The news earlier today that the Koch brothers are joining the fight against Common Core complicates the political calculus surrounding the controversial standards.
The Politico article gives the impression that the rightwingers are the main critics of Common Core by failing to mention that the most zealous advocates for Common Core are Jeb Bush, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, the Business Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Anthony Cody tries to sort out the political contradictions here.
He writes:
“But blaming progressive critics of Common Core for the rise of this conservative movement turns reality on its head. The people who have let down our public schools are those who are willing to embrace standardization and high stakes tests as some sort of “progressive” guarantor of equity. We have been down this path with No Child Left Behind, which was sold to us by an alliance of liberal and neo-conservative politicians. We were told children in poverty would get more attention and resources once standardized tests “shed light” on just how far behind they were. We got teacher ‘evaluation’ schemes built around faulty VAM metrics, leading to mass demoralization and too-many losses of strong educators, simultaneous with a hypocritical push to replace seasoned teachers with Teach for America novices. The result? Intense pressure to raise test scores, narrowed curriculum, and school closings by the hundreds – all with the mantle of approval by our “liberal” leaders. Who really got played here?
“Then Common Core came along in 2009. Everyone was weary of NCLB, and ready for change. But some of us could read the writing on the wall. The fancy words about critical thinking and “moving beyond the bubble tests” sounded nice, but a closer look revealed standards that were originally written with little to no participation by K12 teachers. The promises to get rid of bubble tests only meant that the tests would be taken on expensive computers. The promise to escape the narrowing of curriculum only meant we would be testing more often, in more subjects.
“So many of us started raising concerns. The basic premise of Common Core was similar to NCLB – our schools are failing, and we must respond with “higher standards,” and more difficult tests. But the indictment of public education has been wrong from the start, and we should not lend it credence by supporting phony solutions.”
The bottom line, in my view, is that Common Core is getting increasingly controversial because of the way it was developed and imposed. The absence of a democratic process and the lack of transparency caused a lack of trust and an abundance of suspicion. In a democracy, major changes like national standards for public schools must be done with maximum sunlight and participation, not in secrecy. The fact that no amount of true grassroots opposition from parents is sufficient to alter the views of policymakers like Arne Duncan or New York’s Commissioner John King serves to feed the rage against Common Core, from right, left, and center, from parents and educators.
The Common Core is becoming increasingly toxic. As it becomes more controversial, its chances of survival will dim. The more that policymakers shun reasonable parents and teachers, the more frustrated the excluded become. If Common Core dies, don’t blame the Koch brothers: Blame Arne Duncan, the Gates Foundation, Achieve, David Coleman, the NGA, the CCSSO, and all those who thought that national standards could be imposed swiftly without the hard work of listening and participation that democracy requires.
Well said! The cynic in me hears a new set of CorpEdReformer$ Boots marching to quickly shove another profit making quick fix down educators’ throats. We have been gagging and heaving since NCLB. Can’t even relate to normal digestion and getting old enough to not remember when teaching made sense. What will this new EdReform call the new……?
“The bottom line, in my view, is that Common Core is getting increasingly controversial because of the way it was developed and imposed. The absence of a democratic process and the lack of transparency caused a lack of trust and an abundance of suspicion.”
That, and some people literally believe that Obama is the anti-christ and are instinctively against anything he proposes or supports. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that pulling a fast one in this policy context is gonna come back and hit you in the face. The only way they could have overcome this risk is if the “fast one” was so good that everybody ended up wanting it. And the only way to have a sense of that was to actually entertain constructive criticism.
Given all the freedoms he has stripped, the NSA spying he pushed, the anti-whistle blower laws, CCSS, Obamacare, and everything else Obama has pulled is it any wonder some see him as the Antichrist?
Yes, actually. It is. He never “pushed” the NSA spying, to begin with. It just goes to show you that if you hate Obama in the first place, he can do no right. However, it is possible to disagree with him on CCSS and think the ACA is largely fine, which it is.
Or that just like a Mafia don, the Obomber ordered the hit, without any judicial proceedings whatsoever on a 16 year old American (sic) citizen. And it was done as decreed!
Lou, part of a definition of “antichrist” would be “kills with impunity”. But these religious analogies get old. He’s a murderer plain and simple for that one act alone. Actually worse because he doesn’t have the cojones to do it himself.
