It is curious that duo many supporters of the Common Core standards want choice among schools but celebrate the standardization and lack of choice among suppliers of education materials. They want to multiply choices of schools while standardizing learning and standing back while only two, perhaps three at most, mega-publishers create nearly identical products for the nation’s students and schools.
Robert Shepherd posted a comment about the death of competition in the marketplace for educational materials. Consolidation started years ago as large companies bought up small companies, and as small companies found they were financially unable to compete with the giant corporations. Those trends have accelerated to the point where only two or three corporations control the education publishing industry. He wonders if anyone cares. I say yes, but no one knows how to stop this monopolizing trend. We feel powerless. To whom do we direct our complaints? This is not an oversight. Creating a national marketplace for vendors of goods and services was an explicit purpose of Race to the Top.
Joanne Weiss, who was Arne Duncan’s chief of staff and who directed Race to the Top, wrote in The Harvard Business Review:
“The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.
“In this new market, it will make sense for teachers in different regions to share curriculum materials and formative assessments. It will make sense for researchers to mine data to learn which materials and teaching strategies are effective for which students – and then feed that information back to students, teachers, and parents.”
This may explain why so many major corporations are enthusiastic about the Common Core. It promises them a national market for their products and bring America’s schools into the national economy, where consolidation reigns. Walmart wins, Amazon wins, Google wins, small-scale enterprises lose and disappear.
Robert Shepherd writes:
“I am despairing of anyone’s paying any attention to the consequences for markets in educational materials on the CC$$ and of inBloom.
“Perhaps we have become so used to people using political influence to fix markets in this country that they simply don’t think twice when they see another instance of this. Is that the problem? Or is it that people don’t understand why these dramatically reduce the number of players in the educational materials market? Or are people just fine with having a couple of all-powerful providers of educational materials and with having all the little companies go under. Maybe people are OK with curricula from the educational equivalent of McDonalds or Walmart or Microsoft.
“Even on this blog, when I post about these matters, there is very, very little, if any, response.
“When I started in the educational publishing business years ago, there were 30 companies competing with one another. When the teachers at a school got together to decide what book they wanted to use, there were many, many options. Now, there are three big providers that have almost the entire market. What were previously competing companies are now separate imprints from one company.
“And the CC$$ creates ENORMOUS economies of scale for those few remaining publishers, making it almost impossible for any other publisher to compete with them.
“And inBloom creates a single monopolistic gateway through which computer-adaptive online materials must pass. A private monopoly created by the state.
“Are people OK with this? Where are the articles and essays and speeches about these issues from those opposed to Education Deform? One can understand the silence from the deformers–they created these deforms precisely in order to ensure their monopoly positions. But . . . but . . . why the deafening silence from the other side?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They are the blight, leaving corpses in their wake.
@Shepard… Robert Reich is addressing the issue of monopolies …
http://robertreich.org/post/82938136466
I’ve said in countless discussions about cc$$ that there is a huge monopoly in education: pearson. It’s another disgusting move by billionaires who want to be trillion aires at the expense of children.
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This is so true. When I taught we worked in teams to author literature based thematic units in language arts and social studies. We presented those units at state conventions and had rave reviews. Our students were immersed in quality literature and the results were avid readers and writers who made connections well beyond what you would expect of young children. Our school at test scores at the 99th percentile and many went on to be National Merit Scholars. Now those themes have been replaced by a very blah basal that teaches to the standards. I have no problem with realistic standards that allow for developmental differences. Our themes were fluid and you could tweak and change them to meet the goals outlined by the powers that be but the literature matched the interest of our students and the activities were written specifically for them – rather than some generic, one size fits all curriculum. Such a sad road we have gone down.
Robert, the excesses of capitalism are destroying the virtures of capitalism, and educational materials and vendors are a prime example of this shift . . . . .
I long, Robert, for a nation of small shopkeepers!
That is why a writer like me will always thrive. Where the big box publisher fails, the niche market supplier will hopefully have a fighting chance. I, too, long for the small shopkeeper.
What kills me is the lack of understanding among the “re-writers” of these textbooks. They are taking the same stories that the textbooks already have permission for and are revising one or two questions. This then makes for the alignment. It is wrong, short sighted, and completely misses the point.
I follow the Anthology Alignment Project on Edmodo. What these Big Box textbook author’s “claim” is aligned to the new standards is, in my professional opinion, missing the mark.
I have not seen one lesson plan from a publisher (especially at the high school level) that truly aligns to the new standards. Simply slapping a standard on something and saying it aligns may sell books in the short run, but the long term damage in the product’s failure to adequately prepare students for the types of tasks required of them on the assessment is nothing short of educational malpractice.
Robert, often you have said that the standards are hackneyed. I am working with the standards and have started to appreciate the beauty in the inter-relatedness of the three key ideas. There is a flow to them that lends itself to natural inquiry and lesson structure. After determining the key ideas, I can focus on the craft and structure. Once students grasp the key ideas, and craft, I can integrate new ideas. Rather than get into a philosophical debate as to the merits of the standards, let’s simply say they are here for the long haul and we have to learn to work with them. Because the big box publishers are not educators, or are educators who are long removed from the classroom and haven’t written a lesson plan in many years, there is a true lack of understanding of the standard’s inter-relatedness among the writers. The Anthology Alignment Project is testimony enough that I am correct on this. The lessons are garbage and completely miss the mark. You are so right on this point. The inmates are running the asylum.
