This statement was delivered to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2014/06/statement-to-bese-on-ccss-and-parcc.html
Monday, June 30, 2014
Statement to BESE on CCSS and PARCC
The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has scheduled a special meeting On July 1, at 11:30 A.M., to respond to the executive orders by Governor Jindal that would stop the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the related PARCC testing. Assuming that BESE allows the public to comment before taking action, the following is the statement I plan to make before BESE:
My name is Michael Deshotels, and I am a retired Louisiana educator who writes a blog for educators and for parents. I am here to request that BESE consider at least a suspension of Common Core and the related PARCC testing in Louisiana until Louisiana educators can revise and improve our present Louisiana standards. I am talking about the standards that were rated second in the nation by Education Weekly just over 2 years ago. I believe there are several good reasons for a change in policy on CCSS and there is nothing more appropriate than correcting a policy that we have come to understand is wrong and harmful to our students.
There is growing evidence that the CCSS are poorly designed and the implementation of them is a boondoggle. Why would we want to subject our Louisiana students to this unnecessary experiment? Let other states use their children as guinea pigs while we in Louisiana continue and improve our own system.
In January of this year, I asked the readers of my blog to give their opinion on Common Core and PARCC. I have asked that each BESE member be provided with a copy of my post describing the results of the survey, but I will briefly summarize results of that survey here:
2,724 persons responded to the survey which was available on my blog for a 10 day period near the end of January of this year. My estimate is that the majority of persons who answered the survey were educators (because the majority of my readers are educators), but there were a significant number of school board members and parents who found the survey and responded to it also.
A total of 1954 respondents or 72% chose the option that stated the following: “Do away with both CCSS and PARCC and substitute an improved version of GLEs as the standards for all the basic core subjects. Louisiana would implement its own testing as has been done in the past.”
Only 61 respondents, or just 2% chose the option that stated the following: “Implement the CCSS just as has been prescribed by Superintendent John White with the approval of BESE.”
Based on these survey results I believe it is incorrect to say that most educators in our schools are enthusiastic about Common Core and PARCC testing. I believe it would be much more accurate to say that our teachers and school principals, because they are professionals, will do their best to implement the education policy of this state even if they have serious misgivings about the value of such policies. I believe that BESE owes them the respect of coming up with a policy that is more effective and more appropriate for our students than the Common Core and the PARCC testing.
In addition to conducting this survey on CC, I have studied the CC standards in detail and tried to understand how they will actually work in the classroom. It is my best judgment as an educator for over 40 years in this state that the CCSS are not appropriate for the majority of the students in our schools and that continued implementation of these standards and the PARCC testing will do more harm than good to our students. Many of the standards are not age appropriate as has been confirmed by more than 500 early childhood educators, and many of the standards are not practical enough for the majority of our students who pursue technical careers. I believe these standards are a one-size-fits all approach that will not give most Louisiana students the education they need to be successful in their careers and as citizens of Louisiana and the United States.
I have also carefully studied the development of the CCSS and found that no effort whatsoever was made to field test the standards and to modify them to adjust for any deficiencies or weaknesses. We now know that the standards were not developed according to accepted practices for the development and implementation of standards. The Common Core standards were developed mostly by persons who have never set foot in a regular classroom. The standards are not practical. These standards have already failed miserably in New York state where 70% of all students failed the testing related to CCSS.
The creators of Common Core, have claimed that the CCSS will prepare all students (every single one of them) for college and careers, yet there have been no scientific studies whatsoever to determine the truth of this statement. The developers also claim that the CCSS will help reduce the achievement gap between privileged and underprivileged, wealthy and poor, students. But most of the millions of dollars spent on Common Core have been spent promoting the standards and almost nothing to determine if they actually do what is being claimed. On the issue of closing the achievement gap, we now know, based on the first round of testing, that the achievement gap was actually widened instead of narrowed in New York state.
Not one penny of the billions Bill Gates money or the Race to the top money has been spent on finding out if the CCSS actually worked before they were implemented. All of that money has been spent on just selling us and various influential groups on the Common Core . . . . sight unseen. In fact BESE adopted Common Core sight unseen in 2010. Yes BESE adopted the standards before they were even written!
There were no discussions held by BESE for parents and teachers to review the actual CCSS because the specific standards did not exist when they were adopted. So don’t blame the parents who now are complaining about what they have recently seen their children bringing home from school.
