Alan Singer on Common Core

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1. hotflash57 says:

   June 8, 2013 at 10:04 am

   Ummm…I think it’s called good teaching?

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2. hotflash57 says:

   June 8, 2013 at 10:10 am

   Um….I think Alan is describing good teaching, which those of us who choose to remain in the profession already know. A young principal in my district had the nerve to tell a group of seasoned teachers, “Once you learn how to organize and plan lessons, it will get easier.” The response from a 32 year veteran? “We’re already there.” What teachers need, at least in my district, is TIME and resources. We are technologically 10 years behind, the district tried to bargain away prep time at the table, and we are left to our own devices as to curriculum. I wish they would just give us a check for “our share” along with a set of reasonable standards and a couple of hours each week to collaborate, reflect and plan. I’d be good with that!

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   • Michael Paul Goldenberg says:

     June 8, 2013 at 11:30 am

     Corporate deformers and their apologists are huge on slogans, rhetoric, and tough talk. What they are utterly devoid of is a plan to create schools on any sort of scale that would promote great teaching. The Japanese school day has long been a model of what pro-teaching school days look like: fewer teaching hours, more reflection/planning/collegial interaction/mentoring. Until the deformers start calling for anything like that (which would perforce cost $$), they’re not worth listening to seriously.

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3. Tom Hoffman says:

   June 8, 2013 at 10:20 am

   Yes… I suspect everything Singer writes about would be equally true of a state’s previous standards.

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4. Jon Awbrey says:

   June 8, 2013 at 10:20 am

   “I believe they are partly a ploy by major publishers and media companies to sell new material to schools that is actually the same old stuff marketed with different labels.”

   What does he mean partly?

   Corporate Core™ is all ploy.

   What’s it going to be like when the entire curriculum is some Consortium’s Intellectual Property?

   I’m sorry, but people who let themselves get distracted by the content issues without seeing the control issue are simply too naive to see the end game.

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5. Concerned Educator says:

   June 8, 2013 at 10:23 am

   Coleman’s Common Core is a repackaging of what good schools and good teachers already know. It sprang from ill-will — that’s enough to make me reject every word.

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6. thenextlevel2000 says:

   June 8, 2013 at 10:52 am

   This is the problem with educators….teachers can always find a way to rationalize what is bad at its core, and find some good. Public Schools should go back to the community.

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7. Michael Paul Goldenberg says:

   June 8, 2013 at 11:26 am

   My comment on Singer’s piece:

   You write as if there are all sorts of things here that teachers haven’t been doing. I’ve yet to read a word in any part of the Common Core that represents new or recent thinking about curriculum, instruction, or anything whatsoever. Except for pushing some mathematics topics down one or two grade levels (or, just as inexplicably, moving some up), there’s nothing in the math to open the eyes of any decent teacher. As for literacy, do we REALLY need David Coleman’s silly ideas about non-fiction?

   Where there may be something new coming is in the assessments. But as those are corporate-created and controlled, obscenely long and costly, why would anyone seriously want to support them, given how they’re going to be used to punish teachers, schools, districts, and, of course, children?

   Sorry, but what I see here is a really 3rd-rate spaghetti western they couldn’t get anyone as good as Clint Eastwood to sign on for. And we’re all going to be forced to watch it. Over and over again.

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   • neanderthal100 says:

     June 9, 2013 at 6:13 am

     Non-fiction out and Clint Eastwood in?

     David and Alan are so lost!

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     • neanderthal100 says:

       June 9, 2013 at 6:28 am

       I so agree with you Michael.
       No one minds where they put any material …moving it up or down a few grades…
       Bottom Line-Too much Testing…
       “ONE-SIZE TESTING””-ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL”
       Teachers are so angry that they used these children as Guinea Pigs so the teachers can be fired if the STUDENTS do not perform with whatever% accuracy…
       I say return the RTTT Money as the one teacher suggested on this site..
       Most teachers I speak with just do not care anymore..
       It is like putting perfume on a skunk!

