Claims (and Evidence) about the Common Core

This morning, while laying in bed watching the snow come down, really wishing I could just sleep in, I got a text from a teacher friend of mine. It said, "Take time to read," and included an image entitled "The 8 Most Important Things You Need to Know About Your Child's Teacher and Common Core."

First, let me say that I'm sure this friend is a good teacher, though I've never seen her in action. (We went to college together.) Let me also add that I think there are legitimate concerns with the Common Core, student learning standards in English language and mathematics that have been adopted by most states. (I would encourage you to read what Diane Ravitch has to say on the subject, though I would disagree with many of her assertions as well.) Yet I also think there is a great deal of disinformation being given to parents and teachers, too. In my previous work, I learned a lot about the Common Core and even had to occasionally present on the topic.

Since part of the Common Core is evaluating claims with evidence, I thought I'd take a few minutes to address each of these "eight important things." I'm no expert, but I may have a little bit of insight.

1. "Your child's teacher did not create the Common Core standards, politicians did." Well, this is kind of true, depending on what exactly you mean by the word "create." The Common Core was created by a joint initiative of the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers -- "politicians." Used this way, you may also say that politicians "create" public schools, road systems, and the space program. But the standards themselves were written (i.e., "created") by teachers of English and math. I personally believe that higher education was over-represented in this process, but it is a mistake to believe that Congress may have debated whether i would still go before e, except after c.

2. "Common Core aligned instructional materials (books) are not provided to your child's teacher. Teachers are creating their own curriculum. Daily." This is also kind of true. Most textbook companies have struggled to keep up with the Common Core and states have been wary of adopting materials that claim to be aligned and are not. But my main response to this complaint is, "So what?" As a teacher of music, I actually never had a book that was aligned enough to my standards to simply teach from the book. I taught multiple subjects from year to year, including band, chorus, music appreciation, AP music theory, piano, and guitar and I wrote my own curriculum for every single one of these. You want to know a secret? This is what all good teachers do. Because teachers who just open up the book, read from it, and then assign the questions at the end are not really effective. I would also note that #1 above complained of lack of teacher input and #2 complains that teachers are given more autonomy.

3. "Teachers are being pulled out of their classrooms to learn about the common core [sic]. Teacher absences directly affect student performance. Negatively." This may be true in some areas, but it has nothing to do with the Common Core. If school districts reduce instructional time for teacher professional development, that is a local decision. The alternatives are to schedule professional development during non-instructional time (which is what most school districts in the nation do, contrary to this claim), not offer professional development when new standards or pedagogy are introduced in the classroom, or never do anything new.

4. "Math is new again. In order for your child's teacher to say your child as [sic] a successful math student, your child must explain - in writing - their [sic] thinking. Even if your child has a communication disorder like Autism [sic]." This one is just wrong. Math is not new, though the Common Core does expand approaches to the teaching of math. This is a good thing and allows more students, including those with learning disorders like autism, to succeed. Sometimes they may be asked to communicate their understanding in writing, sometimes they may do it verbally. I fail to understand why this is a bad thing. When a student has the opportunity to explain his or her process, the teacher is better able to understand student thinking.

5. "Your child is supposed to 'dig deep' into the standards, even though the foundation has yet to be laid." Firstly, the child is never meant to dig into the standards themselves; that is the work of the teacher. Secondly, the standards certainly do not ask teachers to dig deeply into their subject without foundational teaching. Actually, the standards are not prescriptive as to pedagogy at all. This one is just nonsense.

6. "Your child will be tested on the new standards before the teachers are trained, before instructional materials have been purchased (if they're ever purchased), and before adequate technology is available to facilitate test administration." Wait, I thought you just complained that teachers were being trained in the new standards (see #3). The two assessments that are being used for the Common Core, from the Smarter Balance Consortium and PARC, have not yet been administered, though the Common Core was released in 2010. That means that there will have been five years from release of the standards till the administration of the first assessment. There may be bumps along the way, including technology issues. This is just how change works, in any area. The alternative is to never change.

