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.
Friday, April 18, 2014
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.
What about Palloohkaville?
(Part 3 of 3: Part 1 and Part 2 are not required reading, but it all sort of fits together)
When we talk about the need for standardization, we inevitably come back to the issue of bad schools.
"If we don't have educational standards and high-stakes test accountability," goes the argument, "then over in Palloohkaville they'll be teaching about the flat earth and Jesus riding dinosaurs and how America is really a fascist country and that 2+2 equals Dog. And the Palloohkaville school board will keep denying necessary resources to Other Peoples' Children High School. We need standards and stakes to force them to Do the Right Thing."
I agree that all of these problems are real and serious problems. I just don't agree that standards will do anything to fix them.
Some are fixed by law. Equitable distribution of resources doesn't require Common Core or ed reform-- it requires enforcement of the laws that say "Thou shalt not screw over one set of citizens to the benefit of other sets of citizens." When some school is falling down around the students' ears, the problem is not educational standards-- it's the political will to Do Right.
For human beings, standards have one function-- to get other people to act as if they share your values. Most classroom teachers, for example, have rules that boil down to "You may not respect and care about every other person in this room, but you will by God at least act as if you do."
Standards for human behavior work better in the negative than in the positive, and better for behavior than for attitude. Our most successful human standards, right back to the Ten Really Famous Ones, have been Thou Shalt Not Do's. School Reformy types have taken to comparing the implementation of their regime to the Civil Rights Movement, and that movement had its greatest success in imposing a standard that said you can't treat non-white folks as if they are lesser beings than you. It has had less success in imposing a standard that says you must treat all non-white people as if they are your friend (and be happy that a Black man was elected President). It is easier to make people stop doing bad things than to make them start to feel like doing good things. And it is particularly difficult to enforce rules that they think and feel certain ways.
So to the extent that educational standards want to impose positive behaviors and attitudes on young people, they are doomed to failure. To the extent that they want to impose positive behaviors on institutions, they are hopeless, because the best you can ever hope for is "going through the motions" and "going through the motions" is not an education.
We know what happens when you give people a punitive bad test-- they learn how to go through the motions that the test requires. That's it.
So what happens if we impose standards on Palloohkaville?
We already kind of know. We've been trying to force districts to drop creationism and teach actual science. What happens is they fight the rules, ignore the rules, and escape the rules. In extreme cases, they commandeer the rules (one of the great fallacies of those who believe in centralized standards is the believe that such centralized control will always stay in the hands of The Right People).
But I will bet you dollars to donuts that we can't find one person who was talked out of creationism and into the scientific view because their high school science teacher was required to teach one and not the other.
Using rules to force people to Get With the Program doesn't work. And it does worse than not work, because when you hand out mental handcuffs and tell everyone they have to slap the cuffs on, the people who will comply are the people who are already with the program-- the people you didn't intend the rules for in the first place. Meanwhile, the people who you really intended the braincuffs for have already figured out how to get around your rule. You didn't stop your bad actors, but you did hamstring your best and brightest.
What happens if we don't impose standards on Palloohkaville?
Palloohkaville becomes known for lousy schools. People don't move there. People don't locate their businesses there. Maybe they raise the will to do something about it; maybe they just change their name to "Mississippi" and decide they're happy with the barrel-bottom view. I'm okay with that. This is America, and the people who should get to decide the fate of Pallohkaville are the Palloohkavillians, who, as it turns out, are the same people who have to live with the consequences of their choices and attitudes. Maybe after they have to live out their values, some folks have an epiphany and say, "Hey, I think maybe education is actually important."
Here's the thing-- I don't believe anybody can step in from outside and apply force in a way that will fix any of that. Sure, you can force them to go through some education-ish movements, but what will that actually change?
You cannot improve a community from outside that community. It is one of the bitterest social and political ironies ever that you can, in fact, wreck a community from outside that community, but you cannot fix it from outside. Every successful model of community uplift ever involves being part of the community. If you want to fix Palloohkaville Schools, you will have to live there (and probably for more than two years). Drive-by do-gooders don't help, and there's a name for the business of moving into an area and forcing the locals to do as you say, for their own good-- it's colonialism.
Outside fixing only diverts attention. Instead of worrying about local school problems, we're worrying about That Damn Federal Test. Our schools don't have a problem, the new mantra goes-- we're just being crushed by a big gummint thumb.
It frustrates me too, that so many Americans don't really value education, but you don't make people value education through centralized standards any more than you make them love hamburgers by turning every restaurant into a McDonalds.
When we talk about the need for standardization, we inevitably come back to the issue of bad schools.
