This Teacher's Ninth Graders Show Contempt For The Common Core

A reader at Perdido Street School blog:

Last week, one of our guidance counselors came in to one of my 9th grade classes to talk to the students about the importance of maintaining their grades, securing letters of recommendation from teachers, exploring career opportunities which would interest them, and making sure they meet their deadlines regarding tests, college applications, as well as financial aid.

The conversation between students discussing careers turned to teaching, at which one student said she always wanted to be a teacher. One of the other student visibly expressed her opinion, and then asked her why she would want to do that...also asking her if she heard of the Common Core. At that point, other students became involved in the conversation and the consensus became apparently clear...their literal hatred and scorn for Common Core, even mocking it as anti-American and the stealing of public education money by those seeking to get rich at the expense of tax payers and public schools.

Mr Gates...I wish you could have been there to hear what high school freshman that are young teenagers think of the "standards" that you have pushed onto America's public schools...

And Ms Elia...it would have been wonderful for you to be there...this conversation in class was student-initiated....student-driven...and student-resolved...a slap in the face to the privatization movement that your Soviet "commisariat" would most certainly have frowned upon.

If the ninth graders get it, so do their parents....and so do many, many more New Yorkers.

And last but not least, Mr Cuomo...you take time out of your busy schedule to preach Success Academy and charter politics...at the behest of your corporate masters...I wish you could have been there too.

Please come to Queens, New York, to discuss your Common Core standards, the three of you...and bring the news cameras...

I know you won't, because the students would make a mockery of the three of you in a public forum.

The newspaper article might read, "Ninth Grade Public High School Students explain why they do not support Common Core to Gates, Cuomo, and Elia".

I get similar reactions from students when I have asked them about their feelings for the Common Core or the EngageNY modules they've been doing for the past two+ years (which, given how Common Core fuehrer David Coleman feels about non-"evidence based" feelings, was a very un-Common Core teaching thing to do, but oh, well...)

How do your students feel about Common Core?

Do some feel that they're getting a well-rounded education writing argumentative essays in every class, spending three weeks on one short story or answering text-based minutiae over and over and over for days on end?

MaryEllen Elia Is Open To Delaying Cuomo's Harmful Teacher Evaluation System

Karen DeWitt at North Country Public Radio:

New York State’s education commissioner said she is open to granting waivers to delay new teacher evaluation for an additional year. Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia said the new systems should not be pushed through hastily because of an arbitrary date.

The latest version of teacher and principal evaluations were pushed through in this year’s state budget by Governor Cuomo. It requires that the reviews be based more heavily on controversial standardized tests. The new plans are due this fall.

The State Board of Regents voted to permit schools that find the deadline too tight to apply for a waiver for a one-year delay. Now, Elia, who’s been on the job since early July, said she is open to granting the waivers if meeting the deadline puts more pressure on already overtaxed school districts. “I don’t think we should put that much more stress on them,” Elia said. “Let them get the waiver and then have the time that they need to really do something that’s good.”

She said the evaluations can be a positive experience if they result in more support for teachers who need to improve some of their skills. “The reality is the teachers are going to be the ones that make it work in a classroom every day for the kids across the state,” said Elia. “So it’s important for us to make sure that this is done appropriately and not pushed through just because of a date.”

Oh goodie - Elia's open to delaying the evaluation system that rates how well teachers are teaching the Common Core standards and Common Core curriculum (EngageNY) that are now under review by Cuomo's third education commission in the last two years.

Oh goodie - Elia's open to delaying the evaluation system that rates teachers based upon the scores of their students on the Common Core tests that 20% of eligible students opted out of this year, the same tests that Cuomo stated were also slated to be reviewed by the Cuomo education commission because parents in New York had no faith in them.

Oh goodie - Elia's open to delaying the evaluation system that a judge is set to render a decision upon after a well-respected teacher in Great Neck went from 14 out of 20 to 1 out of 20 in one year on her state test component and NYSED couldn't explain to her why this was.

Isn't this swell?

No, actually it's not.

The system doesn't need to be delayed - it needs to be scrapped onto the garbage heap and a new one needs to be created in its place.

There is already plenty of evidence that APPR evaluations harm teachers who teach the most vulnerable populations - and more came in today at ICEUFT blog, per James Eterno:

 In April the ICEUFT Blog published a piece in which we publicly admitted that for the 2013-14 school year state data showed that 88% of the teachers at the phasing out Jamaica High School were rated either developing or ineffective. At the time we stated sarcastically that we must be "the worst teachers on the planet." The blog also said these ratings were meaningless.

