Peter DeWitt, in his outstanding blog at Education Week, pulls apart Secretary Arne Duncan’s aggressive defense of the Common Core.
In his speech to the nation’s new editors, Duncan ridiculed the critics as though they were almost all paranoid nuts.
That is unfortunate.
Reasonable people have legitimate concerns about how the Common Core will work, and Duncan would do well to address them.
Some are worried, as DeWitt is, and as I am, that the Common Core tests will widen the achievement gaps.
He is concerned, as am I, that the chanting about rigor, rigor, rigor, does not take into account the kids who are already struggling.
He has vastly over promised what the standards are, what they will do, how they will affect children and schools.
If would be good if he knew, but he doesn’t know.
He has enlisted leaders of the business community as cheerleaders, but they are not the ones who will implement the standards.
These “national standards” have been imposed from Washington with no field trials, no demonstrations, no means of adjusting what goes wrong.
I am not going to get exercised about them because my guess–as a historian–is that we (or someone) will look back 20 years from now, and someone will say, “Remember those Common Core standards?”
And the answer will be “huh?”
The reasons?
The standards were rushed into place with minimal participation by those who must implement them.
Many states lack the technology and the bandwidth to implement the assessments.
From what I have seen in New York, the Common Core assessments are too long and developmentally inappropriate.
Many teachers have not had the professional development to do what is expected.
The U.S. is in a period of reform fatigue.
There is just so much that can be accomplished at any one time.
With so many states changing so many things, it is all more than any system can handle at the same time.
To do national standards right, the process should be done right, with more inclusion, more participation, more feedback from those in the classrooms of the nation, more willingness to listen and get it right.
More wisdom is needed to engage in this process.
We have seen a rush to get it done without regard to the implementation or the consequences for children.
It doesn’t help to ridicule those who raise questions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent post here, Diane. One statement of yours in particular is especially telling, “With so many states changing so many things, it is all more than any system can handle at the same time.”
I am reminded of a quote attributed to the quantitative sociologist, Otis Dudley Duncan, “If you want to measure change, don’t change the measure.” With the false promises of VAM and yet to be realized promises of Common Core and PARCC, the system and the individual contributors may very well be too much to handle.
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“. . . quantitative sociologist. . . ”
Isn’t that an oxymoron?
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When you change multiple variables at once and it all collapses then you can’t track the failure back to one particular initiative and then they can once again just blame the teachers. Therefore, the chaos is planned by billionaires, charlatans and sychophants.
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I think we have the predictable combination of planned crisis (with profitable, but ineffective fixes that must be scrapped for new fixes), and naive True Believers who think they see gold where there is nothing but iron and copper pyrites.
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Completely agree. And in our case, teachers won’t even begin common core training until almost a month after school starts. I don’t see how students can be accurately evaluated when the method of teaching isn’t even ironed out. But that’s beside the point, which I believe is pretty much to create “failure” and then turn around and blame teachers.
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Stupid question, Lori, but at WHAT time during the day is this training set to occur? Will they be bringing subs in while you are at PDs? (And we all know how well THAT works out for the kids!) Will you have to attend these after school or on weekends?
Curious minds want to know!
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“we (or someone) will look back 20 years ago, and someone will say, “Remember those Common Core standards?”
It may well be that in 20 years from now someone will say, “Remember when we had that Black president and 500,000 kids dropped out of school?”
I agree with you that CCSS will defeat itself, but how many Teachers and students will it defeat? Should we wait 20 years to find out?
I don’t think so!
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I don’t believe Diane is suggesting passivity, but I agree that whether we wind up with the Common Core or its ilk, or nothing of the kind, this will be another failed top- down deform effort. Clearly, we want to actively minimize the damage for as many kids as possible.
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Again, I HIGHLY recommend reading Chapter 4: Goal Crazy: When Trying to Control the Future Doesn’t Work–in the book
The Antidote : Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, by Oliver Burkeman. It’s the business model, stupid!
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Tim, I read your comment more than once today. I teach in NC, which along with Utah and West Virginia, require students to have four mathematics credits in order to receive a diploma. The old sequence was Algebra 1, geometry, and Algebra 2 plus one more. We are now moving toward an integrated approach. Math 1 will be and integration of Algebra and geometry. Students will also be REQUIRED to pass Math 2 and Math 3 plus one more. I watched students cry this year during the end of grade test. I worry about the students I taught this past school year. I worry how many will drop out due frustration. I hope I am wrong, but I believe the drop out rate will increase among urban students of low socioeconomic status, at least in North Carolina. I really worry about the students beginning high school without knowing their multiplication facts. I worry about what has happened to public education. I worry about what is to come for our children in public schools.
