Andy Sher, a reporter in Tennessee, thought he would trip up Lamar Alexander by saying that he supported national standards when he was U.S. Secretary of Education in 1991-92, and is thus hypocritical now when he criticizes Common Core.
Senator Alexander explained that he supported voluntary national standards then and now.
Senator Alexander is right. I was there. I administered the award of grants to professional groups of teachers and scholars to write voluntary national standards. We made awards to develop standards in science, history (U.S. and world), English, the arts, civics, economics, physical education, foreign languages, and geography. We made no awards to secret committees headed by entrepreneurs, only to professionals in the field.
As Senator Alexander says, we made clear that the standards were strictly voluntary. It was up to states to use them or not, to revise them as they saw fit. There were no tests of the standards. That was left to the states too.
The goal was to inspire states, not compel them. One thing I admired about Lamar. He never thought he had all the best ideas. He respected federalism.
From the article:
“During his GOP primary campaign, Alexander’s tea party challenger, Joe Carr, hammered the two-term senator for not being sufficiently anti-Common Core, which has become poison to conservative hardliners as federal overreach and by many Democrats for often different reasons.
And now, in the Nov. 4 general election campaign, Alexander’s Democratic challenger, Gordon Ball, has embraced the anti-Common Core crusade. Last month he even attended an anti-Common Core rally, donning an anti-Common Core T-shirt with other opponents, including Andrew Ogles, executive director of the Tennessee chapter of the Koch brothers-aligned Americans for Prosperity.”
Common Core – the MOST TOXIC BRAND name in America!
Heck of a job Arne
Voluntary, open-sourced standards have been recommended by many here as an alternative to the top-down, command-and-control initiatives of the Gates/Obama/Duncan test-and-punish regime. Sounds like LA was ahead of his time.
“It also makes federal education funding largely a block grant, giving states freedom in spending it how they like, he said. Moreover, it includes a voucher provision that would allow parents to use federal tax dollars to attend private schools. But it doesn’t mandate that, instead leaving it up to states to decide if they want a voucher program.”
Great. Another DC person who will spend his entire time there promoting and funding charter schools and private schools.
So we have to choose between people who don’t value our public schools but support the Common Core and people who don’t value our public schools but are ideologically consistent on federalism and oppose the Common Core.
It’s too much to ask that the huge group of people we’re paying to run public education at the federal level support public schools? Is there a job description somewhere they can hunt up and post? I think “public schools” is probably in there somewhere.
Wisconsin State Journal has a good piece on Milwaukee voucher schools. They’ve been ripping off people since 2004, information that was readily available for the last 10 years had anyone bothered to look at it.
Ed reformers (now) vow to take action! But only after it became a campaign issue.
http://www.stevenspointjournal.com/story/news/local/2014/10/12/wisconsin-millions-failed-voucher-schools/17152907/(http:/bit.ly/(http:/bit.ly/(http://bit.ly/(http://bit.ly/1yq5dUp%20
American education has been in constant turmoil since the idea of educating all children became the norm. That is part of the problem; always chasing after the “next big thing” without waiting to see if the ideas already in place work!
A voluntary framework for states to adopt at their will was an excellent idea. The problem does no lay in the standards. The problem lay in the inconsistency of approach and the specialization within the system. Charters are not compelled to educate the lowest performing children so their “results” by nature are skewed. Children who don’t “make the grade” can be eliminated from the pool.
Regardless of any other stands he may have, I thank the owner of this blog for setting the record straight on Lamar Alexander.
In a broad sense, that’s part of a “better education for all”—as in, education for democracy.
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” [Daniel Patrick Moynihan]
Would someone please tell the charter/privatization crowd that?
😎
Aside from Andy’s article, Lamar Alexander was recently running television ads where he says he is 1) against Common Core, and 2) going to fight the creation of a national school board.
