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Common Core Implementation

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We've outsourced this post on Common Core State Standards to guest contributor Christina Hank. Christina is a Curriculum Coordinator for Medina City Schools. You can read more of her work at turnonyourbrain.wordpress.com, and you should definitely follow her on Twitter at @ChristinaHank

There’s been a lot of confusion around what’s happening to curriculum in Ohio education. Let’s break it down into two pieces: standards and assessments.

STANDARDS

Standards are the platform for everything that is taught in a school district, we go above and beyond I the standards to address all the needs of children, such as social and emotional growth. By themselves, standards do not impact anything in our classrooms; they are documents that sit on shelves. It is in how we implement the standards and integrate their intent into our teaching practices that they have any role in teaching and learning.

So, what are the standards in Ohio?

Common Core State Standards (CCSS)—The CCSS are a set of standards in grades kindergarten through twelve in English language arts and mathematics. Many states have adopted this as a common set of standards.

Are included in…

Ohio’s New Learning Standards—Ohio’s New Learning Standards is the title given to all of Ohio’s standards in all contents (including the CCSS in English language arts and math).

ASSESSMENTS

Standards are not the same as their assessments, even though we are seeing “Common Core” used interchangeably with everything that is happening right now. Though the assessments of our new learning standards are rooted in the standards and attempting to assess the intent of these standards, the assessments are a separate piece of educational reform.

Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)—PARCC is one of two national testing consortia develop assessments for the CCSS in English language arts and math. Ohio and 21 other states belong to this consortium, which means Ohio’s students will be taking the same test as students in all of those other states (unlike Ohio’s current assessments with are only taken by students in the state). In each subject (English language arts and math), the test is structured to have two optional tests in the fall (may not be finished by 2014-2015) and two tests in the spring. The first of these spring tests in each subject will be around March and will be a performance-based assessment. The second of these will be in May and will be an End of Year test.

Are included in…

Next Generation Assessments—This all-encompassing term includes both Ohio-developed tests in social studies and science as well as the PARCC tests in English language arts and math.

TIMELINE

As it is almost the start of the 2013-2014 school year (where is the summer going?!), we’re entering the final year of Ohio Achievement/Graduation Assessments and getting ready for our first year of Next Generation Assessments in 2014-2015.

Assessments
English 2014-2015:
  • MS: PARCC Tests for grades 3-8 (National)
  • HS: PARCC End of Course exams (National)
Mathematics 2014-2015:
  • MS: PARCC Tests for grades 3-8 (National)
  • HS: PARCC EOC in Alg 1, Geo, Alg 2 OR Math 1, Math 2, Math 3 depending on student track (National)
Social Studies 2013-2014:
  • MS: Continue with OAA in MS.
  • HS ONLY: our self-created EOC Assessment in U.S. History and Government

2014-2015:

  • MS: Grade 4 and 6, grade-level tests (not cumulative). New SS tests will be "Next Generation Assessments" reflective of PARCC tests
  • HS: State created EOC in U.S. History and Government
Science 2014-2015:
  • MS: Grade 5 and 8, grade-level tests (not cumulative). New science tests will be "Next Generation Assessments" reflective of PARCC tests
  • HS: State created EOC in Biology and Physical Science

As Poverty Increases, Reformers Cling to the “New Status Quo”

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A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education released new data that confirms what every advocate of public education has been trumpeting for years: poverty is a growing scourge on public schools. According to its 2013 Condition of Education report, one in five schools in the United States are considered high poverty. Twenty percent of public school students attended these schools in 2011, considerably more than the 12 percent who did in 1999–2000. That year, 45 percent of students attended a low-poverty school. Now only 25 percent do. Overall, approximately 10.9 million school-age children are from families living in poverty, a four percent increase from a decade earlier.

The trend is stark – poverty is affecting more and more students. And yet, the debate over education – at least how it plays out in the national media and many legislatures across the country- continues to freeze out substantive discussions about poverty and its obvious impact on student achievement. The ongoing fascination with market-driven education reform proposals and their media-savvy boosters leaves room for little else, although recent scrutiny over faulty standardized tests is reason for encouragement.

For years now, the American people have been told that the key to close achievement gaps is to use high-stake stest scores to evaluate teachers and schools, and close schools that are deemed “under-performing” and replace them with charter schools. Obviously it’s easier to champion these ideas once the discussion of poverty and its consequences for millions of students is severed from the equation.

The stakes are high. There is, after all, a lot of money to be made. Reform has become an industry.

“There are people who look at our investment in public education, and they see a treasure chest,” National Education President Dennis Van Roekel recently wrote in The Huffington Post. “Their first thought is, how can they tap into those funds for their own private gain? If just one percent of education spending were diverted to private profit, it would mean $5 billion a year in someone’s pockets.”

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The Trouble with the Common Core

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Via Rethinking Schools

It isn’t easy to find common ground on the Common Core. Already hailed as the “next big thing” in education reform, the Common Core State Standards are being rushed into classrooms in nearly every district in the country. Although these “world-class” standards raise substantive questions about curriculum choices and instructional practices, such educational concerns are likely to prove less significant than the role the Common Core is playing in the larger landscape of our polarized education reform politics.

