The American Prospect has advice for Joe Biden about how he can make dramatic changes on Day One.
Pick your topic: Corporate taxes, the War on Terror, student debt.
Everything is here except for what he can do on Day One to help American education. He can end the Reign of Error of NCLB, Race to the Top, Every Student Succeeds Act, and Common Core. On Day One, he could waive all federal testing mandates for 2021. That would be a start.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Supreme Court just revoked presidential immunity from prosecution while in office.
Oops. Sorry, that was a case decided in July. Trump v. Vance. The court ruled that the president did have to comply with subpoenas. So, not a new decision.
Trump never complied with a subpoena. He ordered everyone in his administration to refuse to comply.
Congress could do nothing without testimony to administration officials.
Trump has been completely lawless for his entire life. This is pretty easy, in the United States, for those who inherit a lot of Daddy’s money. The Teflon Don v2.0. Just another thug.
Thanks for this information, Bob. YAY!
Drumphty Dumpty needs to be prosecuted for ALL of his crimes BEFORE he was in office as well as WHILE he is in office.
Trump is a “CRIMINAL in chief” and his tantrums and lies are used to cover up his dastardly crimes. He’s done this his entire life.
As an aside: Have any you noticed that dump’s mouth looks like an anus?
The problem is that the office of President has virtually no check on it.
since it requires a 2/3 majority for a conviction, Impeachment is really a joke.
What Trump made crystal clear is a major (perhaps fatal) flaw in the US Constitution.
The critical thing is not that he has disregarded the Constitution. It is that under certain circumstances which have done to pass, there is no effective means to deal with it.
The Constitution was allegedly set up as a hedge against a president running roughshod over the laws.
It has failed in that regard.
The casualty of the Gates/Fordham/Walton/Koch education agenda is local democracy and Main Street’s economy. Is Biden willing to stand up for communities against corporate barbarians?
On Day One, he could waive all federal testing mandates for 2021. That would be a start.
YES!!!
Can you please point me in the direction of what you think is the most comprehensive article outlining exactly what you find objectionable about Common Core (unrelated to testing)? Thank you!
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/?s=metaphor
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/what-happens-when-amateurs-write-standards/
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/
And parts of this: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/why-we-need-to-end-high-stakes-standardized-testing-now/
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/02/14/criticism-and-the-common-sic-core-sic/
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/02/08/how-the-common-core-distorted-and-dumbed-down-instruction-in-english/
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/12/23/the-coring-of-u-s-k-12-curricula/
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/who-said-life-aint-no-crystal-stair/
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/01/06/stopping-by-school-on-a-disruptive-afternoon/
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2017/10/02/the-coring-of-the-six-hundred-with-apologies-to-alfred-lord-tennyson/
And there’s an issue, Harriet, with the way you have framed your question. The major problems with the Common [sic] Core [sic] in ELA cannot be divorced from the testing of the standards [sic], for in US ELA curricula and pedagogy today, the testing is the tail that is wagging the dog.
One whole idea is to get it completely divorced from the testing. And to, in pedagogy, NOT teach to the test, such as reading the same passages over and over again instead of reading an entire poem or work of literature.
Having real teachers and child development specialists develop a common core and the tests themselves is a solid idea, as this one was developed by Gates’s minions, for the most part, who were out of education for years and had no real ongoing current grassroots in-the-trenches connection to education. That’s a starting point. But to say that the “United” States should not have a uniform core or framework with some flexibility and wiggle room is also a starting point for a discussion. We are a very not put tighter society, and that hurts us in having enough unity to propel social causes and justice. It’s one of the prime reasons we are where we are. That and our size. So much division, so much variability.
Just as with testing: I have no problem with testing kids, but the frequency of it and the consequences for it must change drastically under this new administration. Tests are used to measure what kids still need help in and to celebrate, in part, what they know. Tests are not the end-all and be-all of excellent teaching and learning. They should remain as but one of many tools to empower children.
Tests do not “empower” children. Standardized tests in particular have no purpose other than to rank and rate children and tell them whether they succeeded or failed.
Since they are normed on a bell curve, a very large proportion of children will always “fail.”
How are children empowered by a social construct that labels them as “failures”?
Years ago standardized tests were validated tests that were like a litmus test with NO high stakes attached to them. Teachers were not evaluated on the basis of these tests. They were mostly intended for nervous parents that wanted to know how their child stacked up compared to others. In my children’s school they came with the report cards at the end of the year, and we hardly looked at them.
