In an opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times–a very important place to make one’s views known–David Kirp attempts to explain to the lay public why there is so much pushback against the Common Core standards.
First is the “simple” (one might say “simplistic”) assumption that having common national standards will level the playing fields for all students. As Kirp notes, it is hard to see how that makes sense when some states and districts spend so much more than others; he might as well have added, and some districts have a higher concentration than others of students who are learning English and have severe disabilities.
Second, the Obama administration’s demand for more and more high-stakes testing built heavy opposition to the standards. High-stakes testing, says Kirp, is very unpopular.
He adds:
The Obama administration has only itself to blame. Most Democrats expected that equity would be the top education priority, with more money going to the poorest states, better teacher recruitment, more useful training and closer attention to the needs of the surging population of immigrant kids. Instead, the administration has emphasized high-stakes “accountability” and market-driven reforms. The Education Department has invested more than $370 million to develop the new standards and exams in math, reading and writing.
Kirp does not object to the standards. He suggests that if they had been introduced along with a moratorium on high-stakes testing, there would have been less opposition. He is right about that. The collapse of student scores that follows Common Core testing has not helped the standards or the tests win friends. Their advocates would have us believe that 70% of our kids are dumb, and their schools have been lying to them. But neither parents nor teachers believe the test results have any merit, and when you learn that both PARCC and Smarter Balanced Tests were aligned with the NAEP proficient level, which is beyond the reach of most students and has been ever since the NAEP achievement levels were set in the 1980s. If you set a passing point that you know most kids cannot meet, you are setting them up for unwarranted “failure.”
If we go back to his first point–what difference will national standards make when there is so much inequitable funding–one is left to wonder what difference the Common Core standards would make even if there were a moratorium on high-stakes testing?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One big lie embedded in Kitp’a piece is that teachers love the creativity and critical thinking in CCSS. Wow. Let’s deconstruct that: where is the actual evidence of critical thinking or creativity? I assure you that now more than ever we are teaching to tests. And not loving it. Additionally, the standards were created with high stakes testing as a given. There is no separating the standards from the testing. This NY Times is more of the same, more it’s such a shame that these great standards weren’t implemented well…I do not buy it and I am living with the collateral damage.
Agree!
He also repeats the tired line about the standards don’t change curriclum when they do. I’m glad to see so many thoughtful comments to the piece. Maybe the editors and columnists will read a few. They are very uninformed on this issue.
I also agree with the collateral damage comment. My daughter experienced a curriclum change in elementary school, then in middle school, and I am expecting another big change in high school. Each time, she wastes time relearning what she already learned and misses learning basic concepts that fell through with each change. It’s very difficult to tutor on the side and figure out what’s missing. It’s certainly not improving the education for children currently in the system.
I agree. While I’m happy to see Kirp criticizing the tests, he reveals his Ivory Tower ignorance of k-12 realities when he implies that memorization is the status quo and that CC will replace it with superior methods Memorization has been unfashionable since Dewey –alas. Would that my 7th graders had memorized something –e.g. the cardinal directions –in their previous six years in the system! Memorization is actually one of the key foundations of higher order thinking. Doing brain training exercises a la CC and Lumosity does not a good education make. Humans need knowledge. In their heads –not just on their tablets. By sidelining the transmission of knowledge, CC continues our tradition of breeding ignorant graduates. CC has never demonstrated its ability to make good on its promises to create critical and creative thinkers. It’s snake oil; too bad Kirp buys it. It’s clear to me that Kirp has not read –or at least not understood –E.D. Hirsch’s Knowledge Deficit or The Making of Americans. I really wonder about the Berkeley Graduate School of Education.
“Memorization has been unfashionable since Dewey . . . ”
Memorization be unfashionable but it sure can be effective means of learning.
Gee Whiz… Duane. Some of th etchings that ‘teachers’ say here, make me want to cry.
Anyone who studied Bloom’s taxonomy of critical thinking knows what analysis demands… PRIOR KNOWLEDGE.
And anyone who took pedagogy, and studied the brain, knows that the brains stores knowledge for the long term, by repetition and review.
Dewey , shmooey. Dewey never meant that memorization was not a component of learning… he just meant it was not the end all… although today, the testing mania has made the regurgitation of facts the benchmark.
The first week of school, I asked the kids in my seventh grade, who would like to get 100% on Spanish and Math tests. All hands flew up. I explained that to memorize the phone number of that cute classmate, it would take 7 repetitions.
I explained that if they sat in class and listened, and took notes, and then went home reviewed the notes, and re-wrote them, they were well on their way to making information part of long term memory. “Wide_awakeness” as my colleague named this process of paying attention was rewarded. But the rewards I offered are another chapter in my saga.
I was lucky. As I wrote to Lloyd, in an earlier post today, this was a very special moment in the four decades where I taught in many schools, and experienced all the problems that I read about here.
memorization may be not be be. Ay, AY AY
One of the commenters from the NYT article summed this up nicely, and I paraphrase:
The human brain is designed to think. Students do not need to be taught how to think as it is a hardwired feature. They just need something to think about. We need to teach them content so that the full power of their brains can be put to use.
The CCSS and its associated assessment (SBAC) pushes students to try and mold themselves into an expected response that is NOT based solely on reading skills. I took the 8th grade SBAC sample test along with my colleagues. There were many answer choices that were vague where I felt that the only way to “infer” or choose the “best” answer was to understand the mindset of the test creator. A particular question about Edward Abbey and his path to becoming an artist stuck out at me. I felt drawn to many of the possible choices based on my own understanding of when and how a journey begins. I can only imagine how my students who all have wildly different life experiences and cultural understandings might have answered the question! Apparently, if I had just read the text more closely the answer would have popped out at me. But upon reflection and a closer reading I found that no amount of closer reading would make one choice the best.
