Paul Thomas wrote this post about a video in which the authors of the Common Core joked about their lack of experience and qualifications for writing the nation’s standards. It is not funny. It is sad.
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What’s also not funny is our unions following the CCSSO playbook and blatantly publishing lies. CCS was NOT state led.
Two people, an elected governor and an appointed commissioner accepting national standards before they were written is NOT state led.
It is state forced, state followed or federal control but it is NOT state led.
See aft propaganda here and then view the CCSSO do’s and don’ts:
Click to access TFT_Resources.pdf
CCSSO communications toolkit:
Click to access CCSSO_Standards_Toolkit.pdf
Why do so many valedictorians in some counties, end up in remedial courses when they get to college? Absence of a common core.
What countries are these? Or are you being sarcastic?
There are myriad problems with the existence of the CCS as they currently stand. This is not to say that some form of uniform and well-rounded standards should not exist or could not benefit students. Rather, a better formulated plan should be developed — a plan conceived of by experienced educators that is not entirely test-driven to start.
I’m curious about your assertion that so many of our valedictorians end up in remedial college classes. Please cite your source. Thank you.
A good number of the valedictorians from my local high school have not taken enough academic classes to be admitted to any state school in my state.
What are the graduation requirements from your high school?
Graduation from high school requires 4 units of English, 3 units of history, 3 units of science (must include physical, biological, and earth science) , 3 units of math (must include algebra and geometry), one unit of physical education, 1 unit of fine arts, and six electives.
Admission to a state college or university requires at least algebra 2 and a chemistry or physics class.
As our state use a straight 4.0 grade scale, so it does not really matter which courses a student takes.
That’s not an unusual list of requirements. How is it possible that you can have valedictorians not able to enter college without remedial courses? In what subjects are they required to take remedial courses? If your valedictorians are struggling, what is happening to the rest of your students?
It is not that these valedictorians were not eligible to enter state universities without remedial courses, they are not eligible to enter state universities at all.
High school grades, at least in states like mine were we have an unweighted GPA, don’t reveal a great deal about potential in college or life. My middle son did not graduate in the top 10% of his high school class yet earned 25 credit hours in our local university (a 4.0 for those classes but they do not count towards high school graduation or high school GPA) and 9 fives on AP exams. He was nearly half way to a college degree before his seventeenth birthday.
How does your school determine the class standings of its students? GPA is calculated not only by grades but by course difficulty as well. Also, doesn’t your school have required courses? Honestly, I find that what you are saying just doesn’t make sense.
My state does not weight grades by the difficulty of the class. My university will studiously unweight any high school GPA of students that apply from out of state.
Incredible. May I ask which state? Has it been invaded by the corporate education reformers? They have diluted educational standards in my state, CT.
My state is one of the big flyover states in the middle of the country. It is not anything to do with educational reform, it is just the way things have always been.
Actually I should say that things have changed here, but slowly. When I fist began teaching at my university, the admission requirement was simply a high school diploma. Eventually this was found to be inadequate, and the more stringent requirements were put into place.
Why are you reluctant to identify your state?
I would be fairly easy to identify as an individual if I identified my state.
When I stopped to think about it, I figured that out. Your reluctance is understandable. Nobody would have the slightest idea who I am or care, and I stay anonymous.
There is something screwy about how your valedictorians are chosen. I am assuming that your high school graduation requirements are in line with what is required to attend college. With what you have outlined as requirements, I do not understand how they are not eligible for the university. What are the requirements for entrance to the university (system)? Valedictorians are generally chosen on their academic course record, so it is disconcerting to hear your high school students are not prepared for college based on that record.
High school graduation requirements are less restrictive than the admission requirements for our state universities. There is less math and science required for high school graduation than is required for admission to our state university. Valedictorians are chosen based on the grades in courses the take, not on academic ability. I would have thought this to be viewed as a virtue by most who post here, given the opposition to the idea that students should be college or career ready.
“I would have thought this to be viewed as a virtue by most who post here, given the opposition to the idea that students should be college or career ready.”
There is no opposition to being college or career ready (however much an eighteen year old is “ready” or not) just to the way of defining such “readiness” through standardized testing. Unfortunately, large universities tend (to have?) to make decisions based solely on metrics because of the size of the student population. At least in Illinois, we have a robust community college system. I think teachers are pretty good at predicting who can succeed in college barring unforeseen circumstances.
What I meant was the view that a student can graduate from high school without being ready to attend a college or university. Valedictorian status depends only on grades in the classes taken, so it is not at all surprising that some students with a perfect 4.0 would not be ready to attend a state college or university.
Admission to my university for in state students is based on class rank (top 1/3) or high school GPA (a 2.0 average in a set of academic classes) or standardized exam scores (21 on ACT or 980 SAT verb+math). It seems to me that this allows students to generate potential in a number of different ways.
I am much less concerned about “college or career-ready” than I am about our giving our students the ability to achieve their self-chosen dreams for themselves, and in their ability to function within a democratic society. Given the dictatorship of the corporate education reformers, with their emphasis on small-learning academies in which students exert minimal choice about which academies they can attend, and the CCSS, our students really have very little opportunity to achieve their dreams. Just look to the example provided by the Soviet Union and the Nazis in which students’ careers were chosen for them by the Party/State.
The academic courses you outlined as necessary for high school graduation used to be fairly typical and acceptable for college admission. A valedictorian probably would have had straight As in those core subjects. A 2.0 in core academics should not be considered onerous for college entrance. Your high school must be really underperforming (especially surprising in a university town) if you had valedictorians not able to meet the minimum requirements for college acceptance.
