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The AFT Criticizes Myths about Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2014 //
24

The American Federation of Teachers is a strong supporter of national standards and has been for many years.

Soon after the release of the Common Core State Standards, the AFT emerged as one of its strongest advocates.

Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, contends that the standards are valuable but the implementation has proceeded without adequate preparation. Last year, she called for a one-year moratorium on Common Core testing until teachers had time to learn the standards, resources with which to teach them, and time for students to learn them. She told a breakfast meeting of the Association for a Better New York, attended by the city’s civic and political elite, that the standards would fail unless implementation was done appropriately, with enough time for teachers and students to prepare for the demands of the new standards.

In the current issue of the AFT journal, American Educator, the AFT educational issues department published a memorandum called “Debunking Myths of the Common Core,” and responded to each of them in turn.

For example, the article maintains, it is a myth that the standards tell teachers what to teach. It is a myth that the standards are a national curriculum. It is a myth that the standards were imposed by the federal government and are mandatory. Etc.

Categories Common Core, Teachers and Teaching

Paul Horton: The Cure for the Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2014 //
51

Paul Horton is a history teacher at the University of Chicago Lab School.

He writes:

The Cure for the Common Core

The Common Core is like that insidious commercial that creeps into the darker recesses of our short-term memories: the jingle that we wake up hearing; the embarrassingly male enhancement ad that we wince at; or the little message that penetrates the space between the paragraphs of every online news story we read. It has become the unintentional trope of market driven education: the separation of learning from creative, non alienated interaction between two subjects: the teacher and the learner. The Common Core Standards seek to reify the learning and assessment processes into code intended to objectify and operate skilled 21st century workers.

Stephen Pinker could not explain its staying power!

Readers of New York Times editorials who read nothing else about “The Core” tend to be down on trash talking critics. The message from the Times editorial board is that informed citizens want higher standards because we are fighting an educational multipolar Cold War with other countries that take an international test. We have to catch up or we are toast. Critics of catching up are ignorant cretins who are either burned out hippies who cling to warm and fuzzy notions of “progressive education,” lazy disgruntled teachers who will have to work harder for less, or “white suburban moms” who hover.

“Get real! say the Tiger moms, we have got to get our kids prepared for the ultimate multicultural meritocracy! The Spartans were wimps, we need real discipline!”

Well, I am hear to tell you that we did not need Common Core last year, and we don’t need it this year, just like we don’t need a lot of other things that we are told that we need.

Here is why:

1) The Common Core will not raise international test scores and there is no correlation between how we perform on international tests and the growth of our economy

2) The Common Core will not create high paying jobs. In fact, the net effect of the long-term implementation of the Common Core will be to drive down the salaries of teachers as their work is standardized to conform to digitalized instruction and standardized testing. The bargaining power of unions will be diminished as more charter schools are licensed and as digital learning forces students all over the world to compete for job qualifications (their test scores as well as transcripts will become what McKinsey calls “liquid information” that will follow them)

3) The Common Core will not lead to a more democratic society: the Common Core is funded by the 1% to make the one 1% more money. The corporations and foundations that have sponsored the Common Core are in it for the money, not kids, parents, or communities who effectively lose control of the educational process with its implementation. Microsoft, Pearson, Amplify and Rupert Murdoch have no loyalty to this country or any another country: they are loyal to stockholders all over the world. Money will be made by penetrating global educational markets with gadgets, software, and virtual learning systems. The leaders of the global movement to standardize education like Microsoft, Apple, and HP, to name three corporations have already set up schools in production and assembly areas that will interface with American and global educational standardization. So the corporate education reform movement might be sold in America as an effort to catch up with other country’s scores. The reality is that global corporations seek global skills alignment to be able to force workers around the world to compete with each other in acquiring a measurable set of skills. Value will thus be added by creating more competition between workers worldwide as test scores will create a scarcity of qualified employees worldwide. Competition for quantified qualifications will drive wages down even for the best jobs. Far from reducing income inequality, Common Core will make it worse locally, nationally, and globally. If you are a great test taker, you will have the opportunity to work for a global corporation, but you will always be competing against great test takers from all over the world.

4) The Common Core will not reduce the achievement gap. No credible study suggests that it does or will. Remember that the big foundations and companies that are pushing Common Core can create “independent studies” that skew results. Remember as well that our media consistently reports foundation “think tank” studies and not academic studies. Remember as well that the Gates Foundation’s resources are virtually limitless. Is there anyone on the Harvard Education faculty who has not received a grant that has origins in the Gates Foundation?

5) The Common Core Standards are top down, not written by experienced educators, and do not consider the individual needs of students of varying abilities who might need to be challenged more or who face steep learning challenges. The National Council of Teachers of English was given the opportunity to review the Common Core literacy standards and their review was scathing. The Common Core Math Standards are confusing, developmentally inappropriate for many students in grades one through three, and do not end up preparing students for college level calculus courses. As more students, parents, and teachers are exposed to the shoddy quality of the scripted lessons, software, and assessments that are being rushed out by for profit testing companies, they begin to understand that they are purchasing a lemon without ever being involved in a decision to buy at any level. The adaption Common Core Standards was required as a part of the Race to the Top competition that states entered to qualify for federal grant money. Our Education Secretary, working with two top aides who were previously employed at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, devised the RttT competition to compel compliance with more charter school creation, state mandated testing aligned with the Common Core Standards, data collection on students and their families, and Value Added Assessments for teachers based on student standardized testing. In many cases applications were prewritten and modified by the Gates Foundation. In most states, only two signatures were required: the governor’s and the state superintendent of education’s. There was very little involvement of experienced educators in this whole process from framing to drafting to mandating. Effectively, local districts gave up control without understanding how or why. Perhaps more importantly, despite Mr. Duncan’s claims, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and leading officials within the DOEd successfully collaborated on creating the requirements for RttT in violation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Together, they successfully mandated the framework for the creation of a national curriculum and coordinated efforts between the National Governor’s Association and Achieve to fund the writing of national assessments that constitute a national curriculum that will be used as the foundation for a national testing regime.

New Year’s Resolutions:

1) We need a new non-aligned movement: against RttT, the Common Core, standardized assessments, and VAM evaluations

2) State and local school boards and major teacher unions need to seriously examine all current and proposed standards to determine the standards that they will support and implement

3) We need to end standardized for profit assessments: why are we paying for shoddy products that will be used to punish kids, schools, parents, and the poor?

