Episode 34: What are the Common Core State Standards all about?

Are you doing these critical things to help your child succeed academically? Take the quiz now to find out the important actions you can take to enhance your child's education. Go to my website, liberationthrougheducation.com quiz and take the quiz today. Foreign welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with with school administrators and educators, as well as the micro discriminations that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. On today's episode, I'll be discussing what Common Core State Standards are from a high level, who created them, and how they address the achievement gap for children of color. No doubt you've probably heard of the Common Core Standards, but do you know what's actually involved in the standards? Do these standards apply to all children? Let's look behind the curtain for what these Common Core Standards really mean and uncover any points of contention. Let's begin. The Common Core State Standards are a set of academic standards for math and language arts that outline what public school students are expected to learn by the end of each year from kindergarten through 12th grade. The initial thought behind why the standards were created was to promote equity among public K12 students. The standards were developed in 2009 and released in 2010. They were mandated that all students would take standardized end of year tests and be held to the same internationally benchmarked standards. The intention was to institute a system that would bring all schools up to the same level and allow for a comparison of student performance in various regions. It was hoped that the standards would help all students with college and career readiness in the United States. The standards were adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia in 2010. However, by 2015, several states had reversed their adoption of the standards and nearly half of the states backed out of their initial promises to use the tests that that were devised to measure the mastery of the standards. Here's an example of the English language arts, literary and literacy expectations. By the end of the second grade, students should be able to explain how images in an informational text contribute to its meaning. By the end of the sixth grade Students should be able to build a coherent analysis of the text, including citing evidence to back up their arguments. The standards expect kindergarteners to be able to count to 100 by ones and by tens, one of the items cited in the 93 page math standards. By the fifth grade, students should understand the concept of volume and be able to relate it to multiplication and addition operations, as well as exhibit the ability to solve real world problems in involving volume. At the high school level, the Standards expect students to be able to construct an informal argument or a proof, as they used to call them when I was in high school, for the formulas for the circumference of the circle, area of the circle, volume of a cylinder, a pyramid, and a cone. The biggest emphasis in the math standards is a mastery in applied math skills in and an understanding of math concepts. Vocabulary is specifically emphasized and is addressed in three of the six English language arts standards for grades K5 for kindergartners. The standards indicate that students not only need to recognize words and know word meanings and definitions, but they are also expected to use words accurately to demonstrate their understanding of words and to be able to analyze words. Additionally, kindergarten students are expected to use words and phrases acquired through conversation, reading or from being read to the Common Core State Standards were actually organized by governors and chief state school officers at a 2009 summit in Chicago. They enlisted the help of university professors, leaders of education advocacy groups, and experts from testing companies to write the standards. It was only until they received pressure from the teachers unions that they added K12 teachers. The main reason that standards were developed in the first place was because of disparities of standards that were written by state level educational bodies which varied from state to state. In other words, some states set much higher proficiency goals than others. Even after the implementation of the federal no Child Left behind act, which was signed into law in 2001. The idea was to mainly put all standards on the same level playing field and to raise the bar for all students and by which all students could be measured. At the core of the Common Core State Standards are the anchor standards, the College and Career Readiness, or ccr, which are the backbone of the Common Core State Standards. The CCR standards describe the literacy skills all students need in order to graduate. The Common Core State Standards do not require particular curriculum, nor do the standards provide scripted lessons or tell teachers a specific text to use. The standards are not considered a federal initiative or a national curriculum. They just provide a framework and learning goals for what students need to know at the end of each academic year. Now let's uncover a bit more about who these quote unquote governors and Chief State School officers are. The Council of the Chief State School Officers and the National Governors association or NGA are not government entities. Although most of their members are elected or appointed state government officials, these are private non governmental bodies which are in essence education trade organizations. The National Governors association really isn't a group of sitting governors, although it may include some ex governors and current or former gubernatorial staff members. Both the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors association are private entities that are not subject to the Freedom of Information request because their deliberations are usually held in in private. The Common Core State Standards are copyrighted by the National Governors association and the Council of Chief State School Officers because many of the nominal members, leaders and staff of both of these organizations have ties to the government and professional politicians. Having the federal government involved in education means more work for them in Washington, D.C. including debating, lobbying, researching and writing talking points for designated government officials. The vast majority of the money that supports the Council of Chief State School Officers comes from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation grants which helped to support the common core. Between 2003 and 2017, the Gates foundation provided over $100 million to the council of Chief State School Officers organization. Have you had a chance to check out my interactive expert on my website? There are some great conversations and questions going on there. You can check it