The requirement for being a valedictorian is to have a 4.0 in the classes a student took in high school. The requirements for high school graduation fall a little short of the requirements for acceptance at a state university (higher level of math, a little more science), hence there are valedictorians who qualify for graduation but not for acceptance at a state university. It does not really have anything to do with the high school under or over performing.
So really it is not because the students were poorly taught but because they were not required to take the courses necessary to get into the state school, typically the least expensive four year degree available. I cannot imagine that students were not counseled in what they needed to take in order to attend the university.
As is often said here, college is not for everyone. The majority of members of my state legislature do not have a college degree, and students don’t need to have a college degree to carry on the family farm, ranch or business.
So from the shocking announcement that some valedictorians from your high school were not prepared for college, we come around to college is not for everyone. Huh?
I don’t know why you thought it was shocking. Valedictorian status is about teacher assigned grades for classes the students take. It says little about preparation for college.
That certainly shows how little respect you have for teachers’ ability to assess their students. (Yes, yes, I know your son’s story.) My experience with students who are valedictorians has been that they deserved the honor.
TG, high-school grades are better predictors of grades in college than are SAT scores. Not sure why you feel the need to denigrate grades given by teachers; nor can I figure out why you have this reverence for these crude standardized instruments.
I am not deme grating teacher assigned grades. I am sure that the As awarded in the classes are well deserved. We were talking about the mix of classes. In my state there is a little room between high school graduation requirements and the minimum high school curriculum required for admission to a state college or university. A good percentage of valedictorians do not take the curriculum required for admission.
When you say high school GPA is the best indicator, are you speaking of weighted or unweighted GPA?
At my institution the range of standardized test scores is far greater than the range of high school GPAs. At the local high school a 3.85 does not put a student in the top 10% of the class. If there is no variation in GPA between students, GPA will not predict anything.
High school GPA does not have to be used for ranking in the way you described. Obviously, a student with a 3.85 did something right even if they did not make the top 10%. All that means is that they probably attended a highly competitive school.
Your earlier post argued that the fact that some students with a 4.0 GPA did not qualify for admission to state colleges or universities indicated that the high school was really underperforming. Now it is very competitive?
Follow the whole thread,TE. You cannot go back and cherry pick any comment you choose out of context.
WRONG
So wrong…
“One of them is that these standards are worthy of nothing if the assessments built on them are not worthy of teaching to, period.” – Coleman
What a fool! The joke is on all of us.
Remember, he who laughs last, laughs best/longest, and those who fight the good fight will have the last laugh Linda!
History will not be kind to Coleman, Zimba, Duncan, Gates, Obama, Rhee, Bloomberg, Emmanuel, the Waltons and all who would play the cruel joke of corporate education reform on America’s children, but the SNL skits poking fun at their folly will be hilarious.
You always give me hope. Together we stand. One by one they will fall.
This one line should silence all those who claim the CCSS are just a flexible, unscripted guideline for teachers.
“. . . these standards are worthy of nothing. . . ” as proven by Noel Wilson in his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”. See my response below for a continuation of the Quixotic Quest
David Coleman:
“It was Lauren who propounded the great rule that I think is a statement of reality, though not a pretty one, which is teachers will teach towards the test. There is no force strong enough on this earth to prevent that. There is no amount of hand-waving, there’s no amount of saying, “They teach to the standards, not the test; we don’t do that here.” Whatever. The truth is – and if I misrepresent you, you are welcome to take the mic back. But the truth is teachers do. Tests exert an enormous effect on instructional practice, direct and indirect, and it‟s hence our obligation to make tests that are worthy of that kind of attention. It is in my judgment the single most important work we have to do over the next two years to ensure that that is so, period. So when you ask me, “What do we have to do over the next years?” we gotta do that. If we do anything else over the next two years and don’t do that, we are stupid and shall be betrayed again by shallow tests that demean the quality of classroom practice, period….”
Did it ever occur to him that maybe there didn’t need to be any tests.
He doesn’t sound too bright….not so eloquent for a “scholar”.
The Coleman lamp does not shine brightly . . . . .
May it be permanently extinguished.
I am horrified by the low, low quality of both Renshaw’s and Coleman’s speaking skills! I have many times seen better by middle school students.
Come on, Robert, don’t taint a good name and good products by associating them with David Coleman.
One of David Coleman’s cruelest and most insensitive, evil acts was his clearly indicated ignorance of how ELLs really learn. Read the last several paragraphs of the transript and see exactly what he says ELLs should do and how their teachers should be handling it.
We teachers NEVER want to exclude ELLs from the density, complexity, and richness of text, language, and critical thought. But HOW we get our ELLs to go through all of that is best left to research, experience, and experts in the field.
David Coleman and all those who support him in this vein are, if anything, violators of civil rights for ELLs. Who cares is they are (allegedly) well intending? If you intend to stop at a red light, but you don’t stop soon enough or your brakes are not working entirely properly and you end up hitting a pedestrian, you are STILL liable for the damages.
It is one of many nadirs that prove how our “elites” are anything but a group of radical interruptors whose mission is to shock people into change rather than facilitate an evolution that involves all the voices at the round table.
But let’s not point fingers at David Coleman mainly.
He has been nursing the teat of Duncan, Rhee, Obama, Broad, Weingarten, Gates, Klein, Emanuel, Ryan, Van Roekel, Bloomberg, Jindal, Christie, the NGA, and Biden, to name just a very few, for the longest time, and the milk never stops flowing.
