Seth Sandronsky, a journalist in California, loves Mercedes Schneider’s new book, “Common Core Dilemma: “Who Owns Our Schools?”
In this review, he summarizes the main themes of the book.
He writes:
“Uncle Sam helped to spur the Common Core State Standards, the newest “big thing” in education reform that profits businesses. Mercedes K. Schneider names the actors and unveils their deeds and words in Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools? (Teachers College Press, 2015).
“A laser-like focus on a politically-connected class of edupreneurs propels her empirical case against education privatization’s bid to establish national test-driven assessments and standards for K-12 public schools. There is a vital history here, away from public view for years.
“Schneider clarifies such deliberate obscurity. In an Introduction, 11 chapters, Conclusion, Glossary, Notes and an Index, she investigates the relevant CCSS methods and motives.
“Schneider begins with a look at the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. It in part paved the path for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 under GOP President George W. Bush that Sen. And Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders voted for, too.
“Central to the NCLB is high-stakes student testing. It fuels education privatization. Teachers’ livelihoods depend on their students’ test scores.
“Under this small carrot-and-big stick framework, the NCLB used state education standards to assess and punish disproportionately public schools in black and brown communities. Democratic Party politicians facilitated this process.
“Yet such a policy reliance upon state standards proved to limit the playing field of education reform. Such limits to capital accumulation generally require federal intervention, with Pres. Obama’s Race To The Top, the CCSS-friendly offspring of the NCLB, a case in point.
“The reformers nearly to a person are not teachers. That fact is striking, and runs a thread throughout Schneider’s book, outraging her and maybe readers, too.
“The CCSS solution to the limits of state standards propelled Achieve, Inc.’s grand plan to create a “common” set of K-12 standards in in English and math. Achieve is part of a triad that includes American College Testing and the College Board pushing the CCSS.
“Elected by nobody, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State Officers own the copyright for the CCSS. If that is not an attack on democracy, what is?
“And as Schneider shows, the plan for the CCSS slithered ahead in stealth for reasons, we read, of preparing US public schools for the intrusion of global monopoly corporations. Business knows best, according to wealthy interest such as Bill and Melinda Gates.
“For example, Schneider shines the light on Gates and luminaries such as IBM’s CEO Louis Gerstner, Jr. He drips arrogance in his ignorance of what classroom teachers and their pupils do on a daily basis, while positioning Achieve to suckle from the CCSS.
“Readers get to know the CCSS word salad of groups and terms. This language of edureform is a try to obfuscate the privatization of American public education.”
There is more, of course. The media writes about the Common Core by reading the press releases of its advocates. Schneider’s book might well be subtitled: The Secret History of the Common Core Standards.”.
A must for journalists, parents, and educators.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good post. Thank you. ANd OY!
Diane, Seth, Mercedes and yes, all you opt-out activists just love the tactics of Goldman, JP Morgan and the big banks to protect your education monopoly profits!
You see, after the economic collapse in 2008, regulators sought to bring transparency to the derivatives business. There are lots of legitimate uses for derivatives (despite the howls of socialists on here) to hedge costs and risks. In the story, it allows a heating oil provider like Dan Singer to guarantee his customers a stable price over the winter. But he can’t know if he has the best price unless it’s an open market with a standard derivative. Big firms like to make all kinds of custom derivatives so they don’t have to compete in the open market. There are some legitimate purposes for these but just like stock markets whose spreads are now in the pennies vs $0.25 spreads 20 years ago, standardization makes things cheaper.
And so it goes with teaching. When “every teacher knows best” and creates their own standards, lessons, and tests, nobody can figure out what the heck is going on in classrooms across the country. Parents don’t know if their kids are learning as much as the school next door. Administrators have no idea which teachers are effective. And educational companies (textbook manufacturers, software providers, etc.) can’t focus R&D investments on making the most efficient products. It’s why standards in the computer business (IEEE) allow hardware and software to be cheap whereas custom installations in your home are very $$$$.
