The Gates Foundation has spent $200 million or so to pay for the Common Core standards. Gates paid for everything because the U.S. Department of Education is prohibited by law from doing anything that might control, direct,or supervise curriculum or instruction. Of course, this did not stop Arne Duncan from shelling out $350 million to pay for new online tests of the Common Core. The tests will certainly influence, direct, and control curriculum and instruction, which is expressly forbidden. But why quibble over the law?
As you read on, recall that Gates paid for everything: the writing, development, evaluation, implementation, and promotion of the Common Core. There are very few education advocacy groups that have not received millions from Gates.
Now Vicki Phillips, who directs the education program at Gates, has written an article to remind us–in case the PR machine is offline–why we desperately need Common Core, why teachers and other educators are warmly embracing it, and how wildly popular it is. She admits that she is baffled by people who call on states and districts to slow down, stop or reverse this wonderful progress. Maybe that refers to Randi Weingarten and the teachers of New York.
One thing is clear, if inadvertently. The standards and the testing are portrayed as integral to states’ ability to evaluate teachers by test scores. All the pieces fit together. You are not supposed to have just the standards, you must have the whole package. That is the Gates Foundation’s vision.
Phillips is obviously unsettled by the controversies erupting in state after state, from left and right, about the standards and the tests. But she does not mention of the public hearings in New York, where thousands of parents berated the Common Core. The foundation seems to be in denial about the pushback against its prize program, the linchpin of wholesale change.
Common Core, she assures us, will get all students ready for college. But how does she know that? What if Common Core creates the results nationally that it did in New York, where only 3% of English learners passed? Where only 5% of students with disabilities passed? Where more than 80% of African American and Hispanic students failed? What if most students can’t clear the bar that the Gates Foundation raised so high? What will our society do with the many students who give up or fail? Will the Gates Foundation tell us what to do to help them? And when everyone goes to college, will the college diploma be devalued? Will there be jobs for them, or will they be truck drivers and retail clerks with a diploma and a load of college debt?
Just wondering.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why did Gates-Duncan push teacher evaluations and grading schools (A-F) along with Common Core, if they wanted to avoid over-burdening public schools?
From my perspective, watching this barrage of “reforms” go in, my sense is no one ever says “no” to reform groups, no one ever says “THIS is a priority” – it’s like each reform group gets their pet policy initiative, whether it’s vouchers or ‘lifting caps’ on charters, or Ohio’s (ridiculous) teacher and school system ‘grades’ or merit pay for teachers. I’m not surprised public schools are drawing a line. Someone had to.
If they wanted to do Common Core really well, perhaps they should have had the guts to say “no” to some of their allies on the zillion other “reforms” public schools are being ordered to put in. Common Core is a huge undertaking all by itself. Why not do one thing really well rather than 500 things poorly? Where is the brave adult who says “no- you can’t have merit pay and school grades and teacher grades and everything else on your wish list AND the Common Core”?
I think Duncan and Gates are incapable of saying no because they needed a political coalition to get Common Core past state legislatures, so they gave everyone in the “reform” political coalition everything they wanted in return for support on Common Core. I think it’s clear Duncan did that kind of political horse trading in conservative states, and he’s now locked into fulfilling a wish list of 50 different “reforms”, none of which will be done well or carefully.
Common Core is part of a reform package– all parts are meant to operate in tandem–thus declareth the National Governors Association in 2009:
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/the-importance-of-common-core-for-nationally-pervasive-ed-reform/
Thank you. I’ll read it.
I really liked your video address to parents, BTW. If we’re getting Louisiana-style “reforms” (and we all are) I so appreciate the information.
I don’t have any problem with “higher standards for students” actually. I would have been a parent they could have persuaded, had I not seen them rubber stamp this absolute barrage of wish list items from every ed reform lobbying group. If they wanted Common Core as a priority maybe they should learn to say “no” to one of their political allies. Public school kids aren’t test subjects for every adult’s pet project.
Chiara, if only they would truly define what “higher standards” are and what they really mean. Adding more objectives to Kindergarten while reducing creative play is simply replacing one outcome for another. Sad.
