A reader offers this observation:
“Before teaching, I worked in software development. If our company released a major product revision with no quality assurance testing and no trial beta release, we would be out of business in a week as well as the laughing stock of the industry.
“Common Core is a corporate initiative written from ivory towers. Teachers had little say. The standards are poorly written and suppress innovation and learning. We have no idea if they are effective or relevant. The logo for Common Core should be a picture of lemmings going over a cliff.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is hilarious!
I appreciate the laugh.
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It would be humorous except that it is exactly correct and children’s futures are at stake.
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It’s not correct. The Common Core were not written in an ivory tower. They were written by real leaders in mathematics education.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/04/what_do_math_educators_think_about_the_common_core%20.html
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Corey, why do you leave Jason Zimba out? He led the writing of the Common Core math standards. He worked with or for David Coleman at Student Achievement Partners. He s on the faculty of Bennington, where David Coleman’s mother is president. Really, it is a close group.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2013/02/rhsu_straight_up_conversation_sap_honcho_jason_zimba.html
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I spent 20+ years of my life in computers. about a third of that I worked for software vendors, serving as the technical manager of then most widely used project management software system. In that capacity I had to negotiate arrangements to beta test new releases on each of the different operating systems for which we sold it – we could not, even in COBOL, guarantee it would work properly until we had.
Those companies with whom I negotiated those agreements knew it was in beta test mode, and we provided additional (sometimes on-site) support to work out any problems that might be encountered.
By then we had heavily stress-tested all of the components of the system on our own computer.
This past week students in New York State were forceable participants in what might not even rise to the level of a beta test. As far as I have seen this was the first real-world testing of the assessments tied to common core. Supposedly it does not count for the students. Still, we effectively paid our beta testers. Here children and schools were mandated into doing the testing for the test companies.
That would never be acceptable in the business world.
Why should it be being required in public schools is beyond me.
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It does count for the students – at least those in 4th and 7th grades. We are told scores on this test are a large portion of what they show when applying to selective middle and high schools and no accommodations are available for opting out. Can’t speak for the high schools (my kid is in elementary) but most middle schools in our district are considered selective. If my child wants to go to the middle school upstairs from her zoned elementary school she has to do well on this test.
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It’s interesting that this current wave of reform is being led by tech giants and billionaires. “Do as I say and not as I do.” Although Microsoft has certainly had enough black eyes by releasing not-ready-for-prime-time software!!
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We never bought the newest Microsoft software. We figured there was no good reason to pay to participate in their beta test. Our strategy has worked well over the years.
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Completely agree
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Except that many of the lemmings know that they’re behaving like . . . lemmings, something actual lemmings don’t realize and can’t. So it’s more appropriate to say that people who are jumping on the Common Core bandwagon despite knowing better are – rather than sheep, cattle, lemmings, etc., – acting like people blithely buying tickets for the Titanic II after getting news that the first one sank after hitting an iceberg. “Don’t worry,” they’re told. “This one is sure to be unsinkable now that we’ve got an extra-large iceberg chaser scotch-taped to the front!” And they can’t wait to sign on board for premium seats.
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http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp
Are the students the lemmings?
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Right, we shouldn’t defame lemmings that way —
In the whole animal kingdom, only humans behave that stupidly.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/04/27/1081903.htm
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A current popular method of software development is called “test-driven development.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development) In this method, tests are written to test the next relatively small feature being developed. Then a minimal amount of code is written to pass that test and implement that feature. A series of test-writing/code-writing/testing is done to fully implement a new version of a software product. Intermediate versions of a product are given as “beta” products to customers to see if the software company is on the right path or not.
One of the most popular old ways of developing software was called the “waterfall” method,” where the whole new version of the product was fully specified first in a series of requirements specs, functional specs, and design specs. This was done before even any design of the new product would start. The tests were developed in sequence or even after the software was written. During development, if something changed in how the software was supposed to work, one had to go back and change the specifications also, which could have a drastic effect on any software completed at that point. Beta testing usually had to wait until the very end when the product was “finished.”
Although the analogy to the Common Core doesn’t work perfectly, its implementation is more like the old waterfall method, particularly in its “testing” methodology.
