Archives for the month of: April, 2014
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Breaking News: Tennessee Legislature Rolls Back Test-Based Teacher Evaluation Law

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
63

In a stunning reversal,the Tennessee Legislature overwhelmingly repealed a law to evaluate teachers by test scores, and the law was swiftly signed by Governor Haslam. On a day when Arne Duncan withdrew Washington State’s failure to enact test-based teacher valuation system, this is a remarkable turn of events.

Joey Garrison of The Tennessean reports:

“Gov. Bill Haslam has signed into law a bill that will prevent student growth on tests from being used to revoke or not renew a teacher’s license — undoing a controversial education policy his administration had advanced just last summer.

“The governor’s signature, which came Tuesday, follows the Tennessee General Assembly’s overwhelming approval this month of House Bill 1375 / Senate Bill 2240, sponsored by Republicans Rep. John Forgety and Sen. Jim Tracy, which cleared the House by a unanimous 88-0 vote and the Senate by a 26-6 vote.

“That marked a major repudiation of a policy the Tennessee Board of Education in August adopted — at Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman’s recommendation — that would have linked license renewal and advancement to a teacher’s composite evaluation score as well as data collected from the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, which measures the learning gains of students.

“The bill to reject the policy had been pushed chiefly by the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ organization, which engineered a petition drive to encourage Haslam to sign the legislation despite it passing with large bipartisan support.

“Huge, huge win for teachers,” the TEA wrote on its Twitter page, thanking both bill sponsors as well as Haslam for “treating teachers as professionals.”

“Eyeing a 2015 implementation, the state board in January had agreed to back down from using student learning gains as the sole and overriding reason to revoke a license. Composite evaluation scores, in which 35 percent is influenced by value-added data, were to centerpiece.”

********************
Two interesting points here: one, Duncan has been hailing Tennessee as a demonstration of the “success” of Race to the Top, in which test-based evaluation of teachers is key. What happens now?

Second, state Commissioner Kevin Huffman is so unpopular that anything he supports is likely to be rejected. His enemies hope he doesn’t leave Tennessee because whatever he recommends generates opposition, even among his allies.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Tennessee

BREAKING NEWS: Duncan Withdraws NCLB Waiver from Washington State

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
91

 

Subject: POLITICO Breaking News

The Education Department is pulling Washington state’s No Child Left Behind waiver because the state has not met the department’s timeline for tying teacher evaluations to student performance metrics.

Washington is the first state to lose its waiver. The loss will give local districts less flexibility in using federal funds. For instance, they may now be required to spend millions on private tutoring services for at-risk students. The waiver revocation could also result in nearly every school across the state being labeled as failing under NCLB.

Washington had pledged in its waiver application to make student growth a significant factor in teacher and principal evaluations by the 2014-15 school year. But the state Legislature refused to pass a bill mandating that student performance on statewide assessments be included in teacher evaluations. The department placed the state on “high-risk” status in August. Arizona, Kansas and Oregon are also at risk of losing their waivers.

For more information… http://www.politico.com

 

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan handed out numerous waivers to states to avoid the 2014 deadline in the No Child Left Behind law.

Under the law, every state must assure that every single child in grades 3-8 is proficient on state tests of reading and mathematics.

No state met the deadline. If the law remains in effect (it was supposed to be reauthorized in 2007, but gets extended year after year), every state would be declared a failed state, and virtually every public school in the United States would be closed or privatized or suffer some other sanction for failing to meet an impossible goal. It bears pointing out that no nation in the world can claim that 100% of its students are proficient in reading and math.

But Duncan didn’t hand out waivers wholesale. Instead, he made the waiver conditional on the state agreeing to accept his conditions, which were similar to the conditions in Race to the Top. In effect, states are now following Race to the Top requirements but without the prize money.

One of the central conditions of the waiver, like Race to the Top, was that states must agree to evaluate their teachers and principals based to a significant degree on the test scores of their students.

Washington State has failed to create such a system. Today Arne Duncan withdrew Washington State’s NCLB waiver to punish it for failing to do as he demanded.

Perhaps legislators in Washington State noticed that this method of evaluating teachers and principals has failed wherever it was tried.

Perhaps they read the joint report of the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association, which cautioned that “value-added measurement” was inaccurate and unstable, and that it measures who is in the classroom rather than teacher quality. The legislators probably did not have a chance to read the recent report of the American Statistical Association, which also cautioned on the use of VAM, because of its imprecision and its unintended effects. But they may have read Stanford Professor Edward Haertel’s advice that states should not set numerical percentages for the use of test scores to evaluate teachers. All of these reports reach the same conclusion: that Duncan’s favorite solution to raising teacher quality does not have evidence to support it.

