You know Common Core is in deep trouble when Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst creates a group to rally round the cause of high expectations. Somehow this new organization pretends to be antagonists to the union but the teachers’ unions have been generally supportive of Common Core. The criticism of the state’s rushed rollout has been nearly universal. Exactly what the demonstrators are supporting is unclear, unless the point is to defend the startlingly high failure rates generated by the state tests. Only 3% of English learners passed. Only 5% of students with disabilities passed. Less than 20% of black and Hispanic students passed. Maybe what StudentsFirst would like best is a test that no one passed. Now, that’s high expectations!

Categories Common Core, New York, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Testing

14 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Sucker-punched in Sactown says:

April 9, 2014 at 8:45 am

Same old kool-aid, different flavor!

Reply
Chiara Duggan says:

April 9, 2014 at 8:54 am

I hate to say it, but it looks like you-all were right about the Common Core:

“When students start taking Common Core exams, the results will “expose that we have a middle-class crisis in this country,” predicted a local charter school network CEO.

The remark came at the eighth annual Yale School of Management Education Leadership Conference, which brings national figures in the education field to the Omni Hotel every April.

The conference opened with a panel of educators from Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport. The panel, like the conference, had a heavy emphasis on charter schools: Two of five panelists hailed from charter schools, and the conference included a site visit to Amistad Academy, the flagship in the Achievement First network of charter schools.”

It’ll be used to justify privatizing the system. The public school kids are just now taking their tests, and the charter operators are already swooping in to capitalize on the low test scores they engineered.

What a betrayal by the adults behind this. I will now opt my kid out. I’m not going to have him being used as the instrument to privatize his own school. We were lied to.

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/yale_som_conference/#.U0Uq7K0WbxI.twitter

Reply
- Linda says:
  
  April 9, 2014 at 9:48 am
  
  Chiara, do read the comments. People are getting it and catching on to the scam. Some of us are busy doing it while they lounge around bloviating.
  
  Reply
Chiara Duggan says:

April 9, 2014 at 9:28 am

The big marketing machine on Common Core is just revving up. Wait until they get some actual “data” from these kids. If we thought public schools were national punching bags prior to this massive national testing experiment, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Reply
- Michael Fiorillo says:
  
  April 9, 2014 at 9:38 am
  
  Chiara, you’ve probably already seen this post, where so-called reformer Rick Hess let the Common core cat out of the bag in 2012, but just in case you or other readers haven’t:
  
  blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess/the_common_core_kool_aid.html
  In this posting, Hess was indiscreet enough to reveal the truth of what Common Core is intended to do, which is precisely what you say.
  
  Reply
- KrazyTA says:
  
  April 9, 2014 at 6:05 pm
  
  Michael Fiorillo: Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute has a way of letting the cat out of the bag.
  
  First, the link you provide: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2012/11/the_common_core_kool-aid.html
  
  A money quote from the 2012 piece to which you refer:
  
  [start quote]
  
  First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing. Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessment results rather than their own lying eyes. (In the case of NCLB, these same folks believed their eyes rather than the state tests, and questioned the validity of the latter–but the presumption is that things will be different this time.) Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace “reform.” However, most of today’s proffered remedies–including test-based teacher evaluation, efforts to move “effective” teachers to low-income schools, charter schooling, and school turnarounds–don’t have a lot of fans in the suburbs or speak to the things that suburban parents are most concerned about.
  
  And this brings us to the crux of the matter. After failing miserably to convince suburban and middle-class voters that reforms designed for dysfunctional urban systems and at-risk kids are good for their children and their schools, Common Core advocates now evince an eerie confidence that they can scare these voters into embracing the “reform” agenda. And this conviction has become the happy Kool-Aid that allows would-be reformers to ignore the fact that they’re not actually offering to tackle the things (like access to exam-style schools, world language mastery, music and arts instruction, and so on) that suburban parents are passionate about.
  
  [end quote]
  
  Second, a link from a blog posting he made in December 2013, brought to our attention by the redoubtable Dr. Mercedes Schneider.
  
  Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
  
  A money quote from the above linked piece:
  
  [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]
  
  “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.” [Michalel Kinsley]
  
  😎
  
  Reply
  - Michael Fiorillo says:
    
    April 10, 2014 at 10:50 am
    
    “Dr.” Frederick Hess?
    
    Please…
Mom from District 2 says:

April 9, 2014 at 11:34 am

This is the group that I mentioned in my response to Geronimo on the earler “Wow, Wow, Wow” thread. They monoplized the Brooklyn and Manhattan meetings scheduled for parents with King and Tisch last Fall. At the time, they would not identify themselves as a group at all (they had identical hand painted signs) “Our kids can HIT your bar!” (ouch!) Very few of them claimed to be parents, some claimed to be teachers. Most of them did not speak of kids at all – they recounted their own miserable educational experiences from decades earlier (in other states) in a way that seemed orchestrated.

They very successfully (with King and Tisch’s help) made the parents who expressed concerns seem like they were privileged assholes keeping minority kids down by denying them the blessed Common Core in all its glory – even the few actual inner city parents (people who shared what neightborhood they lived in and what school their child attended) who expressed concerns were talked over or ignored.

New York City has an unusually broad range of SES groups in the public school system. At least one of the purposes of this group is to encourage class friction around the idea of standardization.

Reply
philaken says:

April 9, 2014 at 11:36 am

The AFT and NEA aggressively support the Common Core. These Rhee affiliated groups probably thought it would be a better spin to say opposition is coming from those “evil unions” then to say there is massive grassroots opposition to Common Core. Typical Orwellian use of language by them to obscure reality.

Reply
- jon says:
  
  April 9, 2014 at 1:07 pm
  
  Lots of teachers support CCS, however they don’t know what is driving them or don’t care one way or the other. AFT & NEA on the other hand baffles me.
  
  Reply
Blind Noise says:

April 9, 2014 at 5:24 pm

Unfortunately, I think Chiara is spot on. This is the tip of the iceberg . . . or rather, the glacier.

Reply
Jeff Nichols says:

April 9, 2014 at 6:49 pm

Maybe I’m naive, but I think Common Core is finished. How many other issues unite the left and right the way this one does? Even Arne Duncan is backing away. Neither the process that led to its widespread adoption (bribery) nor the shoddy results have escaped notice. And a new corporate backed fake-populist front group is not going to bail out this sinking ship.

Reply
- dianeravitch says:
  
  April 9, 2014 at 9:21 pm
  
  Jeff Nichols, I agree. Common Core s on life support. Many states want out. Bill Gates went from place to place, touting its glories. Corporations are paying for ads on FOX. Sounds like desperation.
  
  Reply
Bob Shepherd says:

April 10, 2014 at 5:02 am

An example of how the Common Core in ELA limits possibilities for curriculum development:

Teaching Metaphor (with Comments on Developing Curricula in the Age of the Thought Police)

Reply