The blog known as Perdido Street notes that Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of New York’s Board of Regents, took control after her hand-picked State Commissioner John King stumbled. Tisch announced 16 parent forums to explain and build support for the Common Core. There will be no back-tracking! The Regents will not be moved, no matter how much parents or teachers object to their plans to rush the implementation and testing of the Common Core.
Perdido Street notes that Tim Daly, now running Michelle Rhee’s New Teacher Project (now called TNTP, as in “The New Teacher Project”), likens all opposition to the Common Core as Tea Party-inspired. This, of course, is a smear intended to silence those who think that the state and the nation should move with all deliberate speed, not simply plunge ahead without forethought.
What is it about the Common Core that makes for so much heat and so little light?
We have noted in the past that David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core, served as treasurer of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst during its first year of operation. Another member of her three-person board was Jason Zimba, who wrote the Common Core math standards. (Zimba is a professor at Bennington College, where Coleman’s mother is president.) The third person on Rhee’s board was an employee of David Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners.
What is the synergy between Common Core and Michelle Rhee’s campaign to destroy teacher tenure and collective bargaining and to promote charters and vouchers? Is Common Core developmentally inappropriate on purpose? Is it intended to make American students look bad?
I hope we will learn more about the relationship between Coleman and Rhee. I hope to learn what part of her agenda he supported and did not support during the time she started to collect millions to advance her attack on teachers and public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Tim Daly, now running Michelle Rhee’s New Teacher Project (now called TNTP, as in “The New Teacher Project”), likens all opposition to the Common Core as Tea Party-inspired.”
I would suggest that opposition to the Common Core is the antithesis of the Tea Party. While the tea party has characterized the Affordable Health Care Act as a “train wreck” and that phrase has been used to describe the Common Core and its implementation and impact, that’s where the similarity ends.
Many of the congressmen in Washington espousing the positions of the Tea Party are representatives with the least amount of experience and it seems to me that they share very selfish concerns – a lack of perspective on what the common good might be, particularly those most vulnerable due to the economics of purchasing health care.
Completely the opposite would describe the characteristics of critics warning of the Common Core “train wreck”. They include our most experienced and knowledgeable educators – professors, administrators, teachers and staff – and their objections to it stem from the dangers to not only school systems but to those that are the most vulnerable and least able to defend themselves – the students – our children!
In fact, it is the supporters of the Common Core that share similarities to the Tea Party – lack of experience (they are what Jamie Vollmer described as “Perfectly balanced – equal parts ignorance and arrogance.” and they are immune to the effects and destruction their policies have created.
Tim Daly believes in Michelle Rhee’s Baltimore Miracle.
He was desperately asking for support back when Michelle Rhee’s lies hit the mainstream in January 2011.
No, as GE2L2R justly points out, Coleman, Daly, and Rhee are the Tea Party. Myopic, incompetent, and destructive vandals.
The shoe to drop will be the principal’s evaluation rating based on the APPR formula.
Many BOCES districts had their today.
New York State is CRAZY!!!! The criteria doesn’t even make sense.
I hope some NY principals post their thoughts here.
It will have to be a GAVEL that DROPS in a court of LAW.
APPR evaluations are less than invalid. They are complete unreliable as well. And they have resulted in an enormous waste of professional time, energy, and taxpayer money.
I am about as far from the Tea Party as one can get (for a centrist) … I am not extreme left or right wing. However, I am terrified of the lies painted by the likes of Ted Cruz and “friends”. So, I don’t know why anyone would assume that the only people against the CC are from the Tea Party. I think there are a broad spectrum of people who oppose it for various reasons.
Tea Party opposition, itself, is varied in its objections: religious views, historic interpretation, scientific interpretation, financial freedom, anti-tax, etc. not to mention homeschoolers.
I am against the CC because of its implementation “strategy” which makes it designed for failure for so many people. By choosing topics and operative verbs that are inappropriately assigned to students, particularly in the elementary grades, it sets most kids, teachers, schools up for failure.
My suggestion would be, if it must be implemented, to only use the recommendations at the k-8 grade levels and then see how it tests in high school. But, because of the nature of technology and testing… it “MUST” be forced upon everyone “NOW” …before it has been vetted, before it has been determined if the implementation is appropriate.
I am disappointed in Arne Duncan and Rahm Emanuel, yes. But, it is not because I am a member of the Tea Party. My objections are purely from an educational stance.
Now, I will admit, I don’t have knowledge of the CC for high school students since that isn’t my field of interest or exposure, though I could read up on it.
It seems to me that, while the elementary years should prepare students for success in high school, the fact remains that not all students are interested in or capable of “rigorous” academic instruction or in going to college.
With the current climate for finding employment in the U.S., why would anyone waste their money on college, often going into debt to get the money to go, only to graduate and be unable to find a job that pays enough for repayment of the loans, let alone provide a middle class lifestyle?
