Archives for category: Common Core
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Will Diane Douglas Be the Next State Superintendent of Arizona

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2014 //
22

Arizona had a hotly contested race for State Superintendent. The last one, John Huppenthal, was a strong supporter of Common Core who embarrassed himself by posting crude comments anonymously on blogs. When his name leaked, he was finished, beaten in the Republican primary by a little-known candidate named Diane Douglas.

In the November 4 election, Douglas ran against veteran educator David Garcia. A Democrat, Garcia received a slew of bipartisan endorsements. Douglas kept a low profile while Garcia racked up endorsements. The only issue associated with her was her opposition to Common Core.

Garcia seemed to be the only Democrat with a chance of winning. He had the experience and the credentials. But at last count, Douglas was leading 51-49, too close to call.

This blogger in Arizona wrote this:

“Douglas ran no campaign that I could see. I never saw a sign, never saw a TV ad. She rarely talked to the media, and she refused to debate Garcia. She had one issue: opposition to Common Core. The tea bagging Douglas had no endorsements whose names you’d recognize, and her own friggin’ website is absolutely empty under the section called “My Record and News.” It says to “check back” later; it still says that. Her online bio proudly celebrates her lack of professional experience:

“I did it on my own, for my own edification rather than through a college of “education” in order to add letters after my name.”

Got that? Education in quotes—not the real stuff like her learnin’. Douglas, who runs a stained glass store, did have one thing going for her: An R after her name. I’d wager a big bucket of cash that the old farts in Sun City and the wingers statewide who elected this Know Nothing couldn’t pick Douglas out of a lineup, or tell you one thing she stands for. Except she’s not a Democrat and she doesn’t like Barack Obama.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Arizona, Common Core

Most Teachers Support Common Standards, Oppose Online Tests, Evaluations

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2014 //
75

The Gallup Poll reports that three-quarters of teachers support common standards, a similar proportion oppose standardized online common assessments, while 89% oppose teacher evaluations based on student test scores.

Evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students is the most prominent initiative launched by Secretary Arne Duncan. The Gallup Poll shows that Duncan’s favorite “reform” is almost universally opposed by the nation’s teachers.

Hello, President Obama. Please pay attention.

Categories Common Core, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

How Common Core Math Dictates Instruction

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2014 //
109

Defenders of the Common Core standards insist that they are “standards” and that they do not influence or control either curriculum or pedagogy. Teachers. Are free, they say, to use their own methods of instruction.

As this article in the Washington Post shows, Common Core math dictates how teachers teach. The story is about the resistance of parents to the methodology, but there is no question that there is a specific pedagogy that must be learned and taught.

Even this story repeats the claim that “states and school districts decide how to teach to the standards and what materials to use.” But the story itself demonstrates that the “standards” dictate HOW to teach, and every publisher must align their materials with the CCSS standards.

Categories Common Core

Peter Greene: Will CCSS Close the Gender Gap?

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2014 //
9

Peter Greene reviews a statement from the Center for American Progress saying that there is a gender gap and the Common Core is sure to close it. How do they know? They don’t, but no reason not to continue the game of making sweeping claims. Who can disprove what cannot be proved? Next they will say Common Core cures the common cold. Can you prove that it doesn’t?

Greene writes:

“That’s it. That’s the whole argument. CCSS will raise everybody’s standards, so women (and, I guess, students of color) will just automatically be raised up to the level of white guys. Of course, that effect would theoretically work with literally any educational standards at all– so why didn’t the states (particularly those with super high standards rated by Fordham Institution as better than CCSS) already wipe out their own gender gaps? And how can rigorous education wipe out the pay gap when the pay gap, as CAP just said, is controlled for occupation? Will lady engineers suddenly be paid more because they have a Common Core seal of approval stamped upon them?

“This has to be one of the laziest arguments I have ever seen for pretty much anything. I guess it’s good that they didn’t print a special CCSS edition in pink for girls, but the implication that girls have been doing poorly because, well, it’s just that nobody asked them to do better– it’s somehow insulting to everybody. If CAP is going to try to score social justice points, they’re going to have to do much better than this.”

