Common Core Failure In New York

Remember: a law, rule, and/or regulation is only valid if it is implemented correctly. Theory must translate into practice.

Betsy Combier

Rotten To The Core

Common Core Is Crashing and Burning in New York – Check This Out!

October 17, 2013

By Sara Noble, The Independent Sentinel

LINK

Kara Kallinsee greatly contributed to this article
The failure of the Common Core testing and program implementation has been a colossal failure in New York, one of the first states to take the money provided by corporations and the Stimulus, Race to the Top funds.
Once New York took the money to implement a program sight-unseen, they set themselves up for an ill-conceived educational bureaucratic morass that ignored educational research and forgot to include teachers, but did remember to include corporate influence. It’s a conservative-liberal mess which has garnered bipartisan contempt.
The idea of common standards is a great idea really. Everything else about it has been a disaster from the age-inappropriate goals to foolish trainers promoting nonsensical materials to the enormous corporate invasion into privacy rights of families and children.
Commissioner John King Jr. was ill-prepared for the position he was given and is bringing down the respected New York State Education Department with him. It won’t make Governor Cuomo look good if it is allowed to continue.
New Yorkers upstate and on Long Island are fighting back. New York City appears to be in their usual stupor. They live on the same planet as those in Planet Washington who can’t lead.
A must-read article from the Washington Post by renowned educator, Carol Burris:

Thomas Sergiovanni was a renowned international scholar of educational leadership.  In his book, Moral Leadership, he explains the differences between subordinates and followers.  Sergiovanni argued that educational leaders need followers because followers are not led by coercion, but rather by commitment to beliefs, values and ideals.  In a 1990 article for Educational Leadership he wrote:

When followership is established, bureaucratic authority and psychological authority are transcended by moral authority.

The New York State Education Department has lost its moral authority, as defined by Sergiovanni.  That loss was clearly on display at a recent New York State PTA-sponsored hearing on the Common Core in Poughkeepsie, New York.  By the last half hour of the evening, the audience was both boisterous and impassioned, angered because there was limited opportunity to speak. What little time remained for the audience was twice interrupted by Commissioner John King, who had held the floor for an hour and a half.

The miffed King then reacted by cancelling upcoming scheduled forums.  In response to an inquiry about the cancellation by Long Island’s Newsday, King responded:

I was looking forward to engaging in a dialogue with parents across the state.  I was eagerly anticipating answering questions from parents about the Common Core and other reforms we’re moving ahead with in New York State.  Unfortunately, the forums sponsored by the New York State PTA have been co-opted by special interests whose stated goal is to “dominate” the questions and manipulate the forum.”[1]

The people in the audience at the Poughkeepsie forum were teachers and parents.  The common “special interests” of both groups are children.

What occurred in Poughkeepsie is not surprising to those who have followed the course of reform in New York led by John King.  John King was a teacher for only three years—teaching in Puerto Rico, in a private school and in a charter school in Boston.  After his short career as a teacher, he became the co-director of Roxbury Prep, a charter school with fewer than 200 students during his tenure. Five years later, he became the managing director of Uncommon Charter Schools.

In 2000, John King entered the Inquiry Doctoral Program at Columbia University’s Teachers College.  Each Inquiry cohort was small and intimate—about 25 students.  I know the program well—I was a member of the 1999 cohort.  A fellow member of John King’s cohort was the wife of billionaire Jim Tisch, Merryl Tisch, who was appointed to the New York State Board of Regents four years earlier.  King and Tisch took classes together for two years. In April of 2009, Merryl became the Regents’ chancellor.  In September 2009, John King was appointed deputy commissioner of  education. Two years later, John King was appointed commissioner following the abrupt resignation of David Steiner.  It was the meteoric rise of a man who became commissioner at 36 years of age.

King has surrounded himself with bright young people, most of whom like King, have limited or no experience in public education. They are called the Regents Fellows. Their positions are funded by donations, including a million-dollar gift from Chancellor Tisch herself, and nearly a million dollars from Bill Gates.  At a recent gathering of Long Island school leaders, Tisch was asked about the Fellows. She chided the audience, telling them that they should be grateful for the private donations.  The skeptical audience, however, well understood that there is nothing like a million dollar donation to ensure that ‘my will be done.’

