Our blog poet, who signs as SomeDam Poet, contributed these words of wisdom:
Hail Arne
Full of Gates
The Core is with thee
Mes-sed art thou among Reformers
And mes-sed is the fruit of thy room, RTTT
Our Coleman
Who aren’t an educator
Hollow be they claim
Thy King-dom come,
Thy will be dumb,
In NY as it is in Washington
Spare us this Core our daily bore,
and forgive us our testpasses,
as we forgive those who testpass in charters ;
and lead us not into DAM nation,
but deliver us from Common Core.
Amen
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Beyond wonderful! SomeDam Poet needs to write a book!
LikeLike
Debasing race! How weak the tests
That judge a fool like me.
I once was smart, like others blessed,
But now can’t count to three.
LikeLike
Fred, I might have to steal this.
LikeLike
My pleasure, Reading Ex.
Note: I should have put a capital R in “race.”
Fred
LikeLike
Love it! The movement is very lucky to have him or her.
LikeLike
Wonderful. He should work also on our country rid of thee and star spangled banner. Maybe enough cleverness for a calendar fund raiser for network for public schools!! Who will organize the pictures?? Robin??
Sent from my iPhone
>
LikeLike
Amen (had to say it).
LikeLike
You’re some ham, Some Damn!
GREAT spoof . . . .
Without meaning to denigrate Leonard Bernstein, I propose the following warped notion that Diane and Obama are dialoguing with each other, as Diane tries to warn Obama about Arne Duncan, and Obama resists here advice with his own irrational rationales.
I fully credit all the writers of West Side Story for their original, brilliant verse and song.
All set to “A Boy Like That” with some mean spirited anti-reformer humor modifying the lines:
RAVITCH:
A man like that who’d kill your teacher,
Forget that man and find another,
One of your own kind,
Stick to your own kind!
A man like that will give you test prep,
You’ll get no VAM, no, not tomorrow,
One of your own kind,
Stick to your own kind!
A man who tests cannot love,
A man who measures has no heart.
And he’s the man who takes our jobs
And bores the kids.
Very smart, Obama, very smart!
A man like that wants one thing only,
And when he’s done, he’ll get his charter.
He’ll test prep your class;
He test prepped mine.
Just wait and see,
Just wait, Obama,
Just wait and see!
OBAMA:
Oh no, Ms. Ravitch, no,
Ms. Ravitch, no!
It isn’t true, not for me,
It’s true for you, not for me.
I hear your words
And in my head
I know they’re smart,
But my heart, Ms. Ravitch,
But my heart
Knows they’re wrong
And my pockets
are too strong,
For I belong
To him alone, to money alone.
One thing I know:
I am his,
I don’t care how dumb he is.
I don’t know why it’s so,
I don’t want to know.
RAVITCH:
A man like that who’d take your classroom,
Forget that man and join a union,
One of your own kind,
Stick with your own mind!
A man like that will score your teachers,
They’ll lose their jobs, replaced by preachers
One of your own kind,
Stick to your own kind!
A-P-P-R cannot love,
A-P-P-R has no heart.
And it’s the thing that takes our jobs
so kids can fail.
Very smart, Obama, very smart!
A man like that wants one thing only,
And when he’s done, the kids are lonely.
He’ll measure your class;
He test prepped mine.
Just wait and see,
Just wait, Obama,
Just wait and see!
OBAMA:
Oh no, Ms. Ravitch, no,
You should know better!
You were in school – or so you said.
You should know better . . .
I have Mr. Duncan, and he’s all that I have.
Right or wrong, what else can I do?
I love Arne; I’m hooked,
And everything he took
I take, too.
I have a goal, and it’s all that I need,
Right or wrong, and Arne needs me, too.
I love him, we’re one;
There’s nothing to be done,
Not a thing I can do
But privatize, privatize forever,
Be with Arne now, tomorrow
And all of my life!
OBAMA:
When rich folk rule so strong,
There is no right or wrong,
Your charters are your life . . .
LikeLike
thank you, Robert Rendo! A great burst of creativity!
LikeLike
Readers can laugh at me or with me. It does not matter. This dark age of plutocracy warrants come kind of laughter once in a while to keep our spirits high and our will fortified.
LikeLike
Would like to commission Some DAM poet to write the bios of the deformers.
‘Hollow be they claim’ really resonates.
Not sure if ‘they’ is a typo or in urban vernacular.
LikeLike
this poem is awesome…I spread all over RI’s kingdom come!
LikeLike
Crowned:
Poet Laureate.
LikeLike
I was asked by my EA President and the Superintendent of IL HS Township Dist. 214 to review SmarterBalance, ACT, SAT, and PARCC. The following is a portion of my review:
“In terms of text complexity, ACT, SAT, and PARCC all use excessively high level text. PARCC is by far the worst assessment for many reasons, some of them including the use of multiple passages between which comparisons and contrasts are made; finite detail-oriented questions; and multi-step cognitive analysis. Yet, the ACT disseminated last March resembled PARCC in reading and mathematics, with the exception of multiple passage comparison/contrast. If the agenda of both ACT and SAT is to become more like PARCC, then one, in essence, wouldn’t be any better than another.
