NY Times Doesn't Get That Full Literary Works Aren't Read In English Class Anymore

There's a pro-Common Core article in the NY Times today that makes the claim that Common Core has forced English teachers to teach something other than fiction and literature in English class and by golly, it's good.

The piece sets up a straw man argument that teachers only taught literature in English class before - and often badly at that, but Common Core forces them to teach lots of much more informative non-fictional texts in concert with literature:

Some teachers have resisted the changes. At Midwood High School in Brooklyn this year, the new assistant principal for English, Suzane Thomas, made the English teachers use the Common Core lesson plans offered by New York State, and some were not happy.

“There are several teachers who accused me of destroying the English department,” Ms. Thomas said. Previously, she said, teachers had been able to choose which books they wanted to teach, and many of them taught only literature. (She also noted that some teachers had taught the same books each year, no matter which grade they were teaching, so some students were being assigned the same books over and over again.)

Ms. Thomas said she believed many students were more interested in talking about real-world issues like genetic testing than about how a character changed over the course of a novel.

“I was in a class once and the bell rang, and the kids wouldn’t leave, because they were having a strong debate about whether privacy was more important than security,” she said.

That's right - before Common Core, teachers never paired non-fiction texts with the literature their classes were reading, they just taught the same books over and over again whether the students had already read them or not.

The Times reporter notes that because students are reading much more non-fiction in English class, some fiction has been cut, but she glosses over the real problem here -  that some students are going to come through the Common Core Era having read little or no full-length literary works at all.

Many schools are closely following the EngageNY ELA curriculum to get students ready for the ELA Common Core state test next year.

EngageNY does not value reading whole works of fiction at all - it picks and chooses parts of larger works, couples these excerpts with poetry, literary non-fiction or informational non-fiction, then focuses on close reading, annotation and evidence-based discussion and writing lessons that take the life out of the literature.

Back in 2013, I posted about an EngageNY module for 9th graders that spent 17 class days on one short story, Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.”

Here is how students "engaged" with the text:

The first day, they're excited to start a new lesson and read a story that seems to be about werewolves.

By the third day, they're bored by reading and discussing the same story for three days straight and starting to get antsy.

By the sixth day, they're outwardly hostile to the lessons and the teacher for teaching the lessons.

By the ninth day, they're totally disengaged from class and talk openly about how much they hate English.

By the twelve day, they no longer give a shit about anything - not the class, not the story, not the teacher, not the "assessment" (i.e., "test" for those of you who aren't fluent in reformy geekspeak) that is coming up on Day Seventeen.

By the seventeenth day, students complete the "assessment" with little regard to how they do on it because they stopped caring about the entire process somewhere between the end of Day Four and the beginning of Day Five.

Talk about taking the life out of the art - EngageNY certainly does that.

But what's worse, students who've been taught straight up from the EngageNY curriculum haven't read a full work of literature in high school.

Here was how one high school ELA teacher described the EngageNY curriculum and its approach to full works:

As a 9th grade ELA teacher following the Engage NY Curriculum, I have seen first hand how destructive it really is. For three weeks we have been close reading one story! For the first time, my 9th grade students are completely disengaged. How many times can you annotate the same passage?

I also believe now that these units are actually lowering the rigor of my class. We are now into the second marking period and have read one story and written zero essays. At this point last year my 9th grade class had written two essays, read 5 short stories, and were halfway through their first novel, and we were having fun doing it.

The end of the opening unit has students reading (only key scenes) from Romeo and Juliet and then showing the Baz Lerhman film to supplement. How is reading 5 scenes from Romeo and Juliet, rather than the whole play, more rigorous?

That same teacher has told me he has taught that same cohort of students in 10th grade and will be following them into 11th grade.

Students have been taught one EngageNY module each semester for a total of four EngageNY modules.

They have read a full work of literature only because the teachers revolted and pointed out that if they kept following the EngageNY modules, students wouldn't be reading a full work of literature ever in high school English class.

They would have read about 20% of Romeo and Juliet, but that's not reading the full work.

They would have read part of The Joy Luck Club, but that's not reading the full work.

They would have read most of Macbeth, but not quite all, as EngageNY jumps around a bit to focus on skills-based learning like close reading and argumentative writing on different parts of the play.

Reading a whole work of literature to nourish the soul, engage the spirit, encourage thought and reflection, jar some memory of shared experienced or, God forbid, take an opinion upon that isn't "rigorously" based in a close reading of the text - that's not part of high school English class anymore.

If it's not skills-based with an eye toward work-based skills, it pretty much isn't taught.

That's because the New York State ELA Common Core test contains lots of reading, 24 difficult multiple choice questions based upon those readings, an argumentative essay based upon four difficult (often arcane) informational texts, and one literary non-fiction reading that requires students to find a "central idea" in the text and show how it's developed through some literary device.

With teachers now having their careers tied to the scores from these tests, schools slated for state takeover if the test scores are bad, and students needing a 75 or higher in order to attend a four year CUNY school, it behooves to focus only on the skills that are tested and leave everything else out.

Reading full works of literature for pleasure and wonder?

Gone from the curriculum - at least if it's the NY State EngageNY curriculum. 

Students writing personal responses to the literature they've read so that they can make some connections between themselves and the characters?

Gone from the curriculum - at least if it's the NY State EngageNY curriculum. 

Students writing their own creative works to express themselves?

Gone from the curriculum - at least if it's the NY State EngageNY curriculum.

As an ELA teacher, I have no problem teaching non-fiction texts, either on their own or in concert with literature.

I do resent when a reporter for the NY Times writes a piece that is so full of pro-Common Core propaganda and PR bits that it sounds as if ELA Common Core architect David Coleman wrote it.

This Times piece makes it sound like the reason why some children and parents are finding Common Core English Language Arts dreary and soul-sucking is because schools and teachers aren't finding the right kinds of non-fiction to pair with literature to give students a broad experience with reading and writing.

The truth is, because the Common Core test in NY State assesses a certain kind of learning - close reading, mostly nonfiction reading, and argumentative writing (the argumentative essay on the CCSS test is worth a lot more than the literary analysis essay) - and because there are so many high stakes attached to the tests for students, teachers and schools, much of the wonder, excitement and allure of English class of old has been replaced by dreary, rote skills-based learning.

As an ELA teacher, I'm not opposed to teaching skills-based learning, indeed, I actually enjoy this and think it's a very important part of education, but it's also nice to have the freedom to teach a full work of literature that helps students to develop socially, emotionally and creatively too.

In the Era of the Common Core and the high stakes Common Core tests, that cannot be done anymore

Would have been nice if the NY Times reporter could have gotten into the story that we're going to have a whole generation of children come of age who haven't read much - or any - full length literature.

It will be interesting to see what the consequences of that will be in the decades to come.

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.

What Common Core Proponents Like David Coleman Have Wrought In Kindergarten

Remember when ELA Common Core architect David Coleman famously told parents at a NY State Board of Regents meeting that no one gives a shit what their kids think or feel about things?

Here's how some of that Coleman wisdom is playing out in kindergarten these days:

Writing lessons also have changed.

"In kindergarten we always taught them writing," she said. "But 15 years ago it was more personal, 'Tell me a story about your family.' 'Tell me more about something the class did.'

 "Now we have broader topics, 'Tell me how to make pancakes. Give me directions. Tell me about giraffes,' or whatever topic the student is interested in."

Notice the shift - from learning about self, family and human society to learning informational lessons about external topics.

The teacher in this article says the informational lessons about external topics come from the students themselves ("whatever topic the student is interested in") and this may be so.

Still, I think an important part of childhood, puberty and adult is learning about self.

Who am I?

Where do I come from?

Where am I going?

Who I am in the process of becoming?

Why do I think and/or feel the way I do?

Are all these thoughts and feelings mine or are some of them left over from my parents/family/society?