‘My will be done’ has been the tone and the tenor of chaotic reform in New York.  In its rush to implement teacher evaluations, the Common Core and new testing, the state leadership has likened it to building a plane in the air.  Cut scores anchored to ridiculously high performance on the SAT caused proficiency scores to plummet.  Students, often in tears, rushed to finish tests that were too difficult and too long. The Common Core Algebra modules are still not finished, even though teachers must teach the course to students now. Rushed APPR plans reviewed by law school students and supervised by a young, former Teach For America grad now Fellow, led to disastrous results such as those of Syracuse, where 40% of the teachers were rated below effective and no elementary or middle school teacher was found to be highly effective.

Syracuse is not alone—other districts have simply chosen to hide their disasters.  The very APPR rating bands themselves produce illogical results, leaving one to wonder if the department can add three, two-digit numbers. The confusion continues. Just a few days ago, the department’s website directed those who wanted information about the parent portal to a telephone number of a sex chat line. From APPR, to the Common Core, to 3-8 testing, the plane being built in the air is falling apart.

As a result, there is no followership—no commitment among parents, teachers and principals to the values and ideals of reform.  The interest in the Common Core has turned to tepid support at best. What remains is compliance.  Even that compliance, however, is waning, as evidenced by the Poughkeepsie hearings, the Buffalo forum on testing that drew 2500, and the Opt Out movement that is growing exponentially around the state.  The moral leadership that is needed to navigate through the seas of sweeping change is not there. The source of authority is at best, bureaucratic.

In the authoritarian world of the Uncommon Charter Schools as described so well by scholar Pedro Noguera here, the rule is “thy will be done.”  In the real and messy world of democracy it is different.  Leaders must listen deeply, learn and respond.  They must be willing to consider alternative courses, and even in loud crowds, hear truth. In teaching, we attempt to perfect the skill known as “monitor and adjust.”  You can only master that skill by truly engaging learners.

In many ways, it is a sad tale.  One might imagine that if John King had first been a principal of a New York City public school, or the superintendent of a district, he would have become skilled in dealing with emotional and boisterous groups.  In doing small-scale reforms in a district, he could have practiced effective pacing. John King would know, as Sergiovanni taught, that the heart of good leadership is the development of followership.  Without followership, no reform has a chance.

Satirical photo of the King John King

Are you aware that your child’s records can be shared with private concerns? The law was changed to allow it. Do you know that these private corporations can make money from it and can get hold of your child’s records? This is an unprecedented level of invasion into your child’s privacy. This corporate alliance includes some very strange bedfellows from ultra-conservative Rupert Murdoch to uber-liberal Bill Gates.
Read about it at the American Thinker:

There seems to be little recognition yet that Common Core gives schools and third parties unprecedented access to students’ personal information.  The federal government is acquiring a massive amount of data that can be sold to the highest bidders. This is an invasion of student and family privacy and a violation of our 4th Amendment rights.

[...]

The education technology buzzards are circling overhead and, having smelled the strong scent of money, are salivating at the thought of making billions from this new goldmine.  Reuters reported that in 2012 technology startups for the K-12 market attracted more than $425 million in venture capital.  Rupert Murdoch, owner of Amplify Education, one of the country’s largest education technology companies, estimates that K-12 education is a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone.

[...]

In 2011the U.S. Department of Education reinterpreted the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to permit a student’s academic record to be shared with virtually anyone including non-governmental organizations without prior written parental consent!

Education technology companies can use the information to develop software for students, teachers, and administrators.

[...]

Under Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Secretary of Education, there is an unprecedented level of opportunity for private influence on education.  Thus public-private partnerships are flourishing…Read the entire article at American Thinker. It’s a great article.

