I think there are plenty of well meaning people on different sides of the Common Core issue. It serves no useful purpose to divide people into good guys and bad guys. This is one of those tangled questions where we do best to debate the pros and cons of the Common Core, without challenging the motives of those with whom we disagree.
No doubt, there are some who seek to make profit or who are troubled by Bill Gates’ overwhelming investment in the CCSS. It would be easy to come up with a list of dubious motives for the CCSS, but our national discussion should deal with consequential issues, such as the quality of the standards, whether they are appropriate for students of different age groups, and how they are likely to narrow or increase these gaps among different student groups.
Among the most one sided treatments of CCSS is that of the Southern Poverty Law Center. This is a group that is usually very grounded in its criticisms.
Unfortunately, SPLC chose to paint opposition to the CC as Tea Party and/or rightwing extremists who want to destroy public education. This is odd indeed because the critics and supporters of CC are strange bedfellows.
Jeb Bush, who does not like public education but loves vouchers and charters, is one of the most outspoken supporters of the CC , as is Michelle Rhee, and others on the right. The Chicago Teachers Union just voted unanimously against the CC. CTU is not an enemy of public education
More thinking is needed, less name calling.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hard to believe this blog is calling for less name calling….you are the world champs at it. “All millionaires and billionaires hate public education and are trying to profit from its destruction” And, i don’t think Jeb Bush ever said “I hate public education”
People in glass houses should not throw stones.
Here’s a little proof of Jeb Bush’s grifting in the name of “reform”. He despises public school teachers and their unions because they opposed him both terms in office as Florida’s governor and they have defeated his proposals three times over the class size amendment (twice upheld by the voters despite Jeb’s strong and expensive opposition), the first attempt to impose merit pay, and then the parent trigger legislation.
His work is not transparent and he uses every legal trick available, including multiple organizations, lobbying groups, corporations, etc. all using the same address and same employees to get around the laws of Florida and the USA.
Does he hate public education? Let’s say he loves privatization and profiteering while building a potential presidential campaign on the demonization of hardworking teachers and the innocent children of the USA.
Read this:
http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/article/critics-rap-actions-jeb-bushs-education-foundation
“People who live in glass houses…”
Until the “billionaires and millionaires” send their children to schools with similar copyrighted testing and their schools spend outrageous sums to private vendors for testing, the word hypocrite, applies.
Until the “billionaires and millionaires” place their children in regimented, highly disciplined schools, like urban charters, the word discrimination, applies.
When for-profit schools are run by criminals and people associated with companies investigated for fraud, vigilance is demanded.
When attacks on public education follow an opt-repeated pattern,
-Main stream media “reports” system-wide failures
-Think tank lackeys, testify in capitols
-Politicians demand expensive private fixes
-Business moguls reward elected and appointed policy makers,
DEMOCRACY is in peril
Find me any place that anyone on this blog – Diane or any commenter has ever said *all* millionaires and billionaires hate public education. I’ll wait.
I certainly join the posters here that find name calling counterproductive and think that less name calling and more thinking and discussion of the complicated issues involved would be a very very good idea.
Chris in Florida, Linda & Dienne: I repost here a comment I made under another of today’s postings on this blog.
Susan Lee Schwartz: with all due respect, I am reminded of a response by NY teacher, 5/10/2014, 12:39 PM, which ended with:
“Why would you ask such a ridiculous question? Better yet, why am I responding?”
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/05/10/anthony-cody-why-computers-cant-grade-student-essays/
Your call—I mean that sincerely—but periodically some of the commenters on this blog remind us not to feed the shills and trolls. It just spurs them on.
Let me put this another way. You are trying to respond to someone who thinks the following is encouraging not admonitory:
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts — for support rather than illumination.” [Andrew Lang]
But what can you expect when someone is strictly adhering to the Marxist playbook:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
¿? Yes, Groucho. The famous one.
😎
I don’t respond to the trolls trying to educate them or to change their minds but rather to make sure that their ridiculous statements don’t go unanswered.
There are lots and lots of lurkers who visit this blog and don’t post anything themselves. I’m writing for them.
That’s my choice.
Chris in Florida: well argued.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Foolish peasants arguing with one another over right wing vs left wing politics. Can’t you see, both wings are part of the same dirty bird.
How they must delight in their manipulation of the democratic process that has us trashing one another while the Hegelian principle has us compromising ourselves right to where they wanted us all along.
It matters not who sits in the oval office. The hidden hand is rocking this cradle and shall soon rule the world if we continue to argue over whose politics are correct.
We can agree in our denouncement of CCSS because fundamentally, as human beings, we all realize they violate an unspoken unalienable right.
Well, this particular foolish peasant has noticed that some arguments against the Common Core come from one particular end of the political spectrum, so to suggest that they are general complaints would be quite inaccurate. That has nothing to do with party politics, in my estimation. You just won’t find self-identified progressives shrieking about the “Communist propaganda” inherent in Common Core, for some strange reason. If you believe there IS such propaganda, it’s remarkable how it just seems to pop up everywhere, even in the most unlikely places (Did you know that Communists have favorite numbers that they insist must be used in all Common Core math problems???? Learn how to recognize and avoid these numbers in your family’s everyday lives!)
Okay, back to the brick pits.
Which unspoken inalienable right is being violated?
well said, janine!!!
TE: The Common Core legislates what IDEAS can be taught and learned.
For example, TE, of the thousands of topics related to figurative language that I might engage my students in, the Common Core chooses one, a dull, sad, pathetic, backward, dumb topic: “how the author’s use of figurative language affects the mood and tone.”
Now, doesn’t that “standard” strike you as narrow, puerile even? It does me. It’s like telling me that when I teach the Civil War, I must concentrate on the relative sizes of rebel and union cannonballs.
So who empowered the Thought Police to tell us that of all the topics related to figurative language that we might address in our classes, this is the one that we must address?
That “standard” is a prior restraint on freedom of thought and speech in a place where such freedom is extremely important–in our classrooms.
And to make matters really, really awful, the Thought Police chose amateurs to put these “standards” together. They are hackneyed, backward, and prescientific. They distort and narrow curricula and pedagogy. And one could drive whole curricular progressions for all the grade levels through their lacunae.
Bob, I’m not up on the people who worked on the literacy standards for the most part, but I wouldn’t call the folks who worked on the math standards amateurs. I have issues with some of what they produced, but the Practice Standards are pretty much in line with what progressive math educators have advocated for several decades, myself included. I don’t like the very idea of national standards, so even if the content standards were a perfect match for my own fantasy K-12 curricular standards (which don’t exist), I’d dispute the need for or desirability of any such document, particularly when it is tied to high stakes tests, a bunch of regressive policies, and the whole privatization, for-profit apparatus that this set has come with.
But I still respect some of the folks on the various committees involved with the math standards, even if I think their job was both impossible and unnecessary. Calling THEM amateurs would be, on my view, wrong.
My comments refer to the ELA “standards.” I should have been clear about that.
Thanks for clarifying, Bob.
I have some issues with the math standards, too, but these are basically an update of what was close to a preexisting consensus. Almost all the state math standards that preceded these were variations on the NCTM standards. And in math, as E.D. Hirsch, Jr., pointed out, the standards are basically a curriculum outline. In ELA, things are very, very different. I have a lot of issues with the math standards too, but I don’t feel up to going there right now. Basically, I think it a mistake for us to think that we can do minor tweaking of what we’ve been doing all along and expect to have major differences in outcomes. MOST American adults, all of whom have been through our remarkably consistent K-12 math learning progression, are effectively innumerate, and most HATE math. Tweaking an existing consensus isn’t going to change that.
Thank you. I’m a 912 member and I oppose Common Core. Education is best left at the local level. We share the belief that Common Core harms the education of our children.
I would agree that the process of creating and implementing the CCSS needs to be debated. I question anyone who thinks Bill Gates is in this for financial reasons, and I think the SPLC is probably entering waters it doesn’t fully understand. They put off requests to stand with many people in WI when Gov. Walker attacked public education and other state funding aimed at healthcare for poor children. That said, unions do not have a stellar civil rights record either. Morris Dees and the SPLC will continue to get my vocal and financial support. In WI, the alternative to CCSS would have been politicians setting the standards, and thus we saw the vast majority of teachers support the CCSS. The charter school movement also brings the “urban left” and Republicans together in a similar fashion that CCSS has brought two sides together. I think we all know the CCSS mean very little without the PARCC and SBAC assessment accountability. I’d rather focus on fixing poor assessment and accountability measures than national standards that can be adjusted locally if assessment/accountability would truly test and measure what is important.
Those who love the common core are the ones who will profit most. Children will not benefit from a curriculum of math and reading where the math is fuzzy and the reading totalitarian, both taught to the test. Common Core as it stands is based on backwards planning and doesn’t promote creativity or critical thinking. It is aimed at filling in bubbles on the ultimate test of having retained the answers to the questions, and the math is just about destroying the fact that 2 plus 2 equals 4 and how to solve that, even with pre-kindergarten kids. Face it, if you have 4 crayons, and lay down 2, then 2 more, a pre-k child can logically see that in front of them. When 2 plus 2 equals 5 and a child is asked to explain it, and that answer is acceptable, there is something wrong with the picture.
Where is the social studies, the history, geography, current events, science? No time to teach that, because too much time is spent memorizing the answers to the tests.
When you take who benefits most out of the equation and come up with a better curriculum, I’d be all for it.
In private schools, none of this flies; but its good for the public schools, right?
Jeb Bush may not have ever been recorded saying “I hate public education” but he sure has done his best to destroy it and privatize it.
The “social studies” is hidden in the 50% informational text of the ELA.
They provided constructive criticism for a long time, but more recently their use of common
fallacies, labels and absurd myth v fact arguments have done too much to replace
critical thinking with paid political rhetoric.
I think your call-out is more one-sided than theirs. Here is the key paragraph from the intro to the report:
By raising the specter of “Obamacore,” activists on the radical right hope to gain lever- age against their real target—public education itself.
The Christian Right is reprising themes from earlier battles over the teaching of evo- lution, school prayer, sex education, and more recent efforts to stop the bullying of LGBT students. Their moneyed allies seek to privatize the education landscape.
To be sure, education experts of all political stripes have raised important questions about the Common Core. Are the standards too rigorous? Are they rigorous enough? Should children and teachers be evaluated on standardized testing? Has there been ample time for implementation and teacher training?
These and other issues should be the focus of robust debate—one rooted in the facts. Unfortunately, the issues are being obscured by a cloud of overheated hyperbole, misin- formation and far-right propaganda.
We must do better.
America’s 50 million schoolchildren and the dedicated educators who teach them deserve a sober, well-informed discussion that will help determine the richness of the education afforded children in public schools—as well as what kind of country we become.
Political leaders and policymakers at all levels must reject the extremism that has pol- luted the debate and focus on the real issues. Equally important, they must stand up for public education, one of our nation’s great- est accomplishments and a linchpin not only of our prosperity but of the American ideal of equality for all.
Grant, I disagree. Aside from a few paragraphs, the full publication, graphics included, are an insult to the many concerned parents and educators who take issue with CC. No one would call that a balanced presentation, except you. How about adding pictures of the CTU voting unanimously to oppose CCSS?
Diane, Grant is much closer to the truth here than you are this time. I reply here to draw attention to my post below awaiting moderation. It is foolish in the extreme to attack the SPLC for pursuing their mission. They are not education activists, we are. We cannot expect let alone demand that everyone join our army and abandon their own, especially when we are fighting on different, distant fronts on what is essentially the same war. The SPLC are allies, not AWOL or traitors. Just look at the far right divide and conquer trolling showing up here on this issue, that should tell the regulars here a lot about what’s at stake in this discussion.