7. "Your child's teacher is becoming an alcoholic." Let me buy you a drink.

8. "Your child's teacher is looking for another job." There are numerous problems in public education right now, including an undue emphasis on standardized high-stakes assessment, the narrowing of the curriculum in some districts, the continued politicization of our schools, the charter school movement and the inequitable comparisons made between schools, school voucher systems that favor private schools, teacher quality due to filling positions with untrained "professionals," and much, much more. Anyone leaving the field now may be perfectly justified in doing so. But the Common Core is not one of these problems.

To hear what one talented teacher has to say about the Common Core, read here.

Form, Function, and Frank, Part 2

Today was frustrating.  I didn't exactly have a "bad day."  It was just the sort of day as an educator that makes you wonder how many people truly understand schools and learning.  In fairness to the day, I think I may have a sinus infection, which meant I woke up at 3:30 and was at work at 7:00.  I left sometime after 5:30.  So maybe the day isn't wholly to blame.  Nevertheless I find myself at my computer with an old fashioned chilling on the desk and Beethoven sonatas playing on iTunes, trying not to be pissed off at a large number of people.

My bad day really started on Wednesday.  I discovered on Wednesday night that I would be "presenting" at a school this coming Monday afternoon for a few hours.  Lest anyone think that I'm just grumbling because I'm being asked to work on what was to be a holiday (President's Day for state employees), I really don't mind going to schools to talk to teachers.  Apart from teaching music to students, it's my favorite thing to do.  One would expect more advance notice than these few days, however.  (Actually, our office was asked to put the date on our calendar weeks ago, but having heard nothing more, most of us believed our services were no longer required.)  

No further instructions were given.  We are to present three hours of "professional development" to teachers from three schools.  Our boss is to present the first hour or so, with two hours set aside for content specialists.  The "event" is being "coordinated" (if one can call it that) by something called a "School Intervention Specialist."  I suppose this individual is charged with providing help for struggling schools.  If there were any individual who was aware of what sorts of development were needed by the professionals in these schools, it should be this person.  Yet we were given carte blanche.  I might be presenting on executing the perfect arabesque or re-stringing horns, it would be all the same, I suppose.  As it happens, I'm presenting on student engagement through creativity, and authentic assessment through performance, especially the use of performance descriptors.

You get that a lot if you are an education bureaucrat.  You may get it more if you are one working in the arts.  I don't know.  "Come present something.  Anything.  We've got a few hours to fill and we have to make these teachers do something.  You do arts?  Great!  We never plan anything for them."  It's a babysitting gig.

Only it's not.  At least to me it's not.

The assignment feels like the first general music class I taught.  I was charged with watching 20-odd 7th graders and no one else cared what they learned from me.  My administrators were unfamiliar with my standards and ignorant of any music curriculum.  Brahms or The Beatles, dulcimers or digeridoos, I could have done anything I wanted.  I could have shown the Stomp! video each and every day and no one would have cared, as long as students weren't sent to the office and parents didn't call.  The message was clear: my subject did not matter, my professional skills did not matter, and as far as my class was concerned, my students didn't matter.

The thing was, I cared.  I cared a lot.  One of the first evaluations I received said, "Mr. Deskins is an excellent teacher.  His biggest fault is that he expects others to care about music class as much as he does."  Effin' right, that.  The rest of you have your #2 pencils and your scantron tests, your  team meetings and your curriculum maps and all the rest.  My students and I have the language of angels, glimmering forms that make time audible and make our souls quiver.  We have the giants of this Earth.  We have Bach and Mozart and Bird and Monk.  We have Moonlight Sonata and "Moonlight in Vermont."  We have rock and roll.  The rest of you can go screw.  What happens in this room matters.  

