Last month, Common Core.org hosted a panel discussion that focused on those subjects not included in the Common Core State Standards: history, science, and the arts. Panelists included David Coleman, lead writer of the CCSS in English Language Arts; Lynn Munson, President and Executive Director of Common Core; Lewis Huffman, Education Associate for Social Studies at the South Carolina DOE; and Carol Jago, Director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA.
Among the topics discussed were the results of Common Core’s national survey, Learning Less, as well as the announcement that Common Core will be creating CCSS-based curriculum maps in history and geography. Learning Less was a national survey of 1,001 3rd-12th grade public school teachers to gather data about teacher behavior and classroom practice. The results of the survey are not surprising to classroom teachers:
—66% of teacher say that math and language arts are “crowd[ing] out” other subjects, such as art, music, foreign language, and social studies.
—77% of teachers who believe the statement above say that this is the case across the full student body, regardless of individual students’ academic achievement. Only 21% believe the “crowding out” is targeted towards struggling students.
—51% of elementary school teachers say that students who are pulled out for extra help in math or language arts, the most likely subjects they will be pulled out during are social studies (48%) and science (40%).
—93% of teachers who believe crowding out is taking place believe that this is largely driven by state tests. Additionally, 80% report that “more and more” of the time they should be spending on teaching is spent on paperwork and reporting requirements to meet state standards.
These results and others were discussed during the panel, with each panelists weighing in from their unique professional experiences. “71% of high school teachers surveyed said that students will have read the Constitution by the time they graduate. My question is, but will they understand it? Another statistic, 92% of those teachers said students will know who fought whom in WWII. My question: But will they know why? And I think those are critical things,” said Lewis Huffman.
Taking the conversation in another direction, David Coleman reflected on the current focus across states and districts on ELA. “There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in Kindergarten through 5th grade without coherently developing knowledge in science, and history, and the arts. Period. It is false. It is a fiction. And that is why NAEP scores …collapse as students grow older.”
Piggybacking off this train of thought, Carol Jago added her view as a veteran classroom teacher. “The students who find themselves most often in the classes that are literature lite [and] reading lite, are those students who are most disengaged from school. So what are they experiencing? They experience a content-free curriculum…And so it reaffirms these students’ belief that school is about nothing.”
Lynne Munson rounded off the conversation by announcing that Common Core will be creating a series of curriculum maps for history and geography. “These maps will be based on content drawn from the best existing state social studies standards and they will address the new CCSS literacy standards in history and social studies…These new maps are another concrete step CC is taking toward addressing the problem of curriculum narrowing.”
To read the results of the Learning Less survey, please visit http://commoncore.org/ourreports.php
To read view a recording of the Truant From School discussion, please visit http://commoncore.org/index.php
