Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
My attention turned toward public schools once again this week when I read reports about Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s apologizing for using “clumsy phrasing” when he made comments about some critics of the Common Core Standards—which he has championed. (Note: Common Core—a set of educational standards developed for public school students in kindergarten through twelfth grade—has been adopted by most of our states.) Duncan was speaking to a group of superintendents recently and just couldn’t help himself—it appears—when he said the following:
“It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary. You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.”
A punch in the gut, you say? Here’s one right back at ya, Arne. Lots of people aren’t ecstatic about the “common core” effort to standardize curricula across this country and to institutionalize a “one-size-fits-all” cookie cutter approach to educating our children. It isn’t just “white suburban moms” who aren’t happy with the Common Core standards. There are myriad others who are also concerned about the them—including other parents who don’t belong to the cohort of “white suburban moms,” school administrators, teachers, other education experts, child development experts—as well as a number of liberals AND conservatives.
As DSWright (Firedoglake) wrote, Duncan exhibited “the kind of condescending attitude one expects from education privatizers. But when confronted with such an amazingly arrogant statement Secretary Duncan only apologized for the ‘clumsy’ phrasing, not the sentiment.”
In August, Mitoko Rich wrote an article for the New York Times about the Common Core standards, which have “been ardently supported by the Obama administration”—as well as by “many business leaders and state legislatures.” Rich said that there has been “growing opposition from both the right and the left” to the standards.
Philip Elliott (Associated Press) provided some of the reasons why people have been critical of the Common Core standards:
Some opponents of the standards say they are a one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t appropriate. Other critics say the standards put too much emphasis on high-stakes testing and punish teachers for students’ stumbles. Some oppose the standards because the Obama administration used them as a requirement for states to receive money from the economic stimulus bill.
Common Core Critics
Steven Elbow of The Capital Times wrote earlier this fall about the Tea Party’s organized attack on Common Core being well-funded, while the attack from the left had “been kicked to the sidelines.” Still, Elbow contends that “there’s a strong progressive push-back to the standards as well.” Mark Naison, a professor at Fordham University, told the Miami Herald why some liberals were critical of the new educational standards. Naison said they see Common Core as “a huge, profit-making enterprise that costs school districts a tremendous amount of money, and pushes out the things kids love about school, like art and music.”
Elbow reported that Naison is a co-founder of the Badass Teachers Association—an organization that was “formed to combat…a trend toward corporate-driven standardized testing.” Naison has said that creation of the association was “a reaction to high-stakes testing, backed by Democrats and Republicans alike, used to evaluate schools and teachers.”
According to Kathleen McGrory of the Herald/Times (Tallahassee Bureau), the Badass Teachers—or BATs—“are pushing back against the national standards with Twitter strikes, town hall meetings and snarky Internet memes. They have no qualms with the theory behind the new benchmarks, but they fear the larger movement places too much emphasis on testing and will stifle creativity in the classroom.”
Bonnie Cunard, a Fort Myers teacher who manages the Facebook page for the 1,200 Florida BATs, said, “It’s not just the Tea Party that’s skeptical of the Common Core. We on the left, like the folks on the right, are saying we want local control.”
McGrory wrote that the “BATs represent a new wave of liberal opposition to the Common Core standards, which includes some union leaders, progressive activists and Democratic lawmakers.” She said that they “are joining forces with Tea Party groups and libertarians, who want states like Florida to slow down efforts to adopt the new benchmarks and corresponding tests.”
Last December, I read a Huffington Post article titled Common Core Nonfiction Reading Standards Mark The End Of Literature, English Teachers Say. According to the article, there was growing concern among teachers and parents that literary classics would “go the way of the dinosaurs…” Evidently, there was good reason for their concern because the Common Core benchmarks “call for 12th grade reading to be 70 percent nonfiction, or ‘informational texts’ — gradually stepping up from the 50 percent nonfiction reading required of elementary school students.” “English-lovers and English teachers” were worried that excellent literary works such as The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye could be replaced “with Common Core-suggested “exemplars,” like the Environmental Protection Agency’s Recommended Levels of Insulation and the California Invasive Plant Council’s Invasive Plant Inventory.” I have also read criticism of the Common Core math standards, which don’t introduce algebra to students until ninth grade.
Recently, opponents of Common Core spoke out about their concerns regarding the new standards at the Statehouse in Ohio. Bill Evers, former US Assistant Secretary of Education for policy from 2007-09 and a member of California State Academic Standards Commission in the late 1990s and in 2010 as the Common Core was under consideration, “called the math standards ‘sloppy and inadequate.’ His biggest concern was that the Common Core does not start algebra until ninth grade, when most high-performing countries start it in eighth grade.”
