Mercedes Schneider has discovered a new public relations campaign to sell the Common Core, especially in California, where the state has not jumped head first into testing, as New York did.
Since public support, especially teacher support, for Common Core appears to be evaporating, it makes sense to hire a sophisticated group of communications experts to redesign the sales campaign.
No more crisis talk (quick, someone tell Arne and Bill)!
No more bad-mouthing our kids. After all, if they are so far behind, how can they meet new standards?
Downplay the blame game, downplay the importance of competition, downplay the high-stakes testing. Those tropes don’t work. They discourage support.
The good words are innovation, excellent teaching, systemic, etc.
As a teacher, Schneider is not convinced: “Just because someone hands me a tablecloth, calls it a cape, and tells me to tie it to my back does not mean that if I jump from my roof, I will fly.”
She could have used that great line about putting lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.
As for Common Core, no amount of high-priced PR can save it. The more that teachers learn about it, the less they like it. How else to account for teacher support falling from 76% to 46% in a single year?
Common Core is not simply a toxic brand, as some of its defenders believe. It got one of the greatest send-offs in history, adopted by 45 states even though no one was sure exactly what it was. It came wrapped in such grandiose claims that it was bound to flop. There was no evidence that Common Core standards would improve education, raise test scores, narrow the achievement gaps, make children globally competitive or college and career-ready.
If there is a lesson to be learned from this fiasco, it is that process matters, evidence matters. Money can buy elections, but money alone is not enough to buy control of American education. A change as massive as national standards requires the willing and enthusiastic by educators, parents, and communities. Arne Duncan and Bill Gates thought they could bypass those groups, if they funded enough of their leadership organizations. They thought they could design the standards they thought best and impose them on the nation. It is not working. As New York high school principal Carol Burris said recently about Common Core, stick a fork in it, it’s done.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a great line Mercedes! “Just because someone hands me a tablecloth, calls it a cape, and tells me to tie it to my back does not mean that if I jump from my roof, I will fly.”
What will it take for the mainstream sheep to recognize this “wolf in sheep’s clothing”?
I’m a literacy specialist who jumped right into CC. I am a successful teacher of students (3-5) who struggle with reading. What I realized us that some of my students – no matter how motivated they were, or how hard I tried- were not developmentally ready to do some of what the NY ELA tests is asking them to do. The analogy I love best is that of a baby being ready to walk. No matter what a parent does, a baby will walk walk their bodies and brains are ready and NOT before!! The CCS are not developmentally appropriate for young students!
Branding in the market place seems to have reached a new low!
I’ve heard of the same strategies in NJ with rumors that one district has been pushing to use private philanthropy money to hire a high-powered PR person at a per hour rate that would make teachers cringe.
This morning, the AFT sent out an e-mail message. On U.S. Labor Day weekend, Randi Weingartner is proud to be in Israel but, asks us to fight for public schools, here. Based on comments at this blog, alone, I was reluctant to believe she was, as described, first and foremost, about self-promotion but, the e-mail message was a tipping point for me.
Either she doesn’t care what people think or she fails to understand effective PR.
In either case, teachers deserve a better representative.
Is Randi going to Gaza?
What’s the answer to that joke line?
Yes, and she should stay and solve their problems just as she solved ours.
In Nevada they do not even say common core, these are now Nevada Core Academic Standards (tm sooon?) By any other name, the pungent smell of manure remains the same. As a parent asked, if these aren’t the common core, then why do we need the common core test? The cost will be the final nail in the common core coffin.
Just this past Friday at our teacher inservice, we were all noticing that the presenters from Scholastic were using the term “your state standards.” Sure, technically they ARE state standards because they are the standards our state adopted, but really? Let’s just call them what they are … .Common Core. Now that the public is more informed and more critical of Common Core, it would be advantageous to the pro Core, high stakes testing folks to shift the language to “state standards.” Semantic infiltration????
A rose by any other name…..! Too bad Shakespeare isn’t here to write about this. I wonder how he would describe the Common Core debacle? I can think of a few references to “overly ambitious” people as in MacBeth?
“Out, out damned Common Core! Out, I say!”
Hee, Hee! This whole thing is a Shakespearean Tragedy… and in the end, all the characters on the stage…the real educators will be dead, except the real culprits.
We’ve got the Connecticut Core. They must think we’re stupid if… Oh yeah, I forgot… they do think we’re stupid.
I am pleased by all of the recent news of the demise of the CC and the inevitable end of PARCC. I fervently wish that those trends continue. However the reality that I and my kids face in school is full speed ahead with both.
Finally, so many are seeing that “the emperor wore no clothes.” Of course, a common core-bred school child would not get the reference… ;(
What’s sad is they are so completely out of touch with public school parents that they needed a talented team of marketing people to instruct them on how to talk to us.
It’s a good piece of work. Great suggestions. How funny is it that all of these think tankers and politicians and CEO’s had no earthly idea how to talk to the unwashed masses about public schools. Apparently “public schools suck and you’re all lazy incompetent and unemployable” didn’t go over well with the public.
Now there’s a shocker.
I do not want to talk to them with or without the PR team.
I think we just need another round of stern, patronizing scolding lectures on how mediocre we all are from Arne Duncan, Jeb Bush and America’s CEO’s
Roll out Condaleeza Rice again. Fear-mongering on “national security” always works! 🙂
So so sick of these ad campaigns. Why don’t they try just talking to parents like normal human beings? That might work!
As a teacher, I was told that my practice should be research based, ie., we need to do more of what is proven to work. The Common Core is NOT research based; it is non-vetted entity being forced on public schools as a national policy. It is little more than a “brain fart” from a bunch of governors and a handful of elitists with little or no experience in public education. As pointed out in today’s “New York Times,” America is on the wrong track with its accountability obsession. It’s even worse when the “accountability” is unscientific and invalid like the Common Core and VAM.
But the marketers and the media keep telling everyone that the CC is “research based” and “internationally benchmarked.” Those of us who know better are screaming from the rooftops, but we don’t have the money and clout to get people to listen to us.
Yes, the media should be doing a much better job with their journalism. How do we beat this? The system is broken.
Why all the effort for the propagandists to use new names. People are still going to call it what it is: CRAP!
PARCC spelled backwards is CCRAP!
(the first C standards for “complete”)
“PARCC | CCRAP”
The Common Core is Common CRAP
It’s even spelled that way
When Gates looks in the mirror
He sees the mess he made
Hee, hee… I said as much just a moment ago to my husband, but not so lyrically.
TAGO! APU!
Oh, and for those like me who are AI: APU = As per usual.
Regrettably there are many states still blindly following common core. One fabulous veteran teacher I know in teaching for 40 years… has read and read and read everything mandated about common core and still asks, “Can anyone tell me what it is.. really?” Wishing all states would collapse this disastrous “roll out” of common core for the sake of students across America and for the sake of the public education profession – you know – the real one – not the PR’d version.
Yep. My state is one of those that still acts like the Common Core is the best thing since sliced bread. An article this morning in one of the newspapers touted the “college and career ready” tripe once again. No one seems to question the ridiculous length of the testing, the lack of public input on the standards in the first place, and the fact that places like Finland are achieving excellent results doing exactly the opposite of what is happening here. Even the state union sent out an impassioned plea to the members asking them to comment in support. It’s maddening.
I believe that the Common Core Standards, in themselves, are creditable! I also believe that any district that has had students that have been accepted to an Ivy League (or other highly selective college) have used similar standards with those students!
BUT, we have a twofold problem with this mess that our Nation’s schools are handed!
1. The standardize tests assigned to these standards are not designed to just test students’ knowledge but rather to test the method of instruction. That is, you must teach using the methodology on the standardize tests or the students will not even understand what the questions are asking. So now our Nation’s Educators are told how they must teach using a methodology that is presented by Non-Educators and has not even been shown to be successful or even creditable! To top off this mess , the standardize tests are made high stakes by using them for Teachers’ evaluations which ,in itself, introduces many additional problems including Campbell’s Law and over emphasis on Math and ELA thusly reducing other subjects!
2. We have just come off over a decade of NCLB, where Educators were required to have 100% of their students at a proficient level. I believe that most experienced Educators either knew that they would not be working or hoped that new administration would wake up by the time this idiotic goal of 100% came about. Needless to say, NCLB was a waste and we are now presented with its evil offspring RTTT along with CCSS.
