Randi Weingarten believes in the promise of the Common Core standards, and she has strongly defended them.
But she recognizes that the rushed implantation, notably in New York, jeopardized the standards.
In this post, Randi says that the standards must be separated from the testing.
They must not be used to rank and rate teachers or to apply value-added measurement, where teachers are judged by computer-generated algorithms.
She writes:
“It’s time to call the question. Will the powers-that-be continue to be more concerned with creating a testing and data system that ranks and sorts schools and educators, in the quest for the perfect industrial algorithm to judge teachers, students and schools? Or will they look at the evidence and join educators, students and parents in fighting to reclaim the promise of public education?
“We can’t reclaim the promise of public education without investing in strong neighborhood public schools that are safe, collaborative and welcome environments for students, parents, educators and the broader community. Schools where teachers and school staff are well-prepared and well-supported, with manageable class sizes and time to collaborate. Schools with rigorous standards aligned to an engaging curriculum that focuses on teaching and learning, not testing, and that includes art, music, civics and the sciences — and where all kids’ instructional needs are met. Schools with evaluation systems that are not about sorting and firing but about improving teaching and learning. And schools with wraparound services to address our children’s social, emotional and health needs.”
We know who “the powers that be” are. Will they listen?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Schools that include LIBRARIES & CERTIFIED SCHOOL LIBRARIANS…Please.
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Common Core? We can all agree that some basics are essential: reading, writing, at least basic arithmetic etc but there comes a point where it becomes less certain perhaps. Education, true education encompasses so very much more than those basics and education is best understood as a journey, a life long journey, not a destination where one can say that one is educated. There are always new things to learn and new perspectives to be gained. Too, as has often been said, people are different in so many ways with varying aptitudes. When strictured parameters are identified which exclude the interests and aptitudes of people, then education in its best sense is diminished. This kind of thing has been stated much better by so many people in these blogs over time but perhaps it can never be repeated enough. TOO, as has been said so VERY many times, when people with strictured understandings, with their own myopic visions, who wish to USE others rather than fulfill the needs of others, then we are in deep doo doo which is of course what is happening now. Thankfully there are people who understand this and can state it better than I and who are diligently working to emulate the best in human thought, not the less than optimal vision of humankind’s best thinking.
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Agreed, so fix it forward http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html
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“… education is best understood as a journey, a life long journey, not a destination where one can say that one is educated.”
Yes! Who are you, masked man? (I grew up with the Lone Ranger. “Hi-o, Silver, away!” or something like that. :))
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“They must not be used to rank and rate STUDENTS or to apply ARBITRARY CUT POINTS, where STUDENTS are judged by computer-generated TEST SCORING.”
Can you agree with those changes? If not why not.
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Agreed so fix it forward http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
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Common Core is centralized education. Dangerous. Common Core was hatched as a marketing, profit scheme. IMHO, it is tainted and should be scrapped along with all the other BS reforms.
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This.
And if such a thing is worth pursing at all (a big IF), start completely over but this time have the effort be driven by actual professional educators.
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Prt of a process, soon feds must abandon Common >Core to localities. As the process plays out fix it forward. snatch it from the feds and make it your own. Once you repeal we go back to the ranking and sorting of kids in the classroom which is immoral Supprt this http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
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I agree with all of the comments above………. I think it may be time for Randi to step down. I feel like she no longer represents the majority of teachers. I think she has been so far removed from her days in the classroom she is forgetful…..or she is not listening.
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Fix Common Core forward. Don’t put it on one persons back. Randi is thinking beyond the box and if we input on specific issues, we can develop a proficiency based system thats on an even playing field. But we neede input on the issues, not Tea Party style rhetoric http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
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Randi put many teachers in the box and now she’s trying to snake her way out. CCS, high stakes testing and teacher evals are a package deal. It was designed to be this away, a trifecta to kill public schools. It’s all crumbling bit by bit and she’s trying to find her way out. This isn’t about us.
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Slither, slither, slither, hiss . . . . . . .
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Randi’s getting there, inching closer…,testing, dipping the big toe…..
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Yhank you. As a special educator I see a system that is similar to the IEP for evferyone. All kids are different. Under my system there are no overt labels, just services and kids come to school as kids, not labelled on their foreheads for others to point and laugh.
I understand you can see this more clearly that others because serving our kids, we recognize differences
Everone on this site should listen carefully to the words on Temple Grandin and then input ideas and issues, not tea party rhetoric http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcWx8UVhzpQ
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Just so you know the IEPS are changing and Feds/ states are requiring IEP goals and objectives be aligned with CCS. The verbiage must be the same. It’s all predetermined. So much for the I and the E. It is now a one size fits all NSP: national standards plan and it has nothing to do with the kids, his disability and his needs. And it’s illegal.
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This idea, of an IEP for every student, is an important one. A great idea. And it is precisely because kids differ that we should not be teaching to an invariant bullet list.
“There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.” –Edward Tufte, “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint”
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In Finland about 50% of students are provided with some kind of special education because it is a highly individualized system. They do not emphasize math and language over the arts or sciences. So extra help in one area or another is bound to happen because people are different and have different innate strengths. Special Ed is so common; there is no stigma attached to it.
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Also, if you have the time, here’s an overview of my school in the late 90’s Listen carefully to farmer Will Allen.http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2014/01/get-out-of-my-classroom-and-dont-come.html or buy our books at http://www.wholechildreform.com
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NYS already had developed standards which had been revised and vetted by the teachers over the past ten years or so. Now the inferior common core comes along and we embrace the new kid on the block and kick out our old friend. Even though this new kid has shown his true colors as a bully, we continue to cling to him instead of reaching out to what we formerly embraced.
If we wanted a true common core, the best minds in the country should have worked together with educators, using the current standards from various states as a guide, to develop something authentic. The fact that CCSS and VAM were created to bust the teachers unions and eliminate tenure is the elephant in the room we refuse to publically recognize. The sooner the public is aware of the dangers of this new system, the sooner teachers can return to educating their students.
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I WANT to agree with you, but I wish I felt I KNEW “that CCSS and VAM were created [in order] to bust the teachers[sic] unions and eliminate tenure.”
Whether the influence of teachers’ unions on public education as a whole has been deleterious or supportive is another question.
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Change it forward as there is nothing in the past that worked. Think of it as a part of a process. Whatever the reason for it’s development, focus on the issues and let your mind wander into the future. http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
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Harlan, whether that was the original intent, or not, it’s undeniably the end result. And, even if you don’t like unions, just watch what happens to public education once they are all gone. Even now, their strength has been diluted, and look at what has happened.
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There is something intrinsically wrong with the standards. They put emphasis on nebulous skills that are almost impossible to measure in an objective way, and push strategies upon children, rather than incorporated as one of many strategies (i.e. math.)
The ELA standards push concepts on children in a highly abstract way. It is one thing to ask a child what a story means to her, but to ask the same young child to put themselves in the mindset of the author and compare their interpretations of the story is just wrong. A child may or may not be able to do that, but to expect a generation of children, millions of children, to cognitively stretch in ways their brains have not attained yet, is simply wrong. Teachers know this, and know when to stop pushing. But this is embedded in the standards – year after year. The pushing of abstraction upon children.
The standards are at the core, not the children which is how it should be.
In an ideal world, the standards would be rolled out slowly, with ongoing feedback from teachers. Teachers and principals would need the latitude to pull a standard out and move it to where it belongs. She’s right, the testing needs to go because that will make it worse. But if the standards are meant to work, they have to be customized to the children.
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100% TNL2K
Abstract AND subjective standards measured with objective MC items.
Un-teachable skills being measured to determine how well teachers teach.
If I didn’t [know] any better, I’d swear that this was a set-up for failure.
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Sorry, what is TNL2K?
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The Next Level 2000
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It IS a set up for failure. It is a feature not a bug. The plan is to destroy the teaching profession and public schools and funnel the $$ into the hands of the edudilettanates.
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Weingarten’s post is the best piece she has ever written (and that I have read).
The post is no sales pitch. It is earnest, scholarly argument based upon clear evidence. In the post, Weingarten assumes a definitive position against VAM.
For this, I commend her.
