The Tide Turns On The Common Core

Imagine a story on Common Core a year ago and ask yourself, would the tone have been this skeptical?

Common Core was created in 2009 and is meant to even the playing field by giving every state a universal set of standards to measure learning. The program is incentivized with federal grant money that is given to states that implement the standards.

Massachusetts is typically held up as an example of how the Common Core is supposed to work. The state is considered a success story, with education officials noting improving test scores and reading skills.

But Michael Benezra, a legislative director for the Massachusetts Senate, told Business Insider that the tide is turning in the Bay State on both sides of the aisle.

"Inside the [legislature], the general attitude is that Common Core ... is institutionalized and it's not going anywhere," Benezra said. "I'm starting to see the teachers unions and the charter school people kind of agreeing on the issue that Common Core needs to go."

Common Core emphasizes critical thinking, and the tests are designed to test students' comprehension about what they read and how they come to solutions for math problems. The tests are so intense, taking the average student eight to 10 hours to complete. And teachers are under so much pressure to prepare their students to do well that instruction becomes less individualized and critical thinking in students can be hampered.

"The reliance on testing pigeonholes the teachers to teach only to the test," Benezra said. "So the kids are coming out and what they're learning might not be conventional. So they might know some obscure facts about American history, but they might miss why the revolution started."

Common Core tests could end up defeating the purpose of the standards themselves.

"I think it's kind of counterintuitive to students getting the big picture because they're required to test so much," Benezra said. "In order to perform well on the test, you have to memorize things. ... You can say we're trying to get them to think more critically and read closely … but at the end, the students take a test, they don't write a long essay where they're forced to think deeply about the issue."

Proponents of the Core thought they had won total victory when the Obama administration had forced Common Core, the Common Core tests and teacher evaluations tied to those tests to both the Race to the Top carrot and the No Child Left Behind waiver stick, forcing states to adopt the Obama corporate education deform agenda whole.

But as the opposition against the Core has mounted, so too has the opposition to the ancillary reforms that go with the reform, like the testing.

As Jay Greene noted:

As the Common Core effort crumbles, its supporters are not just failing, but losing ground on previous accomplishments.   If you liked accountability testing, Common Core has done more to set back your efforts than Randi Weingarten ever could have done on her own.

...

 Several states will soon have no high stakes testing while they adopt a moratorium on stakes in their supposed transition to new tests.  The Gates Foundation has backed a two year delay in the hopes of rescuing their effort from collapse.  Like a retreating army suggesting a cease fire, they will find their opponents have little reason to keep the delay temporary.

We've got a long way to go before there is a stake through the heart of the Common Core and it's buried in four different crossroads and I'm under no illusions that the attacks against teachers and public schools will cease because the corporate deformers lost the Common Core War.

But you can see how much ground the CCSS proponents have lost in the last year even in how CCSS stories are framed in the media, let alone how people are talking about the Core at PTA meetings.

Core supporters and proponents once had the upper hand in this fight.

But no more.

The tide has turned and it's not turning back.

Should Bring Them To A Public School Too

From the DN weekend news round-up:

With his two daughters in tow, President Obama visited popular D.C. bookstore “Politics and Prose” Saturday to encourage holiday shoppers to support local businesses. (NYDN)

Great, Barry, now bring them to a public school and show them what a mess you've made of the public education system with your Racing to the Top and No Child Left Behind waivers that have brought us high stakes standardized tests in every grade in every subject, teacher evaluations tied to those tests, badly designed national standards that are boring students to tears in English class and confusing them in math class, and a data collection program that encourages states to hand over sensitive student information to Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch.

I mean, so long as you're using your daughters as political props.

Washington Post: Opt-Out Movement Growing

It's good to see this kind of coverage:

A decade into the school accountability movement, pockets of resistance to standardized testing are sprouting up around the country, with parents and students opting out of the high-stakes tests used to evaluate schools and teachers.

From Seattle, where 600 high school students refused to take a standardized test in January, to Texas, where 86 percent of school districts say the tests are “strangling our public schools,” anti-testing groups argue that bubble exams have proliferated beyond reason, delivering more angst than benefits.

...

The opt-out movement is nascent but growing, propelled by parents, students and some educators using social media to swap tips on ways to spurn the tests. They argue that the exams cause stress for young children, narrow classroom curricula, and, in the worst scenarios, have led to cheating because of the stakes involved — teacher compensation and job security.
 
Standardized testing is one of the most controversial aspects of the accountability movement that began in earnest in 2002 when President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act.

...

 Some say the Obama administration has pushed the stakes even higher through its Race to the Top program, which encourages states to use the standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. In some states, as much as half of a teacher’s job evaluation is now determined by student scores on standardized tests.

The resulting pressure is distorting education, anti-testing activists say.

It's a pretty good article - it lays the blame for the testing craze on both Bush and Obama, it notes that while Obama said in 2011 there may be too much reliance on testing in education, his policies actually promote exactly that, and it shows how more and more parents are joining the op-out movement.

It also gives us some scary figures that should give us some pause:

In 2001, states spent $552 million on testing.

In 2012, states spent $1.7 billion on testing.

Most states haven't even begun to implement the Common Core tests in every grade in every subject in order to evaluate teachers, as Obama's Race to the Top policy requires.

Just wait until the testing price tag then.

No wonder News Corporation and Microsoft and many other corporations are putting the hard sell on Common Core on the radio and TV these days.

They stand to make billions off this.

How Is Common Core For Kindergartners Not Child Abuse?

The NY Post has a horrifying article about the new Common Core expectations for four and five year olds in NYC schools.

Here's a taste:

Kindergarten has come a long way, baby — too far, some say.

Way beyond the ABCs, crayons and building blocks, the city Department of Education now wants 4- and 5-year-olds to write “informative/explanatory reports” and demonstrate “algebraic thinking.”

Children who barely know how to write the alphabet or add 2 and 2 are expected to write topic sentences and use diagrams to illustrate math equations.

