No wonder the big corporations and tech companies are so enthusiastic about Common Core.
The education industry is an emerging market!
Look at this Oregon-based company’s website, and you will see the possibilities. It will be supplying cloud-based resources for New York and other states.
And what a team! Fabulous corporate experience.
Wow! No wonder these business guys look down on teachers. You do the grunt work, you know, like doing stuff with kids every day, and they take home big bucks.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Meanwhile in Kenya… Is this what we are emulating? http://www.ictworks.org/2011/09/12/12-challenges-facing-computer-education-kenyan-schools/
Our last two department meetings were about the Odell website. I, and others, have a problem when the only material discussed is from a corporation. Like they have all the answers. I don’t know how I managed for 18 years before this?
And Six Sigma concepts are being applied to the “business of education”.
Quit deluding yourself, Flolindy, you really didn’t manage yourself all those years. You were just being a “can’t wait to retire and scarf up all that retirement money union thug” during that time.
Corporations are, frequently, too young to know better and too big to be afraid. In the meantime, they wreak havoc on the common sense core.
Ya… This is shameful! I live here in Portland, and PPS (Portland Public Schools) is buying right into this crap. I heard about a K-8 in North Portland that plans to start having their 2nd graders practice on the computers so by 3rd grade they will be ready to take the test.
Diane:
This looks like a small start up venture that is essentially offering a technology platform with the words Common Core slapped on it. They have little or no expertise in k-12. I would assume that they would be competing with other technology firms offering the same services to school districts. If a school district has a competent technology officer their credibility, or lack thereof, should be quickly determined.
What brought this particular company to your attention?
Bernie 1815, there will be hundreds of little start up companies taking money from the school budget, causing class sizes to grow, eliminating the arts, putting pressure on schools to waste resources on something that promises to raise their Common Core test scores. Wrong turn! Wrong direction! Put the money into what works. Read my book to see what that is: pre-K, reducing class size, arts, nutrition, health clinics, etc.
Diane:
This is a small company, not a big business. It’s offerings may well be a waste and a distraction – but some such company may well generate a highly effective innovation. In my opinion District offices should be competent enough to sort the chaff from the wheat. Your criticisms are better directed at District leadership and boards like the LAUSD who pursue solutions in a way that almost guarantees failure, regardless of the potential merits of the original idea.
Bernie1815,
Would you rather die of a thousand cuts or of one to the jugular?
Duane:
You guys will lose sight of the main issue, if you kvetch about companies who are trying to build better mouse traps. Do you feel the same about Blackboard or other types of software tools that potentially increase communications and productivity? Does on-line learning have no role in High Schools? How luddite do you want to appear?
As I said, the focus should be on the school decision makers and the articulation of criteria for evaluating any $$ expenditure – in or out of the classroom. The Apple fiasco in LA was down to a lousy decision-making process with insufficient transparency. It is silly blaming Apple for trying to sell their iPads and software. It is like blaming textbook companies for trying to sell their books or sports equipment companies for trying to sell uniforms and sports equipment. The focus should be on the potential buyer not the seller.
For millennia, people have dreamed of a repository of all knowledge freely accessible by anyone. One of the Ptolemies established the Library of Alexandria. Various scholars, throughout history, conceived of encyclopedias–Pliny, Isidore of Seville, Diderot. H.G. Wells dreamed, in 1937, of a universally accessible “world brain” (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/World_Brain). Truman’s Science Adviser, Vannevar Bush, dreamed of having the knowledge of the world available via magnetic cards on a machine called the Memex (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/). Richard Feynmann imagined storing all the knowledge of the world on a device the size of a sugar cube (http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html). Now, in the age of the Internet, that age-old dream of free, universal access to knowledge has been realized.
And instead of giving our kids access to that, we’re buying iPADs for them loaded with a few canned educational software programs and access the the knowledge of the world DENIED.
The Common Core and inBloom are about turning this unprecedented PULL medium–the realization of that dream that educators have dreamed throughout the millennia– into a PUSH medium that can be tightly controlled and monetized by a few monopolists.
If a kid has a question about K-12 math–what’s a rhombus or a trapezoid? how do I multiply numbers containing exponents? What’s the formula for the volume of a right cylinder?–whatever–he or she can go onto the Net, to Dr. Math, and find the answer in seconds.
And indeed, the possibilities for innovation in education, given the NET, are breathtaking. But a few are doing all that they can to ensure that we have a few large providers who control the tollgates through which knowledge passes and collect handsome fees for the privilege of access to their paltry shadow of what people might get at for free.
