Lyndsey Layton at the Washington Post reports that the name “Common Core” has become so toxic in some states that officials are calling it something else. This is known as old wine in new bottles.
She writes:
“Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) used an executive order to strip the name “Common Core” from the state’s new math and reading standards for public schools. In the Hawkeye State, the same standards are now called “The Iowa Core.” And in Florida, lawmakers want to delete “Common Core” from official documents and replace it with the cheerier-sounding “Next Generation Sunshine State Standards.”
In the face of growing opposition to the Common Core State Standards — a set of K-12 educational guidelines adopted by most of the country — officials in a handful of states are worried that the brand is already tainted. They’re keeping the standards but slapping on fresh names they hope will have greater public appeal.
At a recent meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers, one of the organizations that helped create the standards, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) urged state education leaders to ditch the “Common Core” name, noting that it had become “toxic.”
“Rebrand it, refocus it, but don’t retreat,” said Huckabee, now the host of a Fox News talk show and a supporter of the standards.”
This report stands in sharp contrast to the post by Vicki Phillips of the Gates Foundation on Andrew Rotherham’s blog “Eduwonk,” which claimed that the Common Core has great “momentum” and is unstoppable. Rotherham noted that his organization has received funding from Gates to promote Common Core.
There is a distinct smell of failure in the air.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
and the Common Core by another other name. . . .
Ah, Robert D. Shepherd, you beat me to the punch!
😃
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell just as sweet.” [ROMEO AND JULIET, Act II, Scene 2]
Would that there was something sweet about CC.
Spoiled wine in new bottles. Like proven failures such as merit pay and forced ranking, you don’t improve teaching by the bullet list by giving it a new name.
Perhaps, using Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s infelicitous term, the self-styled leaders of the cage busting achievement gap crushing “new civil rights movement” of our time are truly and utterly the “uneducables.”
😡
Robert, how about an online assessment by any other name? I’m concerned we are letting Pearson’s other branding iron sit in the fire and heat up.
“SMARTER Balanced and PARCC to Launch New Technology Readiness Tool to Support Transition to Online Assessments”
http://www.pearsoned.com/smarter-balanced-and-parcc-to-launch-new-technology-readiness-tool-to-support-transition-to-online-assessments-2/#.UuyFfj1dX84
This just gets creepier and creepier.
So, they’ve realized that they have sunk all these millions into creating a clunky system that 3rd graders cannot use, and so they have to create a vast new system of training 3rd graders to use it, and school systems have to spend billions on computer systems for that training (and the online test taking), which, of course, is necessary if the whole inBloom monopoly on the national database of student responses and portal for computer-adaptive curricula is going to work.
Oh, how these people are being played!!!
And yet when one looks at these amazing new technologies that Not SMARTER ImBalanced has created, what are they?
Drag the answer into a box. (Uh, fill in the blank)
Put the answers in order. (Uh, make a list)
etc.
How very revolutionary!!!!
I suspect that when these ridiculous new tests are rolled out, that’s when the whole deform thing will go supernova. A lot of these deformers are worried about that, too. So, they are delaying while they figure out how to keep that from happening.
Good luck to them there!!! LOL
This initiative is, of course, a kludge on top of the kludge. They will keep kludging along. But at some point, the Core Dump of these tests will happen, and then. . . .
Oh, since Babylon fell, there will not have been a better thump!
They can launch anything they want; on-line testing is their Achilles heel and they know it. Because the reformers have spent too much time in their ivory towers and corporate board rooms with unlimited resources they couldn’t conceive of just how limited technology resources are in public schools. I can imagine some large urban middle schools that have one working computer per 50 students.
Add in the logistics of bandwidth, software glitches, keyboarding skills, and more and it is easy to see that this critical piece will be its doom. NY has seen the handwriting on the wall and many other states will join us soon.
Huckabee’s line caught my eye ““Rebrand it, refocus it, but don’t retreat,”
My question is: When will Coleman and his group Achieve start suing those states for copyright infringement???
Here is an encouraging report….pass along to others.
Way back when the Fl Governor had his infamous “No-Governor Governor’s Summit on Educational Accountability”, I predicted a re-branding to the “Sunshine Core”. I got the re-branding right, just not the name.
Perhaps the “sunshine state” will hire Anita Bryant to sing “Come Learn the Florida Sunshine Standards.”
Only those of you of a certain age will recognize the above reference.
Showing my years, but how well I remember. Rigor, it’s not just for breakfast anymore!
Considering some of the other “causes” ol Anita has been affiliated with over the years (other than the orange juice one) Common Core Sunshine Standards (CCSS) would be quite appropriate.
Well, it is the sunshine state, not the “rainbow state”;^)
In Pittsburgh, they are trying to rebrand the Teacher Evaluation program. They would like it to be known now as the Teacher Improvement System.
Ah, now it’s TIS. I guess I’ll do a TIS for a TES, eh!
Pamela – are you a teacher dealing with EET in Pitt? If so, my sincere condolences. EET has driven hundreds of teachers out of the profession in Hillsborough County FL.
