Several days ago, I posted a commentary by Alan Singer that was critical of the National Council for the Social Studies. Singer was disturbed that NCSS was trying to align its content with the Common Core standards, and that it had modeled some lesson plans on a proposal by the Bill of Rights Institute, which is funded by the Koch brothers. I posted Singer’s piece because it was interesting; I did not echo his criticisms, as I have no independent knowledge of the specific issues he raised. It is good to air the issues, and I provide room to different perspectives.
The president of the NCSS responded to Singer as follows:
Dear Dr. Ravitch:
Alan Singer, professor of education at Hofstra University, has recently criticized the National Council of Social Studies (NCSS) and its work in advancing the study of civics, economics, geography, and history. In particular, Prof. Singer has tried to undercut NCSS’s work on the “C3 Framework” (College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards), by misrepresenting its intent and its content, and has challenged the organization’s integrity by alleging that NCSS is supporting the right-wing political agenda of the Koch brothers.
Your blog of January 5 cites some of Singer’s criticisms. People truly knowledgeable about NCSS, its mission, legacy, and membership will dismiss Singer’s attack—which was our first impulse as well. But his thesis appears to be gaining some traction, at least on the Internet, so we think it is necessary to add some facts to the conversation, in the hope of elevating the discussion to a level more appropriate to its importance.
Singer accuses NCSS and the C3 Framework of sacrificing social studies in favor of the marginalization of social studies content and conceptual learning promoted by the Common Core State Standards. The exact opposite is the case. NCSS and the C3 Framework strongly advocate that the study of social studies – civics, economics, geography, and history are just as important to our nation’s future as the study of Mathematics and English-Language Arts, which are the focus of the Common Core State Standards.
The C3 Framework provides clear and exacting distinctions by defining the conceptual knowledge and skills required for all students of social studies to be prepared for college, career, and an engaged civic life. Twenty-two states and fifteen national professional organizations representing civics, economics, geography, and history, collaborated in the creation of the C3 Framework. All agree that literacy skills are no substitute for the robust content knowledge, skills, and dispositions found in a rigorous social studies curriculum. All agree that a vigorous, inquiry-based social studies education is essential for the development of responsible, informed, and engaged citizens and provides a powerful context for the development of literacy skills for all students.
The C3 Framework is built around an Inquiry Arc…”a set of interlocking and mutually reinforcing elements” structured upon four dimensions:
Developing questions and planning inquiries.
Applying disciplinary concepts and tools.
Evaluating sources and using evidence; and
Communicating conclusions and taking informed action.
These are the pillars of the conceptual framework for the C3 Framework and speak to the heart of education for informed civic participation, the purpose of social studies. They offer a strong foundation for exactly the kind of “meaningful social studies education” and “education for democracy and citizenship” that Singer says is necessary.
The C3 Framework includes links to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts to assist states that have adopted the Common Core to identify the conceptual understandings and skills common to both. High quality social studies education enables students to build content knowledge, conduct research, evaluate multiple sources of information, collaborate with others to share knowledge and ideas, and communicate conclusions based on evidence through expository writing and formal presentations. All of these important skills, found in a rigorous social studies program, will prepare students to address compelling issues and problems in the 21st century as informed, engaged citizens.
Let us turn to the NCSS/Koch brothers connection. In a blog on January 5, Singer claimed:
“Desperate for Koch dollars to subsidize its convention and publications, the NCSS actually had agents for the seemingly anti-Common Core Koch brothers design one of the fifteen Common Core aligned lessons [published in an NCSS Bulletin].”
This line of attack, which Singer expanded upon in segments just preceding and following the quote above, is a classic example of asserting guilt-by-association, innuendo and misrepresentation. Yes, it is true that the Bill of Rights Foundation was and has long been an exhibitor at the annual NCSS convention. In that capacity it is one of over 200 exhibitors, organizations that represent every conceivable ideological stripe on the spectrum. Other exhibitors have included Peace Corps, Fords Theater Society, Mikva Challenge, and the Zinn Education Project among others.
