Paul Krugman posted this commentary about the Common Core standards. Clearly he has never read them and has no idea about the legitimate concerns that teachers and principals have. Instead, he echoes the claim by Times’ writer Bill Keller that the opponents are nearly all rightwing extremists. I just left a short comment, which has not been moderated and approved yet. I expressed my concern about the lack of field testing and the now evident increases in achievement gaps. Raising the bar does not help kids clear it; it just increases the numbers who can’t clear it. You should add yours.
I felt the same way! Bravo, Diane!
Common Core is not developmentally appropriate in the early childhood grades!
“Right wing extremists?!”
Really?
How about people who care about kids = all kids, not just the kids of the 1%?!
How does he turn his back on kids who live in the wrong zip code? The lightning of brilliance doesn’t care about zip codes!
Shame on him. And on anyone who thinks that children don’t matter!
The 1% are not attending public schools or wasting their time with CCLS and the subsequent “designed-for-failure” assessments. If they were, it would cease to exist.
Gotta wonder why you’d refer to a man, who posted an opinion about something he hasn’t read and takes the word of another without examination, as brilliant. Or was that simply tongue in cheek humor?
And they are prestigious writers for a well known paper?
Yeah and teachers are ruining the country. Sure.
Krugman is indeed brilliant in his field of knowledge, economics. He may be outside of his element with education, though, and so he should be nudged in the right direction, with facts and experiences.
Krugman doesn’t even get economic policy right, though he does have Nobel Prize in economics. He’s just a liberal hack.
Krugman at least understands economics enough to make a plausible argument even if you’re a conservative who disagrees with him.
I submitted this:
I’m wondering if you have really looked at the Common Core. Please do so, or don’t call it “entirely praiseworthy.” When I worked with a high school’s faculty last year to help craft it for the classroom, I found the Common Core vague to the point of immobilizing attempts to introduce new possibilities and stifling in its required percentages of focus.
My position as a professor within the City University of New York makes me quite aware of the weaknesses the past decade has introduced into our public schools–which is one of the reasons I am working with high schools to help better prepare students for the transition to college. I would rather see the high schools prepare them well than continue the growing rate of incoming students requiring remediation. The Common Core, unfortunately, is not going to help do this. It does not reflect the realities of our public-school students nor does it address the real issues facing public education.
My views do not come from my political stance (I have been a progressive Democrat my entire life) but from experience with the failures of No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top, of the students entering college without the skills they need–a more and more common event these last few years. None of these programs, and the Common Core is the same, comes from teachers, but from people who feel they know more about teaching than do those with actual classroom experience… so it is not surprising that none of them lives up to its hype.
I agree.
When teachers are left out of the development of a teaching program it should immediately be suspect. Want a building built without engineers? Have a driver, licensed only for cars, drive an 18 wheeler cross country? Put someone with a degree in humanities in charge of a nuclear program? As they say, the devil is in the details.
Ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, anytime but refining, implementing and establishing standards for those ideas succeeds only when done by those with training and experience in the specific discipline.
Instead of the corporate/manufacturing models that seem to persist today, it would be wonderful if someday someone would develop a comprehensive educational program based on what is known about child development and best practices in educational theory. It hasn’t been done or every kindergarten would be focused on teaching languages (including the language of mathematics). Kids wouldn’t be given a scissors until at least 3rd grade. In place of ranking teachers, the elimination of poverty and hunger would be paramount.
Submitted by retired Public School Speech Pathologist with Degree in Speech Pathology and Developmental Child Psychology.
The Comment Page
“Raising the bar does not help kids clear it; it just increases the numbers who can’t clear it.”
I will carry this with me into the murky reformy school year. The clarity of this statement is superb. Thank you, Dr. Ravitch for your ability to drill down to the TRUTH! May God give all teachers the strength to endure and overcome!
Better ““Raising the bar and doing basically not to help kids do better does not help kids clear it; it just increases the numbers who can’t clear it.”
Help consists of smaller class sizes, professionalism and support for teachers, and enough school support professionals to make school work for as many kids as possible.