“Please keep in mind the purpose of the report — it is to issue a warning about the radical right’s war on public education. It is not intended to suggest that the right is the only threat. The reality is that activists like yourself and Diane Ravitich and Deborah Meiers and the teachers of New York and Chicago and elsewhere are doing an excellent job in defining the corporate threats. But virtually no one was throwing a spotlight on the threats to public education that are coming from the far right. And tracking far right extremism is what the SPLC does.”
Jon. I totally disagree with you. The fact is that the SPLC report echoes the reformers charger that the only opponents to CCSS are far right Tea Party conspiracists.
A more balanced report would not play into their meme and reinforce the way they are brushing off and ignoring criticism, from Arne Duncan and Obama to John King and Cuomo.
This report provides more proof and fodder for these harmful denials and add to the narrative that no one else objects to the CCSS, whether that was the intention or not.
With respect, I agree with Grant. In New York State, the Tea Party aspect is almost nil. In other parts of the county, the SPLC is very much on target with this report.
Really? I’ve bumped into quite a lot of Teaparty rhetoric on various Facebook pages from Long Island, upstate, and Western New York. It’s not ALL that’s going on in those regions as far as opposition goes, but it’s not absent. Long Island seems rife with theories from the Charlotte Iserbyte/Bev Eakman perspective about “government schools” and the Common Core, and there’s not a lot of analysis of the Wall Street/corporate aspect of things unless to mention that Bill Gates is a socialist. Or that Bill Gates is an ignorant guy who is controlled by Bill Ayers. I wish I were making this stuff up.
Michael Paul Goldenberg, can we agree that the Chicago Teachers Union is not allied with the Tea Party. Nor am I, nor is Carol Burris, nor is Anthony Cody.
Come on, Diane. You know I’m not suggesting, not even vaguely hinting, that anyone who opposes CCSSI is part of the Tea Party. Particularly not since I, too, oppose CCSSI as you know, and I’m as far from the Tea Party as it gets.
The question is whether this report REALLY says or strongly suggests that all opposition to the Common Core comes from the radical right. I don’t see that. And it explicitly calls for reasonable discussion that is not grounded in propaganda. How is that a problem? How is that an endorsement of CCSSI? I just can’t find that being said.
Surely, somewhere out there, exists a ground where we can critique the Common Core Initiative for its many ills without having to swallow whole a host of Tea Party psychosis (and it really is psychotic: if paranoid rhetoric about Soviet Communism, the United Nations, radical Islam being propagated by Obama, ad nauseam, isn’t psychosis, then it’s willful lying to push a reactionary political agenda).
Or have we really reached the point where ANY and EVERY critique of the Common Core is automatically sound simply because it opposes something we, too, oppose? If so, I’m out. I have never been big on “by any means necessary” politics, or at least not since I was 19. I don’t buy “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” either. I don’t like being in bed politically with people I generally find repugnant and reprehensible, and I can feel the knives they’ll plunge into my back as soon as they get the chance, which is why I don’t give them the opportunity.
I understand that others feel differently. There is plenty of push for holding noses and locking arms with Tea Party folks. On my view, that’s a significant part of what has made BATs a ludicrous organization (coupled with its totalitarian leadership style). I won’t do that. And I respect the analysis SPLC has offered of what the Tea Party types are up to. I think the report gets the motives and tactics of those people exactly right. How is that NOT useful? And how, as I asked earlier here, are they wrong in any particular?
Stiles, do you think the Chicago Teachers Union speaks for the Tea Party?
I wonder when the supporters of the SPLC commenting here are going to call Diane an “anti-semite”-ha ha!
Duane, that’s just unnecessary.
People do understand that criticizing stupid attacks on the Common Core isn’t the same as supporting the Common Core or agreeing with the corporate defenders/promoters/creators of same, right?
I’m puzzled by your comment. The report focused on the threat to public education on the far right wing – a longstanding part of this organization’s mission. And much of that threat comes from insane rabble-rousing on the right.
The part I quoted is reiterated multiple times in the full report, at greater length. They call for a reasoned debate on the quality and implementation of the Standards! Isn’t that what you, in fact, want? So, it is simply not true, as you say, that their report is “among the most one-sided treatments of the CCSS”. You and I have seen FAR worse, on both sides, and you know it.
And to say that the SPLC is name-calling is not only silly but harmful to a great organization that stands shoulder to shoulder with all of us on progressive issues and has been consistent in their mission for 40 years. Why go after your natural allies?
There are many of us who support the Standards AND find the danger on the right far more dangerous than any set of Standards could ever be. (Where were all these fanatical critics of the standards when many states had dopier standards for the past decade??) Why can’t you honor the idea that reasonable people and organizations can disagree without questioning motives or calling the views “among the most one-sided”?
Look at some of the comments below in favor of your views (and under many of your posts), to see the wider danger: nasty ad hominem attacks on a great organization, paranoia about Bill Gates, sweeping generalizations about the evil of the standards, etc. etc. This is what happens when we stoke ‘we’ vs. ‘they’ thinking. That I received hundreds of hateful comments after ‘daring’ to disagree with you earlier this spring shows the kind of danger to which I refer. The mood in the land is foul. So, no good can come from your (unwarranted, in my view) swipe at SPLC; It will only fan the flames, generating yet more heat instead of light. Please reconsider the post.
Grant, I don’t always agree with you, but on this one I fully concur.
Diane, I agree that CCSS is probably the only issue where there is a point of agreement between CTU and the Tea Party.
There are some parts of the SPLC reports that read sympathetic to the CCSS. I felt the report did note that opposition to CCSS is multi-faceted and not only Tea Party. It seemed to me the report said that the Tea Party critique was crowding out more reality based challenges to the CCSS. Most importantly, the report laid out the threat to public education posed by the Tea Party. This threat is significant in some states and communities.
We read it differently
That certainly is how I read it.
Michael, yes that is a good reminder that Tea Party thinking can be found anywhere. I should have said instead that the chance of the Tea Party having a major influence on state education policy in New York is almost nil. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said in some other states.
Well, Stiles, I haven’t lived in NY since moving to Michigan in ’92, but I did work in NYC in 2004 and again a bit a few years ago. I honestly don’t know any more who DOES have meaningful input into educational policy or curriculum in the state other than King and Cuomo, but given the abysmal garbage they’ve served up on ENGAGE-NY, it looks like a lot of mental midgets were at work.
That said, it was more than a bit distressing to me last fall to read some of the Facebook pages from Long Island parents attacking the Common Core precisely from the perspective analyzed in the SPLC report. I felt like I’d fallen into the Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh/Alex Jones Tea Party from Hell. Not sure who was the March Hare, who the Mad Hatter, and who the Dormouse, but I definitely knew I wasn’t in Ann Arbor any more. Kansas seemed more like it.
I’ve now finished reading the SPLC report, by the way. I’m not thrilled with a couple of their “myths,” but by and large, I think they were spot on. And it’s far from an endorsement of CCSSI. I wrote them directly to suggest that they need to rethink a couple of those points (specifically that the Feds played no role in creating the Standards and that states weren’t forced to sign on; while both might be literally true, it’s awfully naive or disingenuous to ignore the extent to which that’s exactly what went down. And just how much this top-down nonsense is the answer to a question no one (outside of some politicians and the publishing/Wall Street folks) was asking.
Right on. Example of actually reading the article and suggesting changes that could be made.
The CCSS in ELA are puerile, backward claptrap hacked together overnight by noneducators based on the lowest-common denominator groupthink of the state “standards” that preceded them. The authors of these “standards” should long ago have been hooted off the national stage. If these had been presented to me by a group of freshmen students as a class project, they might have been excusable. However, I would have been very clear, in responding to the work, that these students had a lot to learn before attempting something of this magnitude.
Attainment in ELA consists of world knowledge and of procedural knowledge. These “standards” leave out the former almost entirely and formulate the latter so vaguely that, as written, they cannot rationally be operationalized sufficiently for valid assessment. In many domains of ELA, these “standards,” which are supposed to be descriptions of outcomes, are entirely misconceived at their most fundamental level, at the level of the categorical conceptualization of the particular kind of outcome in a particular domain. These are vastly different kinds of learnings that cannot all be formulated in the same way. In addition, these putative “standards” show no understanding whatsoever of the distinction between learning and acquisition and treat all teaching and learning in ELA as though it explicit. And, of course, that reflects fundamental misunderstanding of basic science about matters like language acquisition and reasoning. And, of course, the ELA standards draw a boundary in the vast design space of possible curricula and pedagogy in ELA and say, in effect, what is within this boundary you may teach. That’s what is going to be on the test. Every publisher in the country is beginning every project, these days, by making a spreadsheet with these puerile “standards” in the first column and the place where they are “covered” in the next. And by this means, curricula and pedagogy are being grotesquely distorted and narrowed.
Ecologies are healthier than are monocultures. The last thing we need is a national Thought Police, a Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth presuming to tell us all how to do our jobs.
And, of course, one size does not fit all. The very idea of having an invariant list for all is wrong from the start.
And the only reason we have such a list is that some plutocrats wanted a single national list to tag their assessments and computer-adaptive software to. That’s why they paid to have the list created. And that’s why they were in such a hurry and why the puerile, hackneyed list wasn’t subjected to the slightest bit of learned critique.
Oh, yeah. They sent the list to the NCTE once it was done. Then they ignored everything the NCTE said.
cx: as though it were explicit
If we had handed David Coleman copies of Galen and the 1858 edition of Gray’s anatomy and sent him to a cabin in the woods to write new “standards” for the medical profession, we would have ended up with something very like the new “higher” standards in ELA, which give us a few truisms (read substantive texts closely) and a long bullet list of unimaginative, hackneyed halftruths, inanities, and outright misconceptions about teaching and learning of grammar, reading, writing, literature, thinking, speaking, listening, and research.
So if CCSS actual succeed in their intent to improve test scores we should accept them?
Common Core should be rejected outright due to the undemocratic nature of their creation and implementation and the frightening marriage of corporations with the state.
No other evidence is needed.
ecologies are healthier than are monocultures; we didn’t ask for the creation of a K-12 education Thought Police, and we certainly don’t need one.
Oh, right, you don’t need to know math to work at Walmart. Scan and bag, scan and bag. Perhaps they should just eliminate school work altogether and teach the public school kids to scan and bag, push the drink and hamburger photos on a cash register, how to pump gas, how to flip a burger, how to mow a lawn, how to clean a toilet, how to be quiet, shut up, and respect their saviors and be GRATEFUL. Would that please the families Broad, Gates, Koch, Rhee, Kopp, et al.?
That was, indeed, part of the plan of the IMF (thanks Susan Ohanian for your careful research!) which stated that the workers of the future would only need the equivalent of an 8th grade education in the service-driven economies that have maximized profit and rent-seeking of the 1% to the detriment of viable middle classes with their manufacturing jobs and the professions. We are fast approaching that goal in today’s fascist plutocracy, aren’t we?
I am tiref of the comment “tea party extremist”. How about “progressive extremist”?
Labeling those with different opinions as “extremists” is, curiously, the nature of the Bill Ayers methodology. I don’t recall hearing about “tea party extremists” blowing up buildings, though I know it was the M.O. of the Bill Ayers extremist left wing group, The Weather Underground, whom our liberal president is so fond of.
