Yesterday, I received a notice from a group in Indianapolis called “The Mind Trust” about their bringing Condaleeza Rice to Indianapolis to talk about education.
Echoing a lame report issued by a task force for the Council on Foreign Relations, which she co-chaired with Joel Klein, Rice warned that America’s public schools were so terrible that they had become “our greatest national security crisis today.”
The task force solutions: charters, vouchers, Common Core, and new technology. The problem, as the task force saw it, was the fact of having public schools.
This fits the corporate agenda of the Mind Trust, which has a plan to dissolve public education in Indianapolis.
This is sheer humbug and poppycock. Others might say that Al Queda or the threat of domestic terrorism or our huge income inequality threatens our national security, not our public schools. But she has her talking points, and she is sticking to them.
I reviewed the report of the task force, which I found to be wildly exaggerated. The best part about the report was its dissents, which made hash of the report.
Actually, as I look back, I should thank Rice and her co-chair Joel Klein because their unfounded alarmism set me on a mission to pursue the facts about test scores, graduation rates, and international scores. And what I learned made me decide to tell the true facts in a new book.
Sadly, Rice has learned nothing new in the past year. Please give the lady a copy of my book if you see her.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s sadly not surprising that Rice, who failed spectacularly in her core function, would feel informed enough to weigh in on the state of of public schools. Another failure for Condeleeza.
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It should be remembered that Condeleeza Rice was going to deliver a national security speech in which she claimed that too much emphasis had been placed on terrorist groups and not enough on the threat of Russian missiles during the Clinton administration. Ms. Rice was supposed to deliver that speech on September 11, 2001.
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A woman who was instrumental in starting a war isn’t going to care about what you wrote about. She only cares about what she think she knows. How sad.
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CR doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who wants to burden her agenda with the facts.
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Your comment is so mild I am not sure this is the same Jon Awbrey I have come to admire.
Or more probably, I am not appreciating the power of understatement. If so, my bad.
😦
After her part in the eminently avoidable Iraq WMD debacle, I am convinced by her subsequent explanations and behavior that not only facts, but logic and leaving behind an honorable legacy are the last things on her mind.
She seems to have confused the following chastising (if humorous) Marxist admonition for positive encouragement:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
Why do people keep asking? Groucho, of course.
🙂
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What do you expect from a war criminal who doesn’t dare travel outside the United States for fear of prosecution for her Bush era conduct?
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Hi everyone, I am new to this forum (and fairly new to commenting on these things in general), but I am a big fan of Ravitch and passionate about education. I just had a few questions for the community and wanted a little feedback. I apologize if this post is a bit off topic, but it does relate to educational standards.
1. How do people feel about the new NGSS? I have not read them in depth, but I have looked over them and they seem fairly reasonable. They are endorsed by AAAS and the Academy of Sciences, which is pretty encouraging to me. However, I also know that well-intentioned, and seemingly well designed, standards sometimes have unintended consequences when put into practice. Has anyone been implementing these yet? If so what are your feelings? Although I am involved with education, my primary role is as a scientist, so I don’t always know how these things are working out in practice until I hear from people in the field so to speak. Some criticisms I have heard are that they are difficult to read (but I did not find this to be the case) and in some states their standards are already higher.
2. My second question is regarding the CC standards. My knee jerk reaction was that, as they don’t actually provide curriculum but just a benchmark, they may actually be helpful or at least I was somewhat agnostic on them. As I started to hear criticism (surprisingly bipartisan) I began to look more closely at them. The first thing I did was to see what Ravitch’s view was, as I value her opinion on all things educational (this is actually how I found this her blog). I would say I have been swayed to the opinion that they are probably not the best way to go. I guess my question is: If these are not the standards we should be using, what are? I feel some standards (even if they are general) should be applied across the country so children in Arizona are learning the same thing as in New York. I just purchased “Reign of Error” so I have not had the pleasure of reading it yet, so maybe Ravitch addresses this question in her book. Correct me if I am wrong, but in “The Life and Death of The Great American School System” Ravitch supported standards, but these were lose standards such as what we should be teaching in history, science, etc. at each grade level (it has been a while since I have read this). I believe her problem was any attempt at standards became very politicized.
I just was curious on educators’ thoughts on these questions. Sorry if I was long winded and a bit off the topic of the blog post.