It can also be called Workforce Training, Communist Core, Values Re-education, Brainwash Central, Introduction to World Citizenship and the End of National Sovereignty, Virtual Reality 101, UNESCO’s planned one world school, Bertrand Russell’s dream….
“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished…The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”
— Johann Gottlieb Fichte, as quoted by Bertrand Russell in his book written in 1952, The Impact of Science on Society
Sorry, but I don’t think you understand communism (what Russia had under Stalin was totalitarianism, which is the exact opposite of communism). What you’re describing is the natural end result of capitalism – something Marx predicted more than 150 years ago.
There has never been a truly “communist” country yet. Totalitarianism somehow creeps in. Power corrupts.
Right, which is why true communism isn’t about power in any one particular person’s hands or a small group of hands.. It’s about the people sharing power. In other words, the culmination of democracy.
For New York, how about Cuomo Core?
Cuomo sat on Bill Clinton’s Presidential Council on Sustainability years ago. He knows all about Goals 2000. He is up to his eyeballs in Agenda 21 doublespeak. He is working closely with the UN. He wants to make sure every child in NYS is in that data system…….why? He loves the Common Core because it makes all of the other garbage he is pushing possible. Dumb down the children…..if they can’t sit through the CC, drug them up using the DSM 5 to justify any “diagnosis” the big Pharma shrink shill comes up with, and take the child away from any unwilling parents for “educational neglect.” You have to have an air tight system in place for this kind of fascism to work. CC tied to tests tied to APPR is tight. Don’t let go of any piece of it or the whole stinking wall just might crumble.
Speaking of Agenda 21….look who is devoting his time and money to the world stage now….
UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg was appointed Friday to be the U.N. special envoy for cities and climate change, a position that will give the billionaire businessman and philanthropist an international stage to press for action to combat global warming.
I agree, Dawn – it’s all about control, and FEAR (with a capital F-E-A-R!) is their weapon. Compliance through the data, compliance through APPR, compliance through the drugging of a generation of children. Great point about the Big Pharma angle too.
NC has referred to ours as the NC Standard Course of Study all along. We hear “Race to the Top” used more than “Common Core.” Our NCSCOS just happens to encompass the CCSS.
Most teachers are unphased because they believe it will be gone in two years anyway because our DPI has a reputation of changing course fairly often. Nothing is ever carried out fully, is what I am told. Therefore, we never really know what is effective.
The Common Core State Standards are dreadful. But so were the state standards that they replaced. But here are a couple of reasons why having national standards is worse than having state ones.
1. When the standards varied from state to state, curriculum developers did not take them to be HOLY WRIT brought down from the mountain top. They realized that they had to develop a coherent course of study and then correlate THAT to these varying standards. Now, curriculum developers START WITH the bullet list of national standards–with the HOLY WRIT from which one dare not deviate. They begin every project by making a spreadsheet with the bullet list of standards in one column and the places where these are “covered” in the next column over. The bullet list of standards BECOMES the learning progression, the curriculum map. Now, that’s not as terrible as it might be in mathematics, where the standards basically ARE a curriculum map. But in ELA, the Common Core standards are for the most part a list of vague, abstract descriptions of skills. So, turning those into the learning progression, the curriculum map, distorts curricula horrifically. So does adapting activities and exercises in texts so that they mirror test items. And so does applying all the pedagogical strategies THAT ARE ASSUMED by the ElA standards, for many of these implied strategies are hackneyed and backward and make unwarranted, unsupported, unexamined but enormously consequential assumptions. Education becomes test prep–test prep based on amateurishly prepared standards. And curricula developed based on those standards ends up being incoherent.
2. Creating national standards creates economies of scale for the remaining educational publishing monopolists, thus crowding out new entries and competitors. This is a big one, and almost no one recognizes the problem. As Arne Duncan’s Chief of Staff put it, “the new standards . . . are about creating national markets for products that can be brought to scale.” If you like the idea of the Microsofting, the Waltmarting of U.S. education, then you should love having invariant national standards. If you want innovation and competition in curriculum materials and pedagogical approaches, then you will want developers to have the flexibility to create without the prior constraint imposed by these “standards.”
Think of it this way. Suppose that you are preparing a short story unit for a 9th-grade literature text. You can start by thinking about what 9th-grade kids might learn about short stories and develop a unit that builds that experience, knowledge, understanding, and skill. Or you can start with the random bullet list of standards chosen by David Coleman and shoehorn whatever you create into a unit that “covers” those standards. The latter is what people are now doing.
Now, what makes this particularly awful is that even though the ELA bullet list instantiated in the CC$$ is extraordinarily amateurish, no curriculum developer can deviate from it. Achieve appointed David Coleman, by divine right, absolute monarch of the English language arts in the United States, and HE NOW DOES THE THINKING FOR YOU–for every teacher, curriculum coordinator, curriculum developer, education scholar and researcher in the country.
What a way to encourage innovation in curricula and pedagogy!!!
The whole standards-based approach is obscene and ridiculous and philistine. Anyone who has developed curricula based on these standards will be able to describe to you, in enormous detail, their inadequacies, their lacunae, their unwarranted and unexamined assumptions and explain to you how dramatically and negatively they limit the possibilities for curricular design.
