A few days ago, I posted the names of the members of the “work groups” that wrote the Common Core standards. There was one work group for English language arts and another for mathematics. There were some members who served on both work groups.
Altogether, 24 people wrote the Common Core standards. None identified himself or herself as a classroom teacher, although a few had taught in the past (not the recent past). The largest contingent on the work groups were representatives of the testing industry.
Mercedes Schneider looked more closely at the 24 members of the two work groups to determine their past experience as educators, with special attention to whether they had any classroom experience.
Here are a few noteworthy conclusions based on her review of the careers of the writers of the CCSS:
In sum, only 3 of the 15 individuals on the 2009 CCSS math work group held positions as classroom teachers of mathematics. None was a classroom teacher in 2009. None taught elementary or middle school mathematics. Three other members have other classroom teaching experience in biology, English, and social studies. None taught elementary school. None taught special education or was certified in special education or English as a Second Language (ESL).
Only one CCSS math work group member was not affiliated with an education company or nonprofit….
In sum, 5 of the 15 individuals on the CCSS ELA work group have classroom experience teaching English. None was a classroom teacher in 2009. None taught elementary grades, special education, or ESL, and none hold certifications in these areas.
Five of the 15 CCSS ELA work group members also served on the CCSS math work group. Two are from Achieve; two, from ACT, and one, from College Board.
One member of the work groups has a BA in elementary education but no record of ever having taught those grades.
Almost all members who had any classroom experience were high school teachers.
Schneider concludes:
My findings indicate that NGA and CCSSO had a clear, intentional bent toward CCSS work group members with assessment experience, not with teaching experience, and certainly not with current classroom teaching experience.
In both CCSS work groups, the number of individuals with “ACT” and “College Board” designations outnumbered those with documented classroom teaching experience.
The makeup of the work groups helps to explain why so many people in the field of early childhood education find the CCSS to be developmentally inappropriate. There was literally no one on the writing committee (with one possible exception) with any knowledge of how very young children learn. The same concern applies to those who educate children in the middle-school years or children with disabilities or English language learners. The knowledge of these children and their needs was not represented on the working group.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One has to question the “assessment experience” as well, for surely anyone who had any real grounding in assessment would not have conceived of the bullet list of ELA standards as, in every domain, with almost no variation, vague and highly general descriptions of abstractly formulated skills assumed to have been explicitly acquired.
People who had ANY CLUE WHATSOEVER about validity in assessment would have recognized that
a. these 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. that 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 the opportunity costs for all in education in the English language arts that is PRECLUDED BY these backward, amateurish, misconceived standards–those are, well, staggering.
fools rush in
cx: the “that” should be removed at the beginning of item c, above, of course; of for a correction feature on WordPress!
cx: and then they submitted their amateurish product to no genuine scholarly critique, to no vetting
A key difference that I see among viewpoints of those that post here is the perspective about developmental learning. In my experience, there has been secondary teachers were often unwilling to try to bring lower functioning students along if they lacked the skills to tackle specific content material. There was often a disrespect for elementary teachers who “didn’t prepare” students for the difficulties of secondary rigor. Also, elementary teachers often viewed secondary teachers as lacking in desire to assist students who weren’t “ready”.
I think these ideas have been dealt with and that there is more respect and cooperation among all levels of k-12 education. However, the CCSS doesn’t reflect that kind of respect, interest, or cooperation.
When it is apparent that elementary and special education teachers had little to no input into the standards and/or testing that will be thrown at the students, all I see is disrespect for the education and careers of thousands of professional educators.
Technology has ushered in all kinds of “possibilities” that are toyed with, tinkered with, not thought through to the end result, and therefore not viable for usage to determine the futures of our nation’s students or the future of our country. To me, the perpetual “improvements” that tech offers are as likely to be a whimsy, a temporary “fix” that requires constant tweaking until they “get it right”. Just look at our phones, tablets, computers. Just look at the idiotic ” improvements” made to Facebook. Little, if anything, makes it easier to use. And it has become necessary to run ads through all we use…to pay for upgrades we don’t want.
Is not the changes we are enduring in education just like this? We are forced into the constant changes in technological “advances” that don’t amount to a hill of beans, as they say in native West Virginia!
UST look at the expense of purchasing all those laptops in the Los Angeles schools…with a three year deal…and the expense will continue for “upgrades” and new and improved software or compatibility with internet programs and websites and Java, etc.
It seems never-ending. They are willing to throw away experienced educators who do get older and wear out after 25-30 years for unpredictable technology that is DESIGNED to be replaced in three years or less.
As someone else has stated more eloquently than I, humanity has been drained from education. The heart has been ripped away to be replaced by data driven, impersonal technology.
Not surprising from Gates and his fellow bots.
So, by “assessment experience,” I suppose is meant “experience working for the big purveyors of invalid state standardized tests. GIGO.
Diane, This is one of your more “telling” posts. I am not surprised, but I am upset and disgusted. However, it seems that the tide is turning….hard to discern because we are caught in the middle of it…..but we see more and more evidence that “they” are about to lose their upper hand. Thank you for your work and good luck in rehab. You will soon be skipping.
And even with the bum knee, her mind dances. 🙂
Look, I can sort of understand this. Coleman directed this, and he had ALMOST ZERO experience. He has, at least, the excuse of having dealt with a lot of what were, for him, unknown unknowns. What kills me is hearing from the collaborators with this fiasco who ought to know better–the edupundits and educonsultants who, knowing better, have made the decision to go with the flow–to splash about in the great river of green that has flowed from the plutocrats’ pockets in support of the egregious national bullet list.
Bingo!
I read that his mother was in the Math group.
I love your style!
Diane,
Again, you continue to put up these posts saying that the standards were written by the 24 people originally listed on the 2009 press release while failing to address the greatly expanded 2010 work groups:
Click to access 2010COMMONCOREK12TEAM.PDF
So again I ask: Do you have any evidence that the expanded work groups were merely window dressing?