You can review for yourself which
where the “momentum” is going
during the crucial final 20 minutes
of last November’s town hall in
Poughkeepsie, New York,
where NY State Ed.
Commissioner John King
faced the public over his
backing of Common Core
Here is the colorfully titled
YouTube video —
“Commissioner King Gets Spanked”:
This meeting was a Rhee-like
farce where King spoke for 2
hours straight, and was scheduled
to to be followed by 1 hour of
public comments and questions.
Note that… ***was scheduled to
be followed…***
The best laid plans…
Indeed, 20 minutes in, neither
King nor the NYS PTA
moderator “could stand the
heat, so they got outta the kitchen.”
They were totally unprepared by
how well-informed and
confrontational these parents were.
At about the 10 minute mark, one
parent brought up the fact that King
sends his own kids to a Montessori
School which has a curriculum that
is the antithesis of Common Core
as a Montessori school is…
(to quote its wikipedia entry)
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
“… characterized by an emphasis on
independence, freedom within limits,
and respect for a child’s natural
psychological, physical, and social
development….
“… and has these elements
as essential:[1][2]
” — Mixed age classrooms, with
classrooms for children aged
2½ or 3 to 6 years old by far the
most common
“— Student choice of activity
from within a prescribed range of
options
“— Uninterrupted blocks of work
time, ideally three hours
“— A Constructivist or ‘discovery’
model, where students learn
concepts from working with
materials, rather than by direct
instruction.
“Specialized educational materials
developed by Montessori and her
collaborators
“— Freedom of movement within
the classroom
” — A trained Montessori teacher
“In addition, many Montessori
schools design their programs
with reference to Montessori’s
model of human development
from her published works, and
use pedagogy, lessons, and
materials introduced in teacher
training derived from courses
presented by Montessori
during her lifetime… ”
– – – – – – – – – – – –
This disclosure of his hypocrisy
and implied attack on King pretty
much ended things.
King made the dubious claim that
his Montessori school scrupulously
follows “Common Core”
“This totally enraged the audience
of parents as it was and is a
ludicrous and demonstrably false
claim that was rightly met with
skepticism and loud booing,
enraging the crowd… if for
no other reason that folks
don’t like to be lied to or have
their intelligences insulted.
Seriously… if Common Core
is the greatest thing ever
for a kid’s education, why
does King spend tens of
thousands of dollars of
expensive private school
tuition to make sure his own
children are, figuratively
speaking, kept as far away from
it as as Gates-funded salary
can afford.
It’s like if a Surgeon General
told the nation’s parents that a
great new vaccine has just been
invented, and it’s going to
revolutionize the health of
children and their ability
to fight off disease … blah-
blah-blah…. all the while
the Surgeon General is
being handsomely
compensated for pushing
this vaccine.
And then someone asks,
“Mr. Surgeon General… why
don’t you give that new vaccine
to YOUR OWN children? If the
vaccine is so great, why do
you spend tons of your own
money so that your kids get
an entirely different, and—
by all measures—a superior
vaccine?”
“My children’s vaccination is
none of your business, and
not fair ground for discussion.”
Anyway, back to the town
hall video…
The flustered moderator then
quickly wrapped it up, “We’re going
to allow two more people to speak.”
At which point people began
screaming even louder:
“WHAT HAPPENED TO ‘ONE
HOUR’ ?!!!”
This is absolutely riveting video.
Again, you can see that crucial
final 20 minutes at:
I just noticed something while
watching this video. King
sends his kid to a “private
school”… but he doesn’t
use the phrase….
Instead, he calls his kids’
school a “non-public school”…
(at 15:52)
KING: “Non-public schools
are part of the community
of schools in our state… ”
It’s part of some Neuro-
Linguistic Programming
technique to subliminally
get the people to whom
he’s thinking not associate
King with elitists who avoid
the public schools and
instead send their kids to…
yes… PRIVATE schools…
No,he’s just like all you
“public” school parents.
I think it’s called “negation”
where what follows the
negation… in this case..
the negation is the weasel
word “non”, and what follows
it is “public”… with the “public
being what actually is actually
processed by the mind..