Two New York legislators are fighting Common Core for the parents and teachers of Long Island. Assemblyman Bill Graf has introduced Bill AO and State Senator Lee Zeldin is preparing another bill. Keep up-to-date at Fix NY Schools.
Some school districts and parents are fighting back.
King got a beat down at a Town Hall meeting in Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County on 10/10/13! King says ‘special interests’ hijacked the Poughkeepsie forum on the Common Core.
New York Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. has canceled Long Island’s only town hall meeting on state testing and the new Common Core curriculum because the forum in Poughkeepsie went so badly. In fact, he canceled all of them. He is brave when it comes to dictating to parents and teachers. Listen to it on this link or watch it below. It is worth the time and gets better as it goes along. The parents say it all so much better than we can here at the Sentinel. They have it exactly right!
Amazingly, the parents weren’t arrested as one was in Maryland recently.
The moral of this story is DON’T MESS WITH THE MAMA BEARS! You know Commissioner King, the ‘SPECIAL INTERESTS.’
The Superintendent of Comsewogue School District, also on Long Island has set up a website and has rallied against the testing. Middle Country Schools has joined him. Check it out on this link
One parent, representing the PTA, in the Rocky Point School District on Long Island, recently presented a resolution to the Board of Education for an end to the standardized testing:
Commissioner King has been urged to slow down Common Core but there is so much damage already, it might be too late. It needs major fixing first. It needs to be pulled back entirely and revamped.
Because I am leaning-Conservative, I have been accused of being a conspiracy nut, a liar, a fool, and so much worse. However, I have joined with liberals in this fight. One of my friends uses a Commie fist as her symbol. You know that once, not so long ago, there was no red or blue, we were Americans. No matter my political views, I am an American first! I am a Teacher first! I am a parent first! You can ridicule me but you won’t be able to hide the truth.
For me, it’s not about the idea of having a common set of standards, it’s about the testing, the testing which will nationalize education and take control of education from the hands of parents and teachers. It is about the age-inappropriate and ill-conceived goals which are hurting our children!
Check out this website which is accumulating sites and information about parents fighting Common Core. They’ve issued their own Executive Order.
This is your Common Core Terminology Guide:  https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/dh0iqmr1ps4t9nx/Terminology%20Guide.pdf?token_hash=AAHOFXnK3rMkFESQzvISpS99fnOqvmjLGQ76hKrQoSrs0g&dl=1

Common Core and Censored Information

Check Out the Brainwashing Aligned with Common Core!

October 9, 2013

By Sara Noble, The Independent Sentinel

LINK

When the president of the New York State Teachers Union, Richard Ianuzzi, came out in support of the Common Core, he also strongly supported propagandized lesson plans which are aligned with the Core. He has numerous lesson plans posted on the NYSUT blog to prove it. They do not instruct children, they brainwash them into one school of thought.
I include two excerpts from actual lesson plans below with a short biography of the authors.

JOHN LEWIS
The first lesson plan comes from Democratic representative John Lewis and focuses on non-violent activism and the social justice movement.
John Lewis is a civil rights and peace activist and a Democratic politician. He is a strong proponent of social justice which is referred to by many as neo-communism because at its heart is the redistribution of assets from the haves to the have-nots.
In March 2010, a report that Lewis and another black Congressman, Andre Carson, had been called ‘nigger’ by Tea Party protesters outside the Capitol received media attention. Some conservative sources criticized the claim, saying that no video showed up to prove the charges, and the videotapes of the event that later surfaced in fact disproved them. The New York Times issued a correction in July 2010, acknowledging that there was no evidence of Tea Party members hurling racial epithets at Lewis and Carson. Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who could provide audio or video evidence of one of these instances, but none surfaced.
Lewis supports the Occupy movement, a loosely-organized union of far-left radicals who are mainly comprised of Socialists, Communists, Democratic Socialists.
During the 2008 presidential election, Lewis accused John McCain and Sarah Palin of  “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” in a way that brought to mind the late Gov. George Wallace  and “another destructive period” in American political history.
Anyone who disagrees with Barack Obama is a racist!
Click here for this lesson plan from John Lewis which I have excerpted below:

Cumulating activity

Have each group select a current social justice movement. In writing, students should identify the social, political, and/or cultural changes the movement seeks to make, the leader(s) of the movement, and the tactics being used to achieve the desired change(s). Are the individuals involved like John Lewis? Is John Lewis’s legacy seen in this event?

