William Bennett appeared on Campbell Brown's reformster PR site to stick up for the Common Core, but he ignores some inconvenient truths in the process.
The first stretcher is in his thesis-title: the GOP is wrong to run away from the Common Core-- because the standards are working. "Working" is a heck of a subjective term here, but let's see where he's going, shall we?
He starts with some history, noting that many GOP governors who used to love the Core have decided to dump the standards because it's politically expedient to do so. He is not wrong, but he conveniently ignores parts of the story. Perhaps most notable is that so many of these states actually adopted the standards before they were actually written. Bennett also gives a head nod to the notion that "federal overreach" sullied the otherwise beauteous standards, as if the standards would have had a chance of adoption without the full force of federal coercion and cash behind them (spoiler alert: they would not have).
So the story is not, "States adopted educational standards because they examined the standards and decided that Common Core would make education in their states great. Now those same state leaders are dumping the Core for crass political reasons."
No, the story is, "Some politicians adopted a policy because they thought it would be politically (and financially) advantageous to do so, and then dropped that policy when it became politically advantageous to do so." This is not a new story, and it is not a surprising story, and the degree to which career politicians pretend to be surprised by it is baffling.
Bennett correctly calls out Chris Christie for the hypocrisy of dismissing the Core without making any "substantive policy changes." That's fair, but again-- adopting the Core was a political gesture, and so is disowning it. I'm shocked-- shocked, I tell you.
Bennett then embarks on a journey of logic-chopping and baloney-slicing.
Christie recognizes that New Jersey still needs tough, internationally benchmarked standards that resemble CCSS.
Well, except that CCSS is not internationally benchmarked, and never has been. And the word "tough" is meaningless rhetoric. Something can be tough and still be a waste of everyone's time, like sitting through the film version of Les Mis or listening to twenty-four straight hours of heavy metal polka music.
Many polls indicate that the American people support higher and more rigorous standards and testing.
Let's pretend that those poll results aren't baloney in their own right. Let's pretend that the word "higher" means something when applied to standards. None of that means that the Common Core (Bennett carefully skips around how the brand name does in the polls ) is a hit with anyone. I can say that I am really hungry and would like to eat, but if you bring me a plate of raw liver covered with fried kale, I will still send it back. "But you said you wanted supper," you might say, but you'd be silly to do so.
Bennett then repeats his titular assertion that the Core are "working," which is yet another very vague rhetorical flourish. Does he have evidence?
In a word, no.
Bennett instead brings up the Achieve Honesty Gap report, a report with all sorts of problems, such as treating NAEP as a benchmark test. Oddly enough for Bennett's argument, the Achieve report also doesn't mention the Common Core, ever. Bennett's point is that the Big Standardized Test results are getting more in line with NAEP results. This assumes a great many things, not the least of which is that BS Tests are giving us a real measure of how Core-tastic students are, but since there are many parts of the Core that will never be on the BS Test (collaborative learning, reading full works, and critical thinking, for starters), it seems unlikely that the Core tests are even measuring what they claim to intend to measure.
But Bennett's baloney-fest isn't over.
Christie has every right to call for a review of the standards in New Jersey, in fact, most states review their standards every few years anyway.
(Yes, Bennett seems to want to mostly spank Christie in this piece). Bennett is also conveniently forgetting that the Common Core Standards were carefully constructed NOT to be reviewed every few years or even ever. Set in cement, copyrighted, and with states pledged to add no more than fifteen percent and to change not a whit or tittle, the Core also had no mechanism in place for review or revisit, and the architects left the scene quickly for pricey new gigs.
Given the Core pushback and the lack of any authoritative body to oversee anything, the copyright issue has evaporated. But CCSS was designed not to change a bit, and certainly not to be reviewed by the states. In that sentence, Bennett himself has made the case for dropping the Core.
Bennett also invokes the doctrine of Core Inevitability, a sort of sour grapes argument that says, "Fine, make your own standards. But they will inevitably look like the Common Core because CCSS is so close to the Platonic ideal of education standards that all standards must be a pale shadow of the Core awesomeness." This is a highly charitable and extra-fantastical view of the Common Core Standards, which remain the mediocre, poorly written product of educational amateurs.
Bennett finishes with one more hopeful eruption.
If a state ends up tweaking and renaming the standards, it will be acting in a way that is entirely consistent with how the Common Core was designed to function – as exemplar standards for states to improve and build upon.
Yeah, see above. That is very specifically NOT how the Common Core was designed to function. States were forbidden to improve or build upon CCSS. Bennett is entitled to be bitter and disappointed that same political winds that once filled CCSS sails have now deserted the SS Common Core. He is not entitled to pretend that the SS Common Core was built to be some sort of mighty, nimble ocean vessel when in fact it was always, from day one, a wobbly, leaky dinghy with a brick for a rudder.
Showing posts with label CCSS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CCSS. Show all posts
Friday, July 24, 2015
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Embrace the Core
You know, perhaps we're looking at this the wrong way. Perhaps we are missing a golden opportunity.
After all-- at this point, very few people know what the hell the Common Core Standards actually are. We've learned that the vast majority of Common Core textbook materials are actually not aligned at all. We know that the Common Core tests are a random crapshoot. We know that what Common Core looks like tends to depend on who's interpreting it for your district.
If the Common Core Standards were supposed to create a common, shared framework that would put students and teachers across this country on the same educational page, then they have failed spectacularly and completely. (I make that point at greater length in an article in the new Education Week, which is available behind a paywall here and in the current print edition.)
Pushers of professional development use the CCSS brand to push their favorite ideas. Teacher-advocates describe their programs, based on nothing more than their own best teacher judgment, and give all the credit to the Core. Opponents of the Core blame it for every dumb homework paper ever created, whether that assignment has anything to do with the Core or not.
Those last groups are the ones we can learn from, really.
It's so simple, I can't believe I didn't see it sooner.
Do whatever the hell you want, and blame it on the Core.
Teaching students to research material before reading it? I'll call that core-aligned. Forbidding students to research material before reading it? Also core-aligned. Want to do writing-based assessments? Why, that's totally core. Drilling reading assignments with bubble question quiz at the end? Also complete core. I have a great new idea for a program that integrates research, literature and video presentations. Pitch it as aligned to the core.
My home ec students have to read recipes, so I'm a core teacher. I'm a band director? Create a new tweak to the program-- web-based video pre-reviews of works as concert advertisement. Declare it aligned to the Core. Increase in the budget? I need it for Core-related stuff. Teaching students to make a souffle? It's a Common Core souffle.
Teacher core advocates and publishing companies have shown us the way-- there is literally nothing that can't be claimed as a Core-aligned program. Slap "common core" on anything-- there is nobody who can tell you you aren't allowed.
I'm going to have an extra order of fries-- for the Common Core. I am going to get the red Porsche instead of the mini-van because I need it for the Common Core. I did not have sex with that woman-- we were just aligning some Common Core. Please put more frosting on my cupcakes-- it's required by the Core. If anyone tries to question you, just exclaim, "Critical thinking! Alignment! Why are you against higher standards?"
If you happen to be deep in red state Common Core hating territory, just flip the script. Anything you dislike can be blamed on Common Core.
I'm not going to teach Herman Melville because he's part of the Common Core. Don't order that cheap recycled papers-- it's part of the Common Core. Don't you dare put any of that low-fat dressing on my salad-- that's just another way to promote Common Core. I had to punch that guy; he looked like he was going to talk to my kids about Common Core. If anybody questions you on this, just holler, "Communism! Indoctrination! Why do you hate freedom!"
The Common Core, primarily through the efforts of its alleged friends, has been reduced to a meaningless ball of mush. In hindsight, this seems like a completely predictable result-- there is no hard underlying structure of solid sound education ideas based on research and professional experience. Just blobs of personal preferences slapped together by educational amateurs. There is no solid framework, no sturdy skeleton to stay standing when bits and pieces are chipped away. When you dig into CCSS, there's no there there. And so under stress, exploitation, and just being passed along like a nonsense message in a game of telephone, the Core is being reduced to its most basic parts-- nothing at all.
We can take advantage of that by raising the CCSS flag over any and all territory we want to explore (or want to forbid). We were worried that CCSS would be a concrete straightjacket, but as its allies have tweaked and twisted and slanted and squeezed until it's a soggy mess of nothing, a document written on unobtainium with a unicorn horn dipped in invisible ink. And then, with rare exceptions, they've run off so that they don't have to defend the weak sauce they've left behind.
Now, there's no question that on the state and local level, we still have officials doing their best to slavishly enforce their version of the core-- but the vast majority of them aren't enforcing the standards as actually written, either. Andrew Cuomo would be the same size tyrant whether CCSS existed or not. If your district is in the steely grip of Test Prep Mania, the core really doesn't have anything to do with your problems-- the Core can go away, but until the Big Standardized Test goes away, your troubles will remain.
So do whatever you like and use the Common Core as your excuse. Slap the Core justification on every single thing you do in the classroom-- all the cool kids are doing it. Not only will it give you ammunition to defend your teaching choices, but you will help hasten the ongoing disintegration of the standards into a mushy, meaningless, irrelevant mess. The Common Core Standards are over and done. If we do embrace it, perhaps we can embrace it extra hard and help finish it off. I would say to stick a fork in them, but you'll probably need a spoon, and it will be much more fun to use a blender.
After all-- at this point, very few people know what the hell the Common Core Standards actually are. We've learned that the vast majority of Common Core textbook materials are actually not aligned at all. We know that the Common Core tests are a random crapshoot. We know that what Common Core looks like tends to depend on who's interpreting it for your district.
If the Common Core Standards were supposed to create a common, shared framework that would put students and teachers across this country on the same educational page, then they have failed spectacularly and completely. (I make that point at greater length in an article in the new Education Week, which is available behind a paywall here and in the current print edition.)
Pushers of professional development use the CCSS brand to push their favorite ideas. Teacher-advocates describe their programs, based on nothing more than their own best teacher judgment, and give all the credit to the Core. Opponents of the Core blame it for every dumb homework paper ever created, whether that assignment has anything to do with the Core or not.
Those last groups are the ones we can learn from, really.
It's so simple, I can't believe I didn't see it sooner.
Do whatever the hell you want, and blame it on the Core.
Teaching students to research material before reading it? I'll call that core-aligned. Forbidding students to research material before reading it? Also core-aligned. Want to do writing-based assessments? Why, that's totally core. Drilling reading assignments with bubble question quiz at the end? Also complete core. I have a great new idea for a program that integrates research, literature and video presentations. Pitch it as aligned to the core.
My home ec students have to read recipes, so I'm a core teacher. I'm a band director? Create a new tweak to the program-- web-based video pre-reviews of works as concert advertisement. Declare it aligned to the Core. Increase in the budget? I need it for Core-related stuff. Teaching students to make a souffle? It's a Common Core souffle.
Teacher core advocates and publishing companies have shown us the way-- there is literally nothing that can't be claimed as a Core-aligned program. Slap "common core" on anything-- there is nobody who can tell you you aren't allowed.
I'm going to have an extra order of fries-- for the Common Core. I am going to get the red Porsche instead of the mini-van because I need it for the Common Core. I did not have sex with that woman-- we were just aligning some Common Core. Please put more frosting on my cupcakes-- it's required by the Core. If anyone tries to question you, just exclaim, "Critical thinking! Alignment! Why are you against higher standards?"
If you happen to be deep in red state Common Core hating territory, just flip the script. Anything you dislike can be blamed on Common Core.
I'm not going to teach Herman Melville because he's part of the Common Core. Don't order that cheap recycled papers-- it's part of the Common Core. Don't you dare put any of that low-fat dressing on my salad-- that's just another way to promote Common Core. I had to punch that guy; he looked like he was going to talk to my kids about Common Core. If anybody questions you on this, just holler, "Communism! Indoctrination! Why do you hate freedom!"
The Common Core, primarily through the efforts of its alleged friends, has been reduced to a meaningless ball of mush. In hindsight, this seems like a completely predictable result-- there is no hard underlying structure of solid sound education ideas based on research and professional experience. Just blobs of personal preferences slapped together by educational amateurs. There is no solid framework, no sturdy skeleton to stay standing when bits and pieces are chipped away. When you dig into CCSS, there's no there there. And so under stress, exploitation, and just being passed along like a nonsense message in a game of telephone, the Core is being reduced to its most basic parts-- nothing at all.
We can take advantage of that by raising the CCSS flag over any and all territory we want to explore (or want to forbid). We were worried that CCSS would be a concrete straightjacket, but as its allies have tweaked and twisted and slanted and squeezed until it's a soggy mess of nothing, a document written on unobtainium with a unicorn horn dipped in invisible ink. And then, with rare exceptions, they've run off so that they don't have to defend the weak sauce they've left behind.
Now, there's no question that on the state and local level, we still have officials doing their best to slavishly enforce their version of the core-- but the vast majority of them aren't enforcing the standards as actually written, either. Andrew Cuomo would be the same size tyrant whether CCSS existed or not. If your district is in the steely grip of Test Prep Mania, the core really doesn't have anything to do with your problems-- the Core can go away, but until the Big Standardized Test goes away, your troubles will remain.
So do whatever you like and use the Common Core as your excuse. Slap the Core justification on every single thing you do in the classroom-- all the cool kids are doing it. Not only will it give you ammunition to defend your teaching choices, but you will help hasten the ongoing disintegration of the standards into a mushy, meaningless, irrelevant mess. The Common Core Standards are over and done. If we do embrace it, perhaps we can embrace it extra hard and help finish it off. I would say to stick a fork in them, but you'll probably need a spoon, and it will be much more fun to use a blender.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Will 2015 Be Another Rough Year For the Core?
We've had ample time to collect the education predictions for the coming year, and it's an interesting batch. Most of them follow a fairly simple format:
"I love hammers. I predict that in 2015, everything will be a nail!"
Arne Duncan's list is modest-- more kids in pre-school, more graduates from high school, more students with internet access, more students getting pulled into college. It all boils down to, "I predict that our more modest policy initiatives will actually work."
NPR ran an entire list of people predicting that in 2015, those people would turn out to be right. People who like data think there will be data in abundance. People who like school choice think there will be school choice. People who run corporations devoted to certain initiatives such as game-based learning or "snackable" learning predict those things will be doing great.
Of course, with ESEA renewal on the line, people are lining up to make predictions about Common Core. Foes of CCSS are belatedly coming to grips with ESEA's roles in standards adoption. No Child Left Behind (the current version of ESEA) is still the law of the land, and it's a law that virtually every state is currently violating. Only the magic power of Duncan's Magical Waivers is keeping the hammer of NCLB from falling on 50 scofflaw states, and Common Core is one of the ingredients needed to make the magical waiver potion. Take away the hammer and you can arrange it so that nobody actually needs Common Core any more. Add this to the people who want to take a bite out of the Core on the state level, and it becomes clear that the legislation will be worked on this year. Probably.
Anthony Rebora and Ross Brenneman did their own tea leaf meta-analysis this week, and came up with what is undoubtedly the safest summation:
So, in 2015, something is definitely going to happen with the common core ... but it's hard figure out what that might be.
The fate of Common Core is becoming harder to track because the actual words "Common Core" are being abandoned by supporters. Jeb Bush and Arne Duncan have both stopped using brand name publicly, and in general "Common Core" is joining the ranks of "politically correct" as a term that is always used to smear someone else, and never claimed as a brag ("I am proud to be just as politically correct as possible," said nobody ever in the last decade).
Yet some supporters still have hope. In the NPR round-up, Carmel Martin of the Center for American Progress allows that this is the year that legislators lose their interest in CCSS and simply let it be. And while many politicians have abandoned the brand, they will still be pushing a no-name version, calling for high college-and-career-ready standards.
The Common Core battle is further confused by the fact that nobody can tell which side is which. Both political parties are fractured between Pro-Core and Anti-Core, and when you drill down it gets even more confusing (some people hate the Core because they love public education and some people hate the Core because they hate "government schools").
I agree with Andy Smarick's prediction of rough waters ahead, though I think he misses some of the opposition. He points out that many schools of conservatives still feel little love for the standards. Some resent distant technocrats who have pushed aside time-tested standards and approaches on a local scale. Free-market conservatives dislike a one-size-fits-all imposed single system. And small government conservatives are Very Unhappy about the federal overreach involved in CCSS.
And Smarick doesn't even get to the people on the Left who, well, hate many of the same things, including the substitution of government control for democracy while imposing unproven standards. Go figure.
