This is a brief, succinct presentation by Regents Chair Merryl Tisch and State Commissioner John King in which they explain why scores plummeted across the state. The state tests were aligned with the Common Core standards, for which teachers and students had little preparation or resources. Nor had the standards previously been field-tested anywhere to see if they were age-appropriate.
It seems sort of odd to tell a third- or fourth-grade child that they failed the test and they are not college-ready. And predictably, more and more schools are giving tests to children in grades K-2 to get them ready for the Common Core tests.
I don’t really know any evidence showing that the Common Core tests measure college- and career-readiness, especially in the early and middle school grades. I do know they are aligned with NAEP achievement levels and wrongly so. New York’s definition of proficiency now produces the same proportion at that level as NAEP, but NAEP never defined “proficiency” as a pass-fail mark but as an indicator of solid academic achievement. It seems exceedingly cruel to tell three-quarters of the children in the state that they are failures by an untested and unreliable measure.
My suggestion: Suspend all state testing for at least three years until teachers have the resources and training they need. Continue to try out the standards and continue revising them so they are appropriate to the age of the students tested; so they take into account the needs of children with disabilities and English language learners. Revise the early grades and remove whatever is developmentally inappropriate. Let the teachers work with them, fix them, improve them.
Nowhere is it written that the CC standards must be adopted as written. The federal government doesn’t control them. No one is in charge of enforcing them. Let the teachers fix them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No one is in charge of enforcing CCSS, but in the CCSS memorandum of understanding, the governor and state superintendent sign and agree to use CCSS as written, with the condition that standards may be added but that CCSS may not be reduced. (See “CCSS Adoption”: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/the-common-core-memorandum-of-understanding-what-a-story/ )
deutsch29: thank you for your clarification.
😎
“Suspend all state testing for at least three years until teachers have the resources and training they need.”
This would mean the state would be in violation of NCLB and would not be eligible for any federal funds. I am having difficulty finding how much money New York State takes in from the feds for Title I and other programs in an academic year, but I’m sure it is measured in billions.
Is it your contention, Diane, that local districts can get by without this funding for three years? (It would be easy for many “Honor Roll” districts; disastrous for any with high numbers of Title I kids.) Or should state and local taxes be raised to make up the shortfall? (New York City residents already face the highest tax burden of anyone in the United States) Or do you think the Feds will blink and give New York its funding anyway?
Great question!
Can’t forget that this whole mess goes back to federal law.
Revoking CCSS seems to mean that the fall back is the impossible demand of NCLB legislation, i.e. 100% proficiency in math and ELA this school year.
I suspect that Diane is well aware of these federally devised ways to coerce states and districts into imposing oppressive policies upon children. And she is saying: “Enough!”
Isn’t that what the colonies did to the Empire.
There will be enormous amounts of collateral damage in the highly segregated cities where New York State warehouses its poor children of color. But I guess ignoring their plight is nothing new for the suburbs.
NY received $700+million in federal RttT money. Only one of two states to get the Tier I money amounts because we agreed to adopt EVERYTHING quicker. One of the many conditions for getting the funds was an adoption of the CCSS, even before they were written. Additionally, the state agreed to create a massive P-20 Longitudinal Database System to be shared among many state agencies. That was a requirement of accepting the money. So, districts may slowly back out of RtTT, but the state is still all in. Districts will still have to implement what RtTT says for now, but won’t have funding for it. Add to this mess NCLB requirements. Our state has been granted so many waviers and expemptions for NCLB, that the law might as well be null and void. It came up for revote and that never happened from what I read (mayeb in 2009?). I don’t know the fully legalities of it, but I think the first thing to do is expire that law (repeal, etc.). King and Tisch both talked last night abouy requirements under BOTH these edu policies. Then once NCLB is done, chip away at the RtTT requirements, forget about the federal money, etc. Our state is probably spending nearly 3 times the amount of money receiving from RtTT just to implement its requirements. It does not even make economic sense. Am I wrong here? This is my understanding of it.
Only 12 states actually scored enough RTTT points to win federal grant money. I believe that any state that complied with RTTT criteria also received a waiver from NCLB and its AYP requirement of 100% proficiency. So this leads me to believe that if we comply with RTTT then we are freed up from NCLB.
Tim,
That’s an interesting question. When I asked about opting out of testing in my state, I specifically asked if funding would be withheld and if it was the state or feds that would do the withholding, I did not receive an answer to that question.
ConcernedMom: to whom did you direct your question that went unanswered?
I asked someone from my LEA if it was true that funding would be lost if testing participation dropped below a certain level. I asked for a reference to the law and if it was the state or federal funding that would be withheld.
The answer I received was that if <95% participated there would be several layers of intervention by the DPI including notifying parents that the school had a low % and the school would have to implement a plan to bring participation level up (this was quoted from GCS-C-021).
They did not answer about the $. I didn't pursue it so maybe if I kept asking, someone who dig up where it is in writing. I have to decide if I want to push for a more complete answer.
Yes, deny the federal funds. I would gladly take a property tax increase to eliminate this horrible program. We cannot just prostitute out our children to the corporations who are the ones benefiting from this whole thing. Our first priority is our children, not money. A good teacher with no materials will still teach better than a one who is being forced to adhere to these policies.
