Ze'ev Wurman on Bill Gates on Common Core

Bill Gates: OK. So what is the Common Core? It’s a very simple thing. It’s a written explanation of what knowledge kids should achieve at very various milestones in their educational career. So it’s writing down in sixth grade which math things should you know, in ninth grade which math things should you know, in twelfth grade which math things should you know.

Ze’ev Wurman: That, indeed, is what content standards are supposed to be.

BG: And you might be surprised to learn how poor those I’ll call those standards, but to be clear, it’s not curriculum. It’s not a textbook. It’s not a way of teaching. It’s just writing down should you know this part of algebra? Should you know trigonometric functions? Should you know be able to recognize a graph of this type?

ZW: Wrong. I wish Mr. Gates would actually read the standards rather than rely on what others tell him. Common Core standards are more than just content standards, they also dictate pedagogy and hence curriculum. Here are a couple of obvious examples.

“Grade 1 standard 1.OA.6: Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).”

This standard does not require only knowing addition and subtraction within 20, as a content standard should. It insists on knowing four specific ways to add and subtract. In other words, it dictates pedagogy and curriculum.

Bill Gates Needs an Education on Common Core

I haven't read the math standards start to finish, and I probably won't. (I'm working on the ELA standards, Appendix A in particular.)

Nevertheless, I think it's fair to observe that a "standard" instructing teachers to "use strategies such as counting on..." is more than just a content standard. Quite a bit more.

Unfortunately, in the context of American public schools, the word "strategies" means something quite different from what it does outside of public education.

Within public education strategies is a formal term for guide-on-the-sidery.

I remember being semi-gobsmacked, a decade ago, sitting in on a CSE meeting and hearing the word "strategies" repeatedly used to describe the district's approach to educating children with behavioral and/or learning difficulties. The student in question that day, a 5th grader with emotional and behavioral problems, was going to be given "strategies" he could use to stop acting the way he was acting and start acting the way the other kids were acting.

In another meeting, the same psychologist said a child with dyslexia would be given "strategies" she could use to read.

She wouldn't be taught to read; at least, that wasn't the focus.

Instead, she would be given strategies she could deploy, as needed (the child was to be the judge of that), to help herself read better than she was reading now.

Even then, before I'd delved into all these things, I knew it was all rubbish.

A 10-year old with emotional and behavior problems isn't going to use "strategies" to stop having outbursts, and a 10-year old with dyslexia isn't going to use "strategies" to read at grade level.

against strategies, part 2

from Dan Willingham:

I have written (on this on this blog and elsewhere) about the importance of background knowledge and about the limited value of instructing students in reading comprehension strategies.

To be clear, I don’t think that such instruction is worthless. It has a significant impact, but it seems to be a one-time effect and the strategies are quickly learned. More practice of these strategies pays little or no return. You can read more about that here.

Knowledge of the topic you’re reading about, in contrast, has an enormous impact and more important, there is no ceiling—the more knowledge you gain, the more your reading improves.

In a recent email conversation an experienced educator asked me why, if that’s true, there has been such emphasis on reading strategies and skills in teacher’s professional development.

There’s a temptation to say “Oh, Americans don’t value knowledge; they don’t think that people need to know stuff.” But I rarely run into a teacher or administrator who believes that, and I actually have (as yet unpublished) survey data to support that impression. So I don’t think that’s behind it.

Doubtless there is more than one reason, but as a researcher, I have a hypothesis: People think strategies are important because most of the reading research is on strategies. But that’s an accident of the way research is done.

Behavioral research (and educational research in particular) is a more conservative enterprise than you might think. When a researcher decides to conduct a study in classrooms, he or she typically commits at minimum two years of his or her life to the project. What if nothing much happens?

A researcher is therefore motivated not to conduct studies that break utterly new ground, but rather to conduct studies in which one is fairly confident that something will happen.

One takes an intervention that has worked in the past, and adds an interesting tweak.

[snip]

[T]o be competitive for funding the proposal has to be something for which there is already evidence that it will work.
Now consider what it takes to do research on strategy instruction versus knowledge instruction. Teaching children reading strategies is quick. A research project might call for 10 or 20 lessons in total, each lasting 30 minutes or less. One can imagine getting a school administrator’s permission to do such a study in his or her district.
But the hypothesis for knowledge instruction is that it takes years to make a broad impact on students’ knowledge.
Willingham: The Zeitgeist of Reading Instruction
The Answer Sheet

strategies not content

The proposed English-Language Arts “college and career readiness” standards (which we are told are not high school graduation standards) are largely a list of content-free generic skills. Rather than focusing on what English teachers are trained to teach (quality literature), the drafters seem to expect English teachers to teach reading strategies presumed to help students to cope with biology or economics textbooks.

Alternative Needed to Common Core: An Additional Consortium for ‎Common Standards
Williamson M. Evers and Ze'ev Wurman

If you want a reading "strategy" that works, buy a copy of Eugene Schwartz's How to Double Your Child's Grades in School and/or read Carolyn Johnston's posts on Schwartz:

• A reading strategy that really works
• An approach to reading that really works, part 2
  

I like SQ3R, too.

other:
American Educator issue devoted to reading comprehension
Six-Way Paragraphs
SQ3R chart

against initiatives, too

Speaking of schools teaching strategies instead of knowledge (alert E.D. Hirsch!), an approach that requires fantastic levels of goal-mongering and running-record-keeping, I also stand foursquare against the obsessive "rolling-out" of "initiatives."

Take my district. (Please.)

Last year, not long after the crash, the monthly Superintendent's Letter included the following observation:

Excitement abounds throughout the district over recent and upcoming initiatives.

