Peter Greene, in a serious vein, explains that the Common Core standards are integrally connected to the collection of data.
They can’t be changed or revised–contrary to the nationally and internationally recognized protocol for setting standards–because their purpose is to tag every student and collect data on their performance.
They cannot be decoupled from testing because the testing is the means by which every student is tagged and his/her data are collected for Pearson and the big data storage warehouse monitored by amazon or the U.S. government.
He writes:
We know from our friends at Knewton what the Grand Design is– a system in which student progress is mapped down to the atomic level. Atomic level (a term that Knewton loves deeply) means test by test, assignment by assignment, sentence by sentence, item by item. We want to enter every single thing a student does into the Big Data Bank.
But that will only work if we’re all using the same set of tags.
We’ve been saying that CCSS are limited because the standards were written around what can be tested. That’s not exactly correct. The standards have been written around what can be tracked.
The standards aren’t just about defining what should be taught. They’re about cataloging what students have done.
Remember when Facebook introduced emoticons. This was not a public service. Facebook wanted to up its data gathering capabilities by tracking the emotional states of users. But if users just defined their own emotions, the data would be too noisy, too hard to crunch. But if the user had to pick from the facebook standard set of user emotions– then facebook would have manageable data.
Ditto for CCSS. If we all just taught to our own local standards, the data noise would be too great. The Data Overlords need us all to be standardized, to be using the same set of tags. That is also why no deviation can be allowed. Okay, we’ll let you have 15% over and above the standards. The system can probably tolerate that much noise. But under no circumstances can you change the standards– because that would be changing the national student data tagging system, and THAT we can’t tolerate.
This is why the “aligning” process inevitably involves all that marking of standards onto everything we do. It’s not instructional. It’s not even about accountability.
It’s about having us sit and tag every instructional thing we do so that student results can be entered and tracked in the Big Data Bank.
And that is why CCSS can never, ever be decoupled from anything. Why would facebook keep a face tagging system and then forbid users to upload photos?
The Test does not exist to prove that we’re following the standards. The standards exist to let us tag the results from the Test. And ultimately, not just the Test, but everything that’s done in a classroom. Standards-ready material is material that has already been bagged and tagged for Data Overlord use.
The end-game is data-tracking, not standards. And that helps to explain why CCSS was written without consultation with educators; without participation by early childhood educators or those knowledgeable about students with disabilities; why there is no appeals process, no means of revision, why they were written so hurriedly in 2009 and pushed into 45 states and D.C. by Race to the Top.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent post.
In support of the main thrust of this posting, an expert witness from the inside of the self-styled “education reform” movement, Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute.
[start quote]
And that brings us back to the Common Core. If the standards are better than those that many states had in place, swell. If more common reading and math standards make things easier for material developers and kids who move across states, that’s fine. But I don’t think that stuff amounts to all that much.
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://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2013/12/common_core_and_the_food_pyramid.html
Originally brought to our attention on:
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
😎
Reblogged this on onewomansjournal and commented:
“They can’t be changed or revised–contrary to the nationally and internationally recognized protocol for setting standards–because their purpose is to tag every student and collect data on their performance.”
To try to focus on *one specific layer* here — it is also true that the Common Core Standards, in ELA/Literacy aren’t actually well designed for this kind of tagging. That is, the basic design of purely skill based anchor standards measured over 13 years coupled with increasing text complexity at least fits their data tracking needs *in theory* (it is at least a somewhat consistent idea, if incorrect).
To get everyone on board, they had to chuck a bunch of other stuff into the standards — bits and blobs of content, incredibly redundant disciplinary literacy standards, etc., which really compromises the integrity of the standards use for “big data” analysis. They don’t have the kind of internal structure or analytical rigor necessary to do the job.
It is a screw-up on every level, really.
Yes, there’s a bit of consolation in knowing that, after my colleagues and I have been purged from the schools and are eating cat food in a ditch, their data is contaminated and fundamentally worthless.
Too funny Michael!
But as Freud once said, “there’s no such thing as a joke.”
I’m not in a ditch eating catfood, but I am waiting for that consolation/vindication.
Perhaps we can ban together and make a former teacher shanty town.
I think all the good warm spots in California are taken by former tech workers whose jobs went overseas. Mudslides, droughts, ice storms, blizzards…does anyone have weather conducive to a shanty town year round?