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The fly in the ointment lives in the assessments. There in lies the problem because that is where they are really defined…in my humble opinion. The validity of those tests and the reliability is, of course, a whole can of worms in itself.
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“The validity of those tests and the reliability is, of course, a whole can of worms in itself.”
I knew someone, thanks OTP, would give me an opening to tout the Quixotic Quest Bandwagon horn in a post about a WAR CRIMINAL who should be rotting in jail instead of making war on American public schools.
Yes we’ve known about the complete invalidity “of those tests” and since reliability is a function of validity, the complete unreliability of these educational malpractices. Wilson has proven such. To understand why, read his never refuted/rebutted 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 logical 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 crap 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 adoption of the CCSS by 45 states was a deal with the devil. States received waivers to avoid the punishments that were about to be inflicted by NCLB on every single school district in America – as of this school year. The waiver required the use of CC standards – and the mandatory use of CCSS test scores as part of a teacher evaluation piece. So we trade NCLB which punished schools for not meeting ridiculous/impossible AYP requirements – for CCSS which punishes teachers for low test scores on an unproven battery of math and ELA exams. The CCSS exams have nothing to do with improving teaching or learning. The powers that be will not even allow parents to see the exams.
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So it all comes back to the exams again. I mostly do after school programs and summer classes, and tend to work more with community centers than public schools, so I don’t really see most of the politics behind these things. I do work through the university where i am employed and help train students who work directly with the public schools, so I try and keep up with the education field in general. It can be hard as an outsider, and until you hear directly from teachers, it isn’t always easy to see what is behind the curtain with these things. I would agree if the standards are specifically designed for the test, and not more general standards for the teachers and schools to strive for, then we are back in the same boat.
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Middle School physics:
Apply Newton’s Third Law to design a solution to a problem involving the motion of two colliding objects.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of practical problems could include the impact of collisions between two cars, between a car and stationary objects, and between a meteor and a space vehicle.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to vertical or horizontal interactions in one dimension.]
MS-PS2-2.
Plan an investigation to provide evidence that the change in an object’s motion depends on the sum of the forces on the object and the mass of the object. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on balanced (Newton’s First Law) and unbalanced forces in a system, qualitative comparisons of forces, mass and changes in motion (Newton’s Second Law), frame of reference, and specification of units.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to forces and changes in motion in one-dimension in an inertial reference frame and to change in one variable at a time. Assessment does not include the use of trigonometry.]
MS-PS2-3.
Ask questions about data to determine the factors that affect the strength of electric and magnetic forces. [Clarification Statement: Examples of devices that use electric and magnetic forces could include electromagnets, electric motors, or generators. Examples of data could include the effect of the number of turns of wire on the strength of an electromagnet, or the effect of increasing the number or strength of magnets on the speed of an electric motor.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment about questions that require quantitative answers is limited to proportional reasoning and algebraic thinking.]
MS-PS2-4.
Construct and present arguments using evidence to support the claim that gravitational interactions are attractive and depend on the masses of interacting objects. [Clarification Statement: Examples of evidence for arguments could include data generated from simulations or digital tools; and charts displaying mass, strength of interaction, distance from the Sun, and orbital periods of objects within the solar system.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include Newton’s Law of Gravitation or Kepler’s Laws.]
MS-PS2-5.
Conduct an investigation and evaluate the experimental design to provide evidence that fields exist between objects exerting forces on each other even though the objects are not in contact. [Clarification Statement: Examples of this phenomenon could include the interactions of magnets, electrically-charged strips of tape, and electrically-charged pith balls. Examples of investigations could include first-hand experiences or simulations.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to electric and magnetic fields, and limited to qualitative evidence for the existence of fields
YOU TELL ME . . . ?
These are written for 13 1nd 14 year olds with ZERO background knowledge in physics.
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Derrick – try these HS standards on for size:
Students who demonstrate understanding can:
HS-PS3-1
Create a computational model to calculate the change in the energy of one component in a system when the change in energy of the other component(s) and energy flows in and out of the system are known. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on explaining the meaning of mathematical expressions used in the model.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to basic algebraic expressions or computations; to systems of two or three components; and to thermal energy, kinetic energy, and/or the energies in gravitational, magnetic, or electric fields.]
HS-PS3-2.
