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The Common Core State Standards focus on core conceptual understandings and procedures

Lesson Plans and Classroom Resources for Teaching To Core Standards

LEARN ABOUT YOUR STATE TEACHING STANDARDS BY SUBJECT AREA

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THE BRAINThe Brain If I only Had A Brain

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Silver and gold will rot away but a good education will never decay.

Steve Jobs 1953 - 2011

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Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself -- at the university's 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005. Jobs, who fought a rare form of pancreatic cancer, was deemed the heart and soul of a company that rivals Exxon Mobil as the most valuable in America.

"Everyone has the right to education."

Article 26 Universal Declaration of Human Rights December 10 1948

 

 In the real world, it is the government agencies and corporate sponsors funding the work (politicians that guard "their" special Interests" that call the shots.

Apple's 1987 Knowledge Navigator Video

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TEACHING TO STATE STANDARDS
Evaluation, Assessment, State Standards, Drop Out Rates, and Retention.

 

DO SCHOOLS KILL CREATIVITY?

 

 

Download ALL the Standards

 

The Common Core State Standards focus on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades, thus enabling teachers to take the time needed to teach core concepts and procedures well and to give students the opportunity to master them.

SAT Scores - Reading and Discretionary Grant Award Totals to the State

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Do the K12 Education Core Standards prepare students for College

Failing Grades on Core Subjects September 4, 2011 Michael Poliakoff

Michael Poliakoff is vice president of policy at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

For way too many college students, their diploma could be a "ticket to nowhere." At Vanderbilt University, a course called "Country Music" can serve as the only collegiate history course a student takes. At Vassar College, a class that studies Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada, and Gossip Girls can count as a student's foundation in English composition. According to this year's freshman handbook, the course will spark "sophisticated conversations" and introduce students to "critical reading and persuasive writing."
Solid core requirements are increasingly falling to the wayside as the "do as you please" model chips away at the basics. When 18-year-old first-year students are left to construct their own curriculum, they are often left with a haphazard smattering of unrelated classes, leading to an education with gaping holes in it. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has been sounding this warning for the last two years with its "What Will They Learn?" college ratings, and our 2011-12 edition, covering 1,007 colleges and universities, is grim:

The damage shows. Forty-five percent of students failed to show significant improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills in their first two years at college, according to a study released by New York University professor Richard Arum. After four years of college, 36 percent didn't show any significant improvement.
Businesses are noticing. An overwhelming majority of employers believe that institutions need to improve student achievement for America to remain competitive in the global market, according to a study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills survey found that fewer than a quarter of employers deemed the entry-level skills of four-year college graduates excellent, and more than a quarter called their writing skills deficient.
A diploma should be more than a receipt for tens of thousands of dollars of supposed education. A diploma should tell employers that the bearer is knowledgeable in basic math and science, has a sophisticated grasp of writing, and knows what makes our free society tick. Federal and state governments spend tens of billions of dollars on education every year, and higher-education costs are rising rapidly. If Americans are paying billions of dollars for education, shouldn't one return on their investment be well-educated graduates?
The "What Will They Learn?" study grades schools by how many fundamental subjects they require of all students. Nearly 30 percent of the schools get a D or an F, meaning they require two or fewer of the seven core-curriculum subjects examined in the study. Another third get a C for requiring three courses. The findings correlate with trends we see among graduates: diplomas built on a faulty curriculum and that lead nowhere.
Of the 68 Pennsylvania institutions in the study, not one earns an A for requiring at least six of the core courses. Fine schools otherwise, perhaps, but on average they require fewer than three of the crucial seven subjects.
Perhaps saddest and most dangerous of all is the absence of interest in a basic understanding of America. When Roper surveyed seniors at elite universities a decade ago, it found that only 22 percent knew the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people" was from the Gettysburg Address. Only 34 percent could identify George Washington as the American general at the Battle of Yorktown.
The father of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote: "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." But don't ask college seniors who the father of the Constitution is - 77% don't know much about what happened right here in Philadelphia. The full results of the ACTA ratings are available at www.whatwilltheylearn.com

2010 CHEA Award for Outstanding Institutional Practice in Student Learning Outcomes

 

Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world."
 Students and Professors know less about the world than Chimpanzees.

