Frederick Hess: Common Core tests were the fix for NCLB

Frederick Hess writing in National Affairs:

In 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act marked a dramatic win for standards-based reform — but at the price of abandoning the push for "national" standards. NCLB required states to adopt standards in reading and math, administer annual tests geared to those standards, use tests to determine which students were proficient, and analyze the outcomes to determine which schools and systems were making "adequate yearly progress" — including the absurd requirement that 100% of students be proficient by 2014. Schools and systems that didn't perform adequately were subject to federally mandated sanctions. The crucial compromise was that states could set their own standards and tests. In fact, NCLB specifically prohibited national testing or a federally controlled curriculum.

What followed was not difficult to anticipate. The possibility of sanctions gave more than a few state leaders reason to adopt easy tests and lower the scores required for proficiency. A "race to the bottom" was soon underway, prompting an effort to combat the gamesmanship.

[snip]

The real power of standards lies in their ability to change what is tested, and thus to change how curricula and textbooks are written, how teachers teach, and how students learn. As Finn and Petrilli put it, the standards are ignored, and "[e]ducators instead obsess about what's on the high-stakes test." This is why advocates are so impassioned and why critics are justified in fretting about the implications of the Common Core. When coupled with tests, accountability systems, and teacher evaluation, the Common Core becomes the invisible but omnipresent foundation of American education.

[snip]

[T]he Common Core is neither necessary nor sufficient for fixing the problem it was designed to solve. The critical rationale for the Common Core was concern that states had gamed and manipulated testing under NCLB. But a more modest solution was already available. Every state has long participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tests students in reading and math (and sometimes in other subjects) in grades four, eight, and twelve under carefully controlled conditions and provides a rock-solid means for comparing performance. In fact, NAEP results were already being used to flag states that appeared to be gaming their NCLB tests. Common Core advocates, however, thought that relying on NAEP was an unsatisfactory, makeshift solution. Instead, they embraced the Common Core standards.

Solving the "race to the bottom" problem would have required the Common Core tests to replicate NAEP's careful protocols. However, perhaps recognizing that states might not have signed on if they were subject to transparent coercion, Common Core advocates were remarkably laid back about what states would actually be required to do when it came to policing test conditions, accepting mandatory passing scores, or establishing strong oversight boards. Thus, advocates failed to build in controls to prevent states from manipulating outcomes. States can administer the Common Core-aligned tests much later in the school year than is recommended (thus inflating measures of student learning), ignore guidelines on testing conditions, and set their own proficiency scores. The only "safeguard" against any of this is state officials' inclination to do the right thing — which is precisely what it was before the Common Core. Meanwhile, many Common Core states have decided not to use the program's new tests at all; as a result, barely 40% of students are currently slated to be tested with one of the two new Common Core tests, and at least 19 different tests will be used nationwide next spring. Given the critical role of the tests for maintaining standards, this undermines the purpose of the Common Core — and in a fashion that seems unlikely to lead to purposeful experimentation or rethinking. Within a few years, testing may be only slightly less fragmented than before the Common Core, and many established tests will have been jettisoned for slapped-together replacements.

How the Common Core Went Wrong

Common Core was all about the tests.

NCLB had failed -- so the thinking went -- because (some) states gamed the system by writing easy tests (or writing hard tests but setting easy cut scores).

So Common Core would create common standards and, hence, common tests. Hard tests.

Like Jason Zimba, I might have thought, a few years back, that changing the tests would do the trick. Create good tests, let the schools take it from there.

But having sent three children through public schools, and having read some of the literature on foreign aid and its many debacles, I now have a much greater appreciation for the slipperiness of reality.

Or the slipperiness of culture, more like.

I'm extremely tardy getting Barbara Oakley's op ed & new book posted, and it looks like I won't get to it today, either.

But I do want to quote her passage on culture:

Today's Common Core approach to teaching STEM is at least superficially appealing. The goal of placing equal emphasis on conceptual understanding, procedural skills and fluency, and application is laudable. But as with any new approach to teaching, the Common Core builds on the culture that's already there. And the culture that has long reigned in STEM education is that conceptual understanding trumps everything. So bewildered math teachers who are now struggling to teach the Common Core are leaning on the old thinking, which has it that if a student doesn't understand—in the "ah-ha," light-bulb sense of understanding—there's no way she or he can truly become expert in the material.

True experts have a profound conceptual understanding of their field. But the expertise built the profound conceptual understanding, not the other way around. There's a big difference between the "ah-ha" light bulb, as understanding begins to glimmer, and real mastery.

