Dear Friends,
Today this blog reached the unbelievable number of eleven million page views!
I had no idea this would happen when I wrote the first post on April 26, 2012.
Thank you for reading. More than that, thank you for participating.
Many of you contribute regularly to what must be the liveliest discussion about education on the Internet. I read your comments and pick out some that are the most interesting, the most thoughtful, the most informative, and the most provocative and post them. It may be the same day or weeks later. The important thing is that I have tried to make this blog a place where the voices of parents, students, teachers, principals, and superintendents are heard, unedited.
The rules of the blog are limited and simple. Be civil. Avoid certain four-letter words which I will not print. Do not insult your host. There are plenty of other forums for all of the above. Just not here.
As you know, the blog has a point of view, because I have a point of view. I care passionately about improving the education of all children. I care passionately about showing respect for the dedicated men and women who work hard every day to educate children and help them grow to be healthy, happy human beings with good character and a love of learning. I care passionately about restoring real education and rescuing it from those who have dumbed it down into preparation for the next standardized test. I care passionately about restoring to all children their right to engage in the arts, to play, to dream, to create, to have a childhood and a youth unburdened by fear of tests. I care passionately about protecting the public schools from those who seek to monetize them and use them as a source of profit and power.
I am in my end game. I will fight to the last to defend children, teachers, principals, and public education from the billionaires and politicians who have made a hobby of what is deceptively called “reform.” What is now called “reform,” as the readers of this blog know, is a calculated plan to turn public schools over to amateurs and entrepreneurs, while de imaging the teaching profession to cut costs.
The people who promote the privatization and standardization of public education are the StatusQuo. They include the U.S. Department of Education, the nation’s wealthiest hedge fund managers, and the nation’s largest foundations. They include ALEC, Democrats for Education Reform, Stand on Children, ConnCAN, and a bevy of other organizations eager to transfer public dollars to private organizations. Their stale and failed ideas are the Status Quo. Their ideas have been ascendant for a dozen years. They have failed and failed again, but their money and political power keep them insulated from news of the damage they do to Other People’s Children.
We will defeat them. We will outlast them. Who are we? We are the Resistance. We are parents and grandparents, teachers, and principals, school board members, and scholars. We will not go away. They can buy politicians, but they can’t buy us. They can buy “think tanks,” but they can’t buy us. Public schools are not for sale. Nor are our children. Nor are we.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Congratulations, Diane!
Diane, your passion and caring and intelligence is what is needed. Thanks for all your work. Allan
Well spoken Ms. Ravitch,
Thank you got being an advocate for our children, parents, educators, and all involved who care. Thank you for caring and providing a platform for real discussion and debate over such an important issue.
Thank you for your tireless efforts which have slowly sparked concern from parents and others across the country. There has even been more media attention lately, albeit not the amount that is truly deserved for such an important topic. I am not ever certain we can win this fight, but, like you , I refuse to give up because what we are fighting for is too important. Together, all of us can make a difference.
Posted at CT Mirror, an online Connecticut news publication on government policy
Op-ed: Flawed at the Core
By: ANN POLICELLI CRONIN | March 17, 2014View as “Clean Read”
Allan Taylor, chairman of the Connecticut State Board of Education, said at the legislative hearing on the Common Core (March 12, 2014): “It makes no sense to return to the mediocrity of our prior standards by delaying implementation of the Common Core. … Please don’t make Connecticut go backward.”
I disagree about where mediocrity lies. I have designed numerous middle and high school English curricula for Connecticut’s suburban towns and large cities, using both the Connecticut standards and Common Core standards. I know, without a doubt, that the Connecticut standards are superior to the Common Core because they provide learning experiences that better prepare students for college and the global workforce of the future.
Some would like us to believe that the Common Core standards are fine, and the problem is with teachers’ inability to make changes. That view does not do justice to teachers. I have, through my work, asked hundreds of Connecticut’s veteran teachers to consider new ideas about teaching and learning and invited them to change their practice. They have done so with enthusiasm because they tried those changes and realized their students could grow in new ways. When teachers see student growth, they don’t hesitate to change their practice. Teachers’ resistance to the Common Core is not based on their lack of flexibility but rather on their professional judgment. As Thomas Scarice, Madison Superintendent of Schools, asserted in his letter to legislators, the problem of the Common Core is not one of implementation but one of “substance.”