Last February, education expert Diane Ravitch explained why she could not support the Common Core standards on her blog:
I have come to the conclusion that the Common Core standards effort is fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted upon the nation.
The Common Core standards have been adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia without any field test. They are being imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools. We are a nation of guinea pigs, almost all trying an unknown new program at the same time.
Maybe the standards will be great. Maybe they will be a disaster. Maybe they will improve achievement. Maybe they will widen the achievement gaps between haves and have-nots. Maybe they will cause the children who now struggle to give up altogether. Would the Federal Drug Administration approve the use of a drug with no trials, no concern for possible harm or unintended consequences?
President Obama and Secretary Duncan often say that the Common Core standards were developed by the states and voluntarily adopted by them. This is not true.
They were developed by an organization called Achieve and the National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states.
In fact, it was well understood by states that they would not be eligible for Race to the Top funding ($4.35 billion) unless they adopted the Common Core standards. Federal law prohibits the U.S. Department of Education from prescribing any curriculum, but in this case the Department figured out a clever way to evade the letter of the law. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia signed on, not because the Common Core standards were better than their own, but because they wanted a share of the federal cash. In some cases, the Common Core standards really were better than the state standards, but in Massachusetts, for example, the state standards were superior and well tested but were ditched anyway and replaced with the Common Core. The former Texas State Commissioner of Education, Robert Scott, has stated for the record that he was urged to adopt the Common Core standards before they were written.
In 2012, Anthony Cody interviewed scholar and author Alfie Kohn about Common Core for Education Week. Here is an excerpt from that interview titled Will the Common Core Benefit Children?:
Question 1. Where do you think the drive for Common Core standards is coming from?
Alfie Kohn: I don’t think we have to speculate; the answer is pretty clear: While some educational theorists have long favored national standards — and got nowhere with the idea in the ’90s — the current successful push has come principally from corporate executives, politicians, and testing companies. This time they managed to foster the illusion that because the federal government, per se, isn’t mandating it, they’re not really “national” but just “core” standards, even though all but four states have signed on. It’s rather like the effort to reframe vouchers as “choice.” They’ve also been very shrewd this time about co-opting the education organizations by soliciting their counsel. These groups are so desperate for a “seat at the table” of power that they’ve agreed to confine the discussion to the content of the standards rather than asking whether the whole idea makes sense for children.
If your question is read more broadly — not just “Who are the players?” but “What’s the ideological underpinning?” — then all you have to do is look at the rhetoric on the Core Standards website, read the defenses published elsewhere, listen to the speeches: This move toward even greater top-down control and uniformity is almost always justified in terms of “competing in the global economy.” It’s not about doing well, but about beating others. And it’s not about intellectual depth and passion for learning, but about dollars and cents.
Question 2: Supporters believe these new standards will move us away from the narrow focus on reading and math tests that has been the downfall of NCLB. What do you think?
Alfie Kohn: Clearly it will encompass more than reading and math, but the question is whether that leads to the narrowing of other disciplines as well, particularly since these new standards will be yoked to some sort of one-size-fits-all test. That’s been the dilemma of the whole corporate-styled, test-driven approach to “accountability” and school “reform” for some time now: If you teach English-language learners or kids with special needs, or if you’re concerned about social studies, science, or the arts, you’re tempted to say, “Test us, too, so we won’t be neglected!” But it’s like a dysfunctional family, where the main alternative to neglect is abuse. To impose overly specific, prescriptive standards — enforced with standardized tests — is to lower the quality of any field or the education of any population of students.
Question 3. What’s wrong with making our curriculum more rigorous?
Alfie Kohn: My dictionary defines “rigorous” as harsh, burdensome, rigid. How is that beneficial? In most educational contexts, the word is basically equated with difficulty: A more rigorous school, classroom, text, or test, is merely one that’s harder — that is, one in which more students will not succeed. As I’ve argued elsewhere, it’s not just that something can be too hard as surely as it can be too easy, although that’s surely true (and not always acknowledged). The more important point is that difficulty level shouldn’t be our primary basis for evaluating something. I’ve visited classrooms where the assignments weren’t particularly hard but were incredibly rich, engaging, and valuable. And I’ve been to classrooms that were rigorous-with-a-capital-R that I wouldn’t send my dog to.
Common Core and Early Childhood Education
John T. Spencer, a book author and sixth-grade ELL teacher in an urban, Title One School, listed what he believed were some of the pros and cons of the Common Core Reading standards. One con that jumped out at me was the following:
The adoption process bothers me. They were forced through politically as a bailout of the unrealistic No Child Left Behind. And, while the standards tend to be good, they relied more on “experts” and wealthy business people rather than asking for input from educators.
Edward Miller, a writer and teacher who lives in Wellfleet (MA), and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, professor emerita of early childhood education at Lesley University in Cambridge, wrote an article for the Washington Post earlier this year titled A tough critique of Common Core on early childhood education. They said that much of the criticism of the “process for creating the new K-12 standards involved too little research, public dialogue, or input from educators.” They continued, “Nowhere was this more startlingly true than in the case of the early childhood standards—those imposed on kindergarten through grade 3. We reviewed the makeup of the committees that wrote and reviewed the Common Core Standards. In all, there were 135 people on those panels. Not a single one of them was a K-3 classroom teacher or early childhood professional.” They added, “It appears that early childhood teachers and child development experts were excluded from the K-3 standards-writing process.”
That is indeed troubling. Why would early childhood teachers and child development experts not have a seat at the table when the education standards for young children were being written? Who knows what is most appropriate both educationally and developmentally for children in kindergarten through the third grade?
Stephanie Feeney—as well as many other early childhood educators and researchers—were “shocked” when the standards were first released in March 2010. Feeney of the University of Hawaii, who is chair of the Advocacy Committee of the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators, said, “The people who wrote these standards do not appear to have any background in child development or early childhood education.”
Marion Brady—a veteran teacher, administrator, curriculum designer and author—said the standards development process was “done with insufficient public dialogue or feedback from experienced educators, no research, no pilot or experimental programs — no evidence at all that a floor-length list created by unnamed people attempting to standardize what’s taught is a good idea.” Add to that another criticism from Miller and Carlsson-Paige that the Common Core standards “do not provide for ongoing research or review of the outcomes of their adoption—a bedrock principle of any truly research-based endeavor.”
Alliance for Childhood Statement
The following statement was issued by the Alliance for Childhood in March 2010:
WE HAVE GRAVE CONCERNS about the core standards for young children now being written by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The draft standards made public in January conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development, and early childhood education about how young children learn, what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades. We have no doubt that promoting language and mathematics is crucial to closing the achievement gap. As written, however, the proposed standards raise the following concerns:
• Such standards will lead to long hours of instruction in literacy and math. Young children learn best in active, hands-on ways and in the context of meaningful real-life experiences. New research shows that didactic instruction of discrete reading and math skills has already pushed play-based learning out of many kindergartens. But the current proposal goes well beyond most existing state standards in requiring, for example, that every kindergartner be able to write “all upper- and lowercase letters” and “read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.”
• They will lead to inappropriate standardized testing. Current state standards for young children have led to the heavy use of standardized tests in kindergarten and the lower grades, despite their unreliability for assessing children under age eight. The proposed core standards will intensify inappropriate testing in place of broader observational assessments that better serve young children’s needs.
• Didactic instruction and testing will crowd out other important areas of learning. Young children’s learning must go beyond literacy and math. They needto learn about families and communities, to take on challenges, and to develop social, emotional, problem-solving, self-regulation, and perspective-taking skills. Overuse ofdidactic instruction and testing cuts off children’s initiative, curiosity, and imagination, limiting their later engagement in school and the workplace, not to mention responsible citizenship. And it interferes with the growth of healthy bodies and essential sensory and motor skills—all best developed through playful and active hands-on learning.
• There is little evidence that such standards for young children lead to later success. While an introduction to books in early childhood is vital, research on the links between the intensive teaching of discrete reading skills in kindergarten and later success is inconclusive at best. Many of the countries with top-performing high-school students do not begin formal schooling until age six or seven. We must test these ideas more thoroughly before establishing nationwide policies and practices. We therefore call on the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to suspend their current drafting of standards for children in kindergarten through grade three. We further call for the creation of a consortium of early childhood researchers, developmental psychologists, pediatricians, cognitive scientists, master teachers, and school leaders to develop comprehensive guidelines for effective early care and teaching that recognize the right of every child to a healthy start in life and a developmentally appropriate education.
You can check out the names of the five hundred signatories to the above statement here.
*****
“Part of the problem is that the enterprise of raising standards in practice means little more than raising the scores on standardized tests, many of which are norm-referenced, multiple-choice, and otherwise flawed. The more schools commit themselves to improving performance on these tests, the more that meaningful opportunities to learn are sacrificed. Thus, high scores are often a sign of lowered standards–a paradox rarely appreciated by those who make, or report on, education policy.”
~ Alfie Kohn (Education Week—September 15, 1999)
SOURCES
White Suburban Moms Unite! A Letter to Arne Duncan (Huffington Post)
How Common Core is Slowly Changing My Child (Mrs. Mom Blog)
Arne Duncan: ‘White suburban moms’ upset that Common Core shows their kids aren’t ‘brilliant’ (Washington Post)
The biggest weakness of the Common Core Standards (Washington Post)
Arne Duncan reflects on ‘white suburban moms’ comment (MSNBC)
A white suburban mom fires back at Arne Duncan. ‘Common Core is a one size fits all approach.’ (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
A parent’s response to Arne Duncan (Daily Kos)
A Parent’s Letter to Arne Duncan (Diane Ravitch)
Arne Duncan Doubles Down On “White Suburban Moms” Comment, Promotes Economic Ignorance (FDL/Firedoglake)
Arne Duncan is clueless, if he thinks Rhode Island School Board made right decision (Daily Kos)
Arne Duncan is Just Plain Clueless. . . (The Tempered Radical)
Clueless in Seattle (Schools Matter)
Education Secretary Duncan’s Failure to Connect (Education Frontlines)
Arne Duncan Sics His Flying Monkeys on Diane Ravitch (NYC Educator)
Chicago Tribune says ‘Renaissance 2010’ has failed (Substance News)
What big drop in new standardized test scores really means (Washington Post)
A tough critique of Common Core on early childhood education (Washington Post)
Buying Support for the Common Core (Huffington Post)
Battle Lines Solidify Over Common Core (The Catholic World Report)
Ohio’s Common Core opponents vent their concerns with the new education standards (The Plain Dealer)
Debunking the Case for National Standards: One-Size-Fits-All Mandates and Their Dangers (Alfie Kohn/Education Week)
Confusing Harder With Better (Alfie Kohn/Education Week)
Alfie Kohn Interview: Will the Common Core Benefit Children? (Education Week)
What Arne Duncan Can Learn From Texas Moms (Huffington Post)
Common Core standards criticized (The Buffalo News)
School Standards’ Debut Is Rocky, and Critics Pounce (New York Times)
Common Core standards also under attack from the left (The Capital Times)
Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards (Diane Ravitch)
Is the Common Core an Attack on Progressive Education? (Huffington Post)
Children of the Core: American Students at Risk (The Innovative Educator)
Critics speak out about new Common Core standards (WKRN-TV)
Education chief says he regrets ‘white suburban moms’ comment about Common Core critics (StarTribune)
Common Core Nonfiction Reading Standards Mark The End Of Literature, English Teachers Say (Huffington Post)
A critical analysis of Common Core math standards (Washington Post)
Math professor: Common Core “will set our children back one to two years.” Governor in retreat. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
For Common Core, a new challenge — from the left (Miami Herald)
Eight problems with Common Core Standards (Washington Post)
Richard, if only Libertarians would distance themselves from Republicans and conservatives a bit more, they would get more traction with liberals, IMO. That conservatives and liberals can see eye to eye in opposition to Common Core, indicates that we could get far more accomplished if we worked in concert.
rafflaw,
As you said “follow the money”:
Following Common Core money: Where are millions of dollars going?
By Valerie Strauss
November 24, 2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/24/following-the-common-core-money-where-are-millions-of-dollars-going/
Excerpt:
In this post, award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York raises some new questions about the Common Core State Standards and curriculum being developed around them.
Burris has for more than a year chronicled on this blog the many problems with the test-driven reform in New York (here, and here and here and here, for example). She was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is the co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. It has been signed by more than 1,535 New York principals and more than 6,500 teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens. You can read the letter by clicking here. And she is a co-author of a new open letter to parents from superintendents concerned with Common Core testing, which you can read about here.
By Carol Burris
My music teacher, Doreen, brought me her second-grade daughter’s math homework. She was already fuming over Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s remark about why “white suburban moms” oppose the Common Core, and the homework added fuel to the fire. The problem that disturbed her the most was the following:
3. Sally did some counting. Look at her work. Explain why you think Sally counted this way.
177, 178,179,180, 190,200, 210, 211,212,213,214.
It was on a homework sheet from the New York State Common Core Mathematics Curriculum for Grade 2, which you can find here.
Doreen’s daughter had no idea how to answer this odd question. The only response that made sense to her was, “Because she wanted to.” My assistant principal and math specialist, Don Chung, found the question to be indefensible.
The teachers in her daughter’s school are also concerned. They are startled to find that the curriculum is often a script. Here is an excerpt to teach students to add using beads from the first-grade module.
T: How many tens do you see?
S:1
T: How many ones?
S: 6
T: Say the number the Say Ten way.
S: Ten 6
Scripts like this are commonplace throughout the curriculum.
Similar headaches exist at the secondary level as well. A relative, who is required to teach Common Core Algebra from the modules, shared her worries about the curriculum’s conceptual gaps, disjointed and illogical concept progressions, and insufficient time to complete lessons.