4) Allow only those charters that will be administered by the public and for the public. They must be transparent and not for profit. They need to serve communities and kids, especially in underserved neighborhoods

5) We need to end the involvement of for profit investors in education. We need legal transparency that identifies Wall Street influence on Education policy at all levels. We need to be able to identify which local politicians and investors have profited from the possession of Microsoft or Pearson stock or stock in charter companies

6) DOEd funds for special education and other support services should not be held hostage to compliance to RttT mandates

7) Teachers should mentor new teachers to reduce reliance on scripted curricula; teachers should create authentic assessments and grade authentic assessments. Boards of teachers at grade levels and subject departments should create authentic assessment rubrics and should control and examine the state wide assessment process

8) Laws should be passed at the Federal level and in every state to insure that policy makers have at least ten years in a classroom before they are allowed to assume an administrative or policy level post. Our educational system is being destroyed from within by policymakers who are more loyal to corporate and foundation interests than they are to students, communities, and parents. Increasingly, these policy makers have no experience in Education. They are hired to turn Education into for profit businesses

9) Citizens United must be repealed. Because both major parties are beholden to Wall Street interests, our education policies are beholden to bundlers who fund political campaigns in exchange for investment opportunities

10) Remember that although many on the corporate reform side are well intentioned, they care nothing for due process or democracy: they have pulled off a power play and we must resist by coming together. They have demonstrated to the American people that they have contempt for the democratic process. They have the money, the big media, the talking points, the PR firms, and the Chamber of Commerce and Exxon making speeches. We have the passion and the fight! Resist Moloch we must!

Happy New Year in Solidarity!

Paul AFT Local 2063

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Common Core, International

Why I Defend Randi

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2014 //
135

A reader who calls himself or herself “Democracy” left comments criticizing me for defending Randi Weingarten–or perhaps for not attacking her.

Here is my response to Democracy:

Democracy, you ask a good question, and I will answer as best I can..

As you know, I have criticized the Common Core in many posts. I have criticized the lack of transparency and the lack of educator participation in its development. I have criticized the fact that the Gates Foundation paid out nearly $200 million to develop and promote the CCSS, which really means they are the Gates Standards. I have said that rigorous standards will not solve–let alone address–the economic dysfunction at the root of educational inequality–and is likely to exacerbate it.

Randi Weingarten is certainly more positive about Common Core than I am. She is the president of the AFT and has been willing to engage on the issues, while the NEA has remained supportive of Common Core and silent.

I have long believed that Randi would ultimately change course, and she has done so recently. First, she called for a moratorium on testing. only days ago, she came out in opposition to VAM, saying that VAM is a sham. She has followed her reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is that Common Core should be decoupled from testing. If Common Core is in fact decoupled from testing, it loses its power as a means of rating and ranking students and teachers and principals. It becomes a set of standards that may or may not prove useful but has no power to ruin lives and careers

The next, inevitable step is to recognize that Common Core must be amended by teachers and scholars. As it currently exists, it is an infallible edict encased in concrete. No standards are so perfect that they need never be updated.

I will not attack Randi, not only because she is a personal friend, not only because she is showing the capacity to evolve and change her mind, but because we who object to the current demolition derby can’t prevail without the support of at least one of the major unions. In short, we need her leadership. To turn against her is to wound our cause irreparably, our cause being the survival of public education and the teaching profession. To attack one of our few national leaders in the middle of a crucial war will aid those who are attacking public education and teachers. If we who are allies fight one another, we lose. I prefer success to defeat. Too much is riding on the outcome of these questions to indulge in ideological purity and cast out those who are not in complete agreement.

Categories Common Core, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Unions

Randi Weingarten: Decouple the Common Core from the Testing

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2014 //
169

Randi Weingarten believes in the promise of the Common Core standards, and she has strongly defended them.

But she recognizes that the rushed implantation, notably in New York, jeopardized the standards.

In this post, Randi says that the standards must be separated from the testing.

They must not be used to rank and rate teachers or to apply value-added measurement, where teachers are judged by computer-generated algorithms.

She writes:

“It’s time to call the question. Will the powers-that-be continue to be more concerned with creating a testing and data system that ranks and sorts schools and educators, in the quest for the perfect industrial algorithm to judge teachers, students and schools? Or will they look at the evidence and join educators, students and parents in fighting to reclaim the promise of public education?

“We can’t reclaim the promise of public education without investing in strong neighborhood public schools that are safe, collaborative and welcome environments for students, parents, educators and the broader community. Schools where teachers and school staff are well-prepared and well-supported, with manageable class sizes and time to collaborate. Schools with rigorous standards aligned to an engaging curriculum that focuses on teaching and learning, not testing, and that includes art, music, civics and the sciences — and where all kids’ instructional needs are met. Schools with evaluation systems that are not about sorting and firing but about improving teaching and learning. And schools with wraparound services to address our children’s social, emotional and health needs.”

We know who “the powers that be” are. Will they listen?

Categories Common Core, Testing

Gary Rubinstein: An Open Letter to the New Leaders of TFA

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
15

Gary Rubinstein was one of the original members of Teach for America. He has been involved in TFA from the outset. However, he became a critical friend of TFA when he attended the corporate-funded 20th anniversary celebration, bringing together the leaders of the “reform movement” who were attacking the nation’s public schools and their teachers, closing public schools, and promoting charters. He saw a very different organization from the one he had joined two decades earlier. It had morphed into an arm of big business.

In this important post, he patiently explains to the new leaders of Teach for America why he strongly disagrees with the organization–beginning with their boasting about their results–and explains why they are on the wrong track.

He begins this way:

On February 12, 2013, founder and long time CEO of TFA, Wendy Kopp, stepped down. Two new co-CEOs were appointed, Elisa Villanueva-Beard and Matt Kramer. Elisa was a 1998 corps member and Matt had never taught. Both were working as very high administrative positions in TFA before this recent promotion.

I was pretty surprised by this announcement. I did not expect Wendy to ever not be the CEO of Teach For America. I was also puzzled that neither of the new co-CEOs were required to relocate to be near the national headquarters in New York City.

