When winter weather causes the cancellation of school days, the education of every child suffers. No compensatory make-up of school days or minutes of instruction redeems the loss of planned, continuous learning. We know this to be true. It is time for the leaders of school districts in areas that annually face school closure to due to snow and cold to give their school children a break – a winter break in the school calendar.

On January 28, 2014, WKOW, an ABC affiliate in Madison, WI, ran these data regarding Madison area school cancellations.

• School District of Beloit – 4 days cancelled, will extend year by 4 days.
• School District of Beloit-Turner – 4 days cancelled, 2 days built into calendar, considering extending half days or eliminating teacher work days.
• Cassville School District – 6 days cancelled, will make half-days full days, eliminate teacher work days, school on Good Friday, extend the school year.
• DeForest Area School District – 4 days cancelled, 3 days built into calendar, will make-up 1 day.
• Evansville Community School District – 5 days cancelled, 3 days and additional hours built into calendar, will make-up 1.5 days.
• New Lisbon School District – 5 days cancelled, 2 days will not be made up, 1 day taken from spring break, extend the school year by 2 days.
• Oregon School District – 5 days cancelled, need to make-up some days, still considering options, will make final decision in the spring.

http://m.wkow.com/w/main/story/108269442/

Since the WKOW report, each school district has cancelled school between two and four additional days.

The problem of school cancellation is not confined to Wisconsin. All northern tier states, including New England and the eastern seaboard face harsh winter weather. A Michigan report indicated that 140 of 755 school districts cancelled school more than ten days and a dozen districts cancelled school more than twenty days.

http://bridgemi.com/2014/02/snow-wars/

From the get go, it is apparent that the instructional year that some districts place on the annual school calendar contains “throw away days.” If no days of school are cancelled, children will have school on a full calendar of days, usually 180. But if school is cancelled, there are days that can be missed without the need for make-up. 178 days will do. And, there almost always are more hours of instruction scheduled within 180 days than are required. Hence, days when the start of school is delayed and/or children are dismissed early do not count as school cancellations. Actually, starts and early dismissals may be as frequent as cancelled school days.

If a school district does not have “throw away days” in its calendar, then it uses strategies for compensatory time. The easy pickings for making-up instruction are teacher work days. These are days when teachers are scheduled to do professional work at school but children are not in attendance. If teacher work days are used for make-up, children attend school on those days and the planned professional work is forfeited.

Extending school into planned vacation periods or after the planned end of school year date is the next strategy often used by school leaders. It also is the strategy most disdained by parents who have planned and often deposited money for family vacations during spring and Easter vacations and immediately after the last day of the school calendar. Student attendance on make-up days is never as great as attendance on a regularly scheduled days of school. Families that have pre-committed to vacation plans seldom renege on those plans. Regular weekend activities make Saturdays a difficult draw back to school. And, when children know that some to many of their classmates will not attend school on a make-up day, parental statements of “you should go” become less compelling.

Interestingly, holding school on days with severe inclement weather also has a downside for instruction. “My son said (his) teacher could not do plans with seven students in his period one class – so they just say for the entire block.”

http://wavy.com/2014/02/15/debate-rages-about-saturday-school-days/

A final compensatory action is to add minutes to subsequent days of school in the spring in order to meet state mandates for required hours of instruction by grade level or in subject areas. Adding minutes to the school day is an option only if the school will meet number of mandated days of instruction, usually between 170 and 180 depending upon each state’s requirements.

No matter what an observer of snow days thinks, nothing in school is simple when school is cancelled. Many instructional plans are postponed for a day or two, or three or four if a weekend connects to the cancellation. Some instructional plans cannot be reassembled – the speaker or interactive media connection cannot be rescheduled, the field trip option is lost, the school will be on vacation (ironic, eh?), or there are other school demands that take priority over the planned instruction. At a minimum, the continuity of learning is broken. And, it is this break in instruction that is the most damaging.