Enough of the name calling. Liberals are in this mess because they were willing to use any method including violating the constitution with judicial activism to propel their ideas of social justice.
Looks like the chickens have come home to roost.
Janine, there are extremists of all stripes but I can’t fault someone who is an extremist for justice, for democracy, for freedom. The true extremists today are the economic royalists who are bleeding our country dry while enriching themselves.
The “ends justifies the means” mentality simply leaves in the “wild,wild, west”. If we are not a people of laws we are nothing.
To compromise checks and balances or to support judges that do not hold to constitutional principles as the basis for their rulings regardless of how “just” we believe our cause is leaves us at the whim of a ruling elite.
It is very dangerous ground we are treading.
Liberal president?
Don’t you mean neo-liberal?
All commentary aside, labels mean almost nothing today, and real humanism and equality shun labels and go right for the truth and reallity of any situation.
I agree that there is enough name calling. Why not address the issues rather than slap on labels?
Great point!
I find it hilarious that a person whose own prose is dripping with contempt and hatred for all things “liberal” (as if that even existed at all in today’s politics in the USA) chastises others for name calling.
Tea Party extremists are well-documented:
https://archive.org/details/TeaPartyRacismWhatTheMediaWontShowYouAboutTeabaggerRacism
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/03/19/right-wing-extremists-in-montana-file-for-legislative-races-as-democrats/
I could add thousands more.
It’s also more than droll that this comment was made on the very weekend that the “American Spring” movement was supposedly going to Washington, DC to remove a duly elected president and congress from office through force in order to replace them with Tea Party representatives.
Liberal president?
Drone attacks
Arne Duncan
Timothy Geithner
Larry Summers
NSA v Snowden
Pushing ” public private partnerships ”
Lack of support for unions ( comfortable shoes?)
Health care plan as massive gift to corporate insurers
As a life long liberal, from a long line of blue collar liberals, I see nothing liberal here. With the possible exception of some small gestures to a few social issues, Obama is no liberal.
Labels can sometimes be useful. But only when accurate.
I love it when people like you complain about supposed liberal “judicial activism”, but don’t bat an eye at decisions like Citizens United and the dozens of activist decisions since then.
Dienne: what you said.
And on another matter: amazing—dontcha think?—that Diane’s call for us to not shut down dialogue because feelings are running high are being met with exactly those things that shut down dialogue—
Derision. Misleading exaggerations. Deflection onto other topics. Name-calling—about name-calling!
You posed a simple question in an above posting—“Find me any place that anyone on this blog – Diane or any commenter has ever said *all* millionaires and billionaires hate public education. I’ll wait.”
Even if someone could find a few outliers among the many many tens of thousands of comments on this blog, for example, your simple statement is a reminder for a few commenters to take a deep breath, blow into a paper bag, and drink a little orange juice to get their sugar levels back up to normal.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
From the report:
Legitimate issues obscured
To be sure, criticism of the Common Core—which is backed by the Obama administration and funded, in part, by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—is coming from all points on the political spectrum and from some leading education experts. Critics have raised important issues that should be thoroughly debated, such as: whether the standards were adequately tested; whether we can have great education that isn’t simply “teaching to
the test”; whether there has been ample time for implementation and teacher training; and, significantly, whether it’s wise to evaluate teachers on the results of Common Core- aligned tests.
But these and other issues are being obscured by a cloud of fear-mongering propaganda and extremist hyperbole. The attacks from the far right stand apart from the legitimate criticism because of their incendiary language, their apocalyptic warnings, and their reli- ance on distortions, outright falsehoods and antigovernment conspiracy theories.
Might it be possible that SPLC is influenced by Gates $ ? Certainly has happened elsewhere…
I had the same question. There must be a reason.
That is disappointing.
I got a grant from them once. And they featured me in their promotion of a song book they published about being friends with all kinds of people.
—————– 2002:
Leavenworth choir teacher wins $1,000 folk music grant
An elementary teacher at Fort Leavenworth won a grant to support a children’s choir dedicated to singing ethnic folk music.
Joanna Staudinger, a teacher at MacArthur Elementary School, received a $1,000 grant from the Teaching Tolerance education program.
“This is just the kind of program we hope to see implemented in classrooms across the country,” said Jim Carnes, director of Teaching Tolerance.
Teaching Tolerance is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.
The law center is a nonprofit organization that combats hate, intolerance and discrimination through education and litigation.
The classroom grant program provides up to $2,000 to innovative projects that have the potential to serve as models for educators throughout the nation.
————————————–
I don’t really see why they need to take a stand on CCSS. It is beside the point for their goals, I think.
They are not taking a stand on CC$$, they are describing how the disinformation about it is being used as a weapon against public education by the extremists on the right who have created and spread that same disinformation.
I just don’t find Bill Gates, Jeb Bush, Arne Duncan, and various national pundits persuasive on this. I think Jeb Bush’s reforms have been a disaster for Florida public schools. Why would I want to listen to him on national reforms?
It’s become almost an argument from authority because I don’t, actually, agree that all the other ed reforms have been beneficial to the health and strength of the public school systems generally or individual schools, like mine. I’m supposed to trust these people with this huge national reform, why, again? Because they’re Bill Gates, Jeb Bush, Arne Duncan and national pundits?
I have to put the Common Core in context because it doesn’t make any sense to look at it any other way. It’s not one idea in isolation. It’s another policy in a long line of ed reform policy over the last 15 years and it will operate within and with all the other ed reforms, state law, etc. Saying to me “it’s not a high stakes test for students!” ignores that schools and teachers will be measured on the tests, and obviously students are in those schools and taught by those teachers. “Students” aren’t somehow separate from what happens to “teachers” and “schools”.
The Common Core will operate within a context of other federal initiatives, state law and school districts. That’s just fact. That’s how my fifth grader will experience it and that’s how I have to approach it.
Parents here seem very concerned about the Third Grade Reading guarantee, for example, much more so than the Common Core. I’m not polling these people so this is of course anecdotal, but the next question will be how does the Common Core intersect with the Third Grade Reading Guarantee? That’s a good question and if parents are told “oh, the Common Core doesn’t have anything to DO with the Third Grade Reading Guarantee!” that’s not responsive to their concerns. Of course it does. Federal, state and district policy all land in the same place; each individual public school.
Yes, Chiara, I agree. I think, though, it is possible to have a vision for education that is bigger than Common Core, and then let Common Core fall by the wayside as that vision is realized. Baby steps, so to speak. I find very few teachers concerned about Common Core (many say it’s so close to what NC was already doing. . . even the testing). But with Read to Achieve and VAM comes the punitive measures and that’s the problematic part to public education in the long run (much more so than which curriculum we are using).
I have philosophical issues with Common Core, mostly; AND I have reservations about its quality for my children. AND it has bothered me the most, philosophically, of anything in ed “reform;” but seeing things as a triage, it doesn’t bother me for it to be down the list somewhat. But I do get bothered when another group feels the need to promote it. That makes no sense to me. Especially when curriculum is not what they are about, like the Southern Poverty Law Center. It would be like the grocery store having an opinion on CCSS. Who cares?
I object to how it has been framed by Duncan, Bush, Gates, etc. Gates is actually the least offensive to me because he allows the possibility that someone could question this on substantive grounds. He at least tries to persuade. I don’t find him particularly persuasive, but he makes an attempt.
Duncan and Bush and the rest used fear to sell it, which made me immediately defensive, because relying on fear to sell something is immediately repellant to me, People who are afraid make bad decisions. That’s why using fear to sell something is manipulative. Telling people over and again their children will be unemployable unless they embrace the Common Core is using fear to sell something.
When using fear didn’t close the sale, they fell back on attacking the motives of the critics. Suburban moms, how critics have “low standards”, the ever-reliable weapon of union-bashing, and on and on.
Come on. Those aren’t good faith substantive arguments. They’re political tactics. It was a political campaign, not a “debate”.
I would have more faith, more trust, if ed reformers had been in the lead on the on the ridiculous proliferation of and over-reliance on standardized testing, but they were not. In fact, the contributed to that mania by adding VAM and setting policy for charter schools and vouchers and all the rest based on standardized testing. The entire national discussion on schools is based on test scores. They created that environment.
They created this problem and they did nothing to address it, in fact they just made it worse. The opposition to excessive reliance on standardized testing didn’t come from national ed reformers. It came from teachers and then parents. Ed reform leaders didn’t second-guess their own policy when it started to go badly astray. Instead, they doubled down on it. That’s what happened.
How will the ed reform approach to Common Core be different than their approach to all the other reforms of the past 15 years? What’s changed? As far as I can tell it’s the same 150 high profile people and they move from government to ed reform orgs and back again. How will the approach to the Common Core be different than the approach to all the other ed reform initiatives of the last 15 years? In many cases, it is being promoted by the SAME PEOPLE, so there isn’t even a shake-up there. Did they all have some mass change of heart and this will be less dogmatic, less punishing, less rigid and narrow than the other ed reforms?
I am deeply saddened to learn of this support by the Southern Poverty Law Center of the invariant, hackneyed, backward, amateurish, unimaginative, often prescientific, curricula-and-pedagogy distorting Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic].
And I do not think it wrong to call out those who clearly have an enormous financial stake in creating a single national bullet list to tag computer-adaptive curricula and assessments to; nor is it a mistake to call out the Vichy collaborators with the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth who turned on a dime and became, overnight, huge supporters of invariant, summative standardized testing when they saw where all the money was flowing from.
Bob Shepard, please see my response (awaiting moderation) below. Why? Here’s the money quote which should explain it all.
“Please keep in mind the purpose of the report — it is to issue a warning about the radical right’s war on public education. It is not intended to suggest that the right is the only threat. The reality is that activists like yourself and Diane Ravitich and Deborah Meiers and the teachers of New York and Chicago and elsewhere are doing an excellent job in defining the corporate threats. But virtually no one was throwing a spotlight on the threats to public education that are coming from the far right. And tracking far right extremism is what the SPLC does.”
citizensarrest: By default, WordPress holds for moderation posts with more than two links in them. You can avoid this by separating links into separate posts. I have long admired the work of the SPLC, and so this support for centralized, totalitarian, hackneyed, backward regimentation of U.S. education comes as a shock and a surprise.
“This is a group that is usually very grounded in its criticisms.”
Thanks, Diane, I needed a good chuckle this morning. SPLC is a corrupt organization that makes its founders large sums of money by blatant fear-mongering. I honestly don’t understand how even the leftiest lefty can’t see right through their pitiful façade.
Your slander of the SPLC is obvious in both it’s bias and it’s lack of any basis in reality. Anyone familiar with the SPLC can easily see through your pathetic attempt to slander them.
It’s not a slander if it’s the truth. Examples abound and can easily be found using Google, but here would be one place to start:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/26/923486/-Southern-Poverty-Law-Center-s-Cayman-Islands-bank-account
This is pretty shocking. When I was in college I dreamed of working at the SLPC. But I do have faith that the SPLC will come to their senses once they realize the damage that CC and all it’s other trappings have done to individuals, schools, and communities of minorities.
Dianne, you are totally wrong in your analysis and therefore your criticism of the SPLC’s position on the CC$$. When this misunderstanding first started, I sent them an email with many links to make our position clear, They responded and gave me permission to share their response to me which can be found below the “money quote” I excerpted from the whole response that follows it. Diane, you got this one wrong, so you need to issue a correction. Otherwise this misunderstanding WILL be used against both the SPLC and all those opposed to the hostile corporate takeover of public education.
