A Teenager's Common Core Research Paper.

 
A father shared his daughter's Common Core research paper for school.  He wrote she refused any help and her research/opinions are her own.  Here is student's view of Common Core:

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Common Core Research Paper
"Cat B" 6/18/2013
Research and Writing, Grade 7

Education is many things. It’s how we put together our lives one step at a time. The Common Core Curriculum is changing the way we learn. Common core should not be allowed to take over our education. I have taken a lot of time researching for this topic, and I have found out who the people are, what the people who run this program do, what tools they use, and what other schools are doing that is better or worse, depending on your stand point. I may not know everything, but in these paragraphs you will find many websites and resources that can help you find out more so you can do something about it.

The people who have implanted the core into our schools are called progressives, socialists, communists, and others names that mean the same thing: bad people who want to brainwash us until we are just walking drones. Common core was put into place in my school 2 years ago, starting with the little kids in the Elementary school. I believe that the people who started this wanted to start there because when you’re little, you do what you’re told without question. And that’s exactly what they are hoping for. They want to teach students what to learn, not how to learn. They give away people’s information to major corporations and companies, too. Let’s say someone gets into a fight in 5th grade, and then when they’re older and they want to be a hairstylist, the boss will say, “I’m sorry, you had a history of violence. We can’t let you near someone’s head with scissors. Instead of working here, you are going to work at the county dump.”

Secondly, research has been done to find out what tools the common core gives students to use at school and at home. The textbook company Pearson is a major contributor to common core. Pearson bought almost all the other textbook companies and kept the names so that people don’t know about it. Joy Pullman of the Heartland Institute discovered a report by the Department of Education saying: “Common Core’s data mining includes ‘using cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse, and a biometric wrap on kids’ wrists.’ ” The NJ ask kids have to take every year doesn’t evaluate the students; it judges the teachers on if they are teaching using the common core standards. If a teacher’s scores don’t go up within 2 years, they get fired. Then a common core teacher comes in to take their place.

Furthermore, there are websites that show what other schools are doing that may be better or worse depending on your standpoint on this whole thing. If you go to http://www.businessinsider.com/finlands-education-system-best-in-world-2012-11?op=1, you can see that Finland has the best unorthodox educational system in the world. There is no exams or homework until kids are 16, no video cameras, and most importantly, no common core. 93% of Finns graduate from high school, and 66% of students go to college. Only 4-5 hours of school, and only one of those hours are spent in a classroom. In Finland kids get 75 minutes of recess, whereas the U.S. only gives students 25 minutes.

While I was researching, I went to a particular website: http://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2013/03/18/common-core-whats-hidden-behind-the-language-n1537017/page/full. The website had a list of comments that people made. There was one that really struck my curiosity. It said “Stephanie Bell said "Every child is created, and I thank the Lord for this, we’re all created different,” Oh No! The left will go nuts. You never never never mention the Lord! The State is your master! Are you a teacher? Do you not understand that CCSS is only part of the equation? That the state selects the textbook, and the districts often write the curriculum? We are told that we should all be teaching the same thing at the same time. Perhaps CCSS in itself does not do these things, but the states and districts that are implementing them surely do.” This goes back to my comment on your standpoint of this controversial problem. People who are pro-common core will say things like this.

In conclusion, you now know what really goes on in your kids’ schools. Common core should never have been placed in our schools. It takes over using fancy gadgets and a sweet, sugarcoated-cover and then bam! We’re all brainwashed slaves for the government to use at our expense. To learn more go on to Facebook and other sites and if you search correctly you will find a ton of people who know more than most do on this topic. There are loads more to learn. And the more you learn and the faster you learn it, the better it will be for everyone because you can start to do something about it.

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Would David Coleman like to respond to this young woman's concerns about Common Core?  After all, she is the one being taught via CCSS and has questions about the intent, process and outcome of this educational reform of which Coleman is considered the "chief architect".   Since the mandates are coming from the Chief Council of State School Officers (CCSSO) and the principal or superintendent have little say in the educational framework, Coleman should be the spokesperson for these copyrighted standards and their goals.

Straight from David Coleman's Mouth about Common Core. He's Making the Educational Decisions for All Children.

Potter Williams captures David Coleman's speech on data presentation in Boston.  You can see into the mind of the Common Core architect and realize it's about data mining first, control of children, and  effective/ineffective teachers. CCSS wasn't state led and the supporters behind Coleman might surprise you (they certainly should surprise the so called conservative Republicans who fell for this plan).  See if you can spot him ridiculing those who would dare to think someone like Bill Gates would even have a hand in crafting/supporting Common Core.  I've highlighted particular excerpts that beg further discussion about Coleman, CCSSO, the political run around of the adoption/implementation and the standards themselves.

From Potter Williams Report: Common Core Author Seeks More Data:


                                                                         

David Coleman, president of the College Board and author of Common Core State Standards, gave a presentation to data analysts in Boston three weeks ago. In his speech he states the new goals of the College Board are to use data to find “low-hanging fruit” or low-income children who are high achievers but at risk for not going to college.

This may sound noble, but Coleman intends to carry out his new Access to Rigor Campaign by partnering with Obama’s reelection campaign directors who specialized in data and field mobilization. In the video, he lavishes praise on the Obama operatives as well as research teams like Strategic Data Partners based at Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research. 

Names he mentions are a virtual Who’s Who in data collection, both educational and political and they’re all from the left. 

Thomas Kane, professor of  Education and Economics in the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-author of the Brookings Institute’s Hamilton Project on Education along with Douglas Staiger and Robert Gordon. The project emphatically states the same talking point of all the corporatist education reformers: the teachers alone are the most crucial factor in whether schools succeed or fail. 

Erin McGoldrick: "director of data management and analysis, partners with schools, researchers and funders to address the data needs of the charter school movement in California." McGoldrick formerly worked as DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s chief data analyst. 