Little does he know that the milk is poisoned.
But perhaps a snake swallowing its own venom rarely dies from it . . . . . .
Shown below is a list of modern American educational reformers.
Michael Bloomberg
Joel Klein
John King
Meryl Tisch
Michelle Rhee
Wendy Kopp
David Coleman
Arne Duncan.
1) Which is the total number of years of pubic school teaching experience attained by
this group of highly influential reformers?
a) 3
b) 30
c) 300
d) 3,000
According to them, d) 3,000!!
Another sad sad outcome is the downgrading of every subject other than math and ELA. Who are these people? How did they decide that our students don’t need any serious exposure to history, social studies, music, art, science, world languages, or physical education? I already see a shocking lack of attention and resources devoted to these “non-tested” subjects.
Because (basic) math and (basic) reading are skills that employees need to do their jobs. What does a Wal-Mart clerk need to know about Socrates or the historical development of democracy or the theory of relativity? If we allow them to start thinking about such things, just imagine the thoughts they might have! They might realize that Bill Gates and the Walton family aren’t demigods after all!
Elementary and Secondary schools have never been limited to only providing job skills; on the contrary, they exist to create citizens who can function in a democratic society. Imagine a democratic society in which the citizens are ignorant of their rights to practice civil disobedience, to resist corruption and abusive political leaders and business leaders. In fact, our citizens need to understand the history of business abuses of workers and the role of the unions in helping the workers to rise up for higher pay, the 40 hour work week, workplace safety, consumer safety, etc. Just look at American business treatments of workers overseas to see exactly what they have in store for Americans once they kill education, unions, and the willingness to practice civil disobedience. What better place for accomplishing this than by killing education in America in the name of corporate education reform!
Bill, yours is the most lucid commentary. Indeed.
LG,
Thank you. When seen in that perspective, isn’t it obvious exactly as to why corporate education reformers have targeted the Social Sciences and the Arts? These are the very groups that teach that it is okay to resist both political and corporate tyranny.
Because all of those subjects provide context. We don’t want these kids bringing along any background baggage. (snark alert)
They also do not want students to know about the rich history of civil disobedience in our society. They do not want our students to know that resistance is not futile!
Many of you need to read “The Power Elite” by Mills. He explained all of these things years ago (in the 1950s). We are ten times worse now. Basically the elite (military/political/economic) do what they want. They are just trying to do it in “gentle stages” so that people aren’t alarmed. Public schools will be privatized and dismantled. This has already been decided. Soon the Common Core will come out, 70%+ of American kids will fail, and all schools (yes, even in the leafy suburban schools) will be branded “failures.” Then the entire American public school system will be privatized and sold off. Anyone want to buy a school, no experience necessary?? It is a very American story similar to what happened with public transportation in Los Angeles. Bus and car companies bought the street cars and light rail and deliberately ruined it so people would buy cars, gas, tires, etc. Remember every time in American history where there was a choice between the public good and private investment (profit), the choice was always for money. There is no stopping this flow of American history. Either open your own charter school (get your money), or go be bitter and work as a cashier of big box store. This is America!
The fact that you have resigned yourself, your children, and all of America to corporate serfdom does not mean the rest of America has done or should do so John.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
– Margaret Mead
99 > 1
I couldn’t watch the whole video – that room was thick with complacency and ignorance, and Coleman had an audience of sheep. I was reminded of a conversation I had last year with one of my brightest, most curious 7th graders. She asked me when the class would be able to get back to the discussions of the novel we were reading. (This was the week of the ELA standardized tests). I told her that as soon as the test was over, we’d get back to our discussion -and I added – ‘Hang in there.’ She nodded and let out a big sigh and said –
‘We’ve been doing these tests every spring since 3rd grade. We’re used to this.’
Earlier, from the first weeks of school through the school year, I had a feeling of uneasiness that most of my 120 7th graders were too compliant – too willing to set out on a new assignment, without questioning or challenging what was being asked of them. Weirdly, I wore two hats – one, to deliver the lesson, and the other to nudge them to challenge what was being asked of them – to question the rationale behind the assignment. (for example: ‘Why am I asking you to read an article about a young Pakistani girl who fights for the education of girls in her country? Why would I feel that is valuable for you to know about?’ ) On a daily basis I had to tell them not to give me the ‘canned’ answer they think I wanted, but to speak their real thoughts. (I defined a ‘canned response’ as the laughter that comes out of a box during sitcoms)
Occasionally a student would ask a question back, or challenge what we were doing, and these led to lively discussions, as we explored the big picture and how what we were learning applied to ‘real life’. But for the most part, I found the majority of my test conditioned students to be passive and disconnected from any sense of curiosity.
They had learned to survive the SLOs and Spring Tests through being passive and shutting down- and this was alarming.
What happens to a country when its youngest citizens are conditioned to be passive in school through inane and abundant testing? What kind of citizens do they grow into?
Lively, unscripted and unplanned critical discussion? Horrors! Was this in your lesson plan?!?! Glad you weren’t being observed at that time. You could have been labeled ineffective in planning…
Good for you, Jane. We need to be doing more of this instead of cowtowing to the sterility of a “common” environment. As a related arts teacher, I can teach the same lesson four times in a week and still do it differently each day depending on the personality of my classes. It requires me to take extensive notes after each class to ensure students have had the experiences I planned for them, but some classes get there in slightly different ways. No script will ever be able to accommodate a rich, student-led experience where critical thinking is fostered, and no standardized test will be able to fairly measure the growth of such a skill.
