It was just last week that I warned that I was running out of headline variations on "CAP tries to promote a stupid Common Core idea that nobody has seriously tried to sell for years." But the Center for American Progress just keeps driving that baloney truck around the block again and again.
And last Thursday, there they were again. This time it was Lisette Partelow (director of teacher policy) in the pages of US New in their feature called Knowledge Bank.
Common Core doomsayers often claim that rich, engaging, curiosity-inspiring
lessons are a thing of the past. But, as a former teacher, I'm tired of
Common Core critics claiming that the standards somehow inhibit teacher creativity. It's simply not true.
First of all, as you have already guessed, Partelow's "former teacher" status is based on her two years of Teach for America experience (2012-2014). She actually did the TFA thing well after graduating college. She got her BA in Psychology from Connecticut College in 2003, and went straight to work for American Institutes for Research, the test manufacturers who sometimes go toe-to-toe with Pearson. She spent six or seven years working as a Congressional staffer and research assistant, then TFAed her way into a DC first grade temp position before landing a policy gig with CAP. In short, she's not really a former teacher.
But back to her defense of the Core.
Although the Core is swell, its detractors are "winning the public relations battle that they themselves manufactured," because as we know, all objections to Common Core are simply PR ploys and not an expression of real objections by real humans who know what they're talking about. She'll pair that old chestnut up with "people like high standards and great schools, so ipso factoid they MUST love the Common Core, just not by name."
Contrary to popular perception, Common Core was designed to be less prescriptive than many states' previous standards.
So, popular perception is just deluded. When, for instance, the Core says that the way to write a narrative is this:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.3.a
Engage
and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or
observation and its significance, establishing one or multiple point(s)
of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters; create a smooth
progression of experiences or events.
That's not prescriptive? David Coleman's insistence that literature must be understood only by using what appears within the four corners of the text-- that's not prescriptive? And the Core's inherent emptiness, which Partelow presents as a strength (the Core doesn't tell you what texts to include)-- that insistence on structuring around a set of prescribed skills, which in turn implies that texts and literature have no value, but exist simply as a bucket in which to carry the important part, the required skills-- that's not prescriptive in any way?
Like the rules or regulations that provide direction to other
professions, rigorous standards provide a loose guide for teachers to
follow, while still allowing teachers ample room for creativity in how
they develop and execute their daily lessons.
You can read your script wearing a tie or wearing a skirt. You can cover the Core-aligned lessons with your hair parted in the right or on the left. The classroom teacher is free to make any number of choices-- just not any of the major ones.
Partelow trots out some other old standards of the genre, including a teacher (one who won the Fishman Prize from TNTP, TFA's sister organization) who says that "she believes Common Core allows for creativity in the classroom while
ensuring that students are supported by better, more rigorous standards
that encourage deeper levels of understanding." Which is a pretty thing to say, although I have yet to hear an explanation of how, exactly, standards encourage deep thinking-- especially Core standards which have nothing to say about deep thinking, but focus on compliance.
But Partelow goes on to follow pattern of all those essays we read a year or two ago and offers some concrete examples of great teaching ideas and lessons that any teacher worthy of the name already knew to do before the Core was even a distant twinkle in Bill Gates' eye.
Partelow does not even recognize that CCSS has lead to straightjacketed lockstep creativity-free teaching throughout the country, not even in order to blame it one somebody else. Meanwhile, CCSS and its testing program drive schools to get "aligned" materials and follow them blindly. Of course, most reformsters didn't start that game until mid-2014. CAP is stuck in 2013.
Meanwhile, I am wondering what's going on at CAP. This is the fourth article this month in which they recycle stale Common Core talking points from late 2013. Are they in fact recycling, trying to create more environmentally responsible thinky tank effluvium? Are they executing an elaborate piece of performance art and presenting themselves as living nostalgia for the recent past? Did they hire a completely new staff that is now redoing the old crew's work? Did CAP have a stroke?
Whatever the case, they need to stop. How can we take anyone seriously who pretends that a couple of year's worth of discussion and debate and debunking never happened. At the very least, CAP needs to move on to points that we don't already know simply aren't true.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Friday, August 21, 2015
Are You Ready?
It is one of my least favorite questions, particularly when asked in that tone of voice that says, "I'll bet you just hate the idea of stepping back into a classroom. Please tell me how much you hate your job."
I can't think of any other profession that so relentlessly gets the "Don't you just hate to go to work" question. Do people ask doctors, "Boy, all those sick people in your office. What a pain? Amiright?" Do people tell sports stars, "Boy, I bet you're disappointed you made the playoffs and have to keep working."
We're supposed to respond with some version of weary sadness, bonding with the interogator over the shared understanding that, yes, I am sad about having to do my job and he can walk away shaking his head knowingly-- those poor damn teachers, stuck in their stinky jobs.
I can remember as a young teacher feeling kind of sheepish about trying to answer the question, sensing that my answer was not the expected one and yet not seeing a clear way to answer without it being a slap in the face to the person who asked. As regular readers may have noticed, I'm not quite as reluctant to be an ass as I once was. I mean, I understand that people mean well, sort of, and that they are just adopting a socially acceptable avenue of small talk to make conversation, and perhaps that's part of what bugs me about it-- the embedded cultural assumption that of course teachers find their job troublesome and not-look-forwardable-to. Nowadays, mostly, I settle on answering the question as if it were delivered without any subtext-- "Why, yes, I'm looking forward to it," or "Yup, it never gets old. I'm excited to get to it," or "Been getting ready all summer," or "I was born ready." Occasionally, either for people I know can stand it (or people I know can't), "Well, I haven't finished updating the early American lit reading list, and wanted to read through a few more works before heading back, and I was hoping to tweak the materials on verbal phrases because my students always have trouble with nominative absolutes." Only rarely, "Well, of course I'm ready. It's the job I've devoted my entire adult life to, the job I always wanted to do, the job I try really hard to get better at with every passing year. Why wouldn't I be ready?" The word "dumbass" is only implied.
I do know one group that gets a similar subliminal downgrade; all the mothers who are currently being asked how happy they are to get their children out of their houses and back to school. So perhaps the cultural message here is that dealing with children is unpleasant.
Of course, children themselves get their own version of the Are You Ready onslaught. We often puzzle at how small children are so excited about school and older ones are not. I'd suggest that part of the problem is that we keep telling children they shouldn't be excited about school. Not directly, of course, but right now all over the country students are being asked just how sad they are about the end of summer and the start of school.
Just imagine the effect if every single adult that a child encountered in August said some version, "Boy, I bet you're excited to get back to school! Won't it be great? What do you think is going to be the best part? Man, I wish I were your age again and going to school!"
Instead, students keep getting nudges, knowing frowns, and versions of, "Sucks, huh?"
Look, I get that the freedom of vacation is nice and recharging the batteries is useful and both are hard to give up. But this negative talk about school is pervasive and, because it's more subtle than the "Teachers are destroying education" rhetoric, easier to miss and harder to resist. And yes, there's some stress because there always unknowns-- but the stress is because we want to do well, because we care about the job.
But if we teachers are serious about improving the atmosphere around our work and our schools, it is an easy-- but important-- first step to stop participating in the "Oh, going back to school sucks and should make us sad" party. If you love your job and you're proud of the work and you are happy to get back to your classroom, don't be peer pressure pretending otherwise. Smile. Hold your chin up. Say, "It's great, important work and I'm happy to be employed doing it." Don't apologize, even through silence, for being a teacher. Resolve to make this simple stand for the profession. You know the questions and the comments.
Be ready.
I can't think of any other profession that so relentlessly gets the "Don't you just hate to go to work" question. Do people ask doctors, "Boy, all those sick people in your office. What a pain? Amiright?" Do people tell sports stars, "Boy, I bet you're disappointed you made the playoffs and have to keep working."
We're supposed to respond with some version of weary sadness, bonding with the interogator over the shared understanding that, yes, I am sad about having to do my job and he can walk away shaking his head knowingly-- those poor damn teachers, stuck in their stinky jobs.
I can remember as a young teacher feeling kind of sheepish about trying to answer the question, sensing that my answer was not the expected one and yet not seeing a clear way to answer without it being a slap in the face to the person who asked. As regular readers may have noticed, I'm not quite as reluctant to be an ass as I once was. I mean, I understand that people mean well, sort of, and that they are just adopting a socially acceptable avenue of small talk to make conversation, and perhaps that's part of what bugs me about it-- the embedded cultural assumption that of course teachers find their job troublesome and not-look-forwardable-to. Nowadays, mostly, I settle on answering the question as if it were delivered without any subtext-- "Why, yes, I'm looking forward to it," or "Yup, it never gets old. I'm excited to get to it," or "Been getting ready all summer," or "I was born ready." Occasionally, either for people I know can stand it (or people I know can't), "Well, I haven't finished updating the early American lit reading list, and wanted to read through a few more works before heading back, and I was hoping to tweak the materials on verbal phrases because my students always have trouble with nominative absolutes." Only rarely, "Well, of course I'm ready. It's the job I've devoted my entire adult life to, the job I always wanted to do, the job I try really hard to get better at with every passing year. Why wouldn't I be ready?" The word "dumbass" is only implied.
I do know one group that gets a similar subliminal downgrade; all the mothers who are currently being asked how happy they are to get their children out of their houses and back to school. So perhaps the cultural message here is that dealing with children is unpleasant.
Of course, children themselves get their own version of the Are You Ready onslaught. We often puzzle at how small children are so excited about school and older ones are not. I'd suggest that part of the problem is that we keep telling children they shouldn't be excited about school. Not directly, of course, but right now all over the country students are being asked just how sad they are about the end of summer and the start of school.
Just imagine the effect if every single adult that a child encountered in August said some version, "Boy, I bet you're excited to get back to school! Won't it be great? What do you think is going to be the best part? Man, I wish I were your age again and going to school!"
Instead, students keep getting nudges, knowing frowns, and versions of, "Sucks, huh?"
Look, I get that the freedom of vacation is nice and recharging the batteries is useful and both are hard to give up. But this negative talk about school is pervasive and, because it's more subtle than the "Teachers are destroying education" rhetoric, easier to miss and harder to resist. And yes, there's some stress because there always unknowns-- but the stress is because we want to do well, because we care about the job.
But if we teachers are serious about improving the atmosphere around our work and our schools, it is an easy-- but important-- first step to stop participating in the "Oh, going back to school sucks and should make us sad" party. If you love your job and you're proud of the work and you are happy to get back to your classroom, don't be peer pressure pretending otherwise. Smile. Hold your chin up. Say, "It's great, important work and I'm happy to be employed doing it." Don't apologize, even through silence, for being a teacher. Resolve to make this simple stand for the profession. You know the questions and the comments.
Be ready.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Hillary's Teacher PAC, Part II
You may recall that back at the beginning of the summer, a group calling themselves America's Teachers cropped up as a PAC supporting Hillary Clinton. I did a little websurfing to see what I could find and wrote about the results.
The brain behind the PAC is a young man named Naveed Amalfard, who is the PAC's national chairman, a 2014 graduate of Emory University, and a Teach for America guy about to start his second year as a math teacher in DC. My piece about America's Teachers did not makes his day, and the drubbing some folks tried to give him on twitter made his day even less, and so he reached out to me, and this afternoon, we both took a break from beginning-of-year preparations to have a phone chat.
And so I'm prepared to answer the question-- is America's Teachers more nefarious dark money political shenanigans, or something else?
Amalfard seems like a pleasant guy, and I opened by giving him the chance to respond to the piece I wrote. He said that they (he used the word "we" throughout) were surprised to see an attack on their organization, and were particularly unhappy to find themselves linked to DFER and CAP and other Naught Persons and generally marked as negative for reasons they don't feel are merited. This prompted them to want to start a dialogue, and I readily admit that their impulse seems healthier than, say, an impulse to simply assassinate my character in their own space.
Amalfard has fine-tuned his message and mission. From the five points originally listed, AT now stands heavily for universal pre-school, college affordability, and post-secondary schooling for Dreamers. Amalfard circled back around to these three points many times. This is what they want.
I allowed as how since their original appearance, I had had trouble deciding whether they were a skullduggerous front for More Big Money or just one guy with a dream. Amalfard allowed as how they were two guys with a dream-- America's Teacher has a co-founder named Luke Villalobos. And they were animated by a dream for their students. And Amalfard told a story about watching a student get into a great college and then watching that college not provide the financial assistance to make it possible for her to attend.
On AT's blog, Amalfard comes across with the innocent arrogance of youth, the kind that announces that after one whole year of teaching, he Understands It All and will now illuminate the rest of us. On the phone, he was much less so-- not terribly slick and fairly unassuming. He's a good AFT affiliate union member who, he says, was asked to be a building rep but turned it down because he has his hands full with his job. He has enormous respect for his experienced peers and gets advice from them. I know this sounds sarcastic when I type it, but he sounded as if he meant it. Also-- and I mean this in the very best way-- he was often kind of stumbly and inarticulate in the course of our conversation, in the kind of way that suggests he's not some kind of slicker with a smooth line and a greased-up bullshit delivery system.