There are obvious alternatives to having invariant, top-down, totalitarian, mandatory bullet lists of standards. You make them voluntary. You subject them to ongoing critique. You encourage the development of alternatives. Better than all these–you replace them with general guidelines and frameworks.
And, you make sure that they are ALWAYS subject to learned critique and revision and that such critique and revision is ENCOURAGED. You don’t get innovation by slavish adherence to an amateurish bullet list. It’s just stupid to think that you would.
Sorry to be so blunt, but thinking that imposing an amateurish bullet list on curriculum developers will lead to innovation, will move us forward, is just about as stupid as it gets.
Do you honestly think “they” are looking for innovation? In a period in which most aspects of production and creativity are being shut down in this country….why would education be any different? In fact, people HAVE to be dumbed down to stand for this situation. And anyone who resists the brainwash will be “diagnosed” with a psychological problem for which a drug will be prescribed…..adults and children included. In what world is freely handing out brain altering amphetamines to very young children who can’t sit still a great idea?
No, I do not think that the deformers are looking for innovation. They are true believers in a particularly ghastly extrinsic motivation theory of education:
a. Learning is mastery of the bullet list (the standards).
b. Teaching is punishment and reward (via tests).
c. Those who are chosen need to be identically milled.
d. Teachers are expendable. There’s an app for that.
e. Class size doesn’t matter.
f. Student differences don’t matter.
g. Advanced education on the part of teachers doesn’t matter.
h. Schools are sorting devices (you go left. you go right).
i. Arbeit macht frei.
I don’t think that the deformers ACTUALLY believe that U.S. schools are failing. The evidence to the contrary is too obvious. That’s just the PR. That’s the sales pitch to the public–to the parents of the future proles.
Amen to all of the above!
Here is the proposed “curriculum” for New York State high school English classes. The modules themselves contain bullet lists of standards written as “I can ” statements. Focus is on standards, not content.
http://www.engageny.org/sites/default/files/resource/attachments/9-12-ela-selected-text-list.docx
some good texts here but it seems a list put together completely AT RANDOM
because it is
Our New York State Standards were not dreadful. I would like to return to them immediately if not sooner.
The New York standards were unusual in being VERY GENERAL. They were, for the most part, more like framework statements than like the CC$$ bullet list. That’s just what the Thomas B. Fordham Institute HATED about them, and that’s what made them flexible enough that curriculum designers could do great work within the constraints that they imposed.
But no list should be carved in stone, should be made into HOLY WRIT. The development of technique and craft in the English language arts based on humane scholarship and research is an ongoing enterprise. Beware of imposing prior constraints that limit important innovation. That’s a terrible, terrible mistake.
Agreed.
That’s why I believe, fervently, that standards lists should be replaced by
a. general frameworks, and
b. competing, suggested learning progressions , and
c. competing suggested reading lists, and
d. competing, suggested sample lesson plans, and
e. competing, suggested pedagogical approaches in the various domains, and
f. competing, suggested lists of specific world knowledge (knowledge of what) and procedural knowledge (knowledge of how)
all on a national wiki, by grade and ability level, and subject to ongoing critique by scholars, researchers, classroom practitioners, AND students
The NYS social studies standards were the envy of educators nationwide. They were a framework that could be adapted to all teaching styles. The state assessments were created by educators and all past assessments and answer keys were readily available.
CCSS have sucked the lifeblood out of history, government studies, state history and citizenship education.
NY students would be well – served if CC was dropped. Reactionary?? You bet! Recognize the failure and change course.
Concerned Educator
NYS standards served our students well. Our public high schools have sent millions of well prepared students into colleges and careers. Significantly better than most states. Adoption of CCSS in NY will wreck decades of successful efforts in developing world class standards.
Robert, (or anyone else)
How can we get your concept of an educational Wiki up and running. I’m quite ignorant on these types of things. What would it take to get such a non-profit open sourced education encyclopedia going?
Wiki-Ed.US
Revolutionary idea!
There is no god reason that this cant happen.
Who wants to work on this?
Let’s start with the general design.
WIKI-ED.US.K-12
1) Subjects/disciplines/branches of study
2) A fluid framework of standards
3) A fluid curriculum
4) Best pedagogical practices
5) Resources for teachers
6) Evaluating student progress
Other obligations prevent me from devoting time to that right now. However, if Bill Gates wants to put up some money to finance that Wiki, I’m game. 🙂
I am, Duane, quite interested in and serious about creating such a wiki. I hope, one day, to find the time to devote to such a project. It would be a noble undertaking, quite worthy of devoting one’s life to. But this would be a significant commitment and would require significant funding.
Now, if only we can link Common Core to the College Board and SATs, we’ll make brand recognition history.
Our lord and master, David, is working on that.
He’s first going to have to get done with suing with copyright infringement those states that are rebranding. Can’t have others muckin up the waters of the brand name.