We concluded the post by making a not so bold prediction that for 2014-15, when teachers from Jamaica were sent to other schools where the student populations did not have as many needs as those at the phasing out Jamaica, we would see much better teacher ratings.

The data is now in for 2014-15 and another ICEUFTBLOG prediction has come true. This year there were no adverse ratings from the 2013-14 Jamaica teachers who were still in the school system. We were perfect.  That is correct. 100% of the teachers who were at Jamaica in 2013-14, who became rotating Absent Teacher Reserves or were assigned to a school in the 2014-2015 school year, have been rated either effective or satisfactory. The only people who didn't receive these positive end of the year evaluations were the three who were fortunate enough to have retired.

How is it possible that we went from 88% of us receiving adverse ratings to 0% in just a year?  We were the same teachers.

Given that the evaluation system rates how well teachers teach the Common Core standards, curriculum and tests that are now ALL under review by Cuomo's third education commission/panel in the last two years, given that the test component of APPR is in the court system right now (described as a "Black Box" of suckery since NYSED can't seem to explain how they're coming up with the test score component numbers), given that teachers who teach in schools with students who score low on tests are getting nailed with "ineffective" and "developing" ratings and then magically becoming "effective" teachers when they move on to schools where the test scores are higher, there is no reason to DELAY the APPR teacher evaluation system and every reason to SCRAP it instead and build another one that is fair, transparent and effective in its place.

I am under no illusion that this will happen.

APPR is Cuomo's baby, he shoved it through in the last budget session because he felt not enough teachers were being rated "ineffective" or "developing," and he's not going to cave on it now just because he's just caved on his Common Core standards, curricula and tests due to parent protests, falling poll numbers and a skyrocketing opt out rate.

In the end, it will go because it is an unworkable evaluation system, it is harming children, teachers and schools, it is non-transparent, often arbitrary in its test component findings and rigged against teachers who teach the most vulnerable populations of students.

But for now Cuomo will ignore the criticism of the system, ignore that it rates teachers based upon standards, tests, and curricula that he admits are flawed, and push from behind the scenes to make sure the system gets put into place in districts or they lose their state aid increases as per the budget law.

Cuomo's been bragging for years about APPR and he isn't about to let the reality of it - that it's an unworkable, harmful mess - cause it to be scrapped.

But as we've seen with the Common Core standards, tests and curricula, pressure for parents can move mountains in Albany, or at least cause intractable, corrupt politicians to act, so the more pressure put upon Governor Cuomo, the Legislature, the Board of Regents and NYSED to junk APPR, the quicker it will end up where it belongs - in the junk yard.

New York's Assembly Line Teaching

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

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

— Tim Farley (@tfarley1969) June 28, 2015

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

— rbe (@perdidostschool) June 29, 2015

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

— rbe (@perdidostschool) June 29, 2015

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

— rbe (@perdidostschool) June 29, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Randi Weingarten thinks teachers need to be respected?

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

End the assembly line teaching and evaluations.

Education Reformers Not Worried Reform Agenda Will Suffer With John King's Departure

Jessica Bakeman has a piece at Capital NY reporting that NYSED Commissioner John King's departure from the scene will have little impact on the education reform agenda being imposed on the state's students, teachers and schools:

In the upcoming session, Cuomo has already hinted at a robust education agenda that includes further strengthening teacher evaluations and boosting the charter school sector.

Jenny Sedlis, executive director of StudentsFirstNY, a education group that’s closely aligned with Cuomo on issues related to schools, said she’s not concerned that her priorities will suffer in King’s absence.

“There is incredible momentum behind raising standards for students and teachers and for increasing the number of high quality charter schools,” Sedlis said. “So I think John King has laid a strong foundation, and we’ll all be able to build off of that.”

As I posted last night, Regents Chancellor Tisch has also indicated that the reform agenda will continue apace.

That means more charters, "strengthened" teacher evaluations, the continued implementation of the Common Core, more Engage NY curriculum, and continued teacher and traditional public school bashing from Albany.

The political functionaries come and go, the education reform agenda to privatize schools, bust the teachers union and deprofessionalize teaching goes on forever.

The Farewell Speech NYSED Commissioner John King Should Have Given

Here is the "emotional" farewell speech NYSED Commissioner John King gave yesterday according the Capital NY morning education email:

“Last night … I was thinking about those moments in fourth, fifth and sixth grade, when my father was so sick and my mom had passed, and I didn’t have hope,” he said. “But hope came in school. Hope came in Shakespeare. Hope came in The New York Times. Hope came in the capitals that we memorized in every country in the world. Hope came in knowing that tomorrow I would go to class, and I would learn something, and it would be engaging and challenging and interesting. You bring your students hope. This community brings me hope. It has been a tremendous honor to work alongside our team at [the State Education Department] and … the Board of Regents and every person in this room. I’m very grateful. I look forward to our work together, and I look forward to closing that gap between what is and what ought to be together.” [PRO] http://bit.ly/1wFi6uc

Given how destructive King has been to the public school system and the children and the teachers in that system, how arrogant he has treated parents and teachers, how much creativity and joy he has sucked out of education, this is the speech he should have given:

I was thinking about all the hope and joy I was given in school when I was a child, all the hope and joy that my children are given in the Montessori school I send them to, and all the hope and joy I took out of the public schools in New York by pushing the rote learning of Common Core, the test-based teacher evaluations of APPR, the soul-sapping redundancy in the EngageNY learning modules.  To be frank, my job as NYSED Commissioner was to prove that public schools are failures so that charter schools could flourish.  I was hired for that job, that was the job I worked very hard to carry out.  I wasn't quite successful at destroying the public schools or the children and teachers in those schools, but I came close.  It is my hope that my successor can finish that job so that New York State will be a land of innovation and choice, just like they have in the New Orleans school system.

I went into education because a teacher helped me greatly when I was at one of the lowest points in my life.  I had some very grave family issues and, like many children, I was bringing the emotions I had around those issues to school.  A teacher at my school noticed this and talked to me about the problems I was facing. He gave me hope, he showed me some one cared.

In the school system I have helped to create here in New York State, I wanted to make sure that no teacher can have that opportunity to help a student in emotional need because there is no time for that kind of help.  There is only time for test-based learning, endless professional development, useless focus groups, and all the other mind-numbing, soul-killing corporate drivel we at NYSED have pushed on schools and school staff.

If I were a child today and needed the help that I needed from my teacher, I might not get that help because the teacher would say "I'm sorry, John, I'd like to talk but I have to run off to my daily focus group to talk about my target students. Then I have to keep going on the EngageNY curriculum because every teacher in this school needs to be on the same lesson every day or they risk getting an 'ineffective' on their next Danielson drive-by observation.  Good luck, John..."

So much of what King talked about getting from his own teachers - hope, optimism, honor - is the opposite of what King himself brought to the New York State public school system.

Like many reformers, King is a hypocrite, of course.

He makes sure his own kids are given the nurturing they need by sending them to a Montessori school - this way, they don't have to experience the Reign of Error King and his merry men and women in reform have thrust on public school children.

I wasn't expecting him to acknowledge any of this publicly in his "farewell" remarks.

That's why I did it for him.

A Friendly Reminder On Lesson Planning In The Age Of Common Core, Danielson And EngageNY

Dear Staff,

The administration has come to understand that many teachers are feeling the need to address current events in their lessons these days.

It is understandable that children want to talk about some of the stories that are in the news, like the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, or the Eric Garner case in New York City.

Please understand that no matter how much children need to talk about these stories, all lessons must be Common Core-aligned and fully compliant with the "effective" or "highly effective" lines on the Danielson rubric.

Current events lessons must be built around a piece of complex text that is the centerpiece of the lesson.  While we want students to grapple with the complex events that are occurring around us in the world today, we must ensure that they are also grappling with complex words and language they don't understand - otherwise we are not doing our jobs as educators.

Current events lessons may not be open-ended discussions that go where the intellectual or emotional needs of the children lead - they must be fully-planned out ahead of time, with teachers having a rigorous set of close reading questions developed for the complex current events reading text and the responses students are expected to give to those close reading questions.  As always, close reading questions should focus mostly on the language choices and tone of the author, be repetitive in nature, and allow for no thought about the actual event itself.  When in doubt, always remember that in the Age of Common Core and EngageNY, we are teaching skills, not content.

In addition, current events lessons must end with an assessment so that teachers can see what students have learned and what they still need to learn - we cannot lose sight of the importance of endlessly assessing students no matter what is happening outside our school. Please ensure that your Common Core-aligned, Danielson-approved current events lesson contains formative and summative assessments along with the appropriate rubrics so students will know what the instructional expectations are and how they can best achieve them.

