Archives for category: Common Core
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Breaking News: Chicago Teachers Union Opposes Common Core

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
57

The Chicago Teachers Union adopted a resolution opposing the Common Core.

This is big news because the parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, accepted millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to support and promote the Common Core.

Fred Klonsky posted the following account of the CTU action:

Chicago Teachers Union adopts resolution opposing the Common Core State Standards.

MAY 7, 2014

Today the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates passed a resolution opposing the Common Core standards.

A similar New Business Item was not permitted to be voted on at the recent Illinois Education Association state convention. It was ruled out of order by IEA President Cinda Klickna. The NBI had been introduced by veteran Park Ridge fifth grade teacher and delegate, Jerry Mulvihill.

From CTUnet:

Today, members of the House of Delegates (HOD) of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) passed the following resolution that enjoins the city’s educators to growing national opposition to the Common Core State Standards, saying the assessments disrupt student learning and consume tremendous amounts of time and resources for test preparation and administration.

Now that the resolution has passed, the CTU will lobby the Illinois Board of Education to eliminate the use of the Common Core for teaching and assessment; and be it further and will work to organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to the law that increases the expansion of nationwide controls over educational issues.

Common Core’s origins can be traced to the 2009 Stimulus Bill which gave $4.35 billion to the federal Department of Education which created the “Race to the Top” competition between states. In order to qualify for funding, the states needed to adopt Common Core with the added incentive that participating states would be exempted from many of the more onerous provisions of George Bush’s “No child left behind” program.

“I agree with educators and parents from across the country, the Common Core mandate represents an overreach of federal power into personal privacy as well as into state educational autonomy,” said CTU President Karen Lewis, a nationally board certified teacher. “Common Core eliminates creativity in the classroom and impedes collaboration. We also know that high-stakes standardized testing is designed to rank and sort our children and it contributes significantly to racial discrimination and the achievement gap among students in America’s schools.”

The official text of the resolution follows:

Resolution to Oppose the Common Core State Standards

WHEREAS, the purpose of education is to educate a populace of critical thinkers who are capable of shaping a just and equitable society in order to lead good and purpose-filled lives, not solely preparation for college and career; and

WHEREAS, instructional and curricular decisions should be in the hands of classroom professionals who understand the context and interests of their students; and

WHEREAS, the education of children should be grounded in developmentally appropriate practice; and

WHEREAS, high quality education requires adequate resources to provide a rich and varied course of instruction, individual and small group attention, and wrap-around services for students; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core State Standards were developed by non-practitioners, such as test and curriculum publishers, as well as education reform foundations, such as the Gates and Broad Foundations, and as a result the CCSS better reflect the interests and priorities of corporate education reformers than the best interests and priorities of teachers and students; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core State Standards were piloted incorrectly, have been implemented too quickly, and as a result have produced numerous developmentally inappropriate expectations that do not reflect the learning needs of many students; and

WHEREAS, imposition of the Common Core State Standards adversely impacts students of highest need, including students of color, impoverished students, English language learners, and students with disabilities; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core State Standards emphasize pedagogical techniques, such as close reading, out of proportion to the actual value of these methods – and as a result distort instruction and remove instructional materials from their social context; and

WHEREAS, despite the efforts of our union to provide support to teachers, the significant time, effort, and expense associated with modifying curricula to the Common Core State Standards interferes and takes resources away from work developing appropriate and engaging courses of study; and

WHEREAS, the assessments that accompany the Common Core State Standards (PARCC and Smarter Balance) are not transparent in that –teachers and parents are not allowed to view the tests and item analysis will likely not be made available given the nature of computer adaptive tests; and

WHEREAS, Common Core assessments disrupt student learning, consuming tremendous amounts of time and resources for test preparation and administration; and

WHEREAS, the assessment practices that accompany Common Core State Standards – including the political manipulation of test scores – are used as justification to label and close schools, fail students, and evaluate educators; therefore be it

RESOLVED that the Chicago Teachers Union opposes the Common Core State Standards (and the aligned tests) as a framework for teaching and learning; and be it further

RESOLVED, the Chicago Teachers Union advocates for an engaged and socially relevant curriculum that is student-based and supported by research, as well as for supports such as those described in the Chicago Teachers Union report, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve; and be it further