Alabama added to the Standards (keeping within the allowed up to 15% additions) and renamed them the Alabama College and Career Ready Standards. The fact is, that Common Core is Common Core is Common Core. If it quacks like a duck…it’s probably a duck! Earlier in the month, Mrs. Erin Tuttle wrote a really good article about this on the Hoosiers Against Common Core website; “Is That You, Common Core?”.
Thank you for the update.
It has been absolutely impossible to keep -up with Gates et. al.
Gates has recently given $14M towards promoting charter schools in Washington State.
Charter schools are the greatest threat to public education that exists today. If we do not replace the caps that each state previously had on them…public ed. is over. RTTT required the lifting of charter school caps.
Charter Schools…..what a great investment idea. 39% Tax Credit made possible by Bill Clinton. Beautiful. Remember Robert Rubin? He’s the guy that pushed for the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act which allowed the banking industry to become a casino of derivatives based on nothing. It all came crashing down in 2008. Glass Steagall has not been reinstated yet. Bernanke has quantitatively eased us into oblivion to the point where the dollar is about to implode. Robert Rubin has personally benefited while our economy has gone up in smoke.
He’s having his hand at education now. His profits will be large….the devastation is already predictable.
(Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the most profitable Wall Street firm, will lend $25 million to a nonprofit community-development organization to finance 16 charter schools in New York City and New Jersey.
The nonprofit group, Local Initiatives Support Corp., will make the money available to the school operators during the next two years, Goldman Sachs and LISC, both based in New York, said Tuesday in a statement. The chairman of LISC, according to the group’s website, is Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury secretary.
Various disambiguations from Wikipedia:
– Core, the working name of the Digestive Disorders Foundation
– CORE: China Open Resources for Education, an OpenCourseWare organization in China
– The Core is a 2003 American science fiction disaster film. It concerns a team that has to drill to the center of the Earth and set off a series of nuclear explosions in order to restart the rotation of Earth’s core. “A B-movie with its tongue planted firmly in cheek, The Core is so unintentionally (intentionally?) bad that it’s a hoot.” Several reviews cited the numerous scientific inaccuracies in the film. In a poll of hundreds of scientists about bad science fiction films, The Core was voted the worst.
Maybe the best one is this:
Core dump, in computing, is the recorded state of a running program
LOL
And the Core Dump on U.S. kids continues.
Perhaps that’s what we can call K-12 education in the future: the Core Dump.
Does anyone still doubt that the Common Core is a UNESCO contrived world wide plan to crush creativity to “create workers, not thinkers” for David Rockefeller?
There is also CORE Education and Consulting Solutions headquartered in India with offices in Atlanta and New York.
CORE is an end-to-end, education-focused, technology-enabled solutions provider. Working with schools, districts and statewide agencies, CORE ECS delivers K-12 assessment and intervention solutions, technology infrastructure, special education management, pre-k management applications and strategic staffing solutions.
CORE ECS currently touches the lives of over 2,500,000 learners and 150,000 educators across the United States, advancing education through an integrated mosaic of innovative solutions. CORE ECS was established based on the idea that customized, tailored content and “high touch” services – combined with effective, useful reporting and technology – have the power to transform education in the 21st century.
“Does anyone still doubt that the Common Core is a UNESCO contrived world wide plan to crush creativity to “create workers, not thinkers” for David Rockefeller?”
Mostly right, but UNESCO has very little to do with it. It’s a brain child of the global corporations, not global “government” (which really doesn’t exist because the U.S. refuses to sign on to anything that smacks of international law).
In 2004 bill Gates signed an agreement with UNESCO to create and disseminate through a Microsoft platform a world wide curriculum to teach and advance the goals, values and agenda of UNESCO. ….he then began to pour money into the creation of The Common Core.
John Rockefeller donated the land on which the UN sits. He also spent more money than the federal government on education in the early part of the 20th century. He brought the ideas of Wilhelm Wundt to the U.S. His German philosophy spawned behaviorism. David Rockefeller is part of the Club of Rome, the instrumental group that thought up using “global warming” as a hoax to unite the world under one government which could inventory and control all resources including “human capital.” That’s where the Common Core comes in. Rockefeller, Gates, Soros, Bloomberg, Clinton, Cuomo all love the UN. Bloomberg will now be the special envoy for climate change. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us.
The fifth graders at my school are doing a close reading of The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Think again if you think this is a coincidence that that particular informational text would be chosen as CC aligned material.
If you think the UN is so weak and lacking in any persuasive powers over the U.S. then why did 1500 NGO’s and representatives from every large corporation on earth attend the “Earth Summit” in 1992 in Rio? And why is “sustainability” and “smart growth” and “stakeholder” and “climate change” on every politician’s lips and in every town board budget? You are right that the U.S. never officially ratified any U.N. treaty acknowledging global warming. However, it has been flying under the radar right into your backyard since it was a thought in David Rockefeller’s brain.
“If you think the UN is so weak and lacking in any persuasive powers over the U.S. then why did 1500 NGO’s and representatives from every large corporation on earth attend the “Earth Summit” in 1992 in Rio?”
The operative words there are “every large corporation on earth”. This is about corporations owning the government, which is fascism, not communism.