The complex current events text, the close reading questions, the expected student responses to those close reading questions, and the formative and summative assessments must be fully developed and documented in the (suggested) lesson plan format you received at the beginning of the Fall 2014 term and aligned to both a specific, measurable instructional objective and the Common Core English Language Arts standards.

Lesson plans should be available for the perusal of classroom observers.

These are interesting times we live in and, as was said before, we understand why children might want to break from their EngageNY lessons to talk about some of the things that have been happening in the world.

But as always, in order to be professional educators in the Age of EngageNY and the Danielson rubric, we must make sure that every lesson that is taught is Common Core-aligned, rigorous in language, complex in text, rife with assessment and 100% planned out beforehand as evident in the (suggested) lesson plan format.

Thank you and have a rigorous day.

NOTE: Informal, unannounced Danielson observations will be ongoing this week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This woman doesn't belong as Regents Chancellor.

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

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

Here's his number:

District Office

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

Albany Office

LOB 932
Albany, NY 12248
518-455-3791

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

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

But it is time to try.

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

NYCDOE Should Expand Composting Program To Include Common Core/EngageNY Modules

From the Times:

New York City’s school composting program, kicked off just two years ago by parents on the Upper West Side, is now in 230 school buildings in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, and is expected to more than double in size and reach all five boroughs in the fall, with an ultimate goal of encompassing all 1,300-plus school buildings.

 Depending on where the school is, the uneaten and half-eaten leftovers are sent to a compost heap at a former Staten Island landfill or to upstate New York or Delaware, where the slop is churned into nutrient-enriched dirt that farmers or landscape architects can buy. Eventually, the city will send some scraps to a wastewater treatment plant in Brooklyn, where “digesters” turn garbage into usable gas.

“There’s a lot of carbon in that banana that’s going to end up growing something else in your garden at home,” John T. Shea, the chief of the Education Department’s school facilities, said. “It’s the circle of life, baby.”

The hope is that by building up composting in school, the city will help the environment, instill a sense of conservation in schoolchildren and, critically, save some money. The city paid $93 per ton in 2013 to dump in landfills, up from $68 in 2004. Composting saves the city $10 to $50 per ton, because the cost is offset by the sale of the end product, according to the Sanitation Department.

I think this program is great and I would like to see the DOE expand the program beyond food to other scraps and waste that nobody wants - like the Danielson rubric, the Common Core Core State (sic) Standards and the EngageNY modules.

Throw them all onto the compost pile with the rotting tomatoes and bananas where they belong.

As the year goes by and more and more parents turn against these kinds of corporate education reforms, we're getting closer to seeing them end up on the compost pile.

The "Unintended Consequences" Of The Common Core And The Education Reform Movement

An editorial from the New Hampshire Union Leader:

Kids and cursive Common Core fallout

Unintended consequences are beginning to sprout in the wake of U.S. education decisions.

For one thing, there is the move to do away with any concentration on handwriting other than in kindergarten and first grade. For another, there is the federal overreach on common standards.

A lengthy New York Times report last week on research done elsewhere says that a lot more than the ability to write in cursive is at stake regarding the scrapping of handwriting. Several studies have shown that handwriting engages portions of the brain that a keyboard does not.

"When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated," said a French psychologist. "There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental stimulation in your brain. And it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn't realize."

"Learning," said Stanislas Dehaene, "is made easier."

"When learning to write by hand," the Times noted, "children better generate ideas and retain information."

Who would have thunk it?

Don't think the fuss over "Common Core" standards is any big deal? It happens that those standards include ending the teaching of handwriting after the first grade.
Incidentally, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed legislation last week that ends that state's adherence to Common Core.

"It has become very apparent to me that the word Common Core has become a word that is tainted, that is divisive, that has caused widespread concern throughout our state," Fallin said.

According to the Oklahoman newspaper, the standards "were developed in a state-led effort launched in 2009 through the National Governors Association, a group Fallin now heads. Meant to be rigorous and advance critical thinking, they were adopted voluntarily by 45 states and the District of Columbia. Oklahoma joins Indiana in repealing them."

Fallin faulted the Obama administration for using federal funds as either cudgel or reward on the issue, noting that Washington offers financial "incentives'' for those states that, like New Hampshire, go along with the standards.

Perhaps our own state board, which claims no local district need adopt the standards but is making it impossible to avoid them, can try this assignment: Write 100 times, in longhand, New Hampshire can do better than Common Core.

My 11th graders told me this year that they can't seem to write without a rubric and an outline anymore, two items that the Common Core and the Danielson teacher evaluation rubric as practiced in my school specialize in festishizing.

When I asked students to write a personal piece about a struggle they have had and what they have learned from that struggle (a piece that could take the form of either a personal essay, a narrative or poetry), many students said they had difficulty starting because they hadn't written anything creative all year and weren't really reading much in the way of literature or poetry anymore (this is much worse for 9th graders, where they are getting the education malfeasance that is the EngageNY curriculum, but it's still bad at all levels in high school.)

We have been told by the self-described geniuses who brought us the Common Core, the Danielson framework and the other ancillary reforms that go with these that the proof will be there after a decade of reform, that students will be going to college and showing up in their careers ready to do the "rigorous" work the 21st Century workplace will require.

But the consequences from these reforms are showing up already - especially the damage the Common Core and the Endless Testing that goes with it is doing to the emotional health of children.

The Union Leader says these consequences are unintended, but I'm not so sure.

In a country where the economic and social elite seem to want to own 100% of the country, you can see the value in an education revolution that dumbs down most of the populace and does severe emotional and psychological harm to them.

In any case, whether the consequences are unintended, as the Union Leader says they are, or they're intended, as I tend to think they are, the consequences to the reform agenda are showing up already.

The Common Core Generation is going to be a Lost Generation.

What NYSED Commissioner John King Finds Disturbing

From Chalkbeat:

King spoke at length in defense of the Common Core learning standards during a panel discussion at the conference, which was hosted by Schools that Can, a national nonprofit that helps district, charter, and independent schools collaborate.

At one point, when assessing different arguments that he has heard educators make against the Common Core, he noted that some say the standards exceed students’ intellectual capabilities at certain ages.

“Sometimes I feel like ‘developmentally inappropriate’ is being used as a euphemism for ‘harder,’” he said.

Some Twitter users seized on that comment. The user @perdidostschool, for instance, turned it on the state’s Common Core curriculum materials: “‘Rigor’” is often a euphemism for poorly-written EngageNY modules,” the tweet read.

Luckily for King, if not his critics, he also said during the talk that he tries to avoid checking his Twitter account too often.

“There are angry tweets sometimes,” he said. “I try not to look at those, because they’re disturbing sometimes.”

As we know from the Poughkeepsie debacle, what NYSED Commissioner King finds disturbing is anybody who doesn't agree 100% with his education reform agenda.

He doesn't like tweets pointing out problems with the state's reform agenda, the Common Core, the State Education Department's CCSS implementation or the EngageNY modules.

Too bad.

That he says "I try not to look at those" let's you know he very much looks at them.

In other words, they're hearing the criticism at SED even though they make believe like they're not.

I think it was Michael Fiorillo who pointed out that Nixon's people used to say the president never heard the protests outside the White House over the war, he was too busy watching football and engaged in doing the business of the country to hear that stuff.

But we know now from the tapes that the Nixon people were obsessed with the protests, looking for ways to retaliate against the protesters, looking for ways to silence them.

King, Tisch, Cuomo and Company like to make as if the widening parent/teacher protests over Common Core, the Endless Testing regime and the APPR teacher evaluation system that mandates so much of the extra testing don't matter to them one whit.

But you can be certain these protests do matter, they're paying attention and they're worried about them.

In the end, that's what King finds most disturbing about the critical tweets.

They're emblematic of the growing revolt over his reform agenda and he can't ignore that no matter how hard he tries.

Is NYSED Admitting EngageNY Modules Are Crap?

Chris Cerrone tweeted the following this afternoon:

​Is NYSED admitting modules are flawed? Do taxpayers get a $12.9 million refund? http://t.co/Y1SUna6f9b via @AlbanyBizReview
— Chris Cerrone (@Stoptesting15) April 27, 2014

Megan Rogers of the Albany Business Review reports this:

The New York state education department wants teachers to revamp the state's online curriculum resources for the Common Core learning standards.

The state education department released a request for information on a proposal to create regional Common Core Institutes, where educators from school districts, BOCES or charter schools would work full-time to develop new online instructional materials for the 2015-16 academic year.

Educators would serve as Common Core Institute Fellows during the 2014-15 academic year. The teachers would work on one grade level in K-12 math or 9-12 English language arts.

The state has some curricular materials on EngageNY.org.

