Chris Christie came up with a clever strategy to deal with the political hot potato called Common Core. He had long been a vocal supporter. But now, anticipating the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, he has turned against them.
But here is the bizarre part. He wants to keep the Common Core-aligned PARCC test. This parent, Sarah Blaine, calls him out for hypocrisy and double-dealing. She points out that if you believe he is really abandoning the Common Core, she has a bridge to sell you. It is not clear whether she is selling the Brooklyn Bridge (which connects Brooklyn and Manhattan) or the George Washington Bridge (which Christie aides closed to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for refusing to endorse Christie).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This synopsis of Sarah Blaine’s piece is a true gem with the bridge analogy!! How about taking it one step further and selling that bridge in Minnesota or all the other bridges in America “about to collapse” that Congress has allowed to go untended structurally over the decades. “LOL” Christie…. NOT… ! How about making students take tests in Chinese but not requiring them to take Chinese language classes… that sounds about in line with Christie’s reasoning skills… let water seek its own level… the public is a lot smarter than this fool.
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“So Christie is “rejecting” Common Core but still requiring kids to take PARCC, a test developed to measure their achievement of the Common Core. ”
Ed reform distilled down to essence- it’s just testing and data collection. Accountability for kids, teachers and schools with no duty of support or responsibility for results from “the adults” in leadership.
Public schools need to get it in writing. Don’t adopt the accountability mandate unless you get the support first. These guys renege on that second half constantly. The first time it’s their fault- the second (and subsequent) times it’s our fault for buying it.
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It must be heart-breaking for the Obama Administration. After they cheered Christie’s whole agenda on union-busting and privatization and demonizing public schools and public school teachers, he abandons them like this!
It’s really a sad tale of betrayal and broken promises, one ed reform “movement” administration to another.
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His kids got into Princeton and Notre Dame without the benefit of the Common Core standards. No PARCC testing either. Maybe its time to go back to the old fashioned Catholic school standards that enabled his children to be so successful.
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His kids got into Princeton and Notre Dame with Catholic school standards.
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“. . . Catholic school standards.”
I’m at a loss. Please explain, point out and/or outline those “Catholic school standards.
TIA!
Duane
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Christie’s children attend(ed) a Catholic school. The standards are probably irrelevant. My guess would be a textbook curriculum, like most pre-CC programs that were not regulated under NCLB either.
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NY Teacher,
I’m still not sure what you mean by a “textbook curriculum, like most pre-CC . . . either”.
Having gone through K-12 Catholic education, I really have no idea what you are hinting at/talking about. Again, please explain. Thanks!
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I think he’s saying that because his kids attend private school and not public that they are not subject to the CCSS. Although many Catholic schools have adopted the Common Core standards, at least in part. I don’t know if the school(s) his kids attend have done so.
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Just remarking that Christie’s kids got into extremely selective universities without Common Core or NCLB test-and-punish pressures found in public schools for the last 14 years.
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Thanks, I missed that aspect the first couple of readings.
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Christie wants to have his cake and eat it too, which, of course, is easy for him to do. With the Common Core he is trying to ride the wave of conservative opinion that is against the CCSS as he anticipates his move for the nomination. He probably wants to continue the PARCC tests in order to have a vehicle to dismantle public schools and unions. He is the worst kind of hypocrite.
It is my hope that continued scrutiny of this tyrant will reveal more fiscal mishandling. Many families in NJ whose homes were destroyed by Sandy have not received their money from the grants that NJ received from the federal government. Christie should be investigated by the attorney general.
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Those Sandy families might take a page from Newark students. They could walk on NJ shore boardwalks w signs.
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Common Core is a toxic issue…from its inception till the present, it fell in line with the privatization movement. Rigorous testing meant to elicit failure, failure meant to fire public school teachers and close public schools, public schools then converted to private charter schools, and private charter schools used to steal money that should have gone to public schools…
…a cyclical system to destroy public education in the United States while making the wealthy more wealthy, and those in power more powerful.
The Race to the Top should be called what it truly is, The Theft of the Public Education and Taxpayer Dollars.
The only thing keeping Common Core around right now is the arm twisting by the billionaires with the money they throw at politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, who have taken the bribes, and the cash that comes with them. Christie and Cuomo have used Common Core in their states not to better public education, but to demonize it and eventually destroy it. Weingarten and Mulgrew have also sold out those who should be represented by them, the public school teachers, and by doing so, they have also committed sin against the children themselves.
What we are witnessing in America is the running from the poison that is Common Core. But it is a running like no other in recent history…we have Cristie running from a common Core, but also running toward it (maintaining the PARCC tests). A man torn by hatred, greed, power, and abuse of it…
While Christie may be one of the first to run from/run to Common Core…their will be others.
A cyclical system that also has governors running in circles. And state “educators” jumping from one state to another to escape the damage they have done.
Should I take more money, or protect the rights of the people? It is obvious where people like Cristie and Cuomo stand in response to this question.
But they are up to their necks in the toxicity and stench of Common Core.
The sad part is that if we had leaders who were guided by moral compasses, they would have never attached their states to the Common Core mess. They would have protected the rights of the people they swore to represent, the 99%, and not just the 1%, and in doing so, serve to protect the United States from predators like Gates, Broad, and the Walton family.
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In other news, Chris Christie denounces the physics of parachutes, calling for their elimination. However stated Christie, “The skydiving requirement for HS graduation will remain in place.”