"If we don't have educational standards and high-stakes test accountability," goes the argument, "then over in Palloohkaville they'll be teaching about the flat earth and Jesus riding dinosaurs and how America is really a fascist country and that 2+2 equals Dog. And the Palloohkaville school board will keep denying necessary resources to Other Peoples' Children High School. We need standards and stakes to force them to Do the Right Thing."
I agree that all of these problems are real and serious problems. I just don't agree that standards will do anything to fix them.
Some are fixed by law. Equitable distribution of resources doesn't require Common Core or ed reform-- it requires enforcement of the laws that say "Thou shalt not screw over one set of citizens to the benefit of other sets of citizens." When some school is falling down around the students' ears, the problem is not educational standards-- it's the political will to Do Right.
For human beings, standards have one function-- to get other people to act as if they share your values. Most classroom teachers, for example, have rules that boil down to "You may not respect and care about every other person in this room, but you will by God at least act as if you do."
Standards for human behavior work better in the negative than in the positive, and better for behavior than for attitude. Our most successful human standards, right back to the Ten Really Famous Ones, have been Thou Shalt Not Do's. School Reformy types have taken to comparing the implementation of their regime to the Civil Rights Movement, and that movement had its greatest success in imposing a standard that said you can't treat non-white folks as if they are lesser beings than you. It has had less success in imposing a standard that says you must treat all non-white people as if they are your friend (and be happy that a Black man was elected President). It is easier to make people stop doing bad things than to make them start to feel like doing good things. And it is particularly difficult to enforce rules that they think and feel certain ways.
So to the extent that educational standards want to impose positive behaviors and attitudes on young people, they are doomed to failure. To the extent that they want to impose positive behaviors on institutions, they are hopeless, because the best you can ever hope for is "going through the motions" and "going through the motions" is not an education.
We know what happens when you give people a punitive bad test-- they learn how to go through the motions that the test requires. That's it.
So what happens if we impose standards on Palloohkaville?
We already kind of know. We've been trying to force districts to drop creationism and teach actual science. What happens is they fight the rules, ignore the rules, and escape the rules. In extreme cases, they commandeer the rules (one of the great fallacies of those who believe in centralized standards is the believe that such centralized control will always stay in the hands of The Right People).
But I will bet you dollars to donuts that we can't find one person who was talked out of creationism and into the scientific view because their high school science teacher was required to teach one and not the other.
Using rules to force people to Get With the Program doesn't work. And it does worse than not work, because when you hand out mental handcuffs and tell everyone they have to slap the cuffs on, the people who will comply are the people who are already with the program-- the people you didn't intend the rules for in the first place. Meanwhile, the people who you really intended the braincuffs for have already figured out how to get around your rule. You didn't stop your bad actors, but you did hamstring your best and brightest.
What happens if we don't impose standards on Palloohkaville?
Palloohkaville becomes known for lousy schools. People don't move there. People don't locate their businesses there. Maybe they raise the will to do something about it; maybe they just change their name to "Mississippi" and decide they're happy with the barrel-bottom view. I'm okay with that. This is America, and the people who should get to decide the fate of Pallohkaville are the Palloohkavillians, who, as it turns out, are the same people who have to live with the consequences of their choices and attitudes. Maybe after they have to live out their values, some folks have an epiphany and say, "Hey, I think maybe education is actually important."
Here's the thing-- I don't believe anybody can step in from outside and apply force in a way that will fix any of that. Sure, you can force them to go through some education-ish movements, but what will that actually change?
You cannot improve a community from outside that community. It is one of the bitterest social and political ironies ever that you can, in fact, wreck a community from outside that community, but you cannot fix it from outside. Every successful model of community uplift ever involves being part of the community. If you want to fix Palloohkaville Schools, you will have to live there (and probably for more than two years). Drive-by do-gooders don't help, and there's a name for the business of moving into an area and forcing the locals to do as you say, for their own good-- it's colonialism.
Outside fixing only diverts attention. Instead of worrying about local school problems, we're worrying about That Damn Federal Test. Our schools don't have a problem, the new mantra goes-- we're just being crushed by a big gummint thumb.
It frustrates me too, that so many Americans don't really value education, but you don't make people value education through centralized standards any more than you make them love hamburgers by turning every restaurant into a McDonalds.
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.
CT Makes New Strides in Grittology
Sandwiched in the midst of a puff piece about Connecticut's new elite cadre of Common Core teacher shills is this important paragraph:
Getting on the list was competitive. According to a news release from the Department of Education, teachers "were chosen through a competitive statewide application on the basis of their content knowledge, grit, and understanding of the Common Core State Standards. Each educator demonstrated the commitment and ability to “scale their impact” beyond their classroom."