And teachers should add a verbal disclaimer to all students after all SLOs and exams, it could go something like this: ‘The exam you have just taken does not reflect, in any way, shape or form, your intelligence, your compassion, your ability to be a good friend, daughter or son, and any number of the talents that you have, discovered or as yet undiscovered: These tests do not show what kind of success you will experience in the future. They will, however, help you to practice stamina for trials, and may you take that strength and stamina and channel them into all your life’s passions.’
Would not this change to your statement also be true: “. . . most of all teachers were too compliant – too willing to set out on a new assignment, without questioning or challenging what was being asked of them.”
Here in Hartford, CT, the corporate education reformers have created the following situation that is designed to make students fail any standardized test. They did so knowingly and deliberately so that they could close public schools, create charter and magnet schools for the purpose of limiting educational opportunities for most students, especially ELL and special needs children.
1. Delete all attendance requirements. Students are allowed now to miss any amount of days they wish without consequences.
2. Artificially raise the minimum failing grade to 55, thereby enabling students to pass any half-credit or full credit course to pass by passing only one quarter of the school year. A grade of 65 in one quarter of a one-semester course, or a grade of 75 in a full year course will enable a student to pass the entire course whether they attended or not.
3. Redesign all public schools into so-called “small-learning academies”, a euphemism for trade schools in which students’ educational are few and limited. They call this “school choice” but over half of all students are not allowed their choice and are assigned to the academies much like the system practiced by the Soviet Union in which students’ professions were chosen for them by the Party.
4. Socially promote all students who have not legitimately passed a lower grade to the next higher grade. As a result, students have learned that they get by with doing or learning nothing. High School classes in Hartford are now flooded with students who cannot read, write, or compute simple arithmetic problems to the 3rd grade level.
5. Impose standardized tests, now the Smarter-Balance CCSS tests, that have been written to a level far beyond even high school. It is axiomatic that students who cannot function at the 3rd grade level, will be unable to pass these tests.
6. After having accomplished exactly what our corporate educational reform leaders set out to accomplish, they will cite the failing test scores as evidence that the schools are failing and redesign them into charters for the profits of charter school ownership (Stefan Pryor, Connecticut Commissioner of Education is the Founder of Achievement First Charter Schools, whom the Hartford BoE regularly conducts business). Or, they will redesign the schools into Magnet Schools that can choose their students, leaving out the majority.
This type of corruption is obvious to anyone who looks.
Coleman’s level of hubris is astonishing. In the video, he continually ridicules Texas, one of five states that did not sign-on to Common Core written by his questionable “non-profit” Student Achievement Partners. Coleman and the other reformer profiteers were offended by the Texas snub.
I viewed a video of the Texas commissioner testifying he wanted to read the standards once they were compete and they wanted him to accept them even though they were not finished. Most governors and commissioners acquiesced. Shame on them.
Am I mistaken, or is that Lauren Resnick introducing the unqualified authors of Common Core??? What is going on with her career? I have read a number of her articles in AERA and have been impressed with her ideas—not sure how she ended up in that venue or with an introduction that falls well below any academic standard that her university employers would be comfortable with.
Using evidence, what’s Coleman drinking during the speech? He’s sipping from a crystal glass and there’s a bottle of bourbon on the table to his right.
Maybe someone should bust that bottle over his head to knock some sense into it.
Oh, I’m reminded of Bush making his joke about looking for weapons of mass destruction at the White House Correspondents dinner years ago. Not funny and sad. Really, way beyond sad. It sure illustrates who is expected to be accountable and who is not.
Laughing all the way to the bank!
Sadly, even a number of Catholic Schools fell for this joke. Some may not have had a choice, but others like the schools in my Archdiocese did. CC is not developmentally appropriate for early childhood students!
For all but those who shut down their minds and hearts—
Go to the website of Dr. Mercedes Schneider and read the following money quote from Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute:
[start quote] In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper-what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes. [Emphasis added.] [end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Now click on the url provided above & below for a money quote from David Coleman:
[start quote] But let’s be rather clear: we’re at the start of something here, and its promise – our top priorities in our organization, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about our organization, is to do our darnedest to ensure that the assessment is worthy of your time, is worthy of imitation. It was Lauren who propounded the great rule that I think is a statement of reality, though not a pretty one, which is teachers will teach towards the test. There is no force strong enough on this earth to prevent that. There is no amount of hand-waving, there’s no amount of saying, “They teach to the standards, not the test; we don’t do that here.” Whatever. The truth is – and if I misrepresent you, you are welcome to take the mic back. But the truth is teachers do. Tests exert an enormous effect on instructional practice, direct and indirect, and it‟s hence our obligation to make tests that are worthy of that kind of attention. It is in my judgment the single most important work we have to do over the next two years to ensure that that is so, period. So when you ask me, “What do we have to do over the next years?” we gotta do that. If we do anything else over the next two years and don’t do that, we are stupid and shall be betrayed again by shallow tests that demean the quality of classroom practice, period…. [end quote]
Link: http://atthechalkface.com/2013/12/23/this-is-the-common-core-you-support/
The tail of high-stakes standardized testing is wagging the dog of learning and teaching.
How grotesque, considering that the former are very limited in what they measure, are inherently imprecise, and are continually being used and misused for purposes for which they are unsuited.