These are important questions to ponder, but in the new era of the Common Core, these kinds of questions are replaced with "How do you make pancakes?" or "Give me directions on how to get to the Apple Store."

The powers that be in this country want a populace divorced from their own thoughts and feelings, incapable of critical thinking or deep questioning.

They want a populace that can follow orders and comply with directions - make pancakes, get to the Apple store - because that makes for a good consumer society.

What they don't want is a populace who have been taught as children to think for themselves, to learn about themselves, to question society when their own internal signals tell them something's wrong in what they're seeing around them.

That kindergarten children no longer tell stories about themselves or their families and instead repeat directions for how to make pancakes is not a mistake in judgment by David Coleman and the Common Core architects, proponents, and funders like Bill Gates.

It's part of the social engineering of the populace the owners of this country want done to help them maintain their power and privilege.

They're educating the Common Core Era children to be mindless drones who can parrot directions but do not know themselves, do not understand themselves, cannot question themselves or their society.

Common Core Texts Students Are Sure To Learn From

I left the following reply to a tweet by NYSED Commissioner John King:

@JohnKingNYSED My favorite CC$$ text? Meeting minutes from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Kids love 'em too!
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) July 19, 2014

It's not the first time I've taken this jab at King or other Common Core supporters when they talk about all the exciting reading teachers can have students do under the informational text-heavy Common Core Federal Standards.

And the reason why it's not the first time I've taken those jabs is because Common Core supporters actually listed Fed Views, the publication page of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, as recommended reading for the informational text category of the Common Core Federal Standards for 11th and 12th students.

Today I went over to Fed Views to see just what I could use for my 11th and 12th graders.

Here's what I found in the latest piece of writing posted, July 10, 2014:

John Fernald, senior research advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, states his views on the current economy and the outlook.

• The first-quarter decline in GDP was revised to be even steeper than previously announced. The new data indicate that health-care spending fell in the first quarter, in contrast to earlier estimates that showed an increase. Nevertheless, the first-quarter dip appears transitory. In addition to the anomalous decline in health spending, other temporary factors include harsh weather in much of the country, a reduced pace of inventory accumulation by businesses, and weak net exports.
• We expect growth to bounce back over the remainder of this year and next. Indeed, available data already suggest a second-quarter rebound. For example, business surveys show an ongoing healthy expansion in the manufacturing and services sectors. Also, light-vehicle sales in June reached their highest level since 2006.
• The labor market report for June was strong—consistent with an economy that continues to improve. Employment gains have been solid in recent months, averaging 231,000 new jobs per month so far this year. The unemployment rate in June fell to 6.1%, the lowest level since September 2008. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate remains above our estimate of the natural rate, suggesting that economic slack remains.
• Inflation has been running well below the Federal Reserve’s 2% objective. In recent months, inflation has run closer to the objective, in part reflecting higher food and energy prices. However, underlying inflation pressures still appear to be subdued. Hence, we expect only a gradual return to a sustained 2% inflation rate as the economy continues its recovery and slack diminishes.
• A recovering economy has prompted a steady reduction this year in the pace of monthly asset purchases by the Federal Reserve. Nevertheless, with persistent economic slack and low inflation, monetary policy remains highly accommodative. 
• Labor productivity, or inflation-adjusted output per hour worked, is an important factor underpinning the sustainable speed limit for the economy. From the early 1970s through 1995, productivity in the business sector rose only about 1½% per year. In the next eight years, through 2003, that pace more than doubled. Considerable evidence links that acceleration to the production and use of information technology (IT). However, over the past decade, productivity growth has returned to roughly its pre-1995 pace of about 1½%.
• The early-2000s slowdown in productivity growth predated the Great Recession of 2007–09. Hence, it does not appear related to financial or other disruptions associated with the recession. Rather, it appears to mark a pause—if not the end—of exceptional productivity growth associated with IT. Many transformative IT-related innovations showed up in the productivity statistics in the second half of the 1990s and early 2000s. Over the past decade, however, the gains may have become more incremental. 
• Productivity also fluctuates around its trend, with many of the most pronounced movements around recessions. For example, productivity growth was weak relative to trend early in the Great Recession. At the end of the recession and early in the recovery, productivity rebounded sharply. 
• An important reason for these short-run cyclical fluctuations in productivity is variation in the intensity with which firms use capital and labor. For example, when the economy goes into recession and firms see a reduction in demand, they may want to maintain much of their existing workforce if they believe the reduced demand is temporary. In that case, firms may have a larger workforce than is ideal from a short-term perspective, and so measured productivity falls. When demand recovers, firms have excess capacity and can quickly ramp up production without needing substantial investment or hiring. 
• Over the period of a decade, these short-term cyclical movements are probably not a key factor explaining weak productivity growth. Measures of capacity utilization, for example, are close to where they were a decade ago.
• Since 2007, hours worked in the business sector have declined. Fewer hours combined with slow trend productivity growth means that output growth in the business sector has been very slow relative to the previous 60 years. As the economy continues its recovery, hours worked are likely to rise. But, with population growth slowing, future increases are likely to be muted relative to the historical experience since World War II. Assuming productivity growth continues at a pace similar to the past decade, output growth will remain slow relative to its historical performance.
• Uncertainty about future productivity growth remains high. Pessimists argue that IT is less important than great innovations of the past that dramatically boosted productivity, such as electricity or the internal combustion engine. Optimists point to the possibilities offered by robots and machine learning. Economic history suggests that it is hard to know until after the fact how revolutionary any particular innovation will turn out to be.

Now if you're an economics teacher, there might be something useful from Fed Views, but I see not much of use for me as an ELA teacher.

Washington Post reporter Lyndsey Layton reported that the architects of the Common Core also recommended students read some government studies:

Proponents of the new standards, including the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, say U.S. students have suffered from a diet of easy reading and lack the ability to digest complex nonfiction, including studies, reports and primary documents. That has left too many students unprepared for the rigors of college and demands of the workplace, experts say.

The new standards, which are slowly rolling out now and will be in place by 2014, require that nonfiction texts represent 50 percent of reading assignments in elementary schools, and the requirement grows to 70 percent by grade 12.

Among the suggested non­fiction pieces for high school juniors and seniors are Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” “FedViews,” by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (2009) and “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management,” published by the General Services Administration.

Here's a little bit “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management,” for your reading enjoyment:

Executive Order (EO) 13423, "Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management," was signed by President Bush on January 24, 2007. EO 13423 instructs Federal agencies to conduct their environmental, transportation, and energy-related activities under the law in support of their respective missions in an environmentally, economically and fiscally sound, integrated, continuously improving, efficient, and sustainable manner. The Order sets goals in the following areas:

energy efficiency acquisition renewable energy toxic chemical reduction recycling

sustainable buildings electronics stewardship fleets water conservation

E.O. 13423 rescinds several previous EOs, including E.O. 13101, E.O. 13123, E.O. 13134, E.O. 13148, and E.O. 13149. In addition, the order requires more widespread use of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) as the framework in which to manage and continually improve these sustainable practices. It is supplemented by implementing instructions, issued on March 29, 2007 by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).
OMB is also integral in the execution of E.O. 13423. The E.O. requires the OMB Director to issue instructions concerning periodic evaluation, budget matter, and acquisition relating to agency implementation of the E.O. OMB issues budget guidance through updates to Circular No. A-11. OMB will also continue to track agencies' progress on EO and EPACT goals through the three management scorecards on environmental stewardship, energy, and transportation.
Information relating to EO 13423 can be obtained through the following links below:

• Regulations, Guidance, and Policy
  • EO 13423
  • EO 13423 Implementing Instructions
  • EO 13423 Scorecards
  • Reporting Under EO 13423
• Supporting Information and Tools
  • Databases/Software Tools
  • Organizations/Programs
• Lessons Learned
  • EO 13423 Implementing Instruction Support
  • Priority Chemicals
  • Status Reports
• Training, Presentations, and Briefings
• Conferences and Events

CCSS architect David Coleman says the emphasis on informational text and non-fiction reading that Common Core pushes is not limited to just the ELA classroom - much of this reading can be done in math, science, social studies, physical education and CTE classes.

