Mercedes Schneider, no fan of the Common Core standards, here reviews a new proposal for Common Core accountability, this one funded by the Hewlett Foundation. We are supposed to believe that the ideas are new, but almost everyone involved was a key player in the creation of the standards or the federally-funded CC tests.
Schneider says that what is needed is not more accountability for standards that have never been reviewed, revised, or piloted, but accountability for a dozen years of testing post-NCLB.
Why no piloting for CCSS? She writes:
Piloting was needed for CCSS, and it never happened. Instead, overly eager governors and state superintendents signed on for an as-of-then, not-yet-created CCSS. No wise caution. Just, “let’s do it!”
That word “urgency” was continuously thrown around, and it makes an appearance in the current, Hewlett-funded report. No time to pilot a finished CCSS product. Simply declare that CCSS was “based on research” and push for implementation.
This is how fools operate.
America has been hearing since 1983 that Our Education System Places Our Nation at Risk. I was 16 years old then. I am now 47.
America is not facing impending collapse.
We do have time to test the likes of CCSS before rushing in.
She identifies where accountability is needed most, and that is for programs that have been tried and obviously failed:
How about an accountability report on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its strategic placement on a life support that enables former-basketball-playing US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to hold states hostage to the federal whim?
The Hewlett-funded report notes that between 2000 and 2012, PISA scores have “declined.” Those are chiefly the NCLB years and beyond, with the continued “test-driven reform” focus. It is the test-driven focus that could use a hefty helping of “accountability.”
And let us not forget the NCLB-instituted push for privatization of public education via charters, vouchers, and online “education.” An accountability study on the effects of “market-driven,” under-regulated “reform” upon the quality of American education would prove useful.
There is also the very real push to erase teaching as a profession and replace it with temporary teachers hailing from the amply-funded and -connected teacher temp agency, Teach for America (TFA). A nationwide accountability study on the effects of the teacher revolving door exacerbated by TFA would be a long-overdue first of its kind.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If “America faces collapse”, it will be because of the oligarchs and, their accomplices in the media and government.
A worthy goal for the hewlitt foundation would be to seek an investigation into the tax rip-off of foundations with 301(c)(3) status and secondly, to work to return America to the land of promise, that it was during the first 100 years of its existence, when the top 1% controlled only 7-10% of income.
Thank you, Linda. You make sense.
One of the more bizarre parts of the story in the report’s assertion that “US performance has declined in math, reading,and science, both absolutely and in relation to other countries. In fact, there was no statistically significant change whatsoever, in either math or reading. I suppose an elementary understanding of statistics is not required to write a Hewlett Fund report.
One of the minor, but bizarre parts is the assertion that US PISA scores have declined absolutely since 2000. In fact, there is no statistically significant change whatsoever in US students’ PISA scores in either math or reading since 2000. Perhaps an elementary knowledge of statistics is not required to make grand assertions about what “the studies” show.The scores are at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_6.asp
Commented on Mercedes’ blog to her statement:
“There is also the very real push to erase teaching as a profession and replace it with temporary teachers hailing from the amply-funded and -connected teacher temp agency, Teach for America (TFA). A nationwide accountability study on the effects of the teacher revolving door exacerbated by TFA would be a long-overdue first of its kind.”
This very real push is indeed happening now. At the LDOE, with the latest reorg, the Talent Office has shifted much of its former tasks over to another Office. Their focus is now on “reforming” teacher and leader prep. I suspect where they are now is waiting for ALEC to compose the laws for the next legislative session. This is a clear pattern- backwards design from the next legislative session to get it all set up. Start with the pretend “Focus Group” sessions that are happening now. Do plenty of behind the scenes work talking to legislators. Roll out the teacher evaluation results that “show” that the more successful districts rate their teachers harder, etc.
I suspect this is going on all over the country, since none of the reformers seem to have an original idea in their heads. It’s all the master plan from the financiers, which has proven to be a very successful model so far.