As a lifetime teacher and now grandparent, I am totally against further high stakes testing. What will this do for the children of the poor and those struggling with unemployment and low wages. We must get health care for all, and a reasonable social contract and work for full employment……this will really affect student achievement, Often the schools are the only institutions in the poorest community…..And they need help, not tests. Adrienne Fay, Mamaronewck, NY
Thanks for making me read this again… Mea culpa on my previous reaction to this! In my first reading of this post I missed the phrase “entirely praiseworthy” as a description of the common core. I am a huge fan of Krugman and remain confident he will see the link between the common core and the other faux grassroots organizations funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, the Waltons, etc… Here’s the comment I wrote:
You’re usually right on in your political observations… and your analysis of the right-wing reaction to the Common Core rings true… but I don’t think the common Core curriculum is “…entirely praiseworthy”. In my comment to Keller’s editorial I noted that the characterization of the Common Core as “grassroots” is completely off-base: it was funded by the billionaires who want to privatize public education and supported by those who want to ignore the effects of poverty on schools. Read Diane Ravitch’s blog for details on the educational caveats, which would take up more space than this comment box allows…. and keep up the good work on telling the public how economic inequality is hurting our country!
Is the problem with the CC that its resistance on the right uncomfortably mirrors the resistance from the left? I think we should sharpen our criticism to focus on the problem of attaching high-stakes testing to any an every reform. CC without high-stakes is fine and not too different from what many good schools have been doing already.
As a parent (with no background in education) I am more concerned about the testing than the standards. I hate the idea of my child participating in these tests that have no value and are used to punish schools and teachers.
I was so sad to read such a column by someone I have a great deal of respect for. This is the comment I sent:
It is not the right wing fringe that oppose the Common Core, but also educated liberals like me. There is something wrong with a curriculum that only approximately 30% of students can pass and in which only 6% of disabled students can pass as has recently happened in New York.
I am a teacher and used the curriculum with fifth graders last year. There were many elements of the math curriculum that were over the heads of these students. By the way, these were middle class and not high need students. Interestingly, when I taught some of the elements to three 8th graders I tutor, they were able to get “some” of the concepts. This is an unproven curriculum based on no educational research. It was never field tested on real kids. It is a curriculum taken on faith. When I see students burst into tears and hyperventilate because they had to take a test that was developmentally over their heads, something is terribly wrong.
I recommend that you read the blogs of people, such as Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. I am suspicious of a curriculum that claims (without proof) that it will make everyone college or career ready than there being the opportunity for every student to be able to get into a college or a post high school vocational program for little or cost. I am more interested in resources being used to lower class size and giving teachers the resources to individualize instruction than using billions to test kids to death. In NY, about 30 classroom days are dedicated to assessment. Testing is not teaching. This is a magic curriculum that will bare no fruit. Where are the open classrooms and the New Math of the 1960s? These were also ideas based upon faith. What is happening is that billions are being wasted on a curriculum that will someday be stored in a dusty storage closet like so many others.
So many smart non-educators weigh in on this stuff and get it so wrong. Krugman is generally great, certainly a go-to guy on economics, but he doesn’t understand education and the CCSSI.
That’s pretty much the entire problem with this movement….I won’t use the word reform although bowel came to mind.
Linda,
Best comment of the day:)
Good comment, Linda. Besides the reform “movement”, there’s a lot of verbal diarrhea from reform supporters.
Sorry, Paul, but you’ve REALLY blown this one. Lots of progressives oppose the Common Core, and for carefully-considered reasons. It’s simply naive or dishonest to suggest otherwise, and Mr. Keller’s piece today was ignorant or disingenuous (probably some of both).
You are a go-to guy on economics, but you’re way out of your depths on this issue. You clearly haven’t done the homework necessary and so you have swallowed the simplistic conservatives v. liberals party line from the US Dept. of Education. What this is about is profit. It’s about powerful, rich corporations and billionaires controlling the future, destroying public schools, and turning public education into a for-profit enterprise. You want to see STUPID? Wait until we can’t teach a unit that questions whether soft drinks are good for kids’ teeth when the school is owned by hedge-fund managers with vested interests in Coke and Pepsi. Or look at climate science because too many investors in the school can’t afford to have their portfolios scrutinized on environmental issues.
