At first I thought that Paul Peterson’s new book about how teachers are blocking school reform was selling poorly, despite a vigorous public relations campaign, because people actually like teachers. Now, I am not so sure. Look at the recommended reading levels and grade levels for “Teachers Versus the Public.” If you know any one-year-olds or first-graders who want to read polling data about vouchers, charters, tenure, and merit pay, this is the book for them. But you may have to wait for a few more years of the Common Core before our toddlers are ready for a book like this.
From the Amazon.com website:
Product Details
Age Range: 1 – 17 years
Grade Level: 1 and up
Paperback: 177 pages
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press (April 29, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0815725523
ISBN-13: 978-0815725527
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #173,364 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Perhaps the “Grade 1 and up” is a reference not to the reading level but to the level of the reasoning.
Brookings also recently called for the CCSSO to start “enforcing its copyright” and so become the de facto curriculum Thought Police for the United States.
“Curriculum choices should remain the purview of educators. However, states and the federal government should pay close attention to implementation. Governments should give schools the time and flexibility they need to implement the Common Core.”
It’s weird how ed reformers never talk about funding. I’m worried the Common Core is too expensive to do well, now that ed reformers in state government have cut public school funding in order to give tax breaks to the same business interests backing ed reform. How many states have lost funding for public schools under ed reform national and state leadership? Is it 32 or 36?
I guess it’s all about the will to succeed and grit, unless we’re talking about per pupil funding for charter schools, in which case 1000 dollars a year in a per pupil funding subsidy bump, lost, can shut down a charter chain in NYC, or so I’m told on Morning Joe. Money matters a lot when we’re talking about charter schools, but oddly doesn’t matter at all when we’re talking about huge new mandates for public schools.
I count 5 new reforms my district has to put in with less funding. We’ll need a lot of grit, I guess, because it’s tough to pass a school levy when people are told public schools are “failure factories” over and over. What voter would fund schools that are portrayed as “failure factories”? No one, it turns out.
Payments to Pearson under the PARCC contract alone will be over a billion dollars over three years. But that figure pales in comparison to the necessary investment in technology for taking these new tests online. What a waste. The opportunity costs and the negative externalities of doing this standardized testing are both enormous.
Brookings Institution Press?????? That’s the whole story.
It doesn’t take a professional teacher to figure out that adding “rigor” to a kindergartener’s day by eliminating exploratory play time, requiring the young children to sit still on rugs and “read” and preparing them for taking sit down tests IS A DUMB IDEA. People always say anyone who ever has been to school thinks they can be a teacher until they TRY IT. But here the premise is quite different because all of us have not been teachers just because we have been to school but all of us have been learners. How many parents have two older children.. one learned to read very young while the other did’t blossom until midway into first grade? How many parents have grown children.. one walked early and the other late? Is one any less “intelligent” or less of an athlete for it? Everyone seems to get that children… NO…HUMANS develop at different rates. So they do not get the quest to rid children of “childhood” by artificially molding them and explaining away by a supposed ” global competition”! And by testing them and expecting them all to be the same on the same day of the year just because they are in the same classroom and in the same grade is increasingly becoming the obvious disastrous (for “ed reformers”) elephant in the room.
This author is the same Paul Peterson that teaches the following course at Harvard…(note Eric Hanushek has a starring role in his syllabus)
Click to access SUP-448.pdf
Oh and pay particular attention to who on Amazon.com gave Peterson a 5 star review. I did!
Loyd Eskildson… (the Freakonomics guy???)…. and read this…
http://freakonomics.com/2005/11/27/gaming-the-amazoncom-review-system/
So the above is VERY TELLING… guess Eskildson cannot work his “magic” on the “reform nonsense”… NOW THAT IS TELLING IS IT NOT?
My initial response did not go through for some reason but I encourage all to look at Prof Peterson’s syllabus at Harvard… Eric Hanusek has a starring role!
