I remember a brown duck. It was the next to the last duck in the line of little quackers that marched in identical form across the wall above the chalkboard. They were identical in form and expression but each was a different color with a word identifying their color in bold letters beneath each one. I stared at that duck. I hated that brown duck. And my enmity was directed at the representative of the anatidae family simply because for the life of me I could not spell the word ‘brown’ correctly.

As a student I struggled in first grade. I sat there amazed at how much everyone else knew. Of course I had two strikes against me — I was the youngest in the class, not turning six until December and I was a boy. These are not excuses, they are facts, they are realities.

In our fervor to adopt the new Common Core Standards we have set ambitious goals. I am on-board with this. I don’t shirk hard work as demonstrated by my catching up with my classmates by the second grade and going on to excel in school. It is also proven by my choosing to become a teacher.

But this isn’t about me.

It is about the impact of our desires that our children all excel in school. When my daughter was accepted in a advanced program, for gifted students we were told she would be bused to another school where a special class of high achieving students were all grouped together. Much to the surprise of the administrator of the program, my wife and I, both career educators said, “No thank you.” Our daughter was attending the public school we had chosen for her, she was in a class where we greatly respected the teacher, we felt there was no reason for her to go anywhere. It was nice to know she had qualified for the class but she would stay where she was.

But this isn’t about my daughter.

What this is about is our children. We all want what is best for our children. We want them to achieve the most they can in life and we want to be proud of them. But in the end we have to be proud of ourselves too. Parents have to be able to look back on their stewardship of a new human and know that what they did was in the best interest and to the best of their abilities as parents.

It isn’t about being right or wrong. It is about choosing the things for your child that they aren’t qualified to choose for themselves. As adults we must decide what we want for our children. That is why education is such a hot button issue with many people. You are trusting another adult to deliver what your child needs to learn.

Most of us vaguely remember what we did in school. But the specifics are less clear, they show up in the skills we have and how we employ those skills in our daily lives. I doubt if there are many parents who do not care about what their children are learning but the I also believe the same is true of most teachers.

Teachers take their job seriously. After thirty plus years in this field I know this. You cannot show up ready to wrangle a classroom full of children and not be focused and serious about what you do. Yes, there are people who fail as teachers but they do not last long.

The same is true of students. There are children who fail as students, at least in the standard sense. In every class there are students who struggle for whatever reason in their attempts to learn what everyone else is already doing. We all have our brown ducks, smiling down at us taunting us that we cannot do something no matter how hard we try. Self-doubt is the greatest ally of failure.

That is why we owe it to our children not to set walls up that they will slam up against. It is not in their best interest to say, ‘you failed, do it again’. The proper response is “I see this is hard for you, let me try another way to help you’. We need to adapt education to the multitude of needs evinced by our modern world. We should not be narrowing education, forcing children to all conform, we should be broadening it, expanding it and opening up the potential that each individual child has so that they can best assume their place in this complex world.

Our new Common Core standards seek to encourage students to think. In approaching the completion of these goals we need to offer a greater variety of teaching tools and methods, not a smaller array. We must empower our teachers and support them. We have to provide strong, developmentally correct, early childhood enrichment for all children. Schools build the future, we need to support them to the best of our abilities, not the most cost effective. The investment will be worth it. Here in Arizona and elsewhere in the United States I believe that adoption of the Common Core is only the beginning of the process of reforming American achievement and making our schools all they can be. We have much still to do.

I am a freak about vocabulary. I will sit motionless at the keyboard waiting for my foggy mind to clear so that the exact word I want to use will occur to me. Sometimes I cheat and use a – a – oh yeah I remember – a thesaurus.

I am also a semi-retired teacher so here is a test: Which of these two words – ensure, insure, would you put in each blank of this sentence?

Before you ________ that for a great deal of money you should first _______ that it is valuable.

Knowing which word is correct greatly effects the meaning of the sentence.

Or is it ‘affects’?

I think we are in a similar situation in education right now. Much effort is being put into insuring that our children are being well educated. But to adequately insure something implies that it is lost or destroyed and it must be replaced, possibly at great expense. And in replacing something there is no guarantee that we will get one as good as the one we had.

There is a prevalent opinion that our whole public education system must be replaced because children keep failing the tests we give them. In an article in AlterNet, Paul Thomas says it is not that simple, in fact it may be much more insidious. 1) He believes that the “No-Excuses” focus merely serves to short change those less privileged that others and gives data driven researchers a ready response that is mis-informed and scapegoat that is undeserving the label.

While I am not necessarily a proponent of a conspiracy theory of educational reform, I do believe that we are incorrectly confusing ‘insure’ and ‘ensure’.

