John Thompson, an experienced teacher and historian, is convinced that Common Core will die unless there is a moratorium on high-stakes testing.
The early returns from states that have tested the “rigorous” Common Core show high failure rates, especially among poor and minority youth.
Thompson writes:
Real world, there are only so many hours in a day, and time is running out on the opportunity to supply materials, training and, above all, the supports that low-income students will need to meet Common Core standards. Soon, we will face the logistical, political, and legal consequences of denying high school diplomas to students because they failed Common Core and “Common Core-type” graduation examinations, without having an opportunity to be taught Common Core or “Common Core-type” material.
How will we respond to failure rates of 50-60-70% of more among the neediest students?
But that’s not all.
Using the Common Core test results to evaluate teachers is causing massive demoralization among teachers.
The rush to implement Common Core–without proper preparation of students or teachers, with appropriate materials, without a massive investment in instruction–has caused a perfect storm of hostility, pushback, and resentment among both parents and educators.
Students are being hurt by this reckless experiment.
I won’t name names, but I will say that I recently heard a major national figure in education candidly state that “the Common Core is dead.”
Maybe yes, maybe no.
Maybe, like a chicken whose neck was wrung off, it is still running around in circles, unaware that it is dead.
To date, the course corrections have been phony.
The standards must be decoupled from the tests.
Teachers should not be evaluated by scores on tests that do not reflect their skill as teachers, but do reflect who was in their classroom.
The standards must be thoroughly reviewed by expert practitioners in every state, including early childhood educators and specialists in teaching children with disabilities.
Otherwise, the Common Core indeed will be a footnote in history.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
John, I am for a very short footnote! Good to meet you at Scholtz’s!
LikeLike
I am waiting for a Common Core lawsuit. I am waiting for teachers to decry it as an underfunded, high stakes mandate.
Working as an educational researcher for almost 20 years, I think we have reason for national content standards as part of a system that strives for equal educational opportunities. The quick rollout and lack of resources (curricular, professional development, coaching) is good cause for pushback.
LikeLike
I expect the next step will be for all of the State Commissioners to call for “hearings” after which they will proceed on their merry course. The “hearings” I’ve attended are basically window dressing. The agendas have already been determined. Participants are asked to comment but the comments are disregarded. Until the “deformers” are driven from office, they will continue their “deforms.” Egos and $$$$ are driving the Common Core. Gates, Broad, and Murdock need to be shown that money can’t buy everything. If their minions are voted out of office, we can get this great country back on track.
LikeLike
They didn’t spend much time in falling for CCCRAP. Why do they need to waste time dismantling it? I know, I know. The fools have spent so much money trying to implement this garbage that they want to salvage as much as they can. Perhaps they should spend some time figuring out how to hold those who pushed this disaster accountable. What was Bill’s exit strategy if his ten year plan didn’t produce? Is he just going to walk away and leave the wreckage behind?
LikeLike
Recently in Massachusetts the Commissioner invited principals to dialogue about the “reforms,” carefully scheduling the dialogue dates on state testing days. If he really wanted dialogue, there would certainly have been better ways to schedule it.
LikeLike
That Commissioner needs to go. He is not turning out to be good for our MA public schools. Quite the opposite.
LikeLike
Having my state board of education determine science standards is very scary.
LikeLike
Having any group of non K-12 educators create standards is scary. This would include foundations, testing companies and yes, even college professors.
LikeLike
And the elected officials actually making the decisions about statewide standards as well.
I think my colleagues in the school of education would like to think they have some expertise in K-12 education though. If not, we really need to change the licensing requirements for public school teachers in my state.
LikeLike
TE, I’m not talking education professors. In CC Social Studies, it was mostly subject specific professors (history, political science, economics) professors who wrote them. They included skills that I didn’t learn until I was in college. And I graduated with honors.
Their objective isn’t college ready. It’s to guarantee that they don’t have to teach research skills at all. CCSS in social studies very much about college professors decreasing the amount of instruction they’re responsible for.
LikeLike
“The standards must be decoupled from the tests.”
That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. I don’t have huge problems with the standards. They’re not great but most state standards aren’t great either. And, let’s face it, standards will be out there somewhere.
The problem is the tests which are unreasonably difficult and suddenly high stakes for everyone. If the failure rates for more impoverished communities are really exceeding 50% then education as “an equality of opportunity” is fully dead. Students who fall too far behind will simply drop out and save themselves the time, energy and misery of pursuing something so futile.
Lastly, private and prep schools must get on board CC too then. If it is used to “validate” the diploma, then everyone should take it. Why should certain students not have to meet the standards of other students?