I am here as an experienced educator to ask that you do the right thing by listening to the parents and teachers who are telling you that we in Louisiana can do better than the CCSS. We do not need a one-size-fits-all set of standards. We need standards that respect the individual differences among our students and does not attempt to standardize our students. We need standards that respect our teachers and stop dictating every thing they do with a single state test. We need to start reducing the time spent on expensive state testing and endless test prep. Our teachers love to teach and inspire children, not rehearse them for tests!
Education will not come to a halt in Louisiana if this board is willing to take a pause in the rush to these standards and adopt standards that are more appropriate to our state and our students. It was only a few years ago that the LEAP tests did not even exist, and yet our teachers were still educating students even though they were not being forced to prepare students for state tests. Our children are in good hands. They will be better off if we listen to those who have dedicated their careers to educating our children instead of implementing the latest education reform fad promoted by young Bill Gates employees or by persons hired to make standardized tests for the Pearson company.
Thank you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am grateful for this and any other retired educator’s efforts to speak out against Common Core in a reasonable way.
I am a retired educator of 32 years. After one year in Common Core, I realized this was so wrong for my students and those across the state. The first incident I remembered was when we teachers were sitting at our first meeting before school began, and the teacher coach praised the fact that CC was research-based. I thought to myself, “Well, where is the research?” Little did I know that there was none. She had been misled just as the teachers were.
Then, I won’t forget the night of Open House. I asked my parents if anyone had ever heard of Common Core. There may have well been crickets chirping in the classroom. Not one parent raised a hand. At that moment, I realized we were going to be in a world of trouble. No parents at all had any input or insight into what their children were going to be learning. Additionally, not one teacher had ever heard of it. This was in 2012. Supposedly, the standards had been “developed” in 2010.
I think people just don’t realize the impact poverty has on the whole education issue. Until education is put as the number one priority in the American home, things will stay the same. Common Core is not going to solve the problem.
I found the NYS ELA and Math Standards for the elementary schools to be sound. Maybe the problem might have been how they were implemented because the math programs that were used were horrible. The other problem was pushing too many concepts in once school year. But if you read through those standards, you will see they were good. However, like everything else they were put out on Monday and we were expected to follow it on Tuesday. No real training, and the training was all top down which did nothing to help teachers. What a silly idea to ask teachers what they need in order to help their students.
While I agree with the premise that these standards were not properly vetted, piloted, adjusted, and such, I still have to acknowledge that at the higher grades the move to depth over breadth is a positive step. I agree that many early years standards are not age appropriate as well. But I’m not totally in the the throw it all out camp either. There is much that is solid in these standards, and we should keep those things. What we most definitely need to lose is the high stakes tests that cost triple their predecessors. We need assessments that give up information about our students, not assessments designed to fail students and teachers for lack of quality resources and technological infrastructure.
Wake up, smell the coffee, drink it, or tea or whatever your wakerupper is.
“We need assessments that give up information about our students, not assessments designed to fail students and teachers. . . ”
If you cannot design those “assessments that give up information about students” then you shouldn’t be teaching. All you need is teacher made assessments which can take many forms and need not be standardized to supposedly “measure student achievement”.
All standardized tests, “assessments designed to fail students and teachers” are INVALID, ILLOGICAL AND UNETHICAL as whoever pays for the test can set the cut scores wherever they want to “say” whatever they want about students and teachers.
Duane, while I openly invite dialogue, please do not be so condescending to me. I am a veteran secondary teacher. I can find common ground in a lot of places when engaged in constructive dialogue. For example, I can agree that standardized tests have built in bias and rarely tell me information that I cannot gather from my formative and summative assessments in my classroom. Where I differ with your “all standardized tests are … invalid, illogical, and unethical” is that some tests are designed to give reading level. While I may know a student is a struggling reader, and I can discover whether the student is struggling with decoding, vocabulary, comprehension, or a combination of any of the three in my class, having a grade level of each student’s reading skills is helpful in differentiation. So I refuse to lump all standardized testing together. I can gather some useful information from some tests. Another area where I’m sure we can find agreement is that politically the tests are being used to fail students and teachers and punish schools. So why can’t we be less patronizing and a little more open to dialogue?
oyjd,
Didn’t mean to be condescending. Generally if I mean to be condescending it’s nowhere near as “nice” as my opening statement. My apologies if you took it that way.
