Christie, Like His Pal Cuomo, Is Full Of Shit On Common Core

Chris Christie, once a great supporter of Common Core, turned on the standards as he started to gear up for a run for president in a Republican Party where the Core is disdained.

Christie, as on other issues like gun control or Planned Parenthood, likes to muddy the waters on just how much support he has had for the Core in the past and continues to have for the Core now.

For example:

During Thursday night's Republican debate in South Carolina, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was attacked on several fronts for an allegedly left-leaning past, including his supposed support for Common Core education standards, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Planned Parenthood.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called out his rival for propping up Common Core, the reading and math standards implemented in 42 states, plus the District of Columbia, and widely reviled by conservatives as acts of federal overreach.

"I like Chris Christie, but we can not afford to have a president of the United States that supports Common Core," Rubio said on the main stage.

Christie refuted that: "Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey."

But Christie, who once supported the education standards, has flipped on the issue since last year.

In May, the governor asked New Jersey's department of education to review the implementation of Common Core in the state's school system.

But according to NJ.com, earlier this week, the panel charged with reviewing the standards recommended that 84 percent of them remain in place, with slight revisions to the rest. Common Core, the news site reported, does "still have a place in New Jersey classrooms."

Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey?

Hardly.

Not if 84% of the standards remain in place, with slight revisions to the rest, and the state tests still based upon the Core (and the opt-out option for the test soon to be eliminated.)

The same game is happening in New York, where Christie's Port Authority-pal Andrew Cuomo is playing similar deceptions on New Yorkers, claiming Common Core is going to get a "total reboot" when his Common Core Task Force actually recommended that the "instructional focus" of the Core remain in place.

In short, New York's going to get a similar 16% or so tweaking to the Core, where most of the standards remain in place and the others get minor changes so that Cuomo can say the Core no longer exists in New York State.

Christie and Cuomo are full of shit together on education, full of shit together on Common Core, and full of shit together on a lot of other issues (including the Port Authority.)

Quite frankly, the emblems for both the Christie Presidential campaign and the Cuomo 2018 re-election campaign ought to be two big piles of shit.

And if that's a little too crass, well, so is the shit these two crooks are looking to get away with on a whole host of things - including Common Core.

Vacation Bible Schools Become Common Core-Aligned

This sounds like a story from The Onion but it's actually from the Journal-Courier:

This summer, Vacation Bible School instructors at Midwest Church of Christ took a somewhat different tactic in teaching about Noah's Ark and the Gospel: They aligned their lessons to Common Core standards.

It's a move seen increasingly at Vacation Bible School and Bible study classes in Louisville and surrounding areas.

"We're still using Bible stories but we're asking questions that are tied to Common Core," said Olivia Hanley, who helps develop the curriculum for Vacation Bible School at Midwest Church of Christ. "What we're trying to do is ask questions in a different way, a way that's aligned ... to the critical thinking and other questions in Common Core."

Common Core and Bible stories - love it!

I see the possibilities already.

How about some Common Core-aligned Bible math:

Jesus had five loaves of bread, two fish and a crowd of thousands to feed.

Using cubes, explain how Jesus fed the crowd with peanut butter and jelly.

Or how about a close reading of the rigorous Book of Revelations along with some text-based questions getting at exactly what the author meant.

For centuries, humans have struggled to read and comprehend religious texts, but those struggles will fall to a David Coleman-approved close reading strategy.

And hey, why miss out on any opportunity for college- and career-readiness.

Even the baby Jesus understands that there can be no time lost to getting the kiddies college- and career-ready, so everything - including religious studies - should be Common Core-aligned.

Alas, not everyone is with the program:

The Archdiocese of Louisville reviewed the Common Core standards for its schools, finding that some of what its schools were doing in English and math were already in line with the standards. But it said it also noticed some areas it thought were deficient or missing in the new standards and decided to maintain what it had in those areas.

Yet the idea of using these standards in Bible studies or Vacation Bible School has not been as widely discussed.

Archdiocesan spokeswoman Cecelia Price said that Vacation Bible Schools — which are run by church parishes and not the schools — "have a faith-based content and approach. Therefore, I do not believe the (Common Core standards) would be applicable."

Others also seem flummoxed by the idea of aligning Vacation Bible School with Common Core.

"The focus of Vacation Bible School is to fulfill hearts, for young people and young children to know the Lord in a deeper way," said Denise Donohue, deputy director of the K-12 education program at the Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative advocacy group for greater orthodoxy in Catholic schools.

She asked why math and English language arts standards focused on college and career readiness would have any place in Vacation Bible School.

What's next after Common Core-aligned religion?

How about Common Core-aligned family therapy?

Common Core-aligned Twelve Step Groups?

Gee, we've got so much work to do to get the world more "rigorous" and "standards-based."

God help us - this is what a crumbling empire looks like at the end.

New York's Assembly Line Teaching

A serious of tweets with Arthur Goldstein, Tim Farley and Randi Weingarten on the state of teaching in New York today:

@rweingarten @JudithMalys #CommonCore is a big part of why they don't feel respected. Teacher autonomy is gone in this country.

— Tim Farley (@tfarley1969) June 28, 2015

@TeacherArthurG @tfarley1969 @rweingarten @JudithMalys Top-down imposed curriculum comes w/ it in many schools.

— rbe (@perdidostschool) June 29, 2015

@TeacherArthurG @tfarley1969 @rweingarten @JudithMalys Coupled w/ constant Danielson eval, like Lucy on assembly line.

— rbe (@perdidostschool) June 29, 2015

@TeacherArthurG @tfarley1969 @rweingarten @JudithMalys Or the Little Tramp in Modern Times - https://t.co/IqThFflvm9

— rbe (@perdidostschool) June 29, 2015

Truth is, teaching in many New York schools these days is EXACTLY like the Little Tramp on the assembly line in Modern Times, especially when the EngageNY curriculum is used:

Close read incomprehensible piece, ask text-based questions about excerpt, close read same incomprehensible piece (sometimes same incomprehensible excerpt!), ask text-based questions about it, repeat ad nauseam until final assessment that tests retention of said material.

