Interview with the Hampton Roads Community Foundation: Direct Video Link
On Tuesday, October 25, 2011, David Coleman, founder and CEO of Student Achievement Partners, spoke with Cathy Lewis on her public radio program, HearSay, as a precursor to his address the following day at the “Community Matters” luncheon, hosted by the Hampton Roads Community Foundation and the Economics Club of Hampton Roads. Listen to the interview here.
Coleman’s topic: Common Core State Standards to provide consistent understanding of what all students should learn no matter where they live.
Addressing over 200 attendees from all over the Hampton Roads region, Coleman opened his remarks with the basic tenet that only five U.S. states are not on the common standards adopted in June 2011. While it will take some time to measure results, based on an overwhelming body of research, focused education, such as the standards, do net results in other countries.
“Video games players are always aware of their standings but not so in education. Students need to see their growth. We need to design a tool for this, but those designers aren’t in the education market.”
“Common Core Standards are very important to Hampton Roads, especially with the transient nature of military schoolchildren.”
Virginia has no plan to adopt the standards now but can at any time. While Coleman believes staunchly that each state has a right to make their own decision to adopt the common core standards, they are the result of a state-led effort of a bipartisan group of Governors with two main goals:
- Improve student readiness for college and careers within the nation and internationally. Too many U.S. students graduate from high school having passed all standard tests but still requiring remediation when entering college.
- Focus on what matters most so teachers have time to teach and students have time to learn. Teachers and students interact with these standards with an understanding and clear goals to improve performance. The progression is that much clearer where, in previous standards, a goal was met but no one knew why.
Coleman noted that while states are allowed to add up to 15% of their own standards back in, they rarely find the need. Forty-eight states, including Virginia, were engaged in developing the standards by taking the best practices, NOT the most used.
The standards for math in the U.S. are currently “a mile wide and an inch deep” while at least two thirds of A+ countries use the opposite approach. Fluency, application and depth lead to better student coherence. Early exposure to number operations is the best setup for future success in math.
“When someone is going to rip you off on a mortgage, they rarely suggest you do the math,” quipped Coleman.
The Common Core Standards build progressively on knowledge. For example, a deep knowledge of fractions leads to a better understanding of algebra. Coleman added, “the only way the U.S. outperforms other countries in math is in the size of our textbooks.”
How has the U.S. done globally in math over the last 40 years? 4th grade scores improved. 8th grade scores stayed the same. 12th grade scores have gone down and are declining at a faster rate.
Literacy standards were not much better. Only 7% of grade school reading is non-fiction. The Core Standards’ goal is to extend literacy standards into history and science, social studies and the arts to build knowledge. Reading should not be the sole domain of the English Language Arts (ELA) teacher. Evidentiary knowledge, i.e., being able to analyze what has been read, is important to career success. In the U.S., we spend time cultivating narratives of personal opinions and feelings for class credit which is rare in the work environment. Studies show that reading and comprehending text that is more complex is a clear indicator of career and college success.
In today’s global environment, the U.S. needs students and a workforce that is adaptive and reading comprehension is critical. We must compete on performance and not on standards. We are “preparing kids to get into college but not succeed in college” was a response to an audience question when Coleman added that he is working with college admission officers to eliminate the easy personal-focused entrance essay.
As part of the question and answer period, Coleman said it was unlikely the Common Sore Standards will succeed without a discipline of focused work by students and with parental attention. It is the job of educators to make school work worth doing, and much of previous standards was not essential to their futures.
“They can smell it,” said Coleman.
In January 2011, Time magazine profiled Coleman as one of 11 people “changing education.” For more information, visit: Common Core State Standards
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HR Partnership
October 31, 2011 at 4:39 pm (UTC -4)
Norfolk meeting looks at educational ‘core curriculum’
By Elisabeth Hulette
The Virginian-Pilot
© October 27, 2011
NORFOLK — Who says Virginians aren’t interested in the common core curriculum?
The math and literacy standards have been adopted by well over 40 states; Virginia is one of the few not on board. Yet on Wednesday, more than 200 Hampton Roads business and education leaders were in Norfolk to hear from one of the common core’s authors.
“We need to learn more about it,” said Angelica Light, president of the Hampton Roads Community Foundation, which organized the event with the Economics Club of Hampton Roads.
David Coleman is the latest in a series of speakers brought in to shed light on issues the community should know about, Light said. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is one of them.
It was developed over the past few years with input from states, teachers and education research, said Coleman, the founder and CEO of an education consulting organization in New York.
