Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, explains her concerns about the Common Core. She previously wrote a book about how to implement the standards and now wishes she could retract it.
She writes here:
Diane,
I am coming to the same conclusion regarding the CCSS despite the fact that I have advocated college readiness for students during my entire professional career. The CCSS, as they are being implemented, are not about college readiness for all–they are about a testing system that will sort students into different pathways. When I first saw the standards, I thought that they were full of promise. I thought that they could be used to gently guide instruction in a supportive and equitable way, as described in the book that I co-authored–Opening the Common Core. I now wish that I could rip that title off the book. The CCSS have morphed into a punitive testing system that has a narrow definition of what a student should demonstrate on a test in order to claim they are college ready. But college readiness is not, nor has it ever been, about testing. It is about giving students rich, challenging learning experiences. See Adelman’s Answers in the Toolbox (1999) to see the research that supports what true readiness is.
There are five skills in the CC ELA standards–reading, writing, speaking, listening and collaboration. All are important for college and career readiness. Yet, only the first two will be tested, and tested at a level so rigorous that no teacher will have time to spend on the other three. This does not have to be. The IB, for example, assesses all five. The difference is that the IB trusts teachers to score their students’ performance during the year and so those skills can be assessed. The tests of the CCSS are inextricably linked to evaluating teachers by test scores so they cannot trust teachers to assess students’ speaking skills or collaborative skills. I do not think this is coincidence. I think the architects of this reform realized that the tests were going to be so difficult that unless they tied teacher job security to test results, they would not get the narrow curriculum and the drill that would be needed to get the desired scores. This does a terrible disservice to all of our students.
I have looked closely at the 8th grade math test sampler for NYS. The questions on topics are more difficult than the questions on the same topics on the Algebra Regents given in high school for the graduation standard. Last year only 73% of NY’s students passed that Regents. This disjointed, out of sync testing program that is based on the ideals of David Coleman and others, rather than on the reality of developmental learning for a diverse body of NY students is wrongheaded and destructive.
Mr Coleman earned considerable fees for his consultation to the New York State Education Department ( over 60K in a few months). Last year, he went to the College Board for a starting package of 750K. The College Board is now selling CCSS prep curriculum through Springboard, and former employees are Regents Fellows developing the tests. Clearly the Common Core has been quite profitable for Mr. Coleman and others. However, that profit is being made at the expense of our students.
It is all very tragic, and it did not need to be this way at all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane and Carol,
My thoughts on the CC:
Subtexts: Close Reading of the Common Core
As ridiculous as it sounds, my resistance to the common core standards is disconnected from its content. The document, itself, is of far less concern to me than its genesis and its prospects. This past-future duality is where the perils of the common core lie; therefore, it is critical to consider where they emerged from and where they are leading.
The common core materialized as a tool of the political elite and the private sector. The common core was neither sought nor developed by educators or those who care about students or the future of the common good. The common core is meant for political gain and economic profit. This matters because the origin of a movement affects its implementation. Despite elevated rhetoric surrounding the common core, its underlying assumptions about what counts as knowledge, literacy, and culture will exacerbate – not ameliorate – inequality.
Although necessarily speculative, the future of the common core is also suspect. It is certain, however, that national assessments will follow this attempt to realize a national curriculum. While assessment is an essential component of the teaching-learning process, standardized assessments have limited utility and vast, destructive defects. The common core, as the basis for creating a national, profitable system of assessments that purport to measure student learning and teacher effectiveness, is revolting.
And, perhaps, this initiative will provoke a revolution among those with expertise about education. The common core is simply a tool. On paper, it is neither good nor evil. However, like any tool, it requires critical analysis before it is used. With respect to its creation, educators must ask: Who made this tool and why? Who paid for its design, construction, and distribution? How was it made (under conditions of brutality and oppression, or in a collaborative, participatory environment)? Looking forward, we must reflect on the negative effects of standardized assessments, particularly on marginalized students, and ensure that the common core does not fulfill its potential to do further damage to future generations of students.
I love to write, but I don’t want to use a pen that was made by imprisoned children. And, despite its sharp point, I do not intend to puncture someone’s eyeball with my pen. Like my pen, the common core is a tool. And, like my pen, its origins and its prospects matter.
Julie Gorlewski
State University of New York at New Paltz
Excellent comments Julie.
The people who invented the silicon chip and built the 747 were schooled on wrote memorization. Inquiry based learning and mastery of trick questions are all well and good, but without the clarity of knowing the basics forward and backward, it is not an applicable skill.
No, actually not. the rote memorization you mentioned only happens with the basics in grade school. The other things that you grudgingly and inaccurately acknowledge are the key skills that lead to American technical superiority. They are also absolute necessities for the kind of autonomy that let the Skunkworks develop the SR-71 Blackbird and a large number of other innovative, advanced aircraft. It is just not possible to memorize your way to things that do not yet exist but must be imagined. BTW, this was done before the IC was invented, before the computer. It was all done with slide rules. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works
Probably good evidence that the skill of learning to use a slide rule makes you smarter at everything else you do.
A lesser known fact is that the original name was the common core curriculum plan, CCCP, but they didn’t want that association for some reason.