Over the past four months they have co-written three blog posts on the ‘Pass The Chalk’ site which had points of view that I definitely object to. The first was about a bogus study ‘proving’ that certain TFA teachers teach significantly more than their non-TFA counterparts (I analyzed that report here). The second was about a bogus interpretation of the recent NAEP gains ‘proving’ that corporate reform strategies are working (I wrote about NAEP ‘gains’ here). The third was about their support for the common core (Me and others have written a bunch about the problems with the common core).

Gary then writes an open letter to Matt and Elisa. It is a very strong letter, written by someone who understands Teach for America and knows its potential and its weaknesses. Gary has remained in teaching for many years and understands the challenges of teaching as Matt and Elisa do not.

Here are a few snippets: read the whole thing:

Based on what I’ve seen in this first year of your appointment, I am not encouraged that the issues I have with TFA are improving in any way. In your language and your writings I see the same kind of unsophisticated logic that I see in the rhetoric of people like Michelle Rhee and Steve Perry. Things about the ‘status quo’ and about the power of ‘raised expectations.’ As someone opposed to the kinds of strategies that Rhee and Perry promote, I know that my resistance has nothing to do with a desire to preserve the status quo, nor do I think that very many teachers have unreasonably low expectations for their students.

I have no particular attachment to the ‘status quo.’ But I’ve done a lot of research about what is now called ‘reform’ and I fight against it because I believe that it will, if permitted to gain momentum, make education in this country much worse. My prediction is that teachers will flee the profession even faster than they already do under the stress of the new brand of ‘accountability.’ And I’ve seen this start already in California where there are fewer teacher candidates to fill the vacancies. This will exacerbate if market-driven reform is not curbed. I think college students would be crazy to pursue teaching in this current anti-teacher climate. I’d wager that you are already seeing the effects of this, even among TFA corps members. A few years ago, the statistic was that 60% of TFA corps members taught for a third year. Recently I saw an article celebrating that South Carolina, I think, had about 40% stay for a third year. I believe that this is not going to be abnormal and you will see fewer TFAers stay beyond their two years. Teaching was already a pretty stressful job before the standardized test mania infected our schools. Now, for many, it is unbearable.

I do not believe in ‘low expectations.’ I also know that ‘high expectations’ is a very weak silver bullet. Expert teachers know how to set their expectations at an appropriate level to maximize student learning…

You recently penned a blog post in support of the controversial common core standards. Of course Randi Weingarten is one of the biggest common core cheerleaders in the country so it is not like you came out in favor of school closings, for instance. But still, it was interesting to me that you would take a side on this. What does it mean to be ‘for’ the common core? Does it mean that you wholeheartedly believe in the 7th grade math standard which states:

CCSS.Math.Content.7.NS.A.2a Understand that multiplication is extended from fractions to rational numbers by requiring that operations continue to satisfy the properties of operations, particularly the distributive property, leading to products such as (–1)(–1) = 1 and the rules for multiplying signed numbers. Interpret products of rational numbers by describing real-world contexts.

(Note: If you don’t know what they’re talking about, don’t worry. Most people don’t know that math majors in abstract algebra, during junior year of college, learn that rather than justifying that a negative times a negative is a positive, informally any number of ways, you learn that since -1 * 0 = 0, which means -1 * (-1+1) = 0 (since -1+1=0, additive inverse property) and then, by the distributive property (which says a * (b+c) = ab + ac) (-1) * (-1) + (-1)*1 = 0, but since 1 is the multiplicative identity, (-1)*(-1) – 1=0, but then if you add 1 to both sides, you get (-1)*(-1)=1, Q.E.D.)

Or do you just mean that you approve of school being more than just memorizing a bunch of shallow facts, but having opportunity for deep thought-provoking learning opportunities? If that’s what you mean, is is really necessary to spend billions of dollars on new textbooks and new ‘common core aligned’ assessments for this? Isn’t this the first thing we learned at the TFA institute (not you, Matt, but I’m sure you get the idea still), that we need to get kids to the higher levels of ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy’? Elisa, when you taught in Arizona did you not try to teach to a deep level because the common core had not been invented yet along with new assessments which would make sure you were accountable for getting your students to achieve that type of deep mastery of those standards?

One of my favorite sections of this long letter is where Gary suggests that TFA should adopt a value-added approach to its own organization and be prepared to shut down regions where there is high attrition of TFA recruits:

If you are so enamored with the strategies of Rhee, Daly, Huffman, White, and Anderson, why don’t you use them, yourself, in helping TFA maximize its own ‘value added’? This would be pretty easy to implement. First you would publish an annual A-F report card on the different TFA regions. One of the best metrics would be the ‘quit rate’ — the percent of corps members that quit before completing the two year commitment. Though the national average for all the regions is somewhere around 10%, there are some regions that have much higher quit rates. I believe that Kansas City and Detroit are two regions where around 25% of the corps members don’t complete their commitment. Regions like that would get an ‘F’ and after two ‘F’s or something, they would get shut down using the market-driven reform strategies. Then, for recruiters you could track the test scores of the students of the corps members that each recruiter recruits. Some recruiters will fare worse than others on this metric and those recruiters would be labeled ‘ineffective’ and fired. The various staff at the institutes could also be rated by tracking the test scores of the students of the corps members they trained. Basically, you would want to change the culture of TFA management to one which assumes that all TFA employees are lazy and don’t care about doing a good job and can only be motivated by the fear of being fired. If you admire the TFA leaders mentioned above so much, it would be hypocritical to not use their methods with your own employees.

Be sure to follow Gary Rubinstein. He is one of the wisest and smartest of all teacher-bloggers, and his views are always firmly rooted in evidence, which he supplies.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Teach for America, Teacher Evaluations

A Brilliant Idea for Raising and Improving Standards: Open Source Them

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
90

A comment arrived on the blog with a link to a great idea for standards: Open source them.

Right now, the Common Core standards are mired in controversy, and the controversy seems likely to grow worse as more states begin to test the standards and most parents discover that their children have failed.

The criticisms come from right and left and middle, from parents and educators of all stripes.

The blog called Uncommon California looks at the issue in the context of standards found in other walks of life and asks, why not open source the standards and the tests?

