Archives for category: Common Core
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“Embrace the Common Core?” A Debate

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2014 //
36

I am not exactly sure what “Intelligence Squared” is, but it sponsored an interesting debate about Common Core. Here is the transcript. Here is the video.

 

Speaking for Common Core was Mike Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Carmel Martin, formerly assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education and a strong enthusiast for Race to the Top as well as the Common Core.

 

Speaking in opposition to the proposition of embracing the Common Core was Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center in New York, and Rick Hess of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

 

I found Burris and Hess far more persuasive than Petrilli and Martin.

 

Petrilli assured us that we need high standards, and that the Common Core standards are the best standards around. Martin offered an anecdote about a student she met who thought she was well-prepared but learned she was not when she got to college. Both said they had talked to teachers. They also insisted that the Common Core was not top-down, but was bottom up. They claimed that the standards could be changed, apparently unaware that they are copyrighted and allegedly cannot be changed, only added to.

Petrilli and Martin had the talking points one would use to persuade legislators. But it was clear that neither know much about the mismatch between the cognitive demands of the CCSS and the developmental readiness of children. They seemed to believe that school can never be “too hard,” that notated how high you set the bar, all children will reach it. This, if you push fourth grad material down to first grade or even kindergarten, kids will learn it.
 

Burris, the only real workaday educator among the group, said she initially supported the Common Core but turned against them as she realized that so many of them were just age-inappropriate and wrong. She had facts and experience. She gave examples from the standards, and the audience laughed. She spoke knowledgably about the math standards. She is an educator.

 

Hess expressed his doubts about the value of having a single way of teaching reading and math to 50 million students. I was impressed by his reasonable conservatism. He doesn’t hate the Common Core. He just thinks that too many people are embracing them without any real evidence that they will do what they claim to do.

 

From what I heard and read, this was a big win for Burris and Hess. They were right on the facts, right on the concerns, right on the cautions. Burris was especially informed, because she speaks from real-life experience as a working principal.

 

The studio audience voted for Petrilli and Martin. The online voters supporters Burris and Hess. Watch, read, cast your ballot.

Categories Common Core

Schneider: Gates Foundation Gives Grant to “Hardwire” the Common Core Curriculum

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2014 //
49

Mercedes Schneider wrote a book about the origins of the Common Core this past summer, and she continues to keep a close watch on Bill Gates’ investment in the purchase of American education. In this post, she recounts Bill’s infatuation with the idea of standardizing every classroom, because he believes in the glories of standardization. And if he believes in it, so should everyone else.

You know how Arne Duncan and his echo chamber say again and again that the Common Core is not a curriculum? Mercedes says that the Gates Foundation made a grant to “hardwire” the CCSS curriculum. Oops! They didn’t mean to use that word! Maybe by the time this post goes public, they will change the word and call it “standards,” not “curriculum.”

But what’s with the “hardwiring”? Does the Gates Foundation really believe they can hardwire every school to the standards or curriculum of their choosing? This is America. We believe that our states are “laboratories of innovation.” A top-down set of standards, written in D.C., imposed by the lure of federal dollars? Never gonna happen. Ten years from now, maybe sooner, some states will stick with them, others won’t. Whatever they are, they will not be national standards. Americans don’t like to take orders. We don’t want to be hard-wired. We dissent. We debate. We question authority. We march to our own drummers. Or at least enough of us do to make trouble for anyone who wants to standardize us and hardwire us. Bill Gates will have to find a new plaything.

Categories Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Wendy Lecker: Our Real National Standards

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2014 //
10

Wendy Lecker, senior attorney for the Education Law Center, writes here that our most important national standards are found in our obligation to provide a high-quality education, adequately funded, to all children.

She was reminded of this by the recent court decision in Texas, where Judge John Dietz ruled that the schools were inadequately funded.