A lot of behind the scenes work going on with strategic public announcements. I’d bet if someone tracks this nationally, it is a pattern being repeated in every state. It will go as planned and when we teachers and citizens wake up during the next legislative session, it is going to be too late to stop this next train wreck. Colleges of education will be decimated and everybody and their brother will become certified to teach via those wonderful alternate certification programs (for-profit providers).
When you create this much churn, no one can keep track of anything and that’s not coincidental. Watch for the Teach Louisiana website to either come down or change drastically so the public cannot tell who got what certification from where.
Along with the public release of reports showing “better districts rate their teachers harder” and the release of district letter grades should come data showing the percentage of TFAs and alternatively certified “teachers” in each district in Louisiana.
What can be done to stop the destruction of colleges of education and letting more poorly trained folks stand in front of our children barking commands? I suspect not much. Our side (the caring, intelligent, rational one) just does not have the funds that the profiteers do. Heaven help our children and our society.
How about holding Congress accountable for authorizing a law (NCLB) that is IMPOSSIBLE to comply with. No one. No way. No matter how hard we try. No matter how desperately we want to be law abiding schools. A law that punishes public service institutions and their public servants for failing to abide by a federal law that no one can obey. This cant be constitutional. Probably the only law in US history that every single entity under its jurisdiction must violate due to the inherent nature of said law.
This should be taken to the Supreme Court.
“Piloting a Crash Course”
We don’t need no stinking pilots
We don’t need no plane
Common Core is lovely violets
And PARCC is just the same
So am I read this post correctly, that Diane is quoting Schneider approvingly, saying Darling-Hammond and Wilhoit are “fools,” an opinion offered, as Schneider seems to say in her post, without reading the report she is writing about?
Is there some point at which this debate moves beyond rhetoric to the real issues facing American education?
Hi, Bill. Just spoke at the No Common Core Maine forum in York, Maine. NH and Mass were represented. Met a NH legislator named Pitre. He’s willing to work against CC.
Yes, Mercedes, I was going to come over and meet you but, in the end, it was just too nice a day.
Rep. Pitre is a long-term legislator and member of his local school board who does indeed oppose the common core. He is also a strong supporter of charter and vouchers, voted to repeal public kindergarten, put a moratorium on school building aid, roll back support for students with disabilities, eliminate the fundamental right of NH children to an adequate education, lower the school dropout age, eliminate compulsory school attendance, and to allow a teacher to be fired by a school board at any time, without cause.
In fact, if you’re still here and are free to get a bite, I’ll come over.
Pitre heard my position on charters and other corporate reform issues, as well.
Just finished dinner in South Berwick. On the way back to North Berwick for the night.
Ok, another time.
I’m just sayin’ that, in NH anyway, opposition to CCSS is driven by those who share Rep. Pitre’s views.
Same story in La. But he did stay for the entire forum, which included candid discussion about charters, TFA, and grading teachers using test scores.
Mercedes –
You were terrific at today’s event, and your passion as a teacher for your students was certainly on view in the afternoon session. But my, what strange bedfellows! The Pioneer Institute has been trying to take over or kill off the Boston Public Schools for the past 25 years, yet I found my self – to my amazement – agreeing with much of what Jaime Gass had to say about Common Core.
Thanks for making the trip up north!
Corporate education “reform” is part of a much bigger picture, a picture of corporate tyranny in this country, and the issues are about ideology, power and money. So, to me, the oddest thing about these strange bedfellows, both the leaders and their followers (who tend to be affiliated with the Tea Party) is how their primary concerns focus on ideology and power, such as the federal government’s control over states, while corporate influences and profiteering are insignificant to them.
More than anything else, it’s money, BIG money, that has been driving people in both parties to legislate policies and ignore existing laws to the benefit of their corporate sponsors. (As former bank regulator Bill Black noted on Moyers, never before have individual banking executives been seen as too big to jail.)