It’s in the interest of monopolistic teachers to keep any standard test or curriculum out of their classroom. They like the public think there is some “magic sauce” they are cooking up which can never, ever possibly be measured. They are in good company. This is the exact same propaganda that the blue bloods on Wall St put out. Diane, you are in great company. Maybe Goldman should hire you to push back against the SEC!
Virginia, you are becoming irrational. I am not a teacher; I don’t work for anyone. I have no financial interest in any position I take.
Standardized testing has some uses, but currently it is being over-used and mis-used. A score on such a test does not define a student or a teacher.
Do you work for Pearson and McGraw Hill? Are you paid by Gates and Broad to say the things you say?
dianeravitch: pardon the editing tip but—
you wrote “are becoming irrational.”
Isn’t the second word superfluous?
😎
Have you read my article Magic Elixir?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
These charlatans take advantage of the difficultly in providing ‘evidence’, because there is no objective way to evaluate the real ‘magic’ that occurs when a talented, educated professional creates lessons to meet age -appropriate and CLEAR LEARNING OBJECTIVES.
Falsifying evidence, and he malleability of truth these days, makes it so easy for charlatans to sell their snake oil.
virginiasgp
You have a valid viewpoint, but personal attacks near the end of your comment do not help. Just keep to the point and let others comment on it.
This blog generally does not like opposing viewpoints and a majority here take it personally and try very hard to extinguish valid viewpoints by attacking the person who made the comment. That seems to be the standard operating procedure in this blog.
It is never in their interest to make a well researched, well written valid counter point.
By my standards you are not irrational. I do not care if you work or do not work for those mentioned here. You have the right to express your point of view and you should be respected.
Raj said:
“This blog generally does not like opposing viewpoints and a majority here take it personally and try very hard to extinguish valid viewpoints by attacking the person who made the comment. That seems to be the standard operating procedure in this blog.
It is never in their interest to make a well researched, well written valid counter point.”
No, this is a shining example of why you and virginia meet harsh criticism on this blog. Most of the posters here are very tolerant of differing views. Most posters highly value evidence and research, and frequently offer substantial arguments. For you to say that we do not like research, evidence, or opposing points of view, shows that you are intellectually dishonest. That or oblivious.
As for Virginia’s viewpoint: It is a valid CONCERN, but he does not offer a valid SOLUTION. We have made this point over and over, supported by evidence and research and philosophy. Out of his FEAR of bad teachers, he has supported a set of policies that further damages teaching and learning in our schools, rather than solving the problem.
Derivatives started trading in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s as an obscure way
to get around regulations and make a lot of money. Don’t confuse traditional
options or futures contracts with derivatives. The latter have a legitimate use.
The former nothing more than a con mans game.
John:
Options and futures are derivatives, too. They may be more transparent than CDOs and credit default swaps and so on, but especially with today’s high speed electronic trading, they too may distorting markets–the derivative tail that wags the market dog.
In my view, so-called Value Added Measures (or Models) are the worst kind of derivative–far removed from real-life experience and determined by an ill-considered formula. Whatever value derivatives have in financial markets, they have little value in education. But that’s what the “education reformers” are pushing when they push high-stakes testing and VAMs.
An excellent example of world salad and cognitive dissonance.
And projecting the proven and colossal failures of rheephorm onto public education and teachers.
For example, great diversity leads to failure because diversity = monolithic catastrophe? How about the rheephorm business plan that masquerades as an educational model that mandates nationwide homogenized mediocrity and failure on an ever-increasing number of students? With the club of standardized testing used to beat everyone down—as if test scores measure anything useful and significant.
All in the interests of $tudent $ucce$$.
But never fear. If there’s anything amiss or remiss in the Wonderful World of Rheephorm such objective sources as the NYTIMES and LATIMES will sternly suppress their pro-charter and pro-privatization zealotry because, dontchaknow, they have integrity.
😏
Makes ₵ent¢. Rheeally! In the most Johnsonally sort of ways…
But on Planet Reality, not really.
Yet a tip of the hat to those that exert Rheeality Distortion Fields, ruthlessly, on themselves.
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [Charlie Chaplin]
This day was not wasted.
