P. David Pearson University of California, Berkeley

1. Literacy Policy and Practice in the Era of the Common Core: Critical Concerns and Research Guidance for Classroom Practice P. David Pearson University of California, Berkeley

2. Goals for Today • Remind ourselves of what the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts are designed to do. • Examine their potential • New possibilities: The high road on curriculum, text, and cognitive challenge • Explore their dark side: Pot holes, sink holes, and black holes • Discuss some defensible positions to take on curriculum and pedagogy as we move into the all important implementation phase. Slides will be posted on www.scienceandliteracy.org

3. Survey • Elementary? • Secondary? • College? • What’s the difference

4. Elementary Teachers Love • Their kids

5. Secondary Teachers Love • Their subjects

6. College Teachers Love • Themselves

7. A Confession:My Relationship with CCSS • Member of the Validation Committee • Background work on text complexity with a grant from Gates Foundation • Long (and occasionally checkered) history with standards going back to • NBPTS: Standards for Teaching • IRA/NCTE Standards • Research and development work on assessment, especially the sorts of assessments that are allegedly going to be privileged by the CCSS for ELA

8. What sold me on the standards

9. What they said about reading • Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive, reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally. They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens world views. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic. (CCSSO/NGA, 2010, p. 3)

10. So what’s not to like? • Nothing • Everything I believe in about literacy learning

11. What they said about teacher choice • By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed. Thus, the Standards do not mandate such things as a particular writing process or the full range of metacognitive strategies that students may need to monitor and direct their thinking and learning. Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards. (CCSSO/NGA, 2010, p. 4).

12. Just the right balance • NCLB relief package • Let the body politic at every level have a voice in the big overarching goals • At every level along the way, from the state to the district to the school to the classroom, leave a little room for each player to place his or her “signature” on the effort… • Identity, buy-in, the right kind of political negotiation among levels within the system…

13. So……. • In 2010, I signed on the dotted line to say these standards are worthy of our professional support and implementation • Ready to go on the road and seek converts. • But the road to paradise has been a little rocky…

14. Today’s Agenda • Raise and try to answer several questions about the current prospects for new policies and classroom practices • Focus particularly on the role of the CCSS • Especially in the implementation Phase we are just entering

15. Issues and Questions… • Do students need more challenge in the texts they encounter? • Is literacy best enacted in the service of acquiring disciplinary knowledge? • Do the standards get comprehension right? • Is the developmental trajectory of the standards across grade levels valid? • Will the assessments prove to be matches to the standards? • How can the CCSS make peace with NCLB: What about the role of foundational skills?

16. These and other issues are discussed in several papers at www.scienceandliteracy.org: • Pearson, P. D. (2013). Research foundations for the Common Core State Standards in English language arts. In S. Neuman and L. Gambrell (Eds.), Qualityreading instruction in the age of Common Core State Standards (pp. 237-262). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. • Hiebert, E.H., & Pearson, P.D. (2013). What happens to the basics? Educational Leadership. 70(4), 48-63. • Pearson, P. D., & Hiebert, E. H. (2013).  Understanding the Common Core State Standards.  In L. Morrow, T. Shanahan, & K. K. Wixson (Eds.), Teaching with the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts:  What Educators Need to Know,Grades PreK-2 (pp. 1-21).  New York, NY:  Guilford Press.

17. 1. Do students read better and learn more when they experience greater challenge in the texts they encounter. • Based on two assumptions • Students are not college or career ready • 200 lexile gap • We have been dumbing down textbooks • Hayes (1996) • Chall (197os) • Will productive struggle be good for kids?

18. Why text complexity? The gap for college and career readiness Jack Stenner’s (lexile guy) depiction of the 200 lexile gap

19. Productive struggle has its place, as does upping the ante…BUT • Not because we have dumbed down textbooks • Hiebert and Mesmer • Gamson • But because we have NEVER met the challenge of college and career readiness • And because students need the tools and opportunity to read and learn whatever they wish • We all need strategies for coping with our own Waterloo texts.

20. What’s a body to do? • Journey not a mandate • Two general approaches • Gradually scale up the challenge in some sort of digitally delivered learning space • Offer high support for the productive struggle • Rethink the scaffolding metaphor: Not whether a kid can read a text at a given level but • Under what conditions of support can a student make meaning while reading a text?

