Standards Based Education is the "Standard" (Standardized) list of what kids should know and be able to do in each grade. Which means that a child in Kindergarten should know their letters and letter sounds. A child in 6th grade should be able to use clues from the text to determine word meaning. This is not inherently a bad idea.
Standards based education came about when people decided that a child's zip code largely determined their academic success. Children from "better" and more affluent areas have more resources and seem to do better on everything from standardized exams to actual grades. Children from less affluent areas, rural and otherwise urban or city areas perform less on these exams. This disparity got many people thinking it was "WHAT" was being taught that was different. They thought well over here, they teach DIFFERENT skills, or in such town or state. So they came up with the idea that the entire United Stated needed to get on (THE SAME PAGE) as to what we are teaching our children, and as to when. A second grader in California shouldn't be learning long division, when a second grader in New Jersey has just started Multiplication. They also felt that with the rise of technology and creating 21st century learners living in a global society we could not send our kids to "work and compete" with other children who were far advanced than they were in "what" they were taught. So the standards call for more "rigorous" work. In ELA students need to read a lot more nonfiction, be able to cite answers with text evidence(Answer the question, but tell where they got their answer), and each year be able to elevate in text complexity. I don't think that is realistic for many children until a much older age (HS). I think the whole "College and Career Ready" slogan goes too far when we want 3rd grades immersed in nonfiction text. In 4th grade I didn't read nonfiction AT ALL. It wasn't until 13-14 was I even remotely interested in nonfiction. I seemingly still ended up able to read nonfiction in college, and was placed in Advanced Placement in HS, and as an adult that is all I read practically. We can't decide that shoving "Career and College" down everybody's throat s beneficial at 6 years old, the fact is that while we need to educate our kids for the future, they are KIDS.
You can watch this short video for more detail.
https://www.teachingchannel.
"The CC standards are organized in an intoxicatingly simple, linear fashion that acknowledges that the work of a first grade teacher contributes to the growth of a tenth grade student. This connectedness between grade levels is a welcome departure from some previous state standards that jumped from topic to topic, addressing a particular skill one year, dropping it the next, and returning to it later on or not at all. Because the content and assessments will be the same from state to state, a unified system of measure can be used to compare student growth from one part of the country to another. And states will be able to compete for Federal money, but that’s another topic.
The standards address the fact that literacy demands in college, the workplace, and life in general are getting higher, not lower, and to thrive in an information-rich, digital global age, we need a highly literate population."
This idea of a "uniform" education in skills and concepts is not a bad one, what IS bad is how it has been implemented and the many "forgets" that are not realistic. We forget children do not think abstractly for a while, we forget children love fiction stories and that a whole different set of skills is needed to attack nonfiction text. We forget that making content more "rigorous" is making kids who loved it hate it all together, and those who may have done poorly now just don't even attempt it. All of this is ironic because the literacy standards were developed upon the developmental literacy stages of a child. This is more like crawling and walking. (we know most children crawl between 6-9 months). Well within literacy we know children begin scribbling and thinking they are writing words from 3-5 years. We know children typically begin kid writing (misspelling) words that they are writing because they know letter sounds. There is a Foundation, Early Emergent, Emergent Stage, Developmental... Fluent Stage.. etc. These stages discuss the behaviors and abilities of typical children, and the standards were matched off them. Sounds legit, and it is. Here is an example of a literacy standard for my class.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.6.2
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
Due to the fact kids are typically fluent readers by 6th grade it does make sense they should be able to figure out the theme (moral message) of a text and provide a summary of the text without their own opinion, just a simple recount of it.
"Like anything else, how the CC Standards are implemented will make all the difference. The authors are very clear: CCSS does not include information about how teachers should teach. From this, I infer that they understand the complexity of teaching and learning. I suspect they know that binders of ready-made packaged programs and curriculum are worthless without a high quality teacher who’s given the opportunity, respect, and support to design learning for his or her students.
It’s this clear message that makes classroom teachers so vulnerable. We don’t know how, exactly, CCSS will be implemented at the state, district, and school levels. Will teachers get to design new units of study? Will they be offered an opportunity to collaborate around the idea of what these standards mean for their students? Will they have a chance to reflect on student progress, to refine their practice, and make meaningful instructional decisions? To believe in something, you have to own it.
If teachers don’t own it, the full potential of CCSS will get lost in the bureaucratic minefield of our public schools. My hope is that the implementation of CCSS will pair with empowering the most influential person in the classroom: the teacher.I put that in to say.. Common Core has been adopted by States due to federal bribery money. Moreover, they dropped it off with no direction. No workshops, nothing. Teachers began using Common Core (for me 2011) without any real idea as to "how" just all I had was a "what" this in many cases is GOOD. Except many districts already had an idea how they wanted to utilize it, which program they are buying, and what books or materials you will utilize to teach it.
I mean that takes away the freedom to teach the standards in the way that best personalizes them for the learner, the other problem is that because we are rolling out with a new Standardized Test called PARCC, we don't really "know" all the ins and outs despite the few test sample questions they have on their website for subject areas. Once they changed the standards, they had to change the Assessment.
I personally feel as though the Ed reform movement is about politics and money. Due to the fact the federal education department dumped off new standards on almost 45 states (which may be more now), there has been a NEED for educational consultants, educational technology, new educational textbooks, programs, new assessments, more computers to take PARCC (because it is a computer based test).. you name it. Everything MUST GO, out with the old in with the new, except we keep forgetting that it wasn't so much WHAT was taught that was creating an achievement gap or inequality in education. It was really the lack of resources and support in various areas that led to a academic failure. Now that we are all on (One page), why haven't the scores suddenly shot up? I understand change doesn't happen in just 3 years but there should be SOME growth if it was the WHAT was taught, not the HOW. All I see are states cashing in, educational companies like Pearson cashing in, politicians cashing in, schools buying more technology to keep up; but when it comes to student failure that's Teachers and Students are losing out. Also, as I said before... HOW the standards contribute to Ed reform and how they are utilized has been another big problem. A Teacher who teaches in the worst district still faces the resource gap, and what are we doing to fix that? There is not a silver bullet fix to American Education, there needs to be a comprehensive overhaul. The inconsistency we have now is apparent in not WHAT we teach, but how we teach it and some districts don't even have the technology so all their students can take PARCC. I am not sure how that all adds up to "fixing" anything, sounds like in effort to fix one thing we opened up a box of ooopppsssss now we have other problems.......... What do you think attribute to the achievement gap? Is it WHAT is taught? Is it lack of resources? If you ask me, its how we teach and how we test. In many private and affluent public schools kids learn for the sake of learning, and by way they are engaged and interested. They automatically become critical thinkers because it was as if they had the "key" or "seed" placed and as time progresses, it happened naturally. All too often we look for the silver bullet instead of looking at teaching and learning in an authentic manner. If you do what is right, the knowledge will come ANYWAY. Utilizing real world application and performance based assessments. We have to stop differentiating all year long in instruction, only to administer an exam that decides who my kids are and what type of teacher I am that is administered to everyone. When will we start personalizing education in assessments the same we do in our lessons? It is rather ass backwards to me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment