Carol Burris was the only actual on-the-ground educator to participate in the Intelligence Squared debate about Common Core. Unlike the other three debaters, Burris is principal of a high school. She is also a crack researcher, who has published and done research on education issues.
She recently wrote in Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog about the four big “Flim-Flams” at the heart of the claims for the Common Core.
She writes:
“Since the standards were first introduced, Common Core supporters have created amorphous platitudes and spin to market it. Even as more Americans like me “wise up,” do not expect the Common Core-ites to give up. Think tanks have received millions from Gates to support it and education companies are making millions on new Core-aligned materials. There is big money being spent — and big money to be made — in the Common Core.”
Here is what you will hear from the “Core-ites”:
First, that they are internationally benchmarked and grounded in solid research. Not so, says Burris, with evidence to the contrary.
Second, that the standards are merely goalposts and do not tell teachers how to teach. Not so, says Burris, and offers examples.
Third, that the Common Core will close the achievement gap. Not so, says Burris, and demonstrates that it is actually widening the achievement gap and may, if the Carnegie Corporation prediction proves correct, double the dropout rate, lowering the graduation rate, especially among minorities, to levels unseen since the 1940s.
Fourth, that the problems with the Common Core can. Be solved at he state or local level. Not so, says Burris: the standards were copyrighted and states signed a memorandum agreeing not to change them but allowing states or locals to add another 15% to them.
Burris concludes:
“Curriculum will standardize and narrow as students practice three English Language Arts tasks for the PARCC exam. All that will vary will be the difficulty of the texts to which they respond. The lack of imagination, as well as the lack of knowledge on how writing and critical thinking skills develop, is breathtaking. The combination of common, prescriptive standards, national tests and a re-alignment of the SAT and GED will act as a vise pushing schools toward similar curricular experiences for American students. Make no mistake, this is by design.
“If the goal of Common Core supporters is to create a standardized curriculum across states and schools, then they are obligated to make sure that the Common Core standards are both remarkable and sound. They are neither. It will take more than a public relations campaign to convince the American public to buy the homogenized vision of the few who created the Common Core.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dr. Burris’ words should be spread by all intelligent educators in the country. We have known for quite a time that, of the team who were paid to dream up these sketchy “standards”, not one was a classroom teacher. Money talks, and that is the best explanation why such huge sums were spent to promulgate Common Core: people with big bucks wanted it, and actual teachers were irrelevant to the project. It is time to dismantle the whole mess, and bring in qualified people to remedy the damage done.
When the smoke clears, and this whole mess goes away, but not after a generation of students has been short changed by the educational blinders of the CC and punitive, test-based reform; parents, college professors, and others will be pointing fingers and asking very serious questions as they try to make sense what happened to our collective moral and professional compass as the majority of educators remained complicit through inaction. Burris, Schneider, Farley, Greene, Cody, Naison, and a small handful of other strong voices from within the trenches are not enough. We have a choice to make, nearly 3 million strong. Defiance? or Compliance?
I just completed a required module about observing the indicators of child abuse.
It struck me just how our laws make such stringent demands upon a whole series of individuals to report child abuse…physical, sexual, psychological, and neglect. Mandated reporting. Those who are required to do this are typically underpaid, overworked individuals. Yet, their responsibilities are many, and it is good that someone is looking out for the children.
However, in reading about psychological abuse, I had to think that punitive testing is abusive. If a child suffers other abuses, then this simply adds to the child’s suffering. Also, when we no longer have the time to actually observe, tend to, address the child’s emotional needs, we are driving the problems further into the child’s existence. And, as classroom sizes increase, what teacher has the time to teach all that needs to be taught and truly give the students what they need? To stop and listen? To assimilate the possibility that a child is going through so much that functioning academically is truly on the back burner.
What is wrong with this society?
As a long-time teachers’ union member and supporter, I strongly urge our leaders, on local and national level, to publicize this abuse of the public trust. As stated above by NYS Teacher, we have the numbers. Is it courage we lack?
Here we go again on the virtues of the CCSS, this time the conclusion of researchers from the American Institutes for Research (AIR), and featured in a press release yesterday. The “evidence” in support of the CCSS is just in time for another round of press to boost the multi-year campaign for a nationalized system of education in the United States. It must be built around the CCSS of course, but the tests from PARCC and SMARTER may not be tough enough.
Basically, the wizards in statistics and doing a process called “benchmarking” at AIR (a holding company for researchers in the social sciences) looked at international test scores in reading and math, grades 4 and 8, and some international science scores. Then they looked at NAEP scores for these subjects and the scores from statewide tests in these subjects (required under NCLB).
Then they did some “analytics” to see if lower state standards in these subjects correlated with scores on the state tests, and on NAEP, and on scores for the international tests.
Upshot, the researchers claim that standards set by our states are so varied that the test scores being reported at the national level are misrepresenting student achievement. Moreover the degree of our collective misrepresentation of student achievement can be traced to a humongous gap in grade level expectations and state tests tied to state standards.
The “expectations gap” in grade-level standards and tests is much, much, much, much larger than the typical achievement gaps reported within states, usually made even more apparent when states disaggregate their test scores. The states with the highest standards produce the highest test scores but even these states are laggards in setting high standards and scoring high on international tests.
Therefore, to reduce “the expectations gap” and to increase the ability of all of our students to do well on international tests and compete in the global economy, we really do, do, do, do need the CCSS and we must make sure those new tests from PARCC and SMARTER (with score comparability at the national level) set a really high bar for students. In other words, state standards are too variable in grade level expectations. Toss them out.
I really would like to know who funded this report. AIR depends on grants for almost all of its research. I dropped an email to the lead researcher on this project to find out who funded it. No luck so far. AIR reports usually include a credit or disclosuretelling readers who funds the research and/or the reports on research. You can bet this report will be picked up and get great reviews from proponents of the CCSS–and it is now clear that AIR is a party to that propaganda mill.
The tragedy is that this report does not address these well established facts:
Standards-driven reform does not work.
Scores on international tests have no bearing on global competitiveness.
Statistical leaps through thin air with big batches of test scores should never be treated as conclusive evidence of this or that nation’s educational superiority. This is pandering. It reflects a studied distain for cultural, political, economic, and population differences among the nations (and city states) being compared. It is chauvinistic and a distraction from matters of real consequence in the lives of our students and teachers.
A student’s performance in school, including tests, is known to be influenced MOST by out-of-school factors ranging from pre-natal care and inherited abilities to parental education and income, to congruence in language and dialects spoken at home and in school, to “food security,” to peer interactions in and beyond school— not just the instruction received from the teacher, and certainly not standards and tests. Up to 90% of the variation in test scores is explained by these factors.
You can find the press release and locate pdfs of this two-part study as http://www.air.org/news/press-release/education-performance-standards-vary-widely-among-states-some-cases-several-grade
Other references on request.
By spending far too much time on the Internet, and discovering that Bloomberg has absolutely no information on the compensation for AIR executives, I assume that this lack of transparency is deliberate. However, I was able to determine that the CEO, David Myers, is compensated to the tune of well over a half-million dollars. No wonder the organization pays homage to their funding overlords! Too bad that our young constituents, the public school children of the US, don’t seem to share in the effects of this largesse.
A friend who has a relative that works at AIR says it is a grueling process of writing grant proposals as much as anything else. AIR received a big chunk of USDE money to market Race to the Top under the banner of offering “technical assistance to states.”
Here is an example of the work taxpayers paid for, in this case marketing “Student Learning Objectives” to evaluate teachers of nontested/untested subjects. At least 26 states are using this version of a failed business practice called management-by-objectives.