CREATIVITY AND THE ROLE OF ART IN THE K-12 SCHOOL CORE CURRICULUM

Critical Thinking and using Arts Advocacy:
A“hidden curriculum” that defines what art education is and what it does. Studio Thinking presents their findings in a cohesive model along with lesson examples and commentary. The authors say they want to “change the conversation about the arts in this country” and that could happen if they can resurrect, or reinvigorate, some of their earlier work. Studio Thinking presents what the authors say is the right “reason” for arts education as opposed to some other rationales, which they say, are just plain wrong.

 

Which Core Matters More?

Chronicle of Higher Education, September 25, 2011 By Dan Berrett source
Potential students hoping to gauge the quality of courses at Portland State University might be forgiven for feeling a bit confused. On the one hand, the University Studies program, which uses interdisciplinary seminars during the first two years to develop students' core skills, has been widely praised and emulated. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation has [36] lauded the program, adopted in 1994, as "a model for best practices in integrating assessment throughout an institution." [36] source
But the same curriculum also earned Portland State a grade of F last month from another group that rates the quality of individual college programs: the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, an advocacy group with a traditionalist bent.
Portland State is, of course, far from alone in drawing high praise from one camp of curricular observers and disapproval from another. But this dissonance in perception is emblematic of a deeper division over how higher education needs to improve. And it comes amid growing concern from scholars, policy makers, and the public over the value and rigor of higher education. While experts agree that something needs to be done to advance student learning, conflicts persist about exactly what that something ought to be: Should colleges' general-education programs emphasize core skills or a core curriculum?
Each side of the debate [37] has conducted public-opinion [38] surveys and focus groups to strengthen its case that either a core curriculum or a sharper focus on transferable skills enjoys wide support. [37] http://www.aacu.org/ and [38] http://whatwilltheylearn.com
The approach taken by Portland State is dominant and growing. It sees the explicit cultivation of core skills, such as critical thinking, writing, and quantitative literacy, as the goal of undergraduate education. The university's six-point rubric to guide professors in grading work across courses seeks to evaluate student performance on those skills, not on their mastery of a litany of facts and figures. "Our approach is that the content is the lens through which the learning goals are addressed," says Rowanna L. Carpenter, assessment coordinator for the University Studies program.
The virtue of that approach, the rationale goes, is that students can easily transfer skills from one area of study to another, which will help them respond better to work-force and civic demands that will emerge years after they graduate. Because core skills are the goal, rather than specific knowledge, they can be taught through many disciplines, including combinations of them. For example, first-year students at Portland State satisfy their general - education requirements with such courses as "Human/Nature," "Sustainability," and "Design and Society." By contrast, the philosophy reflected in the trustee-council ratings favors an accepted body of rigorous content. The council's critique, while sharply worded, is not unique; it resonates with advocates for the humanities and liberal arts. According to this view, core skills like critical thinking can be difficult to measure or identify. A blogger for The Chronicle recently [39] called critical thinking "a catch-all phrase with no agreed-on definition." [39] http://chronicle.com
Students truly develop skills in critical thinking and quantitative literacy, proponents of the core curriculum say, only if they grapple with rich and time-tested ideas, not a cafeteria-style curriculum that allows them to graduate without being exposed to such foundational courses as economics, foreign language, history, mathematics, laboratory science, and literature. While nearly nine out of 10 colleges are reviewing their general-education requirements, only about one-third require a core curriculum, and there is [40] little evidence of a widespread return to the Great Books akin to the heyday that such courses enjoyed in the middle of the last century. [40] http://www.aacu.org
False Dichotomy
The current skills-versus-content debate represents the latest in a line of curricular disputes. Recent decades have seen pitched battles over the canon and multiculturalism and the merits of a liberal education compared with a practical one. These disagreements touch on the same basic questions: Are students learning the right things? How well will college prepare them for work and for life? The source of those questions is a deeper sense of worry about the academic readiness of an increasingly diverse student body, says Steven Brint, a sociology professor and vice provost for undergraduate education at the University of California at Riverside.
"In some ways it's because the cohort of students became less selective," he says. "There has been for a long time, really going back to the mid-80s, a real concern about what college students are learning and what their skills are, and whether they're developing human capital or not."
In the debate over skills and content, both sides tend to dismiss the notion that their views are in conflict. Core skills and core content are linked with one another, they say, because neither can realistically be taught in isolation. "Claiming college is about either content knowledge or critical thinking is a false dichotomy that we don't need and is actually very counterproductive," says Josipa Roksa, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and co-author of Academically Adrift, which looked at tests of critical-thinking skills among college students -- and judged them to be lacking. While the phrase "false dichotomy" is echoed by several people on both sides of the issue, Ms. Roksa also acknowledges that "this is a longstanding debate in higher education."

