It does not seem to hold up.
The history of the secondary English curriculum in 20th-century America suggests that the decline in readiness for college reading stems in large part from an increasingly incoherent, less challenging literature curriculum from the 1960s onward.
Common Core is a philosophy that believes reading Shakespeare, Melville, TS Elliot, and all other great historical literary works is a waste of time. Instead its reading manuals focus on informational, nonfiction text selections from college students public domain selections about computer geeks, fast food, teenage marketing, and the working poor. Hardly the kind of material to exhibit ambiguity, subtlety, and irony.
Common Core‘s misguided idea is that in the workplace, we are subject to large numbers of boring manuals of complexity and incomprehensibility, and therefore, giving these to our budding and aspiring students will motivate and inspire them to go forward and achieve great things.
It is failing.
In Christina School District, tenth grade English is now Common Core. As one student put it, “last year I was reading Romeo and Juliet. This year I’m reading simple first grade stories….” Last years A+ student is, because of a boring curriculum, putting English on the bottom of their priorities, and now pulling off C+’s….
Is it the teacher’s fault? Not when the student raves about how much the love the teacher… “So why are you doing badly?” “Because it is soooo boring….”
Herein is the key to educational success. It has to be a buffet of choices so each and every student can find something that ignites them… Once fired up by potential interest, their enthusiasm for achievement develops.
We turned out a decent population of baby boomers. Most were successful. Most did well in life… All we did then was throw teachers into schools, made sure the buses ran on time and paid the bills….
That worked then; we should ditch all of today’s corporate plans, and return to the existentialist method of successful teaching….
After all. Most of the people who are running corporations today, dropped out of school…..
kavips 
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December 12, 2012 at 2:01 pm
John Young
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
December 12, 2012 at 2:11 pm
minnehanh
It’s as if they have decided that the kind of comprehension material they throw at you on the SATs represents what you will have to be able to read in college. I always figured they have you plow through those deadly informational pieces just to test your ability to stay awake. What will happen when our culture, which stems in many ways from the literature that defines each generation is gone? I can’t imagine my great-great grandchildren being enthralled by reading the manual about how to assemble my gas grill!
December 12, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Mike O.
Not a single link, kavips? That’s actually not what Common Core says. What do you mean when you say Common Core “reading manuals?”
Actually, nothing in Common Core says you have to take away the literature content. If the local schools and districts are stupid or unimaginative enough to choose to interpret it that way, take your fight there.
I know I will FREAK OUT if English classes don’t teach from the canon of literature. Currently my 8th grade son is getting good Lit readings in his English class, and good training in how to analyze short stories, and good teaching on prosody and poetics. So far so good.
December 12, 2012 at 3:10 pm
kavips
did I not put up a link? Ouch.
While I’m going back to find it, let me continue. I’m not sure what Common Core resources you have, so I cannot answer you on that until I see what they put out… I do know from one curriculum, that one grade level is doing NO literature this year. I do know they are writing after reading what was told to me, are “dumb stories” of everyday common place event. For example, a girl goes into a shopping market, and has to make up her mind to buy whole wheat or white bread…..
Lesson: write a story on which you would choose….
I’m sorry, but being someone who at this age was reading Julius Caesar in original Latin, … as were all my classmates, … really? White or wheat bread? Does anyone in corporate America have a brain? Just askin’…
Common Core IS what is wrong with today’s education…. It is stupid people telling smart people what to do.
December 12, 2012 at 3:22 pm
Mike O.
This business about taking fiction away is getting so big I’m planning to do my own post on it. The gist of it is here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-pimentel/the-role-of-fiction-in-th_b_2279782.html
The standards documents themselves can be found online. I suggest reading the primary documents, because second-hand descriptions of them tend to be unreliable. There is a lot of the material there though and I certainly haven’t read it all myself; just certain sections.
The standards specify a 70% non-fiction rate across all subjects. Schools can meet this by adding non-fiction to other classes without touching English classes. There is a real risk they will misunderstand the guidance though and gut the English curriculum because they think they have to.
I’m not really sure about the current status of the Common Core rollout. Are you sure your informant is actually in a Common Core classroom? Or are they just encountering ordinary stupidity unrelated to Common Core?
December 12, 2012 at 3:35 pm
kavips
Here is the link …. I put it back into the original as well…. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/12/questionable-quality-of-the-common-core-english-language-arts-standards
December 12, 2012 at 3:51 pm
kavips
Thank you for your link… I do believe that it’s becoming the subject of your next post is perfectly timed…
I see from the link you posted why you replied as you did… i think the nuances between the two can be discerned better from this passage in your link….
