Vacation Bible Schools Become Common Core-Aligned

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

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

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

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

Common Core and Bible stories - love it!

I see the possibilities already.

How about some Common Core-aligned Bible math:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alas, not everyone is with the program:

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's next after Common Core-aligned religion?

How about Common Core-aligned family therapy?

Common Core-aligned Twelve Step Groups?

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

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

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

From the Wall Street Journal:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

Common Core Headlines Spell Trouble For Common Core

Common Core advocates are trying to save Common Core from an untimely death but recent news headlines suggest they continue to lose that battle:

Panel starts reviewing Common Core standards in NC

Missouri leaders named in Common Core lawsuit: Foes seek to stop payments to test-making consortium

Green Bay Catholic Diocese Backs Away from Common Core

Quarrel over Common Core: A Pennsylvania Primer 

Common Core US History standards attacked in SC

Not enough play for kindergartners under Common Core?

Last week, a TV production company that had done some propaganda work for the NYSED, the Rhode Island Education Department and ENGAGENY, released a You Tube video ad meant to defend Common Core.

The story about the ad from Politico:

WHEN GRANDPA TAKES ON GATES: Common Core proponents have been saying for a while that they’re going to shake up their PR and one novel approach is about to hit social media. It’s a two-minute video that mocks Bill Gates as one of the “rich computer guys in the nerdy glasses” (who frankly is “not making the best computers any more”) and ends with the decidedly modest tagline, “Common Core. It’s Better Than You’ve Heard.” The video follows a gruff senior as he grills his grandson’s seventh-grade teacher. “You’re not going to make him read stuff just because Bill Gates said so, are you?” he asks. Smiling, the teacher reassures him.

— The ad comes from the media firm Six One Seven Studios, based in a Boston suburb. Executive Producer Bryan Roberts said the firm self-funded the video after learning about the Common Core debate through work with clients including the New York and Rhode Island state education departments and EngageNY, a website that provides curriculum resources to New York teachers. “Too many of the pro-Common Core videos were PowerPoints and talking heads,” Roberts said. “So we put out this video to help folks see the power of telling a fun but simple story with real people.” He has more planned. Watch: http://bit.ly/1Bq4mST

This video showing a "simple story with real people" that was meant to defend the Common Core was itself put on the defense when critics pointed out how ham-handed and awful it was:

The video features a Cartoon Old Guy, who's insulting on so many levels. He's dismissive of the kid. He is wrapped up in his own stupid stories. He can't remember the teacher's name (aging brain function-- hilarious). He's ethnic. He's an ignorant war vet of some war-- he looks like a stereotypical WWII vet, but that would make him ninety-ish. Could be Korea, which would make him seventy-ish. He thinks Gates runs Apple (har!) and he measures the value of his grandson's ability to "figure" in how it can calculate money. Oh, and he plays the lottery.

He's worried about the Common Core stuff he's heard about on TV, and I'm wondering where on TV he's hearing bad things about the Core, because Core proponents have that media pretty well locked up.

The message here? Common Core critics are uninformed fools. Note that the nice teacher lady does not actually offer a single piece of fact-based data about the Core to contradict Old Bat-brained Granddad. She doesn't have to (though she might have mention that Hector will have to put a stop to figuring out math problems in his head). He's so obviously a dope that we are meant to simply discount his complaints because, well, he's a dope. He is truly the most wondrous animatronic straw grampaw ever.

I'd like to save the video for posterity's sake, but it was pulled from the Internet and the "Common Core" account that posted the video on You Tube was deleted.

So much for that defense of Common Core.

Earlier in the month, former Secretary of Education William Bennett wrote a pro-Common Core defense in the Wall Street Journal that was widely rebutted by Common Core critics and skeptics for doing exactly what Bennett claimed Common Core critics do in their criticism of Common Core - misleading people:

This morning, former Reagan administration education secretary Bill Bennett took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to make the “conservative” case for the Common Core. In that effort, he actually made a great case for Core opponents, illustrating the contradictions of the Core while furnishing several examples of all-too-frequent Core spin. And he did it, ironically, while implying that Core opponents have “badly and sometimes mischievously muddled” the Core story.

