The Common Core visionaries dreamed of a world where every student across the nation would have the same standards, a curriculum aligned with the standards, and all students taking one of two tests aligned with the standards. Everything would be RIGORous, we would find out how woefully bad our schools are, teachers would stop “lying” to students, and parents would flee to charters and voucher schools. Best of all, according to Secretary Duncan, parents in Oregon could compare their child with children in other states.
According to this story in the Néw York Times by Motoko Rich, the dream is falling apart.
Several states have adjusted their passing score to avoid telling 70% of the state’s students that they failed.
“The Common Core has been bedeviled by controversy almost from the start; because of the backlash, a few states have already abandoned the Common Core. Fewer than half of the 40 that adopted it originally are using tests from either of the testing consortia that develop the exams, making it difficult to equate results from different states.”
The bad news is that Arne blew away $360 milion on the tests, and the states have wasted hundreds of millions more to prepare for the tests, to buy new technology for the tests, and to change instruction to fit the tests.
The good news is that we don’t need either of the Common Core tests to know how students in Oregon or Maine compare to students in other states. For that purpose, we have the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which compares states, measures achievement gaps. NAEP provides all the data anyone needs. I have yet to meet a parent who wanted to know how their child compared to children in other states. They want to know if they are getting along with other children, if they are doing the work that is right for their grade, if they are good citizens in school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
typo in the comment from the New York Times
Thanks, Arpad, I read it over and found three typos!
This should be a mockumentary:
The Proficiency Experts
“The Common Galaxy Core”
We need a common test
For country and for glory
That lets us match our best
With those of A. Centauri
Agree!!!! Common Core = $$$$$ for the few and a lot of awfulness for the rest.
Thank you to the owner of this blog for the posting and the link.
I am aware that this will sound harsh but the simple truth is: CCSS was never about setting standards for all students so they could be readily compared to each other.
Never. Ever. Not for a moment. So the article is based on a heinous lie by omission.
I start with a teaser.
This blog, , “Common Core For Commoners, Not My School!”—
[start posting]
This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.
[end posting]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
Look at the websites of the schools where the heavyweights and enforcers and enablers of self-proclaimed “education reform” send THEIR OWN CHILDREN. For example, Harpeth Hall [Michelle Rhee], Sidwell Friends [the Obamas], U of Chicago Lab Schools [Rahm Emanuel], Delbarton School [Chris Christie], Michael Bloomberg [Spence School], Pine Crest School [Jonathan Hage, charter edupreneur], Lakeside School [Bill & Melinda Gates], and so on.
No, the bitter medicine of rheephorm is only to be administered to the vast majority of lesser beings known as OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
They assume that the schools they send THEIR OWN CHILDREN to are, by laws divine and natural, already superior and in no need of the spurious ‘fixing’ they claim is necessary for the schools attended by OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
The “dream” that Motoko Rich writes about is that of mandated and enforced mediocrity and failure—where the vast majority attend the “factories of failure” known as charters and use vouchers and so on.
The only “dream” that truly moves the leaders and main beneficiaries of the “new civil rights movement of our time” is for their already advantaged and privileged children to face as little competition as possible from what they perceive as mere hewers of wood and drawers of water—
That’s us.
Their dream is our nightmare.
😎
Does the U. of Chicago Lab school demand any test other than the state common core exam for students who are applying? Or do they not count it at al the way most other private schools do? If it is discounted as an invalid measurement for admissions by Arne Duncan’s wife, then why is he such a hypocrite?
There is also no standardized child. Children are all over the map too, and the job of schools—until NCLB came along—was to teach children to become all the could be based on the individuality and uniqueness of each child.
There are 50 million individual children in the U.S. public schools and each of those children is an individual and unique. There is nothing standard about them. Some children are lost becasue of the environment they grew up in, and can’t be guided to find what works best for them as an adult. Others become police, mechanics, teachers, authors, artists, musicians, scientists, accountants, doctors, lawyers, janitors, crooked politicians, autocratic CEO’s, etc.
However, the corporate reformers, our elected and appointed leaders who support the corporate reform movement, and the psychopathic billionaire oligarchs funding the destruction of the public schools must have all been stamped from the same cloth with the same stamp and they can’t understand that each child is a unique individual.
Allow me to quote me from 2013:
“And now Common Core is upon us. Another concept that, as it is implemented it survives under the false assumption that all kids are the same, progress at the same rate and learn best only with paper, pencil, or computer in hand.”
“However, failure is still at hand. What happens when they discover students are all over the board with their “scores”. How valid are grade levels and how damaging is our system of failure. Soon they will discover that grade levels can not be the indicator of advancement through the system of education. THIS IS ANOTHER GOOD THING. Of course we must keep students with their age peers, but through “centers”, projects, learning in the community, differentiated learning, cross curriculum and many other strategies, good teachers know how to reach their students. Real teachers do not teach to the test very well, they teach to the child”.
Just sayin’
Rubber rulers, inflated scores once more
That mark the rigors of the Common Core.
It’s the relative Common Core elastic standard.
See it stretch. See it bend. Watch it vary, my friend.
…and watch it break!
I like that very much!