I've covered the EngageNY modules a bit here at Perdido Street School blog:

NYSED ELA Lesson Module - 17 Days On One Short Story

EngageNY Modules Make No Sense - An Emblem For Common Core As A Whole

The NYSED Common Core Modules - Meant To Dumb Down A Whole Generation Of Children 

The EngageNY modules have been widely mocked, ridiculed and criticized by parents and educators, students have complained about the drudgery of the lessons, so perhaps the flacks at SED have just gotten sick of defending the indefensible and are ready to throw even more cash into the Common Core curriculum development process.

This time they seem to want to hire actual teachers to do the development work, as opposed to ferreting out the work to private corporations to the tune of $12.9 million Race to the Top dollars.

Nonetheless, this is the kind of thing that could have been avoided if the autocrats at SED and the Board of Regents had slowed down the implementation process and taken the time to think through and collaborate on that process - including the curriculum development, the test development, the evaluation system for teachers, etc.

Instead everything got shoved through at once, a la Shock Doctrine-style, with top-down mandates coming from the self-described geniuses at SED and the Board of Regents, with an assist from another self-described genius in the governor's office.

So now SED seems to be admitting that they lit the $12.9 million they spent on EngageNY modules on fire, that the entire process needs to be redone, this time by actual teachers (though we'll see about that - I suspect the "teachers" SED looks to get for these Common Core Institutes will have to be Common Core-friendly ones, though this is a group that gets smaller and smaller by the week.)

This is just another sign of how the corporate education reform agenda as developed by Regents Chancellor Tisch, SED Commissioner King, Governor Cuomo and the Abany educrats/Gates Foundation employees is falling apart.

One of the fatal flaws of the Common Core/education reform agenda was the hurried way everything was shoved through, which ensured much of the reforms were going to be half-assed and badly done.

The autocrats and plutocrats running the system wanted everything shoved through at once so that no dissent would be encountered.

That worked initially, but now that hurried agenda implementation is helping to mobilize critics across the state to the reforms and getting much of the public on board as they see just what crap the EngageNY module material is.

We'll just have to see if SED and the Regents can salvage this mess by creating these Common Core Institutes (how Orwellian a name!) and developing new CCSS modules and resources for 2015-2016.

The problem for SED and the Regents is that the opposition to the CCSS reforms may be so broad and widespread by that time frame that even if the CCSS Institutes developed useful materials, the whole process may be so poisoned by what came beforehand that no one will dare to use any of it anyway.

Spring Break

Half the staff at my school is either sick with a cold, just getting over a cold or just coming down with a cold.

I'm in the "sick with a cold" category.

I took a day earlier in the week to get over it but never did completely shake it.

Helluva way to start Spring Break when your nose is as red as the 90's version of Bill Clinton and your head is heavier than printed-out lessons from Engage NY.

In any case, hoping to feel better soon and hoping everybody out there enjoys a restful break from school.

God knows, we need it.

The Problem With Always Making Students Show Their Work

From David Ginsburg at Ed Week:

As a new teacher, I upheld the longstanding requirement among math teachers that students must always show their work. And like many teachers, I deducted points when students refused to comply. But the more pushback I got from them--"you shouldn't make us work the problems out if we already know the answers"--the more I questioned the wisdom of this rigid requirement. And eventually my message for students changed from you must show your work to you may show your work. Here's why.

A common reason teachers give students to show their work is that "I can't help you if I can't see what you did." But seeing students' work isn't the only way to know what they did. In fact, you can often learn more about students' thinking when they explain--out loud and/or in writing--what they did than when they just show what they did. (See Standard 3 of the CCSS Standards for Mathematical Practice: Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Also check out Marilyn Burns and her team conducting Math Reasoning Inventory interviews with students.)

A problem with requiring students to always show their work is that it risks emphasizing mathematical procedures and computation to the exclusion of mathematical thinking. The more programmed students are to show their work, the less likely they are to develop mental math and intuitive problem solving skills. 

Of course that's the point with Common Core - to make it look like kids are doing more "rigorous" work when what they're really do is rote procedure that stifles creativity and thought.

We see the same thing happening with the seventeen day units from EngageNY that have kids reading one short story over and over and over and annotating it over and over and over...

NYSED ELA Lesson Module - 17 Days On One Short Story

As I posted earlier this week, the teachers who have had the misfortune to have to use the Common Core lesson modules provided by NYSED at a website they call Engage NY have found that the material is so full of mind-numbing, soul-sucking drudgery that they had lost the interest of students by the second week of school.

I have heard many complaints from teachers about one module that has students read and re-read one short story over and over and over and over for 17 straight days...

