“Wag the Dog” notes that advocates for Common Core are growing desperate. With more and more states dropping out, the CCSS pressure is now turned to higher education to demand that incoming students show their worth by Common Core standards.
He writes:
“As data-driven and evidence-based challenges to the efficacy of the untested Common Core State Standards grow stronger and louder, it appears CCSS supporters are growing desperate and resorting to Maxwell Smart’s catchphrase and tactic of backpedaling from unconvincing and unsubstantiated claims.
This “Would you believe…” survival strategy is apparent in a new report from the New America Foundation.
“America’s primary and secondary schools may be busy preparing for the onset of the Common Core standards, meant to better prepare students for college, but one key partner isn’t even close to ready: colleges and universities themselves.”
That’s the conclusion of a new report from the New America Foundation, which finds that “there is little evidence to suggest colleges are meaningfully aligning college instruction and teacher preparation programs with the Common Core standards.”
The report adds:
“The findings follow earlier alarms that the people who run higher education have, for the most part, gotten involved only late in the Common Core process…
“One reason, it said, is that it’s hard to come up with a single definition of what makes a student ready for college. Another is the huge variety of colleges and universities…
“The report recommends that colleges add the results of Common Core assessment tests to the measures by which they gauge students’ eligibility for admission and financial aid..”
So, no need to test the validity of Common Core. Just require everyone to use it. If SAT and demand it, if higher education values it, why bother with evidence?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
While the focus of this blog is rightfully on public education, often left unsaid is that fact that even private schools are being forced to adopt CCSS, since Lord Gates has seen to it that the SAT’s and ACT are based upon it.
It’s ironic to think of Gates’, Obama’s and the children of other so-called reformers in elite private schools being hoisted on their malevolent parent’s own petard.
Michael Fiorillo: I know you’re not worried about it, but Bill Gates & Co. will find ways to exempt THEIR OWN CHILDREN from the hazing ritual, or at least ameliorate it to the point where it’s barely a blip on their radar.
On the hand, for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, no such reprieve is possible if the self-styled leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time” have their way…
Just my dos centavitos worth.
😎
Could the esteemed Mr. Gates please cite one single product actually developed within his commercial organization that achieved widespread acceptance in the market place?
KrazyTA.
The “new civil rights movement of our time” is really a “reverse civil rights movement” with an obvious agenda to return to an earlier time before World War II when the Chinese Exclusion Act existed and people of color could get hanged for just looking at a white woman.
The white, male dominated, fake, corporate, education reform movement is a reversal of the Civil Rights Movement. Michelle Rhee is their token minority—a face they think will legitimize what they are doing.
agreed. The private colleges these kids will go to don’t require SATs or ACTs and many have not required them since the 80s. If you do submit the optional scores, they put such little weight on them in the overall admissions criteria anyway. These are the same colleges that are happy to see that your public schooled child took AP courses and passed them, but won’t accept them as college credit and never did.
JM,
Which elite schools don’t accept AP credits and don’t require SAT scores? It has been a couple of years since I looked, but from what I recall AP scores were readily accepted (but not transfer credit from incoming freshman) and more elected schools asked for more standardized exam results in the form of SAT subject tests in addition to SAT exams.
I said private colleges, to consider them elite, I guess that’s a subjective term often reserved for the ivys, but they surely include many competitive and highy competitive colleges.
http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional
You’d have to check the policy at each individual college, but even a 5 on an AP exam is no guarantee a college will accept the credit.
https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/creditandplacement/search-credit-policies
JM,
We can at least look at a sample, and see if they take AP credit and require SAT exams. How about the top five liberal arts colleges and private universities according to USN&WP. In order to avoid moderation, I will post each school separately so I can link to the table of AP scores for each institution
Top 5 liberal arts colleges
#1 Williams
Requires SAT or ACT and two SAT subject exams
Link to AP table: http://web.williams.edu/admin/registrar/faq/ap.html
JM
Liberal Arts colleges continued
#2 Amherst
Requires SAT and two SAT subject exams or ACT
Amherst lists AP classes inside each department’s web page. Here is the Math Department: https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments/mathematics/placement
JM
Liberal Arts colleges continued
#3 Swarthmore
Requires SAT and two SAT Subject exams or act and writing or SAT and ACT.