By calling it “non-public”
the word “public” is in the
phrase, and that’s what
gets processed… with
people then NOT associating
King with “private” schools…
i.e. avoid using the word
“private” at any cost.
What occurred backstage with John
King and his advisors after King fled
the stage:
Boy, this NEVER gets old. I laugh
out loud every time.
Ooops.. wrong YouTube link.
HERE is What occurred backstage
with John King and his advisors
after King fled the stage:
THIS is the video that never gets
old, and always makes me laugh
out loud.
Vicki Phillips was Superintendent of my district when I first started teaching here in 2001. She started an all-day kindergarten program, which I think is a good idea for some children. She kept promising that once the students who went through this got to middle school and high school, we would see a change in the kind of student, more ready to learn, more capable. We are still waiting, over a decade later. While all-day kindergarten is more than likely beneficial, it can’t change the poverty levels in my district. It doesn’t change the transient nature of the population, moving from school to school, to other states and back again. It is not enough, and neither is Common Core. It is just more empty promises from a highly paid bureaucrat, who was working for the Gates Foundation even while she was a superintendent.
So she was on the district payroll when she worked for Gates? Was that legal?
How many of these people are in the “business” of school reform? We know that this is a Multi-billion dollar school reform industry. A profit motive????? What do you think!
So here is why a rational person might be very skeptical that the Common Core will be implemented in a careful way. A person would look at the ed reform track record, over the last decade.
Here’s Ohio’s teacher rating system. I don’t know how much it cost or which ed reform group came up with it, but I’m sure it was someone’s pet project.
Skip the story and read the comments. Here’s one that doesn’t really give me a whole lot of faith in this scheme:
Melissa (Vogt) Beatty • 6 months ago
I want to defend my “least effective” rating. I am a teacher on special assignment without a specific classroom of her own. As a result, my roster has zero students. And since “zero” of my students took the OAA, zero % of them passed.
No one in ed reform could say “no” to this? How am I supposed to “use” this teacher rating system? It’s garbage. The A-F school rating system is equally useless. For a reason that eludes me, it was absolutely essential that we put these two ratings schemes in.
This is just poor quality work. Why would I believe the assurances that the Common Core in Ohio won’t be equally sloppy and reckless?
There’s a context here, a history, and it’s now a decade long.
When Bill Gates finally admitted that the standardized testing was completely out of control, he blamed states and districts. He singled my state out, actually. He took ZERO responsibility. Duncan is already blaming parents, and King blames “interest groups”. If this is a disaster, who will be blamed? Public schools, right?
Note this critical paragraph in the above posting:
“One thing is clear, if inadvertently. The standards and the testing are portrayed as integral to states’ ability to evaluate teachers by test scores. All the pieces fit together. You are not supposed to have just the standards, you must have the whole package. That is the Gates Foundation’s vision.”
As an expert witness for the veracity of this way of looking at Common Core I call on Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. On her blog Dr. Mercedes Schneider references the remarks below and provides a link to his original blog entry:
[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. [end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Available via the above link is another money quote from Chester E. Finn Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
😎
I love the post but would have changed “will they be truck drivers and retail clerks” with low paying jobs. We should not devalue anyone or their work.
Mikewatson57, I was not demeaning truck drivers or retail clerks. These are examples of the many jobs that do NOT require a college degree, and also examples of the new jobs that will open in the next decade, including home health aides and construction workers.
You make a great point that a college degree may be less valuable. According to the Wall Street Journal, almost 300,000 college graduates burdened with student loan debt are now working for minimum wage. That is 70% more graduates working for minimum wage than 10 years ago. You won’t hear Commissioner King or Chancellor Tish sharing these numbers.
I will never get over the utter disconnect between reformers and the “human capital” they are so interested in reforming. Vicki Phillips seems very interested in all the data they can collect in aggregate to make large scale decisions with little or no concern with what is happening on an individual level. If twenty teachers lose their jobs based on “on the ground” obviously bogus teacher evaluation schemes, because that’s what the divine data numbers say should happen, it will work out over time as we evaluate the larger trends. If fifty students failed to reach some critical graduation test bar, based on tests that shouldn’t be being used for high stakes decisions, but,oh well, we’ll work those kinks out as times goes on,…Did you notice that the impact on the individual just dribbled out through the cracks?
