I’ve previously shared my skepticism about national standards but they do appear to be becoming a reality. Today, even though studies have shown California standards to be “California’s (English) standards are clearer, more thorough, and easier to read than the Common Core standards,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports that California might adopt them within weeks.
There have been some useful recent posts on the Common Core standards, including “Why almost nobody is writing about the Common Core” (make a point of reading the comments there, too) and The problem(s) with the Common Core standards.
Will National Standards Improve Education? is a forum at the New York Times website, with responses from people like Alfie Kohn and Bruce Fuller.
Mary Ann Zehr has written about how they relate to ELL’s at Standards Organizers Leave English Proficiency to States.
The Common Core Standards (you can find them here) are pretty useless when it comes to English Language Learners. Certainly, the California standards can be helpful to teachers, and I assume our state will keep them.
It’s hard for me to believe that all this effort and money spent on developing new standards couldn’t have been better used on more concrete areas that will actually affect what happens in the classroom — like providing more resources to schools.
What do you think?
July 21, 2010 at 10:12 am
Great post Larry! At the Boston TESOL conference we had one principal who was very interested in our materials for English learners. She couldn’t stop talking about the standards, though, and warned us that if we didn’t concern ourselves with them that American teachers would not use our materials (because they wouldn’t be allowed). We tried to explain to her that our materials were designed to be used by teachers all over the world, but she insisted we focus on getting them in line with the American standards. We were wondering how ELL’s were supposed to fit in to all of that. Thanks for the links!
July 21, 2010 at 10:18 am
I think the Common Core movement is part of a larger misunderstanding about how public education functions. There seems to be a refusal by people outside education, but in policy, to listen to teachers who disagree with them (and still want to participate in helping craft change). I have hope there are dialogues happening, but I’m not seeing it in the products and policies being pushed out.