Mercedes Schneider wrote a book about the origins of the Common Core this past summer, and she continues to keep a close watch on Bill Gates’ investment in the purchase of American education. In this post, she recounts Bill’s infatuation with the idea of standardizing every classroom, because he believes in the glories of standardization. And if he believes in it, so should everyone else.
You know how Arne Duncan and his echo chamber say again and again that the Common Core is not a curriculum? Mercedes says that the Gates Foundation made a grant to “hardwire” the CCSS curriculum. Oops! They didn’t mean to use that word! Maybe by the time this post goes public, they will change the word and call it “standards,” not “curriculum.”
But what’s with the “hardwiring”? Does the Gates Foundation really believe they can hardwire every school to the standards or curriculum of their choosing? This is America. We believe that our states are “laboratories of innovation.” A top-down set of standards, written in D.C., imposed by the lure of federal dollars? Never gonna happen. Ten years from now, maybe sooner, some states will stick with them, others won’t. Whatever they are, they will not be national standards. Americans don’t like to take orders. We don’t want to be hard-wired. We dissent. We debate. We question authority. We march to our own drummers. Or at least enough of us do to make trouble for anyone who wants to standardize us and hardwire us. Bill Gates will have to find a new plaything.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Remember when we used to have discussions about “canon”?
I guess BG read that as “cannon” …
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some of us certainly think that we can hardwire standards into every school in the district or state. I know my state school board thinks is should do that.
So the “us” of “some of us” includes you, eh, TE?
Or is that Gautam or Tarun?
Duane,
By “us” i meant the citizens of the various states that have imposed state standards on each and every school in the state.
Why do you keep adding something about Gautam or Tarun? I am not understanding you.
TE said, “i meant the citizens of the various states that have imposed state standards on each and every school in the state.”
Did I miss the vote on state standards where everyone gets to vote instead of just a few billionaires and their paid for or brainwashed puppets?
The only votes I know about where “the citizens of various states” are given a choice to vote was on vouchers and vouchers lose by wide margins almost every time it comes up for a vote, but the BIG money that supports the voucher movements almost always comes from out of the state where the electorate was given a choice.
Lloyd,
We impose the standards through our elected representatives at the local and state levels. My state board of education spends most of its time thinking about statewide standards. Does California have no such institution?
Back up. Let’s look closer at the implementation of the CCSS and who really made the decisions in each state.
46 states initially adopted the Common Core State Standards, although implementation has not been uniform. At least 12 states have introduced legislation to repeal the standards outright, and Indiana has since withdrawn from the standards.
As for your question about California—-If you visit the next link, you will discover who adopted the standards in California [and the other states—just move the cursor from state to state over the map to learn who made the decisions] and you will discover it was not the elected state legislatures that did it.
For instance, the CCSS was adopted by the California State Board of Education, and The State Board of Education has eleven members, including one student member, all appointed by the Governor of California.
http://www.corestandards.org/standards-in-your-state/
Now, please explain to me how that translates into the citizens of a state or their elected representative voting to accepting the CCSS through the democratic process.
Do you know how many citizens of the United States have even heard of Common Core?
You will find that a difficult question to answer, because the first Gallup Pole that asked that question was in August 2013: “Despite the widespread adoption of new standards, nearly two-thirds of poll respondents, or 62 percent, said they had never heard of them.”
And with awareness of the CCSS, opposition grows.
In August 2014, a PDK/Gallup poll reported: “Overall, the wide-ranging survey found, 81 percent of those polled said they had heard about the common standards, compared with 38 percent last year. However, 60 percent oppose the standards.”
In 2012, Gallup asked: “Also as I mentioned before how much does the general public know about these standards and how were they described?”
Lloyd,
It is the elected state school board who makes those decisions in my state.
At least they were elected and not appointed, but it still wasn’t the legislature.
The billionaire oligarchs behind the manufactured, corporate, fake-education reform movement discovered that they can’t win if they take their crooked and corrupt fringe ideas to the public—they have tried that route for decades and it failed repeatedly—so they are now working hard and spending HUGE sums of money to get their own people elected to every possible position starting at the bottom with elected school boards, city mayors, governors, state legislatures, Congress and even the White House, and the Supreme Court Decision, Citizens United, paved the way for a democracy to become an oligarchy.