After all, to craft a syllabus or curriculum is to make choices about what gets taught, what gets measured, and what gets left out. The debate is often about which half of that dichotomy (false or not) should be emphasized more.

"A core curriculum makes it harder to avoid some confrontation with the key challenges that produce cognitive growth," says Michael B. Poliakoff, vice president for policy at the trustee council. The core curriculum, he adds, "is, in fact, all about transferable skills."
Debra Humphreys, vice president for communications at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which touts the merits of both liberal education and a set of core skills, says it is legitimate to examine what every student should know, but she contends that the council's focus on curriculum alone doesn't go far enough. Teaching classic literature is vital, she says, but just as important is that students learn how to transfer the skills learned in those classes. Asking students to read Shakespeare without explicitly developing their core skills, she says, "just seems to only educate someone halfway."
Broad or Deep?
The tension between skills and content overlaps with a related curricular debate: whether to favor an in-depth examination of a narrow subject or take a broader view.
Two kinds of classroom experience, the American-history survey course and the thematic seminar, bring this debate into sharp contrast. The survey is a mainstay of the core curriculum. In its ratings, the council of trustees credits colleges for their history-survey courses because only those classes, it says, have "enough chronological and topical breadth to expose students to the sweep of American history and institutions."
The thematic seminar is intended to allow students to wrestle with the complexities of a discrete bit of material, to think about it critically and from multiple angles. While students may not be taught entire swaths of historical material, supporters argue that the seminar will help them develop transferable skills and be better prepared to take on complicated subject matter in other fields. Take Mark Higbee's history classes at Eastern Michigan University (the institution does not have a core curriculum and receives an F from the council of trustees). Mr. Higbee teaches through an acclaimed method, called Reacting to the Past, which is used at 300 institutions. In it, students adopt the personae of figures from the curriculum and play elaborate games that can last for five weeks. In his class on the Civil War, Mr. Higbee's first-year students read The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a text he acknowledges is not canonical but "deceptively simple." Students take on various roles, including Mr. Douglass, Charles Dickens, and Senator John C. Calhoun, among others, and argue the critiques and defenses of slavery as they existed in 1845.
The goal, says Mr. Higbee, is not to cover the full sweep of history, but to make students probe the reasoning, prevalent at the time, that slavery was acceptable. Along the way, they build core skills like public speaking, argumentation, analysis, and writing. The professor says that while he is sympathetic to the goals espoused by advocates of a core curriculum, he thinks the question of whether students are learning matters more. And, he says, asking students to focus intently on a few keys parts of history, and to learn them in an active way, as they do in the Reacting courses, is more likely to engage them.
"If a professor stands at the front of the classroom and talks about Plato, it doesn't mean the students are learning Plato," Mr. Higbee says. "For far too long we've been arguing about what students should learn. We don't think enough about how they actually learn."
The council of trustees agrees that teaching and learning are important, but it says there's no way for one organization to evaluate every program. "We can't control whether someone who teaches the Federalist Papers really understands its complexities," says Mr. Poliakoff. "But the fact that students have experienced this document and wrestled with it can only be positive."