Let’s hope that Washington State says no to the illegitimate demands of the Secretary of Education. Duncan is overreaching. He is not the nation’s superintendent of schools. He should learn about federalism and about the limited role of the federal government in the area of education.

Meanwhile, I hope that the state of Washington sues the Secretary of Education and helps him learn about federalism and about the importance of evidence in policymaking.

Here is Duncan’s official letter to Washington State, notifying them that they are being punished for defying his orders.

Here is Peter Greene’s deconstruction of Arne Duncan’s letter to Washington State: read here.

Categories Education Reform, Federal Waiver, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education, Washington State

A Former Charter Teacher Defends the Noble Network in Chicago

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
73

The Noble Network of charters in Chicago has come under criticism on this blog and elsewhere for various reasons. The network collected $400,000 in fines from low-income families, who are required to pay a $5 fine for disciplinary infractions. Noble network charters are named for the super-rich people who endow them, like billionaire heiress Penny Pritzker, now U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and billionaire hedge fund manager (and Republican gubernatorial candidate) Bruce Rauner. Some get high scores, others do not.

 

This letter comes from a former teacher at a Noble charter who is now teaching in a Chicago public school. She does not explain the reason she changed jobs. What do you think of her description of the two systems? What could CPS do to address the problems she describes?

 

I am a former Noble teacher and a current CPS teacher. Diane, I really have to say, you are wrong on this one. There are some things Noble needs to grow in, sure. But I could actually teach my children at Noble. I can’t at my current school. So much misbehaving, cursing, on phones during class, acting out, disrespect for everyone (teachers, staff and their peers). It is horrible. I am at my school because I believe all kids deserve a great education, but this is ridiculous. I have a teacher in the room next to me that cusses at her kids, and I mean the F word! I walked into a class and saw a kid watching porn on his phone. I almost threw up. This was a normal class period. Parents don’t understand how bad it is. They have an idealized memory of school and not a real understanding of what is being robbed from their kids simply because of a lack of empowerment of teachers to DO anything. Decide what to teach in your class (nope). Discipline your students (nope). Put in extra hours (nope).
Noble may have been picky, but parents were involved and addresses their kids behavior to avoid that $5 fine. AND students have to earn four demerits within two weeks to get a fine. A simple mistake here and there is no problem.
CPS better wake up. Charters are not the answer, but if CPS is too afraid to see what they are doing right and get on board it will be their undoing.
Not to mention Noble has a feeling of family that I don’t see at my current CPS school. As soon as the bell rings teachers are GONE. At Noble teachers would stay until 6pm almost everyday meeting with kids to make sure they knew the material. At my current school they actually TELL me to leave when the bell rings.
Maybe if you teach in a selective-enrollment school or in a privileged neighborhood, but you can’t go to Humboldt Park, Englewood or Back of The Yards and tell me Noble isn’t a better way to go. Just go visit Gary Comer High School (Noble school in Englewood) and THEN let’s talk.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Reform

Reader Jim Explains Why Due Process Matters

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
66

Legislatures in various states are trying (and in many cases, recently Kansas, succeeding) to eliminate “tenure” for teachers, which means the elimination of due process.

 

If a student makes a baseless claim against a teacher (“he touched me”) or a parent complains that the teacher discussed evolution or global warming or taught an “offensive” book, the teacher may be fired on the spot, without a hearing in the absence of due process.

 

Tenure doesn’t mean a lifetime job. It means that the teacher has a right to a hearing before an impartial administrator and must be fired only for cause, not capriciously.

 

Teachers don’t get due process until they have taught for two, three, or four years, depending on state law. They don’t give themselves due process; it is a decision made by their principal.

 

 

Reader Jim explains in a comment on the blog why teacher differ from other public employees:

 

I don’t care about other public employees. They are not in the same boat I am. I have spent around 75K on MANY education degrees enabling me to be certified to be a teacher. Other public employees spent “$0″ dollars to be enabled to do their job.

I have a significant investment in the property of my teaching license, and I deserve the right to defend myself against arbitrary and capricious discipline and/or termination processes.

Teaching is not like other professions where once you are fired, and a license pulled, you can go get another job. Without the property of a teaching license, I am nothing in the education field (in terms of being a teacher).

Categories Teacher Tenure

Save Our Schools NJ Complains That Public Schools Are Recruiting for Charters

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
9

Camden, New Jersey, is one of the state’s impoverished small cities that is under state control. It may be the poorest district in the state. It is rhe lowest performing. The Chris Christie administration appointed a 32-year-old inexperienced young man (Teach for America alum) with some time working in the New York Department of Education and Newark as Camden’s superintendent, and naturally, his goal is to turn public school students over to charter operators. Save Our Schools NJ sent the following letter to the state commissioner of education:

“FOR IMMEDIATE USE

April 21, 2014

Save Our Schools NJ requests that Commissioner Hespe stop additional legally-questionable activities by the Camden School District

Save Our Schools NJ Contacts

Susan Cauldwell susancauldwell@saveourschoolsnj.org 908-507-1020

Julia Sass Rubin jlsrubin@verizon.net 609-683-0046

Today, Save Our Schools NJ, a non-partisan, grassroots organization with more than 15,000 members across New Jersey, sent a second letter to the state’s Acting Education Commissioner David Hespe, alerting him to actions by the State Operated Camden School District that raise serious legal concerns.

Highlighting the fact that the Camden School District had mailed home to district families a recruitment flyer for the Mastery charter school network, Save Our Schools NJ requested that the Acting Commissioner “investigate the extent to which Camden’s public school resources were used in mailing” the recruitment flyers to parents as this “would constitute inappropriate use of school funds to promote — and give preferential treatment to — a specific private organization.”

Save Our Schools NJ further informed the Acting Commissioner that Mastery recruiters had been going to the homes of Camden public school students, to encourage them to enroll in the school. Save Our Schools NJ asked the Acting Commissioner to “investigate how Mastery, a private entity, obtained the addresses of Camden students for purposes of conducting unannounced visits to students’ homes” and to “examine whether Camden provided Mastery with students’ home addresses — or any other individual student information — without the consent of parents and guardians.”

Referencing the legislative record of the Urban Hope Act, Save Our Schools NJ also raised once more the concern identified in a prior letter that Camden was violating the Act’s ban on temporary facilities for Renaissance charter schools:

“In passing the Urban Hope Act, the legislature was very clear that Renaissance Schools cannot operate as temporary schools in temporary facilities, but rather must be in a “newly-constructed” school. The legislative statement to the Urban Hope bill, issued by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee on January 5, 2012, states on page 3 that “[t]he committee amended the bill to: … clarify that renaissance school projects are newly-constructed schools…Yet, Camden is planning to locate both Mastery and Uncommon Schools Renaissance schools in existing public school buildings, for the 2014-15 academic year.”

Save Our Schools NJ requested that the Commissioner “immediately investigate whether Camden has authorized Mastery and Uncommon to operate schools under the Urban Hope Act in 2014-15 on a temporary basis in existing Camden school facilities and, if so, take prompt action to direct Camden to terminate this arrangement.”

April 21, 2014

Commissioner David C. Hespe
New Jersey Department of Education
100 River View Plaza
P.O. Box 500
Trenton, NJ 08625

Dear Commissioner Hespe,

As a follow-up to our April 14, 2014 letter, we wish to bring to your attention additional actions by the State Operated Camden School District (Camden) that raise serious concerns about Camden’s compliance with the Urban Hope Act and regulations, and with other laws.

1) Temporary facilities are not allowed under the Urban Hope Act

We remain very concerned that, although their application to build such schools has yet to be approved by your office, Camden is moving forward to facilitate the enrollment of Camden public school students in September, 2014 in “temporary” schools, to be operated by the Mastery and Uncommon organizations and located in existing Camden public schools, ostensibly as Renaissance Schools under the Urban Hope Act.

In passing the Urban Hope Act, the legislature was very clear that Renaissance Schools cannot operate as temporary schools in temporary facilities, but rather must be in a “newly-constructed” school. The legislative statement to the Urban Hope bill, issued by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee on January 5, 2012, states on page 3 that “[t]he committee amended the bill to: … clarify that renaissance school projects are newly-constructed schools.”

Yet, Camden is planning to locate both Mastery and Uncommon Schools Renaissance schools in existing public school buildings, for the 2014-15 academic year.

The attached letter, which was mailed by Camden to public school parents, states:

“Mastery School of Camden will open this fall in two temporary locations for approximately 600 kindergarten through 5th grade students:

-At PynePoynt Family School, Mastery Academy will serve up to 380 new K-5 Students.

