I cross-posted my article about “The Fatal Flaw of the Common Core Standards” at Huffington Post and on Valerie Strauss’ The Answer Sheet, to reach the broadest possible audience.
This comment appears on Huffington Post:
749 Fans·Jonah and Ahab had different perspectives
Thank you Diane Ravitch for bringing up a point which has never been mentioned previously.I’ve worked in international standards organizations representing various corporate and government interests in both the ITU-T and ISO and the points you raise are spot on. The Common Core “Standards” can be no such thing as they don’t even represent ‘defacto’ standards, let alone mutually agreed upon by all stake holders involved.Beyond their poor content, i.e. standards in math setting requirements 2 years behind the rest of the world, the fact that there is no process to amend them speaks worlds as to their lack of being a “standard”.
Standards are revised, updated and sometimes even redacted as new and better standards become available but with Common Core, they are essentially carved in stone as there is no provisions allowing for or supporting their change.
You might wonder why I did not send that very important article about the Common Core to the New York Times. It is because the New York Times rejected my last submission with no explanation and continues to post editorials and articles endorsing the Common Core. I have decided not to waste my time trying to please the editors of the New York Times’ Op-ed page. They accept what they want, and they don’t accept what I write. The last time I published there was in 2011. I don’t expect ever to publish there again, so I use the power of social media to bypass their editorial screen.
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Helen Louise Herndon St. Peters, MO hloherndon@cs.com
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Ravitch examines the Common Core Standards and finds a “fatal flaw.”
Personally, I find an even more basic flaw. “Standards” are not appropriate when applied to the outcomes of education. Training, as in flying an aircraft, running a metal lathe, constructing a building, or writing a computer program seems a more likely target for standards. After all, we are expecting a pretty uniform outcome for each of the participants. We don’t want our pilot trying out a new landing procedure for the first time when we are the passenger.
Education is an entirely different matter. The goal is to extend the potential of each participant producing diverse outcomes suited to the interest and capabilities of every learner. The only place for standards in this process are in the delivery of the learning. Each child should have access to a qualified teacher, a specified level of resources, an appropriate, safe environment, etc.
It is not just a matter of developing standards for learning in a “standard” way, i.e. ANSI. It is realizing that the objective of education is to meet the needs of each child in an appropriate way and working to achieve that goal.
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Agree, Richard.
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Common Core is college, career, citizenship, creativity and collaboration.
I think they’ll just keep adding words that begin with the letter “c” 🙂
I am so, so tired of being marketed to.
Why don’t they just talk to people? Try that. That might work.
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I agree with Bob, we can not let this fiasco fall into an oversight; and addressing ANSI. States created their own standards. ANSI is a part of the paradigm about “global competition”.
We have already destroyed our economy, let’s not follow with children’s minds, by mincing words. These standards were always about profit, not children. I don’t want to see Jeb Bush and Gates cling to the hope of survival on a standards technicality.
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Standards funded by for-profit companies that are not standards (misrepresentation) causing all sorts of actions (costs) that are not first things first and damaging the outlooks for so many because of misapplied resources and permanent records.
Actions on core standards prevent actions on Early Reading Skills Delivered to district requirements. The class action lawyers might weigh in when core standards are the base to wrong records in teacher evaluations or recorded wrongly as the base to permanent student records. If what you say is true, any record in any data base of performance against the standard is poison and a liability.
What else is needed to stop a school board from using them? There is no safe harbor. Certainly the feds, states, and districts have a fiduciary duty to not misrepresent or overrepresent. Who will pay for the damage to teachers and students. Who is making the money from the adoption of these alleged standards. Are they law? Are they regulations? Are they rules? Does the assumed validity have a risk to it that boards, districts and communties have considered?
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Consider them guidelines developed by the Gates Foundation they are not standards. Use as you choose.
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And of course as one who was interested in the Microsoft antitrust trial of the late 1990s I can’t help but remember that one of the biggest knocks on MS at the time was that they’d violate accepted agreed-upon standards in their own products, “improve” on the standard and then try to use their market power to force outside developers to aim at their “standards” disadvantaging competitors trying to follow accepted standards. Thus you would have the problem of web pages that worked ok in Internet Explorer but not Netscape and using that as a weapon.
Mr. Gates has a long history of abusing standards.
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Charles Barone @CharlesBarone 26m
Anyone who hates fill-in-the-bubble and wants higher-level thinking tests should support @PARCCPlace #CommonCore http://ow.ly/uU5QS
Remember! It’s not about the tests! It’s like when people say “it’s not about the money” 🙂
How much do you love that ed reformers have gone from talking about test scores incessantly for a decade to “hating” fill in the bubble tests. Where would they be without fill in the bubble tests? It’s what the whole “movement” is based on.
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If no one who wrote the standards will stand up for them now, they may be on their way out even before they actually arrived.
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don’t hold your breath…
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Call them standards, or benchmarks, or guidelines. Whatever.
The Common Core standards (as their developers refer to them) are based on some pretty specious thinking.
First, is the notion that the ‘standards’ are necessary because American public education is “in crisis.” Untrue, as the Sandia Report made very clear in 1993 and as NAEP scores indicate now.
Second, is the overarching rationale on which the ‘standards’ are based, namely that they are needed to restore American “economic competitiveness” (which has now been scrubbed from the CCSSI website). The World Economic Forum annual competitiveness rankings bury that line of illogic.
Third, the ‘standards’ cannot possibly be “transformational” (as supporters term it) unless there are a multitude of assessments to accompany them, and those assessments will be expensive. Where’s the money coming from?
Lastly, the two major college entrance test companies – the ACT and the College Board – were intimately involved in writing the ‘standards.’ They now claim that their products are “aligned” with the Common Core. Research shows that their products (yes, that includes Advanced Placement) are mostly worthless. Bill Gates funded the Common Core, and big business funds Achieve, another intimate player in the ‘standards’ development.
It isn’t really education that these groups are interested in.
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Yes standards should be ostensible and not include proverbial hand cuffs, which Common Core seems to.
We already had National Standards for music pre-CcSs. There were nine of them. It was working fine.
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https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/21-3
This is off topic, but I liked FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) on my FB wall and they linked me to this article today. ARE CHARTERS SCHOOLS REALLY “HELPING POOR CHILDREN?”
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Are standards typically copyrighted? That would seem to negate the evolutionary process typically expected as part of a necessary revision process.. CCSS is kind of like a ten commandments of education. Somehow we are to look on them as the creation of obviously god like authorities to be tampered with on pain of death.
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