Ira Shor, a professor at the City University of New York, left a comment recently, wondering if “the great Mercedes Schneider” would take a look at the AFT survey showing that 75% of AFT members support the Common Core. As it happens, Dr. Schneider saw the comment and did exactly that. Dr. Schneider is a high school English teacher who holds a Ph.D. in statistics and research methods.
Here is her analysis of the AFT survey.
A reader comments:
Wow, for those opposed to T-cap, wait until you get a good look at common core and the PARCC assessment. The nightmare is about to get worse. As a teacher, I have been working with the debut of common core in Tennessee this year. I don’t even know where to begin to express my frustration with the entire common core movement. It combines an exceptionally narrow curriculum with testing that is vague and open to interpretation (when our group of 6 teachers scored student work we frequently came up with three different scores). The narrow focus of common core does not coincide with the broad based knowledge required for ACT/SAT testing. So until they get all testing aligned, students caught in the middle are screwed. (I have one of these students)
The PARCC assessment is proposing to do away with students accommodations (for students with disabilities) because it invalidates the test! So we now have TESTING dictating what accommodations a special education student may receive. All students besides the very most severe will be expected to sit in front of a computer and take the test. If a special education student didn’t have a disability they wouldn’t need accommodations!
The worst crime of state assessments is that they they fail to recognize the individuality of learning. Students have brains that mature at different rates, learn at different rates, learn in different ways, and benefit from testing in different ways.
It is all insane!
Obscene amounts of money translate into power.
Obscene amounts of money–billions–often translate into the ability to buy elections. But not always, as we saw in the recent school board election in Los Angeles, when the candidate of the Billionaire Boys Club was beaten by Steve Zimmer.
Billionaires don’t just try to buy elections.
They try to buy anyone who might help them or hinder them in their quest for power.
The Gates Foundation, for example, underwrites almost every organization in its quest to control American education. It supports rightwing groups like Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence and Ben Austin’s Parent Revolution. In the recent past, it gave money to the reactionary ALEC. It pays young teachers to oppose unions and to testify against the rights of tenured teachers. It also pays unions to support its ideas about evaluations, despite their flaws. It spends hundreds of millions of dollars to support “independent” think tanks, which are somewhat less independent when they become dependent on Gates money.
The other day, I reported that the ACLU had persuaded the U.S. Department of Justice to take action against voucher schools in Milwaukee that discriminate against students with disabilities. My source at the ACLU, who sent me the DOJ statement and the ACLU press release, mentioned in passing that the National Urban League had turned its back on the ACLU’s efforts to make private choice schools non-discriminatory.
Wonder why? Here is a possible answer.
Switch to teacher evaluation.
Some teachers in New York have wondered why their state union organization is not fighting the misuse of test scores as the basis of evaluation.
Wonder why? Here is a possible answer.
Power corrupts. So does money.
A student in a gifted program wrote this piercing analysis of the state tests he and his classmates just endured.
The tests he took had many brand names and registered trademarks. He realized this is product placement.
He wrote:
“Non-fictional passages in the test I took included an article about robots, where the brands IBM™, Lego®, FIFA® and Mindstorms™ popped up, each explained with a footnote. I cannot speak for all test takers, but I found the trademark references and their associated footnotes very distracting and troubling.
“According to Barbara Kolson, an intellectual property lawyer for Stuart Weitzman Shoes, “The fact that the brands did not pay Pearson for the ‘product placement’ does not mean that the use is not product placement.” To the test-takers subjected to hidden advertising, it made no difference whether or not it was paid for. The only conclusion they (and this test-taker) made is that they could not be coincidental.”
When I served on the NAEP governing board, there was. Flat prohibition on any reference to brand names. I studied the guidelines of every publisher a decade ago when writing “The Language Police,” and all of them specifically banned brand names.
What gives here? Why the marketing in the new Common Core tests?
