1. The event was sponsored by Wireless Generation, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify.  The backdrop of the stage was literally covered in the logos of EdWeek and Wireless Generation.
2. Cari Miller, policy advisor for Jeb Bush’s FEE, was in the audience.  Several TFA’ers also were on the roster.
3. The Superintendent from Hillsboro County Schools in FL, MaryEllen Elia, was one of the keynote speakers. During her presentation,During another discussion, there was heavy promotion of A-F grading and the parent trigger in OH being tied to CCSS.  I didn’t make the connection between CCSS and those two issues, but the fact that it was discussed was puzzling to me.
   1. She devoted a significant portion of her talk to the ways they have incorporated CCSS into their teacher evaluation system, including the upcoming assessments.
   2. She bragged about recruiting parents to promote pro-CCSS materials to the PTAs within the district.  Brainwashing parents through “moles” among PTAs.
   3. She said that she discourages teachers from advancing to administration so that they can become “teacher leaders” while staying in the classroom.  And while I appreciate the sentiment, my cynicism lead me to believe that this discouragement was based on a desire to leave room in administration for Broad-trained folks.
   4. She bragged about her ability to get the business community in her county (corporate involvement) to stand behind CCSS.  “If business supports the CCSS, it takes the pressure of educators…”
   5. In response to a question from the audience regarding teacher training, she openly criticized teacher ed programs saying (paraphrase), “I question if higher ed is where it needs to be.  Professors simply aren’t engaged in what is happening in schools.  FL is putting stress on grading the Depts of Education in our state.
4. During another discussion, there was heavy promotion of A-F grading and the parent trigger in OH being tied to CCSS.  I didn’t make the connection between CCSS and those two issues, but the fact that it was discussed was puzzling to me.
5. There was promotion of personalized learning from a RTTT-d winner in the audience.  I don’t disagree with personalized learning per se, but in the context of corporate reform, it almost always means the promotion of digital education.
6. During a lunch discussion, a renegade school administrator spoke out against CCSS during a Q&A session.  As she bemoaned decades of “the latest and greatest innovation,” the EdWeek staffers looked panicked.  It tells you something when those who are putting on an event become concerned when someone shares candid remarks.
7. Virginia Edwards, EdWeek’s editor, lost all credibility with me as she wrapped up the lunchtime Q&A.  She spoke in reference to the “renegade” I just wrote about and said to the audience (paraphrasing), “I’m not trying to be a supporter of the CCSS, but if you’re not going to support CCSS now, then when?  Journalism had to change or we would have died.  In the same way, teachers have to get hip or die…but I still remain agnostic toward the CCSS.”

Twice MarcTucker wrote blog posts saying that I was wrong about the Common Core. In his second post, he challenged my assertion that parts often standards were developmentally inappropriate, and he cited experts (but not teachers) who agreed with him.

Here, Susan Ohanian responds to Tucker:

:

Arguing about the content of the Common Core State (sic) Standards is a dangerous diversion, steering us away from the important question of Who decides?

I don’t accept the premise of the very existence of these standards, but leaving that point aside, I do have a question for the “leading scholars” of the Validation Committee of the Common Core State (sic) Standards. Looking at their very impressive credentials, I don’t see any mention of elementary school teaching experience.

I’d ask when was the last time any of them was shut up in a room with twenty-five eight-year-olds–or twelve-year-olds. A teacher offers books to students based on the actual classroom reality of that minute. Case in point: I taught third grade in a school that rigorously classified students into high readers, middle readers, and low readers. My first year there, I taught, at my request, the “low readers.” A few months into the school year, an Amelia Bedelia title offered a phenomenal breakthrough reading experience for more than half the class, and so the next year, I started out the year with Amelia Bedelia. For that group, also classified as “low readers,” but significantly more able, Amelia was ho-hum history, something they’d enjoyed in second grade. They immediately showed me they needed something with more meat. So we jumped into Beatrix Potter and Beverly Cleary. Different kids need different books at different times. And you can’t decree this ahead of time.