And certainly the two texts above do not lend themselves to ELA classrooms, that's for sure.

I can imagine the Fed Views site could have some use in an economics class and Executive Order (EO) 13423, "Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management" could be discussed in a science or sustainability class.

But the thing is, I'm not sure how useful these texts would be even in those classes.

These are the kinds of texts that best show how the Common Core Standards and many of the people who wrote them and push them fetishize difficult reading, complex language, and jargon often for what seems like their own sake.

This is silly to me.

The older I get, the simpler I like to keep things - including in the language that I speak and use to communicate.

My thinking is, life and communication are complex enough without adding to it by purposely using complex language and jargon.

That doesn't mean you can't ever use either - sometimes you need to use complex language or jargon to communicate something.

But more often than not complex language and jargon does more to obfuscate (sorry!) meaning rather than clarify it.

Whenever I'm writing something or thinking about something I want to teach in class, I ask myself "What would the two Georges think?"

By that, I mean George Orwell and George Carlin, two people who have been influential on my own thinking and teaching.

Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" has stuck with me since I first read it in, yes, high school - especially this part:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable.

Truth is, I'm guilty of sins on Rule (i) and Rule (iii) more than I would like - some of that is out of laziness, some of it out of sheer necessity (blogging half a dozen posts a day while holding down a full-time job sometimes requires letting go of perfection!)

But I try my best to subscribe to these rules as best I can as a writer and I don't go out of my way to look for reading material for classes based on the Lexile Framework or anything like that.

On the point of jargon, something that I have posted before is how much contempt I have for people in the education world who throw jargon around.

Let's be frank here - the education world is full of jargon lovers and cliche-meisters who really dig throwing this kind of language around:

across content areas
across spatial and temporal scales
across the curricular areas
across cognitive and affective domains
for high-performing seats
for our 21st Century learners
in authentic, "real world" scenarios
in closing the achievement gap
in data-driven schools
outside the box
throughout the Big Ideas
through cognitive disequilibrium
through the collaborative process
through the experiential based learning process
through the use of centers
throughout multiple modalities
via self-reflection
with a laser-like focus
within a balanced literacy program
within professional learning communities
within the core curriculum
within the new paradigm
within the Zone of Proximity
with synergistic effects

You can find that exact language - and much more of it - at the education jargon generator website that can help you too put together a combination of jargon and cliches that will amaze and terrify your friends and neighbors.

It seems to me that people often use jargon when they want to obscure meaning, want to fool people into thinking they know stuff they don't really know, or just generally do things without people actually understanding what it is they're doing.

George Carlin's work on language hits on this idea often, but I think this one gets at it best:




"Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins, it's as simple as that" - indeed, it is as simple as that.

And now that language is codified in the Common Core Federal Standards, those "higher" standards brought to us by David Coleman, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Barack Obama and a host of other ed reformers.

Frankly, I think we could better raise the standards by taking Fed Views and Executive Order (EO) 13423, "Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management" off the CCSS reading list and putting some George Carlin - along with more George Orwell - on it.

Sure, the Lexile Framework might not like the "level" of the language (not complex enough!) and the jargon festishists might not like the absence of jargon (unless you consider the "Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say On TV" jargon), but I'll tell you what, I bet students would learn a whole hell of a lot more from Carlin and Orwell than the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco and the General Services Administration.

The Hubris, Arrogance And Authoritarianism Of Common Core Proponents

Some of the comments on Jay Greene's Common Core Political Naivete and the Enemies List post get at this:

"The main problem has not been intention, I think, but strategy. I have no doubt many Core supporters really think national standards are educationally important. The problem is, to get what they thought was good, they adopted a strategy that was — and is — highly destructive: Drive adoption through stealth and federal coercion, likely to avoid the ignominious fate of open national standards efforts in the 1990s. Demean opponents, as Jay so rightly points out, as kooks and extremists worthy only of derision, not engagement. Perhaps worst of all, refuse to forthrightly acknowledge crucial facts once the public was fully confronted with the Core, including that Core-ites wanted federal coercion, got federal coercion, and that the Core intentionally has a major influence on curricula. 

People may think I am obsessed with the federal role in Core adoption because I constantly repeat the facts about it. And, of course, by itself the federal role is a crucial issue, invoking major constitutional questions, legal questions, and federalism concerns. But what is especially disturbing about the federal role is that Washington’s coercion essentially ensured that we would never get to have a substantive debate — a debate I, I think among many people, would like to have — about the merits of national standards, national tests, etc. Instead, the goal seemed to be to stick the public with nationalization without any public debate. In other words, we never got to have the more substantive national standards discussion because the federal government, at the urging of Core supporters, made having it irrelevant." -- Neal McCluskey

 ...

"I don’t agree with the notion that the Common Core advocates were ever naive. They were simply never honest about what they were trying to do–and didn’t think honesty would get them most of the K-12 system, public and private (remember, they went after Catholic parish schools right away–and Christian Day schools). They wanted control–the power to push buttons as they saw fit–because they thought so highly of themselves–with nothing to show for it in education (which is a good part of the problem.) Duncan didn’t accomplish anything in Chicago, Fordham has never accomplished anything in education that’s been academically effective. And Gates couldn’t discern the difference between third-rate minds in education and first-rate minds in technology, which is why he ended up with hiring third-rate minds for his Foundation. I doubt he ever read a book by Jacques Barzun, for example or reflected on the questions raised by Great Books writers to develop some insight into human behavior.

The first draft of the “anchor” reading standards that came out (sneaked out in July 2009 but changed before its official September debut), the membership of the standards development work group in sprint 2009 (mostly in test development), and the first draft Jim Milgram ever saw of the math standards with Algebra I as the “college readiness level” revealed designer intentions to anyone spending time pondering what was going on. The intentions behind CC were never academic–to upgrade the public schools in K-12 for all kids–even though that was what was needed, and still is. It’s not a “trahison des clercs” for most of them because that would credit Gate, Duncan, Finn, Petrilli, et al with more intelligence than they have. It’s a kind of hubris, but not of the Greek tragic mode." -- Sandra Stotsky

Both McCluskey and Stotsky make important points here.

The people behind Common Core believe they're geniuses and everybody else are morons - you can see that in the arrogance of David Coleman and Arne Duncan, the certitude of Bill Gates.

They decided that only their genius could save the country from the rest of us morons and decided to "save us" without actually asking us if we wanted to be, you know, saved.

They devised their strategies in secret and decided that their plans would be need to be implemented as quickly and as quietly as possible for maximum impact.

Previous incarnations of national standards died when there was pushback from states and localities - so this time, the geniuses decided the whole thing would happen so fast, there would be no time for pushback.

The '08 financial collapse became a convenient cover and excuse to push through what they wanted to push through - national standards connected to national tests that would be used to evaluate teachers, thus ensuring the standards were taught (and driving curriculum as well, since what gets tested is ultimately what gets taught.)

Race to the Top was the carrot, No Child Left Behind waivers were the stick and the USDOE was the driver of it all.

It's all falling apart for a number of reasons, not least of which are, the CCSS standards themselves are half-baked (because they were rushed and not tested anywhere), the ancillary testing that goes with CCSS is facing a mounting opposition from all political sides and the data programs that were supposed to track all the stats are under assault from parents and privacy advocacy groups.

But perhaps the biggest reason it's all falling apart is the hubris, arrogance and authoritarianism of the people behind the movement itself - this coterie of oligarchs and their functionaries thought they could get what they wanted quickly and quietly, with no muss and no fuss, by developing it in secret, pushing it through while everyone else was paying attention to the financial crisis of 2008/2009 and attacking anybody who criticized their genius as crooks or kooks.