I have, like you, been writing curriculum for years. For a small publisher like Amsco to close its doors after 75 plus years in business it meant that the niche market got a little smaller. Now that I am working with Perfection, I see the merit and time and money and patience that goes into making and producing a meaningful product that has been properly vetted and reviewed by actual classroom teachers.
The smaller publishers are going to have their day. When 70+% of a cohort misses the mark on the new state assessments, the demand for remediation materials like what I am writing will become very popular and demand for quality and scaffolding will be high. The good thing about having only a few big box publishers available, is that the little guys, the after market sellers, might, and I stress, might, just be the panacea to this plague.
http://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/
http://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/what-happens-when-amateurs-write-standards/
http://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/who-said-life-aint-no-crystal-stair/
http://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/connecting-the-pieces-open-source-big-data-and-the-origins-of-the-common-sic-core-sic/
And one more thing. I work in a minority high school. 93% of my students are black. On the 2013 FCAT our students had a 29% passing rate in 10th grade reading test (the highest in the school’s history). That means that 71% are NOT eligible for a high school diploma. However, we graduated 84% of the cohort because the students just needed a little more time to work on their skills and we stressed mastery of the ACT. Since we use that as a concordant score, students focus all their attention to passing the reading section of that test, to the exclusion of the math, English, and science scores. Then the de-formers complain that the scores for math and science on the ACT are dropping! HELLO, McFly! Duh! If the reading requirement is so punitive for the state tests that we have to literally teach students how to pass the reading portion of the ACT in order to graduate, then what was the point of preparing them for the CCSS in the first place?
Oh, Linda, how I long for the day when we can go back to teaching reading instead of teaching InstaReading for the Test, and writing instead of InstaWriting for the Test. Before NCLB, we were making a lot of headway. There was a lot of really creative, really innovative teaching going on around the country. A terrible, standardized sameness has descended. We inhabit the Waste Land of Deform. But not for long. The Dark Lords’ tower is about to come tumbling down.
I look forward, Linda, to a day when these amateurish “standards” have been relegated to the dustbin; when the big-box educational publishing monopolists no longer have a stranglehold on thinking about curricula, pedagogy, and assessment; and people like you are free to start their own companies and think their own thoughts in their own ways. And in that day, if you find an idea or two from Lord Coleman’s ignorant list useful and worth preserving, more power to you. After all, he had ZERO EXPERIENCE and was simply parroting stuff he found in the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the preceding state “standards,” and there were bound to be a few decent ideas there.
It’s interesting to me that when people defend these “standards,” they always do so based on a few glittering generalities that were sprinkled on the bullet list after the fact like confectioner’s sugar. This is a 1,600-item bullet list, and most of it is indefensible.
Again, i suspect that you are doing wonderful things in your school, Linda. More power to you. No time to continue this conversation right now. I have been writing all night. It’s time for me to catch some sleep. Warm regards to you, Bob
It would be fun, Linda, for us to collaborate on some project at some point. I recently updated by publications list. Almost all educational products, created over thirty years’ time. More than 200 items on that list, many of them big basals, lit anthologies, and grammar and composition programs. And some new online stuff. I am very, very interested right now and am thinking a lot about online products. I think there’s a lot that can be done there that is extraordinarily valuable but not like anything that is being produced by the monopolists. I see a LOT of paint-by-number computer-adaptive products that treat Lord Coleman’s list as a curriculum outline for a program of worksheets on isolated CC$$ skills. Total garbage. But there is much, much that we can do with technology that can be a realization of age-old dreams for universal access to the library of knowledge, for true individualization that is not just testing in order to find out where to plop kids down in a predetermined, invariant learning progression.
I do, we do, you do what needs to be done to give these kids a fighting chance in the real world. Every day I come to work ready to save lives. When you see the anger and frustration on a teenager’s face when the scores are released, you understand just how damaging these tests are for a teenager. The day they meet the “requirements” necessary for graduation, is a day of pride and awesome accomplishments! I love being a part of that. I write on my off hours for kids like the ones I am blessed to work with everyday. I can’t imagine not being around kids. Being a teacher, no matter what anyone says, is the best job in the world. Beyond any degree or monetary remuneration, the relationships developed in this building are priceless. I work in a building with tomorrow inside. I take that responsibility as a challenge to always offer my best.
At the end of the day, there is a kid whose future is at the mercy of some politician with an arbitrary cut score. If the standard isn’t met, what is the alternative? What programs will the states be able to offer these kids who don’t meet the cut score? What happens to the teachers if their students don’t perform on game day? Where are the vocational programs for students who don’t have the reading scores to enter the program in the first place? There are so many bigger issues here than the standards or the books we use to teach them. We need alternatives. But, to your point, there aren’t any.
That’s what keeps me fighting ed deform, Linda. I grieve for the kids who are being further beaten down by these assessments. For the ones who come into school with a 30-million word language gap and then are tested and told, “Sorry, you are not what we were looking for.” For the ones in high school whose gifts don’t match those tested. This, this is Beautiful, Linda:
At the end of the day, there is a kid whose future is at the mercy of some politician with an arbitrary cut score. If the standard isn’t met, what is the alternative?
precisely the right question. spoken like a true educator!