Ten years teaching seventh and eighth graders showed me this same truth again and again. After he claimed he’d read every book in our classroom, including two sets of encyclopedia, I shoved Dr. Seuss’ Hop on Pop at fifteen-year-old Keith and commanded, “Read this!” Keith, a boy usually on the move–never still–sat motionless for the entire period–at first because he recognized my ‘she who must be obeyed’ mode but then because he got hooked into the book. When Keith finally closed the last page, his expression was one of puzzlement. “I did it. I read this book. Seriously, Miz O. I read it. For real. You wanna hear me?” Throughout the rest of year, whenever things weren’t going well for Keith, he’d say, “How would you like to hear that Hop on Pop book?” and he’d pull up a chair and calm himself by reading a few pages out loud. And he asked those magic words, “Did that Dr. Seuss write any more books?” He ended the year having read more than one book.

In a video produced by the Council of Great City Schools ($8,496,854 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), self-proclaimed Common Core architect David Coleman orates that all students need rigorous texts and he offers advice to the student, like Keith, who is several years behind: “You’re going to practice it again and again and again and again. . . so there’s a chance you can finally do that level of work.”

Those words show Coleman’s chilling disregard for the individual needs of individual students and this is the thread that runs throughout the Common Core imperatives–approved by the august committee referred to by Marc Tucker.

As any teacher worth her salt can do, I offer individual, idiosyncratic stories about individual idiosyncratic kids’ special connections with books. I was lucky enough early in my career to be hired as reading teacher in a program funded by the New York State department of education in the name of innovation. My boss there was himself a reader, and we decided to take the state at their word and be innovative. He let me use the book budget for voucher chips redeemable at a local bookstore. Every month I gave every student a chip good for the purchase of one paperback book. I took kids on a tour of the store the first time. After that, they were on their own. Their choices were remarkably smart. From time to time I was able to dip into the voucher chest and buy multiple copies of high interest titles such as Soul Brothers and Sister Lou and J. T., for group reading. When state inspectors came to see what caused standardized test scores to soar, they asked, “What program do you use?” I replied, “We read a lot of Shel Silverstein”–because my boss had told me we must never let the very conservative school board know how we were spending the book budget. I kept the secret for the fifteen years I worked in the district. Now I tell it as tribute to an administrator who believed in the power of books.

I saw this same ability to make good choices when I taught the “low readers” of third grade. In the Spring we won a Scholastic contest in which the prize was 100 free books. I handed out catalogues and told the kids they each got three choices–two to keep for themselves and one for the classroom library. No standards committee could have chosen as well as those kids did. No teacher savvy about reading could have done any better.

The issue here is not which “informational text” (what a pompous, ignorant term, as though fiction and poetry didn’t provide critical information) is assigned or which grade gets drilled on apostrophe use. The issue is Who decides? The decision should be local and never allowed to fossilize. The truth of the matter is that universal standards can’t apply in a single classroom, never mind across the country. The issue is trusting teachers, trusting kids, and trusting them to find the books they need. The Common Core trusts nothing but computerized programs that train teachers and kids to do what they’re told.

Marc Tucker and others scoffed when I said that the Common Core standards should have been field tested in a few districts and states before they were imposed on the 46 states.

No one knows whether they will improve achievement. No one knows if they will widen or narrow the gaps between different groups. No one knows if the awkward mapping makes sense. No one knows if he standards are developmentally appropriate for the various grades. No one knows whether the standards are realistic or whether they were designed for students bound for IvyLeague colleges.

I think it would be useful to know answers to these questions in advance, before the nation spends billions of dollars on new materials, new tests, new professional development, and new technology for the online assessments.

I have a deep concern that the standards are meant to be so “hard” that many children will fail, and the privatization movement will gain new fodder for its campaign to smear American schools.

This reader understands my concern about the failure to field test the new federal standards before they were imposed:

“As a teacher who came to education from the software industry, there was one phrase that struck a nerve with me: “the Common Core standards effort is fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted upon the nation.” If there is one thing we can learn from business, it is that rolling out a new product in great numbers without field testing it thoroughly is a fool’s game at best and organizational suicide at worst. Companies who gamble this way often find themselves in bankruptcy.”

