Neil McClusky of the libertarian CAT Institute blames advocates of Common Core for the public’s confusion about them.
They say it is not a curriculum, but others admit it is a curriculum.
They say it contains specific content that all children should know, but simultaneously say it has no specific content.
They say it was written by teachers. They say it was written by governors (who knew they had the expertise or time?) They say 45 states voluntarily endorsed the standards (before they were finished!). They say the federal government had no role in Common Core (and fail to mention that states were not eligible for billions of Race to the Top dollars unless they pledged to adopt college-and-career-ready standards, of which there was only one choice.
Of course the public is confused. They (we) have been fed a steady diet of lies about the origin, valdity, and efficacy of Common Core.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Did you note this letter to the NY Times Editor? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/opinion/ways-to-measure-student-progress.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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I Can’t Believe It’s Not A Curriculum
What’s confusing about that?
It’s no different than any other advertising jingle engineered to deceive the public about it’s commercial intent.
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All you need to do is real Neal McClusky’s post to see that it is Mr. McClusky and Cato that are confused, not CCSS supporters.
He says, for instance, “If they [the “common core tests”] ask about global warming or sex education, those topics essentially become Core content.” Really? Do the tests actually ask those questions? And if some test somewhere does ask those questions, does that make those topics part of the standards?”
With political opponents of the standards making assertions like that, is it a surprise that the public is confused?
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No.
That part caught my attention to. I thought I had wondered onto a tea party party with that. But if it takes that kind of illogic to help counteract and destroy the CCSS, I say let em have at it.
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Sorry, Duane, but I disagree. This is precisely one of the gigantic flaws in the overall opposition to the CCSS: the notion that it’s okay to tell lies or misrepresent the reality of aspects of the Common Core because the cause of opposing it is just. And similar sophistry goes on with proponents of the Common Core. And people like me just shake their heads and wonder how supposedly educated people can be so blatantly full of crap.
The false attacks on the entirety of the CCSS-Math undermines badly the legitimacy of many critics, in my eyes and those of other knowledgeable mathematics teachers and educators. Similarly, it becomes hard to take seriously some critics of the literacy standards when they rely on hysterical claims of pornography, Islamist propaganda/”brain-washing,” and similar drivel as grounds for wholesale rejection of the Common Core.
I know Bill Duncan is a staunch supporter of CCSSI, but I think he would acknowledge that there are grounds for reasonable conversations about specifics.
Claiming that everything about Common Core is invalid and must be rejected is a losing argument. Even if Common Core and the concomitant exams are rejected, it won’t be a victory for education, just another example of time wasted that could have been employed more productively for kids.
I’ve nearly given up expecting to have REASONABLE, nuanced conversations with people about Common Core, be the discussion about math, literacy, or assessment. I’m not blaming the critics for starting the problems. But I do blame them to the extent that they knowingly lie or simply spread baloney that they’ve not bothered to vet carefully before sharing it with others. There could be a major spin-off of Snopes.com dedicated to separating truth from falsehood about Common Core coming from both supporters and critics. If there were a living in it, I’d consider taking it up myself. But to do it free at this juncture is a fool’s errand: the accompanying madness demands fair compensation and hazardous duty pay.
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I agree, Michael’s comments are exactly why I can’t jump on the anti-CCSS bandwagon.
My child is in 3rd grade and so far, I think the math standards are a huge improvement over how I was taught math, Sometimes I see someone on the web claiming they have a STEM degree, etc state how the math being taught is all wrong, but I suspect they never studied how to teach math concepts before they become second nature.
For example, a women was ranting because there was an assignment for dividing 90/18 and the task was to draw 18 circles and put dots in each circle until there was a total of 90. Now of course, that would be silly for someone who had a clear understanding of multiplication and division, but for a child just being introduced to division, what is wrong with that exercise? For all we know, that could have been an exercise prior to the CCSS.
I also think people aren’t open to learning new methods once they mastered one way to do something. I was guilty of that until I took a step back and now I enjoy learning with my child. Lattice multiplication is awesome! 🙂
As far as the ELA content, my fear with joining forces with everyone who is against the CCSS, is there is a contingent of people who seem to have a goal of censoring content and I have a big problem with that.
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“Confusion”
Confusion’s a feature,
Not a bug
Spread by a creature
Under rug
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It’s up to us
to step on the rug
to squash the bug
to end confusion
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There is nothing confusing about the CCSS and the accompanying tests. They are COMPLETELY INVALID as proven by Noel Wilson in his never refuted nor rebutted treatise “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.