“Dietz found that to prepare children for citizenship, every school must have a basic set of essential resources: pre-K, small class size, enough teachers, libraries, books, technology, support staff — including counselors, social workers and paraprofessionals — and extra services for children with extraordinary needs, adequate facilities and a suitable curriculum. After a lengthy trial, the judge ruled that Texas’ school-finance system failed to ensure schools had these basic resources and that, as a result, children in these schools were being denied their constitutional right to an education.”

“Across this nation, courts in school funding cases have found that these same resources are essential to a constitutionally adequate education in their states. Like Dietz, they heard evidence from national educational experts and local educational experts — superintendents and teachers who work with public school children every day. These judges heard what children need and what works best to help children learn. From Kansas, to Washington, to New Jersey and beyond, these far-flung courts ruled that their states are responsible for providing schools with this nearly identical basket of educational goods.

“So-called education “reformers” push a different and lesser vision of education — perhaps most honestly expressed by the Dayton, Ohio, Chamber of Commerce:

[whose spokesman said] “The business community is the consumer of the educational product. Students are the educational product. They are going through the educational system so they can be an attractive product for business to consume.”

“This diminishment of children as being in service to business is echoed by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who lamented that because of our public education system, “we are falling further behind our international competitors.”

“Not only is this vision offensive, it is wrongheaded. It has been proven over and over that U.S. students’ scores on national or international tests bear no relation to America’s economy or worker productivity.”

Our national standard ought to be, and until recently was: equality of educational opportunity. That standard cannot be met until all children have access to a good public school with experienced teachers and adequate resources. We must hold state governments accountable for supplying the schools that children need.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, US Education

Laura H. Chapman on the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2014 //
34

Reader Laura H. Chapman has read the CCSS, unlike many others who support or oppose them. She writes:

“Anyone who had READ the CCSS all the way to the footnotes, or looked at the website, and otherwise done due diligence before buying the spin would determine it is a fraud.

“Consider this: Between 2000 and 2002, Achieve conducted interviews with prospective employers and higher education officials in a few states to gather examples later cited as “evidence” to support various claims about college and career readiness.

“This work, undertaken, under the banner of American Diploma Project, is dated and limited in scope. For information about Achieve’s Research see http://www.achieve.org/Research.

“For the list of studies “consulted” in support of claims that the Standards are internationally benchmarked, see the CCSS for Mathematics (pp. 91-93). A high proportion of these studies are not peer reviewed publications, and some are not fully annotated. Comparable information on international benchmarking of the ELA Standards appears in Appendix A, p. 41.

“The benchmarking is entirely for show and to boost the “credibility” of we must do more to be globally competitive. However, during the roll-out of the CCSS, the World Economic Forum published The Global Competitiveness Report, its annual ranking of over 130 countries on 12 “pillars” in an economy. The pillars are: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education (pre-collegiate), higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation. In the 2010-11 report, Switzerland topped the overall ranking, followed by Sweden, Singapore, and the United States. The United States fell two places to fourth position due to the failure of financial institutions, not educational performance. See http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-competitiveness

“I constructed a spreadsheet to map the major and subordinate categories in the CCSS and to place the quantity of the standards to be met at each grade level, in math and ELA, and the Literacy standards (including parts a-e).

“The result was a total of 1,620 standards to be met, with absolutely no rationale for their distribution by grade level.

“One of the examples for a grade 9/10 ELA standard was a direct lift from a community college assignment.

“Geometry is the only math topic treated in every grade.

“There is no explanation for labeling and grouping all studies in the arts under ” technical subjects”

“The average number of standards to be met verbatim in just two subjects is 91 for grades K-2; 109 for grades 3-5; and 147 for grades 6-8. In theory, one lesson, unit, or course can treat multiple standards–but these standards were written with no regard for the rollout of new standards in the sciences, or the arts, or the disciplines grouped under social studies, or the incessant calls for more standards bearing on tech savvy and financial savvy, and so on.

“Drowning the nation’s students and teachers in a sea of standards is not a solution to anything. We do not need more standards. We do not need the CCSS sucking up the time and resources for a complete education with a balanced program of studies in the arts, sciences, and humanities, including at least one foreign language still the gold standard for curriculum excellence.”

