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When it comes to new “common core” standards, theoretical language is giving way to hands-on practice.

The curriculum standards, accepted by 48 states, are being rolled out citywide this year after being piloted in 100 schools last year. Today, every teacher in the city is expected to get training on them.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott sat in on a training session this morning at Brooklyn’s PS 124, which took part in the pilot last year. But at many schools, today is likely to be the first time that teachers learn just how the common core standards are poised to change their jobs.

Some principals put together their own plans for today, but they can also draw on four 90-minute lessons the city devised. One session asks teachers to evaluate student work from their own school to see if it meets the new standards. In another, they will practice assessing teachers according to a new evaluation rubric. A third lesson focuses on connecting two overarching citywide goals: strengthening student work and teacher practice. And a fourth lesson asks teachers to examine student work from a school that adopted the new standards last year. The lessons are part of the Department of Education’s online “Common Core Library” of resources.

In a letter to principals last week announcing the lesson plans, Walcott laid out a timeline for schools’ common core-related accomplishments. This fall, he wrote, teams of teachers at each school should identify students’ shortcomings. In the winter, teachers should ask all students to complete two common core-aligned “tasks,” one in reading and one in math. Through it all, principals should be giving teachers frequent feedback based on classroom observations, Walcott wrote.

Walcott’s letter to principals is below: (more…)

From the state's test score presentation, a slide that shows gains in New York City that exceeds that of other cities.

A first look at state test score data confirms good news for New York City: The city’s test scores gains exceeded those across the state.

According to data released today, 43.9 percent of city students in grades 3-8 met the proficiency standard in reading and 57.3 percent hit the math proficiency standard. That’s compared to 42.4 percent and 54 percent in 2010, the first year after state officials raised the bar to reach that rating.

Statewide, reading scores dropped by a tiny amount — 0.4 percentage points — to 52.8 percent proficient, and math scores rose by 2.3 points, to 63.3 percent proficient.

State officials sounded a somber tone in their press release announcing the scores. “While the majority of students statewide met or exceeded the state’s proficiency standards in both math and ELA, overall performance remains low and the gaps in achievement persist,” the press release said.

Mayor Bloomberg is likely to point to city students’ relative performance during his press conference later today.

But the big story this year is not the scores but the tests themselves. (more…)

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 #3: Fear of Failure Rates

I am not a fan of most of what appears on The Quick and the Ed, but last month Chad Adelman made a great point about setting high standards. He explained that when they are taken seriously and the inevitable high failure rates occur, people find or create loopholes or backdoors.

Frankly, people do not have the stomach for high failure rates. It is easy to say that we want to raise standards; that is the good news. But it is hard to endorse high failure rates; that is public bad news.

In a 2001 episode of The West Wing, two characters discussed the impact of making the standard for poverty more rigorous and realistic. The good news was that they had a better sense of the problem and would be better able to address it.

Toby: Let’s get back to the bad news. Four million people
became poor on the President’s watch?

Sam: They didn’t become poor. They were poor already. And now we’re calling them poor.

Toby: What was wrong with the old formula?

Sam: I don’t know.

Toby: Find out.

Sam: It is possible that this is a statistical reality and not a political finding.

But public failure is always a political finding, too. And people subject to politics, be they elected, appointed or just in high visible positions, have great incentive to undermine bad news or prevent the news from coming out. So, the more rigorous the standards, the less seriously others will take them, knowing that they will likely be blamed for the bad news. The idealized senior staff of The West Wing could accept “the bad news” because it was really just a more accurate description of reality. But would our real flesh & blood leaders, with all of the pressures they face today, be as well able to accept “the bad news” — and potentially the blame for it? When new more rigorous standards lead to reports of fewer expert or even proficient students, those in positions of responsibility will be blamed. Will they allow that to happen?

Previous: Problem #2 — An Unrealistic Bar!
Next: Problem #4 — Classrooms!