Tim, do you know of any example where the federal government has suspended all federal funding because of a state’s refusal to submit to NCLB’s impossible demands?
“Nowhere is it written that the CC standards must be adopted as written. The federal government doesn’t control them. No one is in charge of enforcing them.”
When the tests ARE the curriculum/standards, and when teaching careers hang in the balance (e.g. APPR), enforcement is implicit and explicit as it was rather deviously legislated through RTTT grant contest and/or through NCLB waivers.
RTTT grant money and NCLB waiver was the Trojan Horse gifted to America’s public schools. APPR/VAM was hidden inside. Although NCLB seemed sail away in defeat, the CCSS and PARCC/SBAC were let back into Troy by the APPR.
USDoE should be put on a MORATORIUM.
Amazing that we survied all the way until 1979 without them, isn’t it.
So in 35 years they have basically destroyed the public school system. Kudos.
The USDoE should be recognized for what it is–a rogue agency, a law unto itself incompatible with democracy–and then it should be disbanded and a law should be passed preventing the federal government from getting involved, ever again, by any subterfuge, in dictating standards, tests, and curricular and pedagogical approaches to the country.
At the same time, though, the federal courts should be available for constitutional rights violations.
Interesting here how some folks are cautious about not being anti CCSS because they don’t want to align with fringe groups who don’t like CCSS BUT getting rid of DOE is an old far right notion. This is where left right up down goes in a circle.
I do agree, though, that DOE seems a little out if control.
Would/will IDEA still be upheld and Title I without it? In short, what is the good part of it, if any?
I agree, Duane. I am NOT suggesting a return to the days of local “nullification” of basic Constitutional rights. What I am saying is that precisely what we DON’T NEED is centralized, totalitarian control of standards, curricula, pedagogy, and teacher and school evaluation.
Joanna, if it were up to me, we would have a national agency with the following sole purposes: a) redistributing education funding equally among students according to some formula that takes into account differences in cost of operation of schools in different states and b) ensuring that whatever is done at the state level provides equal access to all, including those students currently covered by IDEA.
Robert,
Your idea sounds great and it starts to address the issue of poverty, Good luck convincing the conservatives (and even some, if not many, of the middle class mommies) that is the way to go. I believe your idea is a good start, I also believe most folks won’t go for it,
Race to the Top (RttT) required that states “adopt a common core of state standards” and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were basically accepted as if they were the only option. No one quibbled with that since the only two people in the state who had to agree to RttT were representatives of the two very organizations that sponsored the development of the CCSS, the governor (from the National Governor’s Association) and the state superintendent (from the Council of Chief State School Officers).
I think there may be a way out of CCSS. What if other officials in states come together and agree to adopt a different set of common core standards, such as the model standards of Massachusetts? That should not be a problem, since everyone keeps saying the CCSS were not mandated by law. And do what Duncan did. Choose a name for them that dovetails with what RttT demands and call them “A Common Core of State Standards” (ACCoSS).
I think Linda Darling Hammond pointed out that at this point it would be more fiscally prudent to try and keep what is good of CCSS because of the expense already entailed. To scrap it to prove a point would likely be as irresponsible as ushering it in. If we fold our arms and refuse to eat something because it was prepared by a cook who was sleeping with our spouse, we might go hungry. We need to consider not cutting off the nose to spite the face. Back to square one might not be wise.
The last thing we need is to try to keep the CCSS. We need to have this amateurish bullet list subjected to the critique that it was never subjected to, and then we need alternative, competing visions of learning progressions in these subjects put before a free people who can adopt and/or adapt them as they see fit.
Wrong analogy, Joanna: we shouldn’t refuse to eat because the chef is sleeping with our spouse, but because he/she is trying to poison us, while saying it’s for our own good.
Michael:
fair enough. You know the dialogue is good when we’re figuring out the right analogy. I love it!
I do think that CCSS is the easiest part to swallow for teachers right now. On the plate of poisoned food, it is the least noxious (from what teachers tell me). Trust me, I get that it is tainted too. But those of us with the little children every day are trying to navigate as best we can to present a positive day for them, while meanwhile fighting for an untainted portion again (and trying to buffer the poison off. . .I guess we are expected to suck out the poison and regurgitate, without harming them. . .much like a mother bird would do). something like that.
?? Lord help us.
Respectfully that is nonsense thinking. Research the concept of sunk costs. if something is bad, saving it becuase you invested in it makes no sense. You still have something bad. It’s not refusing food becuase you don’t like the cook, it’s refusing food that is rotten.
Implementing CCSS will bankrupt education in the nation. If Los Angeles alone is spending $1 billion for iPads-and that does not include the cost of professional development and other resources–what will be the cost for the nation? No wonder big business loves RTTT. And by the way, the iPads and their content will be obsolete in 3 years.
“My suggestion: Suspend all state testing for at least three years . . . ”
Again, you’re getting there Diane but I would love to hear you say: “My suggestion: Suspend all state testing FOREVER because the whole process of educational standards and standardized testing and even the grading of studens is so rife with error as to render any results completely invalid and “vain and illusory”.
exactly
I agree with Robert 100% of the time….
