“I think the Common Core State Standards are our best shot at creating an education system that meets the challenges of the 21st century,” writes Dylan Wiliam, an emeritus professor of educational assessment, who served on the Validation Committee. But he refused to “validate” the standards.
On Rick Hess’ blog, Wiliam explains why.
Committee members were asked to agree that the standards are:
1) Reflective of the core knowledge and skills in ELA and mathematics that students need to be college- and career-ready
2) Appropriate in terms of their level of clarity and specificity
3) Comparable to the expectations of other leading nations
4) Informed by available research or evidence
5) The result of processes that reflect best practices for standards development
6) A solid starting point for adoption of cross state common core standards
7) A sound basis for eventual development of standards-based assessments
In a letter to the CCSSO, Wiliam said he agreed with statements 1, 6 and 7 and “can persuade myself that statements 4 and 5 are just about OK (although it’s a stretch).”
However, I cannot in all conscience, endorse statements 2 and 3. The standards are, in my view, much more detailed, and, as Jim Milgram has pointed out, are in important respects less demanding, than the standards of the leading nations.
. . . I think there is also a real tension between pitching the standards at college-readiness (which is fine) and saying that they are comparable to the world’s leading nations in mathematics when many countries are much more demanding at college entry, because they recruit a smaller proportion of the population.
It’s “silly to claim the standards are evidence-based,” adds Wiliam. “They are choices about curriculum, and no amount of evidence can shed any light on whether we should study Shakespeare or Dickens.”