What teachers should know about Common Core: a guide for the perplexed

Shanahan, T. (2015). What teachers should know about Common Core: a guide for the perplexed. The Reading Teacher 68(8), 583-588.


Timothy Shanahan here gives advice on what teachers can say when parents express concerns about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The article is organized in a question-answer format that reminds me of the popular “FAQ” formats one often finds on web sites. Shanahan provides answers for 24 questions that parents might ask. The article is written in a breezy, teacher-friendly style; Shanahan even tries to include some humor to help reduce some of the anxiety that readers may feel when thinking about the CCSS. That humor may be seen in the title of the article and in its very first paragraph, so clearly Shanahan wants to immediately welcome his readers and let them know he is on their side and here to help. In general, the article IS helpful for teachers and will be an accessible read for most people.

Helpful as it is, the article raised concerns for me. In some ways the tone is slightly patronizing, but I can live with that. I do worry, though, about a tendency here to make light of some very real concerns that parents and teachers may be having. Providing a list of “snappy answers” (p. 583) may not be the best or most respectful way to address those concerns.

Before I proceed to discuss my concerns, let me first state that in general I am a supporter of the CCSS, and of standards-based assessment, as long as those standards make sense and the assessments are aligned and wisely developed and implemented. The CCSS seems like a sensible document to me, one that can be comprehended in a short time. I generally like the direction the CCSS is taking us. We need more rigor in our schools. Therefore, the concerns I express here should not be taken as a case against the CCSS document or anything in it. As a teacher educator, I accept it as what we now have to work with, and it is certainly better than standards documents from the recent past. My job is to prepare future teachers to work in the CCSS era, and I am presently trying to do that to the best of my ability, though there is now some uncertainty that has complicated that task.

My state is one of those that is taking another look at the CCSS. Though I hope our state decides in large part to keep the CCSS, I do understand the worries. Our state was one of the first to accept the CCSS, and many people knew little about them until they were presented as a “done deal”. The people of my state never had a chance to vote on the CCSS, and the state legislature did not. There were some of the usual processes for approval that went on, but the whole approval process seemed to happen very quickly. I am concerned about that, and recognize worries parents may have about how the CCSS happened as valid concerns.

One big thing that worries me, and that Shanahan did not discuss, was the growing corporate influence in education, with a few major entities having a heavy influence. My own initial enthusiasm about the CCSS was dimmed somewhat when I learned of the role Bill and Melinda Gates played in funding the development of the CCSS. In my own state, many new assessments are being developed, for both teachers and students, all of which will be done electronically. One huge publishing company (that I will not name but whose name you would recognize) has apparently taken over the development of many of the assessments that will be used to assess student learning and the effectiveness of teachers. Again, I am not against such assessments in general, but seeing one corporate entity developing almost all of them worries me greatly, even if those assessments turn out to be good ones.

Shanahan addresses several questions about the involvement of the federal government (and the current presidential administration) in CCSS. He states that “there was no federal role in the CCSS” (p. 584). I find this sweeping statement difficult to swallow. “No federal role”? Really? Just because there is no direct influence does not mean the feds are not involved. Offering federal money to states that accept the standards, and more money for testing, is indeed a form of involvement. In fact, I might argue that a larger federal role might have been desirable. It would have slowed things down, admittedly, in a nation where, according to Shanahan, nearly half of college students now require remediation in reading, writing, and math (p. 585). However, there might have been more representation from the American people that way, and there might not be the pushback we now are seeing.