The Origins of the New York State Mathematics Curriculum
Teaching from modules is a new experience. Suburban teachers are used to working with a curriculum that they themselves develop based on state standards. However, because of the rushed Core rollout in New York, along with the dramatic shift in standards, many schools did not have the time nor funds to develop a thoughtful local curriculum, making the state curriculum modules their only real alternative.
Where did this unprecedented scripted curriculum come from?
The New York State mathematics curriculum was developed by an organization located in Washington D.C. known as Common Core, Inc. According to reporter Jessica Bakeman of Capital New York, Common Core Inc. was awarded three large contracts from the New York State Education Department: $3,323,732 for K-2 curriculum, $2,715,958 for grades 3-5, and $8,108,919 for grades 6-12.
That is a total of $14,148,609 — or more than $1 million per grade level project. Bakeman broke the story about the high costs of the New York State modules, which you can read here. To put this expenditure in perspective, my school district, Rockville Centre, generally pays less than $1,000 for a grade level curriculum project.
Principal: ‘I was naïve about Common Core’
Valerie Strauss
March 4, 2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/03/04/principal-i-was-naive-about-common-core/
Excerpt:
Here’s a powerful piece about how an award-winning principal went from being a Common Core supporter to an opponent. This was written by Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in New York. She was named the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is one of the co-authors of the principals’ letter against evaluating teachers by student test scores, which has been signed by 1,535 New York principals.
By Carol Burris
When I first read about the Common Core State Standards, I cheered. I believe that our schools should teach all students (except for those who have severe learning disabilities), the skills, habits and knowledge that they need to be successful in post secondary education. That doesn’t mean that every teenager must be prepared to enter Harvard, but it does mean that every young adult, with few exceptions, should at least be prepared to enter their local community college. That is how we give students a real choice.
I even co-authored a book, “Opening the Common Core,” on how to help schools meet that goal. It is a book about rich curriculum and equitable teaching practices, not about testing and sanctions. We wrote it because we thought that the Common Core would be a student-centered reform based on principles of equity.
I confess that I was naïve. I should have known in an age in which standardized tests direct teaching and learning, that the standards themselves would quickly become operationalized by tests. Testing, coupled with the evaluation of teachers by scores, is driving its implementation. The promise of the Common Core is dying and teaching and learning are being distorted. The well that should sustain the Core has been poisoned.
I hear about those distortions every day. Many of the teachers in my high school are also the parents of young children. They come into my office with horror stories regarding the incessant pre-testing, testing and test prep that is taking place in their own children’s classrooms. Last month, a colleague gave me a multiple-choice quiz taken by his seven-year old son during music. Here is a question:
“Kings and queens COMMISSIONED Mozart to write symphonies for celebrations and ceremonies. What does COMMISSION mean?”
1. to force someone to do work against his or her will
2. to divide a piece of music into different movements
3. to perform a long song accompanied by an orchestra
4. to pay someone to create artwork or a piece of music
Whether or not learning the word ‘commission’ is appropriate for second graders could be debated—I personally think it is a bit over the top. What is of deeper concern, however, is that during a time when 7 year olds should be listening to and making music, they are instead taking a vocabulary quiz.
I think that the reason for the quiz is evident to anyone who has been following the reform debate. The Common Core places an extraordinary emphasis on vocabulary development. Probably, the music teacher believes she must do her part in test prep. More than likely she is being evaluated in part by the English Language Arts test scores of the building. Teachers are engaged in practices like these because they are pressured and afraid, not because they think the assessments are educationally sound. Their principals are pressured and nervous about their own scores and the school’s scores. Guaranteed, every child in the class feels that pressure and trepidation as well.
An English teacher in my building came to me with a ‘reading test’ that her third grader took. Her daughter did poorly on the test. As both a mother and an English teacher she knew that the difficulty of the passage and the questions were way over grade level. Her daughter, who is an excellent reader, was crushed. She and I looked on the side of the copy of the quiz and found the word “Pearson.” The school, responding to pressure from New York State, had purchased test prep materials from the company that makes the exam for the state.
I am troubled that a company that has a multi-million dollar contract to create tests for the state should also be able to profit from producing test prep materials. I am even more deeply troubled that this wonderful little girl, whom I have known since she was born, is being subject to this distortion of what her primary education should be.
There are so many stories that I could tell–the story of my guidance counselor’s sixth-grade, learning disabled child who feels like a failure due to constant testing, a principal of an elementary school who is furious with having to use to use a book he deems inappropriate for third graders because his district bought the State Education Department approved common core curriculum, and the frustration of math teachers due to the ever-changing rules regarding the use of calculators on the tests. And all of this is mixed with the toxic fear that comes from knowing you will be evaluated by test results and that “your score” will be known to any of your parents who ask.
