Initial comments on CCSSO/NGA's March 2010 public comment draft for ELA
3.11.10 - Sandra Stotsky - 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).
Initial comments on CCSSO/NGA's March 2010 public comment draft for ELA
Sandra Stotsky
University of Arkansas
March 10, 2009
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 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 the following standard for English. But one of them, D, presented below, 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."
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 or 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 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 U 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.
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.
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)
5. Few content-rich Literature and Reading standards in Grades 6-12):
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).