“Please keep in mind the purpose of the report — it is to issue a warning about the radical right’s war on public education. It is not intended to suggest that the right is the only threat. The reality is that activists like yourself and Diane Ravitich and Deborah Meiers and the teachers of New York and Chicago and elsewhere are doing an excellent job in defining the corporate threats. But virtually no one was throwing a spotlight on the threats to public education that are coming from the far right. And tracking far right extremism is what the SPLC does.”
Hello Jon,
Thanks very much for your note. I understand your concerns, and would like to reassure you that we’re not unaware of the legitimate criticisms of the CCSS and other elements of the school reform agenda you refer to. I’ve devoured Diane Ravitch’s most recent book, follow her blog, and agree wholeheartedly about the worrisome testing culture.
And I really appreciate your insight that “the education community, having been living and working under the duress of the myriad attacks on teachers and teacher preparation schools among many other things, has become highly sensitized to anyone getting it “wrong”, even when, like the SPLC, they should be viewed as natural allies.”
Our report does acknowledge the legitimate criticisms of the Common Core on page 17 where you’ll find reference to most of the issues you raise — the age-appropriateness for K-3, the involvement of Gates, the role of RttT, the toxic testing culture.
Please keep in mind the purpose of the report — it is to issue a warning about the radical right’s war on public education. It is not intended to suggest that the right is the only threat. The reality is that activists like yourself and Diane Ravitich and Deborah Meiers and the teachers of New York and Chicago and elsewhere are doing an excellent job in defining the corporate threats. But virtually no one was throwing a spotlight on the threats to public education that are coming from the far right. And tracking far right extremism is what the SPLC does.
The report focuses on Common Core because, as you rightly point out, it’s the Trojan Horse for these folks. But their long game is to erode white support for public schools until they become unsustainable. They will move on from the Common Core to school vouchers, elimination of teacher tenure and toward creation of more charter schools run by private religious groups.
We have lots of things we agree on, and if you look at our legal work, especially in New Orleans, and TT’s articles in the last few years, you’ll see that we’re fighting the kinds of discipline abuses, testing, push-out and lots of other policies that deny kids an equal opportunity to learn. But we have a difference view of some things. As a civil rights organization, we’re less likely to view local control as always benign and federal involvement as always oppressive.
Again, thank you for the note and for taking the time to initiate a dialogue.
Best,
Maureen
—
Maureen Costello
Director, Teaching Tolerance
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Ave.
Montgomery, AL 36104
334-956-8327
http://www.tolerance.org
maureen.costello@splcenter.org
Thanks, Jon, I don’t think I am incapable of reading the SPLC report. I understand that they track the radical right, and I appreciate them for doing it. In this case, their report read as a clear statement that those critical of the Common Core belong to the radical right, which wants to destroy public education. I heard from many people who said, “I don’t support Common Core but I support public education. Why are they presenting such a one-sided picture?”
As you know, the Chicago Teachers Union voted against Common Core and no one thinks they oppose public education or identify with the radical right.
If so many people, including me, were confounded by this report, then SPLC needs to revise its publication.
Personally, I think they should do a report on the radical right’s war on public education, which is making big inroads in the South and Midwest with the spread of vouchers, charters, and home schooling. Common Core is a side issue. The main issue is the defunding of public education and attacks on teachers.
Diane, you said “Personally, I think they should do a report on the radical right’s war on public education,” I’m stunned by the cognitive dissonance of this statement because that is EXACTLY what this report is about as it goes into the details of the radical rights war in a way that’s worthy of comparison to Mercedes Schneider’s work. Other than the extensive detail used in connecting the dots of the lines of influence and relationships within the radical right perhaps overshadowing the SPLCs more basic position on the CC$$, I don’t have any idea of how to further explain this or how you and others here still either can’t see or don’t believe the SPLC when they say that this is the case. As far as I can see, they are doing their anti-racist, anti-hate work while fully acknowledging ours in a way that does not contradict anything we have been saying.
Thanks, Jon. Always good to know I’m not completely alone.
MPG — fwiw, I’ve enjoyed your comments here in the last several weeks.
Probably not worth much to others, but I definitely appreciate it. Thanks.
Jon, I am not a stupid woman. If I was taken aback by the SPLC report, by its conflation of CCSS with other issues, then the report was confusing. It certainly confused me. I’m on your team. Ask Mercedes Schneider whether she thought the report was consonant with her work. Deutsch29@aol.com
Diane, I generally agree with Mercedes Schneider when she’s analyzing the lies from the Common Core supporters and the various national and state players in education deform. But she’s not infallible and I no longer take her word without thinking about it. Her take on specifics in mathematics education is wrong-headed, rigid, and narrow, and she absolutely will not engage in specific discussion about the issues. She just waxes wroth about the alleged horrors of progressive math programs that have been around for a lot longer than the Common Core.
I’m looking for someone to take apart the report, chapter and verse. Does Mercedes do that somewhere? If not, and if no such analysis with citations exists, I have to go with the Executive Summary, where I cannot find anything to support the notion that SPLC is jumping on the Common Core bandwagon, attacking teachers, or anything of the kind.
I agree with Jon Lubar’s suggestion that there’s a need for direct conversation with SPLC.
As a long-time contributor to the SPLC, I will need much more explaining from them before I contribute in the future. I read the report, and my take away is simple. To me it says, the extreme right opposes the Common Core. We oppose the extreme right. Therefore we support the Common Core.
Janice Strauss, I read it the same way.
The opening lines of the SPLC report’s Executive Summary betrays a bias towards CCSS in their report:
Across the United States, a fierce wave of resistance is engulfing the Common Core State Standards, threatening to derail this ambitious effort to lift student achievement and, more fundamentally, to undermine the very idea of public education.
This slant colors the intent of the rest of the report, SPLC statements to the contrary notwithstanding.
And your selection of that one sentence and pointed ignoring of the rest of it, which I posted here earlier, betrays YOUR slant. Or, more to the point, precisely the rigidity I mentioned in my previous comment about you, Mercedes. It’s too bad, because when you are doing point-by-point analysis of something corrupt, you are willing to see the job through. But here, you would quickly be shown to be wrong if you went past the first paragraph, so you don’t. Dirty pool that will fool no one who bothers to check out the Executive Summary for him/herself. For shame.
I’m going to take a wild guess and say that some people did not like this passage in particular:
“I think there are plenty of well meaning people on different sides of the Common Core issue. It serves no useful purpose to divide people into good guys and bad guys. This is one of those tangled questions where we do best to debate the pros and cons of the Common Core, without challenging the motives of those with whom we disagree.”
This is a joke, right?
An accurate analysis of the specifically right-wing attacks on the Common Core is heretical? Not for me. I’ve been trying to walk that same line: opposing the corporate agenda that created and pushes CCSSI, but pointing out some of the really absurd attacks on it from the far (and not-so-far) Right. Why? Because when the smoke clears you can bet your house that those folks will be pushing the same reactionary agenda they’ve always supported, including, yes, the destruction of “gummint schools.”
Here’s the executive summary of the SPLC report (minus the intro paragraphs that give a neutral and perhaps naive description of what the Common Core is (or is supposed to be)):
“But to the most extreme critics of the Common Core, the standards are something quite different—a plan to indoctrinate young children into “the homosexual lifestyle,” a conspir-acy to turn children into “green serfs” who will serve a totalitarian “New World Order.”
To the propaganda machine on the right, the Common Core—an effort driven by the states—is actually “Obamacore,” a nefarious federal plot to wrest control of education from local school systems and parents. Instead of the “death panels” of “Obamacare,” the fear is now “government indoctrination camps.”
The disinformation campaign is being driven by the likes of Fox News, the John Birch Society, Tea Party factions, and the Christian Right. National think tanks and advocacy groups associated with the Koch brothers, whose father was a founding Birch member, have taken up the cause.
By raising the specter of “Obamacore,” activists on the radical right hope to gain lever-age against their real target—public education itself.
The Christian Right is reprising themes from earlier battles over the teaching of evolution, school prayer, sex education, and more recent efforts to stop the bullying of LGBT students. Their moneyed allies seek to privatize the education landscape.
To be sure, education experts of all political stripes have raised important questions about the Common Core. Are the standards too rigorous? Are they rigorous enough? Should children and teachers be evaluated on standardized testing? Has there been ample time for implementation and teacher training?
These and other issues should be the focus of robust debate—one rooted in the facts. Unfortunately, the issues are being obscured by a cloud of overheated hyperbole, misin-formation and far-right propaganda.
We must do better.
America’s 50 million schoolchildren and the dedicated educators who teach them deserve a sober, well-informed discussion that will help determine the richness of the education afforded children in public schools—as well as what kind of country we become.
Political leaders and policymakers at all levels must reject the extremism that has polluted the debate and focus on the real issues.
Equally important, they must stand up for public education, one of our nation’s greatest accomplishments and a linchpin not only of our prosperity but of the American ideal of equality for all.”
=================================
Diane and others: where is the wrong note above? How is any of that:
1) false;
2) anti-public education;
3) anti-teacher;
4) pro-corporate;
5) illiberal;
6) anti-progressive?
I could pretty well have written that summary. I find it unobjectionable and accurate. It’s a call for reasonable conversation instead of hysterical propaganda. It’s hardly drum-beating in FAVOR of the Common Core.
I’ll read the rest of the report, but I’d be surprised if it strikes a decidedly different note from the summary. Why would it?
How, Diane, is the above quoted summary NOT well-grounded in its criticisms?
I just got an email from $tudentsLa$t which tries to ride the coat tails of the 60 year anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education and drag Dr. King into this propaganda campaign as well. This is obviously the height of hypocrisy since $tudentsLa$t is among those who are front and center in pushing all of the toxic policies that are perpetuating and further exacerbating “separate and unequal” in our schools and by extension in our entire nation. We have spoken out against the blatant lie that corporate reform and the corporate reformers are civil rights champions. Who better than the SPLC to have as an ally in pushing back against this racist deception? Whom is it more important to educate on the details of this crypto racist lie than the SPLC? Who better than the SPLC to stand by our side and then leap frog past us in educating their constituency on the lies of reform and the cynical misuse of Dr. Kings legacy? WHY are we criticising the SPLC for doing what they do best just because it is not the same as what we do even though there is no actual disagreement between us? The corporate reformers could not in their wildest imagination have expected that we would dump such a beautifully wrapped gift right on their doorstep, a way to discredit both us and the SPLC by using our idiotic misunderstanding of the purpose of the SPLC report as a huge tool to co-opt and take ownership of the SPLC’s and our messages and pursuits of social justice. If we who oppose the entire corporate deform movement cannot get correct something this simple and obvious then we have already lost and should just turn out the lights, crawl under a rock and die. I for one refuse to do that.
Why didn’t they sell it positively? Why do this big build-up to the rollout of the tests with the constant harping on the international scores and the whole “Smartest Kids in The World” promotion?
I think that goes to the impression that it’s “elites” hectoring us into compliance, whether that’s a caricature of ed reformers or not. I agree that it’s a caricature, but if that’s the impression going in why then feed into that? Why sell it using fear?
We couldn’t be trusted to buy into this on the merits? It had to be presented as an emergency with what amounted to a political campaign? Was it really necessary to roll out the generals to talk about national security? I don’t have any objection to higher standards for public schools, and I went to public schools and so does my son. They really didn’t need to roll over me with the national security fear-mongering.
