“Inferior National Standards: English Language Arts” -- by Donna Garner

Donna Garner

3.12.10 - U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan waited until the state contracts were signed before he made the rest of the plan clear. He also waited until just a couple of weeks ago to reveal that the states must use 100% of the national standards and not just the 85% they had been told early-on.

“Inferior National Standards:  English Language Arts” --

by Donna Garner

3.12.10

[Later in this article, I have posted Dr. Sandra Stotsky’s feedback on the March 10, 2010 version of the national English standards.  I have added my interpretation of her comments. -- Donna Garner] 

Under Obama’s 2011 budget, the U. S. Department of Education will have its budget increased 7.6  % to a grand total of $84.6 Billion.

This funding is to implement Obama’s federal takeover of the public schools which is well on its way to completion.

Last year, 48 state Governors (except for Texas and Alaska) signed the Common Core standards adoption agreements before the public was told about the national tests.   

U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan waited until the state contracts were signed before he made the rest of the plan clear.  He also waited until just a couple of weeks ago to reveal  that the states must use 100% of the national standards and not just the 85% they had been told early-on.
 

Plain and simple:  This is Obama’s plan to change the way an entire generation of children thinks: 

National standards  →  national tests  →  national curriculum → teachers’ salaries tied to students’ test scores  →  teachers teaching to the test each and every day  →  Obama indoctrination of our public school children 

Jeff Jacoby stated in his recent article (Dallas Morning News, 3.8.10), “How separating school and state would pay off”:  

Central to President Barack Obama's approach to education is a drive for uniform national standards in reading and mathematics…

Anyone who called for legislation to establish mandatory national standards for television programming or restaurant menus would be laughed at: Americans don't think the government is competent to decide what shows they can watch on TV or what they can order for dinner when eating out. Is it any less risible to think that government knows best when it comes to your children's education?

Rather than centralizing even more government authority over the nation's schools, genuine reform would move in the opposite direction. It is parents – not local, state, or federal officials – who should control education dollars…

More government control is not the cure for what ails American schools. The empowerment of parents is.

Yesterday, March 10, 2010, the Common Core National English Language Arts Standards (and Mathematics) were released.  You can view these at the following link:

http://www.corestandards.org/Files/K12ELAStandards.pdf

For years, Dr. Sandra Stotsky has been a leading voice for rigorous standards; and she has done the grunge work of laboriously plowing through English Language Arts (ELA) standards all across this country.  She has not just set herself up on a pedestal and “waxed eloquent.”  She has done the actual grunge work of organizing, writing, revising, editing, proofing, consulting, evaluating, and helping many of us, including Texas, to improve our ELA standards.  She truly cares about students and their academic achievement.

When Dr. Stotsky speaks, our nation should listen.  She knows what she is talking about.  Here is her feedback on the Common Core National English Language Arts Standards released yesterday, March 10, 2010:

*CCSSO - Council of Chief School Officers

*NGA -- National Governors’ Association

*CCSSI -- Common Core State Standards Initiative -- joint effort between CCSSO and NGA

Initial feedback on Common Core English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies & Science

Sandra Stotsky

University of Arkansas

March 10, 2010

1.  No research base supporting the empty 10 College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Reading on K-12 grade-level standards (see p. 6 and p. 31 of the main document).

There is no evidence to support these generic, content- and culture-free skills as the basis for grade 10 common tests (possibly for a "grade 10 diploma") and as the goal of grade-level standards.  David Conley's report Understanding University Success (2003), which strongly influenced the notion of "college readiness standards," describes the content standards needed for matriculation into college. The report includes standards for English, including standard D, presented below.  But D is not included as a CCSSI college- and career-readiness standard, and its subsidiary objectives do not appear in CCSSI's grade level standards.

"D. Successful students are familiar with a range of world literature. They:

D.1. demonstrate familiarity with major literary periods of English and American literature and their characteristic forms, subjects and authors.

D.2. demonstrate familiarity with authors from literary traditions beyond the English-speaking world.

D.3. demonstrate familiarity with major works of literature produced by American and British authors."

