Archives for category: Common Core
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California Parent: Common Core Tests Are Not Good

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2013 //
17

This parent says her daughter is a top student but found the Common Core tests confusing. She doesn’t have keyboarding skills. How will the district pay for the necessary technology? By increasing class size?

She writes:

“My children are enrolled in school in CA and my daughter’s 6th grade class was “chosen” to take the Common Core test. She is a GATE identified high achiever, with almost perfect CA state scores. She found the Common Core test to be confusing. She too echoed the complaints above. She has no typing experience (it is not on the test so why would they teach it) and so did not have enough time to finish the essays. She found the clicking and typing noises of others to be highly distracting. My kids go to one of the larger richer districts in Orange County and even they do not have the funds for computers for everyone. Where is this money going to come from? Oh yes, my first grader sat in a class of 29! This is a travesty.”

Categories California, Common Core, Testing

Aaron Pallas on New York’s Common Core Test Fiasco

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2013 //
14

Aaron Pallas is one of the wisest education scholars in New York, and therefore (as we New Yorkers all believe) in the world.

He consistently brings a fresh perspective to the unfolding drama and spectacle that is now U.S. education.

And he is one of the few academics willing to enter the arena and engage with current events.

That is one of the clear benefits of tenure.

In this post, Pallas says that he predicted--with uncanny accuracy–how proficiency rates would change as a result of the Common Core tests.

He also notes the incomprehensible glee with which Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg reacted to the news that only one in five students of color are considered “proficient” after a full decade of their policies.

As he observes, Mayor Bloomberg sees everything on his watch as good news, whether scores go up, stay the same, or go down.

Pallas writes:

Here’s the dirty little secret: no one truly understands the numbers. We are behaving as though the sorting of students into four proficiency categories based on a couple of days of tests tells us something profound about our schools, our teachers and our children. There are many links in the chain of inference that can carry us from those few days in April to claims about the health of our school system or the effectiveness of our teachers. And many of those links have yet to be scrutinized.

Does Mayor Bloomberg understand the numbers? Perhaps he’d care to share with us the percentage of children in each grade who ran out of time and didn’t attempt all of the test items, and the consequences of that for students’ scores. Or how well the pattern of students’ answers fit the complex psychometric models used to estimate a student’s proficiency. Or how precisely a child’s scale score measures his or her performance. Or how many test items had to be discarded because they didn’t work the way they were intended. Or what fraction of the Common Core standards was included on this year’s English and math tests—and what was left out.

These are just some of the factors in the production of the proficiency rates that have been the subject of so much attention. And the properties of the test are just one link in the chain.

Hmmm. When no one understands the numbers, not the Mayor who is in charge of the schools, not the scholars who study the schools, not the State Education Department, no one: What does that mean?

 

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Common Core, Klein, Joel, New York, New York City, Testing

How the Gates Foundation Bought and Paid for Common Core

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2013 //
51

In this astonishing post, Mercedes Schneider documents how the Gates Foundation paid for every aspect of the Common Core standards.

Gates paid to develop them; to evaluate them; to promote them. There seems to be no part of the Common Core that was not bought and paid for by Gates.

Does it matter if one very rich man decides to create national standards and call them “state-led”?

Schneider raises the essential questions;

“Can Bill Gates buy a foundational democratic institution? Will America allow it? The fate of CCSS will provide a crucial answer to those looming questions.”

Categories Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Can You Run a 4-Minute Mile? Why Not?

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2013 //
12

David Gamberg is superintendent of the Sourhold district in
Long Island, Néw York. He
understands something that state commissioner John King
does not. Children are different. They develop in different ways
and at different rates. They have different strengths and
weaknesses. Experienced educators know this. The standard for high
achievement in mile-long races is 4 minutes. Runners tried for
years until 1954, when Roger Bannister
broke the barrier. Now many runners have, and it is the
standard. Does that mean you are a failure if it takes you 9 or 15
minutes to run a mile? No. Should all children score “proficient”
on a test that was deliberately made so hard that only 30/35% would
“pass”? What about the kids who are gifted artists and musicians?
What about those who can fix things and are great at solving
practical problems? What about those who are English language
learners? Should they “fail”? Should they be denied a high school
diploma? Sure, it is necessary to test kids periodically to see how
they are doing, but tests should be used to help kids and teachers,
not to punish them.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Common Core, New York, Students, Testing

Letter To Georgia Board of Education in Support of Common Core Math

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2013 //
109

I received the following letter, addressed to the Georgia School Board.

Dear Diane,

I know that you do not support the Common Core State Standards, but I also know that you are willing to consider other points of view. Pasted down below is the text of a letter I have written to the Georgia School Board as they reconsider the CCSS at the request of the governor. The letter is also posted at the Mathematics Teaching Community here:

It would be great if you would post this on your blog! Thanks, Sybilla

Dear School Board Members:

I have been teaching mathematics at the University of Georgia for over 25 years and have devoted a large part of my career to issues of K–12 mathematics education. As a mathematics teacher, I am concerned about my profession and about the mathematics learning of students in Georgia. In that capacity, I am writing with comments, which I hope you will consider as you review the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS-M).

The CCSS-M are the strongest K–12 mathematics standards that I know of.

At the invitation of state superintendents, I have worked on a number of states’ mathematics standards, including Georgia’s and Texas’s. No standards I know of are better than the CCSS-M.

The CCSS-M were developed very carefully with repeated cycles of feedback.

The CCSS-M were informed by previous standards, including Georgia’s, with repeated, extensive input from mathematics education experts who are recognized nationally, and with input from states. The standards were informed by the best available research, including research about mathematics learning summarized in National Research Council reports. I know this because I was an active member of the CCSS-M writing team.

Serious professions deserve standards that are developed nationally.

I think that mathematics teaching is a serious and important profession on par with medical professions, for example. We expect standards for medical practice to be developed nationally by experts based on the available research. Why would we expect something different for mathematics teaching?

The presidents of all the major national mathematical societies have expressed “strong support” for CCSS-M.

This includes the presidents of the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and all the members of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences.
See

Click to access CBMS%20Support%20Statement%20for%20CCSSM.pdf

Having standards does not imply losing autonomy or creativity.

Some of the most creative contributions to art, music, and literature, occur within a framework. Mathematics itself operates within a framework and is full of brilliantly creative results. The CCSS-M allow for creativity and autonomy within a framework.

The CCSS-M need time and support to implement.

Right now, mathematics teaching and learning (at all levels) are not as strong as they should be. The CCSS-M can help us focus on where we need to go. Implementing them will require time, learning, and collective effort. Let’s use the standards we have and work together to make mathematics teaching and learning in Georgia strong and vibrant.

A copy of this letter is posted at the Mathematics Teaching Community, online at
https://mathematicsteachingcommunity.math.uga.edu
where teachers of mathematics (any level) may post comments.

Sincerely,

Sybilla Beckmann
Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics
Boyd Graduate Studies Building
200 D. W. Brooks Drive
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia 30602

sybilla@math.uga.edu
706-542-2548

http://www.math.uga.edu/~sybilla/

Categories Common Core, Georgia

Reader: How to Make a Standard That Works

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2013 //
4

This arrived as a comment on a post about the Common Core:

 

“Say I am designing a fastener for a product. I can VOLUNTARILY choose a standard fastener for less cost off the shelf. That will guarantee interchangability. I also have a certain degree of confidence as to the characteristics about the fastener in terms of strength and corrosion that the standards give me. But I also limit my design to that fastener. If I need to innovate or the standard fastener cannot fit my particular design because it is unique, then I will design my own fastener. But I must build it carefully to match my individual needs and I must test it thoroughly in prototypes before rolling into production on a large scale. I will likely have to modify the original design from my testing. Why should our MOST precious resource, our children, be afforded less concern than a nut and bolt?

When I was working in tech, a standard was rolled out called SGML. It was promising but was unwieldy, bloated, restrictive, and impractical. Companies that tried to force it into designs found failure. An innovation called XML (or HTML for that matter) spontaneously evolved from SGML that was VOLUNTARILY adopted and proved very successful. That standard was nimble, extensible, and allowed companies to use it as needed and innovate.

Common Core is lemmings going over a cliff. The standards are unproven and overly restrictive. They specify HOW teachers must teach in addition to what and when. The wide spread adoption is more political and economic than educational. The associated tests are flawed, too objective, and imprecise as a measurement tool.

Common Core should be a diagnostic standard. It is time to declare a moratorium on testing to these standards, cleanse them of politics, and require further study.”

Categories Common Core

Florida BATS Launch Attack on Common Core

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2013 //
13

Investigative Kathleen McGrory reports in the Miami Herald that Common Core has critics on the left.

This is noteworthy, because Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insists that the main criticism of Common Core comes from extremists and fringe groups like the Tea Party. He also insists that the federal Department of Education has had nothing whatever to do with the Common Core standards; after all it is illegal for the federal Department of Education to interfere in curriculum or instruction. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. Everyone knows that 45 states would not have endorsed the Common Core standards without the lure of $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top dollars, offered as an incentive for those who signed on to standards they may never have seen.

McGrory discovered critics of Common Core on the left, and lo and behold, they are teachers.

To be specific, they are the Badass Teachers Association.

McGrory writes:

The 25,000 BATs, as they call themselves, are pushing back against the national standards with Twitter strikes, town hall meetings and snarky Internet memes. They have no qualms with the theory behind the new benchmarks, but they fear the larger movement places too much emphasis on testing and will stifle creativity in the classroom.

“It’s not just the Tea Party that’s skeptical of the Common Core,” said Bonnie Cunard, a Fort Myers teacher who manages the Facebook page for the 1,200 Florida BATs. “We on the left, like the folks on the right, are saying we want local control.”

The BATs represent a new wave of liberal opposition to the Common Core standards, which includes some union leaders, progressive activists and Democratic lawmakers. They are joining forces with Tea Party groups and libertarians, who want states like Florida to slow down efforts to adopt the new benchmarks and corresponding tests.

They face an uphill battle. The Common Core standards have a strong base of support that includes both Democrats and Republicans. What’s more, the standards are already being taught across all grade levels in Florida.

It’s not only the BATs.

“The sand is shifting for us on Common Core,” said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association.

Ford fears teachers weren’t adequately prepared for the transition to the new standards, even though they will be evaluated — and in some cases, compensated — based on how well their students perform.

For Susan Smith, who heads the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida, the greatest concern is the testing that will accompany the new benchmarks.

“We shouldn’t be revamping our education standards without first considering if we are overtesting our kids,” Smith said. “That’s putting the cart before the horse.”

The Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group Democrats for Education Reform loves the Common Core and the disruptive effects of the testing that comes with it.

So does the Obama administration, and so do many teachers and parents who hope it will help their schools.

But so does Florida’s Republican legislature, which leaves no stone unturned when it comes to looking for ways to privatize public schools and demoralize classroom teachers.

But the opposition is strong enough that state Sen. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami, is calling for a review before Florida moves further ahead with the standards and accompanying exams.

“I get what the intention was with Common Core,” said Bullard, a Miami Democrat and teacher. “But it got lost in the shuffle with all of the other education reform policies. Now, you might as well scrap the whole idea.”

Categories Common Core, Florida

Gesell Institute: The Common Core Standards are Wrong for Young Children

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2013 //
32

The Gesell Institute of Human Development issued a statement in 2010 that was completely ignored, but its warning bears hearing.

In March 2010, the Gesell Institute released this statement. It fell on deaf ears.

 

The core standards being proposed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers are off the mark for our youngest learners. We at Gesell Institute call for a new set of standards for Kindergarten through Grade 3 that adhere to solid principles of child development based on what research says about how and what young children learn during the early years, birth to age eight. The proposed standards for Kindergarten through grade 3 are inappropriate and unrealistic. Policy must be set based on hard data and not on unrealistic goals surrounding test scores.