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8. Joseph Mugivan says:

   June 8, 2013 at 12:18 pm

   The references to entertainers is troubling and glib undermining serious discourse.
   The issue with Ms. Weingarten as not the smoke screen about not being prepared. but the lack of discourse on the program being used in the first place, how it will undermine teachers understanding of the learning process and causing more teachers to leave. It is a boon for publisher who produce mundane “handouts” tailored for “lessons”. Much learning occurs within a “process” and not a lesson. The union has received millions from the Gates Foundation to reinforce the idea that teachers need “lessons” to learn their craft. As Brian Cambourne says, “Handouts begin nowhere and go nowhere”. We can now expect teachers with Masters degrees to increase this addiction to handouts for the Common Core and neglecting the writing process which should be cutting across all curriculum.

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   • Duane Swacker says:

     June 10, 2013 at 11:08 pm

     “The references to entertainers is troubling and glib undermining serious discourse.”

     Stick around and see what I have to say, something to the effect that stick your thought where. . . oops, I forgot to be serious and am being rude, crude, obnoxious. Let’s all get along so that the serious ones can rule. Bovine excrement.

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9. chemtchr says:

   June 8, 2013 at 6:50 pm

   Help. Singer isn’t describing “good teaching” at all. Let’s throw some cold water on our faces and look at the sample he praises.

   He starts out his Common Core apologia with the most bizarre and anti-intellectual assessment demand of all. Exactly what kind of teaching will prepare kids for this:

   “Students can, without significant scaffolding, comprehend and evaluate complex texts across a range of types and disciplines.”

   Why? Why is “scaffolding” prohibited? We are being forbidden to discuss or supply context for the writing prompts. That is not good teaching, and it’s a death blow to content mastery in history, or in any science. Scaffolding builds familiarity with ideas, lucidity, and insight into the topic being discussed. It empowers students, and we need more, not less of it, in every learning modality.

   Here is what’s actually being shoved down our throats at every “training session”. Students must be made to cross out, highlight, map and paraphrase text with no engagement whatsoever to the content. They must refine and hone their ability to mindlessly process any stimulus item thrown at them, at the expense of the deeper engagement they might gain if their teachers go rogue and teach their subjects. This will bring higher scores from the proprietary computer algorithms that will assess their work, and to which children and adults alike will henceforth be held accountable.

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   • Middle school teacher says:

     June 8, 2013 at 10:12 pm

     Great insights Chemtchr!

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     • neanderthal100 says:

       June 9, 2013 at 6:16 am

       Well said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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10. beverly mass says:

    June 9, 2013 at 10:14 am

    huffpo agitprop at its finest. blame it on conservatives, republicans etc… because democrat teacher union types will parrot, useful meme. what a hot mess. reformer educrats of both parties complicit in this travesty. intelligent teachers see through it, but so many paralyzed by fear of admin reprisals and firings, it is criminal, and so many not so intelligent just going along, oh yeah ! this is great! lets sing common core songs!!!!
    parents in the dark with the media blackout on the topic,, scholarly political historians see through it, recognize the flashing red signs of nationalized education and its deceptive implementation, plenty of teachers parents and citizens, see it clearly.
    the huffpo writer spouts the propaganda of ” state-Led “, ignoring the facts of it’s real institution. all the pedagogy arguments about content etc are subterfuge because the real problem is the power grab. with common core NOBODY has any rights or power except the government partnered educrats megaconglomerate, and we all lose big time. why is it so hard to believe? Obamacare is set to screw everybody and we were all fooled and lied to on that one, so why not education? they did it in the UK, and look how that has turned out.

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    • Harlan Underhill says:

      June 9, 2013 at 8:18 pm

      Some of us were never deceived by the President’s lies. But then to vote for him a second time . . . unconscionable.

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      • Duane Swacker says:

        June 10, 2013 at 11:09 pm

        Thoroughly agree with you HU, except coming from a completely different point of view, that of a free thinker.

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