What we talk about when we talk about the Common Core

Several publications have recently picked up on the controversy over the way in which the Common Core standards prescribe 50% “informational text” for assigned reading in grades K-5 and 70% thereafter.  We have written about this silly and damaging quota ever since we heard about it last year: here, here and here.

Now the critique has gone main stream; in recent days, it has been written up in Time magazine, the Washington Post, and Salon.

First, this quota was weakly justified by its supporters that it reflects the distribution of questions on the national NAEP exams (which turns out not to be true.)  Now, Gene Wilhoit, Executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers and a supporter of the standards, claims that that the demand for more “Informational text” was made by “CEOs and University professors”. I doubt the accuracy of this statement too.

David Coleman, the main author of the Common Core, fiercely defends this directive by pointing out that the 70% rule is across subjects, and cites a footnote on page 5 of the 66-page standards in order to back this up. In other words, non-fiction or “informational” text could also be assigned in history, science, and math as well as English classes to make up the 70% quota.

As an example, he proposes that “math students could read Euclid’s “Elements” from 300 B.C.” I haven’t read much Euclid lately, but even if appropriate, this text would likely be very dense.  Only one or at most two pages of geometry can be absorbed per night, along with proofs, problem sets, etc. 

Coleman’s comments lead me to suspect that he and other supporters of the Common Core have not thought their prescription out carefully. Traditionally, in high school English classes, two novels, at least one play and several poems are regularly assigned; that works out to 700 pages of text or more. In order to achieve the 70% ratio without sacrificing huge chunks of literature that would mean that more than 1500 pages of non-fiction would have to be parceled out across all subjects.

And what about K-5 grades? Clearly, the 50% quota in these grades means that half of all assigned reading must be non-fiction in every classroom.  Starting in about third grade, for their independent reading, my son and his friends used to read at least four novels per year, each of them at least 350 pages. They would then have to be assigned 2000 pages of non-fiction in homework to “balance” this out – or else sacrifice the novels which absorbed them and drew them away from video games for at least 40 minutes a night.

David Coleman, who never taught a day in his life, yet was given the power to make these irrational and arbitrary prescriptions for the nation’s schoolchildren.  Who appointed him Czar: Bill Gates?

Now, Coleman says all this discussion of these quotas are a distraction and we haven’t yet got to debating the really difficult aspects of the Common Core, and he may be right.  For example, the Common Core exams are likely to be even longer than the endless tests that our children are already subjected to, and probably two to three times more expensive.  He correctly notes that parents and teachers have lost confidence in standardized testing, but then suggests that these “longer but more thoughtful” exams will “redeem assessment in the hearts and minds of teachers and parents.” Want to bet?  One wonders if he’s ever spoken to any of the parents who have risen up in anger about the amount of time that is already absorbed by testing in our schools.

And what is all this for?  What is the evidence that more informational text, more rigorous standards or more “thoughtful tests” help kids learn? In a recent column  in Ed Week, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute compares the Common Core to the “Dr. Pendergast's miracle cure for everything that ails you”.  

He proposes that the real underlying purpose of the Common Core is to persuade parents in suburban school systems that after their children flunk these new exams, that their schools must be failing too: “Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace 'reform.' … Common Core advocates now evince an eerie confidence that they can scare these voters into embracing the "reform" agenda.” 

It is unlikely, Hess opines, that this will newfangled Shock Doctrine will work to persuade suburban parents to fall in line with the radical reform agenda of test-based teacher evaluations, free market competition, more charters, vouchers and the like.  Yet privatizing our urban school systems is not enough for the corporate reformers; they want to expand their grasp into middle class communities as well. Shall we talk about this, now, David Coleman?