Realcleareducation.com reports that the Gates Foundation favors a moratorium on the consequences of Common Core testing. Since the standards were bought and paid for by the Gates Foundation, it is only right that it should call the shots. Now we know who is in charge of American education. Perhaps the foundation hopes that a delay will defuse the growing movement against Common Core.
Realcleareducation writes:
“Good morning, it’s Tuesday June 10. This morning at RealClearEducation we have news, commentary, analysis, and reports from the education world. This morning Vicki Phillips, Director of Education, College Ready at the Gates Foundation, will call for delaying the attachment of any consequences to the new Common Core State Standards, bolstering the position of those calling for an accountability moratorium. Depending on your perspective that will help or hinder implementation of the new standards more than 40 states are adopting.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
BIll should just go work out an arrangement with Pearson and tell the rest of us what they decide.
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Exactly
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I think you should mediate that meeting, Mercedes!
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These people know that the new tests that have been developed are an utter disaster and that if these are given, that’s the end of Ed Deform.
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Amen! They probably are aware that teachers in the CCSS “resistance” are preparing to “covertly” expose the crappy questions on the tests!
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The call is not for and end to giving the test, only for a moratorium on high stakes attached to them. The consortia have created a flawed product. If these were given and were high stakes, starting next year, as was the plan, then there would be outrage from one end of the country to the other. The Deformers do not want the experience in New York to be replayed nationwide. They are protecting their investment in these terrible ideas. They want time to fix the tests. Otherwise, they seem to be going full-steam ahead.
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Yes, it does make nakedly clear the private hands steering public policy. Perhaps they do feel the situation slipping away from them, so call a moratorium on high-stakes, let all the CCSS states administer the PARCC tests to habituate kids, teachers, schools, and parents to their new regime, and then try to regroup for the high-stakes part of it. After all, the most impt part of this is getting millions of kids taking the PARCC online on tablets sold to schools by digital corps. along with loaded contents licensed annually for $99.95 as signed on earlier this year in the Town of Elizabeth NJ Schools. Maybe they can cut loose from the high-stakes impact and just launch the CCSS/PARCC regime to unify the national pub schl market. Veteran teachers can be driven out of pub schls by other means available to Gates and others(Vergara just okayed in CA killing tenure there for teachers.) So, giving in on high-stakes implementation may be a Trojan-horse strategy they have in their pockets as Plan B.
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You know, Bob, I like what you write but I don’t think anything can really stop the policies of education reform. They have the money to do whatever they want.
When CCSS goes down in flames (because it makes no difference), they’ll say that it wasn’t all bad and they learned some lessons so here’s our newest latest and greatest idea.
When everything goes charter and it makes no difference, they’ll say the good ones showed the way.
When New Orleans flatlines (because it will), they’ll claim some other lesson.
They have just enough “research” organizations and policy papers to deceive the public. The Detroit News ran an editorial written today that shows the improvement of the EAA. The paper was done by technology in education supporters and the Aspen Institute (not really, but kind of) and it came to conclusions that blended learning works! Tulane’s Cowen Institute praised New Orleans new paradigm which sounds great (except that Tulane has been involved in the transition to charters).
The money can get the results they want. Then make it sound official.
I have little hope that things will change. No matter the disaster or modest successes, education is going to continue to change. It just won’t be about kids at all.
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What’s Cuomo going to do now?
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Public schools can’t afford the Common Core:
“The slow economic recovery is taking a toll on the nation’s public schools, reversing a multi-decade trend of increased funding and pushing student-teacher ratios to their highest levels since 2000.
U.S. schools actually weathered the recession itself relatively well. State funding, which accounts for about 45 percent of school revenues on average, fell sharply during the downturn, while local spending, which accounts for roughly another 45 percent, mostly from property taxes, was essentially flat. But federal stimulus dollars helped plug the gap, offsetting the worst of the state-level cuts. Both per-student spending and student-teacher ratios improved modestly during the recession.
Once the recession ended, however, so did the stimulus — long before state and local governments were ready to pick up the slack. Federal per-student spending fell more than 20 percent from 2010 to 2012, and it has continued to fall. State and local funding per student were essentially flat in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available.”