Op-ed submit bugThe outcry against the Common Core and the accompanying high-stakes tests is building. In New York, which implemented the Common Core last year, 545 principals have written a public statement, objecting to Common Core testing. Twenty-three states currently have pushbacks to the Common Core. Parents have begun an opt-out-of-testing movement. One hundred and thirty Catholic scholars have urged prohibition of the Common Core in parochial schools. Five hundred early childhood educators, pediatricians and professors of child development declared the Common Core harmful to young children. The National Council of Teachers of English declined to endorse the Common Core, expressing concern that 21st century learning-how-to-learn skills are absent from the Common Core although emphasized by other nations. No prep schools, bastions of “college-readiness,” have adopted the Common Core.
ALSO READ
CT’s contentious custody cases: Symptoms of flawed family courts, or outliers?
This is a photo of Mark Sargent of Westport, one of the parents pushing to change the family court system.
Some parents say the striking stories of custody cases gone bad are symptoms of a family court system in need of reform. But others involved in the system say wholesale change could undermine the system’s ability to protect the children caught in the middle.
Just four weeks remain until “Small State, Big Debate: Inequality”
We’re just four weeks away from The Connecticut Mirror’s signature event, Small State, Big Debate: Inequality. You can find registration, speakers and the day’s schedule at the event’s website here. We also featured our speakers last week through video and audio.
What is this ‘substance’ the Common Core lacks?
The Common Core standards were not field-tested. No one really knows if they prepare students for college because they were not created by educators but rather by employees of companies that produce standardized tests. All we know for sure is that what is in the Common Core standards can be assessed on computerized, multiple-choice tests.
The Common Core standards do not prepare students for the global economy of the future in which tasks measured by multiple-choice tests will be accomplished by workers in nations with low pay scales. Our workers will need to know how to problem solve when faced with new situations, how to question, how to be innovative and how to collaborate with people who have diverse backgrounds and belief systems.
The Common Core standards are not developmental. They do not consider the physical, emotional and social stages of growth in children and adolescents in order to maximize their cognitive and intellectual growth.
The Common Core math standards will not lead students to careers in the STEM disciplines because the math taught ends with Algebra II. Those intending to major in a STEM subject in college need additional math in high school. With the emphasis on test scores, many schools will teach to the test, and their students will not have enough math for a STEM major.
The Common Core English standards are based on an outmoded pedagogy prevalent in the 1940s and 50s, which does not prepare students for the world of higher education or work in which they must learn to think complexly by interpreting information in multiple and divergent ways and engaging in narrative thinking and inductive and deductive reasoning.
David Coleman, chief architect of the Common Core English standards, demonstrates a model English lesson in which he teaches Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (YouTube: “Text-dependent Analysis in Action”). In it, Coleman never asks for student engagement, such as asking students what connections they make with King’s experiences, what questions they have about civil disobedience or racial issues, what lines they find the most moving, what word they find the most important, or whether they agree or disagree with the ideas. In fact, in the entire lesson, Coleman never mentions the word racism. He simply transmits information about text structure to passive listeners. Our students don’t need that kind of education. They need to be immersed in reading, discussing and writing — the interactions of a rich literacy environment that promote complex thinking.
How will the Common Core hurt Connecticut?
First of all, all students will not reach their potential as learners and thinkers.
Secondly, the opportunity gap between the state’s most underserved children and its most privileged children will widen. Many schools attended by privileged students will work around the Common Core, addressing some standards, paying lip service to others and enriching their classes by what they add to them. Other schools, attended by underserved students, however, are under pressure to close the “achievement gap,” which means only one thing: getting higher test scores. The teachers in these schools will teach to the test in hopes of increasing test scores. Already disadvantaged students will receive an education not equal to their more affluent peers, and many of them will drop out of school, unable to “pass the test.”
So what are we to do?
First: Stop the madness. As parents, educators and citizens of Connecticut, reject the Common Core, based on its lack of substance.
Then:
Create new national standards, in an open and transparent way, written by those who know how to teach, with the goal of developing students’ minds and promoting their achievement as complex thinkers and motivated learners.