I will repeat what I have said before that the expanded work groups also suffered from severe deficiencies, but they were at least some better than the original work groups.
Our side does itself no favors by continuing to trot out outdated information that is easily debunked by the pro-CCSS apologists.
Mr. Talbot,
Mercedes Schneider addresses your question here:
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/a-tale-of-two-nga-press-releases-and-then-some/.
Hope this helps.
Scott
Thanks, Scott. That link is somewhat helpful, but still doesn’t fill in all the blanks. It sounds like Schneider is saying here that the original 24 developed the CCRS, and the later expanded group wrote CCSS. But she does not make that distinction in the link Diane provided above, so I’m still unsure exactly what went on.
My second post does address timeline discrepancies between the July and November 2009 work group announcements. One issue is clear: Teachers did not control the writing of CCSS.
Jack, no one advocating for CCSS questions the composition of the work group other than you. Those 24 wrote the standards. There were feedback groups, validation groups, review groups, but the standards were written by the 24 and immediately adopted by almost every state, with little or no public discussion.
I believe in Ohio we felt coerced by the state to accept CCSS in order to receive federal monies. We had no knowledge of what we were accepting insofar as to the full extent of their scope.
I don’t know if Mercedies backtracked to the Ameria Diploma Project, intended to upgrade high school graduation requirements, but some of the writers for that, and some of the citations in the CCSS of “research” pertaining to college and career readiness migrated form the American Diploma Project into the CSSS.
I found direct evidence of recycling content from the American Diploma Project (ADP) into one of the Common Core State Standards, specifically for Integration of Knowledge and Ideas. Standard RL.9-10.7, calls for students in grades 9-10 to “Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus)” This standard is identical to a benchmark assignment in the ADP project, which came from an Introductory English Survey Course at Sam Houston University, Huntsville, TX and appears on pages 98-99 in Achieve (2004) American Diploma Project (ADP), Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts, http://www.achieve.org/readyornot (see pages 105-106). This standard and example illustrate one meaning of “rigor,” namely, making 9th or 10th grade assignments the same as collegiate studies.
Diane,
I love your stuff, but on this point, you haven’t done your homework. First of all, I am not advocating for CCSS — quite the opposite, in fact.
Second of all, you have still not addressed the fact that the final work group list had 101 names on it, not 24. I know all about the feedback groups and validation committee — I am not confusing them with the work groups.
In the link provided above by Scott Baker, Schneider seems to indicate that the original 24 developed the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS), upon which CCSS was later built. But she doesn’t make that same distinction in the link you used, so I don’t really know.
I really don’t get why you don’t get what I am saying here. I provided you with a link to the final work group configuration — I’m just asking how we can continue claiming the standards were written by “24 people” when that doesn’t appear to have been the case.
No need to single out Jack on this, Diane–you’re surely above resembling a bully post. If he has this concern, certainly others do as well. It sounds to me like he’s attempting to protect you.
Diane B,, thanks. I have yet to hear of any writers other than the original work groups. And remember, they turned out CCSS in a year or so. When I worked on California history standards, our group took three years with multiple opportunities for revisions to finish state standards
Diane,
If you have not heard of any other work groups than the July, 2009 list, then it is because you have not followed the link I provided. Here it is again:
Click to access 2010COMMONCOREK12TEAM.PDF
I have been trying to figure out how all of this worked for quite a while, but much of it is hidden behind the NGA/CCSSO veil of secrecy. Still, I don’t think it is accurate to say that “only 24 people” wrote the standards unless you have evidence that the 101 people on the later list are all stooges.
I have gotten into too many arguments with pro-CCSS people where I repeated half-baked things I heard somewhere and got embarrassed. I learned my lesson and only use arguments I can back up with hard facts now. We need to understand the work group issue better before continuing to say the same things.
Jack
You sholud be more concerned with who wrote the criteria for the Race to the Top contest and subsequent NCLB waiver criretia.
This carrot-and-stick federal initiative is the document that built the CC monster that we are fighting. I dont care if 10,000 people wrote the actual standards. the fact the the standards are crap is almost irrelevant. The true danger of this education reform was spawned the very moment the CCSS were tied to mandatory standardized tests used to evaluate teachers, (and mine student data). I agree that getting the facts straight is important. It is more imporatnt to understand and articulate how (and why) this trap was set using RTTT/NCBW as bait.
NYS Teacher,
That may be a valid point, but it wasn’t the subject of Diane’s post.
I had a hunch that you would respond as such.
Now that I took this thread down a slightly different path, you are free to join me, or stay stuck on the number of people who wrote the CCSS. If your concern is getting caught without your homework, I fully undrestand. But please don’t overlook my point. Its where this whole thing went south.
Laura, I touch on ADP in this post, and also in my book:
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/more-on-the-common-core-achieve-inc-and-then-some/
NYS Teacher,
It’s not so much a matter of getting caught without my homework — I want to understand what happened and be able to credibly defend my position with demonstrable facts. We have enough solid facts on our side to be able to dispense with using speculation or provably false assertions.
Jack, I share your confusion. I have also had people tell me to let it go when I begin to resemble a dog with a particularly appealing bone. Since the standards writing process was so obscured, it is hard to figure out what happened, with whom, and when. If you figure it out let me know.
Jack “I have gotten into too many arguments with pro-CCSS people where I repeated half-baked things I heard somewhere and got embarrassed. ”
Have you tried to question CC fans about the research and, more importantly, the prior empirical evidence for the effectiveness of CC and the accompanying assessment scheme?
I noticed that CC fans change the subject when it comes to this, though without this evidence, it’s immaterial how many people wrote the standards. (I am saying this without trying to devalue Mercedes’ research, which, as always, is very enlightening.)
I’d ask for a link to all the research and evidence.
The situation is curious, to say the least, since the Finns state explicitly that the reason they don’t do standardized tests (especially high stakes ones) because research showed, they don’t work.
Mate,right on. No research validates the CCSS or the tests.
Here is a shocking quote from Sahlberg’s book titled “Finnish lessons”.
“For many educators, including me, the United States is home to a great deal of educational change knowledge, research, and innovation. The question of why this doesn’t show in international comparisons, like international student assessments or the recent review of innovation in education by the OECD, is an important one. Indeed,visitors to the United States often wonder why innovations that have brought improvement to all successful education systems in the world have not been practiced on a large scale in the U.S. school system. Lessons from Finland suggest that it may be that the work of the school in the United States is so much steered by bureaucracies, test-based accountability, and competition that schools are simply doing what they are forced to do in this awkward situation. Many visitors from the United States often note that what they see in Finnish schools reminds them of practices they had seen in many schools in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.”
In other words, educational research done in the US influenced education systems all over the world—except back home in the US, where all this good, pioneering research has been ignored, and instead a crazy bureaucratic system rages.
I love to watch the Obama Administration take absolutely nothing they learn from health care reform and apply it to their education policy.
I have a modest proposal. Call a meeting between the health care people and the education people, and have them talk to one another. They could really avoid a lot of needless angst and waste. Some of them are related to each other! They could have Rahm talk to his brother!
“Federal policies to reward high-quality health care are unfairly penalizing doctors and hospitals that treat large numbers of poor people, according to a new report commissioned by the Obama administration that recommends sweeping changes in payment policy.
Medicare and private insurers are increasingly paying health care providers according to their performance as measured by the quality of the care they provide. But, the draft report by an expert panel says, the measures of quality are fundamentally flawed because they do not recognize that it is often harder to achieve success when treating people who do not have much income or education.”
It’s particularly amusing because Arne Duncan is now talking about the “medical model” in the latest teacher-measurement metric. You just want bash your head against the wall watching this. They’re reforming the broken healthcare system and turning the k-12 education INTO the broken healthcare system, AT THE SAME TIME.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/us/politics/health-laws-pay-policy-is-skewed-panel-finds.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=1&utm_content=buffercd674&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
“Andrew M. Ryan, an associate professor at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, likened the issue to the debate raging over whether teacher pay should be linked to student achievement, measured by test scores. If not used carefully, he said, such merit-pay arrangements can divert resources from the neediest schools and students.”
So it should be interesting to see whether the complaints of physicians are taken more seriously than the complaints of teachers. I don’t know how they scream “unions!” with physicians, for one thing, so we can dispense with the “unions” punching bag.
I will bet you 5 dollars that these complaints are taken seriously and not dismissed with accusations of “self interest” on the part of doctors.
BUT. We’ll see. Maybe you-all should have joined with doctors in 2009 or something 🙂
High expectations (!) also works magic in medicine, apparently:
“The administration has said adjusting the data for social or demographic factors would be equivalent to accepting a double standard, with lower expectations for the care provided to low-income patients.”
Just ignore the fact that they’re re-admitting because the patients don’t have access to primary or preventative care, and pull out the magical “high expectations” phrase. It solves poverty!
What’s the response to Jack Talbot’s point above?
We have a serious problem in this country and that is school reform is a social reform. First started with NCLB (look at Texas it is has us put on the bottom when it comes to our kids academically and dropout rates are one of the highest), now that Obama is in office there was a glimmer of hope that NCLB would have been booted out but as we can see he is on the same bus as the right conservatives are; keeping NCLB, adding common core which adds to pockets of major education industries such as ACT (Pearson), oh yeah and the momentum for voucher/school choice continues at full speed. When will this madness ever stop… Oh probably when every minority, poor student is stuck at some crappy charter school? We have millions of children home schooled and in private schools, and many educators are out of a job. Come on people lets get these so called legislatures and politicians who claim they care about our children out of office because as we can see they have an agenda and it is not for the good of the kids.
An observation: Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Figuring out the very elaborate and complex history of just the Commoners Core section of the Potemkin Village Business Plan for $tudent $ucce$$ won’t be finished in a blog or two or three.
And unexpected obstacles get in the way. Diane’s staff of 92 would have been able get to the bottom of this quickly if they weren’t so occupied in raking in and counting up all the benjamins she’s getting from multibillion-dollar funded unions and the takings from her latest line of eduproducts and the like.
¿? Oops! Word salad…
Sorry, ArneRhee&Co., I truly rheeject that mind-set.
😎
Or, as my husband likes to say, “Rome wasn’t bilked in a day.” Maybe that means there is still hope for us. 🙂
What frustrates me about the ELA Common Core standards is just how technical they are. They assess things that most skilled readers understand intuitively or work on just to get to the content of the material. Frankly, the more I bludgeon my middle school students with the Common Core skills, the more I turn them off from reading.
My goal is to create *readers*! Readers take many forms. Some love poetry. Some only read non-fiction. Others only want fantasy literature. Some will only open a book if it has an athlete on the cover. No matter; they all are welcome in my class and are here to experience the joys of literature in all forms. There is nothing fun, or interesting, or gripping about the Common Core skills. They’re purely mechanical, which means they’re the last thing a struggling reader will care about.
Kids read because of content, not these skills. Yet now I’m supposed to take that away. I’m not surprised at all that there were almost no teachers creating the Common Core. They’re boring.
Spoonbill – You have hit the nail squarely on the head. Pitch perfect description of whats really wrong with CC. Math as well. Most teachers dont buy it, Sudents definitely dont buy it. Bad product, equally bad sales job.
exactly. I entirely concur, NYS Teacher. Spoonbill nailed it.
Education is all about skills. When Abraham Lincoln was reading all those books as he self-taught, you just know that he was skimming the text to identify the main concepts so that he could make fact-based arguments. And I’m quite sure that getting the correct answer in math wasn’t nearly as important as knowing four different ways to get the wrong answer using boxes, doodles, and chicken scratch marks.
Seriously, it’s amazing we built this country without Common Core to guide us.
LOL
Amen!! Go back to basics.