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/public-schools-are-hurting-more-in-the-recovery-than-in-the-recession/
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As far as the public schools were concerned, the “stimulus” was RttT, which was in practice a form of extortion, forcing districts to impose policies that attack teachers and undermine public eduction, lest they be forced to lay off large numbers of staff.
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It’s all about Common Core and they will jettison anything to get it. One size fits all for the proles on computers.
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Yes. They key part for these guys is the national bullet list. They need that to tag their computer-adaptive curricula to. That’s why they paid to have the puerile, invariant, innovation-destroying, hackneyed national bullet list created. It was all a business plan from Day 1.
Now, their lackeys at the consortia have created truly ridiculous tests, and they know this. They’ve seen the early results. They know that if these tests are given, the CCSS goes down in flames with them.
They want a moratorium to fix this and to get people used to having a Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth running U.S. education. The CCSS is the sine qua non for their business plan. They can do without the Orwellian national database of student responses (and eventually get this by other means), and they can postpone the tests.
But their business plan requires LORD COLEMAN’S SILLY LIST.
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Suspending high-stakes tests associated with CCSS makes no sense at all. From the beginning David Coleman made it clear the testing is the whole point. Without coercive consequences, nobody has to buy CCSS related materials, because they are just a set of take-it-or-leave-it suggestions. RTTT rests on demonstrations of “college and career readiness” that are based exclusively on standardized tests. This whole edifice is built on the foundation of high-stakes tests, and when those go CCSS goes. (And with any luck, Arne Duncan goes too!)
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Even without the test, Lord Coleman’s Puerile List has dramatic damaging effects. It drives (narrows, distorts) curricula and pedagogy and stops real innovation cold.
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Jeff Nichols,
You are exactly right. If the tests go, CCSS will falter. Those who like it will use it. Others will revise it to their own specifications. Some will forget about it.
The moratorium is a delaying tactic. They hope to wear down the opposition. Moratorium is not enough. Kill the testing. Let teachers write their own tests.
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“This whole edifice is built on the foundation of high-stakes tests. . . ”
NO! The foundation is the educational standards which are built upon quicksand with intellectual pilings that were made from too wet concrete and no rebars whatsoever. The high stakes tests are the facade that makes the building seem taller and stronger than what it is.
Wilson has already done the intellectual engineering work to expose the weakness of those supposed pilings in his never refuted not rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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Hmm, a moratorium on the high-stakes aspects of CCSS – where have I heard that before? Sigh. Well, I suppose I should be heartened that Gates can take advice from anyone, even if it is Randi Weingartner.
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Birds of a feather. . . ???
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Well, I am sure that Bill and Pearson will let the rest of us know what they decide for us.
Or, rather, they will have their windup toy at the Department for the Regimentation, Dehumanization, and Privatization of U.S. Education, formerly the USDE, do that for them. After all, they paid good money for him.
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Can any of you believe any of this? What a “Twilight Zone..”…..Unbelievable…I never realized that Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard until today. It’s unbelievable that Bill Gates has made himself the head of United States schools. I also didn’t realize that the U.S. Department of Education was not established until 1979 until my husband told me. What a waste of money…they are doing all of this damage on borrowed money from China. What a big joke….
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Yup, make that Bill “I don’t need no stinkin’ college degree, even one from from Harvard” Gates.
Gates is an outlier. See Malcolm Gladwell’s book of the same name for an analysis of how Bill Gates got to be the Bill Gates we all know and (cough, cough) admire.
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Great book, on so many levels. As it applies to Gates, here is my synopsis….Due to Gates’ parents wealth and location they had the ability to send Bill to the ONLY high school IN THE WORLD that had access to the world’s first supercomputer…he was one of THE ONLY high school kids in THE WORLD that could spend as much time (research finds that one needs 10,000 hours doing something to become an expert at it) as he wanted (albeit at night) “playing” with this new supercomputer…that NO ONE else his age had access to…ANYWHERE! His is really not a “Horatio Alger” type story!
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There Are No Standard Children, and Our Job Is Not to Standardize Them
We Share in Common the Right to an Un-Common (Core) Education
Those Who Can, Teach; Those Who Can’t Use Bullet Lists to Micromanage Teachers
Warning: CCSS Literature Program. New Criticism for Dummies.
