Archives for category: Common Core
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Montessori Schools Are Not Same As Common Core

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2013 //
36

State Commissioner John King sends his own children to a Montessori school, which is his right as a parent.

But he insists that his children are getting an education that is similar to the Common Core, which he has mandated across the state.

This Montessori teacher disagrees. She writes:

Hi Diane,

I keep on hearing John King say that Common Core is a lot like Montessori education, but it is actually the polar opposite. Montessori schools do provide the type of education that you so passionately advocate. My students talk about what is important to them and how they are free to learn.

I thought that this quote by Maria Montessori is so fitting for the situation today: “How can we speak of Democracy or Freedom when from the very beginning of life we mould the child to undergo tyranny, to obey a dictator? How can we expect democracy when we have reared slaves? Real freedom begins at the beginning of life, not at the adult stage. These people who have been diminished in their powers, made short-sighted, devitalized by mental fatigue, whose bodies have become distorted, whose wills have been broken by elders who say: “your will must disappear and mine prevail!”—how can we expect them, when school-life is finished, to accept and use the rights of freedom?” [Maria Montessori, Education for a New World, translator unknown]

Thank you for your tireless efforts and strong voice for all of our nation’s children.

Marianne Giannis
1st-6th grade teacher
Kenosha Montessori School
Kenosha, Wisconsin

Categories Common Core

New York Parent and Educator: Common Core Is Killing My Child’s Love of Learning

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2013 //
13

I have met the writer of this letter. I know he is real. He requested anonymity. In New York, it is not safe to question authority:

“It is time for parents to speak out against the Common Core standards. They are destroying the love of learning in our children. My eight-year old son is in the third grade. He is a very strong student, particularly in Mathematics. Despite that strength, he recently had a homework assignment from his Common Core Math workbook, that frustrated him to tears. The word problem involved many steps including reading and understanding the problem, interpreting what needs to be done to solve it, subtracting three digit numbers, estimating each number’s tenth place value before subtracting and then coming up with an answer that matched an estimated answer. The problem was far too complex for a third grader. Instead of being excited about doing Math homework like he used to be, he now frequently says, “I don’t get this. It doesn’t make sense.” He’s right. It doesn’t.
“My son is losing his love of learning as the drill for the spring tests begin. He was so excited by a project that he did on planets and one that he did on Walt Disney. Both projects required him to research, read, write and most importantly, be creative. He didn’t cry then, he laughed and smiled. It was at an appropriate level and made sense. The Common Core and teaching to the test is now replacing these projects in our schools. As an educator, I am disappointed in our leaders and puzzled by their allegiance to the Common Core. As a parent, I am saddened and extremely upset that a curriculum matched to State testing is having such a negative effect on my child’s learning. The inappropriate level of difficulty in the Common Core is quickly turning my son’s joy of learning into sadness. I know that I am far from alone in my feelings and experience with this.
” A fellow parent told me about the effect of the Common Core testing on her daughter. Last year her little girl took the New York State Mathematics exam in the fourth grade. Her performance level on the Common Core test was scored as a 2 (below proficiency), however, the year before she was a 4 (advanced) and has been a very strong student in Math. Unfortunately, this parent was told by her school that her daughter must be placed in an additional Math support class for academic intervention services because of her score. Upon hearing this, the student said, “Now I’m stupid. Now I’m a dumb kid,”. The parent told me that her daughter’s teacher told her that she really does not need AIS, but the State of New York mandates it because of her score on the exam. The student’s confidence has been unnecessarily crushed and the parent is outraged.
“Parents in my suburban community are sharing similar anecdotes and seeing similar effects on their children. They are angry and expect better. They have watched their older children successfully navigate our schools and be very well prepared for college. They know that the scores are not an accurate measure. Their children deserve a well-researched curriculum that is appropriate at every level and does not confuse or frustrate their children to tears. Our children are now experiencing heightened levels of stress, anxiety, confusion, lowered self-esteem and a lack of interest in school. It is frequently being called, “Common Core Disorder.” Many parents have told me that they do not understand what the questions are asking for, why the questions are being asked and even how to solve them. Because I am a school leader in another district, they have complained to me repeatedly that they do not understand why such difficult concepts and high level problems are being taught to children who do not understand, or have just learned, basic concepts. The Common Core is lacking common sense.
“Reformers will suggest that “Common Core Disorder” is due to the lack of quality teaching in prior years and that suddenly things have to change so that students become college and career ready. The children in my community, including my son, and the children in the school that I work in, would be college and career ready without the inclusion of the Common Core curriculum. How do I know this? It’s simple. They have dedicated parents and teachers in their lives that care about them and devote all their efforts and time to teaching them about academics, learning and life at the appropriate levels and in a healthy manner. They instill upon them the importance of school, community and being a good person with a quality character. At times I wonder if reformers have studied the true sources of problems in our schools and education system or implement changes such as the Common Core for other reasons.
“If the reason that the Common Core is being implemented is to increase the numbers of students who are not college and career ready coming out of high school, then why are schools with extremely high percentages of students going to college being subjected to this? If strong students are finding this curriculum to be confusing, how are students with special needs and English language learners going to understand it? If there are students who lack the basic skills to prepare them for college, shouldn’t we have a curriculum that stresses those skills, not one that makes it impossible for them to succeed? Many parents are questioning the motives behind the Common Core. Some have suggested that it is a way to help destroy public school education and for big businesses to profit off of poor results of State exams. I’m not entirely sure, but one thing is certain. The crying and frustration must end. We are raising a generation of students for whom education has become punishment.”

