I recently shared that Graphite, a new, free service from Common Sense Media provides rigorous ratings and reviews of apps, games, websites, and digital curricula. This allows teachers and school leaders to connect in important ways to make informed decisions about which technology to integrate into the curriculum via reviews and “Field Notes” written by innovative educators who are using these products in the classroom.
Not only does Graphite provide an efficient and effective way to assess technology programs, but it also has a terrific component allowing educators to see how each website or app supports the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Below are six ways to do just that.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two collections of states that are designing online tests aligned with the Common Core standards, has released online practice tests in both ELA and math for students in grades 3-8 and 11.
The tests will help schools prepare for implementation of the Smarter Balanced Assessment System in the 2014-15 school year, the organization says.
The practice tests allow teachers, students, parents, and other stakeholders to experience the features of online testing and gain insight into how Smarter Balanced will assess students’ mastery of the Common Core. However, they don’t encompass the full range of content that students will encounter on the spring 2014 Field Test and should not be used to guide instructional decisions, the consortium warns.
The practice tests include constructed-response, selected-response, and technology-enhanced questions. Performance tasks, which are longer activities that ask students to apply their knowledge to solving “real-world” problems, are available for ELA and will be added for math by this fall. Scoring keys will be available July 1.
My friend Angela Maiers has been visiting me in New York and came over last week totally jazzed about helping kids in a school she visited change the world during the last couple days of school. For many teachers, however, it is not clear where world-changing fits within the testing and standards each student is required to meet at every grade level and in every subject.
Instead, the focus is competition and acquisition, mastery, and assessment of skills as outlined in this video.
Three-Minute Video Explaining the Common Core State Standards from CGCS Video Maker on Vimeo.
Success is focused on individual performance indicators that can be summed up by data, achievement reports, test results, and transcripts, It is not clear where we fit inspiring students to use their passion, skills, talents, and abilities to do the work that Angela describes as W.O.W. (worthy of the world).
In last week’s NY Daily News, Robert Pondiscio, a former public school teacher and now the executive director of CitizenshipFirst, lauds the "… abandoning the literacy curriculum used to teach a generation of our children to read”. In the shift to the Common Core, he says we are leaving behind the balanced literacyapproach of Lucy Calkins and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, which he says has done a disservice to students. Having taught at a Project school and at non-Project schools, I beg to differ.
Editor’s note: I feel fortunate to be living during a period in our history where for the first time we can easily form social learning circles that bring together from around the world, experts, authors, and others that share passions and can engage in rich and meaningful dialogue. The power of the technology to connect in ways never before possible is a game changer when it comes to learning. I have brought together one such amazing network of people who come together to think about and grapple with issues of ed reform and alternatives to the status quo with The Innovative Educator group. Here is a piece of that learning where education icon Deborah Meier shares some of her thoughts on the common core.
Its a nice thought--that it [Common Core] is offering a "common language". I wish it were. But common core as presently understood is a 13 year mandatory curriculum (developed largely by experts in testing, not the subject matter being tested) of what is to be taught--and in what sequence. It ignores the power of the interests and ideas that come from students and teachers as the basis for forming curriculum"--or of picking up from the world around us our "curriculum". Starting "where we are" intellectually and moving out from there--a common approach to thematic studies, for example. Or spending months on one "small" part of history or science, in order to be able to ask deeper questions and make deeper sense--rather than covering" a lot in order to be prepared for shallow tests. (Uncovering vs covering as we sometimes say.) etc, etc.
Didja hear it? If you were able to catch any of NBC’s Education Nation conversation, It was ever so subtle, but it was there. The part of the conversation that disturbingly has been the banned from the Common Core College and Career Readiness mantra.
If you heard it you noticed that the language is changing, slowly but surely, from the lips of the politicians, corporate funders, and even from the administrators who feel they must not deviate from the party line (even when they know it's wrong) lest they lose their jobs.
So, what's the big idea that is ever so softly slipping through the lips of those engaged in the politically correct education conversation?
The new and improved stats and facts have arrived, and....
College AND career readiness is OUTTA HERE!
In its place is an important conjunction that many of us were shut down and smacked down if we dared to utter those two ugly letters.
So what are the two little letters that could change everything?
Educators are becoming more and more familiar with and learning about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). What they might not realize is that CCSS is really code for constantly testing the crap out of kids. As a result the publishers and politicianswho designed them reap the rewards. Politicians have pretty charts and numbers they can use as talking points and publishers like Pearson rake in enormous profits. Meanwhile these same politicians and publishers have been yapping about how the new standards and assessments will be so much different and better. Some had visions dancing in their heads of standards that were customized to student who would choose their own way to demonstrate mastery.