Here is an overview of that 17 day lesson module:

Lesson    Text    Learning Outcomes/Goal    

1    St. Lucy’s (p. 225: title, Stage 1 epigraph, and paragraph 1)    Students will begin the curriculum learning to read closely as they examine an excerpt from Karen Russell’s short story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” They will explore the structural complexity of this as they examine the epigraph, a description of Stage 1 of Lycanthropic Culture Shock.     

2    St. Lucy’s (pp. 225–235: Stages 1 and 2)    Students will listen to a read-aloud of the first half of the story. This lesson provides important fluency support and introduces students to some of the text’s central concerns. Students are introduced to the narrator, Claudette, and the rest of her pack, as they begin to consider the narrative arcs of the main characters.       

3    St. Lucy’s (pp. 235–246: Stage 3 to the end of text)
    This lesson concludes the read-aloud of the text and ensures students have sufficient familiarity with the arc of this story to engage fully in the close reading activities in subsequent lessons. The lesson assessment asks students to identify one of the text’s central concerns and practice marshalling textual evidence to support their thinking.       

4    St. Lucy’s (pp. 226–227: From“‘Ay caramba,’ Sister Maria de la Guardia sighed.” to “Neither did they.”)    Students will return to the Stage 1 narrative to uncover connections between the Stage 1 epigraph and the Stage 1 narrative. Students will look more closely at Claudette, Mirabella, and Jeanette—the three main characters in the text—and consider how Russell’s precise language helps us understand both the girls and their experience at St. Lucy’s.       

5    St. Lucy’s (pp. 225–227: Beginning of text to “Neither did they.”)     This lesson introduces students to text annotation and reinforces the value of rereading a text multiple times. Students will consider the reason the girls are at St. Lucy’s while practicing using their annotations as a tool to find evidence.       

6    St. Lucy’s (pp. 227–229: Stage 1, from “That first afternoon, the nuns gave us free rein of the grounds.” to “It can be a little overstimulating.”)    Students will continue to learn the close reading skill of annotation as they begin, for the first time, to interrogate Russell’s text by considering the accuracy of the Stage 1 epigraph. This serves as an introduction to a key tension in the work and establishes a foundation students will use to challenge this and other texts in lessons and units to come.

7    St. Lucy’s (pp. 229 –231: from “Stage 2: After a time …” to “… cocked her ears at us, hurt and confused.”)    Students will continue to develop the skill of answering text-dependent questions through writing as they analyze Stage 2 of Lycanthropic Culture Shock more deeply. This lesson introduces students to the NY Regents Text Analysis Rubric. In this and subsequent lessons, they will refine their understanding of text analysis by using this rubric to assess their work.

8    St. Lucy’s (pp. 231–235: from “Still, some things remained the same.” to “This was a Stage 3 thought.”)    This lesson deepens students’ consideration of the developing rifts at St. Lucy’s. Through Claudette’s eyes, they examine the experiences and development of the three main characters. Here, students will refine their ability to marshal textual evidence by learning how to paraphrase and directly quote evidence in their writing as they prepare for the Mid-Unit Assessment.

9    St. Lucy’s (pp. 235–239: from “Stage 3: It is common that…” to “Jeanette got a hole in one.”)    Students will continue to read closely and answer text-dependent questions as they begin a deep examination of Stage 3. Here they will consider some of the difficult choices Claudette makes, deepening their understanding of how Russell develops this character. In this lesson, students will prepare the Mid-Unit Assessment through collaborative discussion.

10    St. Lucy’s (pp. 239–241: from “On Sundays, the pretending felt almost as natural…” to “…how the pack felt about anything.”)    Students will demonstrate their understanding of the text they have read by writing a formal response to the Mid-Unit Assessment prompt. After the assessment, students will continue their examination of Stage 3, practicing their annotation skills. 

11    St. Lucy’s (pp. 239–245: from “On Sundays, the pretending felt almost as …” to “… that was our last communal howl.”)    In this lesson, students consolidate their understanding of Stage 3 and move toward an exploration of the text’s climax in Stage 4. Students will review their reading annotation from Lesson 10 by participating in a Text-Dependent Questions Gallery Walk that will continue students’ work with text analysis through an evidence-based discussion. Students will again dip into a subtle interrogation of the text by considering the veracity of the Stage 4 epigraph for the characters.

12    St. Lucy’s (pp. 245–246: from the Stage 5 epigraph through the end of the text)    Students will work collaboratively with a partner, using the NY Regents Text Analysis Rubric to revise their Mid-Unit Assessment. Students will conclude their analysis of Stages 4 and 5 and consider Claudette’s assimilation process.    

