Have you ever wondered about the amazingly effective campaign to sell the Common Core standards to the media, the business community, and the public? How did it happen that advocates for the standards used the same language, the same talking points, the same claims, no matter where they were located? The talking points sounded poll-tested because they were. The language was the same because it came from the same source. The campaign to have “rigorous,” “high standards” that would make ALL students “college and career-ready” and “globally competitive” was well planned and coordinated. There was no evidence for these claims but repeated often enough in editorials and news stories and in ads by major corporations, they took on the ring of truth. Even the new stories that reported on controversies between advocates and opponents of the Common Core, used the rhetoric of the advocates to describe the standards.
This was no accident.
Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post reported that the Hunt Institute in North Carolina received more than $5 million from the Gates Foundation to organize support for the brand-new, unknown, untested Common Core standards. Organizing support meant creating the message as well as mobilizing messengers, many of whom were also funded by the Gates Foundation.
In Layton’s blockbuster article about how the Gates Foundation underwrote the rapid adoption of “national standards” by spreading millions of dollars strategically, this remarkable story was included:
“The foundation, for instance, gave more than $5 million to the University of North Carolina-affiliated Hunt Institute, led by the state’s former four-term Democratic governor, Jim Hunt, to advocate for the Common Core in statehouses around the country.
“The grant was the institute’s largest source of income in 2009, more than 10 times the size of its next largest donation. With the Gates money, the Hunt Institute coordinated more than a dozen organizations — many of them also Gates grantees — including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Council of La Raza, the Council of Chief State School Officers, National Governors Association, Achieve and the two national teachers unions.
“The Hunt Institute held weekly conference calls between the players that were directed by Stefanie Sanford, who was in charge of policy and advocacy at the Gates Foundation. They talked about which states needed shoring up, the best person to respond to questions or criticisms and who needed to travel to which state capital to testify, according to those familiar with the conversations.
“The Hunt Institute spent $437,000 to hire GMMB, a strategic communications firm owned by Jim Margolis, a top Democratic strategist and veteran of both of Obama’s presidential campaigns. GMMB conducted polling around standards, developed fact sheets, identified language that would be effective in winning support and prepared talking points, among other efforts.
“The groups organized by Hunt developed a “messaging tool kit” that included sample letters to the editor, op-ed pieces that could be tailored to individuals depending on whether they were teachers, parents, business executives or civil rights leaders.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the advocates for the Common Core standards have the same rhetoric, the same claims, no matter where they are, because the campaign was well organized and well messaged.
What the campaign did not take into account was the possibility of pushback, the possibility that the very lack of public debate and discussion would sow suspicion and controversy. What the advocates forgot is that the democratic way of making change may be slow and may require compromise, but it builds consensus. The Common Core standards, thanks to Gates’ largesse, skipped the democratic process, imposed new standards on almost every state, bypassing the democratic process, and is now paying the price of autocratic action in a democratic society.
Perfect. This needs to be called out.
This may well be true regarding the Hunt Institute, but NC kicked out the standards anyway and I would dare say the ad campaign for CCSS failed in NC.
At this point those who have backed it are peddling extra hard just to preserve public school at all.
As a preacher’s daughter I was raised to believe that the reason we confess our sins on a regular basis is because we easily deceive ourselves in the midst of our sins which results in the negligence of responsibilities. We become blinded by our sinfulness if we are not aware of it or in touch with it.
I think the hubris involved with believing one set of standards and its testing and accountability model would solve all issues of schooling has been sinful. And while putting all energy and thoughtful judgement aside in promoting this self-proclaimed cause, the educational leadership didn’t see the other storm clouds brewing in the east (read the right), and they moved in on while the old preservers and builders of public Ed were blinded by the hubris CCSS and RttT brought with it.
Now we are fighting to preserve a system that was set up in 1870 and has thrived ever since, until (in my opinion) the accountability mindset grew roots and shot vines out that have entangled the while dang thing.
We have a lot of clean up to do in the NC public education garden. The right has their place in that, but we have to keep them from tilling up the whole thing. But they did cut the root from CCSS. So does it really matter about the advertising at this point?
Pedaling extra hard (I think the peddling is starting to fade—I think the “sellers” are realizing people don’t want their product).
I think it is very important for us to know how deep and wide their roots are, how machinated this entire enterprise has been from the beginning. It helps us (at least in states like mine, NM, who are still wholeheartedly on board with CCSS and PARCC) strengthen our resolve and our belief.