What do I agree with in this article? I do think Shanahan’s answer to the question of why we needed new standards is sound. I was not surprised to read about the problems college students are having with basic literacy and math skills. I see them daily in my undergraduate teacher education courses, and it worries me greatly. Many of my students would not pass the Grade 4 CCSS assessments when it comes to writing conventions. I recently had to explain to some students how an average score is calculated. My students seem to have almost no knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, and limited (and sometimes incorrect) knowledge about U.S. history. This is scary in a class of future teachers. We not only have to fix that in K-12 education, I now have the added challenge of making sure future teachers (educated under previous standards) know the content they will be teaching. It is far from a given, just because they graduated from high school! As a matter of fact, my state now has a mandated exit exam (devised by the aforementioned publishing company) that focuses heavily on pure content. My students are not prepared, and it is not all their fault. How can teachers teach to meet the CCSS when they cannot meet those standards themselves?

Along with that, I am in total agreement with Shanahan’s claim (and that of the CCSS) that we need to ramp up the difficulty of reading materials. I have long believed that learners need to read across a variety of levels, not just the instructional level determined for them by diagnostic assessments. Readers need to read easy books at their independent level to gain fluency and learn to enjoy reading. They need scaffolded instruction at various points in their instructional range (and I purposely call it a range rather than one level) to grow and learn new skills. They also need to do some work in texts that are difficult for them. I am not in favor of throwing frustrating books at children and making them do things with them that they are not yet ready to do. However, I disagree vehemently with the practice I have seen in the past where children were not allowed to select books that were not judged to be exactly at “their level”. Not long ago, that was happening a lot. One child I know came home from school (a school that implemented Accelerated Reader heavily), and she was all excited that she was now “allowed” to read chapter books! That made my blood boil.

Another area I am in agreement with is the increased emphasis on informational text in the CCSS, which clearly does NOT mean that literature will not be taught. That misconception needed to be addressed, and Shanahan generally did so well, at least until the last sentence of his answer, and then he lost me. In parentheses (p. 586), Shanahan asks, “Do we really want kids reading novels in algebra class?” My answer is, YES! We do! If literature will help a student understand math better, then let’s use it! Let’s try anything and everything to help him or her understand, and any kind of text!

In a recent annotation on this blog, I recommended an article that favored using children’s picture books in subject areas; please scroll down and read more there for why a novel or other literature might indeed be appropriate and helpful in an algebra class. We have so many kinds of texts available nowadays; though it’s good to emphasize informational text, doing so does not rule out the use of literature across the curriculum. Shanahan clearly was joking a bit here, judging from his reference to Glenn Beck in the same sentence, but I believe he went too far in this instance. There are some other instances where it seemed to me he was being just a touch too flippant for the context, but this little “aside” about no novels in math class was too much for me.

In that same vein, I definitely did not appreciate the way the concern about how student data would be used was addressed. Shanahan attempts to ease concerns about student privacy by telling us that the data are going to be used to evaluate teachers! That does not make me feel better, and I doubt if it would make any teacher feel better. The issue of teacher evaluation based on their students’ test scores is briefly alluded to, then glossed over and left there. In fact, the concerns about student privacy were not really addressed seriously here, either. On those questions, we needed more and did not get it here.

Finally, I completely disagree with the idea that reading motivation and the love of reading are not essential for success. The concern that the CCSS might not build a love of reading is dismissed and minimized here. Actually, reading motivation and reading engagement have been linked with increased reading achievement. I highly recommend reading the work of John Guthrie and colleagues on reading engagement (his work has been described on this blog; just click on “engagement”). Time spent in engaged reading may actually trump factors like socioeconomic status when it comes to reading achievement. If engagement helps learning, then how can we accept a statement that “Loving reading is something that many of us care about, but in fact, it is possible to earn a living or to get an education without it” (p. 587)?

I probably will share this article with my colleagues and students. There is enough here that is helpful to give it value. I will, however, also discuss the concerns I have outlined here. This is an article from a major literacy expert who has been involved with several standards movements, so his words carry weight. That may add to the disappointment I had with the tone of the article and some of its content. To some degree the way the article was put together was probably part of an editorial decision, with the goal to provide an accessible, “light and breezy” article that follows formats and styles that people are used to from web browsing. In this case, though, I think a more formal, careful approach would have served the purpose better.