Have a lesson plan printed out with EVERY step, EVERY activity timed to the second, EVERY question asked of students with expected (and necessary) responses under them, EVERY activity ending in an assessment, EVERY do now activity text-based and "rigorous" (drill-and-kill starts from the very beginning of class and goes right to the end) - this is the daily experience of many teachers in New York's schools.

And God help you if you're slated for a Danielson drive-by observation on the day when you decide to deviate from the above assembly line teaching - you're almost guaranteed a "developing" or "ineffective" evaluation for the lesson in many schools.

Randi Weingarten says teachers feel disrespected and need to be respected?

Respect starts and ends with the autonomy to write curriculum, teach that curriculum as one sees fit, assess students as one sees fit, have the freedom to deviate from teaching methods and lesson plans imposed from above, and not be forced to teach from a lesson plan so completely controlled and rote that it sucks the life and soul out of the learning and the classroom.

Alas, Randi Weingarten and union leaders, through their collaboration with education reformers, have brought us the current assembly line teaching mess.

Randi Weingarten thinks teachers need to be respected?

Great - she should start respecting teachers herself by ceasing to "collaborate" with reformers on reforms that strip teachers of autonomy, creativity, and professionalism.

End the assembly line teaching and evaluations.

Common Core Shill Group Trots Out Bill Bennett To Defend Common Core

From the Wall Street Journal:

A group that supports Common Core is launching a two-week television ad buy in Iowa, the state that hosts the first presidential nominating contests, in an effort to counter a backlash from conservative Republicans against the national academic standards.

The new television ad by the Collaborative for Student Success features Bill Bennett,  U.S. education secretary under former President Ronald Reagan. “High standards are worth fighting for,” he says in the spot starting Monday. “That’s why so many conservatives are taking a fresh look at Common Core.”

This strategy - to sell Common Core as "conservative" to the Republican base was introduced earlier this year:

With Common Core set to be one of the political flashpoints in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and with it a topic at the upcoming CPAC conference (a Thursday panel is entitled "Common Core: Rotten to the Core"), conservative defenders of Common Core briefed reporters on Wednesday to begin pushing back against critics. 

Karen Nussle, executive director of Collaborative for Student Success - and wife of former GOP Rep. and Bush OMB Director Jim Nussle - said the Common Core are K thru 12 standards in math and English developed by the states. They aren't CURRICULUM standards, she maintained. 

Nussle also said that despite all of the opposition to Common Core, only one state out of the 45 that adopted the standards - Oklahoma - has repealed that support. 

And she adds that only another six Republican governors - 2016ers Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal, plus Arizona's Doug Ducey, Maine's Paul LePage, Mississippi's Phil Bryant, and South Carolina's Nikki Haley - oppose Common Core. All other GOP governors support it. And former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is one of its biggest champions. 

Opponents of Common Core, Nussle said, "are pretty much the political outliers."

Core supporters think if they can rinse the words "Barack Obama" from the public perception of Common Core, they can bring conservatives back on board in support of the standards:

Why the opposition to Common Core? "It comes down to two words - Barack Obama. This is what this is about," added Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas Fordham Institute. While the Common Core standards were created by the nation's governors, the Obama administration tied its "Race to the Top" education money to the standards - and hence the association with Obama.

Thus this kind of video from the Collaborative for Student Success that came before the Bennett video (which you can see here):




It's interesting that at least two of the Republicans in that "Cnservatives for the Core" video from 2013 are now opposed to the Core (Huckabee and Jindal.)

It remains to be seen if Core supporters can turn conservatives back onto the Core as the Obama administration sunsets.

Not sure running a video with Bill Bennett hawking the Core is going to do that.

UPDATE: Turns out Huckabee, who used to be for the Core before he turned against it, is kinda for the Core again.

Farleigh Dickinson Poll Finds Only 17% Of Americans Support Common Core

The support trajectory for Common Core drops dramatically:

As millions of students across the country prepare to take the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) exam or the Smarter Balanced Assessment, the most recent national survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind finds that the educational reform behind these standardized tests remains a mystery to many Americans and faces widespread disapproval.

 Currently, 40 percent of Americans say they disapprove of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), often referred to as just the “Common Core,” with 42 percent who are unsure and 17 percent who favor the standards. The goal of the Core is to establish national standards for learning so that all students, regardless of where they live, leave high school with the skills necessary to enter college or the labor force.

Reformers will use this as pushback:

The survey finds that most Americans say that they don’t know very much about the Common Core standards, and they seem to be right: misconceptions about the content of the standards are widespread – almost half of Americans (44%) think that sex education are part of them – and are strongly connected with opposition to them.

...


A lack of information is evident from misconceptions about what topics are included in the standards. In the survey, Americans were also asked if four specific topics – sexual education, global warming, evolution, and the American Revolution – are included in the Common Core. In reality, none of these are part of the Common Core standards, which only include topics in math and reading. Still, two-thirds of Americans say that at least one of these is in the standards, with 37 percent saying that three or four of them are.

But who's at fault for the "lack of information" around Common Core?

Deformers thought they could shove through dramatic eduction reform without the public being clued in - new standards, new tests, teacher evaluations tied to those tests, all in some way connected to the stimulus package, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind waivers - so if there are widespread misconceptions around the Common Core, well, then next time don't shove all this stuff through at once without public discussion and buy-in beforehand.

Elites think they know best but one thing they don't seem to know anything about is how the rest of us respond when shit gets shoved down our throats.

Quite frankly, I don't care if the Core is killed for the right reasons or the wrong reasons anymore.

I just want to see the Core killed.

And with so many people against Common Core, so few in favor and Common Core proponents seemingly unable to persuade the "Don't Know Enough" categories despite all the money they throw into their propaganda, I'd have to say the Common Core is going to die an early death.

Alas, like so many of the zombie lies that pervade education reform (schools are in crisis, teachers are lazy, merit pay works), the Core may re-emerge later on with a new name and new branding.