Categories Common Core

Stephen Krashen Reviews Arne Duncan’s “New” Stance on Testing

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2014 //
23

Stephen Krashen, literacy expert, wrote a letter to the Denver Post to comment on Arne Duncan’s recent discovery that children take too many tests. Some little ones sit for 9 or 10 hours of testing, as well as test prep. Arne is not happy. But who brought all this testing that got out of control in the past five years. No Child Left Behind? Race to the Top? Race, race, race for higher test scores. Evaluate teachers by test scores . Evaluate education schools by the test scores of students taught by their graduates. Who is responsible for this madness that makes children cry?

Stephen Krashen wrote this letter in response to an article by Arne Duncan (or his press office);

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been an enthusiastic supporter of the common core testing program, accurately described as “nonstop testing” by education expert Susan Ohanian. The common core imposes more testing on our children than has ever been seen on our planet, and no attempt was made to determine if the new tests result in higher student achievement.

Now Secretary Duncan (“A test for school tests,” Oct 20) says he supports a movement to eliminate redundant and inappropriate tests. This should have been done using small-scale studies before the tests were forced on millions of children.

Stephen Krashen

original article: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_26762648/test-tests?source=infinite

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Standardized Testing

Indiana: Republicans Abandoned Public Education

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2014 //
19

Conservatives are supposed to conserve. however, these days conservatives are intent on smashing their community’s public schools and substituting a market-based system. this is Wall Street, not Main Street.

From a parent activist in Indiana:

“When it comes to public education, Indiana Republicans have been good at one thing – the deception of their own base of voters.

“Republicans lawmakers found themselves torn this year between traditional Hoosier conservatives and corporate sponsors who finance their campaigns. Conservative voters protested Federal overreach in education. Demanding Indiana maintain local decision-making for their schools, Hoosiers asked lawmakers to abandon the Common Core State Standards. However, the corporate ownership of the Common Core is pervasive.

“Republicans needed to quell conservative voter outrage at a Federal initiative taking away local control and costing taxpayers millions in compliance. Yet, they also needed to appease the big businesses that not only funded the Common Core, but funded their election campaigns as well. What were Indiana Republicans to do?

“Deceive us Hoosier Conservatives.

“Remaining loyal to their corporate sponsors, Republicans devised a scheme – rebrand the Common Core State Standards as the new Indiana College and Career Ready Standards. Confident they had cornered the voting booth, they stuck a new sticker over the Common Core and sold us out.

“State Republicans continue to deceive the public with their education platform of “supporting high state-based standards”. In fact, much of the Republican platform on education is written in deceptive terminology.

“The ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu, said, “All warfare is based on deception.” The Republican Platform on education is nothing more than a declaration of war on our public schools. Unfortunately, Hoosier students are their casualties.”

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Indiana, Republicans, Vouchers

Carol Burris: Does Arne Duncan Think that Moms are Stupid?

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2014 //
13

Carol Burris, high school principal in Long Island, New York, writes here about the sudden shift in tone of the high-stakes testing cheerleaders.

 

Arne Duncan throws his support to the Beltway groups that say that there is too much testing and there should be less. Don’t believe it, writes Burris.

 

Of course, they hope to pacify and quiet the growing movement against high-stakes testing.

 

She writes:

 

Education Secretary Arne Duncan must believe that those “suburban moms” he talked about back in 2013 are an awfully gullible bunch. In response to continued pushback on testing, Duncan and the Council of Chief State School Officers are now saying that they, by golly, are against excessive standardized testing, too.

Duncan recently wrote an op-ed published in The Washington Post in which he expressed support for a statement issued by the Council of Chief State School Officers along with the Council of Great City Schools saying that it was time to rethink standardized testing.

Readers may recall how Duncan characterized pushback on the Common Core as coming from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were” when he addressed the State Chiefs last year. His disdainful dismissal of the genuine concern of parents fueled the already growing anti-testing movement.

 

 

And more:

 

So now Mr. Duncan and the Chief State School Officers need to convince parents that they are listening, too. Their strategy is to say that “we are only for good tests, not the bad tests, and we will make all the bad tests go away.” It is disturbing that they believe that parents would not see through the ruse.

Parents are not protesting weekly spelling quizzes. The tests they do not like are the very tests that Duncan and the Chiefs want to save. In his recent op-ed, Duncan refers to “high-quality tests” as ones for which, “the Education Department has provided $360 million dollars.” The money went to two multi-state consortia, PARCC and Smarter Balanced, designing new tests to align to the Common Core State Standards. All the while, both Duncan and the Chiefs were careful not to mention the Common Core in their statements. The Common Core is now their Voldermort–“he who cannot be named.” Instead they declare themselves the warriors of the bubble test, as though answering multiple-choice questions with a mouse is a game changer.

