Common Core Claims Aren't Factual and Questions Remain Unanswered

Diane Ravitch makes some valid points and raises serious questions about Common Core standards and why the business community is so keen on seeing them implemented. The claims are bolded; the questions are highlighted. From 15153:
 

Yesterday, 72 business corporations published a full-page advertisement in the New York Times supporting the Common Core State Standards.

 

The ad asserts that the CCSS will prepare all children "to be successful in a competitive global economy." How do they know that since the standards are only now being implemented and have never been demonstrated to be successful?

 

The ad says that "the need for a strong employer voice is greater than ever." Why would that be? Is it because so many educators are concerned that the Common Core standards will bust the budgets of their district?

 

The ad says that the big corporations support "these new, tougher academic standards that are currently being rolled out in classrooms across the country." Are they concerned that tougher standards might widen the achievement gap?

 

The ad gives no indication that any of its signatories has ever read the CCSS.

 

This ad is very curious.

 

Why would business leaders take out a full-page ad to urge support for something that 46 states and the District of Columbia have already agreed to do?

I am reminded of the wacky report from a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations a year ago (co-chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice), which claimed that the public schools posed a "very grave threat to national security." Its three recommendations: 1) open more charters and vouchers; 2) adopt the Common Core standards; and 3) create a "national security readiness audit" for every school. Thus: privatization and the Common Core are necessary for our survival as a nation.

All very puzzling. How will the Common Core standards protect our national security?

 

Why are 72 corporations lined up to pledge support for standards that are already adopted but never field-tested?

 

Do they sell products that have never had a trial?

 

What gives?

 

It would be nice if these 72 companies would truthfully and transparently answer these questions Ravitch (and others) have posed about the standards.  Why won't they answer them? 

An aside:  The article states, The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Initiative, led by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers, has produced Kñ12 standards in the foundational subjects of math and English that meet the business community's expectations: they are college- and career-ready, grounded in evidence and internationally benchmarked.   

Why is education geared toward the business community's expectations?  Schools are supposed to be state/locally controlled with taxpayer money and input, not education  becoming the vehicle to create a managed workforce and private corporations directing public education.  The standards are NOT grounded in evidence (they were never field tested before they were adopted and they were adopted before they were even written) and the educational reformers/ business communities have never produced evidence of the standards being internationally benchmarked.   

And one more tidbit these companies didn't bother to mention: The NGA and the CCSSO are private trade organizations who have created standards/assessments that are privately copyrighted and held unaccountable to the taxpayers who have paid for them.

A Teacher Tells Students What's Most Important in Life. You Might Be Surprised.

That's an important question.

How are teachers (and parents) to teach children today?  Is becoming a global citizen and competing in a global economy the most important goal for students?  Is developing a managed economy and learning how to fit into that economy the reason for your child's existence?  

Watch Jeffrey Wright, a physics teacher, impart his educational lessons to his interested students.  More teachers like him and his passion for his subject might help solve any STEM crisis.  No computer could ever replicate the amazing way he teaches and captures his students' attention.  

The latter half of the video illustrates him teaching the students the most important lesson in life...and it's not from any Common Core standard I've come across.

The article description in the NY times of the video:

Jeffrey Wright uses wacky experiments to teach children about the universe, but it is his own personal story that teaches them the true meaning of life.

Will the Government Mandate Marriage so Childrens' Educational Outcomes are Enhanced?

For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage...

Does it Matter for the Children?

From the NY Times: Reviewing the academic literature, Susan L. Brown of Bowling Green State University recently found that children born to married couples, on average, “experience better education, social, cognitive and behavioral outcomes.” 

Can and/or should the government mandate that children born must be to married couples, then, for better educational outcomes? 

If there  are mandates on student personal behavior taught in school (healthy eating stressed and food controlled by adults, physical activity data tracked, sexual education introduced in kindergarten) then why not mandate parental behavior to help ensure a child's outcome in society?  Would it be labeled "Character Education for Adults"?  

Then again, that might involve a judgment in adult choices...but don't we make that judgment when smoking legislation is adopted for private businesses?  "No Smoking" is for the "good for society" and those affected by second hand smoke.  Aren't children educated for the "good for society" and affected by poor choices of their parents as well? 

Arne Duncan Needs an Educational Tip from Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz"

The New York Times has an article on the results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test.  Public education is having difficulty closing the achievement gap between black and white students.   

However, there are some schools making good progress on the NAEP test and they outperform the traditional public schools. Where are these successful students learning?  They are taught on military bases.  Reporter Michael Winerip interviewed a principal and a parent (not educational theorists and politicians) and asked them why these schools worked.  How are schools on military bases different than traditional public schools and what can the "experts" learn about the success of base schools?

