American Association of School Administrators say the Common Core must be slowed down.
“Dear Colleagues:
As we move forward in advocating on behalf of school superintendents, one of the hottest topics right now is the Common Core State Standards. I am pleased to share with you that AASA, The School Superintendents Association, released today a report on the implementation of Common Core and other new state standards.
This report follows a survey of superintendents nationwide which received more than 500 responses from 48 states. The report’s findings echoed the position AASA has taken on Common Core: we need to slow down to get it right. Given enough time and resources, districts and teachers will have the opportunity to implement the standards and aligned assessments in a way that bolsters student learning. AASA opposes the overreliance on standardized testing and the use of one test to assess both student learning and teacher effectiveness, especially so early in the implementation of the new standards.
The survey’s key findings included:
Superintendents overwhelmingly (92.5 percent) see the new standards as more rigorous than previous standards.
More than three quarters (78.3 percent) agree that the education community supports the standards, but that support drops to 51.4 percent among the general public.
Nearly three quarters of the respondents (73.3 percent) agree that the political debate has gotten in the way of the implementation of the new standards.
Nearly half (47 percent) say their input was never requested in the decision to adopt or develop new standards or in planning the implementation.
More than half (60.3 percent) of the respondents who had begun testing say they are facing problems with the tests.
Just under half (41.9 percent) say schools in their states are not ready to implement the online assessment, while 35.9 percent say they lack the infrastructure to support online assessments.
A superintendent from Connecticut said, “don’t fly the ship while you are building it. Students shouldn’t be stressed about testing on something they have never been taught. Teachers shouldn’t be evaluated on the success of student on the tests when they have not been teaching the breadth of the (Common Core State Standards).”
The results from the survey demonstrate that districts are working with limited resources to implement the new, more rigorous standards, despite technology deficits, a dearth of quality professional development materials for school personnel and a challenging national debate. These results reinforce the AASA position that the standards will be a positive change, if districts are given the necessary time and funding to properly implement the new standards and assessments.
To access a copy of the report, visit http://aasa.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/AASA_CCSS_Report.pdf. Thank you to all who participated.
Sincerely,
Dan Domenech
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They’re just not trying hard enough:
Fordham Institute OH @OhioGadfly · May 8
Good teachers don’t fear new #PARCC exams: “the kids will get there. It just won’t happen overnight.” Nice.
Got that? “Good” teachers don’t “fear” the new exams, which I guess means “comment at all critically on them or raise practical concerns”. Only bad teachers do that.
And this?
“Just under half (41.9 percent) say schools in their states are not ready to implement the online assessment, while 35.9 percent say they lack the infrastructure to support online assessments.”
That’s a “fear”. If they just had better attitudes and more courage their bandwidth would improve. Also: unions! It’s probably the fault of unions.
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Superintendents overwhelmingly (92.5 percent) see the new standards as more rigorous than previous standards 100% HAVE FAILED TO ADMIT THAT THEY HAVE NEVER READ THE OLD STANDARDS OR THE CCSS AND ARE JUST FILLING OUT THE SURVEY SECRETLY EMBARASSED THEY HAVE NO CLUE BECAUSE THEY HAVE SO LITTLE TEACHING EXPERIENCE ON WHICH TO JUDGE THEM.
More than three quarters (78.3 percent) agree that the education community supports the standards. FUNNY I DDIDNT GET THE SURVEY FROM MY SUPERINTENDENT.
Nearly three quarters of the respondents (73.3 percent) agree that the political debate has gotten in the way of the implementation of the new standards. BUT FAILED TO ADDRESS WHY THERE IS A POLITICAL DEBATE IF THE STANDARDS ARE AS GREAT AS THEY CLAIM.
Nearly half (47 percent) say their input was never requested in the decision to adopt or develop new standards or in planning the implementation. AND 53% OF SUPERINTENDENTS ARE DELUSIONAL
More than half (60.3 percent) of the respondents who had begun testing say they are facing problems with the tests. AND 39.7% WERE PLAING SOLITAIRE WHEN TESTS WERE ADMINISTERED. 100% FAILED TO EXPLAIN THAT THEY ARE FAR REMOVED FROM THE BOOTS ON THE GROUND ASPECTS OF TESTING AND THEREFORE TREALLY HAVE NO CLUE
Just under half (41.9 percent) say schools in their states are not ready to implement the online assessment, while 35.9 percent say they lack the infrastructure to support online assessments. 6% WERE CONFUSED BY THE QUESTION. 100% HAVE NEVER OBSERVED AN 8 YEAR OLD LEARNING DISABLED OR DYSLEXIC STUDENT TRY TO SCROLL TROUGH A READING PASSAGE ON A TINY WINDOW AND THEN TYPE A TIMED ESSAY USING THEIR LIMITED KEYBOARDING SKILLS.
