It is probably far too soon to know whether the Common Core succeeded or failed, but the studies are beginning to appear.
The adoption of the Common Core standards was a central requirement of the Obama-Duncan Race to the Top program. States had to agree to adopt the Common Core if they wanted to be eligible to compete for $5 billion in federal funds. The Gates Foundation paid for the Common Core, from its writing to its implementation, at a cost estimated between hundreds of millions to $2 billion. (If anyone can determine how much money Bill Gates plowed into the CCSS, I will salute them on this blog). Arne Duncan could not pay for them because federal law bars any federal official from influencing curriculum or instruction. But Duncan did pay $360 million to pay for two testing consortia to develop new tests for the CCSS. PARCC and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Almost every state signed up for Race to the Top. Almost all adopted the Common Core. Almost all signed up to use one or both of the new tests.
The whole venture cost the states many billions of dollars. New standards. New tests. New materials. New software and hardware. New professional development.
The Common Core came with dramatic promises about improving test s ores and closing achievement gaps.
Were these promises kept?
No.Since 2007, NAEP scores have gone flat. The lowest achieving students lost ground.
Matt Barnum reports here on a study that found that the Common Core made no difference.
“A new study, released in April through a federally funded research center, shows that states that changed their standards most dramatically by adopting the Common Core didn’t outpace other states on federal NAEP exams. By 2017 — seven years after most states had adopted them — the standards appear to have led to modest declines in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math scores.”
Most states have dropped out of the two federally-funded testing consortia, which arbitrarily set their passing marks so high that most students were certain to “fail.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why do politicians think they know everything when they don’t? Why do politicians think that teaching kids is putting them in front of a computer screen with horrid programs? Why do politicians act so arrogant?
Answer: Because they are lawyers, wear suits, and get $$$$$$ from their campaign contributors, like Gates and Zuckie. It really is this simple.
Politicians listen to the monied.
While I hope not to be tedious, I have to once again remind that judging success by the typical metrics, whether NAEP or others, is a fool’s errand. If we stipulate to the idea that scores are important in identifying failure, then we capitulate to the notion than successful scores validate policy or practice.
If a more holistic approach were taken, I would propose that Common Core substantially erodes the quality of the learning experience, even if it improved test scores.
Reducing human learning to any standardized curriculum or practice de facto dilutes or shrinks the creative, critical, fascinating dimensions of school. Such an approach suffocates students and good teachers. The Common Core suggests that children are common. They are not. It suggests that life experiences are common. They are not.
And, of course, the tests driven by the Common Core and exceptionally stupid. I’ve parodied them several times.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/common-core-the-lego-kit_b_8020956
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/our-students-their-moment-my-a_b_5668310
You are right.
To accept test scores like NAEP as a gauge of success is to accept the framing of the issue by the deformers.
Even pointing out that NAEP scores have not gone up is a dangerous game to play because it reinforces the idea that test scores are the proper way to judge success.
It’s contradictory to claim that test scores should not be the gauge of success and simultaneously claim that flat test scores “prove” that Common Core failed. One can simply not have it both ways.
I understand that deformers claimed test scores would go up and it is enticing to use the flatlining of test scores to (supposedly) “prove” that deformers failed , but it’s still dangerous to use their false framing because it perpetuates the whole testing mindset, which has been an unmitigated disaster.
But it is legitimate to judge the deformers by the metric that they chose.
They claimed that test scores would go to the Top, they claimed they knew how to close the achievement gap.
Why not see if they met their own goals?
It’x certainly fair to use the deformers standard of success to judge them, but is it wise to do so?
What if next year NAEP scores suddenly jumped by a significant amount?
Could one attribute that to Common Core? No.
But would those behind Common Core make such an attribution?
Of course they would.
But I would argue that the reason for not using scores as a gauge — not even to embarrass the deformers — is actually much more general.
It moves the national conversation away from testing where it has been for far too long.
Even using test scores to “prove” the deformers failed perpetuates the idea that test scores are somehow the best indicator of a successful policy.
George Lakoff has written a lot about the importance of framing to a conversation and I’m sure he would probably say that the reason the deformers have been able to control education for so long is because they controlled the framing of the issues. Even in failure they control the issue because people still use test scores as the gauge.
Here, SomeDAM, is a relevant study and discussion of the issue of the mathematical competency of American adults: https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30561596/balllubienskimewbornchapter.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1556864454&Signature=rt0f1CfQVU1TctgCw5uBpny9lIo%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DResearch_on_teaching_mathematics_The_uns.pdf
Paraphrasing Lakoff: Even if we say “test scores don’t matter” the audience (and us) think of test scores. The same applies to “Your test scores suck though you promised they won’t”.
