Archives for category: Common Core
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Peter Greene on the WSJ Analysis of Common Core’s Death Spiral

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2015 //
36

Peter Greene read the WSJ article that was just posted on the blog, and he saw it as confirmation of what he long ago predicted: the dream of national standards and tests is dead. Whatever you may call the Common Core, there will not be one big set of standards and one big standardized test for all (or even two big standardized tests for all).

In other words, the dream that Common Core would be the single educational vision of the entire country– that dream is dead. Dead dead deadity dead.

But Rothfeld’s piece lays out a not-always-recognized (at least, not by people who don’t actually work in education) culprit for the demise. He lists the usual suspects– politics, testing, federal overreach. But the article is most interested in another malefactor– finances.

“The total cost of implementing Common Core is difficult to determine because the country’s education spending is fragmented among thousands of districts. The Wall Street Journal looked at spending by states and large school districts and found that more than $7 billion had been spent or committed in connection with the new standards.”

That’s billion-with-a-B (and that rhymes with P and that stands for “Probably still underestimating the total cost”). WSJ looked at all sorts of records and figures that still doesn’t count things like the training budgets that have been turned into Common Core training budgets.

So it isn’t working, states are dropping out of the tests and the standards too.

And he allows Vicki Phillips to repeat her claims about the awesomeness of Kentucky without being challenged. In fact, Rothfeld doesn’t really challenge anything about the Core, and in a way, that’s what makes this article so brutal– whether the Core is any good or not is beside his point, which is that the whole business just isn’t working, and it’s costing a ton of money to boot.

Will historians in the future look back and review the short life and rapid death of the Common Core standards as the educational equivalent of the Edsel? New Coke? There must be a Museum of Failed Educational Experiments and Fads somewhere. If there is, a special place should be reserved for CCSS, because it not only was imposed by the federal government and the Gates Foundation without any deference to democratic process, but it wasted billions of dollars that might have been better spent on reducing class sizes, restoring arts education, promoting desegregation.

I confess that I once believed in the value of national standards. The experience of Common Core has proven that national standards are a waste of time and money, that we will best improve education by improving the conditions of teaching and learning and by reducing poverty and segregation. These are hard but achievable goals. They will change the lives of children across the nation for the better. National standards and tests might be imposed, but even if they were, they would do nothing to improve the lives of children or communities or our society.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Testing

WSJ: Common Core in Jeopardy Due to Costs of Implementation

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2015 //
23

Michael Rothfeld of the Wall Street Journal has written the best, most balanced account that I have seen of the perilous condition of the Common Core standards. The article fails to explain adequately why 46 states adopted the standards, as if everyone was waiting and hoping for the chance to endorse untested national standards; it happened because of the $4.35 billion offered as a state competition, but only to states that agreed to do what the Obama administration wanted them to do, which included embracing the standards.

Rothfeld documents why states are dropping out. A few have repealed the Common Core standards. Half of the 46 states that signed on to one of the two federally-sponsored tests have backed out. It wasn’t simply the political controversy from right and left, from parents and educators. The cost turned out to be a deal-breaker.

Some states couldn’t afford the cost of retraining teachers. Some could not afford the technology. Some could not afford the new tests.

But the standards and tests arrived at a time when districts and states were strapped.

“The total cost of implementing Common Core is difficult to determine because the country’s education spending is fragmented among thousands of districts. The Wall Street Journal looked at spending by states and large school districts and found that more than $7 billion had been spent or committed in connection with the new standards. To come up with that number, the Journal examined contracts, email and other data provided under public-records requests by nearly 70 state education departments and school districts.

“The analysis didn’t account for what would have been spent anyway—even without Common Core—on testing, instructional materials, technology and training. Education officials say, however, that the new standards required more training and teaching materials than they would otherwise have needed, and that Common Core prompted them to speed up computer purchases and network upgrades.

“Much more money would be needed to implement Common Core consistently. Some teachers haven’t been trained, and some schools lack resources to buy materials. Some states haven’t met the goal of offering the test to all students online instead of on paper with No. 2 pencils….

“Common Core advocates hoped to make standards uniform—and to raise them across the board. Their goals were to afford students a comparable education no matter where they were, to cultivate critical thinking rather than memorization, to better prepare students for college and careers, and to enable educators to use uniform year-end tests to compare achievement. They wanted to give the tests on computers to allow more complex questions and to better analyze results.

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which signed on to the effort in 2008, so believed in the cause that it has spent $263 million on advocacy, research, testing and implementing the standards, foundation records show. Vicki Phillips, a Gates education director, says its Common Core-related funding of new curriculum tools developed by teachers has led to student gains in places such as Kentucky.