On page 57, the Standards explicitly list a variety of subgenres of narrative fiction that students should read: adventures, historical fiction, mysteries, myths, science fiction, realistic fiction, allegories, parodies, satire, and graphic novels. They go on to list different forms of drama (one-act and multi-act plays) as well as poetry (narrative poems, lyrical poems, free verse, sonnets, odes, ballads, and epics).,/i>
What they do not list are the classical standards that have molded and shaped human kind over centuries….
For example, reading 6 assorted poems compiled from no name poets does not compensate for skipping Romeo and Juliette.
December 12, 2012 at 3:55 pm
kavips
And yes, I am sure the source was correct. It was announced from the teacher in open house, and… when a parent questioned whether any worthy literature works would be covered, they got a “well, maybe , if we can find the time we can throw one in, but that is not on our agenda.”
December 12, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Mike O.
Heritage Foundation? Really?
I had just read your link because it was referenced by Diane Ravitch here: http://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/11/sandra-stotsky-the-leading-critic-of-common-core/
December 12, 2012 at 3:58 pm
Mike O.
“well, maybe , if we can find the time we can throw one in, but that is not on our agenda.”
That is driven by either the teacher or the district, not by Common Core. For you, it’s time to read up on the actual requirements and go on the warpath. No education can be considered successful without one great English teacher who turns you on to literature.
December 12, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Mike O.
“That is driven by either the teacher or the district,”
I meant “by either the school or by the district.” The teacher is likely not to blame.
December 12, 2012 at 4:07 pm
Mike O.
kavips – in this discussion there is no substitute for reading the primary documents. “Page 57” in the ELA standards clearly states the examples given are illustrative examples and not prescriptive readling lists. Same for Appendix B, which gives actual text excerpts. Local schools can use texts that are not mentioned as long as they meet the text complexity requirements.
But critics are making hay by pretending the Common Core lists are prescriptive and not simply examples.
December 12, 2012 at 4:43 pm
kavips
Thank you for the primary documents. I’m afraid they will be read after the kids get tucked in. I appreciate the assist.
As with any manual, the results of what come out, outweigh the effort that was put in.
Common Core may have been constructed with good intentions. But are we getting the results we need? Apparently not, … Even the Bible sometimes gets misdirected….
hat’s off to a million dollar quote…. No education can be considered successful without one great English teacher who turns you on to literature.
December 13, 2012 at 7:39 am
John Young
Mike,
I hope you can maybe see that the implementation is the problem. In your case you are saying “so far, so good”, but the CCSS are not fully implemented in DE yet, so the issues/non-issues are on the way.
As you have read on other blogs, one of the burgeoning concerns is the 70/30 arbitrary fact v fiction split. Here’s the reality, DCAS is embedding CCSS test questions and the Smarter Balanced will be entirely normed to CCSS goals.
If teaching classics does not help get better test scores, our schools and teachers WILL stop teaching them because they jobs and ratings depend on those test scores. It’s a pernicious and vicious circle that is at its base, founded on junk science (VAM).
Just wait until DE has a Teacher of the Year get labeled ineffective on test scores…
December 13, 2012 at 10:22 am
John Young
Deep Common core concerns:
http://www.susanohanian.org/core.php?id=364
December 13, 2012 at 10:23 am
John Young
http://www.susanohanian.org/core.php?id=355
December 13, 2012 at 10:51 am
John Young
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-common-bore/2012/07/09/gJQA9Ko9WW_blog.html
December 13, 2012 at 10:51 am
John Young
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/04/david-colemans-global-revenge-and.html
December 13, 2012 at 10:54 am
John Young
Summer Reading List
Ohanian Comment: I am so glad that someone answered the outrageous opinion piece about the books necessary to gain ‘world knowledge.’ The author of that revealed only that she’s drunk way too much Common Core Kool-Aid. But teachers are being inundated by this kind of Common Core offal. Bill and Melinda Gates-financed professional development floods the school.
I’d just add to this letter that “world knowledge” is much more than facts that can be called up in Wikipedia–or the grim reading advocated by I mean, happy summer, kid: Read Hiroshima, Night, and The Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. I happen to admire all three of these books, but I’m an adult and I want those upper middle school readers to have a childhood. I fail to appreciate why reading these “hard truths this summer” will make it “easier for them to want to learn about the world.”
I’m not suggesting that middle graders shouldn’t be exposed to ‘hard truths,’ but sending them off to the beach with this list is a cockamamie idea, verging on child abuse.
Laura N. Arneson Letter in the New York Times: Re Some Books Are More Equal Than Others (Sunday Review, June 24): Claire Needell Hollander notes that while a 13-year-old may be entranced by “The Hunger Games,” he will not gain any “verbal and world knowledge” from the series. But she misses the point: The reader is learning that a book has the power to entrance, something that new readers need to learn and all readers need to be reminded of occasionally.