We need to give something else to think about when we talk about student assessment.
In general “You can’t even do what you promised to do let alone what I asked you to do” is a strategy that has failed over and over.
Mom, can I go over to the Boltons and help Jenny with mowing their lawn?
You never ever mow our lawn, Bobby, even when I offer you $10 for it, but now you want to do it for the neighbors? How old is Jenny, 25 and you are 15?
But Mom, Jenny pays me $20. What does Jenny’s age have anything to do with making money?
The talk about lawn mowing the family’s front yard, and especially the talk about Jenny very probably has to be postponed a few weeks.
Bob
Thanks for the link.
I’ll have a look at it, but I am skeptical that most American high school graduates are innumerate.
Perhaps the adults and young adults that I have come across are an anomaly, but I have worked with people in many different capacities and areas, from high school teaching, high tech, building trades and even factory work and in my opinion, the innumerate label certainly does not apply to most of them.
But I readily admit that mine is anecdotal evidence and largely based on adults who were educated before Common Core reared its head, although I seriously doubt even that would have made the difference between numerate and innumerate.
And it also undoubtedly depends on one’s definition of innumerate, which may be the real issue here.
I would note that what a professional mathematician at a university calls innumerate may not be the same as what the rest of us would consider innumerate.
And I say that as someone who spent most of my time in college and thereafter working with math.
Many mathematicians believe that if you can’t do proper mathematical prroofs, you are innumerate. By that standard, even most physicists are probably innumerate.
“Many mathematicians believe that if you can’t do proper mathematical prroofs, you are innumerate. ”
Yeah, and hence most mathematicians are not to be relied on in determining what and how should be taught in schools.
The book titled “Innumeracy” by the mathematician John Allen Paulos is an example of what I am talking about.
While it would be nice if all high school graduates understood all the things Paulos talks about, I don’t agree with him that it means you are innumerate if you don’t.
Some of things he writes about are actually fairly arcane and I would guess that even some practicing engineers, scientists and even mathematicians might get them wrong.
As an asside
Some of the MOST numerate people I have come across are those in the building trades,which should not be all that surprising because they use math on a daily basis and the outcome depends directly on the correctness of their answers. It’s very obvious if you figured wrong for the pitch of a roof. Or if you misfigured the length of wire or plumbing pipe. I’d have to say that in many regards, these people know basic math better than many engineers and scientists.
lthey might not know anything about probabilities and calculating the likely number of fasle positives from a medical test but that does not mean they are innumerate.
Here’s a definition of numeracy that most in the building trades could probably pass.
Tile a bathroom from start to finish.
Could most mathematicians, scientists and engineers pass it? I doubt it.
And I think many of tge latter would actually be very surprised at the amount of math and just thinking involved.
Delightful pieces, Steve! Beautifully written. Very funny. Thank you! Enjoyed these immensely.
Bob, your link doesn’t work.
Colorado’s favorite son of the wealthy, Michael Bennet, endorsed by DFER which is referred to as the sister of CAP, is the latest candidate for President.
In 2017, CAP’s President, Neera Tanden, introduced Bennet prior to his speech at CAP.
Bennet’s description, a leader in fighting to reduce the influence of special interests and make our government responsive to the priorities of the American people.
Must have been a parody for the amusement of education oligarchs.
I know this is snitty, but does Neera Tanden’s voice make anyone else long for the mellifluous sound of fingernails scraping a chalkboard like it does me?
Tanden’s performance evaluation criteria, written or unwritten, would be interesting to see. Evidently, getting Hillary elected …..
Yes, Greg, it’s snitty. I would never say such thing because of my assiduous avoidance of sexism.
So, I let my wife do the talking (because of my assiduous avoidance of sexism). Every time Tanden appears on MSNBC, my wife puts her fingers in her ears and shakes her head, screaming like a toddler not wanting to listen to her scolding parents.
Her voice is an unfortunate combination of whiny teenager and Wicked Witch of the West.
For the schools, Common Core was disastrous, but the companies selling the products to the schools being forced to buy them, Common Core was extremely $ucce$$fu£.
The Common Core was invented to forward Gates’ standardization agenda. It did nothing for students except narrowed the curriculum and wasted their time. It also became a vehicle to justify the takeover and privatization of public schools and the firing of senior teachers.
The pound symbol is a nice touch, given that Pearson is a British company.
Intentional. Great minds think alike.