Read the rest of Neil McCluskey's piece, which takes apart every point in Bennett's WSJ column.

Rick Hess also did a good job of refuting the Bennett piece.

Bennett was further put on the defensive when he it was revealed he was paid to "write" the piece:

While in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday, former Reagan Secretary of Education Bill Bennett put out what was described as the “Conservative Case for Common Core,” he admitted he is paid by a lobbying firm for his continued work in support of the controversial standards.

 Bennett’s admission, reported by Politico, that the public relations, lobbying, and business consulting firm DCI Group paid him to write the op-ed perhaps explains why it doesn’t sound much like the writing of the Reagan appointee who agreed with his president that there was no real necessity for a federal Department of Education. 

So we have two "defenses" of Common Core that were themselves put on the defensive this past week and a half and a whole host of headlines that show more trouble's 'a-coming for Common Core.

Given the inept pushback Core advocates, proponents and supporters have engaged in so far, I can't imagine the trajectory for the Core is going to turn around any time soon.

We keep hearing about how the pro-Core side is going to get serious in their defense of the Core, with serious dollars in pro-Core ads and other propaganda.

We keep hearing how the pro-Core side is going to stop talking down to people, stop mocking Core opponents, critics and skeptics.

We keep hearing how the pro-Core side is going to try and connect emotionally with parents and students to win them over to the Core.

But so far what we see are ham-handed attempts by Core proponents to defend the Core like the You Tube ad that's been pulled and the column Bennett got paid to put his name to.

We see continued obfuscation of the issues around the Core, particularly in the "the Core isn't a curriculum" defense, which is false since the testing that comes with the Core and the Obama administration NCLB waivers absolutely prescribes what must be taught in schools.

And we see continued mocking of critics from the pro-Core side, as best embodied in the grandpa in the pulled pro-Core You Tube video.

Good times if you are a Core skeptic, critic or opponent.

Common Core On Life Support

Here's the second poll this week showing the public has turned against the Common Core:

While more people know what the Common Core State Standards are than last year, a majority of them oppose the standards, according to the 46^th edition of the PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools.

Overall, the wide-ranging survey found, 81 percent of those polled said they had heard about the common standards, compared with 38 percent last year. However, 60 percent oppose the standards, generally because they believe the standards will limit the flexibility that teachers have to teach what they think is best. Last year's poll did not specifically ask respondents whether or not they supported the standards. 

The poll also highlighted a partisan split in opinion on the common core: 76 percent of Republicans  and 60 percent of independents said they oppose the standards. Democrats were the only category of respondents polled in which a majority said they support the standards, 53 percent in favor compared to 38 percent opposed. 

If the best Common Core supporters can get is 53%-38% from Dems, Common Core is finished.

Core supporters can roll out their propaganda tour all they want - the trajectory for Core support is clear.

The more the public becomes familiar with Common Core, the more teachers are forced to work under the standards, the less both those groups support the Core.

Yesterday's Education Next poll found teacher support for the Core plummeted in just one year, from 76% supporting the Core last year to just 46% supporting the Core this year.

In addition, opposition to the Core among teachers jumped from 12% to 40%.

So in one year, Education Next, a reform-friendly outfit that frames their polls to get reform-friendly results, saw support for the Core among teachers go from 76%-12% to 46%-40%.

Think about that for a minute.

Last year, teachers supported the Core 76%-12% according to the Education Next poll.

This year, teachers support the Core 46%-40%.

What's the likelihood that trajectory gets turned around?

Not good:

"Given the increased media coverage this year, we were not surprised that an overwhelming majority of Americans have heard about the Common Core State Standards, but we were surprised by the level of opposition," William Bushaw, CEO of PDK International and co-director of the poll, said on a call with press Tuesday. "Supporters of the standards, and education in particular, face a growing challenge in explaining why they believe the standards are best in practice."

That the Core and the tests that go with them got rolled out before the whole thing was completely baked has not helped, of course.

That Core supporters decided to link teacher evaluations to test scores at the same time they pushed the Core Standards and tests have not helped support among teachers either.