Art Costa, professor emeritus of Cal State-Fullerton nailed this: “What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value.” [from Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCATION, 2013, p. 1]
😎
P.S. Please excuse this overly long post but it puts me in mind of a riff on an old slogan: on New Year’s Day, a bargain at your local store is a great value for your money; leaders of the charterite/privatizer movement actually saying what they think and recording it for all to see and read, PRICELESS!
KTA,
“How grotesque, considering that the former are very limited in what they measure, are inherently imprecise, and are continually being used and misused for purposes for which they are unsuited.”
One problem with your statement. Those tests “measure” nothing as they are not measuring devices. They may be a very poor attempt at an assessment device but a measuring device they are not.
Be careful, for you are still trapped in their semantic web!
Duane
What a cruel joke it was on the students of the United States that Achieve decided to anoint David Coleman and Susan Pimentel absolute monarchs of education in the English language arts in the United States. They seem to me both quite bright, but the amateurish work that they did on the CCSS in ELA shows that
a. they are not familiar with best practices or even standard practices in ELA classrooms
b. they know nothing of the cognitive sciences of learning and of language acquisition
c. they know nothing of how educational publishing works and how extensively curricula and pedagogy end up being distorted by bullet lists of standards
d. they understand very little about the limitations of standardized testing
It’s breathtaking that Achieve could randomly choose a couple of amateurs like Coleman and Pimentel to overrule very teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum designer in the country with regard to matters as consequential as
a. how standards in the various domains should be conceptualized
b. what outcomes should be measured for all students in the various domains
c. what learning progressions should be followed in K-12 English language arts
It’s breathtaking that Achieve would think that the amateurs that they appointed should have–by divine right?–the final say on all these matters, thus rendering moot ANYTHING THAT ANY EXPERT IN ANY OF THESE ELA DOMAINS might think.
Suppose that Achieve had attempted to do in medicine what it has done in ELA. Suppose that they had handed Coleman and Pimentel copies of Galen and of the 1858 edition of Gray’s Anatomy and sent them to a cabin in woods to create new “standards” for the practice of medicine. In such a situation, which is precisely analogous to what happened with the creation of the CCSS in ELA, the organization and its appointees would have been, almost immediately, laughed off the national stage. The chorus of derision would have been deafening. Physicians would not have stood for such amateurish meddling in their work.
So, here’s the big question: Given how amateurish the standards [sic] written by Coleman and Pimentel are, why have they NOT yet met with overwhelming resistance? I like to think that there are plenty of teachers and curriculum coordinators who are astute enough to recognize the egregious problems with these standards, which I have written about again and again on this blog–problems that are obvious enough to most who have thought at all carefully about matters like how kids acquire the grammar and vocabulary of a language or what approaches we might take to the teaching of literature that will develop, in children, an understanding of and passion for it.
So why are the idiocies of the Common Core in ELA being passed over in silence?
Aside from the gravy train generated by all those Gates Foundation funds, why are there so many well-known education pundits who are not only opposing but actively supporting this travesty?
I have a new heuristic for determining whether someone has any depth of understanding of teaching of the English language arts:
Does he or she support the implementation of these amateurish standards [sic]?
If someone does, I just cannot take anything he or she says about teaching English at all seriously. Support for standards this bad is a clear sign of simple mindedness, profound ignorance of ELA, or a willingness to say or do anything if the pay is good.
Of the cynical collaborators with the CCSS in ELA, I have this to say: I think that researchers should replace the lab rats they’ve been using with those CCSS ELA collaborators because there are some things that lab rats just won’t do.
There’s on old saying that comes to mind: “If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything”
So why are the idiocies of the Common Core in ELA being passed over in silence?
Its not completely silent here in NY – lots of angry parents statewide.
Just wait until the CCSS aligned ELA is administered this year to every junior in NYS – a passing score required for graduation. When Pearson’s disaster prevents kids from graduating I expect the lawsuits to start dropping. Big problem with the CCSS incredibly subjective and abstract ELA standards is that they are trying to measure proficiency using objective MC items. If they ever see the light of day, these exams will not withstand the scrutiny of experts.
Robert,
“b. what outcomes should be measured for all students in the various domains”
Be careful, Robert, as you are still caught up in the semantic web that is being woven by the edudeformers.
“b. What outcomes should be ASSESSED for all students in the various domains” would be a better statement of what teachers attempt to do. We measure nothing in the realm of knowledge acquisition as the teaching and learning process is not amenable to quantification.
The most worrisome thing about common core seems that there’s no flexibility to adjust based on implementation. The message is simply: Accept them. With any program, there must be some period of adjustment and flexibility, field testing — adding in some things that are missing, changing some things that might be better taught in another grade, revising standards that are poorly worded or unclear etc. It makes no sense to say these are it and you have to take them verbatim. The idea that states MUST keep 85% of the standards verbatim is absurd or that states can’t have a committee of content experts and educators review them and edit as needed. As a parent I worry that my 15-year old is caught in this insanity and when she gets to college she won’t have the math and writing skills because a couple people decided that only they could pick and choose what her teachers and school covers.
And who’s measuring the 15%? Words? Sentences? How do they know?
It’s absurd and makes no sense.
This will implode but guess who they will blame? The teachers, that’s who.
PARCC and SBAC will measure.
How will they know what individual towns, districts, schools and classrooms change?
That’s impossible and creepy. Maybe the NSA will monitor all of us.
I meant the assessments that they write will indirectly measure full (100%) compliance with CCSS. It was my understanding that states were free to add to the standards. Why limited to 15%? I think they wanted to show that they were trying to be a little flexible. Bottom line compliance to CCSS will be judged by test scores.
