The Epic Fallacy of Diane Ravitch (and so many others who approach the Common Core)

This is the tweet that has haunted me since the holiday break began:

Why Teachers Don't Like the Common Core http://t.co/U4IavVPQHt
— Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch) December 21, 2013

Follow the link, and you come across this quote from Ravitch’s blog, an extended quotation from the Journal News, which serves the Lower Hudson Valley in New York.

Ravitch sets it up: “They (article authors Melissa Heckler and Nettie Webb) insist that what matters most in education is the interaction between teachers and students, not a scripted curriculum or higher standards. They write: Through the knowledge of subject content, teaching strategies, and brain research, teachers strive to reach and teach every child. The scripted modules undermine the essential teaching relationship by preventing the individualized exchange between teacher and student, the hallmark of active learning. Student interest should be a salient feature that helps develop and drive curriculum — something not possible with prescribed modules.”

Wrapping this quote inside that title is an EPIC fallacy. Stripped to its core, Heckler and Webb are critiquing the use of scripted modules, which misguided administrators have used for years as a tool for standardizing all kinds of practice and curricula – not just the Common Core. I’m afraid Ravitch perpetuates the same ill logic of the New York administrators (and hundreds if not thousands like them) that penned those modules in the first place. She unwittingly sponsors the belief that common standards necessitate a standardized pedagogy: if teachers must all teach the same things, then they must also teach the same way.

If schools and districts are running the Common Core through the same No Child Left Behind, test-and-punish meat grinder, then they are wholly missing the point of the new standards. It’s not supposed to look like we’ve stopped playing checkers and, in the name of Common Core, started playing backgammon.  Students are supposed to take a more active role in their learning; that’s the entire rationale behind the curricular shift, and it stems primarily from a shift in our economy. In July 2006, Fortune magazine’s cover story proclaimed that the old rules of industry were dead; success could no longer be defined strictly by size and market share, nor could they be pursued simply by cutting costs and increasing production volume. Instead, the “new rules” for business stressed creativity, innovation, and corporate agility. While Coca-Cola chose to focus almost exclusively on its eponymous, flagship soft drink, PepsiCo scooped up Gatorade because its CEO foresaw the emergence of the energy drink market. To wit, the Hansen company (remember Hansen’s? Those quirky, shiny cans tucked in the corner of the soda aisles? All natural, mandarin lime?) saw sales quadruple and share price explode nearly 4000% after they introduced a sixteen-ounce can of nitro called Monster. Jack Welch is dead; long live Steve Jobs. Businesses, Fortune reported, now focus less on making their staples bigger, better, and more popular; they want to develop the next iVention that customers don’t see coming and can’t wait to crave.

Within a year of that cover story, the National Center on Education and the Economy published Tough Choices or Tough Times, a report that blasted our K-12 system because it wasn’t building precisely those skills that the “new rules” economy demanded:

The best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent, most creative, and most innovative people on the face of the earth and will be willing to pay them top dollar for their services. This will be true not just for the top professionals and managers, but up and down the length and breadth of the workforce. Strong skills in English, mathematics, technology, and science, as well as literature, history, and the arts will be essential for many; beyond this, candidates will have to be comfortable with ideas and abstractions, good at both analysis and synthesis, creative and innovative, self-disciplined and well organized, able to learn very quickly and work well as a member of a team and have the flexibility to adapt quickly to frequent changes in the labor market as the shifts in the economy become ever faster and more dramatic.

In other words, those who graduate from our schools must have agile, flexible minds that can handle a diverse array of information that may, itself, change quickly. Moreover, once they leave school, there won’t be a designated hour of “math time” on the job, followed by a corporate bell that tells workers, “Math is over. Time to think about history.” The information will be flying from all subject areas at once, and the Common Core certainly serves this freer-flowing, cross-curricular paradigm in its literacy standards that affect all subject areas. Across the secondary grades (6^th-12^th), those literacy standards that impact classes other than English also demand quite a high level of student engagement with text. Note the ultimate skills that are expected upon high school graduation:

Historical Literacy

            Standard 1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.

            Standard 3: Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain.

Science/Technical Literacy

            Standard 7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., quantitative data, video, multimedia) in order to address a question or solve a problem.

            Standard 8: Evaluate the hypotheses, data, analysis, and conclusions in a science or technical text, verifying the data when possible and corroborating or challenging conclusions with other sources of information.