[My interpretation of Dr. Stotsky’s statements: The elements in the ELA CCSSI are too broadly worded, too much of a “wish list” rather than a definite set of grade-level-specific goals that will lead the student into mastery by high school.  It is as if the CCSSI writers believe they can wave a magic wand over the high school student’s head, and he will automatically be “familiar with a range of world literature.”  Such a goal takes years of careful instruction before high school, and teachers all the way along in school must motivate students to read the great American and British pieces.  Definite and explicit goals must be set at each grade level rather than these broad, sweeping goals as set forth in “D.”  -- Donna Garner]    

2.  Emphasis on the use of a confusing "complexity" formula for English teachers to use to determine the complexity of the literature they teach

No "complexity" formula can tell an English teacher a text's literary context and literary history--what links it to earlier and contemporary texts.  We all know why complexity matters (which is all CCSSI harps on).  CCSSI's explanation (in Appendix A) diagnoses the problem correctly; textbooks have been continuously dumbed down for decades.  But the solution is not to ask English teachers to use a complexity formula to help them judge what texts to teach at each grade level. They know how (or should know how) to determine complexity better than any formula can. 

The problem lies with the advice of reading researchers, supported by reader/writer workshop educators, who advised teachers and publishers many years ago that narrative texts were easier than expository texts, would engage struggling readers better, and would teach them what they couldn't learn from expository texts.  After publishers and teachers followed their advice, struggling readers still didn't read better.  Worse yet, all the other kids had also been dumbed down because of self-esteem-related mandates to prevent faster learners (including faster-learning minority students) from being placed in faster-moving classes or groups.  Now reading researchers say that kids can't read complex texts by grade 12 because their textbooks declined in difficulty and teachers don't know how to judge complexity. 

Reading researchers are now recommending a huge dose of expository reading for all students at every grade, with texts to be determined by a new formula that is as confusing as it is insulting to the nation's teachers. What remains unsolved--the original problem way back in the 1950s and 1960s--is how to get kids who didn't like to read or who didn't learn how to read very quickly to learn how to read "complex" texts. Nothing in these standards addresses the basic issue. We've simply come full circle on what might be in the curriculum except that a formula can't tell a poorly trained teacher the literary context and literary history of a text, as well as the common world knowledge embedded in it, to help students make the links to what will help them understand the text. 

The formula developed by a University of Memphis group is unusable by the average teacher and won't be used by the able teacher. It has five dimensions, with percentiles spread from 0% to 100%. But, get this!  Texts high in "narrativity" and "cohesion" will have low percentiles, meaning they are easy.  Texts low in "syntax" and "word abstractness," meaning they are easy, will also have low percentiles. Eventually, their chart (p.10) makes sense but not at first blush because the reading researchers did not use category names with parallel neutral values.  

Moreover, as if to deliberately confound teachers, an application of the formula to The Grapes of Wrath shows it at the grades 2-3 level in complexity, although CCSSI correctly notes that "qualitative measures" (i.e., professional judgment) place it appropriately at the high school level.

[My interpretation of Dr. Stotsky’s statements:  Some years ago, teachers were told by the reading researchers that students could read narrative selections more readily than expository text. The emphasis in ELA then changed to narrative text.  The result is that students’ reading levels have been dumbed down.  Now Dr. Stotsky is saying that expecting teachers to utilize a complicated complexity formula to gauge students’ reading abilities is still not going to fix the problem.  She says there is nothing in the CCSSI that will help students to become better readers who are able to read more complex text. -- Donna Garner]

3.  Misunderstanding and misuse of NAEP percentages to justify altering what English teachers teach and what is assessed on an ELA test for which English teachers will be held accountable

The introduction to the K-12 standards justifies the stress on reading "informational texts" by referring to the "Distribution of Literary and Informational Passages in the 2009 NAEP Reading Framework" (p. 3).   However, these percentages (70% for informational passages in high school; 30% for literary passages) are for NAEP's reading assessments, not the ELA curriculum.

NAEP's percentages (and the reading researchers advising CCSSO know this) were not intended to guide the allotment of class time for the high school literature curriculum.

NAEP's reading tests were intended by Congress to assess reading skills developed outside of school and in the other subjects taught in high school as well as the English class.

Moreover, a report by Achieve noted very clearly that "literary text should remain the reading centerpiece of the English classroom," that the "NAEP reading assessment is not an 'English' test in the traditional sense," and that "if NAEP were an end-of-course English test, they would recommend a 50 percent or higher representation of literature" (Achieve, 2005, p. 21).

Despite the limitations of the NAEP percentages for guiding the allotment of time for literary study in the high school curriculum, CCSSI has chosen to use the 70 percent figure for passage selection on the NAEP reading assessments to justify their own emphasis on the reading of informational texts in the high school English curriculum, to the detriment of reading fiction, poetry, and drama. The purpose is, apparently, not only to alter English teachers' priorities in their own classes but also to ensure this emphasis in the national tests to be developed (based on the national standards that the U.S. Department of Education may require states to adopt as a condition of further Title I money under the No Child Left Behind Act) for which English teachers will likely be held fully accountable. 

