Politico.com reports that the Council of Chief State School Officers is partnering with Chiefs for Change, the group created by Jeb Bush to promote school choice, digital learning, and high-stakes testing, as well as Achieve, one of the groups that created the Common Core standards, to help states make the transition to ESSA. I can’t confirm which state superintendents belong to Chiefs for Change because its website is down.
Mercedes Schneider wrote that the Gates Foundation recently gave $15.4 million to CCSSO, so you can see where this “assistance” is going.
FIRST LOOK: GROUPS TO HELP WITH ESSA TRANSITION: The Council of Chief State School Officers is partnering up with a number of groups in a new initiative this year to help states transition to the Every Student Succeeds Act. The group is teaming up with Chiefs for Change, Achieve and Ed Counsel to help states design new accountability systems, for example. A working group of state chiefs and district leaders will do a deep dive into the accountability design process, looking at “their vision for school improvement in their state, the systems they need to achieve that and the strategies they need to do it,” Chiefs for Change CEO Mike Magee told Morning Education. Former Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman has also been tapped as a consultant for the new initiative. CCSSO said the groups hope to provide sample accountability models and best practices for states. And they’ll be holding meetings and conference calls with states in the coming months to provide guidance and feedback as states develop new accountability frameworks.
– CCSSO will also work with states in its Innovation Lab Network [http://bit.ly/1m4RI8C ] – like California, Kentucky and New Hampshire – to share ideas and best practices to help states that may be looking to participate in new innovative assessment pilots under ESSA. And CCSSO hopes to work with states as they refine – and possibly look to change – teacher evaluation systems under the new law.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Bush family can’t be trusted!
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And isn’t the Bush family is in up to its eyeballs in educational reform investments?
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Start with NJ. Chiefs for Change FEE acolytes all the way.
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Do they ever do anything with public schools in ed reform other than testing? I know they’re big on opening charters and handing out vouchers, but I’m talking about public schools.
Every single one of these “initiatives” and “innovative pilots” revolves around testing kids.
Can one of the billionaires running this show occasionally come up with something less grim and joyless for public school students?
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When the ONLY tool in your toolbox is a hammer, your only solutions involve hammering. The reform crowd has NOTHING else to offer.
As Alfie Kohn has stated, “The only universal truth about children, teaching, and learning is that there is NO universal truth about children, teaching, and learning.”
Yet the reform crowd’s obstinate belief in the value of standardized testing and their limited emphasis on just two subject areas, flies in the face of this universal truth.
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Once again Bill Gates is inserting himself to set the tone for accountability. With Jeb Bush’s cronies along for the ride what could go wrong? School districts should be actively seeking their own accountability plans to present for consideration. The worst thing that could happen is that Gates will dominate the conversation and insist on VAM 2.0 along with personalized learning, which, of course, he happens to be peddling. With Gates’ money, he is probably lining up support for his terrible ideas that may be accepted with blind allegiance. We have been through this before with the Common Core and the coercive tactics used for states to adopt it. My understanding of accountability under ESSA is that there are options, not one size fits all. However, the options must be approved. Under Gates’ influence he is probably going to make sure all the allowable options suit his agenda. It is likely all the bureaucrats like King will line up and applaud.
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They seem to be under the impression that children won’t know they’re being tested and assessed every minute of every day if they buy them a Chromebook.
That makes testing fun! Who doesn’t love an “equation editor”?
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GROUPS TO HELP WITH ESSA TRANSITION:
Do not believe that this announcement is a good thing. In fact, run for the hills or bar the door. This initiative is intended to shove so-called personalized, competency-based learning into as many schools as possible and “possibly look to change – teacher evaluation systems under the new law.”
If you disliked the process used to shove the Common Core/College and career-readiness into the nation’s schools, you will be wary, very wary, of this new four-way effort to shape policies left to “state choice” by the new ESSA.
And you should be even more skeptical of the role of Lamar Alexander in shoring up some of the policy loopholes and opportunities built into ESSA. Politico announced today (Feb 8, 2015) that there are four organizations ready to “help with the ESSA transition.”
Who are the collabrators? The Council of Chief State School Officers; Achieve, Inc.; Chiefs for Change; and Ed Counsel.
The Council of Chief State School Officers gets its guidance from the directional flows of money for education. In 2015, the CCSSO received over $15 million in operating support from the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation. Add $6.1 million for strategic planning, $1.9 million for pushing the Common Core, all in 2015.
Why is this troubling? Recall that Gates Foundation paid more than $200 million to promote the Common Core. Gates also paid over $64 million to Harvard economists for the deeply flawed Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project. The studies in the MET project did not meet the threshold for publication in any research journal, but the Gates Foundation and others continue to promote VAM, Danielson’s Framework, and Tripod’s student surveys as if these flawed measures are necessary in order to judge “effective” teachers. I think it is fair to say that the CCSSO functions as one of several operating arms of the Gates Foundation.