In one of his characteristically thoughtful and provocative essays, Anthony Cody ponders Randi Weingarten’s call for a one-year moratorium on the high stakes associated with Common Core testing. Randi praised the Common Core standards lavishly but warned that they would fail if high stakes are attached to them before teachers and students are prepared to master them.
Cody does not agree. He maintains that the Common Core testing will have even higher stakes than NCLB. Not only will there be more testing, but teachers and principals will be fired, schools will close, communities will be harmed–as Common Core raises the bar and failure rates grow.
How does raising the bar help those who can’t clear the bar now?
As Cody writes:
“We have this entire project based on the premise that raising the bar will bring up those on the bottom, and make them better able to compete. In fact, when you raise that bar, you create huge obstacles for those at the bottom, and in effect, rationalize and reinforce their own sense of worthlessness, and society’s judgment that they are subpar. You further stigmatize these students, their teachers and their schools, based on their performance in this rigged race.”
He concludes that a moratorium on high stakes test is insufficient:
“We must move beyond not only the bubble tests, but beyond the era of punitive high stakes tests. Only then will we be able to use standards in the way they ought to be used – as focal points for our creative work as educators. I would be glad to have a year’s delay for the consequences of these tests, but I think we need to actively oppose the entire high stakes testing paradigm. The Common Core standards should not be supported as long as they are embedded in this system.”
An earlier post on the blog reported that Girl Scouts was now offering a badge or badges for meeting Common Core objectives. Some readers insisted that was not true. According to this reader, who provides a link, it is true. The question for me is why Girl Scouts is tying its merit badges to school work and why it is endorsing an initiative that is not yet proven or established. Isn’t scouting about scouting and hands-on experience and service?
The reader comments:
“I am a longtime Girl Scout and have been a leaders for several years and I cannot for the life of me understand why GSUSA is attempting to show a connection between Girl Scout Badges and Journeys, and Common Core objectives. As a Brownie leader, I just clicked on the link you posted to see what Common Core objectives my Brownies “accomplished” when they recently earned their “Snacks”, “Painter” and “hiker” badges. The page that came up was this one:
Click to access CommonCore_brownies_Badges.pdf
It states that when earning badges the following standards applied (list of basic reading literature and informational text standards — main idea and detail, learning vocabulary, etc.)
My Brownies didn’t do any reading to earn the badges. For the Hiker badge — they read maps, learned how to dress for the weather, and hiked! No main idea, no detail. For the Painter badge — they painted! No character, setting, problem or solution. And for the Snacks badge — they washed, peeled, sliced, cut, mixed, measured, cooked (with adult supervision) tasted and ate.
The probably did acquire some new vocabulary along the way.
As I said, I cannot for the life of me understand why GSUSA thinks anyone would want to know that Girl Scout badges have any alignment with any state or Common Core curriculum! Why should they? Scouting isn’t school! Kids get enough of school… at school! And clearly they do NOT actually correlate with math or language arts standards.
So why try to make it look as if they do? The only thing I can think of is that GSUSA and local councils might be trying to get grant funding to put on GS programs, and the people issuing the grants are asking whether Girl Scouting is an education program in some way? It’s a long shot, but it is all I can think of.”
A reader sends this comment:
While Business fails in Education, Education is certainly good for Business:
1) Quick Turnaround Teachers are funded by Walton, Dell, Gates….http://www.teachforamerica.org/support-us/donors
2) Corporate-funded CCSS http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/01/idUS157777+01-Feb-2012+BW20120201
3) Backed by corporate-advertising http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM_G4Y7SX3g
4) Opening new corporate marketing channels http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/56868-scholastic-new-technology-programs-aimed-at-the-common-core.html
3) in corporate-funded charter schools http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/mediacenter/top-five-grantees
4) advocated by corporate-funded “front men” http://www.ctunet.com/blog/memphis-district-to-lose-212-million-to-charter-schools-by-2016
5) so corporations can steal children’s data without parental consent http://educationnewyork.com/files/FERPA-ccsss.pdf
6) So they can create more “personalized products” http://www.classsizematters.org/new-york-state-inbloom-inc-fact-sheet/
7) And them move on to PERPETUATE “corporate-takeover-of-education” policies http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2012/01/john_white_appointed_chief_of_louisiana_schools.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-FB
All we need now is for TV shows and Movies to start incorporating the benefits of Common Core into their character’s personalities. Actually, the whole takeover of education is almost like a movie script itself!!
