This is a very funny
spoof of federal education policy. Imagine Arne Duncan
and Roger Goodell, the president of the NFL, calling a joint press
conference to announce a new program called Race to the End Zone.
Imagine an agreement that all teams will use the same plays. Now
the NFL will have no failing teams! “We in the NFL love the Common
Core Curriculum that Mr. Duncan is pushing on schools here in D. C.
and in forty-five states,” Goodell continued. “Just as he believes
Common Core Curriculum can save the schools, we believe a Common
Core Playbook will save our struggling teams. Beginning with the
2013 season every coach and every team will use the same playbook.”
The press corps grumbles: “An MSNBC reporter shouted from the fifth
row: “Do you truly believe if all teams run the same plays they’ll
all have the same success?” “Of course,” Mr. Duncan interjected.
“It’s going to work in education, too. I promise. And I went to
Harvard. So you have to listen to me.”
This is a wide-ranging interview with Christine Romans on CNN.
Romans has two school-age children, and I think she gets it.
It only takes about 3 minutes, and we cover a lot of ground.
I say things that are obvious and common sense but seldom heard on mainstream television.
It has become clear that the nation’s biggest corporations are avid supporters of the Common Core State Standards.
None has been more aggressive in supporting Common Core than Exxon Mobil.
Although normally you would expect to see ads from this company promoting the virtue of their products, they have invested large sums in promoting Common Core on television, YouTube, and news print.
In this discussion with Tom Brokaw, the CEO of Exxon Mobil says that we need CCSS so we can compare states, but that is what NAEP does.
Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, wrote to Governor Corbett and top legislators in Pennsylvania, warning them to stop the delay on the Common Core.
I don’t understand this. I googled Exxon Mobil and Common Core, and got over 40,000 hits.
Has anyone seen a statement in which Exxon Mobil executives have shown any genuine knowledge of the Common Core standards? Have they read them? Do they know the research or are they just repeating talking points? Their ads spout cliches and generalities about higher standards and reaching higher.
Would Exxon Mobil executives please take the PARCC test or the Smarter Balanced Consortium test of Common Core and publish their scores?
Anthony Cody, in a brilliant column, asks whether Common Core will be the Rosetta Stone of Corporate reform.
The Rosetta Stone, he explains, made it possible to decipher ancient languages:
” In the year 1799, a French soldier discovered an ancient stone in Egypt that had been inscribed with a royal proclamation in the year 196 BC, in three languages; Ancient Greek, Demotic, and Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The same text in all three languages allowed scholars to crack the code of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and since then, the term “Rosetta Stone” has come to signify a means by which hidden codes are uncovered. The Common Core has become a Rosetta Stone for understanding how corporate education reform is reshaping public education.”
The Common Core weaves together and makes plain what once seemed to be disparate themes:
1. It unveils the powerful role of the Gates Foundation, which poured nearly $200 million into creating and promoting the Common Core standards.
2. It shows the heavy hand of the federal government, manipulating states into adopting the Common Core, despite the fact that it is prohibited by law from influencing curriculum and instruction in the nation’s schools.
3. It has revealed the extent to which nonprofits, including the teachers’s unions, accepted funding from Gates to advance the Common Core.
4. “The Common Core is propelled by a vision of education as serving the needs of commerce and corporations. Many of the arguments for Common Core portray our children as products on an assembly line. As a high level Gates Foundation official wrote recently, “I am pleased to see the excitement in the business community for the common core. Businesses are the primary consumers of the output of our schools, so it’s a natural alliance.”
5. Common Core reinforces NCLB’s insistence that schools be held accountable for constantly rising scores.
6. Common Core was designed to cause tests ores to plummet.
Read on.
What comes clear is that Common Core has little to do with education reform and everything to do with the corporate agenda of high-stakes testing and the undermining of public education.
Michelle Rhee argues that the PISA scores prove that America is failing its kids. She believes that the way to get higher test scores for all is higher standards, more tests, more rigor. She also promotes charters, vouchers, merit pay, and evaluation of teachers based on student test scores.
Rhee has a close personal association with the Common Core standards. David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards, was the treasurer of the original StudentsFirst board; other members included Jason Zimba, who wrote the Common Core math standards. The only other member of Rhee’s board worked for Coleman’s organization, Student Achievement Partners.
Rhee’s StudentsFirstNY group packed meetings in New York City to endorse Common Core testing and support the Regents’ agenda of rapid implementation of Common Core.
Only Common Core, Rhee argues, can lift our students’ performance on international tests.
Apparently she never read Tom Loveless’s article in which he demonstrated that the biggest test score differences are within states, not between states. Loveless concluded that Common Core would have little or no impact on student achievement.
Robert Shepherd has written curriculum, textbooks,
assessments, and lots else in recent decades.
Here he explains what
is wrong with the Common Core’s version of English Language Arts:
The CCSS in ELA appear to have been written by complete NOVICES
based upon
a. poorly conceived, unexamined notions about how the
outcomes of ELA education should be characterized and measured AND
b. vague memories of extremely mediocre English classes that the
authors happened to attend when they were in school years ago.
