This post is a scholarly analysis of the funding of Common Core: Who put up the money, who benefitted. The paper (which can be downloaded here) was written by three scholars at Pennsylvania State University: Mindy L. Kornhaber, Nikolaus J. Barkauskas, and Kelly M. Griffith.
They track where the money came from and where it was spent.
The biggest problem for the Common Core standards was that they were released based on a hope, not on evidence or experience. They were never tested in advance, so no one could say with assurance how they would affect students, the achievement gaps, teachers, classrooms.
Their closing paragraph is chilling:
An analogy to the Gold Rush may be useful here: The claim stakers are the federal government and philanthropies that have staked out the Common Core for public policy. To work that stake, they incentivize states and school districts to mine the Common Core and get higher measured achievement. To do so, the miners need equipment. The vendors who sell the equipment profit in the short term, even if their tools rarely enable the miners to get the sought-after results. In essence, those who set directions for the Common Core and those who provided resources for its implementation have benefitted, even as potential benefits to schools, educators, and students are elusive, and the entire claim may ultimately be empty.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
No doubt some people have made a killing on the Core. What district hasn’t had to invest in new Core aligned instructional materials? The tech industry must be giddy with the money that has dropped and is dropping into their laps. After all, everyone knows that the acquisition of “21st Century skills” requires a massive investment in computer technology.
After more than a few decades, I am still waiting for when computer technology makes our lives easier. As far as I can tell, it has only made it easier for employers, customers, parents, (and, yes, teachers,too)… to demand more.
Microsoft’s deal with Pearson to create products for Common Core, coupled with Gates’ personal investment in the largest retailer of schools-in-a-box- American communities and kids are screwed. We can thank the Aspen Institute’s cozy relationship with politicians like Bush and Obama.
Cross posted at
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Scholars-Review-the-Fundin-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Common-Core_Diane-Ravitch_Evidence_Fraud-161003-902.html
The report identifies approx. $330 mil. spent, on Common Core, by private foundations, between 2008 and 2014. Breaking it down, the paper lists private foundations giving $21 mil. to states, $35 mil. to school districts and charters, $ 115 mil (indirect) to colleges and universities and, another $159 mil. to colleges and universities. A few years ago, Philanthropy Roundtable published an article, co-written by an external affairs manager of a Gates-funded organization. In the article introduction, this was written, “…reformers …declare “We’ve got to blow up the
ed schools.’ ” The article then suggested an alternative, plutocratic takeover. (title-“Don’t Surrender the Academy” by Frederick Hess of AEI.)
Gates is funding the blow-up of higher education and not just schools of education. He has his eyes set on all postsecondary education with data mongering from candle to 10 years after completing post secondary education.
His weapons of choice include SLOs and VAM and various liaisons with many other foundations. Instead of degrees, he and other foundations, especially Lumina, are pushing for the new national norm of competency based services and online learning, mislabelled personalized learning, and non-stop data mining to get there and stay there.
The effort to shape federal policy is following the same basic template that we saw with the Common Core, with a ton of marketing. This time, the foundations are trying to get control of data for every postsecondary student, link that to K-12 data from states, include data from social service agencies in each state, and rollback FERPA as well as privacy provisions in the Higher Education Act. The Higher Education Act prohibits the construction of a Student Unit Record System that uses an SS number to track students over time. Changing that requires Congressional intervention.
What to do? Here is and example, part of a much larger effort. About 28 foundations have sent money to a “voice group” of mostly college students, Young Invincibles. This group is functioning much like the voice-groups that were formed and funded by USDE and foundations to back the Common Core and RTT requirements for pay for performance.
For the new Gates agenda, the Young Invincibles group is being enlisted as marketers. In 2015, the group wrote a letter to Arne Duncan expressing support for the largely Gates and Lumina funded eight or nine-member Postsecondary Data Collaborative. This letter supplemented one sent by the Postsecondary Data Collaborative at about the same time.
These moves and many others I am documenting are overt attempts at philanthrogovernance. The goal is to preempt public discussion on major changes in federal policy and beef up data gathering using the same shame and blame tactics to eliminate any postsecondary education program without proven market value. Coincidentally, the Postsecondary initiatives from foundations would kill academic freedom in public higher education. You can see the 2015, letters to Arne Duncan indicating part of the agenda. The agenda is still active even though he is gone. http://www.ihep.org/sites/default/files/uploads/docs/press/postsecondary_data_collaborative_-_college_ratings_comments.pdf
or this http://younginvincibles.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/PIRS-comments-Final.pdf
For a small indication of the still active agenda, see how the US Census is being coopted for the Foundation-led initiative here: http://www.workforcedqc.org/news/blog/census-helps-chart-new-territory-grad-earnings
At a minimum, your analysis deserves a Ravitch post.
Would the AAUP, Inside Higher Ed, and the Chronicle of Higher Education be receptive audiences, if the info was sent to them?
Now that my district is moving toward common core and implementing a curriculum called Wonders in K-5 my Kinder and first grade students have not had one opportunity to hold/look at/discover/investigate a single picture book. They have not had the experience of enjoying a book in my classroom after 6 weeks of school. Everything is “scripted” and “virtual” and all contact with so called literature is via the computer. I am sickened by the direction we are going. Very sick, very very sick. Is this a form of child neglect to deprive children of hands on interactions with books in their classroom? Can I even call my self a teacher anymore? What in gods name are we doing?