“At this point those who have backed it are peddling extra hard just to preserve public school at all.”
???! Please explain, thanks!
I meant to say pedaling. . .
our state is facing serious budget cuts (even more) for education. Those who were propagandizing for the RttT stuff now find themselves in a hurry to convince voters to pressure or vote out our very conservative general assembly. I think they were so busy pushing CCSS and so forth that the last election slipped right away from them (that’s my take anyway). Our governor (who signed us up for RttT AND was the deciding vote on legalizing a state lottery, which is also hotly debated right now because lawmakers want to rely on it to pay teachers) decided at the last minute not to run for re-election. The more progressive party did not really have time to get its ducks in a row. There may be no correlation between the energy that went into backing CCSS, but I do know that Jim Hunt is a well-known Democrat and progressive, so if his energy and resources were being spent on CCSS, they clearly were not being spent on getting ready for an election, right?
Make sense?
and I meant our previous governor, Perdue.
Joana… what an excellent analogy when you comment…
“Now we are fighting to preserve a system that was set up in 1870 and has thrived ever since, until (in my opinion) the accountability mindset grew roots and shot vines out that have entangled the while dang thing…”
You have just explained high profit non reality based marketing with a plant growth analogy! Gates is the king at this deceptive practice! Love it.. he is like an overgrowth of poison ivy. While mint is invasive, at least it is USEFUL and TASTES GOOD!
exactly.
Even cat nip would be better than poison ivy. 🙂
Whole dang thing
So, “rigor” IS a four letter word!
I think accountability is the real reason nobody likes CCSS. It’s a punitive set of standards so far used to belittle and humiliate, not raise up or build. Rigor was just a talking point.
“Rigor” was probably part of an extensive marketing campaign involving many board meetings to decide the perfect words that would elevate common core while insinuating that anything that was not common core was not challenging! If one were to study the exact circumstances where “rigor” was used… it would probably support this notion!
And they’re still getting repeated.
Bill Hammond, NY Daily News editor, just published a pro-CCSS column full of the usual lies, distortions and half-truths CCSS proponents use to sell the Core and diminish opponents and critics.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ignorance-common-core-article-1.1859515
I think the song is over in NC. Even though many wish it was not, it is. Now the next step is to keep the anti-public school forces from kicking public school too much while it is down. And all RttT has done, that I can see, is bring us down. Even if cheerleaders for CCSS and RttT believe that if given the chance to play out they would have delivered public schools to unbelievable success, they will not see that played out in NC because the general assembly said no.
Sadly, they’re repeated by the unions as well. I’m in an ongoing discussion with my state union president about this. She keeps telling me that the majority of the teachers support the standards, that losing the standards will damage children, etc. She’s repeating the same propaganda, and she doesn’t even realize it. I’m working to educate her, but I expect I won’t get anywhere. The unions have too much money into this to back off now.
Can you tell me which state? I’m in California and I’d like to know what are union heads are doing.
One of the funny things about New York State is that the so-called education leaders here seemed oh
so willing to admit that they were “building the plane while they were flying it”….that there wasn’t a plan driving their reform schemes.
But, hmmm…. in hindsight, there WAS a blueprint all along.
And, still the whole thing has turned out to be so half-assed! Maybe that’s why many of us so readily bought into their wacky “building the plane” analogy from the start?
Could anything so bad actually be PLANNED? I guess so.
I love this language:
“Arlington High School, one of Indiana’s most troubled schools that was taken over by the state Education Department, could be returned to Indianapolis Public Schools next year if an agreement among many stakeholders is reached this month.
During a dramatic State Board of Education meeting Wednesday, the company hired by the state to operate Arlington told the board that it could no longer run the school without an infusion of more than $2 million in additional funding or by partnering with IPS this coming school year as part of a transfer of ownership to the district for the 2015-16 school year.
The state took over Arlington in 2012 after six straight years of “F” grades. It’s now run by Tindley Accelerated Schools, which is also known as Ed Power.”
