Homeschool Advantages
Dear Members of the NEA, I have been a member of the NEA
for more than twenty years, but I was very disappointed to learn that NEA
supports the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Are you suicidal?
Do you know that public schools are under attack -- and losing students
both to charter schools and homeschooling. And here you are supporting
a nonsensical set of standards? Why can't the NEA itself propose a clearer,
less boring, and more meaningful set of standards? If you want to save
the public schools, I strongly suggest that you do so.
Advantage # One -- Personalized Instruction and Time on Task Parents who homeschool
not only can know exactly what their students need to study next,
but they also spend all their time in one-on-one relationship with their
children. There are no distractions, and they can begin a year exactly
where they started. This is certainly not the case in public schools. Not
only do public school teachers see different students almost every year,
they often work with several sections of twenty or more students. Some
of those students want to learn; many do not. At the college level, it
usually takes me five weeks (of fifteen) before I get a personal sense
of most students.
Advantage # Two -- Multi-year Sequential Instruction I always knew that this was a
problem, but I didn't really think about it in detail until I developed
KISS Grammar and put it on the web. As noted above, my intention was to
improve instruction in public schools. Some public school teachers commented
favorably about it, but they noted that they cannot use it because it is
a multi-year instructional sequence. As a result, it is mainly homeschoolers
who are using it, and they seem to love it.
Supposing the figure to be some one of the neighborhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it.Most KISS exercises are based either on the writing of students at specific grade levels, or on sentences (or short passages) from real literary texts. The point here, however, is that most grammar textbooks do not even address this question -- and neither does the Common Core. But if we want students to be able to identify clauses in what they read and write, we need to enable them to distinguish the verbs that we want them to underline twice (finite) from those that they should not underline (verbals). Interestingly, in a search of the Common Core "standards" for "verbal," the word first appears on page 52, where we learn that eighth graders are expected to be able to "[e]xplain the function of verbals." Just to the left of that, we learn that seventh graders are expected to "[e]xplain the function of phrases and clauses in general and their function in specific sentences." How are seventh graders supposed to do this if they cannot distinguish finite verbs from verbals? (The Common Core never states that students should be able to identify either clauses or verbals in their own writing.) Year Two also addresses the "to," "too," "two" and "there" and "their" problems. (See below.) This second year of KISS, however, depends on the students' having mastered the first year materials. The third year of KISS focuses on basic clauses. A clause is a subject / finite verb / complement pattern. Students who can identify these patterns can learn to identify clauses fairly easily. Clauses are th most important grammatical construction that students need to master. Clauses entail many stylistic and logical options, but many of the most serious punctuation errors (comma-splices, run-ons, and fragments) involve clause boundaries. My reasons for the preceding description were twofold. First, I wanted to suggest that some subjects (and, like math, sentence structure is one of them) require several years to master. Students can master them if instruction is designed such that later material builds on what was previously learned. Second, the approach is clear and easily assessable--even on those fill in the bubble tests. If the standard is that students should be able to identify verbals, give them a sentence with a verbal in it and ask them to bubble the choice that identifies the verbal. Advantage # Three -- Ignoring State Standards Although NEA claims that teachers support Common Core, the responses to an NEA article about it were interesting. As I understand the web site, readers cannot rate the article, "Here Come the Common Core Standards," by Cindy Long, but they can rate the comments about it. For my point, the most interesting comment is by Tyson, who says in part: As of the time I read it, twenty-seven people liked the comment; one did not. What I have heard from teachers is all negative. One of the things I have heard was echoed in Mrs. E's response to the article:So now we’ll have 0 kids knowing their facts by high school because some “expert” thinks the best way to get better is to scrimmage all practice, every practice, instead of actually doing some skill drills. The skill drills work when kids take responsibility for their learning and parents are supportive. Then their would actually be time for a scrimmage. But oops, there I go again…asking people to be responsible instead of just blaming teachers and public schools. I have no problem with the standards for my subject; they seem to be well written, and I like the depth students will go into to explore topics. The big problem I have is that Common Core will require everyone to test every quarter. This means that everyone has to be “on the same page.” I also saw a sample question for first grade, and it was totally inappropriate for a developing reader. It makes me sick to think that a first grader would be tested in this manner.Thirty-six people liked this comment; three did not. Obviously I disagree with MRs. E's belief that the standards are "well written," but what interested me was the "on the same page" comment. I have been told that in some school districts, every teacher in every grade literally has to be "on the same page" of the assigned textbook. In large part, the reason for this was that no one in the school district could understand either the Common Core or the state's standards. Adminstrators therefore decided to take this approach. Why, under these circumstances, are teaachers being rated in large part by how many students do well in their courses? I'm planning a longer "open letter" on a more detailed critique of the Common Core Standards, but just for an example of their silliness, consider the following standards for "Grade 4 students" under "Conventions of Standard English" (page 28): 1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.a. Use relative pronouns (who, whose, whom, which, that) and relative adverbs (where, when, why). |