And this is all just the frontal assault on Common Core. There is a huge storm a-brewin' for High Stakes Testing, despite the attempt to mollify critics. From the mockery of Rick Hess's own predictions list ("In a stunning development, the researchers will discover that much school time is not devoted to reading or math--and that many parents aren't even all that focused on reading and math scores") to scathing testimony by local parents like Sarah Blaine, the full court press is on for testing. While folks may like to pretend that tests like the PARCC and SBA are separate issues from the core, these test are the Core's teeth, spine and testicles. Without the tests, the Core standards are suggestions that have to win compliance based on their actual educational merit, and few people are ready to take that bet. Without The Big Test, CCSS is a paper tiger, and not even a good heavy glossy bond, but more like a thin recycled tissue paper.
The Core still has rich and powerful supporters. It also has attackers who undermine the opposition to the Core with crazy-pants "this incomprehensible common core math is trying to turn my son into a communist dupe" arguments. And the "let's just re-name the damn thing" approach has been, so far, pretty successful.
So I'm not going to predict 2015 as the Year That Common Core Goes To That Great Filing Cabinet In The Sky. But I do believe that those supporters who imagine the bumpiest waters are behind are kidding themselves, and should probably grab an oar, because win or lose, they are about to have a very bumpy ride.
"I love hammers. I predict that in 2015, everything will be a nail!"
Arne Duncan's list is modest-- more kids in pre-school, more graduates from high school, more students with internet access, more students getting pulled into college. It all boils down to, "I predict that our more modest policy initiatives will actually work."
NPR ran an entire list of people predicting that in 2015, those people would turn out to be right. People who like data think there will be data in abundance. People who like school choice think there will be school choice. People who run corporations devoted to certain initiatives such as game-based learning or "snackable" learning predict those things will be doing great.
Of course, with ESEA renewal on the line, people are lining up to make predictions about Common Core. Foes of CCSS are belatedly coming to grips with ESEA's roles in standards adoption. No Child Left Behind (the current version of ESEA) is still the law of the land, and it's a law that virtually every state is currently violating. Only the magic power of Duncan's Magical Waivers is keeping the hammer of NCLB from falling on 50 scofflaw states, and Common Core is one of the ingredients needed to make the magical waiver potion. Take away the hammer and you can arrange it so that nobody actually needs Common Core any more. Add this to the people who want to take a bite out of the Core on the state level, and it becomes clear that the legislation will be worked on this year. Probably.
Anthony Rebora and Ross Brenneman did their own tea leaf meta-analysis this week, and came up with what is undoubtedly the safest summation:
So, in 2015, something is definitely going to happen with the common core ... but it's hard figure out what that might be.
The fate of Common Core is becoming harder to track because the actual words "Common Core" are being abandoned by supporters. Jeb Bush and Arne Duncan have both stopped using brand name publicly, and in general "Common Core" is joining the ranks of "politically correct" as a term that is always used to smear someone else, and never claimed as a brag ("I am proud to be just as politically correct as possible," said nobody ever in the last decade).
Yet some supporters still have hope. In the NPR round-up, Carmel Martin of the Center for American Progress allows that this is the year that legislators lose their interest in CCSS and simply let it be. And while many politicians have abandoned the brand, they will still be pushing a no-name version, calling for high college-and-career-ready standards.
The Common Core battle is further confused by the fact that nobody can tell which side is which. Both political parties are fractured between Pro-Core and Anti-Core, and when you drill down it gets even more confusing (some people hate the Core because they love public education and some people hate the Core because they hate "government schools").
I agree with Andy Smarick's prediction of rough waters ahead, though I think he misses some of the opposition. He points out that many schools of conservatives still feel little love for the standards. Some resent distant technocrats who have pushed aside time-tested standards and approaches on a local scale. Free-market conservatives dislike a one-size-fits-all imposed single system. And small government conservatives are Very Unhappy about the federal overreach involved in CCSS.
And Smarick doesn't even get to the people on the Left who, well, hate many of the same things, including the substitution of government control for democracy while imposing unproven standards. Go figure.
And this is all just the frontal assault on Common Core. There is a huge storm a-brewin' for High Stakes Testing, despite the attempt to mollify critics. From the mockery of Rick Hess's own predictions list ("In a stunning development, the researchers will discover that much school time is not devoted to reading or math--and that many parents aren't even all that focused on reading and math scores") to scathing testimony by local parents like Sarah Blaine, the full court press is on for testing. While folks may like to pretend that tests like the PARCC and SBA are separate issues from the core, these test are the Core's teeth, spine and testicles. Without the tests, the Core standards are suggestions that have to win compliance based on their actual educational merit, and few people are ready to take that bet. Without The Big Test, CCSS is a paper tiger, and not even a good heavy glossy bond, but more like a thin recycled tissue paper.
The Core still has rich and powerful supporters. It also has attackers who undermine the opposition to the Core with crazy-pants "this incomprehensible common core math is trying to turn my son into a communist dupe" arguments. And the "let's just re-name the damn thing" approach has been, so far, pretty successful.
So I'm not going to predict 2015 as the Year That Common Core Goes To That Great Filing Cabinet In The Sky. But I do believe that those supporters who imagine the bumpiest waters are behind are kidding themselves, and should probably grab an oar, because win or lose, they are about to have a very bumpy ride.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
2014: What Did My Readers Care About?
Had I known what this blog was going to turn into, I probably would have done it on wordpress, which has many more nifty tools. This last week, I have watched with envy as worpressers get their own little number-crunching nicely-graphicked end-o'-year wrap-up. Meanwhile, even doing simple tagging is a chore on blogspot.
But my wife has been under the weather, so we've stayed close to home and I've had time to break a few things down here at the blogstand. What could I see in the tea leaves of my sites stats?
I always start with the assumption that readers in the bloggoverse respond mostly to subject. When I see a post take off and draw large readership, I don't think "Wow, I must have written the hell out of that one" so much as I think, "Damn, that must have touched a nerve." So by looking at what posts were popular, I get a sense of what nerves are out there, waiting to be touched.
By far, nothing I have ever written in my life has touched as many nerves as this piece:
The Hard Part dealt with the issue of teachers never having enough-- enough time, enough resources, enough you to do everything you know you should do. It ran on this blog a year ago, and then I later used it on my HuffPost space, where it blew up. At this point it has 560,000 likes on facebook, and has been translated into French, Spanish and German. It is not my greatest moment of writing (at one point, I announce a metaphor and then launch a simile--d'oh) but boy does it ever speak to something that many, many teachers feel-- a sense of just not being enough, of having too much to do and too little to do it with. If there was ever a moment in which blogging made me feel as if I were not the only person to feel a particular way, this was it.
As much as we've all learned to pay attention on the national level, people still respond very strongly to their own local concerns. Three of my four top posts for the year are regional: a piece about the publishing of Minneapolis teacher ratings, a piece from last spring about North Carolina's spirited drive to kick its teachers repeatedly in the face, and one of several posts following the stripping of special subjects in Ohio. Massachusetts's flirtation with teacher certificate screwery made the top 10.
Posts also take off when they address some of the favorite reformsters. People never seem to get tired of seeing what Arne Duncan's latest move of gooberdom, and I swore off directly referencing She Who Will Not Be Named because She always served as the most base-but-effective clickbait. Besides, she simply never deserved to be famous, so I stopped being part of that process.
Once you get away from the reformster A-list, however, interest drops. I will not hurt the feelings of some reformsters by listing the people in whom there's just not much interest, and I will continue responding to their work just because I like to.
People also like mockery, apparently, which is a need I'm prepared to fill. The top ten posts for the year include my directory of anti-teacher trolls and my own take on the ubiquitous "Why I Heart Common Core" letters. Which tells me that as serious as the situation is, folks are still willing to laugh at it. In seven hundred and some posts of varying degrees of seriousness, I have never gotten a "How dare you make light of these serious issues" note. I have, however, received several notes from reformsters-friendly folks saying essentially, "I disagree with most of the substance of what you wrote, but that was still pretty funny." So I guess as contentious as the debates about the future of US public education have become, we are not all so grim as the folks in some of the other big debates in this country.
My sampling here is obviously self-selecting, and not representative of the general population, but it still is interesting to get a hint of what sorts of things people are concerned about. And now I have also fulfilled my contractual obligation to do some sort of end-of-the-year post. Happy New Year to us all!
But my wife has been under the weather, so we've stayed close to home and I've had time to break a few things down here at the blogstand. What could I see in the tea leaves of my sites stats?
I always start with the assumption that readers in the bloggoverse respond mostly to subject. When I see a post take off and draw large readership, I don't think "Wow, I must have written the hell out of that one" so much as I think, "Damn, that must have touched a nerve." So by looking at what posts were popular, I get a sense of what nerves are out there, waiting to be touched.
By far, nothing I have ever written in my life has touched as many nerves as this piece:
The Hard Part dealt with the issue of teachers never having enough-- enough time, enough resources, enough you to do everything you know you should do. It ran on this blog a year ago, and then I later used it on my HuffPost space, where it blew up. At this point it has 560,000 likes on facebook, and has been translated into French, Spanish and German. It is not my greatest moment of writing (at one point, I announce a metaphor and then launch a simile--d'oh) but boy does it ever speak to something that many, many teachers feel-- a sense of just not being enough, of having too much to do and too little to do it with. If there was ever a moment in which blogging made me feel as if I were not the only person to feel a particular way, this was it.
As much as we've all learned to pay attention on the national level, people still respond very strongly to their own local concerns. Three of my four top posts for the year are regional: a piece about the publishing of Minneapolis teacher ratings, a piece from last spring about North Carolina's spirited drive to kick its teachers repeatedly in the face, and one of several posts following the stripping of special subjects in Ohio. Massachusetts's flirtation with teacher certificate screwery made the top 10.
Posts also take off when they address some of the favorite reformsters. People never seem to get tired of seeing what Arne Duncan's latest move of gooberdom, and I swore off directly referencing She Who Will Not Be Named because She always served as the most base-but-effective clickbait. Besides, she simply never deserved to be famous, so I stopped being part of that process.
Once you get away from the reformster A-list, however, interest drops. I will not hurt the feelings of some reformsters by listing the people in whom there's just not much interest, and I will continue responding to their work just because I like to.
People also like mockery, apparently, which is a need I'm prepared to fill. The top ten posts for the year include my directory of anti-teacher trolls and my own take on the ubiquitous "Why I Heart Common Core" letters. Which tells me that as serious as the situation is, folks are still willing to laugh at it. In seven hundred and some posts of varying degrees of seriousness, I have never gotten a "How dare you make light of these serious issues" note. I have, however, received several notes from reformsters-friendly folks saying essentially, "I disagree with most of the substance of what you wrote, but that was still pretty funny." So I guess as contentious as the debates about the future of US public education have become, we are not all so grim as the folks in some of the other big debates in this country.
My sampling here is obviously self-selecting, and not representative of the general population, but it still is interesting to get a hint of what sorts of things people are concerned about. And now I have also fulfilled my contractual obligation to do some sort of end-of-the-year post. Happy New Year to us all!
Common Core Now Loves Inertia
It is by far the weakest argument presented in favor of the Common Core (well, the weakest argument that is not, like "written by teachers" or "internationally benchmarked," based on fabrications and falsehoods). It is the argument that we must stick with Common Core because dropping the standards would be too costly and disruptive.
This argument has been around since CCSS support started to erode. One of the first signs that Louisianna Governor Bobby Jindal and his state superintendent of education John White were growing apart was White's spirited proclamation that dumping the Core testing would throw teachers into a "state of chaos."
Within the last month, two more states have given voice to plaintive cries of "stay the course!" The Hechinger Report presented "Tennessee Common Core Backtrack Leaves Teachers Stranded" which includes several concerns about the Volunteer State's backtracking (a de-Core-ifying augmented by the departure of reformster Kevin Huffman from the state education commissioner position). Tennessee's back-transition leaves teachers straddling both old and new standards. Said one teacher, "I make sure my students are exposed to both standards, but it's only fair that they're assessed genuinely and authentically to the way they're instructed." Not to mention the additional mess the discombobulated assessment creates in a state that is still all in on VAM, using test based bad data and magic formula voodoo to evaluate teachers.
Meanwhile, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant is making noises about reclaiming Mississippi's educational autonomy and dumping the evil federally over-reaching Core. Some teachers are quoted as being not happy.
"I don't think we've been teaching the standards long enough to tell if it's going to fail," said Robin Herring, a fifth-grade teacher at Eastside Elementary in Clinton. "It really scares me that if we stop in the middle of what we're doing that we're just going to move backwards."
It's not that I don't think these folks have a point. But all of this seems... familiar, somehow. Look at the following quote:
"The education of ... children should not be 'politicized' in this way. This is not about what is best for students or best practices in education or even based on proven research, but rather more political rhetoric based on taking advantage of the latest buzz phrase or issue of the day and today it just happens to be 'Common Core.'"
Quick quiz. Were those words spoken by someone opposing the Common Core a few years ago, or someone defending the Common Core today?
Answer: someone defending Common Core today. But you weren't sure, were you?
Yes, it makes a mess when you change an entire system quickly and with little foresight and planning. Yes, it's unfair to give Big Important Tests on material that's not actually being taught. Yes, it's bizarre to implement programs when we don't even know if they work. Those objections to quickly booting out Common Core are valid today, just as they were when they were raised regarding the implementation of the Core in the first place.
When we were implementing the Core, we were all about blowing up the status quo. We were fighting inertia. We were building planes in mid-air and anybody who complained was just a tool of the establishment. We werer throwing out standards that had been rated higher than the Core because we needed to move forward, and do it quickly (even if we had no earthly way of knowing whether forward was really forward). People who complained about moving too quickly, testing too unfairly, throwing out programs and materials without reasons-- these were just people who Didn't Get It. Back in those days, disruption was necessary. Disruption was good.
Now, suddenly, disruption is bad. Inertia is to be revered and respected. We have no proof-- none-- that Common Core is working, but we shouldn't disturb it or throw it off course.
This has been a repeated pattern for reformsters. They used political gamesmanship, emotional leveraging, and rhetorical smoke and mirrors to install the Common Core, and now that those tools are coming back to bite them in the butt, they want to change the rules of the game. "You're making this too political," cry the people who used insider political power plays to get their agenda in place. "You are being too disruptive," complain the people who treated disruption as a virtue when it served their purposes.
It's too bad we're not having more of a conversation about Common Core's (lack of) virtues, but that was a choice reformsters made five years ago. Those who live by the creative disruption must die by it as well.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
This argument has been around since CCSS support started to erode. One of the first signs that Louisianna Governor Bobby Jindal and his state superintendent of education John White were growing apart was White's spirited proclamation that dumping the Core testing would throw teachers into a "state of chaos."
Within the last month, two more states have given voice to plaintive cries of "stay the course!" The Hechinger Report presented "Tennessee Common Core Backtrack Leaves Teachers Stranded" which includes several concerns about the Volunteer State's backtracking (a de-Core-ifying augmented by the departure of reformster Kevin Huffman from the state education commissioner position). Tennessee's back-transition leaves teachers straddling both old and new standards. Said one teacher, "I make sure my students are exposed to both standards, but it's only fair that they're assessed genuinely and authentically to the way they're instructed." Not to mention the additional mess the discombobulated assessment creates in a state that is still all in on VAM, using test based bad data and magic formula voodoo to evaluate teachers.
Meanwhile, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant is making noises about reclaiming Mississippi's educational autonomy and dumping the evil federally over-reaching Core. Some teachers are quoted as being not happy.
"I don't think we've been teaching the standards long enough to tell if it's going to fail," said Robin Herring, a fifth-grade teacher at Eastside Elementary in Clinton. "It really scares me that if we stop in the middle of what we're doing that we're just going to move backwards."
It's not that I don't think these folks have a point. But all of this seems... familiar, somehow. Look at the following quote:
"The education of ... children should not be 'politicized' in this way. This is not about what is best for students or best practices in education or even based on proven research, but rather more political rhetoric based on taking advantage of the latest buzz phrase or issue of the day and today it just happens to be 'Common Core.'"
Quick quiz. Were those words spoken by someone opposing the Common Core a few years ago, or someone defending the Common Core today?
Answer: someone defending Common Core today. But you weren't sure, were you?
Yes, it makes a mess when you change an entire system quickly and with little foresight and planning. Yes, it's unfair to give Big Important Tests on material that's not actually being taught. Yes, it's bizarre to implement programs when we don't even know if they work. Those objections to quickly booting out Common Core are valid today, just as they were when they were raised regarding the implementation of the Core in the first place.