They would find that the schools on base are not subject to former President George W. Bush’s signature education program, No Child Left Behind, or to President Obama’s Race to the Top. They would find that standardized tests do not dominate and are not used to rate teachers, principals or schools. 

They would find Leigh Anne Kapiko, the principal at Tarawa Terrace Elementary, one of seven schools here. 

Test preparation? “No,” Ms. Kapiko said. “That’s not done in Department of Defense schools. We don’t even have test prep materials.” 

At schools here, standardized tests are used as originally intended, to identify a child’s academic weaknesses and assess the effectiveness of the curriculum. 

Ms. Kapiko has been a principal both inside and outside the gates and believes that military base schools are more nurturing than public schools. “We don’t have to be so regimented, since we’re not worried about a child’s ability to bubble on a test,” she said. 


Zounds, Batman.  That's how education is SUPPOSED to work:  

• no federal overreaching, smothering mandate like NCLB (or the waiver), 
• no endless assessments to satisfy federal testing requirements for diversity purposes (tests instead are for purposes of identifying weakness and effectiveness of curriculum), and 
• autonomy and innovation of teachers and principals is a job expectation (not a top down pyramid of regulations mandated by the Department of Education, CCSSO and NGA).

What is the achievement difference between base schools and traditional public schools?

In the last decade, the gap in reading between black and white fourth graders at base schools has decreased to 11 points this year (233 compared with 222), down from a 16-point difference in 2003 (230 compared with 214), a 31 percent reduction. In public schools, there has been a much smaller decrease, to a 26-point gap this year (231 compared with 205) from 30 points in 2002 (227 compared with 197), a 13 percent reduction. 

Schools operate differently on the bases and they are working for these children, parents, teachers and administrators.  They have autonomy and support each child (and their parents) based on his/her abilities:

Nevin Joplin, a sergeant in the Air Force, has a son in the sixth grade at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Sergeant Joplin, who is black and a single father, said both he and his son, Quinn, had been given ample opportunities to succeed. Quinn has been placed in a gifted program, and Sergeant Joplin said he had been treated fairly in the military promotion system. “My records go to the board, my name is blacked out, anything that would identify me is blacked out; they only see what I’ve done and decide on the merits,” he said. 

 How does principal view the children she is responsible for in her base school?


Military children are not put through test prep drills. “For us,” Ms. Kapiko said, “children are children; they’re not little Marines.” 

 Base schools operate under these beliefs:

• children are children (not units for assessing)
• teachers can really teach (not follow a list of common core standards crafted by private companies unanswerable to voters)
• principals can make educational decisions (unlike having to follow the prescribed script from Washington)
• parents (in their military jobs) and students (in their base classrooms) are graded on their accomplishments

What's absent in the base method of education that's pervasive in public schools?  The base schools don't operate under the assumption of "people and thought control" and trust the adults running the schools are competent and professional:


“We don’t micromanage,” said Marilee Fitzgerald, director of the Department of Defense Education Activity, the agency that supervises the military base schools and their 87,000 students. “Individual schools decide what to focus on.” 

Imagine what traditional public schools would look like if children were nurtured and the staff and students were not micro-managed.  Our schools would have the possibility of results realized by the base schools.  This paragraph from the NY Times article reminds me of Dorothy's proclamation in the Wizard of Oz: "There's no place like home":

It has become fashionable for American educators to fly off to Helsinki to investigate how schools there produce such high-achieving Finns. But for just $69.95 a night, they can stay at the Days Inn in Jacksonville, N.C., and investigate how the schools here on the Camp Lejeune Marine base produce such high-achieving Americans — both black and white. 

Dorothy had all her answers in her own backyard.  She didn't need to go to Finland or the Emerald City and neither do our politicians and education gurus. 

  

"Carpetbaggers" and "Charlatans" just might be better than the Current Public School Administrators

There is a sentence in this NY Times article that contained the descriptive words of people/institutions trying to fix education: "carpetbaggers" and "charlatans". Who deserves those titles? Those pesky charter schools and other individuals who are diverting from the time tested (and failed) union teachers and the Department of Education over that last 40 years:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/education/10schools.html

Imagine that. The New York Times doesn't want to spend Race to the Top money on trying new school structures and instructive techniques. I do not want to support charter schools who have not done the job they contracted out to do; however, it does no good for the taxpayers to acquiesce state control of education and throw more money at public education for the same failing results they've seen over the last four decades.

As I understand it, parents don't have to send a child to a charter school. The parents choose the school over a public school. If a charter school is shown to be under performing or failing, the charter is revoked and the school is closed. Why can't this be applied to failing public schools as well?

Now that would be reform worth supporting.