Strongest supporters of Common Core: business community, Jeb Bush, StudentsFirst, other corporate reformers.
Strongest critics: Republicans.
As usual, the debate is framed as rightwing vs. rightwing.
It is way more complex than that.
There ought to be a law that anyone commenting on or writing about the Common Core should be required to read them first.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I just posted this in another blog post, but I’ll put it here too. It’s a trenchant observation someone made of the BTA Facebook page, which makes me think about the curriculum strangling that CC will promote:
“I just had an epiphany. When other countries are critical of american education they are typically not referring to math and reading. They are noticing that our students don’t have a grasp of history, art, geography e ct. and yet those are the things we minimize.”
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Have you seen (or heard about) this lengthy list of questions regarding the CCSS put forward in a letter by the Lt Gov of North Carolina?
http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/154515264
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Thank you for sharing, Monica.
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Monica, it will be more interesting to see the responses to the Lt. Governor’s questions. Thank you again for sharing this letter addressed to Dr. June Atkinson.
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Here is a question, how many of the 45 states which adopted Common Core ask anywhere near the number of questions
being asked.
Its my observation Common Core was a ‘slight of hand’ promotion without foundation…and when questioned about benchmarks, etc. the questioners (some who participated) were ignored.
For Gates to promote a ‘product’ not even build is a dumb as Microsoft selling untested software. ajbruno14gmail in NC
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In Utah, the CCSS was rushed through in a weekend!
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This is the same Lt. Gov whose party has the following bills regarding public education:
officially dropped the k-3 class size cap
allowed charter to grow without approval
forces LEA to lease unused buildings to charters for $1/yr
vouchers for private schools
requires teaching cursive and memorization of multiplications
requires teaching that induced abortions as a cause premature birth in subsequent pregnancies
While the Lt Gov may have legitimate concerns about the CC, I don’t think his party is concerned about the health of public education in general.
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It is interesting. Hedging his bets, perhaps.
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Yes, thank you.
The questions are very good–very thorough. I would be interested in the answers too.
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Also a video, the second of two about CC
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What should they be required to read first, the law, or the standards? How about both? Both contain reasons to oppose.
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People like Michelle Malkin follow our blog, and other Common Core opponents have latched onto our critiques, but it shouldn’t be taken that we are politically conservative or anti-government ideologues.
We focus on the only issue we consider ourselves to have even the barest of credentials to address: the substance of the math standards. We’ve perused the standards front-to-back, and regularly review quasi-official supporting documentation coming out of corestandards.org, U. of Arizona, and the Smarter Balanced and PARCC consortia.
The recent NAEP long-term progress report concluded there have been no significant gains for 17-year-olds overall in almost 40 years of the test’s administration. That’s telling. Although we support common standards, and Common Core has the best of intentions, its content and its approach fall far short of a world-class approach to math education. We don’t think this particular reform effort will mitigate the ongoing crisis.
Leaving aside to the experts central issues surrounding education, such as poverty, the achievement gap, teacher evaluations, and the like, for new math standards to have any hope of success, the first requirement is that they have to be well-conceived.
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I agree with Diane’s suggested law. I do not hear much talk about Common Core in my city. However, I am aware that almost every public school in the city has posted a video promoting Common Core on their website. This was in response to other people’s (from other cities in Alabama) attempts to overthrow Common Core back in the spring. When I bring up the subject of Common Core, without even mentioning my opinion, everyone I talk to basically says that they have not looked at the Common Core Curriculum but they are for it because it has been touted as being the cure for education and making sure that all students can read and do math and go to college and be successful in a career.
I hope that the people involved in Michigan’s debate include educators at all levels of education (early childhood though college) and that everyone has done the research and knows what they are talking about.
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There ought to be a law that anyone commenting on or writing about the Common Core should be required to read them first.
Even then, many would not know what they were reading. For one thing, they wouldn’t understand what the possible alternatives are.
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Can someone comment if this is the official website for the CC and a good place to read them?
http://www.corestandards.org/
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Yes, this is a good place to start. Then continue to do additional research on CC.
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To concernedmom from Alabama teacher
The site that you note does have a link for seeing the Common Core Standards for Math and Languages Arts. If you want to know why people are concerned, google Stop Common Core in (name your state) or (name of state) against Common Core and explore that website. In Alabama, the website is http://www.auee.org/ Alabama is also on Facebook, but the website provides more information regarding why people are/should be concerned about Common Core.