When we were implementing the Core, we were all about blowing up the status quo. We were fighting inertia. We were building planes in mid-air and anybody who complained was just a tool of the establishment. We werer throwing out standards that had been rated higher than the Core because we needed to move forward, and do it quickly (even if we had no earthly way of knowing whether forward was really forward). People who complained about moving too quickly, testing too unfairly, throwing out programs and materials without reasons-- these were just people who Didn't Get It. Back in those days, disruption was necessary. Disruption was good.
Now, suddenly, disruption is bad. Inertia is to be revered and respected. We have no proof-- none-- that Common Core is working, but we shouldn't disturb it or throw it off course.
This has been a repeated pattern for reformsters. They used political gamesmanship, emotional leveraging, and rhetorical smoke and mirrors to install the Common Core, and now that those tools are coming back to bite them in the butt, they want to change the rules of the game. "You're making this too political," cry the people who used insider political power plays to get their agenda in place. "You are being too disruptive," complain the people who treated disruption as a virtue when it served their purposes.
It's too bad we're not having more of a conversation about Common Core's (lack of) virtues, but that was a choice reformsters made five years ago. Those who live by the creative disruption must die by it as well.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
PBS's Common Core Lifeboat
On Christmas Day, PBS Newshour ran a piece about Common Core that was, if nothing else, organized around a fun central image. "Special correspondent" John Tulenko harkens back to the film classic Lifeboat (which he incorrectly places in the 50s), about survivors stuck in the titular conveyance.
The dilemma of that old film, who stays on board, who gets thrown over, that’s a great way to think about the Common Core these days.
It was launched in 2008, a lifeboat full of big ideas to save public schools. But, out on open seas, it’s had to toss aside key parts of the plan just to stay afloat. And the water is getting rougher.
2008? Now I know Tulenko's in trouble, because even wikipdia and the Core's own website mark launch year as 2009. He goes on to cite an unknown survey that says 60% of Americans don't love the Core, and then cuts to a Louis C. K. core-joke clip, because television. Good news, though-- he's landed three experts to help "navigate these troubled waters." Because Tulenko may be loose on facts, but he is tight on metaphor-maintenance.
Our experts? Neal McClusky from CATO, Chris Minnich of CCSSO, and Catherine Gewertz of Education Week. Each gets an opening sound bite (because television). McClusky goes with, "People sure hate the Core, and they hate the brand name most of all." Minnich floated a cool new talking point saying, roughly, "The fact that everyone hates the Core and we're still in the game just shows how vast is the mountain of money that our backers are willing to throw at this." Ha, no, just kidding. But he does claim that "We're not dead yet" is proof that the Core is still vital and viable. Minnich observes that opponents come in many stripes, and many of them hate the Core origin story than the contents.
Tulenko starts ticking off the parts of the Core that had to be tossed overboard. First to go? The hope that states would adopt CCSS voluntarily. When states were "slow to adopt" standards that, in 2009, still hadn't been finished yet, Obama jumped in with Race to the Top.
McClusky: In 2011, 2012, the backlash began as soon as schools started to see the actual standards and started asking what the heck are these, and who decided they were a good idea. "And so we moved to a system of national standards without ever having had a meaningful national debate about doing that."
Tulenko notes that the boat was rocked further by teachers who weren't given the tools or support to implement the new standards, and many of those teachers jumped ship (Tulenko's commitment to his metaphor is a beautiful thing).
Minnich says it's actually going great, and that the places where it's not going great are just places that flubbed the implementation, but with a little tweakage they'll be right along. I am wondering if Minnich set milk and cookies out for Santa on Christmas eve. His childlike boosterism is sort of inspiring, despite its total disconnection from reality.
But then, Tulenko says, everyone hates the testing. And to someone's credit, nobody in this conversation wastes our time trying to argue that the testing and the Common Core are like unrelated complete strangers who didn't even make eye contact on the dock and it's just random fate that they now share the same berth on this trans-educational cruise ship. With teachers about to have their careers put on the line over unproven tests used to measure not-yet-implemented standards, educators squawked loudly.
Now here's the thing about an extended metaphor; if you're not careful, it leads you to say wacky things just for the metaphor's sake. Like this:
Sharp criticism from teachers forced U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, arguably the ship’s captain, to alter course.
Oh, John. The "arguably" signals that even you know that's probably wrong. And in truth, I don't think you could find anybody on any side of this issue who thinks that Arne Duncan is actually a leader of anything. There are days I almost feel sorry for the guy because he's certainly not the captain of this ship. Deck hand? Carved mermaid on the prow? Keel? But not the captain.
Tulenko makes the point that testing has many people and states backing away, despite Arne's 11th-hour sort-of-reprieve. McClusky gets to point out that testing is also expensive as hell between technology and infrastructure.
Tulenko references the name "Next Generation Content Standards and Objectives," which appears to be the rebranding being used in West Virginia. Tulenko takes a moment to underline the use of rebranding to "right the ship," and Gerwetz allows as how that's a popular approach.
Minnich gets the last sound bite, sounding kind of small at this point: "This blip was to be expected because, as you raise the expectations on any system, there will be — there will be pain points. But I think we have weathered the storm." Minnich must have been stuck in the lifeboat after the USS Reality went down.
Ultimately the story doesn't tell us much, but it's important to pay attention to what is being repeated in the almost-mainstream, and here is PBS, an organization that has shown no inclination to take any kind of critical look at the Core, depicting the standards as a ship barely afloat and struggling to stay on course, and providing air time to more than just the usual slate of cheerleaders. It's not a real journalistic look at the Core yet (c'mon John-- take time to google at least), but at least they are drifting in the right direction.
The dilemma of that old film, who stays on board, who gets thrown over, that’s a great way to think about the Common Core these days.
It was launched in 2008, a lifeboat full of big ideas to save public schools. But, out on open seas, it’s had to toss aside key parts of the plan just to stay afloat. And the water is getting rougher.
2008? Now I know Tulenko's in trouble, because even wikipdia and the Core's own website mark launch year as 2009. He goes on to cite an unknown survey that says 60% of Americans don't love the Core, and then cuts to a Louis C. K. core-joke clip, because television. Good news, though-- he's landed three experts to help "navigate these troubled waters." Because Tulenko may be loose on facts, but he is tight on metaphor-maintenance.
Our experts? Neal McClusky from CATO, Chris Minnich of CCSSO, and Catherine Gewertz of Education Week. Each gets an opening sound bite (because television). McClusky goes with, "People sure hate the Core, and they hate the brand name most of all." Minnich floated a cool new talking point saying, roughly, "The fact that everyone hates the Core and we're still in the game just shows how vast is the mountain of money that our backers are willing to throw at this." Ha, no, just kidding. But he does claim that "We're not dead yet" is proof that the Core is still vital and viable. Minnich observes that opponents come in many stripes, and many of them hate the Core origin story than the contents.
Tulenko starts ticking off the parts of the Core that had to be tossed overboard. First to go? The hope that states would adopt CCSS voluntarily. When states were "slow to adopt" standards that, in 2009, still hadn't been finished yet, Obama jumped in with Race to the Top.
McClusky: In 2011, 2012, the backlash began as soon as schools started to see the actual standards and started asking what the heck are these, and who decided they were a good idea. "And so we moved to a system of national standards without ever having had a meaningful national debate about doing that."
Tulenko notes that the boat was rocked further by teachers who weren't given the tools or support to implement the new standards, and many of those teachers jumped ship (Tulenko's commitment to his metaphor is a beautiful thing).
Minnich says it's actually going great, and that the places where it's not going great are just places that flubbed the implementation, but with a little tweakage they'll be right along. I am wondering if Minnich set milk and cookies out for Santa on Christmas eve. His childlike boosterism is sort of inspiring, despite its total disconnection from reality.
But then, Tulenko says, everyone hates the testing. And to someone's credit, nobody in this conversation wastes our time trying to argue that the testing and the Common Core are like unrelated complete strangers who didn't even make eye contact on the dock and it's just random fate that they now share the same berth on this trans-educational cruise ship. With teachers about to have their careers put on the line over unproven tests used to measure not-yet-implemented standards, educators squawked loudly.
Now here's the thing about an extended metaphor; if you're not careful, it leads you to say wacky things just for the metaphor's sake. Like this:
Sharp criticism from teachers forced U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, arguably the ship’s captain, to alter course.
Oh, John. The "arguably" signals that even you know that's probably wrong. And in truth, I don't think you could find anybody on any side of this issue who thinks that Arne Duncan is actually a leader of anything. There are days I almost feel sorry for the guy because he's certainly not the captain of this ship. Deck hand? Carved mermaid on the prow? Keel? But not the captain.
Tulenko makes the point that testing has many people and states backing away, despite Arne's 11th-hour sort-of-reprieve. McClusky gets to point out that testing is also expensive as hell between technology and infrastructure.
Tulenko references the name "Next Generation Content Standards and Objectives," which appears to be the rebranding being used in West Virginia. Tulenko takes a moment to underline the use of rebranding to "right the ship," and Gerwetz allows as how that's a popular approach.
Minnich gets the last sound bite, sounding kind of small at this point: "This blip was to be expected because, as you raise the expectations on any system, there will be — there will be pain points. But I think we have weathered the storm." Minnich must have been stuck in the lifeboat after the USS Reality went down.
Ultimately the story doesn't tell us much, but it's important to pay attention to what is being repeated in the almost-mainstream, and here is PBS, an organization that has shown no inclination to take any kind of critical look at the Core, depicting the standards as a ship barely afloat and struggling to stay on course, and providing air time to more than just the usual slate of cheerleaders. It's not a real journalistic look at the Core yet (c'mon John-- take time to google at least), but at least they are drifting in the right direction.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Jason Zimba: The Other Guy
NPR just ran a piece courtesy of the Hechinger report profiling Jason Zimba. If David Coleman is widely known as the Architect of Common Core, Zimba is That Other Guy who worked on Common Core, handling the math side of things. He never quite achieved the profile of David Coleman, but he's been right there every step of the way.
Zimba has always seemed to me (and I should note that all of my impressions of reformsters are based on twelfth-hand information from reading and youtubing and who knows, if I were actually to sit in a room with David Coleman, I might find him pleasant and personable and not at all possessed of a huge helping of hubris) to be somewhat more human than Coleman, but I've paid less attention to him because math is not my area of expertise. It's hard to sort these guys out; some, like Coleman, seem to have sought out the work propelled by sheer ego, while others seem to have just blundered into the reform biz without really understanding what they were doing.
The profile by Sarah Garland really wants us to see Zimba as a human being. It opens with a scene to remind us that he has children, and that the older one attends a public school, where Common Core is used. "I would be sleeping in if I weren't frustrated," says Zimba, speaking of his Saturday morning extra math lessons for his daughter to make up for what's lacking in the public school. He is apparently also frustrated by how Common Core is playing out in schools across the country.
Common Core was supposed to fuel a revolution. It was supposed to drive improvements in curricula and materials. It would push for excellence and provide the yardstick to measure progress toward that mountain of math awesometude. That was all its creators wanted, and while they knew it would be tough, they were surprised by the pushback.
"The creation of the standards is enshrouded in mystery for people," Zimba says. "I wish people understood what a massive process it was, and how many people were involved. It was a lot of work."
Well, yes. It was shrouded in mystery on purpose. In fact, it was shrouded in mysteries that were wrapped in lies about the involvement of classroom teachers and international benchmarks. But Garland says that the math standards were essentially written by three guys, and not for the first time, I'm reading an account that echoes those SF movies where scientists don't realize that their purely scientific experiment is actually going to be used as a weapon for evil.
"It was a design project, not a political project," says Phil Daro, a former high school algebra teacher who was on the three-man writing team with Zimba and William McCallum, head of the math department at the University of Arizona. "It was not our job to do the politics while we were writing."
I've written about McCallum before, a sad scientist who simply didn't and doesn't grasp the context of CCSS, the way it plays out in the real world, and the motivation of the people powering it. We just built the bomb for good. We never intended it to be used against humans, so humans should not be upset when they get blown up.
Zimba's humble early trajectory wouldn't suggest that he was headed for this kind of government work, but when at Oxford, he "befriended" David Coleman, and in 1999 the two hooked up again to tinker with the idea of an education consulting firm. They started Grow Network, a company that produced reports to help districts and states make sense of the new NCLB test results. "Zimba had a genius for creating reports that were mathematically precise but also humanely phrased, Coleman says." That's striking all by itself; I can't tell you how much of Coleman I've read, and how very rarely he acknowledges the value of any other person's work. Grow was bought out by McGraw-Hill and Coleman and Zimba headed in semi-separate directions. Zimba ended up teaching at Bennington (in Vermont-- there's a great monument there worth visiting) where Coleman's mother was president.
Together they wrote a paper in 2007 addressing the issue of many (maybe too many) standards for math across the states. It was the right paper at the right time. Shortly thereafter, in this squeaky-clean NPR version of history, when the CCSSO and NGA decided to tackle standards, "Coleman and Zimba were picked to help lead the effort." Can't help feeling we've skipped an awful lot of insider history right there. But Student Achievement Partners were formed and given a mountain of money to get to work.
"We were looking for a skill set that was fairly unique," says Chris Minnich, executive director of CCSSO. "We needed individuals that would know the mathematics — Jason and the other writers obviously know the mathematics — but would also be able to work with the states, and a bunch of teachers who would be involved."
That's a fun quote. Particularly the "bunch of teachers" part. Does it suggest that Coleman was on board primarily for his shmoozing abilities?
At this point, Garland's grasp of history gets even slipperier. We do get the inspiring story of Zimba and McCallum working long hours, slaving over the standards in the garage (just like Bill Gates starting Microsoft). She notes again that he was human, with a life and a family and a day job, spiced up with a story of some colleague telling him to stop texting about standards stuff while his second daughter was being born.
During the course of the next year, they consulted with state officials, mathematicians and teachers, including a union group. Draft after draft was passed back and forth over email.
"Consulting." Great word. Then the final standards were released in 2010. Garland notes that "by the following year" forty states adopted them; she does not note that many adopted them before they were written, though she does note that adoption happened "thanks in part to financial incentives dangled by the Obama administration" which is kind of like saying I paid my mortgage payments thanks in part to a Keeping My House incentive dangled by my bank.
Garland's timeline for the resistance to CCSS is even more...um... debatable. She marks the pushback to 2013 and the wave of CCSS test results. She says resistance didn't enter the mainstream until this year, when a father's posting about CCSS homework went viral and Glen Beck picked it up, followed by ridicule from Louis C. K. and Stephen Colbert. Which is about the most truncated history of Common Core opposition I've ever read.
Now CCSS allies are trying to salvage the cause by calling for testing delays. But the writers are just puzzled by all the fuss.
"When I see some of those problems posted on Facebook, I think I would have been mad, too," McCallum says. Daro tells a story about his grandson, who brought home a math worksheet labeled "Common Core," with a copyright date of 1999.
They argue there's actually very little fuzziness to the math in the Common Core. Students have to memorize their times tables by third grade and be able to do the kind of meat-and-potatoes problems Zimba asks of his daughter during their Saturday tutoring sessions, requirements he believes the so-called Common Core curriculum at her school essentially ignored.
In other words, they wrote it right, but everybody is reading it incorrectly.We built the bomb for Good. We do not understand why people are being blown up with it.
Even as Zimba and his colleagues defend the standards against cries of federal overreach, they are helpless when it comes to making sure textbook publishers, test makers, superintendents, principals and teachers interpret the standards in ways that will actually improve American public education, not make it worse.
All of this has pushed Zimba to a new conclusion, a new crusade, a new battle.
These days, Zimba and his colleagues acknowledge better standards aren't enough.
"I used to think if you got the assessments right, it would virtually be enough," he says. "In the No Child Left Behind world, everything follows from the test."
Now, he says, "I think it's curriculum."
Yes, the problem is that we didn't build a powerful enough bomb. If we built a bigger bomb, then it would be used the correct way.
It is hard not to see these guys as hopelessly naive about How Things Work, about the implications of the work they were doing. I sympathize in part-- when he claims that publishers are mucking up the works by using CCSS to market any old crap lying around the warehouse, I don't disagree, but at the same time, dude, what did you think they were going to do with the bomb once you had finished building it?? You may have thought you were building an instrument of peace and wisdom and growth, but you should have paid better attention to the people who were signing your checks and collecting your work, because this is exactly what they wanted it for.
All three are trying to fix it. McCallum has some little start-up you've never heard of to make math apps. Daro is writing a complete math curriculum for Pearson, presumably because, you know, the politics and business are not his problem. Zimba's trying to work on it, too. None of them seem to see their own hand in the mess that is now choking public education. Granted, I see all of these characters through the smudgy lens of various journalists, but I keep feeling as if Coleman knows exactly what he's doing, but The Other Guys don't really get it. They don't see the battlefield because they are only focused on the bomb.
Zimba does not pick up the lesson that he now realizes that he was wrong back when he thought the standards would fix everything, so maybe he's wrong again now that he thinks national curriculum is the answer. And he doesn't seem to have any sense of the moral or ethical implications of trying to rewrite the education system for everybody part time in his garage-- did nobody at any point say, "Gee, for a project this massive, maybe there's a better way and other people who should be involved." While he seems to lack the strutting ballsiness of Coleman, he still must have the hubris required to think, "Yeah, I could write the math guidelines for every student in the country."
Zimba has always seemed to me (and I should note that all of my impressions of reformsters are based on twelfth-hand information from reading and youtubing and who knows, if I were actually to sit in a room with David Coleman, I might find him pleasant and personable and not at all possessed of a huge helping of hubris) to be somewhat more human than Coleman, but I've paid less attention to him because math is not my area of expertise. It's hard to sort these guys out; some, like Coleman, seem to have sought out the work propelled by sheer ego, while others seem to have just blundered into the reform biz without really understanding what they were doing.
The profile by Sarah Garland really wants us to see Zimba as a human being. It opens with a scene to remind us that he has children, and that the older one attends a public school, where Common Core is used. "I would be sleeping in if I weren't frustrated," says Zimba, speaking of his Saturday morning extra math lessons for his daughter to make up for what's lacking in the public school. He is apparently also frustrated by how Common Core is playing out in schools across the country.
Common Core was supposed to fuel a revolution. It was supposed to drive improvements in curricula and materials. It would push for excellence and provide the yardstick to measure progress toward that mountain of math awesometude. That was all its creators wanted, and while they knew it would be tough, they were surprised by the pushback.
"The creation of the standards is enshrouded in mystery for people," Zimba says. "I wish people understood what a massive process it was, and how many people were involved. It was a lot of work."
Well, yes. It was shrouded in mystery on purpose. In fact, it was shrouded in mysteries that were wrapped in lies about the involvement of classroom teachers and international benchmarks. But Garland says that the math standards were essentially written by three guys, and not for the first time, I'm reading an account that echoes those SF movies where scientists don't realize that their purely scientific experiment is actually going to be used as a weapon for evil.
"It was a design project, not a political project," says Phil Daro, a former high school algebra teacher who was on the three-man writing team with Zimba and William McCallum, head of the math department at the University of Arizona. "It was not our job to do the politics while we were writing."
I've written about McCallum before, a sad scientist who simply didn't and doesn't grasp the context of CCSS, the way it plays out in the real world, and the motivation of the people powering it. We just built the bomb for good. We never intended it to be used against humans, so humans should not be upset when they get blown up.
Zimba's humble early trajectory wouldn't suggest that he was headed for this kind of government work, but when at Oxford, he "befriended" David Coleman, and in 1999 the two hooked up again to tinker with the idea of an education consulting firm. They started Grow Network, a company that produced reports to help districts and states make sense of the new NCLB test results. "Zimba had a genius for creating reports that were mathematically precise but also humanely phrased, Coleman says." That's striking all by itself; I can't tell you how much of Coleman I've read, and how very rarely he acknowledges the value of any other person's work. Grow was bought out by McGraw-Hill and Coleman and Zimba headed in semi-separate directions. Zimba ended up teaching at Bennington (in Vermont-- there's a great monument there worth visiting) where Coleman's mother was president.
Together they wrote a paper in 2007 addressing the issue of many (maybe too many) standards for math across the states. It was the right paper at the right time. Shortly thereafter, in this squeaky-clean NPR version of history, when the CCSSO and NGA decided to tackle standards, "Coleman and Zimba were picked to help lead the effort." Can't help feeling we've skipped an awful lot of insider history right there. But Student Achievement Partners were formed and given a mountain of money to get to work.
"We were looking for a skill set that was fairly unique," says Chris Minnich, executive director of CCSSO. "We needed individuals that would know the mathematics — Jason and the other writers obviously know the mathematics — but would also be able to work with the states, and a bunch of teachers who would be involved."
That's a fun quote. Particularly the "bunch of teachers" part. Does it suggest that Coleman was on board primarily for his shmoozing abilities?
At this point, Garland's grasp of history gets even slipperier. We do get the inspiring story of Zimba and McCallum working long hours, slaving over the standards in the garage (just like Bill Gates starting Microsoft). She notes again that he was human, with a life and a family and a day job, spiced up with a story of some colleague telling him to stop texting about standards stuff while his second daughter was being born.
During the course of the next year, they consulted with state officials, mathematicians and teachers, including a union group. Draft after draft was passed back and forth over email.
"Consulting." Great word. Then the final standards were released in 2010. Garland notes that "by the following year" forty states adopted them; she does not note that many adopted them before they were written, though she does note that adoption happened "thanks in part to financial incentives dangled by the Obama administration" which is kind of like saying I paid my mortgage payments thanks in part to a Keeping My House incentive dangled by my bank.
Garland's timeline for the resistance to CCSS is even more...um... debatable. She marks the pushback to 2013 and the wave of CCSS test results. She says resistance didn't enter the mainstream until this year, when a father's posting about CCSS homework went viral and Glen Beck picked it up, followed by ridicule from Louis C. K. and Stephen Colbert. Which is about the most truncated history of Common Core opposition I've ever read.
Now CCSS allies are trying to salvage the cause by calling for testing delays. But the writers are just puzzled by all the fuss.
"When I see some of those problems posted on Facebook, I think I would have been mad, too," McCallum says. Daro tells a story about his grandson, who brought home a math worksheet labeled "Common Core," with a copyright date of 1999.
They argue there's actually very little fuzziness to the math in the Common Core. Students have to memorize their times tables by third grade and be able to do the kind of meat-and-potatoes problems Zimba asks of his daughter during their Saturday tutoring sessions, requirements he believes the so-called Common Core curriculum at her school essentially ignored.
In other words, they wrote it right, but everybody is reading it incorrectly.We built the bomb for Good. We do not understand why people are being blown up with it.
Even as Zimba and his colleagues defend the standards against cries of federal overreach, they are helpless when it comes to making sure textbook publishers, test makers, superintendents, principals and teachers interpret the standards in ways that will actually improve American public education, not make it worse.
All of this has pushed Zimba to a new conclusion, a new crusade, a new battle.
These days, Zimba and his colleagues acknowledge better standards aren't enough.
"I used to think if you got the assessments right, it would virtually be enough," he says. "In the No Child Left Behind world, everything follows from the test."
Now, he says, "I think it's curriculum."
Yes, the problem is that we didn't build a powerful enough bomb. If we built a bigger bomb, then it would be used the correct way.
It is hard not to see these guys as hopelessly naive about How Things Work, about the implications of the work they were doing. I sympathize in part-- when he claims that publishers are mucking up the works by using CCSS to market any old crap lying around the warehouse, I don't disagree, but at the same time, dude, what did you think they were going to do with the bomb once you had finished building it?? You may have thought you were building an instrument of peace and wisdom and growth, but you should have paid better attention to the people who were signing your checks and collecting your work, because this is exactly what they wanted it for.
All three are trying to fix it. McCallum has some little start-up you've never heard of to make math apps. Daro is writing a complete math curriculum for Pearson, presumably because, you know, the politics and business are not his problem. Zimba's trying to work on it, too. None of them seem to see their own hand in the mess that is now choking public education. Granted, I see all of these characters through the smudgy lens of various journalists, but I keep feeling as if Coleman knows exactly what he's doing, but The Other Guys don't really get it. They don't see the battlefield because they are only focused on the bomb.
Zimba does not pick up the lesson that he now realizes that he was wrong back when he thought the standards would fix everything, so maybe he's wrong again now that he thinks national curriculum is the answer. And he doesn't seem to have any sense of the moral or ethical implications of trying to rewrite the education system for everybody part time in his garage-- did nobody at any point say, "Gee, for a project this massive, maybe there's a better way and other people who should be involved." While he seems to lack the strutting ballsiness of Coleman, he still must have the hubris required to think, "Yeah, I could write the math guidelines for every student in the country."
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Trials of the Traveling Student
What about the students who move?
It's a question often raised in support of the CCSS, or just national standards in general. Don't we need national standards so that students who move won't be thrown for a loop when they change schools, even across state lines? I'm unconvinced by this argument.
I'll admit up front that, as both my regular readers know, I am not a believer in national standards at all. But let me try to walk you through my unconvincedness in the face of the traveling student.
How many are there?
This seems to be a point of some debate. Several readers have directed me to a study cited here which suggests a whopping 15-20% students moved within the previous year. That's a fairly fuzzy number, and the previous year in question is 2003. It also doesn't address the nature of the moves-- across town? across state? across country? The study is interesting in that it points out that outside of a small smattering of military families, the traveling students come from families that are migrant workers, homeless, or poor. Reminds me of decades ago when a poor student explained his families regular moves as seasonal-- cold weather months in apartments that included utilities, warm-weather months in places that did not (with the clear implication that rent was not always paid).
The more commonly cited percentage is 1.7% of 5-17 year olds move across state lines. The source for that number is this chart from the US Census Bureau, so it's probably mostly somewhat accurate-ish. In all fairness, I should note that this works out to 915,328 students, which is not an insignificant number. We also can add to that 2.2% moving within the state, and 9.4% moving within the county. Students moving in from abroad is .5%, or one third the number moving across state lines. I note that number because one of the question the issue raise is why do interstate movements merit imposition of national standards, but international do not. Is it a matter of principal, or is there somewhere between .5% and 1.7% a cutoff line under which the number of student adjustment issues doesn't merit consideration.
One of the pieces of information that no set of information seems to address is the when. Are we talking about students who change schools between school years? Experience and anecdotal info suggests not-- that many of these traveling students travel during the course of the school year itself. I promise to care about this point further down the page.
The Devil in the Detail
I am not unsympathetic to the problems that come with moving to a new school. It's just that I don't think a national scope and sequence necessarily helps, and certainly doesn't help to a degree that justifies the effects on the education of the 98.3% of non-interstate students. To manage this kind of consistency within even a state, a single district, or single building, requires certain adjustments that may be neither feasible nor worthwhile.
I'm going to stick with English, which in many ways is more difficult than math because the study of math has its own built in sequencing to an extent that the study of English does not. Let's consider for our hypotheticals, two old mainstays of 9th grade English across the country-- Romeo and Juliet and Great Expectations.
Track Mobility
Should there be ease of mobility between tracks? A low-level group might study R&J with the goal of simply knowing the plot and characters and being able to discuss the play as it relates to modern social patterns. They might even use one of the many modern-language parallel texts to help them deal with the Scary Shakespeare Words problem. On the other hand, a high level class would likely have many additional goals, including delving into the Shakespearean language, writing more academic formal papers.
Students who, in the process of switching schools, also switch tracks will find this difficult. Are their adjustment problems a consideration, or do we write that off as another matter entirely?
Chaining Opportunity
I have a class that is primarily females, so as we study R&J, we veer off extensively into the role of women in Elizabethan society and in the world of the play. One day in discussion several students introduce the topic of women's frustrations over the lack of control they have over their own destiny, and start to use that to inform their own ideas about interpreting characters such as Lady Capulet and the Nurse as well as Juliet herself. As a particularly canny educator (or a fair-to-middlin' one having a good day), I see an opportunity here to bank and set up discussion points for the female characters of Great Expectations.
Should I shut all of that down because it will be unfair and confusing for the hypothetical student who might be moving into my classroom sometime between now and the beginning of Great Expectations?
Should I generally avoid anything "extra," or in a math class should I avoid moving ahead swiftly just because we can, because that will give us material coverage that we are not supposed to have, putting my students too far ahead of the hypothetical transfer student who might be arriving any day now from a school that didn't get that extra material?
It's the same conversation we had for NCLB-- is there really any way to keep students on the same page that doesn't invove holding back those who are ready to zip on ahead?
Eating Dust
On the other end of the scale, we have the slower students. Do I say to them at the end of six weeks, "I know we're only at the end of Act III, and I'm proud of you for hammering this out and making sense of it, and I know that some of you are now really into this and want to see how it all turns out. But according to the Big Master Schedule, we are done with Romeo & Juliet now. So our test on the entire play will be this Friday. Good luck."
Different Strokes
Chris just came into my class from a school where the English teacher approaches R&J strictly from a performance standpoint, but all of my instruction and building activities have been geared toward textual analysis. So while Chris knows the characters and the plot, Chris is not really prepared for any of the sorts of activities that we are doing. Is that Chris's problem, or the educational system's?
Look, I Wasn't Trying To Get This Picky. I Just Think That Every Kid in the Country Ought To Get the Same X, Y and Z.
It's fair to say that all of the above was simply getting excessively picky about the issues of student mobility. But my point is that it's impossible not to get that level of picky, even if your intent is pretty simple.
Let's say that your national standard says that every 9th grade class covers the same list of material (including R&J and GE). That seems simple. But remember-- some not-inconsiderable percentage of the raveling students travel during the school year. So if your school covers R&J in the fall and my class does it in the spring, a student who switches from your school to mine gets R&J twice. A student who switches from mine to yours gets R&J none times.
So a list isn't good enough. To accomplish the goal of making life easier for the traveling student, we have to prescribe not only a list of content, but a schedule for it as well. So by decree, October is now R&J month across America. Except that now we're back to the question of faster and slower classes.
AND that's proscribing content, but we might all use the same content to teach entirely different competencies, so we'd better proscribe exactly what skills will be taught with the content.
And before you know it, in order to make life better for 1.7% of all students, we have written a very specific national curriculum-- not standards, but curriculum. Except that writing a federal curriculum is illegal. But nothing less than a national curriculum is going to accomplish the goal you're after. Anything less will keep us right there in the land of When You Switch To a New School You Have To Deal With Them Covering Different Material in Different Ways.
National Curriculum
Can't be done. It's not just illegal; it's large scale educational malpractice that would destroy any semblance of usefulness of US public education as well as violating some of our most sacred national values.
Or, to be brief, I think it's a bad idea.
What Do You Want, Anyway?
Part of what makes this goal so elusive is that it's so fuzzy. What do you want every freshman in America to know about Romeo and Juliet? Do you want them to recognize that it's a play by some Shakespeare fella? Do you want them to be able to quote passages? Do you want them to recognize key plot points? Do you want them to be able to argue the relative merits of Leonard Whiting and Leonardo DiCaprio? Do you want them to be able to write iambic pentameter? Do you want them to know how it's related to West Side Story? Do you want them to be able to discuss the use of blood and heat as recurring images in the play? Do you want them to know who Queen Mab was? Do you want them to have a theory about where Benvolio disappeared to? Do you want them to be able to explain what the play said to them about their own conception of young love? Do you want them to know all the dirty parts? Do you want them to be able to discuss the various uses of dramatic irony? Do you want them to use the play to discuss the ickiness of sex with thirteen-year-old girls? Do you want them to know that "wherefor" means "why," not "where"?
And once you've selected from the iceberg of ideas and competencies that the last paragraph shows only the tip of, do you want them to display absolute command, bare competence, or passing familiarity with the idea you've tagged.
When you say "I want every class to have covered some of the same basics," what exactly do you mean?
So.....?
When people move, their situation changes. They live in different surroundings. They cope with different weather. They adjust to different local fashion trends. They learn to understand different accents. They learn to eat new regional foods, and they do without the food they used to enjoy. They learn different traffic patterns. They learn about different sports teams.
They learn to do all this because different places are different. (And this is what we've come to in current education debate-- the point where simple tautologies pass for controversial statements).
Different places are different. That's not a flaw. It's a virtue. Yes, it can create challenges for the traveling students but
A) different places are different and
B) your proposed solution isn't really a solution
It's a question often raised in support of the CCSS, or just national standards in general. Don't we need national standards so that students who move won't be thrown for a loop when they change schools, even across state lines? I'm unconvinced by this argument.