Nate Silver: pollster extraordinaire “had correctly predicted the winner of every one of the 50 states and the District of Columbia” in the November 2012 elections. 

Dan Wagner, president of Civis Analytics, and former Obama for America data analyst. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, who was intimately involved in Obama’s reelection campaign, is the sole investor of Civis and news of the company went public May 30, 2013. 

Jeremy Bird:  Founding partner of 270 Strategies, served “most recently as the National Field Director for the 2012 re-election campaign of President Barack Obama, where he had primary responsibility for building a nationwide army of staff and volunteer organizers.” Bird recently began a campaign to “turn Texas blue” by tapping into the Hispanic population there. 

Strategic Data Project:  "The Strategic Data Project partners with school districts, charter school networks, and state education agencies to bring high quality research methods and data analysis to bear on strategic management and policy decisions. The project is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation." 

CEPR: Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. "The rapid accumulation of student achievement data represents an untapped national resource, one that holds the promise of breaking longstanding stalemates in the education policy debate. The Center for Education Policy Research works with university-based researchers and policymakers to bring these new data to bear in evaluating policies and drawing implications for reform." 

Below is a partial transcript of David Coleman’s presentation [from the 40 second mark to approximately the 30 minute mark]. He opens his talk with the fact that he's been quite busy as the newly appointed head of the College Board, and that he was recently married.

SDP Beyond the Numbers Convening: David Coleman May 17, 2013, Boston, Mass.

David Coleman (00.40) It is my honest conviction that the people in this room if we can pull your work together, if we can combine the insights that are contained locally, through the strategic data project combine them into clarifying and galvanizing ideas that there's more force in this room to change the work of education than anywhere else. And that I know is a strange statement because you might say shouldn’t you instead be meeting with the council of Chief State School Officers? 

Those of you who say that might not have attended as many of those meetings as I have or you might say shouldn't you go you know to the university presidents or shouldn’t, you know, you could have many ideas, you could also say seriously at this time in our society notions of evidence and data are more suspicious than powerful. 

What I mean by that is this—if you are watching Washington DC these days the notion that evidence and data will change the world is a hard claim to support. If you're watching the debate over data infrastructure in this country you'd think the noble impulse to use information to propel students forward is one of those gotcha things we better be careful because in trying no good deed goes unpunished. But I wanna highlight for a moment a couple of other facts of what's going on in this country at the same time.

 

During last five to ten years. Two ideas swept the country during a period where all ideas seemed to stop. Right now whatever reform you're interested in, so-so imagine, for me if you don't, if you disagree what area of domestic policy over the last five years has enjoyed bipartisan support outside of education? I'm I'm really, you guys are data, geeky, cool people so contradicting me is allowed unlike the typical politeness that should reign in a moment like this uh...

 

Tell me one, tell me a significant domestic policy area where Republicans and Democrats have gotten together and gotten something done outside of education (unintelligible) may we pray— your lips to God's ears…so-so I want to give you guys two examples that are kind of interesting, but remember these are two examples against the darkness; these are two examples where there are no others. That's a very important notion. One of them is the common core standards, right. It is incontrovertible that despite current disputes forty-five to forty-six states adopted these standards with strong bipartisan support that continues today. Despite the debate at the edges Former Governor Bush, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, I'm listing Republicans now, and a wide range of Democratic governors, supported the notion of acting in common and most people when trying to understand how that could have happened right how could it be that in the country locked against itself that something broke in this way; and they wonder they might wonder whether we had a legion of talented lobbyists or friends in the right places uh... Tom [Kane, Harvard education professor] who knows me well knows how pathetic the beginnings of the common core standard movement were. 

Think of a napkin, think of a few people in a room with an idea; think of the idea of being this the idea being this: if evidence did not inform the development of standards they would  inevitably be vast vague and useless. Now why is that true? Why is it true that without the notion of evidence standards are helpless? I’m making a very strong claim, why?. Have any of you ever please raise your hand been in a committee meeting before? 

So what happened in states is they got together committees to write standards and they got into groups, you’d have your geometry team, your statistics team, your data, your  algebra team, right, a math meeting or you know the ELA not knowing that you know just get everyone together and had a nice big old happy thing. And the only way to end the meeting is what, to include everyone’s stuff; I'm not leaving here until you put in all my stuff and I'm not leaving till you put in my stuff and everyone’s like cool let's put in your stuff with my stuff; we are done here. 

Then teachers and students are in receipt of this, so it's estimated that the California standards the result of such a practice would take thirty years to teach. Once standards get that long several pernicious things happen. So those of you who are interested in assessment must know a fundamental fact of assessment and it's much more important by the way than whether the assessment is multiple choice or open-ended there's another larger factor driving the validity of any assessment. I know you know this.

 

How many things you’re trying to measure; if I'm trying to measure a few things I can ask you several questions about the same thing and get more information…I know this is a deduction; I can find out much more about you, but imagine instead we developed math standards so that every math test is this crazy survey of a bunch of information. 

Where teachers, even good ones, feel like it is Russian roulette what will be tested that year, they feel that the force of the standards and assessments is a force to race them to cover material that they can't cover and that their kids can’t understand; that kind of environment leads to even the best of teachers to find data which we want to see as a signal of truth as not a true reflection of their effort and their work, as maybe even an enemy to their work, so the common core standards did something in mathematics. 

It's quite interesting it turns out that overwhelmingly based on evidence there is a relatively focused portion of mathematics that is extremely important to your future in math. And a lot that is not, to be precise, in the top-performing countries in math in kindergarten through second grade, there are only three topics in common in high performing countries—they are addition and subtraction and the qualities they measure. The common core standards adopted by 45 states in mathematics are the first American standards to dare to follow this tight focus. The American math curriculum as you know has in the past been a mile wide and an inch deep, but that data that evidence allowed us to turn back the tide. 