RESOLVED, the Chicago Teachers Union will embark on internal discussions to educate and seek feedback from members regarding the Common Core and its impact on our students; and be it further

RESOLVED, the Chicago Teachers Union will lobby the Illinois Board of Education to eliminate the use of the Common Core State Standards for teaching and assessment; and be it further

RESOLVED, the Chicago Teachers Union will organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to the Common Core State Standards; and be it further

RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Illinois State Board of Education, the Chicago Board of Education, the Governor of Illinois, and all members of the Illinois legislative branch; and be it finally

RESOLVED, that should this resolution be passed by the CTU House of Delegates, an appropriate version will be submitted to the American Federation of Teachers for consideration at the 2014 Convention.

Categories Chicago, Common Core, Resistance

A Common Core Disaster: Did the Holocaust Actually Happen?

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
136

Will Fitzhugh, the peerless founder of The Concord Review, sent me this astonishing article. The Concord Review is a marvelous journal that publishes the original research papers of high school students. If anyone happens to know a hedge fund manager or philanthropist or billionaire in search of a worthy cause, tell him or her to contact Will Fitzhugh so that our great high school students who love history continue to have a journal to display their work.

 
Let’s Have Middle-Schoolers Debate Whether the Holocaust Happened!

May 7, 2014 by EducationViews.org; Houston, Texas

Scott Shackford –

A group of eighth-grade teachers in the Rialto Unified School District (that’s east of Los Angeles in the Inland Empire of Southern California) decided that a good way to teach their students effective debate skills in writing is to ask them to take a side on whether the Holocaust happened and back up their arguments with facts. You don’t need an Upworthy-style headline to figure out what happened after news got out about the students’ assignment. Outrage! Death threats! And so the school district will not repeat the assignment. From The Sun of San Bernardino, California:

Throughout the day Monday, the district fielded angry calls from parents, a death threat and a flurry of media inquiries over the assignment, which district officials initially defended as an effort to teach students to think critically. Ultimately, however, administrators acknowledged the assignment was in poor taste and promised it would not be given again.

“Our interim superintendent will be talking with our Educational Services Department to assure that any references to the Holocaust ‘not occurring’ will be stricken on any current or future Argumentative Research projects,” district spokeswoman Syeda Jafri said in a prepared statement late Sunday.

Initially, seconds before it turned into a massive public relations disaster, the school district was defending the assignment to The Sun as part of Common Core requirements to teach critical thinking. In an early response, one school board member said, “Current events are part of the basis for measuring IQ. The Middle East, Israel, Palestine and the Holocaust are on newscasts discussing current events. Teaching how to come to your own conclusion based on the facts, test your position, be able to articulate that position, then defend your belief with a lucid argument is essential to good citizenship.”

The Holocaust is a current event? Anyway, I can see both where this bus was going and why it was never going to get there. What if dozens of students decided to argue that the Holocaust didn’t happen, given the small amount of information provided by the writing assignment? Even though I believe the slaughter obviously did happen, I could easily see the argumentative eighth grade version of me trying to argue the other side just to prove I was clever. Imagine the kind of public relations disaster it would have been if it got out that a bunch of Rialto students wrote that the Holocaust didn’t happen in a school assignment. Imagine being those kids’ parents.

This is not to say engaging in a look at Holocaust denial theories should be beyond the bounds of education, but perhaps not in 8th grade and not as a homework assignment on writing skills?

Also, the controversy is a good reminder that even when they’re actually trying to teach critical thinking skills instead of suppressing them, public schools sometimes struggle with doing so in a sensible way. If I were a parent, I’d be more concerned about how quickly the school district Godwinned itself by selecting a subject with such an obvious desired outcome and not something that would actually lead to diverse answers and debate. Will they replace the assignment with a debate over whether man actually landed on the moon next? Or whether the world is round or flat? Or maybe this is the public school version of teaching critical skills—only tackling obvious cases where determining the “right” answer is a breeze.

