Archives for category: Common Core
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Steve Nelson: Education “Reform” is a Mighty Hoax

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2014 //
49

This is a terrific article by Steve Nelson. I wish I could republish it in full but that is not allowed.

He actually says that what is called reform is “a national delusion.”

He writes:

“As I watch the education “debate” in America I wonder if we have simply lost our minds. In the cacophony of reform chatter — online programs, charter schools, vouchers, testing, more testing, accountability, Common Core, value-added assessments, blaming teachers, blaming tenure, blaming unions, blaming parents — one can barely hear the children crying out: “Pay attention to us!”

“None of the things on the partial list above will have the slightest effect on the so-called achievement gap or the supposed decline in America’s international education rankings. Every bit of education reform — every think tank remedy proposed by wet-behind-the-ears MBAs, every piece of legislation, every one of these things — is an excuse to continue the unconscionable neglect of our children.”

Read it!

His conclusion:

“Doing meaningful education with the most advantaged kids and ample resources is challenging enough with classes of 20. Doing meaningful work with children in communities we have decimated through greed and neglect might require classes of 10 or fewer. When will Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and other education reformers recommend that?

“No, that’s not forthcoming. Their solution is more iPads and trying to fatten up little Hansel and Gretel by weighing them more often. Pearson will make the scales.

“Only in contemporary America can a humanitarian crisis be just another way to make a buck.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

NYC Educator: Why We Don’t Need Common Core

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2014 //
16

New York State is a hotbed of parent opposition to Common Core standards, but no one in charge in the state or in the city of New York seems aware of it. Governor Cuomo loves the Common Core, as does State Commissioner John King, most of the state Board of Regents, and the di Blasio administration. The conventional wisdom is that “the implementation was flawed,” but it may be more than implementation that is flawed. Can we really have “national standards” that are “rigorous” and “common?” The more rigorous they are, the bigger the achievement gaps. The more rigorous they are, the more failures there will be among children who are not doing well now. The idea that children will jump higher if the bar is raised doesn’t make sense. If they can’t clear a four-foot bar, they won’t clear a six-foot bar. Word on the street is that the state will report higher test scores, and this great accomplishment will happen by dropping the “cut score” or passing mark. At some point, the public or parents will wise up and realize that the passing rate is utterly arbitrary and depends on an arbitrary decision about where to set the cut scores.

Arthur Goldstein, a high school teacher in Queens in New York City, who blogs as “NYC Educator,” explains here why he does not like the Common Core standards.

“I don’t care how much PD is provided and how many CC-aligned lesson plans are sent along, I don’t want the Common Core. I don’t want test companies and data companies profiting off of the misery of little kids. I don’t want to teach to someone’s test today, tomorrow or ever, to save myself from professional annihilation–when I already know students living in poverty with language deficiencies and many special needs will never on average surpass the scores of children in wealthy suburbia.

“As I think about it, I am sure that America has not so much bought the Common Core as been handsomely paid to adopt it. As states begin to realize the federal morass in which they are now mired, I am sure many more will agitate for withdrawal…

“I have always believed education should be a reserved power, as the Founders intended. The states must be in the driver’s seat. I believe the closer education comes to the grassroots, the better it will serve community needs and our larger democracy. Our federal government already has enough business and thorny issues to keep it occupied. And, I am very worried about much of that business. Why would I want our federal government taking on even more? We are not communist and we are not a dictatorship. We do not need federal hands in every pie. In my mind, the Common Core is a recipe for one rotten pie and we would all do well to keep our hands and those of our children clear of it!”

Categories Common Core, New York City

Louisiana: Untangling the State from CCSS and PARCC–or Not?

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2014 //
4

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced that he was withdrawing the state from Common Core and the PARCC test for Common Core. State Commissioner John White said that the governor was wrong and that the state is proceeding with both Common Core and PARCC. Governor Jindal cut the funding for PARCC.

Mercedes Schneider tries to untangle the elaborate political standoff.

Categories Common Core, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana

CCSS Writer Blasts CC Basic Reading Standards

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2014 //
118

Dr. Louisa Moats was part of the team that wrote the foundational reading standards for the Common Core. In “Psychology Today,” she strongly criticized the standards.

Among other things, she said:

“I never imagined when we were drafting standards in 2010 that major financial support would be funneled immediately into the development of standards-related tests. How naïve I was. The CCSS represent lofty aspirational goals for students aiming for four year, highly selective colleges. Realistically, at least half, if not the majority, of students are not going to meet those standards as written, although the students deserve to be well prepared for career and work through meaningful and rigorous education.

“Our lofty standards are appropriate for the most academically able, but what are we going to do for the huge numbers of kids that are going to “fail” the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) test? We need to create a wide range of educational choices and pathways to high school graduation, employment, and citizenship. The Europeans got this right a long time ago.

“If I could take all the money going to the testing companies and reinvest it, I’d focus on the teaching profession – recruitment, pay, work conditions, rigorous and on-going training. Many of our teachers are not qualified or prepared to teach the standards we have written. It doesn’t make sense to ask kids to achieve standards that their teachers have not achieved! “

Categories Common Core, Teachers and Teaching

Jason Stanford: Former Texas Commissioner Robert Scott Was Right About Testing and Common Core

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2014 //
7

Texas journalist Jason Stanford says it is time to recognize one of the heroes of the Education Spring: former Texas Commissioner Robert Scott, who bluntly said that high-stakes testing had grown too powerful and who warned that Common Core was intended to create a national curriculum and testing system. He came under a lot of criticism at the time and had to step down, but he has been proven right. The movement against high-stakes testing continues to escalate, and the number of states dropping out of Common Core seems likely to increase.