...

The city has adopted national standards called the Common Core, which dramatically raise the bar on what kids in grades K through 12 should know.

The jargon is new, too. Teachers rate each student’s performance as “novice,” “apprentice,” “practitioner” or “expert.”

Kindergartners are introduced to “informational texts” read aloud, such as “Garden Helpers,” a National Geographic tale about useful pests.

After three weeks, kids have to “write a book about what they’ve learned,” with a drawing and sentences explaining the topic.

In math, kids tackle concepts like “tally chart,” “combination,” and “commutative property,” DOE records show.

The big test: “Miguel has two shelves. Miguel has six books . . . How many different ways can Miguel put books on the two shelves? Show and tell how you know.”

An “expert” would draw a diagram with a key, show all five combinations, write number sentences for each equation, and explain his or her conclusions using math terms, the DOE says. 

The consequences of these so-called "higher standards" on the four and five years blessed to have come of school age during the Great Common Core Movement is predictable - they're stressed, full of anxiety and scared:
 

“For the most part, it’s way over their heads,” a Brooklyn teacher said. “It’s too much for them. They’re babies!”

In a kindergarten class in Red Hook, Brooklyn, three children broke down and sobbed on separate days last week, another teacher told The Post.

When one girl cried, “I can’t do it,” classmates rubbed her back, telling her, “That’s OK.”

“This is causing a lot of anxiety,” the teacher said. “Kindergarten should be happy and playful. It should be art and dancing and singing and learning how to take turns. Instead, it’s frustrating and disheartening.”

The DOE spokesperson was less than empathetic about the horrific consequences of the new Common Core on kindergartners:

DOE spokeswoman Erin Hughes said, “These are the types of activities and exercises that students need to work on to acquire the skills they need to be ready for middle school, high school, college and careers.” 

Wow - this Erin Hughes person seems to have grown up under some similar kind of education system where getting along with others and learning the wonders of life were shelved in her kindergarten and replaced with physics and genome explorations.

Remember the Robert Fulghum book from years ago called "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten?

In that book, Fulghum wrote that every lesson that you really need from life is taught to you when you're in kindergarten:

Most of what I really need
To know about how to live
And what to do and how to be
I learned in kindergarten.
Wisdom was not at the top
Of the graduate school mountain,
But there in the sandpile at Sunday school.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life -
Learn some and think some
And draw and paint and sing and dance
And play and work everyday some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world,
Watch out for traffic,
Hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

That's what used to be taught in kindergarten.

Now under the Gates/Broad/Murdoch/Obama/Bloomberg/Cuomo/Klein/Rhee/Duncan/Bush education reform movement, they don't teach any of those things anymore.

Instead they teach how to get an eating disorder or a drug habit or an alcohol problem or workaholism or a shopping compulsion or OCD or a sex addiction or neurosis or any number of other issues because your kindergarten years have had all the joy and fun taken out of them and have been replaced with high stakes testing, higher order math and language lessons, and cutthroat competition with your peers.

It's not a mistake that the same oligarchs who have brought this insane Common Core to fruition do not send their kids to schools that use Common Core.

They send them to Waldorf schools.

Or Quaker schools.

Or Montessiori schools.

Or the Lab School.

You know, the kinds of schools that aren't run like army drill camps, where the teachers aren't graded using test scores, where the kids don't take high stakes standardized tests all throughout the year, where students get to explore meaningful subjects and lessons rather than endless test prep and drills.

The Common Core Federal Standards are tantamount to child abuse and we need to take the people promoting these things to court and charge them with crimes against humanity.

Seriously.

It's not a mistake either that the people who promote this abusive and authoritarian education system are the kind of people who would fail a standardized test based upon Robert Fulghum's book.

They never learned how to get along with others.

They never learned how to share.

They always need to win.

They always need things their way.

They like to hurt people (or fire them publicly on TV.)

And they never clean up their own messes.

Fred Rogers is dead but I really wish he were around today so that he could take the lead in exposing these Common Core Federal Standards for the garbage they are.

And I believe he would do just that.

Let's channel Fred Rogers and Robert Fulghum and John Dewey and Charles Dickens and Howard Zinn and George Carlin and all the other people who taught us that education is about more than testing and drilling, who taught us that education does not come out of a book but comes out of real world experiences with other people and other beings.

The Common Core as carried out by the NYCDOE is an abomination because we have a vindictive petty tyrant in charge of the city who wants to enforce compliance and obedience from the masses and thinks this kind of education system is the best way to do just that, but please know that the rest of the country is going to get similar treatment as these standards get implemented.

These standards are not meant to get kids up to speed with what they should really know.

These standards are meant to scare kids, parents, teachers and principals that what they're doing isn't good enough, that they need to work longer, harder and faster because omigod the Russians are beating us, er, I mean the Japanese are beating us, what I mean is, the Koreans are beating us, or the Chinese are...ah, screw it, SOMEBODY is beating us and we MUST take action to be Number 1 again!

The reality is, the only people who are beating us are the oligarchs and members of the 1% who have stolen most of the wealth in this country and now want the rest of it.

These wealthy, greedy oligarchs are using this education reform movement to educate the next generation of kids to expect to have to work longer and harder for less, to never get vacations or time off, to lead lives that are about drudgery and nothing else.

Most of all, these wealthy, greedy oligarchs want children to grow up rife with fear and anxiety, the earlier the better, so that they will grow into obedient and compliant adults, good workers who do what the bosses say and good consumers who buy what the advertisers tell them to buy.

As a side note, when you infuse a generation of children with the kind of fear and anxiety that the education reformers are infusing this current generation with, you are going to get a whole bunch of people with a lot of emotional issues that corporations can make a lot of money from - and I'm sure Big Pharma, the casino industry, the alcohol industry, the fast food industry, etc. are licking their corporate logos at that thought.

That's intentional on the part of the education reform oligarchs too - don't think they haven't thought that stuff through.

