To backtrack just a touch for those still learning eduspeak: standards are the specific skills and/or knowledge that a student is expected to learn in any given course. They are usually phrased according to what all students will be able to do (if a skill is being taught) or what they will understand (if precise data is taught) at the end of a lesson, a unit, or an entire quarter/semester/year. A course entitled Baseball 101 might have the following content standards:
All students will be able to score a professional baseball game, using an official scoresheet, thoroughly and accurately. (skill)
The aforementioned Fordham Institute report actually compared each state’s current slate of standards against the Common Core on the basis of how clearly the standards were phrased and, primarily, how much they challenged students. The "Introduction and National Findings" shows that he golden state earned a solid “A” grade for both its English Language Arts and Mathematics standards, compared to the Common Core’s grades of “B+” and “A-”, respectively. Easy to argue, then, that California has the superior curricula, right?
Not so fast. There are two big problems here. One is that, by adopting the Common Core, states earn Race to the Top federal funds worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Two, the Fordham evaluation is based on a couple of dubious (and I would say dangerous) criteria. In listing the qualities required for a perfect score in “content and rigor” (Appendix A of the report), Fordham praises standards that “distinguish between more important and less important content and skills either directly (i.e., by articulating which are more or less important) OR via the number of standards dedicated to particular content and skills (i.e., more important content/skills have more standards while less important content/skills have fewer standards).” In other words, Fordham rewards redundancy. The perfect curriculum consists of lots of standards that point towards the same kind of learning. If our state baseball standards added to the examples above by instructing students in how to identify the location of every field position, distinguish between infield and outfield positions, and contrast the responsibilities of the pitcher and the catcher, Fordham gives us a gold star. Aren’t all these skills assumed by the phrase “know the nine different positions”? States should not be applauded for dismembering a fundamental learning goal just to fill the page.
In fact, one prominent education researcher, Robert J. Marzano, concludes that such a practice has actually damaged our national curricula. One study interviewed teachers to see how long they would need to effectively teach every single standard in their subject. The teachers concluded we would need a K-21 education system – nine more years to get a high school diploma – in order to cover everything, (Making Standards Useful in the Classroom, 7). Marzano further notes that our math textbooks attempt to cover nearly double the number of topics that German math books include and 3½ times what Japanese books cover. The prognosis for our science books is even more sickening; they cram four times the number of topics found in Japanese science texts and nine times the amount of material studied in Germany, (Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work, 13). Conclusion: these former Axis powers – along with several other nations – regularly crush us on international assessments because we’re trying to cover far too much material. Teachers and students have no choice but to settle for superficial understanding.
Marzano recommends fifteen to twenty standards in each course – no more than twenty unique ideas or skills can be effectively taught in our current class setting, (Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work, 23). California’s high school seniors are expected to learn fifty-five different standards in English and over eighty standards total in Government and Economics. Such verbosity in our standards only clutters our curricula and chokes the deeper learning out of it.
Don’t expect a Heimlich maneuver from the Fordham Institute, though; they don’t seem too interested in deep learning. The last bullet in their rigor rubric tells us that curricular standards are perfect when they “do not overemphasize the importance of students’ life experiences or ‘real-world’ problems… (and) …They do not imply that all interpretations are equally valid (regardless of logic or the adequacy of supporting evidence).” In other words, a student’s education should be about learning the one right answer – we don’t care about alternative ideas that are equally reasonable – and don’t expect anything we teach you to have anything to do with your life.
That’s a terrible way to gauge curricular rigor, and any administrator who pays any heed to such assessments, from your local district hack all the way to Arne Duncan, has no interest in truly educating America’s young adults. I highly recommend they read Fires in the Bathroom by Kathleen Cushman, which is primarily a collection of quotes from students about why and how their school engages and, far too often, disappoints them. A recurring theme – one that reverberates in a host of other research as well – is that lessons must be made relevant to students. Don’t try to teach in a vacuum. Connect to your class and their current base of knowledge and experience (which, by the way, students are eager to discuss if they believe their perspective will be respected). Teachers perpetually struggle to make those connections, yet when the sheer volume of standards far exceeds our instructional time AND most of those standards are too abstract to engage young minds, it seems the job of educating suffers from a lack of sound raw materials. How much harder can we make the job of instruction? We’re asking teachers to make lemonade out of old lawn mowers.
But I can’t finish this as just an extended gripe. How do we create standards that will draw students’ attention, offering skills that they want to develop? Historian James W. Loewen has examined the boredom epidemic with history instruction, specifically, and does indeed take aim at the standards of those classes. He points out that historians actually debate quite often, probing the past with questions and wrestling with controversies about how those questions get answered. History classes, by contrast, purport themselves to present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – no need for debate or even doubt. The fallout comes when these students enter their first class as college freshmen; Loewen has witnessed, firsthand, how academically crippled these students are when a teacher finally asks them to study a controversial issue, (Lies My Teacher Told Me, 8).
In this light, perhaps education should look less like the spoon-feeding of oversized infants. Perhaps we shouldn’t throw so many standards into the puree, either. Maybe education should look more like mixed martial arts, with students training hard in several different techniques for grappling with information and ideas. Instead of learning the knowledge we give them, the emphasis would be for students to strengthen the ideas they have and manipulate them with intellectual jujitsu until they are powerful enough to force inferior thought to tap out.
Amid the bluster for challenging standards, students need (and would be excited to master) standards that hone their ability to challenge.
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