Click to access SUP-448.pdf
Then take a look at the 5 star nearly incoherent “reviewer” of Peterson’s book on Amazon.. Loyd Eskildson…
And you will love this exposé of Eskildson’s reviews..
http://freakonomics.com/2005/11/27/gaming-the-amazoncom-review-system/
Everyone has a thought on how teachers can better teach because we all have been to school but we all HAVE NOT BEEN TEACHERS. But the difference now is that we ALL have been students.. in fact we are parents of kids and we know better to try to mold students to read at the same pace on the same day of the same year. Any parent of a kindergarten student at a wedding or at the kitchen table knows for just how long the child is able to sit still. Rug time reading? Many parents are probably thinking – how about reading them a story instead! Louis CK may be famous but he is also a parent and his response was pure honesty so it resonates – no spin there! How many parents have successful adult children where one did not read until midway through first grade and the other was reading before kindergarten! How many have a star athlete who learned to walk later than a sibling who is not an athlete?
So all the “reform pr” is not working and the attack on teachers is just a corporate TAKE DOWN STRATEGY of public education. Teachers are the captains of the ship and so the “ed reformers” are doing their best to take them down at the expense of our nations’ children. NOT VERY GOOD PR! Too many academics far removed from the classroom are all too happy to weigh in.. and Peterson is yet another “capitalizing on the wave”.
Thank you, artseagal. I am so glad my daughter, now in fourth grade, had her preschool and kindergarten education in England where we lived at the time. She had the most wonderful time playing and learning. We moved back to Massachusetts when she started first grade. By October she was seeing the reading specialist every day because she was “not on grade level.” Luckily the reading specialist believed she was immature and did not have a learning disability. I agreed. My daughter cooperated, but it made her feel like a failure each day as she was called to go to the specialist. A year later, at age 7 (!) she was deemed “on grade level.” She was relieved and thrilled. In England there would have been no concern or intervention. She would have started reading on her own, when she was “ready.” Had we been here, she would have been seeing the reading specialist in kindergarten and it would have really affected her self-esteem.
One more thing- if my daughter was in kindergarten here, they would have attempted to teach her vowel sounds in kindergarten. She was simply not ready for that! She would have been a failure. CCS could have crushed her confidence. Not developmentally based…
The fact that infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers cannot fully appreciate this book is clearly the fault of the parents. We should immediately start corporatizing parenthood and implement national parenting standards. The time has come.
LOL
Exactly Blind Noise!
We must move immediately to fundamentally change the way parenting happens in this country!
We have been parenting the same way for over 100 years.
Heck, a cave man could walk into a household and recognize parenting! That is unacceptable!
Time to disrupt the system to affect change.
Let the investments begin!
(Thanks for the laugh)
A study could be done about parents coming from particular institutions and how the children of these parents score on tests. This might allow for a retroactive evaluation of both the parents’ teachers and parents, as well as the institutions under the study.
LOL
“Bob Shepherd
May 4, 2014 at 9:46 am
Payments to Pearson under the PARCC contract alone will be over a billion dollars over three years. But that figure pales in comparison to the necessary investment in technology for taking these new tests online. What a waste. The opportunity costs and the negative externalities of doing this standardized testing are both enormous.”
Right, and if a public school has a shrinking budget, what are they going to prioritize? Actual work on the aspirational goals of the Common Core (curriculum, training, public outreach to explain what’s going on) or the immediate need to get the tests in place and comply with the terms of the deal with the feds? Tests will eat another ed reform, whole, just like tests consumed NCLB. I remember the NCLB debate, just as a voter. It wasn’t supposed to end in this testing nuttiness, it was much, much loftier than that, but it did end that way.
I don’t know how it ends any other way, given how it was joined with testing and “accountability” and the various sanctions that go along “accountability” at the state level. I get the aspirational goal of CC. I just don’t know how it translates, given the entire context.
It reminds me a little of international law, which I don’t practice, but am interested in so I read some on it just for pleasure. It’s all about “aspirational goals” and “norms” (not the trade and business side, but the rest of it -human rights) which is great IN THEORY but so often falls so horribly short. They’re trying to create a “norm” that will change the whole meaning of testing (if I take them at their word) but they left all the testing sanctions in! It’s divorced from state law context, which is why I find it difficult to take them at their word.