• Create a power point on the actions of John Lewis in his activism for social change.
• Become a defender
• Review the non-violent tactics used during the Civil Rights Movement. Create a t-shirt, poster, lawn sign, song, or movie to bring publicity to a social justice cause important to you.
• Organize a “Non-violence Day” at school. Make a collection of social activist songs to download as a playlist to be played during the lunch periods.
• Design a public education campaign for your school on non-violent responses to pressing social issues.
• Select a current social justice issue that impacts your community. Develop a non-violent campaign to create change on the issue.

ANTHONY KAPEL ‘VAN’ JONES
The second lesson for review was created by Van Jones, a former White House advisor and advisor to The Center for American Progress, a far-left think tank. In college, he described himself as an angry black separatist.

 VanJones at an anti-police rally he organized

His lesson on police brutality comes from his background as an anti-police protestor in Los Angeles. He engaged in the Rodney King protests in 1992 and spent some time in jail. He came out of that experience an avowed communist. In fact, he was a committed Marxist-Leninist Maoist.
In 1999, he campaigned to free cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal.
He has since taken on the more subtle and deceptive approach of Saul Alinsky to achieve his goals.
He said the following in a 2005 interview:

“Before, we would fight anybody, any time. No concession was good enough; we never said ‘Thank you.’ Now, I put the issues and constituencies first. I’ll work with anybody, I’ll fight anybody if it will push our issues forward…. I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends…. I realized that there are a lot of people who are capitalists — shudder, shudder — who are really committed to fairly significant change in the economy, and were having bigger impacts than me and a lot of my friends with our protest signs.”

He no longer says he is a communist though he also never denies it and his beliefs align with those of the Communist Party USA on issues from environmental justice, social justice, reparations, extreme anti-war stance, and so on. He also is a vocal opponent of Capitalism. So what’s left? I leave that to you.
He worked on anti-war projects with Maoist, Elizabeth Martinez, on STORM. In 2001, he publicly denounced the United States for having brought the disaster on itself. He is also a Truther.
He organized a rally on 9/12/2001 to celebrate the 9/11 attack on the United States. Van Jones can be seen at 04:39 on the tape:
He recently sat – and might still sit – on the board of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a Communist Party USA splinter group. His Green For All environmental project is tied to George Soros’ Open Society.
He strongly supports the Occupy movement.
The following is an excerpt from his lesson which can be found here:

BECOME A DEFENDER

• While it is important to trust what is within the news, it is much more difficult to discover what is truly going on, especially when it is the law enforcers you are investigating. Interview known victims, friends and family of victims, and even the police force to hear the official accounts and what is not being reported by the government or media.
• Invite members of local law enforcement agencies – local police, county sheriffs, state police – to your class to talk about what the job of being a police officer entails and what training officers have to prevent excessive use of force.
• Discuss and debate your and your classmates’ perceptions of police brutality compared with what is in the law, what is portrayed in the media, and by the government. Do they align with each other? Compile stories of police brutality locally, nationally, and internationally and argue the pros and cons of the case. Do you believe that the amount of force was merited?
• If there has been a specific instance of police brutality in your area, prepare materials for a teach-in at your school to inform both students and teachers about police brutality and how to work with the local police force to end it. This information can also be shared with civic and community organizations.
• Research the United States’ official position on police brutality. What actions does the U.S. Justice Department take against law enforcement agencies that violate U.S. laws on police brutality?
• Research United States Supreme Court decisions on cases dealing with police brutality. Create a time line of cases and their outcomes. Prepare a report for your class on the background of the cases and the outcome.
• Contact organizations within the United States that work to eliminate police brutality. Find out what you can do to help end brutality and organize a branch of that organization locally.
• Write to a federal official and file a complaint if you believe that what you have seen, heard, read, or experienced is a form of police brutality.
• Find out what the state of police brutality is in other nations, whether they are democracies, dictatorships, conflict zones, or peace-keeping nations. Countries must work together to reduce excessive force by law enforcement worldwide. Prepare materials to present to your class and civic and community organizations on the background of these abuses and what actions can be taken to bring about the end to such activities in these countries.
• Write to the United Nations Human Rights Council citing reasons to end the abuses of law enforcement globally.
• Research international organizations dedicated to ending police brutality and volunteer to work on their cause.