The purpose of the Common Core, said Arne Duncan’s chief of staff, is “to create national markets for products that can be brought to scale.” Exactly. The net can be a pull medium for education, or it can be a push medium. Making it into a push medium allows the monopolist to make a great deal of money. And it allows tyrants to have a means for controlling what the next generation thinks.
Robert:
I see no evidence to date that anybody can monopolize the NET. It is odd and ironic that those who are defending what is ostensibly a monopoly, i.e., public schools, should be fearful of that which threatens this monopoly. I recall the bad old days of the telephone company monopolies. They too existed by political fiat.
Scale is not bad per se. Nor are standards. Do you think countries or States with standard curriculums are subject to monopolies on the part of textbook publishers? Look at the SAT and ACT publishers – they are essentially a duopoly, yet the market for study guides and prep flourishes, does it not? Why wouldn’t the same be the case for any testing program around Common Core?
Would that it were going to be “hundreds of little start-up companies.” Far from it. The Common Core was a necessary first step toward the establishment of enduring monopolies in educational materials in an age when information was about to become too freely available.
Bernie,
You are quite right on saying that we need to focus on the “buyers”, no doubt! And I have no problem with businesses interacting with the public sector. It is the public though that has the ultimate say over what is spent through its ability to remove and replace school board members who do not wisely spend public school funds and who are not good stewards of the resources.
And, even though I don’t have an instantaneous communications devise, I still have my landline and internet. (Cell service is not available where I live and I see no reason to spend double for phone and internet, plus I like being free of technology and being instantaneously connected) Perhaps that is being a Luddite, don’t really give a crap about that.
I find an over-reliance on “technology as education panacea”. It’s amazing that mankind managed to survive, learn and prosper for so many centuries without intantaneous communications and access to vast quantities of information.
I suggest you read the following from Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-reading-brain-in-the-digital-age-why-paper-still-beats-screens
Duane:
Thanks for the link.
I am not for a moment suggesting that technology should totally replace face to face instruction – but it definitely has its place.
In my opinion, most of these innovation efforts will and should wither and die if they really do not add value to either those currently delivering a service or receiving a service. It is no different from a new textbook: Some are more expensive same old, same old, some are worse than the older books and a few might be marvelously superior. There is no way on knowing before a careful assessment.
This must be why hearing the name has been so important. When you hear a phrase over and over and over again, you know it is either being marketed, or there is just a serious lack of creativity and vocabulary among its users. I have even wondered if without the phrases of “Common Core” “College and Career Ready” and “21st Century Skills” if some of this stuff, at its heart, might have caught on better for people paying attention. The marketing of it and propaganda is half the problem, I think. Or if we suddenly stopped saying those phrases, we might even be able to actually talk about the standards realistically (and democratically, as appropriate). Such as it is it is just a brand name that I wish would go away (and all 3 of those phrases. . .they are not what I want for my son to think about as he enters school).
Like when I was in college and I got really tired of hearing about “the Davidson experience.” Shut up and let me have one, for Pete’s sake. Or “being black at Davidson,” which I was not but I have friends who are and were there with me. . .it must be intentional marketing on the part of the institution. But man it got old to listen to it. And it weakens the strength of the effort to say the name over and over and over again, I think. It kills the integrity
So, is it branding? Is it marketing?
Also, another question: are any private schools out there bragging about using the Common Core? If the SAT is truly going to be aligned with it, then I imagine it is only a matter of time before they feel the pressure to do so. ??
The Catholic Schools in my Archdiocese are using the CC Math and ELA Standards. Tests such as the SAT as well as textbooks being geared towards Common Core are part of the reason for that. Sadly, I also suspect that our Superintendent (with help from NCEA) fell for the line “College and career ready”.
As of now, I know of two private K-12 schools in my city that are not using CC. There may be more as my city has many non parochial private schools. We also have the largest public school system in the state, though.
This is so frightening. I picture classrooms of children who simply get plugged into their one-to-one learning experience, plugged into some online aggegator of their behavioral data, they will lose focus due to the allure of something better, another website, another youtube video, let’s check email, let’s check facebook, minecraft, etc…descending into a flat shallow existence…
This is a nation that is going to let a generation of children melt into nothingness….isn’t it the search for truth that keeps civilized societies moving forward?
Reblogged this on Middletown Voice and commented:
Of course it’s big business…this is why Gov. Mike Pence in Indiana set up a new “education center” to circumvent the democratically elected Education Superintendent, Glenda Ritz. We can’t have the taxpayers getting in the way of corporate profits – not in Indiana.
We have “high values” and dress nicely – we can be trusted.
Hoosiers, don’t be gullible and definitely don’t take the word of Gannett owned newspapers.
