Marc Tucker has published what he says will be the final round in his debate with me.
He noticed that I never actually responded to his first two posts. I printed the views of others.
I have not debated him because I don’t see how it is possible to debate a hypothetical.
OK, we can debate whether the moon is made of green cheese, but I am too busy to debate that.
Or we could debate whether test scores will go up or fall if we give every student access to medical care.
But we won’t know until we try.
He thinks the Common Core standards are fabulous; I don’t know whether they are good or not because they have never been field-tested. He doesn’t see the necessity of field-testing, but I disagree. You don’t impose new standards, new tests, and new everything without some advance knowledge about their consequences.
Do we know if they will improve students’ knowledge and understanding of math and reading and other subjects? No.
Do we know if they will widen the achievement gaps between students of different races and students from high- and low-income families? No, we do not.
Do we know if they are developmentally appropriate for children in K-3? No, we do not.
Wouldn’t it be useful to know these things before we change everything? I think so, Marc does not.
I don’t understand how we can debate a topic in which we know so little.
Here is what I do know.
The most reliable predictor of test scores is family income.
The Common Core will have no impact whatever in changing the scandalous proportion of children who live in poverty in this nation. Nearly a quarter of our children are living in poverty, as compared to far smaller proportions in other societies. If we were to make a dent on that number, bring it down to, say, 15%, that would have a bigger impact on test scores than Common Core. But that is just my guess.
The common wisdom, repeatedly predicted by state superintendents, is that test scores will drop by 30% or so when the Common Core standards are assessed because the tests are “harder.” This will feed the corporate reform narrative that “our schools are failing.” They will use the new stats to attack public education and demand more vouchers and more charters and more privatization. The entrepreneurs are eagerly awaiting the moment when the bad scores are announced, as it will give them new opportunities to sell their edu-schlock.
The fact that David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards, was an original member of the board of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst–the corporate reformers’ attack machine against public education–is no comfort. The other members of her original board were Jason Zimba, who wrote the Common Core math standards, and a third person, who worked for Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners. In other words, Rhee’s board was the same as the Common Core leadership.
There, Marc, I debated you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
Once again, you reveal the hypocritical double-standard regarding “accountability.” Public schools, teachers, and students must provide evidence (using a shifting set of externally imposed rules, rubrics, and regulations) of effectiveness in order to “earn” diminishing levels of finding (not to mention respect). But “reformers” expect – no, demand – that their unproven, expensive ideas be implements immediately and without critique by educators, students, and parents. This is true of the common core, VAM, the edTPA, inBloom – name a RTT initiative, and the claim holds true.
-Julie G
Spot on, Julie.
It’s like the old “government should stay out of our private lives” argument that comes out of one side of some people’s mouths coupled with the “government needs to decide who people can marry and what documents people need to vote” shlock that is spewed from the other side…or the old “we are taxed too much” but “give tax money to private interests because they encourage competition which gives greatness to society” silliness.
Double talk has been used on the public time and again–it’s up to those with the courage to call out the people who make such idiotic statements to set the record straight on reality.
—
“There, Marc, I debated you.” Don’t worry, Diane–we’ve got your back at recess. 🙂
Welcome back, LG. I missed you.
So true, LG!
Job, graduate coursework, trying to keep healthy…all have been keeping me busy. Been knee-deep in a research project as of late, but I’m always lurking.
Thanks for staying in the thick of the fight, Diane.
I think the question of whom should marry whom is quite different from what documentation should be needed to vote. By conflating those two vastly different topics as “schlock” LG loses persuasiveness with me. I agree that government should stay out of whom should marry whom. Let whomever marry whomever they want without discrimination. Love is love. Let it reign. But with respect to documentation needed to vote, I think that a photo ID is not an unreasonable expectation for anyone aspiring to vote. I should think BOTH sides would be able to agree on that in order to avoid the charge that fraud is being perpetrated. And on taxes, we ARE taxed to much, and anyone who says so SHOULD be against government tax breaks to corporations and banks. LG again conflates true libertarian conservatives with members of both parties which thrive on lobbying congress for special privileges for corporations. But the hypocrisy is not just among Republicans. Democrats have their own favorite kinds of corporations whom they vote tax exceptions for and even incentive funding. Though Diane is happy to see LG posting again on her blog, I don’t see that this particular post offers anything more than inconsistent arguments.
Bravo! LOVE the last line!
