This is an interesting documentary on the Common Core, featuring some of its strongest supporters at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (as well as guest cameos by Jeb Bush and Bill Gates) and some of its strongest critics, notably Sandra Stotsky and James Milgram, both of whom served on the “validation committee,” but refused to sign off on the standards. It was produced by the Home School Legal Defense Association (represented by Mike Farris). So far as I know, home schoolers are not bound to abide by the Common Core standards, although they may need them if they take the SAT or the ACT.
The documentary makes two very provocative points about Common Core.
One is a civic critique of the undemocratic way in which the Common Core standards were written: by a small committee that included no classroom teachers, no specialists in early childhood education or in the teaching of children with disabilities or of children who are English language learners, and no working teachers of the subjects at issue. Customarily it takes two, there, or four years to wire state standards, because of the need to hear from different constituencies, especially those that are knowledgeable and directly affected. The Common Core standards were written in a year and adopted by 45 or 46 states in a year, because of the lure of $4.35 billion in federal dollars. The process was speedy and efficient, but it was not democratic. The absence of a democratic process has fed distrust, which in turn has created an angry backlash. The documentary has a few poignant moments about how democracy works. The writers of the Common Core would have benefited immensely by a reminder of what democracy means and how it should work.
The second interesting point that the film raises is whether a single set of national standards can meet the needs of both college-ready and career-ready. Some people complain that the standards are too hard, others complain that they are too easy. This is a contradiction at the heart of the CCSS.
There has been a conscious effort to say that “the train has left the station,” but that’s not a good enough reason to jump aboard (how do you jump aboard a train that has already left the station anyhow?).
First, you want to be sure that the train is going where you want to go. Second, be careful about who is driving the train.
I, for one, am not convinced that the train has left the station. I see more indications every day that the promoters of Common Core are getting desperate because of the negative public reaction. There is a palpable sense that the public can’t figure out how we got national standards in the absence of any democratic discussion about their pluses and minuses. And so we have Gates and newspaper editorials and television advertising and other promotional activities to sell us on something that not many people understand.
Nope, the train is still in the station, and a lot of parents and teachers need to be convinced and a lot of revisions need to be made before this train goes anywhere. This will be hard because it seems that the engineer, the conductor, and the crew have moved on to other jobs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here in Ohio, the Dispatch ran a frantic editorial arguing for testing and “accountability” as part of CCSS. They quoted Fordham trying to shame parents by equating opt out with failing to vaccinate students. It was interesting seeing a very conservative newspaper argue parents should not have the right to raise their own children.
The Reformers and corporate backers hate democracy. It gets in the way of their end game.
The Fordham Institute has been pushing “parental choice” in school for 20 years on Ohio. Now that doesn’t apply? Now they’re using a “commons” argument for testing?
I thought it was “my child, my choice”?
I’m also amused at this sudden rush of attention to public schools during the testing period. Public schools have been completely abandoned by lawmakers, pundits and media unless they’re using them as a punching bag. All of a sudden our “failing schools” are crucial when they’re testing our kids and collecting data, and it’s a team effort and they’re all about “support”.
I don’t think Fordham and the Dispatch even see their hypocrisy. And if they did, they wouldn’t care. The Dispatch is purely anti-teacher and anti-schools to keep taxes low for Columbus’ elite. The zeal in their reporters during the attendance problems bordered on hysteria and a witch hunt. Yet Kasich and his cronies are given a pass on JobsOhio and Kvame’s cozy relationship with OSU. Voters are asleep.
Insightful. Has Fordham been willing to identify its funders, yet?
It’s a single quote from Fordham and then a hectoring lecture to parents.
I plan to watch the ed reform/media reaction to the CC test scores. If they’re used to bash, punish or otherwise harm public schools I’ll opt my son out in a minute. I was assured repeatedly by ed reformers in media that CC testing is not about punishing teachers and public schools. I’ll see if they’re sincere this time. I need a way to hold THEM accountable. They have a tendency to go absolutely insane when presented with a test score to use as a hammer. We’ll see if they can drop the weapon, and resist the urge to push an agenda with these scores. I’m skeptical, and that’s rational. I’ve been watching this for 15 years.
If public schools (and kids) went along with this massive experiment in good faith and they are then punished for that, that’s a betrayal of trust.