“Dave Marcotte and Steven Hemelt (2008) collected data on school closures from all but one school district in Maryland to estimate the impact on achievement. The percentage of students passing math assessments fell by about one-third to one-half a percentage point for each day school was closed, with the effect largest for students in lower grades. Hansen (2008) found effects in Maryland that are nearly identical to those reported by Marcotte and Hemelt, and larger, though statistically insignificant, results in Colorado. Hansen also took advantage of a different source of variation in instructional time in Minnesota. Utilizing the fact that the Minnesota Department of Education moved the date for its assessments each year for six years, Hansen estimated that the percentage of 3rd- and 5th-grade students with proficient scores on the math assessment increased by one-third to one-half of a percentage point for each additional day of schooling.

While our studies use data from different states and years, and employ somewhat different statistical methods, they yield very similar results on the value of additional instructional days for student performance. We estimate that an additional 10 days of instruction results in an increase in student performance on state math assessments of just under 0.2 standard deviations. To put that in perspective, the percentage of students passing math assessments falls by about one-third to one-half a percentage point for each day school is closed.

Other researchers have examined impacts of instructional time on learning outcomes in other states, with similar results. For example, University of Virginia researcher Sarah Hastedt has shown that closures that eliminated 10 school days reduced math and reading performance on the Virginia Standards of Learning exams by 0.2 standard deviations, the same magnitude we estimate for the neighboring state of Maryland. Economist David Sims of Brigham Young University in 2008 took advantage of a 2001 law change in Wisconsin that required all school districts in that state to start after September 1. Because some districts were affected while others were not, he was also able to provide unusually convincing evidence on the effect of changes in the number of instructional days. He found additional instruction days to be associated with increased scores in math for 4th-grade students, though not in reading.”

http://ftp.iza.org/dp2923.pdf

So, why do school continue to build traditional school calendars in the face of this annual dilemma? Does Einstein’s definition of insanity come to mind?

Give us all a break. Schedule a winter break in the school year and avoid the harshest of winter weather. What would this look like?

Begin school on the third Monday in August, typically fourteen days prior to September 1. This will allow the school calendar to complete a first semester, typically 90 school days, prior to Christmas. Too early? Many observers of US schools link the flagging performance of our children on competitive international tests to the fact that schools in the US have one of the shortest school calendars among tested nations. Assuring that children use all of the days scheduled in their school year would be a significant step in improving international test scores if up to five percent of a school year may be lost every year to school cancellations.

Schedule a winter vacation from the third Friday in December to the fourth Monday in January. This break will include traditional Christmas vacations, often one to two weeks in length.

Begin the second semester on the fourth Monday in January. The second semester will include 90 days of instruction and will conclude around the second Friday in June, depending upon the school district’s treatment of spring and Easter vacations.

This alternative will not avoid every winter storm, but it will avoid the days of the year that are typically

• the coldest – check the wind chill temps for the month of January. How many days presented wind chills of -20 degrees or colder?
• the darkest – check the research on ASD, Affective Seasonal Disorder. On how days in January did children go to school and return home from school in the dark?
• most likely to be snow days – on how many days in January did snow fall and create hazardous driving and walking conditions?
• the most expensive days of school operations – check with your local school to determine the operational costs (heating, electricity, snow plowing) of a day of school in January. Compare these costs to a day in August or a day in June. How much overtime was spent in January to make school ready for students given falling and blowing snow?
• the most difficult days of school life to reschedule – check with your local athletic director, school play and musical directors, and instrumental and choral directors. Ask them about the difficulties of rescheduling events that are postponed when school is cancelled.

Even though the data and studies indicate that academic achievement suffers as a result of cancelled days of school in January, that make-up days are poorly supported by many school parents and are poorly attended by children, and that adding minutes of instruction to subsequent school days is a numbers game not an instructional compensation, most school districts will continue to use these ineffective fixes to solve the problems caused by school cancellation.

