John O'Connor is the Miami-based education reporter for StateImpact Florida. John previously covered politics, the budget and taxes for The (Columbia, S.C) State. He is a graduate of Allegheny College and the University of Maryland.
Hillsborough Community College's Dale Mabry campus.
Khadejah Gilbert found out she wasn’t quite ready for higher education when she enrolled in Hillsborough Community College.
She’s one of many students who had to take brush up in basic subjects before starting her associate of arts degree in liberal arts.
The classes cost money, but don’t come with any credit
“I took prep reading and a prep writing before I took English I. And a math class too,” Gilbert said, taking a break from her studies with a game of chess. “I would have wanted to go toward my degree and I’d get some credit for taking it. It’s credit given, but not on my transcript, so, it sucks.”
But no U.S. state beat the top-performing countries in math or science, and Florida has a lower percentage of top-performing math and science students than other countries. The results compared math and science scores on tests taken in 2011 in the U.S. and around the world.
Florida’s average eighth grade math score of 513 ranked it 39th in the world, just behind Finland and just ahead of students in Ontario, Canada. The average U.S. score was 509 and the average international score was 500.
South Korea earned a top average math score of 613, while Massachusetts’ average score of 561 was best in the U.S.
The decision is important because it could affect federal funding for those students. The common definition could also determine which students receive accommodations on standardized tests, such as more time, use of a dictionary or instructions recorded in their native language.
The label matters, because under the federal Civil Rights Act, schools are required to provide English-language learners with additional services to ensure they master English as well as the material other students are learning.
The wide variety in policies also creates headaches for students who move from state to state, or even from one school district to another, as they may suddenly find themselves lumped into a new category.
Now that nearly all the states have agreed to adopt common standards in English and math, known as the Common Core State Standards, some states are striving for a common definition of an English-language learner. The task likely will take years, given the political and policy thickets that need to be cleared.
A common definition would help English learners to receive better educations, said Robert Linquanti, project director for English Learner Evaluation and Accountability Support at WestEd, a nonprofit education research organization based in California, and one of two co-authors of a recent report.
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.”
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.
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