Categories Common Core, New York

The Biggest Obstacle to Punitive “Reforms” Is…

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2013 //
8

Jonathan Lovell, who teaches writing at San Jose State, believes that it is time to stop the punitive reform train that seeks to crush public education and brand it a failure with phony metrics.

The Krytonite of our cause: Passion and Practice.

Lovell writes:

Please bear with me for a moment as I place our five years of work in producing Passion and Practice within a larger picture. It’s one I find both compelling and disturbing.

As Diane Ravitch, along with several others, have begun to say with greater and greater clarity and force(see https://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/24/the-biggest-fallacy-of-the-common-core-standards-no-evidence/), the “roll out” of the Common Core Standards represents the culmination of a 13 year “educational reform narrative” that has labeled K-12 schools as failing and teachers, and teachers’ unions, as the primary cause of this failure.

In an essay I wrote earlier this fall on income inequality and student achievement (see http://jonathanlovell.blogspot.com) I address the question of who is most likely to gain, and who to suffer, from the spring 2015 implementation of the CCS assessments. I’ve received slightly over 2700 “page visits” to this essay over the past two months, using the simple but apparently effective technique of sending it out to friends and colleagues and asking them to so the same, if on reading the essay they find it thought provoking.

I wonder if I might ask you as well to do the same: take the 15 minutes I’m told it takes to read this essay, and then send it along to friends and colleagues, asking them to do the same?

My hope is that, acting together,we might bring a modicum of common sense to the seeming juggernaut of the national accountability movement. It’s also my hope that we might be able to do so before this quite small group of high level “educational reformers” takes the entire system of public education over a cliff in the spring of 2015–when the “results” of the nationwide testing of K-12 students in relation to their CCS proficiency levels are quite likely to be used to demonstrate that public education, “just as we’ve been told,” is indeed going to hell in a hand-basket.

I believe that there are two potentially effective ways to counter this narrative. One is to become as familiar as possible with the counter arguments that Diane Ravitch makes so eloquently in the opening chapters of Reign of Error (see https://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/12/jonathan-lovell-channels-john-keats-while-reading-reign-of-error/ for my own “review” of this book), and to write and talk about these “facts” vs the “hoaxes” we’ve been subjected to with as many different audiences as possible over the next year and a half. The other is to demonstrate as clearly as we can that the “teachers are failures” part of this argument is demonstrably false.

I hope that Passion and Practice will be seen, in years to come, as the opening salvo of this larger national “counter-narrative.”