This is just one example from one test. There are many others in my opinion. Not only are kids with different life experiences punished for thinking differently, but even cleverness isn’t rewarded. I can remember so many times asking a student why they wrote what they did and answered a question with a particular response and the curtains of their thinking are revealed and I discover that they were MORE clever than the test maker (myself). A classroom teacher, when class sizes are manageable, will always be better at assessing student skills and understanding because they have a better chance at creating a shared understanding and working with each other.
That line got to me too. But one of the top comments suggests that teachers did indeed have a lot of input in the Common Core. Yet, it now seems to be written in stone because teachers can’t even suggest changes. Any new program should be considered a living document meaning it should be able to undergo changes.
This piece tried to capture both sides of the problem, when in fact it was another love note to the Core. But I am still glad it made a point to talk about Duncan’s lack of understanding by implementing evaluations and testing instead of just letting it first take hold.
There was not a single current teacher on the “work groups” that refined the standards: https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/those-24-common-core-2009-work-group-members/
The CC standards don’t “seem to be written in stone” – they were “cast in concrete” from the get go. The immutable and permanent nature of the CC standards was conceived as a feature, not a bug. Exactly what no one seeking to improve public education would ever agree to.
Diane, you say “NAEP proficient level, which is beyond the reach of most students”. Obviously, most students don’t reach that level, but it is accurate to say that it is beyond the reach of most students? What is that based on?
Do you think most students are just not capable of doing performing at this level? Or could they with more time? Better preparation?
Very curious about this.
NAEP is a standardized test. Standardized tests are engineered to produce a bell curve. Questions that everyone answers correctly or that no one answers correctly during field testing are removed from the final iteration. The remaining questions vary across the spectrum from those that only a few answer correctly to those that most answer correctly. The questions that only a few answer correctly result in placement at the top of the bell curve; in this case, “proficient” on NEAP.
Christine Langhoff: thank you for reiterating what needs to be repeated even on this blog. The standardized tests under discussion are not casual products with unpredictable results but are carefully designed and produced so as to deliver the results that customers pay for.
Let me draw out one point you make about those tests.
One of their most basic features is a “score spread.” That’s a feature, not a bug. While psychometricians wince when they hear the following, for the vast majority we look at it as producing “winners” and “losers.”
Thank you for your comments.
😎
@Krazy TA-
Just meeting our hostess’ standard:
“A site to discuss better education for all”
The problem is that the cut score is very high for the NAEP proficient level. No matter what the cut score, students will still perform in a bell shaped curve. Here’s an analogy. Every years thousands of students take the SAT. What if it was decided that being “college ready” meant that students had to score 650 or higher even though most students typically score more than a hundred points below that, in the 500-550 range. Suddenly lots of college eligible students, who by the way can do college work, are out in the cold! That is what is happening with the Common Core. Only what will be said is that the teachers and schools of these students are inadequate, and it will set the stage for the privatizers to gobble up these students, even though what they are offering is no better and is most likely worse. The Common Core is not about improving anything; it is about destroying public education.
NAEP is a criterion referenced test, not a norm referenced one. So, while there is a bell curve of results, they are meant to be comparable year over year.
Diane always refers to proficiency (meeting the proficient cut score) as being “beyond the reach of most students”. I’d like to know why she believes that to be true (other than the fact that most students don’t achieve it). What this gets to is whether we’re challenging students enough.
Christine, there is an “advanced” level above proficient, so it is not “the top of the bell curve”.
Retired teacher, at least in my state, “the privatizers” (presumably you mean charter schools) have to use the same curriculum and take the same tests as district schools, so I’m not sure how your evil plan would work.
John,
NAEP proficient is a very high level of achievement. “Advanced” is akin to getting an A+. Proficient is a solid A.
Both Common Core tests have agreed to use NAEP proficient as their standard. Most students will “fail” to meet the standard.
The reason that most students will never reach NAEP proficient is that in the past 23 years, most kids have not met that standard. Only in Massachusetts have 50% of students reached NAEP profient. On average, nationally, 70% do not reach the standard.
What will we do if 70% of our kids don’t graduate high school?
So reading Diane’s response below, if 70% of students are not passing, would you choose to believe that most of their teachers are not teaching well enough? Or would you consider the huge social issues that we have in the US, in terms of a poverty rate for kids not seen in any other first world country, as affecting these children? What about ESL, SPED? Lack of Head Start and rich interactions at early ages with caregivers who speak and read to them?
I honestly don’t understand: could you please break down logically why you are so convinced that teachers and low expectations are responsible for 70% of students not achieving an A level of proficiency on something…
Given that we are responsible for mass failure, are we also solely responsible for success? Did my student who is a Duke scholar succeed only because of me for the year that she had me, or was it her excellent supportive parents, her home rich in arts and reading materials, and parents who valued education? Was it her own excellent follow through and inner drive?
No, it was apparently just me lol.
Thanks for the response, Diane. However, it really boils down to students will fail because students have always failed, which I don’t think answers the question of whether students are capable of doing the work. I’m not saying that they are, I’m just asking.
Titleonetexasteacher, I’m not “so convinced” of anything, I’m just asking a question. I’m sure there are ELL and SPED students who could not be “proficient”. What about average students? Could they be? If not, what keeps them from being proficient? Intelligence? Willingness to work hard? Lack of time to cover the material?