Agreed. This is excellent.
I hope Diane tackles this topic of Obama’s 2015 education budget. Given Obama and Duncan’s track record on education, I seriously doubt the WSWS is exaggerating one bit.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/25/educ-m25.html
Note the part about how Obama wants to “restructure” high schools. This is right out of Bill Gates’ agenda to force “apprenticeships” on working-class kids and being denied the arts and sciences, forever denying them the right to college. The US is not Europe, which had a long history of class differences, but this billionaire thinks it should be done here.
I am totally opposed to “apprenticeships” in high school and slotting kids into low-paid work forever. The right to a higher education is instrumental in the ability to move up economically. If people want to train for skilled trades, do it as it is done now–AFTER high school.
BTW, this is not a return of vocational education, which I totally support, because in vocational education, students are still taking courses in general education which include the arts and sciences. Gates and his puppets want to deny any upward mobility for the vast majority of students hence the tracking schemes.
I can’t believe they’re having the same tired roster of billionaires design vocational education.
Is this a parody of “out of touch in DC”? They think Bill Gates and Eli Broad have their finger on the pulse of working class and middle class people? After the billionaire caucus weighs in, they can have David Brooks and Tom Friedman explain the new and exciting plans in Ohio.
Gates has been pushing this “two-track” system for years because he thinks this is being done in Germany and other countries. Apprenticeships are appropriate only after high school, after all students have a general education background including classes in the arts and sciences. This “two-track” system belief is really what is behind Common Core. Force inappropriate curriculum on the lower grades so that only the top 1 or 2 percent of students who can actually master the inappropriate material are slotted to go to college. The rest of the students who can’t grasp it will be slotted into low-wage jobs and denied college.
And next on the agenda will be the repeal of child labor laws. This is really the “apprenticeship” nonsense is actually about. In third world countries, many students are done with “education” by the end of middle school. It’s being attempted here to fulfill the globalist fantasy we must be “competitive” with Vietnam, China, or Nigeria for jobs.
An infinite number of personalities, dreams, fears, hopes, and aspirations. And your solution is a ONE way street?
Why would the government want to force more and more (younger) people into the labor market? Unemployment is high enough as it is!
I am totally opposed to “apprenticeships” in high school and slotting kids into low-paid work forever.
You obviously have a different plumber than I do.
My electrician’s no bargain either.
I think they want to also make teaching low paid technician jobs. Looking at the standards they have all teaching broken down to specific things to teach, wording to use, etc. Any technician can deliver it. It’s another middle class job that will go away.
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140323/OPINION01/303230005/0/OPINION01/Editorial-Charting-better-future-Detroit-Public-Schools
Detroit gets ready to fully privatize.
I’m shocked how little the newspaper knows about MI charters. They’re some of the least-regulated schools in the country. They seem blissfully unaware of this fact.
Michigan has more rip-off privatized for-profits than any other state I can think of, other than Ohio, which is the national leader.
Onward with the fact-free privatizing! This won’t end well.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Think of them as tags.
That’s exactly what they are. That’s why they were created.
Well done, Peter.
Standards serve the purpose of making parts interchangeable. So, for example, there are United Thread Standards for bolts. These include United Fine (UNF) standards that tell manufacturers that a 1/4-inch bolt is to have a 1/4-inch nominal diameter, 28 threads per inch, and troughs between threads that form a 60-degree angles. These specifications are entered into bolt-cutting machines that use computer-numerical control to mill blanks to produce bolts that meet the standard.
At most, one could make a sound scientific argument only for a shared set of fairly elementary knowledge and skills. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., has made very convincing scientifically based arguments for basic, shared knowledge prerequisite to reading comprehension within the wider community that is a country, but he has always insisted upon that shared knowledge being PART OF, not the whole of, an education and on its being the sort of work that one does with kids at the elementary level. After all, what he is talking about is material that is so common that one OFTEN needs to know it in order to understand what one is reading. His method suggests the importance of doing precisely the sort of scientific study of shared, predictive knowledge, declarative and procedural, that I outlined above–the very kind of thing that the CCSSO and NGA DID NOT DO.