I'll admit up front that, as both my regular readers know, I am not a believer in national standards at all. But let me try to walk you through my unconvincedness in the face of the traveling student.
How many are there?
This seems to be a point of some debate. Several readers have directed me to a study cited here which suggests a whopping 15-20% students moved within the previous year. That's a fairly fuzzy number, and the previous year in question is 2003. It also doesn't address the nature of the moves-- across town? across state? across country? The study is interesting in that it points out that outside of a small smattering of military families, the traveling students come from families that are migrant workers, homeless, or poor. Reminds me of decades ago when a poor student explained his families regular moves as seasonal-- cold weather months in apartments that included utilities, warm-weather months in places that did not (with the clear implication that rent was not always paid).
The more commonly cited percentage is 1.7% of 5-17 year olds move across state lines. The source for that number is this chart from the US Census Bureau, so it's probably mostly somewhat accurate-ish. In all fairness, I should note that this works out to 915,328 students, which is not an insignificant number. We also can add to that 2.2% moving within the state, and 9.4% moving within the county. Students moving in from abroad is .5%, or one third the number moving across state lines. I note that number because one of the question the issue raise is why do interstate movements merit imposition of national standards, but international do not. Is it a matter of principal, or is there somewhere between .5% and 1.7% a cutoff line under which the number of student adjustment issues doesn't merit consideration.
One of the pieces of information that no set of information seems to address is the when. Are we talking about students who change schools between school years? Experience and anecdotal info suggests not-- that many of these traveling students travel during the course of the school year itself. I promise to care about this point further down the page.
The Devil in the Detail
I am not unsympathetic to the problems that come with moving to a new school. It's just that I don't think a national scope and sequence necessarily helps, and certainly doesn't help to a degree that justifies the effects on the education of the 98.3% of non-interstate students. To manage this kind of consistency within even a state, a single district, or single building, requires certain adjustments that may be neither feasible nor worthwhile.
I'm going to stick with English, which in many ways is more difficult than math because the study of math has its own built in sequencing to an extent that the study of English does not. Let's consider for our hypotheticals, two old mainstays of 9th grade English across the country-- Romeo and Juliet and Great Expectations.
Track Mobility
Should there be ease of mobility between tracks? A low-level group might study R&J with the goal of simply knowing the plot and characters and being able to discuss the play as it relates to modern social patterns. They might even use one of the many modern-language parallel texts to help them deal with the Scary Shakespeare Words problem. On the other hand, a high level class would likely have many additional goals, including delving into the Shakespearean language, writing more academic formal papers.
Students who, in the process of switching schools, also switch tracks will find this difficult. Are their adjustment problems a consideration, or do we write that off as another matter entirely?
Chaining Opportunity
I have a class that is primarily females, so as we study R&J, we veer off extensively into the role of women in Elizabethan society and in the world of the play. One day in discussion several students introduce the topic of women's frustrations over the lack of control they have over their own destiny, and start to use that to inform their own ideas about interpreting characters such as Lady Capulet and the Nurse as well as Juliet herself. As a particularly canny educator (or a fair-to-middlin' one having a good day), I see an opportunity here to bank and set up discussion points for the female characters of Great Expectations.
Should I shut all of that down because it will be unfair and confusing for the hypothetical student who might be moving into my classroom sometime between now and the beginning of Great Expectations?
Should I generally avoid anything "extra," or in a math class should I avoid moving ahead swiftly just because we can, because that will give us material coverage that we are not supposed to have, putting my students too far ahead of the hypothetical transfer student who might be arriving any day now from a school that didn't get that extra material?
It's the same conversation we had for NCLB-- is there really any way to keep students on the same page that doesn't invove holding back those who are ready to zip on ahead?
Eating Dust
On the other end of the scale, we have the slower students. Do I say to them at the end of six weeks, "I know we're only at the end of Act III, and I'm proud of you for hammering this out and making sense of it, and I know that some of you are now really into this and want to see how it all turns out. But according to the Big Master Schedule, we are done with Romeo & Juliet now. So our test on the entire play will be this Friday. Good luck."
Different Strokes
Chris just came into my class from a school where the English teacher approaches R&J strictly from a performance standpoint, but all of my instruction and building activities have been geared toward textual analysis. So while Chris knows the characters and the plot, Chris is not really prepared for any of the sorts of activities that we are doing. Is that Chris's problem, or the educational system's?
Look, I Wasn't Trying To Get This Picky. I Just Think That Every Kid in the Country Ought To Get the Same X, Y and Z.
It's fair to say that all of the above was simply getting excessively picky about the issues of student mobility. But my point is that it's impossible not to get that level of picky, even if your intent is pretty simple.
Let's say that your national standard says that every 9th grade class covers the same list of material (including R&J and GE). That seems simple. But remember-- some not-inconsiderable percentage of the raveling students travel during the school year. So if your school covers R&J in the fall and my class does it in the spring, a student who switches from your school to mine gets R&J twice. A student who switches from mine to yours gets R&J none times.
So a list isn't good enough. To accomplish the goal of making life easier for the traveling student, we have to prescribe not only a list of content, but a schedule for it as well. So by decree, October is now R&J month across America. Except that now we're back to the question of faster and slower classes.
AND that's proscribing content, but we might all use the same content to teach entirely different competencies, so we'd better proscribe exactly what skills will be taught with the content.
And before you know it, in order to make life better for 1.7% of all students, we have written a very specific national curriculum-- not standards, but curriculum. Except that writing a federal curriculum is illegal. But nothing less than a national curriculum is going to accomplish the goal you're after. Anything less will keep us right there in the land of When You Switch To a New School You Have To Deal With Them Covering Different Material in Different Ways.
National Curriculum
Can't be done. It's not just illegal; it's large scale educational malpractice that would destroy any semblance of usefulness of US public education as well as violating some of our most sacred national values.
Or, to be brief, I think it's a bad idea.
What Do You Want, Anyway?
Part of what makes this goal so elusive is that it's so fuzzy. What do you want every freshman in America to know about Romeo and Juliet? Do you want them to recognize that it's a play by some Shakespeare fella? Do you want them to be able to quote passages? Do you want them to recognize key plot points? Do you want them to be able to argue the relative merits of Leonard Whiting and Leonardo DiCaprio? Do you want them to be able to write iambic pentameter? Do you want them to know how it's related to West Side Story? Do you want them to be able to discuss the use of blood and heat as recurring images in the play? Do you want them to know who Queen Mab was? Do you want them to have a theory about where Benvolio disappeared to? Do you want them to be able to explain what the play said to them about their own conception of young love? Do you want them to know all the dirty parts? Do you want them to be able to discuss the various uses of dramatic irony? Do you want them to use the play to discuss the ickiness of sex with thirteen-year-old girls? Do you want them to know that "wherefor" means "why," not "where"?
And once you've selected from the iceberg of ideas and competencies that the last paragraph shows only the tip of, do you want them to display absolute command, bare competence, or passing familiarity with the idea you've tagged.
When you say "I want every class to have covered some of the same basics," what exactly do you mean?
So.....?
When people move, their situation changes. They live in different surroundings. They cope with different weather. They adjust to different local fashion trends. They learn to understand different accents. They learn to eat new regional foods, and they do without the food they used to enjoy. They learn different traffic patterns. They learn about different sports teams.
They learn to do all this because different places are different. (And this is what we've come to in current education debate-- the point where simple tautologies pass for controversial statements).
Different places are different. That's not a flaw. It's a virtue. Yes, it can create challenges for the traveling students but
A) different places are different and
B) your proposed solution isn't really a solution
Monday, April 21, 2014
CCSS Politics Make the Daily Beast Sad
Nobody can accuse the Daily Beast of being unclear about its position. "The Incredibly Stupid War on the Common Core" says the headline, followed by the subheading, "An unholy alliance between the Tea Party and the teachers' unions threatens to derail the most promising education reform in decades." So right off the bat, we know where Charles Upton Sahm is headed (though it should be noted that writers rarely get to write their own headlines).
The lead graph compares CCSS to Rocky being pummeled in the early rounds, then quotes Diane Ravitch, the Heritage Foundation, and Glenn Beck. Sahm then goes on to catelog the CCSS setbacks, from Bobby Jindal's backpedaling to Andy Cuomo's blasting of the implementation and creation of a review panel and Indiana (and others) pulling out of the standards. It's an odd list, counting as it does several moves that were about the cosmetics of political theater and not actual changes in position. Does Sahm think the Cuomo review panel was a Real Thing. Surely he didn't miss their findings ("It's all good!"). And it doesn't take much research to note that in many states, nothing has changed about Common Core except the name on the label.
This is a new type of spin. From bluster and confidence ("momentary, meaningless setbacks or no consequence") we've moved to playing the underdog ("boy, we are really on the ropes now"). What's the play here? Are we trying to get CCSS opponents to put up their gloves and go home for a victory celebration? Or are we trying to win the sympathy of the crowd so that they'll shower their support on poor beleagured Rocky "Common Core" Balboa?
Sahm also mentions the AFT and NEA, once enthusiastic supporters, are now distancing themselves, notes the NYSUT bailed, but he parenthetically chalks this up to concerns over the "new, more difficult tests."
This is worth noting because these days The Test never leaves the house without "more difficult" by its side. The implication is always that these new tests are more difficult, more challenging and that's why they bother people. "More difficult" is a useful weasel phrase because everybody assumes that it's a legitimate "more difficult." It's more difficult to go into the boxing ring against an opponent who's bigger and stronger than you are. Of course, it's also more difficult to go into the boxing ring with ferrets crazy-glued to your eyebrows and a dozen angry hamsters in your shorts, but people don't think along those lines because we wouldn't actually describe the ferret-and-hamster option as "more difficult" but would instead call it "crazy unreasonable stupid." By constantly describing the new tests as more difficult, writers keep directing peoples' attention away from the ferrets and hamsters.
Sahm says that "unfortunately" the debate about the Core is more about politics than education. Well, duh. The Core has been more about politics than education from day one. Why would today be any different. If the Core were about education, the conversation about it would have included educators. But it was created by politicians and businessmen for politicians and businessmen. Honest to Stallone, Charles-- teachers have been trying to make the debate about education for several years now, but nobody in power seems to want to do that.
And we go straight from unfortunately politics to Peggy Noonan handicapping Jeb Bush because he has stapled his Presidential hopes to CCSS.
"So what's all this hysteria about?" asks Sahm, and, wow, buddy, I see what you did there. "Hysteria" from the Latin "crazy-ass women with their silly vaginas and not-too-strong thinky parts be getting all worked up over some stupid thing that smart penissy men know better than to emote over."
Sahm does a quick recap of the Standard Issue History of CCSS, starting with "A Nation at Risk" and moving through the governors getting "curriculum experts" and as always I'm amazed at these folks who are unfamiliar with how the internet works. So click here to watch David Coleman explain that the Core was written by a "collection of unqualified people." So, not curriculum experts. (Also-- why do we need curriculum experts to create something that isn't a curriculum?)
This is also the CCSS story that notes retrospectively that President Obama's support in 2009 was a Bad Thing that created a political liability with people on the Right. This part of the narrative is intriguing; I am wondering how, in a non-federalized CCSS alternate universe, the CCSS ever is adopted. First, in that universe, what mysterious force makes the corporate backers/writers of the Core sit back and say, "Yeah, we probably shouldn't use every tool at our disposal to get every state to adopt these. If just a few adopt them, that will be good enough for us." Second, in that universe, why do states adopt the CCSS? I mean-- who would be selling it? Who would be going state to state saying, "Yes, it will make your schools awesome and only cost you a gazillion dollars to implement, and it's totally voluntary!"
CCSS supporters can complain about the damage done to their cause by federal push for CCSS adoption, but without that federal bribery (RTTT) and extortion (NCLB waivers), CCSS would be sitting in a dusty binder somewhere. This is why it's a political debate, Charles-- because it was politically created and politically pushed into states. CCSS has depended on political power for every breath it has taken in its short, wasteful life.
Sahm goes on to tell us what the standards are supposed to do in math and English (he does not bother to say how we know that the standards will accomplish these things, but it's a short article). He points out that they are not a national curriculum, just an outline of what students should learn. So, totally different things. And he grabs the low-hanging fruit of debunking the complaint about non-fiction vs. fiction.
Overall, some claim that the standards are too weak; some argue that they are too rigorous, especially in the early grades. But the Common Core is intended as a floor, not a ceiling. They represent a benchmark for what an average, well-educated student on track for college should know. Even critics agree that, in most cases, the Common Core is an improvement over the weak and haphazard state standards they are replacing. Some states are now tweaking the standards and dumping the “Common Core” label. This is fine. The important thing is that for the first time in decades states are taking a serious look at content and curriculum.
What a paragraph!! People can't even agree on whether the standards are too hard or too easy-- those dopes! The CCSS is a floor for what every average student on track for college should learn, and watch Sahm just sail straight past the assumption that every single student in this country should be prepared for college, or that where you have an average student, you must also have a below-average student. Because every student here in Lake Woebegone should be getting ready for college. Some critics agree that the CCSS is better than old standards, and I guess Sahm wore out his googler finding those quotes for the lead paragraph, so here we'll just have to take his word for it. He admits that some states are monkeying around with the CCSS (why no mention of the copyright, Charles?), and says it's great that we're at least talking about content and curriculum, which is odd because I hear that even some supporters of the Common Core agree that it's not actually a curriculum.
He deploys the current talking point about how implementation is rocky and that's totally expectable and no reason to get all wigged out, and that whether the CCSS work or not will totally be up to the states' implementations.
For the finish, lets' quote David Brooks' lamebrained NYT piece and insist that people who don't love the Core are misinformed and opposing a perfectly sensible program because of hysterical-- oh, that word again. Let's throw in an appeal to the sensible center, and return to our Rocky image of the Core being battered and bruised but still game.
You know what everybody always forgets about the first Rocky movie? At the end of the big climactic boxing match, Rocky loses.
The lead graph compares CCSS to Rocky being pummeled in the early rounds, then quotes Diane Ravitch, the Heritage Foundation, and Glenn Beck. Sahm then goes on to catelog the CCSS setbacks, from Bobby Jindal's backpedaling to Andy Cuomo's blasting of the implementation and creation of a review panel and Indiana (and others) pulling out of the standards. It's an odd list, counting as it does several moves that were about the cosmetics of political theater and not actual changes in position. Does Sahm think the Cuomo review panel was a Real Thing. Surely he didn't miss their findings ("It's all good!"). And it doesn't take much research to note that in many states, nothing has changed about Common Core except the name on the label.
This is a new type of spin. From bluster and confidence ("momentary, meaningless setbacks or no consequence") we've moved to playing the underdog ("boy, we are really on the ropes now"). What's the play here? Are we trying to get CCSS opponents to put up their gloves and go home for a victory celebration? Or are we trying to win the sympathy of the crowd so that they'll shower their support on poor beleagured Rocky "Common Core" Balboa?
Sahm also mentions the AFT and NEA, once enthusiastic supporters, are now distancing themselves, notes the NYSUT bailed, but he parenthetically chalks this up to concerns over the "new, more difficult tests."
This is worth noting because these days The Test never leaves the house without "more difficult" by its side. The implication is always that these new tests are more difficult, more challenging and that's why they bother people. "More difficult" is a useful weasel phrase because everybody assumes that it's a legitimate "more difficult." It's more difficult to go into the boxing ring against an opponent who's bigger and stronger than you are. Of course, it's also more difficult to go into the boxing ring with ferrets crazy-glued to your eyebrows and a dozen angry hamsters in your shorts, but people don't think along those lines because we wouldn't actually describe the ferret-and-hamster option as "more difficult" but would instead call it "crazy unreasonable stupid." By constantly describing the new tests as more difficult, writers keep directing peoples' attention away from the ferrets and hamsters.
Sahm says that "unfortunately" the debate about the Core is more about politics than education. Well, duh. The Core has been more about politics than education from day one. Why would today be any different. If the Core were about education, the conversation about it would have included educators. But it was created by politicians and businessmen for politicians and businessmen. Honest to Stallone, Charles-- teachers have been trying to make the debate about education for several years now, but nobody in power seems to want to do that.
And we go straight from unfortunately politics to Peggy Noonan handicapping Jeb Bush because he has stapled his Presidential hopes to CCSS.
"So what's all this hysteria about?" asks Sahm, and, wow, buddy, I see what you did there. "Hysteria" from the Latin "crazy-ass women with their silly vaginas and not-too-strong thinky parts be getting all worked up over some stupid thing that smart penissy men know better than to emote over."