Another operating arm for the Gates foundation is Achieve, Inc. In August 2015, Achieve received $837,500 from the Gates Foundation for “general operating support.” Achieve is a center forwarding agendas favored by business leaders and governors. Achieve hired and oversaw most of the legwork and never-peer-reviewed marketing research for the American Diploma Network starting in 1999 which morphed into the Common Core.
These two groups are teaming up with Chiefs for Change, founded by Jeb Bush and once supported in part by his Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE). As he geared up for a presidential run, Bush finally released a long list of contributors to FEE which continues to promote pay-for-performance, “technology to customize learning for every student,” and expanded choices for parents and students.” The two most generous, multi-year, multimillion contributors to FEE have the same agenda: Walton Family Foundation and affiliates (Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Wal-Mart Foundation), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. More at: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/jeb-bush-releases-list-donors-education-foundation-n385266
Chiefs for Change is under going reconstruction because it lost membership—a small group of defectors from the CCSSO became very small, only three. Even so, the missions of FEE continue and the backers of Chiefs for Change have the same missions. They want to insert computers and “personalized” learning into every nook and cranny of education and to promote charter schools.
The new Chiefs for Change CEO, Mike Magee, was named a 2012 Walton Family Foundation “Education Reformer to Watch.”
The fourth participant in this well-organized move to fill-in-the-left-in-limbo-spaces within ESSA is not as well known: Ed Counsel. But—the senior Partner at EdCounsel is none other than Senator Richard Riley, the person most responsible for negotiations on ESSA.
Moreover, only four days after the formal passage of ESSA, the managing partner of EdCounsel, Scott Palmer, said that the “most immediate next steps in ESSA include USED promulgating regulations and guidance with regard to key ESSA provisions – further defining (in law) what they mean, might mean, and may not.
These “finishing regulations” to ESSA need to put in place within the next year, before the end of the Obama Administration. “This creates significant opportunity to translate ESSA into action.” http://educationcounsel.com/essa-opportunities-risks/
What I see in this announcement from Politico is organized clout and know-how to inform states on easy and fast “solutions” to the accountability measures that ESSA left in limbo—how to interpret the many holes in ESSA—how to frame those “finishing regulations” needed by USDE.
CCSSO said these four groups hope to provide “sample accountability models and best practices for states.” Please note that this is exactly the same strategy that ALEC uses to get its agenda legislated. State officials will be provided a ready-to-use plan marketed by “experts” who can do all of the detail work for you and just in time to hit your one-year or less deadline.
Here is the kicker. The CCSSO is getting opinions from leaders in its Innovation Lab Network so the CCSSO can “to provide guidance and feedback (to the CCSSO) as states develop new accountability frameworks.”
This is strikes me as a pretense of consultation on a par with saying the Common Core was “state led.” Here are the facts.
The CCSSO’s Innovation Lab Network (ILN) is comprised of 12 states enlisted by CCSSO because they share the same vision for education—including “student agency,” personalized learning, performance-based learning, anytime/anywhere opportunities…with not a single mention of the non-stop data gathering that goes with that. The 12 states where students are serving as guinea pigs for ILN include California, Oregon, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. Schools and districts in these states “test new and innovative ways of meeting student needs, with support from their state education agencies.” http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2015/2/26/meet-the-funders-behind-the-innovation-lab-network.html
So the CCSSO, Achieve, Chiefs for Change, and Ed Counsel want to shove this agenda into other states, and possible teacher education, on a tight timeline. This strategy was in the works while Senator Alexander was wrangling ESSA through the Congressional hearings. I wonder how Senator Alexander defines conflict of interest?
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What is disturbing is that they are well organized and have the backing of billionaire Bill. States with lazy, brainwashed or easily bought leaders will jump on the Gates bandwagon once again. It is concerning if plans could be rejected just because they don’t meet Gates’ big picture of accountability. Policymakers need to wake up to the fact that corporations are not interested in making anything better for students and teachers. Their goal is to sell more products and services, none of which has any validity as sound educational practice.
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Perfectly stated. Their goal is to sell more products and services. Period. There is no educational validity to any of it.
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And John King, acting Secretary of Education, says teachers are ‘unfairly blamed’ for school problems.
Are pigs and donkeys flying? Are we through the looking glass? What’s happening out there?
Hiring the miserable failures at Chiefs for Change is like believing that Jeb! will be elected president.
Something strange is going on and, perhaps, the tides are moving out from the favoring the reformists at long last. One can hope . . . .
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/07/education-secretary-john-king-teachers/79788686/
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The CCSSO seems to have no clue about what might help children. For starters, they have known for six years that the CCSS privilege White children and marginalize children of color. The CCSSO claims that the CCSS are a national document, but a national document that excludes children of color and the poor, as the CCSS does, is not a national document. How sad that this tragedy continues…..
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The tests based on the CCSS do exactly what the “chiefs of change” want them to do. They fail about 70% of the students to feed the school failure narrative, and they fail almost all the poor students. The purpose is so corporations can invade and take over neighborhoods, kick out the poor, make a killing on real estate while they send the poor to a test prep camp and call it “choice,” That is change “you can count on.”
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