Even if one thought that it was a good idea to mill all students so that they could be certified to have the same set of knowledge and skill, one wouldn’t approach this in the ENTIRELY HEEDLESS manner with which the CCSSO and NGA approached the task. They simply hired some amateurs to cobble something together based on a review of the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the preceding state standards.
Why did they work in that way?
Because the creation of the CC$$ wasn’t about producing the best possible educational standards. It was about creating a uniform bullet list for ed tech to correlate to. That’s why the folks who paid to have this done wanted it done. And they wanted it done immediately. The quick and dirty (very quick, very dirty) job that was done on these “standards” was “good enough” work for standards for the training of the children of the proles, good enough work for the training of other people’s children, as opposed to for education of the children of the elite, who always have and always will attend schools were those childrens’ unique propensities and interests will be discovered, acknowledged, and built upon in unique ways.
Is that really the model that we want for schools, to turn them into milling machines? to treat students as blanks to be identically milled? to place them into computerized ed tech the purpose of which is to measure their conformity to predetermined standards and then feed them lessons and retest until they conform precisely?
This current iteration of educational “standards” was based on the idea of starting with what every child must know to be “college and career ready” and then working backward to determine the specifications that would have to be met each year to ensure that. No sort of scientific process was followed to determine what constitutes college and career readiness. It would have been possible to do that. For example, the CCSSO and NGA could have studied students entering colleges and careers to find out what shared declarative knowledge (world knowledge, or knowledge of what) and procedural knowledge (process skills) they had upon entry and what of that knowledge and skill was highly correlated with success. That would have been a scientific approach. It would have been the approach that would have been taken if the business of creating a set of identical standards for the entire country had been approached with anything like the RIGOR that such an undertaking demands.
No such process was followed to prepare the CC$$.
If the CCSSO had done something like that, what would they would have found is enormous variability in the entry knowledge and skill that is correlated with and so possibly predictive of success in different endeavors. Different entry knowledge and skills would be found to be correlated with becoming a successful yoga instructor, plumber, or cosmetologist. Different entry knowledge and skills would be found to be correlated with successful completion of college degrees in electrical engineering, French literature, sports education, film studies, and philosophy. It would have been found, for example, that few successful yoga instructors have to be adept at solving systems of linear equations. Would it be nice if yoga instructors could solve systems of equations? I suppose so. It would be nice if John Boehner could read Wittgenstein and Heidegger in the original German and spell out the differences in their conceptions of truth. But one could say that of ALMOST ANY knowledge and skill that might be attained by anyone about anything. Would be nice.
A complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs people who have, beyond the elementary level, quite differing knowledge and skill sets. Beyond the most elementary level, there are many paths by which one can become an accomplished reader, writer, mathematician, creator, and little that is prerequisite FOR ALL PATHS.
In other words, Peter nails it. The Common [sic] Core [sic] was created for the purpose of making possible programmed, adaptive, computerized learning. The Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] are tags.
Step 1 was to radically narrow the goals of education to college and career readiness, which was pulled off by a rather impressive display of chutzpah and rhetorical sleight of hand. It was, to be sure, a very well coordinated rollout.
The research into what “literacy” skills you need to get through freshman level courses used by CC is relatively strong, as such things go, once you’d narrowed the goal of primary and secondary education to getting through your freshman year of college.
They HOPED they’d just be able to use that plus textual complexity to trace the skills backwards and be done with it. It became rather obvious that nobody was buying it, so THEN they hacked some ersatz Hirsch back in, which screws up their basic model.
Actually, this post by the CTO of Smarter Balanced gives a good summary of what they originally had in mind:
http://www.ofthat.com/2013/02/the-common-core-state-standards-for.html
I can judge only by the product they created, which is extraordinarily amateurish. It’s hackneyed and backward, as though a bunch of real estate salespeople got together and made a list of “stuff to study in English class” based on vague memories of what they studied back in the day.
and here
I must say that I don’t see anything remotely like E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s Core Knowledge Sequence in the CC$$ bullet list, which is almost exclusively a list of skills.
Slightly off topic but is this the first domino to fall?