Table of AP credit: http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/registrar/page.phtml?sidebar=quick&content=apcredit
JM
Liberal Arts colleges continued
#4 Bowdoin
Bowdion does not require SAT or ACT Exams
It does, of course, offer AP credit: https://www.bowdoin.edu/registrar/pdf/apregulations.pdf
JM
Liberal Arts colleges continued
#4 Middlebury
Requires SAT or ACT or three SAT subject exams
AP credit table: http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/academic/records/ap
JM
Liberal Arts colleges continued
#4 Pomona
Requires SAT and two SAT subject exams or ACT
Link to AP table: http://www.pomona.edu/admissions/apply/advanced-placement.aspx
JM,
To save time, I will just leave the AP placement link out. All the universities do accept some AP credit, just search for the university name and add “AP”.
Private Universities
#1 Princeton
Requires SAT or ACT and two SAT subject exams
#2 Harvard
Requires SAT or ACT and normally two SAT subject exams
#3 Yale
Requires SAT and two SAT subject exams or ACT and writing
#4 Columbia
Requires SAT and two SAT subject exams or ACT
#5 Stanford
Requires SAT or ACT, SAT subject tests recommended
#5 University of Chicago
Requires ACT or SAT
So in our sample of the top 10 (actually 12 due to ties), one does not require a standardized test, several require more than one. All give credit for AP classes.
I don’t think there is any evidence that the private colleges that “these kids” want to go to don’t require SAT or ACT scores and do not accept AP exams.
My institution uses teacher assigned grades for in-state admission. Any student with a 2.0 gpa in core academic subjects is automatically admitted (there are other ways to be admitted as well for students who did not achieve that gpa). If the CCSS becomes an important determinant of teacher assigned grades, the CCSS will automatically become part of the admission criteria for institutions like mine.
For your information, Dartmouth College, chartered in 1769 by the King of England, does not exempt classes for AP scores of 5, although they will allow one to take a more advanced class instead of the starter.
They did earlier exempt those with an 800 verbal score on the SAT I from taking freshman English.
If you are serious about obtaining exemptions from beginning college courses, you might investigate whether the colleges within your reach grant exemptions for those who pass the British A level exams, a far more stringent measure than most domestic guides to depth of learning comprehension.
Dormand,
No doubt institutions differ. Unfortunately Dartmouth didn’t make the list I was using because it was outside of the top five private universities.
Personally I find the near universal refusal to accept transfer credit from incoming first year students a bit more vexing than the occasional institution that does not accept AP credit.
Here’s a suggestion: whenever someone from the Resistance to save public education mentions Common Core, why not add Bill Gates in front of Common Core?
After all, Common Core is a Rank and Yank Bill Gates agenda. Did anyone else help fund this program and gain its acceptance across the country before it was even created?
Considering the amount of money he spent in bribes disguised as grants, he is the evil godfather of Common Core and he deserves the credit.
Yes, Lloyd! The common core Gates standards. Let’s say it often.
Oh, I believe high Ed. is catching on. It’s probably the reason so many colleges have dropped the SAT and ACT requirments. I would not be surpised if more follow.
sp error-requirements!
Yes, excellent point! It’s about 800 colleges now that don’t require the SAT or ACT –and growing…
Sorry, David Coleman, but your little College Board CCSS/testing coup is not going to fly with the highly educated.
Why our society has allowed the College Board to absorb so much time and money from those in secondary schools is a deep concern.
The SAT I and its illegitimate offspring, the US News & World Report college rankings are one of the worst things affecting our human capital development infrastructure.
The affluent are able to retain those SAT I tutoring coaches that are able to guide their affluent and frequently robustly entitlement focused charges through the intracacies of the very coachable SAT I test, which no student will ever find of any use once that fat package from an acceptable college has been received.
