You may think that certain Common Core bunk has been debunked so many times that it would finally crawl back to the PR cave that it crawled out of and, if not die, at least spend the weeks eating twinkies and watching AMNTM marathons. But no.
Here comes Cynthia Dagnal-Myron over at HuffPost with an article that looks as if it were written in the summer of 2013. But no-- August 1, 2014. It's a sobering reminder that these undead talking points are remarkably resistant to the light of day. Let's tick off the bogus bunkery still bouncing around.
You haven't read them, have you
We leap right in with the title-- "Do You Really Know What the Common Core Is?" -- and that old standard insinuation that if you're critical of the Common Core, it must be because you don't really understand them, you poor dear. Even Mike Petrilli at the Fordham Institute (motto: We Use Common Core Butter on Our Common Core Bread) no longer claims that CCSS is not criticized by some folks who have looked at it pretty damn carefully.
American schools are failing
You would think by now that we have sufficiently explained how US student scores actually stack up internationally. Breakdowns of PISA scores tell us far more about poverty in the US than schools internationally. Nor do we ever remember to ask the important question "Did the US ever lead the world in these scores?" (spoiler alert: no). And if schools are currently failing, you'd think that would tell us something about the over-a-decade that reformsters have had their own way with public education. They've had a generation of students to fiddle with-- weren't they supposed to be announcing "Mission Accomplished" by now?
But no. Dagnal-Myron starts with this simple premise.
Our school system is broken. Badly.
Faux history
And so in 2009, the leaders of 48 states, two territories and the
District of Columbia enlisted the aid of hundreds of teachers and
educational experts who eventually created the Common Core to help us
fix it.
Well, it is true that some things did happen in 2009. After that, this sentence goes south. I recommend Dagnal-Myron catch up on a more fact-based history of the Common Core. Try this short account by educational historian Diane Ravitch. Or Lyndsey Layton's interview with Bill Gates about his role in spreading Common Core. If you want more background in painstaking fully-researched detail about the pre-2009 history of the Core, try this piece by Mercedes Schneider.And this piece by Anthony Cody is as good a place as any to work on that "hundreds of teachers" baloney; it includes lots of helpful links to NGA's own list of the sixty-ish people who wrote the Core.
Weird self-contradiction
I have read literally (literally!) hundreds of these paeans to Common Core, and they inevitably include some moment of self-devouring illogic. In this case, Dagnal-Myron wanders down a byway about testing. Some districts test too much, because there's money involved, and that leads to lousy test scores. But not, I guess the test scores that Dagnal-Myron used as proof that schools are terribly broken and failing.
Numbered lists of CCSS swellness
You'd think we didn't need to bother, but no-- here comes a list.
Reading non-fiction is swell
It's up to districts to pick reading lists, and students already read non-fiction, and districts don't have to use that list in the appendix marked "Here's how to do it right." Districts are totally free to risk their funding by ignoring the CCSS "suggestions."
Also, Tea Party be crazy
Noting that required reading only includes a few swell things like the Declaration, Dagnal-Myron notes that these swell documents are the very ones many of the people who seem angriest about the CC love to
pull out of a suit pocket and wave, very proudly, at the camera. Come on-- even some of the big CCSS boosters have finally figured out that the Tea Party is only a tiny little slice of the folks lined up against the Core.
More critical thinking and reading and writing
She considers this the "money" standard. I consider this a chance to ask the same old question-- what do you think teachers were doing previously? Were English teachers sitting in classes saying, "No, don't actually read that book. Just put it under your pillow. And for God's sake-- when you write an essay about it, use irrational arguments and don't support them with anything of substance."
Is that what you think we were doing?
And if your answer is no, then why do we need a multi-gazzillion-dollar school-system-disrupting massive federal-ish program to give us permission (or orders) to do what we were already doing?
Magical Common Core powers
Dagnal-Myron supports the previous point by observing that teenagers make poor decisions, and parents may not always enjoy it when their children approach them with solid, well-built arguments.
But you'll thank those teachers later, when she kills that
first interview and lands a job with a salary that gets her out of your
house and into that first apartment. Or helps her start paying off some
of those loans so she can move out a little sooner.
Yes, Common Core will completely override the developmental stage of being a teenager. Science may think that wacky teenage behavior is the result of their stage of neurological development, but no, it's just that they haven't been taught critical thinking and proper textual support by CCSS-empowered teachers. You'd think that the actual physical make-up of the human brain might have an affect on what that brain can do, but no-- Common Core will re-write the human brain! Because, magic!
Things that aren't in Common Core presented as reasons to love Common Core
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that all administrators, consultants and education professors take a workshop entitled "How to make the newest education reform program say what you wish it would say." This is not a new thing.
For Dagnal-Myron, it's technology. Somehow, CCSS means that "technology is blended into the curriculum" (this also scores the usual "forgetting to stick to the standards-are-not-a-curriculum story"). She really doesn't offer any explanation of how Common Core is linked to technology, nor how it will make underfunded districts able to afford computer gee-gaws, but she's pretty sure that once computers enter the classroom, students will be really excited. Which is a charming point of view, if you are still in 1995.
Tsk-tsk-tsk
Again, as someone who specializes in sophomoric mockery, I enjoy a good tsk now and then myself. But no CCSS apologia is complete without it.
So what's not to like? I have no idea. They address the needs of today's
students in ways today's students might actually find more engaging.
But boy, there are some angry people out there hell bent on making sure
the Common Core goes away tout de suite.
I'm really sorry to hear that. I was hoping American kids
were finally going to get the big boost they needed to catch up to the
kids in other countries.
But I guess some our kids will be eating their dust a little while longer...
So there you have it. You may think that we've covered all of this ground so thoroughly that there could not still be people out in the world who haven't gotten any of these memos. But no-- there are still writers, thinkers, and leaders flapping about today as if it's August 2013. Let it be a reminder to the rest of us to stay vigilant and repetitively redundant in getting the message out. And for those of you who don't, tsk tsk tsk.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Friday, August 1, 2014
Writing News Re: Me
I have a bit of news to share.