 

=============

 

The Common Core Marches Deeply On, Building Skills—Content and Knowledge-free!!
——————————
“Teach with Examples”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
http://www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
tcr.org/bookstore
http://www.tcr.org/blog

Categories Common Core

AIR Files Lawsuit Against Pearson Multi-Billion $$$ Contract to Score PARCC

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
14

Now begins the struggle for billions of dollars for Common Core testing. Bear in mind that this is public money that should be spent on reducing class sizes, providing arts programs, hiring librarians and counselors, and supplying other necessary services to students and schools. The next time you hear some politician or pundit complain about the cost of public education, remind them of the billions of dollars that Pearson and its rivals will collect to administer and score Common Core tests. This is the national marketplace that Race to the Top was designed to create. It succeeded beyond Arne Duncan’s wildest dreams–in enriching testing corporations and impoverishing schools.

 

Is this a crime in plain sight? The victims are our students, educators, and schools. Who will be held liable for this massive diversion of taxpayer dollars into the testing industry?

********************************

Politico reports this morning:

 

RIVAL PROTESTS PEARSON CONTRACT: The contract to administer and score Common Core tests for states in the PARCC consortium was expected to be worth several billion dollars through the end of the decade. So it surprised some in the industry that Pearson was the only bidder, in a consortium with a handful of subcontractors. Now a rival, the American Institutes for Research, is claiming it was no coincidence: It’s pressing a lawsuit alleging the bid was rigged. (h/t EdWeek: http://bit.ly/1s0Ksap).

– The PARCC bidding process was run through the state of New Mexico, which put out a request for proposals last year. The request bundled development and delivery of the first year of testing – which Pearson was already working on – with administration of the test in subsequent years. AIR, a nonprofit that administers tests in several states, claims Pearson got an automatic, insurmountable advantage because of the bid’s set up. AIR filed a protest with New Mexico last December, claiming the bidding process unfairly and unlawfully restricted competition. It sent its complaint to the individual identified by the state as the only person testing companies could contact about the process. But some time later – after the deadline for filing a complaint passed – New Mexico told AIR the protest was sent to the wrong office and it missed the deadline. Then it declined to hear AIR’s claim of an illegal bid process. AIR appealed in district court; a hearing is scheduled for later this month.

– “The RFP looked designed to go to Pearson, and it seems that every other firm in the industry must have drawn the same conclusion,” Jon Cohen, AIR’s president of assessment, told Morning Education. “To make a multi-billion-dollar decision based on an anti-competitive RFP won’t serve PARCC, New Mexico or all the other PARCC states well in the long run.’ For more, dive into the (very lengthy) AIR complaints: http://politico.pro/SyehVG and http://politico.pro/1uxz2PE.

– Pearson declined to comment. PARCC also declined to talk, referring questions to New Mexico officials, who could not be reached.

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, Pearson, Testing

Duncan Proves That Common Core Is a Federal Mandate by Threatening to Punish Indiana for Backing Out

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
44

Over the past few years, as almost every state adopted the Common Core standards, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insisted they did so voluntarily. He insisted that the creation of the standards was “state-led” and that the federal government had nothing to do with it. No part of these statements was true. The states adopted the CC because they would not be eligible to compete for a share of nearly $5 billion in Race to the Top funding unless they did so. “State-led” meant that the Gates Foundation, which enjoys a close relationship with the US Department of Education, paid more than $200 million to create and evaluate CCSS, and as much as $2 billion to aid in their promotion, advocacy, and implementation.

It would be illegal for the US Department of Education to direct, supervise, or control curriculum or instruction, so Duncan has pretended he was an arms-length observer.

But he was not and is not.

Mercedes Schneider tells the story here of Duncan’s efforts to force Indiana to stick with standards that were allegedly “state-led” and that were not as good as the standards that Indiana previously had. On what legal authority does he have the right or power to tell a state what its academic standards should be? None.

When Indiana recently threatened to drop the Common Core, the US Department promptly sent out a letter threatening to withdraw the state’s waiver from NCLB, on grounds that Indiana had promised to adhere to high academic standards as a condition of getting the waiver.

The irony here is that Indiana already had superior academic standards prior to adopting the Common Core. Even the conservative policy group, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, rated Indiana’s academic standards as at least equal to, perhaps superior to, the Common Core.

Duncan likes to tell the media that “we are lying to our children.” In this case, to put it euphemistically, he is prevaricating to the public.