The only thing they like better than obedient workers is compliant consumers.

And so, I will say again, we not only need to kill the Common Core Federal Standards deader than a minimum wage hike in Mississippi, we need to take the people who promoted this crap - from the education think tankers who developed it and sold it to the politicians who put it into place to the education system functionaries who are carrying it out - and make sure they never get any power over anybody or anything ever again.

Because anybody who thinks four and five years need to learn permutations over sharing, test prep over play, and fear over wonder shouldn't be in charge of anybody or anything.

TWU President Tells Cuomo To "Shove It"

The unions - from CSEA to PEF to the UFT and the NYSUT - have fallen all over themselves to stay on the good side of Governor 1% (or "Chicken Cuomo" as he's known to his patron, Rupert Murdoch.)

This weekend one union leader finally told the union-busting, union-hating Cuomo what he can do with himself:

As the MTA’s contract with the Transport Workers Union Local 100 was set to expire at midnight last night, hundreds of workers gathered in the bitter cold outside the negotiations at the Sheraton Hotel in midtown for a raucous rally where they were joined by several local politicians.

“I’ve been bargaining for the better part of the last 48 hours,” TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen said. “I’m going to go back into that hotel and I’m going to tell the chairman of the MTA, I’m going to tell the governor to take their petty demands and shove it.”

As the state faces a looming deficit, Mr. Samuelsen said Governor Cuomo and the MTA are attempting to balance the budget “on the backs of Local 100 members” by taking five vacation days, creating part-time bus operators, limiting overtime and not granting a pay raise, among other sticking points.

Politicians who support working people, politicians who see that American society cannot be the 1% getting it all and the 99% getting the shiv, came out to support working people over the governor and the MTA:

Prior to Mr. Samuelsen’s appearance at the rally, which also included a tribute in honor of Martin Luther King Day, the crowd heard statements of support from City Council members Melissa Mark-Viverito, Ydanis Rodriguez and Tish James.

“We are here to support the leadership of TWU and to support all of you, because this is the best way to continue Martin Luther King’s dream,” Councilman Rodriguez said.

Both Councilwoman Mark-Viverito and Councilwoman James invoked the Occupy Wall Street protests in their speech to the TWU crowd.

“You keep this city running and we want to make sure that we support each and every one of you,” Councilwoman Mark-Viverito said. “The 99% is kicking, the 99% is saying, ‘We’re not going to take it anymore, we’re not going to give back anymore.’”

“We have to give homage to Occupation Wall Street who talked about the growing disparity in the city of New York and throughout this nation,” Councilwoman James said. “Those discussions are out front and it’s because of all of you working families, working individuals in the city of New York who deserve a fair contract, who deserve a living wage to sustain your families. That is why we are out here this evening in the cold and I’m glad its cold out here because it reminds us of our struggle.”

As a member of the UFT, I have watched my union leadership fall all over themselves to stay on Cuomo's good side.

As a member of the AFT, I have watched my union leadership fall all over themselves to keep their "seat at the table" in the Obama administration's discussions of education policy.

While they have been doing all of this groveling, both Cuomo and Obama have been pushing anti-teacher and anti-union measures meant to bust our unions, scapegoat teachers for all the problems in the public education system, give local districts the power to fire any teacher at any time for any reason and promote testing, testing, testing over true education.

My union leadership - Mike Mulgrew at the UFT and Randi Weingarten at the AFT and Richard Ianuzzi at the NYSUT - ought to be telling Cuomo and Obama they can "shove it" when they come around with these measures and policies.

They ought to be telling the American people and the people of the State of New York that the test score-based evaluation system pushed by Obama is NOT getting rid of the odious provisions of No Child Left Behind, as Obama and his Secretary of Education Privatization, Arne Duncan, like to say.

Rather this Obama policy is doubling down on the very measures that Americans hate about the Bush law - the narrowing of the curriculum, the erasure of any measure of skill or proficiency in the system except for test scores, and the destruction that the emphasis on scores has done to children, teachers and schools.

The UFT and the NYSUT and the AFT and the NEA ought to be telling Obama to shove his Gates Foundation-funded education policies, shove his 2012 re-election, and shove that idea he has that working teachers who are being scapegoated by this administration are going to vote for Obama again.

They ought to be saying "Remember Central Falls!"

Instead they offer endorsements of the president a year and a half before the election, as the NEA did.

And when the teacher-hating Andrew Cuomo declares New York State is suffering a "crisis in accountability" because teachers refuse to agree to a test score-based evaluation system with wide swings in stability and a margin of error larger than Andrew Cuomo's ego, the UFT and the NYSUT ought to be attacking Cuomo back and arguing that if there is a "crisis in accountability" in this state, it resides at the Regents and the NYSED where state officials are promoting corporate-friendly education "reform" policies while taking money, jobs and trips from corporate education reform companies like Pearson Education and News Corporation.

They ought to be arguing that the "crisis in accountability" in this state resides at Tweed Courthouse and City Hall in New York where the mayor and his Gates Foundation-funded education reform cadre push reforms like merit pay, school closures and test score-based evaluation systems for teachers that will make the education system WORSE while their own policies over the last ten years have resulted in a stagnation in test scores, phonied up graduation rates and chaos and destruction in the system like we have never seen before.

They ought to be arguing that if there is a "crisis in accountability" in this state, it resides with Governor Cuomo himself, who allowed the crooks on Wall Street (many of whom promote this corporate education reform stuff in their spare time when they're not raping investors and ravaging pension funds) to steal billions when he was attorney general, declining to criminally prosecute any of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse.

They ought to be telling Cuomo to shove his "I'm a lobbyist for students" jive by pointing out his kids go to private schools where teachers are NOT evaluated by test scores, where FEAR is NOT the rule of the day, where schools are NOT constantly under threat of closure if they don't show improvements in their quarterly test score results, where endless test prep and endless testing do NOT replace real learning.