American public education was originally an idea from the New England colonies. It was adapted from this to include the entire nation over a slow process of aggregation. The basic principle was that in a republic, universal education is a right and a necessity that must be maintained in order to have an informed participant population.

Since the sixties we have instituted standardized testing to insure that our education system is working properly. It is like the expiration date on a milk carton. Seeing it has passed and we still drink the milk to see if it has gone bad rather than buying a new carton. The problem is if it is bad you get a nasty mouthful of sour milk. In the case of education it is a much more egregious mistake. To test and find out that a student is not prepared is to mean that our work must be done all over again through remediation. It would be much better to ensure their education.

So how do we do that?

Simply, first we establish rigorous standards that are consistent across the nation. You know kind of like a Common Core. Then we write those standards so they do not simply check for memorization and drill but actually encourage thoughtful response. You know kind of like a Common Core. Next we maintain INDIVIDUAL records on each student, recording what standards they have completed and which ones they are still working on. Not mass produced, group tests that shame and denigrate one class over another but simply portfolios of work that demonstrate proficiency. Periodically we might even go back and check previously learned skills.

Finally, and this might be the hardest one to enact, we judge growth not by years of age but objectives completed. We do not recognize failure, we celebrate success. After all these are our children we are talking about.

Oh, and one more thing, we fully fund this process, not just in materials, but for teachers and support personnel. We recognize excellence in the profession by the effort of the professional to expedite this system, by their study of their craft and by their knowledge of the relevant material. Simply, we stop short-changing our future.

1) http://www.alternet.org/education/no-excuses-and-culture-shame-miseducation-our-nations-children

Hard for non-educators to imagine and even harder for professionals to explain. Let me try anyway.

I sat in my last classroom the other day. My indefatigable aide, Donna, had finished a marathon cleaning and clearing out while I had alternated between puttering around, sorting papers and reminiscing while watching her in mute amazement. I had given her virtual carte blanc, that is, I had told her to use the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule: if she was unsure about whether to save something, don’t ask me because I will vacillate and perseverate over the decision and therefore don’t tell me when she had gotten rid of something, because likely as not I’ve forgotten I even had it and definitely no longer need it. As a result of this dictum there was almost nothing that distinguished my former classroom from any other big empty classroom in the school.

Sitting there facilitated my reflections. It made me think of what Catherine Gerwertz writes about as one serious worry that is looming before many teachers who are supposedly relaxing and recovering from another school year: The Common Core. 1) The Common Core is like a big empty classroom. Gerwertz says:

Now, the (Common Core) standards face what experts say is their biggest challenge yet: faithful translation from expectations on paper to instruction in classrooms.

The problem is concisely restated in the article by Professor William Schmidt:

Most current teachers have read the standards for their grade level, think highly of them, and are willing to teach them, but few understand the profound changes in teaching that they will require . . . .

And my followup statement to Gerwertz and Schmidt, not uttered in the article but never forgotten by any professionals, is that teachers need to be ready to implement these changes by day one of the upcoming year. For many teachers this is a summer of transition. Some have established their teaching rituals over many years of practice and reflection. Now they are wondering if those practiced daily schedules and progressions are viable any more.

They also have clean, unwritten plan books that are like my big empty classroom. What will they write? How are teachers going to fill their days? Will they furnish their plans with exciting activities that integrate lessons into the curriculum using the Common Core as a guide or will their days be predicated upon lessons that focus on teaching to the objectives for the purpose of passing tests?

Are the profound changes mentioned by Dr. Schmidt a series of directives that will narrow the curriculum or are those changes a form of educational liberation that energizes America’s public education again and encourages our students to want to learn. It’s scary, entering the unknown territory that the Common Core represents. Teachers like to know what they are doing before they begin to do it. Believe me when I say the youngest child can sense when as the teacher, you are making it up as you go along and they will respond accordingly. It’s not pretty.

My big empty room is unidentified; without personality, like the school year to come. The upcoming year is going to be an exciting one for many teachers. Whether that excitement will be caused by positive energy, persistent confusion or abject terror remains to be seen.

1) http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/04/25/29cs-overview.h31.html

In a guest blog for EdWeek he points out the all too obvious flaw in my argument about national standards as presented by the Common Core: even more testing!

Yes, I am guilty, I have just endorsed additional testing for children. Santa Claus wears a fake beard, he gives out toys to naughty children and the Tooth Fairy doesn’t build a castle, she throws those teeth away!

No, they don’t. I do believe in Santa Claus but I know that even his gifts often come with bills attached. Still, to anyone who has read all of my previous 50+ posts, first, let me say “Thank you!”; second, let me say “Get a life!”, and finally I will add that you must know from completing that daunting task that I am not in favor of any testing other than the maintenance of checklists to record developmental markers accomplished. I would have gleefully taught these last thirty years without ever giving one single high stakes test had I been allowed to do so!

