I got a letter in my email today (cited below) from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, telling me how the future prosperity of our nation depends on adoption of the Common Core standards. I wonder how many members of the Chamber have ever seen a copy of the Common Core standards? Why do they think they will produce miraculous changes in test scores? What evidence do they have about the validity of these standards?
Personally, I don’t know if the standards will have a great effect because they have never been subject to trial. Maybe they are the greatest education innovation of our entire history. Maybe not. What we know to date is that the states that take Common Core-aligned tests see a dramatic drop in test scores. Very few children with disabilities can pass the tests; very few English learners can pass the tests. Most kids from all backgrounds fail them. Only 31% passed the Common Core tests in New York state.
Maybe if you are CEO of some huge corporation, you react by saying, “Wow, that is great news! Now we have a baseline, and our stupid kids will start to get smarter as we test them more and more.”
I have a suggestion. How about if every member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agree to take the PARCC tests or the Pearson Common Core tests that were given to students in New York last spring?
Let’s find out if those who pontificate about these standards can pass the tests. If they can’t, what does that tell us?
But, please, advocate for the things that you want for your own children. If your children are enrolled in an elite private school that doesn’t give the Common Core tests, don’t urge it on Other People’s Children. If the members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believe what they say, will they insist that the Common Core standards be adopted in the schools their own children attend, in schools like Exeter, Andover, Lakeside Academy, Harpeth Hall, Sidwell Friends, Maumee Valley Country Day School, and the nation’s other top private schools? Surely, if they are so great, shouldn’t all children (including your own) have the same standards? You don’t want them left behind, do you?
Be consistent!
And bear in mind two maxims:
Albert Einstein: “Standardize automobiles, not people.”
Pasi Sahlberg: “Standardization is the enemy of creativity.”
This was the letter I received:
Good afternoon,
Knowing this is a busy news day, I still wanted to share the testimony of the Chamber’s Vice President of Education Policy Cheryl Oldham this afternoon at a New York State Senate hearing titled, “The Regents Reform Agenda: Assessing Our Progress.”
As Cheryl states in her testimony:
- Although there are exceptions, American public schools are generally producing fewer students with the skills they need for long-term success. To the Chamber and our members, this looming national crisis requires urgent action, and that action must begin with the K–12 education system.
- We believe that one major answer to this challenge is the Common Core State Standards. For the U.S. Chamber and the business community more broadly, there are three things that are important to know about Common Core and why we support it.
- First, Common Core is an elevated set of standards. It focuses on the building blocks of learning, such as reading and math, and is designed to be applicable in the real world—namely, college or career. It is not a curriculum. Common Core Standards are the “what.” Curriculum is the “how.” That distinction is important to an organization like the U.S. Chamber that values local control and a limited role for the federal government—in most issues—but especially in education.
- Not only is the rigor of the standards important for ALL students, but the second key attribute of Common Core is nationwide clarity and consistency. For a country that is as mobile as we are today, for employers that in many cases have interests in multiple states, it’s critical that students—wherever they live— are ready to enter college or career training upon graduation.
- The third important piece for our members and for the nation is the Common Core is on par with international standards. Currently, our young people are being outperformed by students in countries like South Korea, Finland, Canada, Poland, and Australia. Common Core raises our education standards, which will enable Americans to compete with global peers.
Please let me know if you would like any additional information.
Thank you,
Jamie
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
The info above is almost word-for-word what two Michigan businessmen shared during their testimony this summer (the same morning you testified via Skype). They floated the idea that they couldn’t find enough qualified applicants for the many, many jobs they had available. Never mind that those Michigan jobs don’t pay as well as similar positions in other states. Not a bit of reason in their argument.
OMG. They drank the KOOK AID to control the masses. Question: Does members of various Chambers of Commerce members get perks and other stuff to spout this madness.
If it were indeed true that our students are outperformed in the named countries, the question is, who is better to address those so called deficiencies; educators who have studied the field, work with students, have experience in working with the problems children face OR the Chamber of Commerce? AND are their “answers” working now?
Yes, and the marketing has started. . .
this was in my email inbox today:
Hey Teachers,
Here’s a FREE eBook containing the top 10 tech tools to
teach the Common Core standards.