They ought to point out that the self-appointed lobbyist for children is hurting students by promoting nothing but testing upon testing in the education system around the state.

Instead, the UFT urges us to call 311 and complain to the operator about Bloomberg.

And so, on this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, when Obama will point to himself as the culmination of King's dream and when Cuomo will claim he is the guy on the right side of the civil rights/education issue, I say both Obama and Cuomo - Goldman Sachs-funded and corporately-co-opted politicians - can shove their corporate education reform policies, their union-busting, their teacher-bashing and their water-carrying for the 1%.

The dream I have today is that my union leadership at the UFT, the AFT, the NYSUT and the NEA wake up from their slumbers and join me in telling these corporate-owned politicians to shove it too.

King might have used difference language in this struggle against the union-busting, corporate-reform movement, but you can be sure he would stand with us today in this fight.

The Legacy of No Child Left Behind

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel sums up NCLB:

Nine years ago this week President George Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act that:

A. Stunted the creativity and critical thinking skills of American public school children
B. Prevented teachers from tapping into the full potential of their students
C. Fostered a school environment that values test-taking skills above all others
D. Stole the joy from teaching and learning
E. All of the above

Indeed, NCLB did all of that.

But given what is currently slated to go into law if the Obama administration gets its way on reauthorization, the Obama/Duncan No Child Left Behind Jr. will make Bush's No Child Left Behind look like the unschooling movement.

High stakes standardized test in every subject in every grade.

Teachers graded, paid and evaluated based solely upon those test scores.

5%-10% of the "lowest performing schools" around the country closed every year.

5%-10% of the "lowest performing teachers" around the country fired every year.

Many traditional public schools replaced by nonunionized charter schools. Many of those charters will be operated by for-profit education management organizations.

Title One money no longer distributed according to the number of students living below the poverty line in a given district. Instead, it will be distributed using a Race to the Top competition that will hand the money out to the most "reform-minded" of districts and stiff others who don't pursue policies approved by the USDOE.

Federal standards, federal curriculum and federal tests superseding every bit of local control over schooling that has survived the original NCLB.

Education policy made by a small band of corporate-friendly, Gates- and Broad Foundation-trained "reformers," most of whom have little-to-no actual teaching or classroom experience.

Nine years from now, after the Obama/Duncan/Gates/Broad/Bloomberg/Jeb Bush reforms destroy public education, destroy an entire generation of students and teachers, and dumb the country down even further than it already is, we may look back at George W. Bush's original No Child Left Behind law fondly and with nostalgia.

Scary, but true.

Change we can believe?

Uh, no.

More of the same - only much worse.

Rotherham: Bipartisanship On Education Isn't There

Maybe not so much on the education bipartisanship?

With more than 60 new members to contend with in the House, Boehner most certainly will not rule by fiat. He won't even have much room for compromise without losing too many votes on the right or left. Although education is often seen as a bipartisan issue, there is actually not a lot of agreement on specific policy around contentious issues like national education standards, school choice and performance pay for teachers. Moreover, many of Tuesday's winners are coming to Washington set on cutting federal spending, which means that unlike in the past, big infusions of cash will not be available to help grease the wheels for political deals around education reform.

There are also poorer relations between the Obama Administration and Capitol Hill than is commonly assumed. "This administration has no clue whatsoever about how to deal with Republicans," says Vic Klatt, a longtime Republican education aide and lobbyist. "The education folks, in particular, have trouble."

He's right. The Administration does not yet have any major education policy victories that didn't come through regulation or on the back of other pieces of legislation, such as health care reform or the economic stimulus bill. "The worst thing in many respects that happened to [Education Secretary Arne] Duncan was the stimulus," says Klatt. Why? Because it gave Duncan's team, Klatt contends, "the sense that you can snap your fingers, money falls from heaven, and you do what you want with it."

Given the current political climate, there probably won't be any big No Child Left Behind-like education bills in the next two years. (Instead of being a chance to demonstrate bipartisanship, such bills would likely cause Democrats to fight Democrats, Republicans to fight Republicans, and the House to fight the Senate, leaving the Administration trying to lean into the debate as best it can.) A more likely path to progress is smaller, more modest bills championed by moderate Democrats and reenergized Republicans like Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, a former U.S. Secretary of Education, governor, and university president who, along with Boehner, is seen as a pragmatist.

The more I think about this issue, the more I think that Republicans are NOT going to want to give Obama a major legislative victory on ANY issue, not even education.

Between the GOP being dead set against any new spending and dead set on cutting current levels and the Obama administration's arrogance and inability to work with even Hill Democrats (let alone Republicans), I think (forgive me for writing this) Rotherham is right - no major new education programs.

Boy, that would be swell.

Given the toxic after effects of both NCLB and RttT, we can use a few years off before the next "reform."

Bennet/Buck Race Tied

I was hoping President Obama's favorite ed deformer, Michael Bennet, would have his corporate ass handed to him in the general election, but his Tea Party opponent Ken Buck has done his best to lose the race and it looks like it is working:

Colorado's U.S. Senate race has clenched into a dead heat nine days before polls close, as incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet climbed to meet GOP hopeful Ken Buck's early lead, each man garnering 47 percent support among likely and actual voters, according to a Denver Post/9 News poll.

The tightening race — three weeks ago, Buck was 5 percentage points ahead — is reflective of a handful of factors, some unique to Colorado, some not.

Democrats nationally have burnished their ground game and get-out-the-vote efforts in recent weeks, galvanizing old 2008 enthusiasm that didn't exist over the summer.

In the Colorado governor's race, Dan Maes and Tom Tancredo are battling for the same group of right-leaning voters in a spectacle that observers say has dampened natural Republican enthusiasm this year.

This could hurt Buck when, in any other circumstance, a strong Republican gubernatorial nominee would only help him.

But the Weld County district attorney has also had a series of public gaffes in recent weeks that have likely tempered some of his early energy coming out of the August primary victory as the Tea Party underdog, observers say.