“But after a burst of momentum and a significant investment of money and time, the movement for commonality is in disarray.

“Some states, including South Carolina, Indiana and Florida, have either amended or replaced Common Core standards. Others, including Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana, New Jersey and North Carolina, are in the process of changing or reviewing them. A total of 21 states have withdrawn from two groups formed to develop common tests, making it difficult to compare results.

In California, the costs of implementation are staggering.

California has allocated $4.8 billion to local school districts that they can use for Common Core implementation, but some have asked a state commission to order more funding for giving the Smarter Balanced test.

“For some urban districts struggling to pay for basic educational needs, preparing for the standards has been challenging.

“The Philadelphia school district unveiled a plan in 2010 to implement Common Core and won a $500,000 grant from the Gates Foundation. But a budget crisis the next year resulted in nearly 4,000 layoffs, including of some putting the plan in place.”

There is something bizarre about pouring billions into untested standards and tests at a time when districts like Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and many others are struggling to maintain basic services in their schools and at a time when privatizers are targeting the very existence of public schools.

Categories Budget Cuts, Common Core, Education Reform

Another Essential Reading about the Common Core: Thomas Newkirk

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2015 //
26

thanks to a reader who sent this link to an excellent article by Thomas Newkirk about the defects of the Common Core standards. Newkirk is a professor at the University of New Hampshire. His critique of the Common Core is a classic of reasoned criticism.

He understands that the standards were rolled out with a massive and subtle PR campaign. From the outset, the public was told that the standards were written by governors and experts. The public was told that the CC was a done deal. From day one, it was too late to object. The train had left the station, even though few people were aware that there was a train or that it was in the station. “Resistance is futile,” said the well-paid corps of CC cheerleaders. 

Newkirk writes: 

“The Common Core initiative is a triumph of branding. The standards are portrayed as so consensual, so universally endorsed, so thoroughly researched and vetted, so self-evidently necessary to economic progress, so broadly representative of beliefs in the educational community—that they cease to be even debatable. They are held in common; they penetrate to the core of our educational aspirations, uniting even those who might usually disagree. We can be freed from noisy disagreement, and should get on with the work of reform.
This deft rollout may account for the absence of vigorous debate about the Common Core State Standards. If they represent a common core—a center—critics are by definition on the fringe or margins, whiners and complainers obstructing progress. And given the fact that states have already adopted them—before they were completely formulated—what is the point in opposition? We should get on with the task of implementation, and, of course, alignment.”

Newkirk proceeds to diagnose the flaws of the CC, starting with the conflict of interest of the testing companies whose representatives helped to write the standards. He criticizes the developmental inappropriateness of the standards. 

He writes: 

“The CCSS has taken what I see as exceptional work, that of perhaps the top 5 percent of students, and made it the new norm.” The work once expected of fourth graders has shifted to the second grade.”

The standards give extraordinary power to standardized tests. Not surprising since test publishers played such a prominent role in writing them.  

“The central question is this: Are standardized tests compatible with the more complex goals of twenty- first-century literacy? Or are they a regressive and reductive technology (ironically, many of the countries we are chasing in international comparisons do not share our belief in these tests)?”

Newkirk says: 

In a democracy it is never too late to speak back, to question, to criticize. As Martin Luther King Jr. argued in his“Letter from a Birmingham Jail,”it is never“untimely.” We simply cannot give up our democratic birthright and settle into compliance, not on something this important. We need to pierce the aura of inevitability that promoters have woven around the Common Core. We have to“follow the money”and ask who benefits financially from this initiative (especially important considering the financial scandals that occurred with Reading First several years ago). We need to ask about the role of unaccountable think tanks, testing agencies, and foundations in driving this initiative—have we  outsourced reform? We have to determine what value to place on local control and teacher decision making. We have to ask about the usefulness of the“data”that tests provide and whether these data may be crowding out the richer, contextual observations of teachers. And we have to look at the limitations of tests them- selves, what they can illuminate and what they must ignore. Can they test the complex, integrated, and creative skills that students will truly need—not only to be better workers but more fully realized human beings?

All in all, this is a very satisfying essay that raises important questions. 

 

Categories Common Core, Education Reform

Fred LeBrun: Will Cuomo Back Off His “Horror Show”?

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2015 //
22

Fred LeBrun of the Albany-Times Union is the only journalist (to my knowledge) who gets the picture of the reform disaster in New York (especially after the NY Times mothballed the great Michael Winerip). 