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Again going backward has no value because no one has an alternative. However, change it forward based on the issues you mention and wala, a new educational world. Things don’t change over night, they are part of a process. Guide this process beginning with assessment http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
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New York had good standards, Massachusetts had good standards, etc.
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My comment is in regards to Weingarten’s position on VAM, not CCSS. I maintain that CCSS cannot be divorce from the spectrum of reforms advanced by NGA and Duncan in 2009 in relation to spending the ARRA $100 billion.
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Excellent blog piece. I recommend everyone read it. Now I know who was involved in creating CCSS (and it scares me).
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we have to stop worrying about the politics of who did what. That distracvtion is used to get us off track. Focus on the issues that are good and those needing change
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Cap, I disagree. I think it’s important to note the background and motivation of the leaders in developing CCSS. Then when we look at the result, we aren’t as surprised by their arrogance, and can move forward in our plans to battle the implementation of a broken system.
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Mercedes, I’m not buying it, not from Weingarten.
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If life needs to demonize someone, so be it, thats why schools are closing, not a word about kids
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How stupid does Randi think we are?
The Common Corporate Standards have from the beginning been a vehicle for increased testing – for financial and strategic reasons – and her suggesting they should be decoupled is like a figurehead leader of some occupied nation tsk-tsking about the overzealousness of occupying forces.
More distracting triangulation from teachers’ own Marshall Petain.
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She has boxed herself in and she’s trying to find a way out. Her switcheroo is not for teachers and children. She’s attempting to save herself.
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Linda, I like to think that her thinking is evolving. Certainly, this is a BIG step. Getting rid of these tests will undo a LOT of the damage that is being done by the deform approach. So, if policy makers listen to her on this, that’s great. These tests are going to do a lot of damage. And getting rid of them should be priority 1.
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Yes, it’s self preservation. If it helps us too, so be it. She never should have agreed to the CCS trifecta to begin with if she was truly concerned with children, teaching and learning. She is trying to stay ahead of the crumbling tide.
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Do all of you only think political? IT’S A PROCESS! cheap shots get us nowhere. all the complainers have nothing to offer, no plan, no way to help children, only flex muscles and say SOS- http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
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the whole system of common core is boxed in, thats the point. >She at least is looking for solutions while others just use tea party rhetoric. IT’S A PROCESS!!!!!!!! http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
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I wish I believed, Linda, that it was crumbling. The forces behind the standards-and-testing juggernaut currently rolling over our nation’s kids are very, very powerful. I think that all this isn’t going to fall apart until the egregious new tests are given nationwide. Then there will be hell to pay, just as there was in New York, but it will be on a national scale.
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I agree with Ms. Weingarten’s approach to Common Core. There are many problems with this concept the way it is presented but we can no longer go into reverse where there is no plan other than the original concept developed by Thomas Jefferson in the late eighteenth which he referred to as raking a few geniuses from the rubbish. Not exactly a plan to serve all kids.
The solution is to change it forward, keeping the proficiency base for learning but changing it to humasnize it. Remember, we have always ranked and sorted kids in the classroom. We must learn that whenever a child is first, it is mathematically impossible not to have a child last. And we bleed the soul out of the losers.
As for assessment, we asses science fairs don’t we? we assess orchestra competitions don’t we? we asses debates don’t we? Make assessment real and get rid of the paper and pencil mentality that uses a completely different mindset than real learning.
And when kids explore, they find there own answers. These might not be our answers but theirs might even be more valid. Who did discover America anyway? Columbus? Natives? The Vikings? and who was really the first person to set foot on the North pole? Admiral Perry? The Inuit Indians,? Mathew Henson? And who are the greatest names in our history.? Must kids simply give our answers to be brainwashed into our way of thinking?
This list goes on and on and it goes back to Paul Simon’d song “I look back at all the crap I learned in high school. It’s a wonder I can think at all”
Stay the course Randi, and remember Ted Turners words, “If 90% or the people don’t pooh pooh you, you don’t have a great idea”
Go to http://www.wholechildreform.com for more of my ranting.
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Ted Turner believes 90% of all people should be dead so I wouldn’t go around quoting him as any kind of authority on anything but eugenics.
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
— Ted Turner – CNN founder and UN supporter – quoted in the The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, June ‘96
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Nice try at changing the subject. But no cigar. You prove what I’m saying that we must abandon the tea party thinking and look at the issue. The issue I look at with turner was what he said about developing his television network. Not something you pull out of your butt
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What does it actually mean to “serve” all kids? Is there a hidden metaphor there? Waiters serve people in a restaurant. They bring the food, but don’t force feed the patrons. Stallions serve mares. Servants serve their employers. Slaves served their masters. What does “serve” mean in the context of school education? Does it mean every kid leaves the dining room well nourished? Or does it imply that every kid leave the meadow pregnant with new life? You can lead a kid to literature, but you cannot make him read. Is that true? If you are a trainer of horses for a race, you serve your client the owner, and try to train a winning racer. Is that the image or model we have in our minds for schooling? Are sick horses expected to run as fast as healthy ones? What does “serve” mean in Education?
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Serve all kids is this http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html
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This makes a great deal of sense. Gives one something to really think about. My principal says often, “we are here to serve the kids.”
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I thank Randi for being able to think beyond a simple solution to one that doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Whatever it was developed for, fix it forward. Change is a process. We must abandon the teap party mentality that thinks in a narrow scope. http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
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Wall Street has been pillaging the U.S. since Glass Steagall was removed in 1999. It turned its sights on Education. Its focus is on extracting as much money from the system as possible without regard for its inhabitants. We need to take a magnifying glass to that ….and bring hand cuffs. You will need them if you truly investigate.
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It will crumble faster if we have an alternative
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There is something intrinsically wrong with the standards. They have to go. The sooner the better. Susan Ohanian posts a wealth of critical analysis of individual standards and AFT CC aligned lessons on her blog. susanohanian.org She addresses the inappropriate CC recommended texts for particular grade levels. Her latest post blasts the introduction of Pearson’s Aimsweb Behavior Module. http://susanohanian.org/data.php?id=535
Pearson will assist school districts to gather data to support placing a child on psychiatric drugs if they can’t sit still for the Common Core.
Randi accepted millions of dollars to love Common Core from Bill Gates. I thought the amount was $5 million but recently it has been revealed that many more millions have accompanied that. The teachers she supposedly represents hate the Common Core. What to do…..what to do? Hate the tests….but still love the standards. What a corrupt organization we have representing “our interests.”
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When you lie down with dogs, you’re bound to get fleas……
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simple rhetoric means nothing, Your ideas are needed
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We re define standards as guidelines for success. Much work to be done
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As we listen I hear Randi talk about the problems with the test and I talk about the problems with the standards as deadlines for failure. However, standards as guidelines for success have a purpose. We must abandon the tea party mentality that we are against something without saying what we are for, presenting an alternative. Here’s is an alternative to assessment. Fix it forward. http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
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The Network of Public Education is hosting its first conference in Austin, TX, on Mrch 1 and 2. On March 2, Weingarten and I will be part of a moderated panel on Common Core. Come hear us.
http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/2013/11/npe-national-conference-2013/
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Sorry for typos:
Network FOR Public Education, MARCH 1 and 2.
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Wish I could make it, got friends in Austin, however, I’m kinda broke. And can’t hitch hike from South America damn
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To say you want Common Core without the standardized testing is like saying the body can function without it’s skeleton. The Common Core is being heavily promoted (and funded) by Bill Gates. It’s whole history so far in tainted by its corporate education reform origins and purpose.
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Philaken,
It would be a great joke on Gates if the testing got decoupled from the standards he paid for.
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Now you’re catching on,http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
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But my whole point is that you cannot have Common Core without standardized tests. If you accept one you have to accept the other. Bill Gates is very aware of that.
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And why not? I’m eating a peanut butter sandwich right now.
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bunk, common core w/o testing is called proficiency based learning, need much work though. Must not give up on proficiency based learning Change it forward. Ur thoughts are only true if you allow them to be true, look at this http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
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Thats the point, take away the testing and the body doesn´t function and then we give surgery
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The redoubtable Dr. Mercedes Schneider doesn’t toot her own horn. I am glad to add a blast or two as a tribute to her work on this topic.
Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, an articulate spokesman for the charterite/privatizer movement, his blog of 12-13-13, link on deutsch29 [see below for both links]:
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes. …
This means three things. One, it explains why the battle over the “Common Core” is so intense. The fight is not really about the committee-generated verbiage–it’s really about all the stuff that’s attached to the Common Core, like test-based accountability. [the other two follow; please click on links below for full context]
[end quote]
[brackets mine]
Link: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2013/12/common_core_and_the_food_pyramid.html
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Money quotes from a genuine and articulate insider.
And damning for precisely that reason.
😎
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I believe in the Common Core standards, as well. AND, these standards should be uncoupled from testing for the general education population.
However, as a teacher of severely disabled students that are ungraded , due to their severe disabilities, WHY is Common Core applied to this population?
WHAT has happened to the Alternative Grade Level Indicators (AGLIS) that we used to have (in NY State) as standards for working with this population of students? Rarely do I see any advocacy or support for students such as mine. These students are considered to be exempt from grading, due to the nature of their disabilities. Should they not be considered exempt from Common Core, as well? Or, at least, modify the standards for special education students. Otherwise, what’s the point in these students having an Individualized Educational Plan?
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Do you believe in the fact that the Common Core State (sic) Standards that only focus on two areas (math and ELA) and leave everything else out?
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Make your own at your school level based on real needs of kids. utilizing their personal background knowledge as a jumping off point http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
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Louisiana Purchase:
Actually, by training and inclination, I am a History/Social Studies teacher.
No, I don’t believe that everything else should be left out by the Common Core.
In my opinion, we need to teach students music, arts, the humanities, and science, as well as vocational subjects.
Again, in my opinion, I believe that the intent of the Common Core was to form a common set of educational standards for all students across America. Shouldn’t all of the citizens of the USA have basically the same knowledge and understanding of subject area and content?
What appears to be the problem with the standards, and why people are against them is: a). The method of implementation of the standards; b). The focus on only Math/ELA c). Intense testing associated with the standards, tied in to teacher/student evaluation.
Perhaps if the Standards were rolled out and implemented in a different manner, there wouldn’t be such fierce arguments by educators and parents against the standards.
IMO, the standards should be expanded to include all of the other subjects enumerated here. And, the standards should be used as a guideline for educating ( and modified for special needs students, as appropriate), disassociated from excessive testing evaluations.
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Don’t worry – more standards are coming. If you read experts such as Mr Shepherd, you realize that the new ELA standards were not written by professional educators, but by individuals who arrogantly felt that they intrinsically knew what should be in a standard. After all, they had once attended school, therefore they knew what should be taught and the way the teaching should be implemented. Heavens knows what the science standards will look like.
Even if the idea of a national standard might have been intriguing, the reality has been a nightmare. After all I have seen, heard, and experienced, I have come to realize that this simple concept cannot be implemented without undermining political and economic ramifications which are not in the best interests of the children.
If you worked and lived in NYS, you would already be holding those pitchforks Mr Shepherd alluded to, where CCSS and VAM has become a living nightmare for teachers, parents, and children. Arne Duncan’s monster is alive and well and coming to a city near you.
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what is done should never be designed for one population. sp ed are kids too
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My version of common core is based on my sp ed background. All kids are different. Look at the issues, and let standards be guidelines while IEP type goals are demonstrated proficiencies. And grade levels dissapear, only age levels, and letter grades are moot. Fix it forward http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html
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Kids differ. The invariant bullet list (the standards) do not. That was the whole point of the bullet lists. The theory behind them is that you establish invariant criteria and hold people to those (that is, you use absolute standards instead of measuring normatively). Cap, you (and, alas, Ms. Weingarten) haven’t grokked the theory behind these standards lists. They are ALL ABOUT criterion-referenced testing. The standards establish the criteria for the testing. That’s their raison d’etre. That’s why they were created. To decouple the standards from the tests is to move away from the reason why they were created to begin with. That’s what others here have been trying to communicate, but what they are saying is not being heard.
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TYo move away from the test is to move away from original intent of CC. Now your catching on http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/
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How can you be in favor of a COMMON core when you realize that all students differ?
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No, no, Cap. That is not what I said. Let me spell this out again.
In the past, we used normed standardized tests like the ITBS, the Stanford, MAPS, etc. for making major policy decisions.
The deformers came along with a new theory. They believed that we shouldn’t simply be comparing students to one another, which is what normative tests do. They believed that we should be setting particular standards that kids any kid would be expected to meet if he or she was going to be passed to the next grade, given a diploma, etc. In other words, the theory is that these sorts of decisions should be driven by absolute criteria.
So, they lobbied for the creation of criterion-referenced tests based on standards. The standards were supposed to spell out the criteria. The criterion-referenced assessments were supposed to test those criteria.
The elder George Bush wanted to move to such a system, and people screamed foul at the very notion of making this stuff national, but Clinton bought in, and Bush formalized this approach for the entire country in NCLB. CC$$ + PARCC or SBAC is just the next generation of NCLB. Same criterion-referenced approach. The CC$$ are the criteria. The PARCC and SBAC exams are to test those.
So, you are absolutely wrong about this, Cap. CC$$ was created to be what the next generation of tests would test.
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And I’m saying un create it. If you read my stuff, proficiencies replace grade levels and failure is a learning process. Basically an IEP for everyone. Dont focus on what it was created to do reinvent it. I never said use these for grade levels bc there are no grade levels in my plan. I never said use these for graduation, bc they have their own (My Action Plan) Must stop judging my views on what others believe. Keep proficiencies like IEP goals. You don’t seem to be responding to me u seem to be responding to what the founders of CC believed. I am not them.
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Yikes. Typos. The CC$$ were created to be the next generation of standards that the next generation of criterion-referenced assessments, PARCC and SBAC, would test. Same old NCLB approach, but this time nationalized, so even more totalitarian, invariant, inflexible, centralized, top down, unacceptable in a democratic state.
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stretch your minds guys, focus is too narrow. Would it be clearer for me to say Common Core is horrible but, with effort, what it can lead to could be great
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Now you’re talking, Cap. If these “standards” were voluntary suggestions to be amended in light of people’s knowledge of their students, emerging ideas about curricula and pedagogy, learnings coming from the research community, etc., then they would be acceptable. But they are an invariant mandate. That’s just not acceptable, not to a people who insist on the freedom to think for themselves.
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As for Bill Gates- he’s a businessman. I can’t think of ANY business where money is given without something given back in return.
If Mr. Gates were a true philanthropist, he would give his money freely to the cause of furthering and improving American public school education, without any strings attached. Same as with any of the other billionaire “reformers” that feel as if they can buy the hearts and souls of the American people with their phony philanthropy.
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Yes but what is your plan? http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html
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Cheerleaders for these standards always make vague claims for them: the kids are going to read more closely, they are going to think more deeply, etc. And they totally skip over the fact that these putative standards are a particular list of skills, conceptualized in particular ways, and that those are what will be measured.
When one turns from the deformers’ vague rhetoric to the actual “standards,” one finds that they
instantiate a lot of hackneyed notions inconsistent with best practices in instruction in English;
assume a lot about of prescientific nonsense about language learning;
are, in domain after domain, ill conceived at the most basic level, at the level of their categorical conceptualization (e.g., at the level of the answer to the question “What should a standard in this domain look like?”);
instantiate incoherent learning progressions in particular domains;
are full of glaring lacunae;
seem often to have been placed at particular grade levels totally at random;
seem to have been written in complete obliviousness to the last half century of thought in literary theory and study of the cognitive psychology of learning;
and are inconsistent with and so preclude the implementation of much extraordinarily valuable curricula and pedagogy.
These new ELA “standards” were never subjected to expert critique and would not survive it. They are the work of amateurs. I cringe when I read stuff like this piece of Ms. Weingarten that claims that the standards (and I am speaking here only of the standards in ELA) are some sort of dawning. However, Ms. Weingarten is making progress. She’s gone from “we need to postpone the tests” to “we need to decouple the standards from them.”
The tests will, of course, be utter failures. We shall have with these precisely the sort of outcome we had in New York, replicated nationwide. The cheerleaders for the standards would do well to “decouple them,” for when these tests are given and the villagers see the results, they are going to grab their pitchforks and track the deform monster to its lair.