How We Should Be Teaching Math

Like NGOs disbursing foreign aid, the Common Core had to build on the culture that was already there.

The culture that's already there inside public schools pits "knowledge" against "thinking," "problem solving," and "understanding," with knowledge the loser. Here in my district, in fact, our curriculum director has produced a new Powerpoint, titled "Teaching for Understanding," which poses a rhetorical question:

Is it possible to have a great deal of knowledge but limited understanding?

Harder tests aren't going to raise student achievement inside a culture whose denizens believe that knowledge is an impediment to understanding.

Auntie Ann points out the obvious

Lot of these studies about the problems with reading on screens--including amount absorbed and lack of sleep--need to get through to schools that putting everything on electronic media instead of good old books is a bad idea.

Yes, carrying 3-4 textbooks home every night is like lugging a backpack full of bricks, but there has to be some happy medium out there somewhere.

Thank you!

Can't believe I didn't think of that.

(I did think of it where my own kids are concerned. I've been bugging Chris to get off his laptop in the evening, and I've been asking myself whether I have what it takes to pry Andrew^* from his.)

Put together the finding that e-readers affect circadian rhythms with the fact that teenagers' circadian rhythms are already delayed ....

Yikes.


^* For passersby, Andrew is 20 years old and autistic.

Jason Zimba teaching his children math

For passersby, Jason Zimba is one of 3 writers of the Common Core math standards.

Every Saturday morning at 10 a.m., Jason Zimba begins a math tutoring session for his two young daughters with the same ritual. Claire, 4, draws on a worksheet while Abigail, 7, pulls addition problems written on strips of paper out of an old Kleenex box decorated like a piggy bank.

If she gets the answer "lickety-split," as her dad says, she can check it off. If she doesn't, the problem goes back in the box, to try the following week.

"I would be sleeping in if I weren't frustrated," Zimba says of his Saturday-morning lessons, which he teaches in his pajamas. He feels the math instruction at Abigail's public elementary school in Manhattan is subpar — even after the school switched to the Common Core State Standards.

But Zimba, a mathematician by training, is not just any disgruntled parent. He's one of the guys who wrote the Common Core.

And four years after signing off on the final draft of the standards, he spends his weekends trying to make up for what he considers the lackluster curriculum at his daughter's school, and his weekdays battling the lackluster curriculum and teaching at schools around the country that are struggling to shift to the Common Core.

[snip]

Zimba gave up an academic career in which he had the freedom to wonder about abstract physics problems in the peace and quiet of his Vermont barn. But, he says, "I'm now participating in a much more urgent problem."

That problem is how to elevate the academic achievement of American students, especially the most disadvantaged, so the country can maintain its competitive advantage in the global economy. These days, Zimba and his colleagues acknowledge better standards aren't enough.

"I used to think if you got the assessments right, it would virtually be enough," he says. "In the No Child Left Behind world, everything follows from the test."

Now, he says, "I think it's curriculum."

The Man Behind the Curtain

The theory behind CC was that common tests were the ticket.

Common standards would produce common tests would produce common curricula.

No more race to the bottom.

TimesWatch, Day 1

I need to stop reading education stories in the New York Times.

Because life is short.

Since I'm probably not going to stop reading education stories in the New York Times, I've decided to document the badness.

Or at least list it:

• 12/19/2014 Raising Ambitions: The Challenge in Teaching at Community Colleges:"Data on what kind of teaching works most effectively at the community college level is scant. But what is known from learning theories generally is that constructivist methods, which prize active student participation over passive receipt of information, are intensely valuable." 
• 12/26/2014 Colleges Reinvent Classes to Keep More Students in Science: "Hundreds of students fill the seats, but the lecture hall stays quiet enough for everyone to hear each cough and crumpling piece of paper. The instructor speaks from a podium for nearly the entire 80 minutes. Most students take notes. Some scan the Internet. A few doze....Multiple studies have shown that students fare better with a more active approach to learning...
• 12/27/2014 Rage Against the Common Core: "Many teachers like the standards, because they invite creativity in the classroom — instead of memorization, the Common Core emphasizes critical thinking and problem-solving."

If you haven't read the stories, don't waste your time.

Instead, spend it listening to Education Next's pod cat with Guido Schwerdt:

More Lecturing, More LearningIn this podcast, Guido Schwerdt talks with Ed Next’s Paul Peterson about his new study finding that students learn more math and science when their teachers devote more time to lecturing and less time to problem-solving activities.