Open standards have been used successfully across many industries and technologies. They give flexibility to customize and adapt, while providing a foundation of available standards and interoperability.
Perhaps this framework could be used by states and individual schools as an alternative to Common Core?
Here is the brilliant idea:
Open standards have been used successful across many industries and technologies. They give flexibility to customize and adapt, while providing a foundation of available standards and interoperability.
Perhaps this framework could be used by states and individual schools as an alternative to Common Core?
Open Standards:
  • Seed a growing and ever updating list of standards, drawn for the best from state standards, around the country and around the world.   Encourage standards experts, to participate, evaluate, score them, encourage or discourage them.  Provide an open forum for standards to be evaluated, questioned, commented upon, rated, etc.  Include parents, teachers, education experts.
  • Provide ways to classify, group and sort them, by subject, recommended grade(s), ratings.  When standards are similar or identical, they could be combined to reduce redundancy.  Groups can work to evaluate, combine, rate them to “narrow” the list down or put forward their “recommended” set of standards.   States and schools should just not be monetarily incentivized or forced to use any particular set.
  • For each standards, test and materials publishers (see below) could “claim” alignment for their tests and study tools.  Users would be able to “rate” and/or question this alignment (or lack thereof).
  • Even the Washington D.C. lobby groups that created Common Core could “donate” their copyrights to the Common Core standards by putting them into the public domain & OSS!
  • States and local school districts would be able to pick and choose which standards they would adopt and in which grade level and even within grade levels.  Schools could have 2-3 levels of standards, based on below proficient, proficient and advanced levels. To take it further, schools might have a different set, customized to the level of the child in each subject. Want a particular math standard in 5th grade instead of 6th grade? No problem, just drag and drop it into your set.  Truly “plug and play” standards.

What a fabulous idea.

Similarly, Uncommon California says that the tests could be open source as well.

Open Tests:

  • Any company or individuals should be able to create software and/or paper tests that reference and draw from referenced open standards.  This site is a great example of how aspects of how “open source” tests could work: http://quizlet.com/
  • With software, each school and/or state would have their own, customized test based on their selected set of standards.  Again, could be customized down to grades, subjects, proficiency levels, and even each student.
  • Like the standards, groups could advocate their software or tests, allowing each state and school to choose.  Smarter Balanced and PARCC could even become options, so long as they create tests that are chosen by each state and/or school, customized to their standards and open parent and teacher feedback mechanisms were in place.
  • Reliability of the providers, especially the tests, would need to be well-monitored, especially to prevent sharing of test answers, etc.

And materials could also be open sourced.

As for privacy, any parent should be able to opt their child out of data-mining. “Like just about every other company, surveys and sampling can be used to normalize results if needed, without having to have data on EVERY SINGLE child.”

The Common Core standards as they now exist represent the best thinking of the industrial age. They might have been developed and imposed 100 years ago, in precisely the same manner as they are now.

The industrial age would have demanded that every worker in every factory operate in precisely the same way. How early 20th century!

The 21st century is characterized not by uniformity and standardization, but by processes that are flexible, dynamic, and open to continual improvement.

Categories Common Core

Schneider Responds to Honig on California and the Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
39

Mercedes Schneider has been an outspoken critic of the Common Core standards.

After she read Bill Honig’s explanation about why California educators support the standards without the testing or market reforms, she wrote the following:

Should California Embrace Common Core? My Response to Bill Honig

deutsch29.wordpress.com

Yesterday, California Instructional Quality Chair Bill Honig published a letter on Diane Ravitch’s blog in which he carefully details his reasons for supporting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in California.

In his letter, Honig encourages California districts wary of CCSS to reconsider their positions. He notes, “In California, there is widespread, deep, and enthusiastic support for the common core standards among teachers, administrators, educational and teacher organizations, advocacy groups, and political leaders.”

When I read Honig’s letter, I wondered how it could be true that CCSS would be so well received in California. I have recently blogged about CCSS unrest in California; namely, that the California Republican Party formally drafted an anti-CCSS resolution and that California Governor Jerry Brown is opposed to “government controlled standards and testing.” Brown has been consistent on his criticism of standardized testing.

I would like to address the context in which Honig’s appeal rests. It is a context unique to California. I also offer some cautions in “embracing” the politically-loaded CCSS.

California: It’s the District That Matters

First, let us consider the context of Honig’s letter:

The letter is an appeal to California districts regarding CCSS. California is a local control state. As such, California school districts may reject CCSS. It is not a state-level decision, as is the case in other states.

In California, the district is the entity that decides whether or not to adopt the CCSS endorsed by the state. This means that districts have the right to opt out of CCSS.

A second point: Even though California’s State Board of Education (CSBE) formally adopted CCSS in August 2010, California as a state did not contract with USDOE for Race to the Top (RTTT) funding.

US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan apparently does not care for California’s local control. In 2011, seven California districts banded together to apply for RTTT funding. The California application was the only one rejected:

In another cockfight between California and Washington over education, the U.S. Department of Education has rejected California’s application – and only California’s application – in the third round of Race to the Top. The denial exasperated the seven California school districts that led the state’s effort and were counting on $49 million earmarked for California as critical to do the work they had committed to do.

In a recent statement, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and State Board of Education President Michael Kirst each criticized the federal government’s inflexibility in not accepting what they described as California’s “innovative” approach of giving control of the reforms to local school districts. Seven unified districts, including Los Angeles, Fresno, and Long Beach, formed a coalition known as CORE, the California Office to Reform Education, to compete for round three and work together on the reform.

Apparently Duncan prefers to draw entire states into his RTTT reformer web. However, in 2012, USDOE began a RTTT funding competition for districts. Three California districts won money. All three agreed to evaluate teachers using student test scores.

The freedom afforded California districts by the state must really irritate Duncan, who desires to nationalize his slate of reforms without calling his effort a federal push.

Moreover, those federal-but-don’t-call them-that reforms are meant to be inflexible. As such, the CCSS Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) requires states to not remove any CCSS content. In her discussion of CCSS “flexibility” with North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest in December 2013, North Carolina School Superintendent Jan Brewer responded, “If any state wants to change those standards, that’s just fine. It’s just that you do not say that you are implementing the Common Core….” 19:15 -19:24, 12-17-13, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZrMgNJqjh8 ).