I'm going to let the confusing quotation marks slide and focus in on the most exciting news just kind of dropped into this PR bonanza--
...chosen through a competitive statewide application on the basis of their content knowledge, grit, and understanding ...
You see?!! The State of Connecticut knows how to measure grit!!!!
I am sure that all of us, all around the country, want to know how this is done. I am sure that phones are ringing off the hook in CT DOE offices as other educational thought leaders call to ask for the secret of grittological measurements.
Was it a physical test? Did they make teachers do the worm for a thousand yards? Did they make teachers peel onions and sing "memories" while watching pictures of sad puppies, all without crying? Did they have to compete in three-armed wheelchair races? Were they required to complete a season of the Amazing Race as participants? Did they have to stand stock still while being pelted with medium-sized canteloupes?
Or perhaps it was a study of their personal history. We know that grittologists have determined that people who have tended not to quit things in the past probably won't quit things in the future (who knew?) So maybe the state looked for people who didn't quit things, like lifelong members of the Columbia Record Club or folks who actually finished an unfinishable sundae or who stayed in a bad marriage. Maybe the state only accepted cancer survivors or acid reflux sufferers or folks with chronic halitosis.
Or maybe Connecticut has a special computerized grit test. Take a PARCC exam on a computer with a bad internet connection or using a keyboard on which some eighth grader has previously moved around all the keys. Create a word document on a computer running Windows 3.0-- no swearing at the blue screen of death. Play HALO with a six-year-old on your team. Is there a grit praxis?
Or maybe grit is linked to the third item on the list-- understanding of the Common Core State Standards. Maybe you have to explain the CCSS as interpreted and implemented by the CT DOE without actually laughing out loud or sneezing the word "bullshit." Or maybe they had to convince someone that they really are excited to attend something called "Teachfest" being run by a company called "LearnZillion" (what a dumb name choice-- if people aren't calling those guys "Learnzilla" behind their backs I will eat my copy of the standards).
All I can say is-- the state of CT has a goldmine here. If they are able to test teachers for grit, they need to monetize that and franchise the process, because this is a mine of inexhaustible riches. This will make a far better monetary stream than the business of having teachers employed by public schools create lessons and materials for a for-profit company (maybe grit has something to do with easily silenced scruples).
Plus, CT has the jump by having a Dream Team of 97 highly grittified teachers, which means they can be dispatched on all sort of tough commando raids. I can see the T-Shirts now-- a Sylvester Stallone looking guy with the words "We Are Here To Punch Dumb in the Face!"
You know, my uncle taught history in Connecticut for fifty years, and was much-beloved in his district. It was actually a bit of a surprise when he retired. I suppose he didn't have enough grit for Connecticut.
Getting on the list was competitive. According to a news release from the Department of Education, teachers "were chosen through a competitive statewide application on the basis of their content knowledge, grit, and understanding of the Common Core State Standards. Each educator demonstrated the commitment and ability to “scale their impact” beyond their classroom."
I'm going to let the confusing quotation marks slide and focus in on the most exciting news just kind of dropped into this PR bonanza--
...chosen through a competitive statewide application on the basis of their content knowledge, grit, and understanding ...
You see?!! The State of Connecticut knows how to measure grit!!!!
I am sure that all of us, all around the country, want to know how this is done. I am sure that phones are ringing off the hook in CT DOE offices as other educational thought leaders call to ask for the secret of grittological measurements.
Was it a physical test? Did they make teachers do the worm for a thousand yards? Did they make teachers peel onions and sing "memories" while watching pictures of sad puppies, all without crying? Did they have to compete in three-armed wheelchair races? Were they required to complete a season of the Amazing Race as participants? Did they have to stand stock still while being pelted with medium-sized canteloupes?
Or perhaps it was a study of their personal history. We know that grittologists have determined that people who have tended not to quit things in the past probably won't quit things in the future (who knew?) So maybe the state looked for people who didn't quit things, like lifelong members of the Columbia Record Club or folks who actually finished an unfinishable sundae or who stayed in a bad marriage. Maybe the state only accepted cancer survivors or acid reflux sufferers or folks with chronic halitosis.
Or maybe Connecticut has a special computerized grit test. Take a PARCC exam on a computer with a bad internet connection or using a keyboard on which some eighth grader has previously moved around all the keys. Create a word document on a computer running Windows 3.0-- no swearing at the blue screen of death. Play HALO with a six-year-old on your team. Is there a grit praxis?