Categories Common Core

An Illinois Superintendent Writes about What Matters Most

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2014 //
16

Superintendent Mark Cross joins the honor roll for his willingness to stand up and be counted on the side of students.

Cross sent a letter home to parents in which he criticized high-stakes testing and Common Core. He spoke critically of federal and state initiatives whose purpose is to rank students rather than educate them. Many educators are fearful of saying what Mark Cross said because they are supposed to be docile and keep their professional ethics to themselves. A test score is like stepping on a bathroom scale, he said. It tells you something but not everything you need to know about your wellness. So, he told parents, we won’t be talking much about PARCC or Common Core. We will continue to focus on helping them become well-rounded people, with time to develop their creativity.

Read his letter. He makes clear that he and his staff take their responsibility to the children and the local community very seriously, and they will continue to do so.

If every school board, principal, and superintendent were equally willing to speak their convictions, there would be a genuine conversation about education, rather than the current top-down authoritarianism that typifies relationships between the federal government and everyone else.

The original letter can be seen here.

August 20th 2014

Dear Parents,

Today is the first day of the 2014-15 school year and I wanted to take the opportunity to share some personal thoughts regarding the current state of education at the national, state and, most importantly, local levels. I am very fortunate to serve as the superintendent of this great district and we are all very proud of the incredible progress we have made in recent years, building on previous years of excellence. At the end of the day, our kids and their safety and educational growth are all that matters to us. We work hard to keep anything from distracting us from these priorities.

Unfortunately, there are many federal and state education initiatives that can very much be a distraction from what matters most These initiatives are based on good intentions and are cloaked in the concept of accountability, but unfortunately most do little to actually improve teaching and teaming. Most are designed to assess, measure, rank and otherwise place some largely meaningless number on a child or a school or a teacher or a district. That is not to say that student growth data is not important, It is very critical, and it is exactly why we have our own local assessment system in place. It is what our principals and teachers use to help guide instruction and meet the needs of your kids on a daily basis. In other words, it is meaningful data to help us teach your child.

But no more than a number from a bathroom scale can give you a full assessment of your personal wetness, a test score cannot fully assess a student’s academic growth. Does stepping on the scale tell you something? Of course. But does it tell you everything? Absolutely not.

As one specific example, Peru Elementary District 124 puts great value on the fine arts. We believe that music and art enhances cognitive growth, creativity and problem solving. In fact we know this, and this is exactly why your children have access to an outstanding fine arts program with five music and art teachers from PreK through 8th grade. The state does not assess music or art or science or social studies for that matter. Only language arts and mathematics are assessed with the state’s new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment.

This is why I wanted to let you know that we will not be talking to you that much about the PARCC assessment or Common Core or other initiatives that have some importance, but they are not what matters most to us. YOUR CHILDREN are what matter most and we believe that kids should be well-rounded, with an emphasis on a solid foundation for learning across all subjects by the time they get to high school and later college. We believe that kids need to be creative and learn to solve problems. We believe that exposure to music and art science and social studies, physical education and technology and a wide variety of curricular and extracurricular activities will serve them very well as they grow into young adults.

We further believe that there is no replacement for high expectations, and we must expect our students to achieve to the best of their individual ability. We believe that all children can learn, but not all at the same pace or in the same way. We believe that reading and literacy are the foundations of learning. We believe that children are each unique and have a wide variety of talents and skills, very few of which can be measured on a state assessment

The state and federal government have failed epically in their misguided attempts at ‘reforming’ public education. Public education does not need reformed. It may need intervention in school districts that are not meeting the needs of students on a grand scale, but it needs to be accountable to and controlled by our citizens at the local level. And in Peru Schools, this will continue to be very much the case.

So, I wanted to let you know that we will not let these other things serve as a distraction from educating your children in Peru Schools. When appropriate, we will use these opportunities as a chance to improve but we will not let political nonsense distract us from our true mission, which is to keep your kids safe and to provide them with a world class education. One of my favorite quotes is,

*Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least’

And the ‘things- which matter most here are your kids and their education. Nothing you read or hear about will distract us from that effort.

Thank you for your support of our children and our schools and as always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns at all as we start the new school year!

Sincerely,

Mark R. Cross Superintendent

Categories Arts Education, Common Core, Honor Roll, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Here is a Link to Tavis Smiley Show

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2014 //
37

In case you missed, here is my interview with Tavis Smiley from September 8. It is about 12 minutes. Tavis asked about the Vergara decision and teacher tenure, about the attacks on teachers and public education, about the goals of the current “reform” movement, Common Core, and my judgment of Race to the Top.

All in 12 minutes!

By the way, if you wonder why I was holding my head in last minutes of show, I should explain that I didn’t have a toothache. My earpiece with the audio feed was falling out, and I was holding it in my ear.

Categories Common Core, Race to the Top, Ravitch, Diane, Teach for America, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

If CCSS is not a Curriculum, Why Do All the Textbooks Look Alike?

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2014 //
48

A letter from a public school parent:

“Hi Diane —

I am an avid follower of you, Carol Burris, and other brilliant experts who have helped me understand the state of education today.

A lot has been written about CCSS, and we know that advocates love to say “It’s standards, not curricula” and “States are free to teach the standards their own way; it’s not prescriptive.”

What I don’t see addressed is the reality that, across the nation, CCSS curricula from every publisher is frighteningly similar. From viral post from the engineer dad who wrote the letter in his son’s homework to “tell Jack what he did wrong,” to the coffee cup conundrum Carol Burris outlined in WaPo, I find it eerie that these are nearly identical to the questions my kids are having to tackle in workbooks at their NYC public elementary school. I have also compared notes with my mom friends in Colorado, California, Idaho and Texas, and we are finding that questions are nearly exactly the same — in both ELA and math. And incidentally, we are all also struggling with badly written, error-filled material that clearly has not been proofed, fact-checked or reviewed/edited. Insult to injury!

I realize my observation is strictly anecdotal, but it nags at me. How can there be such marked similarity on a national scale? Were they all written by one shadowy non-profit funded by Gates and then licensed out to publishers? How can it be that they all are filled with so many errors? My children (going into 2nd and 4th grade at a public school in Brooklyn) use workbooks published by Curriculum Associates. That company doesn’t seem to have any connection to Pearson or any other big education publisher. So why is their curricula content the same as all the others? Clearly what’s happening on the ground doesn’t jibe with what CCSS advocates keep saying.”

 

Lorna

Categories Common Core

What Is the Real Cost of Federally-funded Common Core Tests?

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2014 //
13

This report from the Pew Charitable Trusts says that many states are reconsidering the costs of Common Core testing, and a small number have withdrawn from participation in the two federally-funded tests, PARCC or Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

“But as controversy over the Common Core has challenged some states’ commitment to the standards, a number of states have decided to withdraw from PARCC or Smarter Balanced or to use alternative tests, raising questions about the cost of the tests and the long-term viability of the multistate testing groups, which received $360 million in federal grants to develop the tests. The federal grants will end this fall, and it is unclear whether the testing groups will continue past that point.

“What gets tested is what gets taught,” said Joan Herman, co-director emeritus of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. “To the extent that the assessments well represent the spirit and meaning of the standards, the spirit and meaning of the standards will get taught. Where the assessments fall short, curriculum, instruction and teaching will likely fall short as well.”

Federal law prohibits any officer or agency of the federal government from attempting to influence or control curriculum or instruction in the nation’s public schools. It is axiomatic that “what gets tested is what gets taught,” so it is surprising that the U.S. Department of Education funded these two testing consortia; private foundations should have done it.

In the article, several “experts” are quoted about the minimal costs of switching to the new tests, but at least one of them points out that the low-ball estimates rarely include the costs of new technology and additional bandwidth.