Today, on average, teachers spend more time on problem-solving activities than they do making lecture-style presentations. If teachers were to spend 10 percent more time lecturing, this would be associated with a rise in test scores comparable to about 1 or two months of additional learning in a year.

1 space after periods redux

I knew there was a reason why you're supposed to use just one space after a period when you're typing on a computer, but I couldn't remember what it was.

Turns out that, unbeknownst to me, my Downloads folder holds the answer, in a document entitled "Problems Noted on Student Writing":

This change occurred in academic writing as a result of the use of computers that have proportional fonts capable of adjusting the spacing as needed. This rule has been the standard in journalism and publishing since computers have been used for word processing purposes. 

Have I ever come upon a document I didn't download?

Sometimes I wonder.

Barry's Rifle Range on grit

In all my classes, I required my students to answer warm-up questions at the beginning of class. I used two types of questions:. One was a review-type question to apply what they recently learned. The other required them to some apply their prior knowledge –or what was familiar—in a new or unfamiliar situation. Some may view this as an inquiry-based approach, or an application of the “struggle is good” philosophy that adherents of Common Core seem to say is necessary to develop perseverance in problem solving, as well as the all-important and frequently undefined “grit”. I view a short amount of struggle as appropriate provided that explanation is provided shortly after. That way, even if students do not succeed in solving a problem, most are receptive to explanations that they might otherwise tune out.

Saturday, December 20, 2014
Conversations on the Rifle Range, 19: Grant’s Tomb Again, Alice in Wonderland, and the Eternal Question

Asking students to spend a few minutes applying prior knowledge to a new problem arouses curiosity.

That's a good thing because, according to Jaak Panksepp, curiosity is one of the seven core emotions driving all human behavior. He calls it "SEEKING."^*

SEEKING may be the core emotion, in fact, the emotion without which the other six don't work.

So: arousing curiosity about math!

Good idea.

Panksepp's fantastic book: Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions

And I see he published a new book in 2012!

Ordering it now -----

The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions by Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven


^*It's probably more accurate to say that curiosity is a facet of SEEKING.

"About that mom who's not bragging about her kid"

A friend sent me a link to this essay on the subject of kvelling moms, and I'm passing it along.

Very nice.

Yes, this really is the best hoodie ever made

Christmas stuff....

This Hoodie Is So Insanely Popular You Have To Wait Months To Get It

1 space after periods, not 2

I've taken to reading legal writing blogs, mostly because Katie Beals & I are getting toward the end of our writing exercises for Ed's textbook, and I keep worrying we're shaky on topic chains (or topic strings).

Idealawg has a fabulous interview with George Gopen. Well worth your time.

It also has this.

Back to books

I've decided to start turning off my laptop and my iPad at 6pm.

Hmm.

I see it is currently 6:28 pm.

So I'm going to post this, eat dinner, and pick up a book!

Light-emitting e-readers before bedtime can adversely impact sleep

Open the Book, Put Down the Tablet at Bedtime (behind pay wall)

Reading on electronic devices before bedtime can disrupt the body’s circadian clock, making it harder to fall asleep and become alert in the morning, according to a study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness

I've been reading bad reports on eReaders and sleep for a while now, but it was the finding on next-morning alertness that finally got to me. Before I owned a laptop and an iPad, I never had trouble waking up in the morning.

Now I do.

I may have to re-up my subscription to the paper version of The New Yorker.

Sing-along: Il est né le divin enfant

Merry Christmas | Happy Chanukkah

From the annals of persistence:

Ed just spent ages figuring out how to watch The Interview on TV (via YouTube, via Roku, which turned out not to be plugged in. At all. As in, not plugged in to the TV or the wall socket. Things went downhill from there.)

This may have to become a Christmas Eve tradition.

I must say ... I'm enjoying the fact that this is the movie that stopped Sony in its tracks.

Good grief.

In other news, this is the first year we have ever had Christmas presents under the tree!

Meaning: this is the first year Andrew has been willing to leave Christmas presents under the tree unmolested. We used to have to lock wrapped presents in the car so Andrew couldn't get to them.

Needless to say, the Andrew menace led to a distinctly not-fun practice of wrapping all the presents Christmas Eve.

No more!

Another innovation: Andrew wrote out a Christmas list.

Advanced Math for Young Students

Phil Keller sent me a copy of his beautiful new book Advanced Math for Young Students.

(Here's his blog. And here's an early review!)

I told Phil, as soon as I laid eyes on the book, that it has the look and feel of an authored work, nothing like the many-authored splendor of a typical commercial textbook.