After the sixty gazillionth time he hammered on the Big Three Concerns of the PAC, I asked if this meant they had shifted support from Hillary to the Big Three Concerns, and the answer is that they most of all love the Big Three, but they believe that Hillary is the only candidate who can get elected and make them happen. "We think she is a champion for education," he said, and I was trying not to be an absolute ass, so I just pointed out some of the reasons that many people did not agree with him. Still. My union endorsed her, he said. Yes, and many of your union members aren't very happy about it, I said.
I asked the money question. Where does your funding come from. He said that they are going to take (those were his words-- "going to take") money from anybody anywhere on the political spectrum who would support the Big Three Concerns, and they "are not budging from them."
I asked what about Bernie Sanders. He said, "I like him. He's a great guy. A fighter. But when we look at who can get the job done..." and we were back to Hillary. Sanders is a serious opponent, not to be taken lightly, but when it comes to experience and credibility and being ready to be President, Amalfard loves Clinton very much.
Then, knowing I was talking to a Teach for America guy, I was a little bit of an asshat. "Where do you see yourself in ten years," I asked. Amalfard hemmed a bit and said that it would be really presumptuous of him to try to predict that.
"Well," I asked. "Do you see yourself in a classroom?"
"I surely am considering it," he said. When he thinks about the students and what they need, he knows it would be hard to leave. And as the product of an immigrant family, he really feels the issues of educational inequality. That, he thinks, is the most important advocacy work.
I noted at points in our conversation that declaring yourself the representative for the nation's teachers based on the insights you've gained in your one year in Teach for America might raise some people's eyebrows, particularly when you do it in support of a candidate who is not universally seen as public education friendly, might just get you some pushback. He did not try to 'splain why I was wrong, but just said, "I hear you."
Does this twenty-three-year-old have any kind of track record? Well, while at Emory he launched Readers Beyond Borders, an initiative that raised some money (Amalfard made some phone calls back to his hometown in Georgia and raised $19K in three weeks) which put six Kenyan students through college. One is now a post-grad fellow and heard President Obama speak on his African tour.
Is America's Teachers actually making a dent? Well, their twitter account has over 4,400 followers (better than certain C-list bloggers) despite having done fewer than 200 tweets. On the other hand, nobody seems to be talking about them on twitter. They apparently not on facebook, and they don't rise very far on a google search. A few weeks ago they issued a press release about Christie's ridiculous interest in punching the teachers' union, and it doesn't appear to have been picked up by anybody at all.
So if I had to make a judgment (and I don't, but as always, I will anyway), I'd say that America's Teachers PAC is more about youthful naive exuberance, one more monument to how anyone with a little ambition and an internet connection can try to grab a turn on the Big Stage, whether they have a complex and nuanced understanding of what's happening on that stage or not. Perhaps these guys will actually create a giant ship of money collected from all sorts of political enemies that will be used to float President H. Clinton into the universal preschool port. Or maybe he's a deeply gifted actor who managed to pull over my eyes and is yucking it up right now with champagne-swilling Masters of the Universe. But I don't think so. For right now, I'm going to call America's Teacher a couple of relatively harmless youngsters with an improbable under-researched dream.
The brain behind the PAC is a young man named Naveed Amalfard, who is the PAC's national chairman, a 2014 graduate of Emory University, and a Teach for America guy about to start his second year as a math teacher in DC. My piece about America's Teachers did not makes his day, and the drubbing some folks tried to give him on twitter made his day even less, and so he reached out to me, and this afternoon, we both took a break from beginning-of-year preparations to have a phone chat.
And so I'm prepared to answer the question-- is America's Teachers more nefarious dark money political shenanigans, or something else?
Amalfard seems like a pleasant guy, and I opened by giving him the chance to respond to the piece I wrote. He said that they (he used the word "we" throughout) were surprised to see an attack on their organization, and were particularly unhappy to find themselves linked to DFER and CAP and other Naught Persons and generally marked as negative for reasons they don't feel are merited. This prompted them to want to start a dialogue, and I readily admit that their impulse seems healthier than, say, an impulse to simply assassinate my character in their own space.
Amalfard has fine-tuned his message and mission. From the five points originally listed, AT now stands heavily for universal pre-school, college affordability, and post-secondary schooling for Dreamers. Amalfard circled back around to these three points many times. This is what they want.
I allowed as how since their original appearance, I had had trouble deciding whether they were a skullduggerous front for More Big Money or just one guy with a dream. Amalfard allowed as how they were two guys with a dream-- America's Teacher has a co-founder named Luke Villalobos. And they were animated by a dream for their students. And Amalfard told a story about watching a student get into a great college and then watching that college not provide the financial assistance to make it possible for her to attend.
On AT's blog, Amalfard comes across with the innocent arrogance of youth, the kind that announces that after one whole year of teaching, he Understands It All and will now illuminate the rest of us. On the phone, he was much less so-- not terribly slick and fairly unassuming. He's a good AFT affiliate union member who, he says, was asked to be a building rep but turned it down because he has his hands full with his job. He has enormous respect for his experienced peers and gets advice from them. I know this sounds sarcastic when I type it, but he sounded as if he meant it. Also-- and I mean this in the very best way-- he was often kind of stumbly and inarticulate in the course of our conversation, in the kind of way that suggests he's not some kind of slicker with a smooth line and a greased-up bullshit delivery system.
After the sixty gazillionth time he hammered on the Big Three Concerns of the PAC, I asked if this meant they had shifted support from Hillary to the Big Three Concerns, and the answer is that they most of all love the Big Three, but they believe that Hillary is the only candidate who can get elected and make them happen. "We think she is a champion for education," he said, and I was trying not to be an absolute ass, so I just pointed out some of the reasons that many people did not agree with him. Still. My union endorsed her, he said. Yes, and many of your union members aren't very happy about it, I said.
I asked the money question. Where does your funding come from. He said that they are going to take (those were his words-- "going to take") money from anybody anywhere on the political spectrum who would support the Big Three Concerns, and they "are not budging from them."
I asked what about Bernie Sanders. He said, "I like him. He's a great guy. A fighter. But when we look at who can get the job done..." and we were back to Hillary. Sanders is a serious opponent, not to be taken lightly, but when it comes to experience and credibility and being ready to be President, Amalfard loves Clinton very much.
Then, knowing I was talking to a Teach for America guy, I was a little bit of an asshat. "Where do you see yourself in ten years," I asked. Amalfard hemmed a bit and said that it would be really presumptuous of him to try to predict that.
"Well," I asked. "Do you see yourself in a classroom?"
"I surely am considering it," he said. When he thinks about the students and what they need, he knows it would be hard to leave. And as the product of an immigrant family, he really feels the issues of educational inequality. That, he thinks, is the most important advocacy work.