We know there have been many positive claims made for the Common Core:

  • That it represents a tighter set of smarter standards focused on developing critical learning skills instead of mastering fragmented bits of knowledge.
  • That it requires more progressive, student-centered teaching with strong elements of collaborative and reflective learning.
  • That it equalizes the playing field by raising expectations for all children, especially those suffering the worst effects of the “drill and kill” test prep norms of the recent past.

We also know that many creative, heroic teachers are seeking ways to use this latest reform wave to serve their students well. Especially in the current interim between the roll-out of the standards and the arrival of the tests, some teachers have embraced the Common Core as an alternative to the scripted commercial formulas of recent experience, and are trying to use the space opened up by the Common Core transition to do positive things in their classrooms.

We’d like to believe these claims and efforts can trump the more political uses of the Common Core project. But we can’t.

For starters, the misnamed “Common Core State Standards” are not state standards. They’re national standards, created by Gates-funded consultants for the National Governors Association (NGA). They were designed, in part, to circumvent federal restrictions on the adoption of a national curriculum, hence the insertion of the word “state” in the brand name. States were coerced into adopting the Common Core by requirements attached to the federal Race to the Top grants and, later, the No Child Left Behind waivers. (This is one reason many conservative groups opposed to any federal role in education policy oppose the Common Core.)

Written mostly by academics and assessment experts—many with ties to testing companies—the Common Core standards have never been fully implemented and tested in real schools anywhere. Of the 135 members on the official Common Core review panels convened by Achieve Inc., the consulting firm that has directed the Common Core project for the NGA, few were classroom teachers or current administrators. Parents were entirely missing. K–12 educators were mostly brought in after the fact to tweak and endorse the standards—and lend legitimacy to the results.

The standards are tied to assessments that are still in development and that must be given on computers many schools don’t have. So far, there is no research or experience to justify the extravagant claims being made for the ability of these standards to ensure that every child will graduate from high school “college and career ready.” By all accounts, the new Common Core tests will be considerably harder than current state assessments, leading to sharp drops in scores and proficiency rates.

We have seen this show before. The entire country just finished a decade-long experiment in standards-based, test-driven school reform called No Child Left Behind. NCLB required states to adopt “rigorous” curriculum standards and test students annually to gauge progress towards reaching them. Under threat of losing federal funds, all 50 states adopted or revised their standards and began testing every student, every year in every grade from 3–8 and again in high school. (Before NCLB, only 19 states tested all kids every year, after NCLB all 50 did.)

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Wall Street ♥ charter schools

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Call them cynical, but the widespread involvement of financial firms in the charter school movement raises suspicion among many public school advocates.

The map below illustrates just a few entanglements of big league investors in national school-choice organizations.

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Education News for 05-16-2012

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Statewide Education News

  • Legislator refuses to rush changes to school-grading system (Dispatch)

    • Revamping how the state measures schools and district performance on annual report cards is too important and too complex to do on the fly, a state legislator says. House Education Committee Chairman Gerald L. Stebelton, R-Lancaster, said last night that he intends to strip from Gov. John Kasich’s proposed education overhaul a new and more-rigorous grading system. Read More…

National Stories of the Day

  • Backer of Common Core School Curriculum Is Chosen to Lead College Board (New York Times)

    • David Coleman, an architect of the common core curriculum standards that are being adopted in nearly all 50 states, will become the president of the College Board, starting in October. The College Board, a membership organization of high schools and colleges that administers the SAT, the Advanced Placement program and other standardized tests, helped design the standards — an outline of what students should learn in English and math from kindergarten through high school — meant to ensure that all high school graduates are prepared for college. Read More…

  • The National Teacher of the Year on what makes a great teacher (LA Times)

    • The class clown from Mr. Gadberry's high school art class has made good — and how. Rebecca Mieliwocki teaches seventh-grade English at Luther Burbank Middle School in Burbank — but not next year. Instead, she'll be on the road as the National Teacher of the Year. It took her a long time to get to the classroom — she once worked as a floral designer, doing the flowers for Elizabeth Taylor's private jet — and eventually to the White House, where a fellow teacher, President Obama, crowned her as a national teaching treasure. Before she takes off, Mieliwocki is speaking at commencement at her teaching alma mater, Cal State Northridge — and right here. Read More…

Local Issues

  • NBC's 'Education Nation' to spotlight Steubenville's Wells Academy (WTOV-9)

    • A Jefferson County school will represent a success story on NBC's "Education Nation," the network's initiative to engage the country in the state of education in the U.S. The profile on Wells Academy in Steubenville will focus on the school's Success For All program. Read More…

  • Hamilton student overcomes odds to graduate (Hamilton Journal News)

    • For four days, J’aime Murray’s sat in a hospital bed in a coma following surgery to remove a tumor from her brain stem. The only way her doctors could tell if she had voluntary brain function was when she moved her toes. Read More…

  • Virginia Tech alumni talk with Chardon students (News Herald)

    • Few outside of Chardon could understand what that community has gone through since Feb. 27. One group that can relate to some degree includes those from the Virginia Tech campus. On Tuesday, representatives from the University's Actively Caring for People program stopped in Chardon to speak with students and staff from the high school. Read More…