The harful impact on individuals will eventually dribble back up to bite them in the form of a class action law suit.
Those eventual class action suits will not impact, I suspect, a great proportion of those who have been directly affected by reform policy. Those of us caught at the wrong time in the wrong place have to move on to survive, if not economically, psychologically. Even if you happen to be one who might someday get some justice, this long term it will work out view fuels Bill Gates’ dedication to long range results. Forget the immediate fallout in the hopes of future returns. I must admit that I want class action suits to tie reformers in knots. I want to exact vengeance on those dark angels of data. I want them to suffer their own reforms and be powerless to fight back, but I can’t wait to be redeemed or even expect it.
NYS Teacher,
My nomination for phrase of the 2014:
2O2T’s “dark angels of data.”
Has a bit of a ring to it, doesn’t it? Thank you, Duane.
A very nice bit of alliteration too.
Looks like the start of an idea.
Any other entries you can think of?
I should try for some ass..onance. It seems appropriate. Unfortunately, my thoughts become a little less poetic.
Shepherd’s,
“policy supernova”
“Building a plane in a tailspin”
Rheeality distortion field
I live in Ohio where 50% of a teacher’s evaluation is based on so-called value-added scores based on state-wide tests with the results of the tests sliced and diced in a black box via a proprietary formula marketed by SAS. For the 70% of teachers whose job assignments are not ties to such tests, the state is relying on a template for writing “student learning objectives” (SLOs) that meet 26 criteria, one of these a prediction of the scores students should make district-approved pre- and post tests. Both methods of assessing teachers produce stack rankings of their performance based on deeply flawed methods and against the specific findings of research sponsored by the US Department of Education. So where does this convoluted system come from? Credit a sustained lobbying campaign by a huge network of individuals and organizations,many of whom are named in Diane’s book Reign of Error.
Laura…the Bill Gates mode of stack rankings has been discussed here and am glad you continue to remind us that it is being used in school districts to the great detriment of teachers. All stack ranking does is keep people who need to work cooperatively, as with teachers, at each others’ throats. A destructive plan in industry, and even worse in education.
There was an article posted recently here about Gates himself seeing the failings of his use of these competitive rankings at Microsoft. Cannot find the article, so please whomever posted it, repost.
Ellen Lubic
Wow this is shocking. The only part she gets wrong is the last line. Those jobs don’t exist
This is an evaluation of Ohio urban schools done by someone other than Fordham.
Apparently there’s a rule in this state where only the conservative Fordham may be quoted on education issues, so I was happy to see someone else, anyone at all, weighing in 🙂
I like this study because it actually looks at how public schools are doing, rather than just using public schools to measure or discuss charter schools.
Thought this part was interesting and have never seen it discussed in this state:
“None of the charter schools located in urban districts enrolled only students who live in those districts, and many top-rated districts enrolled students from other districts as well. Comparisons of these schools with urban districts as a whole do not take this difference into account. While most top-rated district schools enrolled mostly resident students, examples abound of charters, in particular, with very low urban district enrollments even though they are located in Ohio’s largest urban districts. For example, only 15 percent of students enrolled at Menlo Park Academy in Cleveland were residents of the Cleveland school district.”
http://www.policymattersohio.org/topschools-jan2014?utm_source=January+22%2C+2014+Top+Schools+release&utm_campaign=Top+schools+1-22-14&utm_medium=email
The editorial is propoganda and misleading the public. There is no research to support that any of this will prepare students to be career and college ready. Data miners, show me the data and research that supports your claims.
Reformers demand: Show us the data (test scores) that prove you are a good teacher or else we will threaten your reputation and livelihood.
Reformers response: We have NO data that proves our standards/tests will work as we claim but e we will use them to threaten you anyway.
Do as we say, not as we do
Correct. Without longitudinal studies showing long range outcomes, the whole speculation that is CC is an unproven, and probably false, premise, and Obama/Duncan continue to try to fool a thinking public, and educators who are adept at using real critical thinking skills.