I would never recommend that a person choose teaching as a career today. There is no longer stability or appreciation for the sacrifices that are necessary when becoming a teacher. Many teachers have spent a lifetime deferring their own pleasure and purchases in order to supplement their classrooms. Yet, in this current climate, they are unappreciated, thrown out as soon as possible to “save money” and devalued as human beings by being called lazy leeches.
There has been a rush to change, broad assumptions about what should be taught, and a desire to disrespect anyone who serves their communities. The bottom line today is “profit” for so-called “efficiency”. False assumptions never pan out to be beneficial.
Pitiful.
Deb: thank you for breaking through the Rheeality Distortion Fields generated by the “education reformers” and sending us a missive from Planet Reality.
Your honesty and comments are much appreciated.
🙂
Another piece of the puzzle. For all those wondering why so many folks—public school staff members, parents, students and concerned citizens—can’t seem to get their voices heard, this reinforces what we have been hearing and reading over and over again—
Large parts of the education establishment can’t hear the vast majority of the people in this country because these self-styled “education reformers” are so preoccupied with talking to each other. They generally have a high opinion of one another, so they find it incomprehensibly insulting and perplexing when someone outside their select circles questions and challenges them.
Case in point: State Commissioner John King.
But don’t put it all on his shoulders. He is simply reflecting the in-group consensus of those in mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$ that believe “creative disruption” makes a lot of ₵ent₵.
“A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” [Demosthenes]
Maybe it doesn’t qualify as “informational text” but score another one for those old dead Greek guys.
🙂
The testing of our students is like taking a perfectly healthy people and giving them blood tests until they die.
The Rheeformers are freaking out. In just the last two weeks I have has a flash drive diverted at the post office, had to program the sorting computer for that, envelope professionally opened, flash drive removed, envelope resealed and sent on empty for a message to try to put FEAR into me. Wrong move, just the opposite happened. The flash drive contained video of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Citizens Advisory Board of which CORE-CA is a member dinner to raise money and for a grant to put up a manufacturing facility in the inner city for at risk youth. They took the flash drive addressed to a person with the highest connections to law enforcement as we also have with our relationship with that office for many years.
Then Sunday, Ellen Lubic, a part of the UCLA cabal with Sid Thompson, former sup. of LAUSD, Merl Price, former asst, sup. of LAUSD, and others we know in the cabal who are owned lock, stock and barrel by Riorden, Gates, Broad and Walton put a lot of libelous and slanderous statements into a comment on the blog yesterday. She is going to wish she had never let them convince her to do this. She had an opportunity to meet with Yolande Beckles. I told her the real story. She refused to meet. When you have foreknowledge you have a different status than if you did not know or did not have an opportunity to know. Now she dug herself a hole in her ivory towered academic wimp world. She is now playing hardball with experts. She is over her head intellectually and legally. Thanks Ellen for helping us out stop you and your backers who put you into trouble. Ever been in a real fight with experts before? You, and they are going to get taught some lessons for trying to stop Title 1 reform and following the law and in the theft based on the overcharging for iPads and other electronic devices by Amplify and Microsoft who wants $199.95 just for their keyboard. We have all the documents and statements, even Apple’s 14 page school price sheet in which it states no discounts for schools. I can go to Walmart and buy one of the same iPads as LAUSD for $50 less that LAUSD is going to pay. Wonder why she did this? Promises of money and a career in her consulting business. This is the way they always work. Seen it a lot of times. Nothing new to us.
So, for anyone else who wants to try this for their masters. you will have a BAD day. If you make an honest comment we never care. This was not honest. This was an attempt to stop real people from stopping the crooks. This will never go unanswered.
You had all better understand this is the real world for big stakes and if you are not capable of playing in the big leagues and are not used to it we suggest you stand back as the war has been declared and now it is for warriors with experience not amateurs.
If they get away with the high priced iPads and such from other manufacturers all school districts will be driven into bankruptcy by the hedge funds, bond brokers, Wall Street financiers, Obama, Duncan, Klein, Rhee and on and on. How does anyone think this can continue buying something that will be lucky to last 3 years with bonds for 25-30 years with a payback of 2-3 times the original purchase? It works for building schools, roofs and other long term capitol projects not for disposables like iPads ripping you off for from $1,600-2,538 each. What happened to the $200 with a 5 year guarantee instead of the $1,600 one with 3 years for only 5% when at least 20% break down and in one year in England 50% break down? People, you had better put on your math hat and think about what I am saying. No one else on this blog obviously has the math skills with budget or will even take the time to read them, instead, I see a lot of complaining and not one person ever looking into the budgets even when I show them the problems. I am trying to EDUCATE you to the facts. If your budgets are wiped out as a result there will be no education as there will be no programs or teachers. It takes a balanced budget to do this. I was asked to look at Ann Arbor. They are blowing away their money even thought they have about $11,000/student in funding. They are running consistent deficits into the future and charging, in this upscale priviledged place, $250 + $30 for insurance to play sports and rely on bonds for the buildings. How long can this continue before bankruptcy?
I am sorry, but I found that very difficult to read. I was having trouble determining antecedents and flow. A more specific, bulleted piece of information would really help, as I know you work hard at what you do.