They've created the pushback themselves through the strategies they developed to push through their agenda.

Greene calls that "naivete," though Stotsky disagrees and calls it "dishonesty."

I think it's a little of both.

At the core, the Core proponents are dishonest people - Gates, Duncan, Coleman, et al will lie and cheat to get what they want, the last few years shows that quite clearly.

But they were also naive to believe that there wouldn't be a significant counterattack to their agenda and they've been amateurish (as Greene notes in his post) in their own pushback.

Witness Duncan's ill-advised "Soccer moms are pissed to find out their kids are stupid" comments or Gates whining in the Washington Post about how he's just trying to save the world if only people would let him.

Instead of engaging critics and opponents on point, CCSS proponents attacks and dismiss.

They've sowed the seeds of the demise of their agenda themselves, first through through the authoritarian way they pushed it through, then through the amateurish way they've tried to deal with critics and opponents.

As Stotsky notes, this isn't hubris on a grand, Greek tragedy scale, but it is hubris.

And in the end, it's what's going to do the Common Core and the ancillary other reforms that came with them in.

Bill Gates Exposed For All To See As An Arrogant, Whiny Elitist

Okay, it's official:

We're onto a new phase of the fight against the CCSS.

News media outlets are no longer buying and using pro-Common Core boilerplate rhetoric in stories on the Common Core, they're no longer framing the CCSS the way CCSS proponents want the standards framed, and they're no longer buying into the marginalization of proponents strategies that CCSS proponents and supporters have used over the last few years to dismiss criticism and opposition to the Core.

Most importantly, they're beginning to report on the man behind the curtain who pushed and promoted the CCSS and brought about a revolution in public education - Bill Gates - and some of that reporting isn't so complimentary.

Today's front page Washington Post story entitled "How Bill Gates Pulled Off The Swift Common Core Revolution" is a devastating expose of how one arrogant elitist/monopolist bribed every major stakeholder organization involved in public education to accept an untested, un-piloted idea that standardized learning standards, tests and teacher evaluations across the nation would improve public education.

Gates is on the defensive in much of the article and comes across as an arrogant, whiny jerk:

In an interview, Gates said his role is to fund the research and development of new tools, such as the Common Core, and offer them to decision-makers who are trying to improve education for millions of Americans. It’s up to the government to decide which tools to use, but someone has to invest in their creation, he said.

“The country as a whole has a huge problem that low-income kids get less good education than suburban kids get,” Gates said. “And that is a huge challenge. . . . Education can get better. Some people may not believe that. Education can change. We can do better.”

“There’s a lot of work that’s gone into making these [standards] good,” Gates continued. “I wish there was a lot of competition, in terms of [other] people who put tens of millions of dollars into how reading and writing could be improved, how math could be improved.”

Referring to opinion polls, he noted that most teachers like the Common Core standards and that those who are most familiar with them are the most positive.

Gates grew irritated in the interview when the political backlash against the standards was mentioned.

“These are not political things,” he said. “These are where people are trying to apply expertise to say, ‘Is this a way of making education better?’ ”

“At the end of the day, I don’t think wanting education to be better is a right-wing or left-wing thing,” Gates said. “We fund people to look into things. We don’t fund people to say, ‘Okay, we’ll pay you this if you say you like the Common Core.’ ”

Two things to note here - first, the writer uses Gates statements that make him sound illiterate ( “The country as a whole has a huge problem that low-income kids get less good education than suburban kids get..."), something that's already been noted and mocked on the Internet:

.@BillGates @carolburris Yup - "less good." Kinda like Windows 8.
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) June 8, 2014

.@perdidostschool @BillGates I think Clippy was even lesser good.
— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 8, 2014

Also, Gates' irritation at being challenged comes across in this part of the story, something that we see again later in the piece:

Now six years into his quest, Gates finds himself in an uncomfortable place — countering critics on the left and right who question whether the Common Core will have any impact or negative effects, whether it represents government intrusion, and whether the new policy will benefit technology firms such as Microsoft.

Gates is disdainful of the rhetoric from opponents. He sees himself as a technocrat trying to foster solutions to a profound social problem — gaping inequalities in U.S. public education — by investing in promising new ideas.

Education lacks research and development, compared with other areas such as medicine and computer science. As a result, there is a paucity of information about methods of instruction that work.

“The guys who search for oil, they spend a lot of money researching new tools,” Gates said. “Medicine — they spend a lot of money finding new tools. Software is a very R and D-oriented industry. The funding, in general, of what works in education . . . is tiny. It’s the lowest in this field than any field of human endeavor. Yet you could argue it should be the highest.”

Many CCSS proponents show disdain and scorn for critics and opponents (think Arne Duncan saying critics are just suburban moms shocked to find out their kids aren't as smart as they thought they were), but the head guy in showing disdain and scorn for critics and opponents is Gates.

He's never been much interested in hearing from anybody else when he's been promoting his education initiatives (Gates Foundation people didn't want to hear from small schools critics who pointed out smaller schools often mean fewer class and after school choices for students either) and he's still not interested.

Interestingly, he laments that nobody is putting the kind of money into education R & D that he is, but when it came time to pushing his CCSS, his hundreds of millions of dollars in "philanthropy" ensured that no other ideas about reform would get through.

Carol Burris noted the irony:

"I wish there was a lot of competition" said the man who got in trouble for crushing Microsoft competition :)
— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 8, 2014

Indeed, Gates is a guy who literally made his fortune by crushing all competition and running his computer empire as a monopoly - his call for "competition" in education R & D rings hollow and phony.

As does his defense for why he doesn't send his kids to schools that use CCSS:

 Bill and Melinda Gates, Obama and Arne Duncan are parents of school-age children, although none of those children attend schools that use the Common Core standards. The Gates and Obama children attend private schools, while Duncan’s children go to public school in Virginia, one of four states that never adopted the Common Core.

Still, Gates said he wants his children to know a “superset” of the Common Core standards — everything in the standards and beyond.

“This is about giving money away,” he said of his support for the standards. “This is philanthropy. This is trying to make sure students have the kind of opportunity I had . . . and it’s almost outrageous to say otherwise, in my view.”

But Bill, if the CCSS are so good, you ought to be sending your kids to schools that are using the CCSS - that's called putting your money where your mouth is.

But of course like so many CCSS proponents - from Gates to Duncan to Obama to our own NYSED Commissioner King - the CCSS is all about experimenting on "Other People's Children," not their own.

That hypocrisy comes through loud and clear in this Post piece.

As does the danger of having a country where one filthy rich "philanthropist" can fund his pipe dreams:

“This is about giving money away,” he said of his support for the standards. “This is philanthropy. This is trying to make sure students have the kind of opportunity I had . . . and it’s almost outrageous to say otherwise, in my view.

Sure it is, Bill.

It has nothing to do with your own ego and messianic complex, your need to control everything you see or the money that rolls in to Microsoft as a consequence of the "technocratic" revolution in public education.

Carol Burris also pointed out how defensive Gates looked in the video of the interview that was posted:

.@LyndseyLayton does a tough interview w/ an intimidating bill gates . Watch body language in video http://t.co/3U9N1hm3yy
— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 8, 2014

Gates isn't used to being put on the defensive by anybody - he's using to hearing "Yes, Bill!" and "You're a genius, Bill!"

That Gates the elitist subjected himself to this interview lets you know just how much trouble the Common Core is in - Gates wouldn't put himself in this position, shilling for the Core, unless he and his minions were truly worried about what was happening to their Common Core agenda.

Three states have dumped the standards, one more is flirting with it, even more states have dumped the common "assessments" that the Gates people wanted to ensure the CCSS would be taught throughout the country and they lost their data tracking program when parent activists were able to kill InBloom Inc.
 

The counterrevolution against Common Core is in full swing and its coming from both right and left - something I bet Billion Dollar Bill and his CCSS proponents never thought they'd see.

This Washington Post article by Lyndsey Layton is an extraordinarily important one - it's where Bill Gates and his operations are subject to "rigorous" scrutiny in the mainstream media and put on the defensive.

You can bet that CCSS proponents and education reformers saw the Post cover this morning and thought, "Oh shit - we've got trouble!"

this will be quite something on the anti-cc list servs and sites pic.twitter.com/FxAoBxvct8
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 8, 2014

And they do have trouble - lots of it.

Students, parents and educators are rebelling all over the country over Bill Gates' CCSS revolution, the Endless Testing regime that came with it, and the data tracking programs they wanted to use to ensure it all went off as planned.

There's still much work to be done, including making sure every politician who continues to push CCSS and the Endless Testing regime pays politically for that support, getting the standards pulled from all the states, killing off the testing regime, and forging a new era for public education where all stakeholders get a say in what gets taught and tested - not just the plutocrats and their paid shills.

The plutocrats still have the money and the politicians in their pockets - but as we see with this Gates piece today, the tone of the conversation has turned and where once critics and opponents were mocked in the media as crazies, now it's Gates, his corporate education reformers and their reforms that are on the defensive.

It's a new phase in the fight against corporate education reform.

An Anti-Coleman Assignment

I don't know about you, but I'm running on fumes about now.

Between the compliance stuff for the new teacher evaluation system (including the fetishization of the lesson plans which I covered a while back), the Common Core implementation (which has been going less than swimmingly), the MOSL tests and grading, the Regents classes I have had this year and just the overall "gotcha" zeitgeist from the Regents, the SED, the DOE and the media and politicians, I'm running on empty as the old song goes.

After the 12+ argumentative essay assignments each class has done since September, the close reading exercises, the complex test and informational text practice and all the other so-called "college and career readiness" reforms we've done throughout the year, I decided to hand out a creative assignment to the 11th graders who passed the Regents in January.

The assignment was this:

In preparation for next year's college essay assignment, produce a piece of writing about your own life, about some of the struggles you have had growing up and how you have learned to deal with them. You can write this piece any way you choose - as a first person narrative, as a third person narrative, as a first person essay, even, if you choose, in poetry form (though clear with me the guidelines for that.) The only requirement for the task is that you focus on something of value that you have learned through struggle, some nugget of wisdom you have learned through experience.

I'm thinking of this as the anti-David Coleman assignment, the kind of thing where I do give a shit what the students think and feel, what they have learned not through reading but through living.

I'm looking forward to reading what students come up with.

Common Core Contradictions

 From a commenter at NRO:

Common Core is, itself, a contradiction: it professes to help get kids ready for college and careers while at the same time it destroys the very tools they need to learn to do just that. For English standards, Common Core favors informational texts over fiction while completely deleting poetry and art interpretation from the curriculum. In Math, Common Core seems blatantly to create a nation of idiots but, most worrying, is the complete deletion of any learning of algebraic manipulation. These selectively deleted areas of study are so very worrying because they have one major thing in common: they teach kids how to do critical thinking. They also teach kids how to think creatively and to think outside the box (yes, algebra too). Without these skills, how on earth are kids supposed to succeed in college or careers, let alone in high school? If future generations cannot think critically and creatively, if they do not learn how to question what they see and if they cannot think for themselves then they become sheep. But, isn't that the point? The sheer amount of political messaging in Common Core texts and even math problems would seem to prove just that. However, the lack of poetry and art and fiction takes away something else from kids: the opportunity to feel, to have an emotional reaction to what you read or see. The Common Core website explicitly states that kids shouldn't be exposed to any material they may cause an emotional reaction because that somehow takes away their "safe space." But reacting emotionally to the world is what makes us human. A purposeful denial of this doesn't just turn kids into sheep, it turns them into robots. Automatons for the collective......

I think there is little doubt that the developers and promoters of Common Core - diminished human beings like David "No one gives a shit what you think or feel" Coleman and Bill Gates - have stripping children of their emotional reactions and autonomy as a CCSS goal.

There's a reason why the only learning that is privileged in CCSS is text-to-text close reading.

It's because the developers not only don't give a shit what kids think or feel about stuff, they don't want kids thinking or feeling about stuff at all.

Just follow the orders the teachers gives you.

Regurgitate what you just read.

Be good little automatons.

How Education Reform Is Harming The Health Of Children

There is a horrific story in the NY Post this morning about a rash of suicides involving NYC school children over the last seven weeks:

The city’s public schools are in the grip of a suicide epidemic.

Ten students have taken their own lives in the past seven weeks, according to remarks made Saturday by Chancellor Carmen Fariña.

“As chancellor, I’ve been on the job seven weeks, and there have already been 10 reported suicides. We cannot allow those,” she told 250 new principals at Stuyvesant HS during a private meeting.

“I get those e-mails all the time. And it makes me heartsick.”

The tragic statistic — which amounts to more than one suicide per week — has not been released publicly. The Post obtained a recording of Fariña’s address.

None of the suicides occurred on school property, Department of Education spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said later Saturday. She could not immediately provide the ages or schools of the children.

Chancellor Farina is responding to this epidemic of suicides:

In her remarks, Fariña implored principals to identify lonely and troubled kids. She related how, as a principal, she’d single out such students for Principal for a Day activities, taking them on her Friday rounds and giving them individual encouragement.

“The DOE is taking this very seriously and has provided information recently to principals and networks to help prepare and support school communities for these traumatic times, in addition to training provided each school year,” Feinberg said.

A spokeswoman for the city’s principals union said the outbreak was a shock to her.

“I’m surprised,” said Chiara Coletti, of the Council of Supervisors and Administrators. “If I heard of one or two in the last couple of years, that would be a lot. [Ten] sounds like a lot to me.”

City Health Department stats show youth suicides are rising, with suicide the third leading cause of death for New Yorkers ages 15 to 24. In 2010, 58 people in that age group took their lives. In 2011, the toll was up to 64, and in 2012 it reached 66.

The stresses on children these days have hit pressure cooker levels.

Many NYC school children come from families still struggling mightily with the effects of the recession and the economy and all the problems that come with that struggle.

It's a dog eat dog economy out there, with many people being tossed by the wayside and left there for good.

When children come to school, there is no change from the dog eat dog world - it's all Common Core rigor and assessments and argumentative writing and the like all the day long, with children being told over and over that in order to be "college and career ready" they must get their test scores as high as they can go.

The message at school in the Era Of Education Reform is "You Are Your Data Points" - in some cases, this is the subtle message, but when kids have their test scores placed on data walls in the classrooms or school hallways, it's as overt a message as can be.

In the best of times, children can be mean to each other, but you add the pressure cooker stresses of a bad economy with high stakes schooling and you can bet half a dozen foreclosed mortgages that children are going to act out in response.

This means more instances of bullying, cyber bullying, and fighting when they're acting out against each other.

It means more problems with alcohol or drug use, eating disorders, cutting (physical harm) when they're acting out on themselves.

Many children are starving from a lack of physical, emotional and spiritual nourishment and one of  the very places where they should be getting that nourishment - school - has turned into a toxic environment of rote Common Core learning and high stakes assessment for students, teachers and the school itself.

And don't kid yourself about how much damage education reform is doing to children - when they no longer do art in art class or no longer do physical activity in gym because school administrations are enforcing "Common Core rigor" in those classes and kids are spending the time reading informational texts and writing argumentative essays even in art and gym class, there is damage being done.

In English class, there is no more text-to-self writing or discussion.  The NYSED ELA modules do not allow for any of that sort of learning - everything is rote text-to-text learning, rote close reading exercises, rote assessments after every lesson.

Children are expressing despair over the direction schools have gone in the past few years (with Internet memes of children crying over their Common Core homework making the rounds all the time), but there is little that school staff can do to mitigate the problems.