Develop and use models to illustrate that energy at the macroscopic scale can be accounted for as a combination of energy associated with the motions of particles (objects) and energy associated with the relative positions of particles (objects). [Clarification Statement: Examples of phenomena at the macroscopic scale could include the conversion of kinetic energy to thermal energy, the energy stored due to position of an object above the earth, and the energy stored between two electrically-charged plates. Examples of models could include diagrams, drawings, descriptions, and computer simulations.]
HS-PS3-3.
Design, build, and refine a device that works within given constraints to convert one form of energy into another form of energy.* [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on both qualitative and quantitative evaluations of devices. Examples of devices could include Rube Goldberg devices, wind turbines, solar cells, solar ovens, and generators. Examples of constraints could include use of renewable energy forms and efficiency.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment for quantitative evaluations is limited to total output for a given input. Assessment is limited to devices constructed with materials provided to students.]
HS-PS3-4.
Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that the transfer of thermal energy when two components of different temperature are combined within a closed system results in a more uniform energy distribution among the components in the system (second law of thermodynamics). [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on analyzing data from student investigations and using mathematical thinking to describe the energy changes both quantitatively and conceptually. Examples of investigations could include mixing liquids at different initial temperatures or adding objects at different temperatures to water.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to investigations based on materials and tools provided to students.]
HS-PS3-5.
Develop and use a model of two objects interacting through electric or magnetic fields to illustrate the forces between objects and the changes in energy of the objects due to the interaction. [Clarification Statement: Examples of models could include drawings, diagrams, and texts, such as drawings of what happens when two charges of opposite polarity are near each other.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to systems containing two objects.]
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Derrick
One of the more problematic aspects of NGSS is the inclusion of engineering knowledge/skills. Few traditionally trained science teachers will have the technological background to do this successfully. Just my opinion.
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Yeah, the engineering modules look pretty daunting and they are hard to read. I hadn’t looked at those before. I was mostly looking at the biology and chemistry. Most likely you could get the basic concepts across if given the latitude, but it looks like they are trying to be fairly rigid with how it should be presented. We are currently doing engineering modules for 3-5th graders (I’m not an engineer so I was a bit hesitant about it), but this is all hands on projects that really engage the children. We are presenting engineering as simply designing things to solve problems. I was board just reading those descriptions and I am a scientist who likes math. I doubt the children get very excited.
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NY teacher,
As a science teacher, I have no problem with the standards you mentioned above, for either HS or MS. I think they are reasonable objectives to try to get students to meet at those levels. Of course the language is clumsy, as these things always are, because they are written for critical adults, not children. But it is our job as teachers to translate this into learning activities that can really excite students and get them (for a change) actually engaged in doing science.
The problem that I see is that there are very few students in either Middle School or High School right now that are capable of performing these demonstrations. We just haven’t taught kids that way before. Under NCLB, there was no time at all for big, open-ended inquiry activities, because the tests were about science trivia.
I think all of us science teachers really do want to see our students “planning and conducting investigations”, “developing and using models”, “designing, building and refining devices”, etc. rather than memorizing and recalling algorithms and factoids. And we can get most of them there. As a physics modeling convert, I can vouch for this. Once they get the hang of being free to learn, not just sit and do worksheets all day, kids love this stuff. They really become engaged and grow immensely as learners. But it takes a while for this shift to occur.
In my opinion, we should not be pushing to eliminate the CCSS or the NGSS. Instead, we should be putting our effort into convincing the powers that be to phase in the testing as we phase in implementation. In other words, this year’s first or second graders should be the first ones for whom the tests based on CCSS and NGSS are used to evaluate anything, including students, let alone teachers and schools.
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Dave
Inquiry, discovery, constructivism are different terms for a debunked teaching methodology. They are slow, inefficient, and can be wildly inaccurate when students “discover” misinformation (which they routinely do) Most students prefer and appreciate interesting and engaging direct instruction. Do we really want students “discovering”
the structure of atoms or the mathematics of stoichiometry? Anyone who can’t make science interesting through direct but creative teaching is probably in the wrong line of work. I’ve watched many a student lose interest when asked to construct their own learning. That guide on the side BS is a distant spec in my rear view mirror. Besides I really don’t want to take down the sign on my door that reads, “I am the sage on the stage.” Witness the simple fact that scientists and engineers would not dare conduct an experiment or design a nuclear power plant without a boatload of “facts” and formulas to guide them.
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This is not a popular opinion on this blog, but Diane, who I respect every bit as much as you do, is OK with diverse opinions, especially if you care about kids and education.