It would be amusing that so much money and time had been spent on
“standards” (I can barely bring myself to use this term to refer to
them) this mediocre if not for the fact that they are going to have
dire consequences on many different levels, including dire
consequences for curricula, for curricular innovation, for
pedagogical practice.
So, what are the problems with the new
national standards in ELA? (My God, I could write several books on
this topic, but I’ll settle for providing the outline.)
To begin with, with, as almost any teacher will tell you, the very idea of
creating a single set of mandatory standards for every child is
crazy. How could it be, I ask myself, that any sane person, any
thoughtful or experienced educator, anyone who gave the matter the
least critical examination, could possibly conclude that it makes
sense to have a single set of ELA standards for every child in the
nation?
At the risk of stating what ought to be the blindingly
obvious: a. Children differ; b. We need diversity in outcomes, not
identity in outcomes, from Pre-K-12 education; c. a single set of
standards dramatically reduces the design space within which
curricular and pedagogical innovation can occur; d. a single set of
standards for all effectively tells every curriculum coordinator,
every curriculum designer, every teacher, “What you know or think
you know about your students and about outcomes for them doesn’t
matter–we have made these decisions for you. Shut up and do as you
are told.”
These considerations, alone, should have been enough to
have stopped the CCSS in ELA. But I haven’t even begun to address
the problems with these PARTICULAR top-down, across-the-board,
one-size-fits-all, totalitarian “standards.”
A few of the many
problems with these “standards” in particular. The CCSS in ELA
a. are wildly developmentally inappropriate.
b. embody a lot of completely prescientific notions about how children acquire
language skills.
c. are full of glaring lacunae that teachers and
curriculum designers will not be able to address because they will
be told, “It’s not in the standards.”
d.reflect extremely unimaginative, pedestrian, mostly unexamined notions about what
education in that domain should consist of. The characterizations of what education in literature, in writing, and in language skills should consist of are particularly unimaginative and uninformed.
e. seem often to have been assigned to particular grade levels
completely at random.
f. preclude many logical, potentially highly
effective alternate curricular progressions both within particular
grades and across grades
But here’s the biggest problem of all with
these particular standards, and it’s a problem with most of the
state standards that they supplant: It’s an ENORMOUS mistake to
couch desired outcomes in ELA terms of abstract skills to be
attained rather than in terms of a. world knowledge (knowledge of
what) and b. SPECIFIC procedural knowledge (knowledge of how). In
other words, the CCSS in ELA are WRONG FROM THE START, misconceived
at their most fundamental design level, that of their categorical
conceptualization. The Common Core is a monoculture. It’s just NOT
what is needed by a diverse, pluralistic society, one that prizes,
and benefits enormously from, individual autonomy and
difference.
At the Manhattan forum convened by State Commissioner John King and the chair of the Regents Merryl Tisch, a mother gave this moving speech, which she sent with permission to post.
She wrote;
“Commissioner King, Chancellor Tisch, thank you for the opportunity to share with you tonight. My name is Lorri Gumanow, and my husband and I are the proud parents of a very talented 13-year old public school student who is an actor and puppeteer, and wants to work with the Jim Henson Company someday. I am a newly retired special educator. But tonight I am here to ask you to walk in my shoes as a parent.
Our son was born 3 months premature and has several neurological disabilities and an IEP. His disabilities are not the result of poverty, poor prenatal care or poor educational opportunities. He has always thrived in the public school environment. He has had wonderful teachers, wonderful inclusive public schools, and wonderful supports.
All of a sudden he is failing. He failed the math test last year with a score of 1. What happened? The roll out of the Common Core asks 8th graders to now magically perform as 10th graders, without any attention to the skills and knowledge they might have been required to learn and practice in those 2 missing years.
Your solution is that my son just needs to try harder. Increase the rigor! No excuses! And what do you really mean every time you say, “This work?” He does 4 hours of homework every night and still fails his classroom test! If you don’t pass, you are a failure, and your teacher is a failure too. Fire that bad teacher! Close that failing school! Failure is not an option. Raise the bar. Unfortunately, when you throw some kids into the “deep end of the pool,” with a brick tied to their ankle – label the brick whatever difference you prefer – it is foolish to believe they are all going to be able to come back up for air. A lot of them are going down! I am tired of the jargon and the rhetoric. You are willing to write my son off as collateral damage. I care about my child! I care about all children! And so do his teachers! Education is not a competition – it is a human right and our responsibility!
My son now says he is stupid, he can’t take it anymore, my teacher will get fired if I fail, why can’t I be normal, he says he wants to kill himself, he has meltdowns regularly over homework – AND he has pulled the kitchen knife out of the drawer. He has always received outstanding medical care and mental health care! Now I have to give him, in addition to his daily medications, a sedative when he loses control – over homework and schoolwork????? I sedate my kid with strong drugs so he doesn’t hurt himself over an ELA quiz??? Something is very wrong with this picture. School should not be a life or death experience. School is not worth dying for!
