Prof. Kenji Hakuta has sent out a
year-end message to colleagues in language education. The letter is posted on the Sunshire State
TESOL Adovcacy E-forum and on the Oregon State Department of Education website.
I present below my response, which I
posted on the Sunshine State TESOL Advocacy E-forum. Prof. Hakuta's letter is
posted after my response.
I am not as cheerful as Kenji Hakuta
is about the common core. I see not as a "promising opportunity" but
as a tsunami about to wreck American education.
The standards and tests were created
without significant teacher input. There are no plans to determine if the
standards help students. The language arts standards look like they were
written for English majors, and parents throughout the country are suffering
with their children over the math standards. The standards are enforced
with what Susan Ohanian calls "nonstop testing," more than we ever
seen had anywhere on planet Earth, again with no evidence that they will help
our students. They will, however, be of great benefit to the publishing
and computer companies.
The huge cost of the CC$$ will
increase, thanks to the requirement that tests be administered online.
There is already little left for anything else.
And we should not forget that there
was never any need for the common core: Our schools are not "broken."
The real issue is our very high rate of poverty. But instead of investing in
protecting our students from poverty via food programs, health care and
libraries, we are increasing testing at every level. If the brave new
standards and tests do not result in improvement, teachers will be blamed and
there will be a call for even more testing.
I will be in Ft Lauderdale in a few
weeks to speak at an opt-out (of the tests) conference: http://unitedoptout.com/2014/11/30/united-opt-out-stand-up-for-action-florida-schedule/
- The opt-out movement is the best and fasted way to put an end to this
outrage. I hope to see some of you there.
A Year-End Message from Dr. Kenji Hakuta: https://sites.google.com/a/oregonlearning.org/equity-unit-updates/home/ayear-endmessagefromkenjihakuta
A Year-End Message from Kenji
Hakuta...
Dear Friends:
As the year
comes to a close, I cannot let 2015 dawn without noting the important
anniversaries that passed this year.
Sixty years ago (1954), Brown v.
Board set the stage for racial desegregation, that “separate but equal” was
not enough.
Fifty years ago (1964), President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in the
presence of Dr. Martin Luther King, outlawing discrimination based on race,
color, gender, religion and national origin.
Forty years ago (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Lau v.
Nichols, a landmark decision declared that the same educational treatment
given to English Language Learners as that given to native English speakers
without taking into account their language circumstances violated the Civil
Rights Act.
Thirty-five years ago (1989), the governors under leadership from President
George H. Bush convened at a national education summit chiming in the era of
“standards”, setting the stage for a wave of reforms that have culminated in
the Common Core and related College- and Career-Ready Standards.
Phew, that’s a
lot of history!
From where I
sit, the new year brings promising opportunities for making education better
for all students, based on the history that has brought us here -- if we
commit and build the will and the capacity of the system to learn from our
experiences.
English
Language Learners have always been the “canary in the mine” in English-only
environments – among the most vulnerable of students in the face of the fact
that human learning and cognition are grounded heavily in language.
Language is the primary tool for communication as well as mental
representation and cognitive processing. When the chain of connections
between the mind and language is disrupted, such as when a student does not
understand the language of instruction, learning is disrupted. In our
history, we have recognized this disruption, and tried various programs of
bilingual and of English-as-a-Second-Language and sheltered language
methodologies to help the students – none being a silver bullet, and all
leading to the realization of the importance of commitment, capacity, and
implementation.
Well, the most
obvious face of the Common Core is the magnitude and depth to which
successfully meeting the standards requires student active engagement using
language – and this applies to *all* students. The math standards for
example require students not just to come to the correct answer, but to
explain their reasoning through language. While in the past English
Language Learners struggled, now *all* students are struggling to put their
language to sophisticated use, to explain their reasoning. I am certain
that the results of this academic year’s testing in Spring, 2015, will bear
out the enormous challenge that language has now posed for *all* students,
not just English Language Learners.
This fact is
now dawning on thoughtful educators throughout the nation. School
districts as different as Seattle, Dallas, Hartford and Sanger have come to
the realization that promoting rich student discourse and other academic uses
of language in the disciplines is essential to attaining new content
standards not just for English Language Learners, but for all students.
They have arrived at the systemic realization (many individuals have long
know this, but they have been separated by the stovepipes of bureaucracy)
that collaboration across the system is essential for student success.
The conditions
necessitate a systemic response against separation of language and
content. The first signs of recognition can be found in the language or
recent policies of states such as California and New York that recognizes
that ESL (or ELD, ENL, whatever one wants to call it) needs to happen in a
dedicated as well as an integrated manner within the content areas. The
second is the beginning signs of acceptance of the effectiveness of bilingual
education programs and of the benefits of bilingualism for all students –
this can be seen in the growth of two-way immersion programs in many school
districts.
So, even
recognizing the many troubling conditions in which we humans find ourselves,
there is promise that good work in the coming year will yield progress in the
realization of the important role that language plays in how we learn and how
we communicate – and that it applies to all of us. We sit on the
shoulders of Brown, King, Lau, and (whoa!) Bush, and all have contributed to
our progress.
I feel
enormously fortunate to have you among my many friends and collaborators at
all levels of the profession – may 2015 be an important landmark year for you
both personally and professionally!
Kenji
______________________________
Kenji Hakuta
Lee L. Jacks
Professor of Education
Stanford
University
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