This isn’t about Obama. It’s not about George W. Bush. It’s about Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family, Scaife, the Koch Brothers, the deVos Family (and soon Jeff Bezos, whose family is heavily invested in charter schools), and other oligarchs buying the future. Wake up before you write another purblind column like this one.
“Wait until we we can’t teach a unit that questions whether soft drinks are good for kids teeth…when the hedge fund owner has vested interests in Coke or Pepsi”
I had not considered this in my arguments against CCSS. That is intriguing. My concerns have been the severe limiting of the curriculum to tested subjects. The irony of the situation is that the large concern has been about STEM. Science is not a tested subject in elementary school. In my school it has all but disappeared in favor of language arts and math. Our children won’t hear about tooth decay either, Health is a non-tested subject. We know that young children express and internalize information through art but our children are no longer allowed this luxury. We know that music trains the brain to hear speech patterns, helps develop phonemic awareness and rhyming. Music also helps children with basic math concepts such as fractions. All the arts teach children to look for and remember details. This skill is needed in all curricular endeavors. Sadly this is gone as well.
CCLA limits the reading of classical literature, drama and poetry. These works give children insight about their culture and history. But then maybe this was the idea, prevent children from learning about history, if they don’t understand why we have a Bill of Rights, maybe they won’t be worried when their basic human rights are trampled on or disregarded. Social studies is an untested subject.
High stakes testing is doing severe harm to the education of our students!!
As a Nobel prize winner, I am confident Mr Krugman can see the problems if he just did some reading. He needs to look at the scores, how they were derived, and who is behind the implementation of CCC and who is not. Mr Krugman has often been the voice of reason on controversial issues .
Please note:
Under each of the comments on Krugman’s blog is a “Recommend” button. Comments that have the largest numbers of “Recommend” votes get to be in the “Reader’s Picks” group, which is what readers who don’t want to slog through hundreds of comments look at.
I went through the comments and “Recommended” all those who explained just what Krugman got wrong on this one. After all, it’s not just Krugman we want to reach, it’s all his readers as well. I’ll be looking for Diane’s comment and clicking on that when it appears, too.
If you want to join me, a heads up: you may have to first register as a commenter to “vote.”
I posted this:
Until now I did not know how arrogant Mr. Krugman is about a topic where he has no experience of a real issue of concern by many. To lump it into a political attack on one group is wrong since it cuts across left and right. I am sure that Mr. Krugman had an interesting education and not a homogenized formula that will be the grist for the mill with computer evaluations. The curriculum is not written by educators but operatives of the Gates foundation along with others with an economic interest in churning out these boring published materials. It might be good if Mr K abstain from commenting on things outside of economics, unless he wishes to discuss the economic agenda by the players behind this program.
Bravo!
It is simply unbelievable that Paul Krugman would sign on to something as flawed and immoral as this. I thought I admired him.
My response:
As a longtime reader and admirer, I’m very disappointed that you know so little about Common Core, which has never been field tested or researched. I’m even more disappointed that you’ve done so little research about who funded and pushed it. It’s not educators. I see no evidence you’re familiar with Common Core, or even the Obama agenda for American education. I suggest you read experts like Diane Ravitch or Linda Darling-Hammond rather than taking the word of Arne Duncan, who failied miserably in Chicago and is taking his program nationwide.
I suggest you think very seriously about high-stakes testing, which invariably closes schools in high poverty neighborhoods, and that you think very seriously about whether test scores tell the whole story about education. I suggest you look into the science behind value-added rating of teachers–because there isn’t any. I suggest you examine the way Common Core was researched and field tested–because it wasn’t.
I respectfully suggest that Obama has taken GW Bush’s education programs and not only extended them, but made them worse. You may argue that right-wingers oppose Common Core because it’s the program of Barack Obama, and you may be right.
However, I must tell you that whatever may motivate them, many of their arguments are correct. I expect much better from you, Mr. Krugman.
