Paul Thomas: Common Core and the Gravy Train

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1. Deb says:

   August 19, 2013 at 10:12 am

   One thing that I did not like in the last 15 years of teaching was the constant shift to what the so-called “Best Practices”. Too much emphasis on the artificial and time-consuming presentation of every phase of teaching at every moment as if that is the ONLY way to reach students. I detested that part of the Praxis and evaluation rubrics. Instead of looking for tangible interaction with students as evidence of teaching/learning, they look around the room for the correct posters and messages to the students. You spend more time creating things to please evaluators than you do on focusing on the students. A person only has so many hours in the day, with professional development and perpetual computer changes taking up more hours in the day. You run out of time to have a life outside of the school building. Oh, I complied, but I seldom got home until 9 p.m.

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2. Dienne says:

   August 19, 2013 at 10:26 am

   Sorry, off-topic, but the Obama administration is already gunning for your new book: http://nyceducator.com/2013/08/arne-duncan-sics-his-flying-monkeys-on.html You’re getting to them, Diane – keep it up!

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3. teacherbiz says:

   August 19, 2013 at 10:47 am

   Interestingly (or not), those profiting from the CC testing mandates are typically the first to claim that teachers and their salaries are sucking the system dry. Just yesterday, I stumbled across an old Rush Limbaugh transcript in which he calls teachers “freeloaders” who “don’t want to give up the gravy train,” and this week, he’s claiming that teachers don’t send America’s students the message that hard work pays off–no doubt because he believes that teachers themselves are lazy and make an easy living. (The RL transcript is linked here: http://wp.me/p3DCs2-hu)

   This kind of toxic rhetoric exposes reformers who profit from our students as the ultimate hypocrites, but because so many people resent teachers and are quick to support attacks on them, such rhetoric has literally opened the door to the kind of unchecked profiteering Paul Thomas describes.

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   • deb says:

     August 19, 2013 at 12:25 pm

     It appears that Rush makes his living off easy street. Why do people believe him? He must research to find out what dumb people believe in because they “don’t read, don’t think, don’t listen to anything but Fox news”. But he has his millions and needs to just go away.

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4. Cristina says:

   August 19, 2013 at 10:55 am

   It’s one thing for standardized testing to be culturally biased, but I had no idea that it’s financially biased as well. They make it seem like the rich kids go to Heaven with high test scores and the poor kids go to Hell with poor test scores!

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5. Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

   August 19, 2013 at 1:14 pm

   CCSS and high-stakes testing ARE GRAVY trains for the ELITE.

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6. Cap Lee says:

   August 19, 2013 at 1:48 pm

   Good teachers are NOT taught to teach to the test. Bad teachers can follow the text and teach to the test. They have no clue who the good teachers are. TAKE BACK OUR PROFESSION!

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7. chemtchr says:

   August 19, 2013 at 3:50 pm

   You know who doesn’t understand this?

   I’m a big fan (or was), but Paul Krugman is laboring in complete ignorance of the profit drive behind the Common Core. He seems to think it’s a harmless little effort to improve the schools by diluting right wing indoctrination efforts, or something.

   Here’s Krugman’s stupid “Stupid is a Strategy” blog, and my son’s comment.
   http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/stupid-is-a-strategy/?comments#permid=44

   Does anybody know Krugman, or his barber? Can somebody please straighten our public intellectual out?

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   • Linda says:

     August 19, 2013 at 6:24 pm

     I love Sam….sock it to ’em.

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8. Alabama teacher says:

   August 19, 2013 at 5:25 pm

   Besides its related high stakes testing that shows what teachers already know (the high scores are found in the wealthier zip codes) Common Core is not developmentally appropriate for my first graders. I get headaches thinking about the testing they’re stuck with starting in third grade.

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   • Deb says:

     August 19, 2013 at 6:48 pm

     Every year, the districts are foced by the state to give these tests and the schools that show up in the Academic Emergency or Academic Watch are always low income, low parent involvement districts. We’ve been looking at this since 1995 in Ohio and we all knew that it would be that way. The high districts are the wealthier ones with a few out-liers. Those of us in the middle go along being “The Little Engine that Could” and trying to thump our chests and “prove” we are just as good as the rich guys. That is what is so stressful. You work you rear off to please the adminstrators, who think they are the resident town rulers. It is insane. It proves nothing. I care about kids in OTHER districts, too. I shared information with other districts to help them, too.

     We who are teachers care about CHILDREN not just our own class.

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