Perhaps the most bizarre declaration in favor of annual testing came from Louisiana’s Chief John White who said that it is “an absolutely essential element of assuring the civil rights of children in America.” Meanwhile, 40 of the 70 districts in White’s state are still under desegregation orders, having not achieved unitary status after more than 40 years. When the U.S. Justice Department sued Louisiana to block 2014-15 vouchers for students in schools under federal desegregation orders, John White characterized the order as “a little ridiculous.”. The heck with Brown v Board of Education—as long as kids have the civil right to be tested each year, social justice is served.

 

Imagine that! Kids don’t need desegregation, but testing is a “civil right”? Yes, he really said that.

 

Burris concludes that Duncan and the cheerleading Chiefs don’t believe in democratic control of schools. That’s why they love standardized testing. Teachers and principals can’t be trusted to do what is right for children.

 

And that really sums up the thinking of Duncan and his cheerleading Chiefs. Their distrust of public schools and the democratic control of schooling run deep. It colors every solution that they propose. They have no idea how to effect school improvement other than by making tests harder and making sticks bigger. When punishing the school did not work, it morphed into punish the teacher through evaluations based on test scores. The reality that no country has ever improved student learning using test and punish strategies is lost on those who refuse to address the greater social issues that we who do the work confront every day.
When one argues that testing 8-year-olds for nine hours is the way to give a child his civil rights, then moral authority is surely gone. The public knows it. Moms, of all colors and neighborhoods, are a heck of a lot smarter than Mr. Duncan and his reform supporters believe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Industry, Testing

Iris Rotberg: Common Core and Charters are not Silver Bullets

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2014 //
6

Iris Rotberg, Research Professor of Education Policy at George Washington Policy, critiques the endless search for the silver bullet that will close the test score gaps among children from low-income and high-income groups.

In 2009, a study claimed that attendance at a charter school in New York Cityfor several years would virtually close that gap. We now know, Rotberg shows, that this was an exaggeration and in fact, based on the latest state tests, untrue.

She predicts that Common Core will turn out to be yet another distraction.

“The supporters and opponents of the Common Core are now engaged in an escalating debate about whether the Common Core will strengthen U.S. education or, instead, become a dangerous intrusion by the federal government to control the content of the curriculum. Most likely, as in the case of previous reforms of curriculum standards, it will turn out to be irrelevant to any real change in the opportunities available to low-income students, and it is certainly unlikely to become the silver bullet that narrows the achievement gap.

“It is often assumed that the Common Core’s emphasis on reasoning will make it difficult to cram for and, therefore, test preparation will no longer be useful. That is the claim initially made by the College Board when cram courses were first used to prepare for university entrance exams (College Entrance Examination Board, 1965). The SAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT all emphasize inductive and deductive reasoning, yet affluent families figured out how to cope: They spent thousands of dollars on their children’s cram courses or tutors because they saw that the preparation was effective in raising test scores. If we continue to reward and punish teachers based on the test scores of their students—even if these scores are based on Common Core tests—educators in low-income communities will continue to have little choice but to narrow the curriculum to give more time for test preparation. Rather than reducing the achievement gap, the risk is that the Common Core test, like those that preceded it, will lead to fewer opportunities for children in high-poverty communities. And the rhetoric surrounding it will continue to detract attention from the policies needed to address the societal inequities that have led to the achievement gap.”

She concludes:

“It has been argued that to critique current policies is equivalent to saying that nothing can be done for low-income children. Just the opposite: we know that economic, social, and educational policies in areas of employment and wages, taxation, housing, health, school integration, school finance, and access to higher education can be effective in addressing the fundamental problems of poverty. Meanwhile, however, we can work to ensure that our current policies do not make matters worse for the most vulnerable students.”

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Poverty, U.S. education

Anthony Cody: Is There a Néw Paradigm for Accountability?

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2014 //
21

Anthony Cody recognizes that “reformers” are back-pedaling from test-test-test because 1) the results have been disappointing; and 2) the anti-testing backlash is turning into a mighty roar.

So, of course, they need a new paradigm that redefines accountability. In this post, Cody reviews the latest effort to make accountability palatable and concludes that any paradigm that preserves high-stakes testing will preserve the flaws and misguided incentives of the current system.