Thus, I really don’t get how our strange bedfellows can be so blind to the monetary issues, particularly when these policies are to the benefit of a very small privileged group which does not typically include them. A part of me is really hoping that more of them soon face hard times and become members of the suffering, dwindling middle class, so they too can experience what the rest of us have been going through as a result of corporate tyranny in this country.
If they still believe in the beneficence of corporate leaders, they should be reminded of a sales document introduced in the trial of Charles Keating, who was jailed for his role in the Savings and Loan scandal in the 80s (and who also bought politicians), which advised salesmen, “always remember the weak, meek and ignorant are always good targets.”
The real issue is the CCSS, and the fact that these standards are being defended by people who are trying to put the best face on the CCSS because they have become magnets for criticism. They should to be criticized.
They have been hardwired into federal and state policies. They were written by people who have no credibility as educators much less front-line teachers. The meme of college and career readiness is a fraud. It is based on outdated, cherry-picked, and sloppy scholarship. The standards are not as advertised– ” “clearer, fewer, and internationally benchmarked.”
I regret that Linda Darling-Hammond is defending the CCSS, and not only in this report.
In an EdWeek letter to the editor (October 15, p.24) she says “the CCSS offer a guide not a straightjacket.”
She asserts that: “the standards can be refined to be clearer, fewer, and more aligned with students’ developmental needs, especially in the early grades.”
Sorry to say, that statement foes not comport with these facts. The CCSS are copyrighted. In addition, states signed on to a very explicit “verbatim” use, with some iron-fist rhetoric: These standards are not a menu. You cannot pick and choose. Your state may add 15% more standards, ELA, and math respectively, but you must segregate those from the CCSS. These are not requests. I have the references, as do others who have followed this project, tracked who funded it, know the intersections with the testing consortia and their requests for funds to write curricula for the tests–straight violation of federal law… and the rest. Whatever her good intentions may have been, she is supporting a deeply flawed initiative.
Dr. Darling-Hammond says she does not approve of the “rigid pacing guides that some states are inappropriately applying to the standards.” But those guides are a direct result of parsing the standards (including parts a-e), combined with looking at the length of a typical school year, combined with the inflexible grade level structure, to say nothing of the flawed premise that you can backmap or reverse engineer standards for college and careers clear back to Kindergarten. That is the mind of a systems engineer, a corporate trainer, not an educator.
My spreadsheet entries for the CCSS stopped short of high school courses in math. I have 1,620 standards, charted by grade and by topic. The proliferation of standards and inflexibility in their use is a direct result from the mind-set of the writers of the standards–they are intolerant the principal of reviewing content and skills as students move from one grade to another.
The inflexibility is even more clear if you read the publisher’s standards for teaching materials. The first level of triage for reviewers is to exclude from any further review if the content and skills for a given grade are contaminated with content and skills in a prior grade or introduced in a higher grade level.
The standards are presented in rigid grade-level sequences, not grade-spans. Every year that you work with these standards is built on the assumption that students have acquired the proficiencies from prior grades, all kids learn at the same rates–or else.
The first cohort of students who can meet the criteria for “college and career-readiness” will graduate in 2027. NOt even the LAbor Department projects labor markets that far out. Requirements for entering Harvard are not the same as for a community college. Preparation for a career as a lawyer is not the same as preparing for a career music.
If students survive the program and if public schools are still shackled to this agenda, the nation will have managed to reinvent a version of the 3 Rs, while marginalizing learning in the arts, sciences, health and physical education, social studies, any foreign language unless these studies can be reduced to ELA and math.
I have not met Dr. Darling-Hammond. I know a little about her work as a scholar and leader in the educational research community. I think she has not recently spent enough time looking at the work of teachers in multiple settings or considing how the CCSS have been determining the broader landscape of educational policies–a landscape increasingly based on an ethos of comply–or else.
Dr. Darling-Hammond ends her EdWeek defense of the CCSS with these claims: “Curricular resources should be available for teachers to select, adapt, try out, and refine together within and across their schools. Performance assessments should be robust, developed with and scored by teachers, and provide opportunities for students to demonstrate learning in many ways.”