Actual work on the aspirational goals of the Common Core
Now that’s something, Chiara, that I could get behind. A few simple, broad goals providing the degrees of freedom within which people could suit instruction to their students and within which people could develop innovative curricula, pedagogy, and learning progressions
But Chiara, look at the actual tests that they have prepared. The ELA tests have almost nothing to do with authentic reading and writing. Since authentic reading and writing is not done for them, they are not tests of authentic reading and writing. These are slightly refined versions of the previous tests and equally invalid. And they’ve introduced a lot of unnecessary complications that make bad tests worse. This is particularly the case with PARCC, the worst of the two.
Bob Shepherd
May 4, 2014 at 9:46 am
And so in that Brookings piece is a sort of tossed-off sentence about how states might consider lifting punishing sanctions, since they’re doing Common Core. But states haven’t done anything of the sort, and that’s because (I believe) the “accountability” obsessives are a POLITICAL faction in ed reform, and they can’t be ignored.
To watch the Obama Administration double down on “accountability” WHILE putting this huge new system in makes no sense to me, and when things make no sense from the outside, I usually look for some powerful political faction pushing their agenda.
What if they had done this? What if they had said “you know, we went a little nuts with the testing and the accountability and the various economic sanctions and we’re going to back off that with CC and we’ll SHOW you we’re backing off with making states drop some of the dumber sanctions using funding mechanisms the same way we made funding contingent on CC” ?
That’s a deal made with respect. Admit error, and make some concrete move to ensure it doesn’t happen again. If the Gates Foundation are “quietly” lobbying states to drop the dumb sanctions, that’s not good enough, because they sure weren’t quiet about putting them in. I think they would make huge advances in trust if they would occasionally admit error, publicly. “Quiet” negotiations just makes it seem like they’re not being transparent, again, and they can’t admit some of this goes badly wrong. It contributes to my sense it’s reckless, because they do NO public second-guessing, so how would I know they second guess at all?
Chiara,
I agree with you that it would be appropriate to back off on NCLB sanctions in “exchange” for thoughtful and thorough implementation of CCSS. But, I haven’t seen that discussion on either side.
I’ll read up on GF’s “quiet” lobbying. Is there anyone asking for this tradeoff?
I think the overuse of accountability came out of frustration over resistance to change. I definitely think that evidence of and commitment to change could be traded for backing off on the punitive stuff. I’m afraid that the anti-CCCS and anti-testing rhetoric will make it worse, not better.
Thanks.
“I think the overuse of accountability came out of frustration over resistance to change.”
Funny. I have heard that we (teachers) are resistant to change for my entire 20+ year career.
And my job and what is expected of me and my students, the tools I use, etc. has changed every year.
We may be resistant, but that hasn’t stopped “change”.
😉
On a serious note. I have always thought of the “frustrated with lack of change” meme to be propaganda. Just another way to marginalize teachers and schools and an excuse for blowing up the whole thing. People say schools have not changed since (insert random year). I say poppycock.
Really, think about it. What has fundamentally changed about going to the doctor in the last 50 years? Or any other serves of that type. Yes, more technology, but the same with schools .
Are we sure the fundamental method of schooling needs to change?
Anyway.
Just my HO
See Naomi Kleins The Shock Doctrine for elaboration.
Thanks
Ang: another approach. Not by ME attempting to answer it but by having a well placed and knowledgeable INSIDER of the self-styled “education reform” movement answer it.
And I’m not talking small fish here—Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. This is particularly relevant because it addresses the latest bludgeon being used against public schools and teachers, i.e., the CCSS.
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Read his comments and ask yourself: just who might be ‘on the attack’ and who might be ‘on the defensive’ aka ‘resistant to change’? I rest his case.
😡
P.S. Noami Klein is well worth reading. My treat next time at Pink Slip Bar & Grille.