You may have heard that Anthony Cody I leaving behind the world of Education Week blogging to pursue other projects and spin "Living in Dialogue" onto some new platforms. That should be going live sometime this week. You can stay caught up with his progress at the Living in Dialogue page on Facebook. I think that whole enterprise is going to be pretty cool.
In the meantime, EdWeek had an opening for a blogger, and the writer who got the nod is your truly.
I'm excited about this. It will give me an opportunity to make the case for American public education to a slightly different audience. I know there are people out there who consider EdWeek too corporate and conservative, but for me that is part of the point. There's an audience over there that is unlikely to wander into this blog on their own. I've talked to both Anthony and to Nancy Flanagan, two education writers for whom I have the utmost respect; both say they have never suffered from editorial interference at EdWeek. I have talked to my new editor there. I am confident that I will get to say what I want to say (as long as I follow the instructions of my first newspaper editor years ago, who told me "Write whatever you ant. Just try to keep some connection to our readers, and don't libel anybody.")
I will not in any way shape or form be abandoning this blog. It will continue to be the home base, mother ship, inner sanctum for me, just as it has remained as my blogginess slopped over onto Facebook and the Huffington Post.
It is continually amazing to me that a guy with nothing more than some years of teaching experience and a knack for flinging words together can end up reaching so many people. Who knew that technology would bring us back around to a world where writing-- just plain writing-- could become so powerful?
I have no interest in becoming rich and famous (an it's a damn good thing, too), but I do have an interest in A) getting the word out about what's happening in public education to people who don't know, B) letting people who DO know know that they are not crazy or alone, and C) furthering a thoughtful discussion about one of the most important things in this country-- public education. And doing it all from the perspective of a classroom teacher (I will not say "just") with no special honors or credits or thinky tank money to my name. I'm excited about carrying that mission to new audiences. The new column should go live, once or twice a week, by the end of this month.
You may have heard that Anthony Cody I leaving behind the world of Education Week blogging to pursue other projects and spin "Living in Dialogue" onto some new platforms. That should be going live sometime this week. You can stay caught up with his progress at the Living in Dialogue page on Facebook. I think that whole enterprise is going to be pretty cool.
In the meantime, EdWeek had an opening for a blogger, and the writer who got the nod is your truly.
I'm excited about this. It will give me an opportunity to make the case for American public education to a slightly different audience. I know there are people out there who consider EdWeek too corporate and conservative, but for me that is part of the point. There's an audience over there that is unlikely to wander into this blog on their own. I've talked to both Anthony and to Nancy Flanagan, two education writers for whom I have the utmost respect; both say they have never suffered from editorial interference at EdWeek. I have talked to my new editor there. I am confident that I will get to say what I want to say (as long as I follow the instructions of my first newspaper editor years ago, who told me "Write whatever you ant. Just try to keep some connection to our readers, and don't libel anybody.")
I will not in any way shape or form be abandoning this blog. It will continue to be the home base, mother ship, inner sanctum for me, just as it has remained as my blogginess slopped over onto Facebook and the Huffington Post.
It is continually amazing to me that a guy with nothing more than some years of teaching experience and a knack for flinging words together can end up reaching so many people. Who knew that technology would bring us back around to a world where writing-- just plain writing-- could become so powerful?
I have no interest in becoming rich and famous (an it's a damn good thing, too), but I do have an interest in A) getting the word out about what's happening in public education to people who don't know, B) letting people who DO know know that they are not crazy or alone, and C) furthering a thoughtful discussion about one of the most important things in this country-- public education. And doing it all from the perspective of a classroom teacher (I will not say "just") with no special honors or credits or thinky tank money to my name. I'm excited about carrying that mission to new audiences. The new column should go live, once or twice a week, by the end of this month.
Accountability vs. Responsibility
Folks keep demanding accountability in education. I'm pretty sure what we want is responsibility. We often use the terms as if they're interchangeable, but they aren't.
Accountability is about giving an accounting, reporting, proving to someone that you have done what they require of you, and proving it in the manner of their choosing. Responsibility is about having a duty, a personal requirement to deal with something.
When I take responsibility, it's a choice I make, and I answer first and foremost to myself. When I am held accountable, I'm held by someone else, and I answer first and foremost to them.
When I am responsible for something, it is my problem. I own it. When I am accountable, I am taking care of somebody else's problem. They own it.
When I am responsible, I need to get things right. I define my success. When I am accountable, I need to present the proper appearance to match someone else's idea of success.
When I am responsible, I can make whatever adjustments and decisions I need to as the need arises. When I am accountable, I'm only safe when I run all changes, revisions, and adjustments past the person who really owns the task-- the person to whom I'm accountable.
I honor my responsibilities because they matter to me. I meet my responsibilities because I don't want to let people down, because I want to look myself in the mirror, because I want to think of myself as someone who does what's right. I meet my accountability requirements because if I don't, someone will punish me (and the greater the accountability, the more that punishment will hurt me).
Responsibility comes with power (and vice versa). Accountability comes with little power.
Responsibility is personal. Accountability is impersonal.
Responsibility requires you to call upon, nurture, exercise, and grow your own best personal qualities. Accountability requires you to repress anything that's not approved by those to whom you are accountable. Responsibility helps you become the best version of yourself. Accountability stunts and twists that growth.
The foundation of responsibility is relationships. I don't want to let people down because I have a relationship with them. I want to be able to look myself in the mirror because knowing who I am, and being okay with it, is fundamental to my relationship with everyone else. Accountability is anathema to relationship. When you hurt me, in order to "hold me accountable," that breaks the bridges between us. It's easier for both of us if we don't have any kind of relationship.
Because responsibility is built on relationship, it takes time to create and nourish it. Responsibility grows best in an atmosphere of respect and trust and support. Accountability is quick and simple. I don't even have to meet you to "hold you accountable." It's faster and easier and more readily scalable if you don't.
Accountability is what you impose when you don't have the time or patience to develop responsibility.
Responsibility is about doing the right thing. Accountability is about following orders correctly, going through the approved motions.
We know all this. Teachers and parents wrestle with this distinction all the time. We have our times when we are pushed into the accountability corner ("Just DO it-- or else!") and it never feels good. It feels like failure. It feels desperation. It feels like we've already lost.