But, of course, if one removes the tests then the profitability vanishes. No test prep materials needed! No suggested curricula (I’m looking at you EngageNY). The test publishers and vendors will see all the profits disappear. So I guess we’re stuck with it until it becomes obvious to everyone that it is a failure.
LikeLike
What are the stakes for students in these exams?
LikeLike
Some states are discussing the idea of tying diplomas to proficiency / passage.
LikeLike
I thought that was the case. When you posted that the tests where “suddenly high stakes for everyone” I thought that I had missed changes that made these exams high stakes for the students taking them,
LikeLike
In my state, third grade students who fail the reading portion of the EOGs will have to attend summer reading camp (and improve their reading) or they will be retained in 3rd grade. There are some alternatives (a reading portfolio or an alternative test in some cases) According to the parents I have spoken to, at least some of these students are aware of the stakes.
LikeLike
EOGs? Are these CCSS exams?
LikeLike
EOG’s are end of grade tests. We also have End of class tests and End of year tests. They are all supposedly aligned to common core since that is what is taught in English and Math. We have NC essential standards for other subjects. Every subject is not tested. They are the high stakes tests.
Besides having to pass for 3rd grade in NC, there are 3 tests required to pass high school (Math 1, English 2 and Biology 1). The tests count for a minimum of 20% of your grades in high school. This is from the state. The tests are used to determine eligibility into gifted classes and which language arts and math class you will have in middle school. Each district has some variations on the percents counted in high school or what else may be mandated but this is the main parts of how high stakes impacts students.
LikeLike
Interesting. My state has no required exams for high school graduation. If I remember correctly, the local district uses the WISC-IV off label to determine eligibility for a gifted IEP.
LikeLike
It is sad that we allow excellence to be determined by tests alone.
LikeLike
TE, surely you know that the new assessments are meant to be high stakes. In many states, the current state assessments must be passed in order to advance to the next grade or to graduate from high school. And schools are given letter grades and teachers evaluated based on these tests. The whole idea of introducing the new PARCC and SBAC assessments is to make them high stakes. You must understand this, so why do you keep asking this question. No, PARCC and SBAC are not currently high stakes. Yes, most of the state tests are currently high stakes, and yes, the plan is for PARCC and SBAC to become high stakes.
LikeLike
They are currently 20% of a student’s grade in my state. And passage of said classes is a graduation requirement.
LikeLike
Algebra and ELA aligned with CCSS will become part of the graduation requirement in NYS. And to really up the ante, students will have to score a 75 in math and an 80 in ELA just to PASS. This was supposed to take effect as of the 2017 graduation cohort, but the Board of Regents, out of the goodness of their stone cold hearts has postponed these “CCollege ready” scores until the 2022 class arrives. In the mean time a mere 65 will be deemed PASSING. Sped advocates should be lining up their legal challenges soon.
LikeLike
It looks to me like the new SAT will be the way to get all students aligned with common core. Certainly some private schools will decide to align but many (perhaps the majority) won’t. I am interested to see what the changes will be but I am confident that the new test can be taught efficiently to otherwise well educated students right before they take the test.
Of course, if this all comes to pass it will serve as an example to undermine the whole CC system. That is, if it is possible to get students to start doing whatever Coleman wants students to do with the Federalist Papers 10th grade without beginning in kindergarten why are we so wedded to a backwards-engineered curriculum to begin with?
LikeLike
exactly!!!
The authors of these the “standards” in ELA knew almost nothing about teaching English and so they put together learning progressions that are the equivalent of impossible figures like an Escher staircase or the devil’s trident. They didn’t have a clue how learning and acquisition in these domains occurs and how it is built over time. That’s why I call the whole undertaking “deformy magic.”
LikeLike
Bob, I am starting to think that the bigger crime is not the poor design but how much of it is unnecessary and premature. Going off Coleman’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” mock lesson, these are skills that can be taught to adolescents and indeed this may be the best developmental window for them to acquire the skills Coleman wants. Why subject them to backwards-engineered versions of this end-goal all up through the grades? I think this is a very poor way to deal with the students who won’t be able to latch on quickly as adolescents. Aren’t there better ways of noticing their challenges and addressing them earlier? In fact don’t they probably need some other exercises and out-of-the box interventions precisely because they are grasping things in a different way or at a different rate than their peers?
This is completely not my area of expertise but if it comes to pass that children educated outside of CC are able to jump in at the last minute and test as well or better than children who have been exposed to a rigid curriculum all along, we ought to ask ourselves if the whole scheme is the most efficient way to reach our goals.
LikeLike
Emmy, I think you are on to the core problem with these standards. To put it bluntly: almost nobody really knows how to “teach” these standards. Many people THINK they know. But drilling the skills may not turn kids into the intellectual ninjas they’re supposed to become. We’re taking shots in the dark.