Obama has out-Bushed Bush on just about everything. He has been, as Noam Chomsky recently said in an interview, the worst thing that has ever happened to civil liberties in the United States. Does one have to make a list? Drones, vastly increased surveillance, the NDAA provision effectively eliminating habeas corpus on presidential whim, total disregard for posse comitatus, more deportations of illegal aliens than any other president in history, secret federal star chamber courts, assassination, more raids of legal marijuana dispensaries, refusal to take a principled stand for a federal guarantee of the right of gays to marry (“leave it up to the states”), bailouts of the bankers but not of the homeowners who lost their homes, imposition of VAM and the Common Core and a national database of student test scores and responses, revision of the FERPA regulation, support for vouchers and privatization of public schools–one could go on and on. Oh yeah, he gave us Obamacare, which was Romneycare before it was Obamacare, and is basically a fat treat for the insurance industry.
And all the while, he talks some sort of progressivist line and some people even buy into that. Obama is the oligarchy’s perfect wind-up toy. And when he leaves office, he will go live in the new 60+ million dollar mansion bought for him by the woman whom he just appointed Secretary of Commerce.
If you have any doubt that the fix is in and that the U.S. is now a plutocracy, you need look no further for proof than to the actions of the Obama Administration.
It seems that JonBoy and lohfvl were asleep during the Bush administration…..
Obama is certainly NOT perfect…far from it (Race to the Top? C’mon.)
But the NSA’s massive spying began during the Bush years…Obama placed that spying within the FISA court’s purview.
And the Obama administration refused to defend DOMA, calling it unconstitutional.
And the Obama administration is adamantly opposed to voter suppression, and has , in fact, tried hard to get MORE people registered to vote. These actions can hardly be characterized as anti-civil liberties.
Don’t be paranoid: he’s not the Antichrist, but he is a reptilian shape shifter!
“The news earlier today that the Koch brothers are joining the fight against Common Core complicates the political calculus surrounding the controversial standards” THAT is an understatement!
Sandy, I think it mainly means the Koch Brothers have a candidate in mind for 2016, and it isn’t Jeb Bush. Democrats would do well to stop trying to milk the Glen Beck sideshow, and do the same flinty-eyed calculation our actual enemies just did.
It’s politically advantageous for the far right to stand up and oppose the Common Core because it turns out the people really, truly hate it. Duh. It gets them votes their money can’t buy, because it is a stone around the neck of any candidate who supports it, Democrat or Republican. Democratic hacks will pay a price for selling people’s children to the highest contributor, but so will Republicans.
They’re all going to have to break and run for cover. Sorry, Gates, Murdoch, Bush, Duncan et al.
The direst enemies of all things public were glad to back CCSS, as another weapon in their scorched earth war on the real Commons, as long as there was no political price. The bill is coming in, though.
Thank you, Koch brothers! I never thought I would say that. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. America fought with Soviet Russia to defeat Nazi Germany. It took one brutal dictator to beat another. Forget “Band of Brothers.” Fighting Nazi Germany alone, we would have lost– badly. We will now fight with the Koch brothers to defeat our common enemy, “The Common Core.” Even Ralph Nader said that our only chance is to find a benevolent billionaire to fight for the common man. Well, it doesn’t fit that exactly, but for this cause, it is good enough. Let’s get that money flowing. It isn’t manpower that we need today, it’s just money. Money is what makes things happen. It is the only thing that matters in this declining, Capitalistic Dystopia.
I’m thinking an earlier war is more appropriate in this instance – “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”.
While I wish it weren’t so, I think the struggle will lay waste to our system of neighborhood schools in the end.
And now a little John Dewey for our listeners at home…
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”
for our listeners at home
ah, sweet music!
Except, John, that the Koch brothers are not fighting for the
“common man.” Far from it.
It’s fine to defend ourselves as Progressives being against the CCSS. But there is reality. Our opposition does support, or at least lends credence to, the far right’s position no matter that their endgame is an anathema. Crying foul doesn’t get us anywhere. The enemy of my enemy can become our friend.
But if we view the CCSS as what it may be, a distraction, we can focus on what matters, hat will be there even if CCSS goes away:
Testing, data, privatization, VAM, choice, vouchers, all that.