-At the old Washington School, Mastery Academy will serve approximately 220 K-2 students.”

These types of schools — to be operated by a charter management organization and located temporarily in existing public school facilities — are clearly not authorized under the Urban Hope Act. Accordingly, we request that you immediately investigate whether Camden has authorized Mastery and Uncommon to operate schools under the Urban Hope Act in 2014-15 on a temporary basis in existing Camden school facilities and, if so, take prompt action to direct Camden to terminate this arrangement.

2) Public school districts should not advocate for specific private entities

The letter quoted above, which Camden sent to public school parents, included the attached solicitation flyers for the Mastery charter school chain.

The use of Camden personnel and resources to encourage public school students to attend the privately managed Mastery school would constitute inappropriate use of school funds to promote — and give preferential treatment to — a specific private organization.

We request that you investigate the extent to which Camden’s public school resources were used in mailing Mastery recruitment flyers to parents.

The investigation also should ascertain why it appears that Mastery was the only charter organization in Camden to be given direct assistance by the Camden School District for 2014-15 enrollment recruitment activities.

3) Camden cannot share confidential student data with individual private entities

Camden parents who live in the area from which Mastery plans to draw for its unapproved Renaissance school also indicated that Mastery representatives came to their homes to encourage them to enroll their children in the Renaissance school.

This raises serious concerns about whether Camden disclosed individual student records and information to a third party entity without the consent of the students and their parents and guardians.

We request that your Office launch an immediate investigation into how Mastery, a private entity, obtained the addresses of Camden students for purposes of conducting unannounced visits to students’ homes. This investigation should examine whether Camden provided Mastery with students’ home addresses — or any other individual student information — without the consent of parents and guardians.

We would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you to discuss this further.

Sincerely,

Susan Cauldwell, volunteer organizer, Save Our Schools NJ
Executive Director, Save Our Schools NJ Community Organizing
susancauldwell@saveourschoolsnj.org

Julia Sass Rubin, volunteer organizer, Save Our Schools NJ
Chair, Board of Directors, Save Our Schools NJ Community Organizing
jlsrubin@verizon.net

cc: Paymon Rouhanifard, Superintendent, Camden City Public Schools

David Sciarra, Executive Director, Education Law Center

Categories Charter Schools, New Jersey, Privatization, Resistance

Peter Greene: Did Connecticut Discover a Way to Measure Grit?

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
23

In the ever-ending boundaries of educational science, there is a new frontier: measuring grit.

Peter Greene discovers a striking phenomenon: apparently Connecticut has unlocked the secret of Grittology.

“I am sure that all of us, all around the country, want to know how this is done. I am sure that phones are ringing off the hook in CT DOE offices as other educational thought leaders call to ask for the secret of grittological measurements.

“Was it a physical test? Did they make teachers do the worm for a thousand yards? Did they make teachers peel onions and sing “memories” while watching pictures of sad puppies, all without crying? Did they have to compete in three-armed wheelchair races? Were they required to complete a season of the Amazing Race as participants? Did they have to stand stock still while being pelted with medium-sized canteloupes?

“Or perhaps it was a study of their personal history. We know that grittologists have determined that people who have tended not to quit things in the past probably won’t quit things in the future (who knew?) So maybe the state looked for people who didn’t quit things, like lifelong members of the Columbia Record Club or folks who actually finished an unfinishable sundae or who stayed in a bad marriage. Maybe the state only accepted cancer survivors or acid reflux sufferers or folks with chronic halitosis.

“Or maybe Connecticut has a special computerized grit test. Take a PARCC exam on a computer with a bad internet connection or using a keyboard on which some eighth grader has previously moved around all the keys. Create a word document on a computer running Windows 3.0– no swearing at the blue screen of death. Play HALO with a six-year-old on your team. Is there a grit praxis?”

Keep your eyes on Connecticut. They measure grit there. But be sure to read the comments where you will learn most teachers who applied to the program were accepted. Guess that all teachers in Connecticut have grit.

Categories Connecticut

Teacher to David Coleman: Yes, What Children Think and Feel Does Matter

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
41

Veteran teacher Eileen Riley Hall has some advice for David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards.

Coleman famously said, in taped remarks at the New York State Education Department, that

 

“As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a (expletive) about what you feel or what you think.”

