Peter Goodman, long an insider in New York city and state education policies, here reviews the parlous state of the Common Core and its testing regime in that state.
John King has approached parents with an attitude of inflexibility. He has made it clear that he will sit through hearings if he must, but any changes will be inconsequential.
He will not be dissuaded.
The reformer wagon is losing its wheels. The game plan is falling apart.
The reformer expectation, which was predicted long ago by Jeb Bush, was that the Common Core testing would cause test scores to plummet (as they did).
Then parents would be outraged to discover that their children were getting a bad education, and they would demand charters and vouchers.
But what Jeb didn’t count on was that the charters in New York fared even worse than the public schools.
And what Jeb didn’t count on was that the parents know their children, know their teachers, and know their schools.
They don’t believe their children failed.
They believe the test was designed to fail their children.
They don’t trust John King or the New York State Board of Regents or the New York State Education Department.
They don’t trust the Common Core or the testing associated with it. They think that both were designed to hurt their children.
They think the testing has become onerous. They know that it does not help their children. They think it hurts their children.
Peter Goodman predicts immense collateral damage as a result of the State Education Department’s arrogance.
Heads will roll. Whose head will roll first?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If Jeb had been spending time IN schools instead of organizing groups to talk about schools at meetings, he might have known that.
Leadership is not about how many organizations you can start
This is what these parents are
up against… told in a parody
of John King talking to his advisors:
Jeb is GW brother…says it all.
The Bush Dynasty-a pox on the United States. From Prescott on down.
Parents in the suburbs all moved to where they live because the schools were good. So we are not going to be tricked by reformers coming in with a new test they developed and then what do you know the results of that new test tell us our good schools are not so good. Unfortunately it has taken this growing fungus of reform traveling out to the suburbs for people to really take notice, it has been going on in the cities for a long time, tragically.
Parents deeply know the teachers who work with their children. Parents know and trust these teachers from many shared years in the community, and by the actions and words of the teacher towards their individual child. They listen to their children’s classroom experience, and children are always wise about goodness and truth. Parents easily recognize when a teacher shares the love of their child’s uniqueness. It is easy for parents to trust teachers who care for their children like their own.
Parents don’t trust data points to define their child, and they certainly don’t trust John King or Meryl Tisch making decisions for their children. And the more they learn, the louder they will shout!
Too late, the decision makers will discover we are not the idiots they believed. Guess what? We went to public school before they started tinkering with the curriculum, so we have some smarts and we know how to stand up for our kids and grand kids.
Some of us lived through Viet Nam and we know the power of the protest. Just a little warning.
It’s so easy for Weingarten apologist, Peter Goodman, to want King to be the one who brings CC down. That’s because Weingarten has now seen that the program she endorsed isn’t working. It’s forcing teachers to follow scripts and teach to the test. It’s killing early childhood education and forcing tests on 4 and 5-year olds. Whatever happened to her motto, “Let teachers teach!!”
Now she sees parents (voters) up in arms which scares her more than teachers being up in arms, so she is getting her team to focus on King. I would much rather see a post by Weingarten saying she made a big mistake than looking for scapegoats to shield us from her lack of poor judgment!! (Like the ’05 contract!!)
btw, was it Peter or Leo who said those that did not support CC (or was it VAM) were obstructionists. Still can’t wait to see how he is going to spin that? Mulgrew is already spinning it by saying the DoE is not following the plan. But that’s what they always say after an agreement is reached and then proves to be the worst decision ever on the part of the union which is happening more, and more, and more, and more……..
Gov. Cuomo has an election in a year then wants to run for president. He distanced himself from King recently blaming the regents. He sees that we are not going away but he hasn’t seen how many of us there are and there are lots of us. Soon he will have to choose.
His silence since his infamous “death penalty for failing schools” comment has been deafening. The death penalty for this failed governor will come via the voting machines. One year and counting Andrew.
If the Common core tanks as a result of this, all the better for the education of the children in New York. If more people saw what materials were being forced onto the children and teachers as “common core” they would be outraged! Reading texts that are so devoid of literate value so as to guarantee that more children HATE to read, and, mark my words, will not make them better at the state tests either, should be banned from our classrooms. Scripted lessons foisted on teachers in order to boost sales for the publishing companies should be tossed in the trash where they belong. If you factor out the poverty in which so many of our children live, our scores do not fall far behind other countries, if behind at all. Our education system was not failing our children – but the publishers and for-profit schools weren’t making the profits they desired, so they created tests designed to make children and teachers looks as if they are failing. Then they can sell more test-prep materials, computer programs, textbooks and tests. Who benefits from the testing and Common Core? It’s NOT the children.