Do you realize how hard it is in education to have an eraser as well as a pen? You see, that's the secret of education reform. If we add more my friends we will lose; people are already quite busy. The notion that we've got a great education reform for all people’s spare time is kind of a hilarious idea, but it's hard because things don't come into being without supporters. 

So to erase all that other math … to give you a sense we looked at the data from Washington DC. So you think Washington DC environment, lots of kids are poor, they would focus on the most essential math because that’s the math their kids most need and spend enough time to teach and enough time to practice. An examination of the curriculum in Washington DC had 80% of teacher time outside of the school. Isn't that heartbreaking for the kids? They're spending more time than not practicing things that don’t propel them in mathematics. So, just to be quite specific, do you remember problems like pattern problems circle square circle circle or combination problems like if you have three kinds of cheese and two kinds of lettuce how many sandwiches can you make? No, no, no.

The core in mathematics is actually far more focused. In K-2 the addition and subtraction of whole numbers, the quantities they measure. In third through fifth grade, and I know I’m getting kind of specific, multiplication and division and the mighty art that most predicts your readiness for Algebra which is what? What knowledge and skills earned during those grades most predict your ability to handle the near equations in eighth grade? Fractions. Your exactly right. 

So wouldn't it be better so imagine you have an assessment system where you can pass a fourth or fifth grade math test without knowing fractions cause you’re covering so many topics? What's the problem if you pass that test are you on your way to success? Think of the core of mathematics as a trunk of a tree; without it you are helpless. With it you can do everything else. 

So I just want to give you an example of the kind of overwhelming data, so we had data here we had evidence from international examples of what the best countries did. We had data from domestic studies early mathematics and of what, what things predicted later success. We had surveys from college professors first-year college professors about what math made the difference in their courses and what did not. What we did differently is we used it to force rank; that is, we didn’t just have all this data we decided that based on that data you could decide what was critical and what was not and make it that.  (MEW Note: We thought these standards were voluntary and state led.  Coleman himself says that they are forced?)

When I was involved in convincing governors and others around this country to adopt these standards,(MEW note: Weren't standards state led, not David Coleman led?) it was not “Obama likes them”; do you think that would have gone well with a Republican crowd?

 

It was instead, “there’s a focused set of math with an overwhelming amount of data that will predict success and your standards have teachers all over the place.” The only area of math performance which this country leads the world is the size of our textbooks. It must stop. 

Those are arguments based on evidence—that was the secret power behind the common core.(MEW note: these standards are not based on field testing or best educational practices.  There is no evidence these standards will produce "smarter" students). My own field is literacy, and if I get time of course I would love to tell you about why evidence drives us to where we are in literacy, but I want to tell you in a kind of profound way that the victory of the common core standards is a victory of design and evidence over endless conversation, endless dithering. The real power behind it was a victory of those two ideas. 

So I want you, I’m  challenging you to think today about where do you hold evidence that accumulates, that matters, from different sources that guides you and then how can you use it to provoke a change. I'm gonna give you one example of something the college board is doing about that but I wanna first pause and say I told you there were two things this country did in the last five years right? 

Does anyone know what is the other bipartisan educational movement that has reshaped the educational conversation in the United States over the last five years? (someone answers from the audience, STEM) You know STEM is a very interesting thing; the only question is whether there's a program or whether there's a conversation because I think there's definitely a lot of talk, but I would have a hard time finding, though you may be able to, a galvanizing common action around STEM that that has shifted the work that we do, but i don't see it.

 

Teacher effectiveness. The second thing that has totally changed in this country during the last five years is the overwhelming notion that teachers are different and must be measured based on their individual performance. Do you realize what a political transformation is that this happened under a Democratic president and his education secretary Arne Duncan?  What was typically ideas that could only be talked about in Republican circles like everyone knows this; right, the notion of teacher effectiveness as individually determined was for many years in my lifetime only a Republican idea. The notion that was embraced by Democrats around the country—I know there are fringes on both sides—I'm not—I am alert my friends to the complexities—but I want today for a moment to focus on a different force which is what's actually in common.

And if you want to think about what drove that and what must we all remember as we debate the matter of teacher effectiveness—why did teacher effectiveness gain the traction it did? I just want to pause, was it the Gates Foundation? Was it Race to  the Top? You see, people have a kind of childlike view of power they think that if something big happens there must be some thug behind it. Right. There must be some power. Well that's interesting Paul (speaking to someone in the audience). Paul said the Widget Effect. I think he's exactly right.

 

The Widget Effect published by TNTP [The New Teacher Project] is one of the seminal great things ever written in our field which was an analysis actually of how all teachers are treated the same; but i think there's an underlying argument Paul that makes the Widget Effect so consequential, and that's work that  became championed, in my view, another seminal article which is Hamilton Project paper written by Tom Kane, Doug Staiger and Robert Gordon in which they argued simply this—the most overwhelming fact of education research bar none is the  substantial durable differences between teachers that nothing washes away. 

That is to put this more forcefully for those of us who debate this matter, we all have to I think in our field wonder at, be scared by, the findings of my unrelated but mighty predecessor Coleman [Coleman Report 1969] and I'm with a lot of people who understand the stuff so I’m wading into  dangerous territory, but as I understand the Coleman report of 1969 I believe, what he  devastatingly finds through extensive research is that schools do not matter in changing, largely except for some, in changing the poverty of children. What I mean by that is rather than our dream that public schooling is a force, a substantial one of opportunity and changing the differences between wealthy and poor, that public schooling does not has such power. It largely recapitulates the same income effects we see outside of school. 