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Chiara,
FYI: I’m a GREAT teacher – my students, students with severe and profound learning disabilities grew up to 7 pts. on the PLAN last school year! PARCC is a HORRIBLE assessment. I’m not afraid; I’m smart enough to know how completely inappropriate the assessment is.
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Chiara was being sarcastic. She’s with you, babe, I’m sure.
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In Los Angeles, a person needs only five years teaching experience to become a principal. Some taught years ago. They have no idea what and how we are supposed to really be teaching. Our district is trying to teach principals to be more involved in instruction, but this only goes so far when the principals themselves have so little experience.
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Principals should be required to teach ONE, FULL YEAR CLASS in their area of certification. One experienced teacher could be assigned as administrative assistant or as the dean of students to handle some of the perfunctory jobs, freeing the principal for this all important job.
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In Utah, it’s only three years, which is the same length of time to achieve career status. A “teacher” recently got hired as an assistant principal while still on provisional status as a teacher.
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Principals, AP’s, unit coordinators, union officials, etc. should all be required to teach at least one class a week during the school year so that they can get their heads out of their a***s and experience first hand the calamity that business reform is doing to our public schools.
You’re not advocating for the kids, let alone helping anyone, by hiding behind a desk.
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One week is not long enough. My cousin was the vice chancellor of UC Berkley for many years and she always made it a point to teach one class. If she could find the time, there are no excuses for K – 12 principals, supervisors, or superintendents. Other than contractual ones, of course.
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extremely well said!
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Honestly, I’d like to know “which” superintendents responded. 500 sounds like a big number, but lets put that in perspective. According to the website: http://www.oms.nysed.gov/oas/directory.html – There are currently 698 school districts in New York State alone. Therefore, 500 is a tiny fraction of the superintendents nationwide. I do see they have 48 states represented, therefore, they have only scratched the surface of those who run our local districts. In NYS, it doesn’t matter what you think as a superintendent; Your state funding and federal funding is tied to the CCSL so regardless of your stance, you must implement. Slowing down in NYS isn’t going to happen with the current administration, so why would a superintendent respond to this survey in the first place. I can say that our local district had HIGHER standards than before the CCSL.
There is always a story behind the numbers anyone uses. Knowing what that story is, makes all the difference in whether the information is useful or not.
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I agree that we should slow down and let teachers and students (and parents) become acclimated to the Common Core standards. I just spent an entire week (“vacation time”) voluntarily in professional development classes that helped me learn how to really digest and consolidate some of the new standards and align my teaching with them. This was just a tip of the iceberg.
I now need time to go over what I learned and plan my lessons for the next school year. It has left me wanting a lot more hands on training and time to plan with my grade level colleagues. We are certainly not going to be proficient at this over night, let alone our students will not be ready to be tested on a system full of “bugs.” It was a very challenging, nightmarish experience to be “field tested” on the Smarter Balanced Test in the Spring. Our school doesn’t even have class sets of the ipads we are supposed to receive (another hurdle coming). We have antiquated technology at this point, which makes it impossible to prepare students for testing.
Can we please have sufficient time to prepare ourselves and our students before we are evaluated on how well we are doing? Is it too much to ask that we have the technology we need so students are able to actually take the tests? No one has ever asked any one of us how things are going and what more we need to be able to be successful. There were no evaluations by teachers or students after the Smarter Balanced Field Test. Who’s running this show? The people who really matter certainly are not!
Back to my planning…
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“I agree that we should slow down and let teachers and students (and parents) become acclimated to the Common Core standards.”
That’s like asking us to get acclimated to an atmosphere of pure carbon monoxide.
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Reblogged this on We Are More and commented:
The School Superintendents Association released a report on the implementation of Common Core and other new state standards.
This report follows a survey of superintendents nationwide which received more than 500 responses from 48 states. The report’s findings echoed the position AASA has taken on Common Core: we need to slow down to get it right.