Duane, Thank HEAVEN it’s not just me!! We got to the moon and back and into the information age without (almost any) standardized testing (and the occasional “Iowa” type tests were only for statistical analysis with no stakes attached), and I went to a very good public school where we had no grades before junior high school (you can tell I’m dating myself a little).
Education and health care, two areas where the Feds have failed.
Education, yes. Health care no, unless the Republicans are allowed to take over. And if we can ever convince President Obama to put a Teacher over Education that can be fixed too.
Better be more specific than “Teacher,” because Obama thinks that TFAers are teachers. Have to include formally trained teacher, with a minimum of 5 years of classroom experience teaching ELA, Math or another content area, because they called Rod Paige a teacher when his only real classroom experience was teaching high school PE/Health –and coaching college football. (I have no idea how he was able to parlay that into becoming a Dean of Education and Superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, but the FALSE Texas Miracle in education upon which NCLB was based is attributed to him.)
I am not in New York but am hearing that districts’ hands are pretty much tied now; we wouldn’t be able to survive without the federal funding. I’ll confess to not keeping up with much of this until recently. Before RTTT funding, how did we survive? Is it true that local tax-bases would not be able to support a district or state who chose to give back the federal funding?
Isn’t it ironic that the states hate the feds getting involved in education but yet they want federal money and cut the state money that should be providing educational services. Just like with private and parochial/christian schools: If you want your kids to go to them, pay for them yourself.
Federal funding cannot be tied to CCSS. The feds are prohibited from any influence over curriculum or instruction.
The federal funding will be NOTHING compared to the costs of a) the testing and b) the computer upgrades.
A moratorium on the CCSS is NOT what is needed. What is needed is for individual districts to assert their right to make their own decisions regarding standards, curricula, pedagogical approaches, and testing.
And yes, the federal DOE is a disgrace and should be abolished.
Yes.
Again, I ask: does DOE have any redeeming qualities? Sincerely want to know what others think.
Let the teachers work on them? What a radical idea! That would be admitting that teachers can run their own profession! That not everyone can teach! That’s exactly what the politicians don’ want—to give teachers control of their own destiny. I mean, Lord help us! They might join a union or ask for better pay!
We need highly educated professionals in our classrooms with the freedom to make their own decisions about curricula and pedagogy. THE LAST THING WE NEED IS STANDARDIZATION.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles, not people.” –Albert Einstein
Indeed we need teachers who can think for themselves and lead the children by example. The only example set these days will produce students who cannot think save for canned responses that are expected from teachers forced to follow cookie cutter curriculum to the letter. Common Core… call it Common Chore!
Agree.
I don’t like standardization. If CCSS must be kept, can’t they be like the National Standards were? Before CCSS and RttT there were nine National Standards for music Ed that most states adopted. They were clear, straight forward and I kept them posted in my room and referred to them in lesson plans when necessary. Things seem micromanaged now. It feels icky. (Not so much in music but in what I see around me in the buildings). Nevertheless I still see good work from the kids and neat projects and so forth. Our teachers are handling it beautifully. I just hope they don’t tire out.
So correct!
Oh my gosh, artseagal, “Common Chore”!! (I’ve been calling it “Common Bore” –based on forcing the kids just learning to read to read “informational text” when we KNOW that self-selection increases literacy…)
Imagine, instead of this totalitarian, top-down approach involving federal or state standards, a situation like this:
1. Local districts make their own decisions about what standards to follow, what tests to give, what curricula to adopt, what pedagogical approaches to employ, and what evaluation systems to use.
2. They make these decisions based on competing visions of what standards in particular domains should look like, and they choose from among tests, curricula, and pedagogical approaches envisioned by competing vendors and by academic specialists with competing ideas.
We should be encouraging the development of novel, up-to-date approaches to teaching and evaluation in the various domains, not trying to set up some one model as the holy writ from which no one is to deviate.
The last thing that we need is some distant, centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth dictating to the entire country. Why would we want to adopt, in this country, the sort of model for education that is followed by every totalitarian regime? Are we no longer a FREE people? Are we no longer to have any say? Are we to submit to whatever the edubureaucrats in their wisdom decide for us? Are we to wait for any innovation to occur until the Politburo meets again in five years to revise its invariant, inflexible “standards”?
Is the academic who publishes a paper critiquing the standard approach to, say, the teaching of writing or of Algebra to be told, “Forget it. No one is interested in what you have to say because it doesn’t accord with the bullet list promulgated by the Commisariat”? Or, will a free people be able to look at that new approach and say, “That makes sense. Let’s pilot it”?
I’m astonished that we are even considering notions like pleading with the bureaucrats to give us an extension. We should tell them to go to hell.
We should tell them, “We are still a free people.” And then we should tell them to go to hell.
And to take their “standards” and their Orwellian national database with them.
I agree….this time 200%
Robert, I imagine some folks would answer your question with something like “but what about places that want to leave out evolution or teach creative falling instead of gravity?”
I agree with you. But I have heard these type arguments. So instead we still give the opportunity for public money to go towards that type possibility with Charters? Catch 22. I think CCSS is, like Diane said on The Daily Show, the answer to a problem we didn’t have.