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It seems that the tea party types object to the CCSS because 1)the testing will involve massive data collection on their children, 2)they violate the spirit of the Constitution prohibiting the Federal Government’s involvement in education, and 3)they may not be suitable (i.e. too hard) for their children.
The objection of the liberals who do object seems to be because 1)the standards are not high enough, 2)the tests for the standards (from Pearson and Murdoch’s education division) are poorly written, and 3)they have not been effectively piloted.
If my summary is correct, I don’t see much chance of effective fusion of the anti CCSS forces in an effort to defeat or delay them. My bet in Michigan is that the legislature will LIFT its ban on spending to implement them in spite of the vigorous rattling of tea cups against them.
My personal preference would be for the state to develop its own tests for its own standards. There’s plenty of hot shot education people in Michigan who could do it over a weekend, including the dean of the U of M School of Education, Carla Lowenburg, for math (but I don’t know her position on them—I’ll see what I can find out).
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HU,
Don’t necessarily see your summary of the positions of the objectors to the Completely Crappy Stifling School (CCSS) educational malpractice as accurate.but the fact that so many from many different political perspectives find reason to object is good. Those of us from the free thinking realm of being who refuse labeling of any fashion know that any process that is as logically bankrupt as the educational standards, standardized testing and the grading of students should be condemned for all the errors, invalidities and falsehoods that comprise something like the Coleman Canonical Stupid Shit (CCSS) renders any conclusion drawn from said processes “vain and illusory” and therefore completely worthless as a basis for teaching and learning.
So in my never ending Quixotic Quest to rid the world of some of the most egregious and pernicious educational malpractices I present the following summary of and my comments on Wilson’s study “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
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-crap 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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The content of the standards is a diversion, designed to distract people from the end game of their promoters, which is the replacement of the teaching profession with a corporate tracking machine.
And that in both senses of the word “tracking”.
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On this we do agree!
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Well of course the DINOS LOVE Communist Core, they are Socialists at their very core. I’m not a RINO, I am a Constitutionalist. Communist Core will be used to keep the Amerikan caste system in place. It’s all part of the U.N.’s Agenda 21. “Common Core is an integral part of UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development: globalization is the standardization of systems. Whether the system is law enforcement or land use or government, the standardization, harmonization, and integration of all international methods of management is essential for total control.”
– See more at: http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/common-core-is-agenda-21.html#sthash.h654BAVD.dpuf
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The ones temporarily stopping CC in Michigan are nut cases. Many teachers here are for it because they’ve been working on it for years and don’t like the Meaps. They don’t see an alternative. The delay in implementing the CC is only temporary. Sigh.
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In response to Lori Higgins’ posting supporting Common Core: No one is questioning the need of standards but states already have
Standards. NY State standards are far superior to the Common Core. They include the affective realm: social interaction and literary response and expression. Just as important, NY Standards include the conceptual tools of semantics and syntax, and graphic besides phonics. Common Core espouses a phonetic approach only and eliminates the other conceptual tools in the Primary Reading Standards. CC furthermore emphasizes knowledge in lieu other higher order thinking skills such as imaging, evaluating, applying, and creating.
That puzzled me. CC core claims to be research based and yet other reading programs guided by the Constructivist approach is totally
ignored. I started researching and I sat in disbelief! Dr. Reid Lyon is key here. He was a key adviser on the federal Reading First program under President Bush; Dr. Reid Lyon developed the program. Dr. Reid Lyon is well known for his work and research with disabilities of one kind or another. He developed a phonetic program that helped the disabled children decode successfully. However, a recent study revealed that after spending $ 6 billion on Reading First -a phonic program, a program which is at the core of No Child Left Behind, is an incomplete program. His program did not help develop the skill of comprehension.
Study of Reading Program Finds a Lack of Progress http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/18/AR2008111803650.html
Billions for an Inside Game on Reading http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901333.html in Washington Post is filled with facts about Reading First .
As a presidential advisor Dr. Reid Lyon not only designed Reading First but maneuvered the situation to lock out programs anchored in the Constructivist approach such as Reading Recovery , an internationally acclaimed program. Reading Recovery has a phenomenal track record of success in decoding and comprehension. Literacy Collaborative and the Arkansas Literacy Intervention programs have applied the philosophy and methodology in teaching groups of students. I know school districts that turned down federal money so that they
could use a program that was anchored in the Constructive approach. Teachers knew phonics only wouldn’t work. Now teachers are caught in a trap; they must adhere the CC standards.
