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More Thoughtful

October 14, 2009

Debunking Standards Issue #4: Classrooms

by Alexander Hoffman, at 12:39 pm

This and next week I am raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Problem #4: Classrooms

I have never heard a teacher declare that s/he was going to change what they were teaching because of something s/he saw in a standards document. Never.

Have you?

I have known teachers and other educators to look through standards and declare what they like or do not like. I have heard them say that they approve of certain changes and not approve of others. But no one has ever said that they have to stop doing something because it fell out of the standards or that they need to start something new because it is in the standards.

The fact is that teachers already know what they want to do in their classes. Whether or not you or I agree or approve of their ideas, they already have them. The ideas could have developed during their own days in school, during their preparation, from things they have read, from discussions or experiences with colleagues or any number of other ways. I suppose that, in theory, reading standards documents could shape these ideas, but I have never seen any evidence of it, and I doubt that you have, either.

Previous: Problem #3 — Fear of Failure Rates!
Next: Problem #5 — Tests Matter; Standards Do Not!

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  • Gideon

    You need to get out to more schools. Plenty of teachers look at standards to help them plan their annual scope and sequence, assessments, and lessons. Standards help them remember skills and content to teach during the year and collaborate with other teachers. And they’re extremely useful for new teachers or those teaching a new subject for the first time. In addition, departments often look at standards together to help them coordinate subjects across grades. What you’re also likely to see is teachers looking at state tests to try to figure out which standards are covered in what depth, and prioritizing those standards in their instruction. While I’m not in favor of teaching to the test, I do think teachers can and should have valuable conversations about prioritizing standards and choosing the sequence in which to teach or spiral them.

  • http://www.edpolicythoughts.com Corey

    I’m actually going to have to disagree with you on this one. I think your point stands in that a heck of a lot of teachers are either oblivious to or don’t care about what the standards say. Anybody who assumes that creating a new standard will immediately trickle down to every single classroom in a meaningful way is indisputably wrong.

    But you’re also indisputably wrong on two points: 1.) I certainly have seen some teachers (especially newer teachers) change or base the way they teach on the standards, and 2.) Not every teacher knows exactly what they want to teach (again, especially newer teachers).

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Gideon,

    You seem to be talking about tests, not standards. (Tomorrow’s topic, by the way.)

    I know LOTS of teachers who look at state tests when planning. I’ve sat in departmental meetings, both as a teacher and as an observer, when they’ve discussed state tests. I been in planning meeting, and coordination meetings. Yes, yes and yes.

    Textbooks? Sure. Those prompt changes. Tests? Of course! New leadership? Sometimes. Ideas that come from collaborating with peers? Yup. I’ve seen lots of things that have prompted teachers to change what they do. But I’ve never seen teachers go to the standards documents without the tests and actually drop things from their teaching or add anything to their teaching because of what they saw (or didn’t see).

    So, I have seen teachers look at standards documents. I have seen and heard teachers refer to standards, even in the context of explaining/defending what they do or how they want *others* to change. But I have never seen or heard a teacher change what s/he did based on published state or national standards.

  • http://www.edpolicythoughts.com Corey

    No, I’m talking about standards. I know and have seen teachers who organize their lesson plans around teaching a specific standard. I’ve been in a number of schools where teachers are mandated to do this — the veteran teachers mostly ignore it or only pay it lip service, but the newer teachers actually do it.

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Corey,

    I’ve been there. We had to have the state standards posted on the wall and along with my Aim and Do Now, we also had to write on the board which standard(s) we were hitting.

    We could refer to them by number, but we had to have them up there. (Seriously. I am not making this up.)

    I’ve mentored new teachers, and pointed to the standards to help them to clarify their thinking. But none of my mentees, or anyone else’s that I ever saw, added or removed stuff *because* of what they saw in the standards documents.

    So here are my questions:

    * Were there any lessons that teachers did not teach primarily BECAUSE they were not in the standards?

    * Were there any lessons that teachers did teach primarily BECAUSE there were in the standards?

    * Do you know of any teachers who changed what they taught because a new version of state or national standards were released?