I’m just looking for a basis for the statement that “most students are not capable” of being proficient on NAEP as opposed to “most students will not be”. If anything, why are we “so convinced” that we are doing the best that we can? I’ve heard many teachers express surprise at how well their students are doing with much more challenging reading material (as a result of CCSS) than what they had previously.
If everyone is above average, then pretty soon no one is. Only works in Lake Wobegon (which is a mythical place out on the edge of the prairie).
John, in what world do we define “A-A+” work as proficient and everything else as failure? Do we really want kids to decide they are failures because they don’t get “A”s? It used to be that a “C” was considered acceptable although nothing to write home about. Is there some place we leave room for individual differences? Is there something magical about grades? If so, why don’t we continue to give grades outside of school? “You were only a “C” dad this morning; therefore, you failed at daddyhood. Your driving on the way to work was a little scary. Don’t you know what blinkers are for?” “F”! Take your license away!
I think they made a mistake insisting that the CC standards are not the CC tests. While that is true, it won’t matter to anyone outside practitioners. Unless you’re trying to score debate points against parents, parents are concerned about the tests because they believe (rightly! ) that the test scores will be used by various states in various ways to make high stakes decisions regarding their kids and their schools. Making this legalistic argument that the standards are NOT the tests that come along with the standards is just infuriating.
We got it. The standards are not the tests. Score one debate point to the Common Core promotion team. Now can we talk about the tests that come along with the standards and are completely incorporated with the standards? Because that’s the lived reality of the Common Core standards.and will be the reality for tens of millions of students. While it is certainly important that the tests will be used to measure and rank teachers, the tests will ALSO be used by ed reformers in our states to measure and rank our kids. Duncan patting “moms” on the head and dismissing everything as “fear” is just nonsense. They’re WAY ahead of him. They know what comes next. We all lived thru NCLB. Does he? Do any of them?
Are we to believe that at some point in the future states will put in supports for the new standards, or is this yet another “sink or swim!” market-based initiative?
When does that happen? Can I get it in writing? I know the Obama Administration funded some test-taking infrastructure. That’s the tests. What about the standards?
Inequitable funding is the tip of the iceberg.
Among my students are children who are really, really hungry, wear clothes that are in tatters and have chaotic home lives. Family members are serving time. People they know have been gunned down on the streets. Drugs are omnipresent. It is amazing that they concentrate to the extent they do.
A delay in high stakes testing will postpone the inevitable. I would rather see all the money poured into the Common Core be used to address the inequities in funding inherent in aid formulas. That way the money goes directly into student instruction, not unnecessary and invalid testing.
While we all agree the article could be a starting point for more dialogue about the intersection of standards and testing, once again it’s a starting point that left out the most important voices in the debate. The only mention of veteran educators’ opinions is that 76% of us apparently favor national standards. I look forward to seeing more comments here from real teachers and parents, and hope those informed perspectives might get to share a little of the national spotlight in this debate.
I was a little freaked out by his unsubstantiated statement that most teachers support Common Core. I know a lot of teachers, and i do not know a single one who supports Common Core. I know some who have struggled to deal with it, to help kids pass. I know many with young kids, who hate it vehemently. But I have never heard a working teacher say a good word about it.
I work with many teachers every day. Most teachers that I know like some aspects of the CC standards, as do I.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to talk about pedagogy in any discussion regarding the Common Core Standards.
“Unfortunately, it is not possible to talk about pedagogy in any discussion regarding the Common Core Standards.”
Quite correct Betsy!
That’s because there is no pedagogy in the CCSS.
I forget, if I ever knew, where it is that you are a teacher Duane?
Betsy,
I’ve been teaching high school Spanish for twenty years now (my first dabblings in teaching being a substitute English teacher in a girl’s Catholic school for a couple of months in Trujillo, Peru and later on I taught a semester of an adult ed upholstery class, and all along with coaching a number of youth sports teams during high school on through college and before coaching my own three kids.) after having worked in the business world until I was 39. My experiences in that realm were wide and varied. I have been certified to be an administrator K12 but couldn’t and can’t be a rah rah man for all the educational malpractices that have been and are being instituted.)
Where? The Show Me State.
Thanks for the reply Duane.
An analyses of the article David Kirp entitled, “Rage Against the Common Core” in NYT
The report begins with a false claim – that the nation’s governors and education commissioners drove a huge effort to devise “world-class standards,” now known as the Common Core.
The world-class standards are the goals of the UN and the Gates Foundation. Gates paid David Coleman to write the Standards and then presented them to the governors to sign on to by bribing them with millions of dollars. Mercedes Schneider Explains: Who Paid for the Common Core Standards. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/bill-gates-common-core_b_4079447.html
There is no misunderstanding about the standards and testing as David Kirp maintained,
“The misconception that standards and testing are identical has become widespread.”
David Kirp is only preparing the ground work for naive readers to accept the standards as being a good thing.
Kirp makes the ridiculous statement, that Chicago ‘s Byrd-Bennett didn’t want her students to take the tests because the tests were “unproven.” How can you prove a test?! The validity can be tested but not the test itself. Byrd-Bennett evidently knows that the CC and its high stakes testing is causing a new syndrome – the Common Core Syndrome. Byrd-Bennett evidently does not want her students submitted to a harmful practice.
Kirp stated that “Parents are driven by opinions…”
He should have said informed parents are driven by facts.
Kirp states, “The numbers and consequences of these tests have driven public opinion over the edge,” Isn’t it enough to say that students are “terrified by these tests…” One of the reasons for invalidation of the tests.
The biggest misconception the report is trying to promulgate: “Many teachers like the standards, because they invite creativity in the classroom — instead of memorization, the Common Core emphasizes critical thinking and problem-solving. …”
That is precisely the opposite of what the CC is doing. Show me in the standards where it encourages drama, illustrating, discussion, developing the imagination, comparing text to students’ lives, to other text as a response to a text. I am not talking about writing with similar structure or theme. The writer has no idea what CC is demanding of the students when he writes that teachers like CC “because they invite creativity in the classroom – instead of memorization…”
CC has no understanding of the emergent reader and overloads the children with unrelated items to memorize. Instead of building on the known – connecting the curriculum to the children- it expects the the teachers to teach objectives in isolation; e.g., teaching sight words and the alphabet names and sounds. As the Interactive Constructivist approach maintains all new knowledge must be related to the learner and his/her background and experiences. There is no effort to connect the alphabet to the learners such as using the students names to alphabetize and using the children’s own words to develop the concepts of print. Furthermore, when teaching reading, we need to encourage children to question, predict, visualize/imagine, and make connections while reading. The more children can related to the topic the more they can predict and in turn can comprehend/construct meaning. Graphic organizers are used to help children visualize their thinking. All this is missing with CC’s rote, regurgitation approach, closed reading approach.
The focus of Common Core is far too narrow – just utilizing the higher order thinking skills of analysis and comparing information is incomplete. Analysis doesn’t necessarily include comprehension; that is a different higher order thinking skill. Too much time is wasted on informational text with the primary child. Teachers need to read narratives daily to the children. It is the narratives that develop the skill of reading. With the narratives, sight vocabulary is constantly being reinforced; rich vocabulary is developed- not just proper nouns; varied sentences and narrative structure are reinforced but above all the children are learning what it means to be human. Narratives also lend themselves to the development of all the higher order thinking skills instead of just a few developed by CC with the expository text.
CC has its goal set on amassing great mounds of facts/ information and making text more challenging. CC does not spend time on applying the information. The pursuit of information is only one higher order thinking skill and it is stressed over all others including application and imagination. The goal of education should not be to turn our students into a walking encyclopedias; we have the Internet for instant information.
Dewey maintained, “Information severed from thoughtful action is dead, a mind-crushing load.” Furthermore, to push the reader into reading material on a frustration level can cause a learning disability – not help them.
David Kirp stated that CC “emphasis critical thinking skills and problem-solving.” Bloom’s Taxonomy of critical thinking skills date back to 1956.
CC expects emergent readers to memorize the alphabet and sight words in isolation and then use that information to blend non sense words and memorizing sight words into a meaningful sentence. Sight words have no meaning in isolation. Only captivating stories will develop the habit of reading.
“A Gallup poll found that while 76 percent of teachers favored nationwide academic standards for reading, writing and math…” He is quoting people who are teachers in name only. Educators with a philosophical, psychological, and method courses behind them know very well that the “cookie cutter” approach can not work. Each region has its own needs plus every child has his own unique personal needs, interests, talents, abilities, skills, and background knowledge.
You can use as guide the standards but can not mandate them. Opening paragraph of the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts, states, “One of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school. By the time they complete the core, students must be able to read and comprehend independently and proficiently the kinds of complex texts commonly found in college and careers. …”
On every level there are problems with non fiction material when the text and assignments are politically slanted. There complaints would fill books.
In the following paragraph David Kirp appears to deliberately try to circumvent the truth or should I say deliberately gave false information. “The Education Department has invested more than $370 million to develop the new standards and exams in math, reading and writing….”
He gives readers the impression that the Ed. Dept. developed the standards or even paid someone to write them. As stated before, Bill Gates paid David Coleman to writes the Common Core. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/bill-gates-common-core_b_4079447.html
He states, “It’s no simple task to figure out what schools ought to teach and how best to teach it —” For sure it is next to impossible if you do not anchor the standards in research; if they are not guided by what experts in the field have to say about the purpose of education and how it is achieved.
“Turning around the great gray battleship of American public education is even harder.”
Why turn it around. NYS Learning Standards are far superior to the CC standards . NYS learning standards are researched based anchored in the interactive constructive approach to learning.
Lastly David Kirp states, “It requires creating new course materials,” What a waste of money!
Kirp speaks of the need of “devising and field-testing new exams and, because these tests are designed to be taken online, closing the digital divide. It means retraining teachers, reorienting classrooms and explaining to anxious parents why these changes are worthwhile.” There is no need for all those tests. To repeat for the umpteenth time: Finland has one standardized test during the students educational career. Experts maintain that children age eight and younger should not be given a standardized test. Furthermore, making the students take the tests on-line just pads the pockets of the tech companies.
“Had the public schools been given breathing room, with a moratorium on high-stakes testing that prominent educators urged, resistance to the Common Core would most likely have been less fierce. But in states where the opposition is passionate and powerful, it will take a herculean effort to get the standards back on track.”
Common Core is destroying our educational system and the chance for at Risk Children to succeed. The more the parents become informed about the truth of the CC, the louder and more adamant the opposition will become.
I was truly alarmed by Kirp’s piece; it seemed to me he regurgitated a lot of propaganda and wasn’t at all familiar with the standards or their dangerous effects once applied. As a parent of a super-smart NY 6th grader, I’ve examined every single assignment, test and quiz brought home over the last 3 years since Core implementation, and I am panicking over what’s being taught and how. My kid scored a 97% on both CCSS tests just because he is an overachiever…but that is completely meaningless. He tells me his mind is rotting under Common Core and he doesn’t want to go to ELA anymore, and that’s the true problem that no one talks about. The joy and adventure in learning is gone for him and the other smart kids in his school. (“Why can’t I offer my own ideas, Mom?”) Only when you scrutinize the classroom material, lessons, homework and tests/quizzes do you really understand why these standards (that’s right, the standards, not just the CCSS test) are so dangerous to our best and brightest young minds.
Wake up, Kirp– look at the kids–not just the struggling kids! Ask the teachers! Under the Core standards, originality is forbidden, independent thought and discussion are penalized, exercise of imagination and personal ideas will fail you (if you are even allowed to express them at all!), thinking outside of the box doesn’t exist, debate is absent. Critical thinking is a total joke under CCSS–only David Coleman’s own vision of “critical thinking” is acceptable in ELA.
I’m not a teacher, but I am a lawyer and my education has been the most valuable and treasured part of my life. Maybe if more parents who have actually examined the school material would speak up, things would change.
It’s not just the smart kids that hate this. My very average 16-year-old son HATES ELA. Since CC was introduced, all he has done is grammar and non-fiction articles. He loves literature and misses being able to read it. He’s a debater, so the section on argumentative essays is easier for him, but because it’s simplified argumentation (MUCH easier than what one uses in debate), the teacher just has the two debaters in her class doing homework while she introduces argumentative writing to everyone else, so he’s bored. He loves Shakespeare and literature in general and reads at a very high level, but he’s got really low grades in ELA because of the focus on grammar, which stymies him due to a learning disability.
Good points, Diane!
Also, as I said to you in my letter, I took issue with this statement: “Many teachers like the standards, because they invite creativity in the classroom — instead of memorization, the Common Core emphasizes critical thinking and problem-solving. ”
The truth is the opposite… the CC inhibits critical thinking as Bloom describes it: comparison and contrast (analysis). This kind of thinking disappears when the mandated readings in this core curricula, does not include the most important literature that teachers have used forever to describe the human condition throughout history. When such reading is deleted, and replaced with information texts as the kind that common core promotes, students read for information and then answer questions.
This is NOT critical thinking, but education is a complex subject and the public depends on the ‘experts’ to explain this. As you pointed out in an earlier post, only 9% of the ‘pundits’ interviewed to explain complicated issues, are educators.
I want to add that Dr Kirp, who is an education academic is not a classroom teacher who not only knows Blooms taxonomy of critical thinking, but applies it, day in and day out… except when the mandate is for common core crap!
The New York Times opinion piece by David Kirp on the Common Core State Standards required little research and it omitted key ideas including the undeniable reality that the standards. and tests based on them, are the intended national curriculum…not from my lips (though I agree) but from Andrew Porter among others. Porter is a former president of the American Educational Research Association. See Porter, A.; McMaken , J., Hwang, J., & Yang, R. (2011). Common core standards: The new U.S. intended curriculum. Educational Researcher, 40(3). 103-116. DOI: 10.3102/0013189X11405038.
Promoters of the CCSS insist on misrepresenting the standards as “neutral and non-prescriptive” in relation to curriculum and instruction for many reasons.
First, the specter of having a national curriculum with prescribed teaching methods would be too hard to sell. Just deny that the CCSS have any implications for curriculum and how to teach. Lies aren’t noticed.
Second, USDE needed protection from charges that it was funding a prescribed approach to curriculum and specific teaching methods–that is illegal. Federal law prohibits that. So, forget the law. USDE paid for curricula to make the PARCC and the SBCA tests possible. That is illegal. No inspectors general are investigating.
Third, the CCSS must to be used verbatim. They are not a pick and choose menu. You can add 15% more standards (in ELA and math respectively) but these add-ons have to be segregated from the CCSS so they do not “contaminate” the two versions of an on-line tests, designed by PARCC and SBAC to produce scores that can be made comparable. Comparable means the two tests functional much like a “form A” and “form B in most standardized tests. So if it is true that the cut scores for PARCC and SBAC are comparable and both are using cut scores based on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, we may ask a lot of questions. One is whether the NAEP tests in ELA and math will be kept as an independent measure. or morph to accommodate the CCSS, or simply be cut from the budget taking down the whole program. The PARCC and SBAC tests are supposed to replace statewide tests for NCLB accountability. Just like that. No phase-in? Policy blunders everywhere.
Fourth, shortly after the launch of the CCSS, the writers of the CCSS set up publishing criteria for curriculum and instructional materials. The criteria have morphed into a rating system for judging materials (2014) put out by Student Achievement Partners (SFP) along with the National Governor’s Association, and one its operations known as Achieve, and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). These criteria are likely to favor Pearson products. Why? The CCSSO enjoys handsome funding and perks from Pearson-sponsored international “summit“ conferences, co-hosted by Pearson and the CCSSO–Singapore, Finland, London, etc. After these Pearson-friendly conferences, Pearson issues a Report and Policy Recommendations for Education Leaders. So, if you wondered how the CCSS and Pearson are connected, that is one of multiple connections.
So, back to the newly elaborated criteria for judging whether publishers are generating curriculum resources that are “CCSS compliant.” A ready-to-use 392-page document for raters is filled with iron-first rules and rating criteria. Any claim that the CCSS are disconnected from how to teach and what teach is down the tubes. Hot air. Here is why.