[really sick] which is not [sic]
Bob,
Harriett previously asked what is so bad about the CC standards. You have written about this eloquently. How about posting some of your essays here?
Please feel free, Diane. Each of these carries a release. I keep thinking that I should turn this stuff into a book, but ars longa, vita brevis.
The other issue for me is that having retired, and being quite aware that time is now very precious, I have to prioritize. I would rather spend the time I have left interacting with my grandkids and writing short fiction. But that book about the Coring of US curricula is pretty completely outlined in my head. A LOT of it would be devoted to demonstrating via close readings what scams the tests are and how much the Common [sic] Core [sic] has dumbed down both print and online ELA curricula. Many of my friends in the courseware development industry have quit in disgust at this–because of what they must now do in their materials as a result of the Core [sic] and the tests.
And on that subject, Diane, I am continually astonished by your energy and determination, by the fact that you continue to be, very much, on the front line, exposed to the fray. It’s humbling and inspiring.
And thank you, Diane. Greatly appreciated!
Hmmmm. . . I went to grade school in the early-to-mid 50’s. I remember having to take a “bubble” test and then wondering how I did and when someone would help me learn what I “missed” on the test.
I’m still waiting. CBK
LOL. Exactly, CBK. The billions spent on this testing numerology is wasted, for the data are never in time, are never disaggregated by standard, and even if they were, would be useless because the tests are valid measures of mastery and the standards [sic] do any incredibly poor job of capturing what’s important in ELA, most significantly because they are almost completely content free and incredibly vague and reference almost no concrete descriptive or procedural knowledge to be imparted to students.
Bob Here’s a good question for the test: How many important and well-known people in the US have to write op-eds telling Trump and his base that they are delusional before they believe it? CBK
And, at any rate, any list of “standards” and any curriculum outlines should be tentative and suggested as guidelines because this stuff must be tailored to students’ needs and teachers’ passions and subject to continual improvement and critique by subject-matter experts, scholars, classroom practitioners, cognitive scientists, etc. We did BETTER before all this standards madness, when we had school-based decision making by teachers.
Bob writes: *”And, at any rate, any list of ‘standards’ and any curriculum outlines should be tentative and suggested as guidelines because this stuff must be tailored to students’ needs and teachers’ passions and subject to continual improvement and critique by subject-matter experts, scholars, classroom practitioners, cognitive scientists, etc. We did BETTER before all this standards madness, when we had school-based decision making by teachers.”
. . . not in my school in the 50’s. But no matter. Let’s get our heads out of the past. The new interface is twofold: (1) the computer program and (2) a babysitter.
BTW, it’s according to a 50+ plan that started with badmouthing teachers. Finally . . . we get to replace them now. CBK
YUP. The Gates plan. Replace teachers and facilities with machines. Think of the savings! And good enough education for Prole children, as opposed to the Übermenschen of his own rarified class.
Let me clarify exactly what I mean by “empower” . . .
If I find out, for example, that out of 4 learning objectives, a child has really mastered 3 of the 4 and still needs help in one (ONLY assuming the test is valid and reliable and that I am offering multiple modalities in which that child can learn and demonstrate their knowledge and learning), I can then go ahead and re-teach that learning goal, seeking why that child is still having difficulty, checking for understanding and misconceptions, and teaching differently and with enough cycles of practice in such a way that the child improves and is therefore “empowered”.
This is not about guaranteeing an outcome, as there is always a bell curve. This is about increasing the probability that the child will improve and therefore become empowered. Often, a learner has to work harder at areas of weakness, obviously. There’s nothing wrong with that. We do this, as you already know, Diane, through formative assessment, but I see no reason why it should not drive next year’s teacher’s practices as he/she receives this student into the new grade, post standardized test, and even the current teacher, teaching from April through June.
In a semantic sense, this empowers the teacher, I suppose. And you, having read my note, would see I did say that we should divorce testing from CCSS and labeling teachers and students. Tests are for teachers and students, not for politicians and agendas.
Bob, 😂🤣😅🤣😂🤣😅.
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/
Thank you. It is wonderful to once again discuss problems in education. I think I will save this posting…even Bob who is being concise and especially interesting.
Harriett-
What’s so objectionable about communities keeping THEIR education dollars local so that they can have an economic multiplier effect instead of enriching distant tech moguls through the purchase of corporate, canned on-line instruction?