As for selling out to right-wing zealots, featured speakers at this year’s convention included immigration reform advocate Jose Antonio Vargas, filmmaker Ken Burns, columnist Nicholas Kristof, Anthony Chavez, grandson of the late civil rights icon Cesar Chavez, and many others, who might be surprised at being so labeled. In 2013, the keynote speakers were Taylor Branch, John Lewis, Stephen Paine, and Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. You yourself were a keynote speaker in 2011. William Bennett and Howard Zinn were both keynote speakers at our conference in 2008. Through our exhibitors and our speakers, NCSS provides a dynamic forum for ideas that social studies teachers can measure and evaluate as they see fit.
Yes, it is also true that the Bill of Rights Institute was one of 15 organizations that provided a lesson plan to an NCSS publication (Bulletin 114) on how to use the C3 Framework; the wide range of other contributors included National Geographic, National History Day, Facing History and Ourselves, the Newseum, Mikva Challenge, National Museum of the American Indian, Library of Congress, the National Archives and others. NCSS Bulletins are funded by member dues, and have never received funding from the Koch brothers, as implied by Singer (or from any other of the “right-wing groups” that he speculates are influencing NCSS). NCSS publications are open to a wide range of viewpoints. Although Singer criticizes the latest NCSS Bulletin for excessive alignment with the Common Core, the lesson plans in the Bulletin are, in fact, directly aligned with the four dimensions of the C3 Framework, not with the Common Core State Standards.
A copy of the Bill of Rights lesson plan published by NCSS that Singer denounced is attached. We do not believe that any reasonable reading of the lesson plan will support Singer’s view that it is a result of a conspiracy in which NCSS “had agents for the seemingly anti-Common Core Koch brothers” write the lesson plan with the aim of achieving objectives like opposing “a national health insurance plan and the regulation of companies like Koch Industries that destroy the environment in the name of profit.”
We believe that any representative review of NCSS books and journals, which have published several contributions by Singer himself, will show that they are richly diverse and anything but a “sell-out of all principles.”
The C3 Framework asks students to analyze and evaluate evidence prior to communicating conclusions or taking action. We suggest that all of us follow that sound instruction.
Sincerely yours,
Michelle M. Herczog, Ed.D.
President, National Council for the Social Studies
“The pillars of the conceptual framework for the C3 Framework” that “speak to the heart of education for informed civic participation”?
Yikes, This is the kind of thing George Orwell was talking about in “Politics and the English Language”: The teaching profession is corrupted by such language.
I believe your instincts are correct, Diane, and Alan’s criticisms must continue to gain traction. The presence of Koch brothers in this debate is troubling in every way, and while all Americans must be allowed to weigh in on policy affecting Americans’ future, their involvement must be transparent as their well-established record of using their money to buy political favors casts a well-deserved taint on everything they are involved in. Those aren’t my sentiments alone. Cato Chairman Robert Levy expressed similar reservations years ago.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-10/koch-brothers-file-second-lawsuit-against-cato-institute-1-.html
Should educators ignore Kochs’ influence when think tanks don’t?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74040.html
Does it matter what self-identified libertarians think?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimpowell/2012/03/11/the-cato-institute-controversy-why-should-anyone-care-what-libertarians-think/
I trust even Dr. Herczog will one day appreciate the vigilance of educators who question “Who is making the decisions that affect American children, how are the decisions being made, and who benefits from the decision that are made?” Regardless of where Dr. Herczog’s loyalties lie, if the answer includes “the Koch brothers,” American educators can be counted on to rise up to defend American democracy.
* Dr. Herczog’s clarifications and corrections are of course essential. I argue only that they must not be permitted to obscure Alan Singer’s underlying concerns about the sources of money, which are rightly shared by hundreds of thousands of stakeholders on many sides of the reform debate.
Excellent defense of the C3 Framework. Thank you.
Imdedded in the beginning of the Framework is the stipulation that the Framework does not specify the content to be taught, that is the responsibility of each State or local Educational Authority.
California is moving forward with a great Framework of required content.
Just today, Arizona is going to require passing a “civics test”
Criticizing people by associating them with Orwell or the Koch Brothers just reflects the paranoia of people who can’t stand people who don’t agree with them.
Remember, you get what you vote for and you get to vote for only those that raise enough money, the Irony of Democracy.