That the Obama administration pushed all of this through first Race to the Top and later through No Child Left Behind waivers has not helped either.

Finally, that reformers thought it was a done deal once they got all their changes instituted hasn't helped because they a) got complacent on the messaging around the Core and ancillary other Core reforms like testing, data tracking and teacher evaluations tied to Core tests, and b) got hubristic when they finally did push back, mostly insulting critics of the Core as wingnuts and crazy people.

Well, the hubris and short-sightedness of their reform push has come back to bite them big time.

The Common Core is on life support with the public and teachers these days and looks like its going to be DOA soon.

Support For Common Core Continues To Drop - Even In Reform-Friendly Polls

Who will UFT President Michael Mulgrew punch over this very disheartening news for Common Core supporters?

Anybody watching the escalating battle across the country over the Common Core State Standards and aligned standardized testing will hardly be surprised by a new national poll which reveals a significant loss of support over the last year — especially among teachers, whose approval rating dropped from 76 percent  in 2013 to only  46 percent in 2014. Overall support for the Core dropped from 65 percent last year to 53 percent in 2014, with most of the defection among Republicans.

The annual poll was conducted by the pro-school-reform journal Education Next and asked a nationally representative sample of Americans about a variety of education issues, with the  results on the Common Core being the most dramatic. Here are some of the results:

*Support for the Core dropped from 65 percent in 2013 to 53 percent across the general population. When asked about the notion of common national education standards without mentioning the Common Core, support was at 68 percent.

*Along with the 30-percentage point drop in approval by teachers, there was a huge jump in opposition, from 12 percent to 40 percent.

*Support among Republicans has dropped from 57 percent in 2013 to 43 percent this year, while Democratic support has barely changed, from 64 percent to 63 percent in 2014.

Important thing to note here - this poll comes from an education reform-friendly organization, so the questions are framed in a reform-friendly way.

For example, this one:

U.S. students regularly participate in international achievement tests. In your opinion, how important is it for America’s future prosperity that our country performs well on these tests compared to other countries?

This question comes early in the poll, along with a bunch of other questions meant to convince poll-takers that the American public education system is a mess.

Here's some more:

In your opinion, how important is the academic performance of high school students for America’s future prosperity? 

A 2012 government survey ranked the math skills of 15-year olds in 34 industrialized countries. With 1 being the best and 34 meaning the worst, what is your best guess of where American 15-year olds ranked on this test?

Students in different parts of the country perform differently in math.The average student in your district performs better than what percent of students across the country?

See what they're doing there? 

The poll is designed to heighten the awareness of the respondents to the "education crisis" in the country and steer them toward "national standards" as the answer for the problem.

And even with that kind of reformy-friendly framing, the Common Core dropped from 65% to 53% with the general public and 76% to 46% with teachers.

Showing you just how toxic "Common Core" has become as a brand, 68% of the respondents support "national standards" (with the numbers perhaps jazzed a bit due to the leading questions early on about national standing on international tests and the like.)

In any case, if it wasn't already obvious that Common Core is going the way of the Betamax before you saw these poll results, you ought to see it now.

We are seeing a drop in support for CCSS in poll after poll - the Rasmussen poll, the Siena poll in NY, a poll in California and now a reformy-friendly poll from Education Next.

And the most interesting thing to me is, the more people come in contact with Common Core, the less popular it gets.

Take Rasmussen for instance, which found this in November 2013:

Forty-five states have adopted new national education standards known as Common Core, and nearly half of Americans think that's a good idea. But fewer adults are confident that the new standards will improve student achievement.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 49% of American Adults favor requiring all schools nationwide to meet the same Common Core education standards. Twenty-eight percent (28%) are opposed, while nearly as many (23%) are not sure. 

In June 2014, Rasmussen found this:

Support for Common Core among Americans with school-age children has fallen dramatically, as more now question whether the new national education standards will actually improve student performance.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 34% of American Adults with children of elementary or secondary school age now favor requiring all schools nationwide to meet the same Common Core education standards. That’s an 18-point drop from 52% in early November of last year. Forty-seven percent (47%) oppose the imposition of the national standards, compared to 32% in the previous survey. Little changed are the 19% who are undecided.

