I was invited to attend the Annual Conference on Evidence-based Policy making and Innovation sponsored by the National Association of State Boards of Education. The conference was well planned with excellent leaders and speakers in each of the sessions. These were the very sessions the members of NASBE needed to consider the weighty decisions they need to make on policy required by their positions on their State Boards of Education. I was there as an observer and a blogger, and I was impressed by their genuine concern to do the right thing in education. It seemed that many members were at one time an educator.
A key session for me was the general session on the Common Core State Standards. The panel consisted of David Coleman, “The Architect of the Common Core,” along with Christopher Koch, Illinois superintendent of schools, and Jean-Claude Brizard, CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Brizard was replaced the next day, having nothing to do with this session; I am sure.
Coleman was the driving force of the panel. He was passionate in his presentation of the Common Core State Standards. CCSS is his baby. I am not in agreement with all aspects of CCSS, but I do see a need to provide some statewide guidance to what expectations or goals we have for our learners and teachers. The sticking point will always be the assessment of these expectations and goals.
The point of this panel, beyond the explanation of the CCSS, was the fact that all of the states involved will need to be Common Core compliant by 2014. They stated emphatically that CCSS will affect all subjects and not just math and language arts. It became obvious to me that they were really driving home the who, what, where, when, and most definitely, the why of Common Core. What was searing my brain, as I squirmed in my seat, trying very hard not to jump up screaming 20 questions all at once, was the obvious missing plan of how this is to be done. It cannot be done without teachers fully in support. Where is the professional development piece to all of this? The Common Core is planned and structured and handed to the states with the full support of the U.S. Department of Education. Where is the implementation plan beyond the deadline for compliance? Where is the plan and support for professional development for this grand scheme that will change American education?
There are many teachers in our education system who recognize the need for change in other districts, but they remain satisfied in what they do as educators in their own district. Their students are coming to school, doing work and getting jobs or going to college. According to the media and the politicians, the system is crumbling with no hope for repair, but that is not what educators see in many of their own districts. Why change if we don’t have to? Every educator learns early on that whatever change is being implemented now, if you wait long enough, it will go away when another idea comes along. The other big misconception is that the Common Core right now is only for math and language arts. It is not going to affect any other areas.
Many schools have bought into Common Core and are preparing their teachers for it. Some are doing a better job than others. There are other schools however, that may not be sharing the enthusiasm to be compliant by 2014. The failure or success of Common Core rests with the educators. It might have behooved the policy makers to have first considered an educator’s Common Core for professional development and support so that the very people who are most needed to support, enforce and teach under CCSS will be properly prepared. When it comes to professional development in education, there is little positive commonality. To be better educators, we need to be better learners.
A possible outcome is that if Common Core State Standards fails, it would not be assessed as a failure because it wasn’t a great idea. It will be judged a failure because American teachers never embraced it or supported it. If it doesn’t work, it’s the fault of the bad teachers. No one will look back at the implementation and ask, “How did we prepare our educators to implement this bold idea?” or “Where were educators ranked in the priority of the plan?”
Much of this came in great clarity and focus to me on the plane after I left the conference. The flight attendant was doing the in-flight instruction and got to the part where the oxygen masks come down. She said: If you are an adult with children, place the mask over your face first, and then you will be able to place the mask over the face of the child. If Common Core fails, what then?
It is interesting that you are writing about a conference about evidence-based policy as there is absolutely no evidence showing the effectiveness of the Common Core, no evidence supporting it at all, but somehow it has been the driving force in K-12 education today.
So now we have standards, and soon we will have exams to test whether students have met those standards, but there is something missing — that all important middle piece between standard and assessment: curriculum. That’s right, there is no curriculum supporting the new Common Core standards, not in NY and not, to the best of my knowledge, in any other state. \
If there are standards to be met, and exams to see if students have met those standards, yet no curriculum with which to teach the students to meet the standards. the students will fail the exams.
When students fail the exams, guess who will be blamed for that failure; Not the politicians, businesspeople and professors who wrote the standards; not the politicians who adopted them, and not the companies that write the exams, that’s for sure.
No, the blame will fall on teachers. That is why many teachers I know are not at all enthused about the Common Core.
As is far too often the case, policy has rushed in where more preparation and at least a modicum of evidence would have been the much more professional approach.
In the summer of 2011, I made appointments with every high educ official in my district and county in Az. The purpose of my request to meet with them was to speak honestly as a teacher and share my perspective on rolling out the CCSSs too soon without enough teacher/parent buy-in. I was assured that plenty of PD would be provided and the implementation of the standards would be slow and paced appropriately. One year later, the district has called everyone to get onboard the CCSS train to nowhere and pulled out of the station. Teachers received a letter from the Superintendent asking them to be quiet, stop complaining and reminding them that they have no choice but to embrace the change whether they like it or not and there will be no excuses and you’re either with us or against us. Now, everyone has shut up, found harbor in their rooms and laying low for fear of being berated any further. Essentially, they have been quieted in submission and lost their voices in the conversational push to go along to get along. Sure there have been some PD opts this fall but there is so much confusion and buyers remorse due to a lack of materials, etc. that it will be a long time before there is sufficient buy-in. Until then, status quo will be the default. Not much will change except time passing and that pendulum begins to swing in more alignment with appropriate expectations that do not enforce irrational competition and merit pay carrots that no good teacher will ever embrace. The human business of teaching is so much more noble and skillful than any amount of controlling, manipulating hierarchy can achieve. Who suffers the most in this dispicable reform movement? Yep. The students.
The thing about standards: We’ve had curriculum standards set for years – and the standards may or may not have been planned into particular classrooms’ lessons each year.
It all boils down to the extent to which leaders can facilitate change management. Robert Fullan, Mike Schmoker, and others have written about the challenges of change management for years.
For Common Core Standards to be fully implemented, all of the following need to be in place:
1. Both admin and teacher support of the standards (as you said).
2. Professional learning communities and/or Professional learning networks for all teachers.
3. Professional development that is individualized to meet the needs of both new and veteran teachers.
4. Continual follow-up on professional development. Teachers may need some coaching or a “second eye” (preferably someone who is not a supervisor) to help them talk through struggles and brainstorm solutions.
5. School-wide formative assessment of progress. Apart from the annual standardized tests, in what ways can schools determine the extent to which students are making progress on the standards?
6. Parent education. The pedagogy required to meet the new standards means that school will look different than it did when parents went to school. They will want to know about the changes.
7. Admin PD on change management. I’ve watched my husband lead change management for corporations. He writes plans with specific targets and ongoing assessments toward the completion of those targets. While schools should NOT run like corporations, there are some skills in the corporate world that could be helpful for successful implementation of school initiatives.
What if Common Core Standards fail? More good people will work on subsequent standards that may or may not ever be implemented.
I teach in a large urban/suburban district. My department chair and a colleague went to a CCCS (for science teachers) workshop this week that was run by our district. If this is the level of PD that is going to be provided, then CCCS is just one more thing that teachers are going to have to figure out on their own. My district has 3-4 high school science curriculum specialists at the district office (and more for the middle school and elementary school), and supposedly a science curriculum specialist at each of the 5 area offices. All the support they’ve provided so far is “Here are your standards. Make sure you incorporate them into your instruction.” You know, in addition to all the standards we have to cover for our biology EOC exam. It would be fantastic if those mid-level people whose job is to support our curriculum could create actual activities we could use. But I’m not going to hold my breath.
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