In the spring of 2012, Brookings scholar Tom Loveless set off a firestorm when he wrote a study of the Common Core State Standards and concluded that they would make little or no difference in student achievement.
He did not pass judgment on the quality of the standards but on the question of how much standards matter.
He wrote:
“The finding is clear: The quality of state standards has not mattered. From 2003 to 2009, states with terrific standards raised their National Assessment of Educational Progress scores by roughly the same margin as states with awful ones.”
Does rigor matter? In fourth grade, he found, that was some evidence that raising cut points “is associated with increased achievement. But the effect is not large, and it is difficult to determine the direction of causality. At 8th grade, states with lenient cut points have made NAEP gains similar to those of states with rigorous ones.”
Most important, Loveless finds that “Test=score differences within states are about four to five times greater than differences in state means…Common state standards might reduce variation between states, but it is difficult to imagine how they will reduce variation within states. After all, districts and schools within the same state have been operating under common standards for several years and, in some states, for decades.”
In this article, which links to his study and to critics of the study, he concludes that the Common Core State Standards are not likely to make much of a difference.
Hmmm. How many tens of billions of dollars will be spent on Common Core-aligned hardware, software, professional development, and consultants to see if he is right? How many districts will increase class size, abandon the arts, and eliminate other necessary program along the way?
Couldn’t we have tried the idea out first in three to five states before imposing it on 45 states?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Watch the April 2011 videos for evidence that the reformers’ common core fix via Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners was rigged behind the scenes in New York and beyond. When the reformers’ fix fails in New York, common core and the matching high-stakes testing machine will fall like dominoes across the US.
“Bringing the Common Core to Life” in New York
http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/resources/bringing-the-common-core-to-life.html
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One could look at Kentucky. It is the state with the longest track record of Common Core,which is two years. It’s not a great amount of time, but the results so far are ZERO. They actually fell slightly on their NAEP 2013 scores. They have also had TONS of grants and other funding to “do it right.” NAEP is the best way to compare new methods with a constant test.
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I think some of your questions might be answered by comparing states that have adopted the CCSS to those that have not. Comparing the class sizes and class offerings in non-adopters like Texas, Nebraska, and Minnesota to states that have adopted it like Oklahoma, Iowa, and Kentucky should tell us something about the impact of money spent on the conversion to the CCSS.
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I think it is too early to make those comparisons. Far too early.
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Indeed it is very much to early to answer the questions Dr. Ravitch asks in the post. We will have to wait to see how things work out and hope to statistically control for the other factors that might have an influence on class size, fine arts offerings, etc..
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Reblogged this on Roy F. McCampbell's Blog.
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I think teachers have become so accustom to this trend and that trend and this mandate and that mandate that they have been so conditioned to just “roll with it,” (Duane calls it GATGA, but I think that can really only apply if you are truly in a position to affect what is happening, so long as it is not killing or causing bleeding—but anyway, that’s another subject all together), BUT they don’t think of Common Core as anything but just another trend handed down. And truly I get the sense that leadership on the state level (state board, etc) does not see Common Core with the symbolism it is assigned by those who have probed deeper. In fact, to play devil’s advocate for the sake of conversation, I do wonder if some of its most outspoken critics would be so outspoken if THEY had been approached to write standards on behalf of the country for several million dollars. It is always best to put yourself in other people’s shoes IF you want to problem solve.
If you are not interested in problem solving, then just point fingers and cast blame.
But in regards to this post, I do think teachers are largely not that concerned about Common Core and that, at the end of the, it will have neither the detrimental NOR the heroic effects that either camp predicts. (Suffice to say that the one of two teachers I know who detests it has taken on a drug problem and will be leaving her school after Christmas, having fallen asleep in class and having no order in her classroom). It’s all in how you handle it.
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“It is always best to put yourself in other people’s shoes IF you want to problem solve.
If you are not interested in problem solving, then just point fingers and cast blame.”
In what way might one “put oneself in other people’s shoes” when what the “other people” propose are blatantly educational malpractices that definitely harm many of the most innocent in society, the young students?
There is no “probleme solving” when the problem-the invalidities involved in the whole educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students are intractable/unsolvable due to them being epistemologically and ontological falsehoods????? To compromise on such basic principles is dead wrong. PERIOD.
“at the end of the, it will have neither the detrimental NOR the heroic effects that either camp predicts.”
Sorry, Joanna, but the detrimental effects have been and continue to occur on a daily basis and those detrimental effects should be wiped out at the source-using educational standards and standardized testing as “measurements” of the very human being that is a student.
Re-read Wilson if you don’t understand why.
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I still think there has to be a way.
I hear ya. But I think there is room for everyone down here and if it means we have to push back harder we can and we will, but I think of it like a relationship. And I’m not ready or willing to walk out on this relationship: public school and the state. I will try until the day I die to work to save our schools.