But LeftCoastTeacher, it just happens, by accident, to be the case that the Gates/Coleman bullet list enables testing on computers and depersonalized education software run on computers and massive cradle-to-grave database systems run on computers and that they were paid for by the wealthiest guy in the world who made his money in computers. This is all just synchronicity. It’s magical.
I wish there was an agreed-upon sarcasm font that WordPress allowed.
Magical, indeed!
“It is probably far too soon to know whether the Common Core succeeded or failed. . .”
Not at all. If anything it’s way past the time to determine that. CCSS was an abomination to begin with based on many false onto-epistemological assumptions of the teaching and learning process. Those of us who pointed out, screamed out about those myriad errors and falsehoods that proved before the CCSS came out that the notions of standardization were wrong. And the results? Multiple malpractices that harm many students. And when a malpractice is identified it MUST IMMEDIATELY be discontinued. . . for to do otherwise is folly.
“Channeling Bill Gates”
A decade’s not enough
For Common Core success
I know it might be tough
But fifty years is best
Oh, it’s already had lots and lots of $UCCE$$–billions and billions worth
I love it when we are in full agreement.
What bothers me is that it came at a time where individual states were improving their own standards and many states had good realistic standards that were do-able. Common Core has gobblely goock for standards that are hard to read and understand.
Who writes this stuff ? If it is not plain to me, how am I going to make it plain to a student ?
Newsweek (2008)
“When I lumped Gates in with the ‘bomb throwers” on education, he chuckled and didn’t disagree.”
At the time, Michael Bennet “suited Gates” for Secretary of Ed.
How absurdly ridiculous for CAP to, 8 years later, describe Bennet as “a leader in fighting to reduce the influence of special interests”.
DFER’s Michael Bennet is running for president in 2020.
And Bennet is frighteningly surrounded by many DFER friends in CO: Colorado Democrat Party delegates demanded that the name DEMOCRAT be separated from the organization — yet many of “progressives” in power still flock to DFER doors
President of what?
Unlike almost everyone here, I supported the Common Core because I don’t have any objection to common national standards and “national” makes sense to me if only because people don’t settle where they grew up and there should be some basic agreement on what’s important to know. If you want “local control” I think you have to admit that some “local controls” are bad for students and we’ve talked about that here- science denial or rewriting the history of the Civil War, etc. “Local control” could be lousy.
But if it’s harming public school students, and it seems to be, they should pitch it. I’m willing to admit I was wrong.
In my view it’s another ed reform experiment on public schools that they didn’t commit to or support in any real way once the initial marketing campaign ended. I think this cavalier attitude goes to the fact that they don’t really value public schools or public school students, or they wouldn’t subject them to this constant, wasted effort and upheaval. Teachers and students TIME is valuable. There’s a huge cost to these experiments, and none of the people who come up with them are BEARING that cost. Our kids are accepting the downside of all the risks they take.
I’m to the point where I wish they’d just stay out of public schools. They don’t support our schools or our kids so just chase charters and vouchers and let us be. The harm exceeds the benefit.
It’s an ideological belief, basically. The idea is “higher standards” will just be met with no additional support of any kind. It’s a slogan, like “where there’s a will there’s a way!” or “fake it ’till you make it!”
They all say these ideas come from the private sector, but if that’s true they come from a bad, low quality part of the private sector that runs on slogans. I don’t know why one would want to take a public entity and turn it into a poorly run corporation. One of the higher profile ed reformers brags in his resume that he “reinvented” health care in the 1990’s. I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would brag about the US health care system, or use it as a model for education. It’s an expensive, inequitable disaster.
Successful at what? If by that you mean educating students, I think we can already tell it was (and still is) an abominable failure. But I think it’s getting rather silly to keep pretending it had anything to do with educating students. As Gates himself has said, it’s about making standardized plugs that can be plugged into standardized outlets. Much more economical that way, and so much more profit to be made. In that regard, it has been (and continues to be) an unqualified success.
Exactly right! On the basis of what up you called “standardized plugs” above we should have rejected the CCrap before the bull was allowed in the ring. Now we have to put up with the bucking.
You are right.
Of course, Bill Gates is never satisfied unless he controls 90+ percent of the “market”, but while some states have changed the name of Common Core because of it’s bad press, most of the states that originally adopted it still use it, which means that it is still the de facto standard which textbook and software companies can use to produce the products for the schools.
Also, the fact that College Board has (supposedly) aligned SAT with CC further solidifies the success of Common Core.
Now that it is in most xchools, it really is irrelevant whether CC is successful from any regard other than corporate profits.
I read a post this morning on Gates’ blog about Chicago schools. He thinks he saved Chicago. He should read Ghosts in the Schoolyard, or just ponder for a moment what it meant to close fifty schools in a single day to make his data look good. To himself.