So here I am again.  "Come present.  We have some teachers who need watching for a few hours."  I'm going, but I'm not just watching them.  I'm going to try to engage them, to excite them again about the joys of teaching and the joys of the arts.  I'm going to try to help them see their students for who they are and see themselves for the rock stars I know they can be.  What we do will matter.

I had another large project that took the day yesterday, so I began my task today.  I spent a large part of my morning on the what.  I'd visited one of the schools in attendance one time for about an hour.  Based on that one visit, what could I bring to them that might aid their development as teachers?  I had a few ideas, but I didn't trust myself.  I wandered down the hall for inspiration.

I wandered into the office of my math colleague, Lou Maynus.  Lou is the math teacher I wish I'd had but never did.  I casually asked her what she was presenting on Monday.  Instead of a casual answer, Lou began talking of math practices.  She was excited.  Math matters to Lou.  It's hard to be around her and not think that math matters, too.  And not because of some damned test in the spring.  One senses that evangelical zeal as Lou begins expounding on algebra.  It's exciting to hear.

As we began to talk, Lou remembered that the aforementioned "intervention specialist" had not yet told us how many teachers we would each have in our sessions.  As I left Lou said she would give this person a call.

A few minutes later, Lou was in my office.  "You better come down and listen to this."

We walked to her cubicle.  She had the lady on the phone.

"I have Jack Deskins, the arts coordinator, here with me.  Tell him how many teachers will be in his session."

"Jack, we'll have 50 teachers there."

Now, I've presented to much larger groups than that, but I was mildly confused.  I understood that three schools would be in attendance and I knew that none had a dance teacher and only one had a theatre teacher.

"You have 50 arts teachers?!"

"Well . . . "

I know this pause.

"What are you calling 'arts teachers'?"

Breathe.

"Well, Ms. X, I'm calling arts teachers 'arts teachers': dance, theatre, visual art, and music."

"Oh.  See, I was including all of the related arts."

Now, for those of you not familiar with the double speak that is common in education, an explanation is in order.  The term "related arts" refers to courses that are not (in any special sense at least) "related," nor are many of them "arts."  In addition to actual arts courses, "related arts" can refer to any number of disciplines.  The interventionist went on to explain just which she meant.

"I was including foreign language, business, consumer science, health, physical education, drivers ed, and all of those teachers."

The message was becoming clearer.  None of these content areas matter.  None of these teachers matter.  Professional development doesn't matter.  

This is the message that was becoming clear to me from this "intervention specialist," an individual charged with transforming struggling schools.

"See, I was thinking of it like a principal," she went on to explain.  "I need some place for these teachers to go."

I explained to Ms. X that I would be unable to help her, that my area was the arts and that I was unfamiliar with the other content areas.  I told her that I would be happy to present to non-arts teachers if she knew of particular needs they had and I had some expertise in those topics, but of course, she didn't know.  I told her that my presentation, such as it was at this point, was geared toward those in the arts, which are special disciplines in themselves.

I know some of you will grin at my ire.  So be it.  Screw you.  This shit matters.

Why can't we change schools?  Because we go through motions.  We have a structure called "professional development" and we check our boxes and say that it has happened.  We have a template called "standards" and we agree that they are important and check another box.  We have a form called "assessment" or "faculty senate" or "intervention" or whatever, and we never get to the essence of the thing itself.  

We can't change schools because we believe that learning is just something that happens.  We don't cultivate a culture where real learning, the kind that makes students care about polynomials and gerunds, is fostered.  We don't move with intentionality through the process.  Our understanding of education is superficial because we view it as an ends to something else: a grade, a test score, a job.

We can't change schools because we have confused image and essence.  We have mistaken a few discreet indicators of student achievement for the achievement itself.  We've linked massive amounts of money and regulation to the indicators.  We have exchanged the glory of learning for an inglorious corruptible image.

