added]
China, another behemoth of centralization, is trying desperately to crawl out from under the rock of
standardization in terms of curriculum and testing (Zhao, 2009) and the effects of those practices on its
workforce. Chinese officials recognize the negative impacts a standardized education system has had on
intellectual creativity. Less than 10% of Chinese workers are able to function in multi-national
corporations (Zhao, 2009).
I do not know of many Chinese winners of Nobel Prizes in the sciences or in other the intellectual fields.
China does not hold many scientific patents and the patents they do hold are of dubious quality
(Cyranoski,
2010).
The same holds true for Singapore. Authorities there are have tried several times to move the system away
from standardization toward creativity. Standardization and testing are so entrenched in Singapore
that every attempt to diversify the system has failed, leaving Singapore a country that has high test
scores but no creativity. [emphasis added] The problem is so widespread that Singapore must
import creative talent from other countries (Tan, 2010).
Oversimplification
It is terribly naive to think that all children should be made to master the same set of academic
skills and knowledge and that it would actually benefit them or a country in the long run to do
so.
It is an Orwellian policy position that lacks a basic understanding of diversity and developmental
psychology. It is a position that eschews science and at its core, believes it is appropriate to force
children to fit the system instead of the system adjusting to the needs of the child. [emphasis
added]
It is fundamentally un-child centered and it is an overly simplistic proposal for such a complex nation.
Standardization is a Pollyanna approach to policy-making.
One cannot separate curriculum from culture, emotions, personal backgrounds, life experiences,
prior
knowledge, home environment or stages of cognitive and social development. [emphasis
added]
Cognitive Development Theory (Piaget, 1963; 1967; Vygotsky, 1978), Ecological Systems Theory
(Bronfenbrenner
and Evans, 2000), and Socio-cultural Theory (Vygotsky, 1986), or Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (1954)
among others, suggests that we cannot pretend curriculum operates in a vacuum apart from other
factors.
Standardization assumes that children are not active constructors of meaning that bring prior knowledge
and
experience to the learning situation. It assumes that all students start at the same academic place with
the
same advantages and set of skills and that they will finish with the same results. Those assumptions seem
more like a fairy tale than evidence-based decision making.
Curriculum Research
So what does the research suggest in terms of centralized curriculum planning? Wang, Haertel, and Walberg
(1993) found that curriculum has the greatest influence on student achievement when it is a proximal
variable in the education process. They found that the closer to the student that the curriculum
is
designed, deliberated, and created, the greater influence it has on learning.
This means curriculum should be largely a local endeavor. [emphasis added] When curriculum is
treated as a distal variable, something that occurs distant from the student, handed down from on-high, as
is the case with the CCSS, it has a much weaker influence.
National policy mandates have the weakest influence of all on student learning, because like the CCSS,
they
are distal to the actual learning process (Wang, Haertel, and Walberg 1993).
Recently, Tramaglini (2010) found similar results in a study of the 120 New Jersey high schools that serve
the state's poorest communities. Tramaglini found that the more proximal the curriculum development
process, the better the students performed on the state's high school exit exam. Reed (2010) reported
that universal curriculum standards do not close the achievement gap, the achievement gap is not a product
of an "expectations gap" (p. 38) via differing standards for different types of students, and
that
local school contexts explain more of the achievement gap than universal standards.
Alexander's (2002) study of course taking pattern before and after the introduction of New York's
regent standards revealed that local contexts such as school size and demographics accounted for most of
the
disparity in course taking, and universal curriculum requirements did little to overcome that after their
initial implementation. Local context, involvement and input matters greatly.
There are also seminal works from education's history that point to importance of curriculum as a
proximal variable. Of course we have the mountains of curricular knowledge created by Francis Parker, John
Dewey, Horace Mann, Ralph Tyler, Boyd Bode, the Harap Committee, and Hilda Taba to name just a few.
But we have large studies from others as well. The landmark Eight-Year Study demonstrated that curriculum
can be an entirely locally developed project and still produce better results than traditional curricular
programs (Aikin, 1942).