“The people may again be reminded, that the elective franchise is in their own hands; that it ought not to be abused, either for personal gratifications, or the indulgence of partisan acrimony. This advantage should be improved, not only for the benefit of existing society, but with an eye to that fidelity which is due to posterity. This can only be done by electing such men to guide the national counsels, whose conscious probity enables them to stand like a Colossus, on the broad basis of independence, and by correct and equitable arrangements, endeavor to lighten the burdens of the people, strengthen their unanimity at home, command justice abroad, and cultivate peace with all nations, until an example may be left on record of the practicability of meliorating the condition of mankind.” — Mercy Otis Warren (1805), History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations, in Two Volumes, Foreword by Lester H. Cohen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1994).
Ms. Otis-Warren is sometimes referred to as the first American feminist. I think she and the Founders amongst her friends and family may have been nearly as quick to call out the Koch brothers as Alan and the rest of us sometimes are.
Thanks to you and Dr. Herczog. It’s good to know all the facts in the debate — just as it’s good to know all the players in the ball game!
NCSS has received two grants from the Gates Foundation for more than $500,000. That is pretty strong evidence they are on the side of privatization of schools through standards like CCSS. I am sticking with Singer who has not been paid anything by the Gates Foundation. But I will read the lesson paid for by the Koch Brothers. I just wish the Koch brothers and Bill Gates would pay their fair share of state and federal taxes instead of bribing our representatives to privatize our public schools.
Well you get what you vote for. Don’t vote for people who take bribes
Wonderful retroactive advice for the people of Virginia. Will you share your crystal ball with us, Jim? lol
I don’t want to project, nor offend, but do I detect an overall “buyer beware” approach to … life in general? Where does the market end and a human being begin? Please help us see your boundaries! When, in your view, might educators expect to return to looking out for learners, not looking over their shoulders, or pondering extra-curricular activities that would benefit from a dash of clairvoyance?
Michelle M. Herczog wrote, “The exact opposite is the case. NCSS and the C3 Framework strongly advocate that the study of social studies – civics, economics, geography, and history are just as important to our nation’s future as the study of Mathematics and English-Language Arts, which are the focus of the Common Core State Standards.”
Here’s my response to all Herczog’s blarney I just read: B_ _ _ S_ _ _
Starting out and claiming that their goals are the exact opposite of what Alan Singer alleged and then ending with “which are the focus of the Common Core State Standards” means it isn’t the opposite and Herczog’s bad waltz with words is, like I said, BS.
Bill Gates Common Core State Standards are not important to our nation’s future.
The nation was doing just fine without CCSS.
The nation was doing fine before A Nation at Risk came out in 1983.
The nation was doing fine before NCLB.
The nation was doing fine before Race to the Top.
Instead, the CCSS is a nail in the future of this nation that will lead to an oligarchy led by the likes of the Koch brothers, the Waltons and Bill Gates. The only threat to this nation is the greed of banks, Wall Street, Hedge Funds, corporations and billionaire oligarchs.
If any reform is needed, that reform should be focused on the real threats to this nation and not the public schools, public school teachers, parents and children.
I agree with Lloyd. I have now read the NCSS nonsense that Singer complained about and I was appalled. Here is one of their many standards for Kindergarteners through Second graders: “K-2. Explain how weather, climate, and other environmental characteristics affect people’s lives in a place or region.” I have a Masters Degree in Child Development specializing in the emotional development of very young children. Second graders should be playing on the monkey bars – not trying to memorize some nonsense from the Koch brothers or NCSS. There are dramatic differences between the developmental level of various Second Graders. The idea of imposing ANY standards on children so young is absurd immoral, disgusting and revolting. If billionaires want to control and torture our kids, they should at least wait until the kids are in 6th grade when most of the kids will have some kind of emotional regulation skills. No more torturing little children. Stop the billionaires!
When it rains, things grow and we have water to drink. The climate is different in San Francisco where it hardly ever snows, but here in North Dakota it is very cold and it snows a lot. So that’s why you can’t drink water from the fountain outside after you pry your hands from the monkey bars.
Who said impose, the example you cite from the C3 report showed an example of a standard and how to teach it. Not impose it.
BTW the Koch Brothers didn’t write any standards.
Peoples Pavlovian response to “KOCH Brothers” and BILL GATES just demonstrates an extreme bias that is not helpful. Please read the C3 report/study and try to understand that until CCSS is removed from the program, every discipline must address it because of the corrupt bribe takers we have voted for.
Who are you Jim? You appear and instantly get defensive. Go play on the money bars, and drink the snow.