Sahm does a quick recap of the Standard Issue History of CCSS, starting with "A Nation at Risk" and moving through the governors getting "curriculum experts" and as always I'm amazed at these folks who are unfamiliar with how the internet works. So click here to watch David Coleman explain that the Core was written by a "collection of unqualified people." So, not curriculum experts. (Also-- why do we need curriculum experts to create something that isn't a curriculum?)
This is also the CCSS story that notes retrospectively that President Obama's support in 2009 was a Bad Thing that created a political liability with people on the Right. This part of the narrative is intriguing; I am wondering how, in a non-federalized CCSS alternate universe, the CCSS ever is adopted. First, in that universe, what mysterious force makes the corporate backers/writers of the Core sit back and say, "Yeah, we probably shouldn't use every tool at our disposal to get every state to adopt these. If just a few adopt them, that will be good enough for us." Second, in that universe, why do states adopt the CCSS? I mean-- who would be selling it? Who would be going state to state saying, "Yes, it will make your schools awesome and only cost you a gazillion dollars to implement, and it's totally voluntary!"
CCSS supporters can complain about the damage done to their cause by federal push for CCSS adoption, but without that federal bribery (RTTT) and extortion (NCLB waivers), CCSS would be sitting in a dusty binder somewhere. This is why it's a political debate, Charles-- because it was politically created and politically pushed into states. CCSS has depended on political power for every breath it has taken in its short, wasteful life.
Sahm goes on to tell us what the standards are supposed to do in math and English (he does not bother to say how we know that the standards will accomplish these things, but it's a short article). He points out that they are not a national curriculum, just an outline of what students should learn. So, totally different things. And he grabs the low-hanging fruit of debunking the complaint about non-fiction vs. fiction.
Overall, some claim that the standards are too weak; some argue that they are too rigorous, especially in the early grades. But the Common Core is intended as a floor, not a ceiling. They represent a benchmark for what an average, well-educated student on track for college should know. Even critics agree that, in most cases, the Common Core is an improvement over the weak and haphazard state standards they are replacing. Some states are now tweaking the standards and dumping the “Common Core” label. This is fine. The important thing is that for the first time in decades states are taking a serious look at content and curriculum.
What a paragraph!! People can't even agree on whether the standards are too hard or too easy-- those dopes! The CCSS is a floor for what every average student on track for college should learn, and watch Sahm just sail straight past the assumption that every single student in this country should be prepared for college, or that where you have an average student, you must also have a below-average student. Because every student here in Lake Woebegone should be getting ready for college. Some critics agree that the CCSS is better than old standards, and I guess Sahm wore out his googler finding those quotes for the lead paragraph, so here we'll just have to take his word for it. He admits that some states are monkeying around with the CCSS (why no mention of the copyright, Charles?), and says it's great that we're at least talking about content and curriculum, which is odd because I hear that even some supporters of the Common Core agree that it's not actually a curriculum.
He deploys the current talking point about how implementation is rocky and that's totally expectable and no reason to get all wigged out, and that whether the CCSS work or not will totally be up to the states' implementations.
For the finish, lets' quote David Brooks' lamebrained NYT piece and insist that people who don't love the Core are misinformed and opposing a perfectly sensible program because of hysterical-- oh, that word again. Let's throw in an appeal to the sensible center, and return to our Rocky image of the Core being battered and bruised but still game.
You know what everybody always forgets about the first Rocky movie? At the end of the big climactic boxing match, Rocky loses.
Friday, April 18, 2014
What Would Winning Look Like?
The comment keeps coming (most recently from Rick Hess) that Common Core regime opponents can't just say "no" to the Core, that they must stand for something-- not just against something.
I don't entirely agree. If a mugger approaches you and says, "I'm going to beat you up and take all your money," I will probably say, "I prefer not to be mugged." At that point, I don't think it's a legitimate criticism of my position to say that I can't just be against being beaten and robbed-- I need to be for something.
But I'm going to go ahead, as a kind of thought experiment, and describe a world where all of this shook out the way I think it ought to. Here's life in my world after the CCSS regime finally was swept away:
The Common Core State Standards are replaced with Common Core Recommended National Standards. These standards provide some broad educational goals covering all areas of a child's education (not just math and English). The CCRNS (oh wait-- can I put "American" in front so that they're ACCRNS? Too much??) would be created by a national coalition of teachers and college educators; the creating group would not include a single representative of private education corporations. The federal government might provide some logistical help (setting up the conferences, providing infrastructure, etc) but there would not be a single federal representative at the table.
Adoption of the CCRNS on the state level would be entirely voluntary and not tied to a single federal dollar. State standards boards, also composed entirely of teachers, would rewrite the national standards for use in their states as they saw fit. Keep a little, keep a lot. Add a little, add a lot. Adopt it whole hog, reject the entire thing. They would not have to justify these choices to anybody except the citizens of their states.
A CCRNS Board would stay in place after the initial rollout. It would be smaller than the group that wrote the standards, and meet less frequently. It would maintain an office and web presence and field questions of the "What was the intent/meaning of standard Q.16-7?" and also collect comments of the "Here's our rewrite of standard X.47-b/13, and why we think it works better." These would be useful at the bi-annual convention where the CCRNS were re-examined and re-written. Teacher members will rotate on and off this board; it's conceivable that a few may need leaves of absence to serve on the national standards board for a year at a time.
State Standards Boards will also maintain a skeleton crew for similar purposes, but it will also be up to the State Board to license instructional materials. No publisher gets to slap a CCRNS-ready sticker on their materials until the appropriate state standards board has checked it out. This does mean they will have to repeat the process for all fifty states. Tough shit.
All curriculum decisions will be made by local school districts. All of them. State DOE will not provide "model" curricular material nor "sample" course outlines nor a list of mandated units. They will not "recommend" textbooks. Let me say it again. All curriculum decisions will be made by local school districts.
There will be no high stakes standardized tests. None. Not one. None. States may decide they want to require each district to administer an exit exam for graduation, but the state will not provide it (well, the state never provides it-- more accurate to say the state will not pay somebody like Pearson buckets of money to provide it for them). Any such exams will be developed by the local district. The local district may decide to purchase a standardized test that's out there on the market; that will be a locally made decision.
How would we know that CCRNS was working? Because teachers, parents, employers, community members-- who are not actually fools and dopes-- would see the results. CCRNS would thrive if all the stakeholders said, "That's great. More, please," and fail if all the stakeholders said, "That doesn't seem to help a bit." Of course, since it would be constructed with a review and revision process built in, it could actually respond to criticism and changing conditions on the ground.
Because of all of the above, education will look different from state to state and district to district. In my perfect world, people will recognize that this is a good thing.
Obviously there are many points for argument here, and since I'm not a billionaire I can't just force everyone to come to grips with my vision for education whether they want to or not. But in this piece I'm just laying out my vision. I'll start making my case for it in Part II.
I don't entirely agree. If a mugger approaches you and says, "I'm going to beat you up and take all your money," I will probably say, "I prefer not to be mugged." At that point, I don't think it's a legitimate criticism of my position to say that I can't just be against being beaten and robbed-- I need to be for something.
But I'm going to go ahead, as a kind of thought experiment, and describe a world where all of this shook out the way I think it ought to. Here's life in my world after the CCSS regime finally was swept away:
The Common Core State Standards are replaced with Common Core Recommended National Standards. These standards provide some broad educational goals covering all areas of a child's education (not just math and English). The CCRNS (oh wait-- can I put "American" in front so that they're ACCRNS? Too much??) would be created by a national coalition of teachers and college educators; the creating group would not include a single representative of private education corporations. The federal government might provide some logistical help (setting up the conferences, providing infrastructure, etc) but there would not be a single federal representative at the table.
Adoption of the CCRNS on the state level would be entirely voluntary and not tied to a single federal dollar. State standards boards, also composed entirely of teachers, would rewrite the national standards for use in their states as they saw fit. Keep a little, keep a lot. Add a little, add a lot. Adopt it whole hog, reject the entire thing. They would not have to justify these choices to anybody except the citizens of their states.
A CCRNS Board would stay in place after the initial rollout. It would be smaller than the group that wrote the standards, and meet less frequently. It would maintain an office and web presence and field questions of the "What was the intent/meaning of standard Q.16-7?" and also collect comments of the "Here's our rewrite of standard X.47-b/13, and why we think it works better." These would be useful at the bi-annual convention where the CCRNS were re-examined and re-written. Teacher members will rotate on and off this board; it's conceivable that a few may need leaves of absence to serve on the national standards board for a year at a time.
State Standards Boards will also maintain a skeleton crew for similar purposes, but it will also be up to the State Board to license instructional materials. No publisher gets to slap a CCRNS-ready sticker on their materials until the appropriate state standards board has checked it out. This does mean they will have to repeat the process for all fifty states. Tough shit.
All curriculum decisions will be made by local school districts. All of them. State DOE will not provide "model" curricular material nor "sample" course outlines nor a list of mandated units. They will not "recommend" textbooks. Let me say it again. All curriculum decisions will be made by local school districts.
There will be no high stakes standardized tests. None. Not one. None. States may decide they want to require each district to administer an exit exam for graduation, but the state will not provide it (well, the state never provides it-- more accurate to say the state will not pay somebody like Pearson buckets of money to provide it for them). Any such exams will be developed by the local district. The local district may decide to purchase a standardized test that's out there on the market; that will be a locally made decision.
How would we know that CCRNS was working? Because teachers, parents, employers, community members-- who are not actually fools and dopes-- would see the results. CCRNS would thrive if all the stakeholders said, "That's great. More, please," and fail if all the stakeholders said, "That doesn't seem to help a bit." Of course, since it would be constructed with a review and revision process built in, it could actually respond to criticism and changing conditions on the ground.
Because of all of the above, education will look different from state to state and district to district. In my perfect world, people will recognize that this is a good thing.
Obviously there are many points for argument here, and since I'm not a billionaire I can't just force everyone to come to grips with my vision for education whether they want to or not. But in this piece I'm just laying out my vision. I'll start making my case for it in Part II.
What if there were 50 standards?
(Part II of a series; Part I is here)
Sol Stern has been trying to cyber-argue with Diane Ravitch and Mercedes Schneider lately (you can read his latest thrash here and watch Schneider shrug it off here). His latest flight into the higher altitudes of Mt. Dudgeon builds to a roar and finishes with this closer:
If Diane Ravitch and other anti-Common Core campaigners on both the left and right succeed in their destructive mission, we will go right back to “50 states, 50 standards, 50 tests.” Ravitch and her allies can then celebrate their political victory—but the children in America’s schools will be the losers.
I know that I'm supposed to recognize that going back to fifty states, fifty standards, fifty tests is clearly and unarguably a Terrible Thing, but here I where I differ with the Fans of Standardization. Because I have yet to hear a single, solitary convincing argument for why having one standard and one test for fifty states is a Swell Thing.
I'm actually going to skip over the "one test" part of this, because my contention is that the correct number of high stakes standardized tests to give students is "zero," so we'll just set that part of the argument aside for another day. Let's just focus on my other assertion.
One set of standards for the nation is not a good thing. It's not even a human thing.
Yes, there are useful standards, such as standards for railroad gauge and electrical plugs. These sorts of standards are helpful because they make manufactured objects more useful. Everybody understands that schools are not for making useful manufactured objects, right? I don't need to go over that again, do I?
National education standards for live humans should fail. The notion that every state should produce exactly the same education at exactly the same rate is just so bizarre that I find it painfully difficult to argue against because I have a hard time understanding how anybody could think it's a good thing.
Within our country, we expect places to be different. That's normal. People are cool and flinty in the Northeast and warm and gooshy in the South. People are all packed together in the city and all spread out in the country. December means one thing in Los Angeles and another thing in Syracuse. The human experience is very different depending on where you live.
Corporate forces have actively worked against that human variation for about 100 years, with a huge turbo-boost of standardization activity in the post-WWII period. To really make money, we need to get people to eat the same food, wear the same clothes, shop at the same stores, buy the exact same stuff from Wyoming to Delaware. Plopped down in the middle of any mall in America, you would be hard-pressed to guess where in the world you were standing.
This sort of standardization demands that everything unique and richly interesting about local human experience be erased, all pointy spots and rough edges be ground down. So tear down the Santa Monica Pier and put up a McDonald's. Knock down the 16th Street Mall in Denver and put up a Wal-Mart. Make the beaches in Hawaii available for developers to purchase directly. Condemn Clark's Trading Post and let an outlet mall have a shot at really opening up the Kancamagus Highway. You, dear reader. don't even know what all of these places are, because each is a unique local experience, and that's a good thing, because all together they add up to the rich, varied, human beings on Earth experience.
Why would we want to create a world where nobody ever needed to travel because there was nothing to see anywhere else that you couldn't see at home? Why would we want our ideal world to be one where nobody agonized over where to live because it didn't make any difference? What does "home" even mean when all places are pretty much the same?
"Calm down," I hear somebody saying. "We don't want to turn the world into a bland boring land of commercialized mediocrity. We just want to standardize education."
But local school districts are an expression of local personality. Sports teams are named after local features. School buildings are part o local history. Teachers are still, in many places, public figures of the same sort as city councilmen or police officers.
Schools' priorities, strengths, weaknesses, triumphs, disasters are an all expressions of and part of the local culture, which is in turn an expression of the live human beings who live in that community. You cannot turn schools into a chain. Yes, it's swell that you can walk into any Starbucks anywhere and get exactly what you would get at any other Starbucks, but that is not a worthwhile aspiration for a school. I do not see any value in a future in which, when you ask a student what makes his school special, he answers proudly, "Why nothing! Nothing at all! Isn't that awesome!"
What we want for every human being is that each person should know herself as a unique, valuable, and special, with something important and valuable to offer, a unique constellation of qualities and history, a product of individual hard-wiring and history. I don't mean we need to raise self-indulgent sociopaths, but no healthy society ever developed by saying to its young people, "We want you to grow up to be exactly like everyone else." And our schools have to express that value, and they cannot express that value if they are organized the principle of standardized mass-production.
Now, the other big argument for standardization is, "What if the local values are ignorance and dumbosity? What if-- given the freedom to school as they wish-- they choose poorly?' I hear you-- and that's where I'm going in Part III.
Sol Stern has been trying to cyber-argue with Diane Ravitch and Mercedes Schneider lately (you can read his latest thrash here and watch Schneider shrug it off here). His latest flight into the higher altitudes of Mt. Dudgeon builds to a roar and finishes with this closer:
If Diane Ravitch and other anti-Common Core campaigners on both the left and right succeed in their destructive mission, we will go right back to “50 states, 50 standards, 50 tests.” Ravitch and her allies can then celebrate their political victory—but the children in America’s schools will be the losers.
I know that I'm supposed to recognize that going back to fifty states, fifty standards, fifty tests is clearly and unarguably a Terrible Thing, but here I where I differ with the Fans of Standardization. Because I have yet to hear a single, solitary convincing argument for why having one standard and one test for fifty states is a Swell Thing.
I'm actually going to skip over the "one test" part of this, because my contention is that the correct number of high stakes standardized tests to give students is "zero," so we'll just set that part of the argument aside for another day. Let's just focus on my other assertion.
One set of standards for the nation is not a good thing. It's not even a human thing.
Yes, there are useful standards, such as standards for railroad gauge and electrical plugs. These sorts of standards are helpful because they make manufactured objects more useful. Everybody understands that schools are not for making useful manufactured objects, right? I don't need to go over that again, do I?
National education standards for live humans should fail. The notion that every state should produce exactly the same education at exactly the same rate is just so bizarre that I find it painfully difficult to argue against because I have a hard time understanding how anybody could think it's a good thing.
Within our country, we expect places to be different. That's normal. People are cool and flinty in the Northeast and warm and gooshy in the South. People are all packed together in the city and all spread out in the country. December means one thing in Los Angeles and another thing in Syracuse. The human experience is very different depending on where you live.
Corporate forces have actively worked against that human variation for about 100 years, with a huge turbo-boost of standardization activity in the post-WWII period. To really make money, we need to get people to eat the same food, wear the same clothes, shop at the same stores, buy the exact same stuff from Wyoming to Delaware. Plopped down in the middle of any mall in America, you would be hard-pressed to guess where in the world you were standing.