GREAT, Spoonbill. EXACTLY. The one thing that is SKIPPED OVER in these standards is the actual texts. People do not read to find out what method of exposition the writer used in paragraph 12. Actual engagement with texts is being replaced with
“Write an essay about how the author’s use of figurative language in this selection contributes to his mood and tone. Use three pieces of evidence.”
Never mind what the author is SAYING!!!! Never mind having an authentic, transactional engagement with the text. That long list of crap in the standards should be WAY, WAY down the list of topics to engage. See this piece in which I make the same point (in the conclusion):
http://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/
Thank you! I now home school my kids in a Common Core friendly state because I was tired of, well, so much at our public school, but now I have to fill out reports for a school district “advisor,” and she always seems put out that I don’t sufficiently justify how my kids measure up to the jargony standards the state is now using. I have no idea what “strategies” my twelve-year-old daughter uses to read; I just know I taught her to read when she was four, and she’s done it obsessively since, and even read our “Take Care of Yourself” book on her own when she was in third grade and then needed counseling for hypochondria. If you’re a language arts teacher, you’ve probably met kids like my daughter (and maybe were that type yourself once). But I always seem to be at a loss to “prove” to our advisor that my daughter’s reading skills are improving. Same thing for music; the advisor can’t figure out, when I tell her that my daughter advances a level in our city’s Youth Symphony every time she auditions, how that demonstrates that my daughter is “applying arts concepts.” What planet do these people come from? How are we going to get them off our backs? Nobody will ever learn anything while they’re in charge!
I’d like to know of those 24, how many went to public school or had/have kids in public schools.
Thanks for posting this, Diane! Nice research, Schneider! I will never understand why ANYONE is OK with Common Core. Further, as you posted a few days ago, I do not understand how we have let Pearson -a company based in the UK- monopolize our educational resources. With our country’s economy in dire need of jobs, WHY are we outsourcing one of the most important things for the future of our country?
Our local school superintendent is taking money on the side to go around endorsing Pearson products to other school districts. #evil
Jack: Who are primarily responsible for drafting RttT?: JoAnne Weiss and John Shelton III, former employees of the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation who were presidential appointees to Arne’s senior staff.
Case closed. Thanks Paul AFT
Exactly, Paul. The wind-up toys for executing the business plan. Get that national list in place to tag our assessments and computer-adaptive curricula to, that will be sold through our national portal and curriculum gateway, inBloom. Gee, that last part didn’t work out as planned, huh?
Just look at how well the new “business plan” has worked for the former middle class. A few do very well. They even get pay raises after causing a business to lose money. Yet, the diligent workers lose their jobs of get salary decreases.
My son worked for 10 years at a national drug store chain. He began as an 18 year old and after a few years he became assistant manager. He could have gone on to be manager, but it is a thankless job of 60+ hours per week but salaried and not great pay for that amount of responsibility. They eliminated the assistant manager positions and downgraded pay by $3 per hour calling them team leaders. Same job. But no authority. So he took a buyout and finally found another job elsewhere with less pay but more regular hours. Yet they are making money hand over fist for shareholders.
My son has a 4-year degree with great grades from University of Cincinnati. He is a bright, hard worker but other jobs are not available.
The same crap is happening to the teaching profession. I believe there has always been a stigma that some people associated with teachers unionizing. They said, “If you are in a union you aren’t truly professionals.”. Yet without the AFT and NEA teachers would have never received salaries worthy of their efforts. I noted in the late 80s that as teachers got higher wages that they would be loaded with more and more work…because the pay wasn’t for what we were doing or a payback for years of sacrifice. The raises were a signal to the ptb to heap on the data collection. My prediction came true. Along with more money came more paperwork, more classes to take, more professional development, more yearly changes amounting to idiocy. We eventually were expected to differentiate to the extent that we were practically writing IEPs for every child. Then our salaries were flatlined. I never had a raise since 2007. I retired in 2012.
This business model that is being used in schools today will fail to make education better but it will take salaries back to 1985 levels. That is the goal.
Americans are going to continue to have little expendable income. At some point only a few will be able to buy items and keep the economy moving. Even minimum wage jobs will vanish. Gasoline prices will continue tobrise. The Koch Brothers, Gates, Waltons, Haliburton, etc will pass their dollars on to their families …while the rest of us struggle. I look for the day when people stop spending so that the wealthy realize we are tapped dry. Unfortunately, they have enough to do as they please without a worry.
I am tired of the ideas of “freedom for ALL” being misconstrued as “socialism” and replacing all with “few”. It isn’t anti-American to reign in capitalism from shoving educated and creative people into minimum wage, dead end jobs. Sorry. We are free to be who we want. Even greedy jerks can exist as proudly as they wish. Just don’t tell me that you are motivated by Hod, country, or altruism, because I won’t ever believe you.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Jack Talbot, getting to the bottom of CCSS creation is an excavation.
The original 24 on the July 2009 work group were the ones “officially” on the roster for both the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) (math was never released in final form) and the first draft of the actual CCSS standards. CCSS writing began without the November 2009 “expanded” group.
According to the July 2009 NGA press release, the original 24 were supposed to “start” the CCSS process by developing the anchor standards and then to be “expanded later in the year… to develop standards for grades K-12….”
Neither the NGA press releases nor the CCSS MOU specifically name classroom teachers as intentional developers of CCSS.
The “expanded” group announced in November 2009 was actually not “expanded.” Individuals were swapped out. Most of the newbies were convenience additions– university profs and department of education employees. Very few were current classroom teachers in November 2009– and the timing of the NGA press release compared to Susan Pimentel’s timeline provides evidence that this “expanded” group was not in place for the first CCSS draft.
The July 2009 work group was officially in place for the first draft. The group had not been “expanded” before the writing of actual CCSS had been undertaken.
As to who really “wrote” CCSS– I’m leaning to a small group centered around Student Achievement Partners.
