Were Common Core’s ELA Standards written by charlatans? Sure seems so.
To bypass statutes forbidding the federal government to develop national standards, two private organizations—the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)—in coordination with Achieve, Inc., a private organization established by the NGA and business officials in 1996, agreed to develop Common Core’s standards. Expenses for managing the project were defrayed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, another private organization. In the absence of information from all these private organizations, it seems that Achieve, Inc. and the Gates Foundation selected most of the key personnel to write the standards. We do not know why.
The “lead” writers for the grade-level English language arts (ELA) standards, David Coleman and Susan Pimentel, had never taught reading or English in K-12 or at the college level. Neither has a doctorate in language or literature. Neither had ever published serious work on K-12 curriculum and instruction. Neither had produced literary scholarship or research in education. In 2010, they were virtually unknown to the entire field of English and reading educators and higher education faculty in rhetoric, speech, composition, and literary study. The absence of relevant professional and academic credentials in the “chief architects” of Common Core’s ELA standards helps to explain their major flaws, including:
1. Most of Common Core’s college-readiness and grade-level reading standards are content-free skills. For example, one “anchor” standard is: “Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.” The grades 11/12 standard “clarifying” this anchor standard is: “Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.” This so-called standard is really a free-floating skill because it can be applied to “The Three Little Pigs” or to Moby-Dick.
Why does this matter? It matters because skill training in the absence of significant literary/historical content doesn’t prepare kids for college, career, or critical thinking.
2. Common Core’s ELA standards stress writing more than reading at every grade level. Every experienced teacher knows the foundation for good writing is good reading. Students need to spend far more time in and outside of school reading in order to improve reading and writing in every subject. Common Core’s lead writers got it exactly backwards.
3. Common Core’s writing standards are inappropriate at many grade levels. Most elementary children have little understanding of what “claims,” “relevant evidence,” and academic “arguments” are. How did this get by the hundreds of state department of education reviewers?
4. Common Core expects English teachers to spend at least half of their reading instructional time at every grade level on informational texts. Common Core lists 10 reading standards for informational texts and 9 standards for literary texts at every grade level, reducing literary study in the English class, in effect, to less than 50 percent. However, English teachers are not trained, either by Were Common Core’s ELA Standards written by charlatans? Sure seems so. | NewBostonPost: