Over the years, I have had the pleasure of advising several states as they were revising their academic standards. The process was always carried out by the state commissioner, who selected teachers and scholars from across the state and sometimes from out of state. My own most exhilarating experience was in California, where I helped a committee of educators write the history-social science standards. No legislators were involved.
Now, many states are pulling out of the Common Core, which was imposed on them in a fast deal between the U.S. Department of Education, the Gates Foundation, and several D.C. Insider organizations. Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post reports that legislators in a dozen states are stepping in to take control of academic standards.
This is a terrible idea. Legislators have no academic competence to write academic standards. This is a sure way to politicize Americann education. Politicians should do their work and let educators do their work. Educators are the experts on what students should know and be able to do.
Let’s hope that states have the good sense to rely on their best teachers and scholars to protect the interests of the state and the children.
Ohio’s legislators have shown that they aren’t competent enough to write a laundry list. So, they need to keep their fingers away from writing academic standards.
Grrrr… they really don’t get it! Common Core isn’t appropriate because educators didn’t write the standards! How can the legislators possibly think they can do this? Hubris!
Another good reason why teachers need tenure.
I just got back from Denmark, and it was a beautiful country with well-educated, polite people. I would strongly suggest to any young teachers to move there or somewhere similar. America is only going to get worse, much worse. Now is the time to move somewhere sensible. Find a country based on what is best for society, and not only the rich. It is better to be a cab driver in a free country than a teacher in a prison state. Think about it. Find the courage your ancestors had when they left beautiful Europe to come to this backward swamp. The writing is on the wall…You can always teach English…
Teaching Engilsh is a low pay, dead end job. W. Europe makes it hard to emigrate, so only the most desperate and intra-community connected scam in, aka Middle Easterners. There is no escape.
How were state standards written before all the chaos of common core? Don’t they have something to rollback to?
And it’s always the people who know nothing about how children learn who are quick to tell me, “All your students should be able to do this.” I keep asking for some evidence that supports the idea that ALL of my students will master certain concepts and there is no response. Just because a publisher or someone in the state department of education or…shudder.. the state capitol has decided that a concept should be mastered by a certain grade, it does not make it so.
I don’t think the legislators will write the standards. They may turn that job over to their staff, and I’ve read that TFA has been busy finding jobs for their recruits with state legislators and members of Congress after the TFA recruits leave the classroom after their two year tour of duty in the combat zone ends.
In fact, TFA is an organization that is more focused on recruiting and training covert lobbyists who end up working for elected representatives at the state and federal level than training teachers.
The more I learn about TFA, the more they sound like a Fascist political/military organization.
According to someone who went to Princeton with Wendy Kopp, she got seed money for TFA from Mobile and Union Carbide, saw “TFA as an emblem and instrument of capitalism and its hierarchies” and even way back then, she recognized and stated repeatedly that she was “a corporate tool.”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/03/wendy-kopp-princeton-tory/
And then there is always ALEC, ready and willing to produce the legislation that state representatives can’t quite do themselves or understand, probably hard at work, developing standards on demand.
In reply to Donna, my experience dates back to the late 1950s through early 1970s in several states, with the visual arts, or the visual, literary, and performing arts, or the arts and humanities. The opening gambits differed by district and state.
Back then, the process we now think of standard-setting was initiated by the directors or supervisors of a particular subject, either in a large metro area, or county, or state. These were authentic leaders who had risen to their posts by exemplary teaching and leadership.
The state level supervisors routinely enlisted scholars and teachers to draft “standards” in the manner Diane has mentioned.
No legislators were involved except at a long distance with something like “every 10 years” this re-examination of standards/curriculum guides/frameworks has to occur.”
The writing committees were formed by an informal nomination process that combined volunteers who said yes to the question “Do you want to help do this work?” and nominations solicited through the architecture of the state department of education, including the supervisor’s Rolodex of experts that had relevant expertise and usually, some “appealing and feasible” ideas.
A lot of recycling went into the process. Initial work often entailed a critical review of documents created in other districts and states. In general, there was far less talk about writing standards than drafting a document called a “curriculum guide” or “framework.” of recommendations with a well-developed rationale for the recommendations, and
After the drafts were created they were subjected to multiple reviews,including one or two external reviews from out-of-state-experts. Most of these efforts included a program of publishing and presentations about the new standards.
This collegial process morphed into a good deal of wheel-spinning and wasted effort when federal funds became available for curriculum work under the National Defense Education Act and grant recipients were required to work with “behavioral objectives,” now called student learning objectives, SMART goals, and the like. That kind of micromanaging, grade by grade, with “benchmarks” and all of that arbitrary structure (a spillover from WW2 training guides and Drucker’s management by objectives, and enchantments with programmed instruction) killed off a lot of sound and practical thinking about education. There was also the Brunerian mantra in play, thinking that kids at any level could be taught to think like experts working on “the frontiers of a discipline.” Faith in that “standard” created the conditions for a lot of projects to crash and burn. So can stupic ideas from a bureaucracy. In a Florida project, the grant specifications from USDE were written so that every aspect of the guide or framework had to present an exemplary instructional activity, along with the estimated cost of providing it to about 25 students. That is not a productive use of time when you consider that large school districts brought crayons, colored paper and the like in quantities that filled railway cars. Demands from bean counters waste a lot of time.
Ms Ravitch,
If you are going to dog the Common Core (which I agree is a travesty, but for different reasons than you), it would behoove you\NPE\BATS to come up with an alternative. Zero testing is never going to fly, period. What about ITBS or ACT or the standards from MA?
Try and advocate for something instead of against everything.
She did advocate for something else: “Politicians should do their work and let educators do their work. Educators are the experts on what students should know and be able to do.
Let’s hope that states have the good sense to rely on their best teachers and scholars to protect the interests of the state and the children.”
Anne,
Educators\Progressives have had the run of system for the past 30 years and in general, they (most, not all) sat on their hands by institutionalizing mediocrity. Without a clear alternative from those educators, why would legislatures (in some states, not all) give them another chance?
Ms Ravitch et al need to lead the charge for that clear and exceptional alternative to the Common Core\PARCC\Smarter Balance. Platitudes and calls for broad social reforms will be tossed aside just like a call for zero testing has been.
Cynthia, I have actually written state standards. The California history-social science standards were the best in the nation for many years. It can be done, if it is done professionally. There is no great secret. Standards don’t exist as “bars” for students to jump over, but as a promise by the state about resources and access and opportunity that the state will provide to students.
That’s Tea Party nonsense, folks, so just ignore the scapegoating of Progressives for this 30 year mess in public education which neo-liberals from both parties have foisted upon our nation’s children. People like me have personally experienced this very long era of education “reform” that began in 1983 with the publication of “A Nation at Risk” under the Republican Reagan administration, and which was based on a manufactured crisis according to research, including the Sandia Report. Regardless, schools and teachers have been under constant attack and subject to wave after wave of “reforms” ever since then, as described in this 2007 article before the current wave: http://www.edutopia.org/landmark-education-report-nation-risk.
Progressives have never run public education during this time period, which is why Progressive education is rarely found in public schools and is primarily implemented in private schools today. That is, in the very schools that politicians and billionaires send their own children to, such as Obama, Emanuel and Gates, while nothing even remotely similar to Progressive education is on the agenda for implementation in public schools for the masses.
Victorino Verboten,
So you are telling me that in a district such as Detroit Public Schools, that Ronald Reagan is responsible for the rampant waste, fraud, abuse, financial mismanagement and employee misconduct?
If the Progressives have not been running DPS for the past 30 years, than how would you characterize those who have?
Cynthia Weiss, I advocated for standards written by each state’s best teachers and scholars. States could adopt the Massachusetts standards, which are far far superior to the Common Core standards. Tests should be written by teachers, not corporations. That’s the way it is done in the best schools. Students could take standardized tests once or twice a year for diagnostic purposes, not for high stakes. That’s the educators’ solution to our current political mess created by Duncan, Rhee, Gates, and friends.
I don’t think that standardized tests are necessary every year. Before this testing madness descended, my state tested at three times: grades 5, 8, and 11. It was good for general trends and such.
Our district, in SW Ohio, has been giving an increasing number of tests since the 1990s. They have continued to morph and add on tests each year. The Ohio Proficiency Tests (diagnostic) became the Ohio Achievement Test (punitive) with the onset of NCLB. That was morphed into the Ohio Achievement Assessment. Third- eighth grade students take these tests. Third grade takes a test in Sept and then in May. 2014-15 will bring on the PARCC tests unless Ohio delays them.
