Tag Archives: Poverty

Eight problems with Common Core Standards

Eight problems with Common Core Standards

By , Washington Post,  Posted at 11:37 AM ET, 08/21/2012

Correction: The original post said incorrectly that the Common Core was written with no public dialogue or feedback from experienced educators. The post now says there was insufficient public dialogue and feedback from experienced educators.

This was written by Marion Brady, veteran teacher, administrator, curriculum designer and author.

E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s book, “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know,” was published March 1, 1987.

So it was probably in March of that year when, sitting at a dining room table in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, my host — a publishing executive, friend, and fellow West Virginian — said he’d just bought the book. He hadn’t read it yet, but wondered how Hirsch’s list of 5,000 things he thought every American should know differed from a list we Appalachians might write.

I don’t remember what I said, but it was probably some version of what I’ve long taken for granted: Most people think that whatever they and the people they like happen to know, everybody else should be required to know.

In education, of course, what it’s assumed that everybody should be required to know is called “the core.” Responsibility for teaching the core is divvied up between teachers of math, science, language arts, and social studies.

Variously motivated corporate interests, arguing that the core was being sloppily taught, organized a behind-the-scenes campaign to super-standardize it. They named their handiwork the Common Core State Standards to hide the fact that it was driven by policymakers in Washington D.C., who have thus far shoved it into every state except Alaska, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia.

This was done with insufficient public dialogue or feedback from experienced educators, no research, no pilot or experimental programs — no evidence at all that a floor-length list created by unnamed people attempting to standardize what’s taught is a good idea.

It’s a bad idea. Ignore the fact that specific Common Core State Standards will open up enough cans of worms to keep subject-matter specialists arguing among themselves forever. Consider instead the merit of Standards from a general perspective:

One: Standards shouldn’t be attached to school subjects, but to the qualities of mind it’s hoped the study of school subjects promotes. Subjects are mere tools, just as scalpels, acetylene torches, and transits are tools. Surgeons, welders, surveyors — and teachers — should be held accountable for the quality of what they produce, not how they produce it.

Two: The world changes. The future is indiscernible. Clinging to a static strategy in a dynamic world may be comfortable, even comforting, but it’s a Titanic-deck-chair exercise.

Three: The Common Core Standards assume that what kids need to know is covered by one or another of the traditional core subjects. In fact, the unexplored intellectual terrain lying between and beyond those familiar fields of study is vast, expands by the hour, and will go in directions no one can predict.

Four: So much orchestrated attention is being showered on the Common Core Standards, the main reason for poor student performance is being ignored—a level of childhood poverty the consequences of which no amount of schooling can effectively counter.

Five: The Common Core kills innovation. When it’s the only game in town, it’s the only game in town.

Six: The Common Core Standards are a set-up for national standardized tests, tests that can’t evaluate complex thought, can’t avoid cultural bias, can’t measure non-verbal learning, can’t predict anything of consequence (and waste boatloads of money).

Seven: The word “standards” gets an approving nod from the public (and from most educators) because it means “performance that meets a standard.” However, the word also means “like everybody else,” and standardizing minds is what the Standards try to do. Common Core Standards fans sell the first meaning; the Standards deliver the second meaning. Standardized minds are about as far out of sync with deep-seated American values as it’s possible to get.

Eight: The Common Core Standards’ stated aim — “success in college and careers”— is at best pedestrian, at worst an affront. The young should be exploring the potentials of humanness.

You can read the full article  here.

Research on Grit and Self-Control Recognized in “Genius Grant”

JTF Grantee Awarded 2013 MacArthur Fellowship

As an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Angela Duckworth’s work focuses on studying competencies beyond general intelligence and opportunity that predict academic and professional achievement. She is perhaps best known for her work surrounding the concepts of self-control and grit, and how those personality traits are better indicators of success than factors such as IQ and socioeconomic opportunity.

Click here to see 5 videos of Dr. Duckworth answering these 5 questions about her work and findings:

What is grit?

Are there virtues that are precursors or closely associated with grit?

What role does humility play, if any, in cultivating grit?

How has your personal story been a window into your research on grit?

What advice would you give to a parent who wanted to cultivate grit in their children?

Back from the polls with interesting article

Whew! Sixteen hour election day poll work took a couple of days recovery time. Definitely not as young as I used to be.

Because this article on reverse engineering in healthcare seemed to have a number of interesting parallels with Education I thought I’d pass it on in the blog. Just substitute “education” for “healthcare” in the article. Here’s a summary:

Reverse innovation works because the different conditions in higher- and lower-income settings change the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that drive innovation.

