PARCC

[Loss Leader]

The problem with the reading passages on these tests is that they are usually mangled into an unrecognizable mess. And that seems to be true here. The test-makers have very specific information they're trying to assess and they remove so much that the thing becomes unreadable.

Even so, I think I was able to deal with it well.

I didn't try the essay, but it looked like it could be handled easily. This seems to me like it would be pushing the very limits of what a 5th grader could do.

 

[Minoosh]

I didn't try the essay, but it looked like it could be handled easily. This seems to me like it would be pushing the very limits of what a 5th grader could do.

If I could obscure the fact it's for fifth-grade level, I'd test drive it on a middle school or even high school level.

I don't think PARCC will be high-stakes for anyone as it is rolled out.

 

[Minoosh]

It looks as if my state will not administer the PARCC test this year at all. An alternative test has been developed, or is being developed, and passing it will not be a requirement for a high school diploma. The kids will know, and as a result they probably won't try as hard. Meanwhile teacher effectiveness may be judged by these scores - there's an understandable desire to quantify this factor, and it's fairly tricky to measure.

IMO the whole scene is kind of a mess.

 

[Prometheus]

For the nonce, I've discovered, in my state PARCC will not be an exit exam for the class of 2015. There's an interim exam, and students will find out in a hurry that they don't need to pass it.

Don't you just love how policy makers manage to keep coming up with new ways to shoot themselves in the foot?

This is a personal prejudice, but I have a certain allergy to turning popular entertainment from the 1500s into something children have to be taught how to appreciate. Feeling dumb shuts learning down, in my experience, and how else are they supposed to feel when confronted with a page of text and 20 footnotes? For college, fine, whatever. I didn't have to learn Russian or French for classes that included Chekov and Flaubert. The stories can be told in any language.

It sounds to me like your experience studying Shakespeare in school was quite a bit different than mine. I didn't start to dislike it until I got to College and had a professor who insisted on making every line about sexism and gender equality.

I really don't see how a knowledge of Shakespeare is critical to their futures. I would sooner lose all of English literature than lose any of the actually universal stuff that's been generated in that time.

No one wants to look dumb, so maybe they should know "Beowulf" isn't about a wolf, that "Romeo and Juliet" does not have a happy ending, etc.

It's not critical. Just worthwhile--IF it's not taught in a way that makes kids feel dumb; I am in complete agreement with you on that. No one should fail a high stakes test for not knowing such material, but those who do know it deserve a higher score.

Sure. I think there is better fodder. IMO, learning multiple languages, more history, more geography, more math and more science are all just as good for teaching critical thinking as an appreciation of Shakespeare. But for practice making and supporting a statement, they could start with Shakespeare. As well as many other sources.

Again, I would agree that there are plenty of other valid topics/approaches, and many of them are likely "better". But then again "better" can mean a lot of different things to different people, and the whole enterprise of public education is necessarily a compromise that, at best, will tend to produce results that are just good enough. Deciding which subjects and material are MOST beneficial and how those particular subjects can BEST be taught is really better left to the private sector.

I may be coming at this from an entirely different angle than you are. "English" to me doesn't mean an appreciation for English-language literature. "English" is a common language for the world to work out its technical problems. Even that is subsidiary to the really universal stuff. Relatively speaking, IMO, any given language is trivial. Communicating isn't trivial, but that's not dependent on any one language.

Perhaps so. Where I am, "English" is shorthand for the official term, "English Language Arts".

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I would agree that there are plenty of other valid topics/approaches, and many of them are likely "better". But then again "better" can mean a lot of different things to different people, and the whole enterprise of public education is necessarily a compromise that, at best, will tend to produce results that are just good enough.

Worthy of note to the censored when a non-censored says it.

 

[Prometheus]

Worthy of note to the censored when a non-censored says it.