Even devotees of the Reacting to the Past method dispute the extent to which the underlying subject matter is important. Mark C. Carnes, a professor of history at Barnard College and creator of Reacting to the Past, says he favors using the method to teach subject matter from the core curriculum. He has helped devise Reacting courses that cover the French Revolution (in which students read Edmund Burke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and the roots of democracy (in which they read Plato's Republic, Thucydides, and Xenophon), among other subjects. "Great texts nearly always emerge in points of intense social transformation," Mr. Carnes says. "Thus games based on them have great drama, and students, in making difficult arguments, find gold in the texts." The underlying content matters, he says, because "if students have powerful ideas rattling around in their heads, along with strong chains of evidence, they will learn to think."
Content Drives Skill
If critical thinking is the goal of education, some scholars have asked whether some disciplines are better than others at developing it. The prevailing answer is no, judging from How College Affects Students, by Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini, professors of education at the University of Iowa and Pennsylvania State University, respectively. "We find little consistent evidence to suggest that one's major field of study, in and of itself, leads to different effects on general measures of critical thinking," they wrote. But certain majors may correlate with other indicators that do lead to gains in critical thinking. Ms. Roksa and her co-author, Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education at New York University, point in Academically Adrift to striking differences in critical thinking across disciplinary categories. Business and education and social-work majors score far lower on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a test designed to measure critical thinking, than do those who major in science and engineering, social sciences, and humanities.
Why? It could be that faculty members in those broad disciplinary categories differ in how they value certain types of knowledge. They also may structure their courses in ways that develop skills and attitudes that lead to a good score on the assessment, Ms. Roksa and Mr. Arum wrote. Finer - grained distinctions between fields were impossible to draw, because the numbers of students in each group were too small to be statistically valid, says Ms. Roksa. But other scholars have examined narrower disciplinary categories. Mr. Brint, of Riverside, and two colleagues looked last year at analytical and critical reasoning, as well as time spent studying and academic conscientiousness, as reported by students in the University of California system. They found some sharp differences. [41] http://www.higher-ed2000.ucr.edu/
Science and engineering majors reported more study time than humanities and social-science majors. But among science students, those majoring in biology, chemistry, and engineering reported longer study hours than did others. "Some part of the intensity characteristic of these majors stems from the demands they make on students to master relatively complex concepts and applications," Mr. Brint and his co-authors wrote. Educators in other fields could draw techniques from biology, chemistry, and engineering to encourage gains in critical thinking, they said.
An approach that blends content and skills may be emerging as a good way to make sure that transferable skills are married to rich content, says Ms. Humphreys, of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. After all, she says, it's impossible to learn a skill, such as writing, without knowing what you are writing about.
"If you focus exclusively on skills and drain out any content," Ms. Humphreys says, "you run the risk of missing some important aspects of education."
Efforts in that vein have [42] drawn notice on several campuses, such as among the 19 members of the New American Colleges and Universities, a group of small- to mid-sized private colleges that seek the "purposeful integration" of liberal education, practical skills, and civic engagement. [42] http://chronicle.com/
But even among those institutions, which appear to offer the kind of liberal education that traditionalists would admire, a different definition of core curriculum sometimes prevails. Many of those colleges earn a D or an F from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Enlarge Image The Debate Over Improving Higher Education Comes Down to Which Core Matters More: Skills or Curriculum 2 [43] http://chronicle.com/

 

A Harvard MBA who grew up in a trailer park addresses his graduating class with inspiring words
JOHN W. COLEMAN, HBS/HKS
2010 STUDENT CLASS DAY ADDRESS May 26, 2010