However, only a few months earlier, Alexander was a supporter of Common Core. Also, here’s an ad where he claims to be fighting Obama’s desire to create a national school board (that’s a new one on me).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/politics/campaign-2014-lamar-alexander-no-national-school-board/2014/07/24/71d3af32-135d-11e4-ac56-773e54a65906_video.html
I appreciate Dr. Ravitch setting the record straight regarding Alexander’s when she worked with him.
Regarding Common Core, he has been for it and against it as this article describes.
http://nashvillepublicradio.org/blog/2014/10/06/lamar-alexander-defending-stance-common-core-time-democrat/
Here’s an example of what Alexander is trying to deal with in conservative circles. The article even calls Linda Darling Hammond a “radical Stanford Professor.” (Sorry for all the posts!)
http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/06/senator-lamar-alexander-neo-con-trotskyite-his-common-core-connections/
Here’s a 2011 op-ed by Lamar Alexander in which he supports Obama/Duncan, which is different from his stance today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/opinion/a-better-way-to-fix-no-child-left-behind.html?_r=2&
Correction: I shouldn’t say “support,” but he does mention Duncan as an “excellent secretary.”
Why do we need national standards, voluntary or otherwise?
FLERP, I don’t know.
FLERP!
We don’t!
And all should be actively fighting against the illogical and invalid concept, i.e., epistemological and ontological basis, of educational standards.
Start with invalidities and one surely will end with invalidities, which, in the case of the usage of educational standards and standardized testing harms, causes violence to the most innocent, indefensible in society, the children.
Yep, you know where this is going–directly to Noel 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. 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.
By Duane E. Swacker
From the point of view of a student, state, district, or school level standards are all ” top down” as long as the student is not allowed to choose which state, district, or school to attend.
Diane, Then and now seem to be different, especially if you look beyond the standard-setting process back then. If your paths cross, he certainly need to listen to your present concerns.
Among Richard Riley’s present activities is service on the Board of Directors for KnowledgeWorks.org based in Cincinnati. “The Board of Directors for Knowledge Works, an operating foundation, consists of individuals passionate about reforming education. Board members provide governance, academic, financial, and nonprofit management guidance to help govern the foundation’s work and operations.”
The 2011 tax filing shows that Richard Riley compensation for board service was $52,100 a year. In 2011, KnowledgeWorks’ two major officers received over $500,000 each in annual compensation.
KnowledgeWorks promotes on-line and competency-based education and takes credit on the IRS form for influencing the Obama Duncan agenda. From the tax filing in 2011— “In addition to shaping state and federal policy (RttT), KnowledgeWorks secured a $3 million Investing in Innovation (i3) Grant in partnership with the Riley Institute at Furman University to establish two STEM NTN (New Tech Network) schools in rural South Carolina along the underserved, underrepresented I-95 corridor.”
The 2011 filing shows inflows of money to KnowledgeWorks from other foundations—Carnegie ($875,000), Gates $530,00), and Hewlett-Packard $323,000 among others, and some noteworthy outflows: $ 75,000 to expand Teach for America in Southwest Ohio, and $40,000 the Council of Chief State School Officers for “the Future of Learning project.”
Riley is still a Director, so he probably approved hiring of KnowledgeWork’s new President and CEO—a Broad Fellow and a former Chief Transformation Officer and Chief of Staff for the Wake County Public School System in Raleigh, North Carolina, the nation’s 16th largest school district.
KnowledgeWorks calls itself a “a social enterprise that seeks to create sustainable improvement in U.S. student readiness for college and careers by incubating innovative school and community approaches, influencing education policy, and engaging in education research and development. Our portfolio includes New Tech Network, EDWorks and Strive. –
See, more at http://knowledgeworks.org/building-capacity-systems-change-federal-policy-framework-competency-education
Laura,
I wish I had a chance to talk to either Lamar or Riley. I spoke to Riley’s Institute in SC, and He knows what I believe and say. He is a good man who thinks everyone is a good friend or a very good friend. He doesn’t see the storm clouds nor the fraud.
I hope that this blog will provide an occasion for you to speak with one or both, and any other politically connected people who may be open to some serious listening and thinking again about the fate of public education.