Being reminded of the joy of reading, particularly after a school year spent reading books that may not have entranced at all, is of huge value. While it is surely good if readers of all ages are also learning life skills or global politics or ecology, no teacher or parent — or indeed, reader — should discount the value of reading for pleasure.
It is a hobby that can be at least as entertaining as television or Angry Birds and yet is being discarded by many who are made to feel that it must always be work.
by Claire Needell Hollander
Some Books Are More Equal Than Others
BECAUSE I am a middle school reading enrichment teacher, parents and colleagues often ask my advice about summer assignments. My automatic reply echoes a hit song from the ’70s, “any love is good lovin’.” I tell them blithely that any reading is good reading, while I think to myself, we’ll take whatever we can get.
The data, however, show that my mantra holds true only for the least experienced readers, who attain knowledge every time they read. This age group is fast acquiring verbal knowledge (an increase in word recognition) and world knowledge (an increase in understanding about the world around them), even when they’re reading comic books or relatively simple narratives. For newly fluent readers, usually age 8 or 9, any reading is indeed good reading.
But for students in middle school and high school, reading selection does matter. Students attain more knowledge of both kinds reading Stephen Crane’s “Red Badge of Courage” than they do reading the “Hunger Games” series. When the protagonist of “Red Badge” reflects on his pride in having “donned blue,” it requires both verbal and world knowledge to comprehend that he is proud of having enlisted as a Union soldier.
While “The Hunger Games” may entrance readers, what does a 13-year-old gain in verbal and world knowledge from the series? A student may encounter a handful of unfamiliar words, while contemplating human dynamics that are cartoonish, with violent revolution serving as the backdrop for teen romance.
Reading literature should be intentional. The problem with much summer reading is that the intention is unclear. Increasingly, students are asked to choose their own summer reading from Web sites like ReadKiddoRead, where the same advanced Real World Fiction category includes “The Catcher in the Rye” and “Flipped,” by Wendelin Van Draanen, which centers on divorce and kissing. Both books can be enjoyed by middle schoolers, but how will the seventh grader determine which one to pick?
The issue is further compounded when summer assignments require students to write about what they read. The problem is that the tasks assigned are at once too open and too circumscribed to be of use. What summer reading needs to be is purposeful. But how do we ensure purposeful independent reading given the low accountability of summer assignments?
Some students will happily read off a recommended-reading list (which should include a companion list of resources to support understanding). They will head to the park with Dickens or Austen under their arms, so long as they can leave the Post-it notes at home. They should be permitted this luxury, to have their teachers treat them as independent learners capable of a first dip into a classic, with no destined-to-be-unread written responses required. Doing this allows the student who chooses tougher books to say, “I didn’t understand half of it.” What better time to allow students to struggle than summer, when no one is calling on them to interpret or explain?
So what should students be asked to do? I propose focusing on accessible nonfiction guaranteed to increase world and verbal knowledge. I recommend the following books. For middle schoolers: “Facing the Lion,” by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton with Herman Viola; “A Long Way Gone,” by Ishmael Beah; and “Iqbal,” by Francesco D’Adamo and Ann Leonori (which is a novel about a real kid). For upper middle school and high school students: “Hiroshima,” by John Hersey; “Night,” by Elie Wiesel; “Fast Food Nation,” by Eric Schlosser; “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” by Michael Pollan; “Girls Like Us,” by Rachel Lloyd; and “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” by Katherine Boo.
These nonfiction books provoke students to desire an expanded world knowledge, to consider the flawed moral decision making of the past and the imperiled morality of the future. They all contain high-level vocabulary, but not so much that a typical student might fail to grasp major points.
As we rounded the corner into the tail end of eighth grade, I set out a number of these books for students to choose from for an informal reading class. One student chose to read “Hiroshima” during her last two weeks of school. After a day or so, I checked in with her. Although the eighth grade covered the dropping of the bomb in social studies, I wanted to be certain she could handle the material. I asked, as a casual conversation opener: “It’s pretty disgusting, isn’t it?” She replied, “I feel more sympathy than disgust for these people, Ms. Hollander.”
As the kids say, my bad.
Another student, a struggling reader, chose “A Long Way Gone,” about a child soldier. When I checked in with him, he opened his laptop, pointing out his home country on a map that showed places in which young men, including his father, had been forced into armed service. He reminded me that I cannot always anticipate what a book will say to a reader.
While reading classic literature with students is my passion, I prefer that students explore literature in the summer as a pleasure and return to school curious about the world around them, not weary from having written about books they could not fully understand, or smug from having earned credit for an essay on a book they could have easily comprehended in fourth grade.
Summer assignments should be about why we need to learn and why we need to talk about what we think. We have to move students away from disgust at the unknown, at the horrors visited on other human beings, and toward sympathy. Students who have immersed themselves in real-world problems become excited by current events and history as well as literature. They can make connections between academic areas that are ordinarily divided. They will understand Dickens better for having read “Iqbal,” which tells the story of a boy who is sold into slavery at a carpet factory.