Indiana withdraws from Common Core State Standards:
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/03/25/3418479/indiana-common-core/
A lot of people have been calling for simply rebranding these standards because they have become so toxic. It’s my understanding that the Indiana list is very CC$$like. That’s a great pity. But at least Indiana will be free to adapt its standards going forward and not have education in the state dictated by a distant Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
Bob, that’s what Florida did too — they added a few new standards, like teaching cursive writing in elementary school, and changed the name to the Florida Standards but it’s still the same thing. The state department of education seems to think that the citizens of Florida are too dumb to notice their sleight of hand.
You mentioned above about Hirsch’s Core Knowledge. NYC took the reading program away from Lucy Calkins and her Reading/Writing Workshop and gave it to the Core Knowledge Foundation. The CCSS lessons are supposedly correlated (badly, in the opinion of many who actually teach) with Core Knowledge. I’m not impressed with their “new” reading program at all and most of my experienced colleagues aren’t either, even the ones who taught CK i the past.
Chris, if it were up to me, no states and no federal governments would be dictating standards and curricula and pedagogical practices. They would provide models and recommendations and no more.
The Core Knowledge approach can be very, very exciting. I have seen this first-hand. But I think that it takes a lot of professional development to get people to understanding how to use it and how to run a CK classroom.
The basic concept, which I thoroughly agree with, is this: Contrary to what David Coleman has been saying in video after video, the most important prerequisite, after decoding ability, to successful comprehension is familiarity with the content that is TAKEN FOR GRANTED by the writer or speaker.
Dylan Thomas wrote of “the twelve triangles of the cherub wind.” Now, that line seems impenetrable to most people. But, if you explain to them that old maps used to have little drawings of cherubs on them and that issuing from these cherubs’ mouths were the prevailing winds and that triangles were formed on the maps by the cherubs’ breath, then the line starts to become clear.
Well, almost every passage that a kid encounters is like that. It starts talking about Grant and Lee and the kid doesn’t have any clue who those guys are, or it compares birth to spring and the kid is a city kid in South Florida and doesn’t necessarily associate spring with rebirth, with leaves coming back and calves being born.
So, an essential part of preparing kids to become good readers is to impart to them the common knowledge that writers and speakers take for granted. And that’s what Core Knowledge tries to do. And I have been in those Core Knowledge schools. They are very, very exciting, engaging places because meaty content is engaging, if teachers know how to deal with it. To many, of course, dealing with rich content comes naturally.
There are many misconceptions about Core Knowledge. One is that it is not multicultural. But, in fact, the Core Knowledge Sequences is very, very broad and multicultural. Another is that it is about memorizing facts. This is not true. It’s about becoming familiar with broad lots and lots of related ideas within knowledge domains–about developing substantive understanding and familiarity with weather, seasons, geography, animals, how music is made, ancient cultures. Another is that it takes over the entire curriculum. Hirsch has always said that Core Knowledge should take no more than about half of school time. Another is that kids learning by this means don’t develop skills. Again, not true. Skills are developed in the process of wrestling with interesting content, and they are developed more fully because you can’t think well about what you don’t know about. That’s the fatal flaw in a LOT of current “higher-order thinking skills” instruction–one cannot think in a sophisticated way about anything–chess or violin music or Robert Frost or growing peas–without having a lot of knowledge of it–knowledge of chess, violin music, Robert Frost, peas and soil and fertilizer and so on.
I can’t speak to the actual modules on the New York site. I’ve looked over a few of these, and I saw a lot of problems. But these can be corrected. There’s been much talk here and elsewhere about having second graders learn about Mesopotamia. I would, myself, probably do that topic quite a bit later. But it’s a fascinating, important topic. This is where, in the West, the Neolithic revolution occurred, where civilization began–agriculture, writing, specialization of labor, centralized authority, hierarchies, patriarchy, roads, buildings–a lot, for good and ill, of what we live with today. If I were doing that with second graders, we would be dividing up by caste, planting seedlings and building an irrigation system, building a ziggurat, writing on clay tablets. We would have a BLAST. And we would learn a lot.
Thank you Peter Greene and Bob Shepard. You nailed it!
If you have not already, you need to watch this video published by the US Dept of Ed:
This was filmed at the White House in 2012 during a “Datapalooza” and shows the vision of data collection and data mining in public education. The video is of Jose Ferreira, the CEO of Knewton. Knewton’s largest partners are………get ready for this……..Pearson and Microsoft.