That’s where I am with it right now. I understand Wilson. I just don’t see a world with no grading. Baby steps. I agree on the detrimental effects going on, but I have a hope that drives me, driven by the assurance of things hoped for. Public school, while going through this trial, will not disappear. It will not go unchanged, that’s for sure. But I will not let it disappear in my state. I won’t sit idly by and just comment on the destruction, or shout out notions of what SHOULD be happening, but not working with what is in front of me to get closer to that. I am not accusing anyone of doing that—I just know I feel like casting a vote of confidence for public school surviving this some days. Today is one of those days.
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Reblogged this on theophiluspunk and commented:
The falsification of Common Core’s claims: “Test-score differences WITHIN states are about four to five times greater than differences in state means…. Districts & schools within the same state have been operating under common standards for several years and, in some states, for decades.”
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“King put the responsibility of preparing educators in New York City’s hands, saying professional development around the Common Core must be the focus of the next mayoral administration and schools chancellor.
“This issue of ensuring that every teacher has the preparation and support to implement these high standards well, that has got to be a top priority for the leadership of this district going forward,” he said.”
There’s no real accountability for Common Core. The federal and state leaders who support it will simply pass the buck on any failings to local implementation.
This is also the line on standardized tests, BTW, and it worked there. Promoters of standardized testing can repeat vague “goals” (accountability!) and then walk away from the practical reality.
It’s poor management. There’s no accountability for those at the top. Everything is pushed down the line.
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So if one asks Arne Duncan about the Common Core Duncan will point to state leaders, because it is not a federal curriculum. And if one asks a state leader this is the response:
“the next mayoral administration and schools chancellor.”
Good luck, suckers! See ya! Try not to screw up our beautiful, abstract theory and aspirational goals!
Local leader shouldn’t accept this response from federal and state leaders. It’s a dodge.
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The fallacy of accountability movement is equating a program, or a list of standards, or a teacher evaluation system with student achievement. Instead of asking the fundamental question of how children learn, policy makers continue throwing laws, sanctions, managerial systems, I Pads at the classroom. Establishing a standard (which is the wrong terminology to begin with), and then translating that standard into a meaningful learning experience is a very different undertaking. Returning to the question of how children learn. All of the accountability mandates treat the child as solely a cognitive machine, when learning theory tells us, that children are also social and emotional beings. Unless our policies begin to address the social and emotional well-being of our children (which other countries at the top have figured out), then the cognitive goes no where. I would add that the continual wrangling over this program or that standard or that evaluation system diverts our attention from the 25 or so children teachers face each day and the classroom and community conditions that will provide them with a rich learning environment. The last decade of accountability reform has all but squeezed out the social and the emotional from our classrooms leaving nothing but programs and checklists —- this is not how children learn.
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“Establishing a standard (which is the wrong terminology to begin with)”
Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding!!!!! Give that man a Kewpie doll!!!!
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“Couldn’t we have tried the idea out first in three to five states before imposing it on 45 states?”
NO!
Stupid policies are just that, stupid, inane, insane, illogical, irrational, etc. . . . No amount of “trying out” can overcome the errors and invalidities involved in educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students. The invalidities and absurdities have been known for decades now.
Here, let me touch that red hot stove to see if it burns me. OUCH, GODDAMMIT it burnt me. No shitake sherlock.
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These edufads have occurred with regularity throughout the history of U.S. education. And every time a new edufad catches on, the educrats and politicians pushing it are convinced that it is going to transform everything, utterly. Every time, we are a few years away from a new Golden Age. One can recognize an edufad because it its proponents always begin with something like this:
“And all we have to do is _______________________.”
All we have to do is use the look-say method. All we have to do are behavioral objectives. All we have to do is whole language. All we have to do is create high standards and test to those.
The current edudeform theory is borrowed from a school of thought that swept the business world in the 1980s and ’90s–the key performance indicator, or KPI. Like most really successful memes, the idea can be stated very simply. It lends itself to sloganeering. You get what you measure. If you want to get great results, all you have to do is to put the proper measurements in place.
This idea hit U.S. education like an alien invasion with the passage of NCLB. All we would have to do is to create rigorous standards, test learning of those standards, and hold people accountable for achieving or not achieving them, and if we did that,
ALL STUDENTS WOULD BE PROFICIENT BY 2014
Well, in a couple weeks it will be 2014. And we have had over a decade of standards and testing. And there has been no change in our outcomes by the deformers’ own preferred measure–the criterion-referenced bubble test.
The idea that tough standards and testing of those would bring about enormous positive change in K-12 education has been tried and tried and tried. And it has failed. Utterly failed. But the CCSS/PARCC/Smarter Balanced/VAM crowd has convinced itself, despite this decade of experience with the approach, that all we have to do is more of what hasn’t worked. They are convinced that their underlying argument–that the KPI, applied to education, will bring about the results we want–can’t possibly be wrong. And no amount of argument, no reasoning from evidence, will convince them otherwise.
In other words, the current deform is a religion.