Early grades are given developmental and readiness tests for early intervention so that students with difficulties are diagnosed early and get interventions asap. I think those tests are given twice per year.
Fourth grade takes TerraNova and In View tests in the fall, ProOhio tests in October and February, and the OAA in May. They used to take the CBTS but that is no longer given.
I understand that now students in every grade take online MAP tests twice per year.
I don’t know the specifics of the upper grades’ testing schedule. My sons graduated in 2004 before the madness began to intensify. They took the 9th grade test in the 8th grade, which was the earliest that a student could take the test to prove that they had basic skills for graduation.
Now tests are being developed for all subject areas so that the tests can be used to evaluate teachers. The reason for all this testing is for teacher evaluation.
They were using Batelle’s for Kids to record the exact Times a teacher was responsible for each child’s education. I remember filling that out in 2012 when I had the most student transitions in my 30 years of teaching. Again, this was given to us to fill out with no explanation other than a mandatory deadline. It was to be used to place blame on a teacher if a child didn’t do well in later years or dropped out of school.
Test obsessed. For sure.
I don’t know whether Ohio is deferring the PARRC tests or not.
But our district US obsessed with proving it is as good as the wealthy districts.
Most of us from the early testing era have retired. The bulk of the teachers are between 28 and 45. It will continue to get more intense.
Funny thing, the students aren’t getting smarter with all this testing.
Great, so you and NPE and BATS should advocate for those specific standards. The only reason the door is open for Duncan, Rhee, Gates is the because of the lack of progress over the past 30 years. Propose new\better\clear\exceptional standards and you will shut the door on them.
Cynthia,
When are you coming down to a Newark to help me shut the door?
Cynthia,
The 1% certainly benefitted from the productivity gains of the “mediocre” students who found their way into jobs.
The financial sector could stop being a drag on the U.S. economy and find a way to contribute to GDP. Until then, they’re a wasting disease about which, Jefferson and Lincoln warned us.
Well, when someone is hitting you over the head with a baseball bat, you really don’t need an alternative to the bat. You simply need them to stop hitting you.
If teachers are getting hit over the head, why aren’t more of them speaking up? Teachers in my state, Arizona, cannot say enough good things about Common Core. Teachers never spoke up about the horrible standards we have in place now (AIMS) and they are not now publicly speaking up about the travesty of CCSS. I can only think of one teacher here brave enough to speak up (Ms Ravitch highlighted his story recently) and his is one of those tea party types…
http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2014/08/01/john-huppenthal-and-all-his-dirty-little-lies/
Cynthia, you do realize that some teachers do not have tenure. If they were to speak publicly against the standards, they could lose their jobs. So Dienne’s bat analogy is rather apt.
Hi Nimbus,
I am sure that is true in many cases, but many teachers are outright supporting and promoting CCSS. Why is this happening? Are they under orders to help promote or else? Are they not allowed to offer and support alternatives? I dare you to find even EX teachers or administrators opposing CCSS in Arizona.
As some one who recently returned to my home state of Arizona, I am appalled at the lack of fight/backbone to disagree/oppose policies at any level. There is no due process or protection for any level of disagreement. Tenure is not relevant; no law suit necessary. The AEA seems largely absent. I contrast this with the vigor of discussions in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York City at all levels – an attitude I hope is not becoming past tense – states with a union/association tradition.
I was involved when Massachusetts introduced collective bargaining in the mid-60’s, working with local teacher associations. At first, a great deal of timidity, much like Arizona, but as they discovered the power of collective bargaining, the transformation was palatable. Even the principals asked to be organized.
The key question is how can the professionals in Arizona find a backbone without fear of being fired?
The lack of resistance in Arizona—considered a GOP stronghold—might be explained by two majorities in the state: Registered Republicans and Whites
In Arizona, statistics show a close division among registered voters: Republicans 36%, Democrats 33%, and independents 30%, with independents growing at a much faster rate than either major party.
But, according to the Census,56.7 percent of Arizona’s population is White, not Hispanic of Latino. Only 4.6 percent are Black; 3.2 percent Asian and 30.3 percent Hispanic or Latino.
The results of the 2012 President Election are also interesting:
Romney took 54.2 percent of the vote while Obama took 44.1 percent.
In fact, I found this about Arizona: Arizona Democratic House Minority Leader Chad Campbell vented some frustration about the legislative dealings of his state this week, saying that they had been largely hijacked by the “Tea Party and conspiracy theorists.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/chad-campbell-arizona-tea-party_n_1458766.html
Why do you oppose the CCSS? What is your plan?