We know that a student who is doing good work out of pride and joy of accomplishment is doing far better than one who's going through the motions because we threatened him with the punishment of losing points or losing recess. We know that there have to be consequences, but if we're all about consequences, our students are lost to us and we are down to a Hail Mary of quick fix desperation.
Accountability is just a fancy word for "These yahoos won't do anything right unless we threaten them with serious punishment for screwing up." If we hear a fellow teacher or administrator say that, we would not think, "Boy, that's the professional I want to be! That sounds like the road to success."
You don't have to be a teacher to know these things. Hell, there's actual science that says the same thing in fancier words. But we repeatedly hear calls for accountability. Yes, the tests aren't perfect, but how else will we hold states/schools/teachers accountable? Tenure is bad because it keeps us from holding teachers accountable. A quick, dirty google turns up 650K hits for "accountability in education."
Look, there are certainly things for which teachers and schools should be held accountable. But if we make accountability the be-all and end-all of the system, we will build a brutal, punishing system that crushes all the character traits we say we want. I like a little pepper on my hamburger, but that doesn't make it a good idea to craft an entire patty out of solid pepper. We can't throw out all accountability in education, but we cannot make it the foundation of the system, either. It will not bring out the best in our teachers, our schools, or our students.
Accountability is about giving an accounting, reporting, proving to someone that you have done what they require of you, and proving it in the manner of their choosing. Responsibility is about having a duty, a personal requirement to deal with something.
When I take responsibility, it's a choice I make, and I answer first and foremost to myself. When I am held accountable, I'm held by someone else, and I answer first and foremost to them.
When I am responsible for something, it is my problem. I own it. When I am accountable, I am taking care of somebody else's problem. They own it.
When I am responsible, I need to get things right. I define my success. When I am accountable, I need to present the proper appearance to match someone else's idea of success.
When I am responsible, I can make whatever adjustments and decisions I need to as the need arises. When I am accountable, I'm only safe when I run all changes, revisions, and adjustments past the person who really owns the task-- the person to whom I'm accountable.
I honor my responsibilities because they matter to me. I meet my responsibilities because I don't want to let people down, because I want to look myself in the mirror, because I want to think of myself as someone who does what's right. I meet my accountability requirements because if I don't, someone will punish me (and the greater the accountability, the more that punishment will hurt me).
Responsibility comes with power (and vice versa). Accountability comes with little power.
Responsibility is personal. Accountability is impersonal.
Responsibility requires you to call upon, nurture, exercise, and grow your own best personal qualities. Accountability requires you to repress anything that's not approved by those to whom you are accountable. Responsibility helps you become the best version of yourself. Accountability stunts and twists that growth.
The foundation of responsibility is relationships. I don't want to let people down because I have a relationship with them. I want to be able to look myself in the mirror because knowing who I am, and being okay with it, is fundamental to my relationship with everyone else. Accountability is anathema to relationship. When you hurt me, in order to "hold me accountable," that breaks the bridges between us. It's easier for both of us if we don't have any kind of relationship.
Because responsibility is built on relationship, it takes time to create and nourish it. Responsibility grows best in an atmosphere of respect and trust and support. Accountability is quick and simple. I don't even have to meet you to "hold you accountable." It's faster and easier and more readily scalable if you don't.
Accountability is what you impose when you don't have the time or patience to develop responsibility.
Responsibility is about doing the right thing. Accountability is about following orders correctly, going through the approved motions.
We know all this. Teachers and parents wrestle with this distinction all the time. We have our times when we are pushed into the accountability corner ("Just DO it-- or else!") and it never feels good. It feels like failure. It feels desperation. It feels like we've already lost.
We know that a student who is doing good work out of pride and joy of accomplishment is doing far better than one who's going through the motions because we threatened him with the punishment of losing points or losing recess. We know that there have to be consequences, but if we're all about consequences, our students are lost to us and we are down to a Hail Mary of quick fix desperation.
Accountability is just a fancy word for "These yahoos won't do anything right unless we threaten them with serious punishment for screwing up." If we hear a fellow teacher or administrator say that, we would not think, "Boy, that's the professional I want to be! That sounds like the road to success."
You don't have to be a teacher to know these things. Hell, there's actual science that says the same thing in fancier words. But we repeatedly hear calls for accountability. Yes, the tests aren't perfect, but how else will we hold states/schools/teachers accountable? Tenure is bad because it keeps us from holding teachers accountable. A quick, dirty google turns up 650K hits for "accountability in education."
Look, there are certainly things for which teachers and schools should be held accountable. But if we make accountability the be-all and end-all of the system, we will build a brutal, punishing system that crushes all the character traits we say we want. I like a little pepper on my hamburger, but that doesn't make it a good idea to craft an entire patty out of solid pepper. We can't throw out all accountability in education, but we cannot make it the foundation of the system, either. It will not bring out the best in our teachers, our schools, or our students.
How Lovable Is New NEA President?
NEA president-elect Lily Eskelsen Garcia is, if nothing else, much more lifelike and good with words than her predecessor. We don't have to rehearse the sad story of how Dennis Van Roekel lost my love; the question I'm asking now is, can I be wooed by the new boss?
My initial reaction was not full-on delight. LEG has an unabashed love for the Common Core, and consequently extends her love to the Gates Foundation and other like-minded doers of good. When she starts talking about GERM and the various enemies of public education, she seems to have a blind spot in her left eye. It will be interesting to see how she deals with places like Connecticut, New York and Chicago, where the attacks on public education are coming from Democrats.
And she has made some good moves. She has actually opened a twitter account, sort of. She has twenty whole tweets and is following fourteen feeds (mostly organizational, but some carbon based life forms). She actually contributed to the @stephenathome twitter blitz prior to Campbell Brown's appearance. It's not much, but it's roughly 23,157,391 times more activity than Van Roekel ever engaged in (of course, it's also about 0.00000312 % of Randi Weingarten's twitterage).