Those in the “high achieving, low income” category made famous by the Brookings Institute Hamilton Project by Hoxby and Avery in 2013 find themselves left outside with their respective noses pressed against the glass by those admissions and financial aid committees naively assume that the SAT I has a critical mass of predictive value.
Click to access 2013a_hoxby.pdf
All is not lost to the SAT/ACT profit monger machine.
There are colleges and universities that do not use the SAT/ACT scores for admitting substantial numbers of students into Bachelor degree programs.
http://www.fairtest.org/schools-do-not-use-sat-or-act-scores-admitting-substantial-numbers-students-bachelor-degree-programs.
Pull Quote from site: “More than 800 four-year colleges and universities (almost 28 percent of total) do not use the SAT or ACT to admit substantial numbers of … applicants.”
http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional
In 2010, there were 2,870 4-year colleges in the US.
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84
There’s still hope.
I think they’re going to have big problems with parents if they do that, because they are telling parents that the tests aren’t intended to be used to determine college admissions.
They specifically state that in the FAQ’s.
“The assessments are not intended to be used by colleges and universities in decisions about admission”
It’s on p. 4 in the pdf below
The tests are being sold to parents as NOT high stakes for students. That’s really central to the marketing- it’s an assessment, NOT high stakes as to students.
They should probably tell people if they plan to use them as a factor in eligibility for college admission, particularly because the PARCC site claims that “virtually” all public colleges and universities are partnering with PARCC.
I assumed they would end up as high stakes for students, so I was really skeptical of the claim that they wouldn’t be used in that way. It’s inevitable they’ll be used that way.
Click to access PARCCFAQ_9-18-2013.pdf
I beg to differ. In this zeitgeist, I don’t think the CCSS and associated tests are inevitable in P-12, and especially not in colleges.
We are hearing in our CA community college that students who pass CCSS Smarter Balanced tests with a certain score will automatically be eligible for college-level English and math. One complicating factor is that about 65% of students at our community college are returning to school after an absence–they’re 20 or older. They’ll take the soon-to-be-released statewide Common Assessment (which will replace our locally developed and validated authentic writing placement test) for placement into English and math classes. How long will the CCSS Smarter Balanced (or Common Assessment) tests be valid? If a student graduates high school, works for 2-5 years, returns to college after not having done any academic writing or math since high school, and is placed in college level English and math, what are that student’s chances of succeeding in that course? There is so much focus on hurrying students through, we seem to be forgetting that learning takes time and people learn at their own pace.
Chiara: since in the minds of the leaders of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement some parents are more equal than others [for devotees of CCSS ‘closet’ reading, an allusion to George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM] then THEIR OWN CHILDREN will be spared practically all the “rigor” [read: humiliation] and “challenge” [read: uselessness] of just such a practice.
It’s just letting the parents of the rest of the students [in rheephormish: OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN] realize that the hammer is coming down on them and theirs.
Your comments often make transparent what the education establishment wants to keep opaque in their mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$.
Keep writing. I’ll keep reading.
😎
It never made much sense to me, honestly. If the tests are a measure of college and career readiness, then why aren’t they intended for use in admission?
If they’re NOT a measure of college readiness, then why did “virtually” all public universities sign on?
I honestly don’t believe colleges and universities will be rolled over the way public schools have been, because colleges and university instructors and professors are higher prestige jobs in this country than K-12. I don’t think that should be true, but I do think it IS true.
Public university presidents are big shots.
It’s not like when they’re bossing around some assistant principal at Lincoln Elementary 🙂
Relative to professional status, 70% of college faculty are not full-time tenured faculty.
The opportunity to privatize for money is not related to perceptions of worth. Public colleges will be “rolled over”. The financial assets are too great to ignore.
Linda,
That 70% includes folks like me that are full time, full benefits, but not tenure track. It also includes lots of the folks at the Stern School of Business who are practitioners in their main jobs. I would not worry about them.
Here is a piece by the AAUP on part time faculty (about 48% of faculty are part time)
http://www.aaup.org/article/who-are-part-time-faculty#.U-JgvYBdV5k
I see that Smarter Balanced also states that the assessment will not replace ACT or SAT, or be used in college admissions. It does not make any claim I can see about being high stakes or not.
