National Standards

There are many movements to reform education and many of them do nothing to develop creativity.  We are in a race for high scores in reading and math at the expense of creativity. Recently, Governors and state commissioners of eduction developed a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for grades k-12.  According to their website,    

These standards define the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers so that they will graduate high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs. The standards are:

• Aligned with college and work expectations;
• Clear, understandable and consistent;
• Include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills;
• Build upon strengths and lessons of current state standards;
• Informed by other top performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in our global economy and society; and
• Evidence-based.

Now the question is what exactly does the government want to do with these standards?  The Wall Street Journal on its editorial page sees national standards as a distraction from the work of firing teachers and handing out vouchers, but more importantly pointed out that monies from the Federal Government could end up being withheld for noncompliance

 With the Administration's blessing, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have proposed a set of uniform K-12 math and reading standards for all states. Compliance will supposedly be voluntary, but Education Secretary Arne Duncan said states that support the effort will have a better chance of receiving Race to the Top money. And President Obama suggested that states that opt out risk losing millions of dollars in Title I grants for low-income students.

 I was raised in an Air Force family and we moved a lot.  I certainly see the sense in having national standards.  As a youngster some states were ahead of others and there was always a fear of being setback when your family moved to a new duty station.  However, as an educator I am in agreement with Tamim Anasary in Edutopias article From Education at Risk:Fallout from a Flawed Report

 Only on-site teachers can really make a broad ongoing assessment that gets at a range of achievements and takes the individual into account. By contrast, uniform standardized testing whose outcomes can be expressed as simple numbers allows someone far away to compare whole schools without ever seeing or speaking to an actual student. It facilitates the bureaucratization of education and enables politicians, not educators, to control schools more effectively.

NCLB has left a bad taste in my mouth for federal education mandates and I am fearful that the common core standards could become another mandate.  Just as we are a mobile society and need some standards across state lines, we are certainly a republic and our states and communities have aligned their education product nationally by adopting common curriculum created by educational organizations and through state development of benchmarks and standards.  Education corporations, specifically textbook companies have  gathered that information and created curriculum for our country.  Seems to me that is free market capitalism at work.

My  true fear is that as we work to create educational reform we are taking away the strength of our country.  The ability to create and innovate are not being encouraged in our schools.  Teachers should have the ability to create lessons based upon the needs of their students and local situations.  Children should be encouraged to explore and learn what interest them without being stuck in a timeline of instruction.  Unfortunately all of the reform to date is really based around the philosophy that teachers do not know what they are doing and the national standards are another method to undermine their authority and expertise.

National Standards

Common Core
The National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers released the first official draft of the Common Core State Standards Initiative and will be accepting feedback on the draft until October 21, 2009. This initiative is a set of Core Standards for college and career readiness in maths and language arts. Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, has applauded this initiative and stated, "There is no work more important than preparing our students to compete and succeed in a global economy, and it is to the credit of these states that this work is getting done.” I am not opposed to national standards that are process oriented but believe that the problems these standards propose to solve are systemic in our culture not failures caused by the schools. It is more important to address the skills of living in our culture and motivating children to love learning before we set standards that address the problems of universities and career development.

In his article entitled National Subject-Matter Standards? Be Careful What You Wish For Marion Brady wrote “ It will fail for the same reason the No Child Left Behind Act failed—because it will be driven by data derived from simplistic tests keyed to simplistic standards keyed to a simplistic, dysfunctional, obsolete, 19th-century curriculum.” I agree with his assessment of national standards when viewed as a core of knowledge. Standards for college bound students can be controlled by universities. If they have higher expectations, students will meet them. Those who truly want to go to college work hard to achieve their dreams.

A reading of the standards led me to think that we are trying too hard to quantify what we learn as opposed to how we learn. Most of the standards have been in place in our schools for a long time. I guess that pulling them together into a list is a good idea but, I am not sure it is necessary. The standards for world wide competition can be met if we devise an education system of cooperation that individualizes skill development, teaches problem solving and how to find answers to questions. These are skills needed to succeed in the 21st century.

I fear that common core standards will lead us to spend more time teaching a common core of knowledge rather than those skills students will need for the future. I can’t help but think about a video I saw where a teacher was working with a group of elementary students who were developing a project. As she questioned them about their project they would pull out their mobile devices and look up the information they needed to answer the questions and fully develop the project. This points out that the common core of knowledge needed for any project is available to anyone who can use today's technology and knows how to ask the right questions.

The standards that are being developed do not, in my opinion, address the primary aim of our schools. A set of common standards should address the notion of literacy, citizenship and problem solving skills you need in life. Our present aim to send everyone to college is unrealistic just like our expectations in No Child Left Behind. Not everyone is going to go to college or begin a career when they are 18. It seems to me that as our population ages, childhood should be extended to provide life experiences and some time for fun. We are all going to work for 30 or 40 years. Let’s ease up on our kids and let them explore the possibilities of life and develop lifelong learning and coping skills before going to work.

The core standards being developed are more of the same stuff we have been doing since the 19th century. We need some ideas for the 21st century!!

Some Sites of Interest
Flowing Data is a website all about visualizing data so that it can be used. You can't visualize it if you don't find it. A problem I encountered time and again with students doing research was there total reliance on Google for information. It is a fine search engine but there are other places to go. Flowing Data's 30 Resources to Find the Data You Need could be helpful to extend a student's understanding of how to find informtion.

Fighting Drug Use
Teachers frequently encounter adolescent attitudes towards drugs and alcohol that are based upon popular culture's view of their use rather than facts. I was always looking for ways to try to convince my students that children's brains are growing and the use of drugs and alcohol can be detremental to them. They were frequently skeptical. Here are two sites that have some information about the effects of drugs and alcholol on the teenage brain from Scientific American Online:

Marijuana Hurts Some and Helps Others and Is Bad Judgment the Cause and Effect of Adolescent Binge Drinking have some useful information for teenagers.