My very best,
Jonathan Lovell, Director, San Jose Area Writing Project

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers

Parent: “These Reforms Are Not About Education”

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2013 //
10

This parent testified at the state’s public hearing in Portchester, Néw York. She concluded that John King must resign. Read her explanation:

“Dear Diane,

Last night I attended the Common Core Forum in Port Chester, NY. I was number 6 to speak.It was an incredible feeling to finally be able to look Commissioner King in the eye and say what I have been wanting to say to him for the past 6 months, and to know that this time, he would have to hear me. But that’s the thing, he didn’t hear me or anyone else for that matter.

I brought my almost 80 year old father to the forum. Before last night he was only peripherally aware of education reform. As we left, he was holding back tears, overwhelmed by the pain that he heard parents and teachers expressing and moved by the dozens of parents, teachers and administrators who had spoken so eloquently on behalf of children. I too was moved but I was also angry.

Despite being forced to listen to dozens of parents, superintendents and teachers say over and over again that the current education reform is hurting children and public education, Commissioner King was unmoved. King had not heard me or anyone else for that matter. Despite his 12 stop mea culpa tour, King is going full steam ahead with his corportate, hostile takeover of education.

Back when I was a 28 year old mother of 2 children on the Autism spectrum, I worked hard to return to graduate school and become a teacher. During my teacher training I lost my little brother to cancer and watched my son undergo numerous surgeries. Through it all I continued my graduate work and maintained a near perfect GPA. I don’t tell you these things because I want sympathy or accolades, but to make the point that I know perseverance, I know struggle…the qualities that commissioner king believes that 8 and 9 year olds should experience as the means of motivating them to achieve career and college readiness. And part of what has helped me to persevere and to push through the tough times is my ability to stop and reflect, to change course when one paradigm no longer works. I am saddened and angered that public education is led by someone who is willing to do neither.

I have attached my testimony from the forum below. This is what our commissioner of education didn’t hear.Commissioner King must resign because as parents and educators, we deserve better.

Sincerely,
Bianca Tanis
Parent, educator and co-founder of New York State Allies for Public Education

“My son has autism and your reforms have hurt him. You mandate schools to share sensitive student data. You force students with disabilities to submit to inappropriate and humiliating testing. Only now, 5 months later, after you have had to endure public outcry, are you willing to consider changes. Where was common sense and decency 5 months ago when parents begged to for their children to be exempt and when children with disabilities were being tortured. You should be ashamed.

“These reforms are not about education. They are about the agenda of billionaires with no teaching experience. The fact that your close advisors are the mysterious Regents Fellows, individuals with little to no teaching experience, who are paid 6 figure salaries with private donations by Bill Gates and Chancellor Meryl Tisch, speaks volumes. Private money comes with a price tag and that price tag is influence. We reject leadership that allows public education to be bought. That is not democracy. By the way, the Regents Fellow job description does not mention teaching experience as a requirement.

“It has been said that parent opposition is typical when change is introduced. There is nothing typical about the present response. The incompetent roll out of the common core and the naked disregard that has been shown for developmentally appropriate and educationally sound practice is unacceptable. Your recent concessions are disingenuous and a case of too little too late. They do nothing to reduce the hours of testing or the inappropriate level of test difficulty. They do nothing to make cut scores reasonable or address serious problems associated with high stakes testing.

“In addition to hurting children, your policies promote social inequality. Private school parents, such as your self have the opportunity to say to no to harmful testing and data sharing while public school parents are not afforded the same rights. Are you afraid of what would happen if you gave all parents a choice?

“The inadequacy of our schools is a manufactured crisis. Poverty is the number one indicator of student achievement. When you factor in poverty, US schools are at the top. New York deserves real leadership that addresses real issues. If you won’t provide that leadership, we need someone who will.”

Categories Common Core, New York, Parents, Testing

A First-Person Report on John King’s Meeting in Portchester, New York

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2013 //
35

As John King dutifully carries his “listening tour” to a dozen localities in New York state, touting the virtues of Common Core and high-stakes testing, he is running into a problem: No one likes what he is selling.

However, as the report below indicates, he doesn’t care. He listens without hearing. It doesn’t matter what parents and educators say. His mind is made up. He is going through the motions.