CCSS supports much of that, but it will not go away. Just like Rick Hess and overstayed guests.
We’ve got to focus and go after what really matters. We’ve got to be strategic as well as right.
“Just like Rick Hess and overstayed guests.”
Los huéspedes son como el pescado, al tercer día huelen mal
Or should that be: Los huéspedes son como el Sr. Hess, al tercer día huelen mal
Like the piece in Politico, this is a concern troll argument.
Peter Smyth just said, we shouldn’t oppose the CC$$ because that “lends credence to” the far right. Nice try, by an accommodationist who advances a parade of weasel reasons we should all just cave in to the Core.
Here’s another howler, “CCSS supports much of that, but it will not go away. ” Oh, yes, it will go away. The narrative of CCSS inevitability turns out to be just a tinfoil hat.
Snap out of it, please. This defeatist argument is a desperate, bankrupt tactic by a failed power grab. Let’s bury it, and you’ll be surprised how much easier it will be to fight the Koch brothers.
“Let’s bury it, and you’ll be surprised how much easier it will be to fight the Koch brothers.”
If only…
I have a stomach ache! I think we should all move into poor neighborhoods and talk to moms, talk to kids, play and talk with kids, read to kids and talk about stuff in books, watch TV with kids and talk about what we see – we could start a group – Talk for America (TFA!). If we could whittle away at the opportunity/language gap of the wee ones that live in poverty they might have half a chance when they get to school.
And what are we to make of Shelly Silver of NYS, close friend of Meryl Tisch of the Board of Regents whose million dollars paid for the shadowy “regents fellows,” opining that it might be time to delay CC$$ implementation? Looks like election season.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/01/8538397/silver-case-has-been-made-common-core-delay
These people are starting to figure out that they have grossly miscalculated. The new tests will INEVITABLY be the biggest, most dramatic, most public failure in U.S. education history, and some of the deform collaborators are bright enough to be starting to figure that out. They are starting to run for cover.
Imagine John King’s road tour reenacted in every community in the United States. It won’t be pretty for the collaborators.
The best thing that could happen for the deform movement is for the tests to be delayed because when these tests are given, the gig will be up. The villagers will get one look at these tests and at their results and will grab their pitchforks and track the collaborators with deform to their hideouts.
It’s going to be interesting, when all of this does blow up, to listen to the current collaborators explain how they weren’t really for any of this deform nonsense to begin with. Like the collaborators with the Vichy government, they are going to be doing their best to distance themselves from the position that they took when it looked as though they were serving the inevitable victors.
So many edupundits willing to sell all their principles in exchange for Gates cash, one can’t begin to count them all.
This just in from the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth:
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Learning is mastery of the bullet list.
Teaching is punishment and reward.
Standardization is differentiation.
Arbeit macht frei.
And this from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: All your base (and all your politicians) belong to us.
In the westerns popular when I was a small child, the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats.
On RheeWorld and other alternate worlds affected by Rheeality Distortion Fields, that kind of facile stereotyping is true. On Planet Reality, tain’t so. On the former, everything is obvious and labelled; on the latter, things are usually very messy and complicated.
It is a whole lot easier to shut down one’s mind and heart and play callously calculated games with political and religious and philosophical labels than it is to be well informed, compassionate, and have recourse to logic and facts—
But the former is part of what has gotten us into the noxious morass of “education reform” and the latter is a vital part of what will get us out of it.
Avoid the cynical posturing du jour: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” [Groucho Marx]
Regardless of who is for or against a particular policy yesterday, today or tomorrow, keep your eye on the prize: a “better education for all.”
And there is another angle to this. IMHO, it is close to impossible to make a coherent and compelling case against the imposition of CC without leaving the door open to a veritable demolition derby against high-stakes standardized testing and VAM.
I remind readers of the money quote by Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute that appeared on Dr. Mercedes Schneider’s website:
[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. [end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
The true problem with public education remains the gap in achievment between those living in poverty and those of upper middle class homes. Despite throwing gobs of money at the problem ($30,000 per student per year in D.C.) the results remain stagnant.
Making villains of “white suburban moms” will never change that gap. This is an attack on parents who believe they should have some authority over the education of their children.