This new rating system for CCSS-compliant materials begins with two “non-negotiables”
“Non-Negotiable 1. Freedom from Obstacles to Focus. Materials must reflect the content architecture of the Standards by not assessing the topics named before the grade level where they first appear in the Standards.” Scoring is “Meets or Does Not Meet/Insufficient Evidence.” (No review of content from prior grades is allowed. This criterion is based on the assumption that all students in a given grade have mastered the so-called “learning progressions” in every prior grade. )
“Non-Negotiable 2. Focus and Coherence. To rate Non-Negotiable 2, (do this) first rate metrics 2A–2H. Each of these eight metrics must be rated “Meets” in order for Non-Negotiable 2 to be rated as “Meets” …. “ Materials must “be clearly aimed at helping students meet the Standards as written rather than effectively rewriting the progressions in the Standards.” (p.127). (This is a restatement of the verbatim rule, the CCSS are not a menu, no picking and choosing. The standards are PERFECTED. They are word for word TRUTHS. The “progressions” –what to teach and when– cannot be questioned).
These and all of the other rating criteria for instructional materials are as hard-nosed as the voices of the authors of the CCSS. This 397-page rating kit for every curriculum resource–comprehensive textbook or textbook series; lessons, units and modules; grade or course-level tests; and individual test passages, items and tasks–is available at http://achievethecore.org/page/285/materials-alignment-toolkit. This rating scheme is intended to purge non-complaint materials from the CCSS BRAND, all the way down to specific items and tasks. Amazing.
Although many teachers are already working on the CCSS and selecting resources, there is a challenger to this compulsively detailed 397-page rating system. A press release (Politico, Aug, 19, 2014) announced the creation of a ‘CONSUMER REPORTS’ FOR THE COMMON CORE, a nonprofit outfit with start-up funding of $3 million from the Gates Foundation and the Helmsley Charitable Trust. The launch is being managed by the PR firm, Education First, founded by a person who worked as a marketing expert for the Gates Foundation in promoting the CCSS.
The website for these ratings, EdReports.org, is under construction. Additional start-up funding comes from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. These ratings will put publishers on the defensive (much like the Gates-funded ratings of teacher education). Ratings will be online and invite responses from the publishers. The initial ratings will be offered for widely used K-8 math curricula, including Pearson’s enVision Math, McGraw-Hill’s Everyday Math, Houghton Mifflin’s Go Math.
The CCSS reflect a pitiful vision for American education at the beginning of the 21st century–numeracy and literacy–a version of the 3R’s and marketed as if sufficient for college and career readiness. Substantially paid for by one billionaire, these standards are clearly indifferent to studies of the arts, sciences, and humanities. The authors of these standards view studies in the arts–visual, literary, and performing–as merely “technical subjects.”
The CCSS are indifferent to the civic purposes of education in a democratic society. The promoters of these standards seem to believe that issuing fiats for “verbatim compliance” along with spreading around a lot of cash and perks is enough to gain credibility for a serious flawed and short-sighted agenda for education.
If the New york Times writer had done due-diligence he would have mentioned that these standards are a triumph of marketing over sound thinking about education. The CCSS and its tentacles are functioning as a nationalized system of education relentlessly focused on standards in two subjects. The CCSS set parameters for curricula in these two subjects and distract time and resources from other subjects. The CCSS reflect a studied disregard for the voices of scholars and experienced teachers on the complexities of teaching and learning. Ignorance of these matters has been aggrandized by the funders and promoters of this pathetic program of standardized education.
This is hat the plutocrats and their whores in the USDE desire – a compliant, low-information mass of workers too worried about keeping a roof over their head – an engaged citizenry be damned!
What really makes me sick is that that Helmsley Foundation (the spawn of Leona “Queen of Mean” fame) is dictating education for the masses. After all, she was the one who said “Only little people pay taxes.” Typical billionaire hubris message to the 99 percent – only you pay the taxes, and we decide what you will be allowed to learn.”
During the last Englewood Cliffs Board of Education Meeting I informed the Board during public comment that my son will not be sitting for the PARCC testing (if they are still around) when he reaches third grade. I am quite serious as I feel PARCC and everything behind it is not in the best interest of any student – any grade. Basically it attempts to centralize everything – and this robs the spirit from the classroom. I feel this process it is hurtful to students for several reasons not limited to these:
1. PARCC will be administered on computer rather than paper which places pressure on our youngest of students to learn keyboarding and be exposed to computers even before they have had the experience and develop the proper motor skill to form letters correctly. The computer forms letters perfectly at the push of a button. In the perfect world I would prefer students be on computer much later. Students would benefit by working with real materials rather than inundating classrooms with I-pads and laptops and all the other hardware “sugaring” up the classrooms our youngest occupy. Tight school budgets are spending yet more on hardware just to accommodate the computerized PARCC. It would make much more sense to give just one test on paper.
2. The type of questions I found on PARCC in taking a practice test caused me a huge headache as they were twisted and confusing. I would not subject a young mind to such an assessment. The activities in the classroom should not be centered on what is on this test. This robs the classroom of spontaneity – teaching moments – and valuable digression into areas of interest.
3. Data collection – I will not have 400 points of data collected on my son and held in a database somewhere for unknown future use. More than enough data to inform instruction can be obtained within the school itself. Centralizing this is an invasion of my son’s privacy and disrespectful. I will not have a third party testing company hold his data.