We had a Common Core trainer recently tell us that she talked to a kid who had done close-reading practice in five of his six classes that day! In lieu of actually learning about the world, this kid is doing arid drills all day. Is that a good education?
I agree with Steve K above: the standards themselves have some good points, but the tests have no redeeming features, and they’re likely to engender a hideous test-prep curriculum in most schools.
LikeLike
“Certainly some private schools will decide to align but many (perhaps the majority) won’t.”
Yes, I cannot imagine the elite, expensive private schools I am familiar with adopting CCSS. Nor does it seem that they are currently teaching what amounts to CC.
LikeLike
From the posting above: “The standards must be decoupled from the tests.”
Re CC, shortly before that quote: “Maybe, like a chicken whose neck was wrung off, it is still running around in circles, unaware that it is dead.”
With all due respect, decoupling the standards as propounded by the self-styled “education reformers” from the tests makes them precisely the kind of chickens described just above.
😉
From an unimpeachable source deep in the heart of the education establishment, Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute:
[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/
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
LikeLike
“The rush to implement Common Core–without proper preparation of students or teachers, with appropriate materials, without a massive investment in instruction–has caused a perfect storm of hostility, pushback, and resentment among both parents and educators.”
I am tired of this one often repeated point that insults teachers and implies that this is such a difficult “shift” that we need more time to be properly prepared. If we were to be “properly prepared” what would that mean – ready to teach to the test? What materials? Pearson test prep? What in-service? Robotic instruction from The Teaching Channel?
Teachers are used to quickly adapting to the constant and numerous demands of our jobs. We do it every day, every minutes & every second. If the CCSS were actually designed to be good for children, it wouldn’t have been forced, pushed through, and used as punishment.
The sooner this is history, the better.
LikeLike
I totally agree with this point. The new standards aren’t some sort of magic wand that will make teachers teach better or students learn better. The only thing time will help me with is getting a better handle on what is actually on the test.
LikeLike
Exactly!
LikeLike
yes yes yes yes yes
The LAST THING that US K-12 education needs is “unpacking” of these mind-numbingly amateurish “standards.”
LikeLike
Thank you, Danielle! I’ve come to count John Thompson among the most aggressive and tenacious proponents of corporate control, I’m afraid.
Just when I think maybe he’s actually come over, here comes another slippery call for unilateral surrender. “The rush to implement Common Core–without proper preparation of students or teachers, with appropriate materials, without a massive investment in instruction–has caused a perfect storm of hostility, pushback, and resentment among both parents and educators.”
Wait, what? When did it become our goal to preserve the CC$$ from pushback by parents and educators, at all costs?
LikeLike
Exactly. We should be doing everything in our power to end the imposition on the nation of this restraint on freedom of thought about learning progressions and outcomes.
LikeLike
Also, schools will simply become test prep factories. They’ll be forced to ensure passing scores (to the best of their ability) to generate graduates. That isn’t education. Every day becomes test prep day.
LikeLike
Spot On!
LikeLike
Having any uneducated and unqualified person writing science standards is very scary.
LikeLike
Indeed. Creationists sit on the state school board and in the state legislature because they win elections, not because of any expertise they have.
LikeLike
FEDS require Texas 8th graders to double test. If they don’t, the campus/district will suffer the loss of credit for kids passing the test.
Ex. 8Th grader takes the Alg 1 test. If it counts in the overall score for 8th grade, then that students score will not be included in the cohorts overall score when the rest of the grade takes the Alg. 1 test in 9th grade. Inverse is true as well. Imagine trying to have acceptable scores without the benefit of the scores of top students.
Middle School Students Taking Algebra I
March 6, 2014
Word Version
March 6, 2014
To the Administrator Addressed:
SUBJECT: Middle School Students Taking Algebra I
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has been in communication with the United States Department of Education (USDE) regarding the State’s January 27, 2014 application to amend the approved ESEA flexibility request regarding Algebra I end-of-course assessments for middle school students. Although TEA has not received written notification denying the request, the USDE has communicated that a letter of denial is forthcoming given the USDE: (1) has never approved similar waivers from other states and (2) no other mathematics assessment, except Algebra I, exists at the high school level that will meet USDE requirements to assess the State’s required mathematics curriculum standards. TEA is communicating this decision by USDE to school districts in advance of receiving a written denial because the STAAR grade 8 mathematics assessment will be administered by school districts on April 1, 2014.