Once again, some of the same LAZY reporting courtesy of the alleged “paper of record”, to wit: “The Common Core was devised by experts convened by state education commissioners and governors to set uniform benchmarks for learning”.
Yup, trot out those “experts” again.
Of course, anyone who actually teaches in a public school these days is so weary of the so-called “experts”. First there’s the original whack-jobs who came up with some of this Common Core lunacy -like making students read certain set percentages of non-fiction. But even worse is the never ending army of consultants and coaches who waltz into our schools each day telling us what to do -even though many of these know-it-alls never stood in front of a classroom of students EVER. Or, if they did, it was years ago. How many of you teachers out there have had an observation from someone who doesn’t know their ass from their elbow when it comes to actually relating to real life human students in a classroom? (Pardon my French.)
So we have an “expert” newspaper reporter propping up the alleged “experts” in education. Yup, it’s all just so….experty.
Oh, yes, I love it when I get observed by an administrator who was a GYM teacher! Well, at least he/she was a teacher of something or other!
That’s why, in my book, I recommend using retired teachers. They cost less, understand the profession more and have more time to spend both supporting and then assessing teachers.
This article about Sweden moving to a 6 hour workday is totally of topic. I think it shows a lot of wisdom and common sense. Does anyone ever question why we are working so hard and why “rigor” is the word of the day? Why are we sending kindergarteners home with packets of work to do? Why are we working ourselves to stress, illness and misery?
http://www.sciencealert.com/sweden-is-shifting-to-a-6-hour-workday
Exactly. With machines now doing at least half the work from fifty years ago, why aren’t there 4 hour days work days?
Unfortunately, computers have made our lives more difficult and stressful in many ways. If we didn’t have the computers we have now, there is no way we would have the reliance on statistics, data and metrics that we do now. Teachers are now constantly inputting data into computer software – grades, prof. development hours, statistics, etc. I remember when I had to input my curriculum map into a computer program. What I wanted to say didn’t fit into the box (of course), there were no boxes to check for things I wanted to put down and boxes for things that weren’t applicable, etc. It was all someone’s software – most likely someone who never taught. After 2 years, we got rid of the program and all our curriculum maps went into the digital compost bin. Waste of time.
So the banksters don’t fall acutely ill. Without the lucre that they steal from us peons they would perish.
“This was exactly the problem that a lot of policy makers and educators were trying to solve,” said Karen Nussle, the executive director of the Collaborative for Student Success, a Common Core advocacy group, “to get a more honest assessment of where kids are and being transparent about that with parents and educators so that we could do something about it.”
Well, since Ohio state law says that there have to be five levels and the third level is “proficient” maybe they could have allowed a public debate and tried to change state law to fit their objectives? It was “state led” but they didn’t change state law to fit the new national testing scheme?
Why do they believe laws don’t apply to them?
It’s hard to feel sympathy for people who felt perfectly comfortable putting this in tens of thousands of public schools all over the country with virtually NO public debate or input, and, apparently, no coherent plan. If they HAD allowed a public debate they might have actually learned something and avoided spending tens of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of teacher and student hours on a contractor they fired a year later.
“The Rigor Chorus”
Rigor chorus
Rigor for us
Rigor Core is
Rigor mortis
Sounds like Stravinsky!
well, Stravinsky did study under Rimsky CoreSickof from 1905-1908, after all.
“Rimsky Coresickof”
Rimsky Coresickof hated Colemen
Seventy-thirty-without-a-soul men
Wrote Sheherazade and more
To stick it to the Common Core
Too, it probably hasn’t helped public schools in Ohio that the entire state government seems to be captured by ed reform “movement” lobbyists so they spent the last 10 months meeting with charter school operators to reform the charter school law, again.
A singular focus on the “choice” sector isn’t real supportive of the public schools 93% of the kids in this state attend. Dumping a giant new program in their lap and then running away isn’t a recipe for “success”. They’re getting ready to expand charters yet again, with the help of a big grant from the Obama Administration so we can expect the next ten months to also be consumed with promoting their preferred “sector”.
Weren’t public schools promised some sort of “support” for the Common Core in return for accepting the new(est) testing scheme? When does that start? Or do we once again get the stick but no carrot from ed reform?
“Bedeviled Core ”
Experimentation on your kid
Is what the school “reformer” did
Sans review and sans consent
The Common Core was Devil-sent
You really need to get a book together (I look for every one of your comments…everyday!)
There is one – I’ve read every amazing word in it. SDP linked to it a while back, for free if you can believe that. Although I’m sure it’s grown substantially since I downloaded it.
Glad you like them.
Sometimes I get serious, but as you may have noticed, most of them are pretty goofy (like “Rimsky Coresickof” above)
“The goofier the better” is my philosophy and God knows “reform” provides more than enough goofy material to last a lifetime.
I think they might have to add a definition under “goofy” in the Oxford English Dictionary: “American school reform”.
You can download “A DAMthology of Deform” from here (google drive)
Feel free to forward the link, make copies, etc.
I need to update it with stuff I’ve written since, but that will take some time.
