The long arm of the Gates Foundation reaches out to create a rating system for Common Core-aligned materials. Not content to have paid for the writing of the CCSS. the evaluation of the CCSS, the implementation of the CCSS, and the promotion of and advocacy for the CCSS, the foundation wants to take the next step to make sure no one uses anything less than stellar CCSS.
A ‘CONSUMER REPORTS’ FOR THE COMMON CORE: A new nonprofit funded with $3 million from the Gates Foundation and the Helmsley Charitable Trust launches today with plans to review textbooks and other instructional material for fidelity to the Common Core. EdReports.org will start by bringing in teams of classroom teachers to evaluate K-8 math materials. The curricula will be judged by how well it matches the Common Core and assesses student learning and by whether it offers teachers guidance in reaching children at all levels.The group will post its ratings online and invite response from the publishers. Up first: Pearson’s enVision Math, McGraw-Hill’s Everyday Math, Houghton Mifflin’s Go Math and more than a dozen other widely used curricula. EdReports will turn to high-school math and language arts in future years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Welcome to the Twilight Zone! Unbelievable! But, honestly, with all this craziness around all of us….I can believe about anything anymore…..It’s all pretty sad. Pearson will have to create tons of remediation materials for the new Common Core because it is designed for the majority of our kids to fail the tests. Even more money in their pockets!
And please remain alert to the story from last week in which 8,000+ of books were “weeded out” of just one middle school in Racine, Wisconsin, all guided by a Pearson provided list given to the district. No funds to replace these books with ageless content like the Bible, the Koran, the Holocaust and Hiroshima but what the heck! Ching-Ching-Ding-A-Ling for Common Core/Pearson coffers.
OMG! This is the Twilight Zone. In addition, to what Sad Teacher insightfully proclaimed I would add the following. If these CCSS lovers value student test scores so much, do we get to see the student test scores of the teachers who will be chosen to evaluate this stuff. After all, using “Gatesian” logic, we all want to be sure the teachers who are evaluating are producing high test scores. In addition, I want to make sure they all are teaching in high poverty public schools, and certainly NOT in charters were they can kick out the students who they find problematic!
Do you think we could persuade Bill and Melinda Gates to take the Common Core tests? Fifth grade? Eighth grade?
Could you persuade Bill and Melinda to persuade Lakeside to administer them so that Rory, Jennifer, Phoebe, and all their Lakeside friends could take them?
Third grade would prove the point!
Twilight Zone? It is the sociopathic behavior of a super Narcissistic billionaire! He is using Manipulation of the masses via Propaganda which causes emotional contagion and indoctrination on a grande scale. He is obviously very obsessed with Power and Greed, as are most super Narcissistic billionaires who have lost the ability for empathy or guilt! Bill Gates needs to be put in a straight jacket and carted off to the Betty Ford Center before he destroys this country!
How long before the US Dept. of Education changes its name to The Bill & Melinda Gates Dept. of Education?
Richest nation in history needs corporations and private foundations to fund public education content, testing, policy, standards, materials, ad nauseam? Why, exactly?
Because gubmint is bad!
K-8 for now. Good, because I will have to quit the day they hand me textbooks, teacher guides or a “curriculum” aligned with CCCS. I design my own curriculum based on the pre-k standards for my public preschool. And that’s the way it should be. But I know they’re coming for me!……I have already been told to “throw away” my “home-made assessment” and use Teaching Strategies GOLD. Ka-ching again! Sorry, but my assessment is based on 30 years of classroom experience and it is better and free. And I should be trusted to assess what I think is important in a way I think is appropriate. What did I go to school for?
Annat, Did your state win the Race to the Top –Early Learning Challenge (RttT-ELC)? If so, then your state was required to develop their own preschool standards that are aligned with the Common Core. My state won RttT-ELC and, fortunately, highly skilled ECE professionals developed the standards here, so they are developmentally appropriate, even though the K-3 CC standards are not DAP.
The Gates’ brand has product placement in the CC exams released by NYS:
Click to access nystateglobalregentsandbillgates.pdf
Maybe NPE or AFT or NEA could fund research into effective curricula that exceeds and outperforms CC standards, then share those results with teachers around the country. It would be a better use of NPE\AFT\NEAs of money and efforts, as opposed to supporting political candidates or ballot issues or fighting lawsuits.
A great curriculum in the hands of a great teacher will ‘beat’ CCSS and outperform the world every time.
This WOULD be a better use of $$$ than determining which of the two parties is the lesser of two evils and would enable the NEA and AFT to emphasize their roots as professional resources for teachers.
Well *somebody*needs to do this. At the moment, “Common Core aligned” on a text means exactly as much as “New and Improved!” on a cereal box. Whether Common Core is a good set of standards or not, it would be helpful to get the materials vetted.
When one steps in a pile of dog shit one doesn’t need to get the “material vetted”.
And what,exactly, is a common core aligned AP math (algebra, calculus??-is that relevant??) or AP English (language or literature) text? Or are we more focused ( in English) on AP seminar and research? Doublespeak at its finest.