But Dr. Krashen is correct when he says:

The US Department of Education is developing a massive new testing program, with far more testing than ever before, and they have made no secret about it. (1)

I did not sign on for this. Eat Cuban food? Sure. Invade Cuba? No! In endorsing national objectives that can be employed effectively by educators I am in no way encouraging the subsequent adoption of increased testing, in point of fact in my post I clearly stated:

First and foremost, ESEA must go away. There is no place for the schizophrenic personality disorder that would result from teaching both to the curriculum and the test. (2)

I apologize for being unclear or less than transparent. Rather than increasing testing, I am calling for it to go away in favor of empowering teachers to do what they do best: teach. Co-terminus with adopting national standards for each grade we must also return to the belief that teachers are the experts. They must be allowed to deliver the curriculum and assess as they need to for their records or as they deem appropriate but no one should be telling them how and when to do so.

The greatest argument against high stakes testing is that it puts too much pressure upon our most fragile resource: our children. Yet my own reason for being against the tests is much more selfish — I don’t want to gather data for someone else that does not benefit my own work. When I give a test in April, the results of which will not be released until August when that actual class is three months absent never to return, those results tell me nothing. It’s just someone else’s data.

So, no tests? From my perch in Tucson, I can see the next argument as it approaches now like a massive dark cloud on the southwestern horizon above the Whetstone mountains. “How will we know if we are getting our money’s worth?” “Where is the accountability?” “What about ‘educational rigor’, how is it demonstrated?”

Personally I don’t care, I know how hard my colleagues work, but I understand the problem. How will I offer a compromise? Compromise is important, it is a viable tool, currently out of fashion in our political arena. Ok, you can have your tests, every three grades, but here is my sweet and sour offering: we also must stop social promotion. We have to stop sending children on to the next grade simply because they had a birthday.

What I propose is that children move when they are ready and they are ready when their teachers agree that they are ready. It brings new meaning to the oft maligned term, AYP. Along with establishing core standards to be completed at each level we must recognize that not all children mature at the same rate. Public education needs to change, I agree with this statement but educators should work to change it, not politicians; let them work on how to return to a reasonable dialogue in their workplace — they can fix their own house and let us take care of ours.

Thank you Dr. Krashen, for reading my words and for pointing out the facile nature of my argument. I do apologize but I have to admit I am making this up as a I go along. My articles are not products, they are syntheses and observations; not tenets but more the stuff of wishes, or prayers if you will, for the survival of public education.

1) http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/04/stephen_krashen_testing_and_te.html

2) http://tucsoncitizen.com/tired-tucson-teacher/2012/05/18/the-common-core-standards-and-unfunded-mandates/

For those of you not currently virally endemic to the education profession, the concept of ‘unfunded mandates’ in a nutshell (which might be a good place to put them) are things that teachers are told to do that are not supported by supplemental materials or additional funding, thereby forcing the schools to find their own way to implement the objectives. This is, of course, on top of whatever else they are already doing and paying for.

Needless to reiterate, nonetheless I will, unfunded mandates have further exacerbated the problems of public education. Having watched NCLB and later ESEA become the bane of educators everywhere, how am I now to feel about the Common Core Standards? As simply as possible I have to say, “It’s about time!”

You heard me correctly. I believe nationally established educational standards are not only welcome but possibly the only way to save this foundering ship that is public education.

Currently a child that goes from one state to another, hopefully accompanied by their parents, faces the daunting task of being placed into the new system in operation where they have arrived. There is no guarantee that any of the skills that they have already mastered are still viable exigencies where they are, nor is there any reasonable way to predict what will be expected of them in their new environment; quite simply, curriculum is set, state by state.

With nationally established standards a good portion of the disconnect will be expunged from the process. Clear objectives, sequentially ordered and evaluated will be predetermined by the established nationwide curriculum.

But, you know there is always a ‘but’, this apparent Shangri-La is not without caveat. If educators are going to be held accountable for a nationally established curriculum some things must change. First and foremost, ESEA must go away. There is no place for the schizophrenic personality disorder that would result from teaching both to the curriculum and the test.

Teachers already know this; they have struggled with it for years. It is one of the reasons I like this time of year so much. I no longer have my concentration divided into two brutally warring camps. The test is over now. Unfettered, I can teach to the previously uncovered objectives and highlight those that I know my students will need next year without concern as to how many test questions actually focus on that skill.

A high stakes test does not think; it does not evaluate students on a daily basis; it does not even give teachers data that can be used for the current class of children. For me these tests are useless. A national curriculum however, that is pure gold.