What happens when you create health care solutions specifically for patients in low-income settings? It turns out that learning from and investing in these settings can be powerful ways to tackle problems at home that require out-of-the-box thinking. These differences include:

  1. Higher volume for lower price. Radical approaches are often needed to achieve acceptable performance at ultra-low price points.
  2. Less developed infrastructure allows rapid implementation of new solutions.
  3. Sustainability is important in resource-limited areas, favoring “green solutions.”
  4. Fewer regulations quicken the pace of innovation.
  5. Preferences are different, inspiring creative design.
  6. Overwhelming need increases the ‘purpose motive,’ fueling innovators who want to make a difference.

These six attributes make lower-income settings appealing places to create, test, and scale new ideas (In ABQ/BERNCO, think ABC Community Schools Partnership for pre-K-12 and Mission Graduate: 60,000 for K-12 and beyond).

So, just how do ideas move through a reverse innovation pipeline?

  1.  Identify a high priority problem shared between lower- and higher-income settings. For example, affordable, user-friendly diagnostics, or a mobile health information technology solution to a pressing health care issue.
  2. Innovators in lower-income settings must create a solution that spreads to the first 15% of the population, or the “early adopters.” This usually happens only if the idea is better, relevant, simple, easily tested, and visible to others. Endorsement by early adopters pushes an innovation past its tipping point, where it is then likely to spread to the population at large.
  3. The idea must cross-pollinate from lower- to a higher-income settings. Here the critical link is between lower-income early adopters and higher-income innovators. Whether these parties connect in-person or online, the quality of the interaction must facilitate sufficient trust to allow the idea to cross over. Building relationships over time helps create “spannable social distances,” such that the two parties find each other credible enough to take a risk on the other’s idea.
  4. The idea has to spread in the higher-income setting. Again the innovation must be better, relevant, simple, easily tested, and visible to others. It must also overcome the resistance of existing infrastructure and other established solutions. If the idea is clearly effective in lower-income settings, this can help lower the barrier to adoption.

The article provides three very interesting real-world examples in Diagnostics, Health IT, and Service Delivery.

In short, reverse innovation has tremendous potential to align incentives and disrupt existing systems and technologies. We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg (or, as their African colleagues like to say, the ears of the hippopotamus – I just love that analogy).

Also … beware the resistance inherent in disrupting existing systems.

What can we do to increase the pace of reverse innovation? For starters, we can:

  • Identify high-priority problems that could potentially be solved in lower-income settings.
  • Empower lower-income innovators and early adopters through seed funding, competitive “innovation awards,” or other mechanisms.
  • Bring lower-income early adopters and higher-income innovators together through conferences or learning collaboratives (live or virtual).
  • Track reverse innovation activity globally, identifying and removing barriers to spread.

Many intractable problems in health care could be solved if we accelerated the spread of ideas through the reverse innovation pipeline. To do this, we will need to think differently, invest in reverse innovation, and work together to solve common problems.

Again, think of the work being done today by ABC Community Schools Partnership for pre-K-12 and Mission Graduate: 60,000 for K-12 and beyond.

Read the complete article here.

Change the first five years and you change everything – video

This video produced by The Ounce of Prevention Fund does an excellent job of portraying what is possible to accomplish at the preventative stage across a community like ours.

“CHANGE THE FIRST FIVE YEARS AND YOU CHANGE EVERYTHING”

It’s a real invitation to acknowledge both problem and solution and step up to action.

This is from the Chatham-Savannah Youth Futures Authority – Georgia Family Collection Collaborative website.

Just added: ABEC’s Amazing Resource Wheel

ABEC Resource Wheel – This resource/networking wheel is an amazing one-stop information and learning resource. It describes and links various resources, groups, and topics supporting students, parents, business, and non-profits interested in improving education. To use it, just click the image, sit back, poke away!

Resource Wheel

 The Albuquerque Business Education Compact (ABEC) is a partnership of business, education and local government in the greater Albuquerque, New Mexico community.

 

No Rich Child Left Behind

This is a summary of a lengthy article in the New York Times Online, discussing why and how wealth and early child preparedness has affected, is effecting, schools and society.

Society … that’s you and me, by the way.       Click here to read the article.

  • Children of the rich perform better than middle-class or poor children (all grades, test scores, extracurricular activities, leadership, graduation, higher education).
  • While this has always been so, the test scores gap is 40% larger than in the 1970s.
  • NAEP scores (National Assessment of Educational Progress) have been rising for all populations since the 1970s.
  • The gap isn’t much affected either positively or negatively by K-12 school experiences.
  • It boils down to this: Rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference persists through to high school.
  • The rich have more money and can (and do) focus more of it on early childhood education/experience.
  • It would be supportive to somehow improve the quality of parenting and early child environments.
  • Expand Nurse-Family Partnerships for single parents.
  • Provide greater support for maternity leave and day care.

One commenter named Howard, summed it up nicely, ” … to use another metaphor, the odds are against the seeds that fall on stony ground, no matter how good their genetic makeup.”

Click here to read the article.