Howard Malfucci is a retired superintendent.
On his blog, which he calls “Common Sense NY,” he deconstructs the claims of an active superintendent who is defending Common Core.
Are we really swamped by failure? Isn’t it important to look closely at who is failing to finish high school and why they are not? Why assume they are failing to graduate because the standards were too low?
To the claim that “meaningful learning” is occurring in classrooms that use Common Core, Malfucci responds, “Well, meaningful learning has been occurring in classrooms before the Common Core. Actually, that’s a pretty offensive statement on the part of this superintendent. Hundreds of thousands of students who went through school before the Common Core can attest to that. And, the article cites a parent who has two daughters in school. She said, “I’m not really sure if I believe that. I think it’s too early to tell.” That’s a very astute statement.”
It is time for common sense. It is also time to stop the overblown claims about the Common Core. And it is time for the Common Core propaganda mill to stop treating all critics as extremists.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The only part I disagree with is “Hundreds of thousands of students who went through school before the Common Core can attest” that they experienced meaningful learning without the Common Core.
Make that hundreds of millions, or even billions. Just think of the entire course of human history. Somehow the ancient Greeks invented geometry, Newton and Leibniz developed calculus, and the Wright brothers built the first successful airplane, all without Common Core.
To mantain insanity, one must ascribe insanity to one’s critics.
It always amuses me when people make these comments about how now, under the Common Core, students are finally reading substantive texts closely and responding to them with evidence from the texts.
I and millions of other teachers have been working with students forever, doing just that. What the hell did these people think we were doing?
The debate needs to focus on the Common Core bullet list itself. That bullet list, in ELA, is hackneyed, backward, unimaginative, distorting of curricula and pedagogy, and full of enormous holes. There are two main types of knowledge, world knowledge (knowledge of what) and procedural knowledge (knowledge of how). The Common Core almost completely ignores the former and characterizes the latter vaguely and abstractly, making valid assessment of acquisition of that knowledge impossible (for one can validly assess, in the area of skills, only what has been made concrete–what has been operationalized. Furthermore, the CC$$ in ELA characterizes almost all outcomes as resulting from explicit instruction, but there are vast areas of the English language arts that involve, primarily, implicit acquisition, and so this bullet list, by misconceiving in such a way the outcomes to be measured, leads to misconceived curricula and pedagogy–to the use of explicit means when structures allowing for implicit acquisition are exponentially more effective.
The Common Core in ELA was prepared, overnight, by amateurs. And then it was not subjected to the slightest scholarly vetting. And it precludes better ideas:
Bob, I really appreciated your comments and link. As one fighting the good fight here in Maine, having reference to thoughtful and professional criticisms of CCSS is very helpful, even critical.
Thank you. If you go to my page and scroll down, you will see, on the left, a heading for Education Deform. If you click that, you will find a number of similar pieces in which I analyze a few of these “standards.”
Bob Shepherd: your comment about being amused by the idea that CC is now ensuring that “students are finally reading substantive texts closely and responding to them with evidence from the texts” got me to thinking…
For so many years I have been laboring under a woeful misimpression. Ya see, when I was in 11th grade in the mid-1960s in what was supposedly the best HS in Detroit, I took two elective philosophy classes [one for each half of the school year]. For just one of them, my classmates and I had to get permission slips signed by a parent or guardian because, well, we started with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, then made our way up through Jean Jacques Rousseau and Rene Descartes and Adam Smith and Karl Marx and Bertrand Russell and Ayn Rand and…well, what’s the use of trying to remember the rest? It must have all been a mirage, because according to the most advanced cage busting achievement gap crushing tenets of CCSS…
Getting around to “reading substantive texts closely and responding to them with evidence from the texts” didn’t exist before now. I must have false memories too of the long paper I wrote as the final class writing assignment. As long as almost any paper I wrote in college and university [were those too made up out of whole cloth by my diseased imagination?]. And supposedly the teacher was going to grade my HS paper on such mythological phantoms of the past as logical consistency, appropriate use of citations [form and content], and how well I made my ‘argument.’