The far-left propaganda is undeniable. These are the plans coming out of the New York State Teacher’s Union. They are promoted by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, a prime mover and funder of the Common Core.
Even if you agree with this stance, why would you want propaganda to be part of your child’s curricula? Don’t we want our children to have exposure to facts and then choose for themselves?

In Poughkeepsie, NYS Commissioner John King Gets Heckled On Common Core

John King

Parents Voice Concerns About Common Core: NY Dept of Ed Cancels Further Hearings

By Anthony Cody on October 12, 2013 10:27 AM

LINK

Two days ago, parents and teachers gathered at Spackenkill High School in Poughkeepsie, New York, for a public hearing to discuss the Common Core, with New York State Commissioner of Education, John King.

There was a great deal of dissatisfaction expressed by those attending, and this brings to the surface an issue noted yesterday by Diane Ravitch. These citizens are raising concerns which, prior to this event, have not been given a chance to be aired. The frustration at their lack of input is palpable. Ravitch explains how we got here:

The bottom line is that the U.S. Department of Education badly wants national standards, but it is prohibited by law from influencing curriculum and instruction in the nation's schools.

So, a deal is struck. Gates pays to create the CCSS, and Arne Duncan uses the power of the federal purse to push states and districts to adopt them, then uses his bully pulpit to warn that the future of the nation is in peril unless these very standards are swiftly implemented. 
The problem is that all this happened so swiftly, and with so little public understanding, that the public is in the dark. A recent Gallup poll showed that most people never heard of the CCSS and had no idea what they were. Instead of taking a decade to build consensus, the Gates Foundation and the Department of Education plunged ahead. 

Instead of developing a democratic process in which teachers, teacher educators, scholars, specialists in the education of children with disabilities, specialists in the education of English learners, and specialists in early childhood education were consulted at every step in the process; instead of trying out the standards to see how they work in real classrooms with real children, the Gates Foundation and the Department of Education took a shortcut.

It is not too late to hear what these parents are saying. Commissioner King may not want to hear them, but they are speaking for their children, and they have a year's head start on many of us, in that New York has been ahead of the curve at implementing Common Core curriculum and tests.

 Here is what one father, Mr. Jackson, said: (minute 12)

I have an eight year old son with a giant imagination. He likes telling stories and creating things. He's extremely bright, but he's not the most book-smart kid. He's bright in other ways. He attends third grade in the Cornwall School District. He hates going to school.  He hated it last year, and this year, with a great teacher, he's getting through it. The work that comes home, and the work that the teachers are being forced to teach, is so clinical and boring and confusing, that I refuse to believe that the coursework was written by people with degrees and/or experience in early childhood education. (cheers and applause). The coursework is geared towards the few kids in the class that would have done well in math regardless. The rest of the kids are being made to feel dumb and its abusive, with the kind of testing, and the fact that the teachers have no flexibility or time to do anything creative in their classrooms.

I understand the need to make our children better in math and science, for the future of our country. But there is no reason why you need to affect every part of their schooling, which this Common Core is doing. Everything from the math work being made up of long-winded rails, to eight year-olds needing to learn proofreading marks as if they were getting a master's in teaching. I read in the New York Times article, where you attributed your path to some special teachers in your life, that had you play a sportscaster at a fake news desk. With this new curriculum there is no room for imagination or play as it's all business.

All the kids are stressed out. The teachers in my district are scared for their jobs. They won't sway from the curriculum, they won't debate it or entertain any kind of talk about it to see if anything can be adjusted to make it more moldable. The three times this year that I brought up very specific problems with my son's amazing teacher about something that didn't seem right with the Common Core, I was told that my son needed to know this a certain way for the state tests - end of story. Mr. King, your children go to Montessori school... (applause)

Other parents raised concerns about the data that is being collected on their children. Teachers spoke about the ways the Common Core has restricted how and what they can teach. As Diane Ravitch points out, this reaction among parents and educators should not be a surprise. It must take colossal hubris, on the part of both Bill Gates, and his allies at the Department of Education, to think that they could assemble a small group of people, write a set of standards that would totally transform the way our children are taught, and coerce states into adopting them with zero genuine discussion or debate in the public arena. These standards reflect the process by which they were developed. They do not reflect the expertise of educators, and since they have not been tested in any way, they are going through a trial by fire now, with millions of children being the test subjects.