Any so-called CC momentum will come to grinding halt when state after state bails out of PARCC and SBAC on-line testing. NY has already come to its senses regarding the logistical and financial nightmare that has been created.
How will such on-line tests be secure any way? Time differnecs alone cause problems not to mention hacking. This will be the Achilles heel of the reform movement.
In state after state, the movement against this totalitarian standards-and-testing regime is growing, and the propagandists understand that one way to nip the movement in the bud is to pretend that it doesn’t exist, that the opposition is from a tiny group of extremists and doesn’t represent the overwhelming consensus. It doesn’t matter whether this is TRUE, mind you. It matters whether the press and the politicians and the educrats and the unscrupulous consultants who will adopt any view that seems to be currently lucrative believe it to be true.
The Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] in ELA represent the triumph of philistinism over the tradition of continuously critiqued and revised practice based upon ongoing humane scholarship and research into the various disciplines that make up the English language arts.
Welcome to the era of the Powerpointing of U.S. education.
The smarter ones among the deformers saw what happened with the tests in New York and are worried. They know that when these tests roll out nationwide, they will have a policy supernova on their hands.
So, how are they going to avoid that? Ensure low cut scores at first? Field test and throw out the toughest questions? Remove the high stakes for the first few years until everyone has gotten used to their kids taking these exams? I’m sure that scheming minds are busy busy busy.
“a policy supernova”
from the master of metaphors
You can count on the fact that the CC$$ PR machine will be very, very busy over the next few months. They see what is happening in state after state. They see the awakening to what the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth has been up to.
Bottom line: The Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] in ELA represent the triumph of philistinism over the tradition of continuously critiqued and revised practice based upon ongoing humane scholarship and research into the various disciplines that make up the English language arts.
Welcome to the era of the Powerpointing of U.S. education.
Or not. We can still stop this thing. It’s time that the plutocrats learned a lesson. About some matters, you are not “the decider.”
For example, here in the United States, still, we don’t like people legislating what we can think, teach, and learn.
Sarcasm alert?
Gates said recently, “If you don’t like the new standards and tests, just wait until you have a boss.”
You see, every administrator, teacher, curriculum developer, educational researcher, parent, and student in the country has a new K-12 education boss. His name is Bill Gates. He paid Achieve to appoint David Coleman by divine right, absolute monarch of the English language arts. He’s the new ELA boss.
How dare you people talk back to the boss?!!!
Coleman, who could not make it as a teacher during the one year that he tried…who is a failure as an educator…left the public endeavor in a pique it would seem, and turned to the free market and self enrichment as his payback to public education.
And now he has the power to determine the education from pre – k through university of every American student. How could this confluence of Gates, Coleman, Pearson, Broad, and their cohorts of vast free market wealth, but no training as educators, have grabbed the nation by the cojones to impose their plan on us all?
Mercedes Deutsch presents the logical explanation in that this was a long time in the planning, and the implementation rests in the greedy hands of ALEC.
Are the President, and the hedge fund managers, and corporate pigs, wonderful, or what?
What will happen when all college bound students have to take Coleman’s SAT testing? How can one person’s theories be imposed on all of America’s public, and even private, education?
If all students should be “college ready”, Bill Gates should lead by example and go back and finish his bachelor’s.
The answer is clear that not everyone needs to be a college grad.
He’s taken a bunch of Kahn Academy courses with his son. Gee, even he needed more than the cold comfort of a computer!
Gates etc are linear thinkers. They don’t see human growth and development. Be the change http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-call-to-action.html
You see, we have moved beyond the old era in which people had ideas of their own. We now have Bill and David to do our thinking for us. We have but to obey.
Wow. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, David. How easy is that?
Remember, everyone:
War is peace.
Ignorance is strength.
Freedom is slavery.
Class size doesn’t matter.
The education of teachers doesn’t matter.
Poverty doesn’t matter.
Learning is mastery of the bullet list. (the Word according to Coleman)
Teaching is punishment and reward. (via the Test)
Schools are sorting machine. (based on the Test. You go left. You go right).