I say "sort of" because her twitter account is actually for her blog, and since the election, LEG's blog has turned weirdly third-person. It used to be chatty and personal; now it reads like some administrative assistant PR person is running it for her. This is not a great thing-- NEA historically suffers hugely from Imperial Presidency Syndrome, and it just needs to stop. I know the president of NEA is a Busy Person with Lots To Do. I don't care. Get down out of the castle and live and work and tweet and blog like the rest of the staffless teachers you represent. NEA continues to have huge HUGE problems because of the enormous Grand Canyon Sized gulf between leadership and rank-and-file. Do something about that.
But boy can she talk.
The comment sections are filled with folks talking about how LEG has brought them to tears at conventions. Find some videos-- she can spin words well. The caveat is that some of those same comments sections includes the line on LEG that she talks a good game, but doesn't deliver. At this point, even talking a good game is a step up.
But if you want to see everything there is to be hopeful about, read LEG's Salon interview with Jeff Bryant. Diane Ravitch fell in love with LEG over this interview, and I don't think she's the only one.
In the interview, LEG displays a kind of tough love for the US Department of Education and the hapless Arne Duncan. She has absolved him of evil intent, but not of terrible outcomes, and that's a great political bank shot, because it both holds his feet to the fire and gives him a way to make things better. She gets one of the most annoying things about Arne-- he says lovely things, and then pursues policies that foster the opposite of what he just said.
And her explanation of how federal policy created the test-and-punish atmosphere is nuanced and smart, explaining how it didn't explicitly require such policies, but created a situation where bad policies are predictable and inevitable.
The Department of Education has become an evidence-free zone when it comes to high stakes decisions being made on the basis of cut scores on standardized tests. We can go back and forth about interpretations of the department’s policies, like, for instance, the situation in Florida where teachers are being evaluated on the basis of test scores of students they don’t even teach. He, in fact, admitted that was totally stupid. But he needs to understand that Florida did that because they were encouraged in their applications for grant money and regulation waivers to do so. When his department requires that state departments of education have to make sure all their teachers are being judged by students’ standardized test scores, then the state departments just start making stuff up. And it’s stupid. It’s absurd. It’s non-defensible. And his department didn’t reject applications based on their absurd requirements for testing. It made the requirement that all teachers be evaluated on the basis of tests a threshold that every application had to cross over. That’s indefensible.
There's a lot to love there. It remains to be seen if LEG can grasp-- or acknowledge-- that in the same way, adopting national standards must lead to national standardized tests, and those test must be bad. The new NEA stance of toxic testing = bad, but CCSS = good is going to be awfully hard to pull off, like saying that we love and cherish the beautiful river, but must shut down the waterfall at the end of that river.
I have no doubts that DVR is a swell person, but he set the bar really, really low for effective NEA leadership, and so it would be Very Bad News if LEG couldn't surpass that standard. But while some signs are encouraging, I can't forget that she is a product of the tightly controlled NEA machinery. And she has me wondering how such an apparently smart person handles so much cognitive dissonance. So I'm not in love yet. But I'm willing to be courted.
My initial reaction was not full-on delight. LEG has an unabashed love for the Common Core, and consequently extends her love to the Gates Foundation and other like-minded doers of good. When she starts talking about GERM and the various enemies of public education, she seems to have a blind spot in her left eye. It will be interesting to see how she deals with places like Connecticut, New York and Chicago, where the attacks on public education are coming from Democrats.
And she has made some good moves. She has actually opened a twitter account, sort of. She has twenty whole tweets and is following fourteen feeds (mostly organizational, but some carbon based life forms). She actually contributed to the @stephenathome twitter blitz prior to Campbell Brown's appearance. It's not much, but it's roughly 23,157,391 times more activity than Van Roekel ever engaged in (of course, it's also about 0.00000312 % of Randi Weingarten's twitterage).
I say "sort of" because her twitter account is actually for her blog, and since the election, LEG's blog has turned weirdly third-person. It used to be chatty and personal; now it reads like some administrative assistant PR person is running it for her. This is not a great thing-- NEA historically suffers hugely from Imperial Presidency Syndrome, and it just needs to stop. I know the president of NEA is a Busy Person with Lots To Do. I don't care. Get down out of the castle and live and work and tweet and blog like the rest of the staffless teachers you represent. NEA continues to have huge HUGE problems because of the enormous Grand Canyon Sized gulf between leadership and rank-and-file. Do something about that.
But boy can she talk.
The comment sections are filled with folks talking about how LEG has brought them to tears at conventions. Find some videos-- she can spin words well. The caveat is that some of those same comments sections includes the line on LEG that she talks a good game, but doesn't deliver. At this point, even talking a good game is a step up.
But if you want to see everything there is to be hopeful about, read LEG's Salon interview with Jeff Bryant. Diane Ravitch fell in love with LEG over this interview, and I don't think she's the only one.
In the interview, LEG displays a kind of tough love for the US Department of Education and the hapless Arne Duncan. She has absolved him of evil intent, but not of terrible outcomes, and that's a great political bank shot, because it both holds his feet to the fire and gives him a way to make things better. She gets one of the most annoying things about Arne-- he says lovely things, and then pursues policies that foster the opposite of what he just said.
And her explanation of how federal policy created the test-and-punish atmosphere is nuanced and smart, explaining how it didn't explicitly require such policies, but created a situation where bad policies are predictable and inevitable.
The Department of Education has become an evidence-free zone when it comes to high stakes decisions being made on the basis of cut scores on standardized tests. We can go back and forth about interpretations of the department’s policies, like, for instance, the situation in Florida where teachers are being evaluated on the basis of test scores of students they don’t even teach. He, in fact, admitted that was totally stupid. But he needs to understand that Florida did that because they were encouraged in their applications for grant money and regulation waivers to do so. When his department requires that state departments of education have to make sure all their teachers are being judged by students’ standardized test scores, then the state departments just start making stuff up. And it’s stupid. It’s absurd. It’s non-defensible. And his department didn’t reject applications based on their absurd requirements for testing. It made the requirement that all teachers be evaluated on the basis of tests a threshold that every application had to cross over. That’s indefensible.