Also worth noting is that I said "will tend to" not "can only". I point this out because, in the past, others have misconstrued my attitude as somehow in support of schemes like voucher systems to promote school choice. Rather, that the logistics of compromise inherent in public education entail a tendency to mediocrity, is the reason why more resources should be put into public education not drawn out of them in order to pay for vouchers.

 

[Minoosh]

It sounds to me like your experience studying Shakespeare in school was quite a bit different than mine.

At some point in college I had to read several Shakespeare plays and to make it work I had to read an annotated edition while simultaneously listening under headphones to an LP. I also took a "Film as Literature" course where we watched Roman Polanski's "Macbeth," and the film was lurid enough to convey much of the story visually. In general, I need to at least hear the play, preferably with supportive annotation.

I stumbled on a "No Fear Shakespeare" on "Hamlet" recently. It was bilingual - Elizabethan on one side, current colloquial English on the other. If I read the thing the whole way through, then read the Elizabethan text again, then watched Olivier play the role, then I'd have a basic understanding of that one play.

This is my take on priorities: It's my belief young human beings will spontaneously be drawn into the expressive arts; they will knit a common language in days or weeks. Fewer will spontaneously be drawn into math, which makes nurturing these skills a higher priority.

Where I am, "English" is shorthand for the official term, "English Language Arts".

Where I am it is a second language for many students. They sound fluent enough when chatting amongst themselves but often have pretty small working vocabularies. That's often true of the native speakers as well. There are many potentially fruitful areas that don't involve introducing archaic English. If I want to improve my Spanish, I'm probably better off reading a newspaper than trying to plow through "Don Quixote."

I have nothing against a richer and fuller understanding of the English language, but many learners will get more out of a utilitarian approach. As much as I enjoy wordplay, a lot of it will not resonate with ESL learners. Yet, if they gain complete conversational fluency - with a mastery of tenses - they will be ahead of me, because they will be bilingual. I have a decent Spanish vocabulary, but am very limited outside the present tense.

 

[Prometheus]

At some point in college I had to read several Shakespeare plays and to make it work I had to read an annotated edition while simultaneously listening under headphones to an LP. I also took a "Film as Literature" course where we watched Roman Polanski's "Macbeth," and the film was lurid enough to convey much of the story visually. In general, I need to at least hear the play, preferably with supportive annotation.

I stumbled on a "No Fear Shakespeare" on "Hamlet" recently. It was bilingual - Elizabethan on one side, current colloquial English on the other. If I read the thing the whole way through, then read the Elizabethan text again, then watched Olivier play the role, then I'd have a basic understanding of that one play.

This is my take on priorities: It's my belief young human beings will spontaneously be drawn into the expressive arts; they will knit a common language in days or weeks. Fewer will spontaneously be drawn into math, which makes nurturing these skills a higher priority.



Where I am it is a second language for many students. They sound fluent enough when chatting amongst themselves but often have pretty small working vocabularies. That's often true of the native speakers as well. There are many potentially fruitful areas that don't involve introducing archaic English. If I want to improve my Spanish, I'm probably better off reading a newspaper than trying to plow through "Don Quixote."

I have nothing against a richer and fuller understanding of the English language, but many learners will get more out of a utilitarian approach. As much as I enjoy wordplay, a lot of it will not resonate with ESL learners. Yet, if they gain complete conversational fluency - with a mastery of tenses - they will be ahead of me, because they will be bilingual. I have a decent Spanish vocabulary, but am very limited outside the present tense.

Ah, in that case I would tend to agree with you. OTOH my preference for populations like that would be a true bilingual education approach (Not what passes for bilingual ed in most US districts). All kids should be reading something like their own culture's equivalent to Shakespeare (if there is one) in their native languages.

 

[Minoosh]

... All kids should be reading something like their own culture's equivalent to Shakespeare (if there is one) in their native languages.

It might actually be illegal in my state to do that, except in vanishingly rare special cases.

