Ed,
   They do read a bit more like goals than standards. On the other hand, I
think we have resisted any clear articulation of standards for some
time. I think our students are capable of a great deal more than they
have been asked to do. I know we have shamefully high dropout rates in
many of our schools, but I get the sense from students who survive
those schools that  whole schools suffer from low expectations, not
from high ones. I know I'm in a much different situation when these
students come to college, but they respond very well to raised
expectations when they get here. They take pride in being asked to do
much more.
    If I were poor and raising my children in an urban neighborhood, I
wouldn't accept any of that as an excuse from them (or anyone else)
for mediocre performance. Raise the bar high. Give the kind of support
necessary for those who struggle with it. To me, that's a formula for
high engagement. Again, I know I say that from the luxury of dealing
with students who have made it to college. The view from here, though,
is that we don't care enough and don't expect enough (though there are
saints in the middle of all that. Bless them all.)
   It seems to me that they have decided that students should learn to
write narratives, to write an argument, and to write informatively. If
you look through the sequence, it becomes clear that we don't already
have some sort of proven way laid out to accomplish that. They seem to
be imagining a sequence that might work. There are huge unexplained
goals (like "logical") with a strange assumption that everyone knows
what that is all about. Hugely important goals like "coherence" seem to
be reduced down to the right sort of transition words, which I can
guess will become formulaic. I would love to see a word like
"perspective" show up from time to time. (Either something is an
opinion or it's factual/logical, not much respect paid to the fact that
many topics benefit from a myriad of perspectives. It looks different
from this neighborhood than it does in the suburbs.) There's no place
in all this where students are encouraged to report on their own world
or become "expert" enough to have something to offer. There doesn't
seem to be a recognition that the narrative of their lives is also the
ground for significant contribution to public issues. (Why are the drug
dealers not bothered? What happens around here when someone gets sick?)
I guess I wouldn't be alone among writing teachers in wondering where
engagement comes in. You've got to know what the hell you are talking
about OR BE WILLING TO ADMIT THE LIMITS OF WHAT YOU KNOW and I don't
see any respect paid to that. I keep getting students out of high
school who have been encouraged to take definitive positions when they
don't have the knowledge base. Most of these standards seem articulated
as ends in themselves. There's no sense that these are or can be very
natural developments of the students' own voices and interests
(interests in a double sense--what interests them and what is in their
interest to find out and to articulate.)
    I would say the standards are not fully thought out and at times seem
strangely arbitrary. But I'm not convinced they are too high.

Craig>


Craig et al,
> 	Indeed, he thinks the standards are too high, and so do I.  He gives
> a couple of excellent examples, including this one, for SECOND grade:
> 	Write informative and explanatory texts in which they introduce a
> topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, present 		similar
> information together using headers to signal groupings when
> appropriate, and provide a concluding sentence or 		section.
> 	And another, for 12th grade, which he says is more appropriate for
> college literature classes.  (Once again, I agree.)
> 	I can't believe anyone on that writing committee has ever taught
> below college, or in any public schools that I'm familiar with, and
> I'm amazed that officials from AFT and NEA are going along with this
> nonsense.
>
> Ed
>
>
> On Jun 9, 2010, at 7:56 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>
>> Ed,
>>    My quick reaction to the writing standards is that they are very
>> much
>> genre focused without a particularly sophisticated understanding of
>> the genres in play. It would be interesting, too, to see the language
>> section more closely connected to genre, since the corpus grammars are
>> now giving us a pretty good view of functional language patterns
>> within the genres.
>>    I couldn't access Newkirk's article without subscribing. Does he
>> think
>> the standards are too high? Why would the dropout rate be staggering?
>>
>> Craig>
>>
>>
>> I agree with Herb.  Also, has anyone looked closely at the writing
>>> standards?  Read Thomas Newkirk's comments on them in the current
>>> issue of Education Week.  He calls them an instance of "magical
>>> thinking," and I agree totally.  If they are adopted and enforced,
>>> the
>>> dropout rate will be staggering.
>>>
>>> Ed
>>>
>>> On Jun 9, 2010, at 5:16 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>>>
>>>> The National governor's Association's Common core Standards have
>>>> been
>>>> released and can be accessed at www.corestandards.org.
>>>>   Though they still don't go as far as they ought to in that
>>>> direction,
>>>> they seem a radical shift in favor of knowledge about language (not
>>>> just language behavior) throughout the grade levels. This, for
>>>> example, is from grade 7: "Explain the function of phrases and
>>>> clauses
>>>> in general and their function in specific sentences." This seems
>>>> to me
>>>> the sort of thing that can't happen solely "within the context of
>>>> writing" or through mini-lessons.
>>>>    Check it out. If I am reading this correctly, they are calling
>>>> for
>>>> far more conscious attention to language from K-12.
>>>>
>>>> Craig
>>>>
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