At a time when many states are cutting education budgets and increasing class sizes, some states will find it challenging to increase their spending on assessment.

Unmentioned in the article is the issue of computer-scored testing. Students in theory will answer questions by explaining why they answered as they did. Computers will evaluate their “deeper thinking” as well as their essays. Les Perelman of MIT has demonstrated that robo-graders are unable to tell the difference between sense and nonsense so long as the sentences are structurally sound. Yet millions of students will be judged by computers that are unable to discern irony, wit, creativity, humor, or even fact.

Whose idea was it to put all testing online? Dumb idea. In my view, which doesn’t count as much as Arne Duncan’s or Bill Gates’, most tests should be written by teachers (they know what they taught) and graded by teachers (so they can discover immediately what students learned and did not learn).

Categories Common Core, Testing

Idaho Says SBAC Not Valid But Will Use It to Evaluate Teachers Anyway

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2014 //
12

Levi Cavener, a teacher of special education in Idaho, learned that Idaho will give the Common Core test SBAC) to tenth graders even though it includes eleventh grade content.

“However, I was shocked during this exchange when the Director told me that the decision was due to the fact the state was worried students wouldn’t take the test seriously, and they didn’t want their data set tainted…because, you know, then the results wouldn’t be valid.

“Here is the Director’s response to my question of the logic in giving 10th graders the SBAC instead of 11th graders:

[The director said “Grade 11 is optional this year as your juniors have already met graduation requirements with the old ISATs and might not take the new tests seriously if they were used for accountability.”
Well, that’s convenient. I’m glad the State Department can cherry-pick the students who take the SBAC “seriously” and which students will not; I’m sure they will give that same privilege to teachers…oh..err…I guess not.]

See, here’s why my jaw was left open: The Director of Assessment admitted, rightfully and logically, that if students won’t take the test seriously, then there is no point in assessing them because the data will be invalid. And, if that’s true, let’s not assess those kidos because it would be a total waste of time and resources, not to mention the fact that the data would be completely invalid.

Thus, it would be logical to conclude that if the data is not accurate, then the SDE surely wouldn’t want to tie those scores to something as significant as a teacher’s livelihood.

Oh wait…they want to do exactly that? Shucks!

According to the the Idaho State Department of Education’s recent Tiered Licensure recommendations, SBAC data will be tied directly to a teacher’s certification, employment, and compensation.

Yet, If the Dept. of Ed admits SBAC data isn’t accurate, then what in the world are they doing on insisting that the data be tied to a teacher’s certification, employment, and compensation?

The insistence of tying data that is admittedly invalid is synonymous to tying a fortune cookie to real-world events. I don’t know about you, but my lucky numbers haven’t hit the lottery; what a scam!”

The test is more than eight hours long.

Writes Levi, “Isn’t it logical to conclude that at some point that kidos decide they would rather go outside to recess rather than reading closely on a difficult text passage or spending more time editing a written response? When the kido makes that decision, do we hold the teacher responsible for the invalid data?”

And what about special education kids? “Let’s compound that scenario for special education teachers who work with a population of students qualifying for a special education eligibility under categories of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders, Emotional Disturbances, and Autism Spectrum diagnosis.

“Yup, I’m sure these students will always take the multi-day SBAC with the utmost earnestness; it’s not like the very behaviors they demonstrated to qualify for special education services to begin with would impede their ability to complete the SBAC with total validity of the results?”

Categories Common Core, Idaho, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

McKinsey: The Global Powerhouse Behind “Reform”

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2014 //
10

Which is the most powerful player behind the scenes in corporate reform?

This article says, without doubt, McKinsey.

Where did David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards, get his start: McKinsey.

Which firm pushes the narrative of a “crisis in education”: McKinsey.

Which firm believes that Big Data will solve all problems? McKinsey.

Look behind the screen, behind the curtain: McKinsey.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International
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