[My interpretation of Dr. Stotsky’s statements: The CCSSI is over-emphasizing informational text by using data deliberately taken from NAEP reading and misapplying that to ELA.  Such a misapplication will result in students whose literary background will suffer from not reading enough fiction, poetry, and drama. -- Donna Garner]

4. No international benchmarking 

See British Columbia's high school exit test and required readings (Common Core, Why We're Behind: What Top Nations Teach Their Students But We Don't.  2009, pp. 25-33). And the Appendix on what Finland requires in the upper secondary school, in the Pioneer Institute White Paper "Why Race to the Middle?" by Ze'ev Wurman and Sandra Stotsky (February 2009)

[My interpretation of Dr. Stotsky’s statements:  Dr. Stotsky faults the CCSSI’s lack of international benchmarking.  In other words, the CCSSI has a very limited research base. -- Donna Garner]

5. Few content-rich Literature and Reading standards in grades 6-12

Here they are:

Grade 9-10: Analyze a wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, comparing and contrasting approaches to similar ideas or themes in two or more texts from the same period.

Grades 11-12: Compare and contrast multiple interpretations of a drama or story (e.g., recorded or live productions), distinguishing how each version interprets the source text. (This includes at least one play by Shakespeare as well as one play by an American dramatist.)

Grades 9-10: Analyze documents of historical and literary significance, including foundational U.S. documents (e.g., the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights) for their premises, purposes, and structure.

Grades 11-12: Analyze how various authors express different points of view on similar events or issues, assessing the authors’ assumptions, use of evidence, and reasoning, including analyzing seminal U.S. documents (e.g., The Federalist, landmark U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions and dissents).

[My interpretation of Dr. Stotsky’s statements:  Again, Dr. Stotsky is faulting the CCSSI document for its inexplicit, generic, broadly stated, “wish list” wording that will not give definite direction to teachers to help them guide students to reach specific, rigorous, high-school goals. -- Donna Garner]

6.  Impoverished Vocabulary standards in grades 6-12  

Given that vocabulary and concept development is the critical component in improving reading comprehension, the deficiencies in this "strand" have the most serious implications. The "standards" presented in the most crucial years (grades 6-12) imply only a contextual approach to vocabulary learning even though the research is clear about the benefits of some explicit vocabulary teaching.

The pedagogical uselessness of what the March draft offers in this strand is a recipe for reading failure at the high school level, especially for students whose families are not highly literate in English.  A major strengths of all the versions of the Massachusetts English language arts curriculum frameworks was the spelling out of the different categories of words/concepts that teachers could explicitly teach through the grades. 

Here is all that the empty College and Career Readiness Standards provide:

*Determine the meaning of words and phrases encountered through conversations, reading, and media use.

*Understand the nuances of and relationships among words.

*Use grade-appropriate general academic vocabulary and domain-specific words and phrases purposefully acquired as well as gained through conversation and reading and responding to texts.

There is not even a CCRS requiring the learning of dictionary skills.  All we find on pp. 49 and 50, where "vocabulary acquisition and use" has been relegated and smothered by an anti-teaching approach is "verify the preliminary determination of a word's meaning (e.g., by checking the inferred meaning in context or looking up the word in a dictionary)."  Among other pedagogically useless standards are:

"Trace the network of uses and meanings that different words have and the interrelationships among those meanings and uses."   (One wonders how many teachers, never mind students, can interpret this "standard.")

"Distinguish a word from other words with similar denotations but different connotations."   It is not surprising that no examples were given to illuminate the meaning of this "standard" since it is pretentious gibberish.

Were these vocabulary "standards" approved by the eminent vocabulary experts listed by CCSSI as reviewers or consultants? Shouldn't we expect American students to learn, for example, the meaning of foreign words used frequently in written English, idioms, literary allusions, proverbs, and adages, among other categories of words that need to be brought explicitly to students' attention?  Or, is the expectation to be: if you don't know what a word means, guess or look it up, if you can figure out how to do that. 

[My interpretation of Dr. Stotsky’s statements:  Dr. Stotsky faults the vocabulary development parts of the CCSSI standards because they do not require teachers to teach at each grade level the different and explicit categories of words/concepts that students must know to be able to read sophisticated text in high school.  Again, the CCSSI standards are too broad and generic to be effective at raising students’ academic achievement. --- Donna Garner]