The waiver request was submitted because I do not believe that double testing middle school students is instructionally appropriate nor a valid evaluation of mathematics for Texas middle schools and high schools. Despite the USDE decision on the amendment request, I cannot support testing students on content that does not reflect the instruction the students received that school year and cannot justify arbitrarily assigning a set of prior year test scores to a campus to meet federal accountability requirements given the test scores are not tied to current year instruction on that campus. Therefore, I intend to exercise my authority over state and federal accountability to remove the incentive for a school district to double test a student solely for accountability purposes.
For 2014 and 2015 state and federal accountability, if a student takes the STAAR Algebra I end-of-course assessment and a STAAR mathematics grade level assessment, only the results of the Algebra I assessment will be included in the accountability calculations for the campus and the district where the student tested.
This policy will be adopted by Commissioner of Education rule in the 2014 and 2015 state accountability manuals and will be included in the 2014 and 2015 federal accountability addendums that the TEA is required to submit to USDE. Further, TEA does not intend to count students who took Algebra I in middle school as non-participants at their high school through the participation safeguard for state or federal accountability purposes. To do so would be inconsistent with a policy of discouraging the double testing of middle school students in mathematics.
Texas Education Code(TEC) §39.053 provides the commissioner of education with the authority to adopt the performance indicators used for state accountability, including the results of state required assessments, and determine how the STAAR performance results will be calculated and used. The Commissioner of Education is also responsible for determining how the State of Texas will meet federal accountability requirements.
Current federal accountability requirements specify that students have a mathematics score every year in grades 3–8 as well as a mathematics score in high school. The USDE requires states that offer only one mathematics assessment at the high school level — which can also be taken by middle school students — to ensure there is a mathematics result that can be attributed to a high school. House Bill 5 passed by the Eighty-third Texas Legislature, Regular Session, 2013, eliminated high school assessments in geometry and Algebra II, thereby permitting a portion of Texas students to complete their mathematics testing requirements for high school graduation prior to entering high school. An additional provision of House Bill 5 permits school districts to double test students on STAAR Algebra I and a STAAR grade level mathematics assessment for federal accountability purposes.
Given state and federal testing requirements, USDE denial of the amendment request, and the Texas Legislature’s decision to reduce end-of-course testing to one high school mathematics assessment, I am eliminating incentives for double testing students for accountability purposes.
My primary concern about instituting these accountability policies in 2014 and 2015 is that some school districts may make poor instructional decisions regarding accelerated students. For example, to avoid the dilemma of having these students’ scores attributed to a middle school campus instead of the high school campus, some districts might reconsider offering Algebra I at the middle school level. This would seriously disadvantage students who move quickly through the mathematics curriculum in grades K-8 and would benefit from taking advanced coursework in middle school. This stalls students’ academic progress and provides them with one less opportunity to take an advanced mathematics course or another relevant upper-division course in high school.
Given this concern, Texas Education Agency will be analyzing course completion data submitted by school districts to ensure that enrollment in Algebra I by middle school students does not precipitously decline beginning with the 2014-2015 school year. Based on this annual analysis, some school districts may be contacted to explain reductions in Algebra I enrollments by middle school students.
Sincerely,
Michael Williams
Commissioner of Education
LikeLike
There are several studies, one in particular carried out in the Dade County System, about twenty years ago, that documents what is described in this post. The public will tolerate so much failure and then the push back starts. In the case of Dade, they raised graduation requirements—when the graduate rates plummeted, school administrators began a process of implementing a variety of courses/gimmicks to meet the new graduation requirements and finally the heat got so bad, that the requirements were reduced. I feel the same trend will eventually occur with the charter school movement. At the end of the day, charter schools must make money and that can only mean reduction in services –whether larger classes sizes, uncertified teachers, elimination of special education–those reductions will begin to get old for parents—especially in suburban schools. What our political class continues not to understand is the reality that some public services, serve the common good, and thus, must receive some form of public subsidy– in other words, public schools are not designed to turn a profit, but to offer up a public good. Not to belabor the point, but the same could be said about the treasured conservative belief in the power of competition to solve all problems. Again, competition is an incentive system that works in some industries, but when serving a common good, racing to the top, designs schools for serving a private good—zero sum incentive systems have no place the public service domain.
LikeLike
“How will we respond to failure rates of 50-60-70% or more among the neediest students?”
That, unfortunately, is an easy one: “we” will scapegoat and blame public schools and their teachers, and then proceed to eliminate tenure (already largely a vestige) and seniority, and proceed to the schools over to privateers and gadget peddlers.
It’s a morbid irony that the old Leninist saw of, “The worse, the better” is being employed by the richest and most powerful Overclass in world history, to impose their radical and fundamentally totalitarian – literally so, since they aim for total control of education, pre-K-16 – agenda.
LikeLike
1. You hit this Nail on the Head with this Hammer!!!
“Hammer of Justice”
2. Hope it rang a few bells….or maybe got to a few dumbells…
“Bell of Freedom”
3. Keep singing about the danger
I hope they heed the warning and admit the danger
Song of Hope….
