A Peek into the Real Intent of Common Core?

 ….Hitherto the plans of the educationists have achieved very little of what they attempted and indeed, when we have read them …we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers…But the man molders of the new age will be armed with the powers of the omnipotent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please…They know how to produce conscience and decide what kind of conscience they will produce… The Abolition of Man, 1943  (from  What Would the Founders Think?)

 

 

Is this the scenario with Common Core assessments and ideology of standards?  Instead of "party-state" control of content, in the United States, it's "venture capitalists-state funded" control of content.

 

 

From Lessons From Abroad:

 

"The [Chinese] education system in the party-state is trying to lock up the minds of children, using an untenable set of ideology from Marx and Lenin to brainwash the children. If you don’t buy into that stuff, you will be given a zero score and you will fail the exam."

 

— Jing Chu, described by New Tang Dynasty Television as an “internet writer,”  in response to reports that students who wrote anything critical about the Chinese government in essays on their college entrance exam received a zero

Question: Who sets the ideology in Common Core standards?

 

Answer: It's not your local school board.

Education Venture Capitalists Want Government Money but not Government Mandates....

...however, if you dance with the Devil, you pay the Devil his due.

Venture capitalists are in the business of making money and one area to funnel capital is into charter schools.  Charter start ups are partially funded by federal government money (aka known as taxpayer funding) so there is no true entrepreneurial risk.  They primarily operate as traditional public schools because of the Race to the Top mandates, so true innovation in education content can't occur.  However, teacher unions will be reduced and (according to them and school choice proponents) public education will be saved.

Apparently the venture capitalists aren't liking the Race to the Top "competition" open to individual school districts because of the additional mandates set by Arne Duncan.  They are fighting for that power to create "innovation" as opposed to the mandates from the DOEd. From Education News:

When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan opened the Race to the Top competition to individual school districts two weeks ago, he said he wanted to spur innovation “at the classroom level and the all-important relationship among teachers and students.” Now, a coalition of 16 education startups and policy organizations, herded by the nonprofit NewSchools Venture Fund, are saying the competition gets innovation wrong. They’re planning to send Duncan a letter Friday.

“We … enthusiastically offer our support for the latest Race to the Top-District Competition that prioritizes personalized learning,” the letter begins. “We worry that the competition as currently conceived may not maximize return on our $400 million federal investment.”

 

...but what's ironic is the expansion of their ventures into education wouldn't be possible without the Race to the Top mandates.  Now that they have entered into the education realm (with taxpayer funding), they now want to dictate how schools and teachers teach and are assessed.

The coalition wants to modify the Race to the Top competition by creating a “toolbox” that would allow schools to try out various technological tools, provided by educational developers, to reach student performance goals. The toolbox would be made available on an open data platform to schools and teachers.

 After the project period ended, the developers of the most effective tools would receive more money.

The coalition suggests this round could lead to more useful classroom improvements if it gave extra points to districts that partner with teacher training programs and that work with nonprofit organizations “to implement and scale personalized learning solutions.”

“This is big investment in a very nascent field,” said Benjamin Riley, the group’s policy director, referring to Race to the Top’s funding. “There’s an awful lot being asked from school districts. We want to give every opportunity for partnership.”

They also want to change the application process. According to the letter, the process requires applicants to set forth personalized learning plans, which can be stifling and run “the risk of creating another layer of bureaucracy.” Riley said the current process encourages the designing of personalized learning “from the top down” as opposed to “the way we innovate in Silicon Valley.”

Venture capitalists believe true innovation begins at the bottom level and works its way up.  That is in opposition to the RTTT model and mandates.  

NewSchools Venture Fund, a San Francisco-based group co-founded by venture capitalist John Doerr — and later supported by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings — describes itself as a “nonprofit venture philanthropy firm.” It helps investors find worthy educational entrepreneurs to support, such as charter schools like KIPP. In more recent years, the group has funded technology-based products, such as Khan Academy and ClassDojo, two software applications that help teachers manage classrooms. The organization invested $7.1 million in the spring of 2012 and $2.47 million the previous winter.

The group has close ties to the Education Department: In 2009, Duncan scooped up NewSchools Venture Fund’s chief operating officer, Joanne Weiss, to become a senior adviser for Race to the Top. She’s now his chief of staff.

Venture capitalists like John Doerr (St. Louis born) want to use the mandates to be able to use taxpayer money to start and maintain their ventures but now want the government to back off so they can run like a private school...of course, using the same taxpayer money for the "educational tools provided by educational developers".  They want to be able to use your money to pay for their educational tools they believe would work for students (and channel that money to their educational choice of companies) without governmental dictates on how this should happen.   They want to dictate to Arne Duncan what tools and assessments to use.

They want to operate like a private school with taxpayer money and drive assessment data.  They want their tools (paid for by taxpayer money) to be provided to public schools to assess teachers and student achievement.  They want to control public education, even in the schools they don't manage.   Remember the quote from John Riley (above): “There’s an awful lot being asked from school districts. We want to give every opportunity for partnership.”  Do you think that "opportunity" will be free to public school districts?

Do these venture capitalists understand as many taxpayers do, that Race to the Top is actually a race to the bottom and doomed to fail?  Of course they do.   These venture capitalists are concerned about not "maximizing the return on our $400 million federal investment".  They want to be able to make the money in the venture.  They can't make the amount of private money they want to when the decisions on what tools are used are controlled by the government.