😎
Your moniker is most appropriate.
Why don’t you go somewhere else, a place where your sarcasm and ignorance would be appreciated.
“Your moniker is most appropriate.”
Thank you.
😎
If I wanted profits, I would quit teaching public school, start a nonprofit advocating test-score-driven “reforms” and apply for a Gates grant.
virginiasgp:
Wow, you’re so far off the mark here, I doubt you’ll ever be able to understand what’s really going on.
I’ve given a lot of thought to the analogy between financial derivatives and the ideas promoted by “education reformers.” I hope to find time to flesh out my ideas some day, but for now I’ll just say that standardized test scores are what amounts to educational derivatives. And VAM growth scores are black-box-determined derivatives of those derivatives. The evaluation of education schools by the tests scores of their students’ students would be derivatives three times removed from the students who took the tests.
Inasmuch as I believe VAM is a spurious practice, I find it analogous to the collateralized debt obligations labeled AAA by the ratings agencies even though they were based on subprime mortgages (including the infamous “liar’s loans”). It was the marketing of these derivative contracts by Goldman Sachs and others that helped sink Lehman Brothers and led to the big bank bailouts, the government takeover of AIG and GM, and the massive recession we’re still crawling out of.
The billionaires pushing “education reform” are like the Goldmans and the Citibanks pushing bad mortgage derivatives during the housing bubble. If the rich and powerful are allowed to keep doing this, their cherished educational derivatives could end up contributing to the collapse of public education.
In other words, I think you’ve got the derivative analogy all wrong. Just as exotic financial derivatives pose a threat to our economy, equally exotic educational derivatives threaten the US public education system, and American democracy itself.
cross posted at :http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Seth-Sandronsky-Reviews-Me-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch-150918-794.html?show=votes#allcomments
with my comment, below, which has embedded links to the posts quoted.
“As for me, I wrote “Magic Elixir,”
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
years ago, based on Daniel Willingham’s claim that in education, no evidence is required….but then , after listening to the GOP debates by people who would run our country, liars and charlatans are at the top of our nation.”
“Laura H. Chapman who has read the CCSS, unlike many others who support or oppose them, writes:”Anyone who had READ the CCSS all the way to the footnotes, or looked at the website, and otherwise done due diligence before buying the spin would determine it is a fraud.””This work, undertaken, under the banner of American Diploma Project, is dated and limited in scope. For information about Achieve’s Research
Mercedes Schneider “also takes the occasion to rip apart the celebratory claims for Common Core in a recent post on Huffington Post. She points out that it was adopted by almost every state a full year before the standards were written and disseminated. How convenient. She challenges the claim that it promotes critical thinking.”
And there is this from Paul Thomas who decries the futility of rebranding the Common Core.He writes:”Careful examination of both adopting Common Core and then the backlash resulting in dropping Common Core reveals that states remain firmly entrenched in the same exact accountability based on standards and high-stakes testing that has overburdened education since the 1980s.”
and this from Carol Burris,” veteran principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York, retired this week, to the tears of students, parents, and staff. In this article, part of a blog debate at The Hechinger Report, she explains her negative view of Common Core.”
“So, if you think the Common Core is a real curricula for genuine reform… go to the Ravitch blog and put it into the search field”
https://dianeravitch.net/?s=Common+Core+fraud
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
There are two basic problems with the Common Core. The first has to do with its creation by a non-elected group of governors. The second has to do with the role of the federal government in education. It is not the role of the federal government to provide the instructional direction for public education. Some will argue that the CCSS are merely standards, not curriculum. This is the lawyer in Obama arguing this point. I would argue, if it drives instruction in a particular direction, it’s curriculum. The federal government’s role is to intervene in issues of equity and civil rights, not program. By inserting billionaire Bill Gates and his money, another non-elected person in the process, it further removes the CCSS from democratic governance.
STOP COMMON CORE TESTING
5,396 emails sent to Congress and President Obama.
Read the heart wrenching comments from the many parents who have signed this petition.
http://www.petition2congress.com/15080/stop-common-core-testing/