And thank you, Linda, for your service, each day.
When you refer to the Lord Coleman list, I am assuming you are talking in part to Appendix B of suggested texts. Many of those high school titles are excerpts from Diane Ravitch’s “The American Reader.” There is a sort of irony in that!
Let’s take a sample text from that “list”: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Why the heck would a 14 y.o. give two farts about the plight of Native Americans during the formative years of this nation? Does this mean that students shouldn’t read it? Of course not. I have to work up to this text. To build empathy and background for the topic, I’d focus on Sherman Alexie’s “Indian Education.” I’d also be sure to balance out the argument made by Dee Brown with Andrew Jackson’s State of the Union Address where he advocates for the removal and relocation of the five civilized tribes. It isn’t enough to just look at the list of suggested texts and just start teaching them. There has to be thoughtful scaffolding when introducing any of these remarkable texts. Teachers have to build with a wedge and get the students interested in the topics in the first place. There must be an inter-relatedness to the approach so that students can make connections. It’s almost like structuring a lesson in the manner AP structures an exam. An anchor piece of text with related smaller pieces with a unifying theme. But first I have to get my students to WANT to read it first. I have to “hook” them. Publishers who fail to see this connection will continue to provide a substandard curriculum to our clients.
Lastly, teachers need quality professional development to teach to this level of understanding. I would like to be able to teach metaphors to the degree that you do, but I don’t have that ability. I doubt any of the teachers at my school could either. I would like to possess just half of your content knowledge and experience; I’m handicapped by a Florida, New York, and London education;). Nevertheless, I am floored by how many in my profession are completely clueless how to conduct a close reading of complex text. Too many assign and assume. We need opportunity as a profession to truly learn these standards and how to teach with them in mind. This is a far more blue collar profession than you think. Colleges are graduating students incapable of formulating a cogent argument or a grammatically correct sentence. The dumbing down is perpetuated at the college level, especially in the era of ‘for profit’ colleges, both online and socratic. Many in my profession, especially high school, are second career professionals with little pedagogical experience. They know the content, but fail in the delivery. We need time with these standards so that we can match our delivery with the expectations. This change has come too quickly without enough vetting and professional development. You know things are bad when the trainers from the state know less than the teachers in the classroom.
I am talking about the long list of specific standards, not to the list of texts. The presumption of Lord Coleman’s telling a nation’s educators what their children should read is breathtaking.
In this piece, Linda, I illustrate ONE of the types of problems that I have with the grade-level standards. I discuss one part of one recurring “standard,” but the general approach that I take in this critique can and should be taken with the whole of the sloppy, puerile CCSS:
http://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/
In that piece I deal with the way in which Coleman’s standards preclude more valuable and imaginative curricula and pedagogy. Here’s another whole set of problems. Coleman and his buddies clearly did not understand that
a. the various domains within the English language arts, and the specific subdomains and learnings within them, are incommensurate, and the extraordinarily varied types of learning within these domains cannot all be characterized in the same way as broad, abstractly formulated, explicitly learned “skills”
b. attainment in the English language arts involves both world knowledge (knowledge of what) and concrete procedural knowledge (knowledge of how), and that abstractly formulated descriptions of skills leave out the former entirely and do not sufficiently operationalize the latter to enable valid assessment
c. much of learning in the English language arts is implicit and is completely mischaracterized if described as explicit (which is almost invariably the case in these purported “standards”)
The “standards” (one hesitates to call any list prepared this heedlessly, this thoughtlessly, by such a term) were INTENDED TO BE lists of outcomes to be measured. But the authors of these standards seem not to have given a eunuch’s shadow of a thought to what outcomes actually look like for various kinds of learning in the English language arts, to how those outcomes differ IN KIND, and to how, as a result, anything like valid assessment of those outcomes would also differ.
Instead of approaching this extraordinarily consequential task with the care that it required, they hacked together a document overnight based on a cursory review of the lowest common denominator groupthink of the state “standards” that preceded this list, and then they submitted their amateurish product to know genuine scholarly critique or vetting. And they did this work so heedlessly for one reason and one reason only–their bosses–the ones writing the checks to pay for these “standards”–were in a hurry to get a national bullet list to tag their assessments and computer-adaptive educational software to.
Shame on these “authors.” Seriously. Eternal shame on them. The costs–of many kinds–of their heedlessness are incalculable–billions of dollars wasted on junk tests and computers to take junk tests and junk evaluations and junk curricula and junk pedagogy and junk “trainings” and untold misery for teachers and students.
And, again, the opportunity costs of all that is PRECLUDED BY these backward, amateurish, misconceived standards–those are, well, staggering.
But no, when I refer to “Lord Coleman’s bullet list,” I am referring to the amateurishly conceived list of standards–the numbered items. See the pieces for which I provided links for some insight into why I consider these to be amateurish, hackneyed, unimaginative, often prescientific, and distorting of curricula, pedagogy, and assessment.
