Unless you are a policy wonk or live inside the Beltway, you probably never heard of Achieve.
Achieve is an organization that was founded in 1996 by governors and business leaders to raise academic standards and to advocate for college and career readiness. Achieve is closing its doors this summer. Is the job done or did the money run out or did people just get tired of the same old same old? Years ago, when I was on the other side, believing that standards and tests would solve all our education problems (note bene: I was wrong), I went to Massachusetts on behalf of Achieve to review the Massachusetts standards and tests, then considered the gold standard. Years later, the Common Core came along, and the state ditched its gold standard in order to get some federal Race to the Top gold.
Anyway, Achieve is closing its doors and passing the baton.
Let’s hope this means that in the midst of a global pandemic, the thought has dawned that American students are not in need of more standards, testing, and accountability.
What they need is a fresh vision of what education can be and should be.
And it won’t be found by testing kids more often.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let the glorious news be spread!
The wicked pitch at last is dead!
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Not dead. Unfortunately.
There will be little chance because Achieve will “ensure that standards-based education reform and college- and career-readiness remain central features of the nation’s education improvement strategies, especially in support of efforts to boost equity.”
The organizations promoting the same old, same old agenda are “CenterPoint Education Solutions, the Education Strategy Group and Seek Common Ground” and “long-standing partners such as the Education Trust, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Student Achievement Partners” also “EdReports and OpenSciEd” all “devoted to increasing the supply and demand of standards-aligned curriculum in math, science and English Language Arts.” Add WestEd.
We have an over-supply of standards, beyond the capacity of anyone to meet all of them. Good riddance to Achieve but do not assume that anything has really changed. See this and comments from two years ago.
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You are absolutely correct. Achieve is far from dead… it’s just regrouping and reorganizing. Michael Cohen wrote in this presser that Achieve is handing the reins to WestEd, the Gates Foundation will continue to be involved, and they are helping almost all of their staff members find positions in other similar organizations… reminds me of Pearson people moving to Questar, etc. IMHO, celebration is premature.
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Watch out for embedded testing with Competency Based Education programs. Edgenuity, for example, is an online edu-platform with AI scoring. As I recall, Los Angeles bought it for credit recovery classes, but was sharply criticized because of the low quality of learning that was taking place in the online credit recovery classes. When we went on strike, there were suggestions that Edgenuity be used to replace teachers during the strike. Edgenuity is being used today, during the coronavirus crisis. I just found out LAUSD is going to require online summer school if students get ‘D’s. I bet the summer school classes will be Edgenuity.
It’s better than high stakes testing and VAM evaluations, but still a way to replace and de-professionalize teachers so that Eli Broad can profit and pay less in taxes for professional teachers and lower class sizes.
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The ed reform “advice” on online learning reads like an advertisement for commercial providers:
https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/distance-learning-lets-not-reinvent-the-wheel/
Why don’t people in the “movement” object to this? These are ads for companies and the ed reform pundits sell it as serious “analysis”.
They’re plugging products.
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“Peter Cunningham
Excellent as always. It’s not the test they hate. It’s the accountability. If we based success on measuring teacher and student morale, they’d hate it just as much.”
This is a former Obama official talking about people who work in public schools- “they”- the enemy.
Just amazing we had a Democratic administration that was openly hostile to public schools. The schools 90% of the kids and families use and we’ve now had three Presidents in a row that were hostile to us.
Crazy. You-all are paying thousands of federal employees who are ideologically opposed to public schools. Just nuts.
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