This video helps tie all of the pieces together of a very well thought out strategy that has been in the works for years. A very small number of elite individuals including Gates and Duncan have the vision of revolutionizing global education using a computer based system called Next Generation Learning or Individualized Learning. Some claim it will personalize education. Others claim it will use data mining of powerful, predictive and personal information to profile your child and put them on a predefined educational track. While the benefits seem intriguing at first glance, the risks are simply beyond comprehension if we don’t protect our children’s privacy. All of this is happening without transparency because the elites know parents and teachers would never go for it because it is not proven. Oh, and by the way, Knewton, Pearson and Microsoft all stand to make a lot of money.
Here is their playbook:
1.) Loopholes were added to Federal Education and Privacy Rights Act (FERPA) in 2008/2011 to allow these companies access to student’s personally identifiable information (PII) without a parent’s knowledge or consent in order to “conduct research” or “improve instruction.”
2.) The Common Core national standards provide the tagging structure for the “atomic concept level” data to be gathered in a uniform way.
3.) The national assessments PARCC and Smarter Balance will be aligned to this education taxonomy so that the closer you follow it the higher your scores. Other tests such as the ACT are also being aligned.
4.) The State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) and college entrance will be used to put pressure on teachers, schools, parents and teachers to get the highest possible test scores driving them to the Pearson/Microsoft on-line curriculum that will collect and mine keystroke level data on our children.
5.) Once all of the data analytics and software are developed it will be nearly impossible to get all of the stakeholders to ever agree to revise or upgrade the copyrighted standards.
This EdTech revolution is going to happen one way or another. The question becomes will it happen in a way that empowers individuals or centralizes control in the hands of a few? The answer all depends on how we treat the privacy of our children’s education data. Let’s be clear, FERPA as it stands today is a joke.
This data collection, data mining and data sharing is what inBloom and TS Gold are being built to facilitate. If you are not already familiar with Teaching Strategies Gold (TS Gold) you need to be. This is the next inBloom but it is so much worse. Here is a great blog written by a teacher in Denver to get you started. We must stop the use of TS Gold in our preschool and kindergarten classrooms before it is too late.
http://www.pegwithpen.com/2013/09/do-not-go-for-gold-teaching-strategies.html
This guy talks like a robot! This reminds me of Walden Two and B.F. Skinner from way back in the ’60s. Guys like John Watson and rats in mazes and pigeons in boxes. Yeesh.
Indeed, and let’s not forget that after his academic career was ended by a scandal involving an affair with his graduate assistant, he went into advertising: behaviorism wedded to induced consumerism.
Yup. But the Skinner box is now decked out with smart graphics.
Superb, SF!!!
So I’m in the process of opting my two sons out of the testing, partly because of this data mining, although there are a lot of other reasons as well. My younger son has been no problem. The school accepted his opt out request with no fuss. The school where my older son goes, however, is pushing back. They keep telling us that they will let him opt out, but that he will have to do an “alternative assessment” (whatever that means) and that we will be missing “a lot of good information about what classes he should take next year.” I don’t know if they realize that they won’t get the scores back until this fall (possibly as late as November), or that this is a standard-setting year, so the questions will be all over the map and thus useless for predicting anything, but I refuse to listen to their arguments.
Opt your kids out, everybody! And spread the word!
I agree with the main thrust of this essay. I just wish that we knew more about “The Data Overlords.” Who are these people? What is their motivation?
Atomic Concept???? What planet is this guy on?? Who in their right mind needs to understand everything a child processes every day all day down to the “atomic” level?Can anyone explain to me what the “atomic concept” means? How on earth have we evolved to “need” all this information?
I am sure “we” don’t. Ridiculous. Unless something way more sinister than we can imagine is coming.
I believe that they plan on mapping the electron spin in the carbon atoms of tests takers. By collecting minor fluctuations in spin rate and direction as they respond to test item difficulty, the data gods will be able to predict the most lucrative career path for students.
The idea is that learning can be turned into a bullet list to be mastered. My name for this “atomic concept” is the Powerpointing of U.S. Education.
Not just a bullet list but a bullet list for each individual child with strategies to suit each individual child. It sounds like a lot of “personalized” learning on computers since no teacher can manage a classroom where each student is working on a unique program with unique tools. Obviously the role of the teacher has been downgraded.