The silence of all of these work group members– the first 24, and the “sort of expanded” 101– is incredibly suspicious. NGA only released names of the first 24 under duress. NGA also stated that the deliberations of the work groups would be kept “confidential.”
What a great way to run the CCSS operation any way one likes.
I plan to write a book on CCSS this summer. I will continue digging.
Until then, this is the best I can offer you.
As to Diane’s statement that “24 people wrote CCSS”: I hope her words flush out some statements from the actual individuals supposedly involved in CCSS “development” as concerns actual CCSS creation. I’m thinking there’s some sort of Lord of the Flies fear-motivated group pressure keeping them silent.
When was the first draft of the CCSS completed?
At some point in November. Writing began in September.
Any Agendas or meeting notes available at these work sessions?
Not unless individuals come forward.
Thanks, Mercedes for the pared down explanation. I get lost in competing posts.
Thanks for digging. I wonder if there’s any basis for a Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence, if any, between the National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve, and the CCS authors with respect to the Common Core Standards. There should at least be some emails about the development of the Common Core tests.
It’s a shame that a project that affects so many people is still so shrouded in secrecy. Americans have a right to know how it came about. When your Common Core book is published I will definitely buy multiple copies.
@ Randal Hendee..You state, “It’s a shame that a project that affects so many people is still so shrouded in secrecy. Americans have a right to know how it came about…”
The “corporate ed reformers” used the same strategies to create this hideous national cookie cutter education policy ( CC) that they used to protect the profiteering high stakes testing industry… it is all in the secrecy and the secrecy allows it to grow and to keep opposition at bay! Feels a bit like the famed “Skull and Bones” Society at Yale!
artseagal:
Agreed. As other writers have said, the testing secrecy looks like a baldfaced attempt to hide the poor quality of the tests and to cover up what’s being done to the kids. The worse the kids do, as long as the lid is kept on, the easier it will be for Pearson to sell shoddy materials and services “aligned” with the Common Core.
I wonder what it will take to force some of these closed-door shenanigans into the light. There are so few people calling the shots, the chances of somebody turning whistle-blower seem pretty slim.
Just gave my student that is identified with a learning disability in reading the OAA reading test today. WOW This is NOT why I went into teaching. I had to sit, listen, and watch my student struggle through 5 reading passages that are clearly 3 grade levels above his reading level. I am fully aware of his reading ability due to the multiple assessment we have given all year. At one point in Ohio we piloted an OAA for students with disabilities, not sure where that pilot went?????? Never saw it again????? I am educating myself by reading your blogs and sharing them with my co-workers. Keep up your fight to do what is right!
An insane, abusive policy. Sorry for you and for your student that the two of you, and so many millions of others, have to put up with this benighted nonsense.
common core is crap. i know no adult now would pass. so why are these adults pushing it on our kids now. insane.
Why didn’t you just list the names of people that wrote Common Core Standards?
The Archdiocese of Chicago – the 2nd largest Catholic school district in the US — has mandated that all of the schools “follow ” the CCSS. After 6 months of being forced to apply the MATH Standards to my lesson plans – I felt the only way that I could maintain my sanity was to walk away. Mind you, this was after teaching JrHi Math for 46 years. This included a HS Algebra class for 7th and 8th graders which allowed them to test out of the class in their Freshman year at some of Chicago’s top Catholic high schools. I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to “change” my way of teaching so that I followed the standards. It’s no wonder so many of our minority students are failing.
I chaired the Work Team that wrote the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. There was also a Feedback Group. Both are in the pdf that Jack Talbot links to earlier in this thread. We started in Fall 2009 and finished in June 2010. This was a different process, a different group, and a different document from the one produced by the 24 people listed here. That document was a much shorter precursor document, College and Career Ready Standards. It described the skills and understandings a high school student should have to be ready for college and career. It formed the starting point for development of the Common Core, but did not have any grade level expectations. I is not the Common Core, and these 24 people are not the authors of the Common Core.
Let me first say that I am currently a math teacher outside of Denver, CO. I have a degree in every major science (BA physics, BA chem, MS bio, minor math, >150 grad credits psych, >3.95 GPA) and I was in a PhD program for Neuroscience at a top 10 University for 6 years. I have been in education for over 18 years. I have taught in three states. I had coordinated several university outreach programs, published in educational and scientific journals. I am 3 credits shy of a Masters in Educational Psychology. I have been the director at a children’s science museum. I have substitute taught in over 10 schools. I have literally taught pre-school through graduate school and everything in between with a focus on JH and HS. I say that so no opinionated individual dismisses my thought and opinions because “I never did this, or I never did that.” In regards to Common Core, let us not throw out the baby with the bath water. CC is an outstanding path forward. No, they didn’t use enough classroom teachers in the standard. And it shows, big time! But this always happens even at the state level. There needs to be a lot more active classroom teachers on these committees period. I think the upper establishment for some reason feels they know best. They tend, IMO, to neglect the intelligence, talent, insight, and expertise of the classroom teacher. Just because you “just teach adding fractions” or second grade reading, doesn’t mean that is your level of education and expertise. Secondly, some of the tests that are used to measure CC like the PARCC are atrocious. A foot in the right direction, IMO, but for Christ’s sake, get some classroom teachers on board. Some of my colleagues with degrees in both science and history (>3.5) from flagship state schools couldn’t even read some questions on the math section. The wording is simply not at grade level or developmental level. And any classroom teacher can tell you that. And before anyone thinks, “well maybe you’re just at one of those schools that can’t meet the standards”, I’ll have you know that my classes scored 10-16% higher than the districts and I teach in one of the largest and highest scoring districts in the nation. We were voted in the top 500 public schools in America. Will someone please here our cry! Asking an 8th grader to figure out what “for every variables x and y, with non-zero parameters a and b, compare the solutions for the set of linear equalities such that….” Means. That’s just nuts. In sum, CC is the way forward, but get many more highly qualified classroom teachers to help amend that sucker. Then get a team of classroom teachers to help rewrite those tests so they have the same rigor and test the same concepts. Lastly, I don’t understand why the state pays millions upon millions of dollars on these tests when 20 excellent classroom teachers could do the same with a summer stipend of $5,000 each. Absurd!