Many counselors no longer have time to counsel students on anything except academics and grades.  Many teachers no longer have time to spend talking with children outside of class because of the extra compliance work associated with Governor Cuomo's APPR teacher evaluation system. With all the extra meetings, obsessive lesson planning, curriculum mapping, focus groups, professional learning community meetings, Common Core professional development and artifact collecting, there is no time to just talk to kids and find out what's going on with them.

APPR has done damage beyond the taking of time from teachers that could be spent working with students - it has added more testing and more high stakes to the school year, with added performance assessments coming in fall and spring and the stresses of those assessments falling onto students as they know if they don't do well, their teachers might get fired by the "student lobbyist" in Albany.

So given all of this insanity going on these days, it is not a surprise to me that more and more children are suffering from depression and a lack of physical, emotional and spiritual nourishment.

It would be nice to say that Chancellor Farina's directive that administrators scrutinize students in their schools in order to catch those who are falling prey to depression and despair, but the truth is, there are so many that I have seen over the past few years that I'm not sure how principals, teachers and counselors address the epidemic given how poisoned the school system is with high stakes so-called rigor and reform.

Until the insanity of the high stakes around testing is ended, until the rote learning of the Common Core is replaced with individual-centered learning that allows for personal growth, until the obsession with argumentative writing and close reading of complex texts is replaced with a broad arts, humanities and science curriculum that allows for children to express themselves in many different ways, the despair and depression that is now rife in the school system is not going to end.

There isn't much educators can do about the economy at large that causes stress on children.

But there is something we can do about the education reforms that are harming millions of children around this state and a million+ in this city.

Let us take back our education system from the emotionally-stunted misanthropic education reformers who tell us that no one gives a shit what children think and feel and return it to people who know that children are whole beings who must be nourished physically, emotionally and spiritually with a rich, broad, diverse curriculum in a school environment that is welcoming and nurturing.

Anthony Cody on The Standardization Of Schooling

Why turn school into drudge work for the overwhelming majority of children in this country via the Common Core and the Common Core testing?

Here's why:

In practice what this is likely to yield is an intensification of factory-style education for these low-scoring populations. Students who perform well may be somewhat relieved of this, but those in the low-scoring schools and social classes will get ever an more prescriptive curriculum, closely aligned with the tests.

The cynical among us might begin to suspect that this is exactly the sort of education one might impose on people whose destiny is low-level drudgery-filled jobs - while the elite reserves for itself the small classes, the rich interactive curriculum described on the websites of schools like Lakeside, where the Gates children attend.

The meme about Common Core is that it "raises" standards so that children can better "compete" in a global economy.

The reality is, it is a emotionally-devoid drudge work that is quickly making many children hate school, check out of their lessons, and in the very near future drop out completely.

That's what happens when you teach lessons devoid of content and focuses only on skills over and over and over.

People need to care about what they are learning.

CCSS - and the people who designed them - do not give a shit what anybody thinks or feels about anything.

All they care about is whether the children can do the market analysis by Friday.

That's ELA CCSS designer David Coleman's famous quote to the Regents at a meeting about the standards.

It is emblematic of the reform movement as a whole these days.

The Insanity Of Close Reading A Text Without Context Or Personal Connections

@leoniehaimson To teach without contact & context is bizarre, pointless, ineffective. Learning doesn't exist in a vacuum. Connection is all.
— JosieHolford (@JosieHolford) November 20, 2013

Read the whole Valerie Strauss post on Close Reading that they are talking about here - it is a horrifying tale of what is so wrong with Common Core and why kids and teachers hate it so much.

I am teaching annotation and close reading to seniors today.

In my department, it was strongly urged that we take the SED modules for 9th grade and adapt lessons for the 10th, 11th and 12th grades.

So today we practice close reading of a text over and over and over.

I cannot give students any historical context for the text, I cannot explain any words they do not know, and I cannot ask them to make personal connections to the text (after all, as Common Core ELA standards architect David Coleman said, no one gives a shit what students think or feel about anything, only that they can do the office work.)

The 9th graders hate school - the Common Core lessons they are being taught ensure that.

Today, I suspect the 12th graders will hate it too.

I know I will hate it.

In my experience, the foundation of education is helping students to learn new ideas and concepts by helping them to draw on prior knowledge and make connection to their own experiences.

The Common Core architects, in their words, don't give a shit about any of that.

They care only that students can read a text and make text to text connections.

As Josie Holford said, this kind of teaching is bizarre, pointless and ineffective - and yet it is being forced on us in NY State by the NYSED, the Regents, and Governor Cuomo.

This is why parents and teachers are up in arms all over the state.

These are not higher standards we work with here.

These are insane standards that are meant to make school into drudge work, teach kids just enough skills to do the office work, but not enough to help them to grow into emotionally aware and conscious human beings.

This is child abuse, plain and simple.

The state bureaucrats and Regents board members should be up on charges for forcing these harmful and damaging reforms on children.

No Reformer Comes To Commissioner John King's Defense

Lat spring, College Board President David Coleman said this about NYSED Commissioner John King:

“These are hard times for New York City and New York State,” Coleman said. “The vultures are out. There is a culture in our city and state right now of trying to take people down, including the commissioner to my left.”

Coleman then implored the mostly friendly audience, which included former superintendents Harold Levy and Jean-Claude Brizard, “to stand up for this man for his courage in not backing down.”

After the event, Coleman said his comments were meant as a defense of King, not a response to any specific criticism.

Commissioner King has been having a very difficult time of it lately, having taken criticism at two separate parent town halls in the last week, then taken even more criticism when he canceled future town hall meetings with parents and blamed the cancellations on "special interests" for co-opting the meetings and making it impossible for him to have a dialogue with parents.

The Twitterverse and blogosphere has been awash with negative comments, statements, blog pieces and Facebook posts about King's arrogant dismissal of parents, their concerns over the Common Core and the radical SED education reform agenda.

People have been pointing the chutzpah King has demonstrated by declaring parents "special interests" and the hypocrisy King has shown by claiming special interests had hijacked the "dialogue" at the Poughkeepsie town hall meeting when news accounts report that the evening was actually a two hour John King monologue interspersed with a few minutes of parent questions that King kept interrupting.

After King issued his press release explaining why he had canceled the future town hall meetings, he went into hiding in Albany and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

Interestingly enough, neither has David Coleman or any of the other education reformers so enamored of John King just a few months back.

I have looked for comments from Coleman, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Dennis Walcott or any other prominent ed deformer defending King this weekend in the face of the heavy criticism he is taking and have so far, found nothing.

That no prominent reform voice is coming out to loudly defend King should be a warning sign to our erstwhile SED reformer in Albany.

As I posted yesterday, the politicians and reformers will stick with somebody so long as they are useful to them, but once that usefulness is exhausted, they will turn on them.

The silence from the ed deform side on John King is as deafening as the criticism of King coming from parents and teachers.

It is especially deafening given the passionate defense of King that David Coleman offered just a few months ago.

I'm Sure More Standardized Testing And Standardized Rubrics Will Solve This Crisis

In an article entitled What It Takes to Make New College Graduates Employable, Alina Tugend writes the following:

A special report by The Chronicle of Higher Education and American Public Media’s Marketplace published in March found that about half of 704 employers who participated in the study said they had trouble finding recent college graduates qualified to fill positions at their company.

But, surprisingly, it wasn’t necessarily specific technical skills that were lacking. 

“When it comes to the skills most needed by employers, job candidates are lacking most in written and oral communication skills, adaptability and managing multiple priorities, and making decisions and problem solving,” the report said. 

Jaime S. Fall, a vice president at the HR Policy Association, an organization of chief human resources managers from large employers, said these findings backed up what his organization was hearing over and over from employers. 

Young employees “are very good at finding information, but not as good at putting that information into context,” Mr. Fall said. “They’re really good at technology, but not at how to take those skills and resolve specific business problems.” 