“But with respect to documentation needed to vote, I think that a photo ID is not an unreasonable expectation for anyone aspiring to vote. I should think BOTH sides would be able to agree on that in order to avoid the charge that fraud is being perpetrated. And on taxes, we ARE taxed to much, and anyone who says so SHOULD be against government tax breaks to corporations and banks.”
All of this is opinion, as is the concept of marriage equality. Many also believe there is a level of discrimination with some of the voter ID legislation. For instance, an elderly person who was born in the family home may have no birth certificate or perhaps have no license since he or she does not drive anymore–should this person not be eligible to vote? Opinion. By what standard are you judging a reasonable degree of taxation? Your opinion.
However your post fails to see my larger point: The same people who want the government out of peoples’ lives want the government to interfere in the lives of people who they want to control. Your argument over differences of opinion is secondary.
It sounds like the debate topic could be: Untested theories should be established as policy on a large scale, affecting only or primarily low-income students of color. Pro or con.
Well that is assuming that all parties in the debate believe in the importance of field-testing which clearly Tucker does not.
By not field testing the standards, corporate reformers are leaving behind good sense, even good business sense. Don’t most companies conduct some sort of field trial prior to the release of a new product? This shows that the real concern is not test scores, but how to make schools look worse than they already do. The media is complicit in this as well, by buying in to the “reformer” ideology.
More double standards.
The product they are selling are tests and standards and they are using the FUD (fear uncertainty doubt) tactic to convince you to buy-in. Field testing on this has been done. Changing standards and “harder” tests are simply marketing gimmicks.
Diane nails it. If the Common Core were, instead, say, the 1989 NCTM Standards, or the 2000 Principles and Standards of School Mathematics, each of which contained “process standards” that are the backbone of the only meaningful part of the CCSSI for mathematics, we’d be hearing from many quarters about fads, experimenting on innocent children, fuzzy math, and so on. I don’t know Mr. Tucker’s history in the Math Wars, if he has one, so I can’t state where he stood on all that. But I know this much for sure.
1) There is no field research to support the efficacy of the CONTENT standards now being shoved down the throats of any state that wants federal money, either as able to “raise the bar” in a way that many children not already in an elite economic situation/school will be able to successfully meet or to lift the performance of those already grossly disadvantaged by poverty;
2) There was never any field research to support in advance the idea that “traditional mathematics” pedagogy – teacher-centered, sage-on-the-stage, lecture-driven, drill-and-practice dominated, one-size-and-method-fits-all constructed – would be anywhere near adequate to the needs of our vast and diverse population, going back to the end of the 19th century when we started adapting mass education from Prussian military training precepts and practices.
And yet, there has been little or no complaining about either of these strange things from some of the same folks who’ve spent a good deal of the previous quarter-century screaming about the evils of “fuzzy math.”
I’m puzzled by much of this. I’m intrigued by the split on the educational right (with its odd marriage of neo-liberals and conservatives) about whether the Common Core for math and/or literacy is the Final Solution (see, for example, anti-progressives like H. H. Wu of Cal-Berkeley’s Mathematics Department and University of Virginia’s “Core Knowledge” guru, E. D. Hirsch for those who support the Common Core), or the end of the world as we know it (see, for example, the redoubtable Sandra Stotsky, who never saw a non-traditional mathematics idea she didn’t hate and misunderstand).
Makes a progressive like me really wonder. I will never ally myself with the likes of Stotsky, even if I know she’s right to mistrust Common Core (but for nearly all the wrong reasons). Nor will I ever get into bed with Hirsch or Wu.
The best position, from my perspective, is to continue to oppose the very idea of a Common Core, to make clear how hypocritical the entire project is, to point out both specific and general shortcomings in the construction, roll-out, assessment, and philosophy of what’s being foisted on most of the nation, and to continue to uphold some of the good ideas about teaching mathematics that are in the Common Core, while pointing out that they aren’t new, aren’t in any way linked to the actual content, and are in some very particular ways antithetical to the “let’s drive down everything in mathematics a couple of grade levels so as to (ostensibly) raise the bar for “everyone” (nudge nudge, wink wink).”
If the CCSSI in math is supposed to cure the mile-wide, inch-deep flaws of previous generations’ US math curriculum, as is claimed optimistically by Michigan State University’s William Schmidt, why does it seem like these standards miss every opportunity to give more time for students and teachers to explore deeply any mathematical idea? Instead, we’re given something that looks more and more like my satirical “Calculus in the Cradle, Topology in the Womb” math curriculum that I’m sure, if I produced it, would be a huge best-seller in certain communities (e.g., Ann Arbor, Michigan, for starters)?