I am just fine with the CC standards. If we are going to attempt to improve the outcomes of our students’ education, which we should, no matter that it is already pretty good, we need to measure something. The CCSSI gives us a clear set of benchmarks to measure against and they are rigorous and reasonable. As a science teacher, I have looked into the NGSS and I’m also fine with them. They line up very nicely with the direction I think science education should be moving in–away from rote memorization and toward inquiry.
Of course, Diane is perfectly correct when she proclaims that the biggest room for improvement is not inside our schools but out in our general society. Until poverty and injustice are confronted, we can never expect to see more than a marginal change in our educational outcomes. But if we wish to see that marginal change, a good set of measurement standards is the logical place to start.
However, the problem, to which others have alluded, is that the timing and the emphasis of the testing is all out of whack. We have spent a generation teaching to the test under NCLB and now we are asked to shift to a set of standards that are much more based on critical and analytical thinking and will be assessed using items that require such. This shift will take a generation, yet schools and teachers will be evaluated on these tests as early as next year. That’s a problem.
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I am not a Physics teacher, but I do teach kindergarten ESL. The CCSS for kindergarten students are developmentally inappropriate. Good luck with the Physics CCSS when this cohort gets to high school.
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“. . . we need to measure something.”
WHY???
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What is NGSS and AAAS?
Pet peeve, acronym usage without any refernces.
NGSS = National G-String Society!!
AAAS = American Aardvark Asses Society!!
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NGSS = Next Generation Science Standards
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Sorry, next generation of science standards and American association for the advancement if science.
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Derrick,
Prior to NCLB (well intentioned, poor reality) there was no plan anywhere as to what to teach in our schools or when to teach it, save statewide textbook adoptions. This, of course, resulted in such pell mell calamities as every elementary teacher in America teaching their own little unit on the First Thanksgiving every November – every teacher (K-5,6, every November), at the costs of untold redundancy and numerous other omitted social studies units.
Along comes NCLB which established standards as the first step in planning what was to be taught and when in our schools, without getting into the specifics of curricula. This was the first step in establishing a plan, a map, for teachers, at least within a state, as to how to proceed. The problem: NCLB created fifty different worlds of education, some terrific (Massachusetts), others, not so. Fifty states going in fifty different directions, all with different standards, assessments, and cut off scores, was better than nothing but there was very little equity for students from one state to the next.
Enter Common Core State Standards. Now all fifty states (45 accepted the challenge initially) had the opportunity to be on the same page with a common plan for their schools for standards, assessments, and cut off scores. The problem: A number of the same fraudulent states that had anemic standards, assessments, cut off scores under NCLB are now backing out of CCSS because they realize their students would most likely perform poorly on the new assessments, and state officials would have little to no way of rationalizing any of this to their taxpayers, and especially their parents. Their excuse to taxpayers/parents for withdrawal; the CC assessments would be too costly. This, of course, feeds into the misleading paranoia that CC was developed to fill the coffers of the likes of Pearson or McGraw Hill, instead of improving the over all education of our students.
So, Derrick, while standards may have been a worthwhile notion toward creating equity in our schools and giving all students an equal chance at a high quality education across the country, you can see how the plan has been hijacked by the shenanigans and chicanery of purported adults; those supposedly looking out for our children, when, in fact, they’re out attempting to protect their own incompetent behinds.
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“. . . they’re out attempting to protect their own incompetent behinds.”
PSTLWU!!
Public School Teacher Lovers of the World Unite!!!
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Mr. Hoss
A pretty good summary – for an amateur. You left out the fact that the implementation of NCLB and now CCSS are dependent upon punishing schools and teachers for low test scores. Promoting education through coercion is a losing proposition. You also forgot to mention that CCSS were written and adopted without teacher input – another losing proposition. Ignoring what we know about brain development and cognitive learning theory; ignoring experts on early childhood development – another LP.
By the way, your writing skills are above average; I take it you overcame the damage inflicted by all those ” first Thanksgiving” lessons. However, your critical thinking skills seem lacking – it helps to have a command of those annoying “facts” required to weigh the issues.
For every armchair teacher like yourself screaming about us lazy incompetents – project much? Or just jealous that you missed out on the teaching gravy train when you had the chance?
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The gist of Paul’s comment is that there was a pressing “need” for education “reform” prior to NCLB and Common Core. Not true.