There's a lot to love there. It remains to be seen if LEG can grasp-- or acknowledge-- that in the same way, adopting national standards must lead to national standardized tests, and those test must be bad. The new NEA stance of toxic testing = bad, but CCSS = good is going to be awfully hard to pull off, like saying that we love and cherish the beautiful river, but must shut down the waterfall at the end of that river.
I have no doubts that DVR is a swell person, but he set the bar really, really low for effective NEA leadership, and so it would be Very Bad News if LEG couldn't surpass that standard. But while some signs are encouraging, I can't forget that she is a product of the tightly controlled NEA machinery. And she has me wondering how such an apparently smart person handles so much cognitive dissonance. So I'm not in love yet. But I'm willing to be courted.
Pushback from the Little People
Campbell Brown's appearance on the Colbert Report included one of the popular reformster mini-themes-- the desire to be insulated from any manner of dialogue.
Granted, this is not exclusive to reformsters-- there are many groups of people in American society who have trouble distinguishing between being disagreed with and being oppressed. But among the privileged there seem to be some folks who just find it too, too unpleasant when the little people try to talk back to them.
She Who Will Not Be Named said, in dialogue with Jack Schneider, that "reformers are under attack every day from unions." Campbell Brown herself has previously decried the suffering she suffered because Big Meanies picked on her for not following rules of disclosure. I mean, can't she just, like, you know, DO stuff?
So on Colbert, Brown mounted the defense of her super-secret backers list by declaring that these poor defenseless deep-pocketed must be protected by people like this scary radical--
Yes, poster board, once you've hit it with a magic marker or two, can be dangerous as hell.
There are several takeaways from close reading the complaint.
* Acknowledgement. The crowd outside Colbert was not epic, traffic-closing, window-shattering, riot-birthing huge. But (as with the modest-sized BATs gathering in DC), the folks inside the building rightly recognize it as the tip of an iceberg. When Brown says she wants to protect her donors from those people out there, she's acknowledging that there are a lot of people "out there." We've come a long way from the days when reform opponents were characterized as tiny fringe elements.
* Privilege. Once again, we hear the plaintive cry of the Child of Privilege who finds democracy unpleasant and messy. "Look, all we want to do is make the country run the way we think it should. Is that too much to ask? Why do people keep interrupting us by, like, talking and stuff? We should be able to do this without interference." Nobody has acknowledged this as baldly as Reed Hastings (at least, not on tape) but there is this repeated impatience in reformsterland with the business of democracy. Shut up, do as you're told by your betters, and don't talk back. And some like Brown don't just find little people talking back inconvenient, but really upsetting. This is not how things work in their world. In their world, a Presidential candidate should be able to talk about how awful the lower class is in this country in a posh room being served by a waitstaff composed of lower class folks (and it is deeply shocking if one of them makes a video of it).
* Cluelessness. There are times when I believe that some of the reformsters really don't get that they have started a fight. Brown just wants to gut the foundations of teaching as a career; why are teachers saying mean things about her? I just jabbed the bear with a pointy stick and kicked her in the face; why does she want to bite me? I mean, on one level, she's not wrong. When we find out who's financing Brown's little mini-series on court-based activism, we will undoubtedly have a few words for those people, and some of them will not be nice.
But it will still be an uneven fight. On one side, we'll have teachers writing strongly worded letters and blogs and-- well, I was going to say speaking out in the media, but of course that's crazy, because what media outlet would interview a teacher. But we'll have words, and we'll use them to "attack" these folks, who will undoubtedly turn out to be unelected gabillionaires who are answerable to nobody, least of all, little people. On their side will be millions of dollars, high-powered lawyers, the federal Department of Education, and the mainstream media outlets.
Given the disparity in power, influence and tools, one wonders why folks like Brown even care. What are they afraid of? I can think of two possibilities.
One is that they feel their victory is assured, but they are leery of sacrificing the fiction of democracy. They don't really want to have to come out and say, "Okay, we're not playing any more. We didn't want to have to say this, but in our current system you have no say, and we're just going to do what we want. We were hoping the illusion of democracy would keep you quiet, but play time is over. This isn't a democracy any more, and what we say goes."
The other is that they know democracy is NOT dead, and given enough noise and political pressure, politicians will have to listen not just to the money, but to some people as well. If people decide to actually pick up democracy and use it like a pointy stick aimed at overinflated balloons, something's going to pop. If enough people start talking about the emperor's new clothes, the whole court is going to get caught parading naked, embarrassed, out of power, and finally having to face what they really look like.
I would like to pick the second, please.
Granted, this is not exclusive to reformsters-- there are many groups of people in American society who have trouble distinguishing between being disagreed with and being oppressed. But among the privileged there seem to be some folks who just find it too, too unpleasant when the little people try to talk back to them.
She Who Will Not Be Named said, in dialogue with Jack Schneider, that "reformers are under attack every day from unions." Campbell Brown herself has previously decried the suffering she suffered because Big Meanies picked on her for not following rules of disclosure. I mean, can't she just, like, you know, DO stuff?
So on Colbert, Brown mounted the defense of her super-secret backers list by declaring that these poor defenseless deep-pocketed must be protected by people like this scary radical--
There are several takeaways from close reading the complaint.
* Acknowledgement. The crowd outside Colbert was not epic, traffic-closing, window-shattering, riot-birthing huge. But (as with the modest-sized BATs gathering in DC), the folks inside the building rightly recognize it as the tip of an iceberg. When Brown says she wants to protect her donors from those people out there, she's acknowledging that there are a lot of people "out there." We've come a long way from the days when reform opponents were characterized as tiny fringe elements.
* Privilege. Once again, we hear the plaintive cry of the Child of Privilege who finds democracy unpleasant and messy. "Look, all we want to do is make the country run the way we think it should. Is that too much to ask? Why do people keep interrupting us by, like, talking and stuff? We should be able to do this without interference." Nobody has acknowledged this as baldly as Reed Hastings (at least, not on tape) but there is this repeated impatience in reformsterland with the business of democracy. Shut up, do as you're told by your betters, and don't talk back. And some like Brown don't just find little people talking back inconvenient, but really upsetting. This is not how things work in their world. In their world, a Presidential candidate should be able to talk about how awful the lower class is in this country in a posh room being served by a waitstaff composed of lower class folks (and it is deeply shocking if one of them makes a video of it).