I think we agree that there is a huge difference between a diagnostic assessment of an individual student, one that is part of an array of indicators in determining whether a student may be considered for special education and standardized tests that have no educational significance for the student in the teaching and learning process.
Again, I ask that you read Noel Wilson’s work “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 to understand the myriad errors and epistemological and ontological falsehoods undergirding the whole educational standards and standardized testing regime.
And P.S. I’m not an advocate of high stakes testing in any way, shape, or form. The number one thing I dislike about CCSS, besides being age inappropriate in elementary, is that the implementation has been all about teaching to the test. I’m also not an advocate of using adopting standards that haven’t been validated as a prerequisite for federal funding. Sec’y Duncan and President Obama are not my favorites in the realm of education policy. They have swallowed the corporate Rhee-form hook, line, and sinker.
I find it interesting that you would say “leave Louisiana out of it” and yet, you seem to know nothing about who designed common core and how it is implemented. It seems to me that although there are a lot of people that are against change, they don’t understand why no child was left behind and now how they should have some common core knowledge.
First, find out what common core is about, then find out who developed it. Then find out why they worked on a common set of knowledge.
When you find out the answers, then ask, why was the whole series not advertised or promoted in a positive way.
I’m sure that a bunch of child psychologists and educators are experts in the field of public relations and advertising. (the last was sarcasm, for those who don’t get it)
Concerned parent, I don’t think you understand the Common Core standards. First, they cover ELA and math, like NCLB. The ELA does not contain a “core” of knowledge but a package of skills. It was developed in secret by a committee dominated by representatives of testing agencies like the College Board and ACT. The “architect” was a man who is not an educator but had deep experience at McKinsey and in the business world. They created the Common Core with millions from the Gates Foundation. Adopting Common Core (“college and career ready standards”) was a criterion for eligibility in Race to the Top, so nearly every state adopted, in some cases, sight unseen. There was no participatory process in the development of the standards; no one with experience in early childhood education; no one who was a current classroom teacher; no one with knowledge of the field of special education; no way to revise the standards once they were finished. States may add to them, but they cannot change them. The CCSS was NOT created by “a bunch of child psychologists and educators.” It has had the benefit of many millions of dollars for advertising and public relations. The Gates Foundation has spent more than $200 million dollars creating and promoting the standards. No initiative in American education has ever had more advertising or promotion behind it. Big corporations have advertised it on TV and in full-page ads in newspapers. The Secretary of Education has lauded it to the nation’s newspaper editors and in many other settings. By some estimates, the Gates Foundation has spent more than $2 Billion to advance the standards. I hope this information, which is well known to most of the readers of this blog, clears up your misunderstandings.
“. . . they don’t understand why no child was left behind. . . ”
Well, yes, we do “understand why [children were] left behind”. It’s called poverty in all its myriad manifestations that adversely effect a child’s learning.
Apparently, the end (test) is how the common core curriculum/lessons will be taught/implemented. Isn’t that the outcry? Those who find the standards sound or appropriate, but that the implementation is flawed, I ask you to look to the end game. The end game is the testing; the implementation/curriculum will have to be tied to the test questions, and must be taught in that vein, now matter how vague or “new age-y” the math is, or how inappropriate the close reading non-fiction texts are.
Ignoring that testing (read that ka-ching, profiting on selling/scoring the tests, nationwide and eventually worldwide) is the be all and end all of the common core in the first place, and adding in that the “architects” knowingly wrote the standards 2 grades above and “fuzzily”, so kids would fail, so teachers could be fired, so schools could be closed, so unions could be busted, so charters could be opened, so the privatizers could profit, etc., how in the world could teachers, parents, and students get behind it with support?
So many kids were left out in the cold. Should kids learn “the 3 Rs” – of course. This was not the way to go.
Thanks Diane, for responding to this parent in such an effective way. I can only add that I did educate myself about CCSS and its development. That’s why I must object when uninformed education decision makers insist on imposing it.
Thank you Mr. Deshotels! This piece was wonderfully written. There may be hope for Louisiana after all (says she of North Carolina.) One-size-fits-all equals one-size-fits-none.