In contrast, in his letter, Honig discusses implementing the Common Core, yet he also refers to Brown “readopting [the standards] with some changes, in 2012.” Further in the letter, Honig notes,

This is not to say that the standards are perfect or that they shouldn’t be continually reviewed and modified as the schools across the country implement them. Our math framework committee has already suggested several changes which were adopted by our state board. [Emphasis added.]

Logically, the right to opt out of CCSS brings with it the freedom to modify (i.e., if a district is not pleased with CCSS, it holds the trump card to dropping CCSS entirely). The ability to modify CCSS is evident in Honig’s discussion of the CCSS California consortium and “much of the policy making” being “devolved to local districts”:

…Key educational leaders and organizations in the state have banded together to implement common core in an informal network, the Consortium for the Implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CICCSS). They did so, not because of heavy state or federal mandates, since, as discussed below, much of the policy making has been recently devolved to local districts. [Emphasis added.]

California districts have power. That is why some of them are able to directly deal with Duncan, who apparently decided it a better strategy to contract with “some” of California rather than “none” of California regarding California’s request for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers. In August 2013, Duncan issued such waivers to eight California districts provided they would agree to evaluate their teachers using student test scores, among other conditions:

In addition to using test scores to evaluate teachers, the eight California districts pledged to use other measures to determine school performance, including student growth, graduation rates, absenteeism, school culture and student surveys.

Therefore, for better or worse, California districts have power that school districts in other states do not have. For example, my school district in Louisiana, St. Tammany Parish, formally drafted an anti-CCSS resolution in October 2013. In it, the district reaffirms that it did not agree with the state’s decision to adopt CCSS in the first place and that St. Tammany considered its standards rigorous.

Even though my district formally resolved to reject CCSS, we are still tied to CCSS since in Louisiana it is the state, not the district, that has the power to commit to CCSS via RTTT.

California: Pushing Against Arne

I previously noted that Californiahas accepted no state-level RTTT money. This poses another advantage that California has over other most other states. The states that did accept state-level RTTT money are tied to the federal government’s will regarding the spectrum of reforms promoted by RTTT– including CCSS, its assessments, and the tying of testing results to teacher employment. California’s Governor Brown would not agree to evaluate teachers using student test scores. Thus, California was not eligible for either RTTT funds or NCLB waivers.

California is also unique from many states facing CCSS in that neither governor, nor state superintendent, nor school board president, is a die-hard privatizer. As Honig notes:

Our State Board of Education president, the governor and the state superintendent have repeatedly refused to knuckle under to Arne Duncan’s demands that the state institute teacher evaluations based in large part on test scores.

After considering what I have detailed above– that California districts have control over accepting or rejecting CCSS, and that the governor, state superintendent, and school board president all refuse to grade teachers using test scores (and thereby evidence a healthy distance from the federally-controlled puppeting Duncan so desperately desires of all states)– I understand how it is possible for California teachers to positively receive CCSS.

Indeed, there is still one more important–perhaps the most important– component to CCSS popularity in California: Dislike of the California state standards.

California: Dissatisfaction with Former Standards

According to Honig, California teachers view their previous standards as deficient. As Honig notes regarding California’s math standards:

The standards (CCSS)… shift from the current mile-wide and inch deep approach…. All in all, the standards envision a much more active and engaging classroom….

And California’s English Language Arts (ELA) standards:

Similarly, in English Language Arts the standards also encourage a much more active and engaging classroom….

Here’s an issue to reconcile: According to Honig’s letter, CCSS is a great improvement over California’s standards. However, in its oft-cited 2010 review of all state standards and CCSS, the CCSS-pushing Fordham Institute gave California’s standards higher grades than it gave CCSS– A’s for both ELA and math– as compared to the Fordham CCSS grades of B-plus for ELA and A-minus for math.

This is Fordham’s 2010 overview of California’s ELA standards from its 2010 report:

California’s well-sequenced and thorough ELA standards explicitly address all of the essential content that students must master in a rigorous, college-prep K-12 curriculum. With very few exceptions, the standards are clear and concise and exhibit an appropriate level of rigor at each grade. Minor flaws are noted below, but overall, these standards are exceptionally strong.

And here is Fordham’s overview of California’s math standards:

California’s standards could well serve as a model for internationally competitive national standards. They are explicit, clear, and cover the essential topics for rigorous mathematics instruction. The introduction for the standards is notable for providing excellent and clear guidance on mathematics education. The introduction states simply, “An important theme stressed throughout this framework is the need for a balance in emphasis on the computational and procedural skills, conceptual understanding, and problem solving. This balance is defined by the standards and is illustrated by problems that focus on these components individually and in combination. All three components are essential.” California has provided a set of standards that achieves these goals admirably.

Amazing that Fordham refers to the same standards that Honig believes require replacing.

Whereas Fordham’s review is (bafflingly) considered expert information on the issue of state standards evaluation, the real, front-line “experts” are teachers– those who must convert the standards into a meaningful learning experience for their students.

Fordham forms its opinions from the tower of its own high opinion of itself, not from the classroom.

This begs the question: What does the High and Lifted Up Fordham consider to be “ideal” in a set of standards?

It seems that Fordham places its highest value on standards that are “mile wide, inch deep”– a phrase that former California middle school teacher Anthony Cody has used recently in an email exchange to describe his experience with California’s standards.

Cody’s sentiment is echoed in an October 2013 Los Angeles Daily News article:

The Common Core has also attracted fans because it’s viewed by teachers as “more realistic and smarter” than California’s 1997 standards, which are often criticized as a mile long and an inch thick, says Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association.

“It was impossible for teachers to cover everything,” he says, adding that teachers view the new national standards as “a breath of fresh air” because they require much less regimentation than the earlier standards. Districts have more freedom, this time around, to choose their own curriculum, instructional materials and teacher training programs. [Emphasis added.]

To at least some California teachers, CCSS looks like freedom. For California’s sake, I am sorry that CCSS is inescapably politically infused.

District Danger of Test Worship

In his letter, Honig acknowledges that districts determined to use student test scores in keeping with the privatization agenda will still do so and that such a practice ought not be attributed to CCSS adoption:

If a district is hell-bent to use test scores to evaluate teachers for personnel decisions based on flawed assessment assumptions or narrow the curriculum and instruction to look good on tests, the presence or absence of Common Core Standards and their associated tests will not change that district’s direction.

