When faced with public demands about how Common Core would be implemented, about professional development and student privacy, the state board of education in Louisiana passed the problems off to local district. They ducked.
Fact is, they don’t have a clue what to do, but they do know that Governor Bobby Jindal wants Common Core. He wants more evidence of failure so he can justify more vouchers, charters, and entrepreneurs getting public money.
We have heard numerous calls for NY’s Commissioner of Education John King to resign. He disrespects parents. He brooks no dissent. He accuses them of refusing to engage in dialogue after they sit patiently through his hour-plus monologue. And when they boo and hiss him, he storms away and cancels all future scheduled meetings with parents, fearing, no doubt, the same humiliating response.
This blogger, Teacherbiz, has a fresh look at the whole sorry episode. She sees the event presaged in “Hamlet” and demonstrates how literature helps us to understand life (with apologies to David Coleman, who may find greater meaning in “informational text”).
Having been thoroughly embarrassed by his haughty showing in Poughkeepsie, where parents booed him as he lectured them and brushed off their questions, Commissioner John King and the State Board of Regents want to prove they are not afraid to meet parents. They have scheduled 16 meetings across the state.
With only one exception: there are no meetings scheduled in New York City, where 1/3 of the state’s children are enrolled.
Has he learned to listen? We will see?
Has he learned to treat parents with respect? We will see.
Will we find out why he is skipping the state’s biggest district?
Maybe it was an oversight.
The New York Board of Regents has demonstrated that they are out of touch with the people they serve.
One of the few independent-minded Regents, Harry Phillips of Westchester, said recently that the Regents would not fireccommissioner John King despite his arrogant, dismissive treatment of parents at a community forum in Poughkeepsie.
Leave arise for the moment that nearly half the principals in the state have put their name on a petition objecting to his half-baked, destructive educator evaluation plan. The other half were not willing to stick their necks out, in a climate characterized by fear and intimidation emanating from Mr. King.
The issue at hand is that Mr. king announced five public meetings at which he promised to engage in dialogue with parents and listen to their concerns. What happened in Poughkeepsie was no dialogue. Instead, Mr. King lectured parents for over an hour, then gave them two minutes each to respond. He frequently interrupted parents to disagree with them. When the meeting degenerated into boos and catcalls, Mr. King stalked off, claimed that the meeting had been captured by “special interests,” and canceled the four other scheduled meetings around the state.
Many parents have stepped forward to say that their “special interest” is their child, and the only person trying to manipulate the meeting was Mr. King, who clearly had no interest in hearing from parents unless they agreed with him. He made the mistake of thinking he was in North Korea, but he was in Poighkeepsie, where parents rightfully believe that the state commissioner is a public servant, not their supervisor or boss.
So the Regents will keep John King. Will he take lessons in listening instead of lecturing? Will he learn how to show respect to the parents who care more about their children than he does? Can he pretend humility?
Although John King and Arne Duncan claim that the only critics of the Common Core standards and testing are Tea Party fanatics, we have learned in recent days that the man who is most effective in building opposition to the Common Core in New York is John King himself. Parents have learned that the state does not care what they think, does not care about the damage they see done to their children, and is deaf to their voices.
We will watch with interest to see how the next parent meeting with John King goes, if there is one.
Anthony Codybexplains here why the Common Core standards lack legitimacy.
The developers were in a hurry. They ignored the democratic process. They took shortcuts. Consequently, they lack buy-in and legitimacy.
The democratic process is slow and messy but it works better in the long run than authoritarianism. It gains the consent of the governed. Without the consent of the governed, there is coercion, compulsion, distrust, animosity.
That is why the Common Core is in trouble. That is why it may fail.
Democracy matters.
I received the following comment this morning. I don’t have the answer to everything, and I am not sure what I would do in her place, but this is my advice. Organize the other parents of kindergarten children. Go as a group to the superintendent and tell him this is wrong. Get parents of children in first grade and second grade to join you. Others may as well. Speak on behalf of your child and other children at the school board meetings. Ask to meet your local legislators: the mayor, the member of the Assembly, the State Senate. Do not be afraid or intimidated. You are parents. You vote. Build a strong and united parent group and don’t let the powers that be shut you up. If you don’t advocate for your child, no one else will. Moving won’t solve your problem. You will encounter the same things in other states. Organize, inform yourself. Defend your child’s precious childhood.
