Duncan Stumps Massachusetts

On Monday, Arne Duncan (or somebody in his office) appeared in the Boston Globe pitching some woo-hoo at a couple of his buddies-- school reform, and outgoing Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. A former civil rights lawyer who later moved on to corporate law (Texaco, Coca-Cola), Patrick has been tossed around on the list of possible successors to Eric Holder. But this week Arne was hailing him for fixing education in Massachusetts.

These kinds of puff pieces are interesting because they always include these embedded descriptions of what Duncan thinks education is for.

I have always been impressed by Massachusetts’ deep commitment to education. From the founding of America’s first public schools, through the historic Education Reform Act of 1993 and to today, the state has shown a commitment to improving student outcomes, raising academic standards, closing achievement gaps — and to the opportunities for all that a world-class education can create.

So, education is like a manufacturing process with the purpose of creating opportunities for students, like a shirt constructed for them to wear, and not a growth process that allows them to become a fuller more capable more complete more self-sufficient and fulfilled version of themselves. I know, I know-- it's a definition on which reasonable people can disagree. I just find Duncan's language choices revealing.

He goes on to list some fine current stats that show how awesome Massachusetts is. And he lists some of their super-duper achievements

Over the last several years, the state has also introduced new college and career ready academic standards, with a focus on critical thinking, problem solving skills, has brought approximately 5,000 poor children off waiting lists and into high quality early education, and has worked to make college more affordable. 

Oh, poor, unloved Common Core. Nobody will even say your name out loud any more, not even those who were once your most ardent suitors.

It's a glowing piece of puffery, but it took just two days for Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based thinky tank, to pop up in the same pages of the same newspaper call bullshit on Arne.

Who says Common Core advocates don’t like fiction? In his Opinion piece on Jan. 5, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan got one fact right: Massachusetts leads the nation in education. Attributing that progress to Governor Patrick’s leadership is like suggesting that a pinch runner who finds himself on third base hit a triple.

Stergios is here to tell you that all of Massachusetts finest education hours came before Patrick set foot in the governor's office. And he's not afraid to use the "C" name, either.

Since the adoption of Common Core in 2010, sampled national tests show fourth-grade reading scores, the best predictor of future success, falling more significantly in Massachusetts than anywhere else in the country.

During Patrick’s time in office, Massachusetts students’ SAT scores have fallen by 20 points. (Prior to 2007, SAT scores had risen for 13 consecutive years.)  

When Patrick took office, 67 percent of third graders scored advanced or proficient on the state’s third-grade reading tests (again, an important marker); that number is now 57 percent. 

This would be a good place to remind you that Fordham Institute, a thinky tank that takes back seat to nobody in its love and devotion to the Common Core, compared Massachusetts's old standards to CCSS and found that MA's were better. They said, "Massachusetts’s existing standards are clearer, more thorough, and easier to read than the Common Core standards."

So when we say that the Common Core standards are untested, that's no longer strictly true-- they have been tested all across the country for a few years now. And while I don't agree with the reformsters' measures of success, it's worth noting that by those same measures, the Core have failed in Massachusetts. This is the kind of data reformsters believe important, and by that data, the Core isn't cutting it.

Duncan goes on to note, several times, that Massachusetts is leading the nation in education, and that's not exactly true at the moment. It's more like the national standards are dragging Massachusetts down. So Duncan is essentially congratulating Massachusetts for how well they did in spite of his attempts to stop them. MA is leading the nation in the sense that they already know how to win at this standards game better than the reformsters in DC.

But good luck to Governor Patrick in whatever job awaits him in DC.

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.