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…and to think that NEA overwhelmingly voted to support CCSS but not testing.
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Utah only requires 3 credits of math.
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Lousiana Purchase, the math sequence is changing. Utah is also adopting or has adopted the new integrated math sequence.
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We are currently being pulled out on Wednesdays while students are being released at noon. Unfortunately, Wednesday is our top day for attendance (as many teachers pointed out).
The release time is not used well. No one seems to know what they are doing, we get different directives from multiple administrators and facilitators, and the time is often taken by our principal to catch us up on a general housekeeping agenda–since we do not have time for that anymore.
Quite simply, it’s a joke. However, we have a “gag order” to refrain saying anything negative about it.
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I wonder if Duncan took his cue from Merrow’s Taking Note blog: http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6431. It is very stange how Merrow, Duncan, and David Coleman are simply dismissive of anyone who asks questions about Common Core. As if we are simply being paranoid by, like, your know, thinking critically about Common Core.
Instead of allowing this to go through public debate, we should all just shut up and allow education to move forward. I think there was a bost earlier on this blog about de/reform being Stalinist, and I think there is some truth to this. I think they realize that they pushed something big way too quickly and are being increasingly stubborn about it. Just admit you were a little hasty about Common Core and that we need a year or two to move smoothly. Allow some room to tweak a few things. It won’t fall apart just because you decided to go a little slower.
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Exactly….the people who are supposed to teach the children close reading strategies and critical thinking skills are not allowed to ask questions or challenge the liars and their lies.
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It DOES NOT help to ridicule those who raise questions. It just makes us more clear about your true intentions, and more determined to thwart them.
I am beyond disgusted when I watch (or read) these people spin their lies about education…Duncan, Gates, Rhee, Broad, Emmanuel, Jeb Bush, Klein, Bloomberg, and so on. No moral compass, lacking in relevant experience, and few to none with true, awe-inspiring intellect. Unimpressed. So ready to hear from real leaders who care about the real issues in education. In mainstream media, that usually amounts to CRICKETS.
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“lacking in relevant experience”
That’s a big one. These people presume to make broad changes in education without having the relevant experience to know what actual consequences their policies will have for students, for teachers, for curricula, and for pedagogical practice.
Duncan’s claim that the standards are not a curriculum is a case in point. Of course they aren’t.
But it’s either disingenuous or stupid to claim that that’s the issue.
Standards linked to high-stakes tests inevitably narrow and distort curricula in extremely significant ways.
Now, if Duncan doesn’t know that, then he’s basically clueless. That is, he hasn’t the experience in the classroom and/or in curriculum development that would make that obvious to him. If he does know that, then he’s equivocating by telling a partial truth AND actually likes the kinds of distortions and narrowing of curricula that result from standards linked to high-stakes testing.
In either case, his position is, well, disturbing.
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How about this headline from the “Business Insider:”
STUDENTS WHO TAKE TOUGHER GRADUATION TESTS ARE MORE LIKELY TO END UP IN JAIL….
The school to prison pipeline is rivaling the infamous Alaskan Pipeline…
http://www.businessinsider.com/jail-more-likely-for-students-who-take-hard-finals-2013-7?fb_action_ids=480284132056533&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582
Also, another great article from The Washington Post:
NY Principals: Why new Common Core tests failed
(with the signatures of 50 NY Principals)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/23/ny-principals-why-new-common-core-tests-failed/
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Two really breathtaking links, Maureen!
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“Duncan, Gates, Rhee, Broad, Emmanuel, Jeb Bush, Klein, Bloomberg.”
They must be held accountable and forced to suffer some real consequence for their crimes against the people.
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Such a short list!
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In NY, teachers are implementing 3 new things simultaneously.
They are trying to adapt to a new method of teaching via a new evaluation system.
They are trying to learn to adapt lessons they haven’t been completely versed in organizing to adapt to the Common Core no one fully understands.
They then need to translate those lessons into test scores on tests very few students have taken and where they have been created, and administered, there have been many problems as noted by Diane.
Any one of those things would be a seismic shift for a NY teacher – and they are being implemented in the space between June 1st and next September.
This is utter madness – no other professional could change all these things about how they function with minimal preparation and then have their feet held to the fire on the results – which we’re still not sure if the results will be a true measure of the child or more a reflection of the test creators’ beliefs about what’s a developmentally appropriate question (and we’re never quite totally sure who devises what).