As lists of texts go, this one was not terrible, but it’s extremely sparse, and there are hundreds and hundreds of other lists that are better. It’s astonishing that these clueless outsiders should have the presumption to put forward such lists when there are so many others, so much better vetted, for particular students and purposes, published by scholars, researchers, practitioners, and professional organizations. Everything the authors of these “standards” did smacks of ignorance of what is actually available and what people have long, long been doing better.
My district is in the process of textbook adoption for reading/English language arts. We are a year behind the rest of the state because we didn’t have the funds to purchase last year, as required by the state, which doesn’t always provide enough funds to make the mandated purchases, oddly enough.
How convenient is that for publishers though? The textbook lobbyists got the Florida legislature to pass laws that mandate new materials be purchased every 5 years and only from “approved” vendors who, surprise! surprise!, are the biggest donors to the legislature’s political campaigns.
The last time around the commissioner of education overrode our decision for a math series and made the decision to purchase from a single publisher (a subsidiary of Pearson, of course) for the whole state, not even pretending that we have any choice at all, since Pearson seems to have a permanent seat in both houses of our state legislature. There are so few vendors left that are not part of the Pearson borg that the whole idea of “choice” is a joke anyway. They merge, buy each other, merge again and now there are a couple or three massive monopolies and nothing else.
The two vendors “approved” through political contributions presented to us Friday and the difference between them were so slight as to make our choice all but meaningless. Lots of BS talk about “rigor”, “higher order thinking”and a misguided understanding of GRR (gradual release of responsibility). Oodles and oodles of tech and online components (some only available online) which prompted all of us real teachers to ask how we are supposed to access any of it since our district’s technology is ancient and there is no money provided to upgrade or expand — met with radio silence from the vendors and the district reps.
The big selling point was “text complexity” which is the crux of David Coleman’s twisted understanding of what matters most in reading.I was happy to see that most well-known children’s authors declined to let their work be used (thanks Susan O’hanian!) and much was clearly written specifically for the anthologies and seemed artificial and stilted. Poor kids!
My first comment (that got me lots of evil stares, LOL) was why I need a set of materials that is twice as big and heavy as the Encyclopedia Britannica to teach 6 year olds to read? We had applied for (and failed to receive) permission from the state DOE to purchase massive classroom libraries of real books instead of a packaged program. The packaged programs come with a “trade book” library consisting of 28 titles, not exactly enough choice and variety for a class of 18 or 24 readers at differing levels, depending on grade level.
Each day it becomes harder and harder to go on with a positive outlook in this looking glass world. I made a second comment Friday that got me even more evil stares from the district personnel. When one naive young teacher made the comment that, since one program has authors that were part of the consortium that wrote the CCSS, we should purchase that program I said: “When did we cede all of our professional expertise and knowledge to the authors of the CCSS, none of whom are actual teachers? Why are we silently accepting whatever they tell us without question or challenge? Is that truly the way academics is played? Shouldn’t we be discussing what we see in the programs as useful and what is a waste of time?” Several teachers thanked me privately but none dared speak up in public. Sad and too typical.
Either program choice will be no choice at all. We will be confined to a scripted program that allows for only one kind of teaching and learning no matter how the vendors spin it as being flexible and adaptable. The CCSS, whose defenders continuously scream are not a “curriculum” has become exactly that through the textbook vendors and their unholy alliance with the testing and standards consortiums. No one would acknowledge that the newly named “Florida Standards” are the CCSS wrapped in new paper with a few (less the 15%, as required by RTTT) additions. What a total farce!
They clearly win this battle (and millions of dollars in profits) and the children and teachers will be the biggest losers.
“hat got me even more evil stares from the district personnel. . . .Several teachers thanked me privately but none dared speak up in public. Sad and too typical.”
Have been in your shoes more than once of the 20 years of teaching.
Most educators, whether teachers but especially administrators are GAGA*ers who know how to kiss ass and say I love doing that for you can I do it more instead of standing up and challenging the bullying. And that is why these educational malpractices have become so deeply imbedded when they should have been laughed out of the room the minute they were suggested.
*Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution upon their passing from this realm.
Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
I think you already reported this in an earlier blog… but if not… The NYTimes reported that InBloom has thrown in the towel: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/technology/a-student-data-collector-drops-out.html?emc=edit_tnt_20140426&nlid=26825267&tntemail0=y
I don’t think this in ANY way undercuts Robert Shepherd’s argument… the consolidation of curriculum will lead to a marketplace where the big fish will eat the little fish… and the big fish have enough money to throw around that they will buy out start-ups… Public education needs some kind of open source means of systematically collecting information instead of outsourcing it to for-profit corporations…
I taught in the late seventies and the teacher choices were limited to a select few vendors that the Board of Education chose for its teachers to use. So this is not new. The fix was in a long time ago. I was a special education teacher so I had some flexibility since I really did not receive any funding and to the school system, my students were not suppose to be able to learn. In fact, teachers use to come into my classroom and ask for materials they knew I did not have because they thought that my students were climbing the walls. Instead they saw students working together or separately doing their work. Oh well. The more things appear to be changing, the more they seem that they are the same.
With the folding of inBloom, the use of access to curriculum portals and data repositories as a means to keep out competitors will move to the state and district levels. Keep an eye out there: if your state or district has a data repository and/or curriculum portal through which online materials are available, ask,
Who is the vendor for this?