The standards emphasize depth over breadth, giving students more time to master the most important core concepts by cutting out less important course material. It’s a learning method favored by many foreign countries that tend to outpace American schools, Coleman said.
“The standards need to be fewer, clearer, higher,” he said.
Coleman stressed Virginia needs to make its own decision, which is exactly what it has done so far. The governor and the state superintendent have said repeatedly that Virginia’s Standards of Learning already meet or exceed the common core standards.
Yet on Wednesday, opinions among attendees were divided.
Norfolk Superintendent Richard Bentley said it’s a balancing act: A set of common expectations across states is a good idea, but that has to be balanced with the strong tradition of local control in American schools.
Two military liaisons who work with local schools said a common set of standards would help military children, who can struggle with moves between states that teach different material.
Two other local superintendents said they favor the common core.
“It makes sense, particularly when you get down into it,” said James Merrill, superintendent of Virginia Beach schools. “Language arts and mathematics, it’s really core of core.”
Portsmouth Superintendent David Stuckwisch said he especially agrees with the emphasis on deep understanding of literacy and numeracy.
“When 45 states have signed on and we haven’t, we have to ask why,” he said.
Elisabeth Hulette, (757) 222-5216, elisabeth.hulette@pilotonline.com
http://hamptonroads.com/2011/10/norfolk-meeting-looks-educational-core-curriculum
HR Partnership
November 2, 2011 at 1:44 pm (UTC -4)
United States suffers from lack of core curriculum
Posted: October 28, 2011
In New Jersey, third-grade students write essays about a special activity they enjoy.
In Massachusetts, seventh-graders’ literacy is judged via essays they write about their “perfect day.”
Across the country, high school seniors prove their writing acumen by describing their heroes.
Those topics, which were taken from standardized tests in their respective states, are now widely accepted in U.S. classrooms – and that’s the problem, said David Coleman, one of the country’s top education advocates.
“Has anyone ever, ever, written something like this for the workplace?” Coleman asked about 200 businesses, civic and educational leaders last week during a joint lunch hosted by the Economics Club of Hampton Roads and the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. “People don’t really care about what you think and feel.”
In the business world, Coleman said, people care whether you can present an argument for or against something and cite evidence to support it.
Time Magazine recently named Coleman, the founder and CEO of Student Achievement Partners, one of 11 “Education Advocates for 2011.”
“Coleman wants students to learn to think by analyzing what they’re reading,” the magazine said. “Sounds obvious, but it’s a radical departure from today’s prevailing practices in classrooms.”
But not for long. Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners is a New York group that has provided 45 states with a core curriculum of math and literacy that will soon become the standard in classrooms across the country.
Except in Virginia and a handful of other states. The commonwealth has so far decided not to opt in to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, “which is making it possible for public school students across the country to have the same high academic standards no matter where they go to school,” said Angelica Light, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Community Foundation.
Having a standard curriculum is especially important for Hampton Roads students, because many are military children who move from state to state, said Sally Kirby Hartman, vice president of communications for the foundation.
Coleman said that for too long, since each state sets its curriculum, the U.S. has lacked a standard way to measure students’ performances. That has cost the country in terms of competition, both internally and internationally, he said.
He said there is a “terrifying number” of high school graduates who are not ready for college, which is why remediation rates in colleges across the U.S. are so high.
Coleman said educators are given “vast and vague” job descriptions that mean nothing, and that the Common Core State Standards Initiative provides fewer, clearer and higher academic standards.
For example, elementary school students are given a math curriculum that is a “mile wide and an inch deep” that doesn’t provide the basic, necessary skills they need to build upon in later grades. The mastery of fractions, for instance, is critical in learning algebra, yet students go from grade to grade without knowing them.
The Common Core initiative focuses on the application of math in real life, something that many people don’t know how to do
“When somebody is going to rip you off with a mortgage, they rarely remind you this is a good time to use math,” Coleman said.
Regarding literacy, Coleman said most students are taught to write in an abstract, narrative form that will not serve them well in the workforce, which demands clear, concise writing that contains evidence.
He said during the past 40 years, writing scores for fourth-graders have improved, have remained “startlingly flat” for eighth-graders and have “clearly declined” in high school seniors
Moreover, students in the lower grades mostly read teacher-assigned fiction, rather than texts that present core information on math, science, history and the arts, he said.
The Common Core initiative calls for more informational reading, and requires teachers in subjects such as science, history and social studies to make sure their students are literate, rather than leaving that duty solely to the language arts teachers.
By Bill Cresenzo
bill.cresenzo@insidebiz.com
http://insidebiz.com/news/united-states-suffers-lack-core-curriculum