The impassioned comments of those present were enough to convince the Commissioner that further such exercises in democracy are unwise. Four more hearings that were scheduled have been summarily cancelled at Commissioner King's request, according to the New York state PTA.

While our goal was to provide an opportunity to learn and share, based on review of the initial October 10 meeting, the Commissioner concluded the outcome was not constructive for those taking the time to attend.

 So this experiment in democracy delayed has been extinguished, because those in charge apparently would rather not hear this sort of response.

It is very clear that the implementation of the Common Core standards and associated tests in New York has been a fiasco. The question that hangs over this project is whether the standards can somehow be rescued by more thorough preparation and a different set of tests. The curriculum and tests used in New York were developed by Pearson. Other states, such as California, will see a more gradual rollout, with trials next spring of new tests from the Smarter Balance consortium. New York is teaching us how badly the Common Core can be done, and parents there are teaching us how to respond as well. They organized, they spoke up, and they have been heard, even if the powers that be have made it clear they are not interested.

Speaking truth to power, as these parents did, is an intoxicating thing. It delivers to both speaker and witnesses a shiver, an awakening to the fact that we do not need to suffer in silence, or allow our children to suffer without objection. Those in power may cancel future hearings, but these parents' voices are ringing out, like a bell that cannot be un-rung.

 Carol Burris has posted a letter from a New York parent expressing his dismay at the Commissioner's decision to cancel the scheduled public hearings. 

 What do you think of the concerns raised by these parents in Poughkeepsie? Does this spell trouble for the Common Core project in New York?

Continue the dialogue with Anthony on Twitter. 

Diane Ravitch on Calhoun Headmaster Steve Nelson's Dislike of Common Core

A Hero Educator Who Heads a Private School in Manhattan by dianerav LINK What does it take to be a hero educator? It takes brains, courage, integrity, and a deep understanding of education and children. Steve Nelson, headmaster of the Calhoun School in Manhattan, is a hero educator because he has all these qualities. He wrote a brilliant article about why the Common Core won't work. He knows that David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core, now heads the College Board. He knows that Coleman wants to align the SAT to the Common Core, so no one can escape his handiwork, not even students in prestigious private schools. Here is a sample of Nelson's article. "Actual children, as opposed to the abstraction of children as seen in policy debate, are not "standard." Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of child development knows that children learn in different ways and different times. Some children "read" (meaning a very limited ability to recognize symbols) at age 3 or 4. I have known many students who did not read well until 8, 9 or, rarely, later. The potential (or ultimate achievement levels) of these children does not correlate with the date of reading onset. "It is rather like walking. Children who walk at 9 months do not become better runners than children who walk at 15 months. "Standardizing" the expectation of reading, and setting curricula and tests around this expectation, is like expecting a child to walk on her first birthday. If she doesn't, shall we get our national knickers in a knot, develop a set of walking tests, prescribe walking remediation, and, perhaps inadvertently, make her feel desperately inadequate? In the current climate, Pearson is ready to design walking curriculum and its companion tests. The Gates and Broad Foundations will create complementary instructional videos." And he also writes: "If policy makers and test writers had even rudimentary knowledge of rich individual differences, they would know that any standard test is unfair and, ultimately, useless. Just as children learn in very different ways, they express mastery in many different ways. The Common Core tests (and I've suffered the experience of wading through the many samples provided in the media) assume that all its takers process information in the same way, have the identical mix of cognitive and sensory abilities, and can, therefore, "compete" on level ground. This is nonsensical and damaging. Some of the most brilliant people I know would grind to a suffocating halt after trying to parse the arcane nonsense in a small handful of these questions. Even the math questions assume a homogeneous ability to understand the questions and a precisely common capacity for reasoning and concluding. "I could go on: Stress inhibits learning, so we design stressful expectations; dopamine (from pleasurable activities) enhances learning, so we remove joy from schools; homework has very limited usefulness with negative returns after an hour or so (for elementary age kids), so we demand more hours of work; the importance of exercise in brain development is inarguable, so we eliminate recess and gym; the arts are central to human understanding, but we don't have time. "I have been accused of complaining but not offering solutions, so here's a solution: Properly fund schools and allow good teachers to select the materials and pedagogy that serve the actual students in their care. The rest will take care of itself. "And we can take the billions we're wasting on NCLB, RTTT, Common Core and other nonsense and spend it to improve the lives of the shameful number of children who live in poverty in the "richest nation on Earth." Steve Nelson, welcome to the honor roll as a hero of American education. Please someone, anyone: send this article to Bill Keller and Paul Krugman at the New York Times.