Nailed it, Dienne!
Steve Nelson writes above: “Common Core substantially erodes the quality of the learning experience, even if it improved test scores…Reducing human learning to any standardized curriculum or practice de facto dilutes or shrinks the creative, critical, fascinating dimensions of school. Such an approach suffocates students and good teachers.” I have seen this closeup raising grandsons who every year more hate and detest reading and writing and the lack of imagination in their school work. And work it is, with all the fun saved for private school students. As a retired teacher who made learning fun, I rage over their wasted years, so different from what my children experienced.
I see the same response from my grandson. Instead of teaching the builds on the nature of the child, the CCSS encourage binary thinking. It turns students into Pavlov’s dogs instead of thoughtful, imaginative thinkers. Even districts that supposedly dropped the Common Core are offering tests based on the CCSS.
Does anyone know a kid who LIKES Common Core ELA?
Well observed, Lauren. We read and write so that we can engage with the ideas and experiences being communicated. The Common [sic] Core [sic] in ELA replaces that natural interaction with written material with tortured exercises on applying to random snippets of text random standards [sic] from the Gates/Coleman bullet list. It has utterly ruined my beloved field of English language arts instruction!
Yesterday, a good friend, one of the most brilliant editors I’ve ever known and a deeply learned person sent me a note saying that she was quitting her job in Educational Publishing. I worked in that field for many years myself, in between working as a high-school teacher of English, film, theatre, debate, and speech. She is the latest in a long string of casualties in Educational Publishing–people who have quit because of the trivialization, narrowing, and other deformations of curricular materials due to the Common [sic] Core [sic]. Every educational publisher in the country, now, starts the planning of every publishing project with a spreadsheet. In the far-left column goes the Gates/Coleman bullet list–the “standards.” Next to that goes the list of places in the program where the “standard” is “covered.” In other words, the bullet list has become the default, de facto curriculum. The consequences of this for what student learning have been profound. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that my field, ELA, HAS BEEN RUINED by the Common [sic] Core [sic], except to the extent that brave teachers have given lip service to the stupid Gates/Coleman list while actually continuing to teach English. I’ve written a lot about this. The problems with the Common [sic] Core [sic] in ELA are not immediately obvious to amateurs like Gates and Coleman and politicians and many politicians and EduPundits. They can’t be described in a sound bite. But I’ve written a lot about this. Here, for example, I look at one of the ELA “standards”:
Here, another:
In this piece, I treat current approaches, under these “standards,” to reading: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2017/09/02/on-the-pseudoscience-of-strategies-based-reading-comprehension-instruction-or-what-current-comprehension-instruction-has-in-common-with-astrology/
Here, I take on the ELA “standards” in general: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/05/01/ed-deform-follies-yes-you-get-what-you-measure-or-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/
And in this piece, I describe an alternative to them (skip to the end to read that): https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/a-brief-analysis-of-two-common-core-state-standards-in-ela/
Love how every time you write Common Core you put [sic] [sic]. That really can not be overdone.
…spreadsheet – All teacher editions have these huge lists all over the place noting all the standards that a particular lesson covers. Many trees have died listing these long lists in our TE’s…and please do not come into a room as an administrator and ask a child what standard we are working on because that is another giant waste of time and energy.
The administrator coming into your classroom and saying, “What standard are you working on?” is assuming that the standards are the curriculum. That’s what your students are to study. Exactly. The Gates/Coleman bullet list has become the default, de facto curriculum, and it has dumbed down K-12 education, distorted it, and prevented any innovation, any introduction of new and better ideas.
The Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] have made an ENORMOUS difference in ELA. They have narrowed and distorted curricula and pedagogy, and they have stopped innovation cold. There will be new ideas in this field when Mr. Gates convenes his commissariat again, in a few years, to do the thinking for everyone else–for millions of classroom practitioners; researchers; professors of Education, English, Mathematics, and related fields; and everyone else. You can all stop thinking now. Master Gates and Lord Coleman have done that for you. Do as you are told.
Bob,
You are so correct. Gates can’t even develop good software. Gates set the standard for BAD software.
People like my husband who does physics, mathematics, astronomy, and develops attitude determination systems for space crafts know how rotten Gates’ software is. There are many errors and the customer is made to suffer for shoddy work.
Gates is about fueling his own ego at the expense of others. With people like Gates and Zuckerberg, it truly is BUYER BEWARE.
BTW, my husband is a former inner city junior high school teacher and he knows that teaching is so much harder than being a systems software engineer for space crafts. He also knows that the younger the children the harder the job of teaching is. He marvels at what primary grade teachers do.