When Common Core was still this hazy thing off in the distance, people (including teachers) supported it in polls - kinda like how 68% support "national standards" in this Education Next poll.

But as Common Core gets implemented, as the Common Core tests come around, as teacher evaluations based on Common Core tests start rolling out, you see the support for CCSS dropping by the month.

Hell, in just seven months, Rasmussen found an 18 percentage point drop in Core support and a 15 percentage point increase in opposition to the Core from parents of school-age children.

That trajectory - a continued loss of support for the Core - has been clear for the last year or so and I think no matter what education reformers do to try and save the Core by rebranding it or getting more "emotional" in their support (and propaganda) for the Core, the Core is dying and soon to be dead.

Even their own polls show it.

Time For An Investigation Into New York State's Test Score Results, Data Tracking

Two stories from over the weekend show that the statistics and data issued by NYSED Commissioner John King and his merry men and women in reform at SED cannot be trusted.

First, as I posted yesterday, the NY Post covered how NYSED lowered the cut score levels on this year's state Common Core exams, an act which resulted in slightly higher test scores:

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

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

“The reason that occurs is because the tests are slightly harder,” Deputy Education Commissioner Ken Wagner told The Post.

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

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

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

The changes raise questions about the validity of the results.

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

Score manipulation has erupted in scandal before. Between 2006 and 2009, the state reduced the number of raw points students needed to pass. Then-state Education Commissioner Richard Mills insisted the questions got harder, justifying the lower passing scores. But experts found the test items got easier, inflating scores hailed by then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg, among others, as proof of great progress.

In addition to the Post report on the lowered cut scores, Stephen Rex Brown at the Daily News reported that NYSED couldn't account for a whole bunch of kids they said opted out of the state tests this year in New York City that the city said didn't:

State Education officials were scrambling to determine Friday why test data appeared to show more than 20,000 city students did not take math and English exams.

The perplexing numbers, which the city disputed, revealed 26,949 kids were no-shows for state math tests and 22,656 skipped the English Language Arts exam. The figures were more than triple the previous year’s numbers. State officials suspect there was an error in the way a large group of city students were coded in the state database of third- through eighth-graders who took the tests.

The city Education Department said only 1,925 students formally opted out of the exam — still double the estimate from critics of the April tests.

Leonie Haimson at NYC Public School Parents blog picked up that story, noting that while she would love to believe that the number of students opting out of the state exams in the city was as high as NYSED said it was, she didn't think this was so:

As much as I would have liked to believe the opt out figures were this high, I expressed skepticism to Stephen– and explained that I thought the numbers of students opting out had been far higher on Long Island and Westchester than in NYC. In the suburbs, in general, parents are more organized, enjoy well-funded public schools with high college-going and graduation rates, and have erupted in justified incredulity when the state tried to convince them their schools were failing and their kids were not “college and career ready.” 

Leonie goes on to note that SED's data should not be considered reliable:

My response to all this: with such erratic and unreliable information, how can anyone trust any of the test score data from NYSED?

...

Before the new Common Core tests, we had ten years of state test score inflation in NY that was obvious to anyone paying close attention, but year after year was ignored by the powers that be, because it was politically convenient. Each year Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, sometimes accompanied by Randi Weingarten, would ritualistically bow down to the supposedly infallible test score gods and celebrate the results as showing that their reforms were working. And then the entire imaginary edifice came tumbling down in 2010, when the educrats finally admitted that an enormous test score inflation had occurred, somehow without their knowledge and complicity.

It is too early to assume that the small rise in test scores this year were due to similar manipulations , but a decade of experience should teach us to be open to the possibility. Merryl Tisch predicted that more kids would pass this year – and they did. In any event, we have overwhelming evidence from teachers and principals that the tests were poor quality and a lousy judge of real learning.

The state’s release of data showing thousands of opt outs in NYC is just one more piece of evidence showing how skeptical everyone should be about any data our government officials supply. 

The lowered cut scores that allowed SED to claim "progress" on their Common Core agenda and the disputed opt-out's here in the city are two examples for why there needs to be scrutiny into NYSED's testing operations from an outside entity unaligned with the Board of Regents, the State Education Department or the "non-profit" education reform groups that bolster both the Regents and SED (i.e., the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, etc.)