If the achievement gap is to be closed, child development must be respected and scientific research surrounding how children learn must be taken into account. Research clearly shows that early readers do not have an advantage over later readers at the end of third grade, and attempts at closing the achievement gap should not be measured in Kindergarten based on inappropriate standards.

The work of Gesell Institute has long been focused on research and best practice in child development and education – our legacy is based on the ground-breaking work of Dr. Arnold Gesell, a pioneer in the field of child development who observed and documented stages of development with normative data reflecting what children typically do at each age and stage. Currently, our national study collecting developmental information on over 1400 children across the country is in its final stages of data collection. This data, to be released in Fall 2010, is expected to further support what we know about how children develop and what they know at various ages, as well as the importance of focusing on appropriate methods for teaching young children.

We urge the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to respect the individual developmental differences of children and revise the K-3 standards based on research and the advice of experts in the field of early childhood. Having endorsed The Alliance for Childhood’s Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative, we support the call to withdraw the early childhood standards and create a consortium of experts “to develop comprehensive guidelines for effective early care and teaching that recognize the right of every child to a healthy start in life and a developmentally appropriate education.” (http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/) 

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core

The Biggest Fallacy of the Common Core Standards: No Evidence

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
100

Lately, I have noticed that defenders of the Common Core are smearing critics as Tea Party fanatics and extremists. That is what Arne Duncan said to the nation’s newspaper editors last month, when he claimed that opponents of the Common Core are members of “fringe groups,” people who don’t care about poor kids, and people who falsely accuse the federal government of having something to do with the Common Core. When interviewed on PBS, New York State Commissioner John King also said that the Tea Party was behind the criticism of the new standards.

They would like the public to believe that there is no responsible, non-political, non-ideological opposition to the Common Core standards.

This is not true, and I wrote this piece to explain why reasonable people have good reason to be concerned about the overhyping of the Common Core.

I understand that there are good elements to the standards.

In many states, they may be better than existing standards. In others, they may not.

But I don’t see why they are being rushed into production without a fair trial of their strengths and weaknesses.

No set of standards, no new product, emerges straight from the minds of its creators without seeing how it works in the real world of fallible human beings.

Until we see what happens to real children in real classrooms, the “standards” are words on paper without meaning.

It is only when they are tried out by real teachers in real classrooms with real children, when they are improved through trial and error, that we will know how they work and whether they can be called “standards.”

I cross-posted this piece on Huffington Post so it would reach many more readers.

I print it here for your reaction and comment.

I invite you to open the link and leave comments on Huffington Post.

Testing

Boosters of the Common Core national standards have acclaimed them as the most revolutionary advance in the history of American education.

As a historian of American education, I do not agree.

Forty-five states have adopted the Common Core national standards, and they are being implemented this year.

Why did 45 states agree to do this? Because the Obama administration had $4.35 billion of Race to the Top federal funds, and states had to adopt “college-and-career ready standards” if they wanted to be eligible to compete for those funds. Some states, like Massachusetts, dropped their own well-tested and successful standards and replaced them with the Common Core, in order to win millions in new federal funds.

Is this a good development or not?

If you listen to the promoters of the Common Core standards, you will hear them say that the Common Core is absolutely necessary to prepare students for careers and college.

They say, if we don’t have the Common Core, students won’t be college-ready or career-ready.

Major corporations have published full-page advertisements in the New York Times and paid for television commercials, warning that our economy will be in serious trouble unless every school and every district and every state adopts the Common Core standards.

A report from the Council on Foreign Relations last year (chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice) warned that our national security was at risk unless we adopt the Common Core standards.

The Common Core standards, its boosters insist, are all that stand between us and economic and military catastrophe.

All of this is simply nonsense.

How does anyone know that the Common Core standards will prepare everyone for college and careers since they are now being adopted for the very first time?

How can anyone predict that they will do what their boosters claim?

There is no evidence for any of these claims.