Joanna, democracy is messy. But it is much to be preferred to the alternative.
Who needs all of that money?
I can teach a Polar Bear how to survive at the equator…using a piece of chalk…a blackboard…a couple of rulers…some string…and
some Good Will 2nd-3rd hand books…
Neanderthal. . .I’m with ya. I don’t like technology just for technology’s sake. I love hands on projects with oatmeal cans and colaging (kids need projects like that).
“My suggestion: Suspend all state testing for at least three years until teachers have the resources and training they need. Continue to try out the standards and continue revising them so they are appropriate to the age of the students tested; so they take into account the needs of children with disabilities and English language learners. Revise the early grades and remove whatever is developmentally inappropriate. Let the teachers work with them, fix them, improve them.”
This sounds is a common sense approach. It gives a clear and logical solution for fixing the CCSS rather than just demanding the CCSS be trashed.
Trash deserves to be trashed. And competing ideas deserve to be heard.
Again, some will take your “competing ideas” to mean competing contexts for schools. Whereas, I think you mean competing ideas within one context of public school that is locally governed and guided with greater autonomy than now afforded by RttT. Yes?
Joanna, there are many, many ways to approach teaching in any of the domains covered by the Common Core “standards” that would be equally effective but incompatible with the “standards” as written. I believe that local schools should have the freedom to explore, and never cease from exploring, alternatives for their own standards, tests, curricula, and pedagogy. I believe that we are best served by having a free marketplace of ideas in which local districts can shop. We need variety and experiment in our public schools, not mandated standardization. The idiots who don’t want evolution taught in their schools will be shouted down, as they have in district after district throughout the land. But by adopting a single set of standards, we dramatically curtail possible innovation in learning progressions and curricular design because anything that is adopted has to be compatible with the “standards” as written, and the ELA “standards” are astonishingly backward. These “standards” effectively codify and give the force of law to mediocrity, to every hackneyed, ill-informed cliche about the teaching of English. We need to have those cliches challenged, not codified.
cx: there are many, many ways to approach teaching in any of the domains covered by the Common Core “standards” that would be equally effective or much more effective but that are incompatible with the “standards” as written.
Do people really think that the CCSS is the best we can do? That’s insane. Of course it isn’t. Why on earth would we want to stop revising and improving our learning progressions in light of emerging understandings? Why would we want to go as dramatically BACKWARD as to accept, and cast in stone, the amateurish CCSS in ELA?
Thank you Robert. The cliche part rings loudly to me.
I hear ya. Your thoughts are what my gut tells me to. I suspect that even though we arrived at this point by what seems like some pretty big leaps, we will arrive more at the point you describe (what we have had before, although encompassing major issues of equity) in smaller, incremental steps. And I hope we can do so before “they” call the whole thing off (that is, public school). The problem is that there is a “they” calling the shots. And if you think about it, applying market notions to a democratic institution, which runs in representative fashion (or is supposed to), actually brings about mob mentality (and I don’t mean mafia, I mean mass chaos). Suddenly every one has a frickin opinion, rather than those who were ELECTED to have one (or wisely appointed by those elected). The selfish era of manipulating systems to turn them into market playgrounds has suddenly given megaphones to those who have no background knowledge or training about which they yell. And the biggest megaphones, it seems, have gone to those who seem to care least about the well being of the institution they are charged with protecting and maintaining. Our education “grounds keepers” are directing everyone to pillage and wreak havoc on the very institution they should be protecting.
Milton Friedman was let off the hook too easily. He should have been intellectually grilled more. He got away with ideas of great destruction and was even honored for his ideas and now the damage is being played out.
Shame on him. Shame on those who have not had the intellectual discipline to really consider the destruction now ensuing. We send money to developing countries to help them build schools that are closeby for all children (one room buildings, often, with wooden desks), but in America we tear down the extremely developed version (literally and figuratively, more often figuratively) of what we are trying to help them achieve, acquire and attain. It makes no sense to me other than that our way has been grossly distorted by reforms that have carried us backwards and hurt lives, old and young, every day.
Tells me too
Robert,
No doubt there are “there are many, many ways to approach teaching in any of the domains covered by the Common Core “standards” that would be equally effective or much more effective but that are incompatible with the “standards” as written.” What does that matter to a student who picks the approach? The state, district, school, or even the teacher chooses an approach and the student is assigned to that teacher based on geographic proximity of the home.
TE: It does boil down to real estate, doesn’t it?
If only the Magnet idea had not failed in Kansas City, it might have been a model idea. I suppose it was like Obamacare—it required the cooperation of those who least needed it to make it work for those who most needed it.
The Magnet idea continues to pop up when the real estate question comes about. And that is where some digital classroom ideas might factor in, but I see them as needing to be offered within a public school and not AS an option to school paid for by the public. I do not see magnets as related to Charters though. I do not consider them cousins. I consider them apples and oranges.
The real estate question will always be there.
As I have argued in the past, the use of catchment areas to determine school admission forces school districts to impose a level of uniformity across schools. If a school board tells a parent where their child must go to school they must also be able to argue that this somewhat arbitrary assignment will not matter because the schools in the district are all pretty much the same.
