Thomas B Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

No love for Common Core? Why Tom misses the mark with his critique

yes Kathleen Porter-Magee / February 17, 2012

According to Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institute, “The Common Core will have little to no effect on student achievement.” 

Standards—no matter how clear or how rigorous—are not a panacea.

To prove this, he draws on research from 2009 conducted by his colleague, Russ Whitehurst. Essentially, Whitehurst found that the quality of state standards (as judged by our own Fordham analyses as well as analyses conducted by the AFT) did not correlate with state NAEP scores. More specifically, he found that “states with weak content standards score about the same on NAEP as those with strong standards.”

Q.E.D.?

Hardly. What Loveless conveniently ignores is the second—and arguably more significant—element of Whitehurst’s research. In short, Whitehurst “concluded that the effects of curriculum on student achievement are larger, more certain, and less expensive than the effects of popular reforms such as common standards…” (Emphasis added.)

His point is that setting standards alone does very little, but that a thoughtfully and faithfully implemented rigorous curricula can move the achievement needle, sometimes dramatically.

While one could chose to pit those two policy advancements against it each other (standards versus curriculum), a much more logically way to view it is that while strong standards provide a solid foundation, you still need to build the schoolhouse. For education reformers trying to drive the needle on student achievement, the process should start by setting clear and rigorous standards, but it certainly can’t end there.

That’s the Fordham view. As we have long acknowledged,

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No love for Common Core? Why Tom misses the mark with his critique

Send in the clowns: Common Core implementation advice just keeps getting worse

yes Kathleen Porter-Magee / February 15, 2012

I’ve posted before about the unusual interpretations and suggestions for implementing the Common Core standards that are popping up across the country. Earlier this week, more evidence emerged that when it comes to organizations peddling Common Core implementation resources and strategies, the buyer should beware.

When it comes to organizations peddling Common Core implementation resources and strategies, the buyer should beware.

Eye on Education, a publishing company that provides “busy educators with practical information” on a host of topics (professional development, school improvement, student assessment, data analysis, and on), released a report this week authored by Lauren Davis that highlights “5 Things Every Teacher Should be Doing to Meet the Common Core State Standards”:

• Lead High-Level, Text-Based Discussions
• Focus on Process, Not Just Content
• Create Assignments for Real Audiences and with Real Purpose
• Teach Argument, Not Persuasion
• Increase Text Complexity

At first glance, this appears to be pointed in the right direction. After all, nearly every point includes quotes from the standards themselves or from the publisher’s criteria released by David Coleman and Sue Pimentel.

Unfortunately, dressing up advice with strategically placed quotes does not a Common Core implementation strategy make. And, in all but one area, Eye on Education has gotten the spirit of the Common Core dead wrong.

First, teachers are told to “focus on process, not just content.” Here, the author gives lip service to the Common Core while at the same time prioritizing the teaching of classroom discussion skills over diving into substantive content and reading. Specifically, Davis argues:

“even if you craft strong questions, you cannot assume that students know how to be effective participants in a class

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Send in the clowns: Common Core implementation advice just keeps getting worse

I come not to bury summative assessments but to praise them

yes Kathleen Porter-Magee / February 10, 2012

The Northwest Evaluation Association recently surveyed parents and teachers to gauge their support for various types of assessment. The results indicated that just a quarter of teachers find summative assessments “‘extremely’ or ‘very’ valuable for determining whether students have a deep understanding of content.” By contrast, 67 percent of teachers (and 85 percent of parents) found formative and interim assessments extremely or very valuable.

I can understand why teachers would find formative and interim assessments appealing. After all, teachers generally either create those assessments themselves, or are at least intimately involved with their creation. And they are, therefore, more flexible tools that can be tweaked depending on, for instance, the pace of classroom instruction.

But, while formative and interim assessments are critically important and should be used to guide instruction and planning, they cannot and should not be used to replace summative assessments, which play an equally critical role in a standards-driven system.

Formative and interim assessments cannot and should not be used to replace summative assessments.

Summative assessments are designed to evaluate whether students have mastered knowledge and skills at a particular point in time. For instance, a teacher might give a summative assessment at the end of a unit to determine whether students have learned what they needed to in order to move forward. Similarly, and end-of-course or end-of-year summative assessment can help determine whether students mastered the content and skills outlined in a state’s standards for that grade.

If you believe that we need standards to ensure that all students—regardless of their zip code or socioeconomic status—need to learn the same

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I come not to bury summative assessments but to praise them

Hope is not a plan

yes Kathleen Porter-Magee / February 8, 2012

Two weeks ago, Obama made waves in his State of the Union address when he called for raising the dropout age and requiring all students across the country to stay in school until they’re 18. One big solution to our educational crisis, he explained, is to simply not let kids drop out. (Or at least to make it more difficult for them to do so.)

If only it were that easy.

Obama may end up ratcheting up the pressure to water down the standards to which all students are held.

The truth of the matter is, we have yet to develop an education system that keeps students in schools, that holds them accountable to rigorous standards, and that helps them meet those ambitious goals. Therefore, by putting the focus on staying in school longer, without dealing with the very real challenge of how you ensure that the time spent in school is meaningful, Obama may end up ratcheting up the pressure to water down the standards to which all students are held.

This is a truth that Al Shanker recognized two decades ago. In the 1990 National Governors Association meeting, Shanker explained:

…if we had outstanding teachers and if we were to require students to take a tough curriculum, and if we were to give them homework to do and make sure that they did the homework, and if we didn't promote any student unless the student learned what he or she was supposed to, or graduate them, we would have schools just like the ones that I went

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Hope is not a plan