😃
KrazyTA,
Re: “: just who might be ‘on the attack’ and who might be ‘on the defensive’ aka ‘resistant to change’”, there is certainly plenty of resistance to give up hardened positions on both sides of these issues; no argument there. I’m talking more about the perceived resistance to change of the institution that I believe led to NCLB, RTTT, etc.
Ang,
I use “frustrated with lack of change” as an observation about why over-reliance on standardized testing and the imposition of lousy teacher assessments happened. I think the American public sees a lot it doesn’t like about public education (not all, but some, fair), and the response from the institution has largely been along the lines of “if you’re not a teacher, how can you criticize it?”, etc. I’m not a politician, but I have plenty of criticisms for them, as I imagine many posters on this blog do.
I wish the institution had been more proactive about creating effective teacher assessments, professional development, etc., as I don’t like what has been imposed by state legislatures any more than most teachers do. I’m just pointing out that I think there’s a cause for this, and I think the solution involves negotiation, not escalation. For example, I think teacher’s unions missed their chance to get out in front of the assessment issue and are now paying the price. Same re standardized testing. I just think the answer is in addressing the underlying reasons that the public and pols want these things as opposed to just resisting the efforts. The underlying reasons are reasonable; it’s the implementations that are bad, and one of the reasons they are bad is because teachers were not involved. And a major reason for that is that the institutions that represent teachers thought they could avoid these things altogether; a miscalculation that I think is costing everybody.
My purpose in mentioning these things is not to assign blame; it’s intended to help the conversation about how to get out of this mess.
I guess a main difference between me and many here is that I think the motivations of most ed reformers are genuine (thought there are a minority that are in it because they’re anti-union, etc.). That’s been my experience with most that I meet, including many regularly denigrated on this blog. That’s what makes me believe that it would be possible to negotiate a lessening of NCLB sanctions, overreliance on testing, etc. in exchange for (as I said above) commitment to and evidence of change in adopting more rigorous curricula and accepting the challenge of doing more to get better results, especially with low SES kids.
jpr, you make some sensible points, and I’m not sure how to address them. You can take the teaching profession as a whole to task for not getting out in front of the evaluation and standardized test front, but you probably realize as much as anyone how difficult it is to come up with a legitimate accountability solution. Teaching is at least as much an art as a science, and measuring effectiveness is far more complex than anything we have or probably ever will come up with. And I don’t think anyone could have predicted the insanity — the wide deviations from common sense — that have emerged from the testing movement. Blame on the teaching profession (I appreciate that you’re not into the blame aspect of improving things, but you do seem to point fingers here) is misplaced when matched against what so many influential policymakers (thank you Washington state!) have instituted.
Overall, I appreciate your tone. Thinking your points over, however, I don’t see any kind of compromise position emerging, because the people behind all of this (Obama, Duncan, Gates, Rhee, Cuomo, etc.) have shown a complete unwillingness to give an inch (if anything, they seem to think we haven’t gone far enough). And, as far as teachers are concerned, I’ve found our viewpoints (from the beginning) to be all but ignored and minimized. At this point, in my opinion, we are not seeing a battle between reformers and teachers (could change down the road as we see more of the unintended consequences of these foolish and short-sighted policies). We are seeing a battle between the reformers and the parents of students caught in the middle of this.
Ohio Algebra II Teacher: I think you have brought up some crucial points. I will just weigh in on two of them.
First, you explain very politely why you “don’t see any kind of compromise position emerging.” IMHO, this is an instance when we need to reject the “false equivalencies” approach to the “ed debates/wars.” In general, public school staff and their supporters have given up much and gotten very very little in return.