For instance, Governor Cuomo of New York state who had $35 million to spend on his campaign while his opponent had only $200 thousand.
Tell me, what do you think about the United States being an oligarchy instead of a democracy where so-called elected puppets and fools do what their billionaire masters tell them to do—that is very similar to how it works in Russia and China?
I wonder who funded the elections of the school board in your state?
By chance, do you live in North Caroline?
Lloyd,
I do not live in North Carolina.
You do know that money does not determine election outcomes. Sometimes it is simply the case that one finds oneself in the minority. I am typically in the minority in my state.
TE said: “You do know that money does not determine election outcomes.”
WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!!
“94 percent of winning candidates in 2010 had more money than their opponents.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/oct/17/occupy-wall-street/occupy-wall-street-protesters-sign-says-94-percent/
Just in case:
“91% of the time the better-financed candidate wins. Don’t act surprised.”
* Candidates who out-fundraised their opponents were nine times more likely to win elections in 2012.
* Winning congressional candidates outspent their opponents by about 20 to 1.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/think-money-doesnt-matter-in-elections-this-chart-says-youre-wrong/
I really don’t think that is a coincidence. It’s obvious that giant corporations and billionaires have the advantage.
In my state (Utah), only TWO people signed off on the CC: the state superintendent (appointed, and that was TWO superintendents ago) and the governor. That’s it.
Just fishin with the Gautam and Tarun. I’ll get a bite one of these days.
Bollywood?
You’re getting close S. Smith to an important clue.
In Gates’ own words:
Let’s do some math. Real world math. Not RheeWorld math…
When does 1 + 1 = priceless? [As in, so valuable a price can’t be placed on it.]
Statement by Bill Gates, courtesy of SomeDAM Poet. That’s the first #1.
Now the second #1, courtesy of deutsch29 aka Dr. Mercedes Schneider aka KrazyMathLady. She has pointed out a gelatinous Microsoft-size load of “thought leader” support to the statement by Bill Gates. And by one of the leading intellectual lights of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement, Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute.
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Now I get it.
You hardwire the physical locations called “franchises” [née public schools] where “eduproduct delivery specialists” [née “teachers”] fill the “customers’ craniums” with bits and pieces of low-level skills and docility [née “student learning”] with a curriculum hardwired to the CCSS [née “the wisdom of the ages”] which is hardwired to high-stakes standardized tests [née the “magic crystal ball” of the creative edudisruptors] and—
Voilà! That well known old adage:
“Only intellectual midgets think other human beings are widgets.”
¿? Alright already, I just made it up. But at least it goes together…
That’s more than you can say about Bill Gates/CCSS/stack ranking [aka standardized tests] going along with genuine teaching and learning. *Caveat: the hard bigotry of mandated failure that produces $tudent $ucce$$ is only to be applied to OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, especially in public schools. For the self-styled leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time,” THEIR OWN CHILDREN go to places like Lakeside School where Bill Gates went, and where his own children go now.*
But look at the big picture: one nation’s pain is the vanity project of a charter member of the BBBBC [BusyBody Billionaire Boys Club].
Although not exactly reassuring…
Really!
Not Rheeally… even in a Johnsonally sort of way…
😎
The most important word here is ‘market’, as that is how Bill Gates views the world-one big market for Microsoft products.
The strangest part to me is the lauding of the teachers and schools putting the Common Core in. They’re all doing a “great job!”
Aren’t these the same teachers and schools we all decided were “bottom of the barrel”?
How are they putting in this huge, complex program in so well?
They obviously got much, much better at their jobs sometime between January of last year and June of this year 🙂
I actually think they’ll do the best they can, and that will probably be enough to avoid any giant disasters, but I never assumed they were all slackers who are wholly “self-interested” and avoiding accountability in the first place.
I hate the good cop/bad cop aspects of ed reform. It just makes me cringe, as a management technique. They swing wildly between scolding and accolades, and there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it, other than when they’re selling something.
If you’re going to set yourself up as the parents of America’s public schools, shouldn’t you at least try to be a consistent “good parent” instead of this unpredictable, chaotic parent?