Tom is that a fair summary? Think about that guys, I just want to pause. Imagine if someone came here and said, not you're an education reform community, you're going to go changing the world, go! [Instead] they said, you are irrelevant. All your efforts are for naught.

What we can discover about your kids before they enter your institution is the same as those they leave. You live in a fantasy world in which you imagine yourself changing kids' lives but the combined effect of your action is zero. Better if you were to live a life of leisure and not to work so hard. 

I’d just think that sometimes when something is so stunning we repress it. Does that make any sense? When a finding is so scary it’s like by far the highest quality piece of research, so it's like this is like a real problem to us. So in the years after Coleman, right where where this is finding that schools can't change the force of poverty overall, there's a stunning additional finding which is it's not schools that can but individual teachers—but not if you treat them the same—that's the problem. Right, this kind of reference for teachers. Which we all should share cannot blind us to the fact that they’re materially different and there's a top quartile of teachers that bring substantial change in students' lives. 

That actually seems to offer a effects: we only have to see how durable they are over time, but seems to offer effects that breathe on the achievement gap.What I'm trying to say here it is it's not that the teachers and effective ones haven't had an effect, but it's large enough that we should take it seriously in responding to the achievement gap.

I say this because we pursue a lot of education reforms even though their effects are so incremental, so small that while they may be significant in a statistical sense they have no real bearing on the life chances of children. 

Why, the achievement gap? If you estimate it, 36 points roughly on a scale of 100 correct? If you look at many education reforms, people are like great, we invested all this money, it's a couple of points it's it's significant. Let's do more of it. Imagine you're thirty-six points back and we got a bunch of adults were like we're so great Johnny's on path, he's one or two points more ahead than he used to be. 

But teacher effects are roughly ten points between the top quartile and the bottom quartile and we do have to see how they’re sustained. But I just wanna make clear we have to pay attention when we're using data and evidence to measure the effect as well as the strength of the evidence.  

It is big enough to spend our time with, so when I met Tom Kane he said to me, “I want to change the world with a chart.” He said to me, “I want to make an inescapable fact and, like, given how this guy dresses, and his occasionally uneven speaking voice, and several other natural and learned disadvantages [audience laughs], the idea that this man with this irresistible truth did in fact, by going to the Gates Foundation, and suffering all that that entailed in doing so much work, together with many, many others changed this country, is I think another durable testament to the idea,and he would immediately say it’s Doug Staiger and Robert [Gordon] and others in,and i know many of you here, because the great idea of a good idea is it,  that it’s shared. 

So you all here, you all here then faced the terrible consequence of this idea which that it is that adults are different and they hate it. Typically when you tell them so, that is, this truth does not come without cost. It meets resistance everywhere at every level.

 

If you just changed this or that maybe this is just a sign of the design of the educational system with just a little more investment in professional development. Surely this gap between effective teachers and ineffective teachers would go away. To say that in the face of the data we have before us is the strangest form of wishful thinking ever developed because after billions and billions of dollars investment we don't yet have large-scale examples of where to substantially increased the same value added overtime; and we have overwhelming data on the contrary that there are highly effective and not effective  teachers. 

Which might force us to conclude that in the interests of children we must not ignore this data in making personnel decisions about who is teaching your children and who is not. That may make certain people uncomfortable, but let me say this, to ignore the data about the differences between teachers is to make public schools helpless to change the outcomes of poor children.  (MEW note: just who decides who "we" are? Who should be making all these decisions? Did voters elect David Coleman and company to make these educational transformations?)

You can't have it both ways. You’re back to Coleman if you ignore the differences between teachers; if you say we cannot dare to make the adults uncomfortable in this way and make real choices about who teaches, and (inaudible) get more effect.(MEW note: again, where is this assumed power coming from and what gives Coleman the RIGHT to "make adults uncomfortable"?  He is talking about taxpayers, right?)

Widen the sphere of the effective teacher and gradually move kids from less effective. If we do not increase the concentration of demonstrated effective teachers in our schools;  if we keep focusing on paper credentials which have virtually no predictability outside of later mathematics; if we keep focusing on improving the supply without any evidence such improvements will result in changes for kids; if we ignore performance on the job; if we examine performance on the job and then rate ninety-eight percent of people ‘satisfactory’ and ignore the differences between them, then, then my friends, we have not only ignored Coleman's findings, we have deliberately participated in the deliberate dismantling of public education’s capacity to change poor children's lives. 

There's a great deal at stake here, so you fight that fight every day and I just want to pause for all of you; for all of you who work in state and  districts; who work on the data side, who work on the policy side; who've had your head handed to you when you try to share this data. I want to praise you and thank you for rescuing public education. [applause] 

So, facts matter if we stand for them. There are forces that will try to press it back, but the great news is everything Ii said is very hard to contradict with evidence.  (MEW note: what evidence?  Field testing/best educational practices or theories?)

I will say, in my estimation there's an emergent force that is also promising in changing the calculus of schools and poor children which is a subset of high-performing charters based on my understanding of the research is beginning to show that we can bend the curve to a degree as well with what I think we know today. 

So, what you'll find of me as new president of the College Board is I'm obsessed with moments where there is overwhelming evidence, does that make sense? And a moment of action to be taken, and I think we have discovered one I believe Dan Wagner may have talked about already yesterday if he share some of this already, some says Erin, to my right, I want to introduce a topic but as I introduce I want to talk about another man who used data to change the world. 

Someone who I admire quite a bit because again as you think about your power and your force in this world let's remember who really won the election. Shall we call it Nate Silver? Against all the blowhards of political commentary, the predictions of the nerds were decisive. 

But perhaps more exciting than the person who stood to the side and handicapped the election, is the person who led the Obama campaign's use of data to galvanize the generation of low income people to vote like they have never had before.

 

Whether you are Republican or Democrat the simple precision excellence of the use of information to achieve a result is something in my mind that deserves astonishment. It means again that there is no force greater; think about it, think about hundreds of millions of dollars spent on this campaign and what made the difference right? A lot of things, but this incredible precision and insight gained from data not only knowing where people are, but proposing various interventions, seeing what works, keeping focused on delivering them—and that of course is Dan Wagner who led the analytics for the campaign.(MEW note: the power of data in Common Core may not have as much to do with education as promised?)

So there are moments where your work is the most important work. Let me give you one more this morning as a president of the College Board, we quickly saw the data. As the new president I quickly started to [see] College Board already working on the really, kinda blew my mind, and it is the following fact; and it was independently found by none other than the Strategic Data Project. 

This is the following information: stunningly low-income kids who have defied poverty and every other force that you can imagine, in some percentage racial discrimination of various sorts, visible and invisible, who have defied everything and arrived at the end of high school in the top quartile of performance. 

Right, so this is like wow these kids, I want to be clear, they are not behind they are ahead, and stunningly eighty percent of them do not make an informed decision when they go on to college and it ruins their life. Take go off track. They often go to schools where they don't engage. They don't complete. Can you imagine being in the top quartile and then not completing college?

 

Can you imagine this? (inaudible) I like to think about this as “unclaimed futures” that’s a phrase Erin McGoldrick one of the people in this field gave to me. To describe it these are unclaimed futures you've found at the Strategic Data Project. You know, did you see the data when you found it from your work that in your districts that thirteen percent I believe of kids who scored highest in state test scores don’t go onto college altogether, huh? What is going on? 

You know it's interesting watching Sarah Glover summarize the findings and she's like we got to find these kids now; that they're certain kinds of data we're just, like, this goes beyond a number like, who are these people? I’m gonna go find them. I wanna go talk to them; I’m going to talk their parents. What's their names? Right, that's a certain kind of data in life and it's, it's not just a number it's like, whoa, how could this be happening in this generation?(MEW note: should David Coleman and company have THE RIGHT to hunt kids/parents down for conversation?)

The College Board—our philosophy is it's not just that we can see this data, but these students are within our care. That is as the College Board. We cannot stand that these students who can go do not go. It is our obligation and responsibility to do everything in our power to change this result. That means we shall not rest until these inequities go away.(MEW note: the underlying reason for Common Core.  The College Board has no legal authority nor power nor obligation nor responsibility to guarantee OUTCOME.  Education is about OPPORTUNITY.  This is the nanny state revealed).

I want to put it to you very simply: we see it on three levels—in Advanced Placement—if there are ten students who score ready for AP based on their PSAT score so they get a good enough score on their PSAT, that it predicts a sixty percent chance of them passing AP math. Let's take that example. 

Ten kids who do that of them six Asians will take AP math. So remember they’re all shown (unintelligible) six Asians will take it, four whites, three Latinos, three African-Americans and two Native American. Now I'm a little tired of us constantly talking about, that we should, of Latinos and African-Americans—they’re behind that is true—but let's also start talking about the opportunities they're not being propelled into. Because if those kids don't take  AP they're falling further behind.

 

Or if IB, this is not a AP talk, this is about access to rigor. This is about those kids who've earned the right to go forward, must go forward and absent deliberate intervention, other forces in our society take hold that shall hold kids back who've earned the right to go forward. 

We’ve seen this again in your data. Your data has alerted us because a lot of those kids that thirteen percent that you've found based on grades and state test scores we don't see that data because they often don't take PSAT we were blind to it until you showed us. Thank you so much for blazing that trail because now that you've shown us they too are within our care frankly. 

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Straight from David Coleman's lips to your ears:  The purpose of Common Core and data retrieval. 

Common Core Example? A Humorous Assessment of David Coleman's SAT

Need a chuckle?  Read this piece from The Washington Post SAT to be updated and this tongue in cheek assessment fashioned in the language of Common Core:

Read the article here.  It pokes the holes in David Coleman's push to align the SAT to Common Core State standards.

The readers aren't impressed with Coleman's plan either:

We need more hip hop questions.

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Thanks, Alexandra. re: original Actual Life Math Question, the closest correct answer is D. A better answer is E - quietly excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and once there, climb out the window and disappear for a few days. The time delay puts all the pressure on the cheap tablemates since they have to deal with the angry restaurant manager over the bill (if you run screaming from the table as in D, you get blamed for it immediately). If the bathroom has no window, stand on the toilet, pop open a ceiling tile, and climb up to escape through the plenum space above the ceiling. A return air duct would be ideal but most are too small to wiggle through like in the movies (though no doubt YOU could do so, Alexandra, yes?).

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If it's college success skills you want to test, make sure test takers have full access to wikipedia, and make sure that, for a fee, they can purchase someone else's test answers.

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On the actual life math question, there should be an answer E) put it on someone else's credit card, to match the thinking of the current generation and Washington D.C. 

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See Jane. See Jane run.

What was Jane doing?
A) walking
B)sitting
C)sleeping
D)don't know, I can't read 

Common Core State (sic) Standards

"Whoo Hoo!" The word that started a revolution in opting out of Common Core State (sic) Standards testing.

Susan Ohanian writing in the Daily Censored Whoo-Hoo! Occupy the Schools! about Common Core State (sic) Standards, details how the standards are not state led, a vehicle to establish a Global Work Force, funded primarily by Bill Gates, bipartisan in nature and a quest for a national curriculum/national test:

In response to a poverty rate that tops 90% in many urban and rural schools –and 1.6 million homeless children—many in schools with no libraries–education reformers at the White House, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Governors Association call for a radical, untried curriculum overhaul and two versions of nonstop national testing to measure whether teachers are producing workers for the Global Economy.

They call this upheaval the Common Core State (sic) Standards (CCSS) and there are two things to remember: The Common Core did not originate with the states and it is speculative and experimental–in a word, cuckoo. I use the (sic) in its title because putting the word “state” in there is a political move, a public relations ploy. Learning from President Bill Clinton’s failure to get the national test he wanted, corporate leaders and their political allies try to keep this school remake as distant from the White House as possible, insisting over and over that it’s a “grassroots initiative” –what the people asked for. Every time they say this, the press repeats it. The Common Core reality is about as far from Mom and apple pie as a zombie invasion.

The Gates connection and funding is stunning and who can deny the fact that this money is driving the current educational reform?

The Common Core State (sic) Standards are the result of hundreds of millions of dollars disbursed in carefully distributed grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation accompanied by the threat from U. S. Secretary Arne Duncan to withhold federal funds if individual states did not sign on the dotted line. I looked at two months worth of press citations praising the CCSS –August and September, 2012–and then looked up the Gates money given to those who come to praise CCSS. The list ranges from the American Federation of Teachers ($1,000,000) to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction ($823,637), from the neo-liberal Center for American Progress ($2,998,809) to the neo-conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute ($5,711,462). The PTA got money ($2,005,000); so did the National Writing Project ($2,645,593). And so on and so on. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and with money in their pockets, many are eager to sing the Common Core song and eat the funeral meats.

Although these groups all play a cheerleading role, here are the significant players in deforming school curriculum and testing and their Gates haul.

• Achieve, Inc.: $25,787,051
• The Council of Chief State School Officers: $71,302,833
• National Governors Association Center for Best Practices: $30,679,116

Chief architects of the literacy content for the Common Core content are a lawyer and David Coleman, an education entrepreneur. Coleman gained the most notoriety as he barnstormed the country preaching the importance of nonfiction and a bastardized form of New Criticism, a literary theory abandoned long ago by just about everybody except Mr. Coleman. In his presentation at the New York State Education Building in April 2011, Coleman declared that teachers must tell students: “When you grow up in this world you realize people don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.” Student Achievement Partners, an outfit Coleman co-founded is now churning out Common Core curriculum. They’re bankrolled by $6,533,350 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and $18,000,000 from the General Electric Foundation. Coleman has moved on to head the College Board ($31,178,497 in Gates funds).

My state education department in Vermont urged every teacher to watch a video produced by the Council of Great City Schools ($8,496,854 from Gates) in which Coleman offers advice to the student who reads several grade levels below the complex text assigned to his class: “You’re going to practice it again and again and again and again. . . so there’s a chance you can finally do that level of work.”

Gates is taking advantage of the bipartisan push for this reform and the Federal Government's involvement in these Common Core State (sic) Standards:

Lots of school watchers believe the sole purpose of the Common Core State (sic) Standards is to drive the national test which has been on the corporate agenda for more than two decades. Although the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation paid for the CCSS, the new, super-duper assessments traveling with those standards are funded by you and me. The U. S. Department of Education gave $335 million to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium to develop computer-based tests for grades 3-12. They both plan a lot of testing, and costs of hardware and software requirements, of rewiring school buildings and buying computers that meet the specifications are on the backs of local taxpayers. The Florida state department of education recently announced an infusion of nearly half a billion dollars to develop the necessary technology infrastructure capable of delivering the tests. New York City estimates the same amount.

Although hubris seems to drive Bill Gates’ education reform ideology, it is no surprise that his foundation would find the Common Core’s huge reliance on technology attractive. Technology and the desire to put schools under the oversight and domination of a national test also motivated education reformers in September 1989, when President George H.W. Bush convened a meeting in Charlottesville, Va., for the first-ever National Education Summit. Teachers were also absent from that meeting, Instead, IBM CEO Lou Gerstner joined hands with Arkansas governor Bill Clinton to lead the effort. Gerstner and his Business Roundtable cronies got to name the problem and define the solution, which was a relabeled Business Roundtable plan calling for school choice, competition, and a massive infusion of technology. It was signed into federal law as America 2000. When it morphed into Goals 2000, President Clinton was foiled in his attempt to add a national test. Then came No Child Left Behind under President Bush the Younger and Race to the Top and the Common Core under President Obama. With each residency change at the White House, the name of ed reform has changed and the content has become more destructive to the needs of public schools and the children in them.

Ohanian provides information on how Common Core State (sic) Standards impact children.  When these theories and untested standards/assessments are used on real human beings, the results are injurious to children.

Read the entire article here and discover why "whoohoo" may be the battlecry against the educational reformers and the spark which started a parental revolt against Common Core State (sic) Standards.

WHY Can't Students Read "Catcher in the Rye" in School? Meet David Coleman.

The only item David Coleman requires now is a crown.

The big news in education last week was the reduction of fiction reading in schools thanks to Common Core State standards.  Many writers bemoaned the fact that Catcher in the Rye was being pulled from the approved list of literature by the centralized education system present in the United States.  So much for local control.

Under reported was the story on who is issuing these edicts on educational content and delivery.  It's not Obama and it's not Arne Duncan.  It's David Coleman, who in our new centralized educational framework, should go by the title "Prince David Coleman" for being the lead architect in the crafting of the standards.  He has been endowed with special powers and seems to be untouchable in his pronouncements on how your local school district should teach and what it is allowed to teach.  Are we still in America?  Government for the people, by the people...or have we morphed into a public education system run by an elite?

Potter Williams Report has written an excellent piece on the man controlling your school in David Coleman, Architect of Common Core Standards, Replacing Classics with Propaganda:

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So who started this fiction vs. nonfiction smack down? Who's really behind getting kids to read spreadsheets and tech manuals instead of classic American literature? 

Look no further than the new President of the non-profit College Board[1], Mr. David Coleman. 