«— Peoples Pavlovian response to “KOCH Brothers” and BILL GATES just demonstrates an extreme bias that is not helpful. —»
Is it also bias that causes one to prejudge someone’s response as “Pavlovian?” Should the “Peoples” you refer to accept your rebuttal as uncritically as you say they react to the names “Koch” and “Gates?” Can you explain how you discern these folks from those whose concerns are based on Kochs’ and Gates’s long record of buying political influence and bypassing democratic processes?
A Pavlovian response is reflexive and reactive. A critical response is reflective and reality-based. Among other things it asks, “Who makes decisions, who decides that and how do they decide, and who benefits from the decisions that are made?”
If, upon critical reflection, the answer to all three questions is “KOCH Brothers [and/or] BILL GATES [and/or] hedge fund managers, international billionaires and America’s Wealthiest 1%” whom does it help? Who’s being reflexive? Is it wrong to react? Really?
As the parent of a second grader — whose school has no playground or monkey bars — I’m not seeing what’s immoral about trying to get second graders to talk about how the weather affects people’s lives.
My point in advocating that Second Grades should be on the playground instead of trying to explain the weather is that Second Graders have a huge need for physical development and are limited in their cognitive development. If there are no monkey bars at your school or you are in a cold place like North Dakota, then the kids should be playing in a gym or some other place. Having a standard that requires Second Graders to spend their time analyzing the weather is absurd. The more I learn about NCSS, the more I have concluded it is just another of hundreds of Bill Gates funded fake groups that know nothing about the developmental needs of very young children.
The receipt of a Gates grant and NCSS’ “excitement to be chosen for the Teacher Practice Network”, was reported by Tim Daly, in September. He then identified other organizations that are involved, Constitutional Rights Foundation, Knowledge Works and a Silicon Valley entity strangely titled, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. Has Gates funded all of them?
Gates spoke out against pensions in 2011. He spoke out against raising the minimum wage. He funds Education Trust with Arnold et. al.. He funds the Data Quality Campaign with the Waltons. The president of his foundation was president of the Walton Foundation.
Koch, Walton, Gates. NCSS says tomato, I say tomato.
Lloyd, Singer and David see the light.
So the NCSS is concerned that Professor’s Singer’s critique is “gaining some traction”.
Where was the NCSS when the corporate reformers started to “gain traction”…and then proceeded to tear up our public schools? (Picture a bulldozer plowing into a first grade classroom!)
I see that the “C-3 Framework” and your “inquiry arc” are fully endorsed by the New York State Education Department. Well, there goes your credibility, NCSS -not just with me but with every other teacher I respect.
Thank you Professor Singer for showing courage.
The NCSS should be taking a strong stand against historical decontextualization in Common Core. Instead, most of their energy goes to marketing. their C3 curriculum is one of the worst pieces of curriculum i have seen in 30 years as a Social Studies educator. Glorified gibberish.
I’m not sure which fight NCSS ought to be having. A fight to get included in the CCSS frameworks because what we’ve learned since NCLB is that non-tested subjects get orphaned, or a fight to tear this all down because non-tested subjects get orphaned.
NCSS itself acknowledged this problem: http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/nclbera
CCSS combined with the testing system and teacher evaluation from testing is a recipe for pushing the social studies further aside. I’m not convinced that trying to get on board with aligning themselves is going to help at all.
“I’m not sure which fight NCSS ought to be having. A fight to get included in the CCSS frameworks because what we’ve learned since NCLB is that non-tested subjects get orphaned, or a fight to tear this all down because non-tested subjects get orphaned.”
NAfME (The National Association for Music Education) has always advocated for the similarly orphaned arts education, but now NAfME is supporting a CCSS version of arts standards that I just cannot seem to get behind. The previous National Music Standards as put forth by the organization, then called MENC, were simple and extremely applicable to any developmental age. “Standards” that are so specific and convoluted leave educators out of the professional decision-making process.
It’s the old “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em argument,” but it’s detrimental to get in bed with the enemy in an effort to stay alive.
I feel like these content associations AND the unions need to understand there is no likely benefit to share a foxhole with people who keep measuring your boots for their own feet.
Well-put. It’s bad enough they are tying our hands–wait until they start tying our boots together.