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Indiana

Gary Rubinstein Writes a Letter to Mike Petrilli

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
31

Gary Rubinsten has written a series of “reformers,” questioning their claims. In this letter, he writes to B list reformer Michael Petrilli. Understand that a reformer these days is someone who hates unions, views teachers with contempt as lazy and greedy, blames teachers if schools don’t achieve perfection, and welcomes school privatization. Mike is interesting to Gary, mainly because he occasionally deviates from the rightwing script. For example, it has fallen to Mike to defend the Common Core standards on behalf of his employer, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which is a recipient of generous Gates funding.

Gary was interested to see Mike break ranks with fellow reformers by asserting that college is not really for everyone. That was a break with reformist dogma, which believes passionately in the infinite perfectibility of all, a goal that will be attained presumably when every class is taught by a TFA teacher. Mike broke ranks, but it was only a minor deviation. He still hates unions and loves high-stakes testing and a Common Core.

Gary challenges Mike to answer this simple question: do you really believe that raising standards ever higher will produce big leaps in achievement?

Gary writes :

“But this isn’t the biggest problem I have with the Common Core and the defending of it by you and even by Randi Weingarten. The problem I have, and this is one that I have not heard you address specifically, is that it is based on several shaky premises. The weakest premise, and one I really hope you’ll address, is that “raising standards” — making them harder, you can call it ‘rigor’ if you want to use a euphemism will “raise achievement.” Do you have any basis for that belief? I even saw in a recent thing you wrote,

“For instance, the standards are clear that elementary-school teachers should assign texts that match a student’s grade level, rather than their current reading level. Yet the majority of teachers reported that they continue to assign such “leveled texts” to their charges.

“Have you found that when you try to learn something that starting with an advanced level book on that topic helps you learn? Maybe you like to run on the treadmill. Try this, double the speed that you usually run at. See how that works out for you. I’ve taught for 16 of the past 23 years and my goal is to teach just a little bit beyond the student’s comfort level. When you try to push kids too hard, they get discouraged. This does not maximize learning. Even with things that I try to learn, like Chess and piano, if I try to read too hard of a Chess book or try to play a piano piece that is way above my level — it just doesn’t work. And I’m an adult who is choosing to study this stuff in my spare time, not a child who is forced to sit through a math class. Come on. This is common sense. Yet the opposite, the idea that making it harder is surely going to raise achievement, is the main premise of the argument of the common core.

“Yes, I admit that there can be expectations that are too low, and that’s not good either. I see people at the gym on the treadmill and they’re reading the New Yorker at the same time, and I’m thinking if you’re able to comprehend ‘Shouts and Murmurs’ you’re not running fast enough. But I am not convinced that the old standards were too easy like that. In my experience with teachers and as a teacher, I find that it is to the teacher’s and to the student’s advantage for the teacher to teach at the appropriate level, not too hard, not too easy. This is because students get bored and misbehave when it is too easy and when it is too hard. The students, in a sense, train the teacher to teach to the proper level, and a federal mandate to teach faster and harder upsets this self-correcting feedback loop.

“Did Alabama and Mississippi really have such low standards that it required a federal intervention? I seriously doubt it. We all use the same textbooks and teach the same sorts of things. Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, reading books, writing essays. What do you think all the educators in Mississippi have been doing for all these years before the common core? Surely kids from those states had to take the SATs and they were not completely bewildered by them so much more than kids from other states. I think the argument that the standards were so different before the common core is incredibly exaggerated.

“The common core has been oversold as some necessary miracle cure. It isn’t a miracle. It isn’t going to cure anything. And it is very, very expensive. It was a waste of money, I think. Do you have some sort of estimate of the complete cost of the common core and the expected boost in achievement because of it. You, yourself, admit that schools are not able to perform miracles and get everyone ‘college ready’ so the expected boost can’t be so gigantic. Is it worth all that money?”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers

Lloyd Lofthouse: Obama ‘s Mindless Education Reforms

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2014 //
9

Reader Lloyd Lofthouse finds President Obama’s education reforms to be as unrealistic as those of George W. Bush. The basic theory of action is to set I reachable goals and to punish those who can’t reach them.

He writes:

“The Common Core high stakes testing that judges teachers, gets them fired and public schools closed took public education systems that operated based on individual state legislation with minimum or no standards and demanded the highest possible standards that have never been achieved anywhere on earth at any time in history without building a new system and implementing it over at least an entire generation—and maybe several generations.