Jobs were disappearing, housing values were cratering, but in the high-flying world of our schools superintendent excitement was abounding. Excitement over initiatives.

Come to find out, there is a name for districts like mine:

Too often, the measure of success in schools has been the number of activities and innovations going on. Bryk, Sebring, Kerbow, Rollow, and Easton (1998) call schools like these "Christmas tree schools," a phrase they coined to describe schools undergoing school improvement where activity per se had run amok: "There were many new programs--not just a few--and a great deal of activity and hoopla surrounded them. Some of these new initiatives may have some real strength and integrity. But because they do not cohere as a group and may even conflict, their impact is minimal at best, and potentially negative" .... In the absence of a single-minded academic focus, educators are easy targets for the "innovation du jour," seldom finishing anything they start. The dean of American basketball coaches, John Wooden (1997), gave his playeres this advice, which is admirably suited for educators in Christmas tree schools: "Do not mistake activity for achievement."

10 Traits of Highly Effective School: Raising the Achievement Bar for All Students, p. 53 by Elaine K. McEwan

Guided reading and the workshop model: activity mistaken for achievement.

against strategies

A few years and -- oh -- maybe 3 or 4 Directors of Pupil Personnel ago,^* I noticed, while sitting in on another parent's CSE meeting, a liberal use of the word "strategies." As in: "We'll teach him some strategies for self-monitoring." Or: "We'll give him some strategies for managing his learning." It was strategies-this and strategies-that, all strategies all the time. Apparently our higher-functioning special needs students were being given strategies they could use to overcome their learning problems and work around their developmental disabilities. Check.

At the time, I took this as just another moderately annoying instance of edu-inanity.

But it's always worse than you think.

Reading Miss Brave, and I plan to read every last word Miss Brave has written and posted to her blog, I realize that "strategies" are yet another means of transferring responsibility from the school to the student, while also working your teachers into an early grave and providing employment for a cadre of Lucy-Calkins and/or Fountas-and-Pinnell-trained literacy specialists. Win-win.

Here is Miss Brave:

I've mentioned before that we're expected to make sure each of our students has three goals for each unit in reading, writing and math. While students are working independently after the mini lesson, we're supposed to meet with two small groups for strategy lessons to help them meet these goals.

And here she is again:

Each student is supposed to have three goals in every subject and be able to articulate those goals. That's five major subjects (reading, writing, math, science and social studies), which is fifteen goals for each student. To me, that sounds like a lot of goals. I mean, hello, I have students who don't even know their own last name, let alone the goal they're working towards in reading. I don't understand why we have to start with three goals. Can't we pilot it with one and see how it goes?

And again:

My reading goal is to read my books over to make sure I understand the story.
My reading goal is to stop and make a prediction about what will happen next and then read on to find out if I am right.
My reading goal is to listen to myself read the story to make sure all the words sound right.

My tentative plan is to print all these goals out on big labels that I can stick right on their book baggies. Of course, all the kids break their book baggies by swinging them around, so I was considering getting them all new, durable book baggies (and by "book baggie" I mean they cram all their books into a flimsy Ziploc bag, so I was going to buy durable Ziploc bags, and between those and the labels I am looking at spending a fortune of my own money, since the copier at school is still broken and I have been using my own paper and ink to print and make copies at home on my own time, thank you very much Department of Education).

Question: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Answer: The answer is not 'strategies.'

Students need distributed practice in order to learn and progress, and it is the school's job to give them that practice, not tell them to remember 15 goals and 30 strategies when they are age seven.

Even if a child does manage to hold 3 reading goals in working memory, he's not going to have room for anything else.


^* Recently I figured out that my district has had 5 assistant superintendents for curriculum, instruction, and technology in 6 years. That's a lot.

See One, Do One, Teach One

The title refers to how medical interns learn procedures. But it is also true elsewhere. From the Public Education Network Weekly Newsblast, this short article covers two studies:

MOMMY CAN YOU HEAR ME? CAN YOU HELP ME LEARN?
The goal of a new study from Vanderbilt University was to examine whether explaining to another person improves learning and transfer. In the study, four- and five-year olds solved multiple classification problems, received accuracy feedback and were prompted to explain the correct solutions to their moms, to themselves or to repeat the solutions.

The study found that generating explanations improved problem-solving accuracy following the test, while explaining things to the mother led to the greatest problem-solving transfer. This indicates that explanation prompts can facilitate transfers in children as young as five years and reveals that it matters if the mother is listening. Even though it is possible that prompting children could be a substitute for the positive influences of a listener, there is reason to suspect that explaining to another person improves learning.

People often produce more detailed and explicit explanations and justify their ideas more when they are doing so for other people rather than just for themselves. And young people adjust their speech based on the age of the listener. It follows that explaining to others may increase motivation and also support more complete and explicit knowledge. This improved knowledge could be more easily transferred to new situations and problems.

The Vanderbilt study’s sentiments seem to be echoed in a new piece in Teacher Magazine written by Kathie Marshall (second link). Marshall begins by noting that a great deal of research has been conducted on the importance of student discussion and its prevalence in class. However, research from Martin Nystrand finds that eighth graders spend an average of 50 seconds per class in sustained conversation, with ninth graders spending only 30 seconds. So Marshall set out to see if discussion could help improve struggling students.

After four weeks, Marshall was amazed at the results of this strategy. Many ‘C’ and ‘D’ students were suddenly performing at the top of the class and were highly engaged in their work. One student wrote in her notebooks that "I like this class because in our other classes, we get in trouble if we want to talk about what we are learning."

Learning from Explaining: Does it matter if mom's listening?

Best Practices: Getting to Comprehension in the Classroom by Kathie Marshall Feb 19, 2008