In the arts you will occasionally hear the mantra, "Form follows function."  Popularized by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the proverb reminds artists that we must not elevate our structures, our templates, above the essence of the art.  For the architect it is a reminder that how ever glorious the façade, the house is pointless where one cannot sleep.  To the musician it is a warning that no matter how exact the sonata-allegro form (or the rondo or the twelve-bar blues), all is lost if audible time does not touch the heart.  Those who forget these lessons are called "mere formalists" and their work is branded "inorganic."  Theory be damned, it all comes to that Platonic question: what is the essence of the thing itself?

In education we have elevated form for such a long while that we have forgotten function.  What is the function of education, after all?  It is, as Robert Hutchins said, to "unsettle [students'] minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects."  It is to cause students to engage the world around them through language and figures and law and custom and observation and pitch and rhythm and motion and color.  It is to prepare them for lives of productivity, certainly, but not only as the world judges productivity.  It is to make them question and reason and care.

Students be warned, though: caring has a price.  Sometimes it leads to anger.  And sometimes it causes frustrating days.

A Blog Post about Math (Please Continue Reading)

I'm relatively new to the world of Twitter. For the last several years, it just seemed to me that Twitter was Facebook for people with ADD who had shorter thoughts. I changed my mind this summer at the Teacher Leadership Institute when I learned that several of our attendees were tweeting during sessions about the content. In our infinite 20th century wisdom, members of my office scolded them and forbade these grown-ass adults from using social media on their computers during sessions.

That was really all it took to make me decide that I needed a Twitter account and that I would begin tweeting immediately. It's official: I'm a twit.

I'm using Twitter for professional reasons: all my posts are related to the arts, education, creativity, etc. My followers and my followed are made up less of my friends and more of people who have an interest in those topics. One of my favorites has been @brainpicker, Maria Popova. Her tweets are interesting, but the Brainpickings blog is even better. It's full of thoughts on the arts, culture, design, education, creativity - all those things that capture my imagination. (By the way, she tweets like she's in the throws of mania, so if you follow her, plan on having your feed filled. It's good stuff, but sometimes it's hard to keep up with it all.)

One of her tweet's this morning read: "I find it appalling that this school says artists don't need math http://j.mp/nBJfVz Creativity is in cross-pollination http://j.mp/q04y9W." (Go ahead and take a look at that first article.) It has me thinking this morning about math.

I was a singularly terrible math student. Well, not singularly. Actually, I've discovered that my experience mirrors that of many math students. During my matriculation at Daniels Elementary School, I was a pretty decent student. I liked school. I liked my teachers. Well, most of them. I had my favorite subjects (music, language, social studies) but I tried hard in all of them. In 6th grade I began struggling, just a bit, with math. Nothing too terrible mind you.

When I entered junior high school, my mother wanted my twin sister and me to be advanced in our math studies. We had both been in the "gifted program" (a topic for another post) and it was assumed that this would be of great benefit to us in our school careers. So, we did double assignments for 7th and 8th grade math that year. Now, 7th grade was an academic ebb for me. I was being subjected to the whims of puberty and my home life had gotten a little weird. School waned in importance. I still liked some subjects, but others seemed to have less and less value. Math was one of these. I struggled to finish the assignments, but made it through.

When I entered the 8th grade, I was enrolled in Algebra. Here I will confess that I have hated math ever since. I haven't just hated it though, I have been mystified by it. I have felt stupid in every single math class I have had since 8th grade, and struggled to pass them all. My test grades were horrible. I began skipping the homework, too. It was easier to have low math grades because I didn't do the homework, than to do it and let everyone know that I was really lost. I passed Algebra with a C. Geometry was a little better: B. Algebra II: C. Trigonometery: C- (and that was a gift).

So what went wrong?