As Leonie notes there has been test score manipulation and inflation in the state before and it happened when our current Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch was on the Board of Regents.

In fact, Tisch defended former SED Commissioner Mills over the test score inflation, claiming there was none, when it was quite clear there was.

Michael Winerip, the former NY Times columnist, wrote up a timeline of test score inflation here in New York State that is worth revisiting at this time:

In the last decade, we have emerged from the Education Stone Age. No longer must we rely on primitive tools like teachers and principals to assess children’s academic progress. Thanks to the best education minds in Washington, Albany and Lower Manhattan, we now have finely calibrated state tests aligned with the highest academic standards. What follows is a look back at New York’s long march to a new age of accountability.

DECEMBER 2002 The state’s education commissioner, Richard P. Mills, reports to the state Regents: “Students are learning more than ever. Student achievement has improved in relation to the standards over recent years and continues to do so.”

JANUARY 2003 New York becomes one of the first five states to have its testing system approved by federal officials under the new No Child Left Behind law. The Princeton Review rates New York’s assessment program No. 1 in the country.

SPRING 2003 Teachers from around New York complain that the state’s scoring of newly developed high school tests is out of whack, with biology and earth science tests being too easy and the physics test too hard. The state Council of School Superintendents finds the physics scores so unreliable, it sends a letter to colleges for the first time in its history urging them to disregard the test result. Dr. Mills does not flinch, calling the tests “statistically sound” and “in accordance with nationally accepted standards.”

JUNE 2003 Scores on the state algebra test are so poorly calibrated that 70 percent of seniors fail. After a statewide outcry, officials agree to throw out the results. The Princeton Review says that ranking New York first was a mistake. “We’re going to have to come up with a fiasco index for a state like New York that messes up a lot of people’s lives,” a spokesman says.

OCTOBER 2003 A special panel appointed to investigate the state math fiasco concludes that the test “can’t accurately predict performance,” was created “on the cheap” and was full of exam questions that were “poorly worded” and “confusing.”

DECEMBER 2003 The director of state testing resigns. It was his idea to leave, a spokesman says.

MAY 2004 For the fourth year in a row, scores have risen on elementary and middle school state reading and math tests. Dr. Mills urges the Regents: “Look at the data that shows steadily rising achievement of the standards in school districts of all wealth and categories. More children are learning more now than ever before.”

FEBRUARY 2005 Dr. Mills rebukes those who question whether state scores are inflated. “The exams are not the problem,” he said in a report to the Regents. “It’s past time to turn from obsessive criticism of the exam and solve the real problems — the students who are not educated to the standards.”

SPRING 2005 New York City fourth graders make record gains on the state English test, with 59 percent scoring as proficient, compared with 49 percent the year before. “Amazing results” that “should put a smile on the face of everybody in the city,” says Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who happily recites the numbers on his way to re-election.

FALL 2005 The federal tests (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), which are considered more rigorous than the state tests, show a drop in New York City reading scores. On the eighth-grade test, 19 percent are proficient in 2005, compared with 22 percent in 2003. Asked if city and state officials had hyped the state test results, Merryl H. Tisch, a Regent, says, “They have never, ever, ever exaggerated.”

SEPTEMBER 2007 New York’s national assessment test results are again dismal; eighth-grade reading scores are lower than they were in 1998.

DECEMBER 2007 In his report to the Regents, Dr. Mills notes, “A rich, scholarly literature has challenged NAEP validity since the early 1990s.” He announces a plan to develop the first new state learning standards since 1996, to further spur academic excellence.

JUNE 2008 Newly released state test scores show another record year for New York children. Math scores for grades three through eight indicate that 80.7 percent are proficient, up from 72.7 in 2007. “Can we trust these results?” Dr. Mills asks. “Yes, we can. New York’s testing system, including grades three through eight tests, passed a rigorous peer review last year by the U.S. Department of Education. State Education Department assessment experts commission independent parallel analyses to double- and sometimes triple-check the work of our test vendor.”