“The good news is that we don’t need either of the Common Core tests to know how students in Oregon or Maine compare to students in other states. For that purpose, we have the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which compares states, measures achievement gaps.”
Sorry, Diane, but I’ve have to call you out on that statement. It’s not good news because the NAEP suffers all the same epistemological and ontological errors and falsehoods identified by Wilson* as the SBAC/PARCC and every other ‘educational’ standardized test known to mankind that render any results COMPLETELY INVALID.
No doubt one can compare the results by state of the NAEP tests but that comparison will still be COMPLETELY INVALID. And NO, the NAEP doesn’t measure anything as there are no legitimate standards nor any legitimate measuring device by which one can “measure achievement gaps”. It’s all a big distortion and equivocation, albeit one that is so culturally ingrained, so massively stamped into our consciousness that to question it, one is considered to be loco, crazy, absurd, for certainly bonkers, that harms many, many children through the deceitful and bogus sorting and separating, ranking, and rewarding and/or punishing the students and, by extension, teachers, schools and districts.
Oh, Americans love their rankings. “We’re #1 on NAEP test scores!!” Hot damn!!
*see next post for beginning to understand what Wilson has proven about the COMPLETE INVALIDITY of the educational malpractices that are educational standards and standardized testing.
Gotcha, Duane. Bear in mind that NAEP has the virtue of being no-stakes. If it is as meaningless as you think, at least it does no harm.
Ah, but the harm comes in wasted time, energy and money. Students’ time and energy and taxpayers money. By the way do you have any information or somewhere I can find out about the costs to administer the NAEP? I briefly looked on the NAEP site but did not find anything.
TIA! for the cost info.
Most high stakes tests are not high stakes for kids. Don’t get back in time.
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted “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 words 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.
The 2015 PDK/Gallup education poll found that Americans oppose Common Core by 54% to 25%. And why had there been so little reporting of this important poll, which also shows continued opposition to diversion of public funds to private schools? — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
That amount of money could have been put to much better use. He’s getting away with harming students and making teacher’s take a huge hit. Just not ok.
Which state has the best drivers in the nation? OMG, we don’t know. We don’t know which state puts out the best drivers manual pamphlet. That’s why the American economy is sputtering. We have to measure driving and find the ultimate dept. of licensing driver’s pamphlet.
not sure about best, but of all the places I’ve lived, Massachusetts (especially Boston) has the absolute worst drivers, hands down.
Most of them don’t use the turn signal — and may not even know what that lever on the steering wheel is for.
I seriously doubt it’s in the drivers’ manual
Or if it is, it’s under “Things that you should never do under any circumstance”
We don’t use the turn signal because it is tantamount to giving information to the enemy!
A few years back, someone wrote about driving in Boston. It was titled “Wild in the Streets”. I’m in Lima, Peru, at the moment, where the drivers make Bostonians look quite tame!
Actually, the insurance industry keeps track of cities and states with the best drivers and then they charge more for those areas with the worst drivers. If .gov isn’t in the internet address, it probably isn’t funded by the government and our taxes.
Why does the insurance industry do this? It’s the profits, and we don’t see anyone wanting to take our cars away from us and force us to be driven around by corporate Charter driver services.
http://vehicle-fatalities.findthedata.com/
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview
from ReutersBoston has worst drivers of any big US city (Allstate report)
“A Boston driver, on average, will get into a collision every 4.4 years,” Kari Mather, a spokeswoman for insurer Allstate Corp, said on Tuesday.
The company’s annual report, titled “Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report,” is based on client collision damage data in 2011 and 2012.
It found Boston ranked dead last among cities with more than 1 million residents in their metropolitan area. Next was Washington.
The large U.S. city that boasts the best drivers is Phoenix, where a driver, on average, will get into a collision every 9.5 years,
Learning is so ubiquitous that how much can a state mess it up or impact it? Is it cause or effect? Mass. is the best, so what? Relocate the top ten universities in Mass. to South Dakota, and I bet in about twenty years South Dakota is the best educated state.
The tests are clearly a political tool… which Ms. Rich failed to note. If a governor who is running for president, say Governor Kasich, wants to be able to boast that his policies resulted in high rates of passing, he could prevail on his appointed Commissioner of Education to set a low score as “proficient”. If a governor wants to use test scores to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of teachers and public schools, say Governor Cuomo, he could insist that the Board of Regents and Commissioner of Education set a high score as “proficient”. In the meantime, no one is asking if these tests help teachers gain a better understanding of their students or of their pedagogy…. because everyone knows the answer is that they do not.
One other factoid: the National Merit has different cut scores for different states… something I learned when I was working in MD and a critic wanted to know how come a neighboring WV district had more National Merit Semi-Finalists than our district had… Bottom line: floating cut scores are nothing new in the testing industry…
When Gwen Ifill interviews Bill and Melinda Gates, PBS Oct 7th, does she have any obligation to get to the facts with respect to Common Core, and testing? Is it her job to simply lob softballs and leave all
answers unchallenged?
U.S. News disagrees with Motoko Rich’s story in the NY Times, and says everything is OK with respect to the test scores, though! http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/10/08/common-core-gives-us-a-common-measure-across-states