I don’t care if Adolf Hitler wrote the Common Core Standards.
Diane Ravitch, and all teachers posting here, should know that the authors’ credentials are irrelevant as to the quality of the standards. If you want to argue that the standards are of poor quality, provide evidence about the standards, not the authors.
Intellectual dishonesty only undermines your credibility.
Th standards have been amply criticized by early childhood educators, specialists in education for children with handicapping conditions, and those who question the validity of setting limits on teaching literature.
The writing committee was loaded with people from the testing industry. Yes, it does matter who wrote the standards because of those voices who were ignored.
The standards will survive if teachers find them useful. From the beginning, the plan was to write them quickly, not to test them anywhere, then give the federally funded tests and use those scores to evaluate teachers and close schools.
Jon,
If Adolf Hitler wrote the nation’s standards, I would care.
No, it’s the other way around: the authors of common core should have done the research to prove their claim that their ideas work.
It’s ridiculous to demand that experts should waste their time with listening to unbaked ideas.
The authors of common core wasted tens of thousands of experts’ time by forcing their unbaked standards on them, and tens of millions of kids (a whole generation of them) suffered as a result.
I am glad you brought up Hitler’s example. He, along with memorable leaders like Stalin, did similar things: they forced their dangerous ideas on millions of people.
If a student turned this in to me as a criticism of CC, I would tell him or her that it was an ad hominem attack and to make a valid argument.
Diane, Adolf Hitler promoted vegetarianism, but that is not a valid criticism of vegetarianism.
Mate, conflating the authors of CC with Stalin and Hitler is a reprehensible smear. Your opinion that the authoring process was inadequate is also irrelevant to the quality of the final product. If the CC contains “dangerous ideas” or is a “waste of time”, you need to prove that in your argument.
It is sad to see teachers succumbing to this type of rhetoric, especially those who fancy themselves as teaching “experts”. This is the type of argumentation that our students should be learning to avoid, and expose.
Jonkzo,
It matters that no one on the writing committee for the common Core had any knowledge or experience with English language learners; it matters that none had any experience teaching early childhood education; it matters that none had any experience in the field of disabilities. It matters that there were no active teachers to connect theory to reality. It matters that the plurality of the writing committee were from the testing industry. They simply had very little knowledge of children or of teaching and learning. They knew nothing about cognitive development. There is a huge gap between what you think children should know and do and what they realistically can learn. What’s right for the children in A classes is not necessarily right for all. Children differ. They don’t all learn at the same pace in the same way.
“Mate, conflating the authors of CC with Stalin and Hitler is a reprehensible smear. Your opinion that the authoring process was inadequate is also irrelevant to the quality of the final product. If the CC contains “dangerous ideas” or is a “waste of time”, you need to prove that in your argument.”
This is not a chicken and egg problem, jonkzo. If somebody wants to change millions of people’s lives, he has to show research, doesn’t he?
So where is the research behind CC and the accompanying testing campaign?
Because, as Diane pointed out, there’s tremendous research supporting the status quo, that, in particular, CC is not designed appropriately..
Your personal experience with CC means nothing, when we are talking about the experience of millions.
Finally, how is bringing up Stalin reprehensible? Didn’t he force millions of people to dance according to the music he liked? His ideas sounded as reasonable to him and his worshipers as Gates’ ideas did to Gates and his worshipers.
Gates operates according to the very same principles as Stalin, except he bypasses violence and uses more 21st century methods which are as effective and asantidemocratic, nevertheless.
I grew up under communism. There was nothing even remotely as confining, as suppressing as conforming in it as in what we see in US public education today. The history book had Marxist ideology in it, but teachers rarely made us open our books. They had great freedom in what and how they taught—there were no standardized tests to make them line up..
No Diane, the end result matters. If you want to make the argument that CC does not address ELLs, early childhood development, or special needs students effectively, you should make that argument, rather than attacking the authors credentials.
Jonk,
The CCSS ignores ELLs, is developmentally inappropriate for the early grades, and ignores children with disabilities.
“Close reading” is designed to prepare for answering questions on standardized tests, reading decontextualized text.
There is no basis in research for shifting the balance of reading instruction from literature to Informational text. Students can learn to think critically whether they read novels or poetry or instruction manuals. It doesn’t matter. The set proportions of literary vs informational text are completely arbitrary.
How’s that?
No one seems to understand or mention that the motivation for much of the decision making behind this committee stems from a disrespect for the body of research, education and teacher prep that has taken place since the 1970s. Leaving teacher voices out of the development of CC is one way to be sure that no tainted opinions that would support the educational establishment were allowed to be used. Teachers are viewed as having been indoctrinated with false methodology and pedagogy.
“No Diane, the end result matters. ”
One of the end result is that kids are not college ready. Far from it. They learnt to follow recipes that would enable them to take speed tests well. But did they learn to think? Did they learn to ask questions, argue? Did they learn to understand mathematics instead of just calculating using mostly useless formulas?
I see the end result every day in the math classes I teach at the university, and it’s not pretty.
To make matters really personal and nothing less than infuriating is that I see the result in my own kids.
The CC description is full of promises to the contrary, but that’s just smoke. and mirror to hide the desire to standardize kids and teachers so that they get ready for online education and become robot-workers for gigantic corporations.
*authors’
Diane,
It would be good to see more meaningful discussion about the areas of CC that concern you. My experience with it has been positive, and I teach ELLs and special ed.
What I see in the Top Posts mostly looks like gossip about perceived “villains”. I could write about “lazy teachers” and “corrupt teacher’s unions”, but it wouldn’t add anything meaningful to the discussion about improving education.