The deformers are like the 19th-century Millerites. William Miller was a nineteenth-century preacher who predicted the end of the world. Thousands of his followers sold all their possessions and gathered on a hillside waiting for the event to come and to be carried up into heaven. When the date came and passed, the evidence of the failure of his prediction was discounted. Miller simply set a new date, and his followers started waiting for that one. It came and went too.
In order to continue believing, despite a decade of this deform not working, the deformers have come up with some transparent rationalizations. Well, those state standards were not rigorous enough. The tests were not good enough. All we have to do is to tweak those, to make the standards and the accountability measures tougher. This is equivalent to saying that all those states that created standards and high-stakes tests and other accountability measures simply didn’t do the job well. CCSS + PARCC will be SO MUCH BETTER than the Massachusetts standards + MCAS, the Illinois standards + ISAT, the Texas standards + STARR, the Florida standards + FCAT, that surely the second coming is at hand.
But the CCSS are nothing more than the result of a brief process of reviewing the state standards and producing something like a melding of what the authors believed were the best of those. And the new exams–well, despite all the hype, they are VERY LIKE the old exams. In both cases, the instruments have been tweaked a bit, but the underlying dogma–the KPI dogma–has not changed.
It’s the height of idiocy to keep doing what hasn’t worked and to expect that things are going to be different. But this time, when we go stand on the mountain and wait for the second coming, we’ll be wearing our magic blue socks.
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Last paragraph says it all.
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Robert what an excellent post. is it OK with you if I copy and paste it (and give you credit)?
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Please do.
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Robert D. Shepherd: there have been some excellent comments on this posting; yours are some of the best.
If I may, let me zero in on one aspect of what you wrote.
Whatever one thinks of the CCSS as an abstract aspirational ideal uncoupled from genuine learning and teaching, the reality [not Rheeality] of it is that it exemplifies the core proposition of the adage:
“The beatings will continue until morale improves.” **Partner this with “fire your way to excellence” and “CC for thine, Montessori for mine” if you still don’t get my point.**
Notice how the CC rhetoric and its associated [slight] rewards/[harsh] punishments keep ratcheting up—almost, it seems, in direct proportion to the increasing evidence that this is a game-changing train wreck that will make the LAUSD $1 billion iPad fiasco look like small potatoes?
And do not be surprised when the resulting catastrophe is blamed on—ready for this?—our “failing public schools” with their “obstructionist unions” and “lazy overpaid teachers.”
Accountability? Responsibility? To paraphrase the immortal Leona Helmsey, “That’s only for the little people.”
😎
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Robert, this post of yours could be an OP on the main site. Spot on. And your last line made me laugh out loud.
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Before I read Loveless’ study last year, I was enthusiastic about the CCSS. While I am not in direct opposition to CCSS, I must agree that my enthusiasm has waned. Loveless has addressed the core problem with the rationale for why we must have new standards.
These standards, in and of themselves, will do very little to boost anything. Most of the current ELA state standards are aligned with the CCSS. I can’t recall the study, but it said that most states were around 90% aligned in ELA. The math ones are interesting because of the spiraling that occurs, but that’s about it. Shepherd is correct in saying that very little has changed.
Because of this, I feel that the biggest beneficiaries are the publishing companies and the two test consortia.
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And there you have it Sir Morrigan. A whole lot of grifters and thieves are smelling money.
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I am from NYS and we already have standards which were developed and tweaked over a long period of time. I was on curriculum committees in Buffalo to create lessons to support the standards. We were required to refer to the standards in our lesson plans.
Why did we discard them? They were reasonable. They were broad enough to encourage creativity, but narrow enough to be comprehensive. They gave teachers guidelines without being heavy handed.
And we had testing. The high school Regents Exams have been used for decades. I took them. My kids took them. My mother took them. Now they are going to be replaced by CC tests. Why? We had a system in place.
We also had elementary school assessments. Actually too many, but not like those for CCSS. A Spring assessment for grades 3 to 8 in ELA and Math. A fourth and eight grade science assessment and a fifth and eighth grade social studies assessment (now cancelled). There was also a foreign language test in eighth grade that, if passed, gave the student a high school credit. Now that test can be given by an individual district, if they so choose. (I’m not sure about the high school credit).
Why do we need to rethink the process? The only issue we had before was the changing cut score – as the students got better on the tests – the passing score was increased. It wouldn’t do to have too many students get a three or, heaven forbid, a four. That might mean they had actually progressed towards mastery. Horrors! The test must not be rigorous enough!
Why is NYS (one of the states whose education system was top notch, in spite of its diversity) buying into CCSS? Please explain it to me.
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The current dept of ed email/website news is packed full of the ideas that contend that there is so much support for the common core. You can click on your state to find out specifics. For example, it maintains thar 73% of Ohio’s teachers think the common core will better prepare students to be critical thinkers. Check it out if you are interested.
ed.gov@public.govdelivery.com
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Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
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Reblogged this on Lisa Thomas McIntosh and commented:
This is a fantastic piece.
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