"Buck keeps stepping on his own message," said University of Colorado at Boulder political scientist Ken Bickers. "I think his message indiscipline has curtailed some of that enthusiasm."

...

University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said U.S. Senate races across the country — there are currently eight "toss-up" states — have tightened, in part, because of the Tea Party candidates.

"The Tea Party candidates are weaker than the mainstream Republican alternative they defeated in the primary," Sabato said, noting he would have expected Buck's primary opponent, Jane Norton, to be doing better in the general election. "They pride themselves on the fact they speak their minds, but there are real-world costs in doing that. Every word matters in politics."

Momentum for Bennet, expect him to pull this out.

And that's a shame, because that will be one more vote for Obama's Ed Deform/Bash Teachers education policy when NCLB gets voted on for re-authorization.

Buck is a moron and a crazy person, but on education he will almost certainly NOT be a vote for the Obama education policy.

And education policy is the ONLY thing I care about these days when looking at a candidate.

So many of the corporate-owned Dems running, and ALL of the Dems supported by Barack Obama, are CERTAIN votes for the Obama/RttT/Bash Teachers policies.

Those Dems I am not supporting.

Not for ANY reason.

And Michael Bennet is emblematic of those corporate-owned Dems.

So Much For The Research

The Obama administration likes to make believe its education reform program - tests in every subject at every grade level, teacher pay and evaluations tied to those tests, and the closing of schools and the firing of teachers based upon those test scores - is a proven, research-based strategy to "turnaround" the public education system.

But a new book written by the National Education Policy Center, a university-based research organization in Boulder, Colo. that critiques the work of prominent think tanks, says it is not research-based at all:

The Obama administration's education plan lacks a solid research basis for its proposals, a new book says.

The Obama Education Blueprint: Researchers Examine the Evidence is the first major effort from the National Education Policy Center, a university-based research organization in Boulder, Colo., that critiques the work of prominent think tanks. ("Think-Tank Critics Plant a Stake in Policy World," this issue.)

In the book, scholars take a look at the six research summaries the administration released in May in support of its blueprint—a guiding document it sent to Congress in March to explain its vision of the next iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main federal law on K-12 education. ("Administration Unveils ESEA Reauthorization Blueprint," March 16, 2010.)

The researchers found "the overall quality of the summaries is far below what is required for a national policy discussion of critical issues."

"Each of the summaries was found to give overly simplified, biased, and too brief explanations of complex issues," co-editors William J. Mathis and Kevin G. Welner, both University of Colorado at Boulder academicians, write in the book's introduction.

Mr.Welner, who is also the NEPC's director, said the book is aimed at informing the discussion about the administration's policies.

"It's not that I don't like a lot of the ideas and want to see them be successful," he said. "But when the government makes statements that something is supported by research and it isn't, that's an important message to get across."

Mr. Welner and the other authors say the U.S. Department of Education relied too heavily on the work of advocacy groups to bolster claims and showed a strong focus on the use of standardized-test scores without justifying their use as a valid measure of learning and school success.

The researchers also note a lack of research provided for two key pieces of the blueprint: the accountability system that is to replace the "adequate yearly progress" measure under the No Child Left Behind Act and the four models school districts are to use to turn around low-performing schools.

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment on the book's critiques.

If you're watching Oprah, NBC's Education Summit, or Waiting for Superman or listening to the president and Mayor Bloomberg talk about education issues, you'd be under the impression that all the research is settled and if we just close 10,000 schools across the nation, turns lots more schools into for-profit privatized charters, get rid of tenure and seniority and add new standardized tests to every grade at every level at least twice a year, all the problems in public education will be solved.

That turns out to be as fact-based and rigorously researched as the Bush administration's "We'll Be Greeted As Liberators" prognostication about the Iraq war.

Race To The Top Program Will Be The New NCLB

No Child Left Behind is up for re-authorization.

Since this is an election year, the re-authorization is going to have to wait until AFTER the November midterms to get done.

There have been questions about just what kind of law President Accountability would push.

You might remember back when he was a candidate, President Accountability was CRITICAL of NCLB and the emphasis on testing and punitive measures for schools.

But now that he IS president, he has doubled down on both those items in his Race to the Top program and in fact wants 10%-20% of the "worst-performing" public schools across this country shut down, the teachers and administrators fired, and those schools reopened under new operators (many of whom will be for-profit EMO's.)

Race to the Top has engendered lots of controversy and now pushback as civil rights organizations and educators have pointed out that many of the "reforms" pushed by RttT are either unproven or disproven.

Nonetheless, President Accountability has dug in and not only will there not be any substantive changes to Race to the Top for next year, ALL the odious provisions related to school closings, teacher firings and standardized testing added to every grade at every level will be enshrined in the new No Child Left Behind law (what I like to call Obama's No Child Left Behind Jr.)

Here is Edweek on what Obama wants NCLB Jr. to look like:

The Obama administration is standing by its signature education reform initiative, the Race to the Top program, and the policies wrapped up in that competition—even as the aggressive agenda continues to spark pushback, most recently from some civil rights groups.

Calling Race to the Top “the single most important thing we’ve done” on education, President Barack Obama used a July 29 speech to make a forceful rebuttal to criticism of his efforts, including from members of his own party in Congress.

...

In Mr. Obama’s speech, the president focused mostly on the Race to the Top, which embodies many of the principles the administration wants to carry forward as Congress works to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

He made it clear that he doesn’t want to see wholesale changes to the Race to the Top program, which two congressional panels recently voted to extend for an additional year.

“I’ll continue to fight for Race to the Top with everything I’ve got, including using a veto to prevent folks from watering it down,” Mr. Obama said.

The president also explained his administration’s policies on teacher quality, which have called for states to link teacher performance to student-achievement data and overhaul evaluations, tenure, and retention decisions.

“The whole premise of Race to the Top is that teachers are the single most important factor in a child’s education from the moment they step into the classroom,” Mr. Obama said.