With tools for ELA and Math, this eBook is great for all
teachers! Inside you will find tools for all grade levels.
==> Grab your FREE copy now!
—————————————————————
And recently I got a flyer about a local art museum having a class about how to align art with CCSS.
I have a stomach ache.
Where we gonna run to?
Find the nearest trash can!
Did you know that even Elmo is being promoted/advertised on-line as being Common Core aligned?!?
It is astonishing to me that business people, of all people, would not understand the importance of having vigorous competition among various standards–competing standards, continually being debated and adapted and refined. Do these people think that it would be a good idea to choose a national uniform that everyone should wear? To empower a committee of self-styled experts (amateurs really, with little experience) to make all the production decisions for the nation? How could they think that a set of top-down, totalitarian, one-size-fits-all “standards” (especially one created with no vetting and no professional debate outside the Achieve echo chamber) would be a good idea? That’s just crazy. These people should have been the FIRST to cry foul that anyone should suggest unaccountable centralized regulation by self-appointed bureaucrats.
The last thing that we need is some Politburo meeting every 5 years to overrule every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer in the country with regard to what the outcomes to be measured in ELA should be. Business people should be the first to understand why that is so.
Mandatory national standards will have two effects: a) they will lead to monolithic national markets that small players in the educational materials industry cannot compete in (and thus less competition and innovation, and b) they will lead mean that competing standards won’t be developed.
There are vigorous debates among very well-informed people about the teaching of writing, speaking, listening, reading literature, grammar, vocabulary, and thinking. That’s how it should be!!! We need voluntary, competing standards. That’s how you get innovation.
A distant, centralized authority making these decisions for everyone else is an obscenity. We don’t need a centralized commissariat. We need vigorous, free debate among competing visions. That’s how you get innovation.
Why on Earth would the Chamber of Commerce, of all organizations, be pushing a Soviet-style “reform” on the country? That’s insane.
Reblogged this on Blog of an e-marketer by Main Uddin.
Maybe, if the Chamber of Commerce members stopped robbing and destroying schools for their profit and power it would be better. One thing is correct and that is we are not doing very good. I have too many complaints from business people family and others of students who cannot figure out anything and now we have the Calif. Attorney General, Kamala Harris’s, report on the truancy in elementary schools. Is is any wonder they are not doing good if they do not come to school in pre K – 8th grade and especially up to the 3rd grade as all national studies show. No elementary education, no high school education and no good outcomes for society just for the criminal justice division of society which we know all too well since CORE-CA is a recognized leader in this by police, sheriffs and judges of this state for many years back.
The Chamber of Commerce is another Orwellian name. It really means now the “Chamber to Organize Theft from Society.” Here, we call it as it is, no political correctness, we do not owe our existance to any wealthy corporations or individuals. They do not tell us what to do as they do all the others. Just go look at who funds all of your favorite organizations and think about this: If you existance. pay, clothes, car, hotel rooms, plane flights, nice meals and reputation count on you doing what master, who supplies the money, wants you to do what are you going to do? Why, whatever they want you to naturally as you are that type of person. So what do you expect when they sell you out? A proper decision and stand, or, will it be the predecided one by the funders? Funders win.
You have to love the irony of the U.S. Chamber. Pushing “Federal/National” standards endorsed by Obama and Arne and other Dems. Yikes!
You also have to love the irony of the Chamber of Business Roundtable interceding in the government shutdown and debt ceiling nonsense by telling Republicans to fix the mess they created…a mess the Chamber and Roundtable helped to fund and support.
This is what Ohio Ed Assn has to say. I don’t totally agree, esp about the justification for building the plane while flying. http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2013/10/15/five-key-takeways-from-an-ohio-common-core-debate/#listen
a very good blogpost just now from Paul Thomas, linking to recent article by Hope Against Hope’s Sarah Carr on the effect of Common Core on teaching and learning:
http://bit.ly/1aNHPRJ
Thomas concludes: “While Carr’s reporting is solid, unbiased reporting, I think the evidence here is a blaring alarm that Common Core advocates are wrong, and that those of us pushing against the realities of Common Core consequences are right.”