She writes:
Dear Diane,
Until September of this year, I only had a fleeting knowledge of what the Common Core was all about because I didn’t have a school aged child. This year we eagerly put our oldest son in kindergarten in our upstate, rural New York district. The uneasy feeling in my stomach started on the first day when the parents were ushered into the auditorium and the principal started preparing us that we would find stressed out teachers. Parents with older children began asking questions about why the kindergartners needed to participate in the dreaded testing. Upon returning to my son’s classroom, I did indeed find a stressed out teacher, saying things like, “we are all going to have to work together if we are going to get through this curriculum.” This is when I first encountered the word “module” as well, as I looked at my five year old’s schedule and noticed that he would be doing ELA from 10:45-12:25 every day. He is in full day kindergarten, and the day is packed with Fundations, Writing, ELA, ELA modules, and Math modules. To say alarm bells went off would be an understatement, but we continued thinking, “how bad can kindergarten get?”
Back to school night was a presentation by all five kindergarten teachers, which quickly turned into, “we know this sounds awful, but we promise are going to remember that your children are little.” Within a month of school starting, we were told that they needed to do away with the children’s rest period because there simply wasn’t enough time for it with the curriculum. The more I heard these comments from school, the deeper I dug into the EngageNY modules and started following your blog.
I’m sure you get letters like this every day. I listened to your Town Hall phone call the other night (thank you for not interrupting the questions like Commissioner King in Poughkeepsie) and heard lots of sound advice about what parents and teachers can do to fight back against these ridiculous standards. My question is more basic: Do I send my son to this school tomorrow?
I read educated assessments of the EngageNY curriculum that find it “developmentally inappropriate.” Why should I subject my 5 year old to this when kindergarten isn’t even mandatory? I have the unique situation of living in New York state on the Massachusetts and Connecticut border. As renters, we have options, and I have already decided that my son will not attend 1st grade in the state of New York. But what do I do about today and tomorrow? I fear that he will fall behind in this intense academic environment, but I also fear sticking with it. What do parents do right now?
Sincerely,
Rosemary XXXX
Copake, NY
Mark NAISON, professor of African-American studies at Fordham University, co-founded the BATs.
BATs are everywhere. They think high-stakes testing is child abuse. They think that evaluating teachers in relation to student test scores is nonsense.
Mark Naison here posts a hilarious parody of New York’s educator evaluation system, untested, being built in mid-air, that old airplane cliche.
If you are angry about high-stakes testing, watch it.
If you are upset about the loss of teacher autonomy and professionalism, watch it.
If you want to laugh out loud, watch it.
If you work for the New York State Education Department, DO NOT WATCH IT.
Be careful, laughter is dangerous.
Dear Diane,
I’m the parent in the video who raised the point about Montessori school…http://youtu.be/P_Eiz406VAs (Spackenkill High School. PTA Sponsored Meeting about the Common Core). I hope to set the record straight on my comments.
Sincerely,
Mikey Jackson
As I Was Saying…
Last Thursday evening, I travelled up to Spackenkill High School in Poughkeepsie to attend the PTA-sponsored Common Core town hall where State Education Commissioner John King spoke. I made the hour-long drive by myself with nothing more than a prepared statement I had typed earlier in the day. I was not part of any group. No one lobbied me to go. I had no plans to pick a fight with Mr. King. I was there on behalf of my 8 year old son, his mother and me. I got there very early and thanked the PTA reps for organizing the event while I signed up on the list to make a statement. The PTA told me that Mr. King would not be answering any questions or responding during this portion of the night and would only be listening to concerns.
Before Mr. King gave his presentation, the crowd was told that their concerns would be heard and listened to very carefully. Mr. King went on to give an hour-long PowerPoint presentation and video about the Common Core. Some of it was very interesting. A lot of it made sense. The biggest point I took away from his speech was that we need our kids to do better in math and science to compete in the global job market. That notion makes a whole of lot of sense to me—but the plan of action that the Dept. of Education has decided on to get us there is wrong. It is completely based on number crunching and textbook publisher lobbying, etc. The Board of Ed. can claim whatever statistics they want, but suddenly making great teachers follow scripts or “modules” in the classroom is obnoxious and leaves very little to zero room for any imagination or flexibility in educating. (Homework, for instance, consists mostly of prescribed worksheets.)