This past week I have been dealing with a lot of young people who are not native English speakers. They had to read "The Road Not Taken" and "summarize" it line by line. Their task was more akin to translation than summarization, but that's how their regular teacher put it.

Next they have to write an essay, in English, on Latin American literature that they've read in English. They've never read the Spanish versions.

Many of these teenagers either haven't been in the U.S. long or have somehow gotten by with using very little English in everyday life.

Due to the failures of bilingual education in my state, it was scrapped totally in favor of "immersion." I can speak Spanish to students but am not supposed to use it for instruction. I casually read a Spanish translation of the first verse out loud just to see who tuned in when they heard that. Technically that's a no-no, but these classes are set in a computer lab and I wanted to clue students in to Internet resources.

Their regular teacher has created a 2-week unit done mostly online so my "teaching" is more like monitoring, chasing them off Facebook and YouTube unless there's a tie-in with their coursework. Like the corrido from "Breaking Bad."

 

[Prometheus]

At least you're not required to ensure that all the students maintain above average grades.

 

[Minoosh]

This week - getting Mexican-American kids, many of them immigrants, to read:

- Puritan sermons
- Poems of Phillis Whitley
- and great Native American speeches, and

Identify themes and cite textual evidence in support of your thesis, which is ... what? The Puritan sermons are unreadable; Phillis Wheatley is derivative to the point of obscuring any possible originality. The Native American speeches are at least rendered in modern English, and are presented with quotes summarizing the message.

So far I've been an advocate of the regular teacher's agenda in this long-term sub gig. But this latest assignment stumps me. I believe the students' "How to Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich" assignment is of at least as much value as their junior essay. They don't need to know about Cotton or Increase Mather. They don't have to know about Phyllis Wheatley. The Native American collection is comprehensible and somewhat relevant to understanding the United States. But they are supposed to tie all three together because the way we teach writing is all twisted up with the way we teach literature. Jaysus, at least Shakespeare has some bawdy bits.

 

[Prometheus]

I would agree that the particular choice of literature is somewhat suspect, but I don't see a problem in that the teaching of literature and the teaching of writing are "all twisted up". The Common Core standards require that both be taught. There is no need for them to be taught independently of each other, and the current consensus is that there are benefits to be gained by "twisting them up". There will of course be certain trade-offs as well--the whole initiative is a compromise after all.

Look at at this way: If you're completely unwilling to cede any part of the way writing is taught to those stakeholders who think (particular) literature is important, what part of your preferred curriculum would you willingly give up to allow literature proponents to include their preferences?

 

[Minoosh]

Look at at this way: If you're completely unwilling to cede any part of the way writing is taught to those stakeholders who think (particular) literature is important, what part of your preferred curriculum would you willingly give up to allow literature proponents to include their preferences?

That's already been decided to some extent. Supposedly, there will be more emphasis on nonfiction. The examples I've cited are, technically, nonfiction. But, IMO, they are combined in a way that that makes it very hard to come up with something to say that references all three and can be supported by textual evidence. It's not the way I would have designed the assignment, but I defer to the plan left by their regular teacher.

It's hard to write if you have nothing to say, and these students don't have much to say about these readings, partly because 17th- and 18th-century literature is hard for them to understand. It's sometimes hard for me to understand, and I was an English major (creative writing, which meant I didn't need as many lit hours ).

Today I heard a student say, "As long as none of us does it (the essay due today), we're OK." That was very sophisticated thinking. On Monday, they can all say, "Mister, we didn't understand what you wanted." And the fact that one student out of 80 actually completed the assignment will back them up, big time.

Teenagers know how to think critically. They know how to argue. In "Teacher Man," Frank McCourt recalls discovering the enormous creativity students put into forged excuses, and gave them the assignment of making up excuses for historical figures. It was a brilliant move, but I'm no Frank McCourt (or Jaime Escalante, of "Stand and Deliver).

