Are State School Rankings Reliable? Is Common Core for the Common Good?

I recently attended the opening of our state's Board of Education meeting.  There was a round of applause and a back-slapping session as they discussed the fact that our state has moved in the rankings from 40-something to 6th place.

Quite an achievement, right?

We should be pretty happy, right?

But, a few things struck me as off-kilter about it all.

1.  Part of the success was attributed to expanded voluntary pre-k training. Supposedly, this early training has given us a great boost. However, any research I have ever read on this topic says that early training makes for advanced kindergartners but, by 3rd grade, nobody can tell whether the child attended pre-k or not. It all evens out. Other studies have shown that starting a child in reading and writing later in life (age 8 or 9) will often work out just fine as well.  (And some who start very early, face burn out in their teens.) As long as education is delivered "line upon line, precept upon precept" (Isaiah 28:10), children will learn.

In other words, pre-k might help prepare a child for kindergarten, but that is about it. Kindergarten was initially started (as a voluntary program) to help children prepare for 1st grade.  On a scarier note, "voluntary" often turns quickly to "mandatory" once we get "used to it."  Neither of my parents attended kindergarten -- it didn't exist for them.  I went to the first "full-day" kindergarten at my school (about 40 years ago).  Now, it is hard to find a parent who doesn't believe that kindergarten really isn't "mandatory" (depending on the child's age).

One of the state board members said that she was so happy dropping her children off at "baby school." I couldn't help but cringe. Babies don't need school. They need love, attention, individual care, and happy home surroundings.

2.  Part of the success was attributed to the increase in attendance of Advanced Placement (AP) programs state-wide, and increase in honor roll for those attending those classes. I only have anecdotal support for this, but I have been told this by more than one teenage source:

"If I get a 'D' on an AP test in class, the teacher will count it as a 'C' because this is hard material.  If I make a 'C' in the class, the grade will be bumped to an 'A' on my report card because the school does not want to penalize anyone or ruin their GPA because they took a hard-level course.  They don't want to discourage anyone from taking the class."

Only students who really perform well in class are "permitted" to take the AP exam.  So, here I have a system set up where the student feels great. The majority are possibly given better grades than they deserve. The school looks great:  "Look how involved our kids are in 'higher level learning.'"  (I believe they also receive funding by how many kids are in AP as well.)  The state looks great because only the really "smart" kids take the exam, so their scores will always look good. A very clever tautology (circular reasoning).

At least one of these students that I know made an "A" in the AP class, but did not qualify to take the AP exam, let alone pass it. She could be on the AB-honor roll, but probably deserved a C or D in the class.

Does this philosophy produce students who are really prepared to take college courses?  That is the goal of AP courses, to prove to colleges that students are ready to handle college courses (see another view here). But, if they are not being strictly judged, isn't all the effort wasted?  And aren't all the statistics tainted?

3.  One of the main goals of the meeting was to approve a name change for the Common Core program. If our current standards and efforts raised us from 40th place to 6th place, shouldn't we keep on doing what we've been doing? Why would we adopt new, untried, and untested methods proposed by our federal government (who, by the way, has no constitutional right to have ANYTHING to do with education)?

One psychologist considers the Common Core: "psychological child abuse" (find more info here). But, nobody at the DOE is listening, that is for sure. We see time after time school board meetings (in various states) where parents and teachers are not given time to speak, are yelled at, are ignored. At a recent rally, where my children and I, along with 80+ others protested, the board continued on as though no objections were raised. They voted unanimously to follow their pre-conceived notions and disregard the parents and teachers who have raised issues.

According to sources, the standards our state held prior to Common Core were actually more rigorous than Common Core. If we have been successful at the local and state level, why in the world would we choose to willingly adopt the (known-for-red-tape) bureaucracy of the federal government? Part of the reason must be the federal bribe that comes with it. And maybe there is peer pressure from other states -- you know, the states that are ranked LOWER than we are.  There is no other reason I can think of.

As for the name change, if it bellows like a moose, let's call it a duck. Then, nobody will notice that it just doesn't fly.