Part 1
Education in a democratic republic has a special place and purpose. At least it’s supposed to, and public education’s purpose is most certainly NOT to make a society “more competitive.” Aristotle argued for a system of public education in ancient Athens, noting that “each government has a peculiar character…the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarch creates oligarchy, and always the better the character, the better the government.”
Democratic governance is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.” By contrast, oligarchy is government by a relatively small – usually wealthy – group that “exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” Considering who funds the Common Core, and who supports it (think the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce), and the process by which it was brought to fruition, is there really any question as to the purpose behind it?
A former assistant secretary of education in the Bush administration said that NCLB was really a “Trojan horse…a way to expose the failure of public education…to blow it up a bit.” Is the Common Core really so different?
There are those who don’t believe in the fundamental purpose of public education. They are not interested in the developing the “democratic citizen,” one who understands and is committed to the core values and principles of democratic governance; one who is imbued with the “character of democracy.” There are certain people and groups and special interests who’ve felt threatened by education for “the masses,” especially Mann’s view of public education as “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society. And this begs the question, is the Business Roundtable committed to the core values and principles of democracy? The Chamber of Commerce? Bill Gates? Jeb Bush? And what about Arne Duncan?
All of these people and groups make two false claims about public education in the United States. First, they say that public schools are in “crisis.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
As I’ve noted repeatedly, the data (which these folks claim to care about) have shown and continue to show that there is no general “crisis” in public education in the United States.
The Sandia Report (Journal of Educational Research, May/June, 1993), published in the wake of A Nation at Risk, concluded that:
* “..on nearly every measure we found steady or slightly improving trends.”
* “youth today [the 1980s] are choosing natural science and engineering degrees at a higher rate than their peers of the 1960s.”
* “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause.”
* “The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
Here’s a howler from ‘the’ journal ( a technology journal for secondary school teachers):
” The opposition to the Common Core is misinformed and dangerous.”
http://online.qmags.com/TJL1013?sessionID=D03A54AABEED40D0CD2525ABB&cid=2391437&eid=18442#pg3&mode1
Part 2
The critics like to cherry-pick international test data to buttress their call for “reform.” I suppose if –– like the Roundtable and the Chamber – you’re willing game the economy for profit at the expense of the nation, while calling for more top-end tax cuts and the axing of social safety net and public programs, then you’re also quite willing to lie about a set of numbers. And if you’re willing to blame teachers, and a lack of “accountability” and“ rigorous” standards, for declining American economic competitiveness – as the “talented and oh-so-privileged Amanda Ripley does –– just to sell books, all the while posturing as an “expert” and posing as an “investigative journalist,” well grandma better watch out, because she might be the next one thrown off the train.
That’s the common refrain among the current crop of “reformers.” Their prescription for“reform” is necessary to “make America more competitive” in the global economy. Bill Gates says it. Jeb Bush says it. The U.S. Chamber says, “Common core academic standards among the states are essential” to U.S. competitiveness. The Business Roundtable rekindles the scary myth from A Nation at Risk that a “rising tide of mediocrity” threaten national security, saying that “Since the release of A Nation at Risk in 1983, it has been increasingly clear that…academic expectations for American students have not been high enough.” Not surprisingly, nimrods like Condaleezza “Mushroom Cloud” Rice and Joel “News Corporation” Klein have added their shrill hysterics to the mix. But there’s no there there!
The World Economic Forum ranks nations each year on competitiveness. It uses “a highly comprehensive index” of the “many factors” that enable “national economies to achieve sustained economic growth and long-term prosperity.”
The U.S. is usually in the top five (if not 1 or 2). When it drops, the WEF doesn’t cite education, but stupid economic decisions and policies.
For example, when the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in 2010-11, four factors were cited by the WEF for the decline: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) suspect corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt.
Last year (2011-12), major factors cited by the WEF are a “business community” and business leaders who are “critical toward public and private institutions,” a lack of trust in politicians and the political process with a lack of transparency in policy-making, and “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits especially deficits and debt accrued over the last decade that “are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth.”
And this year (2012-13) the WEF dropped the U.S. to 7th place, citing problems like “increasing inequality and youth unemployment” and, environmentally, “the United States is among the countries that have ratified the fewest environmental treaties.“ The WEF noted that in the U.S.,”the business community continues to be critical toward public and private institutions” and “trust in politicians is not strong.” Political dysfunction has led to “a lack of macroeconomic stability” that “continues to be the country’s greatest area of weakness.”