Opponents to a winter break will complain that winter sports and arts programs will be devastated if children are not in school in January. Not so. Schools have successful histories of beginning fall sports seasons in August and continuing spring sports seasons into June and early July when school is not in session. It is very reasonable to consider winter sports seasons operating successfully in January without children in school. Schools also have successful histories of supporting drama and music programs during the summer when children are not in school.

Opponents will complain that parents will have difficulty finding child care for young children in January. But, probably not any more difficulty than they have in the summer months when children traditionally are on vacation.

Regardless of the evidence, a winter break is not the traditional way in which schools deal with winter weather. Why not? If academic achievement suffers when children experience school cancellations and school leaders use make-up days and additional instructional time to accommodate state mandates knowing that neither of these compensations is as good as continuous, planned instruction, why shouldn’t schools adopt a school calendar with a winter break. It only makes sense to stop doing what doesn’t work and begin a new practice that can work.

For more than a decade, my mother cut my hair. I give her credit for looking at the heads of other children at school and at church and in Look and Life. She wanted me to look like other children. I sat on a tall youth chair in the basement with an old bed sheet around my shoulders and she went at my hair with an electric trimmer and scissors. At the end, she always said with a smile, “That doesn’t look too bad.”

When I was thirteen and earning steady seasonal money with lawn mowing, leaf raking and snow shoveling jobs, I went to a barber shop and learned a life lesson that carried through my career is education. John, my first and usual barber until I went to college, was an artist with his trimmers and scissors. Interestingly, there was the same amount of cut hair on the floor around my mother’s youth chair as there was around John’s barber chair. But, there was a difference in the cuts. From where I sat watching my mother and John, the big difference was that my mother held her lips tightly together as she worked and looked at my head straight on with both eyes. However, she squinted a lot. John was not so tightly wound. As he cut and trimmed, the tip of his tongue appeared in the right corner of his mouth and he began to tilt his head to the right so that he was looking at me as if he was looking around a corner.

It took several years before I had the courage to ask John why he finished cutting my hair with his tongue tip out and head slightly cocked. He said, “I start looking at your head from the front seeing both sides and the top. The closer I get to being finished, the more I need to change the way I look at you. When I can see you in at least two different ways and like the way your hair has been cut, I know I have done a good job.” His answer was more satisfying than my mother’s double negative – “not too bad.”

As a teacher, it was important to look at children and their school work in at least two different ways. When I could do this, I knew that I would be able to cause them to become better learners and to learn better.

First, I needed to look at the child. From straight on, each child is as he or she presents herself or himself. Age appropriate for this classroom and grade appropriate in school promotion. Relatively healthy and alert. Seemingly ready to learn. It is easy to stop looking, because everything looks good or “not too bad.”

With a little twist of perspective, it surprising what one can see. Is this a first child in the family in your class or second or third – it can make a difference in how they feel about you as a teacher. Even though the child is on grade level in reading, was she an early reader or has she been improving each year? Is the child introverted or extroverted? Knowing a child’s proclivity for volunteering with a first answer or preference to hold back, listen and revise an answer based upon more information is an important thing to know. In general, how does the child see herself – does she smile a lot or frown?

Like John, I wanted to look at children as if I was looking around the corner and try to see them differently. Unlike John who was done as soon as I left his chair, my work just began and I needed to keep look differently. Children change over the course of a school year and how they look to you in September can be very different than how they look in January and April. And, every look demands that you form a renewed perception.

Second, and John taught me this, if he didn’t like what he saw in the cut of my hair, he kept on working until he liked what he saw. I learned to listen and look more carefully at what children said when asked a question or what they wrote when given an assignment or their thinking as they talked through a problem. With a generalized and pedestrian look, much of the student work I was presented was fair to good. Almost all of it was passing, for sure. But, was it good enough. How often is a child asked to refine an answer, revise a paragraph, correct mistakes no matter how many or few, or rethink the manner in which they reached a solution? Not often enough. Too often, first draft is a final draft. A good enough answer is a last answer. And, just a few mistakes is close enough. With a different look at student work and my responsibility for causing each child to improve in both their learning and as a learner, I needed to ask for more. “Not too bad” was not good enough.