When we ask what kind of education best prepares learners with necessary (not trivial) academic skills and knowledge plus develops critical thinking, real-world applications, and sustains creativity and love of learning, the answer is education with substantial integrated curriculum child-initiated learning, and yes, that is emergent and messy.
Learning “the basics” in context of complex real world problems and activities (play, investigations, project-based learning) is better for the healthy development and learning of the whole child in the long run. Rote knowledge can be learned faster in the short run through drill, but when learned that way, it is also forgotten faster, and that kind of learning turns learners off to education.
The Common Core Standards are actually irrelevant. PARCC and SMRT
are all that matter.
Be ready for a call from both groups for more more money. It is coming soon. Perhaps though, some of the privatizes and eduvultures will rescue these failing consortia.
If you really wanted to “fix” education, dismiss all the administrators or consultants who bow and worship these “revolutionary” standards.
Failure by design….
In New York City we will have a chance to get rid of the consultants and administrators who are starting to destroy the New York City public school system when Bloomberg leaves. I advise the next mayor to fire all the consultants and administrators who were hired by the Bloomberg/Klein regime. Replace them with TEACHERS !
Sorry for the off-topic hijack, but have you seen this regarding the school-to-prison pipeline: http://www.thenation.com/article/173104/handcuffing-seven-year-olds-wont-make-schools-safer?rel=emailNation#
It seems to me that we do know where we should take the fight, to the testing programs being developed for the CCSS. As Carol says, the CCSS, at first glance, appeared to be a step in the right direction. Now, with the tests making their appearance and the players in the game revealing their identities, it is clear, as has been pointed out, that a good many of us have been duped again. I think it is important that we spend time developing the organization and the strategies to make public the case people like Carol are beginning to develop. The argument should focus on the harm that the CCSS agenda will do to students. We need to fight for what is right for kids and what is right for kids should ultimately make things right for good teachers. I think that strong support for education that really does prepare people to engage in informed deliberation that leads to solutions to the problems people face in life should be the concern of any movement for reform and/or against problematic reform efforts. I think that we need to redirect people’s thinking regarding the “American way” and patriotism and proper education for effective citizenship. In doing this, we then have a way at making thoughtfulness the basic that drives all else, a solid starting point for the critique of all that is proposed in the name of sound educational practice. The CCSS do seem to address the issues of thoughtfulness by going beyond the cataloging of essential content to describe the nature of sound understanding of critical concepts. The CCSS also, in my mind, deal with the kinds of skills necessary for individual to get at the “proper” meanings of the things under study and this is of critical importance and a very hopeful sign IF we do what is necessary to prevent the implementation of means of assessment that fail to consider the individual as a thoughtful being who will, if well educated, go about making sense of things in his or her own way, that way influenced by his or her interactions with the world and the world of people.
One telling sign that those presently in the driver’s seat are taking us down the wrong road is the existence of the Springboard program that is programmed to be teacher proof. Any program that prevents the teacher from being a full participant in a classroom that is first and foremost about the informed deliberation of individuals working together to make sense of things is a travesty, an insult to all that is democratic and solidly American.
I think we have a potent case to make and my hope is that we will use the process of deliberation to not only inform each other about stuff but to hone our thinking and our rhetorical approach to making the case both solid and palatable.
Can you talk more about Springboard and “teacher proof”?
Springboard is a program published by the College Board and, in the form I have seen, is a consumable workbook that covers all a teacher is supposed to teach. The text provides the whole curriculum except for longer works of literature that have to be purchased separately. My understanding of English is that it needs to be taught by thoughtful teachers who teach by interacting with students, not by putting in front of them materials designed by others to insure that what is taught is taught “properly,” that notion of proper adduced by someone other than the teacher. Indeed, the text is so comprehensive as to allow one to “teach” without doing much in the way of thinking and, in my mind, it is the thinking behind the teaching that makes for a good teacher. I have no doubt that some of the Springboard exercises are better than what some teachers have their students do, however, Springboard does not solve the problem inherent in such situations. Springboard was, I have to believe, created to allow schools to achieve decent scores on the CCSS assessments with teachers who may not be adept at assessing student needs and designing lessons to meet the needs of his or her students.
Wow! So Coleman has his hands on this too?
And they said the CCS was not supposed to tell us HOW to teach.
This sounds awful and it also assumes the teachers know nothing, as if we need this scripted crap.
I feel sick after reading this. I hope you didn’t spend your own money.
This is worse than I thought.
Look here if you dare:
http://springboardprogram.collegeboard.org/
Oh dear it gets worse…see excerpt and link…now they are pushing charters and money in their workbook passages:
I’m sure that Mr. Jeter has lots of demands on his money, and my guess is that he gives a fair amount of it pretty generously. But I wonder if he realizes that if he wanted to, he could build a new public school. After all, he’ll never be able to spend all of that money in a lifetime. He could change the lives of the thousands of Bronx kids who root for him and are a big part of the reason that he can make so much money doing what he loves in the first place.