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Correct, move it forward with ideas that humanize it. It’s a tough task. http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
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Randi is the union leader and, as such, addresses the problems of her members. She is not the Mother Teresa of protecting children. That is the role that parents and teachers have to play. I have given up on the union caring about children and letting teachers teach.
They do not have a role in supporting curriculums for cash, as they do not care about curriculum affecting children. Because they have done this, they have a responsibility to represent children and parents, due to their financial incursion into this area.
I am not certain about people who “support” the “Common Core” when they have not seen it, or the materials being used, to “enforce” it.
It is a commercial enterprise resulting in materials and programs which are limiting children’s ability to grow in their thinking capacity. Common Core requires “direct instruction” which is inappropriate for children under 7 and cause distress to them. The brain Is capable of making great leaps of understanding, which will not happen with the reductionist approach to the Common Core, but will lead to great frustration for children and teachers.
This form of education may be labeled “violent”, as it violates the children’s ability to learn, resulting in the violence that the system will experience from these children. and the medication that will be required. This is occurring presently during the recent reign of “No Child Left Behind”.
Randi can say all she wants, but if she is not encouraging lawmakers to act, there is nothing there.
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I am not for common core, I am for what we, together, can make it lead to
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She does have a responsibility to protect children. We all do. The deform movement is a variety of child abuse. That’s why we care about what is happening as much as we do.
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If the “standards” were decoupled from testing, then the pressure to teach to the “standards,” to treat them as the commandments brought down from the mountaintop, would be off, and educators could subject them to reasonable, ongoing critique and refinement. So, decoupling them (getting rid of the standardized tests) would be an ENORMOUS step forward.
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One step at a time, but be ready for the next step. http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/
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I’m having trouble getting past Randi Weingarten’s first paragraph:
“The question is as revealing as the answer; unfortunately, the standards have come to be associated with testing rather than the deeper learning they were intended to promote.”
One reason the standards have “come to be associated with testing” is that the author of the standards has emphasized the importance of the tests that are being written expressly for the standards. David Coleman has stated explicitly that testing IS teaching. What’s more, he explicitly links assessment (presumably, of the Common Core material) with value-added measures for evaluating teachers. Listen to his speech to the Brookings Institution:
[audio src="http://e94516386dde43a790f1-3efc6a395eb32e640ae30c4edef7596c.r44.cf1.rackcdn.com/1997700535001.mp3" /]
“We must face reality in this country, which is that teachers have radically lost faith in assessment. That, in my judgment, is a substantial crisis.” (20:56)
“We have a need in this country to redeem assessment in the hearts and minds of teachers and parents. Otherwise, the accountability systems we are building will never have the depth of support they need. The differences between teachers are real and must be acted upon. But in order to build the consensus to do that, and do it in a humane and principled way, we must have measures that teachers can own, as a proper view of their students’ growth. If teachers don’t believe that an assessment measures their kids’ growth, how could they ever believe it measures their contribution? We must understand that the doubt, the skepticism, is a radical one. It is that these assessments don’t tell the truth . . . That must change.” (21:12)
“This is our moment. If we do not rescue assessment, then the whole consensus will fall.” (22:11)
He goes on to talk about how AP teachers believe in the AP tests, so it’s important for the testing consortia (PARCC and “Smarter Balanced”) to devise tests that teachers will trust. I think he’s got pretty much everything all wrong, but you can see what he’s saying. It’s understood that, in Coleman’s view, Common Core won’t fly without “proper” testing. But he goes a lot further. Testing is the key to “the whole consensus,” which I take him to mean the bulk of the “reforms” that Diane thoroughly debunks in Reign of Error.
Coleman is doing all this great work, not for himself or the College Board, but “on our country’s behalf.” He’s going to save America! And now Randi Weingarten is working to save America from the great work of David Coleman (while at the same time endorsing him and his Common Core Standards).
One last clip from 24:45:
“Assessment is an extremely powerful signal for instruction. But you gotta own it. Cut the s___ when you’re like, ‘Ooh, we wrote this test, and all these people are doing test preparation. They shouldn’t do test preparation, they should look at the standards.’ I mean, is it a perfect–? Like, f___ you. Like, no! It’s–I hate that disingenuousness. If you put something on an assessment, in my view, you are ethically obligated to take responsibility that kids will practice it a hundred times.”
It looks like David Coleman, the author of the Common Core Standards, believes that testing should drive instruction. He doesn’t just believe in teaching to the test; he believes in test prep, highly repetitious test prep. And he believes that teachers should be evaluated by student test scores, and that teachers need to be won over by tests they can trust. If I were a union leader, I would keep my distance from Coleman and all of his foolish ideas, including the Common Core. (For more foolery, listen to the whole speech.)
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Well said, Randal!
The whole theory behind standards-based instruction is that in the past, we measured using normative tests–tests that compared children and groups of children–and that instead, we should measure using criterion-referenced tests. The standards are the criteria. They exist for the purpose of providing the absolute standards against which kids are measured. To decouple the standards and the tests is to vitiate the entire theory on which they are based–the theory that led to their creation, e.g.:
Learning is mastery of the bullet list.
Teaching is punishment or reward via tests of that mastery.
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A pretty lousy theory, but widely held, it seems, among educrats.
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cs: i.e., not e.g., of course
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Let him blah blah. Be ready with real changes forward. Be ready to take back your profession. Be ready to take back assessment http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
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I don’t think it will be easy to “take back” the teaching profession when professional organizations (AFT, NEA, NCTE, ASCD, and others) are being paid to promote top-down mandates devised by non-educators. That’s why it’s important to unmask the people behind the current crop of “reforms.” There’s nothing wrong with questioning the Common Core standards–their quality (or lack of quality), who wrote them and why, what they actually say, what their likely effects will be, or the motivations of their promoters.
Quite a few teachers and administrators have original ideas (or have picked up great ideas from others) and may be eager to try them, but top-down mandates such as the Common Core threaten to kill these ideas. Effective practices (such as free play and recess) are being squeezed out. Give credit to teachers who aren’t cowed by the mandates and are willing to try things aimed at the actual needs of their students.
Yes, there’s too much boredom and unneeded stress in the way we run schools, and not enough real learning. But with the recent mandates, it’s getting harder to address these problems. The standard “reforms,” including the Common Core, are sure to make things worse. Randi Weingarten’s post does not address the true source of many of the problems she says she’s worried about.
By the way, I don’t think the current system was devised by Thomas Jefferson. Plenty of other people and institutions have contributed their ideas over the decades.
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The NEA was established by John Rockefeller. Need I say more?
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excellent post, Randal!
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Those aren’t suggestions just demonizing. Let us know when you have a suggestion. Throwing up your hands and pointing fingers accomplishes nothing but tea party rhetoric
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Are you in the USA or Canada?
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Please advise Randi the problems go well beyond testing, its dictates, cost, what is being taught, stress of untested curriculum and much more.
Be on the alert for the US DOE to offer some accommodations to satisfy Randi and others, but as long as each state does not ‘own’ the standard and have the latitude to decide what its children are taught and which enterprises are chosen to develop standard and curriculum, no amount of accommodation is acceptable.
ajbruno14@gmail.com
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Read my stuff and you will know that I believe that it goes well beyond the test. Ranking and sorting of kids has been done in the classroom for years. However, common core takes us away from outdated lettergrades soon outdated grade levels and focuses on proficiencies. These proficiencies are horrible now because of the test. But taking kids from where they are, our horrible failure system and learning in a way that is real are soon to come as the window of opportunity is open a crack. Take the leap and push for issues http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
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With regard to the “standards,” it’s this simple:
Consider anything one might want to teach to kids and to have kids learn. Consider, for example, vocabulary. There are many, many notions about how to teach vocabulary. Many, many thousands of papers and proposals have been made on this subject. And there is actually a lot that is known about the relevant science–about how vocabulary is acquired.
So, why would it make sense to adopt and set in stone standards that call for particular approaches to teaching vocabulary, especially when these approaches are demonstrably ineffective (teach kids the meanings of lists of affixes and roots; teach them techniques for using context clues)? Wouldn’t it make a LOT more sense to have scholars and curriculum developers continue to develop new approaches to vocabulary instruction based on ongoing research and to have teachers and administrators evaluate these and make their own decisions about which approaches to take?