If anyone wants to speak to him, he would welcome the conversation.
When we watched that PBS special on dyslexia, he laughed his head off and told me, “Now PBS is promoting lies. That’s why I don’t contribute to PBS anymore.”
Attitude Determination CONTROL Systems…sorry left out the word CONTROL.
LOL. I was an Executive VP at a very large national educational publishing house and a high-school English teacher, both at the beginning of my career and at the end of it. I worked MUCH harder as an English teacher than I did as an executive making multiples of my teacher’s salary, and my work as a teacher was arguably more important than any other job is, with the possible exception of nursing.
Attitude Determination Control Systems??
Is that SEL systems? 😉
It wasn’t that Gates could not produce good software.
He could have. He had lots of very capable people working for him at Microsoft.
No, Gates simply did not WANT to do what was necessary to produce good software because that would have taken time and cost HIM money.
Because he had cornered the market on operating systems, he knew that people had no choice other than to buy the crappy operating systems AND the crappy software that was bundled with it.
Not incidentally, in the software development industry, Microsoft is known as Microslop, which is a very apt appellation indeed.
I so appreciate reading your astute comments on this blog, Yvonne! Thank you!!!
Alas so many teachers have been and are still true believers in Common Core, as is my union, the California Teachers Association. They’ve been duped. It does not reflect well on their professional judgment.
Indeed. That’s the truly shocking thing, Ponderosa. The CC$$ in Mathematics were basically a devolution of the existing NCTM standards. But the fact that the CC$$ in ELA weren’t laughed off the national stage the moment they appeared speaks very poorly of the level of preparation of the folks in charge of ELA instruction in the US.
I have links to specific critiques of the Common [sic] Core [sic] in ELA under moderation, above.
That’s interesting to me. I know of no teachers here who appreciate the Common Core
Ohio,
Are you a HS teacher? I think there may be more independent thinking at that level. I don’t know any elementary teachers who are skeptics.
Ohio Algebra II Teacher
Check out what public employees are doing with their private sector
ed tech partners to promote digital learning and foster public-private partnerships, SETDA. It is funded by Gates.
The employees representing Ohio in SETDA said Ohio’s Ed. Dept. is involved with Future Ready. AWrenchintheGears.com has a series of questions we should be asking about the implications of Future Ready.
Future ready??
Like buying a pre-paid burial???
Ponderosa, yes I’m a high school teacher, and you’re probably right about the larger independence there. I can’t speak as well to the elementary side of things (though I haven’t always been thrilled by my son’s math curriculum).
Linda, you’re scaring me. Thanks for the heads up!
A math teacher at my local high school quit specifically because of Common Core.
I have no idea where he went or even if he is still teaching.
The last year he taught, he simply refused to teach CC, which may actually have led to a mutual agreement between himself and the administration to leave.
I have often wondered how many other teachers around the country have done the same. I don’t think we will ever know because no one keeps track of that sort of stuff.
Well I’m certain that the company that owns the ACT test thinks Common Core is a HUGE success! All of a sudden, there are so many more students scoring a perfect “36” on the test and there are many more that are scoring 34’s and 35’s. The Common Core was supposed to align to the PARCC and SBAC tests and then to the newly developed SAT/AP tests/curriculum. Seems that it has failed for PARCC/SBAC SAT/AP and David Coleman is probably having a snitty fit about now. More kids will now turn to the ACT and market share for College Board will hopefully tank (YAY!!!!!). The parents of these perfect/high ACT scorers are happy to tell that they send their kids for pricey test prep OR that the schools are providing the kids with the test prep. The house of cards is being exposed and the testing companies are eating themselves alive from the inside out….combined with the fact that colleges are now proudly announcing that they are going test free or test optional.
“The house of cards is being exposed. . . ”
Over the years I’ve described the standards and testing malpractice regime as a Potemkin Village built of cards on the beach at low tide.
Eventually, it will be all washed out to sea when the tide inevitably changes.
Promotion of the Common Core was not limited to the B&M Gates Foundation, where the data base I just cheked lists at least 245 grants for Common Core (some of these under K-12 education, College Ready, Global Advocacy, Post-secondary Success) with at least 16 grants for PARCC tests, 8 for SBAC tests to say nothing of grants to other groups like the Education Strategy Group enlisted to market the Common Core beyond the B&M Gates Foundation. See, for example, the link to a summary of efforts by the Common Core Strategy Group” organized by Gates but included others such as donore whose funds aresequestered in the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (hard to track), in addtion to support from others listed in the link below..