Dear Diane,
I don’t know what the NCSS is actually doing, but I’d like to see them stand up for Social Studies as centrally important to education in our democracy. I know first hand that we are losing social studies in my son’s elementary school as it get crowded out by extra hours spent on math and ELA due to CCSS and PARCC preparedness.
Remember the story reported last year that Boston–I think it was–was dissolving it’s Social Studies department and folding it into ELA? Then the correction that followed saying, not so?
I can’t speak for Boston, but in truth, what Social Studies has survived in my child’s school this year has to be wedged in between math and ELA. It’s a tiny fraction of what kids got just a two years ago.
I hadn’t seen any Social Studies at all for a few months, then suddenly, a couple of days on Martin Luther King leading up to this weekend. My child loves history. I can see this is something else we will have to do at home.
I keep wondering when the big brains who fawn over standards and try to win the My Standards Are Better Than Yours game will wake up and join us little folk down here who are experiencing the fall out of all this nonsense.
If CCSS/PARCC is draining our schools of social studies, isn’t that just one more piece of evidence–as the CCSS/PARCC folk like to say– that their approach to education is merely a poorly constructed theory? Yet another example of how the Standards linked to PARCC train is running off the rails?
Of course, if you want a system that ranks and sorts everybody by scores that follow them through life, it might be advantageous to limit citizen knowledge about our history– which is full of troublesome democratic concepts like freedom and privacy.
If I were in the leadership of NCSS I think I’d be using my skill sets to get rid of NCLB and CCSS/PARCC.
I actually credited NCSS C3 standards for promoting citizenship in an earlier post. Somehow the NCSS reply to my posts on the Koch brothers and NCSS managed to ignore this and to ignore the substantive comments I made about how C3 and Common Core were translated into practice in the curriculum bulletin by the Bill of Rights Institute, Colonial Williamsburg, Gilder Lehrman, and in their economics lesson. These contributions present a very skewed view of their subjects that promotes conservative views of history, society, and social studies education. The BRI offers a close reading of a Supreme Court decision from the early 19th century in a lesson designed to challenge federal “overreach” including environmental protection, social service programs, and corporate regulation. A major problem with the curriculum package is the very limited idea of citizenship it promotes. Student activism is missing. I also wonder why groups like the Zinn Education Project and Southern Poverty Law Center were not included in this curriculum.
I would like to know how much the Koch brothers through the Bill of Rights Institute and other similar organizations contribute to NCSS to support conventions, to purchase booths, and as advertisers in publications. This information was left out of their reply.
Please let NCSS know that I am willing to discuss these questions in an open forum at their next national convention.
about http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/campaign-to-add-citizensh_b_4256357.html
People who work in the “orphaned subjects” have a long history of playing tag-a-long to subjects deemed to be “core.” There is a persistent hope that writing standards in great detail will some how get you a bit more curriculum time.
Just published standards in Music, Dance, Theater, Visual Art, and Media Studies (new discipline) seem to have been written in the wild hope that all of the standards will be tested with “authentic” assessments.
These standards are grade-specific, starting in Pre-K. The standards come to a screeching halt in high school, with three levels defining studies: Proficient, Accomplished, and Advanced. The writers of the standards wanted a parallel structure for each art form.
I have seen the standards for the visual arts and media arts, Each of these art forms has acquired 234 standards. If the writers followed that rule across all of the arts, then students and teachers are facing 1,170 arts standards.
I see that a model evaluation for the new Dance standards for grade 2 has nine conventional “knowledge and skills” statements…. (“students will…” ). Then the same assessment guide throws in five references to the CCSS, four references to “Blooms,” three “21st century Skills,” four DOK’s, and ten “habits of mind.”
Some arts educators hoped to hitch their star to STEM subjects. Just transform the acronym into STEAM.
Same for those “21st century Skills.” They have been like sticky glue. Most of the skills are not distinct to the 21st century, are modified statements from personnel managers, and came into being by virtue of the political savvy of Ken Kay, a lobbyist for the tech industry (KAY tried twice to get his mixed bag of terms and phrases into federal legislation.)
When I entered teaching there were frequent claims and articles to the effect that arts educators where going to help the nation beat the Russians, win the Space Race because we knew how to educate “creative scientists.”