The standards proponents say, all the time, that the standards are not a curriculum, but when a standard says that kids will learn Greek and Latin roots in order to build their vocabularies, that standard occurs in a context in which, unfortunately, there have been a lot of teachers giving kids lists of these roots to memorize, and the standard encourages the continuance of this extraordinarily ineffective practice–a practice that has opportunity cost because it takes time that might be given to a more effective approach.
Almost none of the vocabulary that an adult knows was acquired through explicit instruction. Vocabulary is learned in semantic groupings in meaningful contexts. If your goal is to increase kids’ vocabularies, having them learn lists of Greek and Latin roots is not going to be effective.
Now, teaching Greek and Latin roots can be effective, can be really interesting and valuable to kids, if this is done for other reasons and not routinely. For example, it’s valuable for kids to learn that words have histories and that one of the tools in the kit of a careful writer is to attend to the historical weight that a word carries. For example, the word idiot derives from the Greek idios, meaning “one’s own.” It suggests, etymologically, that an idiot is someone who doesn’t learn from others, who thinks that only he or she has access to the truth, who doesn’t think his or her ideas subject to public verification. A little archaeology done on that word is quite revealing in the right context–in a lesson on thinking and evidence, for example, or in an explication of a passage making that point about verification.
Here’s the more general point: It’s a completely terrible idea to set in stone what we are going to consider important enough to be measured in the English language arts because we are continually learning about these matters, and there is extraordinarily fruitful disagreement and debate about most of them.
Achieve had no right to appoint David Coleman and Susan Pimentel absolute monarchs of the English language arts in the United States. They have no divine right to overrule every scholar, every teacher, every curriculum coordinator, every curriculum developer in the country. There is nothing special about THEIR thinking. In fact, a lot of it seems, to me, really amateurish.
The makers of these standards have done the idiotic thing (if one uses the word with BOTH its etymological and its current meaning)–they have foisted their amateurish bullet list on the rest of us. We’re supposed to wait to revise this list until they hold court again in five years (or whatever) and issue a new set of decrees.
Again, these standards are a LOT more than general principles (e.g., students will read closely). They are a particular bullet list of what’s to be considered important at each grade level. And that list makes a LOT of unexamined assumptions.
Teaching and learning is about challenging unexamined assumptions, and so this whole business of setting standards in stone directly contradicts our prime directive, as teachers, to produce intrinsically motivated thinkers and creators.
Here’s how people actually acquire the vocabularies they have: They engage in a meaningful activity in the course of which they encounter a lot of new words. You take a yoga class. In the course of a few weeks, you learn (or begin to learn) the meanings of prana, ahimsa, bhakti, moksha, kundalini, tadasana, chaturanga, mindfulness. You take an art class offered by your local Parks department. In the course of a few weeks learn about stippling and chiaroscuro and gesso and filbert brushes and titanium white. And this learning sticks with you because it is all connected and is in a context that is significant to you and, and the terms are being actively used, around you, in all their inflected and derivational forms.
In such a manner–in semantic groupings encountered in extended meaningful context, or knowledge domains–people learn well over 99% of their adult vocabularies. And all those specific “standards” in the CC$$ in ELA that deal with vocabulary strategies are distractions from the actual process.
It’s a good thing, if you own a boat, to polish the bright work. But if you are at sea and there is a hole in the hull, you attend to that. You attend to the thing that really makes a difference.
A good place to start learning about this: George Miller. The Science of Words. Scientific American Library. New York: Freeman, 1991. Someone, please send Coleman a copy, and sign him up for remedial courses in each of the domains that he wrote “standards” for.
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English vocabulary immersion for EFL students.
Humans are hard-wired for this common sense method of acquiring language.
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Of course they are. And we now know a LOT about the human “wiring” for language acquisition. And NONE of what we now know abut those matters is reflected in these backward, hackneyed “standards.”
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Intellectually lazy standards.
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By the way, that “What did Naomi learn about Grandma Ruth” question really rang the rigor bell. If this is what it takes to be college and career ready this whole CCSS thing should be a piece of cake.
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Of course they are more than general principals, so that must change to make them guidelines for learning rather than deadlines for failure. And they can’t be set in stone for that to happen. So make proficiencies demonstrated, make them rea, make them generall and make them local.
A tough charge but the window of opportunity is open, jump thru it and take back your profession http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
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Clearly you are not a first grade teacher trying get ESL students to sit through a CC lesson on Mesopotamia on the Code of Hammurabi and the importance of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. They do not even understand how far from New York where they now live is from Ecuador where grandma and cousins still live. A lesson about that would be far more interesting and instructive for them.
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thats insane, of course, as I said many times, make them guidelines and eventually make them ur own, with your goals. You can do that bc its a process.
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It isn’t just a matter of decoupling the standards from tests. While the CCSS are touted as the what to teach rather than the how, assessment guidelines dictate otherwise. Teachers are expected to abandon the building of schema and background knowledge/vocabulary, one of the key strategies for learning for all children, but especially for ELL’s and sped kids. They are expected to abandon scaffolding or linking new content to previously learned concepts to help students make sense of text as they are seen as unnecessary. Rather, students are supposed to be able to gather all the needed info to answer questions or complete cloze activities using nothing more than what’s on the page. Many, many native English students, through no fault of their own (and certainly not of their teachers’ making) lack sufficient background knowledge to comprehend Ovid’s Metamorphasis, one of the CCSS exemplars. And their ELL counterparts will be lost trying to make sense of the Civil War or other aspects of American history they are unfamiliar with. Yet these pedagogically unsound and harmful practices are set to become part and parcel of every American classroom…
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YES, Ms. Gutierrez!!!!! PERFECTLY put!
ELLs need frontloading, pre-teaching, filling in of background knowledge, and rich language-fertile activities to delve into before “grappling” with text and higher level language. Both realms can and should be intergrated with one another, but to have an ELL do a cold reading of a text in which he/she does not have enough language is counter-productive, absurd, and perhaps abusive, no?
To not frontload instruction resplendently is a disservice to ELLs, and, I would posit, a violation of their civil rights . . . . . . . . .
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I am not for Common Core for the reasons mentioned. However I am not for repealing it bc no one has an alternative. I am for changing it forward Take back your profession. It gets rid of letter grades, grade levels and hopefully our horrible fail system. Put kids on their own action Plan, there MAP to success. which is individual. Systemic change is a process.
I am also for accountability. but on an even playing field. http://www.wholechildreform.com and stretch your minds to a different level
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Of course there is an alternative. What do you think teachers have been doing for the past 100+ years? Under NCLB every state has developed standards that still exist.
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For 100 years we have been screwing kids with the concept developed during slavery called by jefferson, raking a few geniuses from the rubbish. We have never attempted to serve all kids. This statement is outrageous. We should do what we have done for the past 100 years? Are you nuts?
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So you agree with reformers that the public education system in the US has failed and continues to fail its citizens. Talk about outrageous ideas.
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As I said, all schools have failed because all schools are under the same Duncan, Bush, Thomas Jefferson plan. Yes absolutely public has failed bc we are forced to fail. we teach to the test don’t we. We follow in line like lemmings to the sea don’t we? Do we stand for kids, changing the system to allow us to teach and kids to learn? No, we whine
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This may be a surprize, but 50% of urban kids dropped out long before the “test” came along. Ranking and sorting in the classroom was a way of life, long before NCLB. Failed kids went to the streets and jail long b4 NCLB. The winners went to college and we bled the soul out of the losers long b4 NCLB. I am talking systemic failure, not failure of teachers to use great techniques. I have visited Choice, charter, private and public, and public by far has the best teachers.
But without systemic change, teachers can’t teach and kids don’t learn what is real. Take back your profession bc under this system, public had failed also
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Do you ENJOY losing your credibility?
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Furthermore, in K-6 there is not enough time alloted for phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, fluency to build a solid foundation to support comprehension and writing.
Math is just as horrific. Kids in 5th/6th grade, at the school that I teach in, don’t know their add/subt, mult/div facts fluently and can’t solve using the algorithm. May be we should right 504s or IEPs, so they could have accommodations to use a calculator.