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I applaud the letter but with the SAT revamped for next year to align with the Common Core,- that is a whole multimillion dollar industry itself being helmed b ‘Mastermind’. architect/personally doesn’t give a fig about children Coleman. Lord high Gates’s only qualifier for the Core has been the wide testing schedule. There are so many tech start ups with Common Core splashed all over them that are salivating for Core data and Core buy in like the hungry heartless corporations that they are.
Now if we could collectively get them to think of the Common Core as the New Coke then this multibillion dollar industry might just get to realize how this rush to implement untested is going to be just as successful as that was. Having grown up with New Math, and how horridly that is now being recalled- as a widely recognized national what not to do policy- we have to hope that the word on the street with go along those ways.
One thing that Gates did point out is the slow speed that education usually takes. He used his might to push it but I fear that when he moves on to the next new shiny thing in education. districts will still be forced to /forcing on others to keep plugging along with the Core regardless.
For example, the Gates small schools initiative in Atlanta came in under Gates money and when that ended, all those small schools and their top heavy administration heavy design was still in place to the tune of 25 mill a year- paid out by the district every year after that even though Gates had already moved on to teacher evaluations.
I fear that districts will stay with Core and Vam and Danielson even after Gates has finally picked up a cluephone and moved on to something more worthwhile like oh,,, poverty and prison reform- two wide open markets. ( I wouldn’t wish Gates focus on anything so I am not trying to curse them).
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Gates is a bigger fool than I thought. He can’t even remember his own words. He too has recently called for a slow down, apparently forgetting that during the rush to implement he said it would take ten years to know if CC would work. What now, a 20 year wait? Idiots, all of them. Grasping at straws like this just reeks of desperation.
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Desperation is good news NY teacher. Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
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A superintendent from Connecticut said, “don’t fly the ship while you are building it. Students shouldn’t be stressed about testing on something they have never been taught. Teachers shouldn’t be evaluated on the success of student on the tests when they have not been teaching the breadth of the (Common Core State Standards).”
This quote is proof that the fake education reform movement has nothing to do with educating children and everything to do with getting rid of the public education system and turning over hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes to for-profit, corporate owned, private-sector Charter schools that are often refused to teach the most at-risk kids, and are riddled with fraud because they are legally allowed to hide what they are doing and how they are spending that money behind a wall.
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A quasi-reform movement indeed. Bogus premises, and shameless lies.
In the words of the immortal Jimi Hendrix,
“Castles made of sand slip in the sea, eventually.”
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NY Teacher, you rock- thanks for saying that all the suits need to teach a class – I wish I had a recording of what San Diego Education Association brass said to me about that! You are fun to read.
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Thanks. Curious to hear what your SD brass had to say, after you revived them with the school defribrillator.
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Teachers and administrators are all drinking the Kool aid in their own way, just thinking that more time and “training” is needed to implement them. the whole design is to force teaching and learning out of the class room with nonsense activities by the publishers.
every grade is becoming dumber, reading nonsense, and not writing.
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Reformers have turned the system into Jonestown on steroids.
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Now, that was the real Kool aid.
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Some of these numbers and comments are highly suspect. You would have to be blind to the national pushback by teachers, education experts and education advocacy groups to agree that this many educators support the standards and think they are well put together and rigorous. I’ve found that many superintendents are out of touch with what’s going on in the classroom and with curriculum changes and for the most part they push out CC, PARCC, Smarter Balance and Dept of Ed talking points. Some of the CC standards can be salvaged but taken as a whole they fail our students and teachers especially in high achieving states that already had better standards and testing.
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Totally bogus
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If the survey had asked a few questions about the standards to determine whether these sups actually knew anything about them, then it would have yielded some interesting information. Otherwise, it’s JUST MORE PR.
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“that districts are working with limited resources to implement the new, more rigorous standards,”
Ah, the ever present “new, more rigorous standards”. And I’ve got newer and better ocean front property over at Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri. Lot’s going fast, call the operators now.
Well, when working with shit expect to get shit stained hands and the accompanying stench.
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CCSS and the accompanying tests still suffer the same epistemological and ontological errors that Noel Wilson’ pointed out over seventeen years ago in his never refuted nor 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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Now I am swooning.
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No te entiendo.
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So True!
These “new more rigorous standards” from immature, insecure, ignorant policy makers are just more if the same CRAP.