“Scott announced his resignation as Texas Education Commissioner in May 2012, but his public career effectively ended that January when he said that standardized testing had become a “perversion of its original intent.” Testing was wagging the dog, and Scott placed the blame on testing companies and lobbyists that have “become not only a cottage industry but a military-industrial complex.”

“You’ve reached a point now of having this one thing that the entire system is dependent upon. It is the heart of the vampire, so to speak,” said Scott, who stood by his remarks even as others failed to do the same for him.”

Texas was the heart of the testing movement, and a vast majority of local school boards passed resolutions opposing the misuse of testing. Even the Legislature took a stand against high-stakes testing. Much of that momentum can be credited to Robert Scott, who had the courage to speak out when it was unpopular. He is a hero of American education.

Categories Common Core, Honor Roll, Testing, Texas

Anthony Cody: Is Gates’ Moratorium Real or a Tactic to Defuse Opposition?

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2014 //
47

When the Gates Foundation issued a press release calling for a two-year moratorium on the use of test scores to evaluate teachers, its position met a mixed reception. Some saw it as a victory for the critics of high-stakes testing; others as an attempt to weaken the critics by deferring the high stakes.

Anthony Cody says, don’t be fooled. The Gates Foundation gives no indication that it understands that its path is wrong, it is simply buying time.

The question we should all be asking is how this one very rich foundation took charge of American education and is in a position to issue policy statements that should be the domain of state and local school boards. What we have lost is democratic control of public education; while no one was looking, it got outsourced to the Gates Foundation.

Cody writes:

“As a thought experiment, what would it look like if the Gates Foundation truly was attending to the research and evidence that is showing how damaging the new Common Core tests and high stakes accountability systems are? Would they simply be calling to defer the worst effects of this system for two years?

A real appraisal of the evidence would reveal:

“VAM systems are unreliable and destructive when used for teacher evaluations, even as one of several measurements.

“School closures based on test scores result in no real gains for the students, and tremendous community disruption.

“Charter schools are not providing systemic improvements, and are expanding inequity and segregation.

“Attacks on teacher seniority and due process are destabilizing a fragile profession, increasing turnover.

“Tech-based solutions are often wildly oversold, and deliver disappointing results. Witness K12 Inc’s rapidly expanded virtual charter school chain, described here earlier this year.

“Our public education system is not broken, but is burdened with growing levels of poverty, inequity and racial isolation. Genuine reform means supporting schools, not abandoning them.

“The fundamental problem with the Gates Foundation is that it is driving education down a path towards more and more reliance on tests as the feedback mechanism for a market-driven system. This is indeed a full-blown ideology, reinforced by Gates’ own experience as a successful technocrat. The most likely hypothesis regarding the recent suggestion that high stakes be delayed by two years is that this is a tactical maneuver intended to diffuse opposition and preserve the Common Core project – rather than a recognition that these consequences do more harm than good.”

Moratorium or no, he notes, we are locked into a failed paradigm of testing and accountability. Standards and tests are not vehicles to advance equity and civil rights. If anything, they have become a way to undermine democracy and standardize education.

Categories Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Peter Greene: If Competition Is So Great, Then Why….?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2014 //
49

I am tempted to apologize for posting Peter Greene so often, but I won’t. He is consistently on the mark.

In this post he wonders about a glaring inconsistency in the corporate reform project. The reformers love competition. They want students to compete. They want teachers to compete. They want schools to compete.

But when it come to the Common Core, they want all states to have the same standards. No competition. No laboratories of democracy.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Vouchers

Why Kentucky Dropped the PARCC Test

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2014 //
24

When Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced he was withdrawing the state from the PARCC tests, he expressed concern about competitive bidding, among other things. He was not the only one to have this issue.

At the beginning of 2014, Kentucky decided to withdraw from the PARCC testing consortium. PARCC is one of two federally funded testing groups aligned to the Common Core.

Kentucky’s main decision for dropping PARCC was the absence of a competitive bidding process.

Read what the governor wrote. Kentucky state law requires a fair and equitable RFP process, and PARCC is welcome to submit a bid to the competitive process.

Categories Common Core, Kentucky, Testing

D.C. Suspends Use of Test Scores in Teacher Evaluations

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2014 //
16

The District of Columbia has suspended the use of test scores as part of teacher evaluations, a practice which was the hallmark of Michelle Rhee’s tenure as chancellor of that district and which led to the firing of hundreds of teachers.

Chancellor Kaya Henderson said the district needs time to phase in new Common Core tests.

“Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced the decision, saying officials are concerned it wouldn’t be fair to use the new tests until a baseline is established and any complications are worked out.

“The District has fired hundreds of teachers under the system, which was put in place by Henderson’s predecessor, Michelle Rhee. Test scores make up 35 percent of evaluations for those who teach students in the tested grades and subjects.

“Last week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation joined the two largest teachers’ unions in calling for a temporary halt to evaluating teachers based on Common Core tests. The foundation has spent more than $200 million implementing the Common Core standards nationwide.

“The U.S. Education Department has not backed the idea of a moratorium, which is also being considered in New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo introduced a bill on Thursday that would remove test scores from teacher evaluations for two years, and a handful of states have delayed using test scores to make personnel decisions. But no state that already includes test scores in evaluations has committed to pausing the practice.”

Categories Common Core, District of Columbia, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Poll: Nearly Half of Public Never Heard of CCSS

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2014 //
25

You know those national standards that were “developed by the governors” and “state-led”?

A new poll shows that nearly half the public never heard of them.

When asked whether they like the idea of standards that are globally competitive and the same everywhere, 27% said they “strongly support” the idea.

Problems arise with implementation and testing. Also with early childhood education. And flawed teacher evaluation tied to test scores. Other than that…..

Categories Common Core
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