    Do you know of any teachers who said “Oh my god! I have to teach angles BECAUSE they’re in the standards!”? What about “I wasn’t going to teach point of view, but look at the standards. Gotta do it!” How about, “I really wanted to cover the difference between personification and anthropomorphication at some point this year, but it’s not in the standards, so I’m dropping it.” Or “The standards don’t list WHO invented the modern model for the atom, so I’m not going to mention it to my students anymore.”

    Perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe there are teacher out there who have done that. But I’ve not seen it, or spoken to anyone who has.

  • a teacher

    I think in math we really do look the standards, and make decisions about what skills to teach based at least in large part based on those standards.  In particular, here in New York, the standards for algebra are kind of peculiar, and not entirely the same as what an outsider might expect to find in an algebra course – both in terms of what is included and in terms of what is excluded.  When I teach algebra, I have to make certain to include what is in the standards (for example measurement error, probability, and statistics), and I have to at least think about whether to teach topics (such as the quadratic formula) that I think of as core algebra topics but which are not in the standards.  I suppose it does come down to the test to some degree, since the standards determine what is on the test, and if there were no Regents Exam I might feel more free to make the decision to spend more time on the quadratic formula and less time on probability – but still, I’m looking at the standards, not at the test, when I make those decisions.  

  • Affronted

    Oh, you worked with teachers who didn’t use standards to guide their planning?
    Well now thanks to this post, you are finding teachers who do. I’m one. I’ve dropped things because they weren’t in the standards, I’ve added things because they weren’t in the standards. Hi.

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Affronted,

    Hi!

    Can you tell us a bit more about this? What sorts of things did you drop because they weren’t in the standards? What sorts of things did you add?

  • http://www.edpolicythoughts.com Corey

    Alexander,

    I had to do all that nonsense when I taught too. Despite all that, I can say that the standard had no influence on about 98% of my teaching (though I can’t honestly say 100% — there wasn’t zero effect, just very little). But I’ve known other teachers who pay much more attention to the standards — who will sit down and create a lesson specifically designed to cover a standard and make sure that a unit covers all of the relevant standards. I can’t say what they would have done if the standards weren’t present, but the standards are clearly influencing their thoughts.

    I’ve also mentored new teachers and I can say that they were more worried about the standards than I was when I taught.

    Anyway, I think you’re mostly right — I don’t think veteran teachers change their lesson or unit plans much when new standards come out. And I don’t think standards enter teachers’ brains nearly as much as many policymakers would believe. My experience would indicate that new teachers pay more attention to the standards than do veteran teachers. I just take issue with your wording, because I know — not think, know — that standards don’t have zero effect on all teachers.

  • Gideon

    Alexander, just because you personally haven’t seen something doesn’t mean it isn’t or shouldn’t be happening.

    So here’s a different question: should teachers be using standards more to plan their curriculum (and by curriculum I mean scope and sequence, daily lesson plans and selection of materials). I think we all know veteran teachers who use the same lesson plans over and over, often based on what they were taught themselves, but we also know conscientious teachers who year after year tweak their lessons based on research, collaboration, professional development, conferences and, yes, what’s on the state tests. The purpose of having standards is to focus teachers on what the larger education community has agreed is important to teach. I’d rather have teacher look to standards in planning their scope and sequence and lesson plans, than to what merely sounds fun or exciting or they know the most about. And for new teachers, standards are invaluable in helping them know that to teach. Standards don’t limit how you teach or how much you teach of a certain topic, but they do help coordinate the larger system. For example, we don’t want students learning mythic poetry three years in a row because they happen to get three teachers who love mythic poetry, and as a result never get exposed to non-fictional texts.

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Gideon,

    I certainly agree with you that relying on individual teachers’ whims an interest is a poor way to design a decent K-12 educational journey. No question.

    The general idea of standards certainly does seem appealing. Yes, it does.