 

That remark, she says, typifies “all that is wrong with the soulless Common Core standards and its rigid, test-obsessed approach to education.”

 

They focus “myopically on intellectual skills theoretical children should have when they graduate from high school and then builds backward. However, a good teacher, like a good parent, begins by considering the needs of the real children in her classroom and builds forward. Children are not just walking brains, but bodies, hearts and souls as well. Contrary to Mr. Coleman’s crass assertion, our children’s thoughts and feelings should be the heart of our schools.”

 

She offers him a few lessons, based on her many years in the classroom:

 

“You don’t make kids smarter just by making school harder. If you’ve seen the convoluted Common Core elementary math lessons, you know this. Dictating one method of teaching doesn’t make sense, especially when that method complicates simple lessons, frustrating the majority of students. Schools should offer students a variety of ways to approach subjects, increasing opportunities for success.

However, the suffocating standardized tests demand one rigid methodology that does not allow teachers to tailor lessons to their students. Too often, students feel like failures when they are simply not developmentally ready for material or need a different strategy. Success is motivating; repeated failure is not. Build on children’s strengths; don’t hammer them with their weaknesses.”

 

A happy school is a productive school. “Children are in school for seven hours a day, five days a week, for 13 years. School, especially in the elementary years, should cultivate a child’s love of learning. Yet, the Common Core scorns all the creative endeavors (music, literature, art) that inspire students to imagine and dream. Instead of poetry, we now have technical reading. Imagination may not be quantifiable, but it keeps kids invested and ultimately yields far more impressive results than relentless test prep.”

 

What if all the millions now spent on new Common Core-aligned materials and consultants, new software and hardware for the testing, were spent instead to meet the needs of children? “Free lunch and breakfast programs; social workers and counselors; after-school, mentoring and tutoring programs; and smaller classes.”

 

If there had been any experienced classroom teachers on the committee that wrote the Common Core, these lessons might have been learned before they were written in stone and imposed on 46 states by the lure of Race to the Top gold. If the writing committee included as many teachers as testing experts, the Common Core would look very different and would not be facing massive pushback across the nation.

Categories Common Core

Wendy Lecker: Why So Many Segregated Charter Schools in Connecticut?

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
33

Civil rights attorney Wendy Lecker calls out the charter sector of Connecticut for its unabashed practice of racial segregation.

A new report from Connecticut Voices for Children finds that charter schools are hyper segregated and that they exclude children with disabilities and English language learners.

Don’t expect the State Commissioner of Connecticut to care: he was co-founder of one of the state’s most segregated charter chains.

Charter founders think they are advancing civil rights by creating segregated schools but that turns history on its head, Lecker writes:

“As the Voices report notes, the practices engaged in by charter schools and condoned by the state reveal a troubling approach to choice. For them, choice is about advancing the individual interests of families, rather than any broad community wide educational goals; such as desegregation. The authors found that when individual interests are the goal of choice, then choice policies undermine the goal of equitable educational opportunity for all students.

“The idea of equity for all was the driving force behind the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. declared that “I am never what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.”Lyndon Johnson’s motto was “doing the greatest good for the greatest number.”

“The principles of communal good underpinned Connecticut’s commitment to school integration. Connecticut’s Supreme Court deemed that having children of different backgrounds learn together is vital “to gain the understanding and mutual respect necessary for the cohesion of our society.” The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall maintained: “Unless our children learn together, there is little hope that our people will learn to live together.”

The charters have a peculiar idea of civil rights, one that does not reflect the views of Dr. King or Justice Marshall:

“Choice as practiced by charter schools perverts the notion of integration. In its annual report, under the goal of reducing racial isolation and increasing racial and ethnic diversity, Achievement First Bridgeport wrote that the school’s “African-American, Hispanic and low-income students will outperform African-American, Hispanic and low-income students in their host district and state-wide, reducing racial, ethnic and economic isolation among these historically underserved subgroups.”

“Achievement First defines integration as children of color getting better standardized test scores. Justice Marshall must be spinning in his grave.”

In the eyes of charter leaders, higher test scores–achieved by pushing out o excluding low-performing students–trumps integration.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Standardized Testing

Does Data Matter to the Status Quo Defenders?