He writes that every effort to shift to a new paradigm is trapped in the stale thinking of the old paradigm:

“We are stuck in a model that says learning must be measured to be managed, and management is the overriding systemic imperative. This necessitates top-down systems, even as those systems are incapable of delivering the sort of change advocates insist upon….

“A truly new paradigm would invest confidence in students and teachers, rather than constantly require them to demonstrate their adherence to standards and predetermined curricula and assessments. A new paradigm would refocus our schools on the needs of local communities, and require educators to work closely with parents and community leaders to set goals and share evidence of student progress. Accountability invested in centralized authority is inherently top-down. New paradigm? Not there yet.”

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Testing

Joseph A. Ricciotti: Politics, Profits, and the Common Core

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2014 //
18

Joseph A. Ricciotti, a former professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut, wrote the following post:

 

One of the most alarming reports concerning the corporate education reform movement and the growth of Common Core in the country was published by Lee Fang in the Nation magazine. Fang’s report highlights how public education is now considered as the last “honeypot” for venture capitalists and Wall Street investors. Investors’ interest in public education as a money making venture was made crystal clear by attendance at the recent annual investment conference in Scottsdale, Arizona which skyrocketed from 370 people the previous year to over 2000 this year. Likewise, the number of companies presenting at the conference increased from 70 to 390, mostly technology companies. It is also no surprise that Jeb Bush, one of the leading advocates of Common Core in the country, was the keynote speaker at the conference. According to Fang, venture capitalists and for-profit education firms “are salivating over the potential 788 billion dollar K-12 education market.”

More and more politicians are learning that, based on the type of corporate reform education policies that they are espousing, these policies will more than likely also impact and lessen their chances of reelection. Take, for example, Governor Dannel Malloy in Connecticut and Mayor Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago, two Democrats who will be seeking reelection in the near future. Both of these political leaders have chosen to advocate typical corporate education reform policies that are basically anti-teacher in nature and have implemented education policies such as advocating charter schools over traditional public schools. Not surprisingly, we may be in for some stunning upsets in the upcoming elections.

In Connecticut, Governor Malloy chose Stefan Pryor as his Commissioner of Education who is not an educator and who has had a history as a charter school advocate. Hence, as a result, we have seen in Connecticut an unprecedented growth of Charter Schools over the past four years with dismal results as well as scandals involving some of their leaders. The appointment of Paul Vallas in Bridgeport as superintendent was another fiasco.

 

Pryor’s abrupt resignation with no appointment of a replacement in the cards until after the election does not bode well for any indication of change in Malloy’s corporate education policies. Moreover, Malloy may have dug himself into a hole based on the most recent poles and could face extinction come the November election.

Rahm Emmanuel’s actions in closing fifty of Chicago’s public schools has been the catalyst in generating numerous protests from parents and teachers. His battles with the head of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), Karen Lewis, may have resulted in a challenge emanating from the CTU against Rahm Emmanuel for the mayoral seat in the next election. The many protests in Chicago are conveying a message to Rahm Emmanuel that, although he is the mayor, he is not really the leader of the people in Chicago as the protestors themselves are the real leaders. As Naomi Klein has said as an outgrowth of the recent climate change march in New York City, when the leaders refuse to take the appropriate action, the people will become the leaders and take whatever action is needed to bring about necessary change.

This is what is happening today with accountability- based reform or a better term is corporate education reform. These policies throughout the country and especially with the less affluent children in urban schools where the Common Core State Standards are being implemented we find that parents are seething with discontent as they observe and witness the massive failure rate of their children on Common Core tests. As more and more Common Core tests are administered with massive numbers of children failing these tests, there will be a revolution that may serve as the catalyst for change.

Unfortunately, teachers cannot be a part of the Common Core revolt as any dissatisfaction or criticism on their part could be construed as insubordination with possible loss of employment. Hence, the parents of students in public schools will have to be the ones leading the revolt. We have in public education today many non-educators with leadership positions who place the interests of Wall Street and the Corporate sector above the interests of students. And, unfortunately, the corporate reform industry has a stronghold in Connecticut as an outgrowth of Governor Malloy and Stefan Pryor’s corporate reform policies. However, according to Diane Ravitch, author of best selling “Reign of Error,” the corporate education reformists may have all the money but we have the teachers and parents and “we will win” the battle for public education.

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing
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