Examining the NCTE, CCR, and TEKS

 

Examining the NCTE, Common Core, and TEKS standards this week was very revealing. Through all of our exploration, my appreciation for the NCTE continued to grow. I especially appreciated their attitude towards teachers, which positions teachers as active professionals capable of organizing their own curriculum, enacting their own teaching strategies and methods, and ultimately isolating the individual skills they deem most important for their students literacy development. For this reason, NCTE provides a broad outline of their views regarding the teaching of reading and writing, while avoiding the more short cycle approach of listing a data base of mandates centered on the procedural teaching of individual skills. I find this refreshing, as the extensive list of skills established within the TEKS (and to a lesser extent the CCR) can have a limiting affect on a teachers classroom practices and focus. The NCTE, in my opinion, aims to act as a professional resource for teachers to lean on in order to support their classroom decisions and allows them the ability to cite research-based materials in defense of their teaching practices. This positionality is quite different from the CCR and TEKS, which aim to drive teachers and students in a precise direction, allowing individual teachers much less professional flexibility.

In regards to students, the NCTE aims to develop readers and writers capable of functioning within a larger community- both within the school walls and beyond.

Because of this, the NCTE does not directly cite specific content that must be taught-rather they emphasize the use of a variety of literacies in order to engage in a diverse literacy community, with the ultimate goal of developing life long readers and writers capable of performing the increasingly demanding tasks of a modern citizen. Unfortunately, the attitudes and standards established by the NCTE are by no means the leading influence in the English classroom, especially in Texas. That is not to say that the Common Core and the TEKS are irreversibly flawed, but their more intrusive standards often have a negative impact on classroom practices, which inevitably affects student learning. Throughout my career, I hope to use the NCTE as a theoretical background to support my in-class decisions, while managing the constraints presented by the more intrusive state and national standards.

12th Grade Standards	NCTE	CCR	TEKS
Main Focus of the standards.	Focused on developing individual readers and writers to function within a literate community, both in school and beyond.	Focused directly on preparing America’s students for college and career. Because of this, its very “results” oriented in order to give students the most access possible to social mobility.	Focused on the cultivation of a variety of language related skills, judged partially by performance on the state test, although there are areas of the TEKS that are not directly monitored by the STAAR. Simply put, the TEKS are just a list of skills that adults determined adolescents should acquire.
How intrusive are the standards?	Least intrusive. Establish a set of guidelines for teachers to fall back on and to use as a professional basis to support a teacher’s curriculum decisions. Allows for a wide variety of instruction.	Intrusive in terms of what you actually teach (content), however in terms of how you ultimately teach (pedagogy), it is not intrusive at all.	Intrusive in the types of skills a student is expected to perform. It is not intrusive, however, in the content used to cultivate these skills. Unfortunately, the skills that are directly tested on the STAAR often end up being the focus of a curriculum.
Focus on Content (How much does it drive curriculum content)	Does not directly cite specific content, although the recommended purpose and variety of literacies seems to focus on diversity of culture, as opposed to a curriculum centered on dominant culture.	Most direct. This focuses directly on content, as they even mention teaching Shakespeare, “include Shakespeare and a play by an American dramatist.” The focus seems to revolve around dominant cultural literacies (i.e. the Declaration of Independence, speeches by Lincoln, and the Bill of Rights…)	Have very little direct reference to literature, although there is an emphasis on teaching free-enterprise texts about Texas and the United States with the purpose of becoming thoughtful and active democratic citizens.
Focus on pedagogy (How much does it dictate classroom practices)	Views teachers as professionals who are capable of determining the skills necessary to allow space and access to literacy development. For this reason, NCTE provides broader literacy goals as opposed to short cycle skills.	Views the teacher as someone whose main focus must remain on allowing students the highest level of access to dominant, social, educational, vocational, and financial mobility.	Views teachers as in need of monitoring, and as people who may not directly know what skills to teach. For this reason, the TEKS provide an exhaustive list of short cycle skills.