Now, as we all know, Bill Gates paid over $2 billion for the Common Core standards. They are supposed to be the linchpin of a coordinated system: standards, tests, teacher evaluations based on test scores, school closings, turnarounds, etc. but a funny thing happened on the way to the millennium. Parents and educators got angry. Some hated the tests. Some hated the standards. Some hated the federal takeover of their public schools. A few states said they would drop the standards.
The Gates Foundation decided the best way to calm the protests was to slow down the implementation. Here is the story in the New York Times.
This afternoon, on one of my rare outings while I recuperate from surgery, I was sitting in the car outside the fish market, when I got an email from reporter Motoko Rich of the Times. She asked what I thought of the moratorium. This is the last quote in the story:
“Some critics of the standards and testing said that a moratorium was not enough.
“If the sanctions and punishments tied to test scores are wrong now — promoting teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, cheating, and gaming the system — the sanctions and punishments will still be wrong two years from now,” Diane Ravitch, an education historian and critic of standardized testing in schools, wrote in an email. “The opposition to high-stakes testing will not go away.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Is there any chance we can get a “moratorium” on Bill Gates? If so maybe he’ll have time to find a new hobby.
🙂
Forget a moratorium. Let’s strip Bill Gates of his citizenship; then never let him step foot in the U.S. again.
He can go live in Russia.
Oh, and before he leaves, confiscate all his holdings, wealth and any money his foundation has and use that money to support the public schools.
I second that motion.
You can strip him of his citizenship and he would still have UNESCO.
He could take up golf.
Funny how bad PR suddenly leads to common sense. But in this case I do not trust him. He was also behind the push to evaluate teachers using test scores, but when newspapers started publishing names, one that led to a suicide, he came out against publishing names. That didn’t stop any newspaper.
Is Arne still proclaiming Bill doesn’t have a seat at the table? I guess you don’t need one when you own the plantation.
Oh, yes, Master Bill. Yes, Sir, indeed, right away!
I shall see to it, Sir, that I put a moratorium on your disatrous policies for two years. Whatever you say, Master Bill. You own the place, the policy, the tests.
But most of all, Master Bill . . . . .
You own us and our children.
What happens after two years Your Highness?
It does not matter. Two years, a year from now, 10 years from now.
Everything is the teacher’s and administrator’s fault. It’s not as if this is a complex system with many interdependent and multi-directional linearity happening here.
Complex systems don’t exist in the life of someone as monstrous, wealthy, and simplistic as Bill Gates.
Ditto for his horrible petri-dish-of-a-wife.
These two are the Bonnie and Clyde of education, and they want to pedagogically and metrically shoot at your kids . . . . . to rob them of something, and to go onto the next district and the next one and the next one.
They are serial cognition bandits, and will stop at nothing to go on a robbery spree.
Parents beware, be warned. Call the police.
“. . . serial cognition bandits. . .”
Another nominee for quip of the year!!
A moratorium is not enough.
There must be no high stakes testing of any kind. There must be no judgement of teachers based on the test scores of students.
President Obama must be impeached for letting Bill Gates become his partner in the White House with the goal to destroy public education in the United States. The evidence is overwhelming.
Bill Gates must be arrested and tried for the crime of bribing public officials and what ever other laws were broken. There must be many.
Arne Duncan is the Benedict Arnold of the 21st century, and he would have been a perfect fit for Hitler’s cabinet. He must be tried for treason and fraud.
The New York Times is paying attention to you!!!!
How to Prevent Another PARCC Mugging: A Public Service Announcement
This message is not brought to you by
PARCC: Spell that backward
notSmarter, imBalanced
AIRy nonsense
CTB McGraw-SkillDrill
MAP to nowhere
The College Bored, makers of the new Scholastic Common Core Achievement Test (SCCAT)
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (“All your base are belong to us”)
The Common Core Curriculum Commissariate College and Career Ready Assessment Program (CCCCCCRAP) needs to be scrapped. Here are a few of the reasons why:
1.The CCSS ELA exams are invalid.
First, much of attainment in ELA consists in world knowledge (knowledge of what—the stuff of declarative memories of subject matter). The “standards” being tested cover almost no world knowledge and so the tests based on those standards miss much of what constitutes attainment in this subject. Imagine a test of biology that left out almost all world knowledge about biology and covered only biology “skills” like—I don’t know—slide-staining ability—and you’ll get what I mean here. This has been a problem with all of these summative standardized tests in ELA since their inception.
Second, much of attainment in ELA consists in procedural knowledge (knowledge of what—the stuff of procedural memories of subject matter). The “standards” being tested define skills so vaguely and so generally that they cannot be validly operationalized for testing purposes as written.
Third, nothing that students do on these exams EVEN REMOTELY resembles real reading and writing as it is actually done in the real world. The test consists largely of what I call New Criticism Lite, or New Criticism for Dummies—inane exercises on identification of examples of literary elements that for the most part skip over entirely what is being communicated in the piece of writing. In other words, these are tests of literature that for the most part skip over the literature, tests of the reading of informative texts that for the most part skip over the content of those texts. Since what is done on these tests does not resemble, even remotely, what actual readers and writers do in the real world when they actually read and write, the tests, ipso facto, cannot be valid tests of real reading and writing.