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
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I think anyone outside of professional education circles (including the kids who have to take it) will rightfully and rationally consider this not ONE but TWO tests:
“The PARCC assessment at each grade is a single test, delivered in two parts. States and districts set their own schedules, but generally the performance-based component will be given over several days at about the three-quarter mark of the school year. It captures critical-thinking, reasoning and application skills through extended tasks such as reading an excerpt from a book and writing about it.
The end-of-year component will be given in late spring. It consists of innovative, short-answer questions and items to measure concepts and skills and is administered shortly before the end of the school year. Each component is only part of the test.”
I don’t have a whole lot of hope for how honestly and directly the results of this testing will be presented, considering they started with this “one test, two components” dodge.
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All education policy seems rather convoluted due to me, due to the many elements that need to be addressed within each policy. Common Core seems beyond controversial, it perhaps invokes the most frustration for teachers. Not only are teachers expected to “groom” students for standardized exams, but now teachers have restrain their creativity, passions, and perspectives when it comes to how they teach their class and what specifically is taught. I understand that certain things NEED to be taught, however how can we determine one singular set of standards when the nation we live in has so many cultural and financial variances? According to some in the world of education, schools during the era of assimilation in the early 1900’s were considered common schools, and were a tool for assimilation. The “common” core seems to have a similar vibe. What happened to individualism and ingenuity? Seems nonexistent within the Common Core.
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*convoluted to me (not due to me, typo!)
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“They say the federal government had no role in Common Core (and fail to mention that states were not eligible for billions of Race to the Top dollars unless they pledged to adopt college-and-career-ready standards, of which there was only one choice. ”
State leaders lose credibility with me when they make this claim. They have a responsibility to think for themselves. This idea that they are “coerced” into adopting each and every policy or program that comes down the pike because of RttT dollars is just nonsense.
I’m sure a lot of them regret some of the decisions they made. I’m also sure some of the RttT mandates didn’t even cover the cost of adopting the mandate. That’s not “coercion”, it’s stupidity.
State leaders made these decisions. They were “coerced” into nothing.
This notion that state leaders are helpless little lambs who can’t do a cost-benefit analysis when offered federal money doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence in “local control”, either. If they are this easily “coerced” or “bribed” maybe they can’t run public schools after all.
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and to add to the confusion today, in The Ny Times
“The Common Core standards, a set of challenging learning goals designed to better prepare students for college, were developed by a coalition of states.”
Now there is LIE one, as to who developed it.
“But they became closely tied to President Obama in the public mind as his administration offered money to states that adopted the standards, which conservatives portrayed as a stealth federal takeover of schools.”
HUH?
NOW HERE COMES THE BIG LIE: “Tests that gauge how well students are learning the new material have become part of the way many states evaluate their teachers. This makes the tests a target for teachers’ unions, a bulwark of the left.”
Sigh… how do we ever get the public to know the truth when the media is purchased by them!
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/
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That there is an argument about this question strikes me as absurd. The CCSS contain MANY curriculum entailments. As E.D. Hirsch, Jr. pointed out on this blog a few months ago, the “CCSS for mathematics are a curriculum outline,” and there are many, many specific curriculum requirements in the CCSS for ELA (e.g., words from Greek myths in grade 4, the functions of gerunds in grade 8, and foundational documents in American history and government in grades 11 and 12–I’ve pulled these at random; these are but three of the hundreds of curricular entailments of the CCSS for ELA).
And any complete curriculum in mathematics or ELA must align with the hundreds of curriculum entailments of the CCSS, even though, in ELA, these were not rationally sequenced and often deal with minor matters while leaving major matters out altogether. (One could, in fact, drive whole curricula through the lacunae in the CCSS for ELA.)
Try planning a complete curriculum while meeting all the CCSS requirements, and you will see how dramatically the CCSS delimit the design space. Every K-12 math and ELA textbook planner and author in the country knows this all too well. And there is the rub. This sort of dramatic prior restraint on innovation in mathematics and ELA curricula is a serious problem that is almost entirely unremarked.
Consider the set of all possible K-12 mathematics and ELA curricula. Then consider the subset containing curricula that are fully aligned with the CCSS. The latter is a tiny, tiny portion of the former, and much that is wonderful will be outside the subset, including much not yet imagined.
That’s tragic.
Kurt Vonnegut imagined, in his short story “Harrison Bergeron,” a future in which smart people are forced to wear headphones that blast noise into their ears every few minutes in order to reduce their ability to think to the common level. Planning a curriculum under these conditions of prior restraint on the possibilities is something like that.
In the meanwhile, we must do the best we can, working under those restraints.
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