Stephen Lazar, a National Board Certified Teacher in New York City, was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the Common Core. He is worried now about the speed other which the standards are being pushed into the schools.

Marc Tucker has written two posts on his blog saying that I am wrong not to support the Common Core standards.

Stephen Krashen, the eminent literacy scholar, disagrees with Tucker. He posted this response on Tucker’s blog and shared it with me.

Krashen writes:

We need to distinguish discussion (1) of the content of the standards and (2) whether we should have standards.

The content of the standards

Contrary to Tucker’s assertion, it is easy to field-test the standards. If standards are simply “what we want students to know and be able to do,” we could see if any students meet the standards. This is called “known-group” validity: Can those who experts regard as well-educated students pass the tests? Let teachers (or anybody else) select students at various levels considered to have the skills and knowledge considered to be satisfactory for students at that level. See if they can pass the tests.

The real issue

But the content of the standards is not the real issue. The real issue is whether we should have standards and tests based on standards. In his post of March 14, Tucker insisted that “We will not improve the performance of poor and minority students by suppressing standards.” I think we will.

The common core standards and the tests that are their spawn will cost billions. The big money is being spent on getting all students connected to the internet so they can take the tests. And there are a lot of tests and there will be a lot more, far more than we need (Krashen, 2012). And once the tests are set up, there will be constant upgrading, new equipment (remember Ethernet?), and of course revision of the tests when it turns out that the CC$$ are not improving achievement. This is one of the greatest boondoggles of all time (Krashen and Ohanian, 2011).

There is a great deal of evidence that the real problem in education in the US is our high level of poverty: When we control for poverty, our international test scores are near the top in the world (Carnoy and Rothstein, 2013). Poverty means food deprivation, poor health care, and lack of access to books (Berliner, 2009; Krashen, 1997), and improving diet, health care and providing access to books (libraries) improves school performance (for recent research on the impact of school libraries, see Krashen, Lee and McQuillan, 2012). The billions we are investing in testing should be used to help solve the problem, not just measure it. A most investment in food programs, school nurses, and school libraries will have a huge impact, not just on test scores but on children’s well-being as well.

Tucker’s position is that tough standards, tough-minded accountability, will finally get
educators moving, and force them to teach effectively. This is an insult to the teaching profession, and is not supported by the evidence: As noted above, when we control for poverty, our students do very well. Middle class students in well-funded schools score at or near the top of the world. This strongly suggests that the problem is not teacher quality (or schools of education, or unions). Of course we are always interested in improving teaching, but there is no crisis. The problem is poverty.

Some sources:

There are a lot of tests: Krashen, S. 2012. How much testing? https://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/25/stephen-­‐ krashen-­‐how-­‐much-­‐testing/
 and: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/

Boondoggle: Krashen, S. and Ohanian, S. 2011. High Tech Testing on the Way: a 21st Century Boondoggle? http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in- dialogue/2011/04/high_tech_testing_on_the_way_a.html

Control for poverty: Carnoy, M and Rothstein, R. 2013, What Do International Tests Really Show Us about U.S. Student Performance. Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute. 2012. http://www.epi.org/).

Food deprivation, poor health care, lack of access to books, Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential; Krashen, S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational Leadership 55(4): 18-22.

Impact of school libraries: Krashen, S., Lee, SY, and McQuillan, J. 2012. Is The Library Important? Multivariate Studies at the National and International Level Journal of Language and Literacy Education: 8(1). http://jolle.coe.uga.edu/

A teacher in Virginia said this about her state’s standards:

“I teach in Virginia where we do not use Common core. Our standards are actually harder than common core.

“Here is the problem with both: these standards are not developmentally appropriate for children. I am teaching my LD (special ed.) students things like: order of operations (PEMDAS) and prime and composite numbers. I have found very few adults who know what composite numbers are, including West Point and Harvard grads. Do you know what a stem and leaf plot is? Do you know what a compression wave is? Do you know the difference between an expression and an equation? Do you know what an open sentence is (in math)? Can you name different rhyme schemes in poetry? Can you do MLA citations and computer powerpoints? These are 5th grade skills. I am teaching middle and high school skills to 10 year olds. Then when they have difficulties, it is my fault. Really?”