No, 2old. One bullet list. It’s personalized only to the extent that a profile of the kid is created detailing which items on the list he or she has not yet mastered.
The point is, at any given moment, to plop the kid down in the correct place in a predetermined matrix with predetermined objectives for all.
The entire CCCS process is an affront to students, their families, educators, and the United States by those who seek to undermine our foundational principles.
Only people with a heinous and disgusting intent would seek to collect and control our students data “fingerprints” for tracking…this must never, ever happen.
The billionaires have been exposed for what they are, as are their “hired progressives” who have embraced them…sellers and buyers in the marketplace to undermine our public education system and control the future of our children…
The time has come for our elected legislators to truly represent the people, to write laws that protect our children and their families…laws that are attached to severe penalties for those who seek to violate the rights of not only our children, our students, but all Americans…for self-serving reasons, to hold accountable those who want to erode our precious democratic values.
Of course this means everyone will have to learn what data they are supposed to attend to in their classroom. I guess I was lucky that I got released before I had to use more than five sets of data to run my classroom.
The Common Core standards (or benchmarks, or whatever you want to call them) carry no weight whatsoever if they are truly “voluntary.”
There is simply no way to achieve what Common Core groupies term the “transformation” of public education without the “data-driven” testing that goes along with it, even if that testing is “delayed” for a short while. Both Randi Weingarten (AFT) and Dennis Van Roekel (NEA) have to know this, and if they do not, then they are inept and should not be leading anything, much less teacher unions. So, when Weingarten, for example, says she now thinks the standards should be “decoupled” from the testing, she’s blowing smoke, and she should be ridiculed and not lauded for it.
But it’s not just the Common Core “data-driven” testing that’s the problem. It’s that so many education “leaders” are going along with it. I had a conversation recently with a person who heads up an ASCD state affiliate who thinks (a) the testing isn’t really a big deal and (b) even if it is (a big deal) it really doesn’t matter.
But it’s even worse, as I noted previously. Both the ACT and the College Board were major players in the development of the Common Core. These two organizations are the college entrance testing behemoths, and both say that their products (the ACT, the PSAT, SAT and Advanced Placement tests) are now “aligned” with the Common Core. Research shows that these “products” are essentially worthless in predicting or ensuring college success. But, does anyone really think that the ACT and SAT and AP are going to become LESS “important?” [Note: they should just be scrapped…but I will not hold my breath.]
It’s as if we were riding in a bus and came to a fork in the road, and had to decide how best to reach our destination. Some of the riders were asleep, some were too focused on their ipods, ipads and smart phones to pay any attention, and some just didn’t care. And while some of the occupants of the bus seemed to know the right turn to take, those closest to the front were the loudest and most connected to the bus company ownership, so they were the most persuasive and the the driver went where they told him to go.
We have traveled pretty darned far down this wrong-turn road. Nobody wants to admit their mistake(s), or their culpability. Those who argued the loudest for the wrong turn have doubled down on their error. Some who went along with it are now whimpering that maybe we shouldn’t have gone this way.
But we are where we are. To get back on track, the bus has to be turned around on a wrong-turn road that’s awfully narrow. And a lot of the passengers on the bus are still asleep, tuned into their technology, or apathetic.
Meanwhile, the bus travels on.
“He loved Big Brother.”
exactly
Wonderful post.
PS; what is at the end of the road?
A sheer drop?
Ironically, what is at the end of that road is a world being created by the oligarchy that even they would not want their grandchildren living in.
http://www.itsbetterupthere.com/site/
Ang,
It all depends on which road is taken. We are on the wrong-turn road, and if wen continue down that path then it seems to me that public education will be diminished, perhaps greatly. More nonsense will ensue…more high-stakes testing, more charters, perhaps vouchers, and more siphoning of public funds to private interests and bank accounts.
If we can get back on the right road, which to me seems increasingly doubtful, then we can make public education more like what people like john Dewey envisioned it to be, and more like how it is practiced in, say, Finland.
But that means giving up stuff like the ACT and the SAT and AP. It means recommitting ourselves and our schools to democratic citizenship, rather than “economic competitiveness.” It means that teachers have to demand real honest-to-goodness leadership. And it certainly means that education pundits have to be honest.
I’m still hopeful…..