Kentucky is the nation's trailblazer for Common Core math, literacy and English standards.
One of the big complaints critics have of Florida’s new math, English and literacy standards — known as Common Core — is that the standards haven’t been field tested to make sure they work.
While not a field test, Kentucky has been using the standards since 2011. Lawmakers had told state education officials to come up with new standards. Rather than adopt a stopgap, Kentucky schools jumped into Common Core with both feet.
Let’s be clear — for Kentucky, the Common Core is a clear step up from the academic standards it replaced. The state’s old standards got a D from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
“The standards for high school resemble those for middle school,” according to the report. “At times the standards seem to represent a perpetual remedial course.”
“I think it really shifts the debate from ‘Is this a slam dunk? Yes,’ to ‘Should we adopt with additions or with recommendations or with caveats?’” Fordham’s Kathleen Porter-Magee told StateImpact at Indiana’s first Common Core hearing.
But in Kentucky, no one is arguing for a return to the old standards. So when you ask teachers about Common Core pushback, they assume you’re talking about other educators.
“I saw a lot of math teachers who were initially resistant to Common Core at the high school level start to change their mind when they realize there are some changes being made at the lower grades, changes they’d wanted to happen for a long time,” says Ryan Davis, a math teacher at Central.
Nichole Dino and Alexandria Martin, both English teachers at Miami's Carol City Senior High School, say they like Common Core's emphasis on critical thinking. But they hope the new tests won't be biased against low-income students.
Editor’s note: This post was authored by Sarah Carr and Sarah Butrymowicz for The Hechinger Report.
MIAMI—The pushback against the testing component of Common Core here has endangered political support for the controversial national curriculum standards in a linchpin state. But it also has left Florida’s public school teachers in an uncomfortable limbo: Officials expect them to start teaching the new standards over the next year, yet educators remain unsure when, and how, their students will be tested on them.
At issue is Florida’s participation in a multi-state consortium, known as PARCC, working to develop online standardized tests to be aligned with the standards. Several states expect to start administering the PARCC in the winter of 2015. But in late September, Florida Gov. Rick Scott directed the state Education Board to withdraw from PARCC and instead select a new assessment through a competitive bidding process.
“If the test were settled, people would see more of a sense of urgency,” said Kathy Pham, a veteran Miami English teacher who now works full-time as a “peer reviewer” (essentially a mentor) for Miami-Dade Schools. She supports much of the Common Core in theory, but worries teachers will have to scramble at the last minute to prepare students for a new, and largely unknown, test.
Editor’s note: This story was authored by Sarah Carr for The Hechinger Report.
MIAMI—English instructor Lois Seaman often speaks bluntly to her middle-school students about the increased expectations they will face under the new Common Core curriculum standards. “It’s like you are looking at this under a microscope; glean all you can from this text,” she told a class of eighth graders as they studied a passage from “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. “Common Core says, ‘Read like a detective and write like an investigative reporter.’”
Seaman’s students at Richmond Heights Middle School will still be tested on the old state standards this school year. But like many of her colleagues, Seaman has already started adjusting her teaching approach to meet the new standards. Here are a few of her strategies, culled from her own research and materials and guidance provided to teachers by the Miami-Dade school district and the state:
Asking students to read multiple texts on the same theme:
We thought we’d try to fact-check some of the statements and add some of the missing context.
The point isn’t to shame the speakers or to play “gotcha,” but to add some clarity to the debate. Education policy is complicated, confusing and cluttered by jargon. Often, it’s not clear where one policy ends and another begins, or who is responsible for the decision.
It’s also difficult to disprove the testimony from teachers and others which attributed student success to the switch to Common Core.
So here’s a few things people said Tuesday night:
“These standards are supposed to increase the readiness for STEM (science, technology, math and engineering) of Florida students. Unfortunately, they just do the opposite because the students in early grades are not prepared for challenging math in grade eight, like Algebra. So it doesn’t prepare them – it doesn’t prohibit them from taking – but it doesn’t prepare them. Most students will take no Algebra until grade nine.”
Chris Kirchner, a veteran English teacher at Miami's Coral Reef Senior High School, supports the Common Core in theory, but worries teachers won't have enough support and time to adjust to the new standards.
Editor’s note: This story was written by Sarah Carr for The Hechinger Report.
MIAMI—In Chris Kirchner’s freshman English classes at Coral Reef Senior High School, novels like “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Great Gatsby” have been squeezed off the syllabus to make room for nonfiction texts including “The Glass Castle” and “How to Re-Imagine the World.” For the first time, students will read only excerpts of classics like “The Odyssey” and “The House on Mango Street” instead of the entire book. And Kirchner will assign less independent reading at home, but will require students to write more essays, and push them to make connections across multiple texts.