Recently, I read that Andre Agassi is opening a charter school in Las Vegas. I wonder if that will help set a trend. Is it so hard to imagine that a few years from now Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams will be in the Yankee clubhouse talking about something like how to hit Pedro Martinez, when they’ll turn to each other and ask, “By the way, how’s your school doing?”
Click to access Sample_ELA_Lesson_Grade_8_Student_Edition_3.16.11.pdf
And, you are shocked that you were a victim of the never ending Kool aid of the corporate cabal of public school destroyers? WHEN have they ever produced a beneficial program that supports creative, traditional teachers OR a program that actually lives up the contrived hype? Don’t hold your breathe, just expect more of the same kind of velvet glove, hammering our public schools and creating robotic like
students.
“It is all very tragic, and it did not need to be this way at all.” Carol
“The Common Core Standards are actually irrelevant. PARCC and SMRT
are all that matter.” Galton
As an educator of more than two decades, there are aspects of the CCSS (I like the commenter who called these the Corporate Core State Standards)that I can live with such as the teaching of logical fallacies and researched argument papers.
But sadly, the standards themselves do not matter much to the heads of many state education departments and their minions. What matters to them is not that the standards will provide a sound education to students, but rather that teachers will be evaluated on the students’ scores on these yet unseen tests. The New York Commissioner is downright gleeful at the prospect of all this impending failure. He and his staff have expressed publicly that they really don’t care that passages might be inappropriate or inaccessible for students. They’ve simply sent out the message that schools and communities should be prepared for lots of failure. In what universe does it make sense to evaluate individuals based on tests or rubrics that have never been piloted? That students and teachers have never seen and that parents will not be allowed to see? While it is a terrible scenario at the elementary and middle school levels, the bigger battle is coming to the high school level. In New York state next year we will see the end of Regents exams as we know them. And most people have no clue that it is happening.
What parents and community members need to know is that their current sophomores and freshmen will NOT be tested on the current math and ELA Regents exams beginning next year. In New York, these tests have always been a measure of what students have learned in a particular course and several are required for graduation. In addition to the tests in math and ELA, there are tests in global studies, U.S. history, chemistry, physics, biology, and earth science. What will happen to these tests, which are currently (and always have been) written by teachers? How fair is it to current freshmen and sophomores that the rules have changed for them, and that the new tests, which are promised to FAIL large numbers of students, will determine whether or not they graduate from high school? Not all states have this system, but the parents and students of New York state will have a rude awakening. Why is no one in New York questioning why the long tradition of teacher-devised Regents exams is being replaced by PARCC? Some may argue that certain tests have been watered down, and that may be true so that most students could meet AYP. But the pre-NCLB Regents exams in particular were challenging and fair and relevant. Which media outlet will raise this issue or at least inform the community that this is happening?
And your commissioner sends his kids to private school.
This is the true danger of the CCSS…creating a new and state mandated caste system.
Has anyone analyzed the per pupil expenditures for test materials and scoring. Who gets increased income when the number of grades tested or the number of tests adminstered per year are increased? Can we follow.the money chain back to state legislatures or schooldistricts or Or USDOE? Who makes money from increased testing? Can we follow the money? Who is in the loop?
Gail…most states have not done a cost analysis. I even talked to one of my state reps and she didn’t know. Most likely will fall on the backs of districts. Which we’re already struggling.
Follow the money chain to the Gates Foundation.
Oh did I mention that the tests are all computerized and most schools will need new computers…someone call Mircosoft!
Follow “Truth in American Education” to see the money! Gates foundation has put forth $163 million have plans for $150 million more! They have their hands in everything!
Attending a meeting at NYSED, we got a brief pep talk from one of the Kens (Wagner or Slentz…can’t remember which). He said, “The standards are meaningless without the assessments.” That says it all, no?
Many have fallen victim to the DELPHI Technique. IT’s a way to manipulate the unsuspecting public into believing THEY chose something that was already pre-determined. THen in many cases, they realize it was a huge mistake
I had to watch a Common Core propaganda flick at training today… on the day of the FCAT Writes. Go figure. Pearson making out like a bandit down here in FL. Thank you both for speaking up on this matter.
I teach fourth grade math and the current state standards are for example, for students to add and subtract fractions with uncommon denominators. It is hard for them. Now, with the CC, it is a standard for 3rd grade. Very doubtful that many will come into 4th grade knowing that.
I love stories on Dr. Ravitch’s blog like this! Kudos to Diane and Carol!
http://mgmfocus.com/2013/02/26/children-of-the-core-our-kids-are-at-risk/
Here is an article related to the web of relationships that link the Common Core to the College Board and its current president.
http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=16902
Those who do not have access to the full article can probably find it elsewhere on the web.
Again, my suggestion is that we play the game smartly and buy all that is in the CCSS that is good. That done, we should go after what is wrong and going wrong. I can take many a CCS Standard and milk it for its richness and I can even make a case, a good one I think, for why it cannot be met through workbook curricula or assessed using the kinds of tests now being developed.
Do qny of you realize that the SpringBoard program was published way before David Coleman came to the College Board? Did you take the time to do some homework on the program to learn that it came out before the Common Core State Standards were written? Please get the facts straight before your propaganda begins. Just like Fox News, you want to taint the audience before they have a chance to see the real history.