These are good comments but they are appearing in Diane Ravitch’s blog. Everyone should address them to Paul Krugman at the NY Times.
I tried to post a comment but I don’t think it has shown up on the NYT website. Wondering if anyone else has noticed the same thing…
I thought that Fault Lines video about privatization in Chile would be just the thing to get Krugman thinking, because it links the effort directly to US economists like Freidman. But the video has been pulled from Al Jazeera now, too!
What is going on here?
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/faultlines/2011/11/2011111103913257125.html
Very, very scary and it’s not a coincidence. What is happening to our country?
We’re turning into Chile and China. That’s what’s happening.
Does it work here for you? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2mYYyyKIn18
It did for me just now…check it and let me know.
It worked for me, too. Let’s see how long it works.
Thanks you, Linda. What we need to do is get it in front of Paul Krugman before it goes down.
Unfortunately, you can’t comment on the NYT website (or uprate comments) unless you are a subscriber. The fix is in, as far as the NYT is concerned. There seem to be a preponderance of lunatic comments from the right wing on his blog.
You don’t have to be a paid subscriber. You just have to have an account.
I wrote a comment too. Won’t repeat it here, but he’s gotten a lot of response it appears from your readers.
We need Krugman, as an economist, to take a stand against the economic arguments for privatization of American public education, which are being advanced by the Obama administration’s own Department of Education.
We need him to understand that the “accountability” mechanism, including Common Core, is a project of corporate monopolists like Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify, Bill Gates’ Microsoft, and Pearson Education. Accountability of children to their testing empire is the unacceptable element. The capture of regulatory authority over other public institutions hurts children, too, but it doesn’t come right into their classroom and make them cry and throw up.
Accountability means the imposition of private control over the intimate workings of public school classrooms. It seems separate from the effort to split public education into privately held schools subsidized by vouchers, and district schools of last resort dispensing computer-vended failure to the lowest economic strata. Chile’s example might help Krugman see that it isn’t.
I posted the link to the Fault Lines episode “Chile Rising” on Rick Hess’ Edweek blog at 7:06 AM on Aug 16, and it was live then. It’s dead now. It includes interviews with Rolf Lunders, one of Milton Friedman’s original Chicago Boys. These are the same economists who advised Pinochet in establishing Chile’s privatized voucher system. They’re part of the same movement which is working to privatize our education system.
Al Jazeera itself has now pulled down all the links to that episode in our country. Diane, can you call them up and ask why? Can we get that episode in front of Krugman somehow? Can the Chilean academics who have come forward on this blog write a letter to Krugman he’ll actually read?
Diane, if you can get into the same room with him, don’t waste his time talking about the lack of field testing. Explain what “accountability” means for the destruction of public schools. Arguments like whether the Common Core has been sufficiently evaluated duck the real issue, and aren’t his area anyway.
The massive manipulation of legislative and executive power for private financial gain is his area.
Because of character limits for comments on the NYT article page, I’m posting my unabridged comment to Mr. Krugman here:
I am struck by Keller’s comment “Local control of public schools, including the sacred right to keep them impoverished and ineffectual, is a fundamental tenet of the conservative canon.”
I am a progressive, but I can readily understand how a conservative would look at this. No matter what their motivation is, as a rule, they prefer localities and states calling their own shots. And Common Core is seemingly taking that away.
But I am a progressive, and although I’m not an educator, I’m concerned about the “local-local” effects. That is, the TEACHER’S AUTONOMY in the classroom is being increasingly threatened by Common Core and other “education reform” efforts that seek to turn teachers from professionals into widgets. “Teaching to standardized test” widgets. “Teaching to untested standards” widgets. “Teaching way above students’ abilities” widgets. “Teaching materials students can’t relate to” widgets.
Instead of “providing engaging, rich content and treating students as individuals” professionals.
I understand that many are looking at this as a political issue, as for or against Obama, or Democratic/Republican warfare.
But what educational improvements need to be about is doing the best for students.
In this atmosphere of wanting to make schools better (in some cases by closing them!?), and for some, wanting to treat teachers and their unions as the sole ill getting in the way of educational progress, we are forgetting something really important.