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And this is a member of the brain trust, a “rock star” of ed reform. These are the people directing public education for every kid in the country. We’re all supposed to be following this clown.
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Not sure if we fell down the rabbit hole or got pushed through the looking glass.
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Good piece about how closely this politician is following the instructions of his donors on public education:
“Several Wall Street billionaires who have invested heavily in the expansion of charter schools contributed more than $200,000 to Democrats in the 2013-14 election cycle, helping Gov. Dannel P. Malloy secure re-election.
The campaign contributors earned their fortunes as hedge fund managers and private equity investors before earning reputations as “education philanthropists.” They have helped bankroll charter school movements throughout the country, spending to influence elections and to support advocacy movements.
Malloy opened this year’s legislative session with a budget proposal that included $4.6 million in funding to open two new privatelymanaged charter schools, and an additional $17 million for new charter school seats in the next two years. Funding for local school districts would have remained flat.”
The same thing happened in Ohio with Kasich. Charters got new funding and half of public schools lost funding, again.
What amazes me is the lengths politicians and their donors will go to destroy labor unions. Labor unions represent such a small portion of US workers, yet even this tiny threat, this small pocket of bargaining power, must be absolutely eliminated. The IDEA, the slight possibility, has to disappear.
They want the whole thing. 99% isn’t enough.
http://www.courant.com/politics/hc-charter-school-campaign-money-20150529-story.html?utm_content=bufferd96b1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#page=1
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This is just the beginning. He will allow the tests to continue, since for now students are held harmless for another year or two–Not sure if teachers are also held harmless. NJ people will have to explain this.
But like Cuomo he will probably find a way to use it against teachers and schools.
But the real hypocrisy is when he says teachers will be involved. He has never had a teacher on any of the committees making the big decisions. He constantly humiliates them.
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His political strategy isn’t dissimilar from Jeb Bush’s.
For those who want to follow the money, there probably isn’t much associated with maintaining CCSS…
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The Cincinnati Enquirer follows suit on protecting the tests: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/05/30/editorial-common-core-tests/28201109/
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Ohio Algebra II teacher (or anyone else who knows), I have a question after reading the newspaper article:
If PARCC is getting 90 minutes shorter, does that mean they are ditching the constructed response portion?? Or does it mean that they are combining the constructed response portion (typically given February-ish) and the multichoice portion down to a single 90 minute test in May?
I ask because it seems really hard to shoehorn into the scope and sequence all the things that you need to do before the Feb test, and the grading must be very expensive for the constructed response.
I also ask because TN’s next-gen test for 2015-2016 is going to be shorter than the original PARCC overall (hence less disruption to daily schedules), but it is keeping the Feb&May design, with constructed response only in Feb.
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Sdm2,
My understanding is that when PARCC drops 90 minutes, it will still take several hours.
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@diane i would have thought that -90 minutes would leave several hrs too, but it wasn’t clear from the Ohio article. It is so hard to know what to expect
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Here’s the news from the folks at PARCC Online …
http://parcconline.org/streamlining-assessment
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This is essentially the path that TN followed also: drop the name “CC” because it appears to imply nationalized control, but after a long delay move toward using the CC-style test. This political pattern of wanting the cake and eating it too is very clear- it should really not suprise anyone at all. When the dust settles, people will reconsider a lot of this stuff many years hence. It will involve much pain and agony in the meantime.
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Chris Christie. His children. Delbarton School.
Go to: http://www.delbarton.org
CCSS? Uh, hard to find. Typical stuff? Click on the link “Featured News” and behold—
1), 5-21-15, re tennis: “Delbarton brought home the state title yesterday with a tough 3-2 victory over Notre Dame. This marks Delbarton’s first Non-Public A State Championship in three years and the program’s 13th overall since 1996.”
2), 5-22-15: “We have 31 Delbarton seniors continuing their sports careers on the next level after graduation. These recruits will be playing nine different sports next year for some of the premier athletics programs in the country.”
3), 5-26-15: “Four competitors won individual awards, and the Delbarton Forensics team won its first Daniel Masterson Jr. Award for Excellence at the National Tournament in Fort Lauderdale, FL.”
Click on the link to “Student Life” for an item dated 5-28-15:
“If riding a bicycle around an academic campus was good enough for Albert Einstein at Princeton, it is good enough for teacher Rich Peterson and his AP Calculus students.”
Actually, Delbarton School has never been awash in CCSS—even during the time that Chris Christie was mandating the measure-and-punish teach-to-the-test CCSS he was mandating for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
But just because he is spouting his political stance du jour doesn’t mean that he has abandoned his foundational Marxist beliefs:
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
Groucho would be so so proud.
😎
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What an impressive curriculum Delbarton offers! If all students had the opportunity to study philosophy, Latin and computer programming, we would have very well rounded, computer literate and articulate members of society. Instead we have students who are accomplished test takers.
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Christie ought to abandon his quest for the presidency. Just what America needs, a blustering, argumentative and obnoxious president. NOT!
Oh, and we don’t need crazy “Booby” Jindal either. We would be the laughing stock of the world.
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Assessing students on a course of study that has been dropped is beyond ridiculous.
Another reason for every parent, teacher, student, and admin to say NO and refuse/opt-out.
I guess the NJ “edu-reformers” have to keep administering the PARCC until the signed contract runs out. This must be what hell is like. The result of making a deal with the devil.
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