Arbeit macht frei.
These slogans copyright 2014 by the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
All your base are belong to us.
It MIGHT be possible that Bill Gates really believes that what he is doing is a path forward. I will not seek to pry into his psyche.
However,
We are ALL aware of where the road filled with good intentions leads.
So even if his intentions are good, the road leads to the same end.
I think that he does very much believe in his approach AND that it’s going to make billions for him (via that computer-adaptive testing keyed to national standards and delivered through his database and adaptive curricula portal). There are many who think that the Powerpointing of U.S. education is a superb idea. Sad, but true.
I have just figured out why every campaign in the U.S. has to be framed on a war theme. If you promote this type of victory at all costs imagery, you can focus on winning, accepting that there will be collateral damage (students) and acceptable losses (teachers) in pursuit of that victory.
Linear thinkers have difficulty understanding human growth and development. They are great at business but suck at education issues. Here’s more what assessment should look like http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
Cap…Gates is as you postulate, is a linear thinker. He is probably Aspergian too…as seems his wife. When they speak in public neither seems to have much affect. Austic-like thinkers may have huge IQs and total recall, but they do not have the ability to recognize human behaviors beyond the linear.
However, Broad does not have these symptoms…he is purely self aggrandizing and greedy as is Murdoch, Tilson, and the millionaire wannabe Coleman, and most of the others who are determined to kill off public education and turn it into a profit machine.
well said!
Welcome to the era of the war on ___________! This kind of thing was the stock in trade of Chairman Mao, BTW. Every few years there was another war on __________. The Great Leap Forward. The Cultural Revolution. He was a great believer in centralized control of the education system, BTW.
The oligarchs believe that it’s important to feed the “we’re at war” mythos. Makes for great two-minute hates to rally the proles. THis worked for them with regard to the perpetual war on “turrur,” as G.W. Bush, Jr., called it.
I was suprised to see my comment removed. Do you censor out comments you don’t agree with? I will say I feel my original comment made a fair point.
Mikewatson, your comment was not removed or censored. I don’t know what you refer to.
Mike,
Sometimes comments don’t get through. I’ve had it happen more than a few times. Please repost your comment.
Duane
Once again, Diane, you’ve said it so well:
“And when everyone goes to college, will the college diploma be devalued? Will there be jobs for them, or will they be truck drivers and retail clerks with a diploma and a load of college debt?”
You raise another key aspect of this debate: the underlying implication that if EVERYONE went to college than EVERYONE would have a highly secure job and income level.
The unstated assumption is that there are a plethora of jobs in corporate middle management, medicine, law, technology, and related fields—that are unfilled simply because there aren’t enough people to fill them.
As anyone who has those advanced STEM skills knows, that is a false assumption. That false assumption is then compounded over time as more and more people acquire the “Sure Thing Skills” that will supposedly guarantee you a great job at a great salary.
But as more and more people acquire those skills, the market will respond accordingly: the will be a glut of supply, leading to reduced salaries for that same work.
Jobs—of all income levels—will be impacted by technology, making many of them obsolete in the very near future.
Retail clerks have already seen the beginning of the “self-check out” areas in our supermarkets. Truck drivers, and bus drivers or anyone else who makes their living driving will be monumentally impacted soon. Google has already built a car that is self-driving, relying on intelligent software and sensors: It is 96% less likely to be involved in a collision then a human being would be, driving the same vehicle at the same time.
When auto insurance companies realize how much less they’ll have to pay in claims than under the current system…it appears inevitable that within the next 8 to 15 years we’ll be seeing a shift from the human operated vehicle to the software operated.
But what will happen to the people who drive vehicles to produce income?
Technology cannot be overlooked in this debate: Even the smartest programmers are human, and thus can get fatigued, emotionally upset, distracted or confused at any given minute. But software that is designed to program software doesn’t; and it can get more done—in an increasingly shorter span of time—than the most accomplished MIT and CalTech graduates.
And when we have ultra-sophisticated systems and units that can do EVERYTHING better, faster and much cheaper than we humans, will this mean a nightmare for humanity? Or will it be a dream come true?