I noted at points in our conversation that declaring yourself the representative for the nation's teachers based on the insights you've gained in your one year in Teach for America might raise some people's eyebrows, particularly when you do it in support of a candidate who is not universally seen as public education friendly, might just get you some pushback. He did not try to 'splain why I was wrong, but just said, "I hear you."
Does this twenty-three-year-old have any kind of track record? Well, while at Emory he launched Readers Beyond Borders, an initiative that raised some money (Amalfard made some phone calls back to his hometown in Georgia and raised $19K in three weeks) which put six Kenyan students through college. One is now a post-grad fellow and heard President Obama speak on his African tour.
Is America's Teachers actually making a dent? Well, their twitter account has over 4,400 followers (better than certain C-list bloggers) despite having done fewer than 200 tweets. On the other hand, nobody seems to be talking about them on twitter. They apparently not on facebook, and they don't rise very far on a google search. A few weeks ago they issued a press release about Christie's ridiculous interest in punching the teachers' union, and it doesn't appear to have been picked up by anybody at all.
So if I had to make a judgment (and I don't, but as always, I will anyway), I'd say that America's Teachers PAC is more about youthful naive exuberance, one more monument to how anyone with a little ambition and an internet connection can try to grab a turn on the Big Stage, whether they have a complex and nuanced understanding of what's happening on that stage or not. Perhaps these guys will actually create a giant ship of money collected from all sorts of political enemies that will be used to float President H. Clinton into the universal preschool port. Or maybe he's a deeply gifted actor who managed to pull over my eyes and is yucking it up right now with champagne-swilling Masters of the Universe. But I don't think so. For right now, I'm going to call America's Teacher a couple of relatively harmless youngsters with an improbable under-researched dream.
The GOP's Education Problem
Damn you, internet.
I had no intention of watching Campbell Brown's Edfest stream yesterday, but as it turns out, I mostly did. I missed a big chunk of Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, so I did not follow up my AM post with a PM one. But the day did crystallize for me some of the huge gaping problems with the narrative that Presidential hopefuls are trying to craft. I'm pretty sure it tells us something when one of the most coherent narratives came from Chris Christie and that it was also the one most completely divorced from reality.
The narrative's basic is Wanting To Have It Both Ways, and that principle is applied in several places.
Teachers
The theory here is that teachers are awesome and wonderful and the most important people in education. The teachers union, however, is the single biggest obstacle to public education in this country. Great teachers should be paid a ton, and we'll be able to afford that because we will fire all of the terrible teachers in schools, because that's an easy call to make, and great teachers can teach as many students as you like? Also lots of teachers are terrible lazy slackers, and that's what the union is for. But teachers are great. Except for the many, many, many, many terrible ones.
Teachers unions are somehow completely disconnected from their members and the interests and concerns of teachers, according to this story (perhaps teachers unions are run by space aliens), and the irony here is that there is some real disconnect but Exhibit A is the degree to which union leaders have supported reformster programs.
But mostly unions are bad because they make us follow all these rules and pay teachers money and keep teacher job securities in place, and our great teachers don't want any of those obstacles to doing their jobs. We teachers apparently love it when we can be paid whatever and lose our jobs at any time for any reasons. Love it.
Local Control & Choice
GOP pols have the message-- local control is great and the American Way and they totally support it except when they have to take it away from places that suck. Parents should be free to choose from an assortment of great schools, or at least from the assortment of charter schools that we say they should have. And parents who want to exert local control by keeping their community school intact (like, say, the hunger strikers of Chicago or the protesters of Newark)-- well, they can't have it. Jindal gave an impassioned explanation of how parent preference and local control are vital and important; then he gave an impassioned explanation of how even though all the parents and students and teachers and community leaders of New Orleans resisted having their system trashed and privatized, he did it anyway because he knew better than they did.
Parents should have choices, but only the choices we think they should have. But they should have choices. But not those choices. Repeat ad infinitum.
Oh-- unless you stop for the new classic "Local control is union control." Can anybody name a school board anywhere that was bought and paid for by the teachers union? But no-- we can't have local control in some places because those damn teachers--er, that damn teachers union. Only by having the state take over can local voices be empowered.
Red Tape
I suppose it's a small thing, but it's a sign of how much they don't understand. They would like to free schools and teachers from red tape and paperwork etc etc etc-- but they would also like to have complete accountability for everything that teachers and schools do. How they imagine such extensive accountability will happen without tons of reports and data entry and paperwork and red tape I do not know. The definition of red tape is, I guess, "reports about things that I don't care about."
Standards
I imagine this is frustrating for fans of Common Core because the GOP is totally for the Common Core, as long as you don't call it Common Core. They want higher standards (whatever those are) and test-based accountability for those standards (because lazy teachers need to be pushed). We are back to the old idea that teachers could teach every child awesomely-- we just choose not to for some reason. Of course, the faith in state takeover also suggests that the states know exactly how to make schools successful, so why are they holding out on us-- but I digress.
So it's bad when the standards come from the feds, but we should totally have those kinds of standards. But not a curriculum. Just standards that insure everyone in the country is teaching the Right Thing. But not Common Core.
And the GOP has taken to expressing a broader, deeper idea about what education should be about, including arts and vocational ed and other Good Things-- without any awareness at all that the current college and career ready standards accountability test and punish system is set up exactly counter to all those high aspirations.
Nostalgia & Status Quo
To be fair, this is not exclusively a GOP problem. A lot of pols are out there making strong arguments against continuing to run classrooms the same way we did in 1963. When they talk about things that need to change, like rote learning and teacher lecture, I don't recognize the world they describe. I suppose it's natural to base your picture of school on what you remember from being a student--oh, wait. It's natural to do that if you have no experience with or knowledge of what goes on in schools today. Some folks are more prone to this problem than others (Jeb Bush yesterday admonished reporters to put away their blackberries).
But if you're going to rail against the status quo, you ought to know what it is. The GOP hopefuls keep blasting the status quo, as if the status quo weren't test driven, common core infected, reformster created mess.
Race and Poverty
Crickets. Only a side reference when we talk about all the things that good teachers with high standards and big expectations can overcome. But so far the GOP seems to believe that dealing with issues of race is on par with dealing with Montana's Yeti infestation problem.
Urgency
When it comes to public schools, we can't leave a student in a bad one for even a single more day. When it comes to charters, we need to be patient while the charter choice system finds its footing.