Jonk,
I have written many posts about the reasons the standards are inadequate. 500 early childhood education professionals criticized them in a joint statement. I have explained that the instructions that set ratios for literature and informational text are based on NAEP guidelines to assessment developers –not to teachers. Kids could spend 100% of their time reading literature or nonfiction and it would not affect their reading ability.
I’m glad you have written about the actual standards, and sad to see that what teachers opposed to CC are most interested in is gossip.
“sad to see that what teachers opposed to CC are most interested in is gossip.”
Yet another statement ignoring reality and clearly indicating, our responses have not been read.
What is the difference between nonfiction and informational texts?
No difference. Informational text or nonfiction spans the spectrum from Emerson’s essays, court decisions, to the telephone book.
Mate,
Read back further and you will understand that I was referring to the Top Posts, not the content of the replies. I had to search to find Diane’s article about CC and literature, but articles about Melinda Gates are right on top.
Why do you keep saying the same thing when you are given new information?
Jonk,
I have been writing this blog for 4 years+. Many readers have been with me all along. I sometimes repeat earlier posts, but usually assume that readers understand my objections to the Common Core standards. I waited years to decide to oppose them. I first read them in 2009 when they were in draft form. I read them in 2010, when they were released. I came out against them in 2013, and I have written the reasons extensively.
I think it is very important when writing standards to take time and to include the stakeholders–in this case, teachers, specialists in different fields, that is, those who are expected to implement the standards. It is important to have feedback from the field, and to have a review process, even after the standards are published. It is important to have field testing to see how the standards work in real classrooms and how they affect real students. The process matters. None of those things were done. The standards were written by a drafting committee that contained few, if any, actual teachers. The entire process was underwritten by the Gates Foundation. There was no field testing. None. State superintendents were asked to sign on without seeing the standards, because they had not yet been completed. There is no process for review and correction. The only standards ever written in stone were the Ten Commandments. The CCSS is not in the same category. If something is wrong, it should be corrected. Without field testing, without allowing input after trial, without a review process to correct errors, these standards are not valid. Use them if you choose, but don’t impose them on others who don’t wish to use them.
Jonk,
You have convinced me that I should occasionally repost something I wrote a while back–a year or two or three or four–to reach readers who are new to the blog.
Here is one explanation of my opposition to the Common Core standards: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/24/the-fatal-flaw-of-the-common-core-standards/
I think jonkzo’s main argument is that only results matter, and to evaluate results, his personal vision of these results should be convincing to the general public.
It follows, that the process of setting standards is unimportant: good standards, by definition, are those that are set by people with the most power and loudest voice in the media.
So if powerful people claim that 2 + 2 = 10, they have no duty to show evidence for their claim, especially since with this new formula, money will clearly accumulate much faster, so the results will be clearly superior to the those obtained by the outdated 2+2=4 formula.
In fact, fans of the old 2+2=4 formula are those who are obliged to show evidence that 2+2 is not 10. But even if these evidences against 2+2=10 are shown, it’s common sense that 2 + 2 should be changed to much more than 4, like, say, to 10, since the anticipated consequences of this 21st century 2+2=10 formula are much more preferable.
Other than this small unchangeable part of his logic, jonkzo is open for discussion, so let’s focus on what he is open for.
Diane,
Did you mean “either literature or nonfiction”?
“I have explained that the instructions that set ratios for literature and informational text are based on NAEP guidelines to assessment developers –not to teachers. Kids could spend 100% of their time reading literature or nonfiction and it would not affect their reading ability.”
Jonk,
The Common Core guidelines divide reading time between literature and “informational text.” As the students get older, the amount of literature they are taught declines, and the time spent reading informational text increases. Informational text might be nonfiction of a high quality, but it could also be government guidelines or the telephone book or the dictionary. These guidelines have no basis–NONE–in research or evidence. They were written to mirror NAEP’s instruction to assessment developers, which allocate the questions on NAEP. The NAEP guidelines were not instructions to teachers. Teachers should be free to teach what they choose. The CCSS arbitrarily assigned the proportions to teachers. That is wrong and should be ignored.
Mate, I corrected your confusion over replies and top posts. There was no repetition.
I don’t play games with idiots. So continue to spout off, while I ignore you.
Jonk,
Please don’t insult other readers of the blog.
“Teachers should be free to teach what they choose.”
This explains a lot.
I am livid that students are forced to learn multiple strategies to solve SIMPLE math problems. This is causing unnecessary stress on them. Some students, especially those with learning disabilities, cannot process that much information at one time. What are we doing to these kids??? Let’s GO BACK TO BASICS. Ti
“I am livid that students are forced to learn multiple strategies to solve SIMPLE math problems.”
Exactly. And they are also tested on these multiple approaches. It’d fine if the’d look at the same math from different angles while playfully experimenting, but that is not what’s going on.
Common Core or Completely Cracked? In my experience it is Completely Cracked. How is it that individuals that really don’t have any “common” sense or experience teaching math, develop a idea that would vastly change the way education in math is taught in our nation?
I will tell you about my experience with my child. My child attended a regular public school K-1st grade. I started homeschooling in 2nd grade. Before anyone thinks “Great, another crazy, doomsday, isolationist “, my purpose was to make sure my child got a good foundation in her fundamentals-math, reading, and writing. The school district we were in had a 16 students per classroom mandate until the 4th grade. It changed after our 1st grade year. It increased to a minimum of 35 students. I volunteered in the classroom with our school. I was involved in reading circles, math help, and spelling. I found that for the majority of the students, they were on track with learning because of the multiple parent volunteers and the close supervision and guidance of the teachers. Teachers would teach the subject and we would help students if there were questions or problems. Ok, the parents weren’t trained or certified teacher but K-1st grade material is not that difficult-including math. The classroom size is important-those who decide the fates of or children’s education, ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS LAST SENTENCE? Increased class sizes would doom some of the students that need that extra time and help from the teachers. My child was meeting or exceeding the standards. My thought, along with what I experienced in the classroom, was that this change would not help any of the students. Teachers would now be tasked with not only teaching the foundations but also “corraling” 35 or more students. Anyone ever had to deal with 35 or more kids, everyday, every week for 9 months?! Not me, but as any parent would know that is challenge. So I chose to homeschool. I did not want my child to fall through the enormous crack of not learning or having the opportunity to learn because teachers were overwhelmed with the large number of student and with many levels of learning, or disabilties (dyslexia, autistic disorders, ADD, etc). For those of you not part of this world, yes children of all learning abilities are in the same classroom at this stage, unless they are severely disabled or handicapped.