A Nation at Risk warned of ” a rising tide of mediocrity” that “threatened” American national security. Not so. It was a fantasy; a myth; a lie.
The Sandia Report (Journal of Educational Research, May/June, 1993), published in the wake of A Nation at Risk, concluded that:
* “..on nearly every measure we found steady or slightly improving trends.”
* “youth today [the 1980s] are choosing natural science and engineering degrees at a higher rate than their peers of the 1960s.”
* “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause.”
“The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
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Duane,
If you followed my comment closely, those protecting their own behinds were not teachers, but state officials and lawmakers. BTW, I am a retired Massachusetts public school teacher (35 years).
NY Teacher,
“…the implementation of NCLB and now CCSS are dependent upon punishing schools and teachers for low test scores.” That’s quite a negative spin you have there. I view both as bipartisan attempts to fix what was an embarrassment, our public schools – again, no plan anywhere. Everyone doing their own thing? That’s wonderful unless your child winds up in a classroom where the teacher isn’t necessarily on the correct path. And I didn’t miss out on the teacher gravy train at all. I reaped all the rewards.
Democracy,
The pressing need for reform came from the example I cited – no plan anywhere as to what to teach or when to teach it. Is that really any way to run a school system; local, state, or national? Really? It was our national shame, our embarrassment. All those schools, teachers, and students and no plan? Come on. How could anyone even attempt to defend such an organization? It’s also one of the primary reasons outliers got involved in the reform movement. They didn’t trust the educational establishment to fix things, even to establish a coherent plan. As a teacher, I can’t say I blame any of these outsiders.
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Paul,
I didn’t get that meaning so thanks for the follow up. I still don’t see it in your statement, though. (Had to do an acronym though as there have been quite a few here as of late.)
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Can I (politely) ask why some hold massachusetts up as the gold standard for education in this country?
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Kay, Mass has the highest pass rate on NAEP. It agreed in 1993 to add more funding, among other things.
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PH
Not a negative spin – just the reality of the federal law (NCLB) and its next of kin (CCSS). I take it you taught in a well to do district – unlike the one I work in. We got hammered every year for failing to meet our AYP in one sub group or another. SINNI status was our normal operating condition. Twelve years of NCLB and millions of students nationwide were still unable to reach proficiency – through a rather varied set of standards. Now the solution is to simply make it harder through CCSS. BTW can you fault states for creating weak standards to avoid punishment from what every one realized was an unfair system. If the federal legislation was really trying to improve education across the board, why not try to fix the weakest link in the chain: poverty. They could have saved everybody a lot of time, energy, and money by simply assigning test scores according to family income.
In MA where NAEP scores consistently place your state at the top of the country it sure doesn’t sound like a bunch of teachers just doing their own thing with no rhyme or reason. You must also realize that by adopting CCSS, Massachusetts is taking a big step backward in terms of quality standards.
Despite the emphasis on state standards under NCLB, instruction became almost entirely “test driven”. For generation here in NY, high school teachers have been (and still are) using their Regents exams as a curriculum road map. Under CCSS where scores are tied to teacher evaluations do you really think things will change?
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@ Paul:
It’s rather hard to say there’s a “need” for “reform” when, in fact , there was no “need.” The Sandia Report was very clear on that.
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Holy Cow. I ignored this blog entry because I really don’t care what Condie says, and now I check in and find the science standards being discussed off-topic. That is something I’ve studied at length, as they were beiing developed and since.
Derrick, here’s my take on it:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/chemtchr-science-teachers-view-backward-engineered-common-core-science-standards
Hmmm. That is apparently my top-traffic blog now, and the NEPC site comes up first on Google, way ahead of the original post on Edweek.
I have no problem with the science content of those specific middle school physics topics, NY teacher, and I don’t think you would either, if they weren’t all obscured by assessment boundary gibberish. But read what they did to the early grades. It’s perverse and dumb.
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Thanks for the info and link! Sorry, I will assume full responsibility for the degeneration of the thread into something completely off topic. I usually don’t do that, but I had some people asking me about them, and I didn’t know if a blog on the subject
would come around anytime soon. I mostly just looked at the subject matter for different grade levels and it seemed fairly reasonable, but I will agree if they are really designed to teach to the test, I won’t be overly confident in them.
