Journalist Sarah Darrer Littman in Connecticut wondered why the legislature was so eager to shut off debate about the Common Core. Connecticut is not a state with a big Tea Party presence. Parents are trying to understand the issues surrounding the sudden shift to national standards whose effects are unknown.
She knows that Arne Duncan and Governor Dannell Malloy and Connecticut’s commissioner Stefan Pryor want the public to believe that the only opponents of the Common Core are from the Tea Party, but she knows that isn’t true.
She writes:
Such diatribes are foolish and myopic. Common Core proponents need to face a very important fact: parents are not idiots. Those of us with older children can see the qualitative difference in curriculum since the Common Core roll out began — and we are not impressed. We’re angered by the loss of instructional time to testing for a benefit that accrues to testing companies rather than our children.
Common Core proponents claim that the standards raise the bar and will make us more competitive. But is this actually true?
I encourage parents and legislators alike to read the September 2013 study:Challenging the Research Base of the Common Core State Standards: A Historical Reanalysis of Text Complexity published by AERA (American Educational Research Association). The analysis focuses on the ELA components of the standards, but what it says about the assumptions driving them and how they were constructed is important: “The blanket condemnation made by the CCSS authors that school reading texts have ‘trended downward over the last half century’ is inaccurate” — particularly so, the authors of the study found, in the K-3 grades. Why this is dangerous is that “we may be hastily attempting to solve a problem that does not exist and elevating text complexity in a way that is ultimately harmful to students.”
She notes:
When the authors of the AERA study analyzed the literature used by Common Core writers to justify the need for more complex texts, what they found was: “a tight and closed loop of researchers citing one another and leading . . . to an artificially heightened sense of scholarly agreement about a decline in textbook complexity.”
At some point, the advocates for the Common Core–Arne Duncan, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Jeb Bush, etc.–will have to wake up and realize that the standards were written without adequate participation by knowledgeable educators, without any consensus process, without transparency, and without any appeals process. These are not standards. They are a mandate, paid for by Bill Gates and imposed by Race to the Top.
The opposition is not going away. Nor will the questions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
http://edr.sagepub.com/content/42/7/381.full.pdf+html?ijkey=EjF4kCvBrzFsA&keytype=ref&siteid=spedr
The entire abstract is interesting but if you don’t have time to read it in its entirety, skip to the “Discussion and Conclusion” section. Thank you, Ms. Littman (and you, too, Diane!), for bringing this to our attention.
Thank you, Deborah, for the link to the paper!!
The Common Core and the NEW book and movie, Divergence, have a lot in Common in regard to the Core message. They are both about creating a NEW world order for 21st Century obedient workers who have been placed in positions BASED on their TEST RESULTS and 95% of them end up exactly where their family genes would have placed them. No more social mobility determined by others factors outside if the TEST. Everyone is conditioned from birth to know their place and fit in without ever questioning the system. Sounds a lot like Common Core. The system knows everything about you. Sounds like data collection or InBloom. Maybe Coleman, Pimentel (The two creators of the ELA portion of common core), McCallum, Zimba, and Daro (the three creators of the math portion) collaborated on the writing of “Divergence”. If not, maybe they read it as a guide! It has the correct lexicon level. I find it interesting that McCallum asked on his website and blog for people to help spread the word of how great his ideas are and those other people who question his work, he referred to “Insanity”. What an ego! You either agree with me or you must be insane! This is the type of person who has helped force common standards on ALL the nations CHILDREN in Public Schools? This makes the movie look like it could really happen in the near future and how ironic that it takes place in Chicago. Arne Duncan would be proud if Chicago turned out like this. It fits his agenda, but I guess I will have to read the next book to find out where the Non-Public School Children live? They would never accept this type of system for themselves or their children. I am still very puzzled by the NON-Reaction or Response from the wealthy parents who do send their children to the same Public Schools? New Tier, Thomas Jefferson, Mission Viejo, University, Walt Whitman, Walnut Hills, Bellevue, Stevenson, and James Madison High Schools just to name a few and now they will have large numbers of students who score well below the levels they have always performed at in the past. Maybe their lives are too busy to keep up with all that is happening in states like NY. If so, then they will have to fight the reactive battle to change something already in place instead of being Proactive and not letting it happen in the first place by having huge numbers Opt-Out NOW!
“…95% of them end up exactly where their family genes would have placed them.”
It’s not genes, it’s socioeconomic factors. Poor people aren’t stupid, they just can’t afford and/or don’t know how to access the kinds of enrichment that rich kids get. Not to mention the stress of living in poverty and how that stress affects brain development.
On Wednesday, Michael Brickman of the Fordham Institute came to Jefferson City, MO to testify before our state Senate Education committee that if Missouri does not keep the Common Core, that we will then have the worst standards in the country.
Yesterday, I was visiting the Kansas City Start up Village — tech entrepreneurs doing very cutting edge stuff thanks to Google Fiber, which chose to be here in Kansas City despite that it could have chosen to be anywhere…..I also was visiting with a large and growing software company that employs and pays well many engineering and programming types. I asked “do you hire local people and if so, what percent of local people do you hire ?” The answer is yes, a lot — and I also talked with several such employees who went to public high school right here in the Kansas City area. Indeed, as many consider this part of the country “fly over”, they need to hire local people….because we like it here.
I also asked “what do you want in your employees ?” The answer, not surprisingly, “critical thinkers and problem solvers”. What does that mean ? “People who can really think outside the box.” This is something that will be extinguished by Common Core, with its “one size fits all” top-down, prescriptive approach.
If we have the worst standards in the country, Mr. Brickman, how is it that our area is the one employing all these STEM folks ? I think we know this answer: all your CC stuff is just bs, that’s how.
I teach math and science. I send many of my students off to STEM careers — we don’t need common core, and we never did. Much of the public can’t see its way clear to the fact that Common Core is nothing but a corporate gravy train — an educational fix that is neither intended to help students, nor capable of doing so. Mr. Brickman did his best to insult the intelligence of our Senators — when asked if the Gates foundation was a significant funder to the Fordham Institute, Brickman cagily answered “our funders are on our website”. He had to be pressed to admit that he knows that it did, when he should have just said “yes, sir”. I guess Mr. Brickman really believes we need Common Core to be smart enough to see through his duplicity. Some of us certainly didn’t.
Julie from Kansas City, please bear in mind that the Fordham Institute, which employs Mr. Brickman, was paid millions of dollars to evaluate and advocate for the Common Core standards. He was just doing his job.
So he told the committee that he came because he cares so much about our Missouri children that he doesn’t want them to have the worst standards in the country….I don’t think anyone believed him.
I would like to read the article, but it costs $30 just to download it. Is there any other place we can read it?
To me, this isn’t about political party. This is about power and greed. Regular folks, not power hungry elitists, from all walks of life are standing up against cc$$. Thanks for continuing the fight for public education.
Sent from my iPhone
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