I agree with Honig’s determination. Nevertheless, CCSS and its tests are promoted as part of a package of Duncan-promoted reforms. I cannot emphasize this enough. CCSS is not neutral. It is not “just” a set of standards. Duncan is pushing CCSS precisely because it is part of a determined reform package.

As for the issue of districts being “hellbent” upon using scores, the “hell bending” precedes the testing. Here is an excerpt of the CCSS-test-anticipated goings-on in one California district (unnamed) (full comment can be seen here):

In my high school district, the preparation for the upcoming tests in California are having a devastating impact on both the more challenged incoming 9th graders and the higher achieving math students. The Superintendent and the Principals of the 8 high schools have decided, against the wishes of almost ALL district math teachers, to narrow the curriculum to fit both the high school standards and the NEW Smarter Balanced Assessment. Thereby, they have eliminated ALL math course offerings below Algebra 1 and therein, forcing ALL students to enroll in an Algebra 1 class even though they may have fallen two or more years behind in their math levels according to where the CCSS would expect them to be when entering high school.

This pressure to conform to CCSS and its attendant outcome (in this case, the Smarter Balanced assessment [SB]), is a national pressure brought on by a federally promoted portfolio of reform.

CCSS cannot be divorced from such federally-promoted pressure. It’s too late for that.

Advice to Honig and All of California: Watch Out for Arne

If required to choose between Fordham’s assessment of California’s standards and Honig’s report of California assessment of California’s standards, I would defer to Honig– since his career has been tied to California education for decades– which means he is certainly closer to the reality of public education in California.

And even though both Fordham and Honig appear to be on the same side of the issue– with both promoting CCSS– Fordham’s motives are suspect for its having taken millions from Gates– even for operating expenses– and Gates– a very rich man who is purchasing his view of education for an entire nation–really wants CCSS.

However, I disagree with Honig’s urging California districts to dismiss concerns about the role of CCSS in advancing a spectrum of reforms:

I know some of you believe that the Common Core Standards are a stalking horse for the detrimental policy measures which have been connected to them and, consequently are so tainted that they can’t be separated. I would plead with you to revisit that question.

California has delayed CCSS testing via the Smarter Balanced consortium (SBAC)— but the tests will come. And even though Brown is fighting Duncan on the (mis)uses of standardized testing, do not underestimate Duncan in pushing the set of reforms for which he has been fighting since 2009.

Those SBAC test scores will be his leverage.

He will insert himself into district affairs. He has done so recently regarding new New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s choice of schools chancellor.

Duncan has repeatedly inserted himself in state and local elections since his appointment as US secretary of education in 2009.

Don’t think he will stop now.

In the case of California, where the power over education policy is at the district level, Duncan will insert himself there. He wants California to be subject to the entire privatizing spectrum of reforms. His foot is already in the door in several California districts.

In Closing

I applaud Honig for his interest in California education and for his detailed accounting of his reasons for promoting CCSS. Whereas one might try to extend Honig’s appeal beyond California’s borders, doing so does not work. As far as other states are concerned that have accepted RTTT funding, the flexibility to alter CCSS to suit a state’s own determined needs in the name of local control is nonexistent.

As to the process of comparing state standards to CCSS and making informed judgments based upon such comparison: This should have been an opportunity provided to all states absent any pre-completion, federal financial bait. The premature federal CCSS lure bespeaks an intent to ensnare– and ensnare it has.

As for the current atmosphere of CCSS unrest in at least half of the states that adopted CCSS: Any individual or group pushing for unquestioned CCSS allegiance has a hidden agenda. Honig is not pushing for unquestioning allegiance– a refreshing statement for me to write. However, his failure to view CCSS as a component of an overall design to completely privatize American public education is not wise given the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I wish California my best regarding its decisions about CCSS, wherever those may lead.

Just watch out for Arne.

Categories California, Common Core

Montclair Public Schools: Under Siege

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
34

Montclair, New Jersey, has long been proud of its fine public schools. But these days, not even good schools and good districts are exempt from the corporate reform steamroller. At present, a substantial part of the community is at war with the school board and the Broad-trained superintendent. A group of dissident parents, who happen to be among leading scholars of education —–including Ira Shor, Stan Karp, and Michelle Fine—wrote the following description of the turmoil in Montclair.

PREFACE FROM MONTCLAIR CARES ABOUT SCHOOLS:

Montclair, New Jersey is a progressive town with highly-regarded public schools noted nationally for successfully desegregating through a districtwide magnet system. Kids of all colors go to all schools; families of all colors, classes, and sexual preferences are welcome here.

But the town now has a renegade board of education issuing subpoenas to uncover names of critics posting anonymously on blogs and websites. And we have a schools superintendent, hired by the board in fall 2012, who lacks state certification but was trained by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. The superintendent, Penny MacCormack, came to Montclair from the NJ State Department of Education run by Christopher Cerf, another Broad graduate. Liberal Montclair, which voted overwhelmingly against Republican Governor Chris Christie, now has a superintendent from his administration.

Our school board, appointed by the mayor, took a destructive turn a few years ago by embracing austerity, cutting effective programs and essential classroom aides, ending services needed by students, while piling up multimillion-dollar budget surpluses year after year. The board also tried closing two successful and integrated schools, a plan it abandoned only after sustained parent protests.

Things went from bad to worse after MacCormack’s hiring following a secretive search. In true corporate-reform fashion, the board and MacCormack have restricted comments by the public and the local teachers‘ union president at meetings. Community management not public dialogue is its stock in trade. MacCormack hurriedly declared that Montclair was woefully behind on adapting the Common Core standards; she pushed a new “Strategic Plan” with a new layer of quarterly skills tests in every grade. After some of these new district assessments somehow got onto the Internet in the fall, the board launched an investigation and issued its subpoenas – including to a fellow board member – the only one to publicly question the superintendent’s policies- and to Google and a local online news site in an attempt to find out the identities of a local blogger and online commenters critical of the district leadership.

The ACLU of New Jersey sued on behalf of the blogger and following public protests, including from the Town Council, the board has withdrawn the subpoenas seeking identities of online critics. But the board’s subpoena against its own board member is still live and demands him to turn over emails and phone records, in fact, virtually all records of everyone he talks to in the community. You can see the subpoena here.