13    Entire Text    This lesson begins students’ analysis of the St. Lucy’s text as a whole. Working in groups, students will analyze the different stages of Lycanthropic Culture Shock. This work supports the final unit assessment that asks students to look critically at Claudette and make a claim about her ability to assimilate into human culture.      

14    Entire Text    This lesson continues students’ exploration of the key ideas, characters and central ideas in Russell’s text. Student groups will present their analysis of one of the stages of culture shock in the text. Students will use the annotations and information they learned from the presentations to write a response to a prompt that asks students to analyze the how Russell develops a central idea and use multiple pieces of textual evidence.

15    Entire Text    Students will learn how to revise their Lesson 14 writing response by adding an introduction and a conclusion, preparing students for the End-of-Unit Assessment.     

16    Entire Text    Students will prepare for the End-of-Unit Assessment by discussing and engaging in a class debate about the prompt. Students will consolidate their understanding of the text by considering and interrogating its fundamental premise—the value of assimilation.       

17    Entire Text    Students will exhibit the literacy skills and habits developed in Unit 1 by writing a formal evidence-based essay addressing the assessment prompt.   

Here is how students have received the genius that is this EngageNY lesson module that uses one short story for three and a half weeks of lessons:
 
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.

Many people I know think that NYSED Commissioner John King and his merry men and women in reform at SED are diminished and humorless human beings, but I don't think that is so.

Any group of people that could call a website full of lessons that manages to completely disengage children from school "Engage NY" surely have a sense of irony somewhere beneath those nineties goatees and glasses.

A commenter on another Perdido Street School post who has taught this very 9th grade Engage NY module thinks he knows what the NYSED and Regents are trying to do with the Common Core lessons and tests:

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 (other than the usely MOSL exam). 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?

Indeed, more and more people are coming to see the claims of increased "rigor" in the Common Core math and ELA standards as hollow promises or out-and-out deception.

The Common Core State Standards are meant to dumb down children, strip them of their creativity and passion for learning, and show them that their future lives will be full of mind-numbing, soul-sucking regimented tasks and standardized work that they will do over and over and over again.

In short, the Common Core revolution is meant to resign children to their hopeless future as a member drone of the 99%.

You can bet the children of the elites are not stuck reading 20% of Romeo and Juliet or spending a month on one short story.

The pushback against Common Core critics from the likes of College Board President (and ELA standards architect) David Coleman and NYSED Commissioner John King is that the increased rigor in these standards will help students to be college and career ready.

It seems to me having students read one scene in every act of Romeo and Juliet (approximately 20% of the text), then watch the film to fill in the narrative gaps or read one short story over and over and over in order to practice annotation will not get students college and career ready in any way, shape or form.

It will have them ready to drop out of school by the 10th grade, however, or just completely disengaged from their own education.

The Common Core - the perfect tool for the corporate and political elites to grow a generation of numb, compliant children into numb, compliant adults.

EngageNY Adds Phone Sex To Liven Up The Lesson Planning

Can't be any more obscene than the classroom lessons they offer at EngageNY:

The state Education Department’s EngageNY website was directing people with tech support problems to a telephone number for an engagement of a different kind Thursday.

Instead of getting help to log on, people who call the number are greeted with a perky female voice announcing, “Welcome to America’s hottest talk line! Ladies, press 1 to talk to interesting and exciting guys. Guys, press 2 to talk to hot ladies!”

EngageNY is the state’s go-to site for all things Common Core. Teachers, administrators and parents are directed there to get specifics about which subjects are taught at which grade level and to see examples of lesson plans. It gets high ratings from those who use it.

However, when an administrator accessed it Thursday morning to sign up for the mandated parent portal site and had to get a tech support number, the one he was directed to wasn’t what he had expected.

Tom Dunn, a spokesmen for the state Education Department, said they took site down as soon as they were alerted to the issue and were investigating how it happened.

Support at EngageNY will cost $5.99 for the first minute, $2.99 a minute after that.

Please have your credit card number handy when you call.

On the first Monday of the month, "Merry" Merryl Tisch will be on the line to give you some "support."

On BDSM Thursdays, NYSED Commissioner John King will be live on the phone.

Don't forget, the safe word when you're talking to the King is "Danielson!"

Listen, they have to liven up the 22 page lesson plans they're giving to people to use per day someway.