Cognitive Dissonance
Yesterday confirmed what I have suspected, which is that if a GOP candidate talks about education for more than sixty seconds, the raft of self-contradictions come floating in. Standardization is bad, but students should all do the same thing. Local control is great, except when it should be eliminated. Teachers are great. Teachers suck. No federal overreach, but complete accountability for tax dollars.
This is going to be a long primary season. Let's hope the Democrats can do better.
I had no intention of watching Campbell Brown's Edfest stream yesterday, but as it turns out, I mostly did. I missed a big chunk of Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, so I did not follow up my AM post with a PM one. But the day did crystallize for me some of the huge gaping problems with the narrative that Presidential hopefuls are trying to craft. I'm pretty sure it tells us something when one of the most coherent narratives came from Chris Christie and that it was also the one most completely divorced from reality.
The narrative's basic is Wanting To Have It Both Ways, and that principle is applied in several places.
Teachers
The theory here is that teachers are awesome and wonderful and the most important people in education. The teachers union, however, is the single biggest obstacle to public education in this country. Great teachers should be paid a ton, and we'll be able to afford that because we will fire all of the terrible teachers in schools, because that's an easy call to make, and great teachers can teach as many students as you like? Also lots of teachers are terrible lazy slackers, and that's what the union is for. But teachers are great. Except for the many, many, many, many terrible ones.
Teachers unions are somehow completely disconnected from their members and the interests and concerns of teachers, according to this story (perhaps teachers unions are run by space aliens), and the irony here is that there is some real disconnect but Exhibit A is the degree to which union leaders have supported reformster programs.
But mostly unions are bad because they make us follow all these rules and pay teachers money and keep teacher job securities in place, and our great teachers don't want any of those obstacles to doing their jobs. We teachers apparently love it when we can be paid whatever and lose our jobs at any time for any reasons. Love it.
Local Control & Choice
GOP pols have the message-- local control is great and the American Way and they totally support it except when they have to take it away from places that suck. Parents should be free to choose from an assortment of great schools, or at least from the assortment of charter schools that we say they should have. And parents who want to exert local control by keeping their community school intact (like, say, the hunger strikers of Chicago or the protesters of Newark)-- well, they can't have it. Jindal gave an impassioned explanation of how parent preference and local control are vital and important; then he gave an impassioned explanation of how even though all the parents and students and teachers and community leaders of New Orleans resisted having their system trashed and privatized, he did it anyway because he knew better than they did.
Parents should have choices, but only the choices we think they should have. But they should have choices. But not those choices. Repeat ad infinitum.
Oh-- unless you stop for the new classic "Local control is union control." Can anybody name a school board anywhere that was bought and paid for by the teachers union? But no-- we can't have local control in some places because those damn teachers--er, that damn teachers union. Only by having the state take over can local voices be empowered.
Red Tape
I suppose it's a small thing, but it's a sign of how much they don't understand. They would like to free schools and teachers from red tape and paperwork etc etc etc-- but they would also like to have complete accountability for everything that teachers and schools do. How they imagine such extensive accountability will happen without tons of reports and data entry and paperwork and red tape I do not know. The definition of red tape is, I guess, "reports about things that I don't care about."
Standards
I imagine this is frustrating for fans of Common Core because the GOP is totally for the Common Core, as long as you don't call it Common Core. They want higher standards (whatever those are) and test-based accountability for those standards (because lazy teachers need to be pushed). We are back to the old idea that teachers could teach every child awesomely-- we just choose not to for some reason. Of course, the faith in state takeover also suggests that the states know exactly how to make schools successful, so why are they holding out on us-- but I digress.
So it's bad when the standards come from the feds, but we should totally have those kinds of standards. But not a curriculum. Just standards that insure everyone in the country is teaching the Right Thing. But not Common Core.
And the GOP has taken to expressing a broader, deeper idea about what education should be about, including arts and vocational ed and other Good Things-- without any awareness at all that the current college and career ready standards accountability test and punish system is set up exactly counter to all those high aspirations.
Nostalgia & Status Quo
To be fair, this is not exclusively a GOP problem. A lot of pols are out there making strong arguments against continuing to run classrooms the same way we did in 1963. When they talk about things that need to change, like rote learning and teacher lecture, I don't recognize the world they describe. I suppose it's natural to base your picture of school on what you remember from being a student--oh, wait. It's natural to do that if you have no experience with or knowledge of what goes on in schools today. Some folks are more prone to this problem than others (Jeb Bush yesterday admonished reporters to put away their blackberries).
But if you're going to rail against the status quo, you ought to know what it is. The GOP hopefuls keep blasting the status quo, as if the status quo weren't test driven, common core infected, reformster created mess.
Race and Poverty
Crickets. Only a side reference when we talk about all the things that good teachers with high standards and big expectations can overcome. But so far the GOP seems to believe that dealing with issues of race is on par with dealing with Montana's Yeti infestation problem.
Urgency
When it comes to public schools, we can't leave a student in a bad one for even a single more day. When it comes to charters, we need to be patient while the charter choice system finds its footing.
Cognitive Dissonance
Yesterday confirmed what I have suspected, which is that if a GOP candidate talks about education for more than sixty seconds, the raft of self-contradictions come floating in. Standardization is bad, but students should all do the same thing. Local control is great, except when it should be eliminated. Teachers are great. Teachers suck. No federal overreach, but complete accountability for tax dollars.
This is going to be a long primary season. Let's hope the Democrats can do better.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Campbell Brown's Edusummit AM
Today is Campbell Brown's education summit in New Hampshire, featuring six GOP candidates and some other filler. It's an all-day extravaganza. The live streaming had some trouble hitting its stride, so I missed the opener and the first part of Jeb Bush's turn in the soft, comfy chair (there are no hot seats anywhere at this summit.)
I had no intention of watching, but it's like netflixing a bad comedy series-- you just keep sticking around a little bit longer. So I have no super-coherent observations about the morning with Bush, Fiorina, and Kasich (Jennifer Berkshire is there for Edushyster, so I look forward to her write-up). But there are several things that jump out.
"God-given"
That's the preferred modifier for the talents and abilities of students. This not only lets candidates name-check God, but it also sidesteps any discussion about what effects poverty and environment might have on the talents and abilities that a student brings to school.
Local control is union control
Yeah, this is a new but already-beloved talking point. If you let people have local control, those damn unions will just buy the elections, just like they did in...well, somewhere. The problem with this talking point will be coming up with an actual example of a local school board that is run by the bought-and-paid-for tools of the teachers union.
Cognitive dissonance
Holy smokes but the candidates disagree with themselves. Kasich thinks local control is awesome, but the state takeover of Cleveland and Youngstown is also awesome. This is a sticking point for all three candidates, who love them some local control and decry the evils of top-down federal over-reachy policy-- but you can't privatize and get charters and choice unless you open up the market by shutting down local voters.