I am getting down in the dumps about all this…
Perhaps, if I bump into you down at Pink Slip Bar & Grille, you can suggest some way for me to disabuse myself of my own history and experiences. Not anything as extreme as Socrates likes to [sarcastically] suggest as “a spoonful of hemlock makes the memories go away,” but maybe a bullet-list of auto-suggestive edumantras to put me in a CC-state of mind.
And please. No jokes. CCSS is no laughing matter. Not when you got a plane being built in mid-air…
Be there or be square. My treat. I’m counting on ya.
😎
Next thing you know, David Coleman will be claiming to have invented dirt.
In fact, if David Coleman had walked out onto his lawn, discovered grass growing there, and proclaimed to the world that he had a great new idea for lawns–growing grass on them–and if thousands of Instapundits had started echoing him–well, now we have lawns with grass in them in my neighborhood, as it should be, thanks to David Coleman–well, that would be precisely analogous to what has happened. Meanwhile, none of those pundits address the stupid bullet list that Coleman put together–which is really, really dreadful. I wonder how many of them have even read it.
I deconstructed this claim in my blog post, Waking Up On Third Base: Why Common Core Boasts Ring Hollow” http://www.bltm.com/blog
I cringe every time I read our superintendent’s tweets on the district website. In most of them, he posts a picture of a classroom in the district and the caption reads…”look at the engaged learners…deeper learning going on here…look at how the rigor of the lessons has increased…meaningful learning taking place.” It is insulting to the kids and teachers, implying teaching and learning were not taking place before the core.
It’s great to see a former senior administrator come out so frankly. But I think there is another 800-pound gorilla in the room: How can public officials, who are paid by the public to administer the public’s schools for the benefit of the public’s children, so easily take up what are clearly nothing by PR talking points for the privatizing reformers? Where is their ethical allegiance to provide frank commentary and advice to the public?
And I can’t think of any other body of professionals that would say the sorts of things I hear from teachers and administrators about CCSS, namely, statements that boil down to: “We need CCSS, because until now I didn’t understand that I was committing malpractice and now I know how to teach properly!” Don’t they realize their support of CCSS amounts to nothing short of an endorsement of all the teacher bashing of the past 30 years?
I can’t think of any doctor or lawyer who would put up with that for a second. Why do our teachers and school administrators?
As a teacher, I never bought into the ccss. The governor accepted funds for Race to the Top, as did many others, and the ccss came with them. It is only now that are voices are being heard.
I’m happy to read that, Shelley. But I’ve seen many teachers drink and hand out the kool-aid as a school board member and parent. And I know many teachers who dislike the CCSS feel stifled by fear of reprisals from their principals and superintendents. Also, the actions of the AFT and NEA in accepting money from Gates and then endorsing CCSS has been a real stain on those organizations and a betrayal of the teachers and children.
“And I can’t think of any other body of professionals that would say the sorts of things I hear from teachers and administrators about CCSS. . . ”
Yep, way too many are GAGAers*.
Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution upon their passing from this realm.
Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
“I can’t think of any doctor or lawyer who would put up with that for a second. Why do our teachers and school administrators?”
I can’t think of anyone who has the power to control the medical or legal profession the same way in which teachers are controlled. They just do not have a command and control structure that would permit it. Plus, everyone thinks they could teach with little preparation. No one would make the same claim for the medical or legal profession. We do not have an illustrious history of power and respect.
After all, anyone can be a teacher – all you need is a piece of chalk.
I have all the expertise I need – I was once a student.
Where is their ethical allegiance to provide frank commentary and advice to the public?
I have often asked myself this, moosensquirrels. These people are shameless.
Perhaps we have a new slogan:
I’m for Common Sense, not Common Core!
“I’m for Common Sense, not Common Core!”
What a bumper sticker! I can see an apple core with a red slash through it.