Insist that the conversation about standards begin with early childhood professionals. Determine what is the best that kindergarteners can do and then figure out how to teach all kids to do that. Move on to Grade 1, then Grade 2….. Ultimately, students in Grade 12 will exceed all expectations we currently have for them. Guaranteed!
Disengage standards from high-stakes testing; standardized tests always correlate with family income, and we already know well enough the Connecticut story of the haves and have-nots.
Use the millions to be spent on testing to reduce class size, offer enrichment programs, and provide mentoring; give our students, disadvantaged by poverty and/or racism, the benefits their more privileged peers have.
These recommendations are a far cry from the suggestion made by Patti Fusco, a West Haven teacher on the committee charged with improving the rollout of Common Core. She said: “We are going to roll up our sleeves and fix the problem. … Any new thing needs to be tweaked.”
Patti Fusco is wrong. The Common Core standards do not need “tweaking.” They are terribly flawed and must go. That is how we, as a state, will move forward.
Ann Policelli Cronin taught middle and high school English, was English curriculum leader for school districts, taught university courses in English education, was assistant director of the Connecticut Writing Project, and is currently a consultant for English education to school districts and university schools of education. She was named Connecticut Outstanding English Teacher of the Year and has received national awards for middle and high school curricula she designed and implemented.
Bravo. Your honest voice is so important.
Posted in CT Mirror, an online publication for public policy
Op-ed: Foul shots in the classroom: A Fable
By: ANN POLICELLI CRONIN | March 31, 2014View as “Clean Read”
Imagine…
The NCAA Basketball Championship is based solely on free-throw shooting. Team practices are spent doing repetitive exercises of shooting from the foul line. All college players take the same free-throw shooting test. Their scores determine the excellence of the team, expertise of the coach and quality of the school. The team with the highest score becomes the national champion.
As a result of this new competition, the game of basketball is lost. The game, in which quick thinking, collaborative efforts and a whole array of athletic abilities are integral to the success of a team, is not played. The players begin to forget what it was to play 40 minutes of basketball. The coaches stop thinking about ways to develop talents of individual players and stop strategizing about how to make the team as a whole more successful. The fans forget about that long-ago game of basketball and enthusiastically cheer for their favorite foul shooters and compare them to foul shooters on other teams and in other countries.
Op-ed submit bugCritics say that free-throw shooting is a simple skill and won’t prepare the college players for the basketball played in the NBA or WNBA. They also say that free-throw testing was chosen to replace playing games because the NCAA commissioned people in the test-making business to make that decision.
ALSO READ
Op-Ed: Connecticut must stay the course on Common Core
Common Core emphasizes authentic comprehension. In the past, students could depend on memorization to pass an upcoming test, then forget the procedures afterwards; yet they’d need to relearn the material in the following years.
Common Core debate heading to state Capitol complex Wednesday
Legislators will get to hear feedback on the rollout of the Common Core Curriculum Wednesday during a public hearing at the state Capitol complex. The noon event is the result of a move by Republican minority legislators to force the reluctant leaders of the Education Committee to hold a hearing on the bill that would put implementation of the state’s new academic standards on hold.
If this scenario were real, there would be quite an outcry…
But something scarier is happening in public school classrooms due to the Common Core State Standards. At stake there is not the game of basketball, but the development of students as thoughtful, engaged readers and effective writers. The Common Core requires the teaching of 200 narrow skills each year. Such skills will never foster students’ growth as readers and writers. The Common Core keeps students on the foul line, practicing limited skills.
In high school English classes, teaching Common Core skills in preparation for the accompanying test means that students are not asked to create meaning as they read, to think divergently and innovatively, nor learn a variety of ways to express their ideas orally and in writing. Instead, learning the isolated skills of the Common Core will keep students at the rudimentary level of simply finding information as they read and writing in a prescribed formula without any personal investment or even their personal voice.
Teachers of literature in love with ideas must be quiet. Teachers whose satisfaction is helping their students grow as thinkers by immersing them in reading and writing must be quiet. They must spend time at the foul line, urging their students to sink more shots, urging them to get higher and higher scores on tests that classify and rank them compared to other test-takers.