Also teachers unions are terrible and awful and a barrier to great things in education, but teachers themselves are wonderful and deserve our support and good pay except for the bad ones who should be driven from the classroom. We're really torn here.
Expectations are important and magical, so we can get students to do better just by expecting it, but not by supporting those expectations. Just expect.
Annnd-- we all hate red tape and think that a whole bunch of mandated paperwork and programs and stuff is terrible, but we also should have rock-solid tough-love accountability so that we absolutely know if students are learning and teachers are doing a good job. Do none of these people see that the only way to get super-duper accountability is with tons of "red tape"?
Students vs grownups
We saw a resurgence of the talking point about how we should run schools according to needs of students and not the needs of adults (aka teachers aka those money-grubbing union teachers who want pay and stuff). This allows us to dismiss all teacher objections to vouchers, testing , charters, etc because there couldn't be anything in our criticism of policy based on our professional knowledge-- it's just us looking out for our own interests. I find this one particularly ironic because:
A) in many places, teachers are the primary voices standing up for student interests and
B) charters and choice schools are naturally not interested in student needs, because if I'm a charter operator, every dollar I spend on a student is a dollar I don't get to keep.
Fiorina is not ready for prime time
Fiorina channeled Yong Zhao briefly to explain why China-style standardization is a terrible idea, even though much of what she supports fits that completely. She doesn't known that the government and the USED are audited, she doesn't understand the Vergara case, she doesn't know what TFA actually does, and she thinks we're testing students every year in all subjects.
She also dropped the most quotable gaffe of the day, saying that Katrina was "a wonderful oportunity for innovation."
Jeb is anti-tepid
Jeb spoke about his fiery concern and against being tepid. He wants to "let the big dog eat" which seems to mean that corporations should be able to eat piles of money of the backs of children and poop out... I dunno. Education? It was an odd moment. He said "rising" a lot.
Kasich talks to and for God
Kasich was Kasich, barely allowing Brown to speak and instructing us several times on what God wants. He wants teachers not to hang out in lounges, and he channeled Reagan-- Nancy Reagan-- by saying that we stop the drug problem by just telling people to stop.
Just send money
Everyone wants the feds to just bundle up the money and send it to the states to use as they think best.
As I left
A congressperson, an AEI guy, and a writer from the Wall Street Journal were doing a promotional discussion for school choice. It would have been boring, except that the Wall Street Journal writer seems really, really angry, like she wants to punch public education in the face.
You can find the after noon stuff, which kicks off with a panel discussion on the excitement of new innovation which would be uninspiring except that the panel includes Joel "I Just Tanked Amplify" Klein. I'd like to hope that he'll be asked the secret of turning $1 billion into $600 million, but I doubt it. Nobody has gotten a hard question yet today except, oddly enough, "Can you name who influences your thoughts on education policy" which was probably not meant to be a stumper, but is. The feed is on youtube right here, and they'll probably save all of it, God help us.
I had no intention of watching, but it's like netflixing a bad comedy series-- you just keep sticking around a little bit longer. So I have no super-coherent observations about the morning with Bush, Fiorina, and Kasich (Jennifer Berkshire is there for Edushyster, so I look forward to her write-up). But there are several things that jump out.
"God-given"
That's the preferred modifier for the talents and abilities of students. This not only lets candidates name-check God, but it also sidesteps any discussion about what effects poverty and environment might have on the talents and abilities that a student brings to school.
Local control is union control
Yeah, this is a new but already-beloved talking point. If you let people have local control, those damn unions will just buy the elections, just like they did in...well, somewhere. The problem with this talking point will be coming up with an actual example of a local school board that is run by the bought-and-paid-for tools of the teachers union.
Cognitive dissonance
Holy smokes but the candidates disagree with themselves. Kasich thinks local control is awesome, but the state takeover of Cleveland and Youngstown is also awesome. This is a sticking point for all three candidates, who love them some local control and decry the evils of top-down federal over-reachy policy-- but you can't privatize and get charters and choice unless you open up the market by shutting down local voters.
Also teachers unions are terrible and awful and a barrier to great things in education, but teachers themselves are wonderful and deserve our support and good pay except for the bad ones who should be driven from the classroom. We're really torn here.
Expectations are important and magical, so we can get students to do better just by expecting it, but not by supporting those expectations. Just expect.
Annnd-- we all hate red tape and think that a whole bunch of mandated paperwork and programs and stuff is terrible, but we also should have rock-solid tough-love accountability so that we absolutely know if students are learning and teachers are doing a good job. Do none of these people see that the only way to get super-duper accountability is with tons of "red tape"?
Students vs grownups
We saw a resurgence of the talking point about how we should run schools according to needs of students and not the needs of adults (aka teachers aka those money-grubbing union teachers who want pay and stuff). This allows us to dismiss all teacher objections to vouchers, testing , charters, etc because there couldn't be anything in our criticism of policy based on our professional knowledge-- it's just us looking out for our own interests. I find this one particularly ironic because:
A) in many places, teachers are the primary voices standing up for student interests and
B) charters and choice schools are naturally not interested in student needs, because if I'm a charter operator, every dollar I spend on a student is a dollar I don't get to keep.
Fiorina is not ready for prime time
Fiorina channeled Yong Zhao briefly to explain why China-style standardization is a terrible idea, even though much of what she supports fits that completely. She doesn't known that the government and the USED are audited, she doesn't understand the Vergara case, she doesn't know what TFA actually does, and she thinks we're testing students every year in all subjects.
She also dropped the most quotable gaffe of the day, saying that Katrina was "a wonderful oportunity for innovation."
Jeb is anti-tepid
Jeb spoke about his fiery concern and against being tepid. He wants to "let the big dog eat" which seems to mean that corporations should be able to eat piles of money of the backs of children and poop out... I dunno. Education? It was an odd moment. He said "rising" a lot.
Kasich talks to and for God
Kasich was Kasich, barely allowing Brown to speak and instructing us several times on what God wants. He wants teachers not to hang out in lounges, and he channeled Reagan-- Nancy Reagan-- by saying that we stop the drug problem by just telling people to stop.
Just send money
Everyone wants the feds to just bundle up the money and send it to the states to use as they think best.
As I left
A congressperson, an AEI guy, and a writer from the Wall Street Journal were doing a promotional discussion for school choice. It would have been boring, except that the Wall Street Journal writer seems really, really angry, like she wants to punch public education in the face.