My statement was cut short at the regulated two-minute mark and the microphone was turned off. Anyone can see my full statement online, but I wanted to clear something up and finish what I was saying. The NY State Education Commissioner sends his children to private Montessori school. In Montessori, the learning is child-centered and child-specific; from my experience sending my son to Montessori preschool, the kids dictate the speed at which they learn. Common Core and everything that goes along with it could not be more different. Montessori is a proven method of learning. The kids that I know who went to Montessori have all the intellectual benefits that Common Core hopes to achieve. I had no intention of taking Mr. King to task for sending his kids to private school, and I completely understand why someone in the public eye would do so. But after listening to his informative, yet boring, presentation about how great the Common Core is—while knowing how much stress it is adding to my son’s life (and the lives of his teachers, principal, friends, and my parent friends)—I thought Mr. King did himself a giant disservice by not listening to parents’ and teachers’ very real concerns.
The school and district my son attends have always been known for having amazing teachers, arts, sports, and more. Our college rate was already good. Why fix what wasn’t broken? Mr. King, the problems in our schools are community-based problems. This is where you should be putting your attention. How can we make schools in poorer areas just as good as the schools in districts with lots of money? How can we give the districts guidelines, then make sure they know that they are just guidelines and that no teacher or school will be penalized because a seven-year old didn’t fill in a bubble fully? How can we make Art, Music, Physical Education, Technology, Social Studies and reading FICTION just as important as Math and Science? How can we keep big business from influencing how our educrats dictate policy?
This issue is NOT Liberal or Conservative or Progressive. It’s about our kids. My kid. My “Special Interest.” I want him to love school! I want to build him up and let his imagination thrive. The Common Core and the State Assessment tests are hurting our schools, and if Mr. King and the NYS Board of Education don’t want to hear the voices of parents who are on the ground fighting for their kids’ right to learn and be healthy and happy, then they should go get other jobs.
This comment was posted and signed by a mother of a ten-year-old child who doesn’t want to go to school. Ever.
This is the message I recently sent to the Board of Regents and my state representatives:
I have been very vocal about my concerns regarding the implementation of the Common Core Standards, testing, and curriculum in NYS. I have written letters and emails to my NYS representatives and made phone calls. I organized a rally which drew over 2000 people to Comsewogue High School to remind everyone that our students are not defined by their state test scores. I’ve been involved and aware. I joined with other concerned community members to create the group Students, Not Scores.
Tonight this fight became very, very personal.
My ten year old daughter asked me what it would take for me to let her stay home from school forever.
Forever. Not tomorrow… not this week. Forever.
Isabella is very well spoken; very bright. She describes herself as a feminist, and loves to debate adults about the inequity of womens’ pay for equal work. She is committed to calling out bullies in school and helping those people she sees that need a little boost. She can carry on conversations about interesting points and people in American history most kids have never heard of. She can tell you all about the Women’s Suffrage Movement. However, Bella doesn’t learn some things as quickly as other kids do. She struggles with reading at grade level, and has difficulty memorizing math facts. Math word problems are confusing to her, and take her longer than her peers. She has to work really hard to be successful academically. And she does work very hard.
But tonight Isabella decided she has had enough. “School is too hard now.” She said. “I’m too stupid to do this math.” I can assure you we do not use the word ‘stupid’ in our home to describe anything, especially not people. But in the one hour conversation we had in which she was begging me to let her quit school, Isabella used that word- stupid- to describe how she felt about herself more than 10 times.
So, now I have had enough.
No matter the intent, good or bad, in creating and implementing these Common Core standards… if they are hurting children, causing them to give up on themselves at ten years old, there is a problem no one can deny. This problem is bigger than the left wing – right wing debate over states rights and Federal overreach. This problem is bigger than corporations spending billions to influence education policy. This problem is bigger than data mining and privacy. This problem is bigger than Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and Commissioner John King.