New Yorkers Say Common Core Must Go - 49%-34% In Latest Siena Poll

As I detailed earlier, 49% of New Yorkers want the state to get rid of Common Core:

By a margin of 49 percent to 34 percent, voters said implementation of controversial Common Core testing standards, aimed at better accessing students’ needs, should be stopped.

That's a 15 percentage point plurality in favor of killing the Core in New York.

You can see how the unions, had they been opposed to Common Core, could have joined with many parents and really put a shiv into Cuomo's ed deform agenda.

Because he's going to push charter schools, teacher evaluations/dismissals and (perhaps) vouchers as the biggest wants on the New Yorker education list.

But it turns out killing the Core is very high on the list of things NYers want in education policy.

This is something that Cuomo - deep in the pocket of education reform donors/supporters - does NOT want to do.

Alas, it is also something the unions inexplicably do NOT want to do either.

Or perhaps it's not so inexplicable - cynics surmise there's some financial incentives for the union leaders to maintain support for the Core and testing.

In any case, a great opportunity to fight back against Cuomo on education policy on an issue where a clear plurality of NYer's are opposed to his policy is being lost.

Instead the unions are running ads about fully funding public education even as Cuomo and his ed deform buddies are arguing that public schools and public school teachers suck and the first needs to be broken up and the second needs to be fired.

Using the anti-Common Core animus in the state would've been a great way to re-frame the debate and put Cuomo and his ed deform buddies on the defensive.

Unfortunately, it is not to be.

NYSED Commissioner John King Vows To Bring The Chaos, Confusion & Anxiety Of New York's Common Core Roll-Out To A National Audience

From Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY:

ALBANY—Outgoing state education commissioner John King hopes to help school leaders in other states navigate the difficult transition to the Common Core standards and related standardized testing in his new position as the second-highest ranking official in the U.S. Department of Education.

Two years ago, under King’s leadership, New York became the second state to begin testing students on material aligned to the more difficult math and English language arts standards. New York launched the new assessments years ahead of most other states, which will begin administering the tougher exams this spring.

...

“In some ways, the hardest part of the transition is when you’ve given that first set of assessments that reflect higher standards and the state has to confront lower scores and the reality that there’s such a large gap between where we are and where we need to be,” King said during an exclusive interview with Capital. “I’ve encouraged my colleagues to do the best they can to prepare parents, communities, the public for those lower scores. We certainly tried to do that in New York and most importantly pointed to what it means: It isn’t to say that students learned less during that school year but rather to say that this is a realistic picture of where we are relative to college and career readiness.

 “It is a place where I hope that I can be helpful, certainly to my colleagues around the country,” he said.

Oh, yeah, John, you'll be extremely helpful to your colleagues around the country as they see what NOT to do as they rollout out Common Core and the attendant tests that come with the standards.

It was Governor Cuomo who characterized the implementation of Common Core by John King's NYSED as "massive confusion, massive anxiety and massive chaos all across the state."

Parents and teachers across the state criticized King and his NYSED, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and her Board of Regents, over the mess that is Common Core and the Common Core tests in New York.

King refused to accept any of the criticism and responded with his own passive aggressive hostility, first canceling future town halls with parents, then sitting stone-faced through rescheduled ones after Regents Chancellor Tisch forced him to attend them.

The LoHud editorial board described King's engagement with parents and teachers at these forums:

For many in the Lower Hudson Valley, a lasting image of outgoing Education Commissioner John King will be of him sitting impassively at Port Chester Middle School in late 2013. The school auditorium was packed with hundreds of parents, teachers and others. Speaker after speaker stood up to decry the rapid rollout of the Common Core standards and new state tests. King appeared to listen, but said little and gave no ground. Most importantly, he didn't show a pinch of interest in connecting with parents, acknowledging their concerns or even making them feel as if they had been heard.

...

The Port Chester forum came shortly after King had canceled another series of statewide forums, claiming they had been co-opted by "special interests." To John King, anyone who questions or criticizes the state's top-down education "reform" agenda is an outsider who is not committed to seeing kids learn. Parents and educators who find flaws in sweeping curriculum and teacher evaluation changes are portrayed as lazy, excuse-making haters.

 This isn't the case, of course. Many parents and educators in this region have offered reasonable, passionate and often convincing arguments against the growing state focus on testing, data-crunching, and evaluating teachers with a formula that is easily picked apart. But King has not been willing to engage his critics. This position has enraged many and created a bizarre stare-down between the state Education Department and many school districts that are supposed to be part of the same team.

Given his track record of failure here in New York State as education commissioner, the only "help" King can provide other education leaders around the state is as a symbol of hubris, overreach and incompetence.

That is, unless the rest of the country wants the "massive confusion, massive anxiety and massive chaos all across the state" that King brought here to New York.

And that's pro-Common Core, pro-testing Andrew Cuomo characterizing King's CCSS implementation that way, not some member of the opt-out movement or other critic of education reform policy.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch Wants Massive Expansion Of Charter Schools In New York State

Bloomberg is gone, but his pro-charter, pro-school closing policies live on at the state level:

The state should raise its cap to allow more charter schools, the Board of Regents chief said Sunday, running counter to the city administration’s position.

“As we look to this legislative season, people are going to say we need to raise the charter cap. I personally am a great believer in charter schools ... I believe in opening them aggressively” Chancellor Merryl Tisch said on the John Catsimatidis radio show. “I’d like to push more charter schools.”

Charter backers plan an effort to raise or eliminate the cap, which has 28 slots left in the city.

Tisch said the jury is out on Mayor de Blasio’s recently announced plan to turn around the city’s most troubled schools — but if they don’t show progress, the state will step in to attempt to shut them down.

“If we do not see movement on these schools, these lowest-performing schools, in terms of their ability to retool their workforce, by the spring, we will move to close them,” she said. “Because these are the schools that have failed for generations now.”

Isn't it time parents and teachers take aim at Regents Chancellor Tisch, the doyenne of testing as Diane Ravitch once called her, and force her out?

This is a Regents Chancellor who carries out the destruction of the public education system in this state by pushing the abysmal Common Core, the badly designed state tests (which are kept mostly secret by the state BECAUSE they are so badly designed), the badly written EngageNY curriculum and a teacher evaluation system that a study by superintendents in the Lower Hudson Valley shows is harmful to children and teachers.

