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Common Core Standards: A Boon for Edu-Biz

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2012 //
15

Whether the Common Core standards are good or bad, one thing that is clear is that they have opened up multiple opportunities for entrepreneurs.

The textbook industry is retooling, at least adding stickers that say their products are aligned with the Common Core.

Pearson is developing a complete curriculum package in mathematics and reading, for almost every grade, assisted by the Gates Foundation. Children in some district will be able to take their lessons from Pearson products from the isearliest years right through to high school graduation.

Consultants are standing by, ready to sell products and services to school districts.

Here is one interesting list of what is available. There are many more.

What is happening now was not unexpected. Indeed, it is the intended result, it was planned for, hoped for, envisioned.

Joanne Weiss, who helped design Race to the Top and is now chief of staff to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, described the plan:

The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.

Weiss spent many years as an edu-entrpreneur, engaged in the design, development and marketing of products for the education industry.

We don’t know yet whether Common Core standards will improve the education of America’s children. But of this we can be sure: They will be good for the education industry.

Diane

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Obama, Pearson, Race to the Top, U.S. Department of Education

My View of the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2012 //
92

I have neither endorsed nor rejected the Common Core national standards, for one simple reason: They are being rolled out in 45 states without a field trial anywhere. How can I say that I love them or like them or hate them when I don’t know how they will work when they reach the nation’s classrooms?

In 2009, I went to an event sponsored by the Aspen Institute where Dane Linn, one of the project directors for developing the standards, described the process. I asked if they intended to pilot test them, and I did not get a “yes” answer. The standards were released early in 2010. By happenstance, I was invited to the White House to meet with the head of the President’s Domestic Policy Council, the President’s education advisor, and Rahm Emanuel. When asked what I thought of the standards, I suggested that they should be tried out in three or four or five states first, to work out the bugs. They were not interested.

I have worked on state standards in various states. When the standards are written, no one knows how they will work until teachers take them and teach them. When you get feedback from teachers, you find out what works and what doesn’t work. You find out that some content or expectations are in the wrong grade level; some are too hard for that grade, and some are too easy. And some stuff just doesn’t work at all, and you take it out.

The Common Core will be implemented in 45 states without that kind of trial. No one knows if they will raise expectations and achievement, whether they will have no effect, whether they will depress achievement, or whether they will be so rigorous that they increase the achievement gaps.

Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution thinks they won’t matter.

The conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which received large grants from the Gates Foundation to evaluate the standards and has supported them vigorously, estimates that the cost of implementing them will be between $1 billion and $8.3 billion. The conservative Pioneer Institute estimates that the cost of implementation would be about $16 billion, and suggests this figure is a “mid-range” estimate.

The Gates Foundation, lest we forget, paid to develop the standards, paid to evaluate the standards, and is underwriting Pearson’s program to create online courses and resources for the standards, which will be sold by Pearson, for a profit, to schools across the nation.

Of course, every textbook publisher now says that its products are aligned with the Common Core standards, and a bevy of consultants have come out of the woodwork to teach everyone how to teach them.

In these times of austerity, I wonder how much money districts and states have available to implement the standards faithfully. I wonder how much money they will put into professional development. I wonder about the quality of the two new assessments that the U.S. Department of Education laid out $350 million for.

These are things I wonder. But how can I possibly pass judgment until I find out how the standards work in real classrooms with real children and real teachers?

Diane

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

The Disturbing Connection between David Coleman and Michelle Rhee

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2012 //
2

If you are a reader of this blog, you saw earlier posts about the close connection between David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards, and Michelle Rhee. Stephen Sawchuk of Education Week confirms this here.

I learned from Ken Libby–a graduate student at the University of Colorado who likes to read IRS filings by advocacy organizations–that Rhee’s Students First has a board of directors; that David Coleman is the treasurer  of her board of directors; and that the other two members of her board are employees of David Coleman’s organization Student Achievement Partners (one of the two wrote the new CC math standards). To those who ask Coleman why he is on Rhee’s board, he responds that his term ends in June. That is non-responsive.

What outsiders really want to know is whether he shares her agenda and whether he rejects any part of it.

Rhee is a lightning rod. She has advocated for policies that will remove all job protections from teachers. She has supported rightwing governors who want to destroy teacher unions. She advocates for charters and vouchers. She has accepted millions of dollars from known and unknown sources to promote privatization. She has spent millions of dollars to support candidates–usually from the far right–who agree with her views. She treats test scores as the sine qua non of education. She is a darling of the far right.

There is something unsavory about the close alliance between Rhee and the man who drafted the nation’s standards.

The public has a right to know.

Diane

Categories Coleman, David, Common Core, Rhee, Michelle
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