(emphasis added)

The terms in boldface demonstrate how much control a reader exerts over a text. No one source of information is sacrosanct; upon graduation, students should know how to sift through several sources and measure which one provides the best answers that suit their purposes as readers. The math standards take a similar approach: calculations are no longer performed for their own sake. All formulas and equations are presented as tools that can be used to solve specific problems within a concrete context. The Common Core standards specifically reference using geometry to solve “real-world” problems as early as the 5^th grade. In high school, students are regularly expected to craft mathematical models in order to address actual situations. The new California state framework for math, adopted just last month, makes this an explicit priority: “The idea of using mathematics to model the world pervades all higher mathematics courses and should hold a high place in instruction. Readers will see … modeling standards (that) present…

opportunit(ies) for applications to real-world modeling situations …. (which) center on problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace.” (p.5-6, chapter for integrated Mathematics 1 course) 

Increasingly, the Common Core puts the power in the students’ hands to create their own understanding in a context that is relevant to them. Rather than simply reproducing what the teacher has told them, young learners are now charged with producing original expressions of learning that synthesize and apply information in unique ways. Thus, there should be more direct, personalized interaction with students in the classroom. Instructors are no longer the stand-alone gatekeepers to information. If the “old school” teacher was charged with making a student ‘eat spinach’ (read: learn content), and the “old school” assessments simply asked a student to regurgitate what s/he ate, then the Common Core educator must treat students like apprentice chefs. We’re Gordon Ramsay meets Alton Brown, coaching young minds as they sort through groceries and learn how to discern the ripe from the rotten; showing them how to properly dice, season, cook, and blend the data; and pushing them to develop innovative, original dishes that showcase a rich, layered understanding of the subject with a spicy twist that highlights the student’s point-of-view.  There will still be content that must be taught directly; I’m not assuming that students enter the classroom with the academic information already in hand. But the learner’s task is paramount under the Common Core, and the teacher must assess what students need in order to complete the task – be it an essay, a presentation, a piece of art, or a project that has utility beyond the classroom walls. (I confess: I’ve assigned my fair share of group posters that were mostly useless beyond my classroom walls.) As the teacher discovers where students need help, be it a data deficit or a skill deficit, then help is provided. It’s a more dynamic, on-demand approach to instruction with a persistent focus on student production. That’s how the Common Core should truly be implemented.

The transition is far from easy, but it is happening. Service Learning projects have been a national movement since the early 1990’s. Check out this website, which covers the math standards through fantasy sports. And there’s no limit to the ways content can be uniquely understood and re-imagined in artwork. PE students can even start thinking like fitness instructors and trainers. And this shift is happening at the higher ends of education, too. Take a look at Harvard’s most popular course. Browse through the recent changes in the College Board’s Advanced Placement program, and you’ll find six courses that are dramatically changing over the course of just three years (from Fall 2012 to Spring 2015).  The new curricular frameworks uniformly de-emphasize the breadth of content covered and greatly emphasize the importance of enriching specific skills and habits of mind within each discipline. Even the Spanish Language framework points out that “students should learn language structures in context and use them to convey meaning. In standards-based world language classrooms, the instructional focus is on function and not the examination of irregularity and complex grammatical paradigms about the target language. Language structures should be addressed inasmuch as they serve the communicative task and not as an end goal unto themselves.” (emphasis added) In other words, the minutiae of grammar and syntax are only important insofar as they are applied in communication. California’s new English framework – currently in draft form and open to public comment here – takes precisely the same approach under the Common Core. The study of language, even English, must be contextual. The language must serve as a tool for making meaning and affecting expression. Identifying parts of speech is not the prime objective. The more critical question is: can you assemble the parts of your own speech?

Schools will struggle as they make this transition, and administrators must be very careful, lest the tragically flawed practices of the NCLB era be repeated. Starting with the standards is actually NOT the most effective approach. As I’ve written in this space a couple of times, schools must be very clear about their own mission and vision; they must define their own culture before the shift can work. Before students become the focal point of instruction, there must be a clearly defined portrait of what a young learner will become after three, four, five, or six years at your institution. Who is your student, and how do you expect him/her to evolve under your care? Think of the most recognizable universities: they all have a “brand” that carries specific traits along with it. Alumni from Cal, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Notre Dame all possess a unique persona (yes, some may call it a stereotype) that radiates from their alma mater. America’s public schools, if they are to be truly successful, must develop their own persona for the students that learn in their halls. I’ve said it before: very few schools have succeeded in doing this, but in the absence of such clear school-wide visions, many teachers across the country have developed that portrait for their own classrooms. Within their rooms, you’ll see instruction that already focuses on what students produce when they interpret and apply data, and they elicit brilliant work from those students through masterfully designed units and projects. They value the students’ imagination because they are clear about what and how they want their pupils imagining.

These are the teachers, Ms. Ravitch, that probably like the Common Core.