Our group, Montclair Cares About Schools, came together last spring out of concern over the destructive direction in the schools. We speak at board and Town Council meetings, hold public forums and workshops, send letters to the editor of the town paper, and have an active and popular Facebook page.

In December, Montclair Cares About Schools presented to the board and residents a timeline of how we got to this sad point in our district. An edited and abridged version is below.
_____

Timeline of a Debacle: “Just Six Months Ago…”
(issued Dec. 16, 2013)

Just six months ago, Montclair Cares About Schools asked the board to please slow down their plan to impose a new layer of quarterly, district-wide tests. Had the board listened to MCAS instead of ignoring our suggestion, the costly and divisive events since last June 23 could have been avoided.

June 2013: MCAS posted a petition online asking the board to slow down implementation of the planned quarterly assessments. Within 48 hours, 370 parents and community members signed online and another 40 signed a hard copy. Since then, online signers have grown to 560. At the board meeting that night, Montclair High School students presented their own petition signed by about 578 students also asking to slow down implementation of the new assessments.

The board refused to respond to the pleas to slow down. Instead, it rushed ahead recklessly.

It rushed ahead even though the new quarterly assessments and related curricula changes mandated by Superintendent MacCormack would come in the same year as a complex and burdensome new teacher evaluation system imposed by the State.

July and August 2013: The district recruited more than 100 teachers to develop the new quarterly assessments for every K-12 class. The superintendent maintained the new tests were necessary to get students ready for the upcoming state PARCC exams scheduled to begin in 2015.

>The public was told that the district would generate open-ended assessments, attuned to the unique characteristics and concerns of our high-performing district.

>By summer’s end, despite great cost and rush, only the first-quarter tests and lessons were ready, not the whole-year curriculum. School started in September with teachers not having the yearlong curriculum ready for them to plan their lessons.

>Teachers also learned that the assessments would have to be graded on a Scantron-ready metric. Our school curricula were being dumbed down to make them computer-friendly for the new PARCC testing en route to all classrooms.

>Although supposedly every Montclair student would be subject to the new layer of assessments, Advanced Placement students were exempt, making these new Scantron tests directed at only certain students, in a district where fairness and equity matter.

>We also have no evidence that any accommodations were planned for students in special education taking the new tests.

September 2013: At the start of school, students throughout the district were given ‘surprise’ pre-assessment tests. Many were on material not yet taught. We have a copy of a memo telling teachers to make these assessments difficult so that teachers could demonstrate students’ improvement on the next round of tests and to NOT share the pre-assessments or how students performed on them with students or parents.

Based on these unannounced, unprepared, and unnecessary pre-assessments, students were pulled out of regular classes for math and English language arts support, often without any notification or explanation to parents. This disturbed parents, frustrated those children pulled out of classes, and in many cases altered the racial makeup of classes.

October 2013: On Friday, October 25, the district learned that at least 14 of the district’s 60 first-quarter assessments suddenly appeared on an unprotected website on the Internet. Teachers were supposed to administer these tests the following week.

Three things happened in the wake of the online publication of the assessments:

1. Suspicion about how the assessments got online landed immediately on people who were publicly critical of the assessments, the board and the superintendent.

2. As copies of the published assessments began circulating among parents, the cover was blown off the Superintendent’s and board’s claims that these assessments were creative and teacher-generated. Many were canned short-answer tests, a low standard for assessment. Some had been copied verbatim from model state exams and some were clearly developmentally inappropriate for their grades. So much for the high-quality, teacher-generated assessments promised to the public.

3. The true cost of the assessments became known: $490,000. A half-million dollars of our taxes wasted by the board to get us into this mess, with a huge legal bill to follow.

October 28 or 29: According to Baristanet, a local online news outlet, the District filed a police report about the unauthorized publication of the assessments around October 28. As we understand it, the police did not pursue this case because they judged that no crime had been committed.

November 1: The board held a hastily called meeting to vote to hire its own attorney for what it claimed would be an “independent” investigation into the online publication of the assessments.

The board attorney was quoted in news reports that he would “cast a wide net” and would be issuing subpoenas to “blogs and websites.” At that same meeting however, board Pres. Robin Kulwin told reporters that she believed the “leak” was internal.

Why, if the board president believed the leak was internal – that is, caused accidentally or deliberately by someone who works for the district – did the board authorize its attorney to cast a wide net with subpoenas directed at outside parties? This key contradiction has never been explained. Why a big dragnet for a local problem with no evidence of criminal behavior presented?

December 4: The ACLU of New Jersey sued the board to quash subpoenas that the ACLU said were defective and beyond the limited investigative authority of a local school board. The ACLU had previously approached the board asking it to withdraw the subpoena to its client. But unlike other school districts in New Jersey approached by the ACLU on similar matters, our board refused to stop hounding its critics.

December 5: A state judge acknowledged the merits of the ACLU’s claims by granting a temporary restraining order against the board to prevent it from issuing any more subpoenas or taking further action on the ones issued.

December 9: The Montclair Township Council voted to refuse a school board request to investigate a computer network server shared by the town and school district. The council resolution declared that the investigation “is contributing to divisiveness and strife among the people of Montclair,[and] is resulting in the diversion and expenditure of substantial funds.”

December 16 board meeting: We ask the board, how much money has been poured into this punitive and pointless investigation for which you have provided no evidence of criminal activity? Why are you targeting your critics?

We propose that evidence points to the following scenario:

• The assessments had been placed by the district placed on an unprotected site (as confirmed by the board’s own computer network coordinator).

• The assessments were found on GoBookee, a “spider” or scavenger site that retrieves documents from the Internet and then tries to sell them online. Considering this and other Montclair school documents are on this site, we think it likely that this is how the assessments got online.
• We believe no one “leaked” the assessments but that they were poorly secured on the web portals open to teachers. Given the rush and lack of care in this entire process of creating and mandating these new assessments, this is not surprising.

No crime was committed here, and we think the board knows it. The only offenses have been by the board by engaging in a witch hunt – an investigation of parents, educators and community members critical of the board. This investigation has violated freedom of speech rights, embarrassed this respected town, and most likely, as the ACLU asserts, broken laws.

The township council has spoken, parents have spoken, educators have spoken. Enough.
The superintendent and board leadership should take responsibility for any security breach, apologize to the community and cease this destructive investigation.

