Last week, when the Michigan elite had its meet at Mackinac Island, Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee warned about the importance of adopting Common Core. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, who is a fervent opponent of public schools, has already endorsed the Common Core in a meeting with Arne Duncan.
But the Michigan state senate passed a budget bill that prevents the Michigan Department of Education from spending money on the Common Core.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Michissippi legislature has a long, proud tradition of demanding more of public schools without providing a penny of financial support.
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Great. It’s very interesting to watch the growing movement against authoritarian micromanagement of schools by our federal government, and it’s GREAT that we are seeing people on both the right and the left opposing this. Voluntary standards are fine. Taking away the autonomy of every curriculum coordinator, every new educational publisher, every teacher, every principal and superintendent–telling them, in effect, it doesn’t matter what you think you know about what you should teach to whom and how, we’re going to make this decisions for you–that clearly isn’t. Centralized control over standards is totalitarian, and people on both sides of the aisle, politically, have reason to oppose such control. We in the US believe in personal liberty and self-determination. We believe that innovation comes when free people make their own decisions and don’t have those made for them. We’re not fond of tyrants, and we will, as people become more aware of what has been happening, make that quite clear.
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One thing that we need to start doing is calling the deformers out on their Orwellian NewSpeak. We need to make very, very clear that the Common Core State Standards are not common, not core, not state, and not, by any stretch of the imagination, worthy of the name “standards.”
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That is a great point about Orwellian newspeak. At CCSS trainings I’ve attended, the only way we could evaluate presenters was with “plus” (good) or “delta” (could be better). Kind of like saying “good” and “ungood” in Orwell’s novel. Reformers usually don’t refer to themselves in negative terms or like anyone else refering to them in a negative way. And while we are on the topic, what does anyone make of the notion that COmmon CoRE stands for cognitive reorganization? And if there is any truth to that, state legislatures should definitely defund the corporate core.
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if you read about cognitive reorganization, you look at what you see in your trainings and classrooms with the echo of the eery newspeak of ” needed transformation” in documents and ccss reams of documents and their affiliates it sure does look like that is the goal. communitarian cognitive rorganization. Common Core, Our Common Future, Common Purpose, world core curriculum, see UNESCO, see amitai etzioni. see third way. see all the players bios. looks like it. and if that is indeed the case is unesco or the UN who you want leading your children?
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And, at any rate, we believe in diversity and pluralism. The LAST thing we need is “Common” standards–the same set of learning objectives for everyone. In one sense, the word “common” is appropriate, of course: common, adj., base, ordinary, vulgar, coarse
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Michigan knows the core is like the corvair, unsafe at any speed.
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lol
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good one!
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It’s time we took our schools back. That’s something both the left and the right ought to be able to agree on. Let people take their sides: do you support top-down, authoritarian control of schools–those keepers of our future–or do you support liberty?
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Please pay attention, New York legislators!! Testing hearing today at Capitol in Albany. Rally planned this Saturday in Albany to protest the nonsense being handed down by USDOE and NYSED. Let the drumbeats get ever louder!
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Fodder for researchers – achievement in common core versus non-common core states – hopefully someone is already desiging the research model
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Of course, it’s entirely predictable what the results of such research will be.
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mets, the Equity for Excellence Commission final report advises states to not bother with their own standards; just adopt CCSS.
If you have time to read this report, it is an enlightening piece of work:
Click to access equity-excellence-commission-report.pdf
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I am interested in hearing what your take-aways were from this report, Mercedes. It gave me the chills.
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How do we decide what achievement is?
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On the other hand, what’s been horrifying to see is the toadying of what is supposed to be our educational leadership to these authoritarian mandates. Shame on these people for making nice with totalitarians.
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when you live in Michigan you know never to trust Gov. Snyder–the word on the street is that Snyder’s motivation for refusing the Common Core $ is so it will be easier to appoint Emergency Managers for the state’s schools when they are deemed “failing.” its all part of his plot to destroy the state’s public schools and privatize education in Michigan.
follow the money.
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using hegelian dialectics in every corner. this sounds just like the redevelopment schemes with declaring perfectly good buildings blighted so they can take them by eminent domain and change zoning. slow and steady fabians. every move sets up an outcome down the road. like OBE. same scheme. like a delphi consensus meeting. always with a shiny object or some distraction to keep you off guard while they change legislation to pillage, meanwhile you get an old repeat education curriculum and some rediculous ” traffic calming”. same schtick. the thing is that only a few have the playbook and some other stakeholders zip up cause they are tied to the doe re me.
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Lest we get too excited over the prospects of the Tax Exempt Advocacy Party becoming the New Social Welfare Party, what we have here is still a case of legislative micro-meddling in matters of curriculum, the ultimate decisions about which should be left to the academic and educational communities.
In short, passing yet another raft or flotilla of bills is the wrong way to deal with education.
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Well said, Jon
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In a related story …
Michigan Laws Proposed to Force School Mergers
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I am glad to be receiving your blog. There is so much to read that I feel a bit overwhelmed.