JUNE 2009 In the previous decade, New York students’ average SAT verbal score has dropped to 484 from 494; the math SAT score has dropped to 499 from 506. The national assessment’s fourth-grade reading scores have been stagnant for four years, and the eighth-grade scores are their lowest in a decade.

But somehow, state test scores again soar to record levels. In New York City, 81 percent of students are deemed proficient in math, and 68.8 percent are proficient in English. “This is a big victory for the city,” the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, says, “and we should bask in it.” In November the mayor is elected to a third term, again riding the coattails of sweet city scores.

JULY 2010 Finally someone — Dr. Tisch, the chancellor of the Board of Regents — has the sense to stand up at a news conference and say that the state test scores are so ridiculously inflated that only a fool would take them seriously, thereby unmasking the mayor, the chancellor and the former state commissioner. State scores are to be scaled down immediately, so that the 68.8 percent English proficiency rate at the start of the news conference becomes a 42.4 proficiency rate by the end of the news conference.

Shael Polakow-Suransky, chief accountability officer for the city, offers the new party line: “We know there has been significant progress, and we know we have a long way to go.” Whether there has been any progress at all during the Bloomberg years is questionable. The city’s fourth-grade English proficiency rate for 2010 is no better than it was in February 2001, nine months before the mayor was first elected.

Mr. Polakow-Suransky says that even if city test scores were inflated, he is not aware of any credible research calling the city’s 64 percent graduation rate into question.

FEBRUARY 2011 The city’s 64 percent graduation rate is called into question. The state announces a new accountability measure: the percentage of high school seniors graduating who are ready for college or a career. By this standard, the graduation rate for New York City in 2009 was 23 percent.

MAY 2011 Embracing the latest new tool in the accountability universe, the governor, state chancellor and education commissioner ramrod a measure through the Board of Regents, mandating that up to 40 percent of teachers’ and principals’ evaluations be based on student test scores.

AUGUST 2011 With new, more rigorous state tests, city scores rise slightly. “We are certainly going in the right direction,” the mayor says.

NOVEMBER 2011 New York is one of two states in the nation to post statistically significant declines on the National Assessment tests. John B. King, the education commissioner, says the state is certainly going in the wrong direction, but has a plan to spur students’ achievement. “The new Common Core Learning Standards will help get them there,” he says.

DEC. 19, 2011 Nearly a quarter of the state’s principals — 1,046 — have signed an online letter protesting the plan to evaluate teachers and principals by test scores. Among the reasons cited is New York’s long tradition of creating tests that have little to do with reality.

Let us note that before Regents Chancellor Tisch finally admitted the scores were inflated, she defended the scores and SED Commissioner Mills as well as state and city officials on test score inflation by saying “They have never, ever, ever exaggerated.”

Uh, huh - except the scores were absurdly inflated and the claims Mills, state and city officials made hailing the scores were very much "exaggerated."

So Merryl Tisch's word is worthless here - as worthless as SED's data on the city opt-outs.

I had an exchange that went like this today with Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin:

@SteveMcNY It would be nice to see the legislature look into SED's manipulation of scores.
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) August 18, 2014

@SteveMcNY The cut scores were rigged by SED last year to plummet, this year rigged to show "modest improvement".
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) August 18, 2014

@SteveMcNY This test-score rigging is meant to show how NYSED's Common Core agenda is going swimmingly.
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) August 18, 2014

As Leonie noted in her blog post, Merryl Tisch declared there would be test score improvement before the tests were given and - lo and behold! - there was improvement.

The previous year, both Tisch and NYSED Commissioner King declared scores would plummet on the new Common Core tests and - lo and behold! - they plummeted.

Now they lowered the cut scores on the tests for 2014, got a slight rise in scores overall and are declaring "modest progress" in the scores, noting that this "modest progress" demonstrates why their Common Core reform agenda must be followed through.

But as we can see in the disputed opt-outs, SED's data is suspect at best, and with the Post reporting that raw score manipulation puts the validity of the state tests in question, I say it is high time we get an independent investigation into the state's testing regime.

We know they pulled a fast one all through the 2000's with the scoring.

We know current Regents Chancellor Tisch was part of that deception back in those days.