While at the park today with the kids, I saw a classmate of Mason's, coincidentally also named Mason and also in as much trouble with authorities as my own Mason.
Mason & Mason F. started kindergarten at the same time. Their date of manufacture is obviously comparable. They are both currently in 7th grade. But Mason F. now stands nearly 2 feet taller than my Mason. He's filling out. Mason F. has very obviously hit puberty in his 12th - 13th year of life. Mason F. was stealing backpacks from two girls then later blew them off to hang with a young lady dressed scantily in short shorts and a spaghetti tank top. He escorted her out of the park looking every inch of a 16 or 17 year old if I hadn't known his real age. Meanwhile, my Mason was happily climbing a tree and riding his bike up & down a hill as fast as he could.
Bradley was also along with us today. He's now a couple inches taller than Mason, and his voice has started squeaking and cracking. Bradley just turned 12 in February, so he's on the younger side, but still, puberty is making itself known as his jaw strengthens and he struggles between acting child-like and wanting to do more 'mature' things.
All 3 boys would fall in the realm of 'normal development' in terms of their physical growth. Yes, my Mason's has probably been stalled and delayed a bit due to numerous issues, not the least of which is his stimulant medication for behaviors. But what I found myself marveling about was the fact that any adult person would honestly and truly tell these 3 boys that they are ALL. NORMAL. That their bodies will grow, change, develop, and mature at very differing rates, and that is NORMAL. That puberty can strike anywhere from age 8-15 and nobody will bat an eye over it. We will bend over backward trying to reassure a young person that it will happen for them, too; especially for those poor souls who do not physically develop until much later than their peers. They endure such wonderful treatment from their friends by being called things like, "Smurf," and "Shorty," and probably a lot of names much crueler than that. Each name surely hurts, though, and serves to remind that child that they are different, perhaps "less than" the others around them.
But if we adults work so hard to assure children that what their bodies are going through is 100% natural - as God intended - the way things are - beyond their control, why oh why do we not believe the same about the overall learning process?Why do we not trust that each individual's brain functions in a unique and individual manner which makes learning various skills and abilities come when nature intends? Reading, math, writing - these are huge areas where kids are forced, pressured, and frequently demeaned, diminished, and coerced when they are not doing it at the same level as their peers.
Why do we do this to kids? If we can trust their bodies to grow as nature intended, what on earth makes us think we know best when their minds should develop and exactly which skills their brains should be able to accomplish based on arbitrary timetables? Why do we try to standardize their learning to be identical to every other child who was born around the same time rather than respecting that each child will fulfill their mind's destiny when offered a wide range of interesting information the way we offer a wide range of healthy foods?
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Teresa McCloskey is a mom of 4 boys, 'host' mom to countless exchange students from around the world, wife to one amazing husband, daughter of the King, student, life learner who no longer believes in time outs, naughty spots, spankings, shaming, or the compulsory government indoctrination institution system. John Holt, Alfie Kohn, Naomi Aldort, and Adele Faber are some of my heroes.
Professional writer and filmmaker Peter Kowalke didn't start reading until he was 11 which wasn't a problem for him because he didn't go to school. He explained it to me this way.
In school you read about doing things. I preferred to spend my early childhood doing things rather than reading about doing things.
He shared that this wasn't even something he thought about much. When learning to read independently became more of a priority for him, he began picking up reading and from that point on there was no turning back. Peter is not unusual. Dr. Peter Gray studies young people who were never schooled because they were unschooled or attended a Democratic school. The age these children learned to read has a wide range from about 4 - 14 years old. He found that when not coerced or forced, EVERY child learns to read well and by age 15 it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between a child who began reading at 4 and one who began in later years. (Note: This did not include children with severe cognitive impairment or those who don't speak English.) For those unfamiliar with unschooling or Democratic schooling, it provides children with a natural learning environment where they have access to plenty of resources and support, but learning is not forced and children are given the freedom to learn what they choose when they choose.
This was five-year-old Carol Anne's ominous announcement made at her parents' home while starring into a static television when referring to the presence of unknown beings in her home. Their antics, benign at first, such as moving and stacking the kitchen table chairs soon turn quite disturbing as Poltergeist fans can attest. Like the unknown beings in the movie, the newly released draft of the Common Core Standards have had a ghostly presence to the masses who have seen pictures of Governors linked in arms with smiles on their faces as they unite to support the release of standards for a nation. While I do agree the premise of having international or at least national standards, makes sense, I do have concerns that these at first benign, perhaps even good-intention-seeming standards must be treated with EXTREME caution.