You can find the after noon stuff, which kicks off with a panel discussion on the excitement of new innovation which would be uninspiring except that the panel includes Joel "I Just Tanked Amplify" Klein. I'd like to hope that he'll be asked the secret of turning $1 billion into $600 million, but I doubt it. Nobody has gotten a hard question yet today except, oddly enough, "Can you name who influences your thoughts on education policy" which was probably not meant to be a stumper, but is. The feed is on youtube right here, and they'll probably save all of it, God help us.
Hunger Strike in Chicago
Education reformsters have a selective deafness problem when it comes to not-white, not-wealthy citizens, and that is on display again in Chicago, where community activists are staging a hunger strike this week in an attempt to get Chicago Public Schools to actually pay attention to them.
Members of the Bronzeville community have been fighting for Dyett High School since it was marked for phaseout in 2012; CPS cited academic failure. CPS stretched the closing over four years to allow students already enrolled to finish their careers there; that resulted in just twelve seniors being enrolled last year. Supporters of the school say that CPS pressured those remaining students to transfer out; CPS says it was just "gauging interest." Certainly Dyett hasn't enjoyed a great deal of support from CPS-- no infusion of resources or attempt to actually fix the alleged academic shortcomings.
Instead of talking about how to revitalize the school, CPS has been entertaining proposals about what to replace it with, including a proposal from the principal brought in to shut the place down-- that particular proposal has been considered even though it was handed in late. But the school seems marked to be one more victim of the mayor's wholesale slashing of neighborhood schools.
But here's what you need to know about the community activists of Dyett High School-- they have done everything that you're supposed to do in such a situation. They put together a proposal for a school focusing on green and leadership studies, complete with partners and support, that would have allowed the area to keep its last open-enrollment high school. CPS has hemmed and hawed and at one point said, okay, you can keep the school under this plan as long as we still hire someone to run it.
Activist Jitu Brown had some thoughts about that, as reported by Edushyster:
"Why can’t we have public schools? Why do low-income minority students need to have their schools run by private contractors?" As Brown sees it, handing the school to a private operator isn’t much better than closing it. "We want this school to anchor the community for the next 75 years. We’re not interested in a short-term contract that can be broken."
So while CPS has twiddled their thumbs and stalled, the supporters of Dyett have organized and petitioned and called and done what people do when they are ignored-- steadily escalated. They held a rally. They held a sit-in and got themselves arrested. And CPS has folded its arms, dawdled, postponed, and generally tried to avoid making an actual decision about the fate of what used to be Dyett.
Point being-- these folks didn't arrive at hunger strike quickly, lightly, or thoughtlessly.
This website has much of the current information, links, eddresses, and pictures. There are hashtags to follow if you are twitter literate. Jesse Jackson has shown up, and that gets them some extra eyeballs (but he's not new to this particular fight). Check in. Send messages of support. This is not an easy thing, but it's an important thing.
It's a sign of how messed up we are when it comes to letting local voices be heard-- that people have to starve themselves just to have some kind of say in what happens in their own community school. I hope someone listens, and soon.
Members of the Bronzeville community have been fighting for Dyett High School since it was marked for phaseout in 2012; CPS cited academic failure. CPS stretched the closing over four years to allow students already enrolled to finish their careers there; that resulted in just twelve seniors being enrolled last year. Supporters of the school say that CPS pressured those remaining students to transfer out; CPS says it was just "gauging interest." Certainly Dyett hasn't enjoyed a great deal of support from CPS-- no infusion of resources or attempt to actually fix the alleged academic shortcomings.
Instead of talking about how to revitalize the school, CPS has been entertaining proposals about what to replace it with, including a proposal from the principal brought in to shut the place down-- that particular proposal has been considered even though it was handed in late. But the school seems marked to be one more victim of the mayor's wholesale slashing of neighborhood schools.
But here's what you need to know about the community activists of Dyett High School-- they have done everything that you're supposed to do in such a situation. They put together a proposal for a school focusing on green and leadership studies, complete with partners and support, that would have allowed the area to keep its last open-enrollment high school. CPS has hemmed and hawed and at one point said, okay, you can keep the school under this plan as long as we still hire someone to run it.
Activist Jitu Brown had some thoughts about that, as reported by Edushyster:
"Why can’t we have public schools? Why do low-income minority students need to have their schools run by private contractors?" As Brown sees it, handing the school to a private operator isn’t much better than closing it. "We want this school to anchor the community for the next 75 years. We’re not interested in a short-term contract that can be broken."
So while CPS has twiddled their thumbs and stalled, the supporters of Dyett have organized and petitioned and called and done what people do when they are ignored-- steadily escalated. They held a rally. They held a sit-in and got themselves arrested. And CPS has folded its arms, dawdled, postponed, and generally tried to avoid making an actual decision about the fate of what used to be Dyett.
Point being-- these folks didn't arrive at hunger strike quickly, lightly, or thoughtlessly.
This website has much of the current information, links, eddresses, and pictures. There are hashtags to follow if you are twitter literate. Jesse Jackson has shown up, and that gets them some extra eyeballs (but he's not new to this particular fight). Check in. Send messages of support. This is not an easy thing, but it's an important thing.
It's a sign of how messed up we are when it comes to letting local voices be heard-- that people have to starve themselves just to have some kind of say in what happens in their own community school. I hope someone listens, and soon.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
CAP Flubs Again
I'm pretty sure that CAP has lost its collective mind. This months has been marked by a pair of CAP offerings (here and here) that seem to indicate the august allegedly lefty thinky tank is running its PR wing out of a time machine parked in 2013.
Now they are touting the result of a poll they commissioned from Public Policy Polling under the Lesley Knope-ish press release headline:
New PPP Poll Shows that the Development and Aims of the Common Core Are More Popular Than Baseball, Kittens, and Bacon—But Misinformation About the Common Core Pervades
It is hard to know how to take the last part of that header, since the press release that follows it champions a brace of undead misinformation that apparently did not die the last sixty gazillion times it was put to rest. No, here it is, still searching for brains. Let's go shambling down memory lane, shall we?
It's Just the Brand
Remember this one? People totes love the ideas behind Common Core-- they've just been turned off to the branding. Why, 90% (of the 675 people we asked) love the idea of higher standards that would make us competitive in the world, 82% think we should develop standards with teachers and states, 79% think we should have high quality English and math standards while letting local schools set curriculum, and 78% love the annual test idea.
So what? This is a lovely rhetorical trick that assumes the sale, begs the question, cheats the answer, and screws the pooch. Yes, I love baseball, kittens, and bacon, but if you offer me a baseball game between a team of six year olds and a wheelchair team, a kitten that has been dead and lying beside the road for a month, and uncooked bacon wrapped around Greek yogurt, I will not thank you!