Dean Light, Sir Ronald Cohen, faculty, administration, classmates, family, and friends - thank you for the privilege of speaking with you today. It's a special day for many reasons, not the least of which is that this is the closest many of us have ever come to Baker Library. To those in the audience and on this stage who have spent the past two years teaching us, thank you for your dedication, preparation, and attention. To those in the administration and on the Class Day committee, thank you for your tireless behind-the-scenes work. To those in the student loan office, well, let's just say I owe you so, so much. And for those graduates playing section bingo, "David Hasselhoff."
Of course, our deepest gratitude today is to the family, friends, and especially partners who carried us this far. I don't know how your family is handling it, but mine is pretty pumped. My parents are out there somewhere, wearing their "Harvard Dad" and "Harvard Mom" t-shirts for maybe the 500th time. And my wife, currently the sole breadwinner in our family, is just relieved I'm finally getting a job. From up here, I can see that all of you have brought a collection of ecstatic friends, beaming grandparents, and bored little brothers. Well, from all of us in the class of 2010 to all of you: "Thank you." You've helped make what once seemed like an outlandish hope a reality. We never could have done it without you. And I know, at least, that I wouldn't have been here without a lot of encouragement, help, and inspiration from the people who care about me the most.
You see, like many of you, I didn't grow up with Harvard as an expectation. When I was born, my family lived in a trailer park in Central Florida. My dad, a former rodeo cowboy, was scraping by finishing an undergraduate degree; and my mom made it her job to find ways for me to develop and learn with the limited resources we had. This involved a lot of imagination. She read books to me almost every day - the "Berenstain Bears," "The Poky Little Puppy" - until I memorized them and made their words my own. We turned little red wagons into race cars, can recycling into treasure hunting, and firefly catching into dragon chasing. Perhaps the greatest gift my mother gave me was that fantastic capacity - the gift of creativity. By day, I was a just little boy trying hard in school. But at night, in that place between wakefulness and dreams, I was an astronaut, archaeologist, or, to my parents' great dismay, a rock star. Every obstacle was an opportunity, and every struggle a chance to create.
I'm willing to bet that you had similar dreams, too, didn't you? And are some of the very people who taught you to dream sitting with you here today?

Of course, a lot of time has passed since any of us rode in little red wagons; and it's been years - hours at least - since we wanted to be rock stars. These days, most of us just dream of landing jobs, avoiding cold calls, and finding an extra ticket to Commencement in Harvard Yard. But as we cross the stage tomorrow and step out into the world beyond this school, what if it's more important than ever to recapture that child-like spirit of imagination? What if, in a world so vastly transformed by crisis that it barely resembles the one we left in 2008, what matters most is not Excel proficiency or accounting acumen, but a passion and capacity for creativity?