When state education officials chide, “Don’t drill for the test, it does not work”, teachers laugh. Of course test prep works. Every parent who has ever paid hundreds of dollars for SAT prep knows it works —but no parent is foolish enough to think that the average 56 point ‘coaching’ jump in an SAT score means that their child is more “college ready.”
Blouise,
The article you provided a link to was one of the sources that I used.
There was more that I could have added to this post–but it would have been too long. There’s a lot of money to be made by companies/publishers that produce textbooks, tests, and other educational materials that coordinate with Common Core standards–which have been adopted by most of the states.
Obviously gov’t can’t do anything right. Not even fighting a war. Obviously FREE, free enterprise works in a free society — from home schooling on the Internet to… health care. Gov’t coercion never works. Yes, I’m a Libertarian. And I wish you were too. Ron Paul got it right.
rafflaw:
it isnt part of the privatization of schools, it is a further centralization of power by the federal government.
Elaine:
Good article, my wife says common core is a power grab for centralized education. It also means more testing and less learning or so she says which I would guess is probably true.
Trying to pass a test to receive federal funding is probably putting a good deal of pressure on teachers.
It is really sad that the federal government is getting into education, liberals are going to regret this when the conservatives come back to power.
This is like the recent “nuclear option” in the senate. It will be fun to watch all of the fun when Roe vs. Wade is overturned by a majority and the abortion issue is sent to the states. At that point abortion will be legal in the North East, and the 3 states on the west coast and possibly Wisconsin and Illinois. And my future grand children will be learning about the co-existence of man and dinosaurs. I will laugh and think I am really glad I am a binary thinker who would have never tried to force my will [read multi-dimensional thinking] on education or senate rules.
Interesting discussion Elaine. I guess if we are waiting for Sen. Duncan to provide sound guidance, we have a long wait. While some of Common Core standards will be helpful, there is absolutely no excuse for not including teaching professionals at the table when the programs are being devised. Continuing to test, test and test again, without providing a broad educational experience that includes social studies and art and music will not get our students ahead. I think you hit the nail on the head when you suggested that the common core is part of the privatization of the schools. Follow the money and you will see that corporations are going to make more money under Common Core.
The thing that irritates me about this comment, is the contempt it reveals for those “suburban moms” and their motivations. Duncan seems to take for granted the sheer volume of unpaid volunteer labor and material donations they contribute, which are integral to the success of any well-run public school.
When my kids were in school, I worked directly with students as a classroom aide; filled in for their school’s librarian to provide “story time” after her hours were cut; edited and produced the school newsletter; created/maintained the school web site (on my own nickel); led several classroom art projects (also using my own money); served on the district technology committee; helped organize and staff “book fairs” and served as treasurer for the parent-teacher organization.
I even played “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and did a star turn as “Ms. Frizzle” for a school “Magic School Bus” field trip, lol.
And I was hardly alone – I worked alongside a large, dedicated core group of parents; not to mention a number of others who could be relied on to contribute to specific initiatives.
Point being, many of those “suburban moms” he’s sneering at have quite a bit of “sweat equity” invested in their kids’ schools – waaaaay too much to be told that they’re not entitled to have opinions about how those schools operate.
White privilege defending a failed school system that works OK for white middle class kids and teachers. The shamelessness and hypocrisy of white people, allegedly progressive, saying to hell w/ black students and parents is a disgrace. Why don’t you make fun of Duncan’s lisp like the head of the Chicago teacher’s union did? The only thing Obama has gotten right and it’s ripped by the establishment education industry. This is a losing fight and Hillary won’t save you. The war is over, you lost..BADLY, but not as badly as poor kids and families.
Elaine,
Here’s what’s happening in Ohio regarding Common Core:
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/11/ohios_common_core_opponents_ve.html
People from the right and the left and those who consider themselves politically neutral have joined forces in opposition to Common Core.
As to Education Secy. Duncan’s “clumsy phrasing” … many of the educators who oppose this Federal program jokingly respond with the question, “Do you really want your children to turn out as dumb as the Secy.?” And then they replay his remarks. Soccer moms, baseball moms, football moms, basketball moms, track moms, golf moms, volleyball moms, tennis moms, hockey moms, swimming moms, band moms, orchestra moms, choir moms, drama moms, chess club moms, Key club moms, math club moms, science club moms, fine arts symposium moms, Great Books club moms, cooking club moms, and moms of none of the above get really, really pissed off.
Last month I attended a meeting regarding the Bill the above link references (after all, I belong to the Grandmother club moms) and the woman sitting next to me, who I did not know, leaned over and whispered to me, “Arne Duncan is to the Department of Education what Larry Summers was to Harvard … a no-confidence vote!” I had trouble restraining a loud guffaw.