Fourth, standard standardized test development practice requires that the testing instrument be validated. Such validation requires that the test maker show that the test correlates strongly with other accepted measures of what is being tested, both generally and specifically (that is, with regard to specific materials and/or skills being tested). No such validation was done for these tests. NONE. And as they are written, based on the standards they are based upon, none COULD BE done. Where is the independent measure of proficiency in CCSS.Literacy.ELA.11-12.4b against which the items in PARCC that are supposed to measure that standard on this test have been validated? Answer: There is no such measure. None. And PARCC has not been validated against it, obviously LOL. So, the tests fail to meet a minimal standard for a high-stakes standardized assessment—that they have been independently validated.
2. The test formats are inappropriate.
First, the tests consist largely of objective-format items (multiple-choice and EBSR). These item types are most appropriate for testing very low-level skills (e.g., recall of factual detail). However, on these tests, such item formats are pressed into a kind of service for which they are, generally, not appropriate. They are used to test “higher-order thinking.” The test questions therefore tend to be tricky and convoluted. The test makers, these days, all insist on answer choices all being plausible. Well, what does plausible mean? Well, at a minimum, plausible means “reasonable.” So, the questions are supposed to deal with higher-order thinking, and the wrong answers are all supposed to be plausible, so the test questions end up being extraordinarily complex and confusing and tricky, all because the “experts” who designed these tests didn’t understand the most basic stuff about creating assessments–that objective question formats are generally not great for testing higher-order thinking, for example. For many of the sample released questions, there is, arguably, no answer among the answer choices that is correct or more than one answer that is correct, or the question simply is not, arguably, actually answerable as written.
Second, at the early grades, the tests end up being as much a test of keyboarding skills as of attainment in ELA. The online testing format is entirely inappropriate for most third graders.
3. The tests are diagnostically and instructionally useless.
Many kinds of assessment—diagnostic assessment, formative assessment, performative assessment, some classroom summative assessment—have instructional value. They can be used to inform instruction and/or are themselves instructive. The results of these tests are not broken down in any way that is of diagnostic or instructional use. Teachers and students cannot even see the tests to find out what students got wrong on them and why. So the tests are of no diagnostic or instructional value. None. None whatsoever.
4. The tests have enormous incurred costs and opportunity costs.
First, they steal away valuable instructional time. Administrators at many schools now report that they spend as much as a third of the school year preparing students to take these tests. That time includes the actual time spent taking the tests, the time spent taking pretests and benchmark tests and other practice tests, the time spent on test prep materials, the time spent doing exercises and activities in textbooks and online materials that have been modeled on the test questions in order to prepare kids to answer questions of those kinds, and the time spent on reporting, data analysis, data chats, proctoring, and other test housekeeping.
Second, they have enormous cost in dollars. In 2010-11, the US spent 1.7 billion on state standardized testing alone. Under CCSS, this increases. The PARCC contract by itself is worth over a billion dollars to Pearson in the first three years, and you have to add the cost of SBAC and the other state tests (another billion and a half?), to that. No one, to my knowledge, has accurately estimated the cost of the computer upgrades that will be necessary for online testing of every child, but those costs probably run to 50 or 60 billion. This is money that could be spent on stuff that matters—on making sure that poor kids have eye exams and warm clothes and food in their bellies, on making sure that libraries are open and that schools have nurses on duty to keep kids from dying. How many dead kids is all this testing worth, given that it is, again, of no instructional value? IF THE ANSWER TO THAT IS NOT OBVIOUS TO YOU, YOU SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED ANYWHERE NEAR A SCHOOL OR AN EDUCATIONAL POLICY-MAKING DESK.
5. The tests distort curricula and pedagogy.
The tests drive how and what people teach, and they drive much of what is created by curriculum developers. This is a vast subject, so I won’t go into it in this brief note. Suffice it to say that the distortions are grave. In U.S. curriculum development today, the tail is wagging the dog.
6. The tests are abusive and demotivating.
Our prime directive as educators is to nurture intrinsic motivation—to create independent, life-long learners. The tests create climates of anxiety and fear. Both science and common sense teach that extrinsic punishment and reward systems like this testing system are highly DEMOTIVATING for cognitive tasks. The summative standardized testing system is a really, really backward extrinsic punishment and reward approach to motivation. It reminds me of the line from the alphabet in the Puritan New England Primer, the first textbook published on these shores:
F
The idle Fool
Is whip’t in school.
7. The tests have shown no positive results.
We have had more than a decade, now, of standards-and-testing-based accountability under NCLB. We have seen only miniscule increases in outcomes, and those are well within the margin of error of the calculations. Simply from the Hawthorne Effect, we should have seen SOME improvement!!! And that suggests that the testing has actually DECREASED OUTCOMES, which is consistent with what we know about the demotivational effects of extrinsic punishment and reward systems. It’s the height of stupidity to look at a clearly failed approach and to say, “Gee, we should to a lot more of that.”