That is, those things we are trying to attack or build up or standardize are USING STUDENTS AS PAWNS AND GUINEA PIGS.
I would ask everyone to look at one clear example from a student’s perspective. Do you really think that sitting in a classroom where a teacher, acting as a constrained widget, teaching mostly to narrow standards, with little/no creativity allowed, would engage you? Then, to have to take so much time of your school year dealing with taking these draining multiple-choice bubble tests as well? Who would want to put up with this numbing environment? Who wouldn’t want to drop out (at least mentally)?
What are we doing to the students?
Again, WHAT. ARE. WE. DOING. TO. THE. STUDENTS?
(Hint: the college professors see what we’re doing to them. And that’s just the canary in the mine shaft.)
Done, Diane. I’m waiting for my comment to be posted.
I posted yesterday, and it’s up. And there are now a lot of really eloquent posts, informing Krugman of his blunder. I really hope he listens, informs himself, and writes another column.
I tried to post this today, but the “leave a response” button was not responding- will try later:
I have two concerns about the Common Core State Standards.
The first concern I have is that the CCSS will be misused in the same way that high stakes testing has been misused for over a decade. Rather than serving as a national measure to compare and support students, it will be used to control and undermine teachers, instruction, school cultures, and communities.
The second concern is that, with respect to addressing the real challenges facing disadvantaged and underperforming students, the CCSS seems astonishingly beside the point. For 12 years and counting, school reform has been in full swing, first with NCLB, and then with Race To The Top. An honest look at the data will show that, in proportion to the abundant public and private revenue invested in these programs, relatively little progress has been made. Students in economically depressed districts all over the country still lack the services and supports they need to transform their lives. The CCSS are not going to address these needs in any way.
For years Mayor Bloomberg has celebrated the apparent academic gains made during his time in office. Yet, now, with the latest round of New York State tests, tied to the common core standards, we learn that there is a precipitous drop in student academic achievement, as well as a widening of the achievement gap state wide, and in New York City. This begs the question: What on earth have we been doing for the last decade, and how can Mayor Bloomberg, Joel Klein, John King, Arne Duncan, and all the other policy makers who have little or no real teaching experience, celebrate anything?
The distinct impression I get is that the people at the top either don’t want to reform education in America, or they don’t know how. The CCSS may have its merits, but rather than addressing and supporting the needs of our most disadvantaged school districts, these standards serves as a distraction, placing more demands on schools and districts, that are already stretched thin.
Where is the real support?
I’ve been a reader of Krugman’s blog for the past several years and I’m sure Krugman would agree with you. I think what he speaking out against are conservative reactions against any type of national standards.
Paul Krugman is, unarguably one of our most brilliant economists. In fact, it was unconscionable of President Obama to not bring Krugman into a high-ranking position in his administration. At the same time, it is clear that Krugman, like so many other public commentators, knows nothing about preK-Grade 12 schooling.
It is interesting to see that left, right and middle viewpoints (politically) have issues with the Common Core. It should be obvious to those pushing it that a particularly political ideology isn’t for or against it. And, that should give them pause. There is something drastically wrong with its implementation. Corporate/private ownership of schools seems to be pushing the CC into the classrooms, knowing it will produce failure (because it is inappropriately inserted for developmental levels). They are using this “failure” to justify finding teachers of “the old curriculum” as inadequate, and as proof that the unions have robbed communities of dollars. It is manipulation, smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand.
To me, the problem is that it is a framework not a curriculum, so some react to it as if it is an inadequate curriculum. Districts are able to implement it as they wish. Now, the particular areas of mastery seem to be commanded, the topics, if you will. That is a curriculum change for most districts. In some cases, some objectives or topics are to be taught at a mastery level that is inappropriate for a given grade level for all but the most adept students.