So who is setting the cut off % to prove compliance? Proficiency for each grade level for each town, city, state, etc?
So if you do not have at least 80% of your kids proficient in all grade levels in all subjects you are not compliant?
I know you don’t agree, but that is aburd.
Opting out is looking like the only option. Spreading the word here daily.
CCSS was adopted in part to provide states a waiver from the impossible AYP requirement of NCLB. When schools were out of compliance with AYP requirement – they were punished.
Under RTTT/CSSS – teachers will be punished (TIP plan) if too few students score proficiently and the teacher will be labeled “developing” or “ineffective”. Two consecutive years at “ineffective” and supposedly they will be fired or released. Here in NY its a fairly complex growth formula comparing formative scores with Pearson/CCSS scores.
Must keep 100% – can add +15%
That 15% probably covers any state mandates that have been initiated in the past, so the states do not have tothrow out any sacred cows.
Gates, Coleman and Primentel can’t control what students learn from coast to coast. Parents and teachers will push back and create curriculum chaos for the reformers.
Common Core will be another failed multi-billion dollar for-profit reform. Similar to Reading First, Common Core uses students in 45 states for corporate profits without parental consent.
It’s interesting to research the role of Wireless Generation in the Reading First boondoggle. Now, we’re dealing with Wireless Generation on steroids – inBloom > Amplify > Shared Learning Collaborative > Wireless Generation > Pearson > Bill Gates > Rupert Murdoch > Joel Klein > Larry Berger > NY Regents > John King > Arne Duncan > “reform” foundations > Michelle Rhee.
I remember this talk and our introduction to David Coleman. Around that time, principals in my district were called to the district office (on a busy day) to watch a webinar that featured his discussion about how to teach MLK’s Letter from Birmingham. He was confidently advising experienced educators about things that he had neither the knowledge or experience to announce. For example, he said just have the kids read it, no need for pre-reading strategies… I thought he would be entirely incapable of teaching 8th grade social studies!
I starting laughing, not because he was funny but because it was absurd to listen to this know-nothing guy. I left the room a few times to try to compose myself and finally went in and said to my colleagues: “Excuse me, but this is absurd and completely unbearable!!” The math chair agreed, our district tech director turned the offensive nonsense off, and we all left.
That was the beginning of many more ridiculous meetings at which we were expected to listen to impossibly stupid drivel from NYSED!!!
It is a joke and it is not funny!
Katie Zahedi: I thank you from the bottom of my heart for having a normal reaction to absurdity.
I can remember many times when the SpecED teachers I worked with came back from on-site professional development meetings in the school auditorium. Up to two hours listening to an LAUSD bigwig pontificating about the importance of teaching and the importance of learning—and invariably [=always, without exception, without fail] they came back to the classroom disappointed that there was nothing they could actually use to enhance either teaching or learning. One excellent teacher in particular was so looking forward to one presentation that he allowed his hopes to rise—he looked so crestfallen when I saw him afterwards. The promised detailed suggestions that would have been of actual use never materialized—he wished he had just been allowed to teach and get something useful accomplished.
But not to fear. Putting one over on educators and students, at their expense, has one big up side. For the chosen few, there’s lots and lots of $tudent $ucce$$ in it.
“Profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception.” [Sophocles]
Who knew an old dead Greek guy nailed the edufrauds over two thousand years ago?
😎
I think what is most ironic, is hearing “reformers” discussing the lack of quality and rigor of teaching programs and their content.
As we know, supposedly all these “bad teachers” come from all these “bad programs” , but somehow, when it comes to THEM, they have somehow the opposite charge. They have an understanding of absolutely NO content, no pedagogy, and thus literally no chance at having ANY of the knowledge that even a “bad” teacher from a “bad” program has, and yet, this is lauded as a sign of elite educational status…
I am so frustrated.
I am getting really, really angry too.
“Suppose that Achieve had attempted to do in medicine what it has done in ELA. ”
Actually, this was done to medicine by the Rockefellers. Research the history of modern American medicine and you will find a sordid story funded by elites.
http://naturalrevolution.org/the-rockefellers-the-fda-the-cancer-industry/
Medicine was not the lucrative market that it is today, so medical schools were begging for the Rockefeller grants that were being handed out to compliant schools. Compliance to the Rockefeller stipulations required abandoning traditional and natural medicine in lieu of a new generation of petrochemicals for drugs, and trashing entire libraries of past procedures.
What happened was a preamble to book burnings elsewhere, and in some cases, the FDA did indeed have book burnings. Those were dangerous times for traditional naturopathic (non-chemical industry) doctors.
All dissenters who embraced the old time-tested holistic and naturopathic methodologies of healing would henceforth be demonized as “quacks” in formal medical training. That was despite some of those “quacks” having Nobel Prizes in medicine, and vastly superior results.
Read more at http://naturalrevolution.org/the-rockefellers-the-fda-the-cancer-industry/#HQRQV8yiXrFAu4ME.99
The Rockefeller Foundation’s main focus is upon medicine and medical education. Their motto, “to promote the well-being of humanity around the world”. Early on, the initial Rockefeller medical school donations totaled over $550,000,000. In 1928 alone, it gave money to 18 medical schools across 14 countries.The modern FDA. came into being in 1913 — the same year that the Rockefeller Foundation was created. The FDA works hand-in-hand with the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Medical Association.