Now she goes on the attack against public schools, calling for "aggressive" efforts to expand charters in the state and says the state will move to close "failing" schools in NYC if Mayor de Blasio doesn't.

Tisch continues to carry out the corporate education agenda, harming children all across the state with her CCSS agenda, the garbage in the EngageNY curriculum and the badly-designed state tests, and now she is looking to help her criminal friends on Wall Street cash in by pushing for a massive influx of charters around the state.

This woman doesn't belong as Regents Chancellor.

It is time to begin a parent- and teacher-led campaign against her to force her out.

You can start by calling Shelly Silver, her pal who put her in power in the first place.

Here's his number:

District Office

250 Broadway Suite 2307
New York, NY 10007
212-312-1420

Albany Office

LOB 932
Albany, NY 12248
518-455-3791

Email:  http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/Sheldon-Silver/contact/

I'm under no illusion that it will be easy to push back against the Doyenne of Tests or force her out.

But it is time to try.

The harm this woman has done in carrying out her corporate education reform agenda needs to be stopped.

Now We Know Why Cuomo Is Running The Education Ad

I've blogged a few times about Cuomo's latest campaign ad, which is focused on education and makes the claim that he has pushed for a five year moratorium on Common Core consequences for students (a lie - the moratorium is two years) and is opposed to "over-testing" (also a lie - his APPR teacher evaluation system causes much of the over-testing by forcing teachers in every grade in every subject to be evaluated using both state and local tests and assessments.)

You can see those posts here, here and here.

The ad, which shows Cuomo helping his daughter with her homework, was clearly aimed at women, with it's soft focus photography, Cuomo all dressed in white amid a holiday background (even the pumpkins are white), and the text assuring voters "Education is the gift we give our children..."

Clearly Cuomo is trying to shore up his support among women with this late election cycle ad - and here's why.

Per the latest Siena poll, Cuomo's support among women is what's keeping him afloat:

According to the poll, 54 percent of voters view Cuomo favorably, while a record high 43 percent view him unfavorably.

Voters also have a harsher assessment than ever of the governor’s performance, the poll found. A record high percentage—25 percent—said they thought Cuomo had done a “poor” job in office so far, while the percentage who said they believed his performance had been “good” stood at 34 percent, his lowest numbers on that question since he took office. Nine percent said they thought Cuomo was doing an “excellent” job while 32 percent rated his job performance as “fair,” the poll found.

Cuomo is far more popular among women, according to the poll. Sixty-five percent of the women questioned hold a favorable view of the governor, compared to 32 percent who have an unfavorable view of him. Among men, the poll found 41 percent had a favorable view of Cuomo, while 56 percent had an unfavorable opinion.

Cuomo's approval among women is growing. A Siena poll taken in late September found 59 percent of female voters viewed him favorably.

In recent months, the governor has sought to strengthen his support among women by creating the Women’s Equality Party, and his campaign recently began airing ads featuring his three daughters and girlfriend, celebrity chef Sandra Lee, promoting the party and a package of legislation called the Women’s Equality Act.

Apparently the Women's Equality Party Cuomo created is garnering support from some female voters.

Maybe that's why Cuomo is driving around in a bus that looks like a box of tampons.

At any rate,the education ad is the latest salvo to ensure those numbers in female support don't crater before Election Day for him.

Because if his support among female voters fell to his support among male voters, he'd be in trouble.

That his education ad full of lies and deceptions - well, that's just Cuomo doing what he does best.

He's saying anything to win on Election Day.

You can be sure that the Wednesday after the election, he'll drop all this Women's Equality Party stuff, as well as the concerns over Common Core and "over-testing" and go right back to governing the way he did in the first term.

Another Andrew Cuomo Lie In His Education Ad

Last night I posted how people shouldn't be fooled by Andrew Cuomo's new education ad.

In the ad, Cuomo claims the following:

“Education is the gift we give our children, and they deserve the very best,” Cuomo narrates in the ad. “Over the years, I’ve helped my kids by just being there. That’s why I want real teacher and school evaluations; to stop over-testing our children; not to use Common Core scores for at least five years, and then only if our children are ready. I want to invest $2 billion dollars to build the new technology classrooms of tomorrow. And I still believe the best education equipment is the kitchen table, and the best teacher is the parent.”

In yesterday's post I took on the "not to use Common Core scores for at least five years, and then only if our children are ready" line.

There is no five year moratorium on anything in New York State.

The budget agreement last spring brought a two year moratorium on using test scores from the Common Core assessments for students:

As part of the state budget approved in March, Cuomo and the Legislature approved a number of changes to the state's implementation of the Common Core, including a two-year pause on using standardized test scores as the basis for promoting students to the next grade level.

In addition, the legislature passed a bill shielding teachers who teach students who take the Common Core assessments from the worst effects of having those scores used in the state test component of Cuomo's APPR teacher evaluation system:

ALBANY – Legislative leaders and Gov. Andrew Cuomo struck a deal Thursday that would largely hold teachers harmless from poor student scores on Common Core-based exams for two years.

A bill introduced Thursday would essentially exclude Common Core test results from some teacher evaluations through the 2014-15 school year, which starts July 1, shielding them from the negative consequences of a poor review caused by the scores.

Both the moratorium for students and the moratorium for teachers run through the 2014-2015 school year - this year - and then things go back to the way they were before, with districts able to use the test scores to hold children back.

Nothing actually changes for teachers because Cuomo never signed the so-called teacher safety net into law - teachers still have the CCSS test scores used in their APPR teacher evaluation ratings without the shield devised in the legislature bill.

So when Cuomo says he has pushed to "not to use Common Core scores for at least five years, and then only if our children are ready," he is looking voters directly in the eye and lying to them.

That's Pathological Lie #1 in the ad.

Here's Pathological Lie #2 in the ad:

That’s why I want...to stop over-testing our children

Right before that lie, Cuomo brags about bringing "real teacher and school evaluations" to the state - which in practice means he added to the batteries of tests that were already in place so that teachers and schools could be evaluated using student performance and test data.