“If an agreement among stakeholders is reached”
What malarkey. The contractor walked away. The public school system is getting the school back only because it’s underfunded. They’re not a “stakeholder”. They’re the fall-back. They’re lucky there still IS an “Indianapolis Public Schools”” or I don’t know what would happen.
http://www.districtadministration.com/news/indiana-high-school-operator-says-it-can-no-longer-afford-run-school
Chiara.. sounds like Arlington was kidnapped and then sent a ransom note that it could get back its public schools if and only if the kidnappers were paid a few million! Hmmm are “ed reformers” kidnappers of the public school system???
artseagal: dramatic words, but they fit the information…
😎
The PR campaign was successful because the ground was well-prepared by years of noisy claims that our public schools are failing.
Page 17 – La Raza Toolkit taking points…get on the same page, fellas:
Click to access CCSS_Toolkit.pdf
NCLR got something right: “How will student assessments be aligned to the common standards?”
They are common as in: usual, ordinary, familiar, regular, frequent, recurrent, everyday, typical, conventional, stock, commonplace, run-of-the-mill or ordinary; of ordinary qualities; without special rank or position, ordinary, normal, average, unexceptional
OR
showing a lack of taste and refinement; vulgar, uncouth, vulgar, coarse, rough, boorish, unladylike, ungentlemanly, ill-bred, uncivilized, unrefined, unsophisticated
The synonyms are from google.
I don’t find this in the least surprising. Gates bought off La Raza just as he did the AFT, the NEA and the DOE. He’s consistent, gotta give him that.
From page 6:
“This tool kit was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions presented here are those of the authors and NCLR alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the funder. Permission to copy, disseminate, or
otherwise use information from this paper is granted, provided that appropriate credit is given to NCLR.”
We need to drive the message that there is no research to support the college and career readiness claim. By the way, just what is college and career readiness?
A four word phrase with no definition and that, anyway, doesn’t define anything meaningful.
matto… once again.. there were probably quite a few marketing meetings from a Gate’s supported firm to create the perfect catchy phrase to overuse while insinuating that anything non “ed reform” aka public school was the reason behind all the problems with the economy like lack of employment (because students are not getting the required skills to be able to work at jobs). These PR-driven “ed reform” board meetings probably figured out exactly how and when to use the term “college and career ready” to exalt common core while berating and blaming public education for the ills of employment while conveniently blaming public education and conveniently ignoring increasing poverty! The constant driving in of a marketing concept regrettably is mistaken by the public-at-large for reality. This seems to be the whole basis for our current news media!
“College Readiness” refers to one’s willingness and ability to take on student loan debt.
“Career readiness” refers to one’s ability to do keep your mouth shut whole performing tedious, underpaid and heavily surveilled work, the skills for which were presumably ingrained via Common Core-based instruction and testing.
You just hit the nail on the head. Exactly the reason CCSS has so much interest from bankers, corporations and chamber of commerce. When I went to college (late 80s), everyone said to major in liberal arts because businesses wanted critical thinkers. But then I think they realized that all those critical thinkers wound up either leaving corporate life to start competitive businesses, or staying and challenging authority & bucking convention. So now it’s all about training mindless, obedient workers.
Michael Fiorillo:
TAGO!
😎
And it continues… The Hunt Institute is searching for a Senior Education Policy Analyst.
http://www.hunt-institute.org/about-us/careers/
https://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/46289
“The Hunt Institute, an institute of UNC Chapel Hill, was established in 2001 to inspire and equip governors, legislators, and other state-level policymakers to make informed decisions that improve the lives of all children through quality public education.
The Hunt Institute is seeking a Senior Education Policy Analyst to track and analyze education policy issues, practices, and trends for state-level policymakers by authoring policy briefs, designing agendas for convenings, developing curriculum modules, and delivering presentations. The Senior Education Policy Analyst will also serve as The Institute’s key point of contact within North Carolina and as such will be responsible for building relationships with key constituents and for providing evidence-based analyses around emerging education policy issues. The Senior Education Policy Analyst must be proactive about analyzing policy trends at the state and national level and using this analysis to identify and recommend new activities for The Institute to pursue.
Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in public policy, education, public administration, or related field; Master’s degree in public policy preferred.
A minimum of five years of experience in education research and policy.
Deep knowledge of state and national education policy, particularly in North Carolina.
Ability to build and manage relationships with senior policy leaders and thought leaders in the education field.
Ability to effectively navigate the political landscape.
Exceptional written, oral, and interpersonal skills; Demonstrated ability to present complex information clearly and concisely for a variety of audiences.
Passion for The Hunt Institute’s mission and impact.”
NB: No teaching experience required or desired.