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chemtchr
I have a problem with standards like this:
Apply Newton’s Third Law to design a solution to a problem involving the motion of two colliding objects.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of practical problems could include the impact of collisions between two cars, between a car and stationary objects, and between a meteor and a space vehicle.]
Just one more example of people who do not understand Newton’s 3rd Law of motion – or how best to teach it.. Furthermore, how do they expect a 14 year old to “design a solution” to a problem regarding the conservation of momentum? They want a kid to create or invent a solution regarding a meteor colliding with a space vehicle using 3rd law knowledge. This is nothing but a pile of gobbledygook created because they feel the strong desire to put the design/problem solving horse before the knowledge/understanding cart. I shudder to think what the relate CCSS/NGSS assessment question would read like.
As far as elementary science I have little faith in untrained elementary teachers delivering much beyond simple nature studies. Cynical I know but its been my experience over many years (I have seen a few rare exceptions). NGSS can write the world’s finest science standards for K – 6 and my only hope is that they do no harm.
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I agree. A teacher can’t teach what s/he doesn’t know. A hamster in the classroom is one thing. What is Newton’s Third Law? I had physics twice, once in high school, and a non-mathematical version in college. All I remember of both is being sat on a rotating stool and holding a weighted bicycle wheel by handles through the axle hole and told to tilt the spinning wheel. I did, and the seat of the stool rotated me a bit. What was THAT?
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should read: “cart before horse” oops.
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Between her gig at the Hoover Institute, a Right-tilted group of great minds in their own estimation and a shameful output from Stanford, and her shopping for thigh high boots, and her piano playing and golfing, Rice should be treated only with derision. She was part of the criminal Bush group who created only death and destruction in Iraq based on their own lies…and really all about getting the OIL.
People forget about her triumverate with war criminals Cheney and Rumsfeld, which pushed the slow-thinking Bush into an unnecessary war over oil, not al-Quada and Bin Laden, and which helped to cause the tremendous debt for America (along with all the banksters frauds). They built the Tea Party, along with their colluder, Dick Armey and his FreedomWorks gangsters.
Her words should be used for toilet paper.
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“Her words should be used for toilet paper.”
One soils oneself when reading her dribble.
Misquoting one F. Gump: “Rhee and Rice are like peas and carrots.”
And you may be hearing from KTA soon representing the TPMA asking you to cease and desist from associating her with their fine and very useful products.
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If she were a person of color, I would think you were just being racist. Since she lived at the Watergate apartment complex, she must be corrupt, right? As for oil, we wouldn’t need it now, if the President had approved the Keystone pipeline. I suppose you yourself bike to work? Such amazing vitriol.
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As a former public school teacher from central Indiana, I am not surprised. This is the state where Republicans have spit on the state constitution and ignored the voters to pursue their criminal attack on public schools. I only hope my fellow Hoosiers will one day soon do to them what they did last year to the execrable Tony Bennett.
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Count me Edd Doerr… I know who I will NOT be voting for in this election.
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If she had a copy of your book and read it her mind is so polluted and ideological as the perfect 1984 character that she would immediately translate into her head as she read it through her filter and she would automatically rewrite it to her head as she read it to fit her beliefs. What I am trying to say is “It would not matter to her.”
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It is indeed ironic that Rice, a member of the “Principals Committee” during the Bush reign of terror, deems public education a national security threat. The committee approved “enhanced interrogation” who were thought to be a threat, only to learn that many innocent people were rounded up as terrorist security threats. Please. Maybe we don’t want Rice reading Ravitch’s book 🙂
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Please, someone give Condoleeza Rice a heart and a brain. Put a spoon (make it a silver one) in front of her mouth to see if it fogs up . . . .
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I doubt if Connie Rice would profit from your book. “Don’t confuse me with the facts, I have already made up my mind”. Sorry, but she lost any respect which I might have had for her LONG ago. Sad but true. What she helped do TO this country is unforgivable but doubt if she is aware of it.
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How do you want to deliver the book to Rice …via a gentle bop on the head first before asking her to read it (no need for a hard bop as the ideas she currently has loose ones)? Might knock some sense into her! Yeesh.. everyone is an expert at everything these days. I have been keeping my elderly parents abreast of the issues and sending them links. My own father who was not a physician mind you suggested that maybe he should perform brain surgery on a few of these “reformers” since he had a brain he must be an expert at brain surgery! I suggested he start with Bill Gates!