Fascism is not “about corporations owning the government.” Do you really think Mussolini was into that?
I’ve read that the “core” in common core is an acronym of sorts for COgnitive REorganization. Comments anyone?
The Common Core is ultimately about brainwashing. Remember it is designed to be delivered on a computer and tested and graded by a computer. This computerization will get ever more 3D virtual reality oriented so that children will no longer interact with their teachers or experience nature as a real event involving earth, water and sky. The ocean will be wrapped around their heads with sounds and sights so real they can almost touch the fish and coral but so virtual we may never see their eyes again. Gamers already live in that world, usually the world of war. That is what is planned for school as well. The standards will be taught willy nilly making no sense. Classical literature is replaced by informational texts. Beautiful fiction stories that teach kindness and consideration become suggested texts for teaching beginning sounds or conjunctions. Each child lives in their own virtual world with their own subjective concept of truth convinced that whatever they choose to do should be done for the good of the collective.
Cognitive reorganization for sure. They want to separate our children from nature, God, parents and their human teachers. They will create good little deltas and gammas to be the workers of the world. “I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.” –John Rockefeller
Wikipedia description of a portion of Brave New World by Julian Huxley:
Fetuses chosen to become members of the highest castes, “Alpha” and “Beta”, are allowed to develop naturally while maturing to term in “decanting bottles”, while fetuses chosen to become members of the lower castes (“Gamma”, “Delta”, “Epsilon”) are subjected to in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or physical growth.
Let’s see…..toxic vaccines recommended for children at triple the schedule of a decade ago, genetically modified cereals, oils and sweeteners placed in foods that children love, airplanes blanketing the sky with whispy white chemical trails confirmed by testing to be barium and aluminum, toys made in China painted in lead paint for babies to suck on, cell phones and ipads in the hands of young children who’s skulls are not fully formed to create the protective barrier they need to be around electromagnetic waves….what are we allowing to be done to children?
Thanks, Dawn, You clearly see it; how do we fight it/ protect students who are not yet indoctrinated.
I have a few suggestions. Turn off the TV and avoid going to movies and listening to pop music. All of this is extremely detrimental brainwash. Put down the cell phone occasionally and take a walk in nature. The Tavistock Institute has been working to destroy our nation from within for the past 50 years through think tanks, college campuses, the media including Disney, the Rand Corporation, etc. They have promoted violence, immorality, and subjectivity as opposed to the recognition that there is such a thing as “the truth” which exists as universal principles to be discovered by the thinking capacity and creativity of human beings. The universe is not random. People should not be random. Educational standards should not be random. (the common core is random)
Music, in the form of choral singing and learning how to play an instrument should become the basis of elementary school. Classical education which elevates truth and beauty must be revived. Investigations into the assassination of JFK, RFK, MLK and 911 need to take place. How do we expect our children to understand who they are and what their purpose in the universe is if they are never told the truth about their own nation’s history? If students had something interesting and truthful to read, maybe they would want to put away their video games and open a newspaper. Use technology to solve problems, not to enslave people through surveillance and addiction to violent games and porn. Cherish children and old people because they are the most vulnerable and the most wise.
So, are these states going to rebrand the PARCC, also? The purpose of the 15% law is to keep everybody accountable to their rapacious assessment machine.
Gates et al still have one trick up their sleeves, and it”s reformed-progressive Linda Darling-Hammond, among others, with the Smarter Balanced Consortium Sunshine Core Assessments.
Here she is, on a Kansas CCSS web page:
“Performance tasks ask students to research and analyze information, weigh evidence, and solve problems relevant to the real world, allowing students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in an authentic way,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education at Stanford University and senior research advisor for Smarter Balanced. “The Smarter Balanced assessment system uses performance tasks to measure skills valued by higher education and the workplace—critical thinking, problem solving, and communication—that are not adequately assessed by most statewide assessments today.”
http://www.knea.org/home/1688.htm
Yes. The day will come when the collaborators with the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth will be remembered for their participation in this takeover of our schools.
Ignorance may be bliss to some, but it will be the down fall to CC on-line testing. The day that 20,000,000 three to eight year olds are sitting in front of computer screens and taking tests (at the same time?) will never come in my lifetime.
They plan on “culling the herd” a bit at some point soon. They know they can’t control the number of people on earth at present.
that’s 8 to 14 year olds (grade 3 to 8)
“The Smarter Balanced assessment system uses performance tasks to measure skills valued by higher education and the workplace—critical thinking, problem solving, and communication. . . ”
Bullshit, it doesn’t measure anything. Darling-Hammond has it wrong on this one. These “tests” are one type out of many assessments none of which measure anything. They are not “measuring devices” even though they numerate (and I would prefer my term of “numerize” supposed “skills valued by higher education and the workplace”. Putting/assigning numbers to something is not “measuring”.
Folks, fallacies based on fallacies are fallacies.
How effin hard is it to understand that bit of logic?
And those tests are fallacies which are based on fallacies-standards and the fallacy of quantifying qualities-supposedly measuring “skills valued by higher education and the workplace”.
AY AY friggin AY!!!!