The investors are worried about their return.  Where is the concern about the taxpayer investment into a failed policy? Where is the concern of the politicians that the private individuals and groups making money from the charters (while using our money to do so) are driving what is expected in public education?  Maybe there is no concern from them because privatization of public education is seen as the panacea to educational failure.

These Silicon Vally "entrepreneurs" want it all.  Do you think they'll get a waiver to implement their plans and programs from Duncan?  A word of caution to the Silicon crowd: the waivers are usually worse than the original mandates.  These entrepreneurs are in the governmental bureaucracy dance, whether they like it or not.  Governmental mandates and innovation don't mix well. 

Economists Running Classrooms? Is This a Good Idea?

We've raised concerns in this blog about the current plan to change the educational system in Missouri to align with standards not set by the state, but rather by a consortium of states; signing onto underfunded mandates; and the increased privatization of the delivery of educational instruction.

We are supportive of competition in education. There is healthy competition between public institutions, particularly on the university level. What concerns us is the path the privatization is taking in the K-12 sphere on a national level. There is increasing alarm among individuals and groups on both sides of the aisle of the investment in schools from hedge fund and venture capitalist organizations. This is a growing trend in California, Washington state, New York and Chicago, to name a few areas.

While we know this is not the current trend in Missouri, we are concerned we will follow the same trajectory. I'm not the only one who questions the action of turning over failing schools or opening charters for the idea of competition without thinking through the ramifications of this action. Educator Historian Diane Ravitch from the Washington Post Answer Sheet and "The Pitfalls of Putting Economists in Charge of Education":

It is astonishing to realize the extent to which education debates are now framed and dominated by economists, not by educators or sociologists or cognitive psychologists or anyone else who actually spends time in classrooms. My bookshelves are chock full of books that analyze the teaching of reading, science, history, and other subjects; books that examine the lives of children; books that discuss the art and craft of teaching; books about the history of educational philosophy and practice; books about how children learn.

Think back when you were in school. Did you ever think a banker or an investment manager would be the best person to manage a school? Probably not, because those individuals didn't know education theories; they were trained in the financial sector to learn how to invest and make the best turn on said investments. Ravitch continues:

Now such considerations seem antique. Now we are in an age of data-based decision-making, where economists rule. They tell us that nothing matters but performance, and performance can be quantified, and those who do the quantification need never enter a classroom or think about how children learn.

There are many references in new educational reform to rate teacher effectiveness based on "value-added assessment". These assessments will be heavily based on student performance. Ravitch questions the teacher assessment process:

So the issue of our day is: How do we measure teacher effectiveness? Most of the studies by economists warn that there is a significant margin of error in "value-added assessment" (VAA) or "value-added modeling" (VAM). The basic idea of VAA is that teacher quality can be measured by the test-score gains of their students. Proponents of VAA see it as the best way to identify teachers who should get merit pay and teachers who should be fired. Critics say that the method is too flawed to use for high-stakes purposes such as these.

Last July, the U.S. Department of Education published a study by Mathematica Policy Research, which estimated that even with three years of data, there was an error rate of 25 percent. A few months ago, I signed onto a statement by a group of testing experts, which cautioned that such strategies were likely to misidentify which teachers were effective and which were ineffective, to promote teaching narrowly to the test, and to cause a narrowing of the curriculum.

Ravitch continues with her argument and details how the Gates studies promoting the effectiveness of this teacher assessment is questionable. She concludes with this:

If we step back a bit, don't you think there is a certain kind of madness in thinking that economists who never set foot in a classroom can create a statistical measure to tell us how best to educate children? It seems some will never be satisfied until they have a technical process to override the judgments of those who work in schools and are in daily contact with teachers and children. I don't know of any other nation in the world that is so devoted to this effort to turn education into a statistical problem that can be solved by a computer. It is not likely to end well.

I happen to fall in the Ravitch camp vs the Arne Duncan and Gates group. I know many legislators are for much of the Duncan style reform, but like Ravitch, I don't think education is a "statistical problem that can be solved by a computer". The good teachers will leave when they are rated "ineffective" because they have a class of low performing children who are unable or unmotivated to learn and perform badly on testing. It may have less to do with the teacher and more to do with the child's temperament, IQ or family situation. In that scenario, is it the teacher's fault the child can't and/or won't learn? The statistical model doesn't take into consideration those types of variables.

We have an important educational decisions in Missouri. Do we believe education should be the status quo it has been the last 20, 30, 40 years? No. Federal spending has increased 180% and test scores have flatlined. Do we believe we should turn schools over to private financiers who have no educational experience? Ravitch has her reservations about them; Gates sings their praises. What is a parent to think about all this?

If you think this is true competition, I would ask you what competition really means. Does competition of a product mean the selling of a same product in different packaging, or does competition mean some unique feature sets a product apart from another that makes you want to purchase one over another? If the uniqueness is innovation in education, I'm on board. If the product includes the same mandated content, then maybe it's not true competition.

Charter schools can be viable options. They need to have the legal protections of local control of ownership and board positions so they are not co-opted by financiers who have no community connection. They should operate autonomously as charters were intended to operate. Thinking about autonomy, teachers in all educational settings should be given the freedom to teach, rather than parrot pre-conceived lessons and tests. Bad teachers should be shown the door, but perhaps should be done in a manner that measures effectiveness in many ways, not just from test scores from unwilling and/or incapable students.

What is our hope for Missouri children? We hope our children are seen less as human capital in which to invest and more as individuals whom we have been charged to educate.

We'll talk about our concerns about the enormous ties of charters to billionaires, both Democrat and Republican, in another post and hopefully you will begin to understand our growing concern of educational changes wrought without due and careful diligence.