More CRAP is not a positive thing!
Bill Gates obsession with “control”, and his political supporters need for “proximity to power” is a mental health issue that is NOT normal?
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we need to “$low down CC$$?
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Not slow it down….Exterminate it!
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“The results from the survey demonstrate that districts are working with limited resources to implement the new, more rigorous standards, despite technology deficits, a dearth of quality professional development materials for school personnel and a challenging national debate. These results reinforce the AASA position that the standards will be a positive change, if districts are given the necessary time and funding to properly implement the new standards and assessments.”
Dan
This is pure, unmitigated hogwash. Go sell your snake oil somewhere else.
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I am not impressed with Dan’s educational history nor his survey. I don’t agree with his surveys. According to Mercedes Schneider there is unrest in 22 States.
Every state has a nucleus of people speaking out against the Common Core and pressuring their state legislatures to get rid of the Common Core. Thus far Oklahoma, South Carolina and Indiana repealed the CCSS. Missouri passed a bill to come up with new standards within the next two years.
“Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is hitching his wagon to the growing movement against the nationwide school standards known as Common Core…”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/8/as-2016-nears-jindal-backs-away-from-common-core/#ixzz34fixdJcl
“Long Island Parents & Teachers Revolt Against Common Core from …”
“A battle is being waged in New York State with Long Island on the front lines. … the kitchen table, and auditoriums packed with parents and teachers who are …”
Irate parents and teachers met in 20 statewide forums with Commissioner King but Commissioner King wasn’t moved.
Superintendent of Comsewoque, Dr. Joseph Rella, spoke out 8/17/13 against the Common Core. As did Superintendents In Ill., Tenn. 60 school superintendents criticize the Ed. Dept., and Supt. Todd Gazda of Ludlow, Mass. to mention a few.
Superintendent Scott Kuffel of Geneseo schools, in Ill. “…He wrote to his parents and community that the State Board of Education was shoving schools and kids off a cliff.”
Dan Domenech stated, “These results reinforce the AASA position that the standards will be a positive change, if districts are given the necessary time and funding to properly implement the new standards and assessments.”
His statement just reinforced the realization that too many superintendents either have not read the CCSS, have no background to evaluate them, are afraid their job will be in jeopardy if they speak out against the CCSS, or on the take.
Like Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Indiana we need to repeal the CCSS and revert back to the standards the states had in place before the governors signed on to the CCSS. It appears that many superintendents need to be replaced because they are not representing the voice of their communities.
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At one time these kinds of questions would appear on a reading test and a good reader could answer them. Now that school has become test prep for the “skills of the 21 century”, this is all that kids are doing with boring stories. Science an Social Studies reading in minimal and often the teacher reads, or they do “round robin” reading. Much of doing math is all about reading and understanding the question. Poor readers are usually poor in math.
Here are the boring skills, where staff developers meet with teachers and spend hours on just one concept:
Main Idea, Facts and Details, Understanding Sequence, Recognizing Cause and Effect, Comparing and Contrasting, Making Predictions, Find Word Meaning in Context, Drawing Conclusions-Making Inferences, Distinguish Between Fact and Opinion, Identify Authors Purpose, Interpreting Figurative Language, Summarizing.
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These used to be questions which children would learn during a brief test prep period before a standardized test and perhaps only a few actually appeared. test prep might be a few weeks to a month.
Now it is year round, killing kids with dull passages all year. I have seen 3rd graders go off the wall and teachers just follow the script unaware of any damage. Not all teachers are rocket scientists.
I have seen these books in 2nd grade where there is no testing at that level. These are the primary materials that need to be removed. slowing down is not an option.
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Exactly. This crap is destroying taching.
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If this survey were at all scientific, it would have asked a few questions about the Common Core State Standards to find out if the superintendents knew the difference between what they actually say and the lyrics to “Yes, we have no bananas.”
WHY DOES ANYONE TAKE CRAP LIKE THIS SURVEY AT ALL SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!
Clearly, if the survey asked a few questions about the standards, one could disaggregate the responses by a) those who have some notion what the standards actually say and b) those who haven’t a freaking clue (which would be most of them–I would say approaching 100 percent of the supporters.
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“Slowed Down” is another way to say, “Keep it going”. The threat that the Federal money tree will stop being shaken has the beneficiaries saying anything to keep the “dollars” falling.
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