*****Thanks LEE HAYS, PETE SEEGER, and Peter,Paul and Mary
I think your song describes it well and should be the Theme Song for the NPE
LikeLike
I have a rule of thumb for determining whether someone knows the first thing about teaching English:
Does he or she support mandating the amateurish bullet list that is the CC$$ in ELA?
I work with these “standards” all the time. I don’t have a choice. That decision was made for me and for everyone else by a few plutocrats. “The deciders” let’s call them.
Having worked a lot with these “standards,” I can tell you that to know them is to hate them. My overwhelming impression after working with these “standards” for a couple years now is that it’s as though Achieve followed this procedure in order to get them prepared:
1. Go to the local Rotary Club
2. Ask the club to put together a committee made up of the owners of a few local businesses (perhaps a guy who owns an insurance agency, one who owns a barber shop, and one who manages a golf course).
3. Ask those people to put together a list of standards for the teaching of English based on the theory that they’ve all been to school and taken English classes and so know what they are doing.
My overwhelming impression is that these “standards” are the work of amateurs, of people who had no clue how much they were leaving out, what questionable assumptions they were making, how much great current and future curricula and pedagogy their bullet list would preclude, how the types of learning and acquisition in the various ELA domains differ from one another, and how many different ways there to measure those types of learning and acquisition. And they also had no breadth of knowledge of those domains. One can easily drive whole curricula through the lacunae in these “standards.”
The CC$$ in ELA are amateur work. The authors of “standrads” this bad should long ago have been laughed off the stage. There are a few decent ideas, most already widely understood and not the revelations they are claimed to be, in the material surrounding the standards (Read closely!!! Gee, what a revelation.), and these could have been issued as general, voluntary guidelines or frameworks.
But no, we got the bullet list from the committee of amateurs.
And there are even expert ELA consultants who have noticed where the money is flowing from and are enthusiastically “unpacking” this drivel.
As Edward Tufte put it, “There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.”
I laugh a grim laugh whenever I hear anyone refer to these as “new, higher standards.” These “standards” are common, certainly, as in base, vulgar, received, mediocre, and unexamined.
LikeLike
I think it a terrible mistake to have a single set of invariant national standards instead of having competing, voluntary standards that are continually revisited and revised and accepted, rejected, or accepted with modification by autonomous, free schools and districts.
But if one is to have national standards, one should approach the creation of them with high seriousness. That was not done. Achieve hired some amateurs to correlate the lowest-common-denominator groupthink in the existing state standards and added a few notions that had been bouncing around its echo chamber and abacadabra! the new “standards” were born.
If an overzealous rollout of the new tests kills the standards, that will be a great thing for K-12 education in the United States.
LikeLike
Then those education consultants can turn to enthusiastically unpacking whatever NEW BIG THING is next rolled out onto the K-12 education carnival midway, but at least whatever notions they start peddling won’t be mandated for all.
LikeLike
Of course the actual alternative to the CCSS is not “competing, voluntary standards that are continually revisited and revised and accepted, rejected, or accepted with modification by autonomous, free schools and districts.” It is a single set of invariant statewide standards.
I still don’t see how you can have autonomous free schools in a system that assigns students to these autonomous free schools based on street address. Could you elaborate on this point?
LikeLike
TE, for a long, long time the English teachers in a local high school could get together and make their own decisions about what curricular materials to adopt and what learning progressions and pedagogical procedures to employ. You are correct that if the alternative is invariant state standards created by committees of educrats at the state level, that’s just as bad (and easily gamed by lobbyists from the big educational materials providers).
However, there is an alternative: replace the bullet lists of standards with broad, general frameworks describing goals. These would provide the degrees of freedom within which actual innovation could occur.
LikeLike
I had hoped that your notion of independent free school would be more than just picking the reading list for American literature.
How about your idea that math is taught in the context of a variety of more applied programs? Could the local school district assign students living at my address to the high school that used computer design to teach the math curriculum and prevent students living at my street address from going to the high school that uses a machine tool program for teaching math?
LikeLike
For that to work, TE, those public schools have to provide a LOT of choices, much more choice than most provide now. That’s the problem that we have to solve, or would be attempting to solve, if we weren’t distracted by the new deformish accountability demands (prepping for the tests and the VAM).
As always, you raise excellent questions. Kids differ, and one size does not fit all. Here are my recommendations:
1. Create an IEP for every student and a committee consisting of the student, his or her parents and guardians, a guidance counsellor, and a couple of teachers to map that student’s path through the school system.