There is no evidence that the Common Core standards will enhance equity. Indeed, the Common Core tests in New York caused a collapse in test scores, causing test scores across the state to plummet. Only 31 percent “passed” the Common Core tests. The failure rates were dramatic among the neediest students. Only 3.2 percent of English language learned were able to pass the new tests, along with only 5 percent of students with disabilities, and 17 percent of black students. Faced with tests that are so far beyond their reach, many of these students may give up instead of trying harder.

There is no evidence that those who study these standards will be prepared for careers, because there is nothing in them that bears any relationship to careers.

There is no evidence that the Common Core standards will enhance our national security.

How do we know that it will cause many more students to study math and science? With the collapse in test scores that Common Core brings, maybe students will doubt their ability and opt for less demanding courses.

Why so many promises and ungrounded predictions? It is a mystery.

Even more mysterious is why the nation’s major corporations and chambers of commerce now swear by standards that they have very likely never read.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for high standards. I am opposed to standards that are beyond reach. They discourage, they do not encourage.

But the odd thing about these standards is that they seem to be written in stone. Who is in charge of revising them? No one knows.

When I testified by Skype to the Michigan legislative committee debating the Common Core a couple of weeks ago, I told them to listen to their teachers and be prepared to revise the standards to make them better. Someone asked if states were “allowed” to change the standards. I asked, why not? Michigan is a sovereign state. If they rewrite the standards to fit the needs of their students, who can stop them? The federal government says it doesn’t “own” the standards. And that is true. The federal government is forbidden by law from interfering with curriculum and instruction.

States should do what works best for them. I also urged Michigan legislators to delay any Common Core testing until they were confident that teachers had the professional development and resources to teach them and students had had adequate time to learn what would be tested.

Do we need national standards to compare the performance of children in Mississippi to children in New York and Iowa? We already have the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has been making these comparisons for 20 years.

Maybe I am missing something. Can anyone explain how the nation can adopt national standards without any evidence whatever that they will improve achievement, enrich education, and actually help to prepare young people — not for the jobs of the future, which are unknown and unknowable — but for the challenges of citizenship and life? Thebiggest fallacy of the Common Core standards is that they have been sold to the nation without any evidence that they will accomplish what their boosters claim.

Across the nation, our schools are suffering from budget cuts.

Because of budget cuts, there are larger class sizes and fewer guidance counselors, social workers, teachers’ assistants, and librarians.

Because of budget cuts, many schools have less time and resources for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, and other subjects crucial for a real education.

As more money is allocated to testing and accountability, less money is available for the essential programs and services that all schools should provide.

Our priorities are confused.

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, Common Core, Education Reform

Chancellor Tisch Promises Higher Test Scores Next Year

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
40

The head of Néw York state’s Board of Regents Merryl Tisch says everyone should calm down about the collapse of test scores across the state. Next year, she promised, the scores will go up.

You can count on that, because the state commissioner can lower the cut score if he wants to avoid another embarrassment like this year.

What you can also count on, sadly, is the humiliation that 70% of the children in grades 3-8 will feel when they learn from their teacher that they failed the state tests. The numbers who failed are even higher among children who are black, English language learners, and students with disabilities.

This year, the state decided to align its categories with NAEP, not understanding that NAEP proficient is set at a very high level–not a “passing” mark at all– and that the only state where as much as 50% of students reached proficient on NAEP is Massachusetts,  after 20 years of NAEP testing. Apparently New York is content to tell the majority of its students that they don’t deserve high school diplomas or the chance to go to college.

Consider this: the proportion of students who “passed” under the new Common Core baseline was only 31.1% in total. (Last year it was 77.4%).

Among English language learners, only 3.2% “passed.” (Last year it was 11.7%.)

Among children with disabilities, only 5% “passed.” (Last year it was 15.5%.)

Among black students, only 16.7% “passed.” (Last year it was 37.2%.)

Among Hispanic students, only 17.7% “passed.” (Last year it was 40.0%).

Among white students, only 39.9% passed. (Last year it was 85.9%.)

But not to worry, litttle children. New York and the Common Core will make you global competitors.

How do we know? We don’t. Forget about critical thinking. Don’t ask for evidence. Take it on faith. This is, after all, faith-based policy.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing
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