What’s so objectionable when citizens want democratic, local control of the dollars they spend for THEIR kids’ educations?
What’s so objectionable about small class sizes and in-person education for the kids of working class parents instead, of models like the Cristo Rey prototype in Calf. which the Christensen Institute described as having 60 students and computer instruction (Common Core). Cristo Rey received financing from Walton heirs and Gates. Christensen’s claim to fame is the buzz word, “disruption”. Kids, in an America with unprecedented wealth concentration, don’t need “disruption”, they need their parents’ lives to not be an economic crap shoot.
What is so objectionable about a progressive tax system instead of the one in Washington state, the most regressive in the U.S., where the poor pay a rate up to 7 times the rate Gates pays?
Harriet-
Are your questions smug to the point of offensive? Why should anyone in a community believe that you or Gates care about kids that aren’t your own? The schools that Bill and Melinda Gates chose for their kids rejected the presumptuous curriculum scheme of the self-appointed, PR-rich Gates.
Harriet’s question should be, “Why have the skills of public education’s graduates been employed to overcome the 2% Wall Street drag on GDP?”
Harriett, I second Bob’s recommending his blog entries re: CCSS. He draws on a broad background including not only K12 public school teaching, but textbook et al curriculum editing/ publishing & more. As for considering my opinion: I had some background in engineering and purchasing standards through corporate work back in the day. Later on, when I had to align my longtime program for teaching youngsters foreign languages to CCSS (in 2010), I was taken aback at their overly-precise, rigid prescriptivism. At that point I began collecting articles on the subject. Some of them are good on the generalities, but none get into the weeds as Bob’s do, quoting actual standards and explaining the problems.
I hope Biden succeeds but I’m not encouraged by what I see as his cowardice in not calling Donald Trump out for breaking the law.
No one powerful will be held accountable for any of this, will they? Donald Trump and his employees can break the law with impunity and there will be no consequences of any kind.
Ask yourself what would happen if a mayor called an elections official and ordered that official to “find votes”. The mayor would be prosecuted. Biden’s afraid even to mention Trump’s lawbreaking.
Why are our elites such incredible cowards? Of course Trump walks all over them- they’re scared of him.
I think if Trump gets charged with anything it will be by the Southern Dist.of NY. Biden will not want to seem vindictive, not because of cowardice, but because he believes he can lure blue collar people back to the Democratic Party. He does not want to alienate the working people in Trump’s base. If he really wants to appeal to blue collar people to the party, he needs to stop embracing the same failed neo-liberalism that has hollowed out the working class since the Reagan administration. That includes providing robust public services that are truly public, not some rigged financialization of public services from Wall St that lines the pockets of the wealthy at the expense of working people.
retired I know what you mean, I think, but I had to laugh about not alienating Trump’s base. Screaming in my head is this: You cannot be authentic in ANY venue and NOT alienate that kind of thinking.
I know one hand cannot clap; but in this case, the other hand is either missing or shoved up someone’s . . . . . (cbk)
Throughout the campaign Biden sold himself as “blue collar union” guy, not someone in Wall St.’s pocket. One reason people voted for Trump in 2016 was because of his “man of the people” messaging, even though Trump was a “silver spoon baby.” Nobody except New Yorkers knew how truly vile the man was. Blue collar people are more interested in jobs than racism, but I’m sure we could do a Venn Diagram where a certain percentage are both.
Well-stated.
But we can’t even get Mr. Biden to see the need for universal health care in the midst of a pandemic.
But at least Wall Street and the billionaires are sound, right?
SMDH
Chiara: “Bald, bold abuse of power by the president of the united states” Kamala Harris called it on national media the day after it happened. Good enough for me. As Diane says, Biden is not the confrontational type—but his #2 certainly is. And she speaks for him. Not cowardice.
A year ago, some of my former middle school students came back to visit me and, in conversation, told me that the drama teacher at their high school was giving bad grades to students who did not perform services like washing her car. Horror story, right? I always say I go to school to serve students; students do not go to school to serve me. I will not waste a moment of one student’s class time having them run do chores for my benefit.
States are responsible for providing public education. The state serves the students; the students do not serve the state. After all the complaining about “learning loss” during the pandemic and talk about forcing schools to reopen to deal with the “learning loss” “achievement gap”, how irresponsible and how hypocritical it would be to rob students of learning time, during the pandemic, by forcing them to spend time taking tests for the state instead of learning.