I know people hate comparisons to the health care law, but health care law critics weren’t summarily dismissed as “self interested” or stupid and the law was (primarily) sold on the benefits of buying into it. When people found out that they could not, in fact, “keep” certain high-deductible health insurance policies that complaint was taken seriously and addressed. Arguably, a coherent and (somewhat) nationalized health insurance system has as much to do with national economic viability as the Common Core. I would argue it has more. Yet no lawmakers were running around sternly lecturing that the economy would collapse without the health insurance exchanges and I didn’t hear any demonizing of physicians or health care providers as “clinging to the status quo” or whatever.
Diane, I think the only way to achieve any progress in solving this dangerous misunderstanding is for you to have a conversation with those at the SPLC who can best address your concerns. I implore you to contact them directly by phone as I find a voice conversation is the fastest and best way to get through things like this. As someone who studies both military and business strategy and tactics as a way to improve my skills as an activist, I must state in the strongest possible terms that this simple misunderstanding constitutes a severe existential threat to all that we are and all that we have gained in the fight against a better funded and better resourced adversary. They will not hesitate for a nanosecond to use this self inflicted injury against us in every way they can. If I were them that’s exactly what I would do as it’s low hanging fruit that comes at little or no cost.
Maureen Costello
Director, Teaching Tolerance
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Ave.
Montgomery, AL 36104
334-956-8327
http://www.tolerance.org
maureen.costello@splcenter.org
Diane is right to call for less division and more thinking. More thinking will disclose that SOME of the tea party critiques of the CCSS are correct (in my opinion). I think support of the CCSS, even without the testing regimen is evidence of primary gullibility. Lubar is correct. We on the right will point out the error in the SPLC’s endorsement.
Not so fast. SPLC supports CCSS. They are goo-goo-eyed over it in the opening of their report’s Executive Summary.
Across the United States, a fierce wave of resistance is engulfing the Common Core State Standards, threatening to derail this ambitious effort to lift student achievement and, more fundamentally, to undermine the very idea of public education.
SPLC wants CCSS.
Jesus, Mercedes, that’s so utterly not true. Read the rest of the executive summary, for starters. There is no doubt that there is a concerted right wing attack on the very idea of public education. That is their agenda and has been for decades. You don’t throw this report under the bus just because it attacks BAD criticism and crazy theories. You recognize it for its strengths and continue to pursue your own detailed analysis of the corporate/political cabal that is pushing CCSSI.
Mercedes, please read and deal with the ENTIRE report, cherry picking a few sentences is far beneath you. How do you explain this excerpt from the report?
“Based on her vision of what’s best for children, eminent education historian Diane Ravitch has not hesitated to criticize education over her long career. Indeed, she opposes the Common Core, in part because she believes the standards have not been adequately
tested. But she never derides public education per se. On the contrary, in her new book, Reign of Error, she explicitly lauds the institution of public schools. In a 2013 article, she warned of the harm to our common welfare in thoughtlessly attacking them.Public education “expanded opportunity to more people, distributed the benefits of knowledge to more people, and strengthened our nation,” writes Ravitch. “When public education is in danger, democracy is jeopardized. We cannot afford that risk.”“Despite its faults,” asserts this forceful education critic, “the American system of democratically controlled schools has been the mainstay of our communities and the
foundation for our nation’s success.”And that is something that America cannot afford to lose.”” Within the context of a report on the generalized right wing attack on public education itself which focuses on their use of their own anti-CC$$ movement as a weapon, one of many we all have seen them use, this sounds like the SPLC is being pro Ravitch. Or am I just cherry picking here?
It is indeed difficult to understand how a document in which the most frequently cited/quoted person (and clearly most favorably) is DIane Ravitch can be so under assault by Diane Ravitch.
I understand that the SPLC report does not call for the heads of Jeb Bush and Checker Finn, but neither does it pray them. Here’s the first mention of them in the report:
“The uproar is having a political impact, not only threatening to unravel state support
for the standards and becoming an issue in upcoming elections but opening a new rift
between the Republican Party establishment—including potential presidential candidate
Jeb Bush, who supports the standards—and the party’s social conservatives.
Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education
think tank in Washington, D.C., that supports the standards, sees deeper issues
than education at play. “Common Core is the current kickball in a bigger game,” Finn
told the Southern Poverty Law Center. “If you want to bump off your local legislator and
replace him with someone more to your taste, Common Core is a convenient issue to grab
and use politically.”
First, I don’t see a single word in either paragraph that isn’t factually accurate. Jeb Bush DOES face a serious roadblock if he decides to seek the GOP nomination in 2016 from the Tea Party wing of the party, and CCSSI is one of the key reasons. Is that false? Is pointing it out tantamount to an endorsement of either CCSSI OR Jeb’s candidacy? I’m at a loss as to how it is.
The second paragraph again is, first of all, familiar words from Checker Finn. It’s most quotation, and hence cannot be false unless it’s misquoting. Whether we agree with Finn or not about the worth of CCSSI, what he says HERE is absolutely true as well: there’s a far bigger game afoot than the Common Core, and within the GOP, anyone who isn’t a far-right extremist on every issue faces a potential challenge in state or local primaries from a Tea Party or Tea Party-friendly candidate happy to campaign further to the right (the Democratic Party should only have the mirror of this problem!). And what Finn says is correct: CCSSI has become a very convenient issue politically, both to attack Obama and the Democratic Party AND to increase power within the GOP itself. Doesn’t mean that the Common Core is good (also doesn’t mean it’s bad, by the way: that’s a separate conversation). From a strictly party-politics perspective, Finn is right.
So where above is there praise for the Common Core from SPLC?
The next mention of Jeb Bush is here:
“Controversy over the Common Core also appears to be shaping the
early contours of the GOP’s intraparty fight for the presidential nomination
in 2016. Jeb Bush, a strong proponent of the standards, is taking heat
from hard-right elements of his party. “This is a real-world, grown-up
approach to a real crisis that we have, and it’s mired in politics,” Bush said
in March during a Tennessee event promoting the standards. Some other
potential candidates, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, appear to be equivocating after earlier supporting
the Common Core.”
Is there any judgment offered above about CCSSI? Can someone point it out?
Jeb Bush is not mentioned, quoted, or referred to again.
Checker Finn gets one more chance to speak, and it comes in the context of how much political influence and money is being poured into opposition to the Common Core from right wing extremists, leading to discussion of the Koch Brothers immediately thereafter. Here’s the quotation:
“The most common falsehoods: The federal government is dictating
a specific curriculum that schools must follow; school districts and
states will lose local control; the standards force liberal political and
anti-Christian dogma onto students; and testing associated with the
standards is part of a government and big business plot to track personal
information about students from kindergarten to adulthood.
None of this is true, insists Chester Finn of the Fordham Institute,
which supports the standards. “There is no federal control,” he said.
And, as for the Common Core enforcing political and anti-religious
beliefs, “this is total paranoia.”
In 2013, the propaganda blitz worsened as the issue began to set the
conservative grassroots ablaze.”
Please note two things: the “None of this is true” claim comes from Finn, not SPLC. Second, there’s not a single thing mentioned there that I find inaccurate. The only points that are debatable are the actual role the federal government plays in dictating SPECIFIC CURRICULUM. The statement is literally true. If it were not, every district in every Common Core state would be using the same curriculum (and to be clear, this use of “curriculum” refers to textbooks or online materials that comprise the actual lessons being taught in classrooms, not the content standards stipulated in the Common Core documents for literacy and mathematics. This unfortunate confusion of what exactly is meant by the word “curriculum” makes conversations on this issue nearly impossible, even with people who should really know better, in my opinion).
It’s certainly not outside the realm of reason to believe that in the very foreseeable future, there will be one curriculum for every grade, every subject, and every school in every district in every Common Core state, or a very small menu from which to select. A lot of whether that takes place is far more likely to reflect what the big publishers want rather than the Tea Party fantasy of Communists in the White House and US DOE pushing a shadowy set of books that originate in Mother Russia or maybe Beijing or Havana or Pyongyang. Or perhaps it comes from Qum.
And that is it. The entire extent to which there is a mention of Jeb Bush and/or Checker Finn in the SPLC report. Praise for Common Core? I can’t find it. Approval? Not that, either. Endorsement of either Jeb Bush or Mr. Finn? Nope, not a word.
Have I missed something? If so, please, someone – anyone – quote us chapter and verse.
Really.
Your parsing continues to try to explain away the tone of the article which quotes the supporters of the Common Core without elucidation. There is a simple way out of this the SPLC should issue a clarification. Then this blog could come to an end. In fact, I would ask why I have received no response for the SPLC, nor have I seen any other attempt by the SPLC to clarify and correct the article.
You think maybe they take the weekend off?
That said, you have said nothing of substance to answer what I wrote. Where have I misspoken, misquoted, or misinterpreted? You speak of tone. The burden is on you to demonstrate its existence. You have thus far failed to even try.
Qum, MPG. You got it. What have you heard about the secret required white privilege teacher training in the AAPS? First they came for the tea party, but I wasn’t tea party so I didn’t protest . . . Well you know the rest.
Sorry, that should be “praise,” not “pray” early in my previous comment.
And, I do wonder about the differences in promotion of the two laws, the health insurance law and Common Core. I do wonder about that. My fear is the Common Core wasn’t debated and discussed to the extent that the health care law was and parents weren’t brought in until after the testing piece was in place because UNLIKE with health care, we have a universal, public, “free” K-12 system so the assumption was “they have to go along with it, where else are they going to go?”
Because that’s in fact true for me. I live here. My business and family is here. I’m not likely to send my son to a private school and I think I’d be a lousy home school teacher.
So was there more of an effort put into “buy in” on the health care law because we have a partly private health insurance system and a fully private health care provider system? Was there any kind of “these are public schools so they have to comply with mandates so we don’t have to worry too much about what teachers and parents think” type of analysis? Because it looks like there was, from the outside.
The ACA is a disaster, and was adopted via direct presidential lies to get it passed. The CCSS is no different.
Thank you. SPLC means well and most of the time are on the right side, so I was shocked to hear Richard Cohen at an event at UCLA talk about the statement they were going to issue supporting CCSS. I wiggled to the front of the greeting line afterwards, where I dropped your name and an “elevator pitch” against CCSS. He said he knew you (as I told you in a tweet).
As one who’s had much orthopedic surgery, I know you must still be in a lot of pain, but thank you for reaching out to them. Hopefully they will realize that just because the bat-crap crazies are screaming against CCSS, does not automatically render it worthy of defense.
I love that phrase, “bat-crap crazies.” Maybe we are not as crazy as you think.
Thank you Diane Ravitch, for reaching out to SPLC and hopefully finding a way to build some bridges. Their report did not indicate a deep understanding of the overall climate around the CCSS debates, nor sensitivity to it….though it seems they are stating that they were going at it from a narrowly focused perspective..it was not, in my opinion, a good call and hence not a good report.
Message I sent to the SPLC:
I have been alerted by Diane Ravitch’s blog to the unfortunate article you published with a very blinkered view of the Tea Party’s opposition to the Common Core as it is being implemented by the Gates Foundation, hedge funds and the anti-union political right. While it is true that the Tea Party and racists oppose the Common Core for bad reasons, there are many more of us who oppose the Common Core and the huge related business of testing and replacing experienced teachers with inexperienced Teach for America interns and have nothing else in common with the Tea Party. Their goal is to replace public education for all with charter schools for some. The end result of what is going on is a resegregation of schools, since even the charter schools that have open enrollment end up kicking out students who do not perform well and returning them to the public school system. Exactly the sort of thing the SPLC should be fighting against.