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It’s just horrifying to.me that they’re not paying attention to what’s actually happening in states with funding.
Does Duncan really not know that states are gutting public school funding in MI, in OH, in PA?
The sort of abstract cluelessness these people operate under is infuriating.
Do YOUR FIRST DUTY, which is taking care of the 94% of kids who are in traditional public school classrooms, now, today.
I think it’s contempt for and boredom with practical measures. “Smartest people in the room” syndrome, let the little people worry about practical things like FUNDING FOR EXISTING needs, we’re “big thinkers”
Ugh. So sick of this attitude.
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Yes, PA! There is a hearing tomorrow (7/9) in Harrisburg. I intend to go. inadequate funding for education is PA ‘s middle name
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The objective is to cause chaos, destroy education as we know it, and then rebuild it in glorious new age utopian collective image.
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Duncan should probably spend less time at star-studded charter conventions and more time reading the accounts of the new testing regime.
I don’t think I’m an over-protective parent and I was appalled reading the NY reform officials response to the fact that kids were really struggling with the test they sprung on them. They came off as having absolutely no concern for those kids, it was all just ego-driven adult blather about “ripping off bandaids” and the like.
I think they’re irresponsible and reckless. They used those NY kids as experimental subjects.
Do I look forward to these slogan-spouters setting an agenda for my 5th grader in Ohio? No. They’re not rolling out a new consumer product. They’re dealing with 3rd graders. Just no common sense used AT ALL.
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“we (or someone) will look back 20 years ago, and someone will say, “Remember those Common Core standards?”
The standards-and-testing regime is yet another of a long series of EduFads that teachers and students have been subjected to by centralized authorities throughout our nation’s history. See Diane Ravitch’s superb book on this subject: Left Back.
Back in the sixties and seventies, the dominant EduFad was behavioral objectives. By concentrating on what kids did and ignoring what might be in their minds, we were going to effect a SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION in education. The behaviorist EduFad was a crock. So is the standards-and-testing EduFad. In both cases, people hit on a single idea and then start applying it across the board, in every situation, and, as Abraham Maslow wrote in criticism of behaviorism, “[I]t is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” (The Psychology of Science, 1966)
Well, in the era of these one-size-fits-all standards and high-stakes tests, that hammer is going to come down hard on the heads of lots of kids.
Back in the behaviorist days, there were many people who understood the obvious: what’s going on in kids’ minds matters–it matters a lot. To a small but vocal minority, back during the behavioral objectives era, that was blindingly obvious. And much of what is wrong with the standards-and-testing regime is also blindingly obvious to many:
First, creating more difficult tests is a crazy way to try to help already challenged students. Duh.
Second, kids are not widgets. They differ–they differ a lot–and we need varied standards, pedagogy, curricula, and assessments that respect those differences.
Third, for many reasons that most actual educators understand, formative testing is much to be preferred to summative testing, high stakes or otherwise.
Fourth, standards specify across-the-board, identical outcomes to be measured for every student, but we don’t need standardized, identical outcomes for all students. We need kids coming out of K-12 education with a very wide range of divergent skill sets and knowledge appropriate to pursuit of highly varied life tracks in a highly complex, pluralistic, diverse society.
Fifth, we’re not going to create life-long learners by using a bigger stick (testing) to force kids into becoming learners. That’s not how people work, and (guess what?) kids are people. The testing regime does not build intrinsic motivation.
One could go on. But Duncan ignores all such real criticism and attacks straw men. He and his ilk are know-nothings, but they are empowered know-nothings, and they aren’t going to back down until the chorus of derision directed at their EduFad, the latest in a long, sad series of such EduFads, becomes so loud that it shakes every legislative hall in the land.
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“To do national standards right, the process should be done right. . . ,”
Come on, Diane, give that thought up as there is no, yes NO way to “do national standards right”. Wilson has proven that the whole process of developing educational standards (whatever the hell they are), of giving of and dissemination of the results of standardized tests is so fraught with error that the whole process is rendered INVALID. See Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 .
Not only is the whole process invalid but the usage of the results of any standardized test for purposes other than for what it was supposedly designed to test is UNETHICAL!
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 quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional 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 we are lacking much information about said interactions.
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 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 shit-in shit 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 measures “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.
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Superb. Duane. You are digging deep, asking fundamental questions. Few are as thoughtful as you are showing yourself to be. Thank you for this. It’s outstanding.
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Robert,
Thanks for the kind words!
Well, it seems pretty simple to me.