In other words, the Grants database for B&M Gates funding of the Common Core looks to me like a good project for crowd sourcing, especially since some grants are still being made in 2018 with recent promotions also tied to the Gates-Funded EdReports advertised as if a “consumer reports” for Common Core aligned curricula…meaning (among much else) every instructional resource examined must meet senseless criteria (no review of concepts /skills from prior grades allowed). Then add a search criteria to see how many grants have been awarded to migrate the Common Core to digital formats, including games. An example is the multi-player SIM-CITY POLLUTION CHALLENGE: advertised as “aligned with 16 standards, most for Common Core math and the Next Generation Science standards. http://www.gamesforchange.org/game/simcityedu-pollution-challenge/
The game comes with a data-dashboard for teachers to track the “success” of each student in playing the game and document evidence of learning. (Other values, if present, are subordinate to standards-based learning).
Click to access Funding%20the%20CCSS%20_%20What%20Have%20We%20Learned.pdf
The Common [sic] Core [sic] was created so that there would be a single national bullet list to key standardized tests to (tests to be taken on computers) and depersonalized education software to (software to be run on computers) and to provide “data” to feed into learning management systems (to be run on computers). These standards were part of a business plan to sell computers and software command and control systems. Any bullet list would do, as long as it was uniform and could allow products to be made for a national market and sold “at scale,” and that’s why they were put together in such haste, by amateurs, based on the lowest-common-denominator Educational Groupthink of existing state standards [sic], rushed out with no vetting whatsoever, subject to no critical analysis or revision going forward, and supported by many millions (billions) in funds to the federal government, to unions, to astroturf lobbying groups, to politicians, and so on. The nation was scammed, and lots of vendors along the education carnival midway (many famous EduPundits) were quite happy to collaborate, Vichy-style, as long as the river of green was flowing.
That these “standards” narrow curricula and pedagogy and stop cold any innovation by curriculum developers or classroom practitioners or researchers was, from the point of view of their developers, a feature, not a bug because they needed a bullet list that would work everywhere, all the time, going forward, given the limitations of depersonalized education software and management systems.
BINGO, and Obama bought it, hook, line and stinker!
Yes. But in time, this nonsense will collapse of its own dead weight. Unfortunately, a lot of damage will be done in the interim. The Ed Deform Era will be remembered as another period of darkness, another descent into madness, like Eugenics in the early 20th century. History will not look kindly on those who collaborated with it.
Bob
That’s exactly right.
I was involved in software development and everything you describe is what one strives for when one is trying to produce software for a mass market.
One does not want to have to produce lots of different custom versions of software, but just a few (or ideally only one) that can be sold to a very large number of customers (in this case school districts across the country)
Since mass market software was Gates business, it should not be any surprise that this is the approach he took.
Everything that Gates did — and does –should be seen through that lens.
It’s also worth noting that the only way one can ensure that one will not have to be constantly updating and modifying a version to meet customer requests is by effectively locking in the standard. That is precisely why CC was copyrighted, so that those who produced software for it could be sure that it would not be a moving target.
This was so obvious from the very beginning. They weren’t very good, back then, at hiding what they were up to. They actually talked in these terms. Sickening, really. And oh the damage that has been done to ELA curricula and pedagogy!
Gates actually did not even try to hide what he was up to, stating in 2009 that it was all about unlesshing a powerful market” though he did claim to Lindsey Layton in a Washington Post interview that his own company would not benefit from Common Core.
He made that claim at the very time when Microsoft was working with Pearson, the company that produced one of the primary tests for Common Core.
Bob
As I am sure you are well aware, dependence on the ” judgement of history” is actually a very ineffective way of preventing a similar thing from happening in the future.
Much more effective to hold the responsible individuals accountable here and now.
I know it’s not likely to happen with governors like Andrew Cuomo in power, but the states might be able to recoup some of the billions they had to pay out due to Common Core by bringing a class action suit against the Gates Foundation.
The goals of those pushing Common Core might have been out in the open, but the methods they used (in conjunction with the US DOE) to get it adopted with no discussion by state legislatures or local communities were highly secretive and the way Common Core was represented as a “State Standards Initiative” was disingenuous at best and perhaps even illegal.
Of perhaps teachers and parents could bring a class action suit.
The discovery phase alone during which Gates Foundation emails, meeting minutes etc with USDOE would be made available would undoubtedly be worth the effort. If Gates Foundation has not already purged all their servers of such information that is.
to recoup some of the billions they had to pay out due to Common Core by bringing a class action suit against the Gates Foundation
An altogether excellent idea
Having watched as the diploma project required all students to take Algebra I as Ninth Graders, and as the CC continued what I perceived as the NCTM move toward the abolition of Euclidian Geometry, I can only say that I was not at all surprised that idiocy was forced down our throats by administration two and three layers above the classroom. The folly of this, as well as the references to the Demming philosophy that proved so successful, have littered this website. You would have to talk a long time to convince me that the paragons of virtue who promulgated this outrage were not fully aware of what they were doing.
