Peter Greene reports that Bill Bennett went to Campbell Brown’s new site “The 74” to defend the Common Core standards and to chastise Republican governors who are withdrawing their support, especially Chris Christie. Of course, Christie pulled a fast one by dropping the standards but keeping PARCC, which is aligned with CCSS.
Fortunately, Jeb Bush is still aggressively standing up for CCSS.
But Greene shows that Bennett really doesn’t understand how the standards were developed or the conditions of their adoption. He doesn’t know that most states adopted them before they were finished. He just thinks they are awesome.
He doesn’t know that the standards were not internationally benchmarked, he just knows that they are supposed to be “hard,” and that is a very good thing. He says that the public wants “high standards,” but the polls he cites never mention the term “Common Core.”
He thinks that states can improve upon the standards but does not know that they were copyrighted and cannot be changed one bit, other than to add more to them. The CCSS came down from some mountain like stones with writing on them. And no one can revise them. But Bill Bennett doesn’t know that.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
William Bennet is like a lot of high profile backers of the Common Core who signed on to them before they were finished or have been smitten with the press about them, but never bothered to read them or consider their implications. He may also be liking the CCSS because he helped launch K-12, Inc. online learning and thinks that the CCSS is a nice way to brand or re-brand that program.
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America is a wonderful melting pot experiment. Unlike many countries we embrace diversity, children with disabilities, and children who are intellectually challenged. Many countries institutionalize children with physical or intellectual challenges. Many countries enslave children who are poor in sweatshops. We believe every human being deserves the right to opportunities and a fair humane education. Raising the bar so high denies our children that need special consideration a fair and humane education. We should never adopt international standards exclusively because we never want to mirror the lack of compassion displayed by other nations toward their economically deprived or developmentally delayed children. If only America knew how little mercy is given to children who have either intellectual or physical defects around the globe they would think twice before adopting or trying to replicate their robotic standards. I really wish more Americans would travel so they could see how lucky they are. Until then the con artists will have their way with us.
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Yes, Roxanne, this is exactly what I am always trying to get across to people; but you said it so much better than I have done.
Also, the original purpose of public education here was to produce well-informed citizens in a democratic republic– something not exactly appreciated across the globe.
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From Peter’s article:
“. . . it seems unlikely that the Core tests are even measuring what they claim to intend to measure.”
NO!, not “it seems unlikely” but “it is impossible” because at the heart of those “standards” are so many epistemological and ontological fallacies, falsehoods, and errors that the concept is COMPLETELY CONCEPTUALLY INVALID rendering any work done with them to be COMPLETELY INVALID.
The tests “measure” NOTHING! The psychometricians and standardized test supporters claims notwithstanding, the teaching and learning process involves so many variables (billions at the minimum) over long periods of time and in many different circumstances that talk of “measuring” even a minute part of it is ludicrous and risible on the face of it.
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To understand those fallacies, falsehoods and errors please read and comprehend Noel Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted 1997 treatise on educational standards “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.
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There is a difference between not knowing and selectively choosing what you can plausibly deny or picking and choosing your facts to support a moneyed viewpoint.
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Bennett’s claim that standards are “working” turns out to mean that they are “closing the honesty gap,” which in turn means not that students are learning more or achieving more, but that more of them are being reported by their states as below-proficient. Closing this particular “gap” just means getting state test results that better mirror NAEP results. It has nothing to do with anyone’s definition of raising academic achievement.
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I used to think Bill Bennett was the worst sec’y. of ed. (no–title doesn’t deserve caps.) in U.S, history (of course, the worst is Arne Duncan). Bill’s the runner-up. IMO, he speaks nonsense, &–like she-who-shall-not-be-named-but-ran-the-D.C.-schools-into-the-ground–whatever he says needs to be ignored…because he is ignorant. I will never forget when–as acting sec’y. of ed.–he came to Chicago, pointed his finger (for his photo-op), & yelled, “Chicago has the WORST public schools in the nation!” Then–he left. Wouldn’t you think that he might have stuck around, stating the obvious–“Yes, there is trouble here, but w/in my means–&, as it is my job–I will help to improve the school system. I will meet with the CTU, CPS Board and the mayor to come up with a viable plan, so that the children of Chicago receive the education they so richly deserve, and that the Chicago taxpayers pay for.” But…no. And then he rides off into the sunset, probably collecting a handsome pension & lifetime health insurance/benefits, yet gambles the monetary portion away. So, he edits a book about–all things!–morals & ethics! And makes even MORE money (even though–again, IMO–one could say that the majority of these morality tales were published by someone else, somewhere, many years before {specifically, Aesop’s fables}–so, perhaps, a form of plagarism? A colleague of mine & I were aghast that a good friend of ours–also a teacher–had actually purchased Bennett’s book, & was reading it to her students! Aargh!)
Having said all that, he’s the second worst, because, while he didn’t help, he hasn’t absolutely nearly single-handedly destroyed public education in the U.S.
Bill Bennett=Big, Bloviated (creds to Linda for great adjective!) Blowhard.
Ignore him.
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Oh–& I love the part about B2 “chastising” Christie (whom I also have an endearing nickname for–BFF–&, no, it doesn’t stand for “Best Friends Forever;” I will refrain from being more descriptive, because we don’t trash talk–rightly so–in Diane’s living room, & you readers are all pretty smart, & can figure out anything!)
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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