Please write another article that provides the whole picture and does not lump with the Tea Party all the parents, teachers and progressives around the country who care about education and are fighting against those who would destroy public education for the benefit of big business.
John More
Washington DC
PS I have been a been a supporter of the SPLC and what it does over the years. I may need to rethink that support.
John, did you read the SPLC report before sending the message?
I’m nearly done reading the full report. I simply do not see what those who are railing against it claim is there and comprises the vast majority of its content, namely an endorsement of the Common Core standards themselves or a one-sided attack on all opponents of the Common Core. It seems like a very accurate account of the history of reactionary and conservative opposition to public education, grounded in, among other things, opposition to integration and equity for ethnic minorities. They even get R J Rushdoony’s name into the mix, a fellow most progressives don’t know about but should. He figures prominently in the history of fundamentalist attacks on, among other things, public education in 20th century America. I first learned of him when I read REPUBLICAN GOMORRAH, a book I highly recommend.
The more of this report I read, the more I must doubt that those attacking it from the left have actually done so themselves. Or if they have, theirs must be a dramatically different edition than the one I’ve been reading.
I read it very closely. It is my job in life to do so. The author if the article needed to research more broadly and make clear that the involvement of the Tea Party is only part of the story.
The accuracy of the description of the history of right wing opposition to public education does not offset the failure of the author to address the broader context of the privatization of public education and the role of foundations and their allies in the business community in the destruction of public education. Further an argument can be made that it is the federal laws and Arne Duncan and his pals in TFA that have used federal funding, testing, and school closings to subvert local support for public education. Almost a Tea Party argument but with a different purpose – defense of public education.
I feel really sad about the way the SPLC report had been received by people who are opposed to CCSS but not the right-wing group the report is about. There is a misunderstanding that SPLC thinks the opposition is coming solely from the right, and/or that everyone who is opposed to CCSS is on the right. This is an incorrect and incomplete reading of the report. The report is only about the fact that there is right-wing negative discourse about CCSS, and the damage it is doing to our schools, public education, and how it is keeping us from having a reasonable and necessary discussion about Common Core. They even mention you by name as someone who has legitimate concerns about Common Core and how you are not part of the right-wing campaign to slur it with deception and untruths. Please read the section headed, “What is the Common Core?”
Here is a selection from that page:
“Current debates
Many of the legitimate debates surrounding the Common Core focus on concerns that have been central to education reform discussions since the 1980s. It is unclear whether the fringe elements of the radical right are ignorant of this history or whether they are deliberately distorting the facts. What is clear is that the unfounded and paranoid rhetoric surrounding the standards distracts from the important debates that are happening among highly informed scholars, state officeholders, policymakers, educators, and families across America. The following are a sampling of some of the valid Common Core-related concerns under debate:
Education historian and researcher Diane Ravitch has asserted that the Common Core was not developed according to the principles established by the American National Standards Institute. Ravitch says her reason for opposing the standards is not the content but rather concerns about the transparency of the development process and the exclusion of informed, concerned interests such as early childhood educators and special education experts.”
The whole report is about how the right-wing is “distorting the debate” about Common Core. That is not something that opponents should want. We should want a discussion based on the real things that are wrong with CCSS, not that it “will indoctrinate young children into “the homosexual lifestyle” and instill anti-American, anti-Christian values.” Those things are not true, and are obscuring the real legitimate concerns that many people have. That is what SPLC is saying, and they are correct. The report was never meant to be a discussion of whether or not Common Core is a good idea, or a discussion of all of the people opposed to it. It was meant to do what it’s title states, “Extremist propaganda is distorting the debate over the Common Core State Standards.” Please reread the report. Read the whole thing. I think you will see that the SPLC is looking out for kids and public schools (and teachers) but calling out a dangerous right-wing trend which is to lie and mislead people about anything they don’t like.
-Loren Kaplan
That’s how I read this as well, and I find it very difficult to comprehend how/why people won’t/don’t see it. It’s not like it isn’t there, isn’t implied strongly in the summary and introduction, or like there is some point where there’s strong evidence to the contrary.
Given the historical focus of SPLC, this is the sort of report I’d expect from them, one that looks at how extremists pursue their agenda by any means necessary.
Sure, it would be nice if there were an in-depth analysis of the corporate manipulations of government that led to this mess, but there are lots of other articles and books that do just that. On the other hand, this is the first detailed analysis I’ve read, other than my repeated attempts to get at this issue and some short articles that have said similar things, analyzing the broad spectrum of right-wing mendacity on the Common Core. I recognized where this was headed back in the fall: having failed to make Benghazi, Fast-and-Furious, birth certificates, and several other pathetic, desperate attempts to “get” Barack Obama, the Tea Party, the Kochs, and the usual GOP operatives saw backlash against the Common Core as a way to finally “win.” And from the start, the main thrust of these attacks has come from way out in tin-foil hat territory: Agenda 21, not teaching cursive as a way to prevent kids from being able to read historical documents, Charlotte Iserbyt and Beverly Eakman, Bill Ayers as author of the Common Core, pornography forced on young children, and so forth.
If you believe any or all of those theories, fine. That’s certainly your prerogative. But it wouldn’t make the SPLC report wrong. And if you don’t believe them, even more reason to heed and support this report. It doesn’t mean that you have to like anything about the Common Core. It CERTAINLY doesn’t mean you support the Common Core. It simply means you recognize paranoid nonsense when you read it, or at least have the good sense to be suspicious of it.
Is it really that complicated a concept to simultaneously disbelieve Tea Party theories about CCSSI that don’t hold water and know that you still completely oppose the CCSSI movement? And that SPLC has simply tried to give the lie to the really bad arguments from the Right in order to clear the air for sane criticism and conversation, unburdened by these untenable “facts” and theories? I’ll be damned if I can fathom why that should be.
Dear Diane,
Suppose you were to take your essay chastising the SPLC and their attack on opponents of the Common Core State Standards, and everywhere the words “Common Core” appear, you were to substitute “Value-Added Modeling.”
Here’s how your opening paragraph would read:
I think there are plenty of well meaning people on different sides of the Value-added Modeling issue. It serves no useful purpose to divide people into good guys and bad guys. This is one of those tangled questions where we do best to debate the pros and cons of Value-Added Modeling, without challenging the motives of those with whom we disagree.
It’s time for you to stop attacking the people who are working with intelligence and integrity on the thorny issue of evaluating teachers, schools, and colleages using powerful statistical techniques that need to be studied and harnessed, not trashed.
Thanks.
David Cooper
Professor of Education
Elon University
In the very first sentence of this load of crap from the SPLC, public education itself is equated with the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic]. And the same theme is carried throughout.
Diane read this correctly. This report is appalling.
Remember when Arne Duncan gave the speech about how Common Core opponents were all a bunch of right-wing lunatics?
Well, this report from the SPLC is just the extended play version of that single from Arne and the Test-tots-ster-tones.
But expect to see a lot of propaganda like this from lots of surprising places over the coming months. Gates and Pearson have both been very clear, recently, about their plan to mount a major PR campaign.
Well, that didn’t take long, did it?
The thing I can’t figure out is whether the SPLC is just clueless or has been bought. Either way, I am utterly disgusted by this report.
Et tu, SPLC?
Even you?
This kind of crap makes me think that there is no hope. The fix is so far in, and the plutocrats have so much power and control in so many places, that there will be no reversing the deforms. We’re just going to have to watch them roll over our kids and wait until all the damage is done and it’s clear to everyone what a mistake was made.
The list of “facts” about the Commoners’ Core included in this report is almost word for word a recycling of the list on the CCSSI website.
The SPLC has officially made itself over into a propaganda ministry for the CCSSI Thought Police.
I never thought I would live to see such a thing.
Memo to the SPLC: There is opposition to the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] from the left, from the right, and from the center. If you had done any homework whatsoever, you would have found that much of that opposition has to do with pedagogical issues, not political ones.
You think that there is a right-wing conspiracy against the CCSS? You feel the need to launch a defense of the CCSS against that right-wing conspiracy?
Well, fortunately, you are not alone, for joining you to stand up against those right-wingers are the Business Roundtable, the Heritage Foundation, the Chamber of Commerce, ALEC, and Brookings Institutions, and many in the American Enterprise Institute.
Really, SPLC, get a clue.
Dear SPLC: The people who wrote the CCSS in ELA did not understand the least thing about what is known about how children acquire the grammar and vocabulary of a language, nor the least thing about how they learn to reason. There are robust sciences of these that the authors of these “standards” had NO KNOWLEDGE OF WHATSOEVER, clearly. As a result of the ignorance of those authors, the “standards” instantiate ideas that are doing terrible damage to curricula and pedagogy in the English language arts.
And that’s just one domain–language. Matters are EVEN WORSE in the other domains of ELA covered by these “standards.”
These “standards” set back any hope of progress in ELA fifty years, at least. They are a recipe for distorted, narrowed, mediocre, backward curricula and pedagogy.
They are going to do a lot of damage to a lot of kids.
But they are going to make some oligarchs a LOT of money. And that’s why the oligarchs paid to have them created.
I am sure that they will be very grateful for your assistance in furthering their plan for the centralization, regimentation, dehumanization, standardization, narrowing, and distortion of U.S. education.
This uninformed garbage from the SPLC was put together under the auspices of something called the “Intelligence Project.”
Oh, the irony.
Bob, et al., I’ve read the entire report. Aside from two or so of the points in Myths About the Common Core, near the very end of it, I found very very little, if anything, to quibble with. I’m wondering why this has some people, yourself, included, so up in arms.
In particular, I think this report was the single most cogent analysis of the breadth of extreme right wing nonsense that’s emerged over the last year that almost assuredly is grounded in a combination of real nutjob paranoid fantasy and conspiracy theories of the same species as “black flag operations” behind the school massacre in Connecticut – Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, et al., and simple GOP operative animus against Obama and the Democratic Party, despite the fact that every sane person in the room knows that NCLB, RttT, and of course NCLB were bipartisan efforts that had the full cooperation of the GOP and the neoliberal Democratic Party.
Sorry that it isn’t ALSO a repeat of the analysis of the corporatists, but so what? If I and some who believe as I do were to take a similar stance, we could attack vehemently every report that takes on the corporatists but failed to address the right-wing extremist assault. I’ll rant and rave because there is no mention made of Betsy DeVos the next time someone posts or offers a formal paper on what’s wrong with NCLB.
The problem with what I’ll call the Kumbaya approach that apparently informs Mark Naison and the BATs is that linking arms with Teabillies and/or refusing to “stir things up” lest we lose solidarity with them is that it is impossible for progressives to be in solidarity with these sorts of people. They don’t exactly bend over backwards to keep their racist, crazy, anti-Islam, anti-Socialist, anti-Communist, anti-UN, anti-progressive, anti-liberal hatred under wraps, but progressives are supposed to be schtumer Yids so as to avoid upsetting them. That, my friend, is insane. I will trust my long-time friends when they get something slightly wrong (e.g., SPLC) way before I’ll trust my long-time enemies when they coincidentally get something right, but for mostly all the wrong reasons. Non-aggression pacts have a funny way of working out to the detriment of those to the left of center.