Enjoy the Fruits of Learning; Chuck the Core
CCSS: Reign of Error and of Terror
PARCC: Spell That Backward
not-Smarter, imBalanced
My Third Grader Can Out-think Your Secretary of Education
Lord Coleman: By Divine right, Absolute Monarch of ELA Education?
Common Core: NCLB Fright Night II: The Nightmare Is Nationalized
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Look, these tests are a cancer that has metastasized through our PreK-12 educational system. Gates and Company want MORE OF THEM. They want post-secondary to be driven by tests too.
Stop the invalid summative standardized testing. Period.
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Gates, Duncan, Murdoch, Phillips, Coleman, Pimentel, Zimba, Wilhoit, etc. thought that parents would roll over and play dead as the “foundation” used children enrolled in public schools as Common Core guinea pigs. Parents have had enough of “college and career ready” nonsense tied to Pearson’s high-stakes testing. Parents defeated Murdoch’s inBloom data mining machine and parents will defeat the Common Core fake standards bought by Bill Gates without parental approval.
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/the-people-behind-the-common-core-state-standards/1086/
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“it is only right that it (Gates) should call the shots.” So true. Can’t wait for their next communiqué. (snark)
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What about the consequences to our children? Is there a moratorium on that? My child just had to take an Algebra common core regents that he was expected to fail?? He was told ahead of time that most students would probably not do well. The stress this caused my child is indescribable. But, no worries. Once they fail the common core regents, they can sign up to take last year’s integrated regents. Another test! Great!
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Holly, you just outlined a great case for boycotting the tests. No one has a right to set your child up to fail. You have the ability to see to it that never happens again. You and your child together should decide what challenges are worth his time. The education system should be held accountable only to you and the other families it serves. When it fails you, do not cooperate, and demand better!
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Opting out of Regents exams isn’t an, er, option. Passing the NYS integrated algebra Regents is required for graduation. It was decided at The Highest Levels of State Government that this year students can take both the CC version (given last week) and the *regular* one (to be given during the traditional “Regents’ Week” which starts next Tuesday). The highest grade will go on their transcript.
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Wow, Sharon, didn’t realize that — how naive. Our kids are in fourth and fifth grades. I thought regents were only required for high school graduation. So no one can go to high school in New York without passing 8th grade regents? Aren’t high school admissions done before regents are administered? What happens with homeschooled kids or kids in private schools who want to attend public high schools? What a mess!!!
Wasn’t like this when I was growing up…no standardized test was ever required for me to graduate from any level of my education, from kindergarten through the Ph.D. I guess that’s why I’m so slow to understand the test-driven model of education…
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Hi again, Jeff, if you are still reading.
The change to require passing of five Regents exams in order to graduate was initiated for students entering 9th grade in 2008 expecting to graduate in 2012. The algebra exam is typically given in 9th grade, although some advanced 8th-graders take it too. The New, Improved CC math exam is supposed to replace the Regents intergrated algebra exam. You can look up the exact requirements for the Regents and the Advanced Regents diplomas on the NYSED site.
There are no required exams in order to enter high school in NYS, but shhhhh! Don’t give the NYSED any ideas.
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Ah, yes… The Gates Foundation weighing in with its pearls of education wisdom. Two observations. First…. haven’t two years of common core aligned testing already occurred (2013 and 2014)… with consequences having already extracted their toll, or am I on glue? Second, who wants to lay odds whether The New York Times or Wall Street Journal will report on this, given that this groundbreaking idea has come from The Gates Foundation and not some radical grassroots organization or some hysterical helicopter WSM (white suburban mom) such as I.
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And The New York Times wins: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/education/gates-foundation-urges-moratorium-on-decisions-tied-to-common-core.html?emc=edit_tnt_20140610&nlid=40131980&tntemail0=y&_r=0
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Reblogged this on Centerville United for Responsible Education.
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Gates causes damage! He’s an idiot with money…dangerous in this country.
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Is it a coincidence that Randi Weingarten was the first to propose this? NOT!
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