Google Common Core help and see how many sites come up selling flash cards and study guides.
Elaine,
Thank you for the extreme amount of resourcefulness you used to write this. You have certainly done your homework, and found some of the loudest voices on this issue and their reasons for not liking CCSS.
As a practicing educator, I have a first hand child level view of this situation. Here are my reflections organized to some degree around the concerns.
1) I understand the reasoning behind the business concerns. There are two lead companies who will have a duopoly for the online testing services that will be required of each student. I am not a fan of monolopies, and so I do believe this needs to evolve. ETS, as you may know, has a virtual monopoly on the college entrance exam.
2) The classic literature will no longer be read. It may be a shock to many, but the classics are not presently being taught to the degree that most people believe them to be.
3) The technical reading and writing emphasis at 70% by 11th grade may be a bit out of balance. However, it is more in balance than was not been taught and not been taught in the last 20 years.
4) CCSS requires Socratic teaching methodology, not didactic. There is a heavy emphasis on evidenced based writing, as the foundation for technical writing. The goal is not for children to learn to write manuals on how to program your Tivo, it is on students learning the craft of explaining the reasons they support a particular hypothesis or belief. An illustration would be that when they study Hamlet, they would be challenged deeper by the teacher to explain why Hamlet is justified or not in his extreme anger, or what evidence do they have that he has crossed the boundary of sane to insane. It’s next step thinking. Very much like a 1st year law course in Torts. In fact, I have thought about partnering with our local law school to demonstrate for our classroom teachers the Socratic method as part of our professional development.
5) CCSS did not create high stakes testing. It has been in existence for a while. “Standardized testing” should not be used as a pejorative term. Our children should be able to demonstrate proficiency in subject matter regardless of standardized, criterion, or observational assessments. Standardized testing is important, it’s just not the most important. None of them are. They must be balanced if we want to serve our children better, and improve our competitiveness in the global economy through our educational system. My perspective is that CCSS testing is making high stakes testing more equitable for reasons I will explain in the next paragraph.
6) Benjamin Bloom developed his famous taxonomy of learning activities and skill development which has been continuously overlooked by educational leaders nationally, in different states and locally for more than 3 decades. There was a brief glimmer of home in the mid-90s in California when the CLAS test was released, but once again it was shouted down because people didn’t understand it and were unwilling to work with it because of “process” problems in it’s roll out. (Curious about education, there is a never-ending call for “better” education systems but in large number people will reject anything that does not look like their dad’s Oldsmobile. Well, if we want better, it will require different.) Back to Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy. Here is the Taxonomy:
Evaluation
Synthesis
Analysis
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
Picture if you will an inverted triangle with Evaluation at the widest part at the top, and Knowledge at the apex, smallest portion, at the bottom. This indicates the relative amount of time that should be spent instructionally on learning activities described by the different taxonomy levels. The previous standardized test in California, the CST, and the SAT college entrance exam measure the two lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in greatest proportion. Very little, if any, Evaluation and Synthesis is measured by these exams, and I would guess most state exams in our country. Well, the iPhone and the Golden Gate Bridge were created at higher Bloom levels, not lower Bloom levels. So, since we will achieve what we measure, what do we want to achieve.
CCSS teaches and measures Analysis to Knowledge. This is much improved. As we train teachers and give them support and instructional freedom, they can take it to Evaluation and Synthesis which is when education gets very exciting (or at least from my perspective).
As far as equity, we know that “educationally disadvantage youth” and English Learners who are functioning below grade level can still think and problem solve. Their delayed discrete skills such as decoding and computing are not indications that they can’t think and problem-solve. However, because only lower Bloom’s tests have been employed to explain whether schools are doing their jobs or not, students have been removed from thinking activities and drilled on functional skills so that they will not perform poorly on a single test which will characterize their entire year.
Now with a test that will allow them to think as well as recite, they have a chance to show what they know. Teachers will need to balance learning activities which improve their functional skills and learning activities which pose problems and require solutions which can be understood and expressed in ways that do not require reading and fast math facts. Not only does this give the underperforming students a chance at performing, it may also be the success experience in school that they have been missing and need to justify their attendance each day. Additionally, in our poor neighborhood, we have plenty of people living in generational poverty that can read our school handbook and do basic math. Unfortunately for them, they have not had mentors in their lives in large numbers who have coached them in evidence-based problem solving. My belief is that the more our families practice evidence-based thinking the greater the likelihood that they can find solutions to some of the personal challenges they face each day.