Any time that you see the term “data driven” used in an educational setting, consider it to convey ” this is an area in which the corrupt can skew results to appear competent.”
If you look at the fraudulent test scores in Houston, Atlanta, and Washington DC, you will see that the corrupt love data driven organizations. They are so easy to delude.
Education was once the search for ultimate: good, truth, beauty. As evidence is now unimportant in that search: what is?
When the TV sitcom airs, they can call it “Gates Mart”
The CCSS have finally captured the hearts and minds of “university leaders!” But wait, weren’t they on board from the get-go when the standards were being written? The farce continues.
Here is part of the backstory on the belated ballyhoo about the CCSS from higher education. June 12, 2014, posted on the website of Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). PARCC is one of the two consortiums developing tests for the CCSS. Note the error in the first sentence of the press release.
“A coalition of more than 200 university leaders from 33 states launched (sic) this week in support of the Common Core State Standards and aligned assessments. “These Standards are good for our students, our states and our country. We must have students that are college- and career-ready in order for the United States to continue to compete and win in the 21st Century global economy” said Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York and chair of the National Association of System Heads.”
The Orwellian “system heads” are the chief executives of the 52 colleges and university systems of public higher education. Among the “partners” of these systems heads are the National Governor’s Association, and Council of Chief State School Officers, the official sponsors/commissioners of the CCSS.
PARCC needs higher education. The press release says it “will continue to work with higher education leaders to ensure the successful development of college readiness assessments that will be accepted as an indicator of readiness for first-year, credit-bearing courses by colleges and universities. PARCC scores will provide early indicators to teachers, students and parents of whether or not a student has mastered the content skills in English language arts/literacy and mathematics that colleges and universities have identified as essential to success in their credit-bearing courses.” http://www.parcconline.org/higher-ed-mobilizes-support-common-core-and-aligned-assessments
PARCC, like the CCSS, perpetuates the myth that colleges and universities have already identified the essential content and skills for entry into credit-bearing first-year courses and that the CCSS are the outcome of that exercise. There is no proof of that. PARCC cannot say that, so it links you to “Higher Ed for Higher Standards” a recently formed higher education coalition, and “a project” within a much larger PR campaign that operates under the under the banner of “the Collaborative for Student Success.”
The Collaborative for Student Success operates with a four-person staff and the mission of marketing the implementation of the CCSS and forthcoming tests to ”all stakeholders — parents, students, teachers and community leaders.”
This PR campaign, including the higher education component, is funded by many of the usual suspects: Broad, Carnegie of New York, Gates. The publicity machine also includes some of the usual suspects as “Partners,” such as the Fordham Institute. For details go to //forstudentsuccess.org/
As for teacher education, the largest accrediting agency, the newly formed Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) has jumped on board the CCSS wagon and with a new vocabulary. It replaces the term “higher education” with “provider.” It also vanishes the word “teacher” in favor of “completer.” Here is the new Orwellian language.
Accreditation Standard 1.4 Providers ensure that completers demonstrate skills and commitment that afford all P-12 students access to rigorous college-and career-ready standards (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards, National Career Readiness Certificate, Common Core State Standards). http://caepnet.org/accreditation/standards/standard1/
Final note: The first cohort of kindergartners to be standards-driven toward entry into college and a career, class of 2016, is supposed to be ready for that big step in 2028. All students now being tasked to meet the 1.620 standards that Bill Gates paid for are supposed to be disadvantaged participants in this grand experiment. Why? In theory, the grade-to-grade “learning progressions” are so tightly sequenced and superbly crafted for year-to-year mastery that they cannot catch up.
The CCSS are a triumph of marketing slogans over substance. It should be obvious to any thinking person that entry into a community college program in the hope for a career in landscaping might have different requirements than entry into an elite private university.
The writers, marketers, and medusa-like “systems heads” eager to endorse the CCSS ignore the fact that the US Department of Labor never makes projections on job prospects beyond ten years, and it modifies them at least every three years.