Either way, some version of it is coming and in the education debate, like all other debates, its impact can’t be overlooked.
Have they invented a computer with a gut instinct yet? Small example. I take a car in for maintenance my car computer says so. the mechanic reads the code to see what needs to be done. However, he uses his own expertise to assess the necessity and appropriateness of each step. If the mechanic is connected to the dealer too often all they do is what the code says. I use an independent because they are allowed to use their heads. They have fixed my car more than once after it was “fixed” by the dealer service.
It stands to reason, if reformers wanted to graduate more STEM graduates all they had to do was offer full-ride scholarships to all students who majored in these fields at top universities. They could have placed a stipulation on the scholarship that graduates had to work in the field for at least 5 years upon graduation. All the money Gates spent on CC could have been used for these scholarships. IMHO this would have accomplished his goal and impacted education more productively.
Interesting article on how conservatives who advocate the Common Core are re-branding the name.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/rebranding-common-core#break
Very interesting. Thanks for posting the link.
If they are so sure of their product, it should come with a money back guarantee of consumer satisfaction. I think that’s fair, don’t you?
Vicki Phillips is at the Gates Foundation precisely because she subscribes to their corporate-style “reform” ideas. And because Phillips is a top-down authoritarian. When she was superintendent in Portland, Oregon, she was called “Hurricane Vicki” because she was a whirlwind of top-down “reform” and because she treated teachers and parents as weak stalks that could be bent to her will.
Here’s how the blog Seattle Education described her:
“During her three years in Portland, Phillips’ name became synonymous with top-down management, corporate-style reforms, and a my-way-or-the-highway attitude. If Phillips’ time in Portland offers any sort of preview on what’s to come from the Gates Foundation in the coming years, the country’s educators could face a new era of well-funded curriculum standardization, support for business-like initiatives, and additional, test-driven programs that may not serve individual school districts well.”
See how she makes a perfect fit at Gates?
See: http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/vicki-phillips-director-of-education-college-ready-united-states-program/
Interestingly, in March of last year (2013), Phillips penned an article with Randi Weingarten (who gets defended often on this blog) in which they opined that it was critical for American public education to “align teacher development and evaluation to the Common Core state standards.” Phillips and Weingarten made the preposterous claim that it was absolutely essential that the “mission” of public schooling “must evolve from an outmoded model of education that exists in too many places to a new paradigm that will prepare students for life, college, and career.”
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112746/gates-foundation-sponsored-effective-teaching
I’ve noted previously that the Sandia Report (1993) – issued in the wake of A Nation at Risk – examined the allegations that public education was “broken” and “in crisis” and concluded that:
* “..on nearly every measure we found steady or slightly improving trends.”
* “youth today [the 1980s] are choosing natural science and engineering degrees at a higher rate than their peers of the 1960s.”
* “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause.”
* “The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
In her piece at Andrew Rotherham’s blog, Phillips asserts that “teachers are benefitting from the new evaluation systems” that are tied to the Common Core and “change is needed” because “We desperately need a school system that ensures America’s 50 million students are prepared for success in college and careers.”
Sigh. Phillips just keeps reciting the same old canard.
And she gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary to do it.
Perhaps she should follow the CC standard that she expects the students to follow:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.
Show us the evidence that backs her claim that the CC standards will prepare students to be career and college ready.
The so-called “momentum” of the Common Core has about as much credibility as the “body counts” broadcast nightly on the evening news during the Vietnam War did in convincing Americans that we were defeating those Godless Commies.
Yep, and the Department of War realized the futility of those counts and didn’t make the same mistake the last few illegal wars of aggression against those heathen turrerists.
I think that that is spelled “turrurists,” Duane. Like nukulur. Didn’t you learn anything during the G.W. administration?
I tried not to!
The only objection I have to this article is the underlying suggestion that Bill Gates, the person, isn’t doing this with the best of intentions. Absolutely, he has a vested interest in selling more Windows licenses to schools and his minions work to propogate his formula.
All I’m saying is that when I see an interview of him explaining why in the US he only addresses education, I believe his explanation that it matters to him.