Researchers usually find that students flourish where there is stability in the school, with an experienced staff, clear expectations, small classes, and a rich curriculum.
In Kentucky, first state to implement and test the Common Core, student scores fell and achievement gaps widened.
This teacher in Connecticut foresees rough weather ahead as the state and federal government launch a massive experiment:
I wonder about the impact specifically in Connecticut where we are rolling out a new comprehensive teacher evaluation system at the same time [as Common Core]….so we have teachers learning new standards, possibly new curriculum, new evaluation processes, new observational rubrics for lessons, teaching and then setting learning goals based on results of one type of test in 2014, and then another online, common core test in 2015…how many schools will fail? How many teachers will not make gains with their students? How many will be fired? How many schools will be taken over? How will the students handle all the stress and change in the schools? It sounds to me like a lot of people will benefit – private companies waiting to take over schools, publishers, trainers, RESCS, but the hands-down, biggest loser will be the students. It is going to be a rough ride in Connecticut for a few years as this experiment unfolds.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Journalism Guy's Update and commented:
At JEA we have been watching and working on the Common Core movement for the past three years. As we have learned more about CC and the state standards that have been developed to implement them, we see that journalism had been teaching students to meet these standards long before they were written.
The biggest problem with CC is that it has been married to the current standardized testing craze, and the results has been a sort of Bride of Frankenstein creation that is truly scary. We would all be so much better off if journalism programs were simply judged as they have long been judged — by the products they produced and the recognition they receive from their peers.
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Rhode Island is going through the same deal: Implementation of the Common Core State (sic) Standards, AND a new evaluation system rigged to trip us up. Example- if, throughout your observation, you students behaved perfectly, you are effective. A student has to goof off and another student has to correct them (the observer has to see this) for you to score highly effective.
The unions in this state, at once some of the strongest, have confused cooperation with capitulation. Nobody in district management is speaking up (what do they care anyway? especially the ones close to retirement?). People on the state level of education are working for a petty Broad Academy tyrant who just got a slap on the wrist from the state department of labor for shooting out threatening E-mails to her staff.
Note- I always write “Common Core State (sic) Standards.
I call this new educational reform “educational nihilism.”
Things are really going to hit the fan when the PARCC tests come out. I can easily foresee my district buying a pre-set curriculum which will tell me exactly what to teach from day to day.
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We here on Long Island also have the common core, appr, Danielson rubric, evidence binders to show we actually do our jobs and super Storm Sandy which displaced many of our students and staff. Then our principal is mandating all teachers learn and use a new computer grade book. My department chairperson is mandating all English teachers grades 7-10 have student portfolios. All of this on top of our regular responsibilities, you know teaching, planning, grading, progress reports, report cards, cut slips, attendance letters, contacting parents …it’s no wonder I am home “sick” today
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Don’t you want to see Cuomo, Bloomberg, Klein et al. do your job for an entire year. All the work involved. And of course be a fly on that wall. I bet they wouldn’t last a week. Ha
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In New Jersey, the CC is being rolled out a few grades at a time each year while the evaluation changes have been piloted. Next year, the evaluation models will be in effect. The state legislature pushed through laws that affect evaluation, yet lawmakers had no plan on the details of implementation. It’s like saying, “There’s a problem, but we don’t know what it is.” One NJ teachers union has taken the bull by the horns in helping to develop a plan.
The common core is another albatross. According to some of my colleagues, they are lacking some of the resources necessary for implementation of the common core. They are utilizing every free moment of time trying to find their own. They work through lunch. They are working every single evening at home on the new curriculum.
Couple all these mandates with my district’s technology plan and our teachers are overworked, frazzled, and feeling as if they are drowning in everything they must do to prepare for their lessons. I stay after school for several hours each day, and I teach music. I could only imagine how much more the classroom teachers have to do.
Today, I left after four additional hours at my desk working on 1) report cards for the 200 students I grade, 2) the studying of a tutorial on student response software that we’re all expected to use for our assessments and 3) review of performance literature for my spring co-curricular ensembles. I was checking out in the main office thinking I was the only one who stayed that late when I met two other teachers who were still in the building. Four hours. I teach music. And I still brought work home with me. Can’t tell you how thrilled I am to know that I have to prepare writing prompts that support both the common core and the NJASK writing assessments in music class along with my other teaching tasks.
They definitely are setting us up to either fail or quit.
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Gov. Malloy could barely conceal his glee when describing how test scores would likely plummet and even suburban families would see how poor their schools are.
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And yesterday our new school scores were published in the local paper. Surprise, surprise: urban schools are doing poorly, suburban schools are doing well, and rural schools seem to be somewhere in the middle, but definitely closer to the suburban scores than the urban.
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So the question is, is the new test and curriculum creating larger achievement gaps, or is it measuring one already there that has been glossed over in Kentucky’s previous testing scheme?
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Any decent researcher knows that when you change more than one variable in an experiment, you have to do some pretty heavy lifting in order to determine which one had more effect than another. So in Chicago we have a new evaluation, Common Core, a longer day and year, a new contract, school closings and the usual suspects of attacks on an urban system. The key is to be clear about what and whose purposes all of this serves.
We now know with the Wall Street Journal “exposing” how America tests in relation to other countries, that the scope of the hand-ringing is to make sure parents of children in good schools will begin to question their efficacy in order to move to a purely private system. Public schools, with the promise of democracy, citizen-building and the common good are in danger of disappearing. If the billionaire dilettantes have their way, public schools will be for the “throwaway” kids and their teachers will be temps.
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None of this will end until teachers become organized and finally fight with more action. I really have seen teachers do much in most states. Chicago seems like the only place that has really fought back.
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“This teacher in Connecticut foresees rough weather ahead as the state and federal government launch a massive experiment:”
Sorry, we cannot afford to “experiment” with our children’s future, nor the future of education, the most critical pillar of a genuine democratic system of government.
“Ed-reformers” will be held accountable for their crimes against the people.
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