In this provocative post, Anthony Cody takes ASCD to task for its tilt toward market-based reforms and its advocacy for Common Core.
Cody notes that ASCD has received more than $3 million from the Gates Foundation to promote Common Core. That disappoints him, as he thinks that ASCD should be an organization that debates so sweeping a change as Common Core.
In its publications and conferences, says Cody, ASCD seems to be bending to one side of a ferocious debate.
I think what Anthony Cody wants is not for ASCD to be neutral or a debating club. Since there is so much money and political power on one side, pushing privatization, friends of public education cannot afford to be neutral or a debating club.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
debating a change so sweeping–now that would be a novel approach! 🙂
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Common Core complaints are seldom about Common Core Standards. I see a lot about how we hate high-stakes testing; a lot about how we think the process of writing the standards was messed up; a lot about folks suspicious of the people behind the standards; a lot about how standards are being pushed at us by various groups. I see almost nothing about the standards. Which ones are bad? S & L 6, adapt speech for a variety of contexts and communicative tasks? Should that go away? S & L 2, integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media? You don’t like that one? Let’s actually talk about the standards for a change. “Literacy 5.1 is wrong because ____ and should be changed to _________.” The rest is just whining.
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“I see almost nothing about the standards. . . The rest is just whining.”
Horse manure! I’ve been posting and commenting on the educational malpractices that are educational standards and the accompanying standardized tests on this blog since May 2013. CCSS is just the latest iteration of these malpractices and knowing who, what, when, why and how is very important to the discussion of CCSS.
Read and understand Noel Wilson’s “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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Thanks for demonstrating my point! Nothing about the Standards. Massive amount about testing which was my first example of how people get off track and absolutely nothing about any standard. Mentioning Wilson’s 4 frames of reference are a great example of how people fail to stay on track and fail to respond logically. I repeat the question you missed: Which standard is problematic? Are you opposed to students adapting speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks? Are you opposed to evaluating information from diverse sources?
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correction May 2012 not May 2013, ay ay ay!
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“I repeat the question you missed: Which standard is problematic? Are you opposed to students adapting speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks? Are you opposed to evaluating information from diverse sources?
Which of the three questions did I miss???
First question: All standards are problematic. Read Wilson to understand the epistemological and ontological problems with using “standard” as the term of choice.
Second question: No
Third question: No.
Good enough???
“. . . how people fail to stay on track and fail to respond logically. . . ”
Logic implies that “the question you missed” cannot morph into three questions. (just messin with ya)
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Duane Swacker: when someone thinks the airy abstractions of [allegedly good] aspirational goals are more important than whether or not anything helpful and useful has been, is being, or will be achieved re those goals as revealed in their actual implementation—
and dismisses any other POV and approach but their own—
they’ve already admitted they have nothing pertinent to offer re a “better education for all.”
The CCSS are a procrustean bed into which the public schools are being crammed. To narrow any consideration of CCSS into a discussion of what they coulda, woulda, shoulda been ignores the [literal] reality of what they are actually doing in terms of, e.g., increasing the already toxic effects of high-stakes standardized tests.
Thank you for having the patience to point out the sadly thin diversion from the real discussion that must take place.
Keep on posting. I’ll keep on reading…
😎
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I have posted hundreds of entries on this very blog dealing with problems with particular standards and with general approaches to specific domains taken by those standards. But the more general point is that these standards were rolled out–mandated–before there were ANY such learned critique. That’s obscene.
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There is no such thing as “neutrality”. “Neutrality” is actually supporting the dominant power/culture/viewpoint/etc.
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Hard not to wonder if the same is true of “independent” organizations such as AERA, NCTM, NCTE, etc.
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What does ASCD stand for?
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I think the “c” is curriculum. I had trouble finding it too.
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Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.
The of might should be for.
as for the Standards, I attended a Town Hall Meeting on Common Core in a nearby county in Mississippi tonight. It was sponsored by a couple of Mississippi’s state senators who are working to get Common Core out of Mississippi. One of the presenters was Dr. Sandra Stotsky. During the question/answer portion, someone commented that they heard some people say that the Standards are too rigorous while others said that the standards were too easy. Dr. Stotsky explained that the Standards are too much for the early childhood grades but are too easy in high school grades.
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Well my artist, preacher’s daughter interpretation of why this type neutrality is so common today is because of the divorce rate. We are a society of children who, often, come from two homes. We have learned how to navigate through life without taking sides, with being sure to give credence to opposing views and households, to survive even while figuring out how to be true to ourselves, our parents (separately), our step-parents, our previous step-parents, our spouses, our previous spouses, etc. I am in the thick of this way of living (am a step kid, have step kids, rampant divorce among friends and family), and I think a change in value systems over the last 60 years (when divorce was maybe first becoming more common) has caused shifts (confusion?) in our society. I have no judgement on it—only the observation that skewed and blurry boundaries in our personal lives will surely lead to the same in our communities.
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I still am a member of ASCD although, lately, I am not sure why. I used to read the journal Educational Leadership voraciously. They were very good at covering a wide range of important issues from more than one viewpoint. Now, I sometimes have to force myself to pick it up to find the remaining gems. Too often, it is largely a marketing tool for the corporate educational reform movement. It really is a shame.
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I am having the same problem!
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In October of 2012 I listened to a free ASCD webinar on planning for the Common Core ELA standards. It was so annoying I was moved to send this email to the ASCD webmaster (not sure if it ever reached the people responsible for the presentation):
“I wanted to bail out of the webinar after five minutes, but I wanted to give it a fair shot. If you paid attention, you would notice that she was advocating for teaching to the test, from the word GO! The elaborate rubrics and the buzzwords and the sheer reductivism built into the whole enterprise were beyond my understanding. It was truly disheartening to listen to the whole thing.
“When I first heard about the CCS, I predicted that this would happen. The resume builders and consultants would latch onto it and make a living off overworked teachers and unsuspecting, increasingly bored students by creating and spreading this sort of intricately wrought balderdash. This person is being paid real money for her misguided efforts. Testing companies will reap a windfall. What a waste!
“Speaking of argumentation, who constructed the argument for these horribly skewed and ideologically based “standards” in the first place? Was it Coleman? And who fell for it. And why?
“As a side note. The presenter set a world record for use of the word “piece.” I think she even used it to mean “whole.” What kind of literacy modeling is that?
“There might be some good ideas in the CCS, but they are not new. The new elements of the program are, by and large, wrong-headed. By presenting this webinar, ASCD is aiding and abetting some of the worst proposed changes in education.
“Just wait. If students ever get a chance to comment [on] what’s about to be done to them, you will hear a well justified howl of anger and resentment, mingled with a moan of apathy.
“Sorry for the cranky tone, but I think you should be fighting this nonsense instead of spreading it.”
Obviously my input didn’t make a difference. ASCD promotes similar webinars daily. If you want to track down this particular webinar, it’s available on the ASCD website. Not everyone will find it as annoying as I did. But let’s just say that it doesn’t square with my philosophy of education, or, for that matter, much of what I’ve learned about writing and literature. I think the Common Core is a big step backward in language arts education.
Why is ASCD pushing such a poorly conceived, untested project? The only answer I’ve come up with, other than mass psychosis, is that they’re getting paid.
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