“Instead, what Obama did with his Race to the Top and Common Core Standards was the same as expecting a 1908 Model T Ford that’s rated at a top speed of 45 mph to suddenly hit moon rocket velocity or face failure and behind sent to the dump. And to achieve this federally UN-Constitutional mandate, Obama did nothing to replace the Model T’s engine. Nothing!”

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Obama, Race to the Top, Testing

Answer Sheet Reposted My Reply to Alexander Nazaryan

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2014 //
64

Several readers asked whether my reply to Alexander Nazaryan of Newsweek would be reposted where more readers might see it.

Nazaryan took Louis C.K. to task for criticizing Common Core. I explained patiently to Alexander why I agreed with Louis.

Happily, Valerie Strauss saw the post (which I spend a few hours writing at a time when I should have been icing my damaged knee), and she reposted in on her Washington Post blog today.

As for the knee, it is not looking so great right now.

I have many complications facing me, in large part because I am on blood thinners and I have to suspend their use for the surgery.

That puts me at grave risk because the most dangerous part of knee surgery is blood clots, which are life-threatening.

It is all too much to deal with, let alone think about, so I was glad to have the diversion of writing a letter to Alexander.

I must say he was extremely generous in his Tweets in response. He said in one of them that his wife agrees with me, and I tweeted back that his wife is brilliant.

Isn’t it a strange new world that we live in, where strangers communicate via Twitter and other social media and have friendly (and sometimes unfriendly) exchanges?

I think Alexander is an intelligent man, and I don’t really believe he wants schools to be joyless.

I believe he will keep thinking about these issues and come to see that learning and joy are not mutually exclusive.

Sometimes the problems that are hardest to solve are the sources of the greatest joy.

And sometimes I think I should just go ice my knee.

Categories Common Core, Personal

“Looking for an Argument”: Does This Course Meet Common Core Standards?

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2014 //
92

This article by Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, posted at NY’s Chalkbeat, describes a course where students debate a proposition.

They are asked to argue about ideas and explain their views.

The course has been taught for nearly two decades at Urban Academy, one of the two dozen or so New York City Performance Assessment Consortium high schools that are exempt from most state tests.

The argument of the day: Should people be allowed to sell their body organs for money? The argument: They are paid to do other kinds of dirty or dangerous work for money.

So maybe the course fits the Common Core.

On the other hand, students are asked to give their opinions, which contradicts the strongly stated views of David Coleman, architect of the Common Core, that no one gives a “s##t” about what you think or feel.

In this course, students are encouraged to believe that what they think or feel matters.

What do you think?

Categories Common Core

What Happens When a Retired Superintendent Has Common Sense

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2014 //
19

Howard Malfucci is a retired superintendent.

 

On his blog, which he calls “Common Sense NY,” he deconstructs the claims of an active superintendent who is defending Common Core.

 

Are we really swamped by failure? Isn’t it important to look closely at who is failing to finish high school and why they are not? Why assume they are failing to graduate because the standards were too low?

 

To the claim that “meaningful learning” is occurring in classrooms that use Common Core, Malfucci responds, “Well, meaningful learning has been occurring in classrooms before the Common Core. Actually, that’s a pretty offensive statement on the part of this superintendent. Hundreds of thousands of students who went through school before the Common Core can attest to that. And, the article cites a parent who has two daughters in school. She said, “I’m not really sure if I believe that. I think it’s too early to tell.” That’s a very astute statement.”

 

It is time for common sense. It is also time to stop the overblown claims about the Common Core. And it is time for the Common Core propaganda mill to stop treating all critics as extremists.

 

 

 

 

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Common Core

Louis C.K. Sounds Off Against Common Core Testing on Letterman Show

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2014 //
100

This is hilarious.

 

Comedian Louis C.K. was interviewed about the Common Core by David Letterman.

 

This is my favorite line:

 

“He told Letterman he’s trying to help his daughters with their math work, but the questions are just nonsense like “Bill has three goldfish. He buys two more. How many dogs live in London?”

 

When Common Core becomes a national joke, you know it is in serious trouble.

 

What I have been thinking lately is that it is the educational equivalent of dead man walking.

 

Based on my decades as a historian of education, anything that becomes this controversial has a short shelf life.

 

It will be pumped up by those paid to pump it up, but it lacks the legitimacy that comes from an open, democratic, participatory process.

 

Categories Common Core
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