“. . . but I never assumed they were all swackers who are wholly “self-interested” and avoiding accountability in the first place.”
Neither did I. But I resemble the ‘self-interested’ and definitely “avoid accountability” not only in the first place but also in last place.
Bill already has a new plaything. It’s euphemistically called Big History. One ring to rule them all, one ring to bind them…
“Lord of the Rhees” (with apologies to JRR Tolkien, a truly great writer whosework will undoubtedly be banished by the Common Core)
Three Rhees for the Charter-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Core-lords in their public office,
Nine for the Teachers/students doomed to die,
One for the Money Lord making profits
In the Land of Rheeform where rheeformers lie.
One Rhee to rule them all, One Rhee to find them,
One Rhee to bring them all and in the shadows bind them
In the Land of Rheeform where rheeformers lie.
All will bow before Rhee and despair
Let’s hope she will diminish … and go into the west …
Please, let’s not wish that she goes into the West. Instead, let the same fate that befell the Nazgul fall on her and her supporters, because Rhee and her gang are the same as the Ringwraiths.
SomeDAM Poet: you are SomeDAM Researcher too!
😉
I thought I had found the entire trove of moldy edumanuscripts by the self-styled “Ancients of the Education Rheephorm Movement” when I published the following excerpt on this blog earlier this year:
“Three bling for the educrats under the sky,
Seven for the edubullies who on teachers throw stones,
Nine for mere teachers doomed to die,
One for the Snark Lord on his dark throne
In the Centres of EduExcellence where the shadows lie.
One BlingRing to rule them all, One BlingRing to find them,
One BlingRing to bring them and in the darkness bind them
In the Board Room of Gates where the shadows lie.”
[THE LORD OF THE BLINGRING]
Thankfully, Bob Shepherd was able to identify the above as being a song from “The Lord of the Blingring,” book DCLXVI of the Blingringelungenlied.
And now you’ve gone and found some more!
Most krazy props!
😎
P.S. And yours is definitely the older and rarer version because it is obviously before the Rhee Flee from Bauron [the original owner of the BlingRing; he had the power to, er, bore people to death, hence his name]. Newer versions of THE LORD OF THE BLINGRING contain not a mention.
😏
KrazyTA,
I’m just an amateur rheesearcher poking around in the bushes.
You obviously know far more about this than I do. I’d guess you probably have an advanced degrhee in Rheeformology
So maybe you can answer this: who is the Gollum of the Rheeform saga?
SomeDAM Poet: actually, during the time of the “Ancients of the Education Rheephorm Movement” there was a host of Gollum-like creatures that were attracted to, and corrupted by, the olde time equivalent of $tudent $ucce$$.
JRR Tolkien, to his credit, reduced them to a single figure. That is, he used his, er, Poetic License* to make a more manageable and moving story. [*Current online version through for-profit credentialing organizations: as little as a five-week course for a maximum of 9 credits, just like “Dr.” John Deasy’s Ph.D.]
According to the usual unconfirmed rumors, like the educrat enablers and edubully enforcers of the self-styled “education reform” movement, these Gollum-like critters were attracted by the blood squeezed out of a stone—well, that’s what they called the ROI on monetizing children in those stirring past epochs—and would fiercely defend their share of the loot, er, gainfully earned returns.
All the while muttering strange things like “We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious.”
So to tentatively answer your question: there is no one “Gollum of the Rheeform saga” but something more on the order of those seemingly vast clouds of flying monkeys in THE WIZARD OF OZ.
But what do I know? Those eduminions of THE LORD OF THE BLINGRING and THE LORD OF THE RHEES antedate even very old and very dead and very Greek guys.
They are from a time out of mind. Or maybe, just maybe, they’re just out of their minds.
😳
Billy Gates might have some problems selling the history program he found so enchanting in Texas.
Politico, Sept 11, 2011 DERIVING DEMOCRACY FROM MOSES: Texas students may soon crack open their history textbooks to learn that segregated schools weren’t all that bad and the American system of democracy was first inspired by Moses.
That’s according to dozens of passages identified by a panel of university scholars as biased, misleading or inaccurate. The scholars were commissioned by a liberal advocacy group as new history, geography and civics textbooks are up for review by the Texas state Board of Education.
