A panel discussion, hosted by the Council of Chief State School Officers, was conducted last week by webcast. You can view the entire discussion, here, following a quick sign-up. We have also transcribed excerpts from the discussion, particularly those involving our home state of Maryland, and our partial transcription is available here.
In 2010, state education chiefs together with governors from across the country released the Common Core State Standards, a set of expectations to help ensure all students are prepared for college and career.
Since that time, more than 40 states have been working with educators and other leaders to implement the standards. With all of the noise surrounding the Common Core, it can be hard to decipher what is actually happening in states across the country with teachers, students, and parents.
In this webcast, four state education chiefs discussed what’s going well, where we can improve, and what’s next for implementation of the Common Core. June Atkinson, North Carolina State Superintendent of Public Schools; Kevin Huffman, Tennessee Commissioner of Education; Lillian Lowery, Maryland State Superintendent of Schools; and Hanna Skandera, New Mexico Secretary of Education spoke about Common Core implementation in their state. Andrew Rotherham, co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, moderated the conversation.
Highlights
All four superintendents assured the webcast audience that teachers in the states “love” the new standards in the Common Core, despite what people may read in the newspaper or on social media involving corporate conspiracies behind the Common Core standards themselves. Dr Lowery said, for instance:
One of the things that we underestimated was the pushback. And that we would kind of be in the middle getting squeezed, because it’s coming from the right, it’s coming from the left. And it is not—it is not—what we see when we go into classrooms.
The shift is occurring. Two ways I know the shift is occurring: When I go into visit teachers, they tell me, this is hard. So if something is hard, that means that they’re not doing what they’ve always done. They really are implementing new and exciting work. But, it is hard because they do need resources, they do need model units, they do need lessons. And we’re working with our external partners to make sure that happens.
Another reason I know it’s working and the shift is occurring is because I am talking to parents who are now parents of a third grader and a fifth grader, who can clearly see that what this third grader is getting is completely different from that fifth grader and what that fifth grader got when he or she was in third grade.
This shift is happening. Our teachers are doing amazing work. So, when I pick up some of the morning newspapers and read that there’s bedlam all around, that things are coming completely apart at the seams, I’m wondering what schools these people have visited and what teachers with whom they’ve spoken. Because while this isn’t easy, and while we have amazing teachers doing amazing work, this is a shift. It’s a huge shift. It’s hard, but they are in there every day making it happen.
Later in the conversation, all panelists addressed what they see as a recurring conversation about an accountability moratorium. Ms Skandera suggested the call for a delay was only a veiled attempt not to have accountability at all, ever.
“We need to be truth tellers,” Ms Skandera said. “The truth is, we see teachers across our state, they love the standards. Then we get to accountability. … I think we can all tell a story … it was so exciting to stand hand-in-hand with our teachers and our unions both, and the support for Common Core. But as we get closer and closer to the implementation, that these standards are going to mean something, that there are going to be opportunities to identify where our strengths and our weaknesses, etc., etc., … we start backing away, and delay becomes a mantra.”
Although we agree with her in terms of the motive of those people asking for a moratorium (they really would be delighted if teacher accountability went away, folks), we have to say, this is the pot calling the kettle black. Many states this year, including Maryland and Illinois, administered standardized tests that won’t contribute to accountability measures in any schools.
Yes, let’s be truth tellers, shall we?
As much as this space and our readers’ attention span will allow, here it is: The tests that were administered this year in several states were designed for student accountability. The results from these tests have been misused, because those results are being used for purposes for which the tests weren’t designed.
Furthermore, the reliability of these tests has been called into question because they’re given every year to every student in our schools. If a test were truly reliable, like the NAEP exam, a random sample of students a few times during their school career would suffice. The statements by the panelists, therefore, are disingenuous and possibly pushing a hidden agenda as well, for our nation’s schools, too, have completely botched accountability in having students take exams that didn’t count.
What we essentially need is a truce on both sides. For people who oppose teacher accountability, note that a law will never pass in the country that removes testing or stops the ball from rolling on the implementation of higher standards. I have never understood Common Core opponents (we’ve had “standards” for a long time now). The standards need to be played out so we can improve them where they don’t work and strengthen them where they do. Several states have set up resources and professional development to help teachers with the implementation, and from that will come lots of information about where they might need revision.
But if the only talk is about banning the standards, that will leave schools nowhere to go, and we’ll never get the implementation right. The debate’s harsh name-calling hurts teachers and gets in the way of their successful implementation of the Common Core standards. It also makes it virtually impossible to have reasonable discussions about the standards themselves.
On the other side, politicians and school leaders need to produce tests that are indeed reliable, valid, and fair. They need to be reliable so we can afford not to test every single kid, every single year. They need to be valid for the purposes for which they’re being used. And they need to be fair to all kids in every situation.
If we’re to tell the “whole narrative,” then, as school leaders asked the media to do at this panel forum, it’s at least a part of that narrative to say that the tests used over the past decade have not been valid, when data from those tests is misused; reliable, since if they had been reliable, our lawmakers would certainly not have made us give them to kids every single year and waste so much money on tests that provide little feedback to teachers or students; or fair, since, for one thing, the preponderance of multiple-choice questions often confused or tricked kids, sometimes provided no correct answers, and in the case of math or science, tested reading ability more than any subject knowledge.