The Plutocrats who backed these standards are conducting an all-out PR war to try to save them. They need their national bullet list for their business plan.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
Looks like Virginia is cutting down on state tests- I recognize these are not CC tests:
“That is poised to change next year. A bill passed in Richmond last month and signed by the governor Friday cuts the number of standardized tests that third-graders take in half, eliminating the social studies and science tests.
The bill, which had overwhelming support from lawmakers and statewide education groups, represents a significant departure from the test-based accountability system the state has built up over two decades. It eliminates five tests in elementary and middle school, reducing the total number from 22 to 17. Instead, school districts will be required to develop alternative assessments that are project-based to show that students are learning the same material.
The new law responds to a growing outcry from educators and parents across the state — and the country — that students are being overtested and that standardized tests are being used inappropriately and unfairly to evaluate schools and teachers.”
We’re still testing like crazy in Ohio. My son just tested a new science test last week 🙂
I’d like to see some accountability from the accountability people on over-testing. How did it happen that Virginia ended up with 22 standardized tests from 3rd grade to 8th grade? Can they explain how “accountability” went so awry? What factors drove that craziness? Lobbyists? Just kind of a herd effect, where it was fashionable to yammer about “accountability” so they tested more every year?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/virginia-students-will-take-fewer-standards-of-learning-tests-next-year/2014/04/05/eea18666-bb46-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html
I call it “Arne Duncan’s Virginia.”
Btw, their Governor also figured out that grading schools on an A-F basis only serves to hurt communities (kind of hard to sell a house in a neighborhood with F-schools).
Good for Virginia.
Chiara, this isn’t actual progress at all:
“It eliminates five tests in elementary and middle school, reducing the total number from 22 to 17. Instead, school districts will be REQUIRED to develop alternative assessments that are project-based to SHOW that students are learning the same material.”
My caps. This is wrong because there is no educational need for any legislated testing schedule AT ALL. Punishment is the purpose of any “accountability” legislation, by its very definition, and the punishment of children and schools keeps them a captive market for data-driven corporate products.
If we won’t take up the core question of legislated “accountability”, the lobbyists and their insatiable corporate bosses will continue eating our children. The “project based assessments” turn out to be a site on Mahara where children are required to upload “evidence” to the data-gods in the sky, as part of a multiple measures charade. It’s torment, it removes all agency from the kids and teachers, and it makes fourteen year olds cry, and the cut scores on the tests still determine everybody’s fate.
Are we suckers here, or what?
I had the same reaction, Chemtchr. On what basis am I to believe that a legislature has the knowledge or the right to dictate how each school district assesses their students?
C-Span is featuring the Thomas B. Fordham’s Petrilli now (Thursday morning) supporting CC, if people would like to call and comment or tweet.
What many also see is that many of the trains are really going to the same places using the same routes, places and routes that weren’t too attractive in the first place.
For all the commotion from Fordham and Duncan and Gates, CCSS revolutionizes nothing, just apparently standardizes and institutionalizes their status quo.
However, those who oppose CCSS need to acknowledge that there really are schools, districts, and teachers who have embraced from the bottom up, what they have found good in the standards and practices, who have used them as an excuse to do things differently and even better. Ignore the tests and that’s possible.
Just as we say “one size doesn’t fit all”, the opposition can’t be “one size fits all”.
This is not a zero sum game as some would make it.
Peter Smyth, you claim,
“However, those who oppose CCSS need to acknowledge that there really are schools, districts, and teachers who have embraced from the bottom up, what they have found good in the standards and practices, who have used them as an excuse to do things differently and even better. ”
No, there aren’t. You’re making that up. We do have well paid consultants, and a cohort of TFA kids who are unburdened by any sense of professional competence whatsoever. With their life experience of success at fulfilling authoritarian expectations, they have no equipment to question the top-down approval that beams down on them when they comply. That are the primary consumers of this drivel.
Whether they’re “hard” or “easy”, the CCSS demand that instruction be warped to a model of that can spin out a page of empty formulaic bullshit in response to a set of proprietary stimulus commands (the PARCC testing vocabulary that now trumps all subject content). I say again, empty: hollow, void of meaning, constructed to feed a machine.
So, non-educators were assigned by the administration to promote the CCSS, and they do work on committees to write pages and pages of gibberish rubrics which the administration’s “coach” and consultants foist off as teacher input.