Cuomo's vaunted APPR teacher evaluation system (vaunted in his own mind, at any rate - nearly everybody else seems to hate it) works this way:

A) 60% of a teacher's rating comes from "subjective measures," like classroom observations and student surveys
B) 20% comes from "state measures," based upon state tests that students take
C) 20% comes from "local measures," based upon local tests and assessments devised by districts.

There was an immense amount of testing even before the new APPR teacher evaluation system was put into place, but that "immense amount" has now gone to "insane amount" in many schools.

For example, some districts have students taking "pre-assessments" early in the school year and "post-assessments" later in the year in every grade in every subject in order to evaluate their teachers via Cuomo's APPR teacher evaluation mandate.

These local tests and/or performance assessments come on top of the state tests mandates - math and ELA Common Core tests in 3rd-8th grade, Regents exams in high school - the field testing that is done by NYSED to try out new test items on students, and the PSAT test that sophomores and juniors take at their schools in some districts that are used as pre-assessments for APPR as well.

Cuomo is once again looking voters directly in the eye and lying when he says he wants "to stop over-testing our children."

His APPR teacher evaluation system has taken the Endless Testing regime that was already in place pre-APPR and shot it up with steroids.

That Cuomo feels the need to lie so blatantly twice in this election ad shows you how desperate he is feeling in this election.

It would be interesting to see what his internal polling is telling him that he felt the need to dress up all in white, pull his daughter into the ad to help her with her "homework" (or maybe it's her taxes - she looks old enough to be filing a 1040A form) and claim there's a five year moratorium on Common Core consequences when there isn't anything of the sort while saying he's against "over-testing" even as he pursues policies that force "over-testing."

Don't Be Fooled - Cuomo Isn't Caving On Common Core

A headline on this Dave Weigel piece at Bloomberg News claims Andrew Cuomo has "conceded defeat" in the Common Core wars:

Over the summer, when Zephyr Teachout was mounting a surprisingly potent primary challenge to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, I noticed a poll result that confounded some left/right stereotypes. When asked if "Common Core standards should continue to be implemented," a majority of voters said "no." Only 47 percent of Democrats wanted the standards. Independents, who were planning to vote for Cuomo, broke against Common Core by 14 points.

The situation can't have gotten any better for education reforms since then, judging by Cuomo's new TV spot. Among his education pledges is a solemn one "not to use Common Core scores for at least five years, and then only if our children are ready." 

What a dizzying downward spiral it's been for Common Core. Just a few years ago, it was the joint product of agreements by 48 governors (minus only Rick Perry and Sarah Palin), an attempt to ameliorate the negative impacts of No Child Left Behind. (Cuomo was not elected until 2010, after the initial agreements.) Then conservatives rose in opposition – and for a while, progressives laughed at foolhardy lawmakers warning that these new standards would induct children into homosexuality. Later, as Tim Murphy has documented, suburbanites (in New York especially) started raging about the new testing that reflected poorly on their kids, and labor unions worried about the shuttering of underperforming schools.

That's how we ended up with this ad, from a center-left Democrat with heavy labor backing, promising voters that he will slow-walk the education standards that Glenn Beck had warned about first.

But as I posted earlier tonight, there is no five year moratorium on Common Core consequences.

The budget agreement that Cuomo signed into law this spring delayed Common Core consequences for two years, not five - and that was for students only.

As of now, the Common Core consequences for teachers remain.

The APPR teacher evaluation system in the state mandates that 20% of a teacher's evaluation come from student performance on state test scores.

If teachers have students who take the Common Core tests, their state test component for APPR will still be based on those scores - even though the Common Core tests don't count for students.

It's true that the legislature passed a bill giving a safety net for teachers in those circumstances - but so far, Cuomo hasn't had time to sign that bill into law (though he has had time to declare yogurt the official state snack.)

So I dunno what Weigel is reporting here - he's taking Cuomo's ad at face value, but he's foolish to do so.

There is no five year anything for Common Core and some consequences remain even during the so-called two year moratorium (albeit for teachers.)

Josefa Velasquez and Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY report the following:

It's unclear whether the statement is a new plan that Cuomo is revealing in the ad, or a claim about his record on the Common Core, the controversial standards for English and math instruction that have been adopted by most states. Cuomo has pushed for changes that would place less emphasis on students' scores on new standardized tests based on the Common Core, but none of those changes would apply for exactly five years.

...

Cuomo's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment explaining the "five years" pledge in the ad.

In short, Weigel is wrong - Cuomo isn't "slow-walking" anything around Common Core.

The moratorium on Common Core consequences is two years and if I'm not mistaken, those two years are up at the end of the 2014-2015 school year.

Unless Cuomo makes an explicit statement to the contrary, none of the jive in that soft-focus education ad of his changes anything about the Common Core implementation in New York - not for students, not for teachers.

Cuomo Says New York Has At Least A Five Year Moratorium On Common Core

The State of Politics blog reports Cuomo is running a new ad touting his education record.

The ad, all bright and cheery with Cuomo in a white sweater, shows the governor helping his daughter with her homework,

Here's the text of the ad:

“Education is the gift we give our children, and they deserve the very best,” Cuomo narrates in the ad. “Over the years, I’ve helped my kids by just being there. That’s why I want real teacher and school evaluations; to stop over-testing our children; not to use Common Core scores for at least five years, and then only if our children are ready. I want to invest $2 billion dollars to build the new technology classrooms of tomorrow. And I still believe the best education equipment is the kitchen table, and the best teacher is the parent.”

Here's the ad:



State of Politics notes this oddity in the ad:

Policy-wise, the ad is interesting on another level.

The ad’s line about a moratorium for using Common Core scores for “at least five years” is especially intriguing. It’s unclear if the governor is pursuing a new policy stance for a second term. At the same time, Cuomo says he would only allow the test scores “only if our children are ready” but no guidelines are given as to how that would be defined.

Cuomo still hasn't signed the safety net for teachers whose students took Common Core tests that didn't count for them but did count for teacher ratings.