The educational realm is so full of fallacies that it is mind boggling!!
Open your brains, folks! Get out of fallacyland!
(. . . numerize)
Of course, Coleman wants to do the same for the SAT as he has done with the Common Core. He wants both linked together to make it impossible for states to drop or alter the standards. However, as someone who tutors for the SAT, I would recommend, if he makes the SAT impossible, to switch to the ACT. Just about every college in the nation accept this alternate test. If Coleman is successful in aligning the SAT to the Core, the SAT will die–and rightfully so.
YUP. And good riddance to it. The SAT was always a lousy predictor of success in college. Interestingly, high-school grade point average is a much better predictor.
I will only call it the Corporate Core. It is solely about money. It is really much easier to write simplistic curriculum for the entire country rather than waste time, money and resources to create them for individual states. Same thing for tests. Pure and simple, this is what it is about. It is similar to shutting down mom and pops for a Walmart. Much cheaper.
No surprise, here, just like Race to the Top is another name for No Child Left Behind.
Just like–as we have been too smart for the “reformers”–excuses for closing schools & opening charters (particularly in Chicago)–are now “under enrolled” public schools, rather than “failing schools.” (As, of course, we educators & parents know that the “failing schools” not making “AYP” are almost EVERY school, as the expected passing percentage has continued to rise in accordance with the original NCLB {and–isn’t 2014 they year that 100% of the students are expected to “meet” or “exceed?”
We’re all wise to this ridiculousness–after all, hasn’t education lingo (RTI, LRE, NCLB, RTTT, AYP, etc., ad nauseum) been an ongoing conundrum?
Arne & friends, call it what you want— garbage is still trash!
RBMTK,
“. . . garbage is still trash!”
Far gentler words than I would use!!
This has happened here in Nevada as well. We are to refer to this mess as the “Nevada Core Academic Standards,” I am so glad they want to own it. They fear that they may not be able to afford this mess, so it may die yet. I still let people know that this is the common core they never agreed to pay for in exchange for the federal dollars they never received as a race to the toilet loser. (Nevada was told they were not committed to spending enough on education to be considered for a grant).
And as the core is rebranded, all of the CC$$ materials that districts have purchased (not mine since we don’t have any budget for new materials, which, in this case, is a good thin) are then deemed obsolete. And the great selling of the same materials with bright shiny rebrand stickers on them — no change to the content, of course — will begin. The publishers will encourage this rebranding.
Cue music: It’s all about the money, money, money…
It’s cued:
I smell a “case study” coming to the nearest top of the line business school, but ironic that this study is not about equity in public education and how to achieve this… instead it is about how a company can rename a “brand” so as to sell it to unwilling participants under a “new name”… henceforth same bad product with new name in the corporate world equals…$$$$sales$! Instead, the case study should be about how a corporation can gracefully extricate itself from a failed “brand”. Sickening.. but the likelihood of a case study of rebranding the ” common core” brand is probably very real!
Common Core by another name = lipstick on a pig. Call out Soo-ee! and watch how Pearson comes out of their corporate barnyard. It’s time to take them to the “slaughterhouse” by rejecting their attempt to deceive us with their latest tactic.
Our state standards were deemed to be among the highest of the high, crosswalked to the NAEP and rated A by checker and others, to the surprise of our business community who thought they were not aligned to the needs of business and college. Then they were reevaluated and deemed to be great for preparing students for the 21st century skills they would need for work and college. Then tony and mitch adopted common core and their state board of ed, of which many were the same who approved, adopted and touted the previous standards as among the highest of the high, once again crowed about their bestest standards, even as Achieve and others such as checkers fordham said that the common core standards were not as high, not as best, not as strong as the existing state standards of our state. Now our legislature, made up of many ALEC members, are finding that the rabble they roused to get support for charters choice vouchers are now fighting back against this government intrusion and mandate of standards. They have passed a bill delaying implementation past 2nd grade and have now just passed a piece to stop implementation of the common core. They are assigning this back to the state board of ed (the same people who touted their previous adoption of common core as standards for college and work ready preparation) and charging them with developing and adopting standards to prepare students for college and work. And pence has declared they will be among the highest of the high and developed locally. Want to bet they just rename them? Round and round we go, same standards, different jargon. And our local paper and others are acting as if the previous standards and praise for them never existed.
CC (Coleman’s Crapola) is like a 3-legged stool: #1)National standards carved in diamond, #2) Teacher evaluations tied to test scores, #3) COMPUTER based companion tests. If any one leg fails – down it goes. Which is most likely to fail?
#1 Least likely to change
#2 Not until litigated
#3 DOOMED TO FAILURE
Re-branding cannot help them out of this mess.
Hidden within #3 is the all important parental support. The opt out movement will help hasten the collapse.
Association with the CC$$ has now tainted the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce brand also. They’re all so tarnished they don’t want to be caught at the same “Education Summit” with themselves.
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/sarahlahm/curious-case-minnesota-chamber-commerces-upcoming-education-summit
The makers of asbestos and tobacco should have thought of this.