Take a Leap /leep/ for Literacy

What would happen if psychology suddenly lost its silent “p” and was spelled with an “s”? Would we lose any basic understanding of its function or importance? Instead, I think we would save many taxpayer dollars, increase teacher’s class time for content, reduce teacher training needs, and increase student success (dyslexic or otherwise).

I am not a math person, but I think I can figure out these formulae:

Teach a kindergartener to read/spell + never have to address the issue again = less time in school

Less time in school = less teachers, less classrooms, less books, etc. = less tax $

Why don’t we have a phonics-based spelling system? I don’t know. It seems to make so much sense. Every child could learn to read more easily and people from around the world would have an easier time learning our language. There would certainly be less “bad spellers” in the world!
Most kindergarteners are praised for beginning to spell phonetically, and then we spend the next six years – or more -- training them to “spell it right.” Some never get it, hence computers with spell-check.

I live with a dyslexic child who, though he conquered reading, has spent more than 7 years on this “spelling project” and is still in the starting phase, learning the patterns that have so many exceptions. Because he doesn’t have good sequential memory skills, the phrase, “I” before “e” except after “c”, is useless to him.

When your child is learning to read, what do you say? “Sound it out.” But, that doesn’t work with all words. We have a whole generation who learned to “sight read” because of the confusion over our supposedly phonics-based system. Is that a hard /g/ or a soft /g/? Is that “e” short, long or silent? Why does “ch” sometimes sound like /ch/, as in “church”, but other times sounds like /k/, as in “school”?

My son’s spelling program, Sequential Spelling, uses the following as a simple demonstration of the changing sounds in our language:

Ma
Mag
Magic
Magician

Notice the difference in the “a” sound from “ma” to “mag”? What is the change in the “g” sound from “mag” to “magic”? What happens to the “c” sound going from “magic” to “magician”? Let's not even talk about "cian" sounding like /shun/.

As a homeschooler, I can attest to the idea that if the system is easy to learn, it is easy to teach. It is obvious that a truly phonics based system of spelling would increase students’ ease of learning, thereby reducing the number of instruction hours needed by trained and re-trained professionals. The need for reading specialists and remedial teachers would diminish. And maybe, just maybe, there would be more time in the day for more art, music, history and the sciences.
I know that phasing one system in and another out can, and probably should, take many years. England’s “Great Vowel Shift” in sounds took 150 years. So, I propose a few first steps:

1. Remove initial silent sounds like that “p” in psychology and “g” in gnu.
2. Get rid of the silent “gh” in “neighbor” and “weigh”.
3. Replace “ph” with “f” in words like “pharmacy”.
4. Only use the letter “c” when needed for the /ch/ sound. Otherwise, substitute “s” and “k” as appropriate.
5. Start marking long vowels (leave short vowels alone) with a line over top – preparing the way to remove silent “e” someday.

These would be small steps for our generation, perhaps huge leaps in literacy for the generation to come. Next, we will work on implementing the metric system!

Mike Mulligan

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (by Virgina Lee Burton) is one of my treasured childhood books.  It tells the story of Mary Ann (the steam shovel) who is eventually outrun by industrialization -- the electric variety.  But, the best part of the story is how a little boy comes to watch, then a school, then the mayor, the firemen, the garden club, etc., until finally the whole town is standing around and watching Mary Ann "dig more in one day than a hundred men could dig in a week." 

Just this morning, my kids ditched their schoolwork at the first sound of a new machine outside.  Some kind of conveyor belt is moving tiles and workers up to the roof next door.  In the past, they've run to watch the garbage truck, the recycling truck, moving vans, motorcycles, mulchers, and street cleaners!  Of course, ditching schoolwork is always easy to do, but there is more to it than that.  Watching work can be a learning experience.  They may see efficiency at work, or they may find ways to improve things.  Perhaps they will invent something new by learning how things are done now. 

It is easy to see that there is a true fascination that we have with watching work -- especially when machines are involved.  And we'd all rather watch work than do work!  I am avoiding some work right now, just by blogging.  I'd better get back to it and see if I can drag my students along with me!