The homeschool program I chose was also part of the school district we were in. The school district offered this as an alternative to the traditional class room. There was a campus with a principal, teachers, school secretary, small library, computer, and a legion of parent volunteers who were deeply involved in their children’s education. We had monthly field trips, classes in the basic subjects, school plays, access to many avenues of learning including developed internet programs, monthly meetings with our assigned teachers, and the ability to have our children move up in grade level if they were capable. Did anyone ever try to move their child up a grade in a regular school? That is a hard task! There were district and state standardized testing. During our six years homeschooling, my child scored in the mid 90’s to 100 in the testing. I am not bragging but it is to let you all know, in my opinion, that at the elementary and middle school level, the testing of the content of the fundamental is not that demanding. We went through the traditional math.
When Common Core was introduced, it was presented as sort of a trial idea. In our last 3 years we had 3 different publishers of Common Core math. All 3 were vastly different, and in all 3 the content was not about teaching the “depth and breadth” of math, it was more philosophical and discussion based on how to possibly solve the math without any clear defined process. In the normal math realm, 2 + 2 will always equal 2, BUT not in Common Core. The solution is not 2 but possibly some other answer that is the concept of the number 2-are you starting to get the “teaching” or concept/goal of Common Core? One, of many, other fatal flaw of Common Core- non-native English speakers, ESL students, failed miserably on the 2 years of trial testing in our program. These are the students that are from the other countries that the authors “modeled” their program from. These are the students that would normally out score our students. These students are now brought down to our scores in math testing. The trial district testing of the Common Core method also showed a 2 digit decrease in percentage across all levels of math students. How is that good for our students? As a homeschooler, I opted to continue with a regular math program, and my child still tested well because she knew how to solve the math!
This year my child is attending high school, freshman, at a highly praised performing arts school. They are said to have a very rigorous academic program. I have found out otherwise. During homeschooling my thought process to be at level or above compared to the counterparts in a regular classroom. My fear was that I may not be giving my child all the skills and tools she needed to attend a regular classroom. I was wrong, this highly touted school is average in academics. For example, my child is taking French I. Spanish was the prior language studied. The score is he is receiving in Frenh class is 108%- there are opportunities for extra credit. In Lit. And Comp.,an “A”, she has had to explain MLA formatting and genres of writing to other students. So I believe that I was on track and exceeded my goals for my child. Just for your info, the stats for this high school: 85% attended a major college and the rest either choose to attend a community college,work or other endeavor. Last year’s seniors were offered a whopping total of $15 million in scholarships. I believe there were over 500 graduating seniors. That is an incredible amount! To my great dismay, this school is teaching Common Core math. My “A” math students is now a “B” math student. In helping her with this class, we both are very frustrated, confused and unsure of our answers because of the abstract process to get the answers. Math, for me especially in the higher levels like calculus, was difficult. I am not a math person at all but I was able to perform math up to calculus. I am more confused than ever. Unfortunately for my student, the instructor seems just as confused as I am and is not engaged to teach. So what are my options in a regular classroom? Muddle through Common Core and continue to teach my child in a regular math program using another book that I purchased to continue with her math education.
By the way, as some of you know, not all states have blindly adopted Common Core into their education program. I have relatives and friends in other states and countries that do not understand why California has chosen this path for our students. I believe one reason is apathy in our education system to really get a firm hold on teaching our children and the other is the money grabbing by the state for federal dollars to feed into a failing system. Another flaw-the college testing standards do not jive with Common Core. So guess what? As of this writing, your student will be taking a college entrance test that does not align with Common Core curriculum. For those of you who do not live in a state that adopted Common Core, WARNING, Common Core authors are trying to get the all the college testing, SAT, ACT, etc to change their testing to align with the Common Core curriculum. Doesn’t that smack off political strategizing from the Common Core authors, Gates foundation, and other politicians? How many of you parents would be happy with that?!
So what is the answer? Definitely to scrap Common Core. The “philosophy” of Common Core is light years behind the understanding of teaching math. Math is a universal language. No matter what language you speak or where you live on this earth, if a mathematical equation is written on a board, everyone in that international group is able to solve or have a solution. In Common Core, the same group would all look at us Americans as idiots and we would be pushed out of that group for being so. Why do we keep changing our education process every 3-5 years (especially in California)? If the Common Core authors said that they were modeling their curriculum from higher performing countries to get better results here, then they have profoundly failed. They have been drinking from the Common Core fountain too often and too long. All the other countries that are outpacing us in education is because they do not change their education process every so years. Also, they have other high school alternatives such as apprenticeships or work based training programs such as mechanics training, construction and other was non-academic fields that would allow students to have a different career path. I was educated both in and out of the States. I have seen the differences, just as those of you who may have done so. The Common Core authors did not do their due diligence in studying and modeling other country’s math education nor did they experience the other country’s education system for any length of time. If they had done so, they would have tossed their idea into the bin that included the idea of “Ebonics” to be taught as a legitimate course in college.
Also, as a parent we need to be vigilant about our children’s education. I understand that many of us may not have the time because of life happening. In California, I feel that our politicians, from Governor Brown on down, do not have any idea what is happening in their own state. In our Federal government, well we all know how well thought, responsible, and effective they are. Had anyone, from any walk of life, looked at this program, the entire package would have been up in smoke.
I am sorry this is so long but this is my first reply to any blog of any kind. This is how strongly I feel against Common Core. Thanks for letting me rant.