Executives of testing companies designed the Common Core. They wrote standards with skills that are measurable on computerized tests. Those skills are far too small a definition of literacy just as free-throw shooting is far too small a definition of playing basketball. We could benefit from authentic standards, written by those who know how to teach and not measured by computerized tests. Unfortunately, the Common Core committee didn’t have one English teacher in love with ideas on it, not one coach who knows the game.
A foul shooting test will never determine the NCAA championship because of the reality facing college players: The NBA and WNBA await. That world of professional sports demands experience in playing the whole game of basketball. Similarly, the world of higher education and the global workplace await current public school students. That world demands that graduates excel in the complex thinking that a rich literacy environment teaches.
College basketball players certainly will not spend the season just practicing free-throw shooting; instead, they will work at becoming accomplished and strategic basketball players. How our children, our students, our future citizens and leaders, spend their season, their school year, however, is up for grabs. They will spend it either preparing for Common Core tests or spend it becoming thoughtful readers, effective writers and complex thinkers. They can’t have it both ways.
What will we as parents, educators and taxpayers choose for them? It is our call. The time for our voice and our action in opposition to the Common Core is now.
Ann Policelli Cronin taught middle and high school English, was English curriculum leader for school districts, taught university courses in English education, was assistant director of the Connecticut Writing Project and is currently a consultant for English education for school districts and university schools of education. She was named Connecticut Outstanding English Teacher of the Year and has received national awards for middle and high school programs she designed and implemented.
Reply to Anne Cronin
Everything you say is exactly so, especially “Some would like us to believe that the Common Core standards are fine, and the problem is with teachers’ inability to make changes. That view does not do justice to teachers.”
They wouldn’t blame doctors at a hospital if they refused to follow mandates that are anti-health. They wouldn’t condemn scientists who refused to alter best practice that was guided by real science, but they blame teachers when top-down administrators institute anti-learning curricula that does nothing to enable learning… and it is ALL ABOUT LEARNING, not teaching and teachers…. that narrative is the spin of the profiteers who wish to sell magic elixirs to replace genuine best practice.
If you have not seen the superb Grassroots movie “an Inconvenient Truth About Waiting of Superman, you should watch it
It shows how the assault on the professional in the classroom began in NYC. I experienced this war on teachers just as I reached th pinnacle of my success as a cohort for he Pew Funded National Standards and the recipient of the NY State English Council (NYSEC) Educator of Excellence award. By every measure of excellence I was outstanding, but I had to be made to leave if test-prep was to be the mandate.
One last thing, I am renovating a back room which contained boxes from floor to ceiling, of the materials that informed my practice for four decades.
Here are wonderful books on methodology and the philosophy of best practice —the how to enable learning books–; the curricula I planned and wrote, the literature and poetry texts and the materials I generated for the children. AND copies of the student writing that I collected for class use and for the standards research.
But first and foremost in this collection was the syllabi… the state and city booklets… YES, SMALL MANUALS… that listed the OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES that were expected for each grade, in each subject.
I have them all, and not one of them directs the teacher to use specific materials, lessons or methods… LWBA (Learner Will Be Able to…. fill in the verb. LWBA to summarize. LWBA to spell… LWBA TO COMPARE AND CONTRAST… LWBA to write an organized paragraph, essay etc.
As the professional practitioner, I chose the books, the lessons, and it was I who assessed and evaluated performance ALL YEAR in order to plan for the different learning styles of the human brains which were the ‘kids’ in my classroom, the emergent LEARNERS in my practice — MY PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE… I hold two degrees and the equivalent of 3 more.
What struck me as — I wandered through a lifetime of charts and visual aids, of lesson plans and work that demonstrated the success of student outcomes, was that in none of my classrooms — was the absence of any commands/mandates on how to teach or what to use.
In fact, in all but one, I barely had a functioning room, or a set of books. I literally created an purchased everything I used, and at the end of the year, the children and there parents were exuberant. One letter I found last week, from a parent brought tears to my eyes… It told how her son hated school in September and now, in June, didn’t want the school year to end. I have hundreds of letters like that… but in the end, as I was one of six chosen ( from thousands studied by the LRDC standards research teams) to have met every rubric for the GENUINE standards, I was charged in NYC of INCOMPETENCE by a single superintendent who was allowed to ‘document’ my incompetence against her own, personal, subjective criteria.