TE, it matters that different districts take different approaches and can learn from their relative successes and failures.
We need a situation that encourages the development of innovative instructional approaches based on new understandings of how kids learn. But a single set of invariant, codified “standards” will ensure that approaches that do not closely follow those “standards” will not be taken.
The new “standards” in ELA, for example, fail to recognize that there are vast differences in types of learning and types of knowledge acquisition across the various domains. Let me give just one of MANY possible examples:
The new ‘standards’ treat acquisition of the grammar of a language as the learning of explicit rules, and they require that the “texts” to which kids are exposed be leveled according to their complexity. However, we know that grammars are not acquired via explicit instruction but that they are intuited from the ambient linguistic environment by machinery in the mind dedicated to that purpose. For that machinery to work, the ambient linguistic environment to which the child is exposed at home and at school must contain the full range of grammatical constructions of the language, and we know from linguistic research in low SEO areas that kids in those areas do not get that sort of essential exposure.
Now, suppose that, understanding how, in fact, kids acquire the grammar of a language, an academic–a linguist, say–were to suggest to an educational publisher that in the early grades we should create compensatory environments in which kids are exposed to high-interest oral language “texts” that systematically and fairly rapidly introduce complex syntactic forms of the kinds to which kids have not been exposed in their home environments. This is the sort of thing that we should be doing, given what studies of language acquisition tell us. However, the educational publisher would take one look at such a proposal and say, “These oral language “texts” you are talking about are not at the readability level required by the ‘standards,’ and the ‘standards’ do not call for such a prominent role for early oral language, so the idea is incompatible with the ‘standards’ and cannot be considered. We’re looking for ideas that follow the ‘standards’ exactly. We can’t sell anything else.” As a result, an extremely important, scientifically warranted innovation in curriculum and pedagogy would be ruled out, a priori, because of the “standards.”
That’s one example of how the “standards” dramatically curtail curricular and pedagogical innovation. There are many, many more. Issuing these invariant, mandatory “standards” is equivalent to saying, “Build me a more efficient car. But it has to have a gasoline engine. And it has to seat six. And it has to have an internal combustion engine. And it has to have four wheels. And here’s my list of a thousand other specs that it has to have.”
But suppose that instead of having these invariant, inflexible, mandated standards, we had a situation that encouraged innovative thinking about standards and learning progressions in the various grades. Suppose that a great deal of debate about alternative proposals was encouraged. Suppose that there were national forums for such debates. Suppose that small, innovative publishers of educational materials could develop materials that pick up on the best of these ideas but that are incompatible with the CCSS. Suppose that districts could adopt those materials.
That way lies improvement and innovation. Adhering to a priori “standards” is a recipe for ensuring that our curricula and pedagogy will be stuck in the past.
Robert,
Did the previous system without a national set of standards foster innovation? Did we see significant changes in teaching methods originate at the district level and propagate organically across districts?
In fact, TE, the previous system (pre-NCLB) did, in fact, foster innovation to the extent that districts were free to choose their own curricula and pedagogical approaches. Some of these innovations were extremely effective (hi-lo readers for challenged students, flexible-modular scheduling and curricula, literacy circles, Big Books, oral language activities, explicit phonics instruction, formative testing, reading records, knowledge-based curricular approaches, portfolios), some had mixed results (integrated language arts, leveled readers, anchor-paper-and-rubrics-based grading systems for writing), some were disasters (the “look-say” and whole language approaches to early reading instruction), and some could have had great results but were very poorly implemented (sentence combining, programmed learning). And the competition among approaches led, eventually, in some cases, to consensus–it did, for example, with regard to the importance of explicit early phonics instruction, the importance of which almost everyone now understands. For many decades before NCLB, however, power was steadily taken away from local districts and placed in the hands of state departments (in particular, in the hands of educrats in big adoption states who were in bed with the big-box educational publishers), and that tended to stifle innovation as well. In the period immediately before and after NCLB, there was an enormous amount of M&A in the educational publishing business, and what were before some thirty or so competing K-12 publishers got reduced to three major ones, largely due to economic pressures created by well-intentioned but ultimately counterproductive state adoption criteria that smaller vendors could not meet. NCLB hastened that process of consolidation, and CCSS will be the final nail in the coffin of competition in the market for educational materials. As Duncan’s former Chief of Staff put it, the motivation behind the CCSS was to create national markets for products that could be brought to scale (e.g., the Microsofting, the Walmartization of U.S. education).
However, the sad fact is that innovation in English language arts curricula and pedagogy has lagged far, far behind our knowledge of the sciences of language acquisition, developments in critical theory, and our understandings of what constitutes competence in writing, and the reason for this is easy to spot–to the extent that we have empowered distant, centralized authorities (state and federal agencies) to make educational decisions, we have destroyed the ability of innovators to find customers for their products because distant, centralized authorities (state departments, the USDoE) tend to be backward; they represent the mediocre, lowest-common-denominator, backward-looking “consensus.” If you had asked people, a century ago, who had no familiarity with automobiles what they wanted in modes of transportation, they would have described to you the characteristics of a good horse or a good horse and buggy.