    However, I question the value of state and — more pressingly — national standards like we see getting so much attention today. You cite “the larger education community,” but I don’t know that they are involved in standards. Standards creates by individuals serving on committees — and their staffs, of course — whose representativeness of the “larger educational community” is surely questionable. I know how to poll the teachers in my local school, or even how to get an idea of what the teachers in my town or district — assuming districts far smaller then all of NYC — think. But that state or national community? That’s a lot harder. We don’t have elections, and we don’t have real representatives — unless you want to talk about the unions, and we’ve not elected for content or curriculum in those elections.

    So, I certainly would contest your assertion that state or national standards represent that sort of ideal.

    The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has long published standards. I consider them to be the most credible, without question. Of course, I don’t know how that particular sausage is made, so I might be deluded. More generally, however, I would suggest that you (you, me, him, her, they) take a look at who actually wrote whatever standards you might be considering, and whatever process they went through to get to their published form.

    Moreover, I think that there is a middle ground between inevitably flawed national standards and the whims of individual teachers. I think that there is room for some amount of local control combined with requirements for defensible rigor to larger legal entities — with appropriate technical assistance provided to help the more local bodies select from among existing standards and/or creating their own.

    No, individual teachers should not be asked to fend for themselves, or have leeway to decide all of this for themselves — despite whatever twisted ideas might exist about the meaning of “professionalism” or “professional autonomy.”

    Remember, I write everything under the headline, “More Thoughtful.” I want educators to help kids to become more thoughtful, and the educators themselves to be more thoughtful. I don’t think that we can provide or support the kind of education that kids deserve without being more thoughtful. I don’t think that state or national standards accomplish that.

    And, you are right, leaving all of the decision making over content, curriculum and assessment to each individual teacher doesn’t either. But, to be entirely fair, that’s not something that I’ve ever suggested.

  • Parent

    Having lived thru this all , I can say that the rising standards are basically not age friendly for kids these days . More is not always better. Its great, if the class room is full of gifted kids but the reality is they are not all on the fast track to becoming Doctors. Very basic rule is if you stress a kid out you shut down their ability to learn. Throwing more and more high level requirements at kids at very young ages is starting to emotionally alter kids for the long term. Our local paper in my part of the country had shocking headlines the week of state testing. On the front page of the paper was an article stating enough is enough by a couple principles of local schools. They went on to write about kids having emotional break downs and vomiting due to the stress brought on by the thought of state testing. That helpers for the state test there to assist kids in the reading of the test were unable to make sense of some of the questions on the test. We can put this plain and simple at what point does this all cross the line that we can call it child abuse?

  • Montgomery

    Forget about state standards for a minute and think about AP courses. The guidelines for what should be covered in an AP course (AP Calculus in my case) definitely have an effect on the topics that I would choose to cover throughout the school year. Back to the state/national (NCTM) standards, I feel that I would be doing my students a disservice by not using these as guiding principles.

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Montgomery,

    You are talking about an exam. There are AP exams to enforce the AP curriculum.

    If you knew that a topic was in the guide, but would NOT be on the exam, would you cover it? Or would you spend that time to better prepare students for topics that ARE on the exam?

    It’s a hard question, I know. Is your primary obligation to prepare students for the AP exam and what is on it? Or is it to cover the AP curriculum as described elsewhere?

  • Coach

    I will chime in here again as you guys seemed to miss my important point but to your points, teachers in our state go strictly by the requirements these days. They are under alot of pressure to follow the curriculum. One teacher told me there are times when the class doesnt get it and she cant slow down to make sure they understand. There is so much stuff to cover and not enough time to cover it. This teacher was a 35 year veteran with her masters. So what you end up with is this fast paced high level curriculum is you get a kid with a poor foundation from which to build as many basic things will not have been mastered. Like throwing the baby out with the bath water issue. They do know that kids emotional well being are being sacrificed these days as in todays high tech world they have the ability to test neurotransmitter values and see how stress affects these kids. I wonder at what point in time this new test data will be used by someone in a court of law. Average kids who once could lead normal lives are now being setup for a life time of failure as their entire youth spent in the public school system shaped their approach and disposition for learning. Should there be a law that says the government can not do this to a kid unless the parents sign off on it. Not all kids are meant to be sciencetist. I think it should be the right of every kid to be able to get a good basic education not an advanced curriculum that sells them down the river for the rest of their lives.

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