MPG, I remain mystified as to why most everyone here doesn’t get that the SPLC has a different mission than those of us who are fighting the hostile corporate takeover of public education. It is entirely irrational to expect, as too many here seem to, that the SPLC should just abandon all that they are and do and just join and become us on issues like the CC$$ just because there is some overlap. They are allies fighting on a distant, different front in the same war for social justice. They fight against hate and racism, we fight for a good public education system.The SPLC’s “Teaching Tolerance” program and materials are a great add in for schools that is embraced by teachers and hated, willfully misunderstood and feared by too many on the right. The program makes school cultures more conducive to learning and heals wounds in communities. At this point I’m at a loss as to how to heal this totally needless divide between two groups who are in fact natural allies.
Same here, Jon. It’s really hard to fathom. My “second version” theory might account for it, but that’s all I can think of. 🙂
Jon Lubar,
I am wholly in sympathy with the SPLC campaign against racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and other pathologies that have taken root in some states. I think SPLC didn’t bother to do its homework when it wrote about Common Core. For example, its report cited Jeb Bush and Chester Finn as reasonable conservatives who support CC. But Bush and Finn are not supporters of public education. They are both eager to see public schools replaced by vouchers, charters, and online schools, all staffed by teachers without tenure, without unions, or any rights. If SPLC is concerned about the survival of public education, as I believe they are, they should not look to Jeb and Checker as allies. They are not.
I would love to see SPLC look at the states across the south where the governor and the legislature are doing their best to dismantle public education, and take a look at where the money is coming from to subsidize this war on public education, on teachers, and on unions.
Michael, your comments reveal you as much an idealogue as those you disparage. You foment the agenda of the left whilst, simultaneously reject everything your nemesis promotes. Idealogues are usually blinded by their agenda. Open your eyes, the SPLC is wrong on CCSS.
Thank you for the personal attack, Janine.
Now, do you have the smallest bit of evidence to support your claim that SPLC is “wrong” about the Common Core? Like, what exactly have they said that was wrong, for starters? And where did they say it in that report?
As I posted above, if anyone is confused about why people have reacted so negatively to the SLPC report, you can find the answer in the following excerpt:
What is bothering people here is that the SLPC is saying that (1) the federal government is NOT dictating curriculum; (2) school districts and states will NOT lose local control; (3) and Common Core testing is NOT part of a government and big business conspiracy to track personal information about students.
Worse, the SLPC says that these views are not only “falsehoods” and “untruths,” but that they are “continuously spew[ed] out” by “people and organizations who’ve taken” it “as their mission” to do so.
Even worse, the SLPC implies these views are “total paranoia.”
Perhaps worst of all, the SLPC quotes Chester Finn approvingly.
It’s not that the SLPC is saying that everyone who opposes the Common Core is a right-wing extremist. That’s obviously not true. And it’s not simply that the SLPC hasn’t done its homework, or may think that the Common Core is a good thing. The issue is that the SLPC has said that some of the most fundamental arguments that Diane and others make about the Common Core are not only wrong, but are wacko in the same way that the extreme right’s arguments are wacko. And they quote Chester Finn.
Right?
Thanks, FLERP, when I read the SPLC report, I felt as if my views were being lumped with those of extremists. And I could not understand why SPLC would turn to Checker Finn for support because–while Checker has no connection to the Tea Party, he is no friend of public education. For many years, he has been a strong supporter of vouchers and charters. So if SPLC’s primary mission is to save public education, it should not rely on Jeb or Checker as allies.
I don’t think saving public education is the primary mission of the SPLC.
The SPLC is saying they support CCSS.
Where do they say that Janine? What page(s)? What sentence(s)? Repeatedly asserting that something is the case without providing a single iota of evidence for it does NOT make the claim more true. If anything, it makes the reader skeptical that you have any evidence at all, know it, and hope no one else will notice.
I suppose that makes me an “ideologue,” though in what English dictionary I don’t know.
I think a man of your obviously superior intellect will get the gist.
Great non response, Janine. Looks like you have nada.
FLERP, did they really quote Finn “approvingly”? I think I debunked that. I’m starting to feel like I’m back in the doctoral program at University of Florida’s English Dept. in the mid-’70s, grading freshmen compositions. All I ask for is: 1) evidence to support claims; and 2) exposition to help the reader see how the evidence cited actually supports the claims made.
I’m getting neither. And feeling like people don’t think such things are necessary. Since I’m not grading, all I can say is that THIS reader remains utterly unconvinced by the arguments against SPLC, and truly frustrated by the refusal of others to attempt to do the job of refuting my analysis or provide one of their own that is documented. I’m sure that once again makes me an awful human being, a secret agent of the Koch Brothers, etc. But I’ll live with it. I just want to understand specifically what has set some folks off against SPLC.
Yes, I definitely think Finn was quoted approvingly. The whole thrust of the report is that there’s a right-wing attack on the Common Core, and that this attack is crazy and/or paranoid. The report quotes Finn as support for this main point. So I don’t see how it’s not clear that Finn is being quoted approvingly.
To be clear, when I say that the report quotes Finn “approvingly,” I’m not saying that the SPLC has committed some heresy that justifies all this outrage.
Basically, all I’m saying is that I don’t think you need to read between the lines to see why people are angry about this report. The people who are angry about the report aren’t angry because of what it may imply. They’re angry about what it says in plain language: that (1) the federal government is NOT dictating curriculum; (2) school districts and states will NOT lose local control; (3) and Common Core testing is NOT part of a government and big business conspiracy to track personal information about students. A lot of people on this site believe each of those things, and the report expressly calls those beliefs “falsehoods.”
FLERP!, that’s the closest anyone has come to an actual argument with evidence. But I don’t think the evidence is quite so strong for the most part, and even so, I don’t find it adequate to tilt the overall balance of a 40 page report towards the conclusion that the SPLC supports, endorses, or is otherwise enthusiastic about CCSSI.
I remain unconvinced until shown otherwise that the US DOE is writing CURRICULUM in the sense of writing textbooks, lesson plans, etc., that are mandated for all (or even ANY) schools. NY State has done this, but last I checked, they’re not the federal government. And the kickback against ENGAGE NY has been loud and persistent. My one-word review of it based on input from mathematics educators whose professional judgment I trust is, “Crap.” Ditto on the literacy, again based on input from knowledgeable veteran English teachers. And none of these folks feels compelled to discuss Communist indoctrination, Islamic indoctrination, or Martian indoctrination. They may have missed it, of course.
That said, I’ve already commented on my belief that there are a few big publishers who MAY decide that they can maximize profit if there are only a small number of textbook choices out there for each major subject in each grade band. There are now three corporations controlling 85% of US K-12 textbook sales, a tidy $3.2 billion, according to Crain’s: Pearson Ltd., Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. and McGraw-Hill Cos. However, I see a few other potential players in the Common Core “era” (or “error”): the ETS has middle school and high school math textbooks. They seem perfect for mindless math instruction that on the surface looks like “investigative” math, but isn’t. And if it wasn’t already “Common Core aligned” (a meaningless phrase, on my view) a couple of years ago when I worked with a school in Detroit that used it, I’m sure it is now. Given David Coleman’s new job and the plans to change the SAT to align with CCSS, these books might gain traction.
And then there is Eureka Math and its parent company, which remarkably is called Common Core. http://commoncore.org/staff I’ve been aware of them for about a year but still don’t really know who they are, exactly, or how they got the commoncore.org domain name other than just being smart enough to buy it. There’s no one working there whose name is familiar to me. Reading their “story” suggests only that they were perspicacious about an opportunity to make a lot of money. On the other hand, they likely didn’t anticipate the backlash that is now running wild. Whether they will carve out a significant niche remains to be seen.
But none of that equals “The federal gummint is writing Commie, Islamist textbooks filled with porn and social justice propaganda that will dumb down our children, make them unable to read original historical documents (as if there’s lots of that going on over the last century or two), and hand us over to the Red Chinese on a platter.” Not even close. To buy that sort of nonsense, you have to believe that Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton are Communist fronts. That would be, if true, pretty remarkable. My hat would be off to the Commies, I’ll tell you that.
How’s this for an alternative conspiracy theory? Pearson is the biggest player. Pearson is British. Hence, what’s REALLY behind the Common Core is a royalist plot to retake control of the Colonies. . . like it? I know I do, much better than some of the other theories being floated by Teabilly Central.
On the issue of local control: that’s a more complex conversation. NY State and from what I hear, Louisiana, seem to have already done away with local control on textbook/curricular materials. But that leaves about 40 states who haven’t. There remains controversy about whether there is policy built into Common Core that prevents more than slight variance from what’s in the Common Core. Speaking only about the math, I’m trying to see how exactly that applies at the upper level, given that there is no description of what has to go into a senior math class that isn’t precalculus (that is, CCSS-M prescribed no calculus or statistics standards for a full-year senior course), and having worked on precalculus standards last year with a working class suburb of Detroit, I and the department chair came away convinced that there was a lot of wiggle room for adding a wide range of topics.
Granted, that doesn’t prove that there’s wiggle room elsewhere, but looking at Critic Number One of the Math Standards, good old R. James Milgram, who claims that his objection to them is that they won’t make our kids STEM-ready or able to do “rigorous” mathematics at the college level and beyond, or isn’t up to “world class” standards, I have to ask if he really thought that CCSS’s math committee was supposed to write new calculus standards when almost every high school calculus course in the country is based on the AP curricula and few people complain about that as not being sufficiently rigorous. AP isn’t going away as far as I know, and while I prefer the IB curricula across the board to AP, that’s a different argument, not really relevant to Common Core. Indeed, if we’d wanted to adopt really challenging (I won’t use “rigorous” because frankly I think it’s a b.s. word) curricula, we’d do far better by looking at the IB and how its curriculum fits together around issues of intellectual inquiry. Maybe not perfect for all (what is?) but one possible set of options that would beat the bejeezus out of Common Core. However, I’m sure that it would be trivially easy for Teabillies to “prove” that it, too, is part of Agenda 21, etc. After all, if it isn’t Koch Brothers-approved, written by the heirs of R. J. Rushdoony, promoted by Betsy Devos, etc., how Amurican and Christian can it be? And we just can’t have anything less (or more) for our precious children.
At any rate, of the three points you raise, the one about information and data has the most merit, but still is open to question. Having read some Charlotte Iserbyt and Beverly Eakman, I’m well aware of the claims that the federal and some state governments have a long-term agenda to collect not just academic and basic demographic data, but also a host of “psychological” data about kids. Eakman has this going back to specific instances in Pennsylvania from several decades ago, launching her career as a watchdog and conspiracy theorist. Iserbyt claims that this is far more sinister, going back to the Carnegie Foundation and its alleged nefarious deals with the Soviets back in the 1920s or so. Sorry if I remain a bit sceptical, particularly considering the sources, as well as the absence of believable documentation or independent confirmation of most of Eakman’s and Iserbyt’s more outlandish claims. But let’s say that the basic premise is correct. You seriously believe that SPLC is endorsing that practice? Excuse me if I’m less than convinced.
And to repeat: how those three points, even if 100% right, outweigh the rest of a 40 page report so that every other statement in it can be glibly ignored eludes me. It’s the Commie brain chip they put in my head at birth in 1950, I know, but I need a bit more support for the theory that SPLC is a shameless cheerleader for CCSSI and all its various aspects.
Well said, FLERP. Fortunately, there are still people like you who can read.
Michael, read FLERP’s comment above that will save me the time of retyping it. Shall I just say “ditto”.
Almost all language is learned unconsciously. This will come as a surprise to most people, but it’s absolutely the case.