Common core is the state usurping parental authority. Suburban families are collateral damage in the despotic take over of education. This should never happen in a democracy.
Before I get attacked as racist or elitist let me say: I know their are many successful families who struggle with poverty and many struggling children from more affluent households, but 28 consecutive years with a child in the public schools from the inner city to the suburbs has given me a unique perspective. Additionally, as an R.N. who has worked for over 20 years in the inner city (Roxbury, MA) I have seen fundamental changes to the family unit (particularly in the inner city) that has resulted in millions of children whose parents are simply not present. No amount of government intervention will change that.
I know this is oversimplifying, but until we are willing to be honest public education will continue to fail making inroads for corporate entities to hijack public education to the detriment to all (teachers, parents, society and most importantly students who will never be invited to participate in “the great debate”.
We can have a consensus on this; rich, poor, left, right. We all want the best for our children. Teachers voices are important, but without parents driving it there will be no avoiding this catastrophic attack on public education. In a democracy public education policy should be a local/state concern with elected officials who can be held accountable at the voting booth.
I don’t want be marginalized by saying words like “constitution”, but in a representative republic there is no place for policy like this. Where is the outrage?
Janine,
“The true problem with public education remains the gap in achievment between those living in poverty and those of upper middle class homes. ”
No, that is a “false” problem for the myriad reasons Wilson points out in “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”. At best “the gap in achievement” might be a tertiary concern but more likely a octonary, nonary, or denary concern. The inequities in funding, facilities and resources needed to provide a proper and vital teaching and learning process for all students, including the prerequisite social services needs, is the primary problem.
Since teachers have been blamed for everything from A to Z, why are dentists not blamed for dental problems with poor kids, Pediatricians blamed for poor health issues for children in poverty, social workers for attendance issues, health departments for poor vision & hearing results, lack of glasses if needed, DFACS for family a use concerns……?
We need to rise up and refuse to take the brunt of our societies’ ills. We have been helping our kids forever, and we have been beaten up so severely in the last couple of years. Crisis Time. We must throw it back on the folks, corp & politicians, who must change it!
Triangulation.
http://wp.me/pwqHK-3fN
Whatever one might think about the politics of the Koch brothers, they are at least being consistent, here, in their opposition to top-down, absolutist, centralization of power via the creation of what amounts to a regulatory authority (in this case, an authority that regulates IDEAS). What is shocking is that organizations that usually oppose centralized regulations–ones like the American Enterprise Institute, the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, the Heritage Foundation, and ALEC–have been doing everything in their power to create a totalitarian Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth. Among the major organizations associated in most people’s minds with the political right, only CATO has maintained a consistent position opposing this centralized meddling on the part of the federal government.
The business interests have been seduced by the political power they have gained in recent decades and the money still to be mined from education. I have no idea why the Koch brothers have come out against CCSS, but I know enough to be wary in the face of great wealth and power. Actions speak louder than words, so I will wait and watch…
Looks to me a bit like 2 decades of “getting away with whatever they wanted” lulled self proclaimed reformers into thinking they could just continue. But CCSS is, at least for me, the one step too far. And I’m now mad as hell and not going to take it anymore (for my boys).
And it’s interesting. The state reps/politicians/policy makers I’ve talked with are clueless – entirely blind sided here in Oregon that there could be any concern about the CCSS ecosystem.
But I think they are beginning to wake up. Because, if a critical mass of parents become roused, politicians and policy makers need fear for their careers. Few groups in the population wield the power of concerned parents.
All this said, I’d love to see you post about the language of CCSS. Because when I raised Common Core with our local reps, they use bureaucratic evasion – “oh, those are just standards. If you mean the tests you need to talk about the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Oh, the curriculum? Those are free. See, it’s no problem.”
The absolutely WORST commend from a reps’ aide was about the dramatically lower scores we should expect on CCSS. Since we’re not closing schools in Oregon based on CCSS, he told me they aren’t “high stakes tests”. And that if these low scores cause kids anguish “that’s just psychological – they should just get over it”. Is he related to Arne Duncan?
The politicians are clueless indeed. Hard to find any that can even speak intelligently about the issue and we wonder why parents are so in the dark. Parents have only been spoon fed one side of the story from their school administrations and propaganda engine.