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Please ask someone like Pasi Sahlberg to write your intro to your new book giving it an international representation.
Thank you for doing another book! My grandchildren will be the benefactors.
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Condi Rice has a way of yelling that the sky is falling when it isn’t, doesn’t she? First, it was our immanent danger because of WMDs in Iraq. Now its our immanent danger because of our failing schools.
Same old Coni Rice. The one we’ve come to trust implicitly, huh?
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Send me her address – I bought her one today and will mail it to her.
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“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” –National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, on Iraq’s nuclear capabilities and the Bush administration’s case for war, Sept. 8, 2002.
The tubes were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs,” Condoleezza Rice, the president’s national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
But almost a year before, Ms. Rice’s staff had been told that the government’s foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets.
Rice has as much credibility as Ted Cruz.
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…Rice warned that America’s public schools were so terrible that they had become “our greatest national security crisis today.”
…If they feel that way, maybe education can get some of the dollars allocated to defense.
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Brilliant!
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Yes, brilliant! How do we frame it positively and yet get a huge chunk of the military budget? Or, better yet, is there a way to frame the issue of poverty as as “our greatest national security crisis today”, as it is a real crisis, as opposed to the made up educational crisis?
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Thanks for the feed back! My wife is the devil’s advocate and will vehemently argue against any point I am trying to make regardless of her own opinion on the matter (I’m not sure if it is just me she does this with or everyone), so I am definitely okay hearing different opinions. I think it makes for good discussion. I guess the biggest issue with any of this, is it does seem to come back to the test. As far as the NGSS, I mostly looked at the biology and some chemistry and felt it was appropriate. Someone else showed me some of the engineering moduels in NGSS, and they did seem like they were difficult to follow and would be hard to get across the point in the way it was presented. Again I guess it will all come down to how they want to evaluate any of this or much autonomy the teachers actually have once it us all said and done.
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This was supposed to be in response to daveeckstrom, so I’m not sure why it ended up down here,
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“(I’m not sure if it is just me she does this with or everyone)”
Don’t worry she does it with me too!! HA HA!!
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Condaleezza Rice? Talking about education?
Condaleezza? How condescending.
Everything important that one needs to now about Rice can be found in these two links:
1. The PDB of August 6, 2001 warning that bin Laden was “determined to strike in US.”
This was a memo that Rice simply ignored.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/
2. Rice’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission, where she tries to evade questioning about the PDB of August 6, 2001:
Why does anyone take this woman seriously?
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“Condaleezza Rice?”
The modern Uncle Tom!
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It must be a lack of oxygen. They build those ivory towers way too high.
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Condi should have stuck with music.
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I will gladly pay to have one sent to her with an inscription. But I want to know what inscription would be best. (Seriously). It needs to be respectful but poignant.
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While I enjoy the bashing of Ms. Rice, who in my opinion is a war criminal, there is a glaring issue here that only people in Indiana may recognize. First of all the Mind Trust is an evil organization that is headed by the most despicable of education privatizers, DFER. Throw in some of the Tony Bennett/Mitch Daniels faithful and you have a very dangerous organization. Their intent is to convince the state legislature that Indiana must end public education as we know it and move to an all-voucher-system.
Bringing in Ms. Rice to speak is playing to the GOP that love Mitch and Tony but are not fans of our current Governor Mike Pence who appeals mostly to the wacko Tea Partyers. When you mix all of these ingredients together you get the sickest of reform which is purely for profit with re-segregation added in for fun. (Google busing in Indianapolis from the 70s and 80s for some insight.) We are currently having state hearings on the CC, which I predict will be vetted and stay intact. Pence appeals to his crazies by pulling out of PARCC, but the Tony/Mitch crown can feel better that Ms. Rice will be here to validate their beliefs.
Indiana is a crucible for the worst of Education Reform that has inspired the legislatures in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and many others. There is a reason that ALEC named this privatization game plan after Indiana. http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/indiana-education-reform-package/
Sadly this is where I teach.
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Thank you for laying this out. Now I can be ready when they start quoting Condi in NC.
Sadly, people are impressed by her (mostly because she has a membership at Augusta National). (Maybe she and Diane can chat in their green jackets; one from the club, one not).