In the first few years of life, children’s brains create an internal model of the grammar (using that term VERY widely to refer to phonology, semantics, morphology, and syntax) of their native tongue. This is an automatic and unconscious process, and any explicit teaching of the child done by parents or caretakers or teachers is ALMOST ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT TO IT.
Now, the internalized grammar that a child creates during that time is very, very complex. Thousands and thousands of incredibly bright linguists around the world have been working for many decades, now, on figuring out the rules for language that a child has internalized by, say, the age of six, but these are so complex that despite literally millions of person hours that have been devoted to this by linguistic scientists, we are still quite far from having a complete model of what a six year old has unconsciously internalized for any natural language.
Now, let me emphasize that EXPLICT INSTRUCTION IS ALMOST ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to this process. What is relevant is that the child have an ambient spoken linguistic environment that is rich enough to provide the linguistic data from which his or her brain will automatically intuit those rules for the language AND that the child have significant, continual engagement with that linguistic data.
Feral children not exposed to language in the first few years of their lives CAN NEVER LEARN IT beyond the most rudimentary level—a level barely beyond that of what a dog can learn of “language.” They have not retained and built upon the neurological structures necessary for language. The language learning functional mechanisms of the brain are literally reabsorbed if not used. They are pruned.
Now, subsequent work in school—reading and listening and discussion—depends upon the creation of that implicit, internalized grammatical model of the kind that linguists study, which takes the form of actual physical structures—neural networks for doing the functional processing of the language—in the brain of the developing child.
Now, if the child has not built a sufficiently robust implicit internalized model of the language before entering school, no amount of explicit instruction thereafter is going to correct that.
What COULD be done, but is not being done currently ANYWHERE, to my knowledge, is to create for children who have not been exposed to a sufficient robust ambient spoken language environment a version of that environment that the kid missed and to have the child interact in engaged ways with this before his or her innate language model acquisition device (LAD) shuts down.
In other words, what is called for is a compensatory spoken language environment that is SUFFICIENTLY RICH IN STRUCTURE that the LAD has the full complement of material with which it needs to work in order to do its job.
Instead, in the early years in school, we PURPOSEFULLY, because of ignorant pedagogical theories, expose kids from impoverished linguistic environments to an almost exclusive diet of WRITTEN language that is INTENTIONALLY semantically, morphologically, and syntactically IMPOVERISHED–leveled readers, for example.
This will not work and cannot work because the mind is not built to acquire the internal model for a language by such a means, and acquisition of that internal model is PREREQUISITE to explicit learning of later kinds, such as learning to parse fluently and automatically the structures encountered in written language. THIS IS SOMETHING THAT LINGUISTS UNDERSTAND BUT THAT MANY EDUCATORS, INCLUDING READING SPECIALISTS, DO NOT. None of this was reflected, for example, in Reading First, despite there being many, many thousands of “reading specialists” who worked on and in that program.
And, of course, NONE OF WHAT I HAVE SAID HERE IS REFLECTED in the PRESCIENTIFIC new “higher” standards. Instead, those “higher” standards instantiate IGNORANT FOLK MYTHOLOGIES about how language is acquired.
Kids from middle-class homes come into school having heard 30 million more words than low SES kids have heard. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Significantly, they also have not had interactions using spoken language that reflects, robustly, the entire complement of syntactic and morphological structures of the language and range of rules governing relations of these to the SEMANTICS of the language.
The only way to fix that is to have wrap-around services that provide nurturing, rich spoken language environments and interactions FROM BIRTH ON.
We’ll never close the gap until we do that.
And one of the gaps that we need to close is the VAST ONE between what linguists now know about early childhood language acquisition and what is typically understood about such acquisition by education policy makers and education professors–even by ones who specialize in reading.
Certainly, the absolute amateurs who wrote the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] understood NONE of this (and not much about any of the other ELA domains either).
Do you mean to say, bob, that all one has to do is talk educated English to a baby day in and day out every waking moment for its first 5 years and the child will do the job him and herself???? How astonishing. A child learning THE essential human knowledge without certified teachers in charge???? Just immersion in an ocean of language and the human fish will learn to swim by itself? The PARENT as the first teacher? And if the parent is not an educated speaker the child won’t EVER be able to pick up educated speech, reading, or writing because she or he doesn’t have a brain attuned to the complexity of educated speech, like a radio receiver which is very limited in the frequencies to which it will resonate?
And how can you find enough educated speakers to hang out with infants and up? What if the enriched environment speakers are more of the same as the parents, linguistically impoverished and intellectually uninterested in the world?
You might have to take those itty bitty babies away from their mothers, who might object, so at least you’d have to pay the mothers a living wage to give their babies up.
I feel like I’m getting into science fiction territory now.
I do, however, accept your premise, though not perhaps the conclusions you draw from it.
My premise is just current linguistic science. Not my premise. Just what we now know. Well, what some now know. Obviously not what the authors of the CCSS in ELA knew. They were/are/seem to be utterly clueless.
Harlan, I suspect you spoke too soon. I believe the next comment would be “that is why we need all children in the public schools at birth so they can be properly exposed to a rich tapestry of language during their formative years”. Perhaps even the womb would not be too soon. After all, who knows what dangers could come from (gasp) leaving children in the care if their ignorant parents.
Even further. In order to secure a license to have children, one must have a college degree. We already know the consequences of the antithesis.
Yeah, there ya’ go. So many folks here have asserted that, Harlan. I just can’t seem to find a single one. Are you and Janine having a Teabilly hoedown?
Perhaps I should take you along to one of my teabilly meetings to show you we don’t all have horns and a tail. Of course, one or two do, and they will offer to buy your soul.
Intriguing. Someone here is suggesting that or anything of the kind? Your fantasies seem to dominate your reading.
I guess all “the sky is falling” references to longer school days and increased preschool programs as the solution to the education “crisis” were all imagined by me in my paranoid state. Thanks for your supportive words of wisdom. I’m all better now.
Michael, a 40 page response to a comment on a 40 page report indicates more than you have an incredible amount of free time on your hands. And to think, you still managed to say nothing at all.
Hyperbole and insults do not comprise argument or evidence, Janine.
Janine,
Your responses have entailed: 1) complaints about the length of my comments; 2) cracks about my intelligence; 3) epithets about my alleged practice as an ideologue; 4) comments about how much time I have on my hands; 5) grousing about time I’ve allegedly cost others and yourself, none of whom, of course, were under the slightest obligation to either read or retort to my remarks, questions, etc.
What they lack is substance about the SPLC report. I understand why. You have nothing.
Further, if you’re going to attack me for writing too much, be consistent and complain about those who write at length who happen to agree with you. Otherwise, you appear hypocritical.
Unless you alert me to a substantive contribution from you, I’ll presume to be losing nothing by ignoring future output with your name on it. Don’t feel hurt, but I prefer to engage with people who have something to say that’s both on point and grounded in facts or at least specifics.
Sent from my iPad
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We all need a way forward out of this dangerous misunderstanding. And yes, it is quite dangerous as it gives aid, comfort and assistance to the enemies of both the SPLC and of the defenders of a quality public education for all. While the SPLC report, which I have just re-read, does a great job of detailing the connections and history of the right wing’s attack on public ed, I do find it falls short on understanding the convoluted back room nature of the CC$$ development, it’s coercive implementation and it’s links to the testing industrial complex. The solution to this is not to have a tantrum because the SPLC were fooled by the same sales pitches that have fooled so many others or because they did not read our minds and instantly know what it has taken us no small effort to learn the truth about. The solution is for the educators here to reach out educate just as they do when in the classroom, not rant and complain. We should share what we know about the corporate sock puppeting of the DOE and the resulting federal coercion involved with the CC$$ and the testing industrial complex, about the 2.0 version of the separate and unequal policies of deform and it’s other crypto racist effects, about the school to prison pipeline and all the harm being visited upon poor inner city children of color by policies that falsely claim to be the cure for the affliction of poverty. In short, we should inform the SPLC on all the deformy things that negatively affect their pursuit of their primary mission. If as an educator you only point out what a student has done wrong without helping them to correct their mistakes then you are derelict in your duties. We have won many parents and others to our side by slowly and patiently educating them. There is no reason to do anything other than that in this case. The SPLC has a great anti hate program called Teaching Tolerance that is well liked by many teachers and school systems. Can we here not also embrace the idea of tolerance and the patience needed to achieve it in our dealings with the SPLC? I can absolutely guarantee that the last thing our mutual enemies want to see is a stronger bond of understanding and co-operation between us.
Well said, Jon.
I’d even welcome a little more tolerance and patience for my conservative but anti CCSS views. It couldn’t hoit could it? I’m just the messenger or illustration of the winds blowing outside the school building. Unless you realign your weather vanes to the capitalist winds, you’ll be blown away. Instead of promoting revolution, which will never come, and if it did, would lead to tyranny, start thinking of education as a business and how to keep it viable by running it efficiently and effectively. The way to disaster is to be running a business but not recognize it IS a business. YOU have to compete as if you were in the private sector. Your service CAN be contracted out, and still probably be legal under state constitutions. Wake up. Everything you have derives from capitalism. Attack that and the schools will wind up like the VA, a corrupt organization of bureaucrats, unreformable and only salvageable through deunionized privatization. You can only save public schools by reforming your own souls. Charterize yourselves before you are chartered out of existence.
http://bit.ly/1j3b7hE
And your point about the McMillan case, Michael is . . . what? Granted she was railroaded, and even though she was promoting an anti-capitalist revolution doesn’t justify her being tried for violence during a non-violent (supposedly) demonstration.
My suspicion, however, is that she knew the plain clothes cop trying to clear her from Zucotti park was in fact a cop, and that her violence against him was intended. If my suspicion is correct, then her non-violent professions are hypocritical.
Even her love-based socialism is hypocritical. She OUGHT to know that socialism always leads to unjust coercion.
Any demonstration promoting government equalizing of incomes is promoting theft by government, and that theft is verging on violence.
Even so, McMillan should never have been tried, probably.
Unfortunately, her cause is hollow and wrong and claims the victim position shamelessly. No one is a victim of ‘society’ but only of their own ignorance in making bad choices. In fact she loves violating the prison rules too.
If the Occupy protesters were only protesting something legitimate one might develop more sympathy for them.
Still Ms. McMillan was probably unjustly convicted.
The SPLC is well aware of the origin and the dissemination of CCSS. They, apparently, are quite alright with it.
I fear that you are right about that, Janine.
Really, Bob? I’ve rarely seen bright people make so much from so little and be willing to ignore almost all of a 40 page report because of maybe a few paragraphs and a LOT of creative interpolation.
Further, when you find yourself agreeing with people whose entire contribution to the conversation is to name-call and raise their voices, rather than actually attempt to document the basis of their contentions, doesn’t that make you a little bit uncomfortable?
I have a longstanding policy: when I’m on the same side of an important issue as anyone whom I recognize to be generally well to the right of me on most things, I rethink carefully: 1) whether my viewpoint is well-founded; and 2) whether the apparent agreement masks the same general disagreements it always has with that person or those of similar views.
It’s a cold July afternoon in Phoenix when I discover that that person and I really do agree in any meaningful ways.
Michael, I defer. The 40 page SPLC report was not an endorsement of Common Core. Common Core was simply a ready subject as a means to spend 40 pages disparaging the Christian right. Wished you would had been more concise, you might have saved us all the time it took to read the report.
MPG, did you write Saul’s book “Rules for Radicals” or just read it? Don’t you believe this forum has a bit too educated following for the transparent “let’s all marginalize the crazy lady with nothing to say” mentality. I think you need to head back to Media Matters.