This reader writes:

56/57 people spoke at the Portchester Middle School, including numerous superintendents, teachers, parents and one student. Many articulate, passionate variations of same theme: Not research based; hurting children; lowering curriculum standards; hurting teachers and administrators. Seemed like standing room only. King’s only response: we are going forward with CCSS. We heard you. (This is paraprasing).  A lot of face saving on their part. After hearing person after person speak about how children had been harmed, Chancellor Tisch looked bored, and all Comissioner King (with all his three years teaching experience in charter schools) could say was basically, “We will move forward with this and we’ll be committed to high standards.” Not an “I’m sorry children have been hurt. I’m sorry teachers have had to work overtime. I’m sorry the curriculum was delivered to teachers the day before school began.” Not, “I can see we’ve made some mistakes and I’ll make sure that I include your points in our next discussion.” Were we shocked? No. Just what we expected and feared. Our hope: He will hear the same message in the next 13 (?) meetings. My political science spouse said, “you need to tell people to focus on the legislators who attend these meetings: Let them know their job is on the line with your vote. King & Tisch feel quite secure in their jobs. Make sure the legislators don’t feel the same security. Then maybe you’ll  make the changes that need to be made. My note: make sure you organize. Get the people out.

Categories Common Core

John King Meets the Public Again

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2013 //
19

After his fiasco in Poughkeepsie, and his hasty decision to cancel all future public forums, the New York Regents sent John King out on the road again.

His next meeting in Portchester was not the disaster of the Poughkeepsie meeting, For starters, he didn’t lecture the audience for over an hour.

He showed a certain openness to dialogue, though little evidence that anything he heard would change his mind.

He was there to convince parents and educators that he was right about Common Core and high-stakes testing, both of which he advocates.

If he had been listening, he might have backed down and showed some reflection because the audience was clearly not supportive of the Regents’ agenda.

But King and the Regent present engaged in dialogue and will now move on to the next event in the traveling road show.

Opponents of the Regents’ agenda may find that King is doing their work for them in rallying parents and educators against high-stakes testing.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

New York Principal Sounds Off at First of King!s New Listening Tours:

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2013 //
32

After Commissioner John King had a disastrous meeting with parents in Poughkeepsie, he canceled his remaining five open meetings. But the Board of Regents decided what was needed was even more meetings, so King is now holding more meetings around the state, though so far not in New York City.

At his first new round of meetings, one principal got up and spoke fearlessly about what was happening in the state. This was his statement:

“Dr. King, My name is Tim Farley, from Kinderhook, NY, and I am the proud father of four school-aged children and I happen to be an educator of 22 years. Since this is now a listening tour, I would like to offer you three suggestions from the field followed by a question.

1. We do not want your corporately-backed Common Core. We don’t like it. We don’t like it as parents and we certainly don’t like it as educators. Common Core has not been properly field tested and we do not want our children used as guinea pigs for one of Bill Gates’ newest whims.

2. We do not want inBloom or any 3rd party vendor to have access to our children’s once private and confidential information. We know it’s now legal because those in power literally changed federal law in 2011 just so they can do what they are currently doing. We demand and immediate cease and desist on this wide-spread data collection and specifically, the now mandated “Data Dashboard”.

3. We demand an end to high stakes testing. It isn’t NYSUT that wants to curtail tying student scores to teachers’ ratings of effectiveness; it is us, the parents. We know that the ratings are meaningless and it is unfair to the students and to the teachers.

Now for my question: We know that the NYS Education Department used SAT scores of 560 in reading, 540 in writing, and 530 in mathematics, as the college readiness benchmarks to help set the “passing” cut scores on the 3-8 NYS Tests. These NYSED scores, totaling 1630, are FAR higher than the College Board’s own “college readiness” proficiency cut scores for students as young as 9 years of age. Why did you anchor the cut scores to 1630 on the SATs instead of the College Board’s 1550? And I have NYSED’s benchmark study here for your reference.

Thank you.”

Categories Common Core, New York, Principals, Testing

The Common Core in Florida: A Mixed Assessment

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2013 //
82

This is an interesting and even-handed report by Sarah Carr on the implementation of Common Core in the Florida schools.