8. The tests will worsen the achievement and gender gaps.
Both the achievement and gender gaps in educational performance are largely due to motivational issues, and these tests and the curricula and pedagogical strategies tied to them are extremely demotivating. They create new expectations and new hurdles that will widen existing gaps, not close them. Ten percent fewer boys than girls, BTW, received a proficient score on the NY CCSS exams–this in a time when 60 percent of kids in college and 3/5ths of people in MA programs are female. The CCSS exams drive more regimentation and standardization of curricula, which will further turn off kids already turned off by school, causing more to turn out and drop out.
Oh, dear. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
This smells of something else, bait and switch, lip service. Something here is amiss.
I agree. There definitely is an ulterior motive.
It appears that Mr. Gates has pulled his head slightly back inside his shell … for now.
Brace yourself.
As I recall, in Vietnam, there was a truce called before the surprise Tet Offensive. Hanoi had announced in October that it would observe a seven-day truce from 27 January to 3 February for the Tet holiday, and the South Vietnamese military made plans to allow recreational leave for approximately half of its forces.
The first waves of attacks started on January 30.
Don’t relax. This war has a long way to go. Gates can’t be trusted. In fact, not one fake education reformer or their mercenary troops can be trusted either.
Neo-liberals and neo-conservatives believe in the noble lie and the art of deception. Even after they are totally defeated, if any survive with beating hearts, they will creep back.
The generation that spawned these devils will have to die out from old age before we see an end to them and even then it make take a few generations as the movement fades.
Great comment Diane. Perhaps we can hope that the NY Times has lifted its moratorium on your opinions.
Bob, I would add to your list that tests that are used as teacher evaluations turn progressive education on its head, child learners become child laborers, responsible not to themselves and their learning, but to performing in order to keep their teachers, principals and schools. Their work holds up the system.
But education is supposed to meet them where they are and uplift them.
Last thing:
This post from a few months ago by Mercedes Schneider looks at moratorium as a strategy to save the PARCC and CCSS.
Maybe some of your readers who have not seen it would like to check it out.
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/?s=moratorium+on+parcc
Thanks all.
child learners become child laborers
That pretty much sums up what is happening.
Heckuva job, Bill!
Moratorium, shmoratorium. Duane where are you? How many real experts have to point out the lack of reliability or validity of these tests before we quit hearing, “Yes, but we need some way of holding schools, teachers, and students accountable.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could wave a magic educational wand and have all of society’s problems disappear in a wisp of smoke?
2O2T,
Just catching up on the posts after a week spent on the Jack’s Fork River, part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, in southern Missouri for a week. Working my way backwards through the posts.
You are correct about the invalidity of these tests. Since they are indeed invalid as per Wilson, any conclusions drawn are therefore invalid so that a moratorium is kind of like a stay in execution until the last appeals are considered. In this case the appeals to logical thought and analysis (Wilson) are not even considered, unfortunately.
While at the river I had close contact with two distinct venomous animals. While picking up other’s trash, on a beer carton left behind I almost grabbed onto a black widow spider who was in the process of laying eggs. Killed her and burnt the egg sac. Wilson’s work does that to educational standards and standardized testing but unfortunately there are many more individual black widows who keep promulgating these venomous educational malpractices.
The other, a cottonmouth had swum across the river to about ten yards upstream from us. My son, who happened to be right there said it was a water moccasin and I went to verify-not that he couldn’t-I just wanted to be sure. No doubt as it was in the classic cottonmouth position, coiled with its mouth open to expose the “cotton”. Now I’m not Ophidiophobic and prefer to live and let live so we shooshed it back across the river. (Last year at the same spot on the Jack’s we saw a Pygmy Rattler, a very rare sight indeed. Now my son and I only need to see a Massasagua rattler and timber rattler to complete our quest to see all five of Missouri’s venomous snakes in the wild. As it is it was my son’s first time for seeing either a black widow or cottonmouth in the wild, an exciting trip no doubt)
Unfortunately there are still too many “black widows” and “cottonmouths” who spread the poisonous educational malpractices that are educational standards and standardized testing. And way too many GAGAers who fear antagonizing those who (like a B. Gates) promote such deforms.
I envy your trip although not your venomous encounters. After years in the burbs, I have become citified. Fortunately, I managed to produce children who are more in touch with what’s left of the natural world. My forays into the country are guided by wiser heads.
The moratorium has absolutely no value if those who believe in the education of children continue to sit on our hands while other agendas again write the plans for our kids.
It is time to put away political agendas and focus on issues, everyone presenting their ideas and plans with no preconceived notions.
It’s time to wholly embrace the agenda of children. What is the viable alternative to a failed system?