“I’m trying to go big with the change and see what works,” says Kirchner, who has taught English in Miami-Dade schools for more than 30 years.
The “change” Kirchner refers to is the introduction of the Common Core: the education standards adopted by Florida along with 44 other states and the District of Columbia. The standards do not constitute a curriculum, but they lay out general education principles and skills students should master at different grade levels. All Florida public school educators are supposed to start adapting their teaching to the new standards this school year; students will be tested on them for the first time in 2015.
For high school English teachers like Kirchner, the Common Core is prompting consequential and contentious changes in what students read and how the books are taught: The new standards call for a focus on depth over breadth, more challenging readings, and increased emphasis on nonfiction. Students will be expected to make written arguments using specific evidence from reading assignments, often pulling together examples from multiple texts. No longer should teachers ask students to write solely based on their personal experience or opinion—arguing for or against school uniforms, for instance.
“It’s encouraged me to give up some practices I had a great allegiance to,” says Kirchner, “specifically, the teaching of whole novels.”
Wednesday marks the second of three Common Core hearings Florida is holding in an effort to get feedback from parents and communities about the state’s new education standards.
Whether or not you can make it to Davie tonight, we want you to be part of the conversation.
StateImpact Florida is teaming up with our partners at WLRN-Miami Herald news and Florida International University’s journalism program to cover the event. A group of student journalists in our WLRN/FIU Radio Storytelling class will be live tweeting the hearings with updates, context and on-the-ground observations.
Got questions about who’s in the room? What the terms being used mean? How it’s being received? Let us know!
You can join the conversation in the live chat box below or reach us on Twitter with @WLRN and #CommonCore. The Florida Channel will be streaming the proceedings on web channel 7. Continue Reading →
Emma Jane Miller speaks against Common Core State Standards Tuesday. She said using standards developed with support from private groups is education without representation.
Lory Baxley said she drove two hours to discuss her complaints about Common Core standards after checking out her son’s math assignments.
Baxley’s son earned top scores on the FCAT, but now he’s worried if he’ll pass fourth grade. She blamed Common Core.
“About four weeks into the first grading period I noticed a difference in my fourth grader and a difference in his coursework,” Baxley told more than 200 people at Hillsborough Community College. “The math was hodgepodge – no sequence. My son had everything from a line graph to an algebraic problem, as well as numerous different ways to multiply, all on the same homework sheet.”
Florida is one of 45 states to fully adopt the standards. They outline what students should know in math and English at the end of each grade. Kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms are using Common Core now. Other grades are using a blend of Common Core and Florida’s previous standards. Next year, every grade is scheduled to exclusively use Common Core.
Common Core has broad support among educators, but is also facing a rising number of critics.
They say the standards aren’t as good as Florida’s current standards, will require the state to give up local control, and require too much testing among other concerns.
The Florida State Board of Education meeting took a turn for the theatrical on Tuesday.
In all the attention surrounding the Common Core hearings Florida is holding this week, it would have been easy to miss a curious exchange at Tuesday’s State Board of Education meeting.
Going into the meeting, some of the most-watched items included a vote on whether or not Florida should extend a safety-net that prevents schools from dropping more than one letter grade at a time (it should, the board voted) and a decision on whether or not to include reading samples in the appendix of the Common Core standards (Florida won’t, said the board).
But it was during a discussion of a communications strategy around the new standards that things took a turn. At one point, the board members and presenters got into a long debate about how to even use the phrase “Common Core.”
The tussle over language was reminiscent of a scene from Waiting for Godot—ambiguous, circular, full of heady themes. (Alternately, depending on your sense of humor, it had a whiff of Abbot and Costello’s Who’s on First sketches.)
With that in mind, we scripted a few of the more theatrical moments from the meeting. Feel free to give it a dramatic reading of your own: Continue Reading →
Florida is one of 45 state to fully adopt the standards. The standards outline what students should know at the end of each grade, and to emphasize critical thinking skills, ask students to show what they know and prove how they know it with evidence.
The standards are scheduled to be used in every Florida grade at the start of the next school year.
But critics worry the standards aren’t as good as what Florida is currently using, will mean less local control over educational content, are expensive and will increase the amount of time students spend testing, among other concerns.
Before you head to the hearings this week, here’s a selection of StateImpact Florida stories to give you some background on the debate:
1. Your Essential Guide to the Common Core — Find out the basics here, and check out our timeline of Common Core’s development. “The standards set clear expectations for student achievement at each grade level. They also require students to show they understand what they’ve learned. The goal is to tackle learning problems early on — so more students graduate ready for college or a career. Florida is phasing in Common Core over four years. Full implementation is expected in the 2014-15 academic year.”
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