This isn’t a dilemma just in this country, but around the world, Ms. Swan said. A global study conducted last year of interviews with 25,000 employers found that nine out of 10 employees believed that colleges were not fully preparing students for the workplace. 

“There were the same problems,” she said. “Problems with collaboration, interpersonal skills, the ability to deal with ambiguity, flexibility and professionalism.”

Replacing the reading of fiction (which helps students to deal with ambiguity, uncertainty and areas of grey in life) with non-fiction, promoting standardized rubrics and grading rules all across the curriculum (as is happening in many schools), replacing most personal response writing and assignments in the ELA classroom with argumentative and informational writing based only upon close textual readings - I'm sure that's going to help students learn collaboration skills, interpersonal skills, the ability to deal with ambiguity, and flexibility.

Oh, wait - no, it probably won't.

Common Core reform will exacerbate these problems.

ELA Common Core developer David Coleman famously said "No one gives a shit what your kids think or feel about anything..." and he proceeded to develop English Language Arts standards that put that particular value into practice.

But if you want kids to grow up to be employees who are flexible, can deal with ambiguity, can work well with others and can adapt to change, you have to help students to deal with their emotions.

This means actually caring about what kids think or feel about things.

That means having assignments and lessons where kids can explore their feelings about personal issues, societal issues, cultural issues and a host of other things.

Too bad David Coleman and the other developers of the Core either didn't know or didn't care about this kind of thing.

Next year we were told there should be very little text to self response in the ELA classroom if teachers want to be rated "effective."

Everything in the ELA classroom must now revolve around close readings of difficult texts, argumentative and informational writing around those texts, and tests that will assess those kinds of skills through the use of standardized rubrics and grading criteria.

You can bet this will not help kids to grow into adults who are flexible, can deal with ambiguity, can work well with others and can adapt to change.

Arne Duncan, One Of The Biggest Common Core Proponents, Insists Feds Have Nothing To Do With Common Core

Rick Hess wrote the following last week as attacks from the the Tea Party right threatened to take down Common Core implementation in some states:

Sec. Duncan needs to give a speech in which he pleads "mea culpa" and acknowledges that federal involvement and money played a nontrivial (and perhaps, in hindsight, an unfortunate) role in the early stages of the Common Core. Doing so will allow the conversation to move off that sticking point, and reassure the skeptics that the proponents are finally speaking to their fears of slippery slopes. Duncan can then pivot to what comes next. He should signal support for proposals by Congressional Republicans that would prohibit further federal involvement with the Common Core and issue bright-line guidance to make clear that ED will not be sticking its 800-lb. thumb on the scale in the future when dealing with waivers or anything else.

Did Arne Duncan take Hess's advice?

Of course not.

Duncan instead went on the attack against Common Core opponents and skeptics, calling them liars and/or ignoramuses, and exhorting the press to to expose all Common Core criticism as ill-informed or plain wrong.

Here is what Hess thought about Duncan's speech:

Yesterday, our earnest Secretary of Education delivered a big speech on the Common Core to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. In a move that will surprise pretty much no one, he disregarded my advice from last week on how to tamp down some of the push-back to the Common Core. Instead, he basically opted to double down on the administration's rhetorical approach, offering skeptics the back of his hand, and not much else. You can read the whole thing for yourself, but here are seven things that struck me:

1. From the Catch-22 file: When U.S. Secretary of Education is one of the most prominent and vocal champions of Common Core, it makes it harder to argue that this is a state-driven exercise.

2. Duncan was, of course, entirely correct in reminding the editors of the difference between standards and curriculum, and in telling them that agreeing to standards does not mean a state has selected any particular curriculum. Moreover, Duncan sounded a reasonable note when he pointed out the misinformation out there, and blasted critics for "say[ing] that the Common Core calls for federal collection of student data. For the record, it doesn't, we're not allowed to, and we won't. And let's not even get into the really wacky stuff: mind control, robots, and biometric brain mapping."

3. If Duncan was going to go after "misinformation," though, it would have been gracious and constructive if Duncan had conceded that some of this might be due to advocates not doing a very good job of engaging the public or anticipating reasonable concerns, or had acknowledged that such worries are understandable in light of the current IRS and NSA scandals. Indeed, since he was talking to the nation's editors, he might have posed this as a reporting challenge. Instead, I read the "misinformation" point entirely as an indictment of those goofy yokels who mindlessly fear federal overreach.

4. Duncan offered a slight nod to the role that federal funds, Race to the Top, and ESEA waivers have played in pushing the Common Core forward. He acknowledged that the Obama administration "supported[ed]" and "encouraged" the enterprise. He could have used this as an opportunity to sketch a bright line regarding federal involvement and to convince reasonable skeptics that the feds aren't on a slippery slope. Once again, he passed, saying of the standards: "The federal government didn't write them, didn't approve them and doesn't mandate them, and we never will. Anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed or willfully misleading." Uhh, hold on now, Sparky. This depends on what the meaning of "approve" and "mandate" is. Duncan certainly made adoption of approved standards a key in Race to the Top and mandatory for obtaining ESEA waivers (and there weren't a lot of options besides Common Core). He's free to argue the semantics of "approve" or "mandate," but he's over the line in asserting that those who disagree are "misinformed or willfully misleading."

5. On a related note, Duncan again passed on the opportunity to say it might not have been the greatest idea for the 2012 Democratic National Platform to credit Obama for the Common Core, or for the President to take credit for Common Core adoption in this year in this year's State of the Union.

6. In telling the editors what questions their reporters should be asking, it was interesting to see the questions that Duncan didn't encourage. He told the editors to challenge skeptics to show federally created curricula or textbooks (knowing they can't find such examples), but said nothing about looking into federal funding for the testing consortia (which will devise the tests that will drive instruction and curriculum) or whether all the experts agree that the Common Core is as rigorous and generally awesome as he asserted.

7. Duncan said nothing about his "waiver waiver" decision from the other week (which dealt with the challenge of adopting new teacher evaluation systems while changing tests). This pointed to a larger omission, which was the utter absence of any discussion of the implementation challenges posed by the Common Core or how solid reporting might help state and local officials and educators anticipate, understand, and address those.

This all matters because Common Core adoption is not self executing. It depends on the breadth of support and on the intensity of the opposition. The Duncan line of attack doesn't do anything to help on that front and may very well agitate opponents even more. 

I'm glad Duncan doubled down on his defense of Common Core, ratcheted up the attacks against Common Core opponents and skeptics by saying they're either misinformed or lying about the Core, and failed to address any of the legitimate concerns people might have about the NCLB waivers he gave out that almost certainly forced states to agree to Common Core implementation and the data tracking that comes with it, the government's role in funding the Common Core testing consortia, or any of the other worries people have about the CCFS.

It means Duncan will, as Hess suggests, agitate Common Core opponents and skeptics even more and make the implementation of the Core more difficult and the eventual demise of the Core more likely.

This is a pattern with education reform zealots and Common Core proponents - rather than address the very real and legitimate concerns of Common Core or education reform skeptics or opponents, they go on the attack and dismiss anybody who hasn't consumed the Core/Reformy KOOL AID as a moron or a unionized hack desperate to hold on to the status quo.

Most recently we saw this when ELA Common Core standards developer David Coleman went on the attack against skeptics and critics of the APPR teacher evaluation system in NY State at David Steiner's CUNY education reform forum.  NYSED Commissioner/rookie teacher John King also went on the attack at that forum, whining that the press was not fully explaining the complexities of the APPR teacher evaluation system or the Common Core tests to the public and therefore was helping opponents to bring the reform movement down.

It took reformer Paul Vallas to speak truth to the reformy KOOL AIDers:

“We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate,” he said. In separate comments, Vallas criticized evaluations as a “testing industrial complex” and “a system where you literally have binders on individual teachers with rubrics that are so complicated … that they’ll just make you suicidal.”