Well, first off, I had some pretty terrible math teachers. I think I have enough distance now and know enough about teaching to say that with some objectivity. We "did problems" in math class. That was the single teaching strategy employed by my teachers. They "got" math and were perplexed by those who didn't. More - they didn't have time for those of us who didn't. My counterpart in math at the West Virginia Department of Education, Lou Maynus, tells us that everyone can learn math. She told me the other day that she could teach calculus to anyone in our building. I believe her. She uses a variety of strategies, including the application of the most abstract concepts to real-world problems that everyone faces. And she has a lot of empathy, too.

Another thing I realize is that my teachers (and parents) viewed intelligence as a single discreet thing. Everything we know about the brain indicates this isn't the case. (Keep in mind, this was before the work of Howard Gardner became wildly popular.) I'm a reasonably intelligent person in music, art, theatre, language, the social sciences. I'm probably average in the hard sciences and kinesthetic intelligence (my poor performance in sports was due more to lack of strength and speed, not an innate clumsiness). But I'm almost certainly below average intelligence in math.

The assumption that "smart" is one thing has caused many such academic casualties. We know better now, but we still often assume that a student who is brilliant in math should be equally bright in language, or that a student who is an excellent chemist should be able to play guitar. This may be the case, or it may not. Human intelligence is incredibly diverse.

The negative consequences of this thinking are profound. In my case, I ended up narrowing my own curriculum by choice. I elected to take as few math classes as necessary throughout my academic career, as well as science classes that involved a lot of math. I also began evaluating the importance of my coursework based upon whether I thought it would be necessary in my career as a musician.

Now, don't get me wrong here. Students should be free to pursue those interests for which they have talents. Forcing all students to master an identical curriculum is one of the practices that has led us down the path we find ourselves as a nation. I'm glad I was able to take the number of music classes I did in high school and I think every student musician should be free to do so. What I'm suggesting is something else.

What I'm suggesting is this: all learning is good learning. It's not as if learning too much about calculus is going to prevent someone from learning to play the trumpet. Now, it is true that students have limited time in their academic day. Choices must be made, and these can be difficult choices.

But our students need to learn about as many things as they can and as deeply as they can. They need a deep understanding of words, form, movement, pitch, numbers, feelings, and all the rest. They need to learn about the world in all the ways they experience it.

What we know about creativity also suggests that we need to make sure students have the chance to interact with a wide array of disciplines. Creativity generally happens when seeming disparate ideas interact in new ways. Einstein told others that his understanding of music, a discipline whose essence is time, drove his intuition in the discovery of the theory of relativity. And Steve Jobs has made no secret of the fact that much of the design of the Macintosh computer is the result of a single class he took at Reed College in calligraphy.

We also need to stop thinking about education in such narrow terms. We need to acknowledge that students do not have to learn everything in a school building from a teacher. Learning can happen anywhere. (Lest I be mistaken: I don't mean to suggest that arts programs should happen primarily outside of school. Certainly our students can learn much in the arts through those extended learning opportunities, but they can also learn math and science that way.) Schools and teachers need to be transformed into places that inspire students to become independent thinkers and learners, and then help them acquire the resources they need, whether within the walls of academia, or without.

We also need to truly believe that our education never stops. All of us, especially those of us in education, need to model ourselves on Chaucer's Oxford cleric: "Gladly would he learn and gladly teach." We need to have a love affair in this country, not just with education as a system, but with learning, in all its myriad forms.

This manifests itself in many ways in my life. I find myself spending more time at the piano than I used to, and the result is a different type of understanding of harmony especially. It's not that I didn't play before, but I am more curious than I used to be. I'm also trying to correct another of the major deficiencies in my education: my lack of foreign language. My academic experience with foreign language was limited to a single semester of French in college. I enjoyed it, but it didn't seem important to me. Now I'm actively pursuing this interest - Italian this time, instead of French. And I'm using 21st century resources, including Italian language podcasts, blogs and YouTube videos. I don't have time for a class.

I just might take Lou up on her offer, too, and see what calculus I can learn. The creative possibilities seem endless.