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“write”
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Do you mean an IEP for all? Take every kid from where they are? And have time to do it. Couldn’t agree more. How do we do it? Read this to ignite your passion http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html
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All these subjects can be approached with kids at many different levels. Ovid’s Metamorphoses is simply a collection of myths. Many of these–Daedalus and Icarus, Echo and Narcissus, the 12 Labors of Hercules–are very, very accessible to very young children, even to ones who are preliterate, if provided in the right versions. But your general point is right on. We have to start with where our kids are, and our teaching has to respond to them.
A teacher was recently telling me about a student she for whom she was doing a standardized reading record. One of the questions was, “Santa comes down this.” The answer was supposed to be “chimney.” The student, who had only recently come to this country, asked, “Who’s Santa?”
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assessments must use the background knowledge of students as jumping off spots. And I didn’ thear anyone say “It isn’t a matter of JUST decoupling….” of course this is one small step
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This call from Ms. Weingarten to decouple the standards and tests is, potentially, a game-changer. It’s extremely important. Kudos to Ms. Weingarten for taking this brave step. I do not wish, in my criticisms of the CC$$ in ELA, to take anything away from that.
Deform is a whole package. It requires the standards and the tests and making high-stakes decisions based on the scores on those tests. “Decouple” the standards and the tests and the deform monster is dead. Because that is so, because this would kill the beast, it was a brave thing for Ms. Weingarten to call for this. I commend her–and Bill Honig–and the others who have taken such a stance, even though I vehemently disagree with them about the quality of the CC$$ “standards” and their consequences for our kids.
Getting rid of the incredibly ill-conceived and damaging high-stakes summative tests has to be Priority 1, and I am very, very pleased to see that Ms. Weingarten is calling for that.
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Whebnever someone says “so and so believes” the next words are usually a lie bc we love to define everyone elses thinking. Great political theater.
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Robert believes that cows can fly. How stupid, cows can’t fly. Robert is stupid. Completely logical, not rational Say what you believe, not what you want others to believe to give you talking points. Oldest trick in the political book
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I think you’ll lose people here if you’re going to call Robert stupid. Are you in Canada?
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Cap:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowbird
🙂
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She is spitting into a gale force wind. States that adopted CCSS through RTTT or for NCLB waivers have coupled testing with standards as part of their education law.
I wish Ms. Weingarten had encouraged all parents to opt their children out.
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Laws can and must be changed. we must not think of things the way they are, we must envision things the way they could be
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If we all spit in the same direction and duck quickly, let the reformers get wet
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I don’t get it.
I don’t grasp why Diane keeps defending Randi Weingarten and trying to “rehabilitate” her image. And I don’t understand why Weingarten keeps defending the Common Core standards when they were written without teacher participation and when they are based on a demonstrably faulty premise.
Let’s start first at the end of Weingarten’s Huffington Post column that was linked to by Diane. In that piece, Weingarten concludes her support for the Common Core with this:
“We can’t reclaim the promise of public education without investing in strong neighborhood public schools that are safe, collaborative and welcome environments for students, parents, educators and the broader community. Schools where teachers and school staff are well-prepared and well-supported, with manageable class sizes and time to collaborate…schools with wraparound services to address our children’s social, emotional and health needs.”
Is Weingarten serious in implying that Common Core is the necessary ingredient to achieve what she outlines in that paragraph? If so, then she really should not be heading up an education organization of any kind. Common Core has little if anything to do with neighborhood schools that are “safe, collaborative, welcome environments.” It has nothing to do with “manageable class sizes” and “wraparound services” that “address…social, emotional and health needs.”
Moreover, the Common Core is predicated on the notion that “rigorous” standards (and the testing of them) are needed – are imperative – to prepare students (and the nation) “to compete successfully in the global economy.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The U.S already is economically competitive. When it drops in the World Economic Forum competitiveness rankings – as it has done over the last several years – it’s because of really stupid economic policy choices it’s made, policies that have been pushed aggressively by many of those who now insist that schools and teachers must the ones to remedy their economic fallout. Very sad. And very cowardly. And Randi Weingarten is siding with them.
Achieve was one of the instigators of Common Core. (along with the ACT and the College Board). It just so happens that Achieve is funded by groups like Battelle (which argues for STEM when there is no STEM shortage), the Gates Foundation, Prudential and State Farm and Travelers, Boeing, GE, JPMorgan Chase, Intel, IBM, the Helmsley Foundation, DuPont, Cisco, Chevron, Microsoft….many of these companies pay little or no taxes. You can read about Microsoft, just to pick one, here:
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
Achieve’s board of directors is here:
http://www.achieve.org/our-board-directors
As I’ve noted previously, the ACT and the products of the College Board (the PSAT SAT, and AP) are more hype than useful educational resources. They just don’t do much in predicting college (or workplace) readiness or success. But they are big business. And contrary to what they say, they stack the deck AGAINST opportunity for all students. As Matthew Quirk wrote, “The ACT and the College Board don’t just sell hundreds of thousands of student profiles to schools; they also offer software and consulting services that can be used to set crude wealth and test-score cutoffs, to target or eliminate students before they apply…That students are rejected on the basis of income is one of the most closely held secrets in admissions; enrollment managers say the practice is far more prevalent than most schools let on.”
So, why is Randi Weingarten siding with “the big boys?” And why does Diane keep assisting her?
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Change is a process. Ted Kennedy helped start NCLB but he isn’t a demon. Forget who is involved, look at the issues and change them forward, one by one. CC has nothing to do w those things you stated. Thats a good thing, we cant let CC hamper those concepts.
It isn’t about whose side someone is on or other demon izing techniques. It’s about conversations being started to eliminate the 18th century education philosophy of raking a few geniuses from the rubbish as stated by Jefferson
Keep the faith, change it forward
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We’re talking about Chappaquidick Ted, right? Mary Jo Kopeckne’s Ted? The drunken Democrat who quislinged with Bush for NLRB? No demon? No, no, no, no. Just “misguided.” No demonizing. Let’s ask the Benghazi Broad, aka Hillary Clinton what her education policy will be. But no demonizing. No. None.
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I, too, am curious where Hillary stands on the education issue.
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So lets ask the 9 11 prick W
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Wonder no more. It is history. Bill and Hillary tried to do what the Common Core is doing now. Reference “Dear Hillary” and see what comes up.
http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/marc_tucker/
Tucker’s ambitious plan was implemented in three laws passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1994: the Goals 2000 Act, the School-to-Work Act, and the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act. These laws establish the following mechanisms to restructure the public schools:
Bypass all elected officials on school boards and in state legislatures by making federal funds flow to the Governor and his appointees on workforce development boards.
Use a computer database, a.k.a. “a labor market information system,” into which school personnel would scan all information about every schoolchild and his family, identified by the child’s social security number: academic, medical, mental, psychological, behavioral, and interrogations by counselors. The computerized data would be available to the school, the government, and future employers.
Use “national standards” and “national testing” to cement national control of tests, assessments, school honors and rewards, financial aid, and the Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM), which is designed to replace the high school diploma.
Designed on the German system, the Tucker plan is to train children in specific jobs to serve the workforce and the global economy instead of to educate them so they can make their own life choices.
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Goals 2000 was the absolute wrong direction
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Bill created the Presidential Council on Sustainable Development which elevated all of the Earth Day ideas agreed to in Rio to cabinet level. Hillary is friends with Gro Brundtland, the author of The Brundtland Report to the U.N. known as Our Common Future. It lays out how our society must change including how we must brainwash, excuse me, educate our young people on the importance of sustainable development. She is devoted to Agenda 21. Common Core is the education portion.Here is an excerpt:
The Commission has completed its work. We call for a common endeavour and for new norms of behaviour at all levels and in the interests of all. The changes in attitudes, in social values, and in aspirations that the report urges will depend on vast campaigns of education, debate and public participation.
To this end, we appeal to “citizens” groups, to non governmental organizations, to educational institutions, and to the scientific community. They have all played indispensable roles in the creation of public awareness and political change in the past. They will play a crucial part in putting the world onto sustainable development paths, in laying the groundwork for Our Common Future.
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Again, I can’t base my opinions on what a “friend” of Hillary says.
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That was then, this is now. With the problems facing education in NYS, as well as other states, I was wondering where Hillary now stands in regards to the current so-called reforms.
No Hillary bashing please. This is an honest question. I want verifiable information, not anti-Hillary web sites.