4. Two tests per year that will eventually be used to evaluate the teacher performance is flawed logic. There are way too many variables. In addition, over evaluate and you will have no heart to inspire – no energy to motivate. Yet more tests, in most cases, are also administered for the so called “Student Growth Objectives“.
An educational leader, in my opinion, must be a catalyst – must be the cause of positive excitement about the world – like of the world, real curiosity, knowing of the world! The American poet and philosopher Eli Siegel stated “The purpose of education is to like the world through knowing it“ and I wholeheartedly agree. I hope Mr. Hespe and others will find out more about his philosophy and teaching method.
I believe that we are presently in a situation where teachers are not lifted up – but instead, insulted through SGOs, endless data collection, performance rubrics, and more. A once more collegial relationship is being replaced by a corporate style data collecting and crunching top down management – filling out endless computerized evaluations of teachers digitally warehoused by a centralized and privatized third party company. If more weight were given to supporting and lifting our teachers – more resources given to motivating, exciting, and further educating them – it would, in my opinion, be very wise – as our students, our children, my child, would benefit.
I intend to be a vocal critic / advocate for my son and all his classmates at Englewood Cliffs PTA meetings, Englewood Cliffs BOE meetings and even council meetings. I hope more parents will object to mandating of Common Core / PARCC / teacher over- evaluation, and hope that the state reconsiders how it sees its schools and all its young residents. I believe Dr. Maria Montessori saw children as individuals and respected the differences found in each young mind – this is needed.
Most importantly, in order to have schools be more successful everywhere, the state must work hard to close the financial gap between communities rather than attempting to run all the schools like a big business.
David,
Thanks for your comments to the Board, for your actions, and for posting here.
Opposition to PARCC in Florida began with a test of broadband capacity that many districts failed. The cost to provide adequate broadband in rural areas was viewed as prohibitive. Paper and pencil versions were to be limited to a year. This chink in the armor started the opposition here. When the public realized how many days of PARCC testing were required, it was all over.
The whole New York Times piece struck me as….odd. I mean, it’s nice to see anything in the Times that at least offers some criticism of the Common Core. On the other hand, the comments in this blog expose the misconceptions that were repeated by David Kirp.
What stuck me, though, was the headline: “Rage Against the Common Core.” I know writers have little if anything to do with the headlines so I found it especially interesting that the Times editors must have chosen this one. Sometimes the editors are just looking for something that fits. But a headline does frame a reader’s consideration of everything that comes after it.
I googled “Rage against….” and the number one entry to come up was the famous rock band, “Rage Against the Machine.” Hmm. Lefty, protest rockers.
Then the next hit is the Dylan Thomas line, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light…”
The funny thing is, even though many teachers are mad as hell about the dangerous reforms being inflicted on our kids, I think the arguments against the Common Core are anything but outrageous, “being or having the nature of an outrage”. If anything it is the Common Core itself that is “outrageous” -defined as “grossly offensive to decency or morality.”
David Kirp’s piece seems pretty low-key to me. And, Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider, Bob Shepherd and Chiara, to take just a few examples from this blog, are the epitome of reasoned, sober, intelligent, factual debate. At least that’s how I see it.
The term “rage” wrongly portrays the opponents of the Common Core as being somewhat out of control, furious, violent, uncontrolled…”in a fit”.
But, actually, it’s people like David Coleman who strike me as being in a rage….a seemingly quiet rage. He’s like those psycho killers who suddenly get apprehended and everyone who is interviewed in the neighborhood says, “We never suspected him” and “Who’d of thought something like THAT could happen in such a nice place like THIS?” It’s this passive-aggressive, relax and it will be all over in a minute, sort of rage. Remember Nurse Ratched from “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”? That’s it. That’s what I mean.
The people who have been attacking our public schools with their nutcase ideas are the ones in a rage. It’s NOT the law abiding, hardworking kindergarten teachers I hang around with, that’s for sure!
Here in Illinois, ISBE is requiring us to tie all student IEP goals to whatever grade the student is in. We are told we MUST use grade level standards when writing IEP goals, even if a high school junior is reading at a 2nd-grade level. Illinois is also trying to put lipstick on a pig by relabeling the Common Core Standards. Our Land of Loopholes has rechristened them the Northern Illinois Learning Standards. I think the acronym NILS is quite appropriate.
Requiring us to write inappropriate and standard goals flies in the face of what an Individualized Education Plan should be about. This is cruel and violates the spirit and intent of IDEA.
As part of her insightful comment (above), Laura Chapman makes a critical point that the Common Core standards “are indifferent to the civic purposes of education in a democratic society.”
In fact, the overarching purpose of the Common Core (before it was recently scrubbed from the CCSS website) was that students had to be “fully prepared for the future” so that the country “will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.”
That core premise was utterly false. It’s a myth promulgated by the likes of the U.S Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. Both organizations are avidly promoting the Common Core, and both are notoriously supportive of the supply-side economic policies are responsible for millions of job losses, financial- and mortgage-market meltdowns, and near economic collapse.
In education, many of the big-money foundations –– Gates, Walton, Robertson, Bradley, Dell, and Koret Foundations –– push “market-driven” corporate-style “reforms.” They are supported by the likes of Pearson (the testing behemoth), ETS (think College Board and PSAT, SAT, AP, and AccuPlacer), ACT, Achieve (funded by big business), McGraw-Hill, Houghton-Mifflin and Microsoft. And by big bankers (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan) and hedge-funders. And by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.