He writes today:

Cuomo may have seen light on the Common Core mess

Fred LeBrun

Published 6:09 pm, Saturday, October 31, 2015 

Things are at long last looking up for beleaguered public education in this state, probably.

 

I’d like to say the likelihood of significant corrections coming to Common Core, excessive and inappropriate standardized testing, and a hard-wired connection between those tests and teachers’ jobs, is because the politician most responsible for the total mess we’re in, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has finally seen the light. 

 

His infatuation with data driven education ”reform,” fueled by millionaire political donors, has been a disaster, for him and for our children. It’s his law that’s codified the problem. It’s his law that needs amending.

 

But I have a hunch closer to the truth would be the sobering recognition by the governor that what desperately needs fixing and quick are persistently in-the-toilet poll numbers over his intrusive handling of education issues.

 

Voters get it. 

 

Especially with Judgment Day a mere five months away, when the next round of standardized tests are mandated in English and math for grades 4 to 8. That’s also about the time we are apt to see a parental opt-out uprising across the state of a scary magnitude if big changes aren’t already made or in the works.

 

So Cuomo needs to distance himself from his own mess pronto and be part of the solution rather than the problem for a change. 

 

He’s emphatically called for a ”total reboot” of the Common Core system while avoiding any mention of prior ownership or responsibility, and his new task force looking into it is remarkably different attitudinally than the last one Cuomo convened that delivered the Common Core manure heap as the divine word, with no dissent allowed.

 

This time, dissent prevails — and it’s about time.

 

The first public meeting of the governor’s Common Core task force last week at the College of New Rochelle in Westchester County heard presentations and comments from anti-testing activists and a leader of the opt-out movement calling for the immediate decoupling of student test scores from teacher evaluations.

 

Speakers also included those successfully working with Common Core standards, but still calling for changes, such as greater flexibility for school districts, more local control of the process, a diversity of approaches, and the building of trust among parents, teachers and school districts. What’s heartening is that the governor’s office, of course, controlled the panel process because that’s the way they operate, and the fact that divergent views were incorporated is striking. 

 

Nothing like that happened with the first task force. But, there was no public comment period in New Rochelle. 

 

Whether we’re witnessing just more window dressing from the governor or a meaningful attempt at fixing what’s broken will be evident Friday when simultaneous public hearings by the task force will be held all over the state, with public comment.

 

Perhaps the most encouraging sign of all is the governor bringing Jere Hochman, superintendent of the Bedford school district, into the administration as his top education adviser. 

Hochman has been a consistent critic of the administration’s policies, reportedly even tacitly encouraging opt-out. The lower Hudson Valley, where he’s from, has been a center of parental outrage over Common Core.

 

Again, whether Hochman is window dressing, or one of the architects of change, will be evident soon enough. 

 

The State of the State, at which Cuomo is expected to announce his recommendations for changes to his education ”reform” act, is a scant two months away.

 

The announced departure of state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch is also great news. 

 

It’s not just that she backed the wrong horses pushing for hurry-up implementation of Common Core before anyone was ready, and a perfectly idiotic teacher evaluation system, but in truth she was a prominent nag in that stable, a major player. 

 

Before you feel too sorry for her, remember that Tisch was more than willing to sacrifice a generation of our schoolchildren and the state’s teacher corps to her cause. Deliver us from the ideologues. So good riddance. Her leaving is favorable news for the future of the Regents, and for the anticipated recommendations from their own task force to the governor and Legislature for changes to Common Core and teacher evaluations. 

 

Without Tisch in the mix, significant ties are cut to the failed policies of President Barack Obama, outgoing U.S. Education Commissioner Arne Duncan, and former state Education Department Commissioner John King. King, meanwhile, has been booted up to the very top of the ladder as Duncan’s interim successor when he leaves at the end of the year But the operative word that fits like a blanket over that whole lot of them when it comes to education policy is failure.

 

Meanwhile, still another encouraging tea leaf is the state Education Department giving, as promised, more than three-quarters of the school districts in the state waivers from the draconian teacher and principal evaluation formulas built into Cuomo’s education reform law. The stage is set for change. School districts are taking a pass in anticipation that better times are coming.

 

Now, the devil remains in the details, and forgive the state’s teachers, educators — and parents — for being skeptical. The last five years has been a horror show. At the very least sole reliance on the flawed ”growth score” from standardized tests in evaluating teacher performance has to change. It’s written in the law. Student performance, and an appropriate level of teacher accountability, can be measured in a number of different ways, and alternatives need to be part of the dialogue. Common Core standards need new flexibilities, and a total rethink down in the lower grades where serious issues of developmentally inappropriate testing, questions, and frequency are recurring criticisms.

