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.
Chiara, a frequent commenter, sent the following summary of the Common Core fight in Ohio:
“Meanwhile, the Common Core fight in Ohio continues. It’s the Tea party lawmakers versus the Republican lawmakers.
“I have no idea why either group cares at all what is taught in Ohio public schools, because of both parties had their wish, there wouldn’t be any public schools at all.
“I’m flattered by all this sudden concern, but since the second this political battle is over they’ll be returning to either bashing public schools or selling them, I don’t care which side “wins”. I’m rooting for injuries.”
Whoever thought it was a good idea to turn education into a political issue should hang his or her head in shame.
In the midst of a heated gubernatorial race, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, heretofore an admirer of testing and the Common Core and more testing, has written a letter to the U.S. Department of Education saying that students are tested too much, especially in the 11th grade.
“Gov. Dannel P. Malloy appealed to the U.S. Department of Education on Friday to consider whether juniors in Connecticut really need to take a statewide standardized test in the same year that they have SATs, ACTs, AP exams and finals.
“Federal law requires states to test students from grades 3-8 and again in 10th grade. But the new high school test for the Common Core standards is given to 11th graders, with the thinking it yields better data on student learning. This was the first year the test was given to juniors, causing an uproar from some parents.
“I am eager to explore solutions for the students who may be our most overtested: our 11th graders,” Malloy said in the letter to the U.S. Education Department.”
You can’t blame New York parents for feeling baffled and angry at state education officials.
From 2006-2010, the state told them that their children were making incredible gains on the state tests.
Many people thought that the gains were so high that it couldn’t be true.
So state education officials brought in Professor Daniel Koretz of Harvard and Professor Jennifer Jennings of New York University to review the tests and the scores. They reported that the tests had become too predictable, that too few standards were tested, and that the results were inflated. So in 2010, scores dropped across the state as the scores were adjusted.
Then came the switch to Common Core, and the scores across the state collapsed in 2013. Two-thirds of all students “failed” to reach what the state called proficiency. Parents were furious, especially in districts where the graduation rate was well over 90%, and most students were accepted at good colleges. How did their children go from success to failure in such a short time? How could their children be both college-bound yet not, in the state’s telling, “college ready.”
Well, the main reason scores collapsed was that the state education department insisted on aligning New York’s “proficiency” mark with that of the federal NAEP. This was a huge error. NAEP proficiency is a mark of “solid academic achievement.” It is not a grade-level mark; it is not a passing mark. Typically, only 35-40% of students in every state reach NAEP proficient. In my seven years on the governing board of NAEP, I considered it to be akin to an A or a B+. The only state where as many as 50% of students achieve NAEP proficient is Massachusetts.
So if the Common Core tests are not only harder but have a grading scale that is sure to “fail” more than 50% of all students—including 80% of black and Hispanic students, 97% of English learners, and 95% of students with disabilities–what will the state do with all those kids who are not college and career ready?
Want to know more about how the New York State Education Department has fiddled with the test scores? As activist Leonie Haimson says, “do not trust data from the New York State Education Department.”
Blogger Perdido Street calls for an investigation.
Blogger Lace to the Top expresses frustration at the fluctuation in scores.
Many parents are angry at the state and angry at Pearson for concealing 50% of the questions and for the poor quality of many of the questions that were released.
What a mess!
In response to a post about the Common Core, contemplating whether the ship had already sailed, our resident poet “SomeDAM Poet (Devalue Added Model) wrote these lines:
from the old folk song
Oh, they built the Common Core, to sail the ocean blue.
For they thought it was a standard that Gates could ram right through.
It was on its maiden trip, that a teacherberg hit the ship.
It was sad when the Common Core went down.
Chorus
It was sad, so sad.
It was sad, so sad.
It was sad when the Common Core went down (to the bottom of the….)
Duncans and Rhees, Pearson Testing lost their fees.
It was sad when the Common Core went down.
Oh Obama smiled and winked
As the ship began to sink
And he said “The scores are surely going to stink”
So he S.O.S.ed Bill Gates
And he sealed both of their fates
It was sad when the Common Core went down
Repeat chorus
They were not far from the shore, ’bout a thousand miles or more,
When the states refused to teach the Common Core
So they canceled all their waivers, and burned up all their “savers”
It was sad when the Common Core went down.
Repeat chorus
Oh, the teachers saved the weak, as the ship began to leak.
And a band of VAMmers played their mathy hymns
With, “Nearer my God to Rhee”, they were swept into the sea.
It was sad when the Common Core went down.
Some say the ship has already sailed. Some say the train has left the station. But others say they never knew the train was in the station, and they wonder why they are passengers on a train they never booked tickets for, and how it could leave the station when no one knew it had arrived except the drivers.
Still others say that the ship is in trouble. When it sailed, the skies were clear. But uh-oh. Is the crew rebelling? Are the passengers? What about those rough seas?
Tom Scarice, the superintendent of the Madison, Connecticut, public schools, writes that the campaign for the Common Core has been waged with fear tactics, mainly the fear that other nations have higher scores and will therefore “beat” us. But, he points out, citing the work of Yong Zhao, there is no connection between test scores and economic growth.
He concludes:
“Reducing the debate of the common core to a matter of implementation is intellectually weak. A number of other matters remain unresolved. The standards were never field tested with actual students. They have been largely influenced through massive donations via powerful philanthropic organizations such as the Gates Foundation, creating a chilling question about the consequential influence of one billionaire on our education system. Questions about whether or not the standards are appropriate for our youngest and most fragile learners have been raised by over 500 nationally recognized early childhood experts, and special education organizations. Categorically, no evidence exists to support the stance that the common core will raise the achievement of our most impoverished students, which is the most pressing challenge facing Connecticut. Education is much too complex to reduce our work to another futile silver bullet.
“Connecticut has had academic standards for decades. Academic standards, developed by education professionals, are largely embraced by educators. They serve to set clear expectations for the accountability of learning and form the basis of curriculum. However, the rigidity of the common core, mandating that each and every student achieve the same learning progressions, regardless of learning style, and individual learning profile, at the exact same rate, contribute to the epidemic of standardization and homogenization that has afflicted our schools for the past decade. This is particularly concerning when the global marketplace and the demands of citizenship in this era clearly necessitate an individual’s diversity of thought and skills.
“All that said, even within the broken testing and evaluation systems suffocating our schools, there are many individual standards within the common core that are worthy of academic pursuit. Districts would be best served to approach the common core with thoughtful analysis of the potential efficacy and appropriateness of each individual standard as they integrate them into curriculum. Plausible rejection of individual standards by local professional educators must be shared transparently with Boards of Education and the local community, backed up with appropriate justification. As always, healthy skepticism and deep analysis serve systems well. Every state and every district has multiple indicators of student success. What would local accountability look like beyond one tightly coupled measure to the common core? Is student success defined by performance on the SBAC, and if not, will local districts have the fortitude to move beyond the narrow, inadequate comparisons that are provided by standardized assessments?There is more to the story of student success beyond the implementation of the common core.”
Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute has written a smart article about the selling of Common Core. Its advocates use similar talking points, he says, but the most frequently heard lack evidence. You will hear these five points not only from corporate executives and Chamber of Commerce types, but from all CCSS supporters.
Hess lists five of what he calls half-truths or exaggerations.
1. He says it is an overstatement to say that the Common Core is “internationally benchmarked.”
2. The standards are not truly “evidence-based.”
3. No one really knows if the CCSS will make students “college and career ready.”
4. Are the standards “rigorous”? Hess writes: ” More often than not, the case for the Common Core’s superiority rests on the subjective judgment of four evaluators hired by the avidly pro–Common Core Thomas B. Fordham Institute. These four hired evaluators opined in 2010 that the Core standards were better than about three-quarters of existing state standards. Not an unreasonable judgment, but hardly compelling proof of rigor.”
5. We need national standards because leading nations have them. Hess notes that low-performing nations also have them.
I confess that I enjoy it when someone as smart as Rick Hess shows his independence from the Beltway consensus. A sentient person thinking for himself.
Jeff Bryant notices an interesting new phenomenon: Corporate reformers have dropped their triumphalist tone, and now they want to have a “conversation.” But the curious aspect to their concept is that the conversation they want begins with their assumptions about the value of charters, vouchers, collective bargaining, and tenure. As he shows, their “conversation” doesn’t involve actual classroom teachers or parent activists working to improve their public school. It typically means a “bipartisan” agreement between people who work in DC think tanks or veterans of the Bush and Obama administrations or grantees of the billionaire foundations promoting privatization.
In short, the “new” conversation isn’t new at all. It is a shiny new echo chamber where the voices of working teachers (not counting TFA and AstroTurf groups like Educators4Excellence and TeachPlus and others created and funded by Gates, Broad, and Walton) will not be heard.
A real conversation includes the voices of those who know the most about schools and teaching and learning: real working classroom teachers, as well as those who know the most about children, their parents. If the reformers listened to these voices, they would quickly learn that those who are most closely involved in education are not part of the Beltway consensus.
A district court judge in Baton Rouge ordered State Superintendent John White to release information about setting cut scores.
Veteran educator Mike Deshotels posted this on his blog:
“Breaking News: On Thursday, August 28, Judge Bob Downing of the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge ordered State Superintendent John White and the LDOE to produce detailed information about the setting of cut scores for the Mastery level student ratings for the 2014 Spring LEAP test that was designed to be more aligned with the Common Core standards. The LDOE had already released the minimum percentages of correct answers used for the setting of Basic level ratings just before the lawsuit demanding this information was filed. John White was found to be in violation of the public records law for refusing to release the score setting percentages on the 2014 LEAP test and for failing to produce the written communications with the testing company relating to the setting of cut scores. The LDOE was also required to pay all court costs and attorney’s fees necessary to the prosecution of my public records lawsuit filed to extract this vital information from White, the LDOE, and the testing company. This post on The Louisiana Educator Blog had already analyzed the drastic lowering of the minimum percentage of correct answers on some areas of LEAP apparently designed to imply that Louisiana students were doing just fine on the new CCSS aligned tests. Apparently manipulation of test scores to produce predetermined results has now become standard operating procedure in the implementation of Common Core. The video referred to above shows how scores were set in New York to create the perception of failure of the entire New York state system.”
It is striking and sad that judges are now deciding basic education issues or that people have to appeal to judges to get basic information that ought to be available to the public.
Diane Ravitch's blog 