Hello, Doug, those are some really astute and original observations. Have you been around before?
I believe you, that you’re aligning yourself against the corporate reformers for your own boys. I further notice you’re a skilled and wide-ranging business blogger, who heads up a direct TV ad agency of some kind?
I hope it doesn’t sound presumptuous to say, but I’m really welcoming your input on these questions.
Thanks for your supportive comments. I’ll stay engaged as I can. I read this blog regularly but don’t always see something useful to add.
However, I have been looking at CCSS in a pure business sense lately: does the reward justify the risk?
In other words, no business undertakes an effort without knowing that the potential reward I’d high enough AND likely enough to justify the risk (cost, potential harm to the rest of education).
In our district, my rough projections suggest 10 years under CCSS can have no more than a 2% impact on a child’s whole education. Yet the cost for our 28,000 student district appears to be around $100M for those 10 years. And there is risk that CCSS can lose all it’s gains by harming non CCSS education.
$100M for 2%? That is a horrible equation that would lead a business to reject the effort. But no one seems to add it up that way.
Anyway, thanks…
What we need, then, are more instances of stories to which people with media, business, and political insight can contribute. We need paths for more politicians, media industry workers, entrepreneurs and business people to bail out of their coerced Common Core allegiance. There are critics of the Common Core power grab everywhere, and our goal should be to reach a tipping point where they can speak out.
For example, there are many instances where software developers and technical start-ups feel intimidation to “align” with the CCSS promoters as their only viable business strategy. That sucks them into defending policies they really would never advocate for, if they could see an independent way forward. George Lucas’ Edutopia site, for instance, holds its contributors hostage to the Common Core business plan expansion.
Techie entrepreneurs affiliated with the “Maker Culture”, in particular, have a real potential for a contribution to education, which is being suffocated by the Common Core marketing blitz. They hate it, but they are constrained to pay it lip service.
Here is an established business I’m admiring right now. After six years of struggle and many failed grant applications, I finally got six of these units in my classroom this week:
http://www.vernier.com/products/interfaces/labq2/
They don’t interface with the stupid iPads because the district hasn’t bought that App. However, they will connect directly, with an included cable, to a laptop (if only the district had bought Chromebooks instead of idiot tablets). They don’t need no stinkin “aligned to the Common Core” sticker, and they can stand alone if they have to.
Thank you, Diane, for drawing attention to this critical issue–that the CC$$ were created not via da democratic process by oligarchical fiat.
Never forget, all public school reform efforts from those on the right & left come down to one thing. The destruction of public school teacher’s rights to due process & collective bargaining. What has every reform effort hinged upon? Firing teachers. In order to destroy public education & create a free market system of education where parents and students are consumers who must buy a product, reformers must get rid of the one thing standing in their way. Public school teachers.
The Koch brothers, while maybe withdrawing support for CCSS will never stop fighting & funding efforts to destroy protections for teachers in the workplace
The Common Core reminds me of microwave popcorn. It was an invention by a few that could change how we do things forever, but it won’t. People still get popcorn at the movies and pop it on an open fire in a skillet. Microwave popcorn is just one option using an invention of decades post 1960.
So there you go. Common core can be a choice, perhaps. Since choice is also heralded as grand by CCSS pushers. Irony of ironies.
The XFL also comes to mind when I think of CCSS.
Five teachers told me today they bet anything that in two years we will have moved on from CCSS.
CC$$ reminds me, as well, of microwave popcorn. According to Livestrong.com: “there is a chemical used in the nonstick coating on the inside of the popcorn bags that decomposes, producing a compound called perfluorooctanoic acid. This chemical has been associated with increased risk of certain cancers, including liver and prostate cancer,” and the CC$$ is, of course, a cancer on K-12 education, one that has metastasized considerably in the past year or so but that shows signs of responding to treatments like, uh, reason.
Anyone who knows anything of U.S. education history will know that it has been characterized by one edufad after another. The CC$$ test-them-on-standards-until-they-scream movement is just the latest terrible idea. Remember Behavioral Objectives, anyone? ALL THE RAGE in the 1970s, these were going to bring about our Periclean Age. A few years later, they were anathema. The same will happen, of course, with the CC$$ in ELA. Those who haven’t been paying attention will start to do so. The idiocies of these “standards” will be thoroughly explicated by various scholars who, unlike the standards’ authors, actually know something about literature; vocabulary and grammar acquisition; the teaching of writing, rhetoric, and thinking; etc., and soon enough, everyone will be pretending to have thought that the CC$$ in ELA were ridiculous from the get go.