Reading serious nonfiction in the summer is an immersion in the world of necessary ideas. So let’s try that instead of the late August nagging and the relentless complaints from parents about their child’s stubborn refusal to enjoy, say, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” To those parents who wish ardently to re-experience their first literary love, I say, reread it yourself. Perhaps you will recall that the real horrors in that novel happen offstage, to characters who remain peripheral to the narrative. Perhaps your children need to confront some hard truths this summer that will make it easier for them to want to learn about the world.
Claire Needell Hollander is an English teacher at a public middle school in Manhattan.
— Claire Needell Hollander & Laura N. Arneson
New York Times
June 27, 2012
December 13, 2012 at 11:04 am
John Young
Common Core–You’re a bore!
Common core,
you’re a bore.
Appendix C,
the writing I abhor.
I’m venting here…
I just printed out an “exemplar” text from the Common Core site. This 8th grade informative/explanatory text does not even have a lead. Really? Are you kidding me? This is a model text. My units are given to me to modify, the exemplars meet the standards, but they are boring. Boring. This formal academic style of writing with so little voice is scaring me tonight.
Tomorrow my students and I will evaluate this writing piece according to the standards and the rubric and discuss what makes it good and discuss where it can improve. I am wondering if my students will notice how boring the writing is and how it does little to engage the reader.
Of course, engaging the reader is no longer a part of my standards. Here are my standards:
W.6.2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.
Introduce a topic; organize ideas, concepts, and information, using strategies such as definition, classification, comparison/contrast, and cause/effect; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., charts, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
Develop the topic with relevant facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples.
Use appropriate transitions to clarify the relationships among ideas and concepts.
Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.
Establish and maintain a formal style.
Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from the information or explanation presented.
Should I even focus on leads/grabbers? Do they even matter any longer?
Here is the student sample texts in case you’re interested:
http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_C.pdf.
There are parts of CC I am enjoying, but there are other parts that have me asking where am I, where will I go, how will I find myself in all of this?
Common Core,
you’re a bore.
I will not become you’re whore.
I will swim until I find the shore.
I will find a way to do more,
than just achieve the score.
http://meanderingmaya.blogspot.com/2012/09/common-core-youre-bore.html
December 13, 2012 at 11:10 am
John Young
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335520/goodbye-liberal-arts-betsy-woodruff#
December 13, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Mike O.
John… I personally would be thrilled if the 70/30 rule were met by adding informational text to non-ELA classes. But it looks like the rule was badly written and badly miscommunicated.
It is proabably asking too much for local school boards and districts to actually READ the requirements. And Diane Ravitch makes the excellent point that publishers are already revising ELA textbooks and anthologies. The ignorant educators will buy them if it has “Common Core Aligned” stamped on the cover.
I agree if boards and schools are going to be so stupid as to misapply the standards by taking fiction out of ELA, then the standards should be revised. Over on the Ravitch blog I suggested a line be added to require at least 70% fiction for ELA classes.
December 13, 2012 at 2:54 pm
John Young
It’s not too much to ask us to read them, it’s just foolish for the policy makers over the boards (in our case Dover and D.C.) to tie evals to test scores, base tests on common core, then not expect teachers to focus like laser on what’s on the test, EVEN if it is at the expense of classic literature, IF that makes the most sense.
The policy folks and the practice folks are in 2 separate rooms and have been for far too long.
December 14, 2012 at 2:35 pm
kavips
From looking at the educational process from both sides, I can say both sides are primarily looking at the student’s welfare as their prime directive… So, which is best for the student?
One side cites comparisons of American students to the students of those countries competing with us in the field of new jobs… . and says we are currently failing our students. They do seem to have data, as well as our personal observations here at home, to back them up….
The other side cites the failures of the new system, saying, look we’re on the front lines and we’re telling you: with this new system knowledge is not getting into our students heads.
In fairness, both sides have a financial stake in their presentations…. One side would like to be adequately reimbursed for their investment outlays they’ve put into the education process.
The other side, likewise, wishes to continue to be reimbursed for the investment they’ve made into their careers, including their time, as well as their personal resources they put in out of love of what they do….
The obvious answer is to join these two forces together into one fight, instead of pitting them each against the other….
Stop penalizing those who are doing the teaching. Reward them more. Then use the tools corporations are providing, to provide a return on their investment as well..
It will cost more money. We will have to raise taxes on the wealthy. So, bottom line: We must ask ourselves why we are punishing every American child just to keep taxes low on our wealthy? This is one historians will question through the ages……
We need more money. The rich have too much. Tax it and put all of it into our schools.
The rich don’t need any more money. Our schools desparately do…………
July 7, 2014 at 12:36 am
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