Some readers may recall the standards written under the Goals 2000 Educate America Act (H.R. 1804, 1994). At that time, K-12 standards were written in 14 domains of study, 24 subjects, then parsed into 259 standards, and 4100 grade-level benchmarks.
A dispute over the status of history versus social studies ended in no “approved standards” for the latter, but 1,281 grade level standards for history. In those history standards, facts are supposed to matter. Even so, students were (falsely) expected to know that Mary Cassatt was a famous American Regionalist painter. (Wrong. The artist lived in Paris for most of her life, is best known as an Impressionist). Source: Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education, “Process” Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, (2011), http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks/docs/process.asp
Teachers are drowning in standards and the waters keep on getting churned. The tsunami of expectations is just short of asking all of our students to be omniscient. Writers of the CCSS think their version of the 3R’s are just fine and that all teachers should comply even with the ridiculous Lexile Score in ELA.
Ohio currently has 3,203 standards on the books, including 1,600 CCSS (counting parts a-e). That’s about 267 per grade level. The arts standards in Ohio were developed and approved at the state level before the NEW arts standards were written. Which ones really matter will be determined by which ones are acceptable for teacher evaluations.
If Ohio’s current standards are typical, there has been no crosschecking of the sets of standards for duplications, synergies, contradictory expectations, feasibility, developmental coherence, or simply dead wrong content.
The CCSS standards are surrounded with all of the mandatory rhetoric of the day. They are strictly academic. They are rigorous. Students must master them on time, grade-by-grade with no regard for networks of understandings that may later produce unexpected insight and understanding. Not all learning occurs in a tidy progression whithin or across the grades.
Federal officials seem to want national standards for every subject, as if the sum of all the separate standards that can be conjured will make educational sense and favor the development of coherent and feasible curriculum work. They are clueless and learned nothing from the Goals 2000 project.
In any case, well-informed work on curriculum does not begin with standards. It begins with a vision of what education is for, and who should be involved in deciding that, especially in a democratic society.
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2015/01/13/Propel-Charter-Schools-to-take-part-in-national-pilot-in-dance-theater-arts/stories/201501130165
Pilot testing begins
Once again, Laura, you bring light not just heat to bear on a topic.Then the final paragraph of your comments drops the hammer, so to speak, on why this all matters. Thank you for putting into words what somewhat escapes me.
I guess as a social studies teacher I am insulted on two levels.
There are these”micro”, day to day insults that happen in our classrooms -imposed from high above -for example, common core crap paperwork requirements or in New York State the wacky APPR evaluation system. People gripe, shut the doors to their classrooms and then the whole school year moves on. I mean, can you believe it’s January already…again! Life keeps moving on.
But then there is this sort of “macro” insult that cuts deeper, right into the soul. It’s something that is far more dangerous to our schools and to our country…to ourselves. This is the idea that teachers are forced to act upon a vision of education that is illogical, immoral and harmful to our students and our schools: up is down and wrong is right. It makes me want to re-read George Orwell’s “1984” again. And, when citizens have to start living in this sort of imposed, twisted world, unable to respond to what their own eyes see, to what their own hearts know is wrong…..well, something REALLY bad starts to occur. It’s just easier to stop thinking. It’s human nature…..perhaps an instinct to survive. And, wrong does start to become right….
Social studies teachers are charged specifically with teaching about democracy. We have a special responsibility to stand up when our democracy is endangered. The evidence on this blog is clear and has accumulated day after day for years now. Something very wrong is being imposed on our public schools, on our country.
And, to repeat your last paragraph:
“In any case, well-informed work on curriculum does not begin with standards. It begins with a vision of what education is for, and who should be involved in deciding that, especially in a democratic society”
Teachers, parents and students have been cut out of talking about that vision. We need the NCSS to stand up and say, stop, hold on…..we need to back up and get this right.
THAT is the organization that I would be proud to join.
For those who remember, in 2011, the Gates Foundation gave ALEC almost $400,000, “to educate and engage its membership…to drive greater student outcomes… to use merit and achievement to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate teachers.” (Sourcewatch). The concerted goal of the Kochs and Gates was a public relations disaster, for the Gates “philanthropy” brand.
If an organization, to avoid bad press and public outrage, repositions its brand away from offensive associations, there’s no reason to think it’s more than a cosmetic change.
Has NCSS answered a question about whether they have to return Gates money if they publicly denounce Common Core?