Long live Jiffy Pop!
With extra real melted butter of course!
Once again, the billionaire boys and girls club has some fissures. If I remember, there was some quote from Winston Churchill when asked about why he was allied with Stalin and Soviet Russia during World War II. But I can remember it and so what? One of the more enduring rules of political reality is that (for today) “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The more Common Core (and its nasty roots in Chicago’s stupid CASE tests) is revealed, the less to it. Nonsense, expensive, typical Duncan and Obama…
Duncan is the king of backroom deals:
Why should CCSS be any different
Amen.
Today in a book study with my colleagues, we read about CFAs and Priority Standards. The more we read, the more we chuckled; the conundrum that teachers are stuck in the middle of, with the numerous standards, learning outcomes and more, deserves a hearty chuckle because it all is simply a joke! CCSS is not a panacea! What really stuck out for us was the calculated hours of instruction, that Marzano stated was necessary for teachers to get through everything (if we didn’t condense the standards down to Priority Standards). Almost 16,000 hours are needed in a school year for this, but the actual amount of time we do have in a contract year, is around 9,000. But that is considering we have all that time for instruction. We lose more hours with the assessments students have to take, any specials or other activities students have, assemblies, recess, pull-outs and push-ins, fire drills, earthquake drills, those times when students are simply not on task and you have to regroup, unexpected interruptions, students with disruptive behavior….you get the idea. Plus, to add to this hilarity is that individuals who don’t have a background in education, are creating things like CCSS, and it’s the educators who are figuring out how to make it all work! We’ve been given what is clearly an impossible thing to do, yet we have made it work or we have figured out ways to condense our focus on priority standards.
Does it get any more humorous than this?
Diane says this about the Common Core:
“the most zealous advocates for Common Core are Jeb Bush, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, the Business Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”
But she left out Achieve, the ACT, and the College Board. They’ve all hitched their wagons to Common Core.
Achieve is funded by groups like Battelle (which argues for STEM when there is no STEM shortage), the Gates Foundation, Prudential (and State Farm, MetLife and other insurance companies), Boeing, Chevron, GE, JPMorgan Chase, Intel, IBM, the Helmsley Foundation, DuPont, Cisco, and Microsoft.
The ACT is mostly a sham. Many college administrators likely know it, but they are “incentivized” to play along with the college-ratings game. The ACT and College Board are major players. Here’s how a recent research study on the predictive power of the ACT put it:
“…schools have a strong incentive – perhaps due to highly publicized external rankings such as those compiled by U.S. News & World Report, which incorporate students’ entrance exam scores – to admit students with a high ACT composite score, even if this score turns out to be unhelpful.”
And what about the SAT? Princeton Review founder John Katzman says it’s ” a scam…It has never measured anything… does it measure intelligence? No. Does it predict college grades? No. Does it tell you how much you learned in high school? No. Does it predict life happiness or life success in any measure? No. It’s measuring nothing.” Nicholas Lemann, author of ‘The Big Test’ says “The test has been…fetishized. This whole culture and frenzy and mythology has been built around SATs…the level of obsession over these tests is way out of proportion to what they actually measure… ETS, the maker of test…they do sort of profit from it…every time somebody takes an SAT, it’s money to the ETS and the College Board. ”
College enrollment specialists say that their research finds the SAT predicts between 3 and 15 percent of freshman-year college grades, and after that nothing. As one commented, “I might as well measure their shoe size.” Matthew Quirk reported this in “The Best Class Money Can Buy:”
“The ACT and the College Board don’t just sell hundreds of thousands of student profiles to schools; they also offer software and consulting services that can be used to set crude wealth and test-score cutoffs, to target or eliminate students before they apply…That students are rejected on the basis of income is one of the most closely held secrets in admissions; enrollment managers say the practice is far more prevalent than most schools let on.”