Anyone else wondering at the confluence of the announced “moratorium” and the decision in the Vergara decision? Perhaps the Billionaires Boys Club have a little dance going on, wherein Bill pulls back on Common Core high stakes, and Dave works on trouncing tenure and seniority rights over the next few years, . . . clearing the way, eventually, for the death of teachers’ unions, the pinnacle of public school privatization, and the provision of pedagogical puppets.
Teaching, there’s an app for that.
And Bill and Pearson will be happy to sell it to you.
I don’t think the teachers will be alone in this fight.
The AFLCIO and the Teamsters are going to get involved and eventually there may be a national strike of all unions. In fact, the AFT is part of the Teamsters. Imagine all the union truck drivers refusing to drive unless teachers get their tenure back.
The AFLCIO has more than 11.5 million members. The teamsters union has more than a million.
There are about 3.3 million teachers in the two unions.
Since the Bill Gates partnership of fake education reformers is also after public pensions of all kinds—including the police and fireman—-we may have the two million federal workers in addition to the more than twenty million that work for all fifty states.
This is where the domino theory works in our favor. If the 3.3 million teachers fall and lose their pensions, who will be next?
In theory, the fake education reforms with Bill Gates as their five-star general, will be confronted by almost 35 million working Americans.
But we have to spread the word to reach these people and make our case.
Moratorium: wait until the masses stick their head back in the sand.
That is just what they are counting on.
The ringmasters first floated this idea back in the George Bush, Sr. administration–national standards and national tests. They were universally hooted down. They resurrected it with NCLB. That didn’t go too well, did it? But they resurrected it again with Son of NCLB. They rebranded it and gave it a new name and a lot of PR, financed by Pearson and Gates.
Watch this SLO song, student learning objective
OMG, Linda. Is this you? Just awesome!!! Hilarious. And my god, what a lovely voice! Thanks for sharing this!!!!
Not me. I can’t sing. Isn’t she wonderful. Love it…tweeting now.
try this for more parodies ♫ Bring Back the Joy! featuring Tom Chapin, David HB Drake, George Grove, Skip Jones, Stuart Stotts & Dangerous Folk – No Child Left Behind?. Listen @cdbaby ♫ Bring Back the Joy! featuring Tom Chapin, David HB Dr… Click to listen at CDBaby View on http://www.cdbaby.com Preview by Yahoo
Love the image of you out and about, sitting in your car outside a fish market, emailing the NYTs. Powerful. Hope it was a beautiful day.
I would argue for competitive magnet public schools for the best and brightest. We see this in Chicago and in the Illinois Math and Science Academy. These are best kind of public schools. Every region in the country should have these. These “merit” schools would produce our future elites. The rest of Americans students could continue bouncing balls, checking Facebook and being dumb. Of course these elite schools are and would be overwhelmingly Asian (Indian and Chinese). Most homegrown American students simply don’t have the work ethic or interest to make it. It’s faulty culture, not poverty. My Asian students are poor and live in apartments, but the parents value education. Give me a class of 1st generation Chinese and Indian students, and I can fly to the moon! We have to face the reality that all kids are different, have different gifts and ambitions and quit punishing the teachers. If Bill Gates created elite magnet schools all over the country that only accepted the best and brightest, he could do a lot for our country. Every state could have five of these elite boarding schools with no tuition. Think of the young, bored, gifted students in your classes. Instead he is punishing teachers for lazy, apathetic students who don’t study at all. That is a crime! We need to separate off and reward those capable of actually doing something intellectual with their lives.
Imagine the motivation if people actually suffered some consequences for their actions.
That’s just my point. All the consequences are now on the freaking teachers. How do you like that? There are no consequences on the kids. Hell, most of my kids don’t take the final exam seriously. The final exam is worth 20% of their grade, but they do the math and don’t study. Soon, very soon, I will be graded on how well they do on the school-wide final. Think about that. Looks like we will spend the last few weeks, practicing everything with the kids (test prep). I used to just put it on the kids. Now, I have to study with them during class time instead of learning new things. Brilliant! Isn’t it? It’s so sick. I don’t think this has ever been done before in the history of mankind.
“These “merit” schools would produce our future elites. The rest of Americans students could continue bouncing balls, checking Facebook and being dumb. Of course these elite schools are and would be overwhelmingly Asian (Indian and Chinese). Most homegrown American students simply don’t have the work ethic or interest to make it. It’s faulty culture, not poverty.”
Mike, I think perhaps you mistook this blog for a place where people who support deformy, elitist ideas commiserate about the failed state of America’s youth today. Where again did you say that you work as a teacher?
Raking a few geniuses from the rubbish was Thomas Jeffersons plan back in the days of slavery. And thats what magnate schools do. However, if the suggestion is that American kids are lazy, that is sheer non sense. They may not be as good at kissing up, but once empowered, I have seem the most difficult kids thrive, and work hard as any.
First they must be empowered to follow their dreams, not some tiger mom. And second, it has to mean something to them, not just to do a test.
I suggest you’ve used the wrong word, empowered.
Please explain how a teacher, any teacher, empowers every child living in poverty in communities mired in crime, drugs and street gang violence?