Do you know where I can read about this? It strikes me that there may be parallels between this and technological innovation and adaptation in agriculture, a long researched topic in economics.
I disagree, & agree w/Robert’s suggestion to scrap CCSS because the govtl system currently in place has no provision for allowing teacher input/ revision– in fact, forbids it– & will co-opt ‘resources/training’ with ed-for-profit materials & indoctrination– in fact already is doing so. We citizens have allowed executive agencies at the fed & state level to dictate ed policy by fiat, leaving citizens with little recourse. Take a look at Indiana, where fed-up Republicans voted a Democrat into highest state ed office to reverse unpopular privatizing: the governor simply created a new, 2nd state ed agcy, staffed it w/his followers, & is now engaging in open battle to dictate policy from his new dept.
I never thought I’d be joining the right fringe in calling for an end to DOE’s, but it has to be done if they continue to operate them as dictatorships: it’s swiftly moving toward taxation w/o representation.
I would recommend that everyone do a little reading on the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. I just did a quick skim but the corporate influence in CCSSO was hard to miss. Both are nonprofit organizations that seek to influence federal policy and legislation. Someone dissected them awhile ago, but I know I needed a refresher (and still do from the more savvy posters here).
Sort of a “lest we forget” type thing? It is possible that those of us around CCSS every day are becoming a little immune, building up a little tolerance for things we cannot control. It is to be expected, because when you have to swallow something every day and wash it down with something even more noxious (testing, VAM), survival requires some type of acceptance. But I think you are right. A refresher would be good. (You can always go to Mercedes Schneider’s blog too–it is laid out well there).
Mercedes was in the back of my mind as a likely suspect. Thank you for remembering for me officially. We should always keep in mind the adversaries we face lest we just trade one scapegoat for another.
The standardization of education in the English language arts will have one laudable consequence: while the bulk of students squirm under a regime that has reduced education to a bullet list of “skills” they are to “demonstrate proficiency” in, there will be a few who will react violently against the standardization, who will think for themselves in opposition to the technocratic nightmare of computer-adaptive worksheets and scripted lessons. And so, out of the totalitarian nightmare, seeds of creativity and rebellion will inevitably grow.
There will be, for example, those few students who will write brilliant essays in response to the lame essay questions on the national standardized tests, answers explaining why the questions are too lame to deserve answers.
And on those students our future will depend.
I have thought about that too. About the student who will roll his or her eyes and then write some solid, well written piece that is entirely not what is asked, but blows it out of the water. I agree. They are our distant hope, but for now the burden still belongs to the adults (the ones who think and act like adults and want to stand up for young folks, not profit off them).
Let’s just hope we maintain the avenues for their recognition since they will all flunk the standardized writing tests.
King looks like he swallowed some bad medicine. Tisch looks as if she had to take meds. to make her statement.
Education should be ran locally. Teachers with help of child development specialists should establish a belief statement for their district which will affect curriculum and instruction. We don’t need building administrators, but only skilled teachers acting as leaders. Teachers need a system in place that they can take pride and ownership by keeping themselves and each other accountable. They dictate the curriculum and instruction. They should be compensated by the amount of extra duties and professional development they incur. All teachers need to alternate schools every so many years. This helps to appreciate their colleagues, learn from different population of students and their families, and refresh their teaching environment. Skilled teachers don’t need to be micromanaged and made to feel incompetent by having VAM in place or the burden of 100% passing rate on high stakes testing. We need to get back to teaching the whole child. Get rid of slogans like “college ready,” “no child left behind,” etc., that can’t be backed up with proven research and discriminates and causes segregation. It’s time for change and taking back our schools into the right hands
Should be run.
I like your point about teachers moving around some ( there are those who have been in the same classroom for 32 years). I wonder how often is good and how frequent is too much.
If one has been in the same classroom for 32 years…..they become stale…The best veteran teachers make sure they get a dose of all the medicine..even the poison doses..Makes you a better person and a much better teacher..
and totally agree about the slogans. I have been emailing our leadership about that very thing! Young children do not need to be hearing or thinking about career and college ready just yet (even if we are preparing them for it, we need to be more gentle and subtle with that guidance). They still need to be able to dream about being a fireman or an astronaut before they actually have to get prepared for it. And our global economy will not suffer because children need to pretend.
“Young children do not need to be hearing or thinking about career and college ready just yet…”
I can still remember the terror on a younger son’s face when his much older brother was heading off to college half way across the country. He was much relieved to be assured that there were colleges right in our area so that he wouldn’t have to leave home when the time came.
Do you think it matters if a family expects their children to go to school?
In my family history my mother was not expected to get a college degree, my mother in law was the first in her family to get a college degree. It has since become the default assumption in the family that all should go to college.
Yes it matters whether we expect our children to pursue education beyond high school. The expectation signals high aspirations in my community, but it is not the only way of thinking. Formal schooling is certainly not the only way of gaining knowledge.
At what age should a child be aware of these expectations?
That is not a question I ever had to ask my parents. My children would say the same. It’s part of a family’s culture.
Does everyone here really believe everything will be better once the CCSS are abolished? Do you believe the children that passed these CC tests will be failures because of the way they were taught? Is a whole generation of public school children in peril?