Dr. Lyon, just like Marie Clay- the developer of Reading Recovery, has a background in cognitive psychology. Marie Clay, however, developed a wider spectrum of teaching tools; she included semantics, syntax, graphs, along with phonics. Marie Clay taught in the primary schools and then did post graduate study in Developmental Psychology at our prestigious University of Minnesota on a Fulbright Scholarship and completed her doctorate at the University of Auckland with a dissertation entitled “Emergent Literacy.” She developed a non threatening evaluation program called An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement which evaluates a student’s needs and progress without the nationwide standardized test; it is further more administered without stress and is standardized. She furthermore developed set of teaching tools – books called Rigby, Sunshine Books and others such as Irene Fountas and Gay Sue Pinnell’s leveled books. Yet her program was denied consideration by administration because of Dr. Reid.
Don’t forget the cost of CC. 41.7 billion …Accountability Works costs $15.8 billion across participating states. That includes
$1.2 billion for participation in the new assessments; $5.3 billion for professional development; $2.5 billion for textbooks and instructional materials; and $6.9 billion for technology infrastructure and support.
(Interestingly- the site where Matt Chingos of Brookings Institute published this info has since been deleted.)
Lori Higgins sited Fordham University as supporting CC. That always puzzled me. How could such a prestigious school support such an inadequate and even harmful program? The mystery was solved when I discovered that Dr. Reid Lyon is on the Board of Trustees- the same Dr. Reid Lyon that was President Bush’s advisor. All the other businesses and organizations quoted as supporting CC just tells me something is funny; either individuals haven’t the background to evaluate CC, or they just didn’t bother to read it.
Another interesting fact about Reading First:
“Texas- ReadingFirst Program owned by President Bush’s Brother Neil Bush is a Fraud Scam.”
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/literacy/texasscam.asp
Reid Lyon and Doug Carnine, both of whom wound up in Washington, D.C., as advisors to Bush and his now-controversial No Child Left Behind act. Lyon and Sonnenberg are believers in phonics and made that method the cornerstone of Bush’s reading initiative. Retired reading teacher and former Fort Worth school administrator Judith Scott said the highly touted educational reforms in Texas aren’t working and that she is “tired of educators getting a bum rap” for the failures. ” “You only have to look at the people” who ushered in those reforms, she said, to understand why they have failed. They were politicians, millionaire businessmen or big-time attorney-lobbyists, with no history in education, she pointed out. And Marsha Sonnenberg, the reading expert, “never even had a reading certificate.” The whole reform movement, Scott said, became “a political football” that gave power and money to Bush supporters and promoted his “phonics-only agenda.”
http://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com/2006/09/reading-first-fraud-bush-cronyism.html
Reading First; fraud, Bush cronyism
Reading First Financial Corruption/ Fair Test
http://www.fairtest.org/reading-first-financial-corruption
“The Office of Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Education has found numerous legal and ethical violations in how the department steered funds toward favored programs..”
Gates Foundation funded David Coleman to write the national standards along with his cohorts Jason Zima and Pimentel.
“There were no Governors, State Superintendents of Schools, or State Legislators actively involved in the process of creating the Common Core State Standards. “There were also no state administrative or legislative staff involved in creating the standards. The role of state governments was literally restricted to signing onto the standards created by the two trade associations, the NGA and the CCSSO. NGA is an advisory board for the governors based in DC.” April 13, 2013 by Jeffrey Horn. States it in another way: Who Developed the Common Core State Standards?
Mary DeFalco
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Make common core general so decisions can be made at the local level. Make common core assessed through authentic means so learning can be real. Make common core a guideline for success rather than a deadline for failure so kids don’t fail into oblivion. Hmmmm, guess that wouldn’t be common core would it?
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Communist Core will never be anything but what it is… a U.N. Agenda 21. “Common Core is an integral part of UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development: globalization is the standardization of systems. Whether the system is law enforcement or land use or government, the standardization, harmonization, and integration of all international methods of management is essential for total control.” – See more at: http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/common-core-is-agenda-21.html#sthash.T3LfcZrV.dpuf
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