The gap between these theoretical possibilities and what teachers are being required to do by federal, state, and district officials is huge..and that is putting it mildly and kindly and briefly.
There can be progress toward a productive education discussion, when facts are not distorted, beginning with recognition that the overall American public education system contributed significantly to GDP growth, even while the 0.1% took all of the gains and the financial sector drug down the economy.
We can all agree students in problem schools, plagued by poverty, would have better performance, if their parents had sustainable wages and financial security, both of which, contribute to family well-being.
There is no valid dispute, of the evidence, that a vibrant middle class creates demand for products, which leads to job growth. The 0.1%’s inability to spend fast enough, to fuel an economy, if addressed, would be welcome news for a workforce that has proven that they are productive, even when they are subjected to an unfair international playing field and receive, little of the reward, that they earned. On the supply side, financial security for the 99%, makes them more likely to start new businesses. We can hope, that the middle class entrepreneur, given opportunity, won’t focus on planned-obsolescent worthless, hardware/software, for children nor, on opaque, thieving financial products. We can hope that instead, they,as the new capitalists, build an economic legacy for future generations, one that contributes to, rather than preys on America’s citizens.
Listening to the cockamamie education ideas of men, who rigged a Wall Street system, that weakened the nation, socially and economically, is beyond ridiculous. The fact that they hide their price-gouging manipulations from the public, by paying off politicians and for-hire researchers, who lack integrity, is not a reason to follow them. It merely provides evidence of their sociopathic tendencies.
I’m sure enhancements can be made to an already superb school system. Just as the Democratic House rejected the bogus remedy of austerity, and saved the U.S. from total catastrophe, the U.S. can fix the fundamental problem of excessive income inequity and then make education adjustments, building on a stronger platform for success.
If tech moguls, with decades of seasoning, knew how to structure a situation so that vulnerable people could advance, it would be evident in their companies. But, estimates show they employ 4 times fewer the number of minorities, than one would expect, based on population.
The real issue is the CCSS, and the fact that these standards are being defended by people who are trying to put the best face on the CCSS because they have become magnets for criticism. They should to be criticized.
The CCSS have been hardwired into federal and state policies. They were written by people who have no credibility as educators much less front-line teachers. The meme of college and career readiness is a fraud. It is based on outdated, cherry-picked, and sloppy scholarship. The standards are not as advertised– ” “clearer, fewer, and internationally benchmarked.”
I regret that Linda Darling-Hammond is defending the CCSS, and not only in this report.
In an EdWeek letter to the editor (October 15, p.24) she says “the CCSS offer a guide not a straightjacket.”
She asserts that: “the standards can be refined to be clearer, fewer, and more aligned with students’ developmental needs, especially in the early grades.”
Sorry to say, that statement foes not comport with these facts. The CCSS are copyrighted. In addition, states signed on to a very explicit “verbatim” use and with some iron-fist rhetoric: These standards are not a menu. You cannot pick and choose. Your state may add 15% more standards, ELA, and math respectively, but you must segregate those standards from the CCSS. These statements from David Coleman et al were not requests. I have the references, as do others like Mercedes Schneider, who have followed this project, tracked who funded it, know the intersections with the testing consortia and their requests for funds to write curricula for the tests–straight violation of federal law… and the rest. Whatever her good intentions may have been, Dr. Darling-Hammond is supporting a deeply flawed initiative.
Dr. Darling-Hammond says she does not approve of the “rigid pacing guides that some states are inappropriately applying to the standards.” But those guides are a direct result of parsing the standards (including parts a-e), combined with looking at the length of a typical school year, combined with the inflexible grade level structure, to say nothing of the flawed premise that you can backmap or reverse engineer standards for college and careers clear back to Kindergarten. That is the mind of a systems engineer, a corporate trainer, not an educator. In theory, teachers can develop lessons and units incorporating multiple standards. In practice they must “cover’ every standard for their job-assignment.
