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Monday, January 21, 2013

UPDATE: Schools Matter: Because of the common core, do it wrong

Schools Matter: Because of the common core, do it wrong:


Embracing the common core = “Drinking poison to quench thirst”

Yvonne Siu-Runyan: “Once you told me a great idiom from China called, ‘Yin Zhen Zhi Ke: Drinking poison to quench thirst.’ Would you please explain why you used this Chinese idiom when speaking about American education?”

Yong Zhao: “Well, the Chinese saying is to warn people not to take measures that may appear to solve an urgent problem in the short term but in effect the solution is more damaging than the problem.“

From: Yong Zhao in Conversation: Education Should Liberate, Not Indoctrinate http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/05/yong_zhao_in_conversation.html


Accepting the common core as inevitable has the effect of making it inevitable.


Written in response to this question,
"How can we best prepare our students for the common core in language arts?"
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2013/01/response_best_ways_to_prepare_our_students_for_ccss_in_language_arts.html#comments

Larry Ferlazzo responds:
“I have been no fan of the Common Core standards (see The Best Articles Sharing Concerns About Common Core Standards). However, one of the key lessons I learned in my nineteen year community organizing career was that, though we should always recognize the tension inherent in "the world as we'd like it to be" and "the 


Because of the common core, do it wrong


In Larry Ferlazzo’s Ed Week blog, Amy Benjamin first agrees with comprehensible input and then does a strange about-face:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2013/01/response_best_ways_to_prepare_our_students_for_ccss_in_language_arts.html

Amy Benjamin agrees with the idea that we acquire language “mostly” via comprehensible input and then does an abrupt about-face, claiming that students need “regular practice and targeted instruction” in academic language, activities based on word-lists. She goes on to assert that students need formulas to master academic writing, even though she still notes that writing is “informed by input.”
No. There is no evidence supporting this view. There is massive evidence for the superiority of comprehensible