Who makes the decisions about what providers have access and what providers do not? If your district or state makes such decisions, by what means? How transparently? Or in what backroom? Who has access to the data repository or reporting mechanisms in your district or state? How much investment in time, money, and other resources are necessary in order to gain such access? With whom does a publisher have to “partner” for such access?
How many of your seemingly separate providers of print and online materials are actually entirely or partially owned by or in partnership with one of a couple big monopolists? Who has equity in this company?
Who in the district or state went to work for or came from working for the monopolists or for the foundations funded by these monopolists? Who among them has worked for the monopolists as a consultant?
What materials come preloaded on those tablets or desktop computers, and from whom, and in what ways are those devices limited to using curricula from particular providers or that comes through a particular portal? To what extent is the technology you’ve been handed closed, PUSH technology (materials are pushed at you) instead of open, PULL technology (you are free to choose what materials you access using that technology)?
What comes preloaded? Under what contracts? Over what term?
How expensive would it be to pull out, to go with other providers, given that initial investment and that contract? How locked in are you?
What requirements has the state or district put into place that powerfully benefit the monopolists and are so designed that smaller educational materials providers cannot possibly meet them? What requirements for ancillary materials, services, and other “give-aways” are written into your state adoption criteria and serve, primarily, to make it impossible for a smaller publisher to compete in your state? (remember: nothing is free; if you are receiving a give-away with that program, you can bet that the cost of the give-away is rolled into the product somewhere else)
What contracts for other goods and services held by the monopolists in your district or state give them advantages over smaller competitors who cannot leverage those?
What business relationships does the adopted educational materials provider have with what providers of software, databases, cloud storage services, etc? Does this product just happen to be “fully integrated” with some ubiquitous software package that has almost total market dominance, for example?
Which players have full-time lobbyists in your state? What do you think THOSE PEOPLE do to justify their enormous salaries? What foundations operate in your state or district and in what ways? How many retreats and trips and luncheons and other perks for your state or district officials do they sponsor? In what ways are these foundations connected to the monopolist providers of educational goods and services?
Many education deformers make the claim that they coming transition to digital materials will mean lots of innovation in educational materials. But the landscape is not shaping up like that, not at all. Scratch the surface, almost anywhere, and you find three or four key players, often with significant business relationships with one another that are not immediately obvious. The business is getting not only MORE monopolistic but also very, very incestuous.
And so it will be unless people start asking these complex questions. This isn’t sound bite stuff, folks. Often, the fix isn’t easy to see.
National markets for products that can be brought to scale.
McTextbooks. McEducation, Mcthought. Enabled for you by the national Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth which just happened to be funded by the very players who needed a national bullet list of “standards” to which to tag their national assessment and computer-adaptive curriculum products.
Monopolists have no reason to innovate. They have every reason to push the inferior, hackneyed, recycled product out the door as quickly and cheaply as possible. Oh, they will make it flashy looking. It will have curb appeal. Especially if the same monopolist also has enormous intellectual property holdings–a stock photo company here, a video production company there. Slapping a new design on the old junk will be easy for the monopolist to do. But the bottom line for a big, distant monopolist is always going to be this quarter’s earnings, not what is good for teachers and kids.
The Ed Deformers want choice? Well, let there be choice in educational materials. Let there be vigilance about these matters so that many, many new, innovative providers can emerge, including Open Source providers, and compete based on the quality of their materials and ideas, not based on what is now called a “public-private partnership” but used to be called ensuring that the fix was in.
And, beware of geeks bearing grifts.
http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/see-mike-on-c-span-talking-ccssi
The Fordham Institute defends Common Core.
I think I disagree with the criticism of Duncan as far as selling Common Core. I think Arne Duncan has been a disaster for public schools, but at least he was appointed by an elected official. He has that measure of small “d” democratic credibility. He has some connection to a democratic referendum.
These lobbyists groups and think tanks haven’t been elected by anyone. Why would I listen to any of them regarding a test my 5th grader will take in his local public school? I asked a local teacher and the middle school librarian about CC. I think they’re much more credible than a think tank, particularly the Fordham Institute. I think they have way too much clout and influence on public education in this state as it is. Why would I hand them more? I don’t accept that as a given.
Join in Spirit or in Body but know that Picket In The Pines could be a catalyzing event, confronting the public-private partners in their plutocratic lair. This is a national gathering of key manipulators and so a call to camp in the midst of their demented consensus and control, announcing they will be unmasked wherever and whenever they convene to spin profit from the lives of children.
Join us in Lake Placid to take a stand against corporate reform and put the “public” back in public education. Learn more: http://www.nysut.org/picketinthepines
My supervisor, who is am absolutely wonderful man, unfortunately “drank the kool-ade(sp?” and spent a gazzilion dollars on “cc-aligned” textbooks which are so heavy and filled wih distractive materials that no one even wants to lift them up out of the desks, let alone to open thm at home! I need a roadmap just to find the table of contents! Who knew that bs could weigh so much?!