I am concerned about the assault on public education by the promoters of “education reform”….or as I see it, “education deform,” and their attempts to transfer public money into private hands. Profiteers at the public trough.
I have one question (at the moment): Who or what stands to make money from this? That was one of my first questions when this country went into Iraq.
Thank you, Barbara Bearman
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“That was one of my first questions when this country went into Iraq.”
Hers is why we went to war with Iraq, and also why “school reform” exists:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6930.htm
The article is by Naomi Klein published in Harper’s.
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I teach at a school in the district that Tom McMillin, the legislator who introduced this idea, represents. Let’s be clear: This is IN NO WAY a bi-partisan agreement that CCSS is harmful or a salvo to Michigan educators! McMillin is the president of the board of the Pevail Charter Academy. He opposes the CCSS only because its implementation puts a strain on charter schools like his (and probably because reading too much non-fiction in classes other than English may expose students to the possibility that evolution is indeed scientific, global warming is indeed happening, and being gay is not really a choice).
It’s also important to note that this move only prohibits funding, not implementation. Many districts, including mine, are still considering impelementing since we have already realigned curriculum. We’ll just do it without any money. You can guess what that means for teachers and students.
I know many teachers on this forum are anti-CCSS. I am not. I think the standards themselves are good and could lead to real gains in student achievement. As an English teacher, I am especially in favor of the workshop method that is advocated by some respected educators, like Lucy Calkins, who worked on he standards. Of course, I do NOT believe in the standardized tests and teacher “accountability” that have been rolled out in conjunction with CCSS. But, on the whole, this is a lose-lose decision for Michigan educators and students. It should not be celebrated.
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Gail, i assure you I haven’t been prez of the school board at Prevail for many years (though its for a different discussion, the parents who drove their kids to Mt. Clemens everyday to go to Prevail certainly appreciated the fact that their kids got to a decent school and were out of a horribly failing school, oftentimes a Detroit school).
But my motivation for blocking Common Core and high-stakes Smarter Balanced testing is that we should not turn over the standards taught in our public schools to a national, private trade association (NGA). I don’t care who writes the standards – left, right, far right…whatever. I would still oppose nationalizing the standards taught in our state’s schools.
By the way, i did not support the teacher evaluation bill that came out of the education committee two weeks ago, for one reason, because i am very concerned about high-stakes testing and its connection to “accountability”.
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Tom, what are you doing to make charters more accountable in Michigan? Why can families run charters? Shouldn’t education professionals run schools? Why should a CEO who has never spent a day in the classroom be able to make money off of school children? Why can they employ many unqualified family members? Why can they make a profit when teachers do not have adequate supplies to teach in the classroom in the modern world? I really wish you start investigating charters in Michigan. The citizens deserve answers. I understand your opposition to too much federal power. Do you make money off of school children? Just wondering. The Michigan legislators don’t like federal intrusion, yet routinely interfere with citizens at the local level. Why?
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“Shouldn’t education professionals run schools?” Not necessarily. Home schooling is, in my opinion, a legitimate option. Charters another. Vouchers a desideratum. Lawyers should run law schools. Doctors should run medical schools. But who has a monopoly on the what of general education? Reading, writing, and arithmetic are the common knowledge of everyone. The free exercise of religion permits families to deny evolution. It’s bad biology but but it’s constitutional. Global warming is not anywhere as proven as evolution. Some say gay behavior is a choice; even a famous U of M professor says gay mannerisms have to be taught. Where differences of opinion exist it is best to err on the side of non-interference, especially with respect to religious matters. Or would you prefer to regulate religion as well as schools?
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Well said, Tom!
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“My motivation for blocking Common Core and high-stakes Smarter Balanced testing is that we should not turn over the standards taught in our public schools to a national, private trade association (NGA). I don’t care who writes the standards – left, right, far right…whatever. I would still oppose nationalizing the standards taught in our state’s schools.”
There are many problems with the CCSS, but this is THE BIG ONE. We can have liberty, or we can have a tiny group of people making decisions about standards for all of us. If we are going to win on this issue, we need to frame it in precisely the way you have done, Tom, and it’s extremely important that we do so.
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As a teacher, who has been teaching the CCSS in math at the intermediate level, I agree with Gail.
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I am a teacher in Western Michigan and am in full support of implementing the Common Core State Standards. From what I understand, most who oppose this movement don’t necessarily oppose the standards, but the fact that the entire nation must adopt the same standards and power is not given to individual states. Am I correct in that general statement? I do understand this viewpoint, however, I think the quality of these standards and the paradigm shift in education that goes along with it are far too important and “good” to shoot down. I, along with my entire school and district, have voiced our opinion that the Common Core State Standards must go through in order for our schools to get out of this “teaching to the test”, “one size fits all” mind-set and into the mind-set of quality over quantity, collaborative, 21st Century (including technology), education. We are planning on implementing these standards, regardless of financial support, because it’s just good teaching.
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