Sent from my iPhone
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So, let’s have a look at the 11th- and 12th-grade reading lists in New York. They aren’t bad. A lot of good texts on those lists. But notice that they are texts taken pretty much AT RANDOM. The whole notion of curricular coherence is OUT THE WINDOW>
In the past, for better or worse, in most schools in the U.S., we typically did a survey of American lit in Grade 11 and a survey of Brit Lit in Grade 12. Some schools eventually switched out the Brit Lit for World Lit or offered both and gave students a choice regarding which they wished to take.
Now, one could argue about whether taking a chronological, history-of-ideas approach in those grades was a good idea. Here were a couple of thing to recommend such an approach: They provided students with a timeline–a chronological mapping–to which they could attach learning in the future. They provided opportunities for learning about the history and development of thought, culture, artistic forms, etc., in those cultures (the United States and England/Great Britain) and for tying what kids were learning in lit classes to what they were learning in history (and in the arts). There was some coherence to the learning progression.
Many were those who argued, over the decades, against the chronological “great works” surveys in Grades 11 and 12. Some argued, for example, that we should take a genres approach or a thematic approach. But no one was so crazy as to argue that we should present material RANDOMLY.
But now that is just what we are expected to do. We are to take the Monty Python approach to curricula:
“And now for something completely different.”
Because it doesn’t matter what’s being taught when. All that matters is that something from the bullet list of “standards” is being “covered” in each lesson with some “great text.”
And it doesn’t matter what’s happening in that text, really. All that matters is that whatever the standard describes is treated in relation to the text. After all, the standard, not the text, is what is going to be tested.
Oh, but the CC$$ doesn’t distort curricula and pedagogy.
Give me a break.
Yikes! corrections to the post above, which was written all too hastily:
Now, one could argue about whether taking a chronological, history-of-ideas approach in those grades was a good idea. But there were, at least, SOME good rationales for the approach: The chronological approach provided students with a timeline–a chronological mapping–to which they could attach learning in the future. It provided opportunities for learning about the history and development of thought, culture, artistic forms, etc., in those cultures (the United States and England/Great Britain) and for tying what kids were learning in lit classes to what they were learning in history (and in the arts). And there was some coherence to the learning progression.
It’s fascinating that the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, ALEC, and other organizations that can always be counted on to oppose centralized regulatory mandates have been falling all over themselves to impose centralized regulatory mandates (a single, invariant, mandatory set of standards and tests prepared by a centralized Common Core Commissariat or Politburo) on our country. These are the same folks who are always talking about the virtues of unfettered, free competition.
Evidently that doesn’t apply to IDEAS, such as ideas about what school outcomes should be, what we should teach, what kids should learn. Evidently THOSE should be mandated by a central committee of thought police.
Hmmm.
Among major forces on the traditional right (I’m not talking about the Tea Party or the fundamentalist nutcases here), only Cato and the Koch Brothers have been consistent with their professed principles and have OPPOSED this totalitarian prior constraint on the freedom of thought of teachers, administrators, and curriculum developers, have championed voluntary, competing standards, frameworks, etc.
I at on the board of my local Chamber years ago. If I were on such a board today, I would resign in protest at the obscenity of the Chamber’s collusion with the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
cx: sat, not at
None of those “free trade” no regulations guys actually wants competition even in the business world. People like Bill Gates always resort to creating a monopoly, getting government contracts through contacts, and infringing on other people’s copyrights when they are looking for good ideas. Bill Gates was convicted 3 times for copyright infringement and Microsoft was almost split up because of monopolistic practices but he just pays the fines and pressures the judges and goes on making billions by cheating.
There is a distinct smell of failure in the air…
Unfortunately, there is a distinct smell of dishonesty in the air…
The standards before the CCSS were the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards. Seeing as we are the Sunshine State, it *does* actually make sense to have that in the title.
They are actually being changed to simply the Florida Standards. For language arts, we now have the Language Arts Florida Standards (LAFS- which is what I do when I think about how dumb this all is). I believe they re-worked a single standard in order to change the name.
The first version of the lie was that these “standards” were created by the states. The deformers put the “State” in the name of the standards as purposeful misdirection to mislead people into not noticing that national standards were being imposed by fiat by a small group of self-appointed “deciders” for the rest of us. As the opposition to these “standards” grows, de deformers are looking for options. One option is to “rebrand.” Have identical standards but call them Oklahoma Standards, Florida Standards, etc. That’s just another transparent lie, but most of the country is too busy paying attention to whatever Miley Cyrus is licking this week to notice.
This standards-and-testing approach to education is a cult. The education deformers are true believers. They’re not going to back down.
Look, they whole standards-and-testing thing was tried, under NCLB, for 10 years, and it resulted in no change whatsoever in outcomes by the deformers’ own preferred measures. So, no amount of actual evidence is going to move these people to think that they are wrong about standards and testing. They don’t think that they could possibly be wrong about this. It’s as though they were believers in a divine revelation. The revelation to Achieve.