No standards are more powerful than a corrupt, evil superintendent. Ask the DMN editorial board about this truth.
…comprised of disinterested parties, of course, financed by disinterested parties, of course. This smells bad. As to the placement of products into the questions, I had read another about Gates last year that blew my mind. Egomaniac much? Why in the world would Bill Gates be part of the testing? Pepsi? Nike? I guess they are invested in Pearson. This whole thing is ridiculous. I don’t trust this newly minted Gates-paid-for “consumer reports” process, agenda, members.
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/bill-gates-damage-control-via-student-test-prep-questions/
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzZWF0dGxlZHVjYXRpb24yMDEyfGd4OjRmNDEyNTM1YTA1NzczOGE
Hopefully the Consumers Union will sue them to stop using the “Consumer Report” moniker.
the dumbing down materials was what it is all about. Now children and teachers can be thick as a brick.
Reblogged this on We Are More.
I’m sorry this is completely off topic… I swear that Deasy’s goal is to make Los Angeles public schools so incompetent that everyone will run to charters. The new attendance system is spitting out rosters where kindergarteners show up on high school rosters. Every school in the district had problems with incoming students (6 and 9). Our school held home room for a total of two and a half hours to straighten it out – and it only got done that quickly because our AP spent the entire weekend before trying to fix things.
The district is acting surprised, but the head of IT sent an email out Monday warning of problems and asking for patience. Now the PR Meistersinger is telling the press that problems remain with only 7,000 students! Deasy tried to fire a sub a couple of years ago because her lesson plan for the first day of school wasn’t intellectually rigorous. Shouldn’t he be fired for depriving thousands of students of even getting to their classes on the first day of school?
Thank you for your patience.
Gates is aiming to buy the title ‘Commissar of Education”.IThis quest has certinly become his idee fixe. I would like to think that the failure of the Common Core will bring about his downfall. If so, resistance is mounting, that is clear, but it will take years of resistance on the local and state levels to defeat an idea that has failed and is only running on money.
The fight will be arduous. We need someone with comparable wealth and a lawyer with spot light skills to join our resistance. In this fight, We have learned (via Lawrence Tribe) that the usual political labels have lost all meaning.
Thank Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and Grover Nordquist for this development. The problematic government (e.g. the State Departments of Education) got small enough to drown in a bathtub and the “free market” is now “coming to the rescue”. RIP State and local control of the curriculum and hello to the curriculum driven by the oligopoly of standardized test makers.
I just blogged on this and concluded with this thought:
“…decrying Bill Gates misses the point. ALL of Gates’ work on the common core is the result of economic inequality. Because he and his hedge fund friends are able to accumulate wealth that was formerly distributed among school districts and State Departments of Education, ONLY he and his hedge fund friends can provide the services that were formerly provided by “the government”…. and he and his hedge friend funds want to see things standardized across the board. Their motives may or may not be pure, but at this juncture no state government is challenging the federal government’s de facto dictate to adopt the CCSS.
Reblogged this on Jack Of All Trades and commented:
Oh my goodness! Could we through some of this money into funding things that are really at issue like students entering kindergarten that don’t know their last names, virtually no planning time, and high drop out rates would be high on my list. I’m all for strong standards but even if ccss met that need, this is ridiculous.
That would be throw some of this money.
The cat is out of the bag. Everyone, at this point, knows who bankrolled the core (those who will profit), who wrote the core (those who were bought and profited and/or will profit), and where the monies will continue to flow: Pearson for materials and testing, Gates for computers and programs, and charter schools because the bought politicians are hell-bent on closing public schools, and lastly the big funders who will open the schools, or invest in the schools, and the hedge fund raiders who will profit the most on the backs of all this nonsense.
Remove the slick packaging, and you’ve got a rusted can with rotting content. Remove the incentive$ to adopt the core, and you’ve got disinterest.
All that money spent to dupe the public. AND, Gates is still trying to make a smelly pile of poo attractive to the masses, because he and others have so much to lose.
The house of cards is crumbling. What they have left is Campbell Brown and bought politicians, or wealthy men who have bought their way into political positions. but they can no longer lock, stock and barrel change laws or circumvent laws without public opposition. Maybe we are not so well-funded, but at least we have woken up from our comas and are able to see right from wrong and defend ourselves from the onslaught, and educate everyone on what has been ongoing for 15/20 years. I’m awake. I smell garbage.
They would rather do this than assess the CC standards themselves, none of which have been tested or assessed to see if they are, actually better than what they replace.
Last night on the news they showed Bill Gates making a design for the ice bucket challenge. He was sketching a design on paper, with a drafting scale! Go figure.
What’s the “ice bucket challenge”?
It’s pouring a bucket of ice over your head to somehow raise awareness for ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s. The cause is good, but I don’t understand how this will help with funds. And Gates, who could write a huge check to research cures for ALS, DRAWS a bucket of ice water. My neighbor died last year at 52 of ALS, and I’m SO touched (not!) at Gates’ gesture.