Not parents, not families, not communities, not children themselves - nope, only the teacher is the single most important factor in a child's education.

And so what the Obama administration will emphasize most in NCLB Jr. is the scapegoating of teachers.

Test scores aren't high enough?

You're fired.

Work in a district with the highest rates of poverty, addiction, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, unemployment, and other societal dysfunctions in the state - ALL of which gravely affect how students perform (or do NOT perform) in school?

You're fired.

Students don't give a shit about going to school and would rather sit home and watch Maury or Spongebob?

You're fired.

Kids have ADD, can't sit still, can't read or write at grade level and parents are either too busy working or themselves do not have emotional tools to help?

You're fired.

No matter what the problem, there will be NO excuses for teachers.

Instead they will be fired and schools will be closed.

There will of course be PLENTY of excuses for parents, kids and policy makers themselves.

As I pointed out here, President Accountability ONLY wants to hold teachers accountable.

Holding himself, the people in his administration, business leaders who brought down the economy and continue to harm it - not so much on the accountability for them.

If you're a teacher and you still support this administration, you're a masochist.

Because they're going to screw teachers in the NCLB Jr. law and you can be SURE that it will make the Bush NCLB look progressive.

Obama Doubles Down On NCLB

President Accountability announced his NCLB re-authorization today.

He wants to have all teachers evaluated according to test scores, all schools rated according to test scores, and the "lowest" 10% closed down - including really good schools in affluent districts if those schools are not seeing big gains in test scores for students from lower income backgrounds in the schools.

Here's the worst of the "far-reaching" changes Obama proposes:

Under the current law, testing focuses on measuring the number of students who are proficient at each grade level. The administration instead wants to measure each student’s academic growth, regardless of the performance level at which they start.

Under the proposals, schools would also be judged on whether they are closing achievement gaps between poor and affluent students. No sanctions exist now for schools that fail in this area. Under the new proposals, states would be required to intervene even in seemingly high-performing schools in affluent districts where test scores and other indicators identify groups of students who are languishing, administration officials said.

The proposals would require states to use annual tests and other indicators to divide the nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools into several groups: some 10,000 to 15,000 high-performing schools that could receive rewards or recognition; some 10,000 failing or struggling schools requiring varying degrees of vigorous state intervention; about 5,000 schools that would be required to narrow unacceptably wide achievement gaps; and perhaps 70,000 or so schools in the middle that would be encouraged to figure out on their own how to improve.

The administration’s proposals would also rework the law’s teacher-quality provisions by requiring states to develop evaluation procedures to distinguish effective instructors, partly based on whether their students are learning. These would replace the law’s current emphasis on certifying that all teachers have valid credentials, which has produced little except red tape, officials said.

The current law requires states to adopt “challenging academic standards” to receive federal money for poor students under a section known as Title I. But states are allowed to define “challenging,” and many set standards at mediocre levels. Last month, President Obama proposed requiring states to adopt “college- and career-ready standards” to qualify for the $14 billion Title I program. The administration proposes that new federal education dollars be provided to states as competitive grants, rather than through per-pupil formulas.

The Times article has both Harkin and Miller - the heads of the Senate and House committees - saying they like the proposals and everything should go through.

Great.

More testing, more school closures, more fear-based policy-making, and more fear-based teaching.

That's doubling down on NCLB, not changing the law for the better.

For some reason Arne Duncan says the punitive measures of NCLB are gone in this Obama re-do.

How is that?

Teachers and administrators will be fired if they do not raise the test scores of their students, schools will closed if the test scores of their students do not go up, and states will only get Title 1 money by showing the Obama administration how "innovative" they are - in other words, the Race to the Top competitive grants are going to be enshrined in the new education law every year and districts are going to have to do what the administration wants, like tie tenure and evaluations to test scores and open lots of charter schools in order to qualify for Title 1 money.

And for some reason known only to the Great Obama, schools that are already doing well on their measurements will receive more money while schools that are not doing well will be closed or re-structured a la Duncan's policy in Chicago and Bloomberg's here in NYC.

This is really really bad.

Any teacher who voted for Obama who still supports this man needs to have his or her head examined.

Within a few years, the entire public school system - both urban and suburban - will have been destroyed by Obama and Duncan.

We can only hope some people in Congress come to their senses and put a stop to this.

But I am not optimistic about that.

We can also hope that the teachers unions - the AFT and the NEA - come to their senses and say publicly that Obama is now the enemy.

No more of this "at least we're at the table" bullshit.

Here is how the Times characterized their reactions:

And while leading Congressional Democrats praised the plan, the nation’s two major teachers unions did not. “We are disappointed,” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said of the proposal, “From everything that we’ve seen, this blueprint places 100 percent of the responsibility on teachers and gives them zero percent of the authority.”

Can't believe I'm writing this, but Randi is exactly right.

Now she and Van Roekel need to do something about this.

Ranking teachers by "value-added" measures that gauge teachers on whether their students go up on their scores or not is a horrible way to evaluate teachers.

Just ask Accountable Talk.

UPDATE: BTW, let's call the Obama re-authorization NCLB II. Obama and Duncan want the name changed because they think people will be fooled into believing the punitive measures of NCLB are gone if the name to the law is changed.

So let's make sure we call this what it is - No Child Left Behind II

Or No Child Left Behind Jr.

Or Obama's No Child Left Behind.

The point is, all the worst provisions from NCLB - the testing, the punitive measures - remain or have been made worse by President Obama.

Obama Wants To Turn U.S. Into South Korea

Obama speaking to a group of U.S. governors yesterday:

Meeting with the nation’s governors at the White House, Mr. Obama stressed the importance of education to America’s economic competitiveness in a tough global marketplace, a theme he has cited in recent days to undergird a number of his domestic priorities.

He said the depth of the competition was brought home to him during a visit to South Korea last year, when he was told of that country’s determination to educate its children to out-compete American children.

“That’s what we’re up against,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s what’s at stake — nothing less than our primacy in the world. As I said at the State of the Union address, I do not accept a United States of America that’s second-place.”