Do you work in that industry?
“the CCSS demand that instruction be warped to a model of that can spin out a page of empty formulaic bullshit in response to a set of proprietary stimulus commands (the PARCC testing vocabulary that now trumps all subject content).”
THAT statement sums up exactly what I think the consequences of these “standards” have been, and I have seen these consequences in lesson after lesson, program after program, developed in response to the CC$$–in hundreds of them.
TFA kids who are unburdened by any sense of professional competence whatsoever.
TAGO!
just apparently standardizes and institutionalizes their status quo”
YUP
Washington Journal: Parents line, 202-585-3880 Teachers line, 202-585-3881
all others 202-585-3882
The movie correctly states that all children are affected, both in public and private schools. Private schools, including those that don’t accept vouchers, are under pressure to “prove” that they are good schools by doing more standardized testing even though they know that it doesn’t help the students or the teachers. Public Montessori teachers are stuck in a bad position of trying to create a Montessori classroom while having to fulfill all of the requirements placed on them by the district and state.
Because everything is being aligned to Common Core, any of the new curriculum books that I have ordered for my class are geared for test prep or answering questions in a certain format. They are too scripted and written following what I call “the Common Core formula.” There is less of a choice in curriculum available to teachers in private and public schools as well as home schoolers.
I am fortunate to be a private school teacher who can make the choice to participate or not participate in Common Core and testing. If I thought that it would help my students, I would do this. If I thought that it would help me as a teacher, I would do this. I believe that most teachers would make the choice based not on politics, or power, or profit but what would be in the best interest of their students.
I have a choice in the matter but how can the people in charge of educational policy in our country proclaim “choice” when in reality, the choice has been eliminated at the most basic level in the relationship between the student, teacher, and parent?
Petrilli just said that charter schools outperform public schools.
Of course he did. Raise your hand if you believe ed reform professionals WON’T use the CC tests to bash public schools and push a privatization political agenda.
I think it’s a betrayal of trust to have millions of kids taking these tests and thousands of public schools and teachers administering these tests, when the tests will be used by political actors as ammunition to bash them.
Thank you so much for this summation. My son is entering Kindergarten this fall in Connecticut and he is my only child. I have yet to hear anything good about Common Core from any other parents or teachers in my community. I dread what it is in store for my son.
Please look into the opt out movement!
It seems odd to me that the fellow commonly described as the “architect” of the standards, David Coleman, studied philosophy, for the characteristic move of the philosopher is to stop back from the immediate and to ask fundamental questions about it in order to gain insight into what is being thought and done, and since the linguistic turn in Western philosophy at the beginning of the last century, that activity has typically involved looking closely at the language that we are using—at our definitions, for example—to see if what people think mean by those terms—what uses they put them to and what the consequences of those uses are.
So, let’s step back for a moment and have a look at the term “standards,” as it is being employed to describe what is in the Common Core. If one were going to describe the ELA standards as they currently exist, then they seem to be
1. an atomized list of outcomes to be measured
2. in each domain, or area of the English language arts;
3. conceived of as providing a map, by grade level, of what students need to learn
4. in order to graduate college and career ready;
5. formulated as statements of generalized, abstract skills;
6. with a few (very few content items add)
7. and a few added generalizations about broad swaths of the English language arts (e.g., reading: read closely).
I’m not going to go into detail here, for that would take an enormous amount of time, but let me give you a few highlights of a critique of this conceptualization:
1. The various domains and activities within and across domains in the English language arts are incommensurate; their measureable outcomes cannot be formulated in the identical ways, using the same category of utterance (a statement of a generalized, abstract skill).
2. Attainment in the English language arts involves a lot more than acquisition of “skills.” It involves both world knowledge (knowledge of what) and procedural knowledge (knowledge of how). Standards formulated as abstract skills grotesquely distort ELA by focusing almost exclusively on the former AND by not operationalizing the latter.
3. There are MANY, MANY DIFFERING sets of knowledge and skills, in each of these domains, that make up the attainments of a capable graduate. There is no SINGLE PATH, and attempting to describe ONE PATH DRAMATICALLY RESTRICTS the possibilities—the possibilities for innovative, valuable instruction. It draws a boundary in the vast possible design space of curricula and pedagogy and says, anything outside this is forbidden, and that prior restraint on curricular and pedagogical innovation is disastrous.