The criticism also hints at a larger battle raging across the country over academic standards. Conservatives have rallied aggressively to shape what students learn in science, social studies and beyond.
Emile Lester, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, called the Texas texts a “triumph of ideology over ideas.”
Sounds to me like the same old stuff from Texas texbook adoption wars.
““triumph of ideology over ideas.””
More like the triumph of idiology over ideas by idiologues who spout idiocies as truth.
White Hat becomes a campaign issue, which was inevitable:
“Troubled charter schools are “reaching a crisis level” in Ohio and must be made accountable for putting students and taxpayers in peril, David Pepper, Democratic candidate for attorney general, said yesterday.
DeWine’s office dropped out of an Ohio Supreme Court case that pitted charter-school operators against for-profit White Hat Management over who gets to keep computers, textbooks and equipment purchased with taxpayer dollars. White Hat owner David Brennan is a major campaign contributor to DeWine and the Republican Party — a reason DeWine didn’t pursue the case, Pepper claimed.”
I can’t determine why the state dropped the case. Cordray, the former AG (and now head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) was in it when it was at the county level.
I don’t know why the state wouldn’t want to protect their interest. They’re funding the whole thing. Another mystery! 🙂
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/09/09/Pepper_on_charter_schools.html
comingle…comingle…no clear lines…private?…public?…
Moses went up Sinai, got The Word, and came down with commandments. We’ve been having trouble with those ever since.
Executives like Gates do this all the time. Often off to a posh retreat to reinvent the company with out of the box thinking in a wholistic approach. They come down from their mountain with shiny new standards, policies, and strategies and forget to ask the rest of the mere mortal employees if it works or their opinion. Then the execs can not understand why nothing functions and people are unable to do the job. What then follows is blaming the employees or customers, then the execs quickly moving on to another job before being held accountable. The employees are left to salvage the company.
Weird Al says it best.
Einstein said it best: “I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture. . . . ”
—— Albert Einstein, Saturday Evening Post interview, 10/26/1929″
Mike Barrett
I agree. I think that the first step in recognizing the individuality of students is to allow them to attend schools based on their own individual needs and desires, not the catchment lines drawn up by local politicians.
So you are against local schools and think that this quote supports that!
Well to quote someone less lofty than Einstein, “I’d agree with you if you were right.” The importance of universal well resourced local schools has been well articulated elsewhere and the failure of so-called school choice has been widely documented.
[geek test who said “I’d agree with you if you were right.” ?]
Mike,
My post was not for or against local schools, it simply pointed out that traditional zoned schools are the most standardized schools. The local school board can not tell the residents of the 500 block of Maple Street that their students are assigned to a Waldorf school and at the same time tell the residents of the 600 block of Maple Street that their students are assigned to a French language immersion school. The only way that students on those two blocks of Maple Street can be assigned to different schools without upsetting the parents is if the two schools are are alike as possible, are standardized.
Choice allows schools to be different from each other. This is why we see charter and magnet French language immersion schools but not traditional “all and only” traditional zoned schools can not. If schools can be different and students can choose the schools that best fit their individual needs and desires the students will be treated as individuals rather than simply street addresses.
Bill and Arne are both blind to their own myopia, which is a product of what Anne Wilson Schaef calls “The four great myths of the White Male System,” in her book “Women’s Reality.”
Myth #1: “The White Male System is the only thing that exists.”
Myth #2: “The WMS is innately superior.”
Myth #3: “The WMS knows and understands everything.”
Myth #4: “It is possible to be totally logical, rational, and objective.”
When we look at our current politics, and the talking heads, venture philanthropists, politicians, etc., one sees far too much policy driven by those four myths. They know best, and all other voices are irrelevant.
Myth #1, yes a myth.
#2-4 are just universal truths, all should know that by now.*
*unless they aren’t WMs.
Of course it might be impertinent, rude · insolent · impolite · ill-mannered · bad-mannered of this WM to point out the inherent prejudice of A. Wilson Shaef’s conclusions.