[Note: data on 2009, from the 2010-1011 competitiveness report can be found here: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalCompetitivenessReport_2010-11.pdf
The problem in American public education is largely one of poverty. The data show it. Indeed, PISA scores (the scores usually cited by public education critics) are quite sensitive to income level. If one disaggregates U.S. scores the problem becomes clearer: the more poverty a school has, the lower its scores. The presumed do-gooders seem to think that more “competition” and ambitiousness will cause the schools to fix the effects of poverty. Those effects are pernicious. It takes commitment and resources to counteract them. Not testing. Not “rigor.”
Alleviating poverty and its pernicious effects, providing children with high quality environments before they get to school, and following up with health and academic and social policy programs while they are in school, result not only in high-quality education but also in a high-quality citizenry. Both are critical to genuine national security. They constitute the real-world manifestation of equity and promoting the general welfare. This is surely not what corporate “reformers” want. It will require and end to their manipulation and gaming of the “markets” and the tax system. Far easier to blame somebody else, and hold THEM “accountable.”
The public education system in a democratic republic is supposed to develop and nurture democratic character and citizenship. Surely, that’s the kind of reform we need.
And it’s exactly the kind of reform the corporate “reformers” and their allies have little (if any) interest in.
On a different topic, inBloom:
Most readers of this blog are probably familiar with Orson Scott Card’s YA novel Ender’s Game. It’s a sci-fi tale set in a future in which humanity is united into two stable confederations working together to prepare to face a common enemy–some buglike invaders from space that are expected to return to finish a job that they started sometime before–destroying humanity and colonizing the planet. As might be expected in such circumstances, ENORMOUS power has been given to military and intelligence officials. At one point in the novel, two of these officials are talking about the young man Ender. Even though they are high-ranking intelligence officials and the future of the globe is at stake, one of them says, of Ender’s school records:
“We can’t just og into Gilford County North Carolina and pluck a picture out of school files. Did anyone at this school authorize this?”
The point is that the author ASSUMED that school records would always be kept private, that decent people would understand why those were sacrosanct and not to be made available to anyone with interest in them and a checkbook to pay for them.
How far we have come!!! We now have a Secretary of Education who made creating a commercial repository of student information an official goal of his administration!!!
Orwellian.
I agree Robert that in some ways this “information sharing” is the most scary outcome of the “reform” movement. We can stop the ridiculous testing we can do a lot to save our schools, but the sharing of private school information with entities that use it for their own purposes is chilling. This will be difficult to un-do. Love the Ender’s Game reference- I had not caught that assumption.
A primary component of “competitiveness” in the eyes of the Chamber and like-minded organizations is lower wages, wages that dive after the pay earned by workers in supra-national, globalized, outsourced labor markets, labor markets where independent unions are often heavily repressed or non-existent.
The intimidation and bullying, the fear-driven mandates for “compliance,” that are endemic to so-called education reformer practice are not the unfortunate, unintended side effects of well-meaning do-gooders, but an intentional form of “labor discipline” that is axiomatically sought by management, whatever the industry. In education right now, it just so happens that many of the most prominent so-called reformers are people who seem to really get off on breaking as many eggs as possible to make their omelets.
What Frederick Winslow Taylor brought to manufacturing over a century ago – the quantification, breaking down and de-skilling of the labor process, the removal of professional discretion – is now replicating and occupying the classroom, with digital oversight now added to management’s arsenal of command and control.
It’s to be expected that the Chamber – the highest-spending lobby in Washington, created explicitly to counter the labor movement at the beginning of the 20th century – would be propagandizing for the Common Corporate Standards, since in combination with recently-introduced VAM-based teacher evaluations plans, they are a vehicle for even more high stakes exams, a linchpin of public school closings, destroying tenure and seniority, and ultimately the teacher unions.
The Standards are a win-win for those the Chamber represents: a gold mine of extracted public money and resources given over to a wide range of industries – publishing, software development, hardware sales and service, management and consulting, employment agencies (i.e. TFA), real estate, etc. – and increased labor discipline (often expressed as institutionalized sadism) in a line of work that had previously resisted it.
