2. Don’t talk to us about the importance and rigor of the standards.
I teach high school English, and I can tell you that language arts standards, whether the current Common Core Standards or some other set of standards, are neither rigorous nor non-rigorous. Everything depends on what individual teachers actually do with them.
Furthermore, language arts standards simply describe an assumed, conventional set of behaviors that competent readers and writers are expected to display. But though a competent and hardworking student may incidentally do what the standards describe, displaying certain literate behaviors is not the same as seriously and conscientiously engaging texts and writing.
I work very hard to ensure that students do not simply go through the motions of studying literature and writing, even though going through the motions is usually enough to ensure good test scores. I require that they take the texts and assignments seriously and learn something important from them beyond what the standards specify. All of it is standards-based, not because I try to make it so, but because the Common Core language arts standards are so general that just about any assignment can be interpreted and defended in terms of the standards. Two teachers can teach the same standard using different texts, different methods, and with different purposes, giving students radically different experiences.In essence, that means the standard, ostensibly the same in both cases, is internally incoherent, and in that sense non-standard. “Standards-based” is a meaningless criterion for high school language arts lessons.
Thanks for sharing. The reformers who know very little about the minds of children and how to education them are doing great harm right now.
There is nothing wrong with standards, but there is too much wrong with requiring ALL students...special ed or not...to take and pass the same test.
= new reply since forum marked as read