In math, we already had pretty good “standards.” Those were the standards promulgated by the NCTM, and all the states had basically adopted the NCTM standards, with minor modifications. However, the important thing is that a national organization with elected leadership, consisting of math teachers and professors, was the keeper of those standards, and they were subject to continual critique and revision by knowledgeable professionals. Now, it’s possible to make a very strong argument for major changes to the ways in which we approach mathematics instruction. After all, most adults in the US, after having had 12 or 13 years of it, end up basically innumerate. You are probably familiar, Roy, with Lockhart’s eloquent, persuasive essay, “A Mathematician’s Lament,” here: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
But ELA is definitely a different animal. It is possible, I think, to make defensible lists of key descriptive and procedural knowledge that students should acquire in the course of their ELA instruction, but the CC$$ in ELA isn’t such a list.
The CCSS for math was not well thought out. Among the huge issues is the assumption of perfect recall of every concept as a student — often pushed along faster than prepared — moves from grade to grade. While nowhere close to the level of high-ability math students, it pushes more difficult questions from more difficult concepts for learners at younger ages and insists on teaching methodology that might work best for some but not for all. Seemed to be more a vehicle to implement the testing than a method for strong learning.
The prefrontal cortex, which governs problem solving, focusing attention, strategic thinking, planning, and abstract thinking in general is one of the last parts of the brain to develop. It isn’t fully in place until about age 25 or 26. The corpus collosum, which connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain and greatly enables creative problem-solving, also takes a long time to develop completely. As a result, most kids are pretty concrete thinkers. But the CC$$ in mathematics pushes abstract thinking down to lower levels (e.g., “represent and solve problems,” ‘understand properties,” “use place value understanding,” “represent and interpret data,” “understand concepts of area and relate area to multiplication and addition,” “reason with shapes,” “reason abstractly and quantitatively,” “construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others,” “model with mathematics,” “look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning”—all from the CC$$ for Grade 3.
Crazy. It’s like telling a fish to climb a tree.
What people could be doing is having kids in the early grades do lots and lots of activities that involve manipulating shapes and perceiving patterns in them. These help to accelerate the building of the relevant wetware for abstract reasoning in the brain. If they did this and delayed the start of formal math instruction until the mental tools for doing abstract reasoning were actually in place, kids would be able to reason abstractly, find this enjoyable, and learn more math in two years than they now do in 12 or 13. The fact is that most adults in the US, even though they’ve been through 12 or 13 years of math class, are functionally innumerate. Sixty percent of them can’t calculate a ten percent tip even though all they have to do is move the decimal place. Why? They’ve learned to hate math and to think that they are no good at it because, surprise, MOST CHILDREN AREN’T. They don’t have the abstract reasoning equipment yet.
Now, there are some few kids for whom this is not true. There are little Euclids and Gausses and Ramanujans and von Neumanns who are born with truly exceptional mathematical hardwiring. It’s one of those fields in which we know that there are a few individuals with truly astonishing innate gifts. These we need to identify early and put in completely different programs because we really, really need those people.
Well said, Ohio Algebra II Teacher! And so very, very important.
Whenever I make this argument, people throw a counterexample at me: I had this kid who . . . . The ability of adults to fool themselves about how much “understanding” a kid has developed is truly astonishing. It’s a Clever Hans phenomenon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
“Among the huge issues is the assumption of perfect recall of every concept as a student. . .”
Yes, one of many huge issues. How much does a student forget about a concept that they “learn” the minute after they take a test in whatever subject? And then remember it 5 years later in a conversation not related at all to the concept. And then promptly forget in the next minute.
Memory and learning certainly are not linear/straight line from point A to point B. But the CCSS assumes that it is.
As you state, OA2T, just one of many onto-epistemological issues in the standards and testing malpractice regime.
Well said, Duane and Ohio Algebra II Teacher!
I don’t buy the idea that most people who graduate from high school are innumerate.
And many of the people who graduate from US high schools go on to become scientists, engineers and mathematicians and one simply can not do that without having a very good math background in high school.
The latter is one of the reasons Common Core is bad. It actually restricts what has traditionally been taught in high school. Even the fellow who wrote the CC math standard admitted that it was not intended for those who wanted to pursue careers in STEM.