Indeed, Michael. It certainly seems to be so. We have high schools now in this country where every English teacher is on an LDC script. Hello, I’m teacher model CCSS.ELA.3695J. rev2. Pull my string to begin the lesson.
That’s the point. Money. These are the Chamber’s goals:
• Push for more corporate and upper-income tax cuts, and less regulation.
• Cut spending on social programs, and if possible, privatize them (Social Security, Medicare, etc.).
• Blame someone else (public schools and teachers) for the economic messes caused by the polices they’ve supported relentlessly.
• Tap into public education funding, and if possible, divert all of it to private coffers.
The truly sad thing is that little of this gets reported, and when it does, it’s to the tune of “Why can’t we produce the ‘Smartest Kids’ in the world?” Or it’s “We need more STEM training to remain ‘competitive.'” Or it’s “If public school teachers did their jobs, American economic competitiveness would be restored.”
None of that nonsense is true (as I note above).
But how many people (including educators) know it? Or are wiling to do anything about it?
And if people (parents citizens, students, teachers) don’t want corporate-style “reform,” then why do they continue to believe and participate in corporate “reform” programs and practices, (the ACT, PSAT, SAT, Advanced Placement)? You don’t go on a “diet” to keep eating potato chips and chocolate-covered cherries and guzzling super-sized sodas.
Orwell, was prescient and unlike Nostradamus he laid it out. Unbelievably, it is coming to pass unless right now we continue to stop it and raise the heat up many notches.
Besides receiving funding from Gates, I think that the Chamber of Commerce likes the sound of “College and Career Ready” without checking into what Common Core really is/entails/how it really came about, etc.
I received my “NEA TODAY” magazine in the mail today
Page 7 is “President’s Viewpoint” – Stay on Course with the Common Core” and
pages 48-51: “What You Should Know About the Common Core State Standards”
What I am reading is: “Most NEA Members Support the Common Core:”; “The Standards are Designed to Help ALL Students”; and “Success Depends on Better, Balanced Assessment and Accountability Systems”
Sounds like “Drinking the Kool Aid” to me –
I I am a teacher union activist but I do not support what is promoted in this latest periodical
I WILL support the parents (and teachers) who are coming out (in force) against CCST!
What a tragedy that the unions have sold out their membership on this!
They sold out a while back….think Randi Weingarten, who by the way, has extremely limited teaching experience.
Come to think of it, how many “union” leaders, from Weingarten and NEA president Dennis Van Roekel, to state education association presidents, ever go back to the classroom?
Yes, democracy, I am aware that the unions sold out on this a long time ago. They have been major recipients of Gates funding to promote the Common Core. It’s tragic. The unions should be the institutions that teachers can count on.
On a positive note, I was pleased (tongue in cheek) to see that the national crisis is only “looming” now. That must mean that public schools have not been failing for decades or the criisis would do more than “loom.”
I wonder if they also got Gates money, like NEA, ASCD, and on and on. Great suggestion about pushing it on private schools.
Like, where has everybody been man? Like wow, I just realized something was happening and it is 40 years later. Where was I? Is this where we are now? Or is it that this is where they are at now? I’m confused, are you also?
Here’s the future of English education as it is being designed by the Gates Foundation and its teachers’ union collaborators:
Hello, I am Literacy Design Collaborative English teacher model number CCSS.ELA.3679J.rev 2. Pull my string to begin the lesson.
And yes, you can get a pimply TFA grad to do this. In fact, what you DON’T want for this is anyone who will think for himself or herself. You need a tabula rosa. The same inclination led Pol Pot to want to murder everyone in his country over the age of 12 because those older folks couldn’t be programmed to be the perfect vehicle for implementation of the state program.
The Chamber Of Commerce is controlled by ALEX and the Koch brothers. Their goal is to privatize education and run education like a business. It’s all about the money and not improving education. They aren’t experts in education, so why should they be dictating education policy? I’m not an expert in running a business so I wouldn’t tell a business how to operate.
[…] of the Common Core standards. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is likewise making a full-court press to advance the Common Core. Major corporations have taken out full-page ads to insist that the Common Core must be adopted. […]