If the process used, no matter what the human activity, is so flawed as to ensure falsehoods and invalidities why would one continue the process? The key, though, to me, is determining the heart of the problem and fixing it at that point or if not reparable, then abandoning it. In the case of educational standards and standardized testing the process is so bereft, so flawed at its core that it is best to abandon it and quit causing harm to so many innocent victims, the children.
I challenge anyone to rebut and/or refute what Wilson has proven about the epistemological and ontological problems inherent to educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students and the concurrent harm that is caused by the “mis-categorization”/labelling of students.
I’ve not seen any yet!
And since there has not been any rebuttal/refutation, why do we continue the insanity???
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Duncan chose to address those with the tin foil hats. That is why I wrote this http://rlratto.wordpress.com/ .
I view CC as a grand national social experiment that will do irrepairable harm to our nation. The Linkage of high stakes testing is what turns CC into a curriculum. If you take a look at the math standards.. it is a curriculum.
The fact remains, CC standards are not age appropate, have not been piloted, do not guarantee college or career readiness, stifle creativity and experimentation, and attempt to script the emotional and intellectual development of our nation’s children.
Duncan failure arises from his refusal to sit down with teachers and discuss this. He prefers to use his bully pulpit, tweet without. engaging in conversation, and drive ALEC’s agenda. This was not the hope and change I voted for.
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Spot on the money, rratto! Succinctly, perfectly said.
The ELA standards are not a curriculum, but they will, as you not, stifle creativity and innovation in curricula and in pedagogy.
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sorry didn’t spell check.. writing from my mountain hideway on an ipad
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“Reform fatigue,” indeed. An insightful post, Diane. Thank you.
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Carole King; Maurice Sendak:
“There once was a boy named Pierre
who only would say ‘I don’t care.’
Read his story my friend for you’ll find at the end
That a suitable moral lies there. . .”
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=hCEBLHd0v6I&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhCEBLHd0v6I
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Could this be the same Secretary of Education who decried the pernicious effects of two much high-stakes standardized testing? Who boldly [insanely? schizophrenically?] declaimed at the recent American Educational Research Association [AERA] that
“Some schools have an almost obsessive culture around testing, and that hurts their most vulnerable learners and narrows the curriculum. It’s heartbreaking to hear a child identify himself as ‘below basic’ or ‘I’m a one out of four.’ ”
This was directed, first and foremost, at those who [among other things] criticized his tying Federal $$$ to mandating teacher evals that rely heavily on, er, high-stakes standardized tests. He also reminded his critics about Campbell’s Law — “‘the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures – and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.'”
Capiche? And of course, no sane [darn spell check! ‘insane’] critique of his critics who fault him for high-stakes standardized testing would be complete without a swipe at not only his AERA critics but even this blog’s indefatigable numbers-loving [?] Duane Swacker, apparently a hidden lover of quantifying the unquantifiable:
“State assessments in mathematics and English often fail to capture the full spectrum of what students know and can do. Students, parents, and educators know there is much more to a sound education than picking the right answer on a multiple choice question . . . And today’s assessments certainly don’t measure qualities of great teaching that we know make a difference – things like classroom management, teamwork, collaboration, and individualized instruction. They don’t measure the invaluable ability to inspire a love of learning.”
Or could it be that Arne Duncan is capable of nothing more than making a caricature of himself? He is not just studiously ignorant of what his long-time critics have been saying, he refuses to plant his feet firmly on Plant Reality, preferring instead the ‘Rheeality Distortion Fields’ of his peers among the educrats and edubullies.
You can’t make this stuff up. Go to the link provided below.
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arnold-dodge/the-solution-to-a-bad-guy_b_3238930.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Keep firmly in mind what we constantly hear from the self-styled education reformers: “no excuses” mixed in with “if at first we don’t succeed then let us try over and over and over again.”
Think I’m just making this up? Listen to Paul Vallas: “I go in, fix the system, I move on to something else.”
Link: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Paul-Vallas–213999671.html#ixzz2YVYpIbfM”
“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.” [Philip Roth]
😦
And the pain and suffering and destruction that the edufrauds so tirelessly work at and leave behind?
“By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.” [Mark Twain]
😦
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Yep, KTA, I love numbers, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVf5Cr4M-F8
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Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
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Speaking of Vallas, he did away with Bridgeport’s reading and math specialists ~ the only staff who had the time and knowledge to implement Common Core and the Smarter Balance CC assessments (along with dealing with the Connecticut Mastery books, bubble sheets, etc.).
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