Last week, the Washington Post published an editorial in defense of Jeb Bush, Andrew Cuomo, and the Common Core. The editorial scoffed at the idea that the federal government had anything to do with the standards and commended Bush and Cuomo for their sensible support of these state-led standards.
Mercedes just published a book about the Common Core called “The Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?“
I recommend it to the editorial writers at the Washington Post.
They can save some time by reading Mercedes’ advice to them in this post.
The Post asserts that the CCSS were developed by the states and merely “encouraged” by the federal government.
Mercedes patiently explains how the U.S. Department of Education used the lure of bilions of dollars to entice states to adopt common standards and assessments, to agree to evaluate teachers by test scores, to turnaround low-performing schools (firing staff or closing the schools), and to create a longitudinal data base of student information.
These governors were led right into the federal will for state-level education by the promise of federal money. It was just that easy.
The governors traded state autonomy for federal money. And the federal government– US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan backed by President Barack Obama– encouraged them to do so and allowed it to happen….
The Washington Post editorial board assumes that the governors who signed on for Common Core did so for some primary reason greater that the federal dollars doing so would possibly bring into their states. However, any governor who really wanted “higher standards” would surely have insisted on some empirical evidence that the resulting standards were indeed “higher” prior to agreeing to adopt them. Yet this common-sense insistence did not happen.
The promise of federal dollars won.
The near-simultaneous appearance of editorials at the New York Times and the Washington Post in defense of the floundering Common Core tests does make you wonder which important person is making the calls.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gates, Walton, Obama, et al used Common Core to be the mortal blow to our public schools. This year, in addition to having part of our evals being based on test scores, we are being told we must do weekly progress monitoring and keep written parental contact logs. We have been told that the parental contact information must be turned in to admin at the end of the year so that it can be turned into the state.
While progress monitoring and parental contacts are good ideas, it will not be easy to do, especially when the student load is not balanced fairly. Some HS English teachers have 130 students, while others have 60. How do you think evals are going to go for teachers with double the class load and double the data collection?
School “reform” is the lazy politician’s way out of addressing the problems of income inequality, structural racism, regressive taxation and job outsourcing to poverty-wage countries. So much easier for them to blame it all on teachers …. no wonder people are leaving the profession in droves.
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Eleanor, the overwhelming majority of politicians couldn’t care less about income inequality, structural racism, regressive taxation or the outsourcing of jobs. After all, all of things have been worsening under their watch, and as a result of their actions or conscious inaction.
No, they want the money and social engineering capability that comes with their planned hostile takeover of the public schools, on behalf of their patrons, those who fund their campaigns and provide them with the (false) received opinions that underlie their rhetoric and actions.
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“School “reform” is the lazy politician’s way out of addressing the problems of income inequality, structural racism, regressive taxation and job outsourcing to poverty-wage countries.” Privatization is a way for these lazy politicians to abrogate their civic responsibility and duty for the job they chose to do in the name of public service. As voters we need to remind them that they are in office to do their job. We need to pester them and be a thorn in their sides letting them know we are watching. The privatization of prisons or the post office is not the same as public education, a cornerstone of democratic principles. The politicians should be reminded of this daily. The sneaky, undemocratic way they are using test scores and natural disasters to invade communities and turn districts over to corporations must called what it is, racism!
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Amen. It’s also a way to quietly line the pockets of profiteer buddies while claiming to be in the service of children. If politicians truly cared, they’d have a look at Measure of Success’s recommendations: http://windycityteachers.blogspot.com/2015/08/ed-reform-fails-to-cure-youth-disconnect.html
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” The privatization of prisons or the post office is not the same as public education, a cornerstone of democratic principles. ”
“First they came for… .” Don’t fool yourself into thinking that privatization of other public services/responsibilities is less important. Privatization of prisons has driven the rise of the prison population. Staples taking over post office responsibilities with part-time minimum wage jobs is not going to improve mail service. The post office is fighting for its life too. Yes medical care has always problematic but treating it like a business has not improved service. Heaven forbid that your medical appointment last longer than 15 minutes, and stick to the issue at hand or you will be hit with two different bills of different codes. PBS has been compromised by corporate sponsors and the media no longer is required to present unbiased reporting. Public education is just the latest public good to be undermined.
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I love this:
“The Arkansas Board of Education should look at renaming Common Core as it reviews the education standards that have been criticized by some conservatives, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Wednesday.
The Republican formally submitted to the board recommendations from a task force that last month said the state should continue using Common Core but conduct a broader look at where to change and replace the standards.”
They’re keeping the Common Core but changing the name. Eventually they’ll stumble on the radical and innovative idea of simply telling voters the truth, but it may take more commissions. Why not just tell them the decision was made years ago and there won’t be any real public debate or discussion? That’s what happened.
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Tons of states have done this. I think the states think that regular people are stupid, and we can’t figure out that the name is the only thing that changed.
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If WaPo truly believes this is a state run effort, then how do they explain all the states that have abandoned it? They spent all this time working hard on their own plans, only to scrap it?
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Sshhhhhhh! Quit with the logical thinking!
