Mercedes Schneider noticed something curious in the reports of the Gates Foundation:
Despite the CEO’s pledge to “double down” in shoving CCSS on unwilling schools and teachers, the Gates Foundation has not handed out a single CCSS grant in 2016.
Oh, also, Sue Desmond-Hellman cites ACT data. As Peter Greene pointed out in another post, the student who is gifted in music and the humanities is not “college ready” unless she also gets high scores in science. And the brilliant young scientis is not “college ready” unless his test scores in the humanities are equally stellar.
Standardization has downsides.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mercedes is correct on no new Gates grants for Common Core so far this year, but the Foundation threw a bunch of money into 2015 ventures that extend through much of this year or beyond.Examples:
New Venture Fund Date: August 2015 Purpose: to support the implementation of the Common Core Standards Amount: $10,800,000 Term: 10 (months) just winding down.
Date: November 2015 Purpose: to support reporting on issues related to the implementation of the Common Core, next-generation assessments, personalized learning, and college and career readiness in Education Week Amount: $750,000 Term: 12 months
Student Achievement Partners Inc Date: July 2015 Purpose: to support the growth of Core Advocates work to over 20 states and one million teachers, enabling teachers, districts and networks to understand, practice and advocate for the instructional shifts required by the Common Core Standards Amount: $2,800,000 Term: 36 months
Preva Group LLC, Date: November 2015, Purpose: to deliver increased data quality and response rates for data collection from educators resulting in lower administrative cost and time burden, automated measurement of alignment to Common Core for classroom teachers resulting in better implementation of Common Core lessons, and automated measurement of indicators of sustainability for education initiatives resulting in shorter surveys and rapid measurement Amount: $715,415 Term: 9 months nearing an expiration Note:: “automated measurement of alignment to Common Core for classroom teachers resulting in better implementation of Common Core lessons.” ( I read this as a project to align classroom teachers to the Common Core automatically).
Council for a Strong America Date: October 2015 Purpose: to educate and engage stakeholders around the Common Core and high quality preschool Amount: $4,250,000 Term: 35
Stand for Children Leadership Center Date: October 2015 Purpose: to support capacity building and increased public will around Common Core standards and aligned assessments in four states, as well as positive teacher effectiveness policy changes Amount: $3,580,000 Term: 25
United Way of New York City Date: October 2015 Purpose: to build United Way New York City’s capacity as an advocate, school-based technical assistance provider and community-based organization trainer in support of Common Core in NYC and NY State Amount: $1,200,000 Term: 17
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Inc. Date: September 2015 Purpose: to support states in their efforts to implement high quality, college and career-ready assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards Amount: $1,250,000 Term: 12
Note that Common Core was also part of his teacher ed grants late in 2015, five grants for three years.
It is certainly fair to say that Gates is desperately trying to shore up the Common Core and the college and career assessments that are supposed to be aligned with those standards.
As for Peter’s comments…Many students majoring in the arts will be college and career ready and pass the entrance exams of their post-secondary schools, with or without SAT?ACT. They can do this by audition or portfolios, or resumes from professional performances before graduation, as is the case with youngsters recruited for Broadway, Hollywood, competitions for TV (the Voice) or sponsored in classical music circles.
The Common Core dumped studies in the arts into the category “technical subjects,” really an arrogant snub, especially in tandem with the treatment of literature.
Naïveté and ignorance in the arts are widely tolerated as a perfectly normal outcome of pre-K through college. A little dab will do you–the chance to be exposed–seems to be the prevailing view, unless you attend an elite private school.
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Off-topic- On April 8, 2016, Obama appointed a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship member, to a Presidential Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Given the fact that the Pahara founder, also co-founded (1) Bellwether, an organization that uses the term “human capital pipeline” for schools and (2) New Schools Venture Fund, whose “marching orders” were described as ” develop(ment)… of a diverse supply of different (school) brands on a large scale” and, (3) who was a founding team member of TFA (all 4 groups receiving Gates funding), there is no way that the majority of Americans would support a Pahara-Aspen public education appointment.
To re-establish democracy, U.S. Departments, from top to bottom, need to be rid of oligarch influence. The suspicion of opportunistic profiteering, instead of philanthropy, taints all that surrounds them.
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Or, all they cared about was the testing and now that that’s in they met their objective.
Or that.
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C, The objective was to have standardized testing that was consistent across states. With PARCC and SBAC losing state customers, that consistency won’t be achieved. The changes in federal education act give states more leeway re how to assess.
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The “unleashing of powerful market forces”, the result of a nation-wide linkage of standards, curriculum and testing, has been interrupted, making profit reassessments necessary.
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Diane, after 3 days of bad coverage directed at Manatee County, FL, an update on the breakthrough we had yesterday would be fair. Thanks for the work you do.
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Charlie,
I took your advice.
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