Richard R. Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Indiana University, compiled the following reading list to help others understand the root causes of low academic performance:
Professor Hake writes:
“Penny” commented: ”We know that poorer (lower socioeconomic) students tend to do poorer in school. How about looking at the true root cause.”
For the “true root cause” see the REFERENCE list below containing poverty-related references from my *complete* post “The Contentious Common Core Controversy” at http://bit.ly/Y7ocMv
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
REFERENCES
Berliner, D.C. 2009. “Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success.” Education and Public Interest Center (Univ. of Colorado) and Education Policy Research Unit, (Arizona State University); online as a 729 kB pdf at http://bit.ly/fqiCUA. In his abstract Berliner states: “This brief details six Out of School Factors (OSFs) common among the poor that significantly affect the health and learning opportunities of children, and accordingly limit what schools can accomplish *on their own*: (1) low birth-weight and non-genetic prenatal influences on children; (2) inadequate medical, dental, and vision care, often a result of inadequate or no medical insurance; (3) food insecurity; (4) environmental pollutants; (5) family relations and family stress; and (6) neighborhood characteristics. These OSFs are related to a host of poverty-induced physical, sociological, and psychological problems that children often bring to school, ranging from neurological damage and attention disorders to excessive absenteeism, linguistic underdevelopment, and oppositional behavior.”
Brady, M. 2012. “Eight problems with Common Core Standards,” in Valerie Strauss’ “Answer Sheet,” Washington Post, 21 August; online at http://wapo.st/15Z4kTg. Note especially Brady’s crucial problem #4: “So much orchestrated attention is being showered on the Common Core Standards, the main reason for poor student performance is being ignored-a level of childhood poverty the consequences of which no amount of schooling can effectively counter” – see e.g., Berliner (2009), Duncan & Murnane (2011), Kristof (2013), Marder (2012), Neuman & Celano (2012), and my 14 blog entries on the overriding influence of poverty on children’s educational achievement at .
Duncan, G.J. & R. Murnane, eds. 2011. “Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances.” Russell Sage Foundation, publisher’s information at http://bit.ly/nCkmKv. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/r3MrCh.
Kristof, N.D. 2013. “For Obama’s New Term, Start Here.” New York Times OP-ED, 23 Jan, online at http://nyti.ms/WnEhU2. Kristof wrote: “Something is profoundly wrong when we can point to 2-year-olds in this country and make a plausible bet about their long-term outcomes – not based on their brains and capabilities, but on their ZIP codes. President Obama spoke movingly in his second Inaugural Address of making equality a practice as well as a principle. So, Mr. President, how about using your second term to tackle this most fundamental inequality?”
Marder, M. 2012. “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics,” Journal of Scholarship and Practice 9(1): 8-25; the entire issue is online as a 2.7 MB pdf at http://bit.ly/KPitWM, scroll down to page 8. Marder wrote: “The collection of nationwide data do point to a primary cause of school failure, but it is poverty, not teacher quality. As the concentration of low-income children increases in a school, the challenges to teachers and administrators increase so that ultimately the educational quality of the school suffers. Challenges include students moving from one school to another within the school year, frequency of illness, lack of stable supportive homes with quiet places to study, concentration of students who are angry or disobedient, probability of students disappearing from school altogether, and difficulty of attracting and retaining strong teachers. Most people who see the connection between poverty and educational outcomes are confident that low-income students in a sufficiently supportive environment will learn as much in a school year as students in well-off communities.”