Common Core State Standards are not Common Core. These Standards are not Common but are high level Standards and it is unreasonable to expect the majority of students to meet these Standards. The States are labeling students failures as early as third grade! How do you think that encourages students? I am sure any experienced Educator can tell of instances where students have not applied themselves in High School but with maturity have gone on to successfully complete college and certainly many “poor performers” that have gone on to be very successful members of our society! Meeting the goals of CCSS on a standardize test tells us nothing about the future success of that student but it does give a student the label of failure which would certainly do more harm than good!
I enjoyed reading your comment, and I agree with just about everything you wrote. There are issues with CCSS, but I can shut my door and then teach in a way that my students deserve. In other words, CC doesn’t get in our way of authentic, powerful learning. On the other hand, I have little, make that NO, control over the testing hours and hours of test prep that my students and I suffer through. It is malpractice and unethical. I am still teaching the way my students deserve, but that test fear is always present.
Me, too. I teach the way that the students deserve and do whatever test prep I feel is necessary, with consistently excellent results. The fear you speak of has been present for more than a decade now. What’s different now is the new evaluation system and the new tests. These have drastically incresed the fear factor. It’s getting much harder to keep the wolves at bay and teach well.
@Tim… when you state, “Meeting the goals of CCSS on a standardize test tells us nothing about the future success of that student but it does give a student the label of failure which would certainly do more harm than good…” this is why so many teachers feel that common core is nothing short of child abuse. I teach many students who are wonderful human beings, who are caring, loving and intelligent but cannot pass these tests for a whole host of reasons. Some hang their heads in shame that they cannot pass these tests, some give up and carry an angry chip on their shoulder… and the final blow will be when the students know that their test scores may contribute to their teacher’s professional demise. I am not sure how many of them understand this and it would be interesting to know.
“. . . the final blow will be when the students know that their test scores may contribute to their teacher’s professional demise.”
I had a student tell me that he was going to pass the big test coming up so I wouldn’t get fired. He was so sincere and confident. Fortunately for him he was so learning disabled that he couldn’t even understand that he had no chance. Many others are not so “lucky”.
Science is not about belief, it is about proof and verification. Because you or anybody else believes or wants Common Core to be relevant and valid, does not make it so. I do not want my own kids part of a grand fiasco.
How many people would say “ok” to drug companies buying items off a CVS shelf, mixing them together till it seems “right”, then injecting the concoction into patients as a cure for cancer? Common Core and PARCC are no better.
Tim: your eloquently expressed #1 is—excuse me if I am putting it in too succinct a form—another way of saying that “the tail of testing is wagging the dog of teaching and learning.”
That is, the scores generated by standardized tests are used to label, sort and rank teachers, students and schools. For teachers, the scores are the critical sustenance of VAM; for students, the scores are ‘objective’ confirmations of society’s few winners and many losers; and for public schools and districts, the scores undergird various grading systems used to shame and punish. Not to leave out the fact that tightly constricting the measure/assessment of teaching and learning to the inherently imprecise, highly limited, and toxic constrictions of standardized tests is, indeed, a pedagogical approach.
And just what is that pedagogical approach? One-size-fits-all, emphasizing the imparting of, and training in, low-level skills and docile obedience rather than critical & independent thinking.
With the critical proviso that for the leading charterites/privatizers, this toxic EduWidget Approach is to be imposed on OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. For THEIR OWN CHILDREN, there’s Lakeside School (Bill Gates) and Delbarton School (Chris Christie) and Sidwell Friends (Barack Obama) and Harpeth Hall (Michelle Rhee) and U of Chicago Lab Schools (Rahm Emanuel) and the beat goes on.
And again, from the very innermost circle of the education reform establishment, the indissoluble link between high-stakes standardized testing and CCSS as per Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute:
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Which is exactly why a fierce advocate of CCSS and its associated testing rituals appeared in a blog posting on this blog of 3-23-2014, entitled “Common Core for Commoners, Not My School!”
The entire posting: “This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.”
