Thinking About Learning

Several weeks ago the Washington Post reported that 46 states have agreed to the establishment of common core standards.  I knew before I even finished reading that my state, SC, would be one of the states not participating.  Our governor has a history of grandstanding in an effort to make his name well-known before the next presidential election, and this was another opportunity for him.  Outrage at Gov. Sanford is nothing new for me!  He has never been a supporter of public education, as evidenced by his push for tax-dollar vouchers for private schools.  His last big grandstand was his refusal to accept stimulus money for schools, and I participated in a protest rally at the state house over that issue.  Now he doesn’t want the federal government telling us what our students should learn.  Okay, it might be different if our state was leading the pack in achievement, but it seems like a no-brainer to me that we could benefit from some collaboration.  Common standards could raise the bar nationally for what students are expected to learn.  In order for our students to be globally competitive, it’s imperative that we raise the bar.

After reading Clay Burell’s post about Secretary of Education Duncan, I’ve been questioning the methodology for determining these standards.  Burell identified the groups that have been selected to write the standards from an article from Education Week:

Achieve, a Washington-based group made up of state policymakers and business leaders; act Inc., the Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit organization that runs the college-entrance exam of the same name; and the College Board, the New York City-based sponsor of the sat admissions exam and the Advanced Placement program.

State policymakers, business leaders, and college entrance exam creators…hmmm, there is no mention whatsoever of educators participating in this process.  The same article reveals that subject-matter groups such as the NCTE and NCTM have expressed concern about being excluded from the “Common Core” process.  I, too, have some major concerns about this.  It would be so disheartening to have such a much-needed initiative go awry due to standards being determined by non-educators.  With ACT and the College Board writing the standards, it’s easy to see the next step could be that they would create (and profit from) a national test.  It’s not that I’m opposed to a national test.  I just don’t think that the same entities should determine the standards and write the test.

States have already poured lots of money into developing standards and tests.  Although SC is still at the bottom of the barrel in performance, we have some of the most rigorous standards and testing in the nation.  That’s one reason we rank so low nationally.  Our tests more accurately demonstrate student proficiency (or lack of) than other states.  The same Washington Post article I referenced earlier said:

In Mississippi, for instance, 90 percent of fourth-graders passed the state reading exam in 2007, according to U.S. Department of Education data. But only 51 percent had at least “basic” or “partial mastery” on the test known as the Nation’s Report Card.

SC has many obstacles to improving student achievement.  A large number of our students live in poverty, and our current level of unemployment has reached 12.1%, one of the highest in the nation.  We have a state legislature that is satisfied with only mandating that each child in our state has the opportunity to receive a “minimally adequate education.”  Our governor has demonstrated at every turn that he disdains public education.  We have school buildings in the Corridor of Shame that are a hundred years old and would not be seen fit as a prison facility, but our state has been unwilling to take action.  President Obama raised awareness of the situation in his inaugural speech when he invited Ty’sheoma Bethea, an 8th grader from J.V. Martin Junior High School in Dillon, S.C., to sit with his wife and then told her story.  Even still, help for her school did not come from within our state, but from a furniture supply company in Chicago.

I recount these educational and political woes as evidence that we are in desperate need of change.  Common core standards won’t solve the above mentioned problems, but could at least put us on a more level playing field for measuring academic success.  I was encouraged to read our state Superintendent of Education, Jim Rex’s, comments in the Spartanburg Herald Journal about the movement towards common core standards:

Although South Carolina is prevented from being an “official” participant due to Gov. Mark Sanford’s refusal to sign on, I have been assured by the effort’s leaders — including the National Governors Association — that we can participate unofficially.

That’s good news!  The people of SC continue to fight for progress, in spite of a governor who spits in our faces at every turn.  We have a long way to go, but as an educator, I’ll never give up hope all of our students will one day receive the kind of quality education they deserve.

Research shows that collaborative planning and the use of common formative and summative assessments are key factors in improving instruction and achievement.  I observed this first-hand in my own school this year as my principal led change to transform our faculty into a professional learning community, based on the concepts in DeFour’s On Common Ground. Our students made a dramatic improvement in achievement due to this culture change, so much so that we were specially recognized by our district office.  Since collaboration is so effective within a school, it only makes sense that national collaboration for the development of a core curriculum has the potential to yield great results.   If the development of national standards is handled correctly and if educators are given the opportunity to participate in the process, this initiative could be a first step in molding our educational system into one that will prepare our students to be globally competitive.