The U.S. ranks near the bottom among OECD nations for early childhood education, probably the only way to empower the 23% of U.S. children living in poverty—more than sixteen million.
For instance, France instituted early childhood education programs several decades ago to reach 100% of four year olds. At the time this program was launched, poverty in France was 15%. Today the poverty rate is less than 7%, but it takes generations, not one school year, not even five years is enough. It takes a long term commitment for several generations to sometimes overcome the burden of poverty, and this must start years before a child enters their first day of kindergarten—and France only cut poverty in half after about thirty years.
And in the US, as you pointed out in your comment, the Brush and Obama administrations demanded teachers do this with bubble tests and achieve 100% success with every child with no other support for the teachers and public schools. In fact, funds were cut from the public schools.
G. W. Bush and Obama are both guilty of reinforcing the child abuse of almost 16 million children. Obama’s partner in this crime is Bill Gates, so he’s guilty too. What started with NCLB is a crime against humanity, and what did the West do with Nazis found guilty of crimes against humanity after World War II? According to the verdicts and judgements in those trials, Arne Duncan should be hung too. Following orders is no excuse.
“Most homegrown American students simply don’t have the work ethic or interest to make it.”
Bullshit, pure 100% USDA Grade AA Bullshit!
Wait. The WAPO waits 3 months to run the Gates interview. Within days in the NY Times Gates is walking back his testing stance on testing. The same day of the California tenure case. This is a PR blitz by the oligarchs and their private media. Gates and Obama and Duncan held accountable for their seemingly criminal acts? Not a chance. We can no longer vote for for the parties of the 1 percent. They remind me of the image Orwell conveys in the reformer playroom, 1984: a boot smashing into one’s face. Vote Green.
Play book not playroom. Only one “testing”in sentence two. difficult week in nimbus land.
Slowing it down doesn’t help unless they are open to change. Common Core is simply not educationally sound. But you should see what I do to it in my upcoming (in about 2 or 3 months) book Brainstorming the common core: Salvaging the Fiasco of Reform
You wont recognize CC
In the Washington Post interview posted recently, Gates tells of a 2008 meeting and suggests that David Coleman and Gene Wilhoit came to him at that time to pitch to him the idea of new national standards. However, it’s my understanding that that’s not how this all happened–that Gates funded a 2007 report from the Hunt institute calling for new national standards, that Gates tasked Achieve with finding people to draft these standards, and that Gates wrote the check to pay the people who did the drafting.
The interview seems to me an attempt on Gates’s part to position himself as simply a good guy with a checkbook there to help these folks (the “states,” LOL) with their idea for improving U.S. education when, in fact, he was involved in this whole national standards business much, much earlier. Certainly, he funded the 2007 Hunt Institute report calling for new national standards a year before this meeting with Coleman and Wilhoit. So why would he pretend that the whole thing was some sort of new idea to him?
And why should we all be speculating about this? Why should new national standards have been cooked up by a few people in a backroom and have been a fait accompli before anyone else ever heard of them?
Gotta wonder why WAPO didn’t fact-check their interview? Sounds like more Gates PR to me…
pathetic, isn’t it?
Well, look to see who the owner is.
I am HIGHLY suspicious of this move. On one hand it’s risky…gives the public more time to understand why these standards aren’t very popular. But i think in reality, there’s another Federal educational stimulus brewing that will again bypass the classroom and go straight to Gates and his subcontractors.
But this is an opportunity! Use the time wisely. Diane once told me to keep my powder dry when it came to new ideas for systemic change away from the new status quo.
I would love it if she would support my new book,coming out in a couple of months Brainstorming the Common Core: Salvaging the Fiasco of Reform. This one will make everyone sit up and listen!
Maybe Gates will buy up the whole edition, Cap. Nobody’s gonna want to salvage the stinking hulk of his Common core without his money behind it, and I think it’s getting too hot for him.
I think the WaPo interview broke through his bubble, and Gates realizes his whole agenda may actually be in jeopardy. We should realize that, also. Pay attention, now:
HIS WHOLE AGENDA MAY BE IN JEOPARDY. We’re mobilized, and we can turn the tide on his tax-dodging, democracy-hating, faux-philanthropic assault. It isn’t a bus, we’re not going to be on it or under it, the train hasn’t left any stations, the public private partnership will not be our new system of governance, and our children won’t live under the plutocrats’ heel.
We’re gaining momentum on all three Gates-Empire fronts. The July 26 demo in Seattle might unite Monsanto opponents with in-country African agricultural activists, anti-big-pharma with third world health movements, and American teachers, parents, and students with aspiring political activists. Move, move, move.
There are a zillion specific, concrete things to do. Force the sniveling NEA national leadership to take some progressive stand, and put some daylight between them and the Gates Foundation’s new delay tactic, for instance. They are, as of now, indistinguishable from Gates.
chemtchr,
I believe the date to be June 26, at least that is what I am planning on.
Why anyone listens to Gates is beyond me.
