Support Your Michigan Colleagues

There's a struggle over the ELA curriculum going on in Michigan right now. Here's some information about it (and the address of a petition you can sign) from CEE Executive Committee member Allen Webb:

In Michigan CEE members and our own state affiliate, "MCEE," are engaged in a very interesting struggle over mandating curriculum and assessment at the high school level. Two things happened that set this struggle up.

First, three of our members, Becky Sipe (Eastern Michigan), Ellen Brinkley (Western Michigan) and myself were three of the five people who wrote, two years ago, the state-wide English Language Arts Content Expectations for high school. Although we had to meet a number of requirements not of our own making, we think we drafted a set of standards and content expectations that are the most progressive in the country, very much informed by what I think those of us in CEE would consider best practice instruction and research. This document, part of the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) response to No Child Left Behind, was then reviewed by both academic reviewers (again two CEE members, Marilyn Wilson (Michigan State) and Sue Steffel (Central Michigan)) as well as teachers in the field.

Second, the state legislature, in a (low cost) effort to create "higher standards" decided to mandate that all students that graduate from high school in Michigan take a rigorous curriculum (the "Michigan Merit Curriculum") that includes, among other things, 4 years of English. The MDE decided that the 91 content standards that we created and reviewed should simply be adopted for these four years, with the plan to complete all 91 every year. Of course, we had originally rejected a year-by-year or course-by-course approach and the 91 standards were written and reviewed to be met over 4 years. Moreover, the MDE decided that every district needed to create common courses and common assessments for all of English classes, and they provided models with specific literary works. While the standards we wrote were very clearly supportive of teacher freedom to create curriculum and instruction, now we are finding many teachers telling us that they are being forced to follow rigidly the other teachers in their district or the state models.

Now MCEE is fighting back as strongly as we can. Using our listserve -- a listserve that has been very important to maintaining contact between all of the CEE people in the state -- we have over 55 signatures of English education professors in our state (including the presidents of MCTE, MRA, and MCEE and two former NCTE presidents) on a letter supporting that the standards be used over 4 years (not every year) and teacher freedom to determine curriculum, instruction, and assessment. We are disseminating this letter, and supporting materials to secondary English teachers across the state and have also set up a petition that allows them to sign the letter. We are finding that teachers are delighted by this support. All of these documents and information are available at http://www.mienglishstandards.com -- a wiki site where teachers across the state can not only gain information and sign the petition, but also share their experiences with the implementation of the standards.

This process is demonstrating the value of a strong CEE state affiliate and helping us defend the freedom, creativity, and professional judgment of secondary teachers. You don't have to live in Michigan to sign the petition! Please join us!

National Teacher Ed Standards?

From Education Week:

National Standards Urged for Math, Science Teachers
By Sean Cavanagh

A federal commission has issued draft recommendations calling for the creation of national licensing standards for teachers in mathematics and science, in what would mark a clear shift away from a system controlled by individual states and universities.

Either the federal government or a national policy organization would establish guidelines for certification and teacher training, under the proposal. States and school districts could be given federal financial incentives to follow those standards, according to the report’s recommendations.

Read the rest here (requires registration).

I think it's unlikely this idea will become law, but if it does, it's hard imagine it won't happen to English as well.

Are National Standards on the Way?

Lynn Olson writes about the move toward national standards in Education Week. It may not be too soon to start thinking about the involvement of professional organizations like NCTE/CEE in the process. The first time around (when NCTM created their standards and other subject matter organizations received grants to follow suit) there was a certain amount of political maneuvering, but that was nothing compared to what we're likely to see this time. We should also start considering what impact national subject matter standards would have on teacher education.

Standards Get Boost on the Hill
Bills before Congress aim to raise the bar in states.
By Lynn Olson

The politically sensitive idea of increasing the rigor of state standards and tests by linking them to standards set at the national level is getting a push from prominent lawmakers as Congress moves to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act as early as this year.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee and a newly announced candidate for president, introduced a bill with Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Mich., last week that would provide incentives for states to adopt voluntary “American education content standards” in mathematics and science, to be developed by the governing board for the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the new chairman of the committee, introduced a bill Jan. 4 that would encourage states to benchmark their own standards and tests to NAEP, but would stop short of calling for the development of national standards.

Read the rest here.