How does trashing the CCSS address poverty? It may help the middle class mom feel good she took control of her own child’s education, but will that same middle class mom fight for social justice for the poor who, with their low wages, allow her a certain standard of living? Will she accept a higher cost of living/higher taxes (or a redistribute of her current taxes across school districts) if it meant a more just society and more children ready to learn?
Perhaps poverty, not terrible standards, is the biggest threat to the health of our society as a whole. Poverty existed before the CC, it will exist after the CC and K-12 schools, even those with excellent teachers, can’t change that fact on their own.
Concerned Mom:
This is a good time to draw a graphic organizer and figure out where CCSS figures in (at least , that helps me). As a teacher in a building every day with the CCSS culture all around, it can be frustrating to watch (because of what goes with it, it smacks of micromanagement and a little bit of thought control). I think those “trashing” the standards would be able to find small parts to salvage (as Robert Shepherd puts it, utilizing the “domains” covered in it) if they were asked to be on some sort of panel to do so. Remember, this blog is frequented by those for whom curriculum is their language. . .so an abomination has occurred in their field and they are responding to it. You, like me, seem to spend more mental and emotional time looking at all of this from the perspective of a parent. And we see larger storm clouds, making CCSS look like a tempest in the teapot. I think it is both, and those for whom curriculum is their field are going to be more focused on CCSS, and that is OK. Hopefully those whose professions are social work and anything along the lines of relieving human suffering will focus their attention there. It takes both. Swallowing CCSS hook line and sinker just because there are other and bigger problems might also be minimizing the issues with CCSS. Perhaps the conversations just need to be less intermingled for clarity and focus. Then again, there doesn’t need to be just one conversation, just as there doesn’t need to be just one way of educating American public school children.
(For whatever it’s worth). 🙂
Just out of curiosity, how would you lay out your concerns as a NC parent, if you had to create a list that you would present to a decision-maker or someone of influence? (if you don’t mind me asking)
Joanna,
You are correct, Thank you for steering me back to the issues.
As far as how I voice my concerns. If I had to create a list of my concerns, I would share it with my child’s teacher. I have reached out to leaders at the LEA level and state (just by E-mail) with some of my concerns and questions.
One of my biggest concerns is the testing machine and how those results are used. However, I believe that stopping the testing machine is not enough to help some of the struggling students.
The ideal situation would be if my school had a teacher representative (perhaps elected by the parents) who I would go to with concerns and that teacher would reach out to the people of influence and that teacher would have a voice or vote in the final decisions. I know some of my concerns are selfish because the only student I have direct contact with is my own child. I am not an educator and my “gut feeling” may be wrong when I question some practices.
CM: I think (if it matters what I think) that you are right to be asking the questions and listening to your gut. So keep doing that. People read them who might just have more influence than you know. So keep it up, just as I am often encouraged to so on this blog too.
concernedmom
The fight is not about all of the standards..
1st ..there are too many standards being half-way taught and shoved down the student’s throats in a dictated amount of time by the Power Testers… (so the students will have been exposed to them before a test.)…..Make sure you COVER all of the standards..They said not a thing about teaching the standards because they know the curriculum is too full and you can not possibly teach all of them in the given amount of time….
2nd… CCSS = “One Size Fits All” mentality and that is the only thing Common about the Core..
As you can see when you read this post..Robert Shepherd and Joanna Best are such eloquent and intellectual writers….as for me….not my talent….
If my spouse were writing it would be about equal to these two intellectual geniuses…but mine are nowhere equal..
But..I understand all that they say…
Bottom Line..
Teachers need to take control of the curriculum and instead of the ‘One Size Fits All’….let us try to “Find the Right Size for Each Child”….then and only then…by Individualizing each student’s education…..will we ever own “The Claim of Success”…
Neanderthal. . .I always like reading your comments. You’ve got it.
🙂
Neanderthal, your modesty is becoming, but you definitely underestimate your own talents! 🙂
Sorry, didn’t see this later post– started to respond to some of your gist above. I speak from a parent & taxpayer view, informed indirectly by past private-school & current ed-enrichment exp. I see CCSS as inextricable from the hi-stakes testing & teacher VAM by which it is sold to the states, which makes it part of a machine that chews up & spits out public schools & ps teachers, opening inroads for privatization. This has a direct effect on schools in poor areas, many of which already have been taken over by their states due to lack of local funding, so local citizens have an even more difficult time of affecting policy than middle-& upper-middle class citizens.
Frankly to me the content & quality of CCSS is irrelevant. It is simply another plank in a policy-by-fiat, citizens-be-damned executive power grab that cannot be allowed to stand in a democracy. I am looking at a system where $ talks, so middle- & upper-middle-class votes ‘speak’ louder than poor votes– & 12yrs of ed policies over which those louder voices are silent or going unheard– which means things at the poor end are far worse. Until funding by property taxes changes (if ever), yes, getting wealthier citizens to protect thei hi-performing schools by dumping state-imposed anti-public-ed policies is one of the ways we can help everyone.
It is simply another plank in a policy-by-fiat, citizens-be-damned executive power grab that cannot be allowed to stand in a democracy.