2. Replace grades for broadly defined classes (Algebra I, US History) with certificates of attainment of narrowly scoped content and skills, mastery of which can be demonstrated via several alternative means (preparation of original work in a portfolio or passing an exam). At the end of a K-12 course of study, the student will have accumulated a great many of these.
3. Replace classes in broad subject areas (English I, Algebra I) with a wide variety of highly specific flexible-modular offerings, including workshops, seminars, lecture classes, study groups, and ed tech. Draw upon resources from outside the school to supplement those offered within the school.
4. Create multiple paths through these offerings that reflect the differences in students and differing goals. Ideally, a kid with a mechanical/engineering bent should be able to study mathematics and physics via classes like “measurement of materials” and “woodshop geometry.” A kid with an artistic bent should be able to study such subjects via classes like “measurement for designers” and “design geometry.” Same topics as in the old days, different content. Very hands on.
5. Create a national portal for design of such modules.
6. Fund the necessary facilities for hands-on learning (shops, labs, studios).
7. Do a lot of diagnostic work throughout K-12, using much better tools than we now have, to get at actual attainment, ability, proclivities, etc.
8. Make up for the huge language gap that kids come into school with by creating immersive spoken language environments that for low SES kids designed to introduce the sophisticated spoken language vocabulary and syntax not found in the home environment so that the kids’ internal LADs have something to work on. THIS IS CRITICAL.
I have lots more specific suggestions that get at your question, but this isn’t the place. Explaining those would take a lot of time.
LikeLike
So, how do we get there? We get there by
replacing national and state “standards” with general guidelines (or frameworks) that provide lots of degrees of freedom
making sure that one of those general guidelines is that the differing abilities and goals of students must be recognized by the system and built upon
giving local districts and schools a great deal of autonomy enabling them to innovate
providing opportunities for teachers and administrators to get a close look at the innovations that others are implementing
I also think that we have to pay teachers more, demand more expertise going into the job, and provide them with the time in their schedules to submit their practice to continual critique and revision via Japanese-style Lesson Study
LikeLike
So, in the plan that I have articulated here, there would be very important roles for the testing companies and for ed tech to play, but those roles would liberate potential and help to create intrinsically motivated learners instead of being the demotivational tools that they most commonly are today
LikeLike
In short, TE, the public school system does not have to be a monolith. There are ways to change that without replacing public schools with for-profit ventures run by grifters most interested in skimming taxpayer dollars–turning those into enormous inflated salaries and real-estate holdings.
LikeLike
I spend some time arguing on this blog in favor of a very much decentralized public school system. I look forward to your company in making those points.
LikeLike
What I am suggesting, TE, is that we can design alternative tracks within schools. A high school does not have to offer one approach to math instruction, not in a time in which alternative resources can easily be brought to bear and when the use of those resources can be supervised by instructors who spend much of their time acting as mentors and facilitators.
Years ago, I did my student teaching in a school that used flexible modular scheduling. The teachers had carrels in a large, central common study room. They would leave from these to go conduct workshops or lectures or demonstrations or whatever of varying length as necessary for the modules that they were teaching, but they spent most of their time as available resources that any kid could call upon for assistance with his or her work.
LikeLike
It seems to me that you would get some good scale economies with fewer tracks per building and students choosing the building. Does every high school have to have every track?
LikeLike
“I had hoped that your notion of independent free school would be more than just picking the reading list for American literature.”
Really, TE? Did I not say that before the era of state-issued bullet lists, local teachers could choose their materials, their learning progressions, and their pedagogical techniques? Clearly, I did, and that’s a helluvalot more than choosing their reading lists.
LikeLike
But a lot less than scrapping the traditional approach to teaching mathematics or converting the whole school to take a Montessori approach to education. That would be serious autonomy.
LikeLike
So, people want accountability. Via a system like the one I have briefly outlined, we could have that. The student would end up with these certificates that say, “I have demonstrated my understanding of the major ideas, authors, and works of the American Transcendentalist movement” and “I have demonstrated my ability to create a website with style sheets in HTML 5.” And together, these certificates, would make for a unique path through the system on which a student could discover his or her passions.
Because that’s what schooling should be about. It should be about feeding the flame of intrinsic desire to learn that kids are born with, for education is not the filling of a bottle but the feeding of that flame.
Some kids come into the system, and the flame is almost extinguished. For most, we make sure that it is entirely extinguished by the time they reach sixth grade.
Kids differ. Standards and standardized tests do not.
A complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs those differences, not kids who have been identically milled.