These groups have pushed incessantly for corporate and upper-bracket tax cuts and laissez-faire regulatory policies, which caused a huge pile-up of deficits and debt, and led to a shattered economy. The supply-side policies these organizations pushed have led to increases in poverty, millions of lost jobs and houses, a corporate culture that fosters off-shore tax evasion and funds oligarchic ideology, and gross income inequality. They broke the economy. But the perpetrators point the finger of blame at public education. The Chamber says the Common Core standards “are essential to helping the United States remain competitive” in the global economy. The Business Roundtable says that increasing student achievement via the Common Core is vitally important to increasing U.S. competitiveness (the Roundtable even resurrects the “rising tide of mediocrity” myth).
I’ve already pointed out in earlier comments that this is simply untrue. It’s a lie.
The great education historian Lawrence Cremin described it this way in Popular Education and Its Discontents (1990):
“American economic competitiveness… is to a considerable degree a function of monetary, trade, and industrial policy, and of decisions made by the President and Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Departments of the Treasury, Commerce, and Labor. Therefore, to conclude that problems of international competitiveness can be solved by educational reform, especially educational reform defined solely as school reform, is not merely utopian and millennialist, it is at best a foolish and at worst a crass effort to direct attention away from those truly responsible for doing something about competitiveness and to lay the burden instead on the schools. It is a device that has been used repeatedly in the history of American education.” (p. 103)
In his NY Times piece, David Kirp has not-so-indirectly taken the side of Bill Gates and the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. He’s on the wrong side. But then, so are probably most of the “leaders” in public education.
Randi Wiengarten has called the Common Core a “foundation for better schools” that will prepare kids for “success in college, life and careers.” Lily Eskelsen, vice-president of the NEA, said “We believe that this initiative is a critical first step in our nation’s effort to provide every student with a comprehensive, content-rich and complete education.” Byron V. Garrett said the “National PTA enthusiastically supports the adoption and implementation by all states of the Common Core State Standards, which were recently released in final form.”
The National School Boards Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Secondary School Principles, and the American Association of School Administrators issued a joint statement on the Common Core standards that makes clear that public education in the United States is in deeper trouble than many thought. These “leadership” groups’ statement said Common Core “tests are necessary” for “use in teacher and principal evaluation,” though they’d prefer some delays and the inclusion of other “timely data.”
These “leaders” pay attention to what people like Michael Barber say. Barber, as many know, is Pearson’s point man of education “reform.” And Person’s idea of “reform” is little different from that of the ACT and the College Board, or of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.
Barber is a bean counter. He’s a top-down autocratic, described by a prominent British columnist as “a control freak’s control freak.” And make no mistake; Barber is very much in the private education camp. So why is it that so many “leaders” in the public education sector buy into what Barber peddles?
John Goodlad died last month. Goodlad loved public schools and devoted his life to studying them and trying to help make them better. As reported in the LA TImes, “Goodlad described schools where accomplished teachers could lead their peers, where students are not grouped by age, and where the ability to discuss and assess ideas matter more than test scores.” Goodlad observed that the pedagogical structures, practices and policies employed by schools are the means by which they “implicitly teach values.” Goodlad, like John Dewey, understood the ties between public education and democratic governance.
As one admirer put it, John Goodlad believed that educators should be discussing and working on “the relationship between schooling and what it takes to maintain a free society.”
The testing that already exists in public schools and the testing that will come with the Common Core -– not to mention the test packages those sold by the ACT and the College Board –– do not advance democratic citizenship.
Thank you for for insightful comments about the relationship of public education and democracy. In my career I felt a strong need to prepare students for the responsibilities of living in a democratic society. If we are to be stakeholders in democracy, we must prepare future generations to think critically and analyze information while developing a sense of civic of responsibility. A comprehensive education that includes the arts, science and physical education will best prepare students to be productive members of a community. Students need to learn how to be a responsible member of a collective society in which divergent thinking is valued, and there is more than one way to solve a problem.
I appreciate your historical perspective and understanding of the duplicity of large segments of educators in affirming values and products that they should be criticizing with savvy, sound scholarship, ample representation of viewpoints other than those who see little beyond teaching one version of math and ELA as if good-enough or great for this generation. The vision is pathetic, along with the easy go-along-to-get-along path many have taken.
Neither student education nor worker performance will have an impact on the plutocratic schemes to rob people of the rewards of their labor.
The financial sector’s drivel about “competitiveness” fails to account for their responsibility in taking 42% of median Black and Hispanic family net worth, in the preceding 6 years and, 26% of White median family net worth.
Someone needs to inform Kirp of the COMPLETE INVALIDITY of the whole educational standards and standardized testing regime.. I guess no one better than Noel Wilson and his 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
Common Core does not make sense, plain and simple.
Of course it is crap. We know it, and all the conversation here is just evidence of it…what is crucial is that major newspapers and media publish punditry which is clueless about the classroom, because the VOICE OF THE TEACHER, the classroom practitioner, is never in the conversation.
If the doctor in the practice had to follow dictates of the hospital directors that were detrimental to the patients, people would die, and things would change… although my down is a cardiologist and finds it harder and harder to practice in hospitals where the bottom line is money, and the patient care is second.
The oligarchs have won… they run the entire show.
Here is the Moyers piece that explains why nothing works for the people
http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/viewvideo/78516?utm_source=Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=679ed709a0-DC_Activists_Disrupt_Xmas_Shopping&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_44bc741bc4-679ed709a0-80962161&goal=0_44bc741bc4-679ed709a0-80962161
Any understanding of cognitive science informs a misplaced emphasis on intelligence as omitting total cognitive ability. Testing does not solve problems in content or processing.