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Teresa, I can only imagine the feeling, the pain, to not only observe but to live within a system undergoing such pernicious – and decidedly undemocratic – “reform.” People have the ability to think and create in incredibly productive and cooperative ways, yet they too often engage in petty, spiteful, greedy and dishonest conduct.
Indiana seems to have a lot of them, with far too many in positions of power. But how did they get there?
“The people” elected Barack Obama, hoping for “meaningful change.” I suppose they got some of that, especially considering the previous 8 years (of whichRice was an integral part) and contemplating what a McCain or Romney presidency might have looked like.
However, on financial “reform” Obama has been incredibly soft, saving “accountability” and “performance” measures for the nation’s public schools and teachers.
I keep wondering when more citizens, and teachers and parents are going to demand a stop to the stupidity. Supply-side economics doesn’t work, and is a direct cause of deficits, debt and gross income inequality.
Public education is not the “problem.” But it has drifted from its core mission of nurturing democratic citizenship and a commitment to the core values embedded in the Constitution: popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, tolerance, and promoting the general welfare.
The Common Core, more testing, merit pay, Advanced Placement courses, the ACT, STEM, and the SAT are not going to fix that. In fact, they’re part of the dysfunction. The facade. The lie.
I hope the bigger picture emerges in Indiana and elsewhere. But I’m not holding my breath.
But I do trust that you are the bright spot for some kids each day. All of us should be thankful for that.
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“Supply-side economics doesn’t work,. . .”
Unfortunately it does work quite well for one side-those who already have the most jack-by having those with the least jack supply the money that the “one” side so avariciously covets.
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Yes Duane….it’s worked well for the uber-rich….but everybody else has been stuck with the bill.
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Out of curiosity, I read Rice’s bio and learned that she is the child of public school teachers and that she had wonderfully nourishing educational experiences in her early life.
She should be especially ashamed of her various acts of cultural barbarism.
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“. . . acts of cultural barbarism.”
That’s putting it quite nicely considering that she is a WAR CRIMINAL responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands.
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It’s amazing to me that all these liars get a free pass. There were no WMD. Just a decade long war that killed them and us. Why would ANYONE listen to Condoleeza Rice or anyone in the Bush family.
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Rice is just reading her lines.
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Mustn’t forget too, Joel Klein’s history of embellishment and exaggeration started long before he became Rupert Murdoch’s tablet curriculum salesman. It starts with his own sad tale. As Richard Rothstein reported almost a year ago…
“To support his program, he’s had to suggest he had an “inner city” upbringing on “the streets” and was raised in a dysfunctional home we typically associate with the truly disadvantaged. This is where his misrepresentations and distortions come in.”
http://prospect.org/article/joel-kleins-misleading-autobiography
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If there were any justice in the world, these war criminals would be paying for their crimes, not pontificating about other topics they know nothing of.
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It should be hard to sleep at night if you think about all the wonderful young men and women who died because of your bad judgement
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That is why she is still explaining herself with the same tired speech 12 years later.
To me she is not that far removed from the protagonist (played by Cate Blanchett) in Woody Allen’s new movie “Blue Jasmine.” Only no evident Valium and vodka addiction. She may not be on a park bench, but I do think she is talking to herself.
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Public schooling is so very underfunded and low on the priority list. This should be her criticism, not our public schools. So, that tells you which agenda she’s promoting. Thanks for nothing, C!
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Diane, unfortunately, we are besieged by the Mind Trust in Indianapolis. Bill Gates’ money is one of the primary sources for the Mind Trust which allows TFA to be placed in the Schools in Indy. As the Director of the Indianapolis Education Association, we are fighting the war with the right wing agenda and the super majorities in our Legislature. As well, our Tea Party Governor is no better. The goal of the Mind Trust is to collapse our Indianapolis Public Schools. The Director of the Mind Trust is David Harris who headed the Charter Schools for the former Indy Mayor Bart Peterson, a “New Democrat.” We have had horrible results with the TFA teachers. In fact, IPS administration came to us not knowing what to do due to their dismal results and discipline. The TFA’s barely last two years and DO NOT join the Union. Indiana has to be ground zero with all of the Charter schools and unrestricted vouchers. As well, we have had our collective bargaining rights diminished to a point that we just meet and confer. Clearly, if we do not follow the advice of Robert Reich and get involved there will be nothing left of Public Education. Thank you for your national leadership and the latest book, “Reign of Error.” I am recommending it to everyone I know and make contact with.
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