Since last week, I have been 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 #2: An Unrealistic Bar

Even if we did not have the kinds of gaps that we see between schools, districts and even states, there is a common problem with where to set the bar. Standards are often set by content experts who have rarely worked with below average students in their field, and perhaps not even average students. They declare what they think students ought to know or be able to do by the time that they graduate from high school, for example. Imagine what college professors/instructors of mathematics would say that high school graduates should know. And historians. And scientists.

When these standards setting committees say, “To be proficient, a student should know…,” what do they actually mean by proficient? Are these bars set for the average student? For the honors student? For the student who truly excels in that subject and will major in it in college?

I don’t see a lot of pressure for these brilliant experts — and I am perfectly willing to concede that they are brilliant experts — to consider a bar any lower than what they think ought to be possible, what they would like to see happen. But they don’t do research or investigation to see how likely or practical their goals are, for whom they might be reasonable, or what it would require for schools to raise all of their students to that level of proficiency — presumably the goal, right?

This leads to aspirational goals and standards, rather than realistically achievable standards.

Previous: Problem #1 — Which Bar to Raise?
Next: Problem #3 – Fear of Failure Rates.

We are decades into the Education Standards Movement. Standards have been all the rage for quite some time, and they are getting all kinds of attention today. Right now, there is all kinds of work on national standards going on.

But I say, “Feh!” Standards do not matter — particularly national standards — even if we dearly want them to.

What Are Standards, Anyway?

Standards prescribe and specify what should be done in school. In that, they are similar to curricula and lesson plans. In fact, the line between standards and curricula can be hard to distinguish — as can the line between curricula and lesson plans. As a rule, however, standards are the least specific of the three, and focus on what should be taught, rather than how it should be taught.

So, standards documents describe the goals of a course or a subject. They are the bar or the target, depending on your preferred metaphor. They declare what should be taught, what students should learn and/or what they should be able to do by their course’s end.

When I was teaching in New York not that long ago, each of the English teachers in my school was required to have a poster of the ELA standards up in their classrooms. The contents were probably just a couple of pages long, and they specified what students should learn in their high school English classes.

The widely publicized Common Core draft ELA standards, released last month, can be found in a 47 page document, of which six pages comprise the standards and the rest are explanations and examples to help the reader make sense of them.

Who Creates Standards

Anyone may write standards, and can try to publicize them and get others to pay attention. Rarely, however, will such efforts be successful. Standards simply cannot have more power and authority than the organization that publishes them. NCTM (the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) has been publishing standards for decades, and their expertise and credibility have given them a lot of weight.

However, the most important standards have been created by the states. In our system, the federal government has no constitutional role in education, in theory leaving the entire enterprise to the states. In the last fifty years, though the federal role has grown, standards have still remained the province of the states. In 1994, President Clinton tried to foster the creation of voluntary national standards, but was politically unable to do so — due to the efforts of Lynne Cheney and others. This time around, the Council of Chief State School Officers is leading the effort, along with Achieve — a creation of the National Governors Association. Thus, this time we have a national effort that is not tied to the federal government in Washington, DC.

Of course, it is not as though President Clinton, Governor Schwarzenegger or any of the State Superintendents write standards themselves. Rather, they are supporting the creation of standards by teams and committees of experts. These can include text book writers and publishers, teachers, researchers, professors of education, experts in the appropriate content areas and various others. Real people, with real expertise, real agendas — for better and for worse — and real histories.

Six Problems

Over the next week, I will explain the major problems I see with standards efforts, particularly high profile national standards.

• Problem #1: Which Bar to Raise?
• Problem #2: An Unrealistic Bar
• Problem #3: Fear of Failure Rates
• Problem #4: Classrooms
• Problem #5: Tests Matter; Standards Do Not
• Problem #6: Local Control
• Standards: Why Does Anyone Bother?

Come back through the week and share what you think of each reason. In the meanwhile, do you think that there’s a strong case to be made for strong state or national standards?