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The major sources of misinformation recycled by the Post and NY Times are the PR firms hired by the outfits that foisted this agenda on public education, including Achieve, Student Achievement Partners, the National Governor’s Association, and so on. But there is also another campaign to override criticism of the Common Core. The PR with misinformation is flowing from the Seattle PR firm hired by the Common Core Funders Working Group led by Gates of course and determined to shore up the implementation in the midst of growing criticism and less than Gates-perfect FIDELITY in the implementation. So the Seattle PR firm, Education First, is churning out the false history of the CC and urgent need for implementation including the tests, aligned materials, professional development. This is in addition to the Gates funded communications program that started to market the CC way back in 2007. I love the weirdness of foundations identifying themselves as the Common Core Funders Working Group…literally true since Gates, and some of the others paid the bills. Details are in an earlier post.
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Article in today’s papers by Students First calling out DeBlasio’s school policies as failures. Why? Poor test scores on recent tests! Solution? Charter schools! Love it–it’s working! Bad tests, bad scores, more chaos so-called “cycle.”more charters…Luckily, the opt-out movement has alerted some of the public to the fraudulent nature of th
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of this so-called “cycle.”
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Sorry. Post should have read “more charters.” My phone cuts me off sometimes…
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“Why? Poor test scores on recent tests! Solution? Charter schools!”
Which was exactly the concern regarding the Common Core testing, and what was patronizingly dismissed as a “conspiracy theory”.
I was pretty confident they would use the (lower) scores as a political hammer to push their agenda and they are.
Telling people one thing to get them to go along and then using their trust and good faith against them is wrong. It’s a breach of trust.
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The latest crop of diversionary testing shysters know all too well, that the foundation for
producing a “critical” citizenry, IS a critical education. To wit: the celebrity culture,
rampant consumerism, the allure of diversionary spectacles, showcase the division of
critical thinking and cultivated idiocy. The “sway” of marketing or propaganda IS the
“litmus test” for consciousness.
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The reason the Washington Post supports Common Core is obvious. Jeff Bozos, I mean Bezos, owns the paper and inherited Kaplan’s testing company. He is covertly trying to destroy the printed word and replace it with a digital universe. That is why print newspapers are atrophying, and public school teachers are a dying profession. We have reached critical mass, and only a revolutionary move on the part of teachers who are not yet under the control of Bill Gates and the corporate gangsters can effectively make it happen. The first consideration is to flatten the educational pyramid and remove all administrative positions, replacing them with support positions culled from the senior staff on a rotating basis, so that the adversarial relationship is also eliminated. I have been preaching this for a long time, and have been stonewalled by even the best of our teacher advocates. Shame on Bill Gates and shame on the pundits who lack the courage to tell the truth about the internal stress that is partially responsible for this fiasco. They along with the greedy hedge fund types who are diverting tax dollars earmarked for public education, collectively are responsible for the demise and de-professionalization of the teaching profession. Don’t purport to be the voice of the teaching profession if you are not willing to speak all of the truth to power.
Ian Kay
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Indeed, Ian Kay
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Ian,
I did not know that “print newspapers are atrophying” because of Jeff Bezos. He must be one powerful individual. I thought that it had something to do with classified ads which disappeared from print media thus reducing revenue. In addition the habit of buying newspapers is disappearing because we now can get our news free on smart phones, computers, tablets etc., at our convenience. We do not have to wait till morning to read the paper after paying for the privilege.
I was also not aware that “public school teachers are a dying profession”. At last count there were as many public school teachers (about 4 million) as before unless US Department of Education database is bogus.
Live and learn from blogs with infinite wisdom.
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Raj,
I’m a 30 year veteran teacher. Please don’t try to lecture me on the demise of the teaching profession. First, Jeff Bezos is a monopoly unto himself. He has stated very clearly his prediction about the death of the printed word. It would take too long to educate you on that gangster. As for the demise of print newspaper, it’s a fact of life, and all of them have fired most of the local reporters, and now rely on those pundits who write editorials that project their personal ideology. No teacher today and in the future will be able to have the pleasure and satisfaction that I got from a system that revered and sustained me and my colleagues throughout our career. There are 3.1 million teachers today, and keep tabs because that number will be substantially reduced every year hence.
It’s time to get your head out of the sand, and tell me where you think I’m going wrong with my suggestion for reform. Oh, or are you an administrator who got their accreditation by jumping ship, and now you think that you are more qualified to make decisions for your former colleagues? Hmmmm.
Ian Kay
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Getting back to the post, it seems to me that the battle between the states and the feds is a red herring. Public education is owned by the public — the taxpayers who contribute to the treasury to support the public infrastructure that includes educating our youth. The public needs to step up and exercise its rights and responsibilities in determining what and how schools operate. It works best when it takes a village. Failing to do so has the consequence of leaving the gates open to privateers to step in and work their profit-seeking schemes on the public coffers. Can you imagine them getting involved out of the goodness of their hearts… if so we would be seeing their no-strings-attached wealth invested without expectation of dividends in eradicating poverty, that pervasive cause of low-performing public schools across the country. What we need is less autocracy and more democracy. But that’s just one democracy-loving, 75-year-old boy’s opinion.
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The NYTimes articles invariably describe the Common Core as an initiative that started at the State level. This repeated erroneous reporting has the effect of eliminating any contradictory evidence making the lie into truth.
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And them there’s California, who lowered their standards to get the federal funding. That’s how much we needed the money.
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And the federal government– US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan backed by President Barack Obama– encouraged them to do so and allowed it to happen. I can t tell you how much these posts mean to all of us, Mercedes.
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