This is not always easy to do. There are many social norms that make just good enough good enough. You will hear children say that “other teachers don’t make kids do rewrites.” You will hear “I don’t have time tonight to do this over.” Students will say, “I’ll take the B grade; that’s good enough.” And, certainly some will say, “I passed, didn’t I?” Staying the course of “we’re not done just yet” can be difficult. But, I always remembered, whether I was in my mother’s or John’s chair that, “I cannot see my head and I have no idea what they are seeing.” Knowing that children as students do not see the end of the job of learning is essential if you want to push children past good enough. That is how I responded to children who were more than willing to jump out of their desk with my first response to their work. “At this time, you are not able to see what I want to see in your school work.” After a while, they sat a bit longer to see if I was satisfied or if I needed to take second look.

Actually, the way John looked at my head created a very good lesson for life. Do a good job, then look at it differently to see if your first perception remains an accurate appraisal. If not, keep working until it is better than good.

Most professional development is a plan to fail because too many school districts do not take advantage of what we know about quality professional development. Typical professional development is more about the obligation to inform teachers about issues and prepare teachers for events than it is about the opportunity to train teachers to improve student achievement.

There is a small but growing body of professional study about professional development. “What Makes Professional Development Effective – Results from a National Sample of Teachers” by Garet et al tells us –

• The most common type of professional development is the after-school and summer workshop. And, the most criticized form of PD is the after-school and summer workshop.
• Many teachers are not prepared to implement teaching practices based upon high standards of deeper student understanding and competency. Many teachers learned to teach using models of learning and teaching that focused heavily on memorizing facts and little upon developing deeper understandings and this is how they teach on a daily basis.
• PD that assists teachers to learn new teaching methods shares several features. These include the involvement of teachers in a rich, multiple-year experience in collaborative planning of instruction; the clear linkage of improved teaching practices with the improvement of student achievement; PD that is clearly focused upon student thinking, the curriculum to be learned and pedagogy; and, open access to alternative ideas and methods about teaching and the opportunity to observe and experiment with these and then reflect upon their effectiveness.
• Two significant impediments to high quality PD are cost and balanced effort. Professional development is one of the first cuts when budgets are reduced while the cost of teacher time and travel and training increases. Because of limited financial resources, PD always is underfunded and on the cheap. And, most PD leaders try to provide some training to all teachers at the detriment of providing quality training to any teachers.

http://www.imoberg.com/files/Unit_D_ch._24_–_Garet_et_al._article.pdf

We also know that PD that is displayed as a logical plan has a higher chance of success. Logical plans are based upon local data, clearly describe student and teacher learning needs, explicitly describe professional learning outcomes in terms of improved content knowledge and teaching skills, specify needed support in terms of time and resources that will be applied to the PD experience, and explain how the effects of the content and skills PD will be evaluated.

http://mdk12.org/share/pdf/MarylandTeacherProfessionalDevelopmentPlanningGuide.pdf

Yet, this is what a typical beginning-of-the-school year explanation of a school district PD plan sounds like.

Thank you Dr. Jones for explaining the district’s instructional goals for this school year. Everyone shares your concerns regarding the district’s need to improve student achievement in reading and math.

Our professional development plan for the school year is very promising. This summer we planned the entire year’s PD calendar to assure that everyone is professionally prepared for another outstanding school year.

The two pre-service days will provide all teachers with an overview of all the changes within the district since the last school year with reports from every district department. During the two days, approximately six hours will be allowed for classroom preparations.

A 30-minute staff meeting is scheduled for the second Monday of each month. These after school meetings will help teachers prepare for things like the statewide testing in October, the Open House in November, Christmas concerts in December, and first semester grades in January.