You can read my articles about education reform at my author’s page at http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
Again, Anne, you are exactly correct in your assessment of what went wrong, and all I can add is that this was no accident. It was planned and implemented… a process and a media spin that removed the voice of the practitioner so public education would collapse and it could be privatized. The bonus of the collapse was not merely the profits for corporations, but the creation of an ignorant population who would be unable to separate propaganda form truth, or know what history actually taught us about he creation of our Constitution.
You are a tireless advocate for what is right and good about children and teaching and teachers. You have shown us the evidence of what is going on that is wrong for our schools and children. Thank you very much for your work and expertise and brilliance. Is change important? Yes. But what and how and when and where? And who decides? Programs that harm children such as those with direct instruction in Kindergarten that deny free play time are simply wrong. Those that claim to help children by turning them into robotic Stepford Students do not recognize or celebrate what is unique to our humanity and potential. These are very scary times indeed and thank you, Diane, for leading the charge to bring clarity and change. This blog is a huge help, a clearing house for sharing vital information. Today, April 1, I head into a friend’s classroom where I used to teach to do some poetry this afternoon. This morning they will have taken the state ELA tests. When we recite some poems together and enjoy the words and ideas, talk about what the poems mean to us and simply enjoy the activity, I know I will have spent my day wisely. This kind of joyful learning that matches natural learning is far better than sitting in isolation filling in circles to answer convoluted questions on a high stakes test. Or clapping in unison reciting rule 1 or 2 or whatever. Houses built on foundations of sand inevitably will collapse.
My congratulations to you on yet another readership milestone, Diane. I will be grateful forever for the work you’ve done.
No April Fools Day joke here.
Thanks, Diane!
Some of our legislators are becoming agitated with you/us- this is good news! Yesterday, a high powered legislator claimed that your argument regarding ANSI/ Common Core was false because the Governor’s Association vetted Common Core.
This is NOT an April Fools’s Day trick, either. Carry on.
Thank you, Diane, for giving teachers a place to unite. You filled a huge void left by the two main teachers’ associations which should have stood up for us, but didn’t.
Please take good care of yourself. You are so needed.
Congratulations, Diane,
Facing scathing criticism from the tech industry about a new product, a Microsoft corporate vice-president had the revelation, on the Microsoft official blog, “Unlike a can of soda, a computer operating system offers different experiences to different customers to meet divergent needs…”
(Techradar, Chris Smith, 5/12/2013, “Microsoft Fights Back, says Windows 8 changes aren’t admitting failure”.
And, at the How-to Geek site, “Goodbye Microsoft Security Essentials…” , they conclude…”(based on) Microsoft Security Essentials’ history of worsening test scores…(and) all of the stories we’ve heard about it failing people in the real world, and (the company’s) inconsistent communication, we don’t feel we can recommend MSE anymore.” They also said, “MSE was in last place in protection among all products tested, by AV-TEST. The score was so low that it lost its AV-Test certification. In June 2013. it received a zero… the lowest score possible. …When it came to malware protection, it tested below every other antivirus program tested.”
Instead of educators on the defense, Common Core discussions should be about the track record of Microsoft product failures.
TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED.
The symmetry of two ones followed by six zeros in less than two appeals to me.
So please excuse a bit of long-winded impertinence about how I view this blog.
DO NOT TAKE FOR GRANTED: “Diane Ravitch’s Blog A site to discuss better education for all.” 75 may be the new 45, but remember that Michelle Rhee literally is 44 years old and has a real staff of 120 and Diane Ravitch has a fictional staff of 92. Diane does it herself [with very occasional help from others]. A sterling contrast between the impersonal [and often fictional] accountability of those pushing eduproduct and genuine personal responsibility.
DO NOT TAKE FOR GRANTED: the commenters on this blog. With apologies in advance to many others, where would we be without at least an occasional mention of Noel Wilson by Duane Swacker, or a take down of the CCSS curricular bullet lists by Bob Shepherd, or Chiara Duggan’s detailed breakdown of the latest shenanigans [and worse] of the charterite/privatizer movement? Not to mention the pointed and revealing comments of Dienne, 2old2tch, chemtchr, Linda…and the beat goes on.