…and if you read the background information of each one of the executives, NONE of them are teachers NOR do they have any hands-on (a.k.a.dealing with students and all the daily, real life classroom demands) experience! Perhaps we should run them through the TFA training and they could even claim to be not just trachers, but highly- qualified teachers!
Of course it is. CCSS and high stakes testing have ALWAYS been about the BOONDOGGLE of MONEY for the RICH and the CONTROL of the citizenry of this country. Our schools are great, but hey…do the SPIN, and unfortunately so many American people believe that the ills of this society are teachers’ faults rather than where blame should be laid — on the greedy and the politicians. it’s reprehensible.
Since 1968 when President Johnson funneled money into school districts, the publishing business and etc have been making programs, games, ways to teach, etc. Let’s go back to the days before ditto machines and teach. That produced people like “us” and we did n’t do so bad. ( for people over 60)
My proposal: Let’s start referring to it, in public, as The Rotten Core. We need to brand this grotesque Frankenstein experiment being performed on teachers and children so that it sticks in the greater public’s mind.
Common Core has been a bonanza for businesses. I cannot tell you the amount of junk mail that I’ve gotten to “help” me teach Common Core Standards. Everybody wants in on the act. The International Reading Association sends me notices of books that will tell me how to teach CCS. Test prep. companies send me advertisements. I initially agreed with Common Core, now I just see it for the money-making enterprise that it is. By the way, I am a high school English teacher.
So disgusting and disheartening. What would it take for legislation to be passed that would do away with this “fastest-growing market” we’ve become burdened with?
And the authors of the NYS Modules appear to be:
https://www.edcaliber.com/engageny
Who are these people????
I do not believe that Edcaliber was involved in developing the modules. It seems to be one of an infinite number of “entrepreneurs” that has seen an opportunity to make money in the Ed sector.
It looks like they want to get paid to play a middleman role for districts–using the free modules that ANYONE can access from EngageNY and putting some window dressing–like reformatted links to the standards, attractive calendars that show pacing guides, and so on–on the whole package for a fee.
(Unless I’m missing something), this looks like a real shyster outfit. The stuff is open source–available at NO COST, for Pete’s sake. The teachers can get the stuff which includes all lesson plans off the website. They are highly scripted (even though NYSED says that those are not “scripts”; they are put there to describe “vignettes” to help teachers picture how the lessons might progress… Oh, ok.).
So if not Edcaliber, then who? NYSED doesn’t have to staff to write this stuff.
The Education Industry Association became an organized lobby in 1990, with many tech companies in the mix from the get-go. Early conferences offered offered workshops on “selling the sizzle, not the steak.”
Fast forward. In 2012 USDE published a policy brief promoting online learning and the tech visions of commercial companies and academics. This project and report came through a grant to SRI. The named consultants for the policy brief included “experts” from Agile Mind, Inc., SRI International, Jive Software Commendo Inc., (Austrilia), Moodlerooms, Florida Virtual School, Google, Yahoo!. Zynga, Carnegie Learning, Kaplan, Onsophic, and Sakai. Academic experts were from the University of Michigan, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Vanderbilt, Purdue University of California (Los Angeles and Irvine), Carnegie Mellon, and Athabasca (Canada).
The breathless prose from a recommendation on page 61 illustrates where enthusiasts (and OZ) want all of us to go: “Develop decision supports and recommendation engines that minimize the extent to which instructors need to actively analyze data. The teacher in a truly automated classroom would have much more than access to student scores on state and district tests. Diagnostic real-time assessment tools and decision support systems would enable the instructor to make decisions ‘on the fly’ to improve instruction for all students. But conscious labor-intensive processing is not possible under the time constraints of efficient classroom management. To support teachers in the act of instruction, we need decision supports and recommendation systems that link student learning profiles to recommended instructional actions and learning resources. We give such tools to physicians and military decision makers: education is no less complex and no less important.”
The last paragraph on page 51 is: “Open source tools for adaptive learning systems, commercial offerings, and increased understanding of what data reveal are leading to fundamental shifts in teaching and learning systems. As content moves online and mobile devices for interacting with content enable teaching to be always on, educational data mining and learning analytics will enable learning to be always assessed. Educators at all levels will benefit from understanding the possibilities of the developments described in the use of big data herein.” Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/plan/2004/edlite-xplan-sdm.html
If you need an antidote to this version of the Skinnerian learning machine, and the Gates funded Data Quality Project try this caveat: “We are more susceptible than we may think to the ‘dictatorship of data’—that is, letting the data govern us in ways that may do as much harm as good. The threat is that we will let ourselves be mindlessly bound by the output of our analyses even when we have reasonable grounds for suspecting something is amiss. Or that we will attribute a degree of truth to data which it does not deserve.” Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier. (2013). Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 166.