And it really is weird because under Governor Jim Hunt education in NC was improving year after year. His institute is counter to his past.
Also, regarding NC dropping Common Core, that resolution hasn’t passed yet as far as I am aware. When or if it does, the new standards will be created by a political committee.
The whole plan seems to be the destruction of the NC Department of public Instruction, which on the surface, given the CCSS cheerleader attitude and wasteful burocracy of DPI, might seem like a good thing, handing even more control of education over to the General Assembly is a scary prospect.
Sounds like Goebbels circa WWII. Facism is alive and well in America 2014. Govt. , oligarchs and media coordinated-personal freedom diminished. So sad.
“Sounds like Goebbels circa WWII.”
In what way? Please explain. Thanks!
Does “Power” establish anything to hobble itself?
Was Public Education established to counteract the mind-control
regime of marketing or propaganda?
Is Capital a passive beneficiary of Government, or is it Government?
From my experience teaching 7th grade for over 20 years, the best we can hope for is competent, creative, caring teachers, and then let them run their classrooms. From my experience teaching 7th grade for over 20 years, the best we can hope for is competent, creative, caring teachers, and then let them run their classrooms. https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=586362505121790920#editor/target=post;postID=2539402563105466965;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postname
@brettstaylor
In case no one has noticed (their MS Windows computer crash) before: with Gates it’s ALL about the marketing.
That’s the Common Core of all Microsoft products, which follow the Gates CAM (Crap Added Model): start with crap and jkeep adding more and more.
Indeed.. how many of us have not heard common core BRANDING like “rigorous”, “college and career ready” etc ad nauseam???? When I read this comment:
“What the campaign did not take into account was the possibility of pushback, the possibility that the very lack of public debate and discussion would sow suspicion and controversy…”
I want to add that what the “campaign did not take into account is that eventually when this “program” was implemented based entirely on a marketing campaign… REALITY comes into play and students and parents around the nation are well aware that the policy not only did not work, not only is abusive to children but also… leads back to a high profit money trail for those who created it or are in on the “scam”! You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”… even if you spend one trillion dollars trying to do so Mr. Gates!
Not only was the process to adopt Common Core undemocratic, because it was developed by non-educators, the Standards are completely developmentally inappropriate! But Alabama’s State Superintendent likes the sound of “College and carer ready”. Sigh.
From Layton’s article: “In an interview, Gates said his role is to fund the research and development of new tools, such as the Common Core, and offer them to decision-makers who are trying to improve education for millions of Americans. It’s up to the government to decide which tools to use, but someone has to invest in their creation, he said.”
He neglected to say that he not only invested in their creation, but as shown here, invested heavily in selling them to the public. He would like to cast himself as a benign philanthropist, but appears to be an arrogant power broker.
So… now we have this untested, unpiloted, unproven, developmentally-flawed, research-void, developmentally inappropriate (at least K-2) agenda paid for and promoted to state and federal government by one of the richest men in the world, and a slick, pricey PR propaganda campaign to go along with it. You’d think this was more about a fabulous new product than our children…. All that money thrown away on (false and misleading and deceptive) advertising and PR and hype. Sinful… and shameful….
” All that money thrown away on (false and misleading and deceptive) advertising and PR and hype.”
Change ‘thrown away” to “invested in” and you have accurately and succinctly described Microsoft’s business plan.
Has been from the very beginning.
In fact, in the deal that put Microsoft on the map, Gates promised IBM an OS for their PC when he neither had one in hand nor had ever even written one.
One would have to be an idiot to actually believe that Microsoft will not benefit from Common Core (or, as Gates has claimed, “There’s no connection to Common Core in any Microsoft thing”.)
Larry: ah, the “no connection” defense…
I got the following from a posting on this blog, 3/5/2014, “Microsoft and Pearson Join Forces to Creat Common Core Curriculum: Are you $urprised?”
The link below was included and accesses an announcement of 2/20/2014:
[start quote]
Today Pearson announced a collaboration with Microsoft Corp. that brings together the world’s leading learning company and the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions to create new applications and advance a digital education model that prepares students to thrive in an increasingly personalized learning environment. The first collaboration between the two global companies will combine Pearson’s Common Core System of Courses with the groundbreaking capabilities of the Windows 8 touchscreen environment. The Common Core System of Courses is the first curriculum built for a digital personalized learning environment that is 100 percent aligned to the new standards for college and career readiness.