My spreadsheet entries for the CCSS stopped short of high school courses in math. I have 1,620 standards charted by grade and by topic. The proliferation of standards and inflexibility in their use is a direct result from the mind-set of the writers of the standards–they are intolerant the principle of teaching with some review of content and skills as students move from one grade to another.
The inflexibility is even more clear if you read the publisher’s standards for teaching materials. The first level of triage for reviewers who judge the materials is this: Exclude the materials from any further review if the content and skills for a given grade are contaminated with content and skills in a prior grade or if the materials refer to content and skills introduced in a higher grade level.
The standards are presented in rigid grade-level sequences, not grade-spans. The underlying assumption is that students must have acquired the proficiencies from prior grades, all kids learn at the same rates–or else.
The first cohort of students who are supposed to meet the criteria for “college and career-readiness” will graduate in 2027. Not even the Labor Department projects labor markets that far out. Requirements for entering Harvard are not the same as for a community college. Preparation for a career as a lawyer is not the same as preparing for a career music. The whole architecture for the CCSS is not just flawed; it reflects a pathetic vision of what education is for. How about civic competence and engagement? How about some understanding of what life offers and requires beyond going to college and getting a job?
If students survive the program and if public schools are still shackled to this agenda, the nation will have managed to reinvent a version of the 3 Rs, while marginalizing learning in the arts, sciences, health and physical education, social studies, any foreign language unless these studies can be reduced to enhanced skills in ELA and math.
I have not met Dr. Darling-Hammond. I know a little about her work as a scholar and leader in the educational research community. I think she has not recently spent enough time looking at the work of teachers in multiple settings or considering how the CCSS have been determining the broader landscape of educational policies–a landscape increasingly based on an ethos of comply–or else.
Dr. Darling-Hammond ends her EdWeek defense of the CCSS with these claims: “Curricular resources should be available for teachers to select, adapt, try out, and refine together within and across their schools. Performance assessments should be robust, developed with and scored by teachers, and provide opportunities for students to demonstrate learning in many ways.”
The gap between these theoretical possibilities and what teachers are being required to do by federal, state, and district officials is huge..and that is putting it mildly and kindly and briefly.
“Common Core of Faults”
Holding kids accountable
For screw-ups by adults
The American Way
I have to say
A Common Core of faults
“Common Core of Faults”
Holding kids accountable
For screw-ups by adults
The American Way
To make kids pay
For Common Core of faults
Yes, the idea of “urgency” is continually used, playing on the natural concerns of parents for their children. I’m surprised the NYS Education Department hasn’t come up with a color coded warning system (Red, Redder and Burning in Hell) to ramp up the public’s fears (and help their oligarch bosses accrue even more power).
As late at December 2013 last year, NYS Education Chief John B. King was still saying that the Common Core was not being implemented quickly enough….despite the fact that the whole operation was about to come off the rails….with parents, teachers and state lawmakers up in arms. Even his own boss, the craven Andrew Cuomo, was gearing up to throw the clueless King under the screeching wheels..
Here’s the quote from the Buffalo Daily News, from less than one year ago!
“Right now, there is a student on a community college campus in this region who’s thinking about dropping out when that student goes home for the holidays because that student is taking remedial courses and sees his graduation receding into the distance,” King said. “So the worry in education isn’t about moving too fast; my main worry is that we’re moving too slow.”
http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/education/king-rejects-argument-that-common-core-standards-are-too-difficult-20131212
Yes, as this blog entry so aptly puts it: “This is how fools operate”.
And, this fool is still in charge of our state’s entire public education system? How can this be?
Note to John B. King: you are being USED. How about fighting to make college more affordable for that community college student you say you’re so concerned about?
The AP reported six days ago that the Montana Secretary of State filed a complaint against a research project “paid for with a $250,000 (Hewlett) grant…”. The complaint alleges Stanford University and Dartmouth college researchers broke 4 laws by sending 100,000 election mailers to voters that appeared to be from the state.
501(c)(3)’s, receiving tax advantages as charities?
.