out at forward/forward/liberation through education.com forward/askmenything Again, check out the questions and conversations happening there at HTTPs://forward/liberation through education.com forward/ask me anything this looks like a prime example of the tail wagging the dog. As for the National Governors association, the publications that they provided revealed more of a marketing spin and not scientifically based evidence, especially regarding the use of tests to support Common Core. In fact, their publications reveal hard sales for the Common Core Aligned Consortium Tests from the part Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers are PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. The PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium tests were described as better aligned to more rigorous and relevant Common Core State standards, more useful to educators. All of this marketing and advertising was presented even before they had created the test. The efficacy of the Common Core is still being debated and researched, so the initial marketing for the testing component seems to have been wishful thinking. The problem with the so called high quality tests is that they are more expensive, take much longer to administer, and unfairly disadvantaged already disadvantaged children because of the lower likelihood of familiarity with the complex test formats and computer based assessment tools. The involvement of the federal government caused opposition to the Common Core, and to a much lesser degree, the content of the standards themselves caused opposition. Some educators and activists objected to the English language arts standards focus on nonfiction reading, for example. Other early childhood educators argued that first and second graders were expected to tackle skills that they weren't developmentally ready for. Additionally, some math teachers contended that standards were particularly weak in preparing students for college majors in math and science. To no surprise, the bulk of the text of the Common Core was grounded in politics. Conservative activists and lawmakers were offended by the idea that all states would be expected to share one set of standards, and they saw it as an encroachment on the American tradition of states rights. Testing was a major component of the Common Core State standards. Those that opposed testing, including teachers, parents, students, and policymakers, argued that the tests, which ranged from seven to nine and a half hours, were much longer than the ones that the states have been using and that this extended test taking time in impacted instructional time. Many activists saw corporations playing too large of a role in the K12 policy regarding testing with many of the tests developed by big name companies such as Pearson. This prompted the opt out movement with tens of thousands of students boycotting the first administration of the testing in the spring of 2015. The truth is many school districts were slow to implement the standards because of a lack of money and good instructional resources. Although anecdotal reports indicate that many teachers were using the standards to deepen their instruction, in the end the United States did not end up with a higher shared standard across states or a standardized testing and scoring system that compared student performance from state to state. State States and districts still pretty much design their own tests and implement their own versions of curricula. Congress effectively barred federal government from getting involved in states adoption of standards in 2015. The standards gave teachers an end goal, but they didn't provide a roadmap for how to get there. So curriculum choices and instructional strategies were left up to individual schools and teachers. Decisions about materials and methods could lead to big variances in the quality of instruction that a student receives. Even using the same state standards and district level standards. There seems to be no quality control over instructional materials that states use as a part of their standards implementation. A gap in the standards policy was that it didn't focus on what teachers were doing during the journey of getting students prepared with the proper skills that they should have. There was no provision for the states to develop in a meaningful capacity to improve instruction. There are numerous research articles that show that students are routinely given assignments that don't meet grade level standards and that students of color, students from low income families, students with disabilities, and English learners are more likely to experience being given below grade level assignments than their peers. Districts that implemented high quality curriculum with particular attention to coherence and intentionality around the Common Core seem to be having an impact. Unfortunately, the degree of coherence is more of an exception and not the norm. Research from Brown University indicated that that the early phases of the Common Core State Standards gave a boost to well off students but didn't really provide significant help to disadvantaged students. Scores on national tests in the study well off students were those who had sufficient resources to succeed. A separate study from earlier in 2021 focused on the Chicago Public Schools and found that great improvements were made for previously low achieving students when their teachers received extensive professional development for the math standards. Studies have found that the relationship between Common Core implementation and student outcomes is mixed at best. Specifically, it's unknown whether the Common Core contributed to the closure of achievement gaps. There are four pathways through which the Common Core could influence student outcomes. 1 instructional changes aligned to the content standards, 2 changes to curricula, 3 heightened expectations for students and 4 the implementation of other standards based reforms. The instructional changes aligned to the Common Core content standards have the greatest potential to influence student outcomes. Raising expectations is another component that can highly influence student outcomes, especially for vulnerable students. Students typically align their performance with their expected performance. The Common Core Standards had a large positive effect on black economically advantaged students across grades and subjects. Academically vulnerable students whose families equipped them with the benefit of having high socioeconomic standard and availability of resources also benefited when the Common Core raised expectations. The students from economically disadvantaged families, however, who also faced other barriers to academic success, did not fare well on the Common Core State Standards. The mere act of raising state expectations without addressing the structural issues burdening economically disadvantaged students will at best maintain the status