NYC Educator on the Total Failure of Bloomberg's Public School "Reform"

Here in Bizarro World Massive Failure Is Good News

 

 

 

LINK

I just read at Diane Ravitch's blog that Mayor Bloomberg has joined fellow know-nothings Joel Klein and Arne Duncan in hailing the massive failure on Common Core exams as a good sign. I'm rarely at a loss for words, but I don't know precisely what to say to this.

How on earth is a two-thirds failure rate anything to boast about? This is the same guy who, after defying the twice-voiced electoral will of the people, bought himself a third term. Am I the only one who remembers the surreptitiously Gates-funded motto, "Keep It Going, New York?" Actually, what Bloomberg and Geoffrey Canada, who was running the campaign, wanted to keep going was a test score rise based entirely on the tests having been dumbed-down. And then when the gains were made moot, which Ravitch had predicted years earlier, Bloomberg and Klein said that was a victory too.

So here's the message from Michael Bloomberg. If test scores go up, it's a great success. If they stay the same, it is also a great success. And if they plummet, that is also a great victory. I keep saying, "Being reformy means never having to say you're sorry," but intending it as ironic. Apparently, it's the unvarnished truth.

It turns out that when you revolve your philosophy around things like junk science evaluation and standards that have been established to be effective absolutely nowhere, you can just say any damn thing you feel like. When circumstances change, you can continue to say any damn thing without concern that you're contradicting yourself. It doesn't matter if your past statements are recorded all over the mainstream media and can be checked with a one-minute Google search.

Anyone who thinks it's OK to subject hundreds of thousands of children to failure, based on nothing, is simply unfit to care for them. And anyone who boasts of massive failure while demanding teachers be fired for the same is a massive, deluded hypocrite. I don't want to mention any names, like Mike Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Arne Duncan, Barack Obama, Andrew Cuomo, because I wouldn't wish to embarrass anyone. I'm a sensitive guy.

Finally, I'm pleased to tell you that while today's Daily News posts yet another E4E column on Common Core, it also features commentary from Diane Ravitch, Zakiyah Ansari, and yours truly.

Tuesday, August 06, 2013

Common Core--Being Reformy Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

The new Common Core test scores are about to come out, and are anticipated to be a disaster. This, naturally, will give further credence to the corporate-created myth that our schools are in crisis and need to be "reformed," despite the fact that CC itself is quite reformy. The fact that no one actually knew what would be on the tests is of no importance, nor is the fact that this system has never been proven, let alone tested, anywhere.

The papers will write editorials about "failing" schools, and will revel in this as proof that unionized teachers are goofing off when they should be teaching. Of course, since no one knew what would be on the tests, no one could prepare students for the tests. And, of course, we don't really know what passing or failing these tests establishes.

In fact, even today, elementary and middle schools haven't got a curriculum for this all-important program. The thing about reformy programs is they are absolutely urgent. That's why we can't wait to find out whether or not they work. In fact, in the case of things like VAM and merit pay, the fact that they have failed everywhere they've been tried is no reason to stop using them. In times of crisis, we must do whatever Bill Gates says we must do, no matter how counter-productive or idiotic it is.