This sort of standardization demands that everything unique and richly interesting about local human experience be erased, all pointy spots and rough edges be ground down. So tear down the Santa Monica Pier and put up a McDonald's. Knock down the 16th Street Mall in Denver and put up a Wal-Mart. Make the beaches in Hawaii available for developers to purchase directly. Condemn Clark's Trading Post and let an outlet mall have a shot at really opening up the Kancamagus Highway. You, dear reader. don't even know what all of these places are, because each is a unique local experience, and that's a good thing, because all together they add up to the rich, varied, human beings on Earth experience.
Why would we want to create a world where nobody ever needed to travel because there was nothing to see anywhere else that you couldn't see at home? Why would we want our ideal world to be one where nobody agonized over where to live because it didn't make any difference? What does "home" even mean when all places are pretty much the same?
"Calm down," I hear somebody saying. "We don't want to turn the world into a bland boring land of commercialized mediocrity. We just want to standardize education."
But local school districts are an expression of local personality. Sports teams are named after local features. School buildings are part o local history. Teachers are still, in many places, public figures of the same sort as city councilmen or police officers.
Schools' priorities, strengths, weaknesses, triumphs, disasters are an all expressions of and part of the local culture, which is in turn an expression of the live human beings who live in that community. You cannot turn schools into a chain. Yes, it's swell that you can walk into any Starbucks anywhere and get exactly what you would get at any other Starbucks, but that is not a worthwhile aspiration for a school. I do not see any value in a future in which, when you ask a student what makes his school special, he answers proudly, "Why nothing! Nothing at all! Isn't that awesome!"
What we want for every human being is that each person should know herself as a unique, valuable, and special, with something important and valuable to offer, a unique constellation of qualities and history, a product of individual hard-wiring and history. I don't mean we need to raise self-indulgent sociopaths, but no healthy society ever developed by saying to its young people, "We want you to grow up to be exactly like everyone else." And our schools have to express that value, and they cannot express that value if they are organized the principle of standardized mass-production.
Now, the other big argument for standardization is, "What if the local values are ignorance and dumbosity? What if-- given the freedom to school as they wish-- they choose poorly?' I hear you-- and that's where I'm going in Part III.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Paul Bruno's Advice for CCSS Supporters
Paul Bruno is a science teacher who writes a blog of his own while occasionally contributing to This Week in Education over at Scholastic. He calls himself a CCSS agnostic and generally writes about the standards with a fairly even hand.
After spanking CCSS supporters for abandoning an affirmative case for the standards, Bruno was asked by Morgan Polikoff to provide a positive suggestion, and so today Bruno responded with four suggestions for Core supporters. If you're a regular reader, you know I find value in the perspective of people beyond the usual dichotomy of Hate CCSS With A Blinding Passion and Pushing CCSS With Feverish Intensity. So let me take a look at Bruno's three suggestions, and why I don't think anybody's going to listen to him.
1. CCSS supporters need to acknowledge that they overestimated the potential for standards per se to improve curriculum and instruction.
Here Bruno and I are seeing something different, because I don't think CCSS supporters ever really believed that standards alone would raise anything. I think people who have espoused this view have always used "standards" as short-hand for "standards backed up with some kick-evaluations and sanctions so that people will by gum meet those standards or else." I think this is one of the reasons that The Core arrived in the states with high-stakes punitive testing programs already welded onto them. But Bruno gets this next part right:
Teachers already think their pedagogy is about right for whatever learning objectives you want to establish; if you want them to think differently you need to convince them directly. It is also increasingly apparent that you can’t avoid nasty battles over curriculum by saying “standards are not a curriculum”.
2. CCSS supporters should acknowledge that the new standards are not really as unambiguous as they had thought.
Bruno correctly notes that CCSS fans aren't really doing themselves any favors by repeatedly responding to criticism with "But that's not what the CCSS say." But Bruno tracks the issue back to peoples' pre-existing edu-confusions. I don't think it's that simple. I think this is an insolvable problem inextricably linked to CCSS by virtue of the top-down creation of the standards.
One of the built in problems of top-down reform is that only the people who were in the room for creation know what they really meant-- and in a top-down program, that's a small group of people, none of whom are going to be directly involved in the implementation of their ideas. And so the battle over what the Original Text really means is endless (as endless, say, as the centuries of interminable battle over what that Jesus guy actually had in mind).
Add to that the suspicion in some quarters that the writers of the Core didn't even really mean what they said in the first place, either because they didn't know what they were talking about (particularly applicable to the all-amateur-hour ELA standards) or they were just writing standards with an eye on the billion-dollar pot of testing gold at the end of the Common Core rainbow, and not trying to write true standards at all. And then the Founding Fathers of Common Core simply released their creation and dispersed, back to their real jobs or to new cash cows.
Add all that together and you have a "movement" with neither a strong controlling text nor a group of active involved leaders. Which opens the door for all manner of vendors, profiteers, and power-hungry reins-grabbers to declare, "Why yes-- what I want to do totally belongs to this package."
I don't think we're seeing peoples' pre-existing confusion so much as we're seeing the built-in confusion of CCSS (some of which is deliberate). It's an ambiguity that makes the CCSS regime profitable, and it's an ambiguity for which no correcting mechanism exists. The few die-hards saying, "But-but-but this isn't what the standards really say" carry no more weight than Leon Trotsky declaring, "You're doing my revolution all wrong."
3. CCSS supporters should focus more on Common Core-aligned assessments.
What the CCSS “really” mean will be determined in large part by the tests used to hold teachers and schools accountable. So while it’s all well and good to assure us that, e.g., the CCSS “require” a “content-rich curriculum”, that won’t really be true unless the eventual assessments require a content-rich curriculum.
Bruno is correct, though the real answer is that "content-rich curriculum" won't happen until we're facing "content-rich assessment," and that will be happening never (aka "the same day the assessment includes collaborative performance tasks").
The assessments are the curriculum and the tests are the standards.
4. CCSS supporters should spend more time highlighting “good” Common Core-aligned lessons.
Bruno is correct in noting that CCSS is losing in the court of public opinion in part because it is solidly linked to all manner of dopey lessons (including many that aren't really Common Core lessons). But people talking about CCSS "success" always face the same problem.
Let's say we're discussing the oft-made much-beloved assertion of CCSS-fan teachers that the Core now lets critical thinking into their classroom. The problem is that from this assertion we can only conclude one of two things:
1) The teacher either didn't know or wasn't able previously to include critical thinking in her classroom. The only explanation for this is that the teacher is a dope.
2) The teacher was not previously allowed to include critical thinking in her classroom. From this we must conclude that the school administration is a dope.
Neither of these problems requires a multi-million-dollar retooling of the entire American public education system. When someone shows me a good CCSS lesson, my first question is always "How did Common Core make this possible?" (My second question is usually "Who wants me to pay them to use this?") It only highlights for me that the CCSS have always been a solution in search of a problem.
They are the educational equivalent of a salesman at my door telling me, "For only a few thousand dollars a month, we will install equipment that will guarantee that there is air inside your home." I'm in favor of air-- a huge fan, in fact. But it's not clear to me why I should give you my money, or free reign of my home, and I'm pretty much waiting for you to break into a chorus of "Trouble" right here in River City.
So it's not that I think Bruno's advice is wrong, exactly. I just don't think there's anybody in a real position to take it.
After spanking CCSS supporters for abandoning an affirmative case for the standards, Bruno was asked by Morgan Polikoff to provide a positive suggestion, and so today Bruno responded with four suggestions for Core supporters. If you're a regular reader, you know I find value in the perspective of people beyond the usual dichotomy of Hate CCSS With A Blinding Passion and Pushing CCSS With Feverish Intensity. So let me take a look at Bruno's three suggestions, and why I don't think anybody's going to listen to him.
1. CCSS supporters need to acknowledge that they overestimated the potential for standards per se to improve curriculum and instruction.
Here Bruno and I are seeing something different, because I don't think CCSS supporters ever really believed that standards alone would raise anything. I think people who have espoused this view have always used "standards" as short-hand for "standards backed up with some kick-evaluations and sanctions so that people will by gum meet those standards or else." I think this is one of the reasons that The Core arrived in the states with high-stakes punitive testing programs already welded onto them. But Bruno gets this next part right:
Teachers already think their pedagogy is about right for whatever learning objectives you want to establish; if you want them to think differently you need to convince them directly. It is also increasingly apparent that you can’t avoid nasty battles over curriculum by saying “standards are not a curriculum”.
2. CCSS supporters should acknowledge that the new standards are not really as unambiguous as they had thought.
Bruno correctly notes that CCSS fans aren't really doing themselves any favors by repeatedly responding to criticism with "But that's not what the CCSS say." But Bruno tracks the issue back to peoples' pre-existing edu-confusions. I don't think it's that simple. I think this is an insolvable problem inextricably linked to CCSS by virtue of the top-down creation of the standards.
One of the built in problems of top-down reform is that only the people who were in the room for creation know what they really meant-- and in a top-down program, that's a small group of people, none of whom are going to be directly involved in the implementation of their ideas. And so the battle over what the Original Text really means is endless (as endless, say, as the centuries of interminable battle over what that Jesus guy actually had in mind).
Add to that the suspicion in some quarters that the writers of the Core didn't even really mean what they said in the first place, either because they didn't know what they were talking about (particularly applicable to the all-amateur-hour ELA standards) or they were just writing standards with an eye on the billion-dollar pot of testing gold at the end of the Common Core rainbow, and not trying to write true standards at all. And then the Founding Fathers of Common Core simply released their creation and dispersed, back to their real jobs or to new cash cows.
Add all that together and you have a "movement" with neither a strong controlling text nor a group of active involved leaders. Which opens the door for all manner of vendors, profiteers, and power-hungry reins-grabbers to declare, "Why yes-- what I want to do totally belongs to this package."
I don't think we're seeing peoples' pre-existing confusion so much as we're seeing the built-in confusion of CCSS (some of which is deliberate). It's an ambiguity that makes the CCSS regime profitable, and it's an ambiguity for which no correcting mechanism exists. The few die-hards saying, "But-but-but this isn't what the standards really say" carry no more weight than Leon Trotsky declaring, "You're doing my revolution all wrong."
3. CCSS supporters should focus more on Common Core-aligned assessments.
What the CCSS “really” mean will be determined in large part by the tests used to hold teachers and schools accountable. So while it’s all well and good to assure us that, e.g., the CCSS “require” a “content-rich curriculum”, that won’t really be true unless the eventual assessments require a content-rich curriculum.
Bruno is correct, though the real answer is that "content-rich curriculum" won't happen until we're facing "content-rich assessment," and that will be happening never (aka "the same day the assessment includes collaborative performance tasks").
The assessments are the curriculum and the tests are the standards.
4. CCSS supporters should spend more time highlighting “good” Common Core-aligned lessons.
Bruno is correct in noting that CCSS is losing in the court of public opinion in part because it is solidly linked to all manner of dopey lessons (including many that aren't really Common Core lessons). But people talking about CCSS "success" always face the same problem.
Let's say we're discussing the oft-made much-beloved assertion of CCSS-fan teachers that the Core now lets critical thinking into their classroom. The problem is that from this assertion we can only conclude one of two things:
1) The teacher either didn't know or wasn't able previously to include critical thinking in her classroom. The only explanation for this is that the teacher is a dope.
2) The teacher was not previously allowed to include critical thinking in her classroom. From this we must conclude that the school administration is a dope.
Neither of these problems requires a multi-million-dollar retooling of the entire American public education system. When someone shows me a good CCSS lesson, my first question is always "How did Common Core make this possible?" (My second question is usually "Who wants me to pay them to use this?") It only highlights for me that the CCSS have always been a solution in search of a problem.
They are the educational equivalent of a salesman at my door telling me, "For only a few thousand dollars a month, we will install equipment that will guarantee that there is air inside your home." I'm in favor of air-- a huge fan, in fact. But it's not clear to me why I should give you my money, or free reign of my home, and I'm pretty much waiting for you to break into a chorus of "Trouble" right here in River City.
So it's not that I think Bruno's advice is wrong, exactly. I just don't think there's anybody in a real position to take it.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Bill McCallum, CCSS Author & Sad Scientist
When movies present us with science-related disasters, we generally involve one of two sciency types-- the mad scientists and the sad scientist. The mad scientist is the one genetically engineering giant gerbils to take over the world (cue maniacal laugh). The sad scientist is the one who believes that he is Doing Great Things, like creating no-leak ice cream cones for poor children everywhere, only to discover that his patron, whether its an evil millionaire or an evil businessman or an evil military leader, plans to use his great creation for Evil Purposes!
"No!" cries the Sad Scientist as the villagers approach his genetically modified lima beans with pitchforks and torches, "You don't understand! They won't harm you! They're really quite yummy!!" And when the Sad Scientist discovers that his GMO ferrets have actually burned down an orphanage, he still sticks up for them. "They're just misunderstood."
I was thinking about the sad scientist as I was reading up on Bill McCallum. McCallum describes himself as someone who was “born in Australia and came to the United States to pursue a Ph. D. in mathematics at Harvard University, a professor at the University of Arizona, working in number theory and mathematics education.” He's also one of the creators of Common Core, having represented Achieve on the 2009 panel that created the College and Career Ready vision of what a high school grad should look like, and then serving as one of the three lead writers on the math standards.
I encountered him when a click-pursuit led me to isupportthecommoncore.net, a website that McCallum and Jason Zimba (another math CCSS writer) started last August. McCallum does most of the blog writing on the site, assisted for stretches by his colleague Aubrey Neihaus. The lead post started like this:
The Common Core State Standards present a rare opportunity to advance the way we teach our children mathematics, reading, and writing. But change is hard, especially as forces amass to tear the standards down. This blog is for those who want to see the standards succeed and are willing to receive the occasional call to action in support of them. I recognize that you are all busy and not everybody can respond all the time. But if there are enough of us that won’t matter.
Well, almost a year later, it appears there aren't enough. The site has 323 subscribers and many fairly silent comment sections. There are a smattering of short, supportive comments; many of the comment sections are closed to comment. There are some resources, most from October 2013 or earlier, including items such as the Hunt Institute videos about CCSS. Links to "Share Your Story of Support" and "Stand Up and Be Counted" both lead to big empty nothings. A link to "Voices of Support" garners a "page not found" message.
But just as the few sad furnishings in a big empty house can tell you something about the owner, I found the website revealing. Well, sad, but revealing, too.
We have a tendency to characterize all CCSS backers as evil geniuses, malignant mad scientists, or greedy underhanded businessmen. But I've characterized CCSS regime supporters as three groups
1) People who make a living/profit from CCSS
2) People who see things in the CCSS that aren't actually there
3) People who haven't actually looked at the CCSS yet
I think Bill McCallum is part of group #2.
I've read most of what he posted here, some interviews, material he posted at his other website. Bill McCallum is no David Coleman. He appears to have a sense of humor (prior to the launch of the support site, he promised that there would be jokes, and the site includes a link to one of Colbert's CCSS bits). He is by and large respectful of CCSS opponents; he occasionally engages their argument as if it's worth talking about (at one point he wishes that the new Diane Ravitch had been around twelve years ago to fight the influence of the old Diane Ravitch). He does not, a la Coleman, suggest that he is a gifted amateur who is just making a WAG that should be fine because he's so damn smart.
Like the typical sad scientist, he seems to truly not grasp how his creation is actually being used and harnessed in the real world. In the midst of the one conversational thread on the site, he writes this:
My vision of CCSS is consensus about what we want kids to learn but not a rigid script for how they should learn it.
He says many things like that. It's not that we haven't heard a version of the point before, but I'm struck by how he frequently uses the simple language of someone who's sincerely trying to explain a truth, and not the convoluted jargonny blather of someone who is trying to hide a truth.
Searching his writing, I found more of that vision. CCSS should provide standards that can be interpreted locally. The infamous Appendix is meant as a suggestion or example of how to extend the standards, not a directive or guide. Curriculum and assessment should be based on the standards, but created by local entities.
McCallum is baffled a bit by some opponents; last summer and fall he saw them as only as wackos on the far right, and he linked to a post suggesting that CCSS is neither panacea nor Satanic, but simply a better way to focus teachers, who remain the backbone of instruction. His frequent argument against CCSS opponents is that what they are complaining about isn't really the Common Core at all.
Like a writer who has sold his novel to Hollywood, McCallum seems not to grasp that he no longer gets to define what the CCSS are or mean. Coleman appears to have fully embraced the complete CCSS regime and has moved with gusto to cash in on the whole complex. But McCallum keeps insisting that his CCSS is simply standards, and no standardized curriculum nor tests nor teacher evaluation nor school evaluations are any part of it. It is also true that a communist leader shouldn't look like a Stalin or a Mao, but reality is just a bitch some times.