“Pearson has accelerated the development of personalized digital learning environments to improve educational outcomes as well as increase student engagement,” said Larry Singer, Managing Director for Pearson’s North American School group. “Through this collaboration with Microsoft, the global leader in infrastructure and productivity tools for schools, we are creating a powerful force for helping schools leverage this educational model to accelerate student achievement and, ultimately, ensure that U.S. students are more competitive on the global stage.”
“Personalized learning for every student is a worthy and aspirational goal. By combining the power of touch, type, digital inking, multitasking and split-screen capabilities that Windows 8 with Office 365 provides with these new Pearson applications, we’re one step closer to enabling an interactive and personalized learning environment,” said Margo Day, vice president, U.S. Education, Microsoft Corp. “We’re in the middle of an exciting transformation in education, with technology fueling the movement and allowing schools to achieve this goal of personalized learning for each student.”
In addition, iLit, Pearson’s core reading program aimed at closing the adolescent literacy gap, will be optimized for the Windows 8 platform. Designed based on the proven instructional model found in the Ramp Up Literacy program, which demonstrated students gaining two years of growth in a single year, iLit offers students personalized learning support based on their own instructional needs, engaging interactivities, and built-in reward systems that motivate students and track their progress.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1748922#ixzz2uLL0Nx7J
So “There’s no connection to Common Core in any Microsoft thing”—
Rheally!
But not really.
But then in some ways Bill is just an old fashioned fella.
“In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.” [Stephen Leacock]
😎
It’s not just Common Core CURRICULUM (I like to call a spade a spade) that has bypassed the democratic process with a pen and a phone. The question is, will the sheeple continue to follow, or will those responsible pay the price for their autocratic actions in a democratic society?
I just transfered information on grants from the Gates Foundation website into a master spreadsheet using search terms such as Common Core, Public Schools, Charter Schools, MET project (measures of effective teaching).
This shot my day. Looking all those millions of dollars is a bit like eating peanuts, until you realized the purchasing power of the Gates’ money and some of his strategies for deploying it.
These key terms turned up about $215.7 million in Gates funded promotional activity just for the Common Core. I am working on some secondary analyses of his investments in promotional activity for the CCSS via funding for universities, specific districts, and states, various NGOs, and some “Inc. and LLCs known to be PR agencies or aspiring profit centers in the education business.
The website shows huge investments in “advocacy.” and “communications” nested in US initiatives for education and sometimes buried in a “global advocacy” category.
On the Common Core promotion alone, about $24 million in Gates money passed through other foundations, including the Hunt (about 7.8 million), and the Colorado Legacy Foundation (about 9.7 million). The foundations for AFT and NEA combined have received about $7.8 million. For help in promoting the CCSS Gates also directed about $7.4 million to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Inc.
Other investments are probably well-known (e.g., about $16.2 million to the Council of Chief School Officers; about $7.5 million to the Council of Great City Schools; about $6.4 to National School Boards Association; about $3.7 million to ASCD) .
Probably less well-known, unless you live in Kentucky, is about $10.8 million to “incent” the state to be one of the first to implement the CCSS.
Also a recipient of largess to promote the CCSS is the New Venture Fund, at about $15 million.
With 1,620 standards in the CCSS (parsed to the a-d level, I calculate that a single standard has to this date cost the Gates’ foundation about $133,150. Now I am thinking about the 86 standards for geometry written for K-12. Standards for that one topic cost about $11.7 million.
Gates would probably regard that $11.7million investment in a singe topic in math as little more than a “rounding error” in terms of money.
I am a special education teacher. While I don’t like the Common Core State Standards, WE NEED COMMON STANDARDS! My issue with the CCSS is that they are developmentally appropriate, especially for younger students, and the adoption process was undemocratic.
Learning to Teach Nothing in Particular: https://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/winter1011/Cohen.pdf
“absent a common curriculum, teachers-in-training could not learn how to teach it, let alone teach it well. Hence, teacher education consists of efforts to teach future teachers to teach no particular curriculum. This is very strange, since to teach is always to teach something, but the governance structure of U. S. education has long forbidden the specification of what that something would be.”
Common standards are necessary for a strong teaching profession. The CCSS are not the right set of common standards, but let’s not criticize the idea of common standards.
“WE NEED COMMON STANDARDS!”