Four in-service days are scheduled; one each quarter of the school year. There will be three presentations on each day to allow our district coordinators to inform all teachers of how we are meeting the state mandates related to their departments. There will be time for teachers to ask questions at each session.

Teacher requests to attend professional conferences were submitted last spring and we have allocated substitute teacher time and travel money to as many requests as we could. In order to provide conference attendance to as many teachers as possible, only one day of multiple day conferences was approved and mileage reimbursements are limited to 50 miles.

Also, meetings are scheduled for all Title 1 and Title 3 teachers, as well as all special education teachers, to review new regulations for these programs. Due to our limited sub budget, we are not able to provide substitute teachers to cover your absences for these meetings. Children will be assigned to regular ed for additional classroom time.

The National Staff Development Council completed a multi-year study of professional development in US schools and recommends these points for improved PD.

1. PD should be intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice.

2. PD should focus on student learning and address the teaching of specific content.

3. PD should align with school improvement priorities and goals.

4. PD should build strong working relationships among teachers.

http://learningforward.org/docs/pdf/nsdcstudy2009.pdf

So, plan your PD locally. And, plan your local PD with a backwards design.

Develop and commit to intensive and ongoing training of cadres of teachers who share similar teaching assignments for a group of students at the same school site. Multiple cadres can mean multiple groups within a school, multiple schools, and cadres from multiple school districts.

Commitment means providing adequate released time for massed instruction of specific content and pedagogical skills followed with adequate distributed time for application of, reflection about, and reinforcement of what has been learned.

Commitment also means diminishing the usual distractors of PD. Bring the PD closer to the teachers’ work site instead of having them spend released time traveling to the training. Supply adequate time for the teachers being trained to prepare students and substitute teachers for their significant absences from the classroom. And, connect principals and curriculum supervisors to the training so that everyone responsible for improving student achievement is on the same page.

Quality PD is not the same PD for every teacher. Commit to training teachers relative to their relationship to district priorities and goals. The provision of quality PD also does not mean that all teachers are engaged in PD all of the time or at the same time. It is okay for some teachers to be engaged in PD while others are not.

Finally, understand the difference between informing and training. Assuring that all teachers are informed about current issues and concerns related to the classroom, grade level, school and school district is the work of communications. Communications is not professional development. Staff meetings and newsletters and blogs and wikis are appropriate for good vehicles for communications. A half-day workshop or seminar can enhance the sharing of information. However, these episodic meetings regardless of frequency are no substitute for intensive, continuous and goals-based professional development.

Consider the significance of student teaching to the initial training of a teacher. Most teachers believe that their student teaching was the most important, formative experience in their preparation as a teacher. In order to effect significant changes and improvement in a veteran teacher’s content understanding and pedagogical skills, effective PD practices must present a student teaching-like commitment of time and resources, instruction and practice, reflection and reinforcement if educational leaders have any hope of causing real improvements in student achievement.

Change is a constant in our lives as nothing stays the same forever. Change is a constant phenomenon because the interplay of time and the human propensity to muck around mean that eventually even the most stalwart feature of our human world will change. Change is what it is – just a multi-dimensional shifting from one point of reference to another point of reference in preparation for yet another shift. It is content free and totally impersonal. Change is just a process of nature.

As irrefutable as change is, change scares most people spitless. And, even as change scares people, spitless people, and the extent to which spitless people will go, can cause organizations undergoing planned change to miserably fail to complete a change process.

The diagram below displays a theory of change.

http://stevenmsmith.com/ar-satir-change-model/

In the Satir Change Model, the “late status quo” is the usual condition of most healthy organizations. Good health means that the organization always is making slight adjustments in its forward movement. As the elements that surround the organization change due to economic, political and cultural shifts, to name a few, in its general environment, the organization makes slight adjustments in its forward path. It is like the airplane flying from Boston to Los Angeles, never flying on a straight line but always making compass and altitude adjustments until it successfully lands in LAX.

Pay attention to the sequence of “late status quo, foreign element, resistance, and chaos.” It is how an organization responds to the chaos that determines its potential for successfully completing planned changes.