Does it add up? Yes, because when it comes to $tudent Succe$$, it makes a whole lot of ₵ent¢.
Rheeally! In a Johnsonally sort of way…
For the rest of us, not really…
Thank you for your comments.
😎
The one thing that we’ve learned from this is that we must ask questions and demand answers. Our unions, governors, school boards, state ed. dept. must all quit being the puppets to feds because as we know they all wear Duncan aka:dunce caps. Heaven forbid we have another goofball (looks speaks for itself) like him running the ed. dept.
“As New York high school principal Carol Burris said recently about Common Core, stick a fork in it, it’s done.” Beautiful!
Let us hope that like a soufflé, it too will collapse.
CC may be done (fork and all), but it is not coming out of the oven until Congress re-writes/re-authorizes the ESEA OR until it is challenged in the courts as being an unconstitutional breach of federal power.
The common core is so bad:
What’s the chance of ever seeing a private common core immersion school?
An Esperanto, or metric immersion school would have better odds.
Cross-posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Schneider-The-New-Sales-T-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Important_Schools_Standards-140831-473.html#comment509228
with this comment:
“This article https://dianeravitch.net/2014/08/31/schneider-the-new-sales-technique-for-common-core/
by Ms. Schneider is a must read, and I am so grateful to Diane Ravitch for her service to our people, withher blog which keeps track of the shenanigans that are afoot as the malefactors who destroyed a working education system re-purpose their poop, in order to sell it to the public and once more BAMBOOZLE THEM(my essay written here, years ago.)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
“Today, I posted links to Walter Brasch and to Joe Nocera at the NY Times,
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Labor-Day-Assignment-Educ-by-Walter-Brasch-Education_Education-Curriculum_Education-Funding_Labor-Unions-140830-605.html here at Oped,
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Labor-Day-Assignment-Educ-by-Walter-Brasch-Education_Education-Curriculum_Education-Funding_Labor-Unions-140830-605.html
each examining the question of what to do next in education? Actually, the question they need to ask, the essential one where the answer means successful learning, is this one, the one that Harvard asked when they ran the real National Standards research, in the mid-nineties: “What does LEARNING LOOK LIKE.”
Nocera poses some good ideas about ‘improving the schools’ but the best answers come from educators which is why I cross-posted this link.
“Moreover, the answer reveals itself when one knows what it takes for the human mind to acquire skills (i.e.LEARN). The standards for LEARNING DISAPPEARED, when the Duncan/Gates/Broad narrative replaced it with evaluation STANDARDS for teaching thru testing. T
he 8 standards are contained as critical principals in “The 8 PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING which WAS the Pew-funded, Harvard-run research on Lauren Resnick’s thesis on effort based LEARNING
Click to access polv3_3.pdf
which was proven by the Univ Of Pittsburg research/observers — the LRDC — in this nation-wide study.
http://www.newvisions.org/page/-/Prelaunch%20files/PDFs/NV%20Publications/challengestandards.pdf
I was a cohort. I KNOW ALL THIS HAPPENED. SUCCESSFUL schools that reflect the use of these criteria abound in America and abroad ( see the real what it takes to teach LEARNING IN FINLAND).
http://blip.tv/hdnet-news-and-documentaries/dan-rather-reports-finnish-first-6518828
“The public needs what Nocera suggests, to know what A GOOD SCHOOL LOOKS LIKE, but first, the public needs to know that it is ALL ABOUT WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE, recognizing what every professional teacher does when 35 kids, emergent learners all, depend on this expertise.
If one reads the voices of the professional in “The American Educator,”
http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/issues.cfm
or look at the evidence in the schools that are often featured, then the indicators of the crucial criteria will be evident in every school! It takes a program that has clear criteria for success, and real motivational rewards for achievement (not scores on a test). Yes ,it takes the hiring of authentic professionals not novices trained to follow someones concoctions… but real educators who set clear OBJECTIVES for acquiring skills and retaining information. These professionals use genuine performance evaluation (including some quizzes and tests) to know what needs to be brought to the students in the next lessons.