Mandating standardized testing in 2021 is like having all the public school students in the United States wash his car for grades.
Oh my, did I need to edit that comment! This little phone makes me so hasty. I meant to change “run errands” to “do chores” in the first paragraph, and in the last paragraph, “his” was meant to be “the president’s”.
Having the students test is like Biden having them wash his car for grades.
I need more coffee, apparently. Or maybe less coffee. I don’t know.
LCT: Your comments are so wise that what you call mistakes still appear cognizant (even brilliant!) to me.
It would always irritate me–at the end of the school year (even an entire week before the last day)–that most teachers would have the students boxing up their supplies & taking them to the closets or their personals to their cars! IMO, those last days were still precious days whereby, you know, some semblance of “education” (isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing in schools, educating students?) was to have been taking place, not hauling around heavy boxes like pack mules?
My colleagues always used to tease me about this–that I hadn’t packed up my room (I had, some, after school, & it was by me, not by my students) until the last minute. Sigh. I was always the last person to check out (you know, when your room is clean, you turn in your keys, you pick up your summer check{s}, & you get in your car & leave), but it felt good…until the next week, when I had to come back to finish cleaning up! (Yep, I pretty much had to do that every year!)
Anyway, LCT, keep drinking coffee & spouting off wisdom. You’re one of my favorites, here.
“Education is wounded. Pressure must be applied.” Genius!
Students wasting time on testing is a way to collect data to be sold. It is also a way to unfairly stigmatize poor students, ELLs and classified students. Standardized testing serves corporate interests more than it serves students.
The students are working for the testing and privatization industries instead of having the adults work for the students. Giving the tests benefits the adults. “Students first!”
LCT-Thanks for your wise, student centered comments. Your students are fortunate to have you in their corner.
The American Prospect has provided an excellent, long-overdue agenda of what can begin curing this ailing nation, but Mr. Biden is apparently bristling at the Prospect’s Day 1 Agenda suggestions:
“Apparently, Biden isn’t thrilled about the trajectory of this discussion. On a call with civil rights leaders leaked to the press last week, Biden flashed some anger at the idea that he has the ability to make great strides for the American people even if Congress balks. “There’s some things that I’m going to be able to do by executive order,” Biden acknowledged, stating that he would “use it to undo every single damn thing this guy [Donald Trump] has done by executive authority.” But, he quickly added, “executive authority that my progressive friends talk about is way beyond the bounds … Not within the constitutional authority. I am not going to violate the Constitution.”
https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/joe-biden-is-unhappy-about-the-day-one-agenda/
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Will President Biden do anything to fix the public education mess started by President Reagan’s lies in his “A Nation at Risk” Report, and continued with Bush #1, Clinton, Bush #2, Obama, and Trump?
The United States once had a public education system that was the envy of the world. Even China sent people to study our K-12 public education system to learn how to improve public education in China. But that was before Bush #2 declared total war on K through college public education that every president since has continued.
It’s time to rebuild America’s public education system from Kindergarten on up.
First, President Biden must support teachers’ unions and put teachers in charge of decisions in the classrooms just like Finland does.
Lloyd:
I can only say that my greatest hope is that this will not be another 4 years of an Obama presidency. Just as we could not stand another 4 years of it45, neither can we survive the failed & punishing educational (not to mention Wall Street) policies of the Obama Administration.
Given the chance of a lifetime to change, REALLY CHANGE & restore public education to its best intents & purposes, the O.A. made things MUCH, MUCH worse. Charter schools were praised–even given a week of glorification–the same week that was “Educators Week” for public schools educators! Central Falls H.S. was publicly shamed by the O.A.. (this was even worse that Wm. Bennett coming to Chgo., holding a press conference in front of one its most expen$$$ive hotel$ (where W.B. was probably a “guest,” paid for by–us), pointing a finger, saying, “Chicago has the WORST schools in the nation!” & then…leaving &, later, doing nothing to help.
I think the first thing that needs to be done is to end “standardized” testing forever. That, alone, will release all the $$$$$ we need for all the things we need (lower class size, textbooks, libraries & librarians, more school nurses, social workers, psychologists, T.A.s, teachers, building improvements, etc.). Then teachers WILL, again, be able to teach–no more curriculum dictated to us by tests.