And where did you get the impression that “progressives have run the system for 30 years.” That would put the start of the progressive movement in 1984, with Ronald Reagan in office.
There has never been a one-size-fits-all billionaire financed set of standards in only two subjects with a preemptive strike at all other subjects via a “literacy” agenda promoted nationally for a decade and a half with a multi-million PR campaign–not here or any other country unless you want to talk about some totalitarian nations.
The noncommercial NAEP tests and the standards for them have not been totally free of political influence, but they have functioned very well as a source of information about the proficiencies of students over time, and these tests do not require or benefit from test-prep on an annual basis.
“Zero testing is never going to fly, period”
Quite correct, because if there is nothing (zero testing) how can one expect ‘nothing’ to fly???
Yes, the goal should be zero standardized testing as Noel Wilson has shown the COMPLETE INVALIDITY of the standards and standardized testing regime. Any conclusions are “vain and illusory”!
To understand why read and comprehend Wilson’s “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 description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional 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 the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
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. And 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 attempts to measure “’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.
Tests should be diagnositic and formative. If there are summative tests they should not be punitive.
Just as people can’t come to a consensus here, there cannot be one way of testing throughout the nation. Why? Because there is skepticism as yo what constitutes necessary learning, appropriate pedagogy, and the purpose of education in the first place within the context of today.
Collaboration requires compromise. Since I have been told that compromise is not what we are looking to achieve here, there is little left to say.
People ate upset for different reasons. And school must go on. Lives must go on. People have bills to psy and jobs to do, even if they are unimpressed or fearful of what is going on.
State school boards are also not often made up of anyone with any knowledge of education. That is, in part, why I am not particularly concerned with the CCSS. I think it very likely that my state will come up with something worse.
State school boards shouldn’t write the standards either. Teachers should do it. That’s what Diane is advocating.
And you’re not concerned that these standards were passed so rapidly, with no ability for the public to read them and comment, funded by billionaires, and practically mandated by the federal government? The way the CC was passed and implemented is the antithesis of democracy. THAT is the part that angers me the most. That and the fact that many people (particularly in the media) don’t seem concerned with this end-run around democracy.
Threatened,
State school boards, as elected bodies, do seem to think that their control of state standards part of the democratic control that so many who post here find essential to education.
I have little hope that my state board would give up its control to an undemocratic group of experts, and even less hope that it would come up with a set of standards significantly better than the CCSS, especially in mathematics.
Unfortunately, the term “scholar” has been hijacked and is used along with “educator” as the cover beneath which privatizers hide since they cannot say they are teachers.
I love the California history standards because they enumerate specific, important knowledge to be learned, not fuzzy skills that teachers only pretend they know how to impart (sure you can elicit these skills, but that’s not the same as imparting). The California history standards steer us out of the fog of half-baked education theories into the clear light of facts. Because of these standards kids in California learn the story of Western Civilization from Greece through the Civil Rights Movement; they learn the origins and basic tenets of Islam; they learn about the great achievements of our Mexican kids’ ancestors, the Aztecs and the Maya; they learn about the background and civilization of China, the rising superpower… Without these standards, kids could easily be condemned to vapid and fruitless “literacy” instruction, or ineffectual thinking skills instruction, or a year-long hands-on project on medieval knights –in other words, to not actually learning much. I fear that we’re going to abandon these great standards in lieu of the new Common Core history standards that I’ve heard are in the works –standards that are likely to back down from specifying content and replace it with fuzzy demands to build fuzzy “history skills”. Kids will learn haphazard fragments of history while allegedly learning the allegedly more important ability to “think like a historian”. Fragments are not good enough; we must tell kids the whole story.
Do they learn about the Ancient Israelites? They had a great influence on western civilization with their laws and concept of only one God, which our founding fathers acknowledged. I’m finding many states to leave the achievements of this group out of 7th grade World History. However, the high standards of Massachusetts includes this group.
This is nothing but badness. How can a legislator, who has likely spent his or her entire life in privilege, possibly write anything that would inform my teaching kids who live in daily poverty?
How do I get my “Give Education back to the Educators!” bumper sticker? I’d like a button too. These should exist. Anyone? I will pay, especially if it is for the cause.