21. What’s a body to do? Text-task scenarios (Valencia, Pearson, & Wixson) • Texts are not inherently difficult or easy • Neither ability nor disability is behind the eyes and between the ears (Meehan, McDermott) • Show me an abled reader today and I’ll show you a disabled reader tomorrow • Show me a disabled reader today and I’ll show you an abled reader tomorrow • Depends on Context- • Support (how is it scaffolded) (3rd leg of the CCSS appendix) • Task demands (what do you have to do to demonstrate understanding) • Knowledge, interest, motivation, engagement…

22. 2. Are reading and writing best developed and enacted in the service acquiring disciplinary expertise? • Minimize Reading to Learn vs Learning to Read • Always learning to read (that’s why we need secondary programs • Always reading to learn (that’s why texts for even our youngest readers must promote knowledge and insight) • Reading, Writing, and Language are best conceptualized as tools, not goals • Mischief—Means not ends

23. Our current view of curriculum Social Studies Language Arts Mathematics Science

24. A model I like: Tools by Disciplines Academic Disciplines……….. Language Tools 

25. Early: Tools are privileged Academic Disciplines……….. Language Tools 

26. Later: Disciplines are privileged Academic Disciplines……….. Language Tools 

27. Weaving is even a better metaphor than a matrix Language Writing Reading math literature Social studies Science 

28. Reading Writing Language Literature Social Studies Science Mathematics

29. Integration is tough…What happens when you try to integrate reading and math? • The evolution of mathematics story problems during the last 40 years. 

30. 1960's • A peasant sells a bag of potatoes for $10. His costs amount to 4/5 of his selling price. What is his profit? 

31. 1970's (New Math) • A farmer exchanges a set P of potatoes with a set M of money. • The cardinality of the set M is equal to $10 and each element of M is worth $1. Draw 10 big dots representing the elements of M. • The set C of production costs is comprised of 2 big dots less than the set M. • Represent C as a subset of M and give the answer to the question: What is the cardinality of the set of profits? (Draw everything in red). 

32. 1980's • A farmer sells a bag of potatoes for $10. His production costs are $8 and his profit is $2. Underline the word "potatoes" and discuss with your classmates. 

33. 1990's • A kapitalist pigg undjustlee akires $2 on a sak of patatos. Analiz this tekst and sertch for erors in speling, contens, grandmar and ponctuassion, and than ekspress your vioos regardeng this metid of geting ritch. Author unknown 

34. 2000's • Dan was a man. • Dan had a sack. • The sack was tan. • The sack had spuds • The spuds cost 8. • Dan got 10 for the tan sack of spuds. • How much can Dan the man have? 

35. 3. Do the CCSS get comprehension right? http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson

36. Prevailing research-based wisdom about comprehension… • Kintsch’s Construction-Integration Model • Rand Report on Comprehension Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

37. The End of Elegance • Business had been slow since the latest rise in the price of crude. • Nobody seemed to want anything elegant anymore. • Suddenly a well-dressed man burst through the showroom door, • and headed straight for the most expensive model on the floor.

38. John Ingham peered over the rims of his horn-rimmed glasses, • over the top of the want ad section of the newspaper, • adjusted his loose-fitting jacket to hide the frayed sleeves of his shirt, • and rose to meet the man whose rhinestone stickpin and alligator boots (but were they?) seemed incongruous amidst the dazzling array of steel-gray • Mercedes sedans.

39. “Ill take this one”, he said confidently, pointing to most expensive model on the floor… • “cash on the line!” • Later, the paperwork complete, John muttered to himself, “I’m glad I didn’t blow this one.” • He added, “What does he know about elegance? What does anyone know about elegance anymore? • Then he smiled wryly as he returned to his newfound pastime.

40. Context Kintchian Model Text 3 Knowledge Base Does>>>>>>>>> 1 Text Base 2 Situation Model Experience Says Means Out in the world Inside the head

41. Rand

42. Kintsch’s Construction-Integration Model • As you read, for each unit, you • Construct a Textbase • Integrate the Text and Knowledge Base to create a Situation Model • Incorporate information from the Situation Model back into your knowledge base • Use your knowledge to nudge the world a bit. • Start all over again with the next bit of reading • C-I-C-I, anon anon Says Means Does

43. My claim in 2010: The vision of comprehension in the CCSS maps onto important theoretical, assessment, and curricular research • National Assessment of Educational Progress • Four Resources Model of Freebody and Luke • Kintsch’s Construction-Integration Model http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson

44. Key Ideas and Details • 1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. • 2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas. • 3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text. • Craft and Structure • 4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone. • 5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. • 6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text. • Integration of Knowledge and Ideas • 7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.* • 8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence. • 9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

45. Common Core • Standards 1-3: Key ideas and details • Standards 4-6: Craft and structure • Standards 7-9: Integration of knowledge and ideas http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson

46. NAEP • Locate and Recall • Interpret and Integrate • Critique and Evaluate

47. CCSS NAEP • Key ideas and details • Craft and structure • Integration of knowledge and ideas • Locate and Recall • Interpret and Integrate • Critique and Evaluate

48. Freebody and Luke’s 4 Resources • Reader as Decoder: Get the message: • Reader as Meaning Maker: Integrate with knowledge: • Reader as Text Analyst: What’s the real message and how is it crafted • Reader as Text Critic: What’s the subtext? The hidden (or not so hidden) agenda? SAYS MEANS DOES

49. Consistent with Cognitive Views of Reading Key Ideas and Details Locate and Recall What the text says Decoder Integration of Knowledge and Ideas Integrate and Interpret Meaning Maker What the text means Craft and Structure What the text does Critique and Evaluate User/Analyst/Critic

50. For those who want to see everything at once…