The very same groups who seek to “reform” American public schooling so that no child is left behind, are selling snake oil that will –– and already does –– deny millions of kids a decent education. They perpetuate a corrupted system that marginalizes workers and citizens, that off-shores millions of jobs, that creates enormous inequities in income and wealth through transfers of money from public treasuries to private coffers, and they tell us that the solution lies in better teachers, more “rigorous” standards, and “accountability.”
If we’re going to point the finger at Common Core zealots (and charlatans), let’s do it accurately.
The 2011 study regarding the predictive value of the ACT that you quoted from found that the English and Mathematics ACT sub tests were “highly predictive” of college success. Reading and Science sub tests were found to have low predictive value, so the overall predictive value of the Composite score is reduced. When I read it, my conclusion wasn’t that ACT is a sham, but that colleges should move beyond simply using the composite score to using the sub test scores as part of a multi-criteria admissions process.
That Ohio study on ACT found that it has minimal predictive power.
For example, the ACT composite score predicts about 5 percent of the variance in freshman-year Grade Point Average at Akron University, 10 percent at Bowling Green, 13 percent at Cincinnati, 8 percent at Kent State, 12 percent at Miami of Ohio, 9 percent at Ohio University, 15 percent at Ohio State, 13 percent at Toledo, and 17 percent for all others. Hardly anything to get all excited about.
Here is what the authors say about the ACT in their concluding remarks:
“…why, in the competitive college admissions market, admission officers have not already discovered the shortcomings of the ACT composite score and reduced the weight they put on the Reading and Science components. The answer is not clear. Personal conversations suggest that most admission officers are simply unaware of the difference in predictive validity across the tests.”
As you perhaps, know, the ACT keeps releasing “studies” showing how “unready” students are for college and work. And what do they use to reach their always alarming conclusions?
I guess it all depends on how one defines a “sham.”
SAT, ACT, COMPASS are all College Board exams and they are all being aligned to Common Core standards in math and English. This is a huge problem. Research fuzzy math-an actual Common Core term and you will begin to see what a complete disaster this is for our kids.
Interesting but unsurprising to see the libertarians opposing this… given their way, whereby the federal government stays out of public education, there would be a race-to-the-bottom on standard setting the way there is a race-to-the-bottom on wages… which is why the Koch brothers were OK with NCLB which gave them privatization opportunities without having any federal fingerprints…
It’s also unsurprising that the business crowd wanted to see change happen quickly: businesses do not operate democratically OR openly… and they thrive on getting products to the marketplace FAST! One of Steve Jobs quotes illustrates this: “You can’t ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
Schools— at least MOST schools— operate democratically, which means change happens at a MUCH slower rate because boards need to convince the public that changing the way we do business is necessary… and it is always difficult to move away from the status quo.
I think it makes sense to side with tea-partiers & libertarians on this one. We are all against the federal overreach. Libertarians prize local control; public schools are funded locally. Thinking progressives cannot support top-down fed control of educational curriculum, nor pedagogy nor methodology. Their only intervention should be to ensure equal access.
Common Core was adopted by states before the standards were written. It is driven by The Gates Foundation, Pearson, McGraw Hill, and others. None of the forces driving the standards have anything to do with education. Common Core is a power grab and an attempt to nationalize education.
The opponents of Common Core from the Left need to put their own biases aside. The mere mention of the Koch Brothers seems to be a disqualifer, which is sily coming from educators.
Left and Right CAN agree on many issues, lest we think like the political class which seeks to destroy each other…at the expense of the best interested of the American people.
Common Core is wrong to a range of people.
Parents involved with the children educations see the problems sitting at their kitchen table assisting with homework.
Teachers seeing in first hand from a professional vantage point….they see the standard will not education children, merely aid them
in passing tests.
Legislators see it when they tally up the added cost of education as most states barely have enough to meet current spending demands.
All who study Common Core see is it as the largest Federal initiative to take control of public education, which has been the responsibility of individual states. Govt. will use its power of the purse (withholding education funding).
One last comment to the majority of followers of this blog. I can understand the parochial nature of your approach to education, its your livelihood.
But, for a moment consider Common Core from the position of non-educators. If you do I hope you appreciate Common Core does incalculable damage to public education…and will create education clones to ‘educate’ student ones. ajbruno14 gmail