Stephen Krashen
In: Talking Points 28 (1): 26-28, 2014. (Themed issue: Learning English as a New Language)
In this
paper, I will not discuss the Common Core standards themselves in any detail.
My suspicion is that the standards were made unreasonably hard on purpose. As
Susan Ohanian has noted, the language arts standards appear to be designed for
English majors (Ohanian, 2012) and feature tasks that are far too difficult
and, in fact, unreasonable, e.g. requiring students to ignore context in
discussing texts.
We have
been regularly encouraged to comment on the content of the standards. Those who accept the invitation to discuss the content of
the standards will have the impression they have a seat at the table. In
reality, invitations to discuss the standards appear to be simply a means of
control, diverting attention from the real issues:
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to
strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate
within that spectrum … That gives people the sense that there's free thinking
going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being
reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate" (Chomsky, 2002,
p. 42).
This is a weapon of mass distraction: We are invited to debate issues
such as whether 10th graders should be required to write 40% of
their essays as arguments, 40% as informational, and 20% narrative, and we may
even win a few concessions. But the "presuppositions of the system"
are dead wrong.
Are our schools
broken?
The Common Core State Standards (sometimes referred to as the
CC$$, for reasons that will become clear later), are based on the presupposition, widely
discussed in the media, that our schools are broken, and that only a system of rigorous
standards and tests will improve things. But published studies conclude that our schools
are not broken. The reason for our unspectacular international test scores is
our high rate of child poverty: When researchers control for the effect of poverty,
American scores are near the top of the world (e.g. Payne and Biddle, 1999; Carnoy and
Rothstein, 2012).
Complaints about progress made by English leaners are also popular
in the media. We are told, for example
that most English learners "languish" in ESL and bilingual programs
for years, and never acquire enough English to join the mainstream. A look at the data, however, shows that in
general, English learners make acceptable progress (Krashen and McQuillan, 1995).
The silliest compaint about English learners is the observation
that most of them score below the "proficient" level on tests of
English reading. In other words, the complaint is that English learners are
English learners. If they scored at the proficient level on English tests, they
would not be English learners.
The real problem: poverty
The Common Core ignores the problem of poverty. Poverty means many
things, all of which negatively impact school peformance. Among them are food
deprivation, lack of health care, and lack of access to books (Krashen, 1997; Berliner,
2009).
The best teaching in the world will not help if students are
hungry, ill, and have little or nothing to read. Child poverty in the US is a huge 23%, second
highest among all high-income countries (Adamson, 2013), and English learners
have an even higher rate of poverty, estimated to be double that of the
national average (Betalova, 2006).
The power of poverty has been demonstrated by many
studies, including studies showing a strong negative correlation between levels
of poverty and rates of reclassification as proficient in English among English
learners (Krashen, 1996).
Access to books
The lack of access to books among high-poverty English learners
makes it nearly impossible to for them to make significant progress.
Access to books in the first language is very helpful for early
literacy development in English. We know that building literacy in the first
language is a shortcut to second language literacy, but this requires books for
read-alouds and books for free voluntary pleasure reading (Krashen, 2003). Massive pleasure reading in English is
necessary for the full development of English literacy, including vocabularly,
grammar and writing ability (Krashen, 2004).
We (Krashen and Williams, 2012) recently described a case of an
English language learner who not only acquired English well but who became an
author of books in English, two novels and an autobiography. Reyne Grande
developed basic literacy in Spanish before she immigrated to the US at age
nine, and “successfully completed the ESL program and got rid of my status as an
ESL student” at the end of seventh grade (Grande, 2012, p. 240) thanks to her
English reading habit.
Grande became a pleasure reader in English when she
was a seventh grader, and in grade eight she was a regular visitor to the local
public library, borrowing the maximum allowed of ten books every week. Midway through grade eight she described her
English as “almost as good as the native speakers,” except for her accent (p.
242).
Free reading remains important later on: Self-selected
reading in our area of interest is responsible for our development of academic
language (Krashen, 2012a): Reyna Grande kept reading, and expanded her choice
of books, thanks to her English teacher at Pasadena City College, Diana Savas,
who introduced her to Latino literature and encouraged her writing.
Also, continued reading in the heritage language is a
powerful means of maintaining and developing the heritage language after we
leave school, which results in economic and cognitive advantages (Tse, 2001).
The testing
boodoggle
The Common Core movement does nothing to protect
children from the effects of poverty. Instead of investing in food programs,
health care, and libraries, we will be spending unbelievable amounts of money
on tests required by the Common Core. Even though research tells us that more
testing does not produce higher achievement (Nichols, Glass, and Berliner, 2006), the Common Core
will require about 20 times more testing than No Child Left Behind: we will
have summative tests, interim tests and possibly pretests in all subjects, at
all grade levels, from preschool to grade 12 (Krashen, 2012b).