$76,000,000,000.00
http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/03/news/companies/forbes-billionaire-rich-list/
I think Gates is just trying to take the heat off all the anti common core rumblings with its links to testing and teacher evaluations and is trying to placate the masses temporarily until he buys his next common core/testing strategy. I am sure some glossy PR firm told him to take this approach. While I would like to be optimistic… it seems futile to be optimistic with a megalomaniac like Gates. It is better not to believe a word he says and to figure out the strategy behind the bull. Frankly, Ravitch was on target with Motoko Rich… no moratorium on common core policy linked to testing is needed … but eradication sure is! You cannot will a stone into becoming a butterfly no matter how you package it and reinvent it.
It doesn’t take a PR firm to see that the testing part of this is in real trouble. Look at the debacle in New York. If there are high stakes attached to these awful tests any time soon, there will be a public policy meltdown. The villagers will grab their shovels and pitchforks and chase the Ed Deform monster to its lairs.
The Ed Deformers must know this. Thus the call for the moratorium on the high stakes. They need time to try to salvage the tests. Otherwise, their business plan for U.S. education is doomed, and they know it.
We’ve seen a lot of business organizations get behind the standards-and-testing cudgel.
Odd, huh?
These are usually the first folks to abjure centralized regulation and control.
If they really believed in Lord Coleman’s List and in these ridiculous new tests, they would put them out there, like any other product, and let the market decide. But no, they choose to enforce these from on high, to work in the background to give them the force of regulation and law, and, in Arne Duncan’s case, to conduct blackmail of the states to force them to adopt them.
Why this route?
Because they have a crappy product that could not stand on its own merits, that could not win the hearts and minds of teachers based on those merits.
Bob Shepherd: now let’s be sure I’ve read you correctly…
The free-market fundamentalists are using big gubmint to rig (by fair means and foul) the marketplace, not permitting the “invisible hand” to do its divinely appointed job wherein all have equal access and information and influence? And you object?!?!? On what possible grounds?
I am shocked and ashamed, sir, that you have attempted to cast aspersions on one of the most sacred Marxist axioms of all:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
Again with the ¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿? Yes, the famous one. Groucho.
And no, not Chico, Harpo, Zeppo or Gummo.
I’ve given you the top five. No need to continue on down to any lesser and more obscure Marx, whoever you might be thinking of…
😎
“And though all the windes of doctrin were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licencing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falshood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the wors, in a free and open encounter.” –John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)
Those doing the Coring of the United States have assiduously avoided any “free and open encounter[s].” Their backward ideas would not survive those.
Gates’ business model fits: put a buggy OS on as many desktops as you can and developers HAVE to work with it whether they like it or not. You debug after release.
What I tolerate on my laptop….NOT what I tolerate for my kids or my profession.
Certainly, if the CCSS in ELA were subjected to anything like real vetting by scholars, researchers, teachers, and independent curriculum developers, they would be hooted off the national stage. They are a disgrace. Backward, hackneyed, unimaginative, inappropriate, often prescientific, often misconceived at the level of their categorical conceptualization and of what is included and excluded, not representative of the best contemporary thinking about teaching in any of the areas covered, so vaguely formulated as not to allow for valid testing of them, and certainly not better than many, many alternatives.
This top-down, authoritarian approach belongs to a factory model from the last part of the nineteenth century. We need an open-sourced, crowd sourced model that allows for divergent thinking and innovation.
No one had the right to appoint David Coleman absolute monarch of education in the English language arts in the United States. He clearly is not qualified for such a position, and no one is, even folks who actually, unlike Lord Coleman, have some real experience and learning in this field.
Sounds like Windows Vista
Does anyone actually believe that the CCSS in ELA is the best possible formulation of what learning progressions we should be following in the English language arts and what outcomes we should be measuring?
Well, perhaps there are some few who don’t know much about teaching English who might believe such a thing.
But isn’t the very idea that David Coleman knows better about these matters than any of the millions of scholars, researchers, educators, and curriculum developers in the country simply ridiculous, prima facie?
I have been thinking about and researching the teaching of reading, literature, writing, grammar, vocabulary, speech, research skills, and thinking for decades–seriously working at this–but I would not dream of thinking that any curriculum ladder that I might conceive of
a. would be appropriate for every student and
b. could not be improved upon by other with better ideas
Coleman hacked together the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the previously existing state standards, sprinkled some New Critical fairy dust over it, and produced a an amateurish piece of crap that wouldn’t merit a passing grade in an undergraduate English methods class. Why should we all be forced to work within the constraints of THAT?
Because Bill Gates thinks so?
Give me a break.
cxs:
I have been thinking about and researching the teaching of reading, literature, writing, grammar, vocabulary, speech, research skills, and thinking for decades–seriously working at this–but I would not dream of thinking that any SINGLE curriculum ladder that I might conceive of
a. would be appropriate for every student and
b. could not be improved upon by others with better ideas
It’s just silly. Bill Gates doesn’t have any control over how states punish teachers and schools based on these tests. None of them do.