* Cluelessness. There are times when I believe that some of the reformsters really don't get that they have started a fight. Brown just wants to gut the foundations of teaching as a career; why are teachers saying mean things about her? I just jabbed the bear with a pointy stick and kicked her in the face; why does she want to bite me? I mean, on one level, she's not wrong. When we find out who's financing Brown's little mini-series on court-based activism, we will undoubtedly have a few words for those people, and some of them will not be nice.
But it will still be an uneven fight. On one side, we'll have teachers writing strongly worded letters and blogs and-- well, I was going to say speaking out in the media, but of course that's crazy, because what media outlet would interview a teacher. But we'll have words, and we'll use them to "attack" these folks, who will undoubtedly turn out to be unelected gabillionaires who are answerable to nobody, least of all, little people. On their side will be millions of dollars, high-powered lawyers, the federal Department of Education, and the mainstream media outlets.
Given the disparity in power, influence and tools, one wonders why folks like Brown even care. What are they afraid of? I can think of two possibilities.
One is that they feel their victory is assured, but they are leery of sacrificing the fiction of democracy. They don't really want to have to come out and say, "Okay, we're not playing any more. We didn't want to have to say this, but in our current system you have no say, and we're just going to do what we want. We were hoping the illusion of democracy would keep you quiet, but play time is over. This isn't a democracy any more, and what we say goes."
The other is that they know democracy is NOT dead, and given enough noise and political pressure, politicians will have to listen not just to the money, but to some people as well. If people decide to actually pick up democracy and use it like a pointy stick aimed at overinflated balloons, something's going to pop. If enough people start talking about the emperor's new clothes, the whole court is going to get caught parading naked, embarrassed, out of power, and finally having to face what they really look like.
I would like to pick the second, please.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
What Ever Happened to Learn More Go Further?
In honor of Throwback Thursday, I decided to follow up on one of my favorite reformy intiatives. Mounted by way of Jeb Bush by way of FEE, and the US Chamber by way of the Higher State Standards Partnership, "Learn More. Go Further" was going to set the grass roots ablaze with Common Core love.
I first wrote about LMGF back at the end of March (the media program launched March 19), noting that the whole business was a scaled-up version of a Florida CCSS-pushing program. I visited their site and while there were details to parse, my bottom line was that "every piece of bullshit you've ever heard about the CCSS regime of reform is here, in slickly well-designed webullar glory."
Part of their charm was a ham-handed attempt at social mediaizing the program. "I hear folks like the twitter," said some well-paid consultant. "Let's use some of the twitter." And so LMGF sent four teacher ladies (two charters, a cyber, and one reading specialist-turned-administrator) to show the world that good, wholesome, American teachers loved them some CCSS. The ladies were given two twitter accounts apiece (one national, one Floridian). The accounts were promoted, the ladies started posting pro-CCSS stuff about twice a day while not really engaging anyone. My reading of some of their responses suggested to me that they were specifically aimed at conservative holdouts. One might conclude that this program was driven, at least in part, by Jeb's realization that Common Core was not a pony he could ride to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The other day I suddenly realized that the ladies weren't turning up as promoted twitter recommendations. In fact, I hadn't seen them in a while.
What has happened to Learn More. Go Further?
Short answer-- they appear to have to that big lobbying lounge in the sky.
They had some moments. When the Louis CK flap blew up, LMGF gave a comment to BBC Trending because, I don't know, somebody had to? And Sachs Media Group won a Digital Advertising Silver Addy for some of the slides in the program.
But the twittering ladies have gone silent. Each racked up a little over a hundred tweets, and all four fell silent on May 30. May 30 is also the last day that Learn More Go Further posted anything on their Facebook fan page (which actually is more closely connected to the Florida version of LMGF), or tweeted under their own group handle. Their "newsroom" hasn't picked up anything new since mid-May.
And when you click on [contact us], you are taken to the website for the Salsa Group, apparently the outfit that provided the platform for the website (and does so for many political fundraisy groups). This was disappointing because I was actually going to pick up the phone and act like a journalist. Back to being lazy again.
Jeb's backing of the Core and all the political problems that go with it have been much discussed. This piece from the Tampa Bay Times, published the day after LMGF went dark, lays it out as well as any of them.
Learn More Go Further was supposed to fix that. It was supposed to sell the Core and testing with four pretty faces and lots of American flags, and it failed and slunk away quietly into the dark night of the internet. Yes, Bush could legitimately blame the failure on somebody's inability to master the tools of social media.
But clumsy social media skills aren't the explanation. It's the message. Jeb Bush and the US Chamber tried hard to sell the Common Core with this program, and they failed. I hope the four teachers are enjoying an extra fun vacation that lasts all summer. I hope Bush gets to enjoy a vacation that lasts even longer.
I first wrote about LMGF back at the end of March (the media program launched March 19), noting that the whole business was a scaled-up version of a Florida CCSS-pushing program. I visited their site and while there were details to parse, my bottom line was that "every piece of bullshit you've ever heard about the CCSS regime of reform is here, in slickly well-designed webullar glory."
Part of their charm was a ham-handed attempt at social mediaizing the program. "I hear folks like the twitter," said some well-paid consultant. "Let's use some of the twitter." And so LMGF sent four teacher ladies (two charters, a cyber, and one reading specialist-turned-administrator) to show the world that good, wholesome, American teachers loved them some CCSS. The ladies were given two twitter accounts apiece (one national, one Floridian). The accounts were promoted, the ladies started posting pro-CCSS stuff about twice a day while not really engaging anyone. My reading of some of their responses suggested to me that they were specifically aimed at conservative holdouts. One might conclude that this program was driven, at least in part, by Jeb's realization that Common Core was not a pony he could ride to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The other day I suddenly realized that the ladies weren't turning up as promoted twitter recommendations. In fact, I hadn't seen them in a while.
What has happened to Learn More. Go Further?
Short answer-- they appear to have to that big lobbying lounge in the sky.