Neuman, S.B. & D.C. Celano. 2012. “Giving Our Children a Fighting ChancePoverty, Literacy, and the Development of Information Capital,” Teachers College Press, publishers information at http://bit.ly/ZVCsil. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/VVml0G, note the searchable “Look Inside” feature. The publisher states: “This is a compelling, eye-opening portrait of two communities in Philadelphia with drastically different economic resources. Over the course of their 10-year investigation, the authors of this important new work came to understand that this disparity between affluence and poverty has created a *knowledge gap* – far more important than mere achievement scores – with serious implications for students’ economic prosperity and social mobility. At the heart of this knowledge gap is the limited ability of students from poor communities to develop *information capital.* This moving book takes you into the communities in question to meet the students and their families, and by doing so provides powerful insights into the role that literacy can play in giving low-income students a fighting chance.”
State testing was disrupted by major computer breakdowns in Indiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Minnesota.
All 46 states and D.C. are supposed to administer Common Core assessments online by 2014-15.
Maybe the corporations will solve the technological problems by then. Maybe states will come up with the money to pay for enough computers by then. Maybe students will figure out how to hack into the assessments by then.
All sorts of surprising and unpredictable things happen when big business and big government decide to take the work of humans out of human hands.
Arthur Goldstein teaches high school in Queens, New York. Many of his students are English language learners. He blogs at NYC Educator. His blog is one of the best in the nation.
He wrote the following for readers of this blog:
How Smart Will Common Core Make Our Kids?
Judging from the editorials in the papers, you’d think Common Core was the best thing since sliced bread. Actually, sliced bread is highly overrated, as anyone with fresh artisan bread and a good knife can attest.
The Daily News predicts over 60% of our kids could fail Common Core tests, and appears to see this as a good thing. Yet, as a public school teacher, if 60% of my students were to suddenly fail, I highly doubt my principal’s first instinct would be to compliment me on my high standards.
I’m also willing to bet anything my students would not appreciate it very much. They’d be particularly upset, vocally upset, if I’d given them tests for which I had not prepared them at all. I could certainly explain to 34 teenagers that it was urgent I raise standards, that it was an emergency, and that there was, therefore, no time to prepare or test my methods. Nonetheless, I would not wish to have to face them on a daily basis afterward.
Their parents would not be happy either. And yet, when NYS Education Commisioner John King advocates much the same thing, the Daily News says he’s “fighting the good fight.” It’s not much of a fight when he’s facing down a press corps that cheers each and every untested reformy notion that comes down the pike. It would be tougher to explain huge failure rates to a group of public school parents (like me).
One of the most remarkable statements I’ve seen was from the Daily News editorial, which asserted our kids were “nowhere near as smart as they need to be.” Can they seriously believe Common Core tests measure intelligence?
I don’t give tests to see how smart kids are. I give them primarily to see how well students have mastered material I’ve introduced. I’ve tested kids who barely speak English, kids who live with broken or improvised families, kids who work nights helping their parents deliver papers, kids who travel hours just to get to school, and kids in situations I cannot even publicly describe. Here’s something I know for sure—very smart students fail tests.
I keep hearing about how Common Core measures reading comprehension. One good way to to improve that is via tricking kids into loving what they read. If you can get them to do that (and I’m not at all persuaded any new tests will), they’ll be better equipped to plod through The History of Cement, or whatever delights Common Core has in store for them. Other tests will certainly continue to reflect student preparation, or how well they can select A, B, C, or D. None of this tells us how smart kids are.
I’m just a lowly teacher, but I don’t see it as our job to make kids smarter. It’s our job to inform and prepare them, and for far more than test-taking. It’s our job to awaken or inspire their passions. It’s our job to make them love this great gift that is their lives.
And frankly, John King, who sends his kid to a Montessori school where none of these tests are applicable, has an awful lot of gall to tell us they’re what our kids need. Why on earth doesn’t he want our kids to have what his kid has?
