Blogger Jonathan Pelto reports that Governor Dannell Malloy of Connecticut plans to spend $1 million to a public relations firm to sell the idea of Common Core.
This suggests that he is concerned about the kind of public backlash that was caused by the botched implementation of Common Core in New York.
Connecticut is one of the three highest performing states on NAEP, and parents are not likely to take kindly to the new Common Core tests, which are likely to produce a sharp decline in test scores, as they have in other states. There are quite a lot of “suburban moms” in Connecticut. Lots of moms and dads who will not be easily persuaded that their children are failures. Not by Governor Malloy or Commissioner Stefan Pryor or a public relations firm with a $1 million contract.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
I wonder if Jindal and White will follow suit? Connecticut is where John White’s reformer predecessor, Paul Vallas of RSD, set up shop after leaving Louisiana in shambles and many of the ideas Vallas promoted there are directly out of his RSD playbook, of which John White no doubt co-authored.
I’m already hearing concerns from parents about the Common Core. At conference time they wanted to know why their children dislike math so much. Many are already lost and are frustrated with the new “rigor” imposed from above. How will our students succeed if they have already labeled themselves at the age of seven as math failures?
There used to be laws against domestic propaganda.
Legalities aside, it is unseemly to give taxpayer money to a PR firm in order to push the taxpayers towards accepting an unpopular program. Like stealing a man’s gun and then shooting him with it.
“Like stealing a man’s gun and then shooting him with it.”
Exactly.
Maybe, selling a person a gun on layaway, shooting him with it after he makes the last payment, and then making the family pay for the funeral at a “Charter Cemetery.”
Good luck on selling scripts that are nonsense. Use them for SNL material. SNL needs characters who look like Gates, Murdoch, Klein, Rhee, Bloomberg, Duncan, King, etc. It sketches will go viral – more than Tina Fey’s Pailin because children and families are victims of the corporate reformers.
Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda. Marketing, marketing, marketing.
OY VEY! It’s ALL about MONEY. SIC.
From Pelto blog, comment from a brilliant CT dad:
One million dollars to PROMOTE (that is, advertise) a specific educational curriculum? I have never heard the like. I can easily imagine an advertising campaign to market a new kind of cocoa-cola, or a new brand of Nike sneaker; but a Madison Avenue effort to “inform” the public about school curricula? Why, that’s simply absurd. Unless, of course, the Common Core Standards have little to do with real education and are a kind of gimmick to turn over vast sums of money to private companies. Then it all makes sense: if it’s all about providing market opportunities for testing companies and information technology outfits and other “educational services,” then, yes, the CCS would need to be marketed, as no one is interested in buying that smelly old fish! In other words, we are talking “supply-side economics.” Certainly, teachers, students and parents in the main have NOT been demanding a Common Core Curriculum.
The main proponents of this development have been the corporate “reformers” who see it as way of making money and taking further control of the classroom. The CCS is part of the ongoing corporate effort to undo the professional status of teachers, and to make them pure “technicians” of “information.” Professionalism implies autonomy, and that is what the “reformers” object to. They would like to see teachers under the thumb, just as in business corporations employees have very few freedoms.
Once upon time, Republicans in particular claimed to be against common standards in the name of local autonomy; but now both Republicans and Democrats are onboard for the CCS, for the same reason that Al Capone robbed banks: that’s where the money is!
I had occasion recently to take a close look at the CCS. I found it to be depressing stuff. The standards are conceived along “management” and “economistic” lines. It was as though a bunch of business profs had gotten together to decide upon the perfect school curriculum. The authors of the CCS write that the Standards “provide a consistent, clear understanding of what children are expected to learn… The standards are designed to be relevant to the real world.” And this for me was the giveaway: there isn’t enough in the Standards about the value of the creative imagination.
Perhaps the best education brings children to the “real world,” so that they might also go beyond it, in their hopes, dreams, desires and ideals. In other words, what is wanted in good education is not just adjustment and accommodation but also powerful critical thought, inspiration, enthusiasm for what can’t be seen but only imagined. The Common Core Standards are no good thing precisely because they aim to produce students who will be intellectually unable to criticize the Common Core Standards as biased pedagogy. At the heart of the CC is standardization: this is not a recipe for producing well-rounded individuals or critically minded citizens; it is a model for producing clones and drones. No wonder they have to spend a million dollars to promote the sale of this lemon!
As I mentioned in another post today, during my break from teaching 7th grade this holiday season I am rereading some favorite Sinclair Lewis fiction. Governor Melloy reminds of this favorite quote from the creator of Babbitt and Elmer Gantry:
“Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods (read “common core”) are worthless.”
Merry Christmas
Linda, I’m glad you mentioned Al Capone! This quote makes so much sense: On corruption: “I got nothing against the honest cop on the beat. You just have them transferred someplace where they can’t do you any harm. But don’t ever talk to me about the honor of police captains or judges. If they couldn’t be bought they wouldn’t have the job.”
“A crook is a crook, and there’s something healthy about his frankness in the matter. But any guy who pretends he is enforcing the law and steals on his authority is a swell snake. The worst type of these punks is the big politician. You can only get a little of his time because he spends so much time covering up that no one will know that he is a thief. A hard-working crook will-and can-get those birds by the dozen, but right down in his heart he won’t depend on them-hates the sight of them.”
These politicians put the mafia to shame!
A failed product is a failed product.
Let’s face it. CCSS are an awful product, and people hate them. They are the Edsel. They are New Coke. They are Clippy the Paperclip. They are Windows Vista.
No amount of marketing is going to save them.
Mark my words: In a few years, people will look back on the Common Core as one of the biggest mistakes in U.S. history. One will find, then, as many supporters of the CCSS as one finds, today, supporters of, say, the interment camps for citizens of Japanese descent during World War II and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Everyone, then, will consider it OBVIOUS that the CCSS were extraordinarily badly conceived. It will be very, very difficult to find anyone who will own up to ever having been a supporter of this crime against our children.
If CCSS were really as good as they are being promoted as, the promotion would not be needed. Put the money where it is really needed; in the public school classrooms.
Whose $1 million will Malloy be spending? Taxpayers?
There’s a new spin now, they say it’s foundation money, and they haven’t decided. I think they are back peddling once word was leaked. Damage control. But yes, original story was our money and it probably still is.