Blogger and former teacher G.F. Brandenburg has written an important and thoughtful post explaining his objections to Common Core or any other national standards that are overly prescriptive.
He writes:
“…. It’s utterly false to say that SOMEBODY knows all the answers to the questions about how to educate our youth, our younger generation. Whenever I have a serious or even frivolous conversation in any forum whatsoever about education, I am struck by the degree to which perfectly serious, reasonable people, of all walks of life, disagree on the ultimate goals of education.
“Heck, people can’t even agree on what are the most important questions!!
“Of course, I have my own opinions, but as facts and situations change, my own opinions about education and many other aspects of society have been shifting a lot over my lifetime — and I’m willing to bet that this is also true of any of you who read this sentence, however old or young you might be.
“So the idea that all lessons conducted in school need to follow a script that was written by somebody else, and that the teacher’s job is simply to follow that script — damn, that’s scary. Especially since the scripted stuff I see most of the time is clever but ultimately utterly dishonest advertising that is trying, for the most part, to get me to do things that are bad for me and my friends and former students but profitable for some small group of very powerful people.”
He adds:
“Of course, the people organizing the government to require and to tax us to pay to concoct and implement these plans wouldn’t possibly allow their own kids to grow up in schools like that. Billionaire and millionaire kids go to schools like Lakeside in Seattle, or Sidwell or St. Albans in DC, or Chicago Lab School or Andover or Choate or whatever, and each teacher challenges kids to think for themselves, and there are music lessons and glee clubs and handicrafts and outdoor activities and other sports and drama clubs and so on and so on.
“I’m of the opinion that that sort of structure, where the working-class kids get a stultifying school regime and the children of the rich get a whole lot of indulgences and individual attention, is just plain wrong, and it’s sick.”
And he writes much more that you would find interesting.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’ve noted it before, but it bears repetition. In Book 4 of Politics, Aristotle wrote this about the importance of the middle class:
“the middle class is least likely to shrink from rule, or to be over-ambitious for it; both of which are injuries to the state…Thus it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class…democracies are safer and more permanent than oligarchies, because they have a middle class which is more numerous and has a greater share in the government; for when there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.”
Thirty years of (stupid) supply-side economic polices have piled up huge deficits and debt, transferred vast sums from public treasuries to private bank accounts, led to the off-shoring of millions of jobs, and nearly broken the economy. They are exacting a serious toll on the middle class.
In Book 8 of Politics, Aristotle explained the importance of public education to democratic governance. He points out the different foundational ethos of governments:
“the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy;and always the better the character, the better the government.”
It’s precisely because of the importance of public schooling to civic education and democratic citizenship that Aristotle concluded this:
“education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private- not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.”
We haven’t learned much in the last two thousand-plus years, have we?
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“he citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives.”
That’s exactly what the ruling elite are trying to do – prepare the vast majority of student for the low-wage, non-thinking service jobs that will be available to the masses, while preparing their own children to be rulers.
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The real distinction between private schools of the for the rich and public schooling is their definition of an educational experience. At the Chicago Lab School or St. Albans they focus on school/classroom experiences that are structured around the social, emotional, and intellectual needs of the child. In working class schools, or now our new standardized version of public schooling, the focus is on some numerical end (institutional goal) — the development needs of the child are totally ignored in this model of schooling. In private institutions a child’s interests, talents, and abilities are respected; in institutional schooling they are crushed. Having said that, I have not been real impressed with the policies or the moral behavior of the best and brightest class. Our continual involvement in wars and financial disasters of the last three decades have been largely crafted by a professional/technocratic class who graduated from our best private schools and universities. John Saul’s book, Voltaire’s Bastards, does a superior job in describing the mentality and behavior of this hero class that has caused so much pain in the world and our country.
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No hay duda, Alan, no hay duda.
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It’s interesting to hear the various views of CCSS. In our home we believe public school should not have as its mission establishing winners and losers in all aspects. But rather, we need winners across the board. Students who will be the ones to cut duct work and vents in buildings for geothermal units, and students who will cut into other humans for surgery. CCSS is like having one sport, instead of having basketball, football, wrestling, track–allowing for winners with various strengths to excel an thrive.
That said, the principal in my building likes CCSS. She is Puerto Rican. Is it more likely that a minority who was ELL as a child likes CCSS because it asserts some kind if control that makes the playing field seem more level?? Has there been any comparisons on what various subgroups think of CCSS? Do affluent folks (in public schools) like it less?
Then you run into moms who say they don’t know what CCSS is, but that they don’t like how much homework the kids have or how much the kids are being assessed.
I have heard two excellent teachers with fifteen years experience say they are looking for new jobs this week.
It is my understanding that the high stakes on NC third graders has resulted in no more social studies or science this year, but three prompts a day in reading that must be mastered with no time to explain to the children why they are doing things. But that is where CCSS meets General Assembly madness.
The good news is I heard that a poll showed 96% of NC residents think NC public education is headed in the wrong direction.
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“. . . allowing for winners with various strengths to excel an thrive.”
Couldn’t care less about “allowing for winners”. That is the talk of capitalist edudeformers. Why should we “allow for winners”? Why not allow for all to reach inward to their own potential, desires, knowledge and help them accomplish those things? Why “winners”?