It was a hollow promise that the tests were going to be used the way the CC proponents claimed in the first place, “for assessment, not punishment”.
They have no earthly idea how states will use the scores. None. States could use them to retain kids, deny a high school diploma, fire all the teachers, close 20% of the schools and turn them over to private contractors, whatever.
Now that they’ve graciously granted two years for public schools to put this program in, they have absolutely no power to enforce or guarantee a “moratorium”, either.
It’s meaningless. Tens of millions of people in these states will find out how lawmakers in these states use the test scores after the Common Core testing is in. That’s the truth.
True, in two years the political climate in the U.S. could change drastically in any directions. And the longer the resistance has to educate the country about the real public schools, public opinion might change as more people learn what’s really going on.
Now, we have to work harder to make sure few in the U.S. are in the dark about the fake education reformers.
They all said exactly the same things about NCLB. The testing would never be used punitively! It would be “high quality” and used to IMPROVE public schools. Then they all sat back and watched as testing consumed every public school in the country. Not a peep out of them. The one and only reason there was any attention paid at all to excessive and ridiculous testing was parents and teachers complained. Ed reformers were still shaking their pom poms until the moment Texas parents said “enough”
What’s different this time? It’s the same group of 150 people running this one. I’m not clear there’s any interest in public schools at all, quite frankly. They all seem to spend 24/7 either opening charter schools or promoting charter schools. Between that and union bashing, I never hear a word about public schools.
You say you never hear a word about the public schools but you’re on Diane’s blog leaving a comment and her blog has more than twelve million views and gets maybe twenty thousand to seventy thousand views a day and the summer break is just starting as more than 3 million teachers go free for ten weeks.
A few months ago, I had never heard of Diane and her books until my wife told me. You can’t protest if you don’t know what’s going on.
In addition, Diane has been on a number of talk shows that reach audiences in the millions and tens if thousands of parents have protested in a number of states.
There are more than fifty million school age kids in this country and those kids have parents and grand parents. Those parents care and according to Gallup, 72% of American parents trust the teachers and the public schools their children attend. If 72% of the parents of 50 million children trust the teachers and public schools their children attend, that says that the support for the public schools is strong. I think about a third of the U.S. population of 316 million are parents of school age children and throw in about another 60 million living grandparents. And they all have friends and extended family. Pretty soon, that pretty much covers the total population.
Click to access 2013_PDKGallup.pdf
The link will take you to the highlights of the 2013 PDK/Gallup Poll to find out what parents said about the public schools.
And don’t think the fake education reformers don’t know this. They are moving fast because they have to achieve their goals before the 72% wake up and discover what’s going on. That’s when we will start to hear America roar at the election booth.
I predict that most American parents will not approve of their children being turned over to hedge fund billionaires, the Walton family or Bill Gates.
It’s our job to educate all those teachers, parents and grandparents. That’s something the fake education reformers don’t want to happen. As long as they keep most of America in the dark, then they will win but they are racing against word of mouth and that word is spreading.
And the numbers are already changing. See the comparison between 2012 and 2013 for one question (Table 8.)
Some states require that teacher evaluations include how well a teacher’s students perform on standardized tests. Do you favor or oppose this requirement?
In 2012, the national total that opposed this issue was 47% and 52% were in favor of it.
Now, look at one year later in 2013: 58% were opposed and 41% favored using standardized tests to judge teachers—a massive shift and it will grow as we get the word out about what’s really going on.
The fake education reformers don’t want the people to know the real facts because then they will lose and lose bad.
You are absolutely right. I came here only 3 weeks ago, and it is the ONLY place where I get all the news without going to a list serve. I have followed Norm Scott’s Ed Notes, and Leonie Haimison’s yahoo group NYC Educators, as well as Betsy Combier’s various sites, Lenny Isenberg’s Perdaily.com, Karen Horwitz’s Napta site (endteacherabuse.org) and even Rene Diedrich’s Hemlock not he Rocks, site. No where but here is the a genuine conversation join ton about the shenanigans in the 52 states… the big picture, which is the take-over of public education.
I was there when it began, 20 years ago when due process disappeared http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
and the media rant about ‘dead-wood ‘began. There were no charter schools then, and testing was done by the teacher, to assess and to plan.
The total control of the media, and that propaganda machine (television) changed all that, changing the narrative. I wrote this in 2008:
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/08/subverting-the-national-conversation-a.html
I am astonished when I read the dialogue on this site… IT IS AS IF NOTHING HAS CHANGED… THEY ARE DOING THE SAME THING THEY DID IN NYC AND blaming the failing schools on teachers. here in NYC, Eva Moskowitz has plans for new charters,
The debacle continues with a judge declaring that teachers are depriving the ethnic populations of the schools of their rights to a good education.
Orwell, is shifting in his grave.
you forget that the state lawmakers are bought and paid for by Gates and his cronies – Broad and the Waltons; that the Kochs’ ALEC blows thru and leaves behind reformist legislation, that reformists now control and manage many of the school districts
I don’t know if you were replying to me or Lloyd, but I agree with you.