David Coleman is no exception to the current crop of reformers determined to produce cogs for the State. He has no experience in the classroom except for a short gig as a tutor yet he has managed to build the curriculum in public schools for the 21st century with little interference.

The 42-year old has hit the jackpot no doubt to his own familial relations. His mother, Elizabeth Coleman, has been president of Bennington College in Vermont for 25 years. A University of Chicago alumni, she was a Ford Foundation Scholar, and a graduate of Cornell and Columbia. Ms. Coleman has also been a consultant for the Annenberg Corporation. Prior to Bennington she was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of humanities at the far left New School for Social Research in New York while little David was growing up.  The New School was begun by progressives in 1932 and modeled itself after the neo-Marxist social theory of the Frankfurt school. 

At Bennington, Coleman showed her son the way by pioneering curricular programs in writing and launching a social justice initiative, the Center for the Advancement of Public Action. 

Following in his mother's footsteps, David Coleman has been called the "lead architect" of the Common Core Standards now adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia. The bipartisan National Governors Association which has been instrumental in pushing the standards praised Coleman's selection as president of the College Board. One of the reasons for the states' passive acceptance of such a critical initiative centers on Coleman's and others insistence that as a literature scholar he believes in the value of a liberal arts education. At the same time he's touting the value of Shakespeare he makes statements like this:

“It is rare in a working environment,” he’s argued, “that someone says, ‘Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.’”

"As you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.” 

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Mr. Coleman seems to have a problem expressing himself without vulgarity in other venues as well.  Susan Ohanian was the first writer to note his continuing issue with crass language (warning: vulgar expressions ahead) in Standardized Testing, the Common Core, and Dropping the F-Bomb:

by David Coleman

EXCERPTS

. . .I think PARCC is doing some beautiful work. . . to design assessments that seriously recognize two ideas: One is that assessment is an extremely powerful signal for instruction but you gotta own it. Cut the shit when you like "ooh we wrote this test and all these people are doing test preparation. They shouldn't be doing test prep; they should look at the standards."

I mean is it a perfect life? Fuck you. NO! I hate that disingenuousness. If you put something on an assessment in my view you are ethically obligated to take responsibility that kids will practice it 100 times. . . .

These Standards say that all kids deserve and must read the good stuff. We must stop watering down text. We must give demanding texts at every level. . .. That's true for English Language Learners. These students have a right to rigor. . . .These core standards demand that all students can and with adequate practice master greater rigor. . . .

Crack that whip!  Get those kids into shape!  Demand, demand, demand and give the kids the "right" to rigor.  What he doesn't talk about is that he is the one to decide what is rigorous, what is not and what students must learn.  David Coleman is an unelected official  deciding what your local district MUST teach and how.

But don't put ALL the blame on David Coleman.  Potter Williams details some of the politicians (Democrats and the Republicans) allowing and/or supporting Coleman to have this power:

•  Arne Duncan (US secretary of Education) 
• Jeb Bush (Former Republican governor of Florida)
• Mitch Daniels (Republican governor of Indiana)
• John Hickenlooper (Democratic governor of Colorado)

Others lavishing praise on Coleman include: 

• Kati Haycock (The Education Trust)
• Randi Weingarten (AFT President)
• Kaya Henderson (DC Public Schools Chancellor) 
• Bob Corcoran (GE Foundation President)  

The article chronicles Coleman's connections with private industries profiting handsomely from the publicly funded mandates.  To understand how schools cannot now set their own curriculum (no matter what your school district/state legislation states) and why students won't have the ability or time to read and discuss Catcher in the Rye in literature class, read how one man was able to manipulate standards/assessments with the help of politicians and corporations making handsome profits from the takeover of public education:

Whether Coleman sees himself as the schoolmaster of a one world order education is unknown. What is apparent, however, is the horse has already left the barn here in the United States. With the common core standards already in place, conservatives and liberals alike have failed to vet transformers like Coleman primarily due to Republican globalists who have been on board in the transformation of public school education with their far left comrades since the late 1980's. 

Ohanian ended her post on Coleman's speech at Brookings with this thought:

Remember this:

The Common Core State (sic) Standards and Assessments are something you can't use at a price you can't afford.

  

Common Core = Educational Equity, NOT Educational Excellence.

...two words NOT allowed in Common Core standards. "Uncommon" & "Creative"

Jamie Gass from Pioneer Institute writes about current DOEd education reform and common core standards in an article entitled "Leaves of Memory Going Dark":

Gov. Patrick, Secretary Reville, and other state officials must realize the damage the national standards are doing to the high school English curriculum and require yearlong courses in American and British literature, as well as classical literature in Grade 9 or 10. If they do not, their lasting legacy to the Bay State’s schoolchildren will be one of trading that which is beautiful and enduring for the jargon-filled dead language of educationists.

Here are some of the buzz words and jargon-filled dead language of educationists sprinkled in Arne Duncan's, Michelle Rhee's and David Coleman's statements about education and education reform:

• Educational equity
• Common core
• School choice
• Global competitiveness
• STEM ready
• College ready

What the educationists don't tell you but what is becoming apparent is this is not about individual education and teaching to each child.   That which is beautiful and enduring is being replaced with data driven assessments and conformity.  What is obvious is when the DOEd pushes common core, the emphasis is on common.  Education is not geared to excellence and surpassing goals.  Education's emphasis is for all students to be the same according to Arne Duncan:

His record of achievement is already secure. After talking about national standards for decades, the U.S. has finally adopted them. This is an example of Duncan’s quiet skills. By deleting the word “national” and working through the governors, he bested conservatives who have long refused to accept standards from Washington. Using the lever of Race to the Top, 41 states have adopted “common core” standards in just two years. “For the first time, a child in Mississippi and a child in Massachusetts will be judged by the same yardstick,” he says.