The bigger problem is the implementation of the tests, which are designed for student failure in order to “prove” their theories that the teachers are the problem. It is as if no matter how hard you work, you will fail (both teachers and students). It is demoralizing. And, even in a successful district, the pressure is on constantly to do better, better, better, no matter the student population. They place the same pressure on the poor, underfunded, undersupplied, underfed students and schools. It is like a recipe for a deliberate disaster. Creating a Perfect Storm. Orchestrating the fall. The fall into the hands of the privateers that don’t understand kids at all.
Yet, we talk about the CC and the tests as one problem. They are and they aren’t. Someone can like the scope of the CC without understanding developmental appropriateness or implementation. The tests are deliberately developed to be difficult and to frustrate the learners with reading and comprehension problems.
It is like putting together a piece of furniture with directions written in another language or even written by someone who doesn’t fully grasp the English language/nuances.
Deb, that’s one of the best description of concerns of Common Core that I’ve read so far. I’m still on the learning curve as a non-teacher, and I very much appreciate it!
Thanks. Things are finally getting to the point where people are talking about the crux of the problem. We have hammered around both points confusing those who haven’t dealt directly with it and using research and jargon at times that just makes people lose interest. I have almost bailed here a few times from being picked apart by 2-3 guys who don’t seem to want a solution.
I posted the following: Do your research: CC standards are not developmentally appropriate & they are inextricably tied to the testing madness that is strangling our education system. The premise of instituting CC is that US schools are failing. This is false. Some schools, schools that are charged with educating the most economically disadvantaged among us, are struggling. CC does not address the issue of poverty. It ignores the fact that, when you remove poverty as a factor in PISA rankings, the US comes out on top. Our high childhood poverty rate is the cause of our low ranking. CC not only fails to address the real problem in education, poverty, but its implementation has led to schools cutting art, music, and electives that make up a true well-rounded education. Teachers are being laid-off and replaced by novices who “teach” by reading CC approved scripts, created by corporations for profit. Ed “funding” is no longer going to schools; money is going to companies such as Pearson, who has a $32 million contract in NY. InBloom is also benefitting from the new regime, as it has contracted with NY to collect confidential student data that it will sell to corporations that will develop “learning products.” The Gates, Walton, and Broad Foundations have pushed CC b/c they see a gold mine in the field of education. ALEC has been working to privatize (profitize) public schools. Follow the money. No research supports CC. It’s a moneymaker, plain and simple, and it comes at the expense of our kids.
As of this moment 231 comments to his blog. I hope he reads these comments and understands that the CC represents everything that he loathes.
This was my reply:
I’m disappointed, Mr Krugman. Unlike others, I expect more from a perspicacious thinker even when he ventures beyond his ken. Yet here you simply bump Keller’s piece– wherein he erects a straw man (ignoramuses are against CC so it must be good) & proceeds to lip-synch the Common Core Pop.
I also expect more from a denizen of NJ. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that we (along with MA & other states) have been scoring right up there w/Finland for decades, thanks in part to stellar state standards which cover every subject area, focus on step-by-step mastery of material, skills & critical thinking.
Why would you think that substituting standards conceived by the
Nat’l Gov’r’s Assoc, funded by Gates/ Broad, written by 1 individual w/o reference to ed research nor input from teachers on the ground, & pushed by the Fed’s Race to the Top, would improve our educational achievement?
Not being an educator you may have missed our state’s standards for Abbott Schools. They are a lesson in what happens to quality stds once the state injects funding for underprivileged students tied to ‘accountability’ req’t’s. Mastery standards are strapped into computer-testable, scheduled bites to which lesson plans & ed’l mat’l’s must be aligned, complete with a list of pre-approved commercial curricula suggested for purchase. This is the bureaucratic model in place, & will be used for CC as well.
I posted the following yesterday:
If one more pundit credits Common Core as praiseworthy I’m going to have an embolism. All they are doing is taking the so-called “reformers'” propaganda at face value. Will someone PLEASE do a LITTLE bit of research into this fiasco that is at the “core” of privatizing education, deprofessionalizing teachers and looting public school funding for corporate profits?
First we had A Compact for Learning under Clinton. Then came No Child Left Behind under Bush. Now we have Obama’s Race to the Top and it just gets worse and worse with each ill conceived ideology formulated by people who have never taught anything to anybody.