The bit about 60 percent of adult Americans not being able to calculate correctly a 10 percent tip came from a NEA study.
I draw that conclusion, SomeDAM, on the basis of observing the adults around me. I have a couple friends who are engineers, and their math is great. Almost everyone else I know describes himself or herself as being “bad at math,” and when situations come up that involve doing some math, I’m the one in the group that ends up doing it. Examples: my fellow teachers were asked to grade their finals on a curve. I had to explain to them how to do this. Yesterday, a friend texted me to ask how to figure out if she had a 93 percent average in her class and the final was worth 30 percent of her grade, what grade would she have to get on the final to get an A in the class. It’s simple Algebra, but I had to do it for her. And I’ve seen this all my life. There are popular jokes about this–a meme that goes around the net that reads, “Another Day in Which I Didn’t Do Any Algebra.”
Yes, many Americans go on to do jobs that involve math, but many, many more describe themselves as math phobic or as hating math or as not being any good at it.
I have had a very difficult time, SomeDAM, in finding studies of levels of ADULT mathematical competence and math anxiety in the United States. One can find lots of stuff comparing US to foreign STUDENTS’ results on standardized math tests, but very little addressing how much math the average US 30 year old knows, but my own experience has been that the answer to that is “not much.”
https://phys.org/news/2018-03-high-adults-unable-basic-mathematical.html
And I don’t think that they are innumerate immediately upon graduating from high school. After all, they’ve just had the stuff. I think that when you catch up to them 20 years later, they mostly are.
All I have to say is that child #1 is in public school and I can’t help her with any of the math and my engineer husband can’t understand it either (it grossly leaves out chunks of material?). Child #2 goes to private school and I am happy that I can understand and am able help him with his Geometry homework if needed. Private school Geometry teacher is 86 yrs old and has been teaching for 60 yrs….I asked him at the beginning of the school year if the emphasis would be on Euclidean or Cartesian and he said he taught “real” geometry and didn’t know what Cartesian Geometry was.
Freshman math at my college was reading Euclid’s Elements and doing all the proofs. I found it very fun.
That’s a very funny story, Lisa, about the ancient Geometry teacher. Maybe he knew Euclid personally but didn’t catch up with the newfangled stuff from Descartes! LMAO!
I think it altogether wonderful, however, that your child’s teacher is 86. Ageism is a great evil.
A central purpose of NCLB and all that has followed was to make public schools look like failures in order to pave the way for the privatization that the majority of Americans never wanted. So, standards and tests may have failed to improve student performance or make a dent in inequity but it has made strides in undermining public education.
Arthur,
The corporate reform movement has some successes, if you consider its goals.
It loves disruption and it has successfully disrupted and destabilized one of our most important public services.
It hates unions, and it has crushed unions in states where they were once strong, like Michigan and Wisconsin.
It loves data, and it has promoted technologies that mine student data.
It doesn’t believe that any preparation is needed to teach, and it has helped to make TFA a wealthy and powerful organization while demoralizing teachers and creating shortages.
Quite a track record.
Arthur,
The corporate reform movement has some successes, if you consider its goals.
It loves disruption and it has successfully disrupted and destabilized one of our most important public services.
It hates unions, and it has crushed unions in states where they were once strong, like Michigan and Wisconsin.
It loves data, and it has promoted technologies that mine student data.
It doesn’t believe that any preparation is needed to teach, and it has helped to make TFA a wealthy and powerful organization while demoralizing teachers and creating shortages.
Quite a track record.
Yes. It is important to be clear that what’s good for all students was never their goal. They know that the common good is a broadly shared goal, so they cloak their real goals in obfuscating language like, “No child left behind,” “Every student succeeds,” and “Civil rights issue of our time.” It’s all lies.
Opposite talk. Up is down. Day is night. Peace is war. Ignorance is strength.
Orwell saw it coming.
And for this reason, Mr. Camins, Gates’s goal (computerizing K-12 education and everything else) and the Waltons’s goal (smashing public schools and unions) were both served by forcing, top-down, a single set of “standards” on the country.
The Coleman-Duncan legacy will be viewed as the most sweeping and damaging expansion of the null curriculum in US public school history. A combination of devastating opportunity costs along with the deadening of student enthusiasm and curiosity produced by the hyper focus on test scores and data driven instruction. Teaching and learning is an intrinsically human endeavor and the standards-based, test-and punish reform movement of the 21st century exorcised most of the humanity from public education. Heck of a job Arne!
Reblogged this on What's Gneiss for Education.
Awesome, Greg!
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
The simple answer is a big and fat resounding NO!!!!
Amen