quo. Higher expectations provide the greatest benefit to students when those students also have the resources needed to succeed. The effects of school interventions are typically more noticeable in math than in reading. Factors like home environment, other coursework, and extracurricular activities seem to have the greater influence on reading relative to math outcomes. As far as Common Core Standards are concerned, the bottom line is that the Common Core does not work equally well for all students across all schooling contexts. As one specific example of state pushing back on the state standards, the Texas State Board of Education voted in September of 2022 to delay the revision process of the state's K12 social studies standards until 2025. Because of the conservative pressure against drafts that were intended to make history instruction more inclusive, the last major overhaul of social studies standards was completed over a decade ago and then recently streamlined in 2018. The issue with whether and how to make social studies more culturally relevant isn't new, however. Over the last two years, the debates have led to both legislative and public interference in various state education agencies procedures, especially in states like Louisiana, South Dakota and Virginia, where recent efforts to update what's covered in the history class involved delays and do overs. The proposed standards covered foundational knowledge building in Texas, US and world history in K2, world history in grades 35 and Texas and US history in grades 6 8. According to some researchers and educators, what happened in Texas basically stemmed from a broader Republican led effort across the country to pass legislation that limits how topics like racism, gender identity are discussed in schools. Here are this episode's takeaways. The Common Core State Standards are a set of academic standards for math and language arts that outline what public school students are expected to learn by the end of each year from kindergarten through 12th grade. The initial thought behind why standards were created was to promote equity among public K12 students. The standards were developed in 2009 and released in 2010. They mandated that all students would take standardized end of year test and be held to the same internationally benchmark standards. The intention was to institute a system that would bring all schools up to the same level and allow for a comparison of student performance in various regions. It was hoped that the standards would help all students with college and career readiness. The standards were adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia in 2010. However, by 2015, several states had reversed their adoption of the standards and nearly half of the states backed out of their initial promises to use the tests that were devised to measure the mastery of the standards. I discussed the interconnectedness of politics and education in episode 30 of my podcast. I encourage you to check out that episode, if you haven't done so already, to understand the history of federal government involvement in education. The Common Core State Standards are no exception to government involvement in education. In fact, as I addressed earlier in the podcast regarding the co founders of the Common Core State Standards, government staffers and influencers were paid to convince the American public that Common Core was wonderful, even though many remain unconvinced. All of the time, money and effort have been produced at best and we're at a stalemate. This happened because states continue to leave Common Core State Standards to either develop standards under a different name, alter the standards, or even replace the standards. The Common Core Standards had a large positive effect on black economically advantaged students across grades and subjects. Academically vulnerable students whose families equipped them with the benefit of having high socioeconomic status and availability of resources also benefited from Common Core race expectations. The students from economically disadvantaged families, however, who also faced other barriers to academic success, did not fare well on the Common Core State Standards. The mere act of raising state expectations without addressing the structural issues burdening economically disadvantaged students will at best maintain the status quo. Higher expectations provide the greatest benefit to students when those students also have the resources needed to succeed. Although proponents of the Common Core State Standards argued that they would produce a common set of states standards across the country and student performance across the states could be validly compared, that goal is no longer attainable once the states began to review and change the standards, the frameworks, the blueprints, and even test items to match their own preferences. The truth of the matter is that the goal was never possible as long as the states retained any power to make changes anywhere along the test development curriculum of Standards Framework Blueprint tests. The Common Core State Standards were more about political posturing and less about pedagogy. After more than a decade after the release of the Common Core Standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics, there is no convincing evidence that exists that the standards had any significant positive impact on student achievement. The standards also appear to have had no significant impact on achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, as well as no discernible impact on the distribution of achievement. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this. Also, I'd love to hear from you. So please leave me a rating, a review, or a comment and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you would recommend my podcast to a friend directly on Twitter and to mention my show in your tweet. Additionally, connect with me on Instagram and Facebook Facebook with the handle kimjfields. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have a burning question about a particular issue going on in your child's schooling experience, or a specific topic that you'd like me to explore and discuss, shoot me a quick email@kimiberationthrougheducation.com to let me know what your question is. Anyone whose question is selected to be discussed on one podcast episode will receive a $25Amazon gift card. Be sure to stay tuned. On the next episode of my podcast, I'll be discussing equity and diversity in education until until next time. Aim to learn something new every day. Love my show. Consider being a regular subscriber. You can subscribe for as little as $3 per month. Just go to forward/forward/tinyurl.com podcast support there's no contractual obligation. You can cancel at any time. If you choose to subscribe, I'll give you a special shout out thanking you in an upcoming episode. Remember, that's HTTPs://forward/tinyurl.com forward/podcast support to subscribe.