Now he's saying there's "at least a five year" moratorium on using Common Core scores for children, but if I remember correctly, the budget settled on just a two year moratorium.

In addition, he says nothing about whether those Common Core tests just won't count for students but will still count for teachers.

Given how he brags in the ad how he wants "real teacher and school evaluations," I would think he doesn't plan to delay APPR ratings for teachers based upon those Common Core tests - especially since he hasn't had the time to sign that safety net he negotiated with NYSUT into law yet (though he did have time to make yogurt the official state snack.)

This ad shows you how desperate he is to run up the score on Astorino - it's clearly aimed at women (the soft focus, the white colors, the presence of his daughter) and maybe it will win a few votes to him.

But I'm skeptical of that - many mothers know the reason there is Common Core in the schools and the reason why there are Common Core tests is because Andrew Cuomo wants it that way and has taken no steps to change the state's education policies.

Sure, Cuomo doesn't control the SED or the Regents, but he surely could change the direction of the state policies if he wanted to.

Instead he simply lies in his ad that he's instituted a Common Core moratorium for "at least five years" that doesn't actually exist.

Andrew Cuomo - liar, hypocrite and he looks goofy in white.

Howie Hawkins: Get Rid Of Common Core - And Standardized Testing

Here's why I am supporting Howie Hawkins for governor in next month's election:

ALBANY—Green Party gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins has entered the fight among liberals and conservatives over which side is more opposed to the Common Core standards.

Hawkins, during a conference call with reporters on Monday morning, said he wants New York to ditch the curriculum standards that New York adopted with the majority of U.S. states. But he also wants to get rid of statewide standards—and standardized testing—altogether, a position that he says sets him apart from his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, who is running on a third-party line entitled “Stop Common Core.”

“My position is we need to opt out of Common Core because it’s dumbing down education,” Hawkins said. “It’s forcing our teachers to teach to the test. That whole high-stakes testing regime, which is part of Common Core, is a big drain on time and money in schools.

“We should let the local teachers and parents and school boards make the decisions about standards, curriculum and assessment,” he continued.

When asked about Astorino, Hawkins said: “He’s talking about setting up our own standardized assessments in New York. I think we’ve got to get away from that and let the teachers teach.”

During that conference call, a reporter noted that many of the state tests are part of a federal mandate:

“If the law says you gotta do it, you gotta do it,” Hawkins said, responding to a question about the federal requirements. “But we are adding to the tests by opting into the Race to the Top money.”

Hawkins' reference was to the Obama administration’s signature education initiative, a grant competition through which New York won $700 million in 2010. The funds required the state to adopt curriculum standards that aimed to boost college- and career-readiness, such as the Common Core.

The grant program also required New York to develop a statewide teacher-evaluation system that rates educators partly based on students' test scores. The evaluation system has resulted in more local testing in some districts, although some confuse that testing as being tied to the adoption of the Common Core.

Indeed, the mandates were made much worse by Race to the Top.

APPR?

Tied to Race to the Top.

inBloom?

Tied to Race to the Top.

Common Core?
 
Tied to Race to the Top.

All that testing added to every subject in nearly every grade in New York schools?

Consequence of APPR which is tied to Race to the Top.

It's true, the Obama administration has now tied some of the worst reforms to No Child Left Behind waivers, so even sending the RttT money back to the feds won't make some of the worst stuff go away overnight.

But the sun is getting ready to set on the Obama administration in a couple of years, so Arne Duncan and the rest of his merry men and women in reform aren't going to be in power forever.

There can be some post-RttT/post-NCLB waiver sanity.

Vote Howie Hawkins on Election Day.

Common Core Proponents Whine It's Everybody's Fault But Theirs

Joy Pullmann nails this:

It has become fashionable to blame the effects of nationalizing education on anything but the national curriculum mandates and the tests that accomplish it.

Teachers unions have seized on Common Core to undermine testing mandates and teacher evaluation schemes, bemoans Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek. Bad model lessons are undercutting Common Core’s potential, exclaims Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Common Core teacher retraining sessions teem with learning theories that research has proven ineffective, complains E. D. Hirsch, founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation. And textbook publishers have twisted Common Core into a resurgence of “fuzzy math,” asserts College Board’s Kathleen Porter-Magee.

In other words, our nation’s 50 million schoolkids enter a storm of curricular chaos this fall, but, like them, Common Core is just a hapless victim. Has Common Core really been hijacked, or has it been a rogue vessel all along?

 ...

A look at the standards themselves, as its proponents often demand, suggests this controversy is at least partly Common Core’s fault. Its curriculum mandates are wordy, obtuse, and inaccurate. Try this representative directive, for kindergarten: “Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.” After wading through the blubbery language, an astute reader will ask, “How many ways can there be to spell the five vowels? And are there any minor vowels?” There is precisely one spelling for each of the five, and only five, vowels. So what could this mandate mean?

It’s unclear, and so is the rest of Common Core, as in-depth analysis along these lines from Hillsdale College’s Terrence Moore shows in his book The Story Killers. So no wonder New York teachers, and teachers everywhere, must muddle about, prey to contradictory education theories, in the name of Common Core. The lack of curricular clarity in Common Core has spawned mass confusion. Follow the money: The Common Core beneficiaries are consultants and test developers.

...

That’s the real essence of Common Core: a political movement, a neat and tidy scheme to streamline U.S. education through a set of rapid, enormous policy changes rather than undergo the tedious process of convincing people and their elected representatives they should assent to a new way of organizing education. To speed things along, the people who created Common Core requested back in 2008 that the federal government play “an enabling role” and “offer a range of tiered incentives” to get states to sign onto national curriculum mandates and tests. 

Once President Barack Obama came into office, he obliged, and then some. Thanks to federal grants offered during the recent recession, 40 state departments of education offered to accept this complete overhaul of their schools’ curricula and tests more than five months before the actual curriculum requirements were published in June 2010 and two months before even a draft was made publicly available. Taxpayers still await the final version of these new national tests.