Plus (and I have to say this) the cover and pages are creamy and smooth, a throwback to the physical beauty of books pre-crash (although of late I've had the sense that decent paper may be making a comeback).

The book is so compelling I may have to buy a second copy to work through myself so the other one can stay on the coffee table.

From the Introduction:

For 26 years, I have been a high school physics teacher. I work in an excellent, well-regarded high school and I have been fortunate to have many talented students who soak up all the physics I can teach them, and more. But every year, I also teach students who struggle to master the topic, despite their great efforts and mine. And I know from discussions with colleagues, both within my school and arose the country, that we are not the only ones struggling. There is something getting in our way. Maybe this will seem obvious to anyone who has struggled in physics, but here's what I think: I think it's the math.

Physics applies math. It's all about finding relationships and solving the puzzles that the laws of physics present. For the most part, this work is done in the language of mathematics, and more specifically, the language of algebra. So to be comfortable learning physics, a student has to be fluent in that language. Algebra cannot just be a memorized set of procedures for finding 'x'. It has to be a symbolic way of representing ideas. But for many students, that level of fluency is not attained unjust one year of algebra--which is all that many students have had when they start studying physics. It's no wonder that some struggle.

It is not only physic students who struggle. For even more than 26 years, I have been teaching students how to prepare for the math portion of the SAT. What I have seen over the years is that most students are not fluent enough in algebra to successfully apply algebra on the SAT. One goal of my SAT course is to teach alternative, non-algebraic approaches to SAT problems. It is also a major theme of my math SAT book, The New Math SAT Game Plan. And I will tell you something you may find surprising (or even distressing): on the SAT, these non-algebraic methods work very nicely. They won't get you to an 800, but they will take you pretty far. And even my top scorers report that they like to mix in the non-algebraic methods along with the standard approaches (which, as top students, they also know how to use).

The non-algebraic methods, however, won't get you very far in physics. In fact, a student who does not really learn the language of algebra is going to struggle in all later math and science classes: physics, statistics, computer science and beyond. That STEM door is swinging closed because one year of algebra class did not lead to sufficient fluency. So why spend only one year? Why not start earlier?

I am not saying every 7th grader should be in a high-school version of Algebra I. But I am saying that every middle school student should, over the course of the middle school years, start learning about and thinking about the ideas of algebra (even some ideas that won't reappear until Algebra II or Pre-calculus). These are ideas that take some time to ponder.

Happy 12/13/14!

I speak as a fan of 11:11 on digital clocks.

Speaking of digital clocks, several years back my neighbor told me her son couldn't read an analog clock.

Are schools teaching analog clocks these days?

Allison on Math Nights

MSMI has done several parent math nights.

When we are asked to give a math talk by a school and it is well attended, it is because the parents are upset. If it is very well attended, it is because the parents are in an uproar about the math program.

Since we generally are going in to fix the math program, or to support a math change to it, our goal is first to name the problem. We explain the issue (nationally, not just locally, not just here, wherever we are, but nationally) is that US curricula are not preparing kids for algebra. We tell parents what they know intuivitely but can't name. We tell them what they've watched their older kids suffered through. Then we explain we need to change what we teach, when we teach it, and what the teachers know about the maththey teach to fix it. When we are done, generally, parents calm down and give us the benefit of the doubt.

Usually, the second math night (a followup) has 1/4 of the turnout the first one had.

If a math night has no attendees, it is because math is doing just fine--the parents are concerned about some other problem.

Parents don't have time to go to meetings if things are fine. They go to indicate their disapproval or their concern.

We also found if the *children* put on the math night, as one of the grade night programs, it is well received--so if we want parents to learn about the math program, learn the games to practice math facts, etc. then it needs to be a child-centered event. Parents come when kids put on a math carnival. They even enjoy it. It does not need to be fuzzy math--kids LOVE stumping their parents at mental math calculations and bar modeling.

We tell parents what they know intuivitely but can't name.

Knowing intuitively that something is amiss: this is the chronic problem parents face. You know something--your cognitive unconscious knows something, rather--but you can't name it.

I remember, when I first became politically engaged here, living in a state of chronic anxiety that a) I didn't know what I was talking about and b) I was about to be publicly called out on not knowing what I was talking about. I spent hours Googling and reading, and reading and Googling, to make sure everything I said and wrote in my district had already been said and written by someone who did know what they were talking about.

Kitchen Table Math was incredibly important to that effort. I wrote posts to put into words what my cognitive unconscious already knew (or suspected), and I said nothing, in district, without ktm commenters vetting it first.

Funny thing: at some point I stopped feeling anxious, and I stopped obsessively fact-checking myself.