For example, when you put pro-charter/privatization educrats in charge of public schools and you get true disasters in a time of belt-tightening like the $1 billion iPad fiasco in LAUSD, I find it truly dishonest to say that “both/all” sides are to blame. Perhaps the creepiest part is that the edufrauds who promoted it and the edubullies who enforced it get an added bonus: some of the public commentary blames—get this!—the “teachers union” and lazy ‘tenured’ educators and ed reform haters and the like for the whole mess! If you don’t like the word “blame” then let’s just say that the responsibility for much [definitely not all!] of what is wrong in public education is not equally shared by all parties. This must be stated clearly and without regard for anybody’s sensibilities.
Second, teacher evaluations, de facto based on the scores generated by high-stakes standardized tests. A genuine scourge and plague that are poorly understood by those that use them against teachers, schools and communities of OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN but largely missing from the schools the “influential policymakers” send THEIR OWN CHILDREN to.
One of their most grievous offenses: when teachers in the unfortunate schools undergoing the punitive hazing ritual of VAM are not in the tested subject areas, they often end up with the scores generated by test-takers they have not taught. A fundamental violation of even the most elementary notion of fairness and decency.
Thank you for your comments.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
Thoughtful implementation of the CCSS in ELA would require eliminating most of it because if one gave the slightest thought to most of these purported “standards,” one would see that there are far better alternatives.
See the following as an example:
The PARCC website says that there are 15 million public school kids in the PARCC states. So, under this contract, at $24 a kid–what Pearson is to be paid–that’s $360 million a year.
So, how much is that in terms of opportunity cost?
Well, that much money would pay 9,812 beginning teacher’s salaries EVERY YEAR.
It would buy 437,500 high-end laptop computers or 1.67 million high-end computer tablets for poor kids EVERY YEAR.
It would buy 5 million new basal textbooks EVERY YEAR.
It would buy 29.167 million library books EVERY YEAR.
Over three years, Pearson’s take on the PARCC tests alone will be more than a billion dollars.
Any wonder, now, why Pearson heavily supported the CCSSO and went into partnership with Bill Gates? And that’s just the beginning of the Cash Cow that Common Core will be for Pearson.
The Cash Cow Common Core College and Career Ready Assessment Program.
Holy C.C.C.C.C.C.R.A,P.
Do you think someone at amazon.com might have sabotaged the info to post it that way?
wdf1, I don’t think so, only because there would have been much more effective ways of sabotaging (i.e., increasing the price; omitting endorsements; including the incorrect image; misspelling author name or title…).
deutsch29: “Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t.” [‘Dr.’ Steve Perry channeling rapper Jay-Z]
At 5:13 PM, PST, 5/4/2014, A CHRONICLE OF ECHOES is #2,452 in books on Amazon. Yesterday at 5:01 PM, PST, it was #6,118 in books on Amazon.
At 5:16 PM, PST, 5/4/2014, TEACHERS VERSUS THE PUBLIC, paperback, was at #57,858 in books on Amazon. Yesterday at 4:57 PM, PST, it was #173,364 in books on Amazon.
At 5:19 PM, PST, 5/4/2014, TEACHERS VERSUS THE PUBLIC, kindle edition was #53,036 in the Kindle Store on Amazon. Yesterday at 4:58 PM, PST, it was #190,384 in Kindle Store on Amazon.
Dr. Mercedes Schneider, A CHRONICLE OF ECHOES: endorsed by Dr. Diane Ravitch.
Dr. Paul E. Peterson & Dr. Michael Henderson & Dr. Martin R. West, TEACHERS VERSUS THE PUBLIC: endorsed by former NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Governor Jeb Bush, former DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Dr. Eric A. Hanushek.
Even with the ‘new charter/privatization math’ that gives us 100% graduation rates with 30 & 40 & 50% attrition rates from entering cohorts and miracle charters that create “little test-taking machines” that give modest increase in high-stakes standardized test scores—
The public school teacher. By a KO.
What are the odds against that? Go figure… [for the CCSS decontextualized ‘close reading’ crowd, a number/stats joke]
And we didn’t even have to wait ten years [thank you, Bill Gates!] for the result!
Congratulations!/¡Felicitaciones!/Omedetoo gozaimasu!
😎
Holy cow, talk about propaganda! Start brainwashing them when they’re young.