Or maybe grit is linked to the third item on the list-- understanding of the Common Core State Standards. Maybe you have to explain the CCSS as interpreted and implemented by the CT DOE without actually laughing out loud or sneezing the word "bullshit." Or maybe they had to convince someone that they really are excited to attend something called "Teachfest" being run by a company called "LearnZillion" (what a dumb name choice-- if people aren't calling those guys "Learnzilla" behind their backs I will eat my copy of the standards).
All I can say is-- the state of CT has a goldmine here. If they are able to test teachers for grit, they need to monetize that and franchise the process, because this is a mine of inexhaustible riches. This will make a far better monetary stream than the business of having teachers employed by public schools create lessons and materials for a for-profit company (maybe grit has something to do with easily silenced scruples).
Plus, CT has the jump by having a Dream Team of 97 highly grittified teachers, which means they can be dispatched on all sort of tough commando raids. I can see the T-Shirts now-- a Sylvester Stallone looking guy with the words "We Are Here To Punch Dumb in the Face!"
You know, my uncle taught history in Connecticut for fifty years, and was much-beloved in his district. It was actually a bit of a surprise when he retired. I suppose he didn't have enough grit for Connecticut.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Making a Difference
The Reformy Creed
With proper standards alignment, it should not make any difference whether a student learned math in Tennessee or Kentucky.
If the teacher is doing a proper job, it should not make any difference whether a student comes from a privileged, enriched background or a poor one.
If a school has implemented a good teacher-proof program (like engageNY), it should not make any difference whether a student has an experienced teacher or a brand new one or a non-teacher with five weeks of training.
If the students have been exposed to the proper educational training, it should not make any difference whether they are developmentally disabled or not.
And if they are developmentally disabled, it should not make any difference in how The Test is given.
If the teacher is properly following the script, it should not make any difference which particular students are in the class.
In fact, if the teacher is properly following the script, it should not make any difference how many students are in the class.
The problem?
If there is one thing that people are motivated by, dream of, long for, strive in pursuit of, cherish, relish, desire more than even an ice cream sundae with a cherry on type it is this--
To make a difference.
People want to know that they matter, that their presence in every situation made a difference. Kafka's Metamorphosis (a non-informational text) resonates with horror because it speaks to one of a person's deepest fears-- that he will pass through life making so little difference that he might as well have been a bug.
The Reformy movement (aka The Status Quo Formerly Known As Reform) is Kafkaesque and dehumanizing because precisely because its dream, its goal, is an education system in which no individual makes any difference at all. Any student, any teacher, should make no more difference to The System than any other.
The Reformy Ideal is a human nightmare-- a system where anyone could take your place and nobody else would notice. It's not that your individual needs, strengths, weaknesses, personality or spirit are erased-- this is a system that renders all these elements so unimportant that erasing them isn't even necessary.
Every human being has a right-- in fact, an obligation-- to make a difference. The Reformy Ideal is not just a bad way to run a school system-- it's a bad way to treat other human beings.
With proper standards alignment, it should not make any difference whether a student learned math in Tennessee or Kentucky.
If the teacher is doing a proper job, it should not make any difference whether a student comes from a privileged, enriched background or a poor one.
If a school has implemented a good teacher-proof program (like engageNY), it should not make any difference whether a student has an experienced teacher or a brand new one or a non-teacher with five weeks of training.
If the students have been exposed to the proper educational training, it should not make any difference whether they are developmentally disabled or not.
And if they are developmentally disabled, it should not make any difference in how The Test is given.
If the teacher is properly following the script, it should not make any difference which particular students are in the class.
In fact, if the teacher is properly following the script, it should not make any difference how many students are in the class.
The problem?
If there is one thing that people are motivated by, dream of, long for, strive in pursuit of, cherish, relish, desire more than even an ice cream sundae with a cherry on type it is this--
To make a difference.
People want to know that they matter, that their presence in every situation made a difference. Kafka's Metamorphosis (a non-informational text) resonates with horror because it speaks to one of a person's deepest fears-- that he will pass through life making so little difference that he might as well have been a bug.
The Reformy movement (aka The Status Quo Formerly Known As Reform) is Kafkaesque and dehumanizing because precisely because its dream, its goal, is an education system in which no individual makes any difference at all. Any student, any teacher, should make no more difference to The System than any other.
The Reformy Ideal is a human nightmare-- a system where anyone could take your place and nobody else would notice. It's not that your individual needs, strengths, weaknesses, personality or spirit are erased-- this is a system that renders all these elements so unimportant that erasing them isn't even necessary.
Every human being has a right-- in fact, an obligation-- to make a difference. The Reformy Ideal is not just a bad way to run a school system-- it's a bad way to treat other human beings.
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.
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