The American Federation of Teachers is a strong supporter of national standards and has been for many years.
Soon after the release of the Common Core State Standards, the AFT emerged as one of its strongest advocates.
Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, contends that the standards are valuable but the implementation has proceeded without adequate preparation. Last year, she called for a one-year moratorium on Common Core testing until teachers had time to learn the standards, resources with which to teach them, and time for students to learn them. She told a breakfast meeting of the Association for a Better New York, attended by the city’s civic and political elite, that the standards would fail unless implementation was done appropriately, with enough time for teachers and students to prepare for the demands of the new standards.
In the current issue of the AFT journal, American Educator, the AFT educational issues department published a memorandum called “Debunking Myths of the Common Core,” and responded to each of them in turn.
For example, the article maintains, it is a myth that the standards tell teachers what to teach. It is a myth that the standards are a national curriculum. It is a myth that the standards were imposed by the federal government and are mandatory. Etc.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe she is correct in saying that the standards don’t tell teachers what to teach. It’s the high stakes testing, the value added metrics, and the form of teacher, principal and school evaluation and accountability attached to the standards, that tells teachers what to teach.
Yes!!!!!!
The CCSS themselves are rendered meaningless by the tests. The tests become the true standards.
A lasting and effective cornerstone of public education cannot be formed from coercion, threats, and punishment.
Looking at the CCSS in isolation could lead one to make many of the same conclusions as Ms. Weingarten. However, looking at the big picture, which includes testing, RTTT, teacher evaluations, and insufficient funding, leads to a very different, and much more accurate understanding. If one starts to include many of the US’ societal issues, one can see the disaster looming, where education becomes increasingly segregated by wealth and ability, where many who are just not able to reach these standards don’t graduate or have to graduate with a differently-tracked diploma. It’s shameful that a leader of such an influential organization doesn’t see the ramifications of the standards or see the real story behind their implementation.
Being drawn into a discussion on whether you are for or against common core is the same as trying to respond to the question: do you beat your wife — I ask myself, why am I discussing/debating this topic when all the assumptions in legal terms have no standing in the academic arena: the central assumption that you can standardize knowledge is a foolish one. Knowledge by definition is a moving target, constantly evolving from a continual process of inquiry that each academic discipline has applied to the particular problems they investigate. You can standardize a production process (even the most tightly controlled processes in manufacturing contain some variation), but in academic disciplines we all know that how we understand/know a theory, fact, procedure today, could be quite different than how that theory, fact, procedure is understood tomorrow. Recently talked with a Ph.D in chemistry who expressed frustration or lament that the dissertation he wrote in 2012 was rendered totally irrelevant by recent findings in the field –the same could be said about common core—five years from now or maybe 1-2 we will find the common core irrelevant. Where does that leave school subjects—where they should be, in the hands of disciplinary experts —that us in the classroom—presenting to our students what our particular academic community has agreed upon as today’s best theory, best idea, best practice—which as professionals in the field leaves us with the obligation of continually doing the kinds of professional development that keeps us contemporary in our academic or technical field. I continue to be amused by states like Texas whose board of education legislates what knowledge is of most worth–in the case of Texas evolution and reconstruction for example to not meet their standard of worth. Yet, we all know that an academic in the science and historical community could not participate in their respective discourse communities holding these beliefs.
This. To even have the discussion is to lose it.
“Knowledge by definition is a moving target, constantly evolving from a continual process of inquiry that each academic discipline has applied to the particular problems they investigate. You can standardize a production process (even the most tightly controlled processes in manufacturing contain some variation), but in academic disciplines we all know that how we understand/know a theory, fact, procedure today, could be quite different than how that theory, fact, procedure is understood tomorrow.”
Yes. Yes. Yes. This is true on a couple different levels–that of the scholarly and research communities and that of individual students.
Thank you for another cogent analysis.
AFT just lifted this defense from the standards writers themselves: http://www.corestandards.org/resources/myths-vs-facts
seriously?
The standards don’t say what to teach, but they do say that teachers should do x,y and z with what they teach. I just read the National Council of Teachers of English responses to the standards. It is so full of questions, doubts and outright statements that many of the standards are baseless, go against current research or go against good practices in the study of literature and English.
And it appears they eventually gave up and now support them, basically saying the standards creators can put out what they wish. Now NCTE seems to support the sale/advocacy of books that will supplement/counter-act the negative impact of the ELA standards. How and why have these organizations sold out? I guess it comes down to the fact that those poor, inner-city kids whose parents won’t even know these are low quality standards and won’t dispute them should just be happy they are getting something.
Click to access NCTE_Report_CoreStds_2-10.pdf
Click to access NCTE_Report_CoreStds_1-10.pdf
Click to access NCTE_Report_CoreStds_12-09.pdf
They basically gave up and said members should respond to NGA and CCSSO if you still have a problem; they have no plans to take a stance.
Yeah, it’s all for the children.
Thanks for posting this. I had the same impressions, but you dug deeper than I did. NCTE received Gates Foundation money to “support the implementation” of the standards. The results are on the NCTE website. Is that why NCTE has given up?
It’s hard to believe so many respected members of the field have either gone down without a fight, or embraced the CCS with open arms. I hope more teachers do the research and start speaking out.