The Rockefeller Foundation
Its partners at the FDA began an aggressive campaign of suppressing medicines that competed with the chemical industry. An unholy alliance formed between the American Medical Association, the FDA, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
“I never have and never will approve a new drug to an individual, but only to a large pharmaceutical company with unlimited finances.”
– Dr. Richard J. Crout, Director of the FDA’s Bureau of Drugs (Spotlight, January 18, 1982)
Read more at http://naturalrevolution.org/the-rockefellers-the-fda-the-cancer-industry/#Z2uZk7YAZCbeHOjl.99
Rockefeller also brought over from Germany the ideas of Wilhem Wundt which provides the intersection of “medicine” and education. Behaviorism has morphed into the Ritalin generation. It is a crime. And the Rockefellers and Gates are the criminals.
Click to access WUNDT-1.pdf
In the late 1800s, Wilhelm Wundt, a disciple of
Charles Darwin, founded the first humanist psychology
laboratory. Like Darwin, he assumed that since man is an
animal, sin is not a factor in human behavior. He concluded
that psychological difficulties are the result only of unmet
“animal” needs. This position is held in varying degrees by
Christian accommodationists today. One of Wundt’s students,
G. Stanley Hall, taught John Dewey, who later influenced
Edward L. Thorndike. Thorndike insinuated humanistic
psychology into the American school system, and another of
Dewey’s disciples, Harold Rugg, wrote curricula to displace
biblical teaching from American schools.
The Rockefellers put more money into education than the government at the turn of the century.
Seems that this is evidence to stop the implementation of CCCS and begin an investigation into those who bought and sold this product.
Yep.
THAT I would LOVE to see.
Parents from coast to coast need to file class action lawsuits. Follow the federal tax money starting with Duncan’s corporate USDOE > Gates Foundation, Pearson, Rupert Murdoch (inBloom, Amplify, Wireless Generation), Common Corrupt Core, John King, NY Regents, Michelle Rhee, etc.
Duncan funnels billions in tax funds from classrooms to the corporate interests on a silver platter.
I’ve been wondering if this is possible, in these circumstances. I think it’s an excellent idea.
I carefully watched and took notes on the first 48 minutes of the video. There is good and bad here. On the one hand, Coleman is indeed smart and bears the marks of having received a first-rate liberal arts education himself (Andover, Yale) –something that, sadly, many teachers themselves have been deprived of –and I infer that he’s drawing some good (and some bad) lessons from this experience. On the other hand, his reform vision amounts to a half-baked hypothesis and I find it appalling that the whole nation has been enrolled in an experiment to test this hypothesis. He claims all of his ideas are based on research and evidence. He’s bluffing.
The Good:
1. Coleman is absolutely right that teachers need to teach knowledge about the world in order to build kids’ reading ability. Too few teachers get this. He says many things that are music to my ears such as, “the first major shift in instruction is a focus on reading to build knowledge.” And, “the standards reinaugurate elementary teachers’ rightful role as guides to the world.” Here he seems to “get” E.D. Hirsch’s invaluable insight that reading is not a skill but a function of background knowledge: the more you know about the world, the better reader you’ll be. He alludes to the page in the standards that sketches out a unit on the human body –this is my favorite part of the CCSS –one that most seem to overlook.
2. Though I am not a math teacher, I find convincing his case for teaching fewer math topics in greater depth. I like that he calls for developing math fluency –automaticity –“yes, rote in a sense”. We need to end the stigma on rote learning –it’s an essentail part of a good education.
The Bad:
1. Unfortunately Coleman’s understanding of Hirsch’s insight is only half-baked. He insists on READING to build knowledge. What about listening to lectures? What about read-alouds? What about watching videos? These build knowledge as well as or better than reading, especially at the elementary level.
2. He also subscribes to the faulty “muscle” metaphor about reading –i.e. reading is a skill which, like a muscle, gets stronger by exercise. There is a little bit of truth to this, but not much. You do not prep to read Niels Bohr by practicing on random texts of gradually increasing complexity. You prep to read him by studying physics! There is no such thing as an all-purpose “complex text reading skill” that can be deployed in difference knowledge domains. What might appear to be a “complex text reading skill” is really just a reader’s robust general knowledge at work. But Coleman doesn’t get this. Thus we find Coleman declaring, “what’s NOT allowed is for content teachers to just fill their kids with content and call it success. Students must develop the independent ability to analyze content area texts…This is particularly important for middle schools. If you do not get your middle school teachers on board with getting students truly ready with increasingly complex science and history texts, you are doomed to failure. No high school can repair the damage.” This sounds wonderful, and if it were truly doable we should do it. But I, a middle school teacher, will be so bold as to say, “Boss, it’s not doable”. Why? Which will better prepare a kid to read the Dred Scott decision in 9th grade –grappling with complex ancient Greek epics in 7th grade, or listening to lively lectures on the Constitution and slavery? The best way to prep kids for reading high school content is to give them the foundational knowledge in high school subjects. Kids already possess analytical ability –it’s built-in to our brains. What they don’t possess, and what they need, is knowledge.
3. Another conceptual error that Coleman makes is claiming that the text contains all the clues one needs to comprehend it. Close reading will unlock the secrets of any text. Here he reveals himself as an exponent of the New Criticism. Ironically E.D. Hirsch’s life work has been discredit New Criticism. Hirsch’s essential insight is that the text does NOT contain all the clues one needs to understand it; the reader must supply a lot of background knowledge from long-term memory banks to be able to make sense of most texts. Coleman does not seem to see the contradiction of embracing both Hirsch and New Criticism. I love close reading, but it seems to me that this is an advanced skill that can only be applied fruitfully in the higher grades after schools have given kids a robust foundation of world and word knowledge. A little practice at it is good, but making this the central plank of the curriculum is a big mistake.