Sorry, just noticed 3-4 errors above…:(
It is no surprise that there are so few companies publishing teacher’s materials. When high stakes tests are given they are “top secret”. This is for the purpose of MAINTAINING CONTROL OVER THE BILLION DOLLAR PUBLISHING INDUSTRY. We live in an enforced “teach to the test” age in title one schools and the “corporate ed reformers” refuse to acknowledge this elephant in the room because it serves their purpose to ignore it. In reading the NY Times opinion pages regarding “school choice”… there is a parallel… THERE IS NO CHOICE when a child from poverty chooses one hideous charter or another assuming they are not kicked out or denied entrance based on being a SPED or ELL. Likewise, a school district has NO CHOICE of publications whether it is in print or on line because of the entire grip of the secretive testing industry. Some of the opinions expressed in the NY Times preach high and low about the merits of choice and its links to freedom and equality.. but they are sure not preaching who has access to the cream of the crop schools and who does not. Three publishing choices for school texts is tantamount to a parents’ choice between 100 crappy charter schools which they will have to travel far to get to.
Don’t discount the proliferation of grassroots internet sites as one of the reasons for the perceived apathy. I frequently browse the internet for educational materials, many direct from other teachers. That said, i do think the lack of competition is not good.
I think that possibly teachers are so caught up in being forced to find ready-mades Common Core materials that this may not be on their radar as a concern. When we were getting our training, we were told we were taking core education, new, faster, beneficial training. The word Common was never used. Then we were bombarded with “state standards” that were gradually overriding local course of study objectives. Many teachers, other than recent graduates, were too busy keeping up with demands to realize what was happening. By 2010-11 the terminology turned to CCSS but I am not sure how many knew that this was a national core. We were just bombarded with local compliance…we thought. As teachers, we voted “no” when asked if we wanted RttT funds. We were ridiculed and the change happened anyway.
Our materials were handed to us in the form of manuals about programs. They included worksheets and lessons that were aligned with CC but we had to develop our own means of teaching those standards while delivering our local curricula at the same time. It had to fit under the big umbrella of state standards.
We did buy programs from Pearson. We thought they were inadequate. We supplemented with our own materials. It was gradual and stealth-like. Ohio was continuing to give the OAA so we had to teach to that test as itvmorphed to resemble the eventual PARCC tests in anticipation of dropping scores. I can look back on it to see certain signs, but we weren’t connecting the dots about the fact that there was an elimination of competition.
Teachers have risen to the task of creative ideas using cc in their narratives and they share freely on Pinterest. Also, Teachers Pay Teachers has inexpensive ways to deliver content to students. It seems that everything must now say “common core aligned lesson” to get noticed.
Instead of spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to play the common core version of Monopoly, districts should invest in its teachers. They know their students best. Allow them to create the materials. Our unit district has not even entertained the thought of purchasing math textbooks at the middle school and high school level. The textbook is NOT the curriculum. More schools should refuse to play the game. We should not be forced to be the shoe, hat, or thimble.
One model of inspiration is Charleston Middle School, Charleston, IL. Two teachers there have created their own pre-algebra resources.
wonderful post, Mary!
Reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “The Bully Pulpit” taught me how destructive these huge corporate monopolies can be, and I learned why progressive Republican President Theodor Roosevelt fought the corruption of his own party and made it one of his goals to fight these monopolies and limited their power.
Presidents G. W. Bush and Obama are no Teddy Roosevelt and their actions—not their words—reveal they are in league with the monopolies that TR despised and battled most of his political career.
In the Olden Days, the Graber family in Texas monitored textbook adoptions in that state and others. Publishers lived in fear of the Graber’s ultra right-wing evaluations and their influence on textbook adoptions.
In that era, pleasing the Grabers became a high-stakes game of “chicken” for academic integrity in content because a big sale in Texas could bring in more profit than from all other “adoption” states. The “needs” of the Texas market shaped the materials from other publishers. Texas was then different the other huge market, California, because there was real money in the coffers for K-12 resources in Texas, not so easily extracted from district sales in California.
Competition for the market in Texas was governed by strategies–creative sabotage of claims by others, undisclosed perks for supervisors of content areas and members of text-book committees. Small publishers were driven from the major markets by a tradition called “free’s”–districts wanting as many free materials as possible for the review process or wrapped into a deal. In many subjects, a purchase of student materials meant that publishers would be expected to offer free teacher materials or a free series of workshops for teacher orientation..
Robert has an excellent grasp of these and other cut-throat competitions and their bearing on current marketing of CCSS-compliant texts and on-line materials.
A Nation At Risk was a document with no references! If you research the document, you find it was based on several individual opinions of things that were needed to improve our Public Schools. All have been implemented, except to pay teachers a professional wage on a level with other professionals. If you have not read it, then Please read it. It is an easy short read. However, like common core standards, which is based on no research, but the thoughts and opinions of a few select people, the same was true for the basis of A Nation At Risk! With all the Reseach Universities and scholars in this nation, it is almost unimaginable for important documents and related decisions based on these documents to be made without debate! Why is this happening? Have we all given up on fighting Big Money or is it a realization that both major parties and both major teacher unions have been bought off and you can count on one hand the number of people in power who still support public schools? No more book stores, publishing companies own or run by the 1%, everything you learn will come from a software program controlled by the 1% and therein, the content of the program is controlled by the same people and now we have a capitalistic system to make America great again, like during the 1880’s and 1890’s! What will stop this from happening? We are almost there, so it must happen soon. If I were President of the NEA, I would call for a national walkout until the people in control agreed to a moratorium on Common Core testing and agreed to allow professional K-12 teachers to edit and alter the new standards so they are appropriate for their students age level and time is given to create curriculum and lessons in line with the goals of the standards without requiring teachers to teach to a NEW test.
