By Sheila
Resseger in Rhode Island’s Future
Dr. Ken Wagner, Rhode Island’s new commissioner of public
education, was asked what strategies he would propose to address the achievement
gap between students of color and their Caucasian counterparts at the July 13
joint meeting of the Board of Education and Council on Elementary and Secondary
Education at which his nomination was confirmed. (video
available here)
What is essential for closing the achievement gap, he said, is
to have the same “high learning expectations for all students.” In using this
phrase, he is referring to the Common Core State Standards.
These standards, along with the EngageNY curriculum aligned to
them, a curriculum which Dr. Wagner has taken credit for developing in NY
State, have been declared developmentally inappropriate for young children by
many experts on early childhood education. (See Joint Statement of Early
Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards
Initiative)
In his remarks, Wagner disparaged these authentic voices by
claiming that ideas on developmental stages by the esteemed child psychologist
Jean Piaget are passé. According to Wagner, “Now the consensus seems to be much
more that students can achieve things never thought possible, provided the
right supports.”
There is an article by cognitive psychologist Dr. Daniel
Willingham that seems on the surface to corroborate Dr. Wagner’s point. (“Ask
the Cognitive Scientist: What Is Developmentally Appropriate
Practice?” (AMERICAN EDUCATOR, SUMMER 2008)
Willingham does indeed critique Piaget’s developmental stages
and finds them wanting. However, he also states: “… changing strategies and
experimenting with different methods of presenting and solving problems may be
a more effective way to improve instruction than trying to match instruction to
children’s developmental level.”
If you substitute the Common Core Standards/EngageNY rigid
pacing for the words “developmental level,” you have an argument for not
following scripted lessons paced according to grade level, which is what
EngageNY provides.
Scripted lessons means that teachers are provided with specific
questions and explanations they are to use to teach each lesson, and students
are expected to respond in predictable ways. For anyone who has spent any time
with children, it should be clear that their responses are and should be
unpredictable—effective teachers are open to the teachable moment, and this is
a crucial tool for reaching and engaging students.
Declaring that young children can handle more difficult concepts
than we have given them credit for does not translate into saying all children
in the same grade should be held to the same content at the same pace, which
the Common Core, EngageNY and accompanying testing essentially require.
Why are Dr. Wagner and other adherents of lock-step learning
using an anti-Piaget argument as an excuse for what actually amounts to what
many veteran teachers consider educational malpractice? What comes to mind is
how convenient this argument is for stifling objections to the scripted
materials that state departments of education and districts want teachers to
follow.
I found it ironic that when questioned by the student
representative at the Board of Education meeting, who asked if the Common Core
Standards truly allow teachers to address individual students’ learning, Dr.
Wagner responded: “So the standards are not prescriptions. … I do not see this
work as scripted. … It’s about justice.” Numerous experienced teachers
and others knowledgeable about young children disagree.
According to the testimony of Dr. Walter Schartner, Sayville
School Superintendent with 41 years of experience in education, and 26 years as
an administrator:
“The
NY State modules and domains that script what teachers—very, very successful,
highly effective teachers–do is the problem. … I hope everybody else has a
chance to go onto EngageNY, and look on how scripted these modules are, in
terms of the first two minutes do this, the next eight minutes do this. It’s an
insult to our teachers ….”
Programs serving young children need highly trained, autonomous
teachers who are aware of the developmental appropriateness of content and
process for the growth of the individual children in their charge. Those who
are obsessed with a rigidly paced, standardized-test/data informed approach see
value in “outcomes” and “accountability” rather than in respecting the lived
experience of children.
When will sanity be restored to teaching and learning? Our
children deserve it, and the clock is ticking.