Given the speed, secrecy, and arm-twisting of this initiative, the resulting chaos is no surprise. Potential pitfalls and a broad base of support never emerged during public debate, because there was no public debate. What is surprising is that people still insist on blaming Common Core’s victims rather than its perpetrators.

What the Common Core Authoritarians who have tried to shove these untested, ill-conceived national standards and national tests down the throats of the entire nation while claiming they're "voluntary" are discovering is that you can rig the political process, buy off the politicians, shove through your policy changes in the dark of a recession and throw "incentive cashola" around like George Steinbrenner on the first day of free agency, but if people around the country don't buy into the policies, you're going to get major pushback.

The Common Core Authoritarians are now in the "whining stage" of their defense, which is where they blame everybody but themselves for the mess.

That's a pretty good sign that things aren't going to turn around for Common Core and the ancillary tests and other policy reforms that go with it any time soon.

I can't imagine Bill Gates whining that he can't understand why Common Core is such a political football is going to win over too many critics and skeptics.

Common Core whine - it doesn't get better with age.

Louisiana Parish School System Votes To Get Rid Common Core Math

And so the movement against Common Core continues to gain steam:

ST. TAMMANY PARISH, La. —Major changes are on the way in the way math is taught in the St. Tammany Parish School System in the continuing controversy over Common Core.

After another long and often intense meeting Thursday night, the matter came to a vote before the St. Tammany School Board.

"We're going to phase out the Eureka Math from the math curriculum by the end of this school year," said School Board President Beth Heintz.

While a number of educators and others urged the board to give Eureka Math more time to work, a large and vocal contingent of parents just wanted it gone.

Over recent months concerned parents have echoed similar sentiments.

Said one parent, "I have a child who is very discouraged, who has always been a good student in math and between my husband and I we have three college degrees, we have to Google to figure out what we're supposed to help our child with."

"We have listened to our parents," said Heintz. " We realize that they do not care for the Eureka Math curriculum. I know that many of our teachers have listened to that. I'm sure they will keep that in their minds when choosing the curriculum they want to use in their classrooms."

Already the black line master work sheets that students use online with Eureka have been deleted. The school system will now create work sheets of their own to replace the Eureka element.

Can you imagine a school board that listens to the will of parents and votes accordingly?

Here in New York State, we have a Board of Regents, a Department of Education, a governor and a legislature that listen only to the will of Bill Gates and other education reformers.

Common Core Authoritarians Bully, Threaten And Intimidate To Keep Common Core In Place

Common Core proponents seem to be very big on censorship and intimidation.

In NY State, there's a gag order on teachers who administer or grade Common Core tests - they are under threat of losing their jobs, having their teaching licenses revoked or being hit with criminal charges if they reveal test items or talk publicly about the tests.

In Louisiana, former Bloomberg NYCDOE henchman John White seems to have followed suit with threats and intimidation over the Core:

Gov. Bobby Jindal went on the offensive against state Education Superintendent John White Wednesday, accusing him of marginalizing teachers and implying Louisiana's top education officials may be silencing opposition from educators on the Common Core academic standards.

Jindal issued an executive order requiring local and state education officials to respect teachers' right to free speech and specifically their right to criticize Common Core. There was universal praise for the governor's action, but also some disagreement over whether there is a widespread problem with teachers being muzzled over the academic standards. 

...

Jindal issued the executive order as a reaction to an article in Alexandria's Town Talk, in which one anonymous teacher says she had been reprimanded for posting a negative comment about Common Core on Facebook. The governor's office said it had heard from other teachers who were also told to keep their Common Core complaints to themselves.

"We have received a lot of calls and letters from teachers who are opposed to Common Core, and we want to be sure that these teachers' rights are protected," said Shannon Bates, Jindal's deputy communications director. "If teachers are being quieted in one parish -- it can happen in others, and we want to make sure these teachers are able to be heard."

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers says they haven't had a lot of complaints from teachers about being muzzled over Common Core and Jindal is in a battle with White over the standards, so it's possible he's making hay over something that isn't a huge problem - yet.

But NOLA.com makes this much clear:

Louisiana teachers associations were grateful that Jindal reaffirmed free speech protections for educators. They said teachers are afraid to speak out against school policies, though that fear isn't exclusively related to Common Core.

Educators have felt mounting pressure for at least two years not to say anything about major teaching changes, since it has become easier for supervisors to fire them through a new state law Jindal supported. 

"They do feel as though their jobs might be in jeopardy. It's not just in Louisiana. It's something that is common all over the country for teachers," said Debbie Meaux, president of the Louisiana Association of Educators.

There's little doubt that these top-down standards, developed in secret and rammed through during the darkest days of the last recession, are under assault from students, parents, and teachers across the nation and proponents, unable to defend the largely indefensible standards, have taken to authoritarian measures to push back against criticism.

That's meant insulting critics as crazy people, saying some moms might not like the standards because they reveal their kids might not be as smart as the moms think they are, threatening to punch people in the face who criticize the standards, or intimidating teachers to keep quiet over poorly-designed CCSS tests by holding license revocations and criminal charges over their heads.

I can't imagine threats and intimidation are going to keep the standards in place for long - not with criticism and opposition to them mounting.

But the Common Core authoritarians certainly are going to try to bully, threaten and intimidate their way to Common Core nirvana.

NYSUT Sues NYSED Over Common Core Testing Gag Order

Here's some action by the NYSUT leadership I can support:

The statewide teachers union filed a federal lawsuit late Wednesday over the state Department of Education’s policy of requiring teachers to sign confidentiality agreements before scoring tests based on the Common Core standards.

The New York State United Teachers argues in the legal action that the confidentiality requirement — which the labor group says is essentially a “gag order” against teachers is unconstitutional and violates free speech rights.

NYSUT argues the SED policy prevents teachers from raising issues with state testing out of fear of reprisal.

The gag order is without doubt meant to silence any criticism of the tests by keeping teachers from speaking out about particular test items they find that are poorly designed.

NYSED and the Regents would like to keep future "Pineapple and Hare" debacles under wraps through the threat of a lawsuit and license revocation on teachers.