Planned change actually is the introduction of a pre-considered “foreign element” into the organizational environment. Sometimes referred to as an improvement or innovative practice, or, as the next generation in positioning the organization to meet a better future, the introduction of the new idea, practice, product or personnel is regarded by the status quo as foreign. It is the new kid in the neighborhood that nobody knows. It is an uninvited guest at the company party. At its heart, it represents the unknown. For some, the unknown is welcome and they embrace it. For others, the unknown is greatly disturbing and excites their fight or flight responses.

For the sake of an educational example, let’s examine the Common Core State Standards as a “foreign element.” The initial exposure of the Core looked like another compass or altitude adjustment in the status quo of K-12 education in the United States. After all, the Core was authorized, approved and disseminated by the National Governors Council, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and a select group of Fortune 500 companies. Just another planned change.

Following a brief time for first blush reading, examination and analysis, the Core initiated a ripple of adjustments to all of the economic, political and cultural status quo systems within education. Many felt the Core may be like new math/old math controversy or the debate between phonics and whole language. Not quite. Within months and in a not-too-subtle manner, the federal Department of Education used the Core as a driver for change within the fifty state Departments of Public Instruction. State adoption of the Core was part of the quid pro quo for a waiver from the draconian mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act. Most states found this a welcome consolation. Forty-five states and state education departments adopted the Core, accepted the waiver, and other financial incentives of the Race To The Top program. For a brief time, the change process resembled the Satir model and was preparing for “transformation.”

The friction of change was different for local school districts that did their first blush reading, examination and analysis of the Core and found an instant need for major professional development. Regional educational agencies and national professional development vendors responded to the alarm of the local school districts with a wide array of workshops, seminars and training institutes. Whereas, there were early adopters of the Core by the major powerbrokers at the national, state and local levels, it did not take long for the friction of change to mount a growing resistance. Call it “slap back.”

The issues of resistance to the Core rose in each of the factors of the status quo – economic, political and cultural. Taxpayers balked at the implied financial resources needed to retrain four million teachers and the new educational materials needed for the alignment of instruction with the Core’s new and different academic standards. State and local school district budgets already were maxed out. Money became an issue. Politicians at all levels balked at the federalization of public education which constitutionally is under the purview of the state. The Core became synonymous with the Affordable Care Act. Partisanship and radicalism became an issue. Somehow, there also is a fear that the Core represents the forces of advocates of One World and this was an affront to patriotic Americans. And, traditionalists argued that each local school district historically established its own educational requirements and the Core trampled on local control. The reduction of emphasis upon classic literature in favor of increasing instructional focus upon a literacy for contemporary information was hotly argued. Local control of the quantitative and qualitative focus of instruction became an issue.

Resistance rose and chaos ensued. And, in this episode of chaos there appeared to be no allowance for a “transforming idea, integration, and new status quo.” (see the diagram) The future direction seemed to be any direction but the Core.

It is how organizations respond to resistance and chaos that bespeaks their true health. At all times, there are elements of resistance and chaos within the life and times of every organization. Most are accommodated within its negotiated systems. Wages and benefits are negotiated. Discontinuation of old products necessitates retooling for new products. Work groups may be transplanted from one geographic location to another, sometimes across the country or world. New skills sets are needed by new employees as veterans and outmoded skill sets transist from the workforce. Each has change creates its own uncertainties and each uncertainty its incumbent resistance. Healthy organizations are able to accommodate the give and take of change. Yet, life adjusts and the organization goes on. Not so true for unhealthy organizations.

Increasingly, however, resistance and ensuing chaos in our contemporary culture have found new types of power. Resistors do not seek accommodation of planned change; they seek to restructure and sometimes strengthen the status quo as a price for diminishing the chaos. As a result, organizational leaders wet a finger and lift it to the wind each time the resistance bell is rung. Within the chaos, leaders are determining their personal stake in the nature of the attempted organizational changes or if they can harness the chaos for their personal advantage. This capacity is forging a new generation national, state and local leaders.