4. For almost any given topic on the bullet list, there are going to be, and in fact are, other, alternative formulations, that are a) more scientific, b) more in keeping with best practices in the teaching of English, c) more imaginative, d) more valuable, and e) more informed by scholarship and research than are the ones prepared by this particular group, so a list conceived as this one does narrows and distorts pedagogy and curricula, leads to invalid assessment, and dramatically restricts the possible application of new understandings developed by the practitioner, research, and scholarly communities.
5. Many attainments in ELA that constitute the knowledge and skill sets in ELA are not explicitly learned but are, rather, implicitly acquired, and formulating descriptions of those as explicitly learned misconceives these fundamentally and so leads to extraordinarily misconceived, counterproductive curricula and pedagogy and to invalid assessment not in keeping with what is known and how (with the type of knowledge to be assessed). So, the standards, as conceived, misconceive many of the domains at the most fundamental level—at the level of what is to be described and measured.
6. It makes no sense at all to have ONE SET of BOTH college- and career-ready standards. What people need to know and to be able to do differs from one of these groups to the other, on average, and for either group, there are many, many possible paths, not one. Kids differ, and a complex, pluralistic society like ours needs to have those differing proclivities and abilities recognized and built upon so that people can develop in vastly varying ways. It’s fundamentally wrong to attempt a one-size-fits-all approach. The last thing that we need is to have our schools turned into factories for the identical milling of outputs.
That list just scratches the surface. There are many, many more problems that I haven’t the space to go into in a short post like this. The particular generalizations attached to these standards (read complex texts; read them closely) make major, unexamined, highly dubious assumptions, and no real vetting process was followed to solicit and apply critiques of those assumptions.
These “standards” are dangerous.
They misconceive the English language arts in dramatic ways. In particular areas, for particular learnings, again and again, the standard is misconceived at its most fundamental level, at the level of its categorical conceptualization.
They narrow and distort and so lead to really backward curricula and pedagogy and to invalid assessment. They are an egregious prior restraint on curricular and pedagogical development that ossifies and stops innovation cold.
They put round kids and round topics of study into square holes. They are inflexible and do not work for particular curricula and particular kids and particular desired outcomes. They specify one path where there should be many.
They are often backward, hackneyed, prescientific, unimaginative, puerile, and describe outcomes not as valuable as any of a great number of alternative, related standards might.
Andy, one could drive whole curricula through the lacunae in these “standards.
The creation of national standards is a profoundly consequential undertaking. These “standards” overrule every teacher, curriculum developer, and curriculum coordinator in the country and render moot the knowledge and discoveries of the entire community of ELA practitioners, researchers, scholars, and curriculum developers.
They were prepared heedlessly by amateurs, and thatshows in almost every line of them.
cx: “the characteristic move of the philosopher is to STEP back”
Dear David: As it stands, this list would get a D-. There is much, much that you have to learn before attempting something this grand. Perhaps you might go teach for a time. Please see me after class. I have a long reading list for you.
P.S. I know how we got here. The Plutocrats wanted, quickly, a national bullet list to tag their assessments and software to. And so they rushed this. They paid for and got a hack job based on an uncritical review of the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the state standards that preceded these “standards.”
What a tragedy for our nation.
Please forgive the many typos in my hasty note, above. I wish WordPress had an edit feature.
Years ago when we were working so hard to improve curriculum and teaching techniques we said “if you don’t know where you are going, how do you know when you have arrived?”
But
politicians always know more than the people who study problems. Look at climate change for example. Scientists spend their professional lives studying the problem. The politicians who wish to make a buck or two know more than they do.
Education is in the same boat. Don’t confuse me with facts, I have already made up my mind.
It’s horrific how far backward these “standards” take us in domain after domain. There is much that was very exciting being developed in curricula and in pedagogical approaches in ELA that is now dead in the water. For example, this whole standards-and-testing movement, since NCLB, has stopped the writing process/writing workshop movement cold. In school after school across the country, what’s now taught is InstaWriting for the Test Grade 3, InstaWriting for the Test Grade 4, InstaWriting for the Test Grade 5, . . . and so on. And the same is true in all the other domains. Dramatic, dramatic, stultifying distortions.
Ecologies are far healthier than are monocultures.