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Jamie Vollmer said it so well in reference to a talk that he, as a maker of an award-winning ice cream, gave to teachers in his “The Blueberry Story” . His epiphany was cited in Larry Cuban’s “The Blackboard and the Bottom Line” and Diane Ravitch’s “Reign of Terror” You will be surprised how often you find evidence of his retrospective comment!
The Blueberry Story:
The teacher gives the businessman a lesson
“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”
I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.
I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that had become famous in the middle1980s when People magazine chose our blueberry as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”
I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society.” Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure, and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!
In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced — equal parts ignorance and arrogance.”
You can read the entire account at:
http://www.jamievollmer.com/blueberries.html
but that perfectly balanced remark aptly describes too much of the current reformers and their ideas and proposals to change education.
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The CCSS is the most controversial, yet distracting, piece of education reform. It literally consumes almost all education reform discussions and debates via social media. This is why I call the CCSS: The Black Hole of Education.
http://atthechalkface.com/2014/01/04/ccss-the-black-hole-of-education-2/
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Diane,
Wondering about this article published today in Indiana… http://m.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/guest-commentary/guest-commentary-will-indiana-use-common-core-or-a-hybrid/article_94457e01-7004-51f1-9a79-b6d6fc2829ce.html?mobile_touch=true
I work for one of the districts listed and the article implies the common core standards were commented upon by hundreds of Hoosiers and when governor Pence withdrew from from the national assessment body we could then author our own state assessments. Just what, exactly, does this mean for our school children? I assure you I’ve not met an Indiana teacher who is excited to implement the CC. Thank you.
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The CCSS were written by a small group (27 people), of whom only one was an educator. Nearly half came from the College Board or ACT. After they were written, they were reviewed by teachers, but it is not clear how much the reviews affected the standards. The standards were never given a real-life trial in any classroom. The federal government funded two assessment consortia to devise standardized tests for the Common Core. They will be online only. There is no federal law governing the use of CCSS or the tests themselves, since it is illegal for the federal government to influence curriculum or instruction. It was possibly illegal to fund the testing programs, as they will certainly do what the law forbids. All of this is legally murky. If the unions were on their toes, or if any of the other major national associations were acting independently (and had not received millions from the Gates Foundation to promote CCSS), there would be a legal challenge. As it now stands, no one knows to what extent either the standards or the tests are mandatory. They certainly do not have the power of federal law behind them.
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“They certainly do not have the power of federal law behind them.”
But the Common Core standards DO have federal coercion behind them…and the National Governors Association, and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve, and the National Math & Science Initiative, and the ACT, and the College Board (which says its products – PSAT, SAT, AP – are all “aligned with Common Core). and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Business Roundtable, and the Gates Foundation, and the National School Boards Association (“local school board members,
superintendents, principals, and teachers believe in the CCSS…”), and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and the American Association of School Superintendents (“AASA is pleased to support the process for the creation of common core standards currently led by the NGA and the CCSSO.”), and the National PTA (“National PTA enthusiastically supports the adoption and implementation by all states of the Common Core state Standards”), not to mention the AFT and NEA (though they keep trying to play it both ways).
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“As it now stands, no one knows to what extent either the standards or the tests are mandatory.They certainly do not have the power of federal law behind them.”
Very true, however here in NY ‘they’ have the power of NYSED policy behind them and cannot be ignored without a district and/or administrators suffering the consequences. Through a series of email correspondences, I was informed by the department of assessment that any school district that refuses to participate in CCSS/RTTT testing will be deemed out of compliance with state education policy and will likely be penalized by the withholding of aid money.
“The federal government funded two assessment consortia to devise standardized tests for the Common Core. They will be online only.”
Students here in NY will be taking the Pearson paper tests for at least the next two years as the Board of Regents voted to indefinitely suspend PARCC computer testing. Reasons given were lack of technology infrastructure and lack of money to put it in place.
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Thank you G.F. Brandenburg! The Common Core Standards are developmentally inappropriate for early childhood students and I would love to get rid of Pearson’s Scott Foresman Common Core Reading Street series. Talk about a scripted reading program, but I hear that McGraw Hill’s Wonder Reading series which is also Common Core based is not any better. I am lucky though. Although the schools in my Archdiocese are using the Common Core math and ELA Standards, we are not yet being told we have to follow the books precisely. That may happen next year when we may give different tests and scores drop.. As for now, we’re still giving the Iowa Test of basic Skills to our 2nd-8th graders and I have some leeway in how I use texts.
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Good commentary by Brandenburg, all should read.
“. . . his objections to Common Core or any other national standards that are overly prescriptive.”
They don’t have to be “overly prescriptive” to be fought against. As we know the standards and standardized testing are the two faces of the edudeformers’ coin of the realm. Neither can exist without the other as they are presented (nor at any time because “standard” implies measurement, of which the tests are the supposed measuring device.)
Wilson has proven the invalidity and futility of using this coin of the realm in which the value is “vain and illusory”. As he states: “It requires an enormous suspension of rational thinking to believe that the best way to describe the complexity of any human achievement, any person’s skill in a complex field of human endeavour, is with a number that is determined by the number of test items they got correct. Yet so conditioned are we that it takes a few moments of strict logical reflection to appreciate the absurdity of this.”
To understand that absurdity read and comprehend Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
The ol Don has rested and returned to his Quixotic Quest to rid the world of the nefarious educational malpractice that are educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading”, sorting and separating of innocent children, all of which cause tremendous harm to most. There is so much to be learned from his work so I challenge all to a duel to read and understand it to the end.
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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