It is a given that an organization does not emerge from its dealing with the issues of chaos along the same pathway it held prior to the chaos. There will be change, but not the change that was planned.

The upshot is that change may no longer be a planned process assisting an organization to navigate from point A to point B. Organizations now may exist within the pinball machine of time in which they put the “ball” of their wanted change into motion not knowing clearly how each element in the system will tap and redirect the change. Finally, however, ball will come to rest and that is where the organization will find itself. A plane headed for LAX may be anywhere on the globe.

Hence, any persons contemplating a planned change within their organization must understand the new dynamics of change theory. Plan with resistance and chaos in mind. Not to do so, is to court organizational disaster.

Huh? is an appropriate question when the status quo of schlock is deemed preferable to improving the education of generations of children.

The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards for the Social Studies was written in the early 1980s and confirmed in 1998. There has been no work by the WI Department of Public Instruction on social studies standards since 1998. The delay in standards reconsideration was further put on hold with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics in 2010. The DPI’s professed plan was to adopt the CCSS for Science and Social Studies when they were released sometime in this decade.

However, in October 2012 the Council of Chief State School Officers (state school superintendents) terminated any further discussion of common state standards beyond the already released English Language Arts and mathematics standards. The CCSSO along with the National Governor’s Council and Achieve, a group of Fortune 500 companies, comprised the educational reform leadership for writing and authorizing the Common Core standards for ELA and math. The state superintendents, state governors and corporate leaders were on a roll in leading educational standards revision until conservative political forces at the national level caused the elected officials of Common Core leadership to abandon the work.

Conservative politics also has been at play at the state level of educational reforms. Wisconsin was one of 45 states to adopt the ELA and math Common Core standards and was on track to adopt the science and social standards as they were released. In March 2013, Governor Scott Walker and all members of the state legislature received letters from individuals representing Patriot networks, TEA Party committees, Faith and Freedom coalitions, and Young Americans for Liberty asking them to abolish the Common Core standards in Wisconsin. Their complaint is that the Common Core standards are not rigorous enough for Wisconsin children, the Common Core is a federal intrusion into the state’s responsibility for education and further displaces local control, and that the nationalization of educational standards is another “Obamacare.”

http://www.wispolitics.com/1006/131126Walker

“I’d like the Legislature to hold those hearings,” Walker said in a response to Wisconsin Reporter’s question on Common Core. “And in the larger context I’d like us to be in the position where we can identify our own unique standards that I think in many ways will be higher and more aggressive than the ones they’re talking about.”

http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/scott-walker-says-state-should-have-more-rigorous-standards-than/article_32eff547-1ea8-5393-b297-25915eb7d744.html

So, what are we to think about social studies education today? As the Governor touts that every child is to become college and career ready as a result of their education in Wisconsin, what should we know about a student’s understanding of government and citizenship, economics and personal finance, US and world history, geography and world cultures? Not to mention the ways in which sociology and psychology help us to understand ourselves and the behaviors of those around us. In Wisconsin, the expectation of a social studies education is now thirty years old and aging fast. We are teaching Millenials and their children the social studies we taught their grandparents.

As the academic standards for social studies now are locked in time in Wisconsin, what do we know about the quality of this status quo? Actually, we know that the quality is not good. In 2011 the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for Advancing Educational Excellence evaluated the “State of State US History Standards” for each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. This is the Fordham summary of that evaluation.

“Presidents’ Day 2011 has come and gone, but George Washington would be dismayed by the findings of this new study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Reviewers evaluated state standards for U.S. history in grades K-12. What they found is discouraging: Twenty-eight states—a majority—deserve D or F grades for their academic standards in this key subject. The average grade across all states is a dismal D. Among the few bright spots, South Carolina earns a straight A for its standards and six other jurisdictions—Alabama, California, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia—garner A-minuses.”