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I don’t know where she stands, hoewever, she does have my books, maybe she will read them. She talked about ed in the past talking about it takes a village but I don’t have the context. she’s a smart lady, will se what comes of it.
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And I hope she reads Diane Ravitch’s books as well.
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It’s the old political trick guilt by association. It hit me when implementing a new school, fully public, fully union. The soon to be voucher king, Dr Howard Fuller single handedly brought my school in the Milwaukee Public School system. We got bashed by the Fuller haters because we were his school. in reality, he supported our school. The political cheap shots go on forever. Dylan said When will we ever learn?
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Come to think of it, what if they would have supported my school as a fully public fully union school? Shortly after the charter movement started. Why? Because schoolsl like mine were bashed.
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the point is a liberal dem started nclb along w others. What the hell does this conversation have to do with Benghazi? Can you say 9-11? It has nothing to do with Hillary, If you have nothing to say about the subject, sit down and shut up
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What does ur political crap have to do with anything? W alowwed 9-11 but that has nothing to do with this issue, Reagan gave massive weapons to bin laden and that has nothing to do with it. U lost the election, twice, get over it
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Part 1
I don’t get it.
I don’t grasp why Diane keeps defending Randi Weingarten and trying to “rehabilitate” her image. And I don’t understand why Weingarten keeps defending the Common Core standards when they were written without teacher participation and when they are based on a demonstrably faulty premise.
Let’s start first at the end of Weingarten’s Huffington Post column that was linked to by Diane. In that piece, Weingarten concludes her support for the Common Core with this:
“We can’t reclaim the promise of public education without investing in strong neighborhood public schools that are safe, collaborative and welcome environments for students, parents, educators and the broader community. Schools where teachers and school staff are well-prepared and well-supported, with manageable class sizes and time to collaborate…schools with wraparound services to address our children’s social, emotional and health needs.”
Is Weingarten serious in implying that Common Core is the necessary ingredient to achieve what she outlines in that paragraph? If so, then she really should not be heading up an education organization of any kind. Common Core has little if anything to do with neighborhood schools that are “safe, collaborative, welcome environments.” It has nothing to do with “manageable class sizes” and “wraparound services” that “address…social, emotional and health needs.”
Moreover, the Common Core is predicated on the notion that “rigorous” standards (and the testing of them) are needed – are imperative – to prepare students (and the nation) “to compete successfully in the global economy.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The U.S already is economically competitive. When it drops in the World Economic Forum competitiveness rankings – as it has done over the last several years – it’s because of really stupid economic policy choices it’s made, policies that have been pushed aggressively by many of those who now insist that schools and teachers must the ones to remedy their economic fallout. Very sad. And very cowardly. And Randi Weingarten is siding with them.
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Completely agree. Her walk back is not credible.
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Monaural thinking can not see a full concept, we must stop either or thinking and understand the total of a conversation.
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For ONCE, democracy, I agree with you whole heartedly. Of course, I’m not altogether sure about wrap-around services provided by THE GOVERNMENT. I’d prefer to see the family and the church of one’s choice doing most of the support, just on principle.
In fact, since I don’t think those government services are EVER going to be forthcoming in the abundance which Randi, you, and Diane would wish, I would prefer to see us all working toward policies which strengthen the family (a high minimum wage with government support if necessary wouldn’t be improper in my view) rather than government bureaucratic employees providing the services. For THAT, I think, there is potential political support.
Government is NOT, in my view a good substitute for family and church and neighborhood, of which public schools can be a PART, but not all. In fact, I would base my whole social policy on the principal of “no work, no benefits” in order to promote mothers and fathers working together to raise the children they create. But all that’s another debate, really.
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Part 2
Achieve was one of the instigators of Common Core. (along with the ACT and the College Board). It just so happens that Achieve is funded by groups like Battelle (which argues for STEM when there is no STEM shortage), the Gates Foundation, Prudential and State Farm and Travelers, Boeing, GE, JPMorgan Chase, Intel, IBM, the Helmsley Foundation, DuPont, Cisco, Chevron, Microsoft….many of these companies pay little or no taxes. You can read about Microsoft, just to pick one, here:
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
Achieve’s board of directors is here:
http://www.achieve.org/our-board-directors
As I’ve noted previously, the ACT and the products of the College Board (the PSAT SAT, and AP) are more hype than useful educational resources. They just don’t do much in predicting college (or workplace) readiness or success. But they are big business. And contrary to what they say, they stack the deck AGAINST opportunity for all students. As Matthew Quirk wrote, “The ACT and the College Board don’t just sell hundreds of thousands of student profiles to schools; they also offer software and consulting services that can be used to set crude wealth and test-score cutoffs, to target or eliminate students before they apply…That students are rejected on the basis of income is one of the most closely held secrets in admissions; enrollment managers say the practice is far more prevalent than most schools let on.”
So, why is Randi Weingarten siding with “the big boys?” And why does Diane keep assisting her?
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ding!
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We have to stop the tea party mentality, demonizing and saying no to everything. we can not continue to make excuses to go back to a system designed during slavery. We must stop deamonizing with cheap political rhetoric and come up with constructive ideas moving forward. “Getting rid of” is not a solution, what do we replace it with that allows an even playing field, takes kids from where they are, assesses real learning, allows real teaching and on and on.
Whining and crying using tea party rhetoric does not accomplish anything. woe is me I’ve been deceived. Put the focus on kids and come up with ways to change it forward getting rid of the lie of letter grades, the lie of grade levels, the humiliation of a fail system that pushes kids into the streets, The single standard that pushes kids deeper into the streets.
Change it forward to include statements of what a child has learned and needs to learn, Take kids from where they are, able to pass proficiencies through out the year, w/o grade levels and w positive failure. And uses standards as guidelines for success while local goals drive the learning of kids, using their background information.
Backward brings back the 18th century slavery crap. Forward is a tough road. Ok buy my book cuz I´m broke 🙂 http://www.wholechildreform.com
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I’m offended by your linking of tea party rhetoric to the basic stance of most posters on this blog. We tea partiers DO have a positive program, sort of. It’s called charters and vouchers, NOT because we hate public education per-se, but because we see contemporary public education sucking up to big government, which wants to run everything, including health care now, as well as education.
It used to be that public education had modest goals, give everyone a chance. Now public education wants to “change the world,” to eliminate poverty, to make every child healthy, wealthy, and wise. To guarantee that every child succeeds. Not part of education’s job. That’s the job of family and church and community. The public schools want to become gods, now, and teachers see themselves as priests transmitting the mysteries of the universe to all. Education wants to be the state church of the country.
We tea partiers rather oppose that, but not because we don’t love our local good schools. but because the schools are asking for funding to create utopia, and THAT is not going to happen, barring the US going communist, and even then it won’t work. The example of the USSR is compelling. The Party members saw that they had better schools, hospitals and housing. There is ALWAYS a two-tier system in a tyranny. So, we don’t want to go in that direction because of all else freedom of conscience must be respected.
True????
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Yes and no, Harlan. In order for children to take full advantage of schooling, there are certain conditions that should be met. I would agree with you that most of those conditions/services should not be the responsibility of public schools. I would also say that many families, communities, and churches are not able to meet those conditions either. The need is too great and the resources are too slim. Resources are not distributed evenly, so many do without. I don’t know the solutions, Harlan, but we have yet to come close to dealing with societal ills privately. While we figure that out, the public schools are left with the necessity of trying to meet as many of those needs as possible if we want the children to be able to learn.
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I little homework:
Assignment 1:
Put the Common Core in ELA out of your mind. Make your own list, for K-5, for 6-8, and for 9-12, of what you think kids, generally, should know (world knowledge, or knowledge of what) and be able to do (procedural knowledge, or knowledge of how) as a result of their schooling in each of the following areas:
reading (decoding and comprehension)
reading literature
reading nonfiction
writing (be specific; think about the entire range of world and procedural knowledge possessed by competent writers)
grammar (phonological, morphological, and syntactic competency)
research
public speaking
dramatic interpretation
debate
discussion
thinking (heuristics and algorithms for making reasonable arguments, for problem solving, for decision making, etc)
media
Now, this is REALLY important: As you are putting together your list, construe “knowledge” in each of these areas broadly so that it includes BOTH implicitly acquired knowledge (what linguists call acquisition) and explicitly acquired knowledge, for most of what people know and are able to do falls into the first of these categories.