Allow me to change that to your proper meaning: “I NEED COMMON STANDARDS BECAUSE I CAN’T THINK FOR MYSELF!”
“. . . absent a common curriculum, teachers-in-training could not learn how to teach it, let alone teach it well.”
How the hell did we all become teachers before CCSS? We must all be fooling ourselves to think that we are decent and good teachers!
Are you TFA “certified” SpEd?
“Common standards are necessary for a strong teaching profession.”
Really??!!
What the hell did the “teaching profession” do all of those years before “standards”??? Obviously, we were all faking it.
Duane,
I have an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s degree in elementary and special education. I DID NOT go through TFA or a similar program. I was “traditionally prepared.”
Common standards equals a common knowledge base for teachers. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has standards: http://www.nctm.org/standards/default.aspx?id=58. Finland has common standards.
Most professions, especially applied professions, have common standards. Engineers have building codes. Psychiatry and Neurology have the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Nursing has standards: http://www.nursingworld.org/scopeandstandardsofpractice.
Standards help designate the common knowledge base. A common knowledge base professionalizes a profession because this common knowledge base must be learned by those entering the profession. It is a barrier to entry, if you will. One reason why programs like TFA can exist is because of the lack of a commonly-held professional knowledge base. People who are not educators, e.g. Bill Gates and Eli Broad, can have some “authority” about education because there is no common knowledge base. If there was a common knowledge base, then Bill Gates and Eli Broad would seem less qualified to speak about education because they lack the common knowledge of teachers.
It is the lack of common standards that allows certain school districts to teach creationism or intelligent design as science.
See the following article: “Morris, Hiebert propose alternative way to improve education,” http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2011/mar/shared-instructional-products-031811.html
A quote highlighted from the article, pulled out as a stand alone quote in the article: “To teach is always to teach something, but the governance structure of U.S. education has long forbidden the specification of what that something would be.”
Complete bullshit!
In both districts in which I’ve taught for 20 years now there was this little thing called “curriculum”. I guess you’ve never heard of “curriculum” before, eh? Just rewrote the Spanish curriculum last summer. I didn’t include any “standards” whatsoever. I’ve not known of any district that did not/does not have “curriculum” for all subjects and grade levels.
To Ed of “great students”:
What a fool as being an educator can utter the need for COMMON STD? This is exactly that communist talkative strategist, madly fascist enforcers and capitalist marketing strategist can fool general public by using all sounding “ideological” words alike, such as independence, anti-slave, patriot, or competitive, career readiness…
We all need creativity, democracy, transparency, honesty, kindness, being considerate, and mutual respect for personal aspiration.
What is “the” definition of your “great student”? If you need to follow the so called common STANDARD, your “greatness” must mean ROBOT who cannot express nor have any idea, except being programmed to follow “code of silence” or else as to be discarded like garbage.
If you have read and followed this website, and you still suggest your idea as such, what do we expect from general public? I am very sad for your naiveté. Back2basic
“Educator of Great Students”
To understand the epistemological and ontological fallacies and errors inherent in the concept of educational standards (and the accompanying standardized tests) read and understand Noel Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
My friend Robert, who doesn’t mince words (which is one of the reasons I like him so much) said elsewhere about this story:
“sadly, most “leaders” on the community side of politics are focused on messaging To! Be!! Right!!!, cuz, when you’re a trustafairian, a suck up to trustafairians, or don’t know what I’m talking about, messaging to win is too banal.”
I agree…. people are squeemish – don’t want to confront and fight back in any way that might not be ‘nice’…. well, my reply to that is – since when has Bill Gates been ‘nice’ in what he’s doing to our kids and our teachers and our schools? The man thinks it’s OK to single-handedly take over and change public education for an entire country of 314 million people and he’s gone about it in the most thorough, devious, manipulative way possible – what’s ‘nice’ about that?
To all naive educators:
Please consciously remember four guiding principles when we deal with manipulative people:
DO NOT quickly believe in the saying from:
1. People with authority, scientific knowledge, and wealth (due to their own gain)
2. People with old age, claimed to be a Wise-man (due to his lust for control and power)
3. Any written old testaments (due to it is possibly fake)
4. Any mystery, unfounded truth, and lack of proof of science (due to rumour or legendary).
Most of all, any short cut or promise lack of democratic and transparent process which bribes all authorities to guarantee general public to attain a quick success is simply intentional BAD trap. Back2basic