I love my wife. She's named Amanda. It does not follow that I will love any woman named Amanda. I love lunch. It does not follow that I will love any crap you stick on a plate and call lunch. I love the idea of having all my hair back. It does not follow that I will buy whatever snake oil you pitch as hair restorant.
People may well love all those things you listed, CAP. It does not follow that Common Core is any of those things. Standards don't make nations competitive. The Core were not developed by teachers. The implementation of the Core that we got takes most local curricular control away. The annual tests that we got are crap.
Politics! Eww!!
Unfortunately, opponents of the Common Core have embarked on misinformation campaigns in order to create widespread confusion among voters or to score political points.
That's from Catherine Brown, Vice President of Education Policy at CAP, a group of political operatives, many of whom aren't currently on duty because they have gone back to their real jobs-- working as political operatives for Hillary Clinton. The standards were born of politics, hatched by politics, pushed on states by politics, and promoted by politics. You don't get to disown politics now.
The Central Lie
“These survey results show that the goals of the Common Core are quite popular when tested piece by piece,” said Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling. “People aren’t exactly sure what’s in the Common Core, but when asked about its provisions, they wholeheartedly support them across demographic lines.”
Emphasis mine. Because what he meant to say was "when asked about things that we claim are provisions of Common Core..."
Other Lies
Just 4 percent of voters know that teachers helped develop the Common Core
Well, yes. For the same reason only 4% of Americans know that Barack Obama is actually an alien lizard king. Only 4% of voters know this because IT IS NOT ACTUALLY TRUE!
Nearly half of voters think that the Common Core prescribes a specific curriculum,
And they're not really wrong. Well, this is technically not true, but practically speaking, CCSS was pitched as a the exact steps to follow to come up with a curriculum. The kit for building a pole barn is not a pole barn, but you are not going to build a Lamborghini out of it.
But hey-- lots of us were talking about this a lot-- over a year ago.
72 percent of voters believe that standardized tests take up more time than they actually do. A recent CAP report showed that students spend, on average, 1.6 percent of instructional time or less taking tests.
Again, voters are perhaps "confused" because they base their ideas on reality and not reformster press releases. And in reality, students are spending huge amounts of time on practice tests, pre tests and classes in which the curriculum has been bent toward test prep. (See also here and here for old posts where we were all talking about this a year ago).
Running out of Headlines
Seriously. I am running out of titles to use on pieces about how CAP has put out talking points that were debunked, gutted, and buried ages ago. I am straining my noggin trying to imagine what audience they imagine for these PR blasts? People who have been in a coma for a year or two? People who live under rocks?
Are the people running CAP lost because all the grownups are all busy helping Clinton run for office? Are they confused, ballsy or lazy? Whatever the case, they have got to do better, because this baloney is not advancing anybody's conversation with anybody.
Now they are touting the result of a poll they commissioned from Public Policy Polling under the Lesley Knope-ish press release headline:
New PPP Poll Shows that the Development and Aims of the Common Core Are More Popular Than Baseball, Kittens, and Bacon—But Misinformation About the Common Core Pervades
It is hard to know how to take the last part of that header, since the press release that follows it champions a brace of undead misinformation that apparently did not die the last sixty gazillion times it was put to rest. No, here it is, still searching for brains. Let's go shambling down memory lane, shall we?
It's Just the Brand
Remember this one? People totes love the ideas behind Common Core-- they've just been turned off to the branding. Why, 90% (of the 675 people we asked) love the idea of higher standards that would make us competitive in the world, 82% think we should develop standards with teachers and states, 79% think we should have high quality English and math standards while letting local schools set curriculum, and 78% love the annual test idea.
So what? This is a lovely rhetorical trick that assumes the sale, begs the question, cheats the answer, and screws the pooch. Yes, I love baseball, kittens, and bacon, but if you offer me a baseball game between a team of six year olds and a wheelchair team, a kitten that has been dead and lying beside the road for a month, and uncooked bacon wrapped around Greek yogurt, I will not thank you!
I love my wife. She's named Amanda. It does not follow that I will love any woman named Amanda. I love lunch. It does not follow that I will love any crap you stick on a plate and call lunch. I love the idea of having all my hair back. It does not follow that I will buy whatever snake oil you pitch as hair restorant.
People may well love all those things you listed, CAP. It does not follow that Common Core is any of those things. Standards don't make nations competitive. The Core were not developed by teachers. The implementation of the Core that we got takes most local curricular control away. The annual tests that we got are crap.
Politics! Eww!!
Unfortunately, opponents of the Common Core have embarked on misinformation campaigns in order to create widespread confusion among voters or to score political points.
That's from Catherine Brown, Vice President of Education Policy at CAP, a group of political operatives, many of whom aren't currently on duty because they have gone back to their real jobs-- working as political operatives for Hillary Clinton. The standards were born of politics, hatched by politics, pushed on states by politics, and promoted by politics. You don't get to disown politics now.
The Central Lie
“These survey results show that the goals of the Common Core are quite popular when tested piece by piece,” said Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling. “People aren’t exactly sure what’s in the Common Core, but when asked about its provisions, they wholeheartedly support them across demographic lines.”
Emphasis mine. Because what he meant to say was "when asked about things that we claim are provisions of Common Core..."
Other Lies
Just 4 percent of voters know that teachers helped develop the Common Core
Well, yes. For the same reason only 4% of Americans know that Barack Obama is actually an alien lizard king. Only 4% of voters know this because IT IS NOT ACTUALLY TRUE!
Nearly half of voters think that the Common Core prescribes a specific curriculum,
And they're not really wrong. Well, this is technically not true, but practically speaking, CCSS was pitched as a the exact steps to follow to come up with a curriculum. The kit for building a pole barn is not a pole barn, but you are not going to build a Lamborghini out of it.
But hey-- lots of us were talking about this a lot-- over a year ago.
72 percent of voters believe that standardized tests take up more time than they actually do. A recent CAP report showed that students spend, on average, 1.6 percent of instructional time or less taking tests.
Again, voters are perhaps "confused" because they base their ideas on reality and not reformster press releases. And in reality, students are spending huge amounts of time on practice tests, pre tests and classes in which the curriculum has been bent toward test prep. (See also here and here for old posts where we were all talking about this a year ago).
Running out of Headlines
Seriously. I am running out of titles to use on pieces about how CAP has put out talking points that were debunked, gutted, and buried ages ago. I am straining my noggin trying to imagine what audience they imagine for these PR blasts? People who have been in a coma for a year or two? People who live under rocks?
Are the people running CAP lost because all the grownups are all busy helping Clinton run for office? Are they confused, ballsy or lazy? Whatever the case, they have got to do better, because this baloney is not advancing anybody's conversation with anybody.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)