Good functioning models exist for doing this. The one I am familiar with is the AP courses and tests. If you give the task to actual teachers throughout AND put the appropriate resources in time and personnel towards the task, you can get a high quality product.
I too was skeptical that a curriculum ‘driven’ by a standardized test could improve the quality of my course until I was actually teaching the courses.
The problem with standards, written by whoever, is the same as the problem with SLOs that I posted yesterday – the underlying assumption about what education is. Education is not a top down transfer of knowledge/skills from the teacher to the empty vessels called students. It is instead inspiring and guiding those students, who already come with their own interests, experiences, culture, dis/abilities, etc., to explore and discover knowledge/understanding/interpretation/problem solving/etc. for themselves.
Yes. Sage on the stage, Blank slate. My way or the highway. Results, not excuses.
Inspiring is not enough. The actual transfer of information is the essence of education. That’s what griots in West Africa did; that’s what teachers from time immemorial one every continent in every culture have done. The fact that we now have cars and computers does not change this eternal fact. This transfer takes years and years. You can’t merely inspire and then hope that kids will acquire core knowledge once they’re launched from the K-12 system. Work and other obligations interfere. We need to intensively transmit knowledge to kids now while they have the free time.
There was a time, not so long ago, that State Departments of Education wrote standards or contracted with experts like Diane Ravitch to do so. Over the past three decades State DOEs have been decimated by budget cuts.
Diane wrote: “Let’s hope that states have the good sense to rely on their best teachers and scholars to protect the interests of the state and the children.”
In North Carolina? Hahahahahaha…
Amen! It is a mess in NC!
Agreed. But how can Arne Duncan and so many others believe that Common Core can survive another election cycle if it remains tied to teacher evaluations, school rankings and unilateral grade promotion? Fine if it’s used to compare results across states, but it’s just a skeleton of dubious developmental design being tested by a testing company that’s just a business with an increasingly bad reputation. It must carry no more weight than that, except for several really hefty grains of salt.
When “A Nation at Risk” came out ALL teachers, ALL public school systems were horrific, incompetent, ad nauseum. The general public was admonished that to save our country they must rush in and “save” the schools. Otherwise our country was going to go the way of all great former countries which disappeared into history.
SO
It makes sense that since teachers and educators are so “incompetent” that our politicians – who have all the answers – should “save” our country.
Looks like they are really trying. “Trying” is the right word if one gets my meaning.
Might I suggest “bungling/fumbling” in place of “trying”.
A bought politician who is “trying” might attempt to educate himself on the issues so they would know something about what they are trying to do. The greedy, fake, corporate reform freaks don’t care how ignorant they are because improving the public schools isn’t on their agenda—making money is the goal.
Something like this always sets me off. A few weeks ago I was speaking with a high school teacher in my area and she was going off on a rant about the new standards that where being put in place by the state, I personally didn’t have much of an issue with them, but then again I have yet to fully work within the walls of a functional school. And one idea that she had about a change to the common core was giving educators a chance to come up with standards, but not the standards of their own department, but of the departments of their co-workers. So things like english teachers making up the standards for math classes and visa-versa. This way an educator could make up what they would want to be taught were they to be taking the course in stead of just looking at it from a teaching stand point. But letting someone with no experience take the reigns just seems more counterintuitive than anything.
So, in one of the states mentioned in the WaPo article, Missouri, the members of the work groups are required to be teachers with at least 10 years’ experience, except for a small number of persons who must be parents of public school students in K-12. Although that doesn’t guarantee these won’t be political, at least the vast majority of the work group members will be actual teachers with 10 years experience or more.
And in Missouri, at least as to math, there were some great standards pending at the time that Missouri adopted Common Core per RttT / NCLB. These standards were far better than Common Core. These standards were also written by Missouri educators, not politicians.
TeacherJulie,
New York was also creating its own revised standards when Meryl Tisch decided to jump into the Common Core morass.
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/education/2014/05/10/common-core-derailed-ny-standards/8918925/
Today’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a sampling of teacher opinions regarding cc. One of them, Terry Kaldhusdal, has been a Teacher of the Year.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/common-core-standards-debate-the-voice-of-educators-b99316266z1-268644222.html
Today’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a sampling of teacher opinions on the CC here:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/common-core-standards-debate-the-voice-of-educators-b99316266z1-268644222.html
One of the teachers who comments, Terry Kaldhusdal, has been WI Teacher-of’-the Year.