I can't seem to shake the idea that teaching writing-through-literature is an artifact, something we do because we've always done it. We don't push other arts in the same way. Reading comprehension and writing mechanics matter, but students could compare and contrast virtually anything - Copernicus vs. Galileo, football vs. soccer, Macs vs. PCs - and exercise the same mental muscles. This would probably be my ideal, assigning writing across the curriculum so that teaching writing skills is not so heavily tied to appreciation of English-language literature.

 

[Prometheus]

That's already been decided to some extent. Supposedly, there will be more emphasis on nonfiction. The examples I've cited are, technically, nonfiction. But, IMO, they are combined in a way that that makes it very hard to come up with something to say that references all three and can be supported by textual evidence. It's not the way I would have designed the assignment, but I defer to the plan left by their regular teacher.

It's hard to write if you have nothing to say, and these students don't have much to say about these readings, partly because 17th- and 18th-century literature is hard for them to understand. It's sometimes hard for me to understand, and I was an English major (creative writing, which meant I didn't need as many lit hours ).

Today I heard a student say, "As long as none of us does it (the essay due today), we're OK." That was very sophisticated thinking. On Monday, they can all say, "Mister, we didn't understand what you wanted." And the fact that one student out of 80 actually completed the assignment will back them up, big time.

Teenagers know how to think critically. They know how to argue. In "Teacher Man," Frank McCourt recalls discovering the enormous creativity students put into forged excuses, and gave them the assignment of making up excuses for historical figures. It was a brilliant move, but I'm no Frank McCourt (or Jaime Escalante, of "Stand and Deliver).

I can't seem to shake the idea that teaching writing-through-literature is an artifact, something we do because we've always done it. We don't push other arts in the same way. Reading comprehension and writing mechanics matter, but students could compare and contrast virtually anything - Copernicus vs. Galileo, football vs. soccer, Macs vs. PCs - and exercise the same mental muscles. This would probably be my ideal, assigning writing across the curriculum so that teaching writing skills is not so heavily tied to appreciation of English-language literature.

What you say is completely reasonable. I think perhaps a lot of whatever disagreement we may have may be due to differences in local implementation. My experience with the new curricula is limited, in that I am teaching adults so I only directly have to use a specific subset of Common Core, but it sounds like the teachers I know here are for the most part already doing what you say you would like to have done. For instance, the subset I use with adults and the homework my own children are bringing home quite clearly emphasizes the importance of non-fiction over fiction.

 

[Minoosh]

What you say is completely reasonable. I think perhaps a lot of whatever disagreement we may have may be due to differences in local implementation. My experience with the new curricula is limited, in that I am teaching adults so I only directly have to use a specific subset of Common Core, but it sounds like the teachers I know here are for the most part already doing what you say you would like to have done. For instance, the subset I use with adults and the homework my own children are bringing home quite clearly emphasizes the importance of non-fiction over fiction.

In my state there's an atavistic mistrust of change, which I pretty much dismissed, but then the skid-greasing by textbook conglomerates ruffled my contrarian feathers. The whole thing seemed like a ruse, "reform" to require new texts and assessments.

The "curriculum" is not what's changed, as far as I understand that word. We still want the same basic stuff covered, and "curriculum" denotes a course of study, not specific techniques or materials.

I love playing with the English language, its nuances, its mature literary traditions. But, such wordplay appeals to relatively small numbers of "word people" and isn't going to be a global norm forever. So I have shifted to utilitarian aspects of English as *the* emerging global language. Nonfiction ideally provides more knowledge, vs. literature with its themes, devices and wordplay appreciable mostly to native speakers.

There's some backlash to reforms that seemed designed to sell textbooks and new assessments. So in my state, PARCC is out for now. But I hope to get a job teaching teenagers to argue. Many teachers, and students, may do better with a text on critical thinking. I favor a more creative approach, while not forgetting that many stakeholders just want to know what they're expected to learn and the best formula for obtaining this learning.

I dislike textbooks, but I'm not sure we're ready to do without that tool just yet.