Back to the Future! 1880’s and 1890’s here we come. The Question is, “Will we be able to elect another President Theodore Roosevelt in our time and can we find such a person who can defeat BIG Money from both major parties. Times are very different. These people may have learned not to repeat the mistakes of the past. We may have to wait for many of them to die out and hope the intelligent members of the middle class can unite the majority of people so they see what is happening to their families, schools, communities, and children’s future hopes. I will be gone soon, so all I can do is pray for all of you and your children and grandchildren. I am not a very religious person who goes to church each week, so this may be a waste of time, but other than some type of huge revolt or civil disobedience like in the sixties; I see no other answer because we have little to no money to fight back and they own most of the media so what other recourse do common people have? You may answer that we can vote, but for whom? Gov. Jerry Brown will not run and if he did he would probably lose. A Brown and Warren ticket would be interesting but it will never happen. I just cannot understand why intelligent middle class public school parents are not more concerned about their children’s and grandchildren’s future?
quote: “Are people OK with this? Where are the articles and essays and speeches about these issues from those opposed to Education Deform? One can understand the silence from the deformers–they created these deforms precisely in order to ensure their monopoly positions. But . . . but . . . why the deafening silence from the other side?”
for one, I feel totally powerless….. when I look back to the 60s and 70s I see “halcyon” days and I ask my colleagues if I was just kidding myself? I think one major change has been the diversion of R&D monies into narrower channels for fewer opportunities … In Massachusetts we never had a strong county system…. anyone who wanted to innovate at the “local” level had to apply for federal Title III/Title IV funds. There were major innovations such as the Pat Suppes math program (their reading program was not as readily apparent in effectiveness)… my sister-in-law was involved in the research and they drew in educational psychology along with the teaching of math. The R&D funds were there for validation to prove the program effective BEFORE it was disseminated…. Things seem to be backwards now when Duncan and his ilk allocate funds for PARCC/Pearson to create something (unproven, untested, experimental and expensive) by betting on “this horse out of the gate”… and PARCC/Pearson uses our students as guinea pigs… Pat Suppes could not have gotten away with that … competition to receive the award was “stiffer”??? or criteria were very different? Major directions were evolving through National Diffusion Network to assist in promising and developing practices…. there was a major federal program for “Practices” network that was dismissed when the political powers changed … it was in essence to work on the gap between the LABS/Colleges/Universties to build stronger connections with the practice of daily instruction. Have all of these initiatives been lost? Have we gone back to the “deus ex machine” with computers being the machine?
Bob
How do you think the re-branding/re-naming of CC in several states will affect this issue?
Just an inconvenience re: labeling resources?
My district leaders are crowing high and low about how we’re only using the “best” parts of the CC (not all of it, according to them–I guess that they don’t know about the copyright?). But all of our materials are labeled “Common Core aligned.” So, in my large district’s case, nope no difference.
yes, if they just rebrand, which many are doing, that will be just a pain in the neck for developers. but it also opens the door to scrutiny of the standards and revision, and thank all the gods there are for that!
Bob Shepherd, maybe publishers will have two stickers–one that says “aligned with Common Core” and the other “not aligned with Common Core,” but contents would be the same
That is highly likely.
After all, every program ever published by any of the major educational publishing houses was PERFECTLY ALIGNED to every set of standards ever written by any district, state, or national body. LOL.
The rebranding was, of course, the Reverend Mike Hucksterbees pastoral advice: Lie about it. Change the name but keep the same standards. Pull the wool over the eyes of the public.
Yep.
Gates wants CCSS for its “scaling of market forces.” CCSS is a business deal designed for education mega-corporations. Gates talks about it here:
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/video-bill-gates-explains-common-core/
The way to fight back is to kill CCSS. However, I believe states are afraid of Duncan– likely because of the not-so-hidden profit agendas pushing the entire spectrum of reforms. If a state “drops” CCSS then readopts a renamed twin, then the ed companies can still make a killing from curriculum and tests.
You are right, of course. Both publishers told us that if we chose their package that the new “Florida State” version of the CCSS would be incorporated, one said in all materials and the other said in all digital materials.
This proves my assertion that there is little difference between what is offered and that the textbook packages are serving as a de facto curriculum because of the constraints implied in the standards and their recommended texts, etc. reducinhg what is negotiable and what teachers are “allowed” to do and not do.
The way to fight back is to kill CCSS
That is exactly the case. This is the engine that runs the Ed Deform juggernaut that is rolling over our teachers and kids.
This is all very true. So why aren’t people complaining? Sometimes it’s a matter of things being cheaper and or more convenient. As everyone knows, districts have a limited amount if time and resources. We needed common core aligned materials two years ago and still don’t have what we need. If there are three major publishers doing this, they are not doing it fast enough.
I would argue that the crux of the problem in this facet is not the Common Core — or national standards as a concept — but the power and resources of Pearson and the other big players in the context of constant, rapid policy churn and manufactured crisis.