My point is national ed reformers have absolutely no control and (actually) no idea how these tests will be used at the state level. Assessments, punishments, positive, negative, the truth is they don’t know.
They shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep. “Assessment not punishment” is a promise they can’t keep, and so is “moratorium”.
I think states should have gotten dedicated funding and a guarantee of ongoing support as a condition of testing the tests. I think they did an absolutely lousy job of negotiating on behalf of their public schools. They’re either the world’s worst advocates for their own public schools or they were bowled over the billionaire. They took on a huge job and got no assurances in return, and if they think they’re getting any help after they already put the testing in, they’re kidding themselves. Ed reformers wanted the tests. Now that they have the tests, they’ll be off on their next project which seems to be testing 3 year olds.
“Bill Gates doesn’t have any control over how states punish teachers and schools based on these tests. None of them do.”
The hubris is astonishing, isn’t it? He’s right up there with Donald “The Boss ” Trump. How is this any less blatant a show of force and egregiously unethical than buying elections? The Koch brothers could even take a lesson from him.
It doesn’t matter what your intention is…when you are undermining democracy you are undermining democracy.
The irony is that Gates likely got pressure from the White House to do some indirect damage control for them. As long as he fills his coffers, he doesn’t mind being the errand boy.
I’m sure the Koch brothers and Waltons are already learning from Bill Gates and making changes in how they are doing to take over the United States—–not just public education, but everything from the military to public street sweepers.
For goodness sakes…. 20 years later, I see what the plan was all along, when “THEY” took out the teachers. They had to remove the practitioners who would object to such anti-learning nonsense. “THEY” made the narrative all about testing and evaluation –teaching not learning. “THEY” decide what is taught, how it is taught and how it is evaluated, “THEY” own the institution of education…or at least they think they are in the end zone, only to find out that the people, scattered as they are in 52 states and almost 16,000 different districts want a say in the education of the children who ARE the future, nots one “product.’
Keep at em’ Diane… and feel better, the summer is here. I am visiting relatives in Brooklyn, this week. I will think of you.
Nice work Diane. About the fish… We’ve really had lots of luck with COSTCO salmon and talapia. The boys love fish, and so does Bear. Except for cod. What were you getting? Morale of the story: answer the phone before fishing…
Diane, best wishes
I hope your recovery goes well.
A moratorium is trying to stop the hemorrhaging. If there is a moratorium then maybe no more states will pull out diring the moratorium time and they will not lose more ground, MDG still on track.
The Sacrifice
dolce et decorum est. . . .
Row on row, row on row,
Row on row stationed
Sick at their monitors
Sat the six hundred.
“You may now type your Username”
Said the test proctor.
Set up for failure
Sat the six hundred.
“Enter your password key!
“Mercy upon you!
“During the testing
“No one may help you.”
Someone had blundered.
That much was certain.
Theirs was not to make reply,
Theirs was not to reason why,
Theirs was but to do or die,
Theirs was but to try and cry.
Set up for failure
Sat the six hundred.
Text to the right of them
Complex, out of context,
Bubbles in front of them,
Plausible answers,
Tricky and tortured,
Boldly they bubbled and well
Though smack in the mouth of hell
Sat the six hundred.
This is what reading means,
Now that Gates/Pearson
Has reified testing
So far beyond reason.
Pearson not persons.
Plutocrats plundering,
Taxpayer dollars
Spent to abuse.
The children are used
They bubble and squirm
To reveal their stack ranking
And never again
Will know joy in learning
Never again
Humane joy in reading
And writing, no never again,
Not the six hundred.
Text to the right of them
Complex, out of context,
Bubbles in front of them,
Plausible answers,
Tricky and tortured,
Boldly they bubbled and well.
Gritfully slogging through hell
Sat the six hundred.
When shall their innocence,
Innate curiosity,
Joy in their learning
Ever return?
Alas this is not to be.
Theirs is to gritfully
Show the obedience
Proper for proles,
Their rightful roles
In the new feudal order.
Standardized children
With standardized minds,
Common, not great,
Though sufficient to serve
The ends of the state,
Lost to themselves
And the fruits of their labors.
Honor this children’s crusade.
Honor the price they paid.
Remember when they played.
Our once-young six hundred.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Be ready to pounce with a system of education designed to serve all kids. Where kids affected by poverty are supported by a school design that takes them from where they are. My upcoming book tentatively titled Brainstorming Common Core will be out soon. look for it
And this is why there is no site like this one, because Bob writes here, and I get o be int he teacher’s room with him, even when Harlan lurks at the side, trying to figure out what HE himself is thinking. (his raison d’ être, not mine, for his posts.
Did you post this elsewhere, so I can link directly to it?
May I send it to others?
What Melinda and Bill Gates have to learn is that standardized testing can indicate how well a large number of students perform and not indicate how well individuals are doing. Certainly, a standardized test can not be used to evaluate how well a single teacher is doing with 25 students.