Famed economist Joseph Schumpeter once called capitalism "creative destruction" - a formulation that perfectly captured both the dynamism and danger of the economic system that's been adopted almost everywhere in the world.
The latter half of Schumpeter's phrase is now self-evident. Our two years here have been a season of destruction. Hundred-year-old institutions have fallen like dominoes and markets have plummeted - endangering pensions, college funds, and retirement plans around the world. We've witnessed Masters of the Universe in business and politics who have exercised more creativity in evading the law, amassing power, and harming their fellow human beings than in conceiving of solutions to make this world a better place. And millions of people have lost their homes, their jobs, and their hope. MBAs like us have been keenly sensitive to the crisis because we've born at least some share of the blame.
But as we graduate tomorrow, the primary question for our class - for our generation - is not "What happened?" but "Where do we go from here?" In this time of crisis - when passion, innovation, and leadership are so desperately needed - how do we restore balance to the system? And in a world that is stumbling, can we be creative in the midst of destruction?
I believe the answer to that question is a resounding "yes." If my three, yes three, years at this institution [as a candidate for master's degrees at both HBS and the Harvard Kennedy School] have convinced me of anything, it is that HBS, despite its flaws, really is dedicated to educating "leaders who make a difference in the world." And my classmates and I, despite our flaws, overeager pit dives, and skydeck moments share that dedication. We have a long way to go. We have a lot to learn. And we must keep with us the humility we've learned in this crisis; but if we can harness two essential components of creativity - imagination and dedication - I think we can be part of the solution to our world's problems rather than their perpetuation.
The first element of creativity, of course, is imagination - that ability to think of the world in unbounded terms and produce new things where nothing existed before. This was easy when we were kids. If you asked us about career paths, we might have a tough time choosing between president and Spiderman; but we always set the bar high. As we mature, sometimes reality encourages us to think in slightly smaller increments. But HBS has consistently impressed on us - through class work in leadership and innovation, exercises in personal reflection, and the challenging advice of alumni and friends - to be imaginative with both our careers and our solutions to the challenges we face. One great evidence of this is the MBA Portrait Project, which you can find scattered throughout Spangler Lounge today. For it, MBA students, echoing poet Mary Oliver, were asked to write about what they intend to do with their "one wild and precious life." And the responses - whether to be great parents and spouses, innovative social entrepreneurs, or world-class karaokeers - are both imaginative and hopeful. Reflection and innovation are further encouraged through cultural activities like the HBS Show and Sankofa; and this push for imagination often culminates in the various business plan competitions around campus - activities that, in recent years, have produced companies and social enterprises dedicated to everything from recycling unwanted electronics, to treating Lou Gehrig's disease, democratizing fashion, and combating illness and drought. No, I don't think imagination will be the problem - particularly if we classmates can find a way to encourage one another's dreams and aspirations long after this experience has passed away.
But in order to transform imagination into creativity we must couple it with dedication - devotional persistence in the face of time, challenge, and struggle. Our New England neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson highlighted the necessity of dedication when he said, "Without ambition, one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it." My friends here are nothing if not dedicated. This is readily apparent when you watch an HBS rugby match or a Section Olympics tug-of-war. But it's also more subtly demonstrated by students' dedication to lasting impact and the school's dedication to facilitating long-term thinking. I'm proud to say that I've seen my peers here help out - on the ground - in almost every major crisis we've experienced in recent years. Katrina. The Chinese earthquakes of two years ago. And most recently, Haiti, where a first- and second-year student at HBS have been pioneering the development of electronic medical records and where more than a dozen students have traveled over the past two weeks alone. Dedicated to long-term social impact, HBS students have set up the Harbus Foundation, the nation's only foundation run by MBA students. And in classes like Leadership and Corporate Accountability, we are taught, persistently, to think beyond quarterly returns. Tenacity is almost second nature to many among us, but it will be essential to addressing the long-term challenges we'll face. And it's a place where our family, friends, and former professors - all of you - can help us most by encouraging us, supporting us in difficult times, offering us a little wisdom when we need it, and holding us accountable for the promises we make.
In a way, I think it's simple. Imagination and dedication. Creativity in destruction. Depending on your perspective, fellow graduates, we've been blessed or cursed to leave this place in the midst of interesting and urgent times. But despite the very real pain and difficulty of the current environment, it is an opportunity. Up until this point we've lived in a world built and cared for by our parents, grandparents, and forebears. But tomorrow, for those of us in caps and gowns, things change.
Our generation is tasked with creating something new and undreamt from the remains of this crisis, and I think that history's perspective on us will rest on our ability to fight through the destruction and recapture the child-like creativity that once allowed us to chase dragons, cherish red wagons, and believe that, no matter where we came from, we could one day make it to a place like this. Thank you, once again, for the honor of addressing you, Class of 2010. Many of you will belifelong friends, and over the past three years you've taught me about character, community, leadership, and compassion. Leave this campus tomorrow as creators, and remember to take the time to dream. We may not end up as rock stars, but it never hurts to have a little imagination.

Note: These remarks are as prepared for delivery.

Harvard Business School graduates its 100th class of MBAs. The student-led MBA Oath, pledging to "not advance my personal interests at the expense of my enterprise or society" and to "remain accountable to my peers and to society for my actions and for upholding these standards." According to student leaders, approximately 300 members of the HBS Class of 2010 have signed the Oath, joining over 3,000 MBA graduates at 15 schools in the U.S. and around the globe. (For the complete oath and further background, see www.mbaoath.org).

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