Reconciling NYS mandates of CCSS with the Realities of LD

1. Reconciling NYS mandates of CCSS with the Realities of LD Annmarie Urso, Ph.D. State University of New York at Geneseo

2. What led up to the development of CCSS?

3. Assessment Results! • PISAs, ACTs, NAEPs  results in Reading in US students – even after NCLB’s mandated assessments and demands for AYP made by schools and students. • Less rigorous reading material!  • More complex texts • Teach advanced comprehension • Emphasis on “Close” and “Deep” literary texts and informational texts.

4. How many students struggle with Reading?

5. Reading Performance on NAEPs in 2009 65% of 12th graders and 68% of 8th graders read below grade-level. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Data, 2009. Retrieved June 3, 2011, from http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/

6. WE HAD ACCOUNTABILITY WITH NCLB • STANDARDS BASED INSTRUCTION • AYP • WE HAD ASSESSMENT WITH NCLB • WHY DO THESE POOR RESULTS CONTINUE?

7. What we know about why this continues… BIG ISSUES: POVERTY DISPARATE READINESS FUNDING MECHANISMS TEACHER TRAINING & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES

8. WHAT THE “FIXABLE” ASSUMPTION IS AS TO WHY IT CONTINUES: LACK OF COMMON CURRICULUM WITH EXPECTATIONS AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ALL STUDENTS, TEACHERS, AND PRINCIPALS.

9. What are the CCSS?

10. What they are: • Developed in 2010 and adopted by 45 states. • Designed to bolster the college and career readiness of students after high school. • Variety of constituents drafted the standards. • Some areas consistent with research and other areas just reflect current ideas. • Describe what students should know in order to succeed beyond high school but don’t specify how students should learn the subject matter.

11. What are the CCSS in ELA?

12. CAUTIONS • “No single series of model lessons or curriculum guide can describe the variations in content & methodology to reach all students.” Louisa Moats, 2012 • Teacher-directed, systematic, sequential, explicit approaches that work best for students with LD and learning challenges (Archer & Hughes, 2011). • Variations in learning readiness and abilities are NOT ADDRESSED IN CCSS or in the model lessons, videos produced by CCSS< think> tanks; engageny, etc.

13. SLOs - While the CCSS authors have provided guidelines regarding the implementation of the CCSS for ELLs and students with special needs, they have left the specifics of that implementation to districts and states.

14. NJ SLOs – provided by NJSED

18. CAUTIONS ABOUT THE CCSS in ELA for students with disabilities: Reading Writing CCSS only focus on composition. Explicit guidance regarding importance of foundation writing skills. Interdependence among: Oral language-written language, reading foundations, writing foundations, and higher level goals in comprehension and composition Lacking: • Sequence of instruction • Critical milestones & relationships among: PHONOLOGY WORD RECOGNITION SPELLING FLUENCY COMPREHENSION

19. Recommendations for students with learning disabilities

20. EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION MATTERS! • SCIENTIFICALLY BASED EVIDENCE • EXPLICIT • INTENSIVE

21. RTI & CCSS are mandated in NYS – regular classroom instruction is critical to changing growth trajectories – just as critical as remediation! • We need to catch students EARLY toimprove their reading scores (progress that closes gaps). • INTENSIVE EFFORT on both the teachers and the students is required to achieve maximum growth.

22. EARLY IS BY 2ndGRADE • WE NEED HIGHLY SKILLED TEACHERS • WE NEED INTERVENTION & INSTRUCTIONAL DECISIONS DRIVEN BY ASSESSMENT • WE NEED TEACHER TRAINING • WE NEED A COMMITMENT TO THE HUMAN & FINANCIAL RESOURCES NEEDED TO IMPLEMENT CCSS

23. 1. Effective instruction matters! • Explicit, intensive, scientifically based instruction taught by highly trained teachers. • Scaffolded instruction 2. Universal Design for Learning. • Removing barriers inherent to curriculum for access. 3. Advocate where it counts! • Teacher training programs, access to PD, and support for teachers.

24. CULTURE OF HIGH EXPECTATIONS: Instructional supports for learning― based on the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)―which foster student engagement by presenting information in multiple ways and allowing for diverse avenues of action and expression.

25. David Rose, CAST “The Goal of UDL is not to eliminate challenge-which is essential to learning-but to reduce extraneous barriers that are not core to the learning goals…simply reducing barriers to access is the first step to reducing barriers to learning.”

26. Recommendations from CCSS developers: Instructional accommodations ―changes in materials or procedures― which do not change the standards, but allow students to learn within the framework of the Common Core. Assistive technology devices and services to ensure access to the general education curriculum and the Common Core State Standards.

27. UDL is a framework for making curriculum more inclusive Recognition Strategic Affective

28. WEBSITES www.cast.org Center for Applied Special Technologies- UDL/DI www.engageny.org Engage NY – NYSED website on CCSS http://ukcrl.org University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning www.reading.org International Reading Association http://www.interdys.org International Dyslexia Association

29. www.geneseo.edu/education/urso