By far the most expensive (and profitable) part of the
Common Core testing plan is the requirement that the tests must be administered
online. My suspicion is that the entire standards movement had this as its goal
from the beginning, because of the huge potential for profit (Krashen and
Ohanian, 2011).
Universal on-line testing requires that all students
have up-to-date computers: 50 million students will each require a new computer
every three years. It will also require
a massive infrastructure that requires constant repair, and constant
replacement as "progess" is made in technology.
The US Department of Education has guaranteed that substantial repairs
and updates will be necessary, all providing a steady stream of profits to the
computer industry while frustrating students and teachers. In
the National Education Technology Plan, the US Department of Education insists
that we introduce massive new technology into the schools immediately, because
of "the pressing need to
transform American education ...", even
if this means doing it imperfectly. Repairs can be done later: "... we do not have the luxury of time:
We must act now and commit to fine-tuning and midcourse corrections as we
go." (From: US Department of Education, 2010, Executive Summary).
Studies on the spread of innovation
(Rogers, 2003) show that very early first-wave adoption of innovations is not a
good strategy. The best strategy is to be part of the second wave: The first
wave will be imperfect and expensive; the problems of the first wave will be
solved in the second wave and the new devices will be cheaper. The US
Department of Education is insisting that American educators be very early
adopters.
While the fundamental needs of
English Learners are ignored, every spare dollar will go into the Common Core
standards and tests, accurately described by Susan Ohanian (2013) as a “a radical untried curriculum overhaul and
… nonstop national testing.”
Works Cited
Adamson, P. 2013 “UNICEF Measuring Child Poverty: New
League Tables of Child Poverty in the World’s Rich Countries.” Innocenti Report
Card 10, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.
Betalova, J. 2006. Spotlight
on Limited English Proficient Students in the United States. Migration Information Source. http://www.migrationinformation.org/usfocus/display.cfm?ID=373
Berliner,
D. 2009. Poverty and Potential:
Out-of-School Factors and School Success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public
Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential;
Carnoy, M and Rothstein, R. 2012, What Do International Tests Really Show Us about U.S. Student
Performance. Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute. http://www.epi.org/).
Chomsky, N. 2002. The Common Good: Interviews with David Barsamian.
Berekely, CA: Odonian Press.
Grande, R. 2012. The Distance Between Us. New York:
Atria
Krashen,
S. 1996. Socio-economic status as de facto bilingual education. Bilingual
Basics Summer/Fall 1996: 1-3,9.
Krashen,
S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational Leadership 55(4): 18-22.
Krashen, S. 2003. Three roles for reading for
language-minority students. In G. Garcia (Ed.) English Learners: Reaching the
Highest Level of English Proficiency. Newark, Delaware: International Reading
Association. Pp. 55-70.
Krashen, S. 2004. The Power of Reading. Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann and Westport: Libraries Unlimited.
Krashen, S. 2012a. Developing academic language: Some
hypotheses. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 7 (2): 8-15.
(ijflt.com)
Krashen, S. 2012b. How much
testing? http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/25/stephen-‐ krashen-‐how-‐much-‐testing/
and: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/
Krashen,
S. and McQuillan, J. 1995. Contrary to popular opinion: English language
proficiency and school performance of speakers of other languages in the United
States. NABE News 18,6:17-19.
Krashen, S, and Ohanian, S. 2011. High
Tech Testing on the Way: A
21st Century Boondoggle? Living in Dialogue (Apr 8).
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-dialogue/2011/04/high_tech_testing_on_the_way_a.html
Krashen,
S. and Williams, C. 2012. Is Self-Selected Pleasure Reading the Cure for the
Long-Term ELL Syndrome? A Case History. NABE Perspectives September-December
2012, p.26
Nichols,
S., Glass, G., and Berliner, D. 2006. High-stakes testing and student
achievement: Does accountability increase student learning?
Ohanian, S. 2012. Read more fiction in the
classroom, researchers say. http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=350
Ohanian, S. 2013. Whoo-Hoo, Occupy
the Schools. www.dailycensored.com/woo-hoo/
Payne,
K. and Biddle, B. 1999. Poor school funding, child poverty, and mathematics
achievement. Educational Researcher 28 (6): 4-13;
Rogers, E. 2003. The Diffusion of
Innovations, Free Press.
Tse, L.
2001. Heritage language literacy: A study of US biliterates. Language, Culture
and Curriculum, 14 (3): 256-68
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