...

The Bridgeport, Conn. superintendent — who has served stints in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans and earned a reputation as a turnaround consultant for struggling districts with big budget gaps — said reforms he backed were at risk of collapsing “under the weight of how complicated we’re making it.”

“We’re working on the evaluation system right now,” Vallas said of Bridgeport. “And I’ll tell you, it is a nightmare.”

You can tell who is winning the Common Core publicity wars by which side is whining the most about the unfairness of the press.

Arne Duncan telling reporters to carry the water of the Common Core, coming one month after David Coleman and John King whined to their fellow ed deformers about the lack of media support for the Common Core (an absurd charge, btw - all the editorial boards in NYC support the Core unequivocally), shows us that Common Core proponents and their political functionaries know the public is turning against them.

As Hess noted in his post, had Duncan been smart, he would have distanced himself from the Common Core and let other figures take the lead in defending it (Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or Cory Booker, for example.)

But Duncan was not smart and instead he went to the mattresses with Core opponents and got headlines like SECRETARY DUNCAN DEFENDS COMMON CORE - the kind that will just make the people fighting the movement to fight even harder against it.

Heckuva job, Arne.

Heckuva job.

Should SAT And ACT Scores Be Used For NYC Teacher Evaluations?

They might be:

A host of city public-school art, gym and other teachers will be rated next year not by their students’ work but by how their schools do on state math and reading exams.

Schoolwide results will count for up to 40 percent of teachers’ ratings in subjects that don’t have standardized tests, such as health and some languages.

State Education Commissioner John King, compelled by state law to craft the city’s evaluation system, made schoolwide results the default if principals don’t select other rating tools.

“Student scores reflect the work of many personnel, and in some schools, schoolwide measures may be beneficial to support increased collaboration and accountability amongst staff across all grades and subjects,” he wrote in his 241-page evaluation plan.

...

The plan also opens the door for high-school teachers to be held accountable for how their students do on such standardized exams as the SATs, ACTs and AP.

Those are among the third-party exams that the schools chancellor or principals can tap for rating teachers in classes where no state or city exams exist.

How would you like to have the SAT be used for your evaluation?

I'm sure College Board hack David Coleman would love that.

Ed Deform House Of Cards Falling - Ed Deformers Whining About It

There have been two instances of major whining by education deform proponents in the past couple of weeks.

The first was at Pearson booster David Steiner's CUNY Institute for Education Policy panel, when Common Core Federal Standards architect David "No One Gives A Shit What You Think Or Feel!" Coleman whined about the following:

“These are hard times for New York City and New York State,” Coleman said. “The vultures are out. There is a culture in our city and state right now of trying to take people down, including the commissioner to my left.”

Coleman then implored the mostly friendly audience, which included former superintendents Harold Levy and Jean-Claude Brizard, “to stand up for this man for his courage in not backing down.”

That man to his left, NYSED Commissioner John King, then offered a vintage whine of his own on why the public isn't buying the reform agenda he's selling:

“One of the challenges is that the media conversation about education always boils down to black hats and white hats,” King said, referring to the polarized sides of the education debate. As an example, he pointed to a recent New York Post story about a reading passage in the state’s curriculum that contained criticism of the passage’s content but little recognition of its value as a challenging text that reflects real-world issues.

“That may be all that space allows, but I think ultimately our challenge is to have a deeper conversation of what it would really take to change student outcomes,” King added.

Fellow ed deformer Paul Vallas responded to the King whine like this:

“We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate,” he said. In separate comments, Vallas criticized evaluations as a “testing industrial complex” and “a system where you literally have binders on individual teachers with rubrics that are so complicated … that they’ll just make you suicidal.”

...

The Bridgeport, Conn. superintendent — who has served stints in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans and earned a reputation as a turnaround consultant for struggling districts with big budget gaps — said reforms he backed were at risk of collapsing “under the weight of how complicated we’re making it.”

“We’re working on the evaluation system right now,” Vallas said of Bridgeport. “And I’ll tell you, it is a nightmare.”

Has it not occurred to the ed deform proponents that by making these new teacher evaluation and school accountability systems so complex, convoluted and unworkable, they have sowed the seeds of destruction of the systems right into the DNA?

I can only think that these so-called "Best and Brightest" like Coleman and King are so blinded by their own genius that they have failed to see that by arrogantly shoving these reforms down people's throats, untested and unpiloted, and by refusing to assuage concerns over the changes and instead attacking critics with straw man arguments about the status quo, they will be bring about the destruction of their own reforms.

Or perhaps they thought a propaganda campaign beating up on teachers and schools and promoting the new changes would dazzle the public into blindly following along with them on the ed deform trail.

In any case, they were wrong about that, and you can see just how wrong in all the revolts that are spreading all across the country against Common Core, against high stakes testing, against data-driven education.

The second Great Whine Moment came yesterday when Chancellor Walcott used a meeting with principals at Brooklyn Tech to defend the Bloomberg education reform agenda and attack prospective mayoral candidates for not sticking with it 100%.

The NY Times reported that the principals were wholly uninterested in Walcott's whining speech and some were outright hostile to it.

But Norm Scott wrote that the Times article didn't quite accurately get the frustration and hostility some principals felt at being Walcott's captive audience for his ed deform defense:

The political agenda was primary as Walcott hosted what some say was an anti-UFT union bashing-Fest disguised as principal conference. There's some irony in that while most principals, especially Leadership Academy types, agree with the anti-union agenda, many principals also despise the Tweedies with a passion and are not unhappy to see them go. Do you think principals of NYC public schools are actually happy to see their space given away to charters which get favored treatment?

One attendee said:

The chancellor made a big political speech about why the next mayor can not be allowed to do anything against the reform agenda and how the UFT can not rule education and teachers should not be protected. Some of the newbie knuckleheads laughed, not realizing the very same system will be used to fire them.

Apparently Walcott brought in Mike Johnston, Colorado State Senator,  "another dirtbag to bring up Memphis spirituality and quotes the bible in rationalizing education reform," said one attendee. "He wrapped these policies around Martin Luther King and the bible story of the good Samaritan," outraging one principal who challenged Johnston by saying King was in Memphis to support union workers for a contract not education reform and Jesus was a carpenter so would be a union man.

Johnston also talked about firing the weakest teachers using basketball as an analogy.  One questioner reminded him that we can accurately assess how many baskets players score while tests are always full of errors so we don't this need junk science..

A veteran principal said he has "fired teachers and doesn't need 10000 rubrics and data to get rid of bad teachers."

Norm goes on to write that this Great Whinery Movement from New York State officials, educrats and functionaries isn't just about New York:

While Walcott tries to stave off total irrelevancy, what is going on is the fast and furious fall of ed deform. Think of the Mad Men opening of the guy falling out of a building. Ed deform is being dashed on the rocks below and they are getting very nervous.

Let me use another TV moment, one that is now cliche but quite accurately captures where we are in the ed deform movement.

It has jumped the shark.

It's best days are behind it, as cheating scandals reveal data-driven miracles in Atlanta and Washington D.C. to be mirages, as Common Core implementation meets obstacles in Indiana and other states, as many conservatives across the country turn on the movement as federal overreach (Obamacore), as the two national testing consortia have problems rolling out their so-called state of the art assessments, as Bloomberg rides off into the Bermudan sunset and his successors vow to undo many of his most odious reforms.

You can tell which side is winning this battle by which side is doing the most whining.

The oh so arrogant education reformers, blinded by their own hubris, still haven't awakened to the fact that the public has not turned against reform because they are not adequately communicating the complexity of it to them.

They have turned against reform because education reform proponents do not, as Paul Vallas told his education reform audience at David Steiner's ed deform panel, "have a good message to communicate."

In other words, the public doesn't want what Coleman, King, Walcott and the other deformers are selling.

Whine all you want, fellas.

That won't change anything.