Amen to that!
In this video, from August, King’s talking point is 46 states have adopted the CCSS, but today he says “45 states, the District of Columbia, and DOD schools.” Which state dropped out?
The national standards were needed by people who wanted to launch computer-adaptive products that would be sold nationwide and who needed a single set of standards to adapt those products to. They were paid for because they were an essential first step in order to carry out a business plan. Only secondarily was any attention paid to the quality of these “standards.” All that was important to the folks who paid to have these “standards” developed was that they rationalize–fold into one document–what was being done in various state standards. It would have been very, very difficult for these people to create computer-adaptive learning systems that simultaneously correlated to a bunch of different standards.
The whole national standards movement is about the Walmartization, the Microsofting of U.S. education. It amazes me that that is not obvious to many well-known, highly respected educrats and education pundits.
I too get amazed. And then I think it’s just me because I don’t hear people saying anything about it and I even hear teachers say they like it (just not the testing or VAM), and then I read this blog and realize it is not just me. I don’t know what that indicates, but at this point in time I think it is because a) what choice do they have if that is what they are handed b) if you have to choose one thing in that list to not be upset over, that is what they have chosen or c) not knowing the politics, ignorance is bliss for those who do not know the politics.
The culture surrounding CCSS was getting started when I re-entered public school employment after three years off. The change was blatantly obvious to me. But maybe to those who had not left, like I had, the juxtaposition was not obvious (like the frog in hot water analogy).
Robert, if you don’t mind me asking, do you ask teachers you know (other than on this blog) what they think of CCSS? I wonder if there is a trend in any particular area of teaching who like it more than others, etc. This is another area where the Tea Party guys in our state did introduce a bill that made sense in that they want the CCSS to be studied (I don’t know what happened to that bill, I need to check). I suspect there is also not a great deal of outcry about CCSS where Republicans are in charge and heaping it on (cutting tenure, cutting budgets, taking away classroom limits) because the Democrats (and teachers who are Democrats) are either not likely to criticize something their party signed on for OR they feel the ills of CCSS are a smaller issue because of Republican led reforms in education. This is why I became an independent. I needed to step away from a party affiliation so I could fairly speak out about my observations for public education. A party affiliation was holding me back on doing that, and I wonder if that might be the case for others as well.
Sadly, Joanna, many of the teachers I know are not very familiar with the CCSS, and many have become inured to standards-based approaches in the decade + since NCLB and see this list, rightly, as not much better and not much worse than what they had before in the state standards inspired by NCLB. The CCSS attempt to rationalize and make uniform the previously existing state standards, but those, too, were a terrible mistake, leading to mediocrity, not excellence, for those, too, codified many, many misconceptions.
Among those who are unfamiliar with the details of the CCSS, sadly, are many who are actively promoting the CCSS on behalf of district offices–folks who simply haven’t thought carefully or deeply about what specific standards and specific approaches taken by the standards in particular domains mean. Some know the standards only from highlights fed to them by propagandists, and the propaganda, of course, skips the details. However, the devil is in the details, in the ways in which specific aspects of the learning progressions and approaches of the CCSS limit the possibilities for curricular and pedagogical innovation (a terrible opportunity cost of hewing the the CCSS party line), in specific standards that are compatible only with counterproductive approaches, in the lacunae (in what is left out), in the assumptions on which the standards were based, in the predictable reaction of educational publishers (which has been to turn the bullet list of standards into the curriculum–taking us further down a path of teaching isolated skills outside of a coherent curricular context),
I am continually amazed by the extent to which even nationally known “experts” in ELA curricula and pedagogy don’t see the ways in which the CCSS constrain development, egregiously limiting the possibilities. There are many, many ways to produce good readers, writers, speakers, listeners, and thinkers. There are many that would be very, very effective that are not possible given the standards. I ask myself, over and over, how could experts be so unfamiliar with the possibilities for ELA curricula and pedagogy as not to recognize the ways in which these “standards” unacceptably limit the design space and encourage and at times even enforce a lot of backward, counterproductive approaches.
Suppose that we agreed, Joanna, that you would make the desserts and I would make the entrees for Thanksgiving dinner but that I told you that the desserts would a) have to contain ice cream, and b) would have to be served in waffle cones, and c) would have to be served cold. Same thing with these “standards. They start with preconceived, unacknowledged, often hackneyed and uninformed assumptions about teaching and learning in the various domains, and those notions severely limit the possibilities, ruling out many approaches that would be better than those that are possible, given the “standards.” The CCSS in ELA is like having “standards” for flying machines that rule out all but hot-air balloons and dirigibles.
I think it would be helpful to point out particular CCSS math standards that start from “preconceived, unacknowledged, often hackneyed and uninformed assumptions about teaching and learning in the various domains, and those notions severely limit the possibilities, ruling out many approaches that would be better than those that are possible, given the “standards.” It would give us something concrete to discuss.
The CCSS in math can be found here: http://www.corestandards.org/math
Every time I see these comments, I continue to wonder why NYSED insisted on giving these tests… both in terms of inappropriateness for the kids plus the colossal waste of money. And I have yet to arrive at a rational answer.