4. Strikingly, he acknowledges that teachers are going to teach to the tests. (Isn’t this essentially an admission that the standards themselves don’t really matter??) Unfortunately he has faith that the new tests won’t be “shallow tests that demean the quality of classroom practice”. That they’ll somehow be congruent with the half-lovely, half-baked vision of teaching that he has in mind. Note to Coleman: your faith is misplaced. The sample tests I’ve seen are terrible and units I’ve seen that aim to prep for them are mostly terrible (cf. LearnZillion’s lesson on mood in Hamlet –deadly). The tests are spawning a Caliban of a curriculum, not the Miranda you envisioned.
. Strikingly, he acknowledges that teachers are going to teach to the tests. (Isn’t this essentially an admission that the standards themselves don’t really matter??)
Yes. The tests are the key to this takeover of public education as propaganda project. And who is in charge of the tests? The federally funded testing consortium. He who makes the tests controls the curriculum. You will find a bunch of “sustainable development” brainwash in the tests. You will find the concept that being a global citizen is more important than being an American citizen in the tests.
The CCSS provided the opportunity to create new tests. They are actually a ruse.
Very well said, Ponderosa!
Thanks, Robert. I plan to watch the rest of the video at some point –Coleman promised he’d demonstrate two lessons. This afternoon I took a break from fevered thinking about ed reform to take a walk and do a close reading of “Ode to a Nightingale”. Love that poem.
We were working with state standards in New York prior to CCSS. We were required to include them in every lesson plan along with an explanation of how they tied in with what was being taught. We posted the standards in a visible place before and during every lesson.
These standards were pretty effective, but they were written to fill the needs of the general ed community. Not special ed. I hoped that, with time, this oversight could have been addressed.
Similar to the NY State Standards, the CCSS does not address the needs of the special education community. We’re now being told to align our ABLLS standards with those of the CCSS. This for 5 year olds with autism. A completely inappropriate use of the standards.
The two big differences between the state standards and CCSS, imo, are:
1) The CCSS is a national set of standards that only allows for 15% change. I do not like or trust a system of this size to allow for change as readily as one which is written for a more local or state setting. We have an extremely diverse population in the USA. Different communities have different needs, based on the demographic makeup of their student bodies. The CCSS will not allow for tailoring as readily as a set of standards developed on a more local level.
2) There were no strings attached to the original NY State Standards. No tests. No VAM. No Race to the Top money. No need to buy and maintain expensive technology hardware and software. Schools were allowed to use their own assessments. Prior to Bloomberg’s reign, we were given wide latitude in choosing the curricula that would best serve our kids. This freedom was severely curtailed once he came into office. Not so coincidentally, Mike is one of the key proponents of every aspect of the school “reform” movement, including CCSS and the tests/technology associated with them.
These two points, alone, are enough to convince me that the CCSS and all the trappings associated with them are not in our best interests, as a nation. The fact that they’ve been rammed down our throats despite the strong objections of educators, child psychologists, parents, etc, strengthens this feeling. The fact that few of these objections ever make it to the mainstream media speaks volumes.
Videos such as what I’ve just watched just make me sick to my stomach. To allow that much power to a chosen few who, through their own admission, don’t have the qualifications to use it effectively…
I refuse to believe that the CCSS is a done deal. We need to question authority and question it even more if we receive unsatisfactory answers, if any answers at all.
My comments from atthechalkface:
If one has delved into educational standards and standardized testing, one would realize that the two are different sides of the same coin and cannot be separated without destroying the coin itself. And what that coin represents (as all coin/money do is a value) no one can agree on. Dilemma, no!?
When was does delve into the epistemological and ontological bases for educational standards and standardized testing as Noel Wilson has done (before NCLB, RaTT, and CCSS) one finds total invalidity to the concepts and any conclusions drawn from those processes. Wilson has elucidated thirteen sources of error in the educational standard and standardized testing regime that renders the whole process invalid. To waste so much time, energy and monies to a process that is intellectually bankrupt is beyond comprehension, but the educational standards and standardized testing idiologies (yes, that is misspelled on purpose) sure have gotten their share of believers, much like any religion gets it’s share of “faith” believers. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that the level of religious believers in this country corresponds to the inordinate amount of believers of the educational standards and standardized testing idiology.
Folks, if you haven’t read and understood Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted destruction* of educational standards and standardized testing then you should. And if you have read it and can refute/rebut it I would greatly appreciate the dialogue (have yet to have any takers on that and neither has Wilson in the sixteen years that the study has been published). It is best for the powers that be and the true believers in testology to ignore and confine his study to the dustbin of history.
*See: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
I’m looking for an earlier post, here, and can’t find it, so I’ll just agree with something I saw either here or, possibly, on The Chalk Face:
Mr. Coleman is acting as though the “tests” are a done deal. As though, “of course we now have to produce tests that are worthy of being taught to…”
I know it’s kind of naive…but who in the world put this guy in charge, here (Gates)?
I do not want this man and/or his staff to be setting up any kinds of assessments for my kids. And for our entire nation…?
Lately, I’ve been wishing I’d chosen law as a profession. This stuff can’t be legal. I’d work for free to fight it. Somehow, someway, we must expose these distortions of a true educational process. Post links on FB. Talk to friends and engage foes in debate.