Take a look at the parallel education “reforms” that have been going on in England, home of Pearson, where public education in a country the size of Louisiana has rapidly been privatized and now has over 4,000 academies and free schools, their equivalents of charters and voucher schools, while we have only 6K so far. They call their national standards “national curriculum,” and have national tests, so I think you can see why some “reformers” here are having a problem keeping the language straight so they can be legally correct here.
England seems to be the model for the business plan, which aims to capture a much larger market share with the inclusion of our huge country. And, just like our “reforms” were instigated by neoliberal “New Democrats” yet appeal to Republicans, theirs were initially instituted by neoliberal “New Labour” but also appeal to Conservatives. Teachers are being scapegoated there, too. It’s sickening how similar things are over there –and surely not just a coincidence. This information should be researched thoroughly and spread widely.
The pond doesn’t inhibit bad ideas as much as it did in the days of yore.
Yesterday:
“He’s heard the complaint he’s moving too quickly on education reform. “We are not getting better fast enough,” he said. “As a nation, we are going to educate our way to a better economy. Companies are going to go to where the skilled workers are. Hopefully, it is here in the United States.” If not, he said, America will lose skilled jobs to India, China or Korea.”
The Obama Administration are still repeating this same line. People should know that there is an actual debate about why US wages are flat or falling, and the inferior quality of the workforce is one VERY narrow view.
THIS view is one that is beloved and repeated by US business leaders and politicians because it holds everyone who is actually powerful and influential absolutely blameless for flat or falling wages, and puts the entire burden on public schools.
But it isn’t “fact”. It’s Scott Walker’s view, and the US Chamber of Commerce view and the Obama Administration view but a normally skeptical person would NOT repeat that without SOME inkling that is is SELF-SERVING to some very powerful interests.
If this is the quality of the “critical thinking” ed reformers are promoting, thanks but no thanks. I think my sixth grader is better informed and would see the obvious benefit of business leaders and politicians promoting this as “truth”.
http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/get-schooled/2014/sep/08/obamas-one-two-punch-education-his-wife-michelle-a/
And so here’s one of the many, many dissenters on Duncan’s “skills gap” excuse:
“Why “alleged”? Because, on a national level, the skills gap does not exist. (See Who Says There’s A Skills Gap?)
Yes, there are issues finding people for specific jobs in specific industries; for the labor force as a whole, however, the skills-gap “crisis” is no such thing. And to the extent that your business is having problems, to a large degree, the solutions are in your hands. Specifically: Start training programs, pay competitive wages, and work with governments and community colleges.”
Now why would politicians and US business leaders promote an idea that shifts blame and accountability from them to other people or entities? That never happens, right? 🙂
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201404/cait-murphy/skills-gap-in-the-labor-force.html
Kids are not widgets and teachers are not assembly line robots.
Cross posted to Mercedes…Shortly after releasing the Standards with much publicity about international benchmarking, the CCSSO helped to fund a study that shows the Standards are not, in fact, closely aligned with the standards of nations that score higher on international tests.
In mathematics, for example, the nations with the highest test scores—Finland, Japan, and Singapore—devote about 75% of instruction to “perform procedures” compared to the CCSS emphasis at about 38%.
These same nations give almost no attention to “solve non-routine problems” compared to the CCSS.
In ELA, countries that score at the highest level also have patterns of emphasis in different grade spans that differ substantially from the CCSS, with a greater emphasis overall on “perform procedures” than in the CCSS.
The big surprise is that a significant part of “perform procedures” in mathematics and ELA is following directions and completing highly conventional assignments, free of elaborated analysis and generalization.
In other words, compliance with the conventions of schooling has a strong association with higher test scores. Wowzie. Who would have guessed that learning to follow directions mattered so much?
Note also that the former president of the American Educational Research Association, Andrew Porter, was among others who did this study and made the connection of the CCSS to the “new US intended curriculum. See: Porter, A.; McMaken ,J.; Hwang, J. ; & Yang, R. (2011). Common core standards: The new U.S. intended curriculum. Educational Researcher, 40(3). 103-116. DOI: 10.3102/0013189X11405038
Follow the hardwire from the source starting with Bill Gates > Washington DC > the states > public school districts [Note that private sector Charters are not hooked up to the Bill Gates hardwire] > individual schools > classrooms > attached to children’s brains for programming.
“We question authority.”
When you question your union masters, do let me know.