7) I recognize the lack of perfection in this system. We need to make sure that testing services are not monopolies and must serve children first. We must maintain a balance of fictional literature and evidence-based writing responses about them. If Algebra needs to be moved, then we may need to move it. But, honestly, those are small but important discussions relative to the scale of creating standards that are good for children across the country. It is quite a feat, and we can edit as we go. Nothing will begin with perfection. BTW, the “one size fits all,” when there were no uniform standards that public was up in arms. Since the 80s we have had uniform standards. Of course we should test children according to a standard. Without a bull’s eye, what are we aiming out. The difference is do we score the progress of a child, or do we score the failure level of the school. I submit, the former changes inSpires and motivates students and teachers. CCSS can do that for us.
Those who criticize the Common Core standards as “cookie cutter” don’t know what the heck they’re talking about. The Common Core is a set of educational GOALS, nothing more. It doesn’t dictate teaching methods, classroom activities, or anything else. The outcomes can be achieved in myriad ways, hardly a “cookie cutter” approach. It’s time someone had some aspirations for the education of our children.
Listen up, Arne Duncan: Racial defense of Common Core won’t derail coalition to fight corporate school reform which hurts kids
“Education Spring” is on — and the uprising against testing, cuts and for-profit schools is on the rise
By Jeff Bryant
11/19/13
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/19/child_abuse_parents_fighting_to_take_back_schools/
Excerpt:
“There’s something happening here,” the old song goes, “what it is ain’t exactly clear.”
The “something” in this case is the full-throated outcry coming from every corner of the nation about policies governing the nation’s public schools.
And while it may not be “exactly clear” what the protests are calling for, the causes are all too obvious.
In the summer of 2012 public school teachers in Chicago made headlines when they went on strike demanding improved conditions for children attending their public schools. Then in 2013, students and parents poured into the streets of Philadelphia to object to worsening school conditions, which got the attention of at least one television news outlet.
Most of America ignored the unrest because it was coming primarily from communities of black and brown families living in inner-city neighborhoods. But now the protests have spread to white suburban communities of the more well-to-do.
Boisterous rallies in school auditoriums and civic halls in places like Long Island, N.Y., and Denver prompted U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to remark last week that he found it “fascinating” that even “white suburban moms” are now speaking out against his policies.
While protests coming from black and brown moms from the inner city may have left the secretary bored, Duncan now needs to make the leap from fascination to actually listening to what people are saying. The protests – a continuation of an “Education Spring” that has broken out across the country – are only going to get louder and stronger.
Why Arne Duncan Is Wrong About This White Suburban Mom’s Objections to Common Core
by
Cameron Blazer
11/21/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cameron-blazer/why-arne-duncan-is-wrong_b_4298303.html
Excerpt:
This week, I learned — thanks to U.S. Education Secretary, Arne Duncan — that my unease about the virtually nationwide adoption of Common Core Standards for education is not about the facts. No, Secretary Duncan helpfully mansplained, “suburban white moms” like me oppose the Common Core because the tests designed to evaluate them show that our kids aren’t actually “brilliant” after all.
So helpful!
Here I was thinking that I am skeptical of the claims made by Common Core supporters because I actually want more out of my child’s public education — more art, more music, more foreign language, more physical wellness — not less.
Here I was thinking that my wariness of the Common Core arises out of a concern that many of its corporate proponents are lining up to market costly standardized tests of core skills like abstract thinking, reasoning, and written expression — tests that will be administered and scored by for-profit companies at a far remove from the classrooms where instant feedback about students’ progress is what is needed.
Here I was thinking that my objections to the Common Core standards in English and Language Arts are rooted in my actually having read them and having real concerns about just how “common” or “core” some of the favored skills are.
Here I was thinking that it was my rational application of the thinking and reasoning skills I obtained a generation ago as a public school student that led me to question the merits of adopting an untested set of standards drafted by a small handful of people — many of whom are not professional educators, some of whom stand to gain economically from the adoption of the standards, and none of whom represented the wisdom or interests of parents — to evaluate abilities of my child and his peers.
Here I was thinking that my objection to the Common Core standards is rooted in a fundamental belief that education has more to offer my child and his peers than mere readiness for career and college — that public education can and should be more than a workforce development pipeline.
Here I was thinking that no set of standards — no matter how well-designed or well-intentioned — can overcome the troubling landscape of urban and rural poverty that is the through line for America’s most at-risk schools and students.
So I am grateful that Secretary Duncan has simplified my concerns so effectively. Instead of all of the above worries, I can relax knowing that my objections are merely the class-and-gender-and-race-based worries of a carpool-addled know-nothing!
We don’t need no standards. We just need to compete with China and India in the important things like football.
In L.A. unified instead of improving schools and education they bussed students out of the inner city. You can learn a lot riding on a bus.
“Where do you think the push … is coming from?”
When a government pays for it (whatever it is) they want power and control.
Reblogged this on Brittius.com.