 

It won’t be all that hard to torque the law back to reasonable. Now let’s see it happen before we break out the confetti. 
flebrun@timesunion.com • 518-454-5453

Categories Common Core, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform

Jack Covey Reviews Eva’s ED Talk

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2015 //
52

Reader Jack Covey watched Eva Moskowitz’s ED talk at Governor Cuomo’s Camp Philos retreat:

“Holy moley!

“I just watched a one-woman Eva Moskowitz’ horror show… starring Eva herself. It’s her six-minute “Ed Talk” (get it? rhymes with “Ted Talk”) at the 2014 Corporate Reform jamboree called “Camp Philos”:

She glowingly tells the story of Sidney — an eighth grade Success Academy student — while projecting her picture on a screen. (Did she get permission?)

“During Common Core testing, Sidney was in a life-threatening battle with sickle-cell anemia. Even at the most severe moment of crisis in her health, Sidney insisted on taking the entirety of that year’s Common Core testing. The adults around argued otherwise, because she had just had her infected spleen taken out that very day, “had lost a lot of weight,” and “was extremely cold and weak.” In the light of this, the principal informed Sidney that she was entitled to claim a “medical excuse” and delay taking the test.

“However, Sidney wouldn’t hear of it, and took the test.

“I want to get a 4,” Sidney replied, with Eva recounting these words with emotion.

Eva’s point?

( 02:10 – 03:03 )

( 02:10 – 03:03 )

“EVA MOSKOWITZ: “Children are incredibly resilient, and I would urge you to think about NOT treating children AS children… I think that we have underestimated in this country the pleasure that comes from achieving mastery, and from performance. In my experience, kids actually want to perform. The want to master. Sidney was a perfect example, even though she was in a life-threatening situation.”

Sweet Lord! What is WRONG with this woman?

“Cue the Supremes:

“(By the way, Camp Philos 2015 is this weekend. My invite must have got lost in the mail.
I wonder what Eva’s 2015 “Ed Talk” will be this year, given the timing.)”

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Common Core, Testing

Crazy Crawfish: Louisiana: The Fight Goes On

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2015 //
1

Jason France, aka Crazy Crawfish, ran for state board of education in Louisiana and lost. As he explains it here, the winning candidates pretended to share the views of the losers and had the advantage of millions of dollars from super-PACs. The losers were outspent by at least 100-1.

The winners’ campaign was promoted by the Louisiana Association and Industry.

Jason says there are still two candidates in the race who need our help so that the corporate people don’t gain total control.

He writes:

“To everyone who supported and believed in me and the other FlipBESE candidates you have my utmost respect, thanks, and gratitude. With your help we terrified our opponents into outspending us in the 100’s to one range, to fabricate and promulgate lies about us, and to actually adopt OUR platforms to defeat us.

“None of the LABI backed candidates ran on platforms claiming Common Core and PARCC were outstanding or that the state should confiscate and run all of our schools, because they knew those claims would cost them the elections. So while LABI and their allies claim education reform got a mandate in Saturday’s election, nothing could be further from the truth. You won’t see LABI’s remaining lapdogs doing anything to promote the agenda they claim they have a mandate for in their runoffs.

“That means it is crystal clear (even to our opponent’s highly paid political consultants) that it was FlipBESE that won Saturday, October 24th, NOT corporate ed reform and Common Core.

“Now that LABI has most of the BESE seats, and has deceived and bribed their way into unseating two of our greatest champions (Carolyn Hill and Lottie Bebee) it is more important than ever to rally around our remaining champions.

“We NEED Mary Harris and Kathy Edmonston to defend our teachers, parents, and students.

“For this reason I am proud to endorse and support Kathy Edmonston for the BESE district 6 runoff race against LABI owned Jason Engen.”

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Louisiana, Politics

G.F. Brandenburg Revises DC PARCC Pass Rates

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2015 //
2

Be sure to see G.F. Brandenburg’s post on the pass rates for DC high schools on the Common Core test PARCC. 

Don’t miss his commentary after the graphs. He tells the secret to getting high scores. He says, as I have written many times, that the cut scores were set so that most students would fail. 

Categories Common Core, District of Columbia, Education Reform

Carol Burris on the Drop in NAEP Scores: “No Excuses!”

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2015 //
17

Carol Burris, experienced educator and executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes hereL about the 2015 NAEP scores.

She reminds us that Arne Duncan crowed about the scores in 2013. His Race to the Top states proved he was right. Now he says, it takes time to absorb the changes I have imposed on the nation’s schools. Wait until 2025 to judge.

