Table Of Contentebook
THE GUILFORD PRESS
Assessing the Common Core
Assessing the
Common Core
WhAt’s gone Wrong—
And hoW to get BACk on trACk
roBert C. CAlfee and kAthleen m. Wilson
Foreword by Milton Chen
The Guilford Press
new York london
Copyright © 2016 The Guilford Press
A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
370 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1200, New York, NY 10001
www.guilford.com
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording,
or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Calfee, Robert C. | Wilson, Kathleen M. | Chen, Milton.
Title: Assessing the common core : what’s gone wrong and how to get back on
track / Robert C. Calfee, Kathleen M. Wilson, Milton Chen.
Description: New York ; London : Guilford Press, a Division of Guilford
Publications, Inc., [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015022777 | ISBN 9781462524327 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781462524334 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Common Core State Standards (Education) |
Education—Standards—United States—States. | Educational change—United
States.
Classification: LCC LB3060.83 .C357 2016 | DDC 379.1/580973—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015022777
To educators who create engaging learning environments
in which all children thrive
In memoriam:
Bob Calfee—
cherished mentor, colleague, and friend to many
About the Authors
Robert C. Calfee, PhD, until his death in 2014, was Professor Emeritus of
Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education. He was also a former
dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California,
Riverside. A cognitive psychologist, Dr. Calfee conducted research on the
effect of schooling on the intellectual potential of individuals and groups,
the assessment of beginning literacy skills, and the broader reach of the
school as a literate environment.
Kathleen M. Wilson, PhD, is Associate Professor Emerita of Teaching,
Learning, and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
As a founding director of the university’s Schmoker Reading Center, she
studies teacher professional development in formative assessment and
instruction of children experiencing difficulty with literacy acquisition.
Most recently, Dr. Wilson has been exploring teachers’ integration of digi-
tal technologies into literacy instruction.
vi
foreword
i
am honored to write the Foreword for a critical book that comes at a criti-
cal time, not only for its cogent and valuable interpretation of the Common
Core State Standards (CCSS) but also to help honor two scholars who have
embraced educational innovation throughout their careers, always with a
focus on how children learn best.
In fact, my path to this page has taken a circuitous route, over several
decades. In February 2015, I had the opportunity to give a lecture at the
Thompson Forum at the University of Nebraska and to speak with students
in Professor Kathleen Wilson’s undergraduate elementary grade literacy
methods class. I learned that she had been a graduate student of Professor
Robert Calfee’s. A little more than a year earlier, in December 2013, I had
spent a few days with Bob and his wife, Suzanne Barchers, formerly of Leap-
frog and a literacy expert as well, as part of a team conducting a workshop
at the Beijing Academy, a new middle school intended to create a state-of-
the-art model integrating technology for progressive education in China.
In the early 1980s, I was a Stanford graduate student in communi-
cation and encountered Professor Calfee’s teaching and research through
several fellow graduate students studying with him. A decade later, while
working in educational media at the PBS station KQED in San Francisco, I
became familiar with his leading role in the design team of Leapfrog’s liter-
acy software and devices. So it is both a professional and personal privilege
to introduce this book as a way of honoring Dr. Calfee’s lifetime of achieve-
ment in advancing the teaching of the language arts and Dr. Wilson’s own
impressive and creative teaching and scholarship.
vii
viii foreword
Both of these authors understand that this is a pivotal time in our
nation’s history, when we can create a school system to educate our stu-
dents to prosper in a global and uncertain future, or we can continue to
carry the baggage of 20th-century school systems, curricula, and assess-
ments into this future. If implementing the CCSS results is more of the
same—students sitting in classrooms where teachers provide most of the
information, perhaps with a nod to technology and students now read-
ing digitized textbooks—then we will have failed. And the prospects for
the United States will grow dimmer. Every important issue we face as a
nation—the economy, jobs, health care, national security—relies on a more
highly educated citizenry.
This book trumpets some good news for education and our future. It
comes at a time of some controversy and confusion, to say the least. The
changes needed by our schools—and our children—are dramatic, and the
forces of politics at all levels are weighing in, from states rescinding com-
mitments to the CCSS to parents marching on school boards, concerned
that their children will fare worse on more challenging assessments. These
disputes will dissipate when more educators work to show the path for-
ward.
In this book, Calfee and Wilson act as our pathfinders, shining their
lights on the multiple pathways now possible for students to achieve mas-
tery in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Everyone interested in
understanding the CCSS and how they translate into the classroom—and
that should include everyone interested in improving schools—should read
their account.
In the history charted by the authors, the CCSS represent the most
important blueprint developed for our nation’s schools and perhaps our
last, best chance to align what happens in classrooms to the future our
students need. They ask us to understand the “big picture” of the CCSS
and strive to meet its highest goals, rather than think narrowly and “dumb-
down” ambitious standards, as we have done in the past. They want us to
look up, not down, and reach higher, not lower. They ask all educators to
peer to the further horizon of what today’s 18-year-olds should know and
be able to do and backward-map to the types of “deeper learning” activities
6- or 12-year-olds should be doing come Monday morning.
Calfee and Wilson present a clear and compelling—indeed exciting—
view of the new learning landscape now made possible when every student
has his or her own digital device connected to the rich resources of the
Internet. While politicians have been arguing over who should control what
happens in schools, the last decade has transformed how, when, where, and
with whom powerful learning can happen. Technology has continued to
get better, faster, and cheaper, changing every aspect of modern life. Those
changes are now coming to the classroom. The world’s digital resources