LikeLike
I’m not sure I like the certificate idea. It sounds like it could be as stultifying as a high stakes test. The real danger of formalized accountability systems is their tendency to micromanage, which I know you are opposed to. I look at my education and see a gentle helical progression. Over those 12 years of undergraduate education, I was slowly introduced to a basic structure of knowledge through which I honed my ability to respond to the environment around me. The realization that “schooling” is never over only gradually dawned on me. The fact that I find that thought a god send is what I want all students to embrace. How incredibly stultifying life would be if at some predetermined point we “topped out” on learning. The ultimate couch potato.
I’m really not criticizing you, Bob. I think I am fighting this overwhelming urge people seem to have for a rock solid guarantee. “I swear on all things pedagogical that he learned that material, and he demonstrated it by completing this series of performance tasks I set for him. Now he is ready to tackle x, y, and z.” It’s easier to think this way the older the student as we struggle with determining the tools we want each high school graduate to own. I have no answer.
LikeLike
Did you really mean to say 12 years of undergraduate education? My chancellor would have been very cross with you as the goal is to graduate in 4.
LikeLike
Yep, I said it. Thankfully undergrads finish their formal studies a might quicker. 🙂 I was thinking of the K-12 population.
LikeLike
I am absolutely in favor of a decentralized public school system, of a return to local autonomy (but under broad guidelines, or frameworks).
Centralization of the school system has been a great evil.
For example, state standards and adoption criteria that micromanaged curricula and pedagogy in the schools led directly to the consolidation of the educational materials market in the hands of three monopolistic vendors.
LikeLike
I look forward to your help in advocating for building and student autonomy in other threads here.
I think scale economies in printing and distribution contribute a great deal to the large market shares of publishers. The folks that I talk to at Pearson, Cengage, and Norton all think of themselves as software companies these days. The barriers to entry in that market are very low.
LikeLike
TE, like Diane, I used to be a proponent of charters and vouchers because I wanted to see more diversity in school offerings and because I was horrified by the awful sameness and lack of innovation that we were seeing due to micromanagement of local schools by clueless educrats. But the proof is in the pudding, and I’ve seen far too much grift in both the brick-and-mortar and virtual charters and far too much cherry picking of students. It’s just far too easy for con artists to game the charter and voucher systems. I’ve also come to believe that the evidence shows unequivocally that these policies, where practiced, actually increase the achievement gap and savage inequalities. Those inequalities can best be addressed, I believe, through equitable public funding of public schools, including providing additional resources for wrap-around services in low SES areas. And I think that emerging technologies make possible offering the diversity that I seek from within the public school system. I am loathe to throw over a system that has been as brilliantly successful, over the long run, as the US public school system has been. There’s nothing conservative about heedlessly tossing aside a system that has served us so well. I believe that the way forward is to recommit to the common schools, to do away with the top-down, one-size-fits-all mandates, and to return autonomy to local schools so that market forces–a truly free market in educational ideas and approaches and materials–can actually work to bring about innovation. Local social sanction is a powerful force for positive change and for preventing corruption and the woeful unintended consequences of decision making by distant, centralized powers.
Centralization and standardization are great evils. So is creating the conditions in which con artists can flourish.
LikeLike
You are right, TE, that economies of scale due to printing costs has been a huge contributing factor.
But the barriers to entry to the ed software market are not that low, TE. A few issues:
There are 93,000 schools in the US. Getting the message out to those is expensive. Marketing is a huge part of the P&L for any product, print or digital.
A database system like inBloom creates a gateway through which only “partners” of inBloom can pass.
State adoption criteria favor some vendors. See New York’s adoption of what is basically the Amplify curriculum. Often, state adoption criteria come with a long, long list of requirements that only the deep-pocketed can meet (long lists of ancillary materials, for example, and compatibility with state data and reporting systems).
One of the huge costs for ed software development is images. The big publishers have enormous intellectual property holdings there. Bill Gates, for example, owns Corbis, and I suspect that that’s a great thing for any of the companies that he is incubating.
Another huge cost is permissions, which is a big deal given the CC$$ emphasis on informative texts. Again, the big publishers have huge intellectual property holdings there. The small publisher can’t draw on those.
The national standards effectively preclude development of a lot of truly innovative curricula and pedagogical approaches–anything “not in the standards.” They make it difficult for the new publisher to come at the monopolists with a genuine innovation, with something disruptive to their hackneyed approaches. This is a BIG one that is not widely appreciated. If there is one recipe or formula, it’s going to be easier for the deep-pocketed company to implement it than for the smaller one to do so. The small innovator has always relied on his or her ability to come at the market with something fresh, but if that’s ruled out a priori, . . .
I have long contended that the push by the monopolists to enact national standards was a reaction to the dangers to their traditional business model presented by the low cost of pixels as compared to paper and by the emergence of the open-source curricula movement. It was important for them to ENFORCE scaling.