As usual, a brilliant piece.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Testing

Gary Rubinstein on D.C.’s Performance on the PARCC Tests: For Whom the Bell Tolls

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2015 //
12

Gary’s latest post has a smart title: “For Whom the Bell Tolls; It Tolls for Rhee.”

Having received Race to the Top funding, and being part of the (not so) great “reform” movement, the District of Columbia enthusiastically endorsed every reformy idea that involved high-stakes testing, or test-based accountability. Of course, D.C. school leaders Michelle Rhee and her successor Kaya Henderson supported Common Core and joined the PARCC testing consortium (one of the few to remain in PARCC).

The scores were released yesterday. Gary has analyzed them and made some important discoveries. The scores overall were pretty awful, as you would expect from a test that was designed to fail most students. But, surprisingly, the much-abused D.C. public schools outscored the much-lauded D.C. charter schools. How could that happen? How embarrassing for the Walton Family Foundation, which has poured so much money into charterizing the D.C. schools, as well as to Eli Broad, who recently announced his intention to open more charters in D.C. to save more kids from the terrible public schools. And yet those “terrible” public schools got higher scores than the charter schools! Go figure.

Rhee used to say that she would turn D.C. into the best urban district in the nation. She used to scoff at the educators who preceded her, citing the fact that only 10% met the standards in math. Well, what percent do you think met the “proficiency” standard in math? 10%.

Gary writes:

So of course the ‘no excuses’ crowd begins making excuses. But rather than saying that the quality of the PARCC test could be an issue, they instead say things like, “We knew this was going to happen. We just need to adjust to the new more rigorous standards.” This may buy them a few years, but I have to wonder how long supposedly ‘data driven’ reformers can continue to ignore data that refute their agenda.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Michelle Rhee, Privatization, Testing

New York: Cuomo’s Chief Education Advisor Has Conflicts of Interest

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2015 //
20

Richard Parsons, chair of Governor Cuomo’s Common Core Commission, works for a firm that invests in education technology and has contracts with the state, according to the Long Island Business News.

“One of the governor’s chief education advisers is employed by a firm that does millions of dollars of business with the state’s schools, although that has not been disclosed to the public.
“Richard Parsons, the leader of an earlier state education commission that recommended heavy investment in technology and head of a new education task force, works for a company whose principal holdings include an education technology firm that does a substantial business with the state.
“Parsons, the former chairman of Citigroup and CEO and chairman of Time Warner, was recently named the head of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s task force on the Common Core.
“Since 2009 he has been a senior adviser at Providence Equity Partners – whose principal holdings include numerous education technology firms. The state disclosed his position there, but did not indicate that Providence had any involvement in education technology firms.
“That definitely should have been disclosed,” said one education official who asked not to be identified. “I knew him from Time Warner….

“Providence owns Blackboard, a high-tech education firms whose roots go back to a consulting firm founded in 1997 to work with non-profit IMS Global Learning Consortium and merged with CourseInfo the following year.
“Venture capital firms and venture capital arms of companies such as Pearson, Dell, AOL, The Carlyle Group and Novak Biddle Venture Partners all took stakes in Blackboard, which went public in 2004.
“Investors led by Providence Equity Partners later bought Blackboard for $1.64 billion, taking the firm private. Blackboard remains one of Providence’s key holdings with contracts around the country, including New York State.
“Blackboard in December of 2011 obtained a $6.8 million contract for the State University of New York system, according to state records, in 2012 obtained another $1 million contract and in 2014 obtained a $7.5 million contract.
The company also obtained a $5.9 million contract with the City University of New York in 2012, followed by an additional $1 million contract over the next two years.
“Blackboard has been building its New York business, even as Parsons has risen to a high rank among the state’s education advisers.

“Allison Breidbart White, a critic of the Common Core and of the task force Gov. Andrew Cuomo created, said there is “no doubt, lots of conflict of interest on that panel, not just with Parsons.”
“He also served as the head of the governor’s 2012 committee to reform education that recommended heavily investing in technology.
“The state indicates that the New York Education Reform Commission that Parsons led “played an instrumental role in developing a blueprint to improve the quality of education for all students through its final report in January 2014.”
“The New York Education Reform Commission under Parsons focused heavily on the benefits of and need to spend heavily on rolling out more technology.
Read more: http://libn.com/2015/10/27/gov-chief-ed-advisers-firm-major-supplier-to-state-ed/#ixzz3poDyxYv1

Categories Common Core, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, Technology, Computers
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