Specifically, Wisconsin’s US History standards earned a grade of “F.”

“Wisconsin’s U.S. history standards, for all practical purposes, do not exist. Their sole content is a list of ten eras in American and Wisconsin history, followed by a few brief and vague directives to understand vast swaths of history and broad historical concepts. Determining an actual course’s scope, sequence, and content rests entirely on the shoulders of local teachers and districts.

Local districts must, we are told, have “the flexibility to determine” not only classroom sequence and organization but also the “content of their social studies curriculum.” For “if teachers are to understand fully the performance standards and the spiraling nature of the content and concepts, they must be actively involved in the process of selecting content and materials.” Yet the only result of such “spiraling” seems likely to be dizzy teachers. They are told to “select” content for their courses but are given no meaningful guidance in doing so. The state abdicates the responsibility of standards to define minimum and shared content expectations for all students. Teachers and districts are left on their own.”

http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/the-state-of-state-us.html

In an imperfect, or at least an overly political world, the immediate question regarding educational standards may be “which is the best basis for student instruction” when every set of new standards will have its critics. Wisconsin is doing a “back to the future” to reinstate/confirm all of its Model Academic Standards. Politically-speaking they may be good enough. Educationally-speaking they are not. Using the Fordham Institute evaluation as a screener, Wisconsin’s English standards earned a D- grade and the mathematics standards earned an F. And, the science and social studies standards for Wisconsin each earned grades of F in the Fordham study.

Wisconsin could do another version of back to the future and re-employ state authorship with legislative oversight. However, the effect of washing educational standards through the legislative process was official adoption of Model Academic Standards graded as D- and F. This process of creating state consensus for approving academic standards is only as good as the last critic’s demands when that person’s vote is the deciding vote cast. Or, when all radical, liberal or conservative, opinions must be accommodated. This consensus process only breeds mediocrity.

In regard to social studies education, should Wisconsin continue to use of homegrown standards rated by Fordham as “F” or the state consider other resources? Should Wisconsin give in to the mandates of local control, vis-à-vis 1984, process that produced “non-directive” and “vague” standards?

This writing is not intended to endorse the Common Core standards as the definitive word in reformed education in the United States. While there are many things good about the Common Core there also are many things that are not good. Diane Ravitch’s speech to the Modern Language Association raises many valid criticisms and questions regarding the Common Core. Interestingly, she was a Core supporter but dropped her support after more intensive investigation. Yet, Ravitch opens an invitation to fix the current ELA and math standards and apply the “fix” procedures to future attempts at Core science and social studies standards.

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/26/why-i-cannot-support-the-common-core-standards/

As a re-beginning point, the National Council for the Social Studies’ C3 Framework (college, career and civic life) was written by national social studies experts, including members of most of the national organizations for the individual disciplines of the social studies. The authors are authentic experts in their field of study. The C3 Framework is not a set of standards. The Framework is a template of social studies principles that should be incorporated into an interdisciplinary instruction of civics, economics, geography and history. The authors of the Framework leave decisions of content and pedagogy to be made by organizations of classroom educators in the various states. They recognized the minefield that exists in attempting to author standards that must be supported by the various special interest groups in our nation. Most importantly, the Framework embeds intellectual inquiry and investigation, strategies for collaborative problem-solving, and ramped up requirements for reading and writing skills. Lastly, the C3 is not tied to the national testing that surrounds the Common Core. The Framework presents a purely academic platform upon which Wisconsin could create a 2014 set of social studies standards.

http://www.socialstudies.org/c3

So, what is the answer to “huh?” The political stalemate to replacing failed educational standards in Wisconsin is not an acceptable status quo for children who have only one pass through their K-12 education. Since 1984, almost thirty graduating classes from Wisconsin high schools have gone into the world with the background of “F” social studies standards. For the social studies, if not the Common Core approach and if not the C3 Framework, then what? Or, is the answer from the right another push toward the privatization of education where state-approved academic standards are not required?