And as a parent, would you want this medical history about your child on inBloom, for the world to see? (By the way, our son has given me permission to share this with you!) Are we overprotective parents, protecting him from rejection and failure? Absolutely not – he is an actor. He knows that when he experiences rejection after an audition, he picks himself up, works hard and tries again. But it’s demeaning to try again when you know you don’t have the skills. Experiencing failure is an important lesson in life. But being punished for something out of your control is abuse, and it is discriminatory.
My son is a proud member of the Drama Desk award-winning TADA! Resident youth theater ensemble, and just earned a leading role in their upcoming off-Broadway musical production. Talent exists in many forms, academic talent being just one form. The arts are what save my son’s life! He will reach his dream through hard work, perseverance, and dedication to his craft. Those are qualities that employers value! Your testing and sorting of children, and treating them as human capital will not bring our children down, because we won’t let you. We love and support our children, and embrace all of their special talents! We are active, concerned, informed and intelligent parents and we won’t let you hurt our children. Pull out of inBloom. Fire Pearson now! Drop the Common Core! All children, not just the children of Ivy-league educated and wealthy parents, are entitled to a good education in our democracy. Not just the kids in private schools and charter schools. ALL children!! I hope you were listening. Oh, and by the way. I graduated from an Ivy-league college too and I believe in our public schools! Thank you!”
New York state’s attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman won an agreement from the Pearson Foundation to pay $7.7 million in fines for using its charitable activities to advance its corporation’s profit-making arm.
According to the story by Javier Hernandez in the New York Times,
“An inquiry by Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, found that the foundation had helped develop products for its corporate parent, including course materials and software. The investigation also showed that the foundation had helped woo clients to Pearson’s business side by paying their way to education conferences that were attended by its employees.
“Under the terms of the agreement to be announced on Friday, the money, aside from $200,000 in legal expenses, will be directed to 100Kin10, a national effort led by a foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, to train more teachers in high-demand areas, including science, technology, engineering and math.
“The fact is that Pearson is a for-profit corporation, and they are prohibited by law from using charitable funds to promote and develop for-profit products,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement. “I’m pleased that this settlement will direct millions of dollars back to where they belong.”
“Officials at Pearson and the foundation defended their work.
“We have always acted with the best intentions and complied with the law,” they said, in a joint statement. “However, we recognize there were times when the governance of the foundation and its relationship with Pearson could have been clearer and more transparent.”
“The case shed a light on the competitive world of educational testing and technology, which Pearson has come to dominate. As federal and state leaders work to overhaul struggling schools by raising academic standards, educational companies are rushing to secure lucrative contracts in testing, textbooks and software.
“The inquiry by the attorney general focused on Pearson’s attempts to develop a suite of products around the Common Core, a new and more rigorous set of academic standards that has been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.
“Around 2010, Pearson began financing an effort through its foundation to develop courses based on the Common Core. The attorney general’s report said Pearson had hoped to use its charity to win endorsements and donations from a “prominent foundation.” That group appears to be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Pearson Inc. executives believed that branding their courses by association with the prominent foundation would enhance Pearson’s reputation with policy makers and the education community,” a release accompanying the attorney general’s report said.
“Indeed, in April 2011, the Pearson Foundation and the Gates Foundation announced they would work together to create 24 new online reading and math courses aligned with the Common Core.
“Pearson executives believed the courses could later be sold commercially, the report said, and predicted potential profits of tens of millions of dollars. After Mr. Schneiderman’s office began its investigation, the Pearson Foundation sold the courses to Pearson for $15.1 million.
“The attorney general’s office also examined a series of education conferences sponsored by the Pearson Foundation, which paid for school officials to meet their foreign counterparts in places like Helsinki and Singapore…..”
In this provocative post, Anthony Cody takes ASCD to task for its tilt toward market-based reforms and its advocacy for Common Core.
Cody notes that ASCD has received more than $3 million from the Gates Foundation to promote Common Core. That disappoints him, as he thinks that ASCD should be an organization that debates so sweeping a change as Common Core.
In its publications and conferences, says Cody, ASCD seems to be bending to one side of a ferocious debate.
I think what Anthony Cody wants is not for ASCD to be neutral or a debating club. Since there is so much money and political power on one side, pushing privatization, friends of public education cannot afford to be neutral or a debating club.
Anthony Cody has discovered that there are many organizations that have published a list of “myths and facts” about Common Core standards.
There seems to be a concerted effort to convince educators and the public that the standards were written by educators, or by the states, or by a huge collaboration of educators and administrators and governors, all working together.
As Cody shows, there was not a single educator included in the writing of the standards. Educators were brought in to review the first draft, not to participate in writing it.
The purveyors of “myths and facts” seldom mention the involvement of major corporations and the testing industry. Representatives of both were at the drafting table from the get-go.
Diane Ravitch's blog 