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
83

Reader Chiara Duggan says that study after study shows that charters and vouchers demonstrate that data don’t change their minds. She is right. The charters that get high test scores systematically exclude the most challenging students. Some public schools get higher test scores because they serve affluent districts. The differences between charters, vouchers, and public schools tend to be small if they enroll the same students. But the Status a quo pays large numbers of people to argue that the Status Quo–the destruction of an essential institution of a democratic society–is “working” and has positive effects. When the test scores don’t support their argument, they shift the goal post and claim that the private schools–the charters and vouchers–have higher graduation rates. They take care not to mention attrition rates, which are very high. In the case of Milwaukee, the “independent” evaluators from the Walton-funded University of Arkansas quiet.y acknowledged that 56% of those who started in voucher schools left before graduation.

Chiara writes:

Oh, data doesn’t matter to ed reformers. It’s a belief system. Private is better than public. You can’t move someone off a belief with numbers.

How many times have you see a voucher study like this over the years? Once a year for two decades? Yet Democrats and Republicans and paid lobbyists and pundits still promote publicly-funded private schools over public schools. Vouchers have expanded every single year in this country under ed reformers. There isn’t a scintilla of evidence that they’re any better than the public schools they undermine and then replace, but it simply doesn’t matter.

“Students attending private schools receiving taxpayer-funded vouchers in a new statewide program did not score as high overall as public school students on state tests in reading and math, according to data released Tuesday by the Department of Public Instruction.”

It doesn’t matter what public schools do; improve, don’t improve, whatever. They are the designated punching bags for the punditry set. It’s knee-jerk at this point. Heck, a lot of people are PAID to bash them. It’s a smart career move.

I think this may inadvertently benefit public school students. As it becomes more and more clear that privately-run schools don’t outscore public schools in any meaningful way, the goalposts will move, and standardized test scores will no longer be the measure. I think it’s already happening. Ed reformers may actually do something that benefits public schools, and deemphasize the lunatic, obsessive fealty to test scores. They’ll do it it only to defend their own schools, but public schools may benefit collaterally.

Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/local/education/blog/dpi-wisconsin-voucher-schools-show-lower-test-scores-compared-to/article_df494180-cd29-538a-80be-a923cded39aa.html#ixzz2yNzhk7yP

–

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Research, Vouchers

“Common Core: Building the Machine”

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
50

This is an interesting documentary on the Common Core, featuring some of its strongest supporters at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (as well as guest cameos by Jeb Bush and Bill Gates) and some of its strongest critics, notably Sandra Stotsky and James Milgram, both of whom served on the “validation committee,” but refused to sign off on the standards. It was produced by the Home School Legal Defense Association (represented by Mike Farris). So far as I know, home schoolers are not bound to abide by the Common Core standards, although they may need them if they take the SAT or the ACT.

 

The documentary makes two very provocative points about Common Core.

 

One is a civic critique of the undemocratic way in which the Common Core standards were written: by a small committee that included no classroom teachers, no specialists in early childhood education or in the teaching of children with disabilities or of children who are English language learners, and no working teachers of the subjects at issue. Customarily it takes two, there, or four years to wire state standards, because of the need to hear from different constituencies, especially those that are knowledgeable and directly affected. The Common Core standards were written in a year and adopted by 45 or 46 states in a year, because of the lure of $4.35 billion in federal dollars. The process was speedy and efficient, but it was not democratic. The absence of a democratic process has fed distrust, which in turn has created an angry backlash. The documentary has a few poignant moments about how democracy works. The writers of the Common Core would have benefited immensely by a reminder of what democracy means and how it should work.

 

The second interesting point that the film raises is whether a single set of national standards can meet the needs of both college-ready and career-ready. Some people complain that the standards are too hard, others complain that they are too easy. This is a contradiction at the heart of the CCSS.

 

There has been a conscious effort to say that “the train has left the station,” but that’s not a good enough reason to jump aboard (how do you jump aboard a train that has already left the station anyhow?).

 

First, you want to be sure that the train is going where you want to go. Second, be careful about who is driving the train.

 

I, for one, am not convinced that the train has left the station. I see more indications every day that the promoters of Common Core are getting desperate because of the negative public reaction. There is a palpable sense that the public can’t figure out how we got national standards in the absence of any democratic discussion about their pluses and minuses. And so we have Gates and newspaper editorials and television advertising and other promotional activities to sell us on something that not many people understand.

 

Nope, the train is still in the station, and a lot of parents and teachers need to be convinced and a lot of revisions need to be made before this train goes anywhere. This will be hard because it seems that the engineer, the conductor, and the crew have moved on to other jobs.

 

 

 

 

Categories Common Core
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