Because when a child is broken in spirit, when they have lost their self worth and confidence, that damage is not erased easily. When children hate school to the point that they attempt to avoid it at all costs, there will be no desire to be college or career ready.
Now, before you say I just want my child to succeed no matter what, and I must be one of those ‘everyone gets a trophy for participating’ parents, let me say this: I want my children to be challenged. I want them to have to work to be successful. I want them to sweat it out occasionally, and have to ask questions to clarify. I want their curiosity to lead them down paths I’ve never imagined. I want them to want to know more… about everything.
But when they have no confidence, they will not try. They will not raise their hand to ask a question. They will fear homework, quizzes and exams… and the voice they hear in their heads telling them they can’t, will create a self fulfilling prophecy… so they won’t succeed.
If these insane policies pushing developmentally inappropriate curriculum on our children are allowed to stay in place, what will the future hold for those students who do not fit in this one size fits all approach? What will happen when the precious data doesn’t show the growth these education reformers want to see because so many kids just give up? How many kids have to be hurt before we stop? How many kids have to use that word to describe themselves before we realize the damage that is being done?
Tomorrow morning I will bring Isabella to school. I will tell her that I know this is hard, but she has to just try her best. I will tell her I know how smart she is, and so does her teacher. I will kiss her head and whisper “I love you” with a smile.
And after she walks down the long school hallway, I will use very ounce of passion and compassion I have to call on my elected representatives to stop the abuse. I will contact every media outlet and offer my story- Isabella’s story. I will call, write, tweet, and email the Board of Regents and NYSED Commissioner. I will request meetings with policy makers. I will rally friends and family to do the same. I cannot, no I will not sit back and wait for someone else to get this done.
No one has the right to implement policies that are downright abusive, no matter how lofty their goals. These policies have hurt my child- and that is unacceptable. You’ve heard the phrase ‘Hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned’…. that is nothing compared to that of a mother protecting her child.
~Ali Gordon
I got a letter in my email today (cited below) from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, telling me how the future prosperity of our nation depends on adoption of the Common Core standards. I wonder how many members of the Chamber have ever seen a copy of the Common Core standards? Why do they think they will produce miraculous changes in test scores? What evidence do they have about the validity of these standards?
Personally, I don’t know if the standards will have a great effect because they have never been subject to trial. Maybe they are the greatest education innovation of our entire history. Maybe not. What we know to date is that the states that take Common Core-aligned tests see a dramatic drop in test scores. Very few children with disabilities can pass the tests; very few English learners can pass the tests. Most kids from all backgrounds fail them. Only 31% passed the Common Core tests in New York state.
Maybe if you are CEO of some huge corporation, you react by saying, “Wow, that is great news! Now we have a baseline, and our stupid kids will start to get smarter as we test them more and more.”
I have a suggestion. How about if every member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agree to take the PARCC tests or the Pearson Common Core tests that were given to students in New York last spring?
Let’s find out if those who pontificate about these standards can pass the tests. If they can’t, what does that tell us?
But, please, advocate for the things that you want for your own children. If your children are enrolled in an elite private school that doesn’t give the Common Core tests, don’t urge it on Other People’s Children. If the members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believe what they say, will they insist that the Common Core standards be adopted in the schools their own children attend, in schools like Exeter, Andover, Lakeside Academy, Harpeth Hall, Sidwell Friends, Maumee Valley Country Day School, and the nation’s other top private schools? Surely, if they are so great, shouldn’t all children (including your own) have the same standards? You don’t want them left behind, do you?
Be consistent!
And bear in mind two maxims:
Albert Einstein: “Standardize automobiles, not people.”
Pasi Sahlberg: “Standardization is the enemy of creativity.”
This was the letter I received:
Good afternoon,
Knowing this is a busy news day, I still wanted to share the testimony of the Chamber’s Vice President of Education Policy Cheryl Oldham this afternoon at a New York State Senate hearing titled, “The Regents Reform Agenda: Assessing Our Progress.”
As Cheryl states in her testimony:
Please let me know if you would like any additional information.
Thank you,
Jamie
Diane Ravitch's blog 