I shared my primary fears around these standards last October in my post All Children Left Behind - Common Standards for Our Student's Past. My concerns presented themselves again yesterday as a DOE official shared with a gleam in his eye that The Common Core Standards draft had been released and this was going to mean a whole new era of even more rigorous assessments for our students.
The common standards movement is underway in 48 states in our nation and these standards are set to be finalized this month. I’ve been reading what the smart educators I respect are saying about these standards. Here is the summation. These are poorly written standards being put in place with testing companies at the forefront of the decision making. These ed testing companies as well as other big educational businesses/curriculum providers have a huge financial profit to gain after the adoption of these standards because a nation can now adopt their curriculum. There is no alignment or recognition of the changing face of education and the digital worlds in which our students are existing, reading, writing, interacting, producing, and publishing.
What can we do? Provide feedback today about the standards by visiting http://tinyurl.com/fixthestandards. It literally takes less than five minutes. You can use my words above, the words of others below or write your own.
Below are excerpts from other educators about their take on the standards, links to each resource, and where to visit for more information.
One look at the reading standards and you can’t help but be left with the impression that the authors have never “read” anything much beyond words on paper and that the idea of “remix” and even links are outside of their experience. There is nothing here about how reading and writing in online and digital spaces changes the interaction, nothing about the social interactions that readers and writers will have around texts that are changing rapidly and substantially.
In all of this, the thing that most frustrates me both in the talk about national standards and national assessments and the whole “Race to the Top” bunk that is coming out of the administration is just a total lack of vision, this sense that nothing has fundamentally changed, that this is the same old classroom with the same old expectations and the same old ways of proving them that we’ve had forever. I’m not saying we don’t need assessments, but there’s a lot of required learning right now that few if any standards are addressing.
Replacing one externally-created checklist with another undoubtedly more voluminous one will not help one child.
You cannot have “core” standards without additional standardized testing. Now districts already addicted to testing will have a more potent hallucinogenic with which they can poison public education.
Teachers and students are terrorized by testing and externally-imposed curricular mandates.
This Core Standards movement should scare everyone who believes that meaning and learning is still most powerfully made in the spaces that students and teachers share. More than teachers, students, state administrators, the group that stands most to gain from national standards and a national test is the education-industrial complex.
This isn't about whether or not people think that all students should be able to write a thesis statement. This is about how students are taught that information, how they are assessed on that information, and on the role of big business in teaching and assessing them.
I find them hard to read, because I think they are poorly written, but standards often are.
We are inviting testing companies to determine the future of our schools with virtually no accountability or public input.
These standards were developed by two testing companies, the College Board and ACT, with help from a nebulous non-profit, Achieve, Inc. It is essential to understand this when reading the Common Standards; it explains many of their odd choices. In the example above, the obvious interpretation is that they chose to define the standard as "support or challenge assertions" rather than "construct a response or interpretation," as every international example they cited did, because the former is much easier and cheaper to score reliably on a standardized test.
No high performing educational system in the world would consider giving testing companies this much control over their standards and curriculum. It is absurd.
These standards are specifically designed to not be the sole responsibility of English teachers, so any data system properly linking student performance on related tests to teachers would attribute the results to all subject area teachers.
The idea that these English Language Arts standards are "internationally benchmarked" to those of high performing countries is a farce, except insofar as the benchmarking demonstrates the low level and quality of our proposed standards.
No country with high reading scores in international assessments conceives of the discipline of Language Arts as being limited to literacy skills, or "college- and career-readiness," as the Common Standards do. Thus, the Common Standards are narrower, lower and shallower than the English Language Arts standards of high performing countries.
Zhao describes how schools have to keep pace with a world that is being dramatically transformed by globalization, the “death of distance,” and digital technology. Instead of falling in line with mandates for standardization, his prescription is for educators to
Expand the definition of success beyond math and reading test scores.
Personalize schooling so that every student has opportunity to learn.
View schools as enterprises that embrace globalization and digital technology.
Gotham Schools in New York City is running this series on the Common Standards:
Note that many of the handy links to benchmarked standards under "see evidence" don't point to the right place, so if you want to be complete you need to use...
England's standards make an easy point of comparison if you're curious about what actual benchmarked English Language Arts common standards might look like.