Here’s an interesting look at the need for–or maybe the lack of–research that goes into education policy decisions.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/blueprint-introduction
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/options
Diane —
I continue to believe that you cannot test the standards. If students fail to achieve them, it does not prove that they are unachievable. What would you say if students in the United States failed to achieve them but students in other countries do achieve them? Would you say that is because of the high levels of poverty among youth in the United States? How would you prove that? If chief state school officers say that these relatively high standards will prove harder to achieve for many students than the current—often very low—standards, that is not proof of a conspiracy; it is what you would expect. Whether students do end up achieving them is not a function of the standards per se, but the strategies used to get students to the standards. But I have made my case in my blog on this point and we will have to let our readers judge the merits of our cases.
What really bothers me in your last post is the way it ends. I am sure you were no fan of Senator Joseph McCarthy, but you must be aware that he was one of the leading practitioners of the art of “guilt by association.” I find that many people resort to it when they run out of substantive arguments. Over my lifetime, I have associated myself on certain points with people with whom I agree on those points, even when I disagree with them on other points. I have also changed my own mind over time. I note that you have famously changed your mind on certain points. The fact that David Coleman associated himself with Michelle Rhee for a certain purpose does not mean that he is wrong on standards, nor does it necessarily mean that he would take the same position on any particular issue today that he might have taken then. I think we are all better off arguing our points on their merits than by using guilt by association as a rhetorical weapon.
— Marc
Guilt by association? Being treasurer of an organization that is dedicated to eliminating teacher tenure, weakening collective bargaining rights, and promoting charters and vouchers is not guilt by association. It is playing a central role in advancing a cause that is anathema to public education and those who teach in public schools.
I judged. You lose. Diane wins. The tide is turning….sorry Marc.
Connecting with circles and arrows all of the Common Core organizations, ETS, SAP, CCSSO, etc., and all of the people, Coleman, Rhee, Wilhoit, etc., and then tracking all of the switching around and the conflicts of interest those movements create is a modern variant on Twister, only the game doesn’t end.
“The most reliable predictor of test scores is family income.”
You are wrong about this. The most reliable predictor of scores is the educational background of the family .
Example: Quite a number of immigrants to this country are well educated but rather poor. I taught a Russian-born student whose Grandma was a Phd, – she lived in a tiny apartment. Needless to say, she went on to Stanford.
You can’t begin to understand the success of certain Asian subgroups without understanding this.
Anecdotal, true, But look at the data.
Look at SAT scores: They are arrayed by family income. The students from families with the lowest income have the lowest scores. Every increment in family income is associated with higher scores. At the top of the SAT scores are the students whose family have the highest income.
Since beginning to follow ed blogs about four years ago, I have become aware of one of the few consistent methods of attack employed against public school education and public school staff. It consists of creating a lot of heat and light around hypotheticals decoupled from reality.
I claim no originality in this, but I think of it as the “How Many Teachers Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin?” line of attack, the correct answer being “62! Of Course!” Others venture a few more or less, or for the more imaginative or philosophical-minded that if teachers are considered spiritual rather than corporeal beings, then (of course!) an infinite number. And so on, ad nauseum…
The very idea that debate has to be so constrained appeals greatly to the charterites/privatizers because it decouples the discussion from reality. In their eyes it is irrelevant if high stakes standardized testing strongly incentivizes all sorts of immoral and destructive behavior—the abstract notion is so beautiful and perfect in itself that it must be applied over and over again until it finally works, and any bumps along the way (e.g., the profoundly immoral cheating scandal of Atlanta Public Schools under B. Hall) are minor inconveniences that must be endured regardless of the damage inflicted on children, adults, public education and the entire nation.
And not surprisingly, the leading charterites/privatizers treat with sneering contempt any suggestion that those pushing eduproducts are powerfully influenced by such old fashioned temptations like celebrity, power and wealth. No, those potentially destructive and self-destructive motivations are exclusively found among those lazy LIFO certificated teachers and their unions and professional associations, public school support staff, and competent administrators who (supposedly) only care about the well-being of adults, especially when their well-being is (according to the edubullies) at the expense of students, parents, and communities.
Given the sneer-and-smear tactics of the edubullies, pretty much every topic is open for discussion on a website like this that attempts “to discuss better education for all” in a free-wheeling and open-ended discussion that allows everyone to make her/his case.
So for the edubullies: you can dish it out, but you can’t take it? If you don’t like the heat, don’t go into the kitchen.
🙂
NO, it’s not 62, it’s 666.
You’re right about the hypotheticals. TE loves hypotheticals.