In fact, the experiment demonstrated that the less standardized, more diverse, locally developed
and
designed the programs (based on demonstrated research and theories of learning), the better the students
did in college academically, socially, and civically compared their traditionally prepared
peers.
[emphasis added]
Results from several well-known earlier studies demonstrated that there is not "one best curriculum
path" for students in high school and standardized curricula sequences are not necessary to achieve
superior results in elementary and high schools (Collings & Kilpatrick, 1929; Jersild, Thorndike,
&
Goldman, 1941; Thorndike, 1924; Wrightstone, Rechetnick, McCall, & Loftus, 1939; Wrightstone,
1936).
The Road to Nowhere
We have been down the road of standardized curriculum and that road is a dead end in terms of
ensuring that more children learn more. [emphasis added] The results from the "college
prep
for all" initiatives in Chicago beginning in 1997, New York State in 2001, Texas in 2003, and
mandated
use of universal state standards via the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 have done little to close the
achievement gap, or the social/ economic gaps that exist in this country (Allensworth, Takako, Montgomery,
& Lee, 2009). The growth of blacks and Hispanic subgroups on the NAEP slowed after NCLB was enacted
compared to the same time period before the law. One mandated universal curricular program for all
children
just does not make conceptual sense, is intuitively contradictory, and has no empirical backing.
Equality of curriculum standards is inherently inequitable. Mandating that everyone follow the same set of
standards and perform at the same level of achievement guarantees that everyone will not get what they
need
and that certain groups of students, those that do not fit into the new system, will lose out.
They will be labeled "not proficient" or "in need" of something, when perhaps they
just
need more choices, more pathways, and more diversity of curricula within the system.
We should be increasing curricular diversity, not seeking to constrict it. We should be trying to
help students explore and enrich their intellectual and social growth, not constrain them or funnel them
into a small set of subjects.
A comprehensive curriculum is supposed to fulfill a unifying and specializing function. The Common Core
State Standards does neither.
It creates a standardizing apparatus. We should respect differences among children, not try to
extinguish
them. There is a lot more going on here on the societal level than meets the eye. It's more complex
than the creators and vendors of the standards either understand or wish to present. [emphasis
added]
Think It Over
There is no reliable, independently validated empirical support for the CCSS initiative
and yet many policy-makers and educators support it. [emphasis added]
It is an attractive idea to support because it limits the intricacies of the real issues and makes it easy
to lay the blame at the foot of a system (public education) that reacts to society, not drives it.
The CCSS initiative compartmentalizes complexity and compartmentalizing messy issues
allows
people to be intellectually lazy. Developing coherent education and social policy is more difficult. The
vendors of the CCSS present the standardization of America's children as a neat and clean solution,
easily manageable and easy to discuss.
Unfortunately the real world is not so
organized and it is much more cognitively complicated. Believing that we can eliminate
the
complexity of educating all students by putting forth superficial ideas like one-size fits-all standards
is
like believing rankings on international tests really mean something. (Is your tooth under the pillow?)
It seems anti-intellectual, and based on the lack of evidence, unethical to support such a massive social experiment, using participants who have no choice but to go along.
The evidence suggests that there is not a crisis in education; there is a crisis in education leadership at all levels. Those who perpetuate bad ideas based on flawed data are practicing poor leadership. If some school leaders and their organizations do not want to stand up for children then they should stand down and let those who are willing assume the leadership reins. School leaders do not have to conduct the research on these topics but at least they should read it and dig below the surface to understand it. [emphasis added]
Children have a right to a quality education. School leaders, those who prepare them, and the people who
lead our professional organizations have a duty to help provide the quality. If some education leaders
choose to drink the snake oil then they should expect to get sick. If some help sell it, they should
resign.
Children do not have a seat at the policy-making table. Policy is thrust upon them, not created with them.
They are helpless to defend themselves against poor decision making.
They do not have a voice. They have only the voices of the adults who are supposed to know better. I
welcome
your rebuttals but please remember: Leave the opinions and ideology behind and bring the evidence.
Author's Note
Portions of this commentary were adapted from Tienken 2010 & 2011 listed in the references.
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