In the *long run*, in a stable policy environment, with the internet as a distribution and composition platform, stable national standards, particularly if they were of the quality of some of the better national or provincial curriculum frameworks used elsewhere, would tend to favor innovation and smaller players. Particularly if standardized testing was not central.
That’s the opposite of where we are right now of course, so Pearson wins the day. If nothing else, we’re very much in “nobody ever lost their job for buying IBM, I mean, Microsoft, I mean Pearson” territory.
I’m not trying to make this point to defend Common Core, Pearson, etc. But at this point, chaos and shock doctrine policy favors Pearson more than the Common Core does. If the Common Core goes away, a whole bunch of startup potential market rivals will die a sudden death (I don’t care if they die, I’m just pointing this out). Pearson will *still* be in a better chance to react to the next thing than their commercial competitors for the foreseeable future.
Once I worked in a school in which I tought 3 hours out of 8, so I had 5 hours to develop my classes daily. No books and no tests the teachers as true designers, we did not depend on editorials nor on every body gets the same stuff from outsiders but a careful weekly curriculum adapted to the needs of each group.
wow. wonderful. This is as it should be. Teachers need the time in their schedules, and the autonomy, to develop their curricula and teaching strategies to suit their students and to work together collaboratively to subject those to critique and refinement via something like Japanese-style Lesson Study.
Bob, thanks for always keeping us informed and keeping us aware. I too noticed the lack of comments. I think we are so busy trying to keep our heads above water, we don’t have time to comment. Or we just don’t see the point anymore. Are we becoming too weary to fight?
Our small Louisiana district is looking at new CCSS textbook adoption and will spend lots of money on new textbooks. Money that would better be used for students and personnel. I feel we should take time and consider other options. But time is ticking for the new PARCC (or CCRAP?) test and teachers are desperate for CCSS aligned textbooks. We just spent last year trying to write our own curriculum. Each district supervisor was in charge of a different grade level. I think this is an option that allows teachers to take control of their curriculum and focus on instructional practices that are student centered. We need to invest in professional development to support creating our own curriculum and invest in resources to align our own curriculum. The problem is that buying a ready made textbook package is easy. The bells and whistles are so tempting. As someone commented earlier, the textbook should only be a resource, not the curriculum. Is it too late? Has everyone already lined up to drink the Koolaide? Bob is correct in wondering about the deafening silence.
Thank you, Bridget. I long for the day when teachers have autonomy again and are given the time in their schedules to do Japanese-style Lesson Study–continual critiquing of their curricular and pedagogical choices and refinement of those in collaboration with their peers.
So capitalists who promote school choice are anti-choice on school curricula, standards, textbooks, testing, professional development, and more. George Orwell would love these anti-choice choicers.
his, the irony is astonishing, isn’t it?
Did you read my essay “Magic Elixirs,” or Willinghams piece in The American Educator.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
ttp://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall2012/Willingham.pdf
The truth is that parents and students lose choice when the private sector corporate charter schools float into town on a river of taxpayer money.
Before these Charters, parents had the choice of who to vote for to sit on the school board where parents then had an elected ear to listen to their concerns and suggestions.
With Common Core and corporations, no choice.
Before Common Core, concerned parents through PTA, teachers and even students often worked together in the selection of texbooks and other material.
With Common Core and corporations, no choice.
Before Common Core and funds flowing away from public schools, students had a wide variety of choices for electives.
With Common Core and corporate control, no choice.
Before the corporate schools came to town, any parent, teacher and even student could sit down and go over the transparent records that revealed how the taxpayer money was spent to educate the children and run the schools.
With Common Core and corporate control, no transparency leaving no choice to take a look.
Before Common Core road to town with the gang of fake education reformers, there were many choices that are vanishing as fast as the taxpayers money boosts profits and walth of Hedge Fund billionaires..
Get this. Respect is so low at our school that the principal decided to tell the PTO that they could not provide dinner or coffee for the teachers during conference nights. This has been done for 15 years but she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t think teachers should have even a 10 minute break to have dinner (a bite to eat). Many of the teachers have a lunch break at 11:30 am. Conferences start at 3:45 and last until 7:30. So they should go 8 hours without any food or drink? Is this not hatred? Is this not a power trip? Is this not showing teachers how little they matter as human beings?
If we continue putting great teachers under working conditions that decrease morale, the corporate interests will win. She has shoved every classroom teacher over 50 except for one. There are possibly 3-4 teachers who are 40+. Most are between 25 and 35. See any trends here? New hires seldom last more than 1 year.
This is insane. This district has been in the top rankings on all testing on our county and in our comparison group for 20 years.
Yeah Ohio.
She is not a principal. She is a lackey of corporate America who I think was placed in your school to do exactly what she’s doing. This probably means the district administration is also loyal to the fake education reformers, and not to students, parents or teachers.
that is http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall2012/Willingham.pdf
This is really funny. I went Googling for the Joanne Weiss quote, to tweet it into the @louisck twitter stream, and it took me 3 days back in time, to right here!
“common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets” http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/03/the-innovation-mismatch-smart/
Louis C.K. @louisck 6h
CCSS. It’s a new program. why defend it aS perfect? Why let poor test writers profit and tell parents and teachers they are “wrong”.
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