Truth in advertising has never been part of the CCSS
It’s funny that PARCC states that, as my state (LA) does not administer the PARCC to high schoolers. I wonder how many other states don’t give PARCC to them?? John White sold us out to the ACT series, with tons of data mining/demographic surveys at the beginning of each test.
Not only will it be used as an entrance criteria, but there will evolve a Common Core for Colleges and Universities. Why shouldn’t all Calculus courses at colleges be the same? If I leave one college mid-way and go to another, why shouldn’t they be teaching to the same standards as my first college? And in order for Arne to rate all colleges, which a number of the reformers would love to do, there has to be common testing for all like courses in college, with a schedule of how long it should take to teach each topic in the course, and a standard test to take at the end of the course. And the job you’ll get after college depends on your score on the CCFCU (… for Colleges and Universities) standard test at the end of college that all students will have to take. And colleges will be closed when their students score too low on the CCFCU tests, and of course Arne will rejoice. And for each college that’s closed, there will be a charter for-profit college that opens up, getting to use the old facilities for free of course. And it will be staffed by TFACU (Teach for American Colleges and Universities) “graduates”, who will get five weeks of training in the summer to teach the college classes.
Sigh.
It seems to me that one important difference is that students pick the post secondary institution but it is the local government that chooses for the student in traditional catchment schools.
It seems that way to you because you grasp at straws to justify the privatization push and you fail to learn from people here who don’t support your agenda.
As you have been reminded before, the primary difference is that college students are typically adults, since 18 is considered to be the age of majority in most states.
Concerned,
If you wish we can talk about private primary and secondary schools. In my town there is a Waldorf school, a Montessori school, a progressive school, and a parochial school. All private, all different curriculum, all the students choose to attend. There are also traditional catchment public schools where the school a student attends is based on street adress. The traditional schools must be as close to identical in order to justify the arbitrary assignment of student to school.
I have seen enough of your privatization propaganda and I have no interest in talking to you, since you obviously throw out these red herrings in order to proselytize (and are very misinformed). Asta la vista, “reform” stooge.
Concerned,
My point is student choice creates variety in schools. This would be easy to refute if untrue. Simply find some districts where traditional zoned schools show the sort of variety that choice schools show. This would be a district where the students living on the 500 block of Maple street are assigned to attend a Waldorf school and the children living on the 600 block are assigned to attend a French language immersion school.
I should warn you that I believe you will be unable to find such districts. Traditional all and only school catchment systems depend on uniformity across schools to justify student assignments based on street address.
Perhaps there should not be standardization of courses at colleges.
If I elect to register at Yugo University and you elect and are admitted to highly selective Porche University, you might just expect to have exposure to a higher level of thinking in calculus than I will see at my commodity
choice of institution.
Very frankly you will learn far more than i will ever learn and it will enable you to think at a higher level and to comprehend the interrelationships to a far greater degree than I ever will with my TA droning on from his yellowed notes to the class of 1,000 students.
In order to reduce costs to students my state has gone far to ensure that courses transfer between schools seemlessly.
With respect to the prior posting that reports at least one each of the different organizational structure of schools in her town, I can assure you that within each category you will find institutions that deliver outstanding results and also those that should be shut down.
It mostly depends upon the management effectiveness of the principal. When the parents pitch in to share some of the massive burden placed upon the shoulders of faculty members, coaches, performing arts directors, etc, the whole student body thrives and everyone is uplifted.
Take out an outstanding principal and insert an autocratic tyrant who has never supervised anyone, much less professionals, and you have a disaster.
We put our daughter into such a nightmare situation in a school with a superior reputation for caring rigorous teaching.
If there is a change in management in anything that your kids will be involved in, take my word for it and check things out before naively assuming that things will be great as they were before.
Conrad Appel (CC loving head of Senate Ed Committee in LA) just got an outcome based education bill passed through for higher ed. They are going to be rating college degrees based on income (their onlyidea of success). So, what will happen to those degrees which don’t make as much money? social work, education, history, etc? At least all these senators/reps are being watched carefully here with our current education circus.
Sir-
I submit that the final word of your posting says everything about that choice.
Aggggh!