Clearly, the new standards will be easier for affluent students and harder for disadvantaged students. There is no indication that they will close the achievement gap. Maybe the bright students will arrive in college even better prepared for their English classes. Who knows what will happen to the English learners and the students who are struggling to read?

Two things jumped out at me:

First, the English teachers said they would not be able to teach To Kill a Mockingbird or The Great Gatsby anymore. No time for that. Anyway, they are not informational text.

Second, one English teacher said she would just have to give up assigning whole novels. Now, students will read excerpts. That makes me despair. Authors write whole novels, not excerpts. You cannot understand what the book is about unless you read the whole thing.

And one other point: Did no one read the New York Times’ article about the study showing that reading great literature is the best preparation for a job interview and for personal interactions?

Categories Common Core, Florida

Third Grader Prepares for the Global Economy

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2013 //
176

A mother sent this comment:

“Here is a problem my third-grader brought home (I had to read it 3 times, and it took ME forever to work this–forget an 8 year old):

“Easton has been raising vegetables in his garden all summer. He plans to sell some of his vegetables at a local farmer’s market.

“He has selected 24 radishes, 30 onions, 16 heads of lettuce and 25 tomatoes to sell. He wants to display the radishes together, the onions together, the lettuce together, and the tomatoes together, and to place them in sets with equal rows for each kind of vegetable.

“He plans to put each kind of vegetable in at least 2 rows. Show ALL the different ways that he can display equal rows for each kind of the vegetables at the market. Write an equation for each way you find.”

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core

Linda Darling-Hammond on the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2013 //
54

Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University is a highly respected figure in American education. She was Barack Obama’s spokesperson during the 2008 campaign, and many educators expected and hoped that she would be selected as Secretary of Education. How different the scene would be if that had happened!

I have been trying to persuade Linda to learn how to tweet (I say, there is nothing to it, if I can do it, anyone can do it), but she doesn’t have time. I want her to blog, but she is engaged in major multi-year studies. When I think of the people with the knowledge, the presence, and the stature to lead the battle against the bad policies that are now stifling our nation’s children, her name comes to mind.

She did write a blog and gave me permission to post. It was in response to a question about her views on the Common Core. Linda has played a role in developing the Smarter Balanced assessment, which is supposed to be more attuned to student thinking and performance than the other one (PARCC).

This was her answer:

My view about what we should be doing re: curriculum and assessments can be found in the last chapter of my book, The Flat World and Education, where I describe how many other countries create thoughtful curriculum guidance as part of an integrated teaching and learning system. In short, what I would prefer and what other more deliberative countries do is a careful process by which educators are regularly convened over several years to revise the national or state curriculum expectations (typically national in smaller countries like Finland and Singapore, and state or provincial in large ones like Canada and China). Then there is an equally careful process of developing curriculum materials and assessments (managed by the Ministry or Department of Education with the participation of educators) and organizing intensive professional development. The development process takes at least 3 years and the initial implementation process takes about the same amount of time and deeply involves educators all along the way. Unfortunately, this was not the process that was used to develop and roll out the CCSS.

But the CCSS is what we have now, so what do we do about it? I think there are some elements of the CCSS documents that are potentially useful in setting our sights on higher order thinking and performance skills, and those are important. However, I am fearful that they will be badly implemented in many states. What we should do is take time – at least the next 3 years – to develop curriculum resources that teachers can select, adapt, try out, and refine together in collegial professional development settings within and across their schools. We should use the standards as guideposts and not straitjackets. And we should develop robust performance-based assessments of the kind I describe in my book that provide exciting opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning and for teachers to be engaged in development and scoring – used for information and improvement, not for sanctions and punishments.

I continue to try to work on this agenda with one of the two assessment consortia (Smarter Balanced) and with the Innovation Lab Network states, because I want to try to make what is happening as productive as it can be, and perhaps more instructionally helpful than it might otherwise be. There are some states that are working hard to bring such a vision into practice, but the current federal insistence on implementing sanctions for teachers and schools associated with tests (through requirements in Race to the Top and ESEA waivers) could create incentives that will both narrow the tests and distort their use.

Diane anticipates these problems in her blog, and she could well be right about many of them.

Categories Common Core, Testing
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