DO NOT TAKE FOR GRANTED: that some ‘stage’ in the discussion about a “better education for all” has been completed. Ensuring that every parent has the option of sending their child to a well-resourced neighborhood public school is truly the “never-ending story.” Just like the classroom, there are folks that have been in the thick of the discussion [and activism] for a while and those just joining in. That’s what genuine learning and teaching is all about—and it should never have an end point.
DO NOT TAKE FOR GRANTED: that there’s only one way to ensure a “better education for all.” Agree and act together where we can, disagree and go our separate ways where we must, but never give in to one of the fundamental principles of the charterite/privatization movement: contempt. Diversity of thought and action is a plus, not a minus, from the NPE conference and blogs and informal discussions to opt out and strikes and demonstrations.
I end with a simple reminder. This blog is Diane’s virtual living room. She didn’t have to invite us in. We don’t have to stay. Let’s make the most of her generous offer to join in a wide-ranging conversation—and perhaps more—knowing that two twos followed by six zeros is within her, and our, reach. And that one person, armed with powerful ideas, can make a difference by bringing people together:
“A decent boldness ever meets with friends.” [Homer]
Perhaps the old dead Greek guy knew someone like the owner of this blog?
😎
Ang: after all the times you’ve treated me at Pink Slip Bar & Grille…
Maybe I left you out because lately I have been preoccupied with Socrates. He’s usually quite level headed but ever since he learned he was taking the CC tests he’s keeps muttering under his breath about “hitting the hemlock again.” Although I think he brightened up when I mentioned Opt Out…
😏
Please keep posting. I’ll keep reading.
😎
This site offers HOPE/truth I can believe in, Thank you Diane for speaking truth to power.
Thank you Diane!
Thank you for helping to inform the masses and reassuring me that we will win!!!
Down the Rabbit Hole with PARCC.
It’s taken me a while to begin to wrap my head around what’s really going on with PARCC and what makes it so absolutely wrong, but standing in the hall after school today talking to some fellow teachers I think got a glimpse. As we discussed the inappropriateness of the exams for our students, it occurred to me that actually it all makes perfect sense if your goal is to generate the most data that you possibly can. If you believe that, given enough data, you can predict human behavior, environmental, societal and other factors, and all the infinite variables of existence to a degree that mimics reality, of course you would want the most data that you could get. And you become obsessed with data. And eventually you lose track of what you initially were hoping to measure. It becomes data for data’s sake. And soon it has absolutely nothing to do with education, students, or anything human. And as you disappear further and further down the rabbit hole, you can’t understand why nobody gets it but you. The reason we don’t “get it” is that IT MAKES NO SENSE. You have become lost in your neverending quest for data. You are delusional. And you must be stopped
As along-time worker in arts education aware of so many “silences” and “cut-backs” I am especially grateful for your consistent and powerful endorcements for studies and experience in the arts for all students.
Thank you for your dedication, and your ability to discuss the issues and call those to account who need to be called to account, REGARDLESS of their political affiliation. Politically speaking, I am your opposite, BUT it is here where we all come together to fight for our children and our teachers. I am the daughter of two career public educators, the wife of a current public high school associate principal, the PTO president of a local elementary school, a Comp I teacher at a community college, and (most importantly) the mom of four children (who attend public school). There are days I am beyond frustrated with everything and just want to ignore it all, but your blogposts encourage me to keep up the fight. That it is working. That it is WORTH it.
I am resigning my PTO presidency at the end of this year, so that I can fight the fight even more. I don’t feel that I can do that while in a leadership position at the school. So next year, I WILL opt my kids out. Next year, I will be encouraging others to follow my lead.
Hat TIP! HOORAY.
Truly amazing. Your voice and message is being heard. I would like to add that what the “others” children have in their private school setting, I want for ALL children. I am not for taking anything away from them, just want to see that kind of education, opportunities to discover, explore and learn without the fear of THE TEST be available. I know what that looks like and want it for all.
Thank you, Diane! From Montana
Hi everyone,
I’d like to share a talk I recently gave to the School Board of Palm Beach County, FL about the excessive testing going on in our public schools and who is profiting by it.