Common Core Musings

I’ve been spending time lately not developing lessons with teachers, but trying to bring together the work we have done into some kind of resource that is useful to a wider audience (a website, I think), as well writing some articles on what I’ve been learning through my collaborations. I’ve also been thinking again about the Common Core. I have developed a set of lessons for grades 3-5, each connected to the standards - but I’m a little uncomfortable with these, and I've been trying to figure out why. Here are some of the reasons.

I, like many, have mixed feelings about the Common Core State Standards. The only ones I’ve spent any time reading through and thinking about are the Language Standards. On the one hand, these are exciting since they include quite a bit of knowledge about grammar, usage, etymology, and morphological analysis. Apparently, there were even some linguists among the creators of the language standards strand with its three sections: Conventions of Standard English, Knowledge of Language, and Vocabulary Acquisition and Use. Each strand includes between about 15 and 30 standards per grade in these three areas. Examples from grades 3, 5, 7, and 9-10 of Conventions of Standard English are shown below:

Grade 3:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.A: Explain the function of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in general and their functions in particular sentences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.B: Form and use regular and irregular plural nouns.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.C: Use abstract nouns (e.g., childhood).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.D: Form and use regular and irregular verbs.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.E: Form and use the simple (e.g., I walked; I walk; I will walk) verb tenses.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.F: Ensure subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent agreement.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.G: Form and use comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs, and choose between them depending on what is to be modified.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1.H: Use coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.

Grade 5:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.1.A: Explain the function of conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections in general and their function in particular sentences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.1.B: Form and use the perfect (e.g., I had walked; I have walked; I will have walked) verb tenses.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.1.C: Use verb tense to convey various times, sequences, states, and conditions.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.1.D: Recognize and correct inappropriate shifts in verb tense.

Grade 7:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.7.1.A: Explain the function of phrases and clauses in general and their function in specific sentences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.7.1.B: Choose among simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences to signal differing relationships among ideas.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.7.1.C: Place phrases and clauses within a sentence, recognizing and correcting misplaced and dangling modifiers.*

Grade 9-10:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.1.B: Use various types of phrases (noun, verb, adjectival, adverbial, participial, prepositional, absolute) and clauses (independent, dependent; noun, relative, adverbial) to convey specific meanings and add variety and interest to writing or presentations.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.3: Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.4.D: Verify the preliminary determination of the meaning of a word or phrase (e.g., by checking the inferred meaning in context or in a dictionary).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5: Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5.A: Interpret figures of speech (e.g., euphemism, oxymoron) in context and analyze their role in the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.5.B: Analyze nuances in the meaning of words with similar denotations.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.6: Acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.

The amount of knowledge about language expected here is more than we’ve seen in any other standards, so that’s good (though intimidating!) – the more knowledge about grammar and language, the better. (Though some of them are quite strange, as I wrote about here. I’m especially struck by this 8th grade one.)

On the other hand, I’m troubled that these standards may become yet another list, items to check off without teacher or student fully understanding or appreciating the value of such knowledge. For indeed, the value isn’t evident if the standards are approached as concepts to be taught. However, if they are used as a scaffold for introducing a method of thinking, of discovery, rather than as a checklist, they could become a very good starting place for investigations into language.

There is some very direct value in studying the concepts alone, as I’ve written about elsewhere in this blog. Learning about the concepts in the standards, such as parts of speech, tense, aspect, types of clauses, and so on, will have direct applications to reading, writing, and analysis of literature. But importantly, students can gain much more than knowledge about grammar and its applications. Cameron (1997, "Sparing the Rod: What teachers need to know about grammar," Changing English 4.2), in discussing similar standards in England, stresses the importance of knowledge beyond “constituent structure and word class categories…if you want students to have not merely some factual knowledge about language but a critical awareness on such issues as the value of standard and nonstandard dialects, the status of minority languages, etc.” (235). And quite critically, knowledge about the structure of language is the foundation upon which such other knowledge is built. Cameron adds the following:

“[I]if people don’t understand the grammar, they cannot make critical positions their own, because they cannot understand the supporting arguments. For instance, the sociolinguist’s axiom that ‘all varieties of a language are equal’ is not just a political statement to the effect that one should not be prejudiced against, say, Black or working-class speech, it is a statement about the comparability of varieties on structural linguistics criteria such as systematicity, formal complexity and rule-governedness. For someone who does not understand what is meant by these terms, who cannot look at grammar as a system and formulate the rules, the axiom remains mere dogma, something you believe, or not, according to ideological conviction. To be truly ‘critical,’ language awareness must be informed by ‘technical’ knowledge about language” (235).

The CCSSs also include a Knowledge of Language section for each grade level strand, which does incorporate notions about language in use with standards such as the following.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.3.B: Compare and contrast the varieties of English (e.g., dialects, registers) used in stories, dramas, or poems.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.9-10.3: Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.

In order to do address these well, however, and in ways that aren’t discriminatory, one must really understand the grammatical structures underlying the varieties, as well as understand the basis of biases of spoken and written variations.

The other component of the standards that makes me somewhat uncomfortable has to do with so-called Standard English. One of the sections of each Language Strand is called Conventions of Standard English. This term promotes the mythical idea – what some would call an ideal – of a single standard variety. My collaborator extraordinaire, Anne Lobeck, and I have been working on several projects related to this idea of Standard/Academic English. She has noted that there is much evidence that there simply is no homogeneous linguistic variety with specific rules and forms that speakers and writers know and agree on. There are a handful of shibboleths of both speaking and writing, but not enough to build an entire notion of a standard around. Promoting such a hypothetical standard in our standards allows for an institutionalization of the process of linguistic subordination and overlooks the discrimination suffered by speakers of non-mainstream dialects, including (some) non-native speakers of English.

Many of the lessons that have grown out of my collaborations with teachers – many in this blog – begin to get at all of these notions, but the standards themselves, don’t. It’s important, then, that we approach the standards critically. We may use them to help achieve what we want our students to know, but we must make sure that they are not reinforcing aspects of ideologies about language that we reject.