I hadn't become an expert on math or math instruction or public schools in general, but somehow I knew enough to feel confident that anything I said -- even something I said off the top of my head -- would be in the realm. Which it generally was.

I also, and I hesitate putting this in print, developed a sense of how thin my adversaries' knowledge was. That's not a criticism. Administrators can't possibly know everything about every subject (that's the problem with central administrators choosing math curricula), and an administrator who went to ed school before constructivism was in full bloom may not actually know that much about the doctrine and its history, however committed s/he may be to "rolling out" one constructivist initiative after another.

In short, at some point it dawned on me that I could pretty much say whatever I wanted and get away with it. I could get sloppy and no one would know but me.

That came as a bit of a shock.

I see politicians and pundits differently now.

Politicians and pundits are churning out an awful lot of content.

How often do they actually know that what they're saying is true?

How much fact checking happens in politics?

I'm guessing not too much.

More unfortunate headlines

(Unfortunate headline number 1)

Also on page 1 of the 12/3 Education Week:

Parents Get Schooled on New Math Standards

Schools around the country are holding math nights, sending letters home, and posting videos on their websites to teach parents about the Common Core State Standards for mathematics, which require students to use calculation methods that many parents never learned.

Math nights?

Like this one?

Reminds me of that great piece of advice from the Math Trailblazers people re: how to deal with parents:

Be pro-active with parents. Don’t wait until complaints hit. People have done a lot of things to involve parents, from math nights to big math carnivals, where the kids teach the activities to the parents. There are letters in the program that go home to parents.

Math nights are never a good sign.

How to Get Parent Buy-In

Unfortunate headlines

On the front page of the 12/3 Education Week:

Consortium Sets High Bars for Its Common-Core Tests

More than half of students won't reach proficiency, Smarter Balanced predicts

Nail in the coffin.

I think I've mentioned Ed went through this in CA, back when the state was writing bigger, better tests.m(From the old kitchen table math: Regents Math A 2005)

They made the tests hard, and the whole project blew up.

You can't fail half the kids in the country -- more than half! -- and expect parents to sit still for it.

Philip Hamburger at CUNY tomorrow

We're going ----

American Education and the Separation of Church and State: Fact vs. Fiction

Event Date: 12/4/2014
Time: 5:30-7:15 pm
Location: Roosevelt House, 47-49 E 65th Street, New York, NY

Philip Hamburger
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law
Columbia University

Matthew Yellin
Social Studies Teacher and Curriculum Coordinator
Hillside Arts and Letters Academy, Jamaica, Queens

Ashley Berner
Deputy Director
CUNY Institute for Education Policy

Galloping through world history

re: New York State Common Core Social Studies Framework Grades 9-12

Catherine forwarded this social studies framework (or whatever it is). This monstrosity would be laughable if I didn't know how much pain it was going to inflict on students and teachers. The idea of galloping through world history from 10,000 (!!) BCE to the present in 9th and 10th grades is beyond absurd. The only way to do this is with breathtaking superficiality, especially in the 9th grade, which goes from 10,000 BCE all the way to 1750 (yup, that's 1750 in what used to be called AD). Fourteen-year-olds are supposed to cover all this content knowledge while also learning the "practices" of history and social studies, following the strands of 10 ridiculously huge themes, and developing "literacy" in reading, writing, and talking about history.

It seems as though the geniuses who devised the program fused together the goals of Columbia Teachers College critical thinking devotees with Hirschian content knowledge folks and then added in the ideas of everyone residing between the two poles (Common Core, National History Standards, National Council for the Social Studies, etc.) What an ungodly mess!

and see: A historian reads New York State's Common Core Social Studies Standards 9-12

Devices in boxes

New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said Monday the city school system has poor inventory controls and inaccurate records, leaving thousands of computers and tablets either missing or unused.

[snip]

The comptroller said his team investigated computers and tablets bought from Apple Inc. and Lenovo Group for nine schools and department headquarters from July 2011 through June 2013.

The report said the department was unable to name the whereabouts of 1,817 laptop and desk computers at these sites, and auditors found 394 devices sitting in unopened boxes, some for years.

Mr. Stringer said he believed this was probably “just the tip of the iceberg” of lost or unused goods among city schools.

Audit: Thousands of New York City School Computers Are Missing or Unused
Report by City Comptroller Says School System Has Poor Inventory Controls
By LESLIE BRODY
Dec. 2, 2014 12:10 a.m. ET

Are there recall elections for 2-billion dollar technology bonds?

Hope so.