LikeLike
Oh, and locking big districts into a particular platform with preloaded curricula is another way to keep competitors out.
LikeLike
cx: economies of scale . . . have been a huge contributing factor, of course
LikeLike
cx: The number of public schools is about 99,000.
LikeLike
Any move, like adopting national standards, that makes for paint-by-number approaches to education greatly favors existing monopolistic providers.
LikeLike
never2old, you misunderstood my intent. I am not suggesting a top-down certification program. I’m talking about independent schools being able to design their own.
LikeLike
I’m not sure I still understand. What would your school “system” look like?
LikeLike
” Ask the club to put together a committee made up of the owners of a few local businesses (perhaps a guy who owns an insurance agency, one who owns a barber shop, and one who manages a golf course).
3. Ask those people to put together a list of standards for the teaching of English based on the theory that they’ve all been to school and taken English classes and so know what they are doing.”
You are insulting these local business owners. They may tag along like so many who listen to the mantra, but they are smart enough to know they should not be writing English standards. It takes a special kind of arrogance to think that you can walk in and tell someone how to do a job with which you have no familiarity.
LikeLike
yes, never2old, of course. mea culpa.
LikeLike
Education reform. Process by which one brings about innovation in and personalization of learning via
standardization,
centralization,
decontextualization, and
dehumanization.
LikeLike
In 1984 Orwell defines doublethink as the ability to accept mutually contradictory beliefs as simultaneously correct.
Ed deform is doublethink.
LikeLike
from the Reformish Lexicon:
CCCCRAP. Common Core College and Career Ready Assessment Program.
Collective name for PARCC (spelled backward, as in a grimoire), SBAC (notSmarter imBalanced), and the new S.C.C.A.T. (Scholastic Common Coring of America Tool).
LikeLike
One more reason why the tests are making Common Core implementation difficult or even impossible:
Key lawmaker says report shows Michigan may not be ready for online testing
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140306/SCHOOLS/303060109#ixzz2vIlw9jvH
LikeLike
I apologize if this has been said time and time again, but I am a College student looking into the field of education for when I graduate, and when I went to ask teachers how they felt about Standards Based education (Maine’s fix to the common core) they both stated that when it came any sort of standards it was a scary thought to have people getting together to meet and decide on what each subjects standards where, even though most of the people in a room had probably never set foot in a classroom since graduation day at their alma mater.
I do have one question though, and if anyone could shed some light on it that would be amazing. Would the death of Common Core be a terrible thing? Thinking about if it where to fall through the floor, could it just be giving way to better education standards as it has in Maine? or do you think that once it’s gone that’s all she wrote as it where?
LikeLike
Right on target John. Some thoughts http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
LikeLike
I agree. These tests serve nothing but punitive ends. In order to implement any sort of positive change, tests should only be diagnostic. These tests would then be used to determine what needs to be learned and to determine the appropriate sequential learning goals for students.
The only reasons I find the CCSS to be inappropriate have to do with the fact that they are not vetted, tried, adjusted, trampolines, and continuously field tested prior to their institution as “the absolute answer and solution” to what is “wrong” with education in America.
More apt would be to discover what us wrong in America due to unbridled greed and a desire to make every aspect of life “owned” by a private corporation. Talk about freedom. How are we free when we are subjected again and again to some random decision by a few people with money? Why do moguls have the right to designate just who is “good enough” to participate in this society? Why should some data collectors be allowed to interpret data however they wish and then use that data to ruin lives? I am sick of vCard this.
http://time.com/15199/college-president-sat-is-part-hoax-and-part-fraud/
LikeLike
diagnostic and formative; summative products should be products–things that kids produce
LikeLike
“How are we free when we are subjected again and again to some random decision by a few people with money?”
Wouldn’t this make a great essay question for the SAT!
LikeLike
LOL. Yes, it would! Very like some of the questions that are asked on le bac, BTW.
LikeLike
My next door neighbor has been playing very loud and disturbing music all night long. The music contains offensive lyrics and is preventing my kids from getting a full nights sleep. As a result, my children’s progress in school is being negatively impacted. Their constantly tired, cranky, and have trouble doing thier homework. And the music keeps playing, all night long.
I finally called my neighbor and demanded that he stop playing his music. Gave him all the good reasons any rational person would need to stop. Tired kids. Inappropriate lyrics. Schoolwork suffering; parents being driven crazy; very frustrating. Please stop the madness, I mean music I pleaded.
My neighbor responded with a question:
“If I stop playoing the music, what do yo want me to do instead?”
LikeLike
Bob Shepherd..your quote is Powerful!
It should be about feeding the flame of intrinsic desire to learn that kids are born with, for education is not the filling of a bottle but the feeding of that flame.
LikeLike