However, the standards are being used (abused – call it what you like) to dictate what teachers have to teach. For example, the standards don’t say that children in second grade have to be able to independently choose a line from a 4 grade level book and then write an alternate new scene from their imagination and make sure that it would fit in the story. However, it is touted as being based on the standards and, therefore, must be a part of what I teach. If I don’t, then I am not preparing them properly for third grade (even though, the curriculum was never piloted – yes, my students are being used as guinea pigs). There a number of activities I used to do in the classroom that would fit into the Common Core but they are not being touted by Pearson (guess who prepared the above performance based assessment), New York State (guess who applied for Race to the Top with gusto), New York City (guess who bought the above Pearson reading curriculum sight unseen), or the federal government (guess who threatened states to comply with Race to the Top or else). No, it does not directly tell teachers what to teach but it is a very fine line. Common Core is not the miracle the reformers and the AFT say it is. I hope, for the sake of the children I teach, it is not an absolute failure either. And that being said, why would we spend so much money on something that was not properly researched – if at all – when we we could have just kept our own standards and tweaked them if they needed to be more rigorous?
Bill Gates, David Coleman and Randi Weingarten can claim that the Standards do not tell teachers what to teach, are not a national curriculum and were not imposed by the federal government, and the micrograms of truth contained in those claims may be enough to limit resistance, but as always they are dissembling.
The Standards are a vehicle for ever-more high stakes tests. After all, how can you otherwise measure if they are being met? In practice, in the hands the many fearful and/or unimaginative administrators out there (and in the marketing and product development divisions of Pearson) the tests are the curriculum.
As for them not being national standards, it’s another nano-fact that turns out to be a lie: with Obama’s DOE extorting districts to accept the Standards or lose funding in the midst of a fiscal crisis, their widespread acceptance was a foregone conclusion, and was about as voluntary as a candy store owner “choosing” to be protected by the Mob. Gates’ stealth funding and roll-out of them, with the National Governor’s Association and School Boards Association acting as his beards, was designed to mask that.
This is just more of the Weingarten/Unity Caucus spin machine at work, attempting to misdirect members about the forced march the AFT has signed on to.
At the risk of sounding crude, public school teachers, at least those in urban districts such as NYC, have always been expected to take s%#t.
Now the Overclass and the misleaders of our unions expect us and our students to eat it.
Very well said.
Try and tell me the “unions” haven’t been infiltrated by moles in order to kill them from within.
Some of the answers to these “myths” do not seem to be very strong refutations.
I have been spending a lot more time looking at the standards and need to spend more time still. I can say this. The CCSS are far more specific and prescriptive than, for example, the standards of Finland.
In math the standards not only tell teachers what to teach, they also tell them how to teach in that they require unusual problem solving techniques as well as written explanations. Kids in NY are finding this both tedious and confusing.
Standards should point to content,skills…not methodology. Because these standards are mandated, it is problematic.
Problematic could end up being quite the understatement. We finally get to see the Pearson train wreck II this June. The 7th and 8th grade ELA tests were not only longer in duration but significantly more difficult than the traditional 11th grade English Regents. I can’t imagine what the expectations for juniors in NYS will be on the new Pearson/CCSS aligned ELA Regents.
Part 1
Randi Weingarten bought into the nonsense. She signed on to the Common Core standards, and all that goes with it. Now, she’s trying to remedy her error, doing a little nifty backpedaling on “value-added” teacher evaluations. But it’s too little, and far too late.
Ed Secretary Arne Duncan is in the corporate “reform” corner. He’s been urging the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to do more to push the Common Core.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, doing more than its part, has pressed this canard:
“Common core academic standards among the states are essential to helping the United States remain competitive and enabling students to succeed in a global economy.”
The Business Roundtable has resurrected the “rising tide of mediocrity” myth of A Nation at Risk, saying (falsely) that ““Since the release of A Nation at Risk in 1983, it has been increasingly clear that…academic expectations for American students have not been high enough.”
Arne Duncan parrots what they say.
I’ve noted previously that the alleged goal of corporate-style education “reform” is “economic competitiveness.” All the supposed “reformers” cite it. But the U.S. already IS internationally competitive. The World Economic Forum ranks nations each year on competitiveness. The U.S. is usually in the top five (if not 1 or 2). When it drops, the WEF doesn’t cite education, but stupid economic decisions and policies.
When the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in 2010-11, four factors were cited: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) suspect corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt.
In the last two years major factors cited by the WEF are a “business community critical toward public and private institutions,” a lack of trust in politicians and the political process, a lack of transparency in policy-making, and “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of deficits and debt, “increasing inequality and youth unemployment.”
Part 2
The current corporate “reformers” worship at the altar of “free” markets, despite the lessons of history (the Great Depression and the Great Recession), and despite the unfolding market-rigging scandals in the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) – which affects several hundred trillion dollars of assets and loans – and the ISDAfix, which is “a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.”
The emerging evidence is that the world’s biggest banks and trading companies gamed a “market” of some nearly $400 trillion of these trades, and not in favor of the public. Some of the very same players (corporate and individual “investors”) are involved in both the LIBOR and ISDAfix scandals.
More recent disclosures reveal that traders and bankers have rigged the foreign exchange (FX) market, one that involves daily transactions of nearly $ 5 trillion, which is “the biggest in the financial system.” As one analyst noted, this is “the anchor of our entire economic system. Any rigging of the price mechanism leads to a misallocation of capital and is extremely costly to society.”
See: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-11/traders-said-to-rig-currency-rates-to-profit-off-clients.html
The corporate “reformers” say not a word about any of this. They pretend none of it has happened, or is occurring presently. And that’s simply unacceptable.
The public education system in a democratic republic is supposed to develop and nurture democratic character and citizenship. That’s the foundation of American public schooling; that is its core mission. And that is precisely the kind of reform direction we need.
Sorry Randi Weingarten. Arne Duncan has already sold out, and let public educators down. So have you.
See this article on the Academe blog (AAUP):’