They had some moments. When the Louis CK flap blew up, LMGF gave a comment to BBC Trending because, I don't know, somebody had to? And Sachs Media Group won a Digital Advertising Silver Addy for some of the slides in the program.
But the twittering ladies have gone silent. Each racked up a little over a hundred tweets, and all four fell silent on May 30. May 30 is also the last day that Learn More Go Further posted anything on their Facebook fan page (which actually is more closely connected to the Florida version of LMGF), or tweeted under their own group handle. Their "newsroom" hasn't picked up anything new since mid-May.
And when you click on [contact us], you are taken to the website for the Salsa Group, apparently the outfit that provided the platform for the website (and does so for many political fundraisy groups). This was disappointing because I was actually going to pick up the phone and act like a journalist. Back to being lazy again.
Jeb's backing of the Core and all the political problems that go with it have been much discussed. This piece from the Tampa Bay Times, published the day after LMGF went dark, lays it out as well as any of them.
Learn More Go Further was supposed to fix that. It was supposed to sell the Core and testing with four pretty faces and lots of American flags, and it failed and slunk away quietly into the dark night of the internet. Yes, Bush could legitimately blame the failure on somebody's inability to master the tools of social media.
But clumsy social media skills aren't the explanation. It's the message. Jeb Bush and the US Chamber tried hard to sell the Common Core with this program, and they failed. I hope the four teachers are enjoying an extra fun vacation that lasts all summer. I hope Bush gets to enjoy a vacation that lasts even longer.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Conservatives Backing Away from Reform
Stephanie Simon's Politico piece "Mom's winning the Common Core war" includes a sort of second breath rededication of purpose from Michael Petrilli at the Fordham Institute and Wes Farno at Higher State Standards Partnership, a group that we've met before working hand in hand with Jeb Bush's FEE and the US Chamber of Commerce. Both Fordham and HSSP are big-fans of the Core (or, at least, big fans of being paid to promote the Core).
“We’ve been fighting emotion with talking points, and it doesn’t work,” said Mike Petrilli, executive vice president of the Fordham Institute, a leading supporter of the standards. “There’s got to be a way to get more emotional with our arguments if we want to win this thing. That means we have a lot more work to do.”
“The Common Core message so far has been a head message. We’ve done a good job talking about facts and figures. But we need to move 18 inches south and start talking about a heart message,” said Wes Farno.
Beyond the practical advice we might offer Farno (specifically, measure twice, cut once, and don't accidentally talking to peoples' intestines or genitals), there's a case to be made that these guys have missed the mark both on the diagnosis and the prescription. But don't take my word for it. listen to some actual conservatives.
Neal McCluskey of the CATO institute has been on the No Love For CCSS bus for quite a while, and his "Core Reporters: We've Just Been Too Darned Principled" pulls no punches.
The argument for the Core – to the extent one has even been given – has mainly been a simple one of “build high standards and success will come.”...This ignores the major empirical evidence I and many others have brought against the Core, and national standards generally, showing that standards – much less the Core itself – have demonstrated no such power.
He goes on to observe that the Core defense strategy has depended on neither evidence nor data nor facts, but on calling opponents names. And indeed, both in Simon's article and back in David Coleman's Aspen Chat, the new refrain in reformville is "No, we never should have called those guys names. They're actually fine people."
But we don't have to travel to CATO to find conservatives with doubts. On Tuesday, Andy Smarick posted on Fordham's own blog a piece that asks the question "Is education reform anti-conservative?" Smarick frames the question with his own personal journey (throwing caution to the wind and forgetting David Coleman's admonition that nobody gives a shit what he feels or thinks").
Smarick says he has become "restive" about reform (which would make a fine song lyric or t-shirt) and after considering many of the things he's restive about (failure to operationally embrace diversity, too much compromise with hidebound traditionalists), he finds his answer:
After months of frustration, I finally put my finger on the essence of the problem: there is no conservatism in today’s education reform...
Others might argue contemporary K–12 reform is premised on conservative principles (expanding choice, utilizing competition, resisting public-sector unionism), so I should stop bellyaching. But this free-market orientation is only one strand of conservatism.
He enumerates some conservative values that are lacking in school reform, including a respect for tradition, and an aversion to activist government that leads to respect for evolutionary, not revolutionary, change. And I just want to point that I've been saying this for a while-- I come from a whole family of traditional conservatives, and the current state of ed reform is not something they are in tune with.
Meanwhile, Rick Hess continues to be in front of the conservative discussion of reform. A while back he asked the question, "What should conservatives be for in education?" (and I answered it), and while I don't always agree with Hess's conclusions, he's a conservative who's generally willing to behave like a grownup and exhibit some intellectual honesty.
About a week ago Hess celebrated the anniversary of Race to the Top by examining what a cock-up it turned out to be. He notes two serious flaws in RttT; it's an underachieving list, like making a list of two attractive women at the Miss America pageant, but the two observations are worth noting.
One is rarely mentioned, but significant-- by offering up a plate of money at a moment of financial disaster, the feds gave states a way to put off solving problems. States looking at real financial crises said, "Okay, our solution is to plug the hole with these free federal funds." This turns out to be somewhat like treating a compound leg fracture with strong doses of pain killers; eventually the pain killers wear off and you're in even worse trouble.
The second is more familiar-- a version of the "if only the feds had stayed out." However, instead of the usual imaginary world where states all signed up to Common Core their hearts out, Hess envisions "a collaborative effort of 15 or so enthusiastic states." But by rushing the whole process and forcing, by RttT or by waiver, every state to climb on board, the feds "pushed states to hurriedly adopt new teacher evaluation systems and specifically to use test results to gauge teachers, not-ready-for-primetime evaluation systems are now entangled with the Common Core and new state tests." Common Core and its various attached reformy things could have been a contender, but now Hess fears it's just a cautionary tale.
So what actually happened? The answer, I suspect, is in Smarick's line
But this free-market orientation is only one strand of conservatism.
As I've told many of my civilian friends, the reformster assault doesn't make much sense when you try to parse it as liberal versus conservatives-- you end up with all sorts of people on the "wrong" side. But when you reframe it as "corporate $$" versus "educational concerns," it suddenly makes a lot more sense.