Thanks, I just heard about the ALS challenge yesterday but didn’t connect the two instances (Gates’ drawing and the actual challenge).
The announcement that Bill Gates wants to do a version of the Consumer Report for CCSS instructional materials is more evidence of his determination to micro-manage the content of instruction, how it is delivered, and tested. The Helmsley Charitable Trust joins in this latest Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation venture, announced in Politco and elsewhere on the web.
This new Gates-Helmsey Consumer Report begins with ratings for instructional materials for math, K-8. The lead scholar for the project is Maria Klawe, President of Harvey Mudd College. Dr. Klawe is one of the ten members of the board of Microsoft Corporation. In addition to other high profile advisory posts and having many honorary doctorates. Dr. Klawe is on the board of the nonprofit Math for America and Advisory Council for the Computer Science Teachers Association.
Does this high-profile scholarly credibility leave behind the 2014 criteria and rating system for CCSS materials published by Student Achievement Partners (SFP) with the NGA and CCSSO? This ready-to-use 392 page SFP document was designed for district use in evaluating materials. Perhaps Gates wants to by-pass district evaluations and also to assert that the Institute of Education Sciences “What Works” reviews of research on such materials are worthless. Who knows?
I looked at the SFP rating criteria for instructional materials in K-8 math. They are as hard-nosed as the voices of the authors of the CCSS. The rating kit (available at http://achievethecore.org/page/285/materials-alignment-toolkit) calls for CCSS “alignment checks” for comprehensive textbook or textbook series; lessons, units and modules; grade or course-level tests; and individual test passages, items and tasks; and compliance with the 2013 version Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, Grades K–8.
The rating worksheet for the Instructional Materials begins this way:
“Non-Negotiable 1. Freedom from Obstacles to Focus. Materials must reflect the content architecture of the Standards by not assessing the topics named before the grade level where they first appear in the Standards.” Scoring is “Meets or Does Not Meet/Insufficient Evidence.” .
“Non-Negotiable 2. Focus and Coherence. To rate Non-Negotiable 2, first rate metrics 2A–2H. Each of these eight metrics must be rated as Meets in order for Non-Negotiable 2 to be rated as Meets” …. “ Materials must “be clearly aimed at helping students meet the Standards as written rather than effectively rewriting the progressions in the Standards.” (p.127). (A restatement of the original CCSS verbatim rule).
Will the new Gates-Helmsey Consumer Report affirm or run away all of this intellectually constipated and insular work on a rating system for” CCSS compliant” curricula and resources? Is it likely that a distinguished scholar will just be a figure-head for a rating system others have designed? Who knows.
The Gates-Helmsley rating system has not been rolled out, but if this project is similar to the Gates-funded ratings of teacher education programs published in U.S. News and World Report, it will be done on the cheap, with a barrage of publicity, and with the unvoiced purpose of intimidating publishers, narrowing or eliminating non-compliant curriculum materials, and endorsing tests tied to a limited array of instructional materials. If accomplished, this rating feat that will diminish the authority of tests developed by the PARCC/SMARTER consortia, and more generally any claim to expertise that is independent from the house of education that Gates and his pals have built.
None of us who look at the overall influence of Gates-funded initiatives should be surprised if half-baked ratings—never field tested by “consumers” or placed into well-designed experimental research programs—will end up in U.S. News and World Report. But this time, the Gates Foundation could end up in court, with the Helmsley Charitable Trust part of a lawsuit that makes real news.
The forthcoming Gates-Helmsley Ratings invite legal challenges from the publishing industry because big bucks are at stake. Moreover, the Gates’ foundation has poured millions into the development of proprietary math curricula likely to be rated: Scholastic $4.4 million, Illustrated mathematics $3.4 million and more. Is it likely that these products will get poor ratings after such huge investments?
I have no legal expertise, but recalling the history of the CCSS and the tactics of Gates as a philanthropist and a business guru, it seems to me prudent for this project to be interrogated now, with questions about the criteria and process and PR for the ratings addressed to: the project leader Eric Hirsch and the math expert Maria Klawe, and the incoming NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia who is quoted by Politio as a supporter of the effort.
At minimum, the ramifications of the proposed rating system need more discussion, including the prospect of legal action by publishers who have not been beneficiaries of Gates’ and Helmsley’ “non-profit” operations.
Enquiring minds should want to know more, including NEA.
Consumer Reports does not accept advertising in order to provide unbiased reviews. Gates used his own money to fund a non-profit ranking system that reviews things he is in favor of supporting in relation to Common Core. I doubt these reviews will be unbiased due to their funding source. I don’t think Gates knows how unlike Consumer Reports his project is.
Am I roght in remembering that one of those “think-tank” groups just a few months ago came out with a suggestion that there be a national Curriculum Director or agency of some sort to oversee the curriculum and make sure that what is being called “aligned” is really aligned? And everyone balked at the idea that it was in fact Nationalizing the curriculum. And now a few months later Gates sets up a non-profit to accomplish the same exact thing this way? Who remembers this?