As you are putting together your list, try to put the received notions found in typical standards lists aside and think, instead, of what competent adults know and can do in each of these areas. You will be astonished at how broad the gulf is between the two.
Be as specific as possible. For example, with regard to the procedural knowledge (knowledge of how, what people often refer to as “skills”), operationalize your statements as much as you can. That is, describe a procedure–something that can be carried out.
Arrange the items on your list in a sensible learning progression for each grade level, bearing in mind that most will appear across grade levels and be revisited at a more sophisticated level in grade after grade.
Compare the results to the amateurish CC$$ ELA bullet list compiled by Lord Coleman.
Assignment 2:
Divide each domain into subdomains. For each, ask yourself this question: What should a standard, conceived of as a measurable outcome, look like for this subdomain? Bear in mind the quite obvious fact that these subdomains are incommensurate. They are apples and oranges. They aren’t the same sorts of knowledge, not at all, so sensible ways of measuring ability in the subdomains will vary enormously. Bear in mind Ralph Waldo Emerson’s suggestion that a foolish consistency (having your standards be of the same kind) is the hobgoblin of little minds. Don’t allow this hobgoblin to haunt your work.
More to come.
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Ralph also touched on Self Reliance:
I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names,
to large societies and DEAD institutions.
Word clouds, or an endless stream of pseudo platitudes, draw the
pupils into a make-believe world and then convince them that the
make-believe world is a good approximation of the real world.
The make-believe world is NOT a well-lit space as to “What” we
are doing.
The differences between “Official Policies” (What is claimed)
and “Actual Policies” (What the policies actually accomplish)
has always been obscured through a tyranny of words.
The official policy (Democracy) established another
official policy (Public Education).
The Powers-That-Be established Public Education for the
Powers-That-Be.
Public Education is “For the People” to the same degree
that Democracy is “For the People”.
Self-infused blindness, stupefaction, narcotized blitheness,
bla, bla, bla.
If the soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The
guilty one is not who committs the sin, but the one who causes
the darkness. Monseigneur Bienvenu (Les Miserables)
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Randy Weingarten needs to review her notes on child psychology recalling the permanent harm caused when inappropriate demands are imposed on our children. She needs to review her philosophy of education notes and recall the importance of the Constructivist approach in lieu of the Behavioral because the Constructivist approach not only respects the individual but values them in this Democracy. She needs to review notes on curriculum and instruction and recall that Standards must be developmentally appropriate. She should review her notes on John Dewey’s Democracy and Education- children should be given the freedom of exploring their God given talents be they in the art world or the corporate world. Since Language Arts isn’t her field she should listen to authorities in the field when it comes to reading instruction. The Common Core is a deterrent to say the least- causing irreparable harm on children who are retained because we do not support a program that is conducive to their learning- the philosophy and practices of Reading Recovery.
The CC is rotten to the core. The Architect of the CC ignored years and years of research in the areas of child development and areas of teaching and learning including the learning disabled and the ESL. The scripted text with a time line- no pausing for the slower learner- hinders imagination, critical thinking, and individualization. Imposting tasks that are not developmentally appropriate is cruel. It is obvious as one reads the CCSS that the architect and his co-workers had no background in child development, child psychology, in philosophy of education, in curriculum development and the teaching of reading. Billionaires like Bill Gates and the Waltons have established organizations and contribute enormous amount of money to change the way we teach our students. Literature, art, music, and all critical education are sacrificed so that children do well on standardized examinations. Therefore, how schools and their teachers fare, including whether or not a school continues to exist, depends on students’ scores.
The corporate world justify their take over by criticizing our present education system. Common Core advocates maintain that teachers are finally teaching critical thinking skills. CC maintain that in the past it was a rote approach: untrue. Certain higher order thinking skills such as imagination are not developed with CC. The curriculum is not related to the students; critical thinking skills center on lower order thinking skills of knowledge and comprehension. The development of the imagination is ignored. No application is made to the students and their lives. Questions are asked that require a set answer. The Behavioral approach in lieu of the Constructivist approach dominates the teaching. The aim of the corporate world’s initiating and supporting the Common Core is to stimulate the economy – not to better education. Education has been an untapped resource of revenue for the most part. But now these past years the wheels of the financial world start spinning again toward profiting.
District Supt. Taylor of Schools in NYCity wrote about privatization and taylorization back in 1912. In light of what Supt. Taylor wrote, we see the present struggle our education system is enduring from a different perspective. The reform movement is not to better prepare our students for college but to better prepare them to conform to the Taylorized work place and a profit making institution. The cost of implementing the CC over the first 7 years to states will be 16 billion dollars ($15,835,121,347) or over 200 million per state, on top of regular educational needs. (Pioneer Institute) The corporate world tried to spin its wheels with Nation at Risk. They maintained that our Nation was at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.
To meet the needs of the corporate world, they must first be privatize and then taylorize the educational system. The Corporate-dominated school system with standardized education was and is now aimed to make economic changes. The effectiveness of teachers is evaluated via the testing system- a big source of revenue. The testing program reaps millions of dollars for the Pearson Co. who designs and publishes the tests. In Texas the Pearson Co. receives $462 million testing contract and Texas isn’t even a state that has adopted the Common Core. NY State has a five-year, $32 million contract with Pearson to create tests for the state. The costs of the tests, though, are just the tip of the iceberg. There is also the cost of scoring them. Other costs–the time spent on test-taking instead of learning. Plus the Pearson Co. has bought up all our major educational publishing companies and now they provide texts and the tests.
Testing is only one problem with the CC but a major one. No other country in the world tests children like the US. Finland, who the corporate world likes to compare US educational system with to show how we are falling behind in education, has no mandatory standardized test until the age of 16. Children are not measured at all for the first six years of their education. 26 Amazing Facts About Finland’s Unorthodox Education System We need only look to North Carolina to see where we are headed for if we don’t over throw the CC and testing now. In NC $40,000 is the most a teacher can make regardless of how many degrees. Teachers are treated like factory workers- easily replaced; no unions, no tenure, no voice, no respect for education.
For Randi Weingarten to continue to support the CC is doing an injustice to our children. It is not enough for Randi Weingarten to criticize the high stakes testing. We need someone at the helm of the FTA to fight for our children and democracy. We need someone who will rally our parents, teachers, and politicians to get rid of the CC and reinstate the Standards that were in place before the rotten CC were forced upon the educational world.
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Randi is being a bit disingenuous. The problem people who are against Common Core go much deeper than testing, which seems to be a concern of Randi and teachers more concerned with how they are measured than the benefit of excessive tests.
Consider, Common Core test developed by approved consortium cost more than double the cost of state generated tests. This may not be a concern to Randi but it is to taxpayers.
The actual curriculum may not be a concern to Randi, but they are to parents and even psychologists who have seen an increase in stress in grades 1-4.
There is so much more….read for yourselves….http://stopcommoncorenc.org/
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Teachers are very concerned with excessive testing especially when we can assess these skills ourselves. It isn’t just about how we are measured. We care for the children we mentor.
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Linda,
Thanks, although no a teacher, the ones I know not only object to the testing, but the what they must teach. The damage being done in the lowest grades may be incalculable…as many 1-3 grades are getting stressed with these untested standards, and some schools gagging teachers who speak out. Even our state NCEA has told their members
not to criticize CC.
We are working to reject CC…as we also looking to increase student
pay, Please check the link http://stopcommoncorenc.org/ if you have
not evaluated CC.
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The question still lingers, and I can’t get an answer from AFT leadership (or anyone else):
If the tests and CCSS are “decoupled,” “delinked,” or whatever, then what? I know that AFT is heavily invested in keeping the CCSS in classrooms they represent (even to the point of pseudo-mandates). Other than the fact that they’ve already spent tons of money on Gates-led programs and materials, why are the standards what they most want to protect? How does that “reclaim the promise,” much less the profession?
And, even more pressing for me, what happens to the TESTS once they are “decoupled?” By all accounts, neither AFT nor their local and state affiliates are talking about getting rid of the tests…just the stakes. So teachers may not be evaluated on VAM or shoddy systems, but what about the students? Are schools still being expected to utilize AFT-supported, national consortium tests?
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lets hear your thoughts http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-call-to-action.html
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