The whole standards-and-testing movement is based in ignorance.
Robert,
Could you discuss how traditional neighborhood public schools move us away from a monoculture? In particular, how will a local school board justify sending students on the 500 block of a street to school A and sending students on the 600 block of a street to a very different school B?
Because in those schools, TE, unique, autonomous teachers do unique, autonomous work with unique kids, and there are different tracks for those kids to follow. This was true in the school system of the town I went to middle school and high school in, which had only about 70,000 residents at the time. How much more true it is in a day when we can offer very varied virtual programs to supplement the in-school ones.
You see every zoned school having to provide every track or would you drop the zones and have students go to the school that has the track that bests suits those individual needs?
Autonomous teachers and administrators can tailor what they do to the needs of their kids and their communities. and we can have schools within schools.
TE, if that small community can support several charter schools and private schools in addition to its public schools, then it can support several schools within schools (unique programs) within its regular public school system.
I think your right that communities can support choice programs. I often defend choice programs against concerns that they cherry pick students or destroy neighborhood cohesion.
Given that, TE, I don’t really see the point you are making, unless that point is to require the public school system to have more varied offerings, which I definitely favor, though it’s often the case, already, that they do.
There was a time, TE, when we didn’t have the feds, nor did we have the states, nor did we even have the districts micromanaging classrooms. ALL THIS MONEY AND ENERGY SPENT TO MICROMANAGE THOSE CLASSROOMS HAS BEEN ENTIRELY WASTED. NO IMPROVEMENT HAS COME OF IT, and much has been lost, much personalization.
Much of what happens when autonomous individuals make their own decisions. What happens in such circumstances? People rise to the occasion. They choose texts they really care about. They take responsibility for their students’ learning. They act like professionals instead of like the hired help.
We have debased the profession of teacher in the United States.
I thought you might like these student blog posts bout what students do. http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_ahead/student-voices-what-teachers-really-do/?cmp=ENL-TU-NEWS1
Brigid Finucane
Thanks for the link. Students get it.
One thing I find very telling about the HSLDA documentary is that (as Diane notes), the filmmakers actually reached out and allowed Common Core proponents to have their say. How many times have those on the other side ever even acknowledged that there is a valid anti-CCSS argument to be made, much less actually provided a forum for the airing of our comments?
The takeaway: One side is confident in its argument, whereas the other feels it can only win by shutting down the discussion.
Never. The answer is, never.
Not once has a major newspaper or one of these groups pushing what they are, absurdly, calling “standards,” invited a truly knowledgeable opponent to present the opposing arguments.
The Thomas B. Fordham doublethink tank, for example, holds a lot of panel discussion with “real teachers”–a couple of handpicked stooges who will parrot the party line of the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth (CCCCMiniTru).
A post I wrote earlier today in response to a NYTimes column by Gail Collins addresses the issue of our corroding local democracy: http://waynegersen.com/2014/04/24/worlds-fair/ The post notes that SOME of the roots of the for-profit privatization movement come from locally elected school boards who willingly privatized some operations with good intentions…. but the ultimate consequences of privatization are the undercutting of democracy.
A few years back, my local school board considered privatizing custodial services. The public outcry was intense and immediate. The custodians were part of the school community. Everyone, children, teachers, and parents knew they could depend upon them for help well beyond their assigned duties. The thought of rotating workers who had no attachment to the school community, the children in particular, was horrifying. The school board backed down.
Thanks for this post, Diane, and for your clear and spot-on description of the strengths of this quite well-made documentary. It will be interesting to see if it helps to spark more discussion of the how the common core came to be, and whether the creation of exactly the same standards for those who are college bound and those who are career bound makes any sense at all.
The Trailer for those who don’t have a half hour – 2:51 minutes
Complete Documentary – 39:08 minutes
The documentary is well worth watching in its entirety. It’s really well done.
Watched the whole thing. So glad I did.
Diane,
I just showed this film in my ED110 class today. I wish you could have been present while they watched the film. The up and coming pre-service teachers, so of who are parents, could not believe what they were seeing and hearing. One student even made the same observation you made-where are the TEACHERS in this process.
Cherie
Wonderful, Cherie. These teachers need to know what they will be up against. I believe that a new day will dawn post Ed Deform, but it’s going to take some time, and it’s not going to be pretty. A lot of damage will be done in the interim.