And of course, the NYSED goons carry those threats out at times.

NYSED Commissioner King: We'll Rig Common Core Tests To Show Continued Gains Over Time

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY:

ALBANY—State education commissioner John King expects student performance on Common Core-aligned exams to improve over time, as it has in Kentucky, the only state that has moved faster than New York in implementing the more rigorous test standards.

Kentucky reported significant gains during the third year of Common Core-aligned state exams, the results of which were released last Friday. Students across grade levels improved in most subjects. Graduation and college-readiness rates improved as well and typically underperforming groups of students, such as those living in poverty or with disabilities, also showed improvements.

“We are optimistic that we will see continued growth as we head into the third year of Common Core assessments,” King said. “Like Kentucky, we can expect that the progress over time will confirm the strength of the work of teachers and principals on implementing the Common Core.”

As I've pointed out over and over here at Perdido Street School blog, the educrats decide what is "passing" or not when it comes to these tests.

That renders this kind of thing meaningless:

The results of Kentucky’s third year of testing provides more encouraging data for Common Core advocates.

For example, Kentucky's college-readiness rate is now 62 percent, up from 54 percent last year and 47 percent in 2012. The four-year graduation rate is also up slightly, to 87 percent.

Gee, who set's the college-readiness rate?

Educrats in Kentucky.

Who decides that rate has jumped from 47% in 2012 to 65% now?

Educrats in Kentucky.

Want to make a bet those stats wouldn't hold up to scrutiny if an independent audit of the scoring methodology were done?

The same thing happened here in New York last year when educrats lowered the number of correct answers students needed to score "proficient" on the Common Core exams.

The NY Post reported back in August the following:

State officials touted increases in scores on tough Common Core exams this year but failed to reveal that they had lowered the number of right answers needed to pass half the exams.

The state Education Department dropped the number of raw points needed to hit proficiency levels in six of the 12 English and math exams given to students in grades 3 to 8, officials acknowledged.
...

Student scores plunged on last year’s statewide 3-8 tests — the first based on the new Common Core standards. Before the 2013 exams, a panel of 95 educators decided how many points, or correct answers, students had to get to demonstrate proficiency.

But the point cutoffs were tweaked after this year’s tests. The state and its testing vendor, Pearson, found six tests were harder and four easier this year than in 2013, Wagner said.

They did so by comparing how students performed on “anchor” test questions — identical items used in both 2013 and 2014. A report on the scoring process will be released in December or January, Wagner said.

The changes raise questions about the validity of the results.

“The information given out about the test questions does not provide a complete picture, making it hard to judge how much progress students made last year,” said Fred Smith, a former testing analyst for city schools.

"Progress" as practiced by educrats in power pushing an agenda always needs to be carefully parsed and studied.

So when King says he is sure that NY students will show continued progress on the Common Core tests over time, what he means is he and his fellow merry men and women in reform in Albany will rig the scores to ensure that's exactly what happens.

Common Core As Child Abuse

From the Christian Post:

Parents in New York state described the anxiety and depression experienced by their children after the state began implementing testing tied to the Common Core in part two of Home School Legal Defense Association's documentary, "Building the Machine: A Movie About the Common Core."

The children are "blaming themselves and saying there is something defective with them and school is making them feel defective," Mary Calamia, a licensed clinical social worker who works with children and teachers in the New York state school system says in the film.

"They're blaming themselves, they're saying they're at fault. They're calling themselves stupid. ... Thus we get anxiety and depression," she added.

Rachel Gibson, a special education teacher and parent in Westchester County, New York, recalled that one child carved the word "stupid" into her wrist after receiving her test scores.

...

Calamia recalled that around October 2012, after teachers had switched to the Common Core, she began noticing an unusually large number of students going to her with anxiety, depression and self-mutilating behavior.

As a social worker, she had dealt with those issues before. What was unusual was the sheer number of new cases.

"The numbers of kids coming in were off the charts, and that's when I first heard about Common Core," she said.

The Common Core curriculum is developmentally inappropriate, parents and experts in the film argued.

Yvonne Gasperino, a parent in Westchester County, New York, could not understand why her children's school was adopting the Common Core, given that it is a private Catholic school.

"This is cognitive child abuse," she said.

One of the architects of Common Core, former McKinsey consultant/current College Board President David Coleman, famously told New York parents that no one gave a shit what their children thought or felt, all that mattered was whether they could get a market analysis done for their bosses.

That's the spirit behind Common Core - no thoughts or feelings, just get the widget work done.

No wonder some children are crying, falling into depression and hurting themselves - they're being abused in school.

Bill Gates Says He Wants Common Standards AND A Common Curriculum

It's all about being "common" - for the commoners, at any rate:

Bill Gates called the Common Core academic standards a “very basic idea” to set national standards for what students should know at various grades.

But at a POLITICO event Monday, he also stepped right up to the edge of advocating a common curriculum as well — something that Common Core supporters have made it clear they do not intend to impose.

“Should Georgia have a different railroad width than anybody else? Should they teach multiplication in a different way? Oh, that’s brilliant. Who came up with that idea?” Gates said.

...

He said he thought of Common Core as “a technocratic issue,” akin to making sure all states use the same type of electrical outlet. “The idea that what you should know at various grades … should be well structured and you should really insist on kids knowing something so you can build on that. I did not expect that to become a big political issue.”

Gates described the state of education before Common Core was introduced as “a cacophony” because every state had different standards. Many of those standards, he said, didn’t align well with exams.


“Common Core is, to me, a very basic idea that kids should be taught what they’re going to be tested on and that we should have great curriculum material,” he said.

Standardization imposed from atop by the political functionaries of oligarchs like Gates.

And now he's out in the open about the standardized curricula he wants for all the kids in the country - except for those fortunate enough (or wealthy enough) to not be in the public school system.

I'm betting CCSS proponents are already going to be looking to undo the damage Gates did with his statements at the Politico event.

CCSS folks keep telling us Common Core is not a common curriculum - but now Bill Gates, the billionaire who's put more money up in support of Common Core than anybody other Uncle Sam, says differently.