I actually feel a little sad for McCallum. I imagine that some of the atomic scientists who thought they were developing an awesome power source, not a new way to immolate hundreds of thousand of people, might have struggled as well. But the corporate profiteers and data overlords and anti-teacher public school haters have found in his work a perfect tool for their agenda, and McCallum's intentions, no matter how noble they may have been, no longer matter.
I don't know how well the real Bill McCallum matches my mental picture. Maybe he's a huge jerk, and I just don't see it in his writing. I do wish he would wake up and smell the proverbial coffee. Because when I say his intentions for his creation no longer matter, that's not entirely true. His repeated statements about his intentions for the Core help feed the CCSS machinery, allow the profiteers and the rest to publicize the Core based on what its creator says and not what's actually happening. And if McCallum were ever to look at any of the anti-education crap that has been welded onto his creation and say, "This is not what I meant at all. This is wrong. This is exactly the opposite of what was supposed to happen"-- that would be a powerful force for sweeping the crap away, and making it possible to do some of the things he apparently meant to do in the first place.
It's tough for the sad scientist to come to terms with he reality of what's been done to his creation. Sadly, right now, we're left with the sad image of Bill McCallum trying to rally support for CCSS on a ghost website by hawking buttons.
"No!" cries the Sad Scientist as the villagers approach his genetically modified lima beans with pitchforks and torches, "You don't understand! They won't harm you! They're really quite yummy!!" And when the Sad Scientist discovers that his GMO ferrets have actually burned down an orphanage, he still sticks up for them. "They're just misunderstood."
I was thinking about the sad scientist as I was reading up on Bill McCallum. McCallum describes himself as someone who was “born in Australia and came to the United States to pursue a Ph. D. in mathematics at Harvard University, a professor at the University of Arizona, working in number theory and mathematics education.” He's also one of the creators of Common Core, having represented Achieve on the 2009 panel that created the College and Career Ready vision of what a high school grad should look like, and then serving as one of the three lead writers on the math standards.
I encountered him when a click-pursuit led me to isupportthecommoncore.net, a website that McCallum and Jason Zimba (another math CCSS writer) started last August. McCallum does most of the blog writing on the site, assisted for stretches by his colleague Aubrey Neihaus. The lead post started like this:
The Common Core State Standards present a rare opportunity to advance the way we teach our children mathematics, reading, and writing. But change is hard, especially as forces amass to tear the standards down. This blog is for those who want to see the standards succeed and are willing to receive the occasional call to action in support of them. I recognize that you are all busy and not everybody can respond all the time. But if there are enough of us that won’t matter.
Well, almost a year later, it appears there aren't enough. The site has 323 subscribers and many fairly silent comment sections. There are a smattering of short, supportive comments; many of the comment sections are closed to comment. There are some resources, most from October 2013 or earlier, including items such as the Hunt Institute videos about CCSS. Links to "Share Your Story of Support" and "Stand Up and Be Counted" both lead to big empty nothings. A link to "Voices of Support" garners a "page not found" message.
But just as the few sad furnishings in a big empty house can tell you something about the owner, I found the website revealing. Well, sad, but revealing, too.
We have a tendency to characterize all CCSS backers as evil geniuses, malignant mad scientists, or greedy underhanded businessmen. But I've characterized CCSS regime supporters as three groups
1) People who make a living/profit from CCSS
2) People who see things in the CCSS that aren't actually there
3) People who haven't actually looked at the CCSS yet
I think Bill McCallum is part of group #2.
I've read most of what he posted here, some interviews, material he posted at his other website. Bill McCallum is no David Coleman. He appears to have a sense of humor (prior to the launch of the support site, he promised that there would be jokes, and the site includes a link to one of Colbert's CCSS bits). He is by and large respectful of CCSS opponents; he occasionally engages their argument as if it's worth talking about (at one point he wishes that the new Diane Ravitch had been around twelve years ago to fight the influence of the old Diane Ravitch). He does not, a la Coleman, suggest that he is a gifted amateur who is just making a WAG that should be fine because he's so damn smart.
Like the typical sad scientist, he seems to truly not grasp how his creation is actually being used and harnessed in the real world. In the midst of the one conversational thread on the site, he writes this:
My vision of CCSS is consensus about what we want kids to learn but not a rigid script for how they should learn it.
He says many things like that. It's not that we haven't heard a version of the point before, but I'm struck by how he frequently uses the simple language of someone who's sincerely trying to explain a truth, and not the convoluted jargonny blather of someone who is trying to hide a truth.
Searching his writing, I found more of that vision. CCSS should provide standards that can be interpreted locally. The infamous Appendix is meant as a suggestion or example of how to extend the standards, not a directive or guide. Curriculum and assessment should be based on the standards, but created by local entities.
McCallum is baffled a bit by some opponents; last summer and fall he saw them as only as wackos on the far right, and he linked to a post suggesting that CCSS is neither panacea nor Satanic, but simply a better way to focus teachers, who remain the backbone of instruction. His frequent argument against CCSS opponents is that what they are complaining about isn't really the Common Core at all.
Like a writer who has sold his novel to Hollywood, McCallum seems not to grasp that he no longer gets to define what the CCSS are or mean. Coleman appears to have fully embraced the complete CCSS regime and has moved with gusto to cash in on the whole complex. But McCallum keeps insisting that his CCSS is simply standards, and no standardized curriculum nor tests nor teacher evaluation nor school evaluations are any part of it. It is also true that a communist leader shouldn't look like a Stalin or a Mao, but reality is just a bitch some times.
I actually feel a little sad for McCallum. I imagine that some of the atomic scientists who thought they were developing an awesome power source, not a new way to immolate hundreds of thousand of people, might have struggled as well. But the corporate profiteers and data overlords and anti-teacher public school haters have found in his work a perfect tool for their agenda, and McCallum's intentions, no matter how noble they may have been, no longer matter.
I don't know how well the real Bill McCallum matches my mental picture. Maybe he's a huge jerk, and I just don't see it in his writing. I do wish he would wake up and smell the proverbial coffee. Because when I say his intentions for his creation no longer matter, that's not entirely true. His repeated statements about his intentions for the Core help feed the CCSS machinery, allow the profiteers and the rest to publicize the Core based on what its creator says and not what's actually happening. And if McCallum were ever to look at any of the anti-education crap that has been welded onto his creation and say, "This is not what I meant at all. This is wrong. This is exactly the opposite of what was supposed to happen"-- that would be a powerful force for sweeping the crap away, and making it possible to do some of the things he apparently meant to do in the first place.
It's tough for the sad scientist to come to terms with he reality of what's been done to his creation. Sadly, right now, we're left with the sad image of Bill McCallum trying to rally support for CCSS on a ghost website by hawking buttons.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Edupreneuring Hard Rock Instructional Boondogglery
Are you too non-rich to attend Camp Philos, the philosophical retreat for educational thought leaders at Lake Placid this summer? Then 2014 Rock the Core! may be for you! If nothing else-- it provides an object lesson in edtrepreneurship in action.
Rock the Core will take place June 9-11 at the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi MS. 2014 Rock the Core is the fancy name for the 2014 New Teacher Institute, which is put on by the New Teacher People. Despite the remarkable initiallary coincidence, this is TNTP (which used to stand for The New Teacher Project but now, well, doesn't (kind of like KFC). None of that is easily discernible by looking at the website for the event.
A search for "The New Teacher People" turns up nothing but the website promoting this, well, let's call it a Training Convention Boondoggle (TCB). A search for "The New Teacher Insitute" turns up the same plus a press release or two, but from that we learn that the founder of the group is Candance McClendon, and that this is the third annual such gathering.
We're clearly working a different market here than the Lake Placid philosophers' gathering. Instead of skiing, it's beach vollyball. Instead of a private massage, there's a hotel pool. But Hard Rock has excelled at turning an okay idea into a mass-produced franchise of numbing sameness, loved by tourists and hated by locals, so it seems like a better location for CCSS conventioneering than a former Olympic site. I think Ms. McClendon nailed it with that choice. So who is Candace McClendon, and how did she end up with her own special teacher consulting business?
Ms. McClendon has a project (The Future of Education) on fundrazr on which she tells her story.
I never wanted to be a teacher. I completed my entire high school and college career with a fierce passion for writing and creating narratives. I wanted to be a journalist. I had the goods, and I had spent the majority of my teens idolizing the editors in those glossy magazines. Needless to say, my senior year in college, I decided I was unprepared to live the fast life in New York City, so I opted for a year of teaching to save money. My life has never been the same.
She spent six years in the classroom and five as an educational consultant. Her Linkedin profile lists her as the owner of McClendon Education Group, LLC, (founded August 2009) which is based in MS but does not have a website of its own. The New Teacher People is another one of her companies, which puts on the New Teacher Institute in the summer, and also, apparently has a newsletter and Saturday Academies. This is all way more than you can glean from the site itself.
About Us takes you to some vaguely worded puff about change, students, world shaping and the need to "move expeditiously to prepare our youth for what's to come." We (who remain nameless throughout) have selected all sorts of current and former educators to create a "personalized product."
The registration page asks "Are you an advocate of Common Core?" The site promises engaging professional development (not the same old "sit and git") that will show you "what CCSS will 'look' like in a classroom/school like yours (i.e struggling learners, below grade level readers, state test driven, low student morale, time management issues)." I can't explain the inappropriately quotationed "look," but I am curious if the Institute will address Common Core's role in creating some of those problems. There's also a crack about fifty slides of PowerPoint which became ironic when I found this promotional video for the event which looks a lot like, well, bad PowerPoint (though it does use Pharrell's "Happy" as a sound track, and I love that song and appreciate that Pharrell got some of these peoples' money when they paid for the rights. You guys totally paid for the rights to use that, right?
Keynote speaker is Sandra Alberti from the Student Achievement Partners, the group founded by David Coleman, Susan Pimetal and Jason Zimba tocash in on CCSS help assimilate more tools help all students and teachers achieve good stuff. Notes the site, "One of our powerful keynotes, Achieve the Core, is founded by a writer of the Common Core State Standards. How close to an authentic look at CCSS can you get than that." It's possible Ms. McClendon hasn't finished proofreading.
Also speaking will be Adam Dovico from the Ron Clark Academy, and now I'm wondering how is Ron Clark doing these days, because he has to be looking at many of these uplifty no excuse charter-loving reformy stuffs and thinking, "Damn! I was a man ahead of my time." Anyway, he'll be here to collect a fee as well. And apparently State Rep Jeremy Anderson is coming as well.
The site has a resources page that plugs work from Chester Finn, Mark Oshea, Lucy Calkins, and Robyn Jackson as well as links to the CCSS themselves. Accommodations are a conventioneer-friendly $169/night, and the conference itself is a mere $299 (early) or $349 (after April 30). There are only 350 seats, so act now.
And there is a pdf for presentation proposals, but those were due by March 4th. I'm bummed to have found this too late. I was thinking that if I can't raise the money for Camp Philos, I could have put in a proposal to present "How to Deal with CCSS Foolishness and Boondogglery" or "How to Cash in on New Educational Baloney."
Ms. McClendon is to be commended for her edrepreneurial spirit; she's clearly not one of the big fish (SAP is only sending a "staff" person?!) but she has marked out her own corner of the market and with a little pluck and a webdesigner, she's propped herself up as reformer-for-hire. With a shiny website and everything! I'm not sure that we can blame this sort of thing on Common Core; as long as folks are interested in a nominally work-related vacation on the Gulf Coast, this sort of educational profiteering will always be with us. Still, as another protional video reminds us, Mississippi is looking at full-on Core onslaught in August of 2014, so that sense of manufactured urgency can't hurt. 350 seats times $300 makes $105K which is a not too shabby take for a weekend convention. And if Ms. McClendon gets lucky at the slots, she may really cash in.
Rock the Core will take place June 9-11 at the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi MS. 2014 Rock the Core is the fancy name for the 2014 New Teacher Institute, which is put on by the New Teacher People. Despite the remarkable initiallary coincidence, this is TNTP (which used to stand for The New Teacher Project but now, well, doesn't (kind of like KFC). None of that is easily discernible by looking at the website for the event.
A search for "The New Teacher People" turns up nothing but the website promoting this, well, let's call it a Training Convention Boondoggle (TCB). A search for "The New Teacher Insitute" turns up the same plus a press release or two, but from that we learn that the founder of the group is Candance McClendon, and that this is the third annual such gathering.
We're clearly working a different market here than the Lake Placid philosophers' gathering. Instead of skiing, it's beach vollyball. Instead of a private massage, there's a hotel pool. But Hard Rock has excelled at turning an okay idea into a mass-produced franchise of numbing sameness, loved by tourists and hated by locals, so it seems like a better location for CCSS conventioneering than a former Olympic site. I think Ms. McClendon nailed it with that choice. So who is Candace McClendon, and how did she end up with her own special teacher consulting business?
Ms. McClendon has a project (The Future of Education) on fundrazr on which she tells her story.
I never wanted to be a teacher. I completed my entire high school and college career with a fierce passion for writing and creating narratives. I wanted to be a journalist. I had the goods, and I had spent the majority of my teens idolizing the editors in those glossy magazines. Needless to say, my senior year in college, I decided I was unprepared to live the fast life in New York City, so I opted for a year of teaching to save money. My life has never been the same.
She spent six years in the classroom and five as an educational consultant. Her Linkedin profile lists her as the owner of McClendon Education Group, LLC, (founded August 2009) which is based in MS but does not have a website of its own. The New Teacher People is another one of her companies, which puts on the New Teacher Institute in the summer, and also, apparently has a newsletter and Saturday Academies. This is all way more than you can glean from the site itself.
About Us takes you to some vaguely worded puff about change, students, world shaping and the need to "move expeditiously to prepare our youth for what's to come." We (who remain nameless throughout) have selected all sorts of current and former educators to create a "personalized product."
The registration page asks "Are you an advocate of Common Core?" The site promises engaging professional development (not the same old "sit and git") that will show you "what CCSS will 'look' like in a classroom/school like yours (i.e struggling learners, below grade level readers, state test driven, low student morale, time management issues)." I can't explain the inappropriately quotationed "look," but I am curious if the Institute will address Common Core's role in creating some of those problems. There's also a crack about fifty slides of PowerPoint which became ironic when I found this promotional video for the event which looks a lot like, well, bad PowerPoint (though it does use Pharrell's "Happy" as a sound track, and I love that song and appreciate that Pharrell got some of these peoples' money when they paid for the rights. You guys totally paid for the rights to use that, right?
Keynote speaker is Sandra Alberti from the Student Achievement Partners, the group founded by David Coleman, Susan Pimetal and Jason Zimba to
Also speaking will be Adam Dovico from the Ron Clark Academy, and now I'm wondering how is Ron Clark doing these days, because he has to be looking at many of these uplifty no excuse charter-loving reformy stuffs and thinking, "Damn! I was a man ahead of my time." Anyway, he'll be here to collect a fee as well. And apparently State Rep Jeremy Anderson is coming as well.
The site has a resources page that plugs work from Chester Finn, Mark Oshea, Lucy Calkins, and Robyn Jackson as well as links to the CCSS themselves. Accommodations are a conventioneer-friendly $169/night, and the conference itself is a mere $299 (early) or $349 (after April 30). There are only 350 seats, so act now.
And there is a pdf for presentation proposals, but those were due by March 4th. I'm bummed to have found this too late. I was thinking that if I can't raise the money for Camp Philos, I could have put in a proposal to present "How to Deal with CCSS Foolishness and Boondogglery" or "How to Cash in on New Educational Baloney."
Ms. McClendon is to be commended for her edrepreneurial spirit; she's clearly not one of the big fish (SAP is only sending a "staff" person?!) but she has marked out her own corner of the market and with a little pluck and a webdesigner, she's propped herself up as reformer-for-hire. With a shiny website and everything! I'm not sure that we can blame this sort of thing on Common Core; as long as folks are interested in a nominally work-related vacation on the Gulf Coast, this sort of educational profiteering will always be with us. Still, as another protional video reminds us, Mississippi is looking at full-on Core onslaught in August of 2014, so that sense of manufactured urgency can't hurt. 350 seats times $300 makes $105K which is a not too shabby take for a weekend convention. And if Ms. McClendon gets lucky at the slots, she may really cash in.
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