So despite the fact that these tests have not been established to determine anything whatsoever, they will be used to place teachers on a fast track to unemployment, one of the long-cherished goals of reformy people everywhere. So what if we vilify a few more city teachers for no reason whatsoever?  As long as we can fire them, we're making progress.

Now I don't know whether or not these tests will establish anything. But when the scores are as abysmal as projected, they'll be used as a battering ram to trash working teachers. Why on earth didn't teachers prepare kids for the tests they had never seen? Why didn't they spend a little time going over the material that didn't exist?

And, of course, in schools with high numbers of learning disabled and ESL students, the scores will be lower, and reformy Arne Duncan will press for their closure. Never mind that every school targeted for closure has had high numbers of such students. That's just a coincidence. It must be the fault of the unionized teachers.

It can have nothing to do with the lack of planning and preparation. We are simply to assume that Common Core is wonderful, despite the fact there is no evidence whatsoever.

Because reformy Arne Duncan says so, and that ought to be enough for anyone.

The NYC DOE Desperation - Its A Long Shot

The Common Core: A Bizarre but Revealing Picture Tells a Thousand Words

June 5, 2013
LINK

A couple of days ago a bizarre if not surreal poster appeared on the entranceway wall of the school in which I work. Issued by the New York City Department of Education, touting both the challenges and wonders of the highly dubious educational cure all Common Core State Standards, the poster is aimed at New York City parents. In large print are the words: “ This Spring We’re Aiming Higher.” It makes a point of warning parents, among lots of fluff, that on account of the rising standards of the Common Core, their childrens’ all revealing test scores will go down this year.
But not to worry, parents, the poster goes on to say, in the end, because of the Common Core, your kids will be prepared “for college and a career.”
Nothing-new here. This kind of drivel about the wholly untested Common Core has been repeated with cast iron certainty ad nauseum from coast to coast.
But the words are accompanied by a photograph and it is here that things get interesting. The picture of what appears to be a 10 year old boy shooting a basketball at a basket that is not merely distant but ludicrously distant. The child appears to be almost beneath the opposite basket. To tell this child this is a challenge is to not understand the meaning of the word. The child has not a prayer of making the shot. Indeed, neither would many grown men. But then again, most grown men would know what the little boy in the picture would not: there is only one scenario where one would even consider taking such a shot — a moment of absolute desperation when your team is behind at the buzzer and you fling the ball and hope for the best. And they would know something else: they would know that only an absolute fool or an absolute sadist would have you practice such a shot.
It is, to say the least, a curiously cruel choice of a metaphor, particularly considering the audience it is aimed at. If some gym teacher had my kid taking such shots I’d question not merely his or her competence, but his or her sanity. Indeed, only someone with no knowledge whatsoever of basketball or the fragility of a child’s psyche would ever request such a moronic task. It virtually insures failure. Yet, for all its absurdity it is completely consistent with the towering arrogance and self-righteous certainty of the promoters ( and owners and profiteers ) of the Common Core and indeed, all of the “education reformers.” After all, this is the same crew that under the No Child Left Behind act insanely demand that every child in America be proficient in English and Math or they shut down their schools.
All of this, of course, could be dismissed as making too much of a silly poster but for the fact that while musing over the image I could not help but recall Diane Ravitch’s prescient comments on a purloined copy of this years Common Core aligned fifth grade English Language Arts test: “ I read the passages and the questions based on them. My reaction was that the difficulty level of the passages and the questions was not age-appropriate. Based on test questions I had reviewed for seven years when I was a member of the NAEP board, it seemed to me that the test was pitched at an eighth grade level. The passages were very long, about twice as long as a typical passage on NAEP for eighth grade. The questions involved interpretation, inference, and required re-reading of the passage for each question.”
Ravitch’s conclusions on the actual test – that fifth graders were tested with eighth grade level work — could easily be seen as the intellectual equivalent of demanding that little kids shoot a basket from the opposite side of the court: could easily be seen, that is, as exposing either an imbecile’s idea of raising standards or as an integral part an extraordinarily cynical long term plot to set American children up to fail by the millions to create a rationale for privatizing public education.
I see the later.