______

Epilogue: As 2014 begins, Montclair Cares About Schools continues its fight to expose and stop the damage to our good schools caused by this board’s and superintendent’s top-down, test-focused management and by its failure to tolerate public dialogue about our public schools. Our group endeavors to show alternatives. We hold public forums, workshops, living-room meetings for parents. We invite everyone interested in public education to visit our Facebook page.

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

In addition to this joint statement, Ira Shor wrote the following letter to the editor of the Montclair Times to complain about the influence of the Broad Foundation in Montclair:

Dec. 29, 2013

Is Billionaire Eli Broad Running Our Schools?​

Why is the District refusing to release items regarding the Superintendent’s relation to the Broad Foundation? On October 31, 2013, I filed a request under NJ’s Open Public Records Act(OPRA) for documents regarding Supt. MacCormack’s financial disclosure that she received “more than $2000” in 2013 from the Broad Foundation. We need to know how much “more than $2000” Broad is paying her and for what services. Contrary to OPRA law, Mr. Fleischer, her COO, provided no requested documents and did not explain why he refused. OPRA requires district officers to meet legal requests in 7 business days or explain in writing why not. Mr. Fleischer had 35 days but provided no Broad items and explained nothing.

What is the Superintendent hiding? Who does she work for–Montclair’s families or billionaire Eli Broad and his campaign to standardize public schools? She attended the unaccredited Broad Academy whose “grads” follow Broad’s playbook, imposing one-size-fits-all curricula, endless bubble-tests, and high-priced consultants and testing technology. We have a right to know if she answers to Broad or to us.

The Superintendent and our Board have recklessly disrupted our good schools and squandered taxes on ridiculous subpoenas, while refusing to spend yet another huge surplus on things our kids need: smaller classes, foreign language, aides in all classes, librarians in all schools, instrumental music, and after-school mentoring for at-risk kids. Listen to our over-tested kids reporting fear and stress; listen to our under-supported teachers at monthly Board meetings; then, you’ll agree we should roll back the Broad agenda and its assessment train wreck. The refusal of my OPRA request joins other illegal refusals from Mr. Fleischer and the Supt.’s office. Stop hiding from those you should be serving. Open your books and files.

Ira Shor
302 North Mountain Avenue
Montclair, NJ 07043
973-337-6783

Categories Broad Foundation, Cerf, Chris, Common Core, New Jersey, Testing

Anthony Cody: Who Are the Critics of Common Core?

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2014 //
54

The news earlier today that the Koch brothers are joining the fight against Common Core complicates the political calculus surrounding the controversial standards.

The Politico article gives the impression that the rightwingers are the main critics of Common Core by failing to mention that the most zealous advocates for Common Core are Jeb Bush, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, the Business Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Anthony Cody tries to sort out the political contradictions here.

He writes:

“But blaming progressive critics of Common Core for the rise of this conservative movement turns reality on its head. The people who have let down our public schools are those who are willing to embrace standardization and high stakes tests as some sort of “progressive” guarantor of equity. We have been down this path with No Child Left Behind, which was sold to us by an alliance of liberal and neo-conservative politicians. We were told children in poverty would get more attention and resources once standardized tests “shed light” on just how far behind they were. We got teacher ‘evaluation’ schemes built around faulty VAM metrics, leading to mass demoralization and too-many losses of strong educators, simultaneous with a hypocritical push to replace seasoned teachers with Teach for America novices. The result? Intense pressure to raise test scores, narrowed curriculum, and school closings by the hundreds – all with the mantle of approval by our “liberal” leaders. Who really got played here?

“Then Common Core came along in 2009. Everyone was weary of NCLB, and ready for change. But some of us could read the writing on the wall. The fancy words about critical thinking and “moving beyond the bubble tests” sounded nice, but a closer look revealed standards that were originally written with little to no participation by K12 teachers. The promises to get rid of bubble tests only meant that the tests would be taken on expensive computers. The promise to escape the narrowing of curriculum only meant we would be testing more often, in more subjects.

“So many of us started raising concerns. The basic premise of Common Core was similar to NCLB – our schools are failing, and we must respond with “higher standards,” and more difficult tests. But the indictment of public education has been wrong from the start, and we should not lend it credence by supporting phony solutions.”

The bottom line, in my view, is that Common Core is getting increasingly controversial because of the way it was developed and imposed. The absence of a democratic process and the lack of transparency caused a lack of trust and an abundance of suspicion. In a democracy, major changes like national standards for public schools must be done with maximum sunlight and participation, not in secrecy. The fact that no amount of true grassroots opposition from parents is sufficient to alter the views of policymakers like Arne Duncan or New York’s Commissioner John King serves to feed the rage against Common Core, from right, left, and center, from parents and educators.

The Common Core is becoming increasingly toxic. As it becomes more controversial, its chances of survival will dim. The more that policymakers shun reasonable parents and teachers, the more frustrated the excluded become. If Common Core dies, don’t blame the Koch brothers: Blame Arne Duncan, the Gates Foundation, Achieve, David Coleman, the NGA, the CCSSO, and all those who thought that national standards could be imposed swiftly without the hard work of listening and participation that democracy requires.

Categories Common Core

Arthur Camins on Bill Honig’s Post: Is This the Way Forward?

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2014 //
38

Arthur Camins is  director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. After reading Bill Honig’s post about Common Core in California, he wrote the following comment:

 

Bill Honig makes an argument to consider: Maybe there is a potential alternative to having to choose between accepting tight linkage between the Common Core State Standards and high-stakes testing or no standards at all. I argued in The Past Gets in Our Eyes(http://www.arthurcamins.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Past-Gets-In-Our-Eyes1.pdf), that total opposition to standards in any form is a function of being trapped by our individualist history. In NGSS: A Wave or a Ripple (http://www.arthurcamins.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/NGSS_Wave-or-Ripple2.pdf), I made a plea to not undermine the new science standards with a rush to consequential testing. Decoupling standards from expensive and destructive consequential testing systems makes them less subject to mindless prescriptive curricula and rushed implementation and thus more open to critical review, experimentation and revision. I hope California turns out to be a successful example for the rest of the nation. Is there potential for New York City’s new leadership to follow suit?

Categories Common Core
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