We know that SED's data is suspect.

We know that King and Tisch call what the scores are going to be long before the tests are actually given, calling into question the validity of the tests.

And we know that they lowered the cut scores this year to show "modest progress" - again, something that calls into question the validity of the tests.

It is time for an investigation into both the State Education Department and the Board of Regents over these matters because they have a track record of deception previous to this, we see now that their data is suspect at best, and we know they have a political agenda they are pushing.

Common Core Proponents Change Bar For Success

Remember when Common Core proponents used to brag about having 45 states and D.C. on the Common Core bandwagon?

Now they say they'd be happy with far fewer states using CCSS and the CCSS tests:

“The politics have reached the point where they’re getting in the way of actually implementing” the standards, says Andrew Rotherham, cofounder of Bellwether Education Partners, an education research and policy group based in Sudbury, Mass.

“The perception is one of momentum [for the anti-Common Core people], and politics is a game of perception,” he says. “If you end up with 25 states doing [Common Core] in a meaningful way, that’s an enormous victory, but it won’t be perceived that way.”

From 45 states + D.C. to 25 states.

How the might have fallen.

In the end, if 20 states stop using Common Core, the CCSS testing consortia are sure to die (especially now that the federal money is drying up) and once the CCSS tests die, there is little for reformers to use to ensure that the standards are being taught even in the 25 states that nominally will still be on the CCSS bandwagon.

There was a reason why reformers pushed Common Core, tests based on Common Core and teacher evaluations tied to tests scores all at the same time all across the nation.

It was to ensure that the standards were taught in every school and they were going to force this through the tests and the evaluations.

But the more states that drop CCSS and the ancillary CCSS tests, the less powerful the sticks to enforce CCSS in other states become, especially if the PARCC and Smarter Balanced testing consortia go the way of the dinosaurs.

Nice try by Eduwonk trying to put a winning face on a loss, but if 20 states drop off the CCSS bandwagon, that's disastrous for CCSS proponents and supporters.

Common Core Proponents Mount - Yet Again - A Public Relations Offensive

Politico's Stephanie Simon writes that Common Core Federal Standards proponents are putting together a new P.R. offensive:

Supporters of the Common Core academic standards have spent big this past year to persuade wavering state legislators to stick with the new guidelines for math and language arts instruction. Given the firestorm of opposition that took them by surprise, they consider it a victory that just five states, so far, have taken steps to back out.

...

But in a series of strategy sessions in recent months, top promoters of the standards have concluded they’re losing the broader public debate — and need to devise better PR.

...

So, backed with fresh funding from philanthropic supporters, including a $10.3 million grant awarded in May from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, supporters are gearing up for a major reboot of the Common Core campaign.

“We’ve been fighting emotion with talking points, and it doesn’t work,” said Mike Petrilli, executive vice president of the Fordham Institute, a leading supporter of the standards. “There’s got to be a way to get more emotional with our arguments if we want to win this thing. That means we have a lot more work to do.”

Step one: Get Americans angry about the current state of public education.

To that end, expect to start hearing from frustrated college students who ended up in remedial classes even though they passed all their state tests and earned good grades in high school. “These kids should be as mad as hell” that the system failed them, Petrilli said.

Expect poignant testimonials, too, from business owners who have tried to hire kids from the local high school only to find they can’t do tasks involving basic math, such as separating out two-thirds of a pile of lumber.

Step two: Get voters excited about the prospects of change. Teachers who like the standards are going to be sharing more concrete examples of benefits they see in their classrooms. Groups representing minority students will likely be more vocal, too. The National Council of La Raza, for instance, is promoting a new video featuring a little girl who credits the standards with teaching her the word “whimsical.”

And there will be a whole lot more from the pro-Common Core side on social media, including Pinterest pages full of student work. A coming Twitter blitz will aim to stir up buzz for a new video that tracks a debate between four people who at first seem to want very different things from their schools — but end up discovering they all support the standards. The video, produced by an Arizona coalition, doesn’t once mention the well-worn talking points “academic rigor” or “international benchmarks.”

“The Common Core message so far has been a head message. We’ve done a good job talking