Alan Singer at Huffingtonpost on the We MUST COMPETE WITH SOUTH KOREA!!!! education meme:

President Obama told a meeting of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce:

'Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea every year. That's no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy. We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day. That calendar may have once made sense, but today it puts us at a competitive disadvantage."

Expect Education Secretary Arne Duncan, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and New York School Chancellor Joel Klein and a long line of politicos and supposed edu-experts to make the pilgrimage to South Korea any day now, so they can view this educational miracle first hand.

Everybody is not as enamored with the Korean educational system as President Obama is. According to one Korean news source, "Obama's remarks came as a surprise to many South Koreans as the country's education system has been under constant public criticism due to its lack of creativity and heavy dependence on private tutoring." But their kids do get high scores on standardized tests and apparently that is all that counts.

One critic of the Korean educational system, Dr. Samuel Kim, a senior research scholar at the East Asian Institute of Columbia University, reported that 44% of Korean students who enter "top" American universities drop out before graduating. This is much higher than the dropout rate for students from China (25%), India (21%) and even the 34% dropout rate for American students at the same universities. Essentially, years of extra tutoring prepares Korean students for college entrance exams but not for acquiring a college education.

Clay Burell, an American high school humanities teacher, who currently lives with his family in South Korea, reports on his blog that Korean students are forced to study in "hagwons" -- private night, weekend, and summer classes where the overwhelming emphasis is on learning English. The Korean Education Ministry estimates that as a percentage of GDP, South Korean parents spend four times more on average on private education than their counterparts in any other major economy. Most of what they study is "worksheet-based, scripted, and devoted to passing college examination tests, the SAT, TOEFL, and all the other tests these classes teach to." What Burell finds ironic is that despite all of this investment and high test scores, Korean students are notoriously poor at reading, writing, and speaking English. In other words, they can't use what they are supposed to have learned and what they test well at.

There you have it - Obama wants to turn the U.S. education system into Korea's, yet the Korean system is dysfunctional.

And he's using the recession that has devastated the states and federal money as the means to do it.

By the time he is done with his one term presidency, there is going to be some serious damage done to public education.

But I can guarantee you that all the "reforms" he is forcing onto the system will make things worse, not better.

Obama's NCLB Rewrite Is Horrific

Here are the details:

The administration has already made its mark on education through Race to the Top, a federal grant program in which 40 states are competing for $4 billion in education money included in last year’s federal stimulus bill. In his State of the Union address, Mr. Obama hailed the results so far of that competition, which has persuaded states from Rhode Island to California to make changes in their education laws. States that prohibit the use of test scores in teacher evaluations, for example, are not eligible for the funds. The competition has also encouraged states to open the door to more charter schools, which receive public money but are run by independent groups.

Now the administration hopes to apply similar conditions to the distribution of the billions of dollars that the Department of Education hands out to states and districts as part of its annual budget.

“They want to recast the law so that it is as close to Race to the Top as they can get it, making the money conditional on districts’ taking action to improve schools,” said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, who attended a recent meeting at which administration officials outlined their plans in broad strokes. “Right now most federal money goes out in formulas, so schools know how much they’ll get, and then use it to provide services for poor children. The department thinks that’s become too much of an entitlement. They want to upend that scheme by making states and districts pledge to take actions the administration considers reform, before they get the money.”

One section of the current Bush-era law has required states to certify that all teachers are highly qualified, based on their college coursework and state-issued credentials. In the Race to the Top competition, the administration has required participating states to develop the capability to evaluate teachers based on student test data, at least in part, and on whether teachers are successful in raising student achievement.

Educators who have talked to the administration said the officials appeared to be considering inserting similar provisions to the main education law, by requiring the use of student data in teacher evaluation systems as a condition for receiving federal education money. Mr. Duncan has publicly endorsed such an approach, Mr. Cunningham said.

Let's repeat one part of one sentence - states and districts must pledge to take actions the administration considers "reform" before they get the money.

Here's what that means - privatizing public schools, adding more charter schools, closing more public schools and replacing them with charters, lifting any cap on the number of charters, tying teacher evaluation to test scores, and adding days and time.

If you want federal money, you've got to do these things.

Obama's "reforms" make Bush's look miniscule.

He must be stopped.

Luckily it's an election year and he has failed at every other issue he's taken on.

This could be a tough haul.

But something tells me, if he succeeds at anything, it will be this.

GOP Praises Obama's Pro-Privatization, Union-Busting Education Agenda

Obama and the Republican Party agree - teachers unions are the problem with education today and charter schools and privatization of public education are the answer:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Jan. 28) -- For all of the partisan rancor surrounding President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, there was one domestic area where the president could claim legitimate bipartisan achievement: education.

During his first year in office, Obama has drawn praise from conservatives like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for his approach to improving the nation's schools. The administration's centerpiece initiative, a program called Race to the Top, has been lauded by some reform activists for injecting competition into the federal grant process. It also has been credited with nudging states to adopt higher standards and more accountability for schools.

It was no surprise, then, that at a time when the White House is trying to renew its cross-party appeal, Obama chose to devote a significant chunk of his speech to education. And it was a rare issue that escaped withering criticism in most Republican responses.

"This year, we have broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools," the president said. "The idea here is simple: Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform -- reform that raises student achievement, inspires students to excel in math and science, and turns around failing schools that steal the future of too many young Americans, from rural communities to inner-cities.

...

In the official Republican response to the State of the Union, Virginia's new governor, Robert McDonnell, highlighted the GOP's agreement with Obama on education, making no mention of policy differences.

"The president and I agree on expanding the number of high-quality charter schools and rewarding teachers for excellent performance," McDonnell said. "More school choices for parents and students mean more accountability and greater achievement."

Two senior Republican congressmen also praised the education portion of Obama's speech. The ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, said Obama and Duncan "have indicated a surprising willingness to take on education special interests."

Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., said he had "every intention" of working with the administration on further reforms, including the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Much of the GOP support for Obama's education initiatives stems from the administration's apparent willingness to buck traditional Democratic allies like the teachers' unions in calling for an expansion of charter schools and "pay for performance" in teacher compensation. The administration has been able to hold the support from the Democratic base because of its pledges to dramatically increase federal spending on schools. The stimulus package alone contained more than $100 billion for education initiatives, including the "Race to the Top" program and aid to states to prevent teachers from being laid off.

Great - the one bill Obama will actually sign into law will be the NCLB reauthorization.

Make no mistake, it's going to be a bad one - longer school days, longer school years, teacher evaluation and pay tied to test scores, more school "turnaround" (i.e., creating more charter schools.)

I am still hoping that some Repubs kill this bill just because they don't want to give him any victories before 2012, but I don't think that's going to happen.

I just don't think they will be able to refrain from helping a Democratic president break the unions.

Obama's State of the Union Address to Promote Charter Schools and More Ed Deform

If you like all the chaos and craziness of the last eight years of Bloomberg, you're going to love the next three years of Obama.

Fresh from his defeat on health care reform, he is turning his attention tonight to education deform, and it's as bad as you think it's going to be:

President Obama will propose a major increase in funding for elementary and secondary education for the coming year in Wednesday's State of the Union address, one of the few areas that would grow in an otherwise austere federal budget, officials said.

...

The funding would include a $1.35 billion increase in Obama's "Race to the Top" competitive grants for school reform. It would also set aside $1 billion to finance an overhaul of No Child Left Behind, according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

...

The $1 billion fund would be held out as a carrot for a successful legislative conclusion. One top aide to the president described it as an "incentive necessary to implement the kinds of reforms that we believe are necessary."

Obama has encouraged efforts by states to raise school standards and improve testing. Aides said that in the president's State of the Union speech, he will make a forceful call for broad reforms of the way school performance is measured and rewarded.

In other words, if you want federal money for education, you better complete the following - additional standardized tests at all levels in all subjects, teacher pay tied to testing, teacher evaluation tied to testing, more school closures and lifting state caps on charter schools completely.

Oh, and don't forget additional days in the school year and additional hours in the school day.

It will be interesting to see if he gets what he wants in education. He is roundly hated by Repubs and they really don't want to give him any victories these days, sensing that they can knock off many Dems in 2010 and Obama himself in 2012. And there have to be some Dems who think his public school privatization policies are jive. It is possible that his pro-privatization agenda can be beaten back.

But I am not too hopeful about that. He can't lose every issue and if there's any issue that might see bipartisan support, breaking the teachers unions and imposing charter schools in every urban area in the nation just might be it.

NCLB Reauthorization

On Saturday, the Washington Post looked at the Obama administration's upcoming No Child Left Behind reauthorization push.

The gist of what will happen is best summed up by Diane Ravitch:

"They're really not going to repudiate No Child Left Behind," Ravitch said. "They're just going to rename it and add the twist of more choice, more accountability."

Like Mayor Bloomberg, like Bill Gates, like Eli Broad, like all the hedge fund managers/education "reformers," Obama wants to destroy teachers unions, sell off the public schools to the privatization folks, and make schools into 10 hour a day/300 day a year factories for churning out good corporate employees willing to work longer and harder to make a lot less than their parents and grandparents.

More change we can believe in from the Change We Can Believe In President.

One thing I would note about the NCLB fight - Obama is a weakened president already. Whatever cache and juice he had last year has been tarnished - people on the extreme right think he's a foreign-born terrorist, people in the middle are unhappy with the bailout policies and overall direction of the country, and some (though not nearly enough yet) on the left see him as corporate sell-out.

Obama can be fought on this.

Had he pushed through NCLB in 2009, he would have gotten everything he wanted.

But with Ted Kennedy deceased and Chris Dodd so weakened by his Countrywide scandal that he is retiring from the Senate, Tom Harkin is the new head of the Education Committee. Ed Week says the administration may actually get some opposition from Harkin to their reform plans:

Frederick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, said he sees Harkin as “more of a traditional Democrat on education issues” than Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and an author of the NCLB law.

“Assuming that the administration is interested in promoting Race to the Top-style priorities through the [NCLB] reauthorization, Harkin could be trickier for them,” Mr. Hess said

As chairman, Harkin may provide a needed check on the administration’s agenda, Hess said. “We need more speed bumps, and Harkin is certainty more likely to be a speed bump than Dodd” would have been.

Also, Obama has spent a lot of political capital on the still incomplete health care reform measure, the economy remains in bad shape for nearly everybody but the people who work on Wall Street, unemployment remains at 10% and a double dip recession is not out of the question once government stimulus spending comes to an end. Obama will take a lot more heat in the coming days for the bailout mess as it becomes quite clear that his treasury secretary, Timmeh Geithner, gave away the store to Goldman Sachs, et al. And that's assuming that the terrorist threat doesn't continue to occupy much of his time and energy.

My point about all this is we may have a bit of an ally in the Senate to pushback on Duncan and Obama on some of the reforms they want to push and much of the country, weary already of President Accountability and his economic policies and the health care fight, may not be so thrilled about the permanent systemic change he wants to bring to education.

The key is to get the unions to see that Obama is weakened and can be taken down in this fight. Randi is a collaborator by nature, so I worry that despite a president with a tanking popularity and enough opposition in the country to push back against ed deform, she'll choose to cave instead.

Guess we'll just have to see.

In the meantime, I'm hoping the Repub actually wins that special election up in Mass (it may be close) and sends President Accountability his own accountability message - liberals are pissed off at him and willing to see his administration and its corporate-friendly agenda go down in flames rather than vote for crap they don't want just because it's a "Democrat" giving it to them.

Not to mention that would be the end of the health insurance giveaway program Obama is terming "reform," which just might be the best thing that could happen for both the long-term health of the Democratic Party and the country at large