“Yes, the school needs the SUPPORT of the administration, not the punishment and insane lawlessnessthat is the case. 4 of 8 principles for learning are FOR THE ADMINISTRATION… which is why all this blame on teachers has done nothing to fix schools. Principals of principle (forgive me) ensure:* a quiet ,safe physical plant which includes organizing for smaller classes and creating support services.
“Principals must be qualified educators, too, as it is their Job to hire and support educated professional teacher -practitioners. The sad commentary of abused teachers can be found with regularity Ravitch blog regular, but this link, to NAPTA,
http://endteacherabuse.org
will send you to a place which records the OPPOSITE OF WHAT real ADMINISTRATORS SHOULD DO. This has to end if this country is to retain educated professionals to ensure our future citizens have the skills to run their lives and the country, and ensure democracy…which depends on shared knowledge.
Click to access hirsch.pdf
If you want the to figure out what it takes for kids to learn, what must be present, it begins with the truth of the Pew study… if you can find it! Zillions of dollars for real 3rd level research and POOF,! — WE GET MAGIC ELIXIRS
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
FROM THE VERY FOLKS WHO WRECKED PUBLIC EDUCATION… because as Schneider and Ravitch warn the puppet-masters of school destruction are cooking up all sorts of narratives to se ll the same ‘poop’ as shinola.”
“The China Syndrome”
The meltdown of the Common Core
Is headed downward through the floor
And won’t quit sinking til China’s reached
And hence returns from whence it leached
“You need to reframe the debate…This is about China kicking our butts. Do you want China to kick out butts? No!” — Michelle Rhee
The folly of Common Core proponents’ China envy
Funny you mention “The China Syndrome”. There was an article in today’s Danbury (CT) News-Times about various people hosting foreign students in their homes while these students attend local schools entitled “Chinese Exchange Students Fill Empty Nests”.
http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Chinese-exchange-students-fill-empty-nests-5721920.php
David Guerrera is the cofounder of Apex International Education Partners, which matches host families with Chinese students studying at Connecticut high schools. Given that so many of our “leaders” worship the “success” of the Chinese education system – based on its ranking in dubious international test scores, Guerrera’s observation is illuminating:
Guerrera credits the increase in exchange students to China’s booming economy and the Chinese desire to provide the best education possible.
“China has seen in the last decade a tremendous increase in wealth,” Guerrera said. “And education in China is top priority. The Chinese think that, hands down, an American education has much more advantages than an education in China.”
The China Syndrome in reverse ?
Exactly.
I still think many of the people who claim to like CCSS are people who do not wish to deal with race head on.
In Maryland it has just been rebranded as the Maryland College and Career Ready State Standards:( They refer to it as McCrackers, which is absurd and gives me a headache. Now Md can say we don’t use Common Core, but MCCRS is exactly the same.
Here in Ohio, it is a surreal onslaught of pro-Common Core forces against a new bill ending the standards. So many “experts” supporting a standard they know nothing about. The arguments run from “we can’t stop doing something wrong just because we have been doing the wrong thing” to “we have no idea if it will work, but if it ruins an entire generation’s future, at least we tried something”.
The sales technique might be counteracted by professing the “Aim” of education is to
aquire a knowledge of the world. The lay of the land based upon understanding through
observation (seeing), compared to verbiage/descriptions (learn phrases by heart without
understanding their meanings or application)
Show these so called “Defenders of Economic and Social Interests” to be engaged in
repeated institutionalized, large scale fraud leading to the strategic stupor revealed by
the effectiveness of marketing or propaganda.
Well said!
“Common Core is not simply a toxic brand, as some of its defenders believe. . . There was no evidence that Common Core standards would improve education. . . ”
Yes, quite toxic and clearly no evidence!
Actually the evidence as shown to us by Noel Wilson is that these “educational standards” and the accompanying “standardized tests” (and they go hand in hand, are two sides of the same coin) are so rife with epistemological and ontological error (errors in the conceptual foundation of those practices) that the whole process is completely invalid causing harm to many students in the process leaving us with no other conclusion than these malpractices are UNETHICAL and IMMORAL.
To understand why read and understand Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A 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. 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.
My my, Duane. What a pleasure to write at a site where such wonderful conversations occur. I am not an academic, but appreciate the erudition and explanation.
I have been witness to this. So sad.