Why did members of the validation committee refuse to sign off on the Common Core document? Why do child development experts tell us that the standards are inappropriate for for the primary grades? Why have children literally been tested to tears?
Centralized “reform” of education, whether from the federal or state level, is an abysmal failure.
Let teachers teach and let society get a handle on the poverty that is driving each reform movement. Neither poverty nor parenting can be nullified in the classroom. That both can be is the foundational assumption of this “reform” movement and that is why it will crash and burn.
When it does, be sure the teachers will be blamed.
My comment:
You [PK] and Keller perhaps do not know this but opposition to Common Core and all the corporate reform that comes along as a bonus is not coming only from the rightwingnutcases. Common Core, more and more testing, merit pay, teacher evaluation based mainly on testing that was never designed for such uses, statewide school grading systems, the Big Data share with InBloom (a Gates, Murdoch initiative)– it is all inter-related and much of it, while allegedly originally well-intentioned and “sounding pretty good,” is hurting not helping the goal of good schools for all kids. And is being driven by large companies and out of state edu-preneurs making a lot of money off of our public schools.
You know, if all that is such a great idea, why aren’t the private schools clamoring for it? In fact, I will tell you the precise moment when I will perhaps re-consider my view of all this testing. data. more testing, misuse of testing results, “value-added” nonsense, etc etc– as a troubling and pernicious development in the education of our nation’s public school children: when Lakeside Prep in Seattle, Sidwell Friends in DC and other august and prestigious private academies decide they want their students to be signed up for this racket. Otherwise they will remain separate and apart from the commoners’ children in the public schools, of course. It must be easy to dictate policies that only affect other people’s children.
I was suspicious, but hadn’t looked into it in the last few years I was teaching, that we were being highly influenced (in my district) by Pearson. I believe we had PD and other programs thrown at us and we “bit”. It was like skimming the top of a PD session because we didn’t pay for all that training. As I have been looking online to offer some assistance to someone who is a first year teacher, I am finding that Pearson leads the way in the internet searches, so their grade level programs and books are right at the front of the search engine’s offerings. As I look at the programs we used, I am seeing that many are Pearson. This has been seeping in to our district for at least 7 years. Probably longer. Now, we have done extremely well on the tests, so it would seem to me that the way to do “well” is to follow the Pearson prescription. But, is that better? I do not think my students who will be graduating in the next 7 years are better, brighter, more prepared for college than in previous years. And, I don’t think my content had “improved” at all. However, the way, the process, the use of technology was forced into the pedagogy and even teaching HOW to use the technology was part of our course of study. It seems “convenient,” if not suspicious, that following the materials of PARCC before we had even jumped on the RttT train “helped” the students be more successful on tests designed by Pearson. It almost feels like a monopoly. That is why, with other extenuating factors, I retired in June 2012. I am glad I jumped off the train. I might add that it is next to impossible to find the time to question, compare, even look at the “big picture” since the training we got appeared to be from the state suggestions, etc. We just found we had to “stop whining, shut up, and do our jobs” as our assistant supt and now supt was proud to say.
Retirement is less stressful, but I can’t let go of my belief that this whole scenario, since NCLB, is bad for kids. If I remember, it started with Goals 2000 and proceeded onward. Both parties have bought into it on some level. Both parties are seeing their folly to some extent. I fear that with so much money invested in this grand change that it will appear unacceptable to turn it around.
As an aside, my students weren’t scoring higher on the TerraNova and InView tests than they had prior to the madness. They came into 4th grade being more average than in the years prior to all this insanity.
But I guess they know how to take tests that resemble the PARRC tests.
Today (8/22/13) Ohio is releasing its new A-F Report Card. The tension is alive and well all through the state. In a half-hour we will know “the truth”. Right. http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Data/Accountability-Resources/Ohio%E2%80%99s-New-School-Report-Card Info not up on the link yet.
I am researching Common Core, and this is getting very depressing. I can’t see any reason to adopt these new standards, and yet, our state has bought this program hook, line, and sinker. What can I do?