States won't be judged by the same yardstick, students will judged by the same yardstick.  This means children with low, middle and high IQ scores will be judged on the same common standards and assessments.  How's that working out for gifted or highly motivated students?  Common core is determined to make these kids common and services are being curtailed for them according to Insidehighered.com:

The College Board, facing widespread criticism, on Tuesday announced that it was abandoning plans to test out an August administration of the SAT this year. Many high school students want a summer option for taking the SAT, but many college and high school officials were upset by the College Board's plan to try out the idea with a summer program of the National Society for the Gifted and Talented -- a program whose $4,500 price tag led many educators to call the pilot a "rich kids SAT."

Initially the College Board defended the idea of using that group to test an August SAT. But on Tuesday, the board issued a statement that said in part that "certain aspects" of the summer program whose participants would gain the August SAT opportunity "run counter to our mission of promoting equity and access, as well as to our beliefs about SAT performance." The statement added, however, that the organization was "still very much committed to exploring the concept of a summer administration," and would look for ways in the future to do so "in a manner that better aligns with our mission and the students we serve. Steps also are being taken internally to ensure that future initiatives receive the appropriate level of senior management review."

This statement of equity and access from the College Board, soon to be headed by David Coleman, one of the primary architects of Common Core, is not surprising and is a foundational belief (if not the foundational belief) of educational reform.  What can gifted students expect in North Carolina thanks to Common Core?  From educationviews.org:

Under new education reforms adopted by North Carolina, gifted elementary school students will no longer be able to take middle school courses formerly available to them.

In an effort to phase in a set of national education reforms knows as the Common Core — an educational initiative that seeks to improve American education through unified and rigorous teaching across state lines — North Carolina has voted to install a more difficult curriculum for the 2012-2013 academic year.

Officials say that middle school math courses currently taken by gifted elementary school students will be too difficult for them after the curriculum changes, the McClatchy-Tribune reports. As a result, middle school courses will no longer be available to advanced elementary school students.

These changes fuel an already heated national debate on education reform. They raise the question of whether compliance to national educational standards such as the Common Core can stifle individual schools, preventing them from being able to push — and conversely, alienating — their brightest pupils.

This is reminiscent of Nancy Pelosi's statement about Obamacare:


"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it...away from the fog of the controversy"



Now that the governors, state boards of education, and the common core architects are telling you what's in Common Core and educational reform, if you have a student whose learning style/ability is not "common"... good luck.
 

What's REALLY Happening in Schools? Common Core Control Coming Soon to Your Public School...or Home School...or Private School.

If you have stories about your child's Common Core implementation and would like readers to know how it is impacting your child's learning and testing, we'd like to pass it on to other readers.  Since it's "common", your experiences are likely to be similar to those of parents/students in your consortia.  Homeschooling and private schooling parents, please pay attention to how Common Core will be invading your teaching materials as well.

Common Core tales from a mother of four children in the Midwest:

Regarding David Coleman being named president of the College Board, this could be good news in a way.  Here in Indiana we have organized groups of home schoolers, who have been asleep at the wheel since the mid 90's, when they rallied against OBE, Goals 2000. etc. I have been frustrated that I haven't been able to get the lobbyists who represent them to pay attention. They think they are "safe" because they home school. Those days are numbered and they are going to have to join the fight!

Why should home schooling parents or even parents private schooling their children be concerned?  

  

Some people I know who have taken the courageous step of home-schooling have understandably lost interest in fighting the federal take over of schools. They have the attitude that they can teach a good solid curriculum to their children, many of whom will outperform regularly schooled kids on the SAT, and get into a great college.  If the SAT is rewritten to align with the Common Core, they may think again before ignoring it.

For example, the Common Core inspired reform/"fuzzy" math my third grader brings home is difficult to do well on, unless it is specifically "taught.". It requires scripted written explanations and solving problems in unconventional ways. Getting the answer right using the standard algorithm doesn't cut it. The child's' answer is marked incorrect. It necessitates teaching to the test. It has exemplified to me that in certain subjects there will be items that will have to be taught, in order for a child to score well on a Common Core test.

Private schools that are accredited in Indiana all must take the federally funded PARCC assessment. Non-accredited schools are talking about how they will be impacted by the fact that most of the mainstream textbooks will be rewritten to be Common Core aligned. Now, if the SAT is altered most every college bound student will become entangled in the Common Core, regardless of how and where they are schooled.

Since taxpayers are paying for this privilege of unfunded/unvoted mandates and they are supplying their children to this system, the bureaucrats should be delighted to hear from the people paying for this service:

Another pathetic tidbit is that after 35 parents went to a School Commission meeting,with complaints such as "I have a degree in finance and I can't understand how to help my third grader with her math homework, the Principal called in a Pearson sales rep to sell us on the book.  When parents weren't satisfied, the Principal finally responded in frustration, "Look, I know parents don't like this kind of math because it isn't how any of us were taught, but we have to teach it this way because this is what is going to be on the PAARCC assessment."

Bingo. The principal isn't concerned the process of teaching math is all wrong.  He/she is concerned that the kids learn how to learn this process because that's the way the students will be assessed.  Now when your curriculum director and superintendent tells you he/she will still be able to set the curriculum, you know he/she is not telling you the truth.  It truly is "teach to the test."

The tactic of ignoring the public school educational reform debacle by home schooling and private schooling won't work either. If your home schooled, privately schooled child can't answer the question in the way it's designated by Pearson (a privately held company unaccountable to taxpayers), your child (even though he/she understands math) will most likely not do well on the PAARCC (or other consortia) assessment.

Do you believe David Coleman's promises on untested, unproven and unconstitutional standards...or tales from parents who are actually experiencing the standards and bureaucrats shrugging their shoulders because they see themselves as powerless?  Welcome to Arne Duncan's educational reform.

Have a story to share?  Contact stlgretchen@gmail.com