American Institutes of Research. (2012, November). Student learning objectives as measures of educator effectiveness: The basics. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://educatortalent.org/inc/docs/SLOs_Measures_of_Educator_Effectiveness.pdf
Laura –
I mercifully have no first hand experience of SLO’s but what I’ve read gives me the impression that teachers are to gaze into a (not-so) crystal (clear) ball and make a prediction of how much kids will “grow”. If they predict wrong, they are screwed. Is that a fair deconstruction?
I thought this post on BrainPickings was especially timely in light of our current discussions on education. The opening quote says it all: “While it is not the business of education … to teach every possible item of information, it is its business to cultivate deep-seated and effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions.”
http://tinyurl.com/luwe2j4
Carol Burris summarized very succinctly some of the problems with Common Core.
So true is her comment on the achievement gap- the gap has only widen. Recall the 70% failure last year!!! And I add on to that our students trying to survive under the yoke of CC are suffering irreparable psychological harm. Students who burned the midnight oil studying for the Standardized test only to find out that they are failures. Could this be a variable causing youth gangs on LI? They failed the impossible tests and then made to feel stupid. Are those students now in turn going to cause the community irreparable harm? We destroyed their self-image; they feel worthless and no one gives a dam. So why not join a gang to hit back at society? That Standardized test causes so much harm. There is a place for everyone in this society; we all don’t have to run a 4min. mile.
Carol Burris stating “the curriculum will standardize and narrow” added a very insightful comment: “Make no mistake, this is by design.”
I can’t help wonder why the govt. is dumping thousands of children into our education system. Just two years ago every district had to excess teachers here on LI. Where, oh, where are the resources going to come from to meet the needs of these thousands of illegals without immunization shots, non-English speaking children, and traumatized by the whole movement? These illegal students will bring the school standards down lower yet. Is that a deliberate act to bring down our schools so the corporate world can move in and cause more havoc? Are the powers that be trying to destroy the middle class, make everyone subservient to the all powerful one losing our independence?
What/ who is behind this movement of illegals crossing over? Don’t tell me it is for humanitarian reasons. It is not humanitarian to rip children away from their parents and take them into exile. I visited a poverty stricken barrio of Venn. People didn’t venture out alone during the day and for sure not at night. The first night a gang shooting war took place outside the wall in the room where I was sleeping. I feared a shot would penetrate the wall and hit me. The next morning I was informed that it was a common occurrence. Is Venn. flooding our country with illegals? No; they have learned to work together to protect their community and survive.
A Reuters article published May 29 cited that the Obama administration estimates that 60,000 children unaccompanied by parents or relatives will pour into the United States this year, up from about 6,000 in 2011.
“The massive influx of children unaccompanied by parents or relatives who have illegally crossed our borders this year is placing a heavy burden on the American schools that have been given the responsibility of educating them.”
(Is that a deliberate act to undermine our schools, label them as failures, and sell them to the corporate world?)
Illegal Alien Children Are Overburdening U.S. Schools
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/immigration/item/19101-illegal-alien-children-are-overburdening-u-s-schools
Those children need their parents. What are we doing to their emotional well being?
In August, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad took a difficult stand; he charter a jet to send 124 kid 13 -19 unaccompanied immigrant children back to Honduras.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/aug/27/chain-email/did-iowa-gov-terry-branstad-charter-jet-send-124-i/
When will other people in authority take a stand?
This is the new plan for the alternate assessment of special education students in my state (MO). I am wondering if anyone can comment on their thoughts of this. It is new to us and we will be completing learning modules over it. I was interested in those who may know more about it than I? One thing I do know is we are learning the process and administering the assessment virtually at the same time.
Click to access guide_to_dlm_reqd_training_and_prof_dev_2014-15.pdf
I looked up the company, Mel, and this is what the research tab had to say:
The Dynamic Learning Maps™ (DLM) Alternate Assessment System is research-based. Publications and presentations about DLM research appear on this page as they become publically available.
Not too reassuring, eh?
I guess they are like former president Clinton, it depends on what you mean by research.