I’m still going through the SAT materials, so I’m not able to make any conclusions about this assessment yet. I don’t see anything strikingly different in SmarterBalance, other than the listening portion of this assessment. Like PARCC, it contains multi-passage comparison/contrast, but at least the text used in these comparisons is shorter. Text is still excessively high. One significant difference ACT has over other assessments is the use of the following scaffolding: http://www.act.org/standard/planact/english/index.html This format is easier for teachers to work with, and it helps them target individual skills on which to focus in different level courses and grade levels.
There is no research I have come across that supports the use of archaic vocabulary used in primary source documents such as the Declaration of Independence to “level the playing field” in terms of comprehension. In fact, research supports the opposite. The single most important component of reading comprehension is background knowledge. Even when students cannot understand vocabulary terms used in a reading passage, they can still glean meaning from text using context to compensate for words they don’t understand.
Using archaic vocabulary only favors high achieving, high socio-economic students who have the fortitude and patience to weed through confusing, complex, and unfamiliar text. To understand this from the students’ point of view, I have to ask myself, how intelligent would I appear if I were assessed using text written in Spanish? I know some Spanish, but I’m not fluent in it, and such an assessment certainly wouldn’t appropriately or adequately assess my ability to compare, contrast, synthesize, apply, etc., information for purpose of extracting meaning.
Not only do these assessments not assess what they claim to assess, but I’m also convinced, based on brain research, they are actually harmful to students. The brain only has so much neural support. If the brain is trained through repetition to narrow this neural support to a specific region of the brain, then neural activity will supply less support, or perhaps no longer support, other very important areas of the brain, specifically those areas allowing for the ability to think conceptually and creatively.
Ray Charles was born with sight, but lost his sight early on in his childhood. Once he lost his sight, his senses of hearing and touch became more acute. This happened because neural activity once supporting sight was redirected to support other senses – hearing and touch. Without sight, there was no need for neural activity in this region of the brain, so neurons travelled to other areas that did need support. Fortunately, genius for Ray Charles evolved through his auditory modality in the form of musical, artistic expression.
It is exceedingly concerning that our assessment practices could likely be obstructing the natural development of human thought processes, and my heartfelt message is that this isn’t a question of what test is better or worse – this is an issue of morality and calls for careful consideration as to what we as educators are doing to our students in our effort to neatly package their performance into statistical boxes that are misleading, at best, and that lie, at worst. We are using quantitative assessment to evaluate qualitative data – it simply cannot be done. We, as mature adults, are far more advanced than what our cognitive abilities indicated as adolescents.
Unfortunately, government is dictating educational practice, but perhaps it’s time to evaluate the government’s ability to determine what sound educational practice is. The original intent behind the use of standardized assessment was a noble one, but it has spun out of control, and current research suggests it may actually be detrimental to student learning and damaging to the neurology of the brain.
My best advice is to “take the path less traveled by;” Robert Frost claims it “made all the difference.”
I’ve always believed students were the educators top priority, even if this means making very difficult decisions with which many may disagree. Funding is not a priority if it comes at the expense of our students’ well-being. They are in our care, and we, as adults and as educators, are supposed to know and do what is “educationally” sound for them.
We make mistakes, we learn from them, and then we adjust accordingly. We aren’t perfect, but when there is strong evidence indicating our assessment practices are very likely damaging to the natural development of neural activity in the human brain, we should stop what we are doing until this evidence is analyzed through appropriate research. My bet is this could be as simple as speaking with doctors specializing in the neurology of the brain.”
LikeLike
You make some excellent points. As a former ESL teacher, I watched my students climb over many hurdles to function in an English setting. The use of archaic language in reading selections serves no purpose other than to ensure their status at the bottom of the pile. In truth ELLS should not be tested at this level for five to seven years, and instruction would have include “archaic language.” Why would we want to waste instructional time on archaic language? There are too many other important items to learn instead.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Somedam Poet, Thanks for the laugh! That’s hilarious! Best wishes, –Andy
LikeLike
genius
LikeLike
‘Love these smart poems!
“In jest, there is truth.”
William Shakespeare, King Lear
LikeLike
like….
LikeLike
Thanks to all for the words of encouragement.
But much of the credit (for this and other stuff I have written here) belongs to those who wrote the posts/comments that were the inspiration.
In this case, “NY Teacher” suggested that I recite Hail Arnes and our Colemans as penance for my poetic “sins”. Ha ha ha ha!
BTW, I have compiled many of the poems I have written here into “A DAMthology of Deform” — a pdf that can be read and/or downloaded from my (Google) website. Just click on SomeDAM Poet above.
LikeLike
Simply the best.
LikeLike