Both parties, both political bents, are infested with people who are far more concerned about corporate bucks than... well, anything.
I don't believe that the rush to RttT that Hess decries was the result of just political ambition or simple over-reaching wonkery-- I'd bet that behind the scenes were corporate folks like Pearson et al who could just taste all the delicious money to be made if the feds would just open up the entire education market. Folks who could smell that enormous pile of money, who were writing pieces about education as the next big investment opportunity-- they were not going to settle for a measly fifteen states poking along toward Core-centered reform.
It's hard to tell where some people fall on the political spectrum these days, but it's really easy to tell whether big business pays their bills or not. We've watched money infect the process of defending the country and providing a food supply by warping and twisting the political process surrounding those sectors. Today we're simply living through the same infection spreading into education.
There are always going to be some serious conservative-liberal disagreements about how public education should work, but we all ought to be able to agree that money-driven political baloney does NOT improve the situation.
“We’ve been fighting emotion with talking points, and it doesn’t work,” said Mike Petrilli, executive vice president of the Fordham Institute, a leading supporter of the standards. “There’s got to be a way to get more emotional with our arguments if we want to win this thing. That means we have a lot more work to do.”
“The Common Core message so far has been a head message. We’ve done a good job talking about facts and figures. But we need to move 18 inches south and start talking about a heart message,” said Wes Farno.
Beyond the practical advice we might offer Farno (specifically, measure twice, cut once, and don't accidentally talking to peoples' intestines or genitals), there's a case to be made that these guys have missed the mark both on the diagnosis and the prescription. But don't take my word for it. listen to some actual conservatives.
Neal McCluskey of the CATO institute has been on the No Love For CCSS bus for quite a while, and his "Core Reporters: We've Just Been Too Darned Principled" pulls no punches.
The argument for the Core – to the extent one has even been given – has mainly been a simple one of “build high standards and success will come.”...This ignores the major empirical evidence I and many others have brought against the Core, and national standards generally, showing that standards – much less the Core itself – have demonstrated no such power.
He goes on to observe that the Core defense strategy has depended on neither evidence nor data nor facts, but on calling opponents names. And indeed, both in Simon's article and back in David Coleman's Aspen Chat, the new refrain in reformville is "No, we never should have called those guys names. They're actually fine people."
But we don't have to travel to CATO to find conservatives with doubts. On Tuesday, Andy Smarick posted on Fordham's own blog a piece that asks the question "Is education reform anti-conservative?" Smarick frames the question with his own personal journey (throwing caution to the wind and forgetting David Coleman's admonition that nobody gives a shit what he feels or thinks").
Smarick says he has become "restive" about reform (which would make a fine song lyric or t-shirt) and after considering many of the things he's restive about (failure to operationally embrace diversity, too much compromise with hidebound traditionalists), he finds his answer:
After months of frustration, I finally put my finger on the essence of the problem: there is no conservatism in today’s education reform...
Others might argue contemporary K–12 reform is premised on conservative principles (expanding choice, utilizing competition, resisting public-sector unionism), so I should stop bellyaching. But this free-market orientation is only one strand of conservatism.
He enumerates some conservative values that are lacking in school reform, including a respect for tradition, and an aversion to activist government that leads to respect for evolutionary, not revolutionary, change. And I just want to point that I've been saying this for a while-- I come from a whole family of traditional conservatives, and the current state of ed reform is not something they are in tune with.
Meanwhile, Rick Hess continues to be in front of the conservative discussion of reform. A while back he asked the question, "What should conservatives be for in education?" (and I answered it), and while I don't always agree with Hess's conclusions, he's a conservative who's generally willing to behave like a grownup and exhibit some intellectual honesty.
About a week ago Hess celebrated the anniversary of Race to the Top by examining what a cock-up it turned out to be. He notes two serious flaws in RttT; it's an underachieving list, like making a list of two attractive women at the Miss America pageant, but the two observations are worth noting.
One is rarely mentioned, but significant-- by offering up a plate of money at a moment of financial disaster, the feds gave states a way to put off solving problems. States looking at real financial crises said, "Okay, our solution is to plug the hole with these free federal funds." This turns out to be somewhat like treating a compound leg fracture with strong doses of pain killers; eventually the pain killers wear off and you're in even worse trouble.
The second is more familiar-- a version of the "if only the feds had stayed out." However, instead of the usual imaginary world where states all signed up to Common Core their hearts out, Hess envisions "a collaborative effort of 15 or so enthusiastic states." But by rushing the whole process and forcing, by RttT or by waiver, every state to climb on board, the feds "pushed states to hurriedly adopt new teacher evaluation systems and specifically to use test results to gauge teachers, not-ready-for-primetime evaluation systems are now entangled with the Common Core and new state tests." Common Core and its various attached reformy things could have been a contender, but now Hess fears it's just a cautionary tale.
So what actually happened? The answer, I suspect, is in Smarick's line
But this free-market orientation is only one strand of conservatism.
As I've told many of my civilian friends, the reformster assault doesn't make much sense when you try to parse it as liberal versus conservatives-- you end up with all sorts of people on the "wrong" side. But when you reframe it as "corporate $$" versus "educational concerns," it suddenly makes a lot more sense.
Both parties, both political bents, are infested with people who are far more concerned about corporate bucks than... well, anything.
I don't believe that the rush to RttT that Hess decries was the result of just political ambition or simple over-reaching wonkery-- I'd bet that behind the scenes were corporate folks like Pearson et al who could just taste all the delicious money to be made if the feds would just open up the entire education market. Folks who could smell that enormous pile of money, who were writing pieces about education as the next big investment opportunity-- they were not going to settle for a measly fifteen states poking along toward Core-centered reform.
It's hard to tell where some people fall on the political spectrum these days, but it's really easy to tell whether big business pays their bills or not. We've watched money infect the process of defending the country and providing a food supply by warping and twisting the political process surrounding those sectors. Today we're simply living through the same infection spreading into education.
There are always going to be some serious conservative-liberal disagreements about how public education should work, but we all ought to be able to agree that money-driven political baloney does NOT improve the situation.
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