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Public schools are EXPECTED to fail, that’s the goal. Then the privateers can swoop in.
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I agree with Ravitch and the readers here on this blog on most issues but not Common Core. Yes, it’s true these standards were developed undemocratically, and yes, it’s also true they’re untested. However, they’re still good standards and a big improvement over what we have now, which is nothing. I believe they will improve teaching and learning, and I wish this and other sites would focus on different issues that are tied to public school privatization efforts.
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How will these standards improve teaching and learning? What is your definition of “good” standards?
And why do you think so many of the non-corporate Ed sites focus on the school privatization movement?
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Standards are useful as guideposts, not as sticks with which to beat kids and teachers and schools.
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I agree – but I tire of people like the poster above saying that standards will improve teaching and learning without giving specifics. Standards on their own are not proven to “improve” teaching or learning. Well-written standards in combination with (hopefully good) PD can change teaching (clarification of what is taught, who teaches what, how a concept is developed across grade levels), which may then change learning, which we hope will be for the better.
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K Quinn @ 4:32,
What you describe is curriculum not “standards”. I have yet to see a workable definition of the word “standard” as it relates to the teaching and learning process. Do you have a workable definition?
Duane
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leigh, you surely cannot be serious about common core. why in the world is it necessary to mandate that all people have sameness and that these standards worldwide will enhance the universe to a point of rapture? Really. its pure utopian insanity with dollar signs in the eys of the edusales staff and the drooling countries wishing to dominate us. It is uncreative, inaccurate, myopic, sympathetic to tyrants and murderous dictators and unstablizingly nonlinear. it should be called dumbness for dummies or indoctrination for indocrinators or dummies for indoctrinators or biased utopian stooges for robots, or international psychosocial sycophants for depopulation or chaos vs control. common core is just another
insider quadruple entendre meant to fool the public into something they would never agree to. but many like you are on the
bandwagon, by the way a propaganda technique indicated by famous propagandist edward bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, of the blend of Freudo Marxism of the Frankfurt school the basis for critical theory and critical pedagogy and pedagogy of the opressed and liberation theology and Ayers and Giroux and it all ties up with a nice little bow from UNESCO and called Common Core.
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It is truly dystopian and “data” is a four letter word.
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Common Core is not an improvement over what we have now. California had to lower its standards to align with CC. For instance, California eight graders are no longer required to take algebra.
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I agree with Leigh about the common core, partly. I think they have the potential to really improve teaching and learning and, for once, seem to call out the standards in a specific enough way to give teachers a target to aim at. There are two huge problems, however.
First, the stuff required at the lower elementary is completely developmentally inappropriate. It seems like they just worked backwards from what they wanted in 12th grade, regardless of what students would be capable of at different ages.
Second, it really requires a complete overhaul of how NCLB has conditioned our system to work. We will have to do way more inquiry and critical thinking with our students and way less drill and practice. This will require a full generation to accomplish and lots of staff development. But instead, our students will be required to be up to speed with the Common Core on assessments given in 2015. Of course we will fail miserably.
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LCH,
Please define “standard” as it relates to the teaching and learning process. Thanks,
Duane
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Picture/drawing of a severely cored app, with saying:” All students have the same leaning needs: all are cored in common”.
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It is the high stakes tests that are used as sticks to bash teachers, close schools and abuse children. The tests were just as worthless before the Common Core standards were adopted as they are now. The two issues (standards and tests) have been conflated. I absolutely agree that standards should be seen as guideposts not absolutes but unfortunately there can be no true educational debate regarding the worth of the ideas behind the Common Core Standards as long as the standards are tied to the testing.
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Here is a possible logo for the Corporate Core National Standards:
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Ha. You have my vote!
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Excellent, true and heartbreaking all at once…
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Ouch!
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Great idea…either that or a huge black hole…no light escapes, no enlightenment provided.
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AMEN! Love this idea…
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Move to Nebraska – No Common Core State Standards here. We have our own standards, thank you very much.
No charter schools here. We don’t want them or need them.
Unemployment rate < 4%.
I hypothesize here, but perhaps all of the above is why our teachers in Nebraska are so darned happy.
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