Trying to talk sense to deformers about their “extrinsic punishment and reward based on mastery of the bullet list” theory of education is like trying to talk to Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church about his notions regarding the age of the Earth. One isn’t going to get anywhere. And since the deformers currently have enormous power and a LOT of money behind them, their terrible theory is going to continue to be implemented until it all blows up in their faces, as it INEVITABLY will.
Sadly, a lot of kids and teachers are going to be grievously harmed in the meantime.
My suspicion is that the policy supernova will occur when the idiotic not-Smarter im-Balanced and PARCC-on-kids’-throats tests are given nationwide.
Perhaps that’s when they will give up on this failed approach. We’ll see.
A supernova is a natural event. In fact we are all made up of the materials (atoms) spewed forth from such a nearby event over 5 billion years ago.
I would liken what is about to happen more like the Chernonyl disaster. Made
What I meant to say is that a supernova is a tremendously violent but constructive, natural event. More than half the elements on the Periodic Table are created when these massive stars explode. A policy tsunami is better because its is a tremendously destructive natural event. A policy meltdown a la Chernobyl in 1986, is even better because it is a tremendously destructive man-made event, brought about dangerous errors in human design and judgement. This post is obviously a result of having too much time on my hands while waiting for the SB to begin.
Either way, I have to agree that the PARCC and SBAC rollout in a little over a year will be the beginning of the end. It will be interesting to watch the on-line field testing taking place this year. A precursor to disaster.
Oklahoma State Department, in an effort to thwart a challenge from the right, renamed everything CCSS, and actually dropped out of PARCC…now CCSS are OAS (Oklahoma Academic Standards), as in, “Does my OAS look big in this standard?” Then, the PARCC assessments were renamed for a vegetable: OCCRA: Oklahoma College and Career Readiness Assessment…but the best is the next acronym: OCCRAP: Oklahoma College and Career Readiness Assessment Portal!! We respectully suggest they hire an eighth grader to vet their acronyms. Sheesh.
Did OK actually drop out of PARCC testing or did they simply re-name it? If so, who is writing the “OAS” aligned assessments?
OCCRAP
That would be a good name for the national tests now being developed. Well done, Oklahoma!
Doesn’t re-branding sort of defeat the purpose of a unified, cohesive set of national education standards for all K – 12 students? Arne and Dave can’t be too happy about this first crack in the dam.
So, my 4th grader in public school on Long Island took her 2nd series of NWEA MAP assessments last week. (First set of ELA and Math were in early November. I came “this close” to opting out but decided not to so that I could understand first-hand what was going on within the school.) She came home almost in tears on Friday. What happened? Apparently, approx. 30 minutes (this is my daughter’s estimation) into the ELA assessment, an error message appeared on some (but not all) of the monitors, and those children were unable to continue with the assessment. What ensued was understandable confusion among the children. The proctor got on the phone with whomever (I’m guessing a techie person) and engaged in an understandably agitated conversation, as my daughter said she could hear the commotion through her headphones (apparently all the children wear headsets to din ambient noise). Notwithstanding the distraction, my daughter — whose computer continued to function — was able to concentrate long enough to get a “Congratulations, you have finished” sort of message on her monitor; seconds later, the proctor got off the phone and pressed the “master pause” button, which closed down all of the computers. The obvious question is this: what will the school decide to do? Will the test have to be readministered? If so, to whom? All of the children? Only those with error messages???? What about those, such as my daughter, who finished their assessment? For those children who did not finish, can those portions of the assessments that were completed before this computer glitch be salvaged? How much more substantive class time will have to be lost for this retesting? Or, will the retest be instead of recess? Who will pay for this? This is only the beginning….
Just the tip of the iceberg. Policy meltdown at 11. Don’t touch that channel.
Oh, Deborah,
As a parent, don’t worry….we’ve been experiencing this for YEARS in Georgia. We’ve seen these tests attempted to be administered 5, 6, 7 times!!! Hang on…..you and your daughter only have 6 more times to go through this nonsense!
Just take heart and feel better…
Here in Georgia, lame local school superintendents are blaming the National Weather Service for not giving them correct information to close schools for the day for our ice/snow storm. Now, the problem is, the bulletin released by the Service came out at 3:38 AM–a full 6-7 hours before the storm actually hit. And, they thought they could actually get away with that lie!!! With “integrity”, “honesty”, and “intelligence” like this, we can’t even begin to handle addressing the ridiculousness of all this testing!
Good luck to you and your daughter!
Yes, this is exactly what was suggested by legislators multiple times at the first meeting of the North Carolina Common Core “Study” Committee – the insinuation that if we change the name and retitle it “North Carolina Standards in Education” then all the angry activists will go away. Thanks for sending this to me & great job keeping on top of it. Below are the last couple of pieces I’ve written up about Common Core as it applies to NC & the study committee – we need as many activists at the second study committee meeting (Feb. 20) cranking up the heat on them & calling out their plan to simply postpone action. My sign is going to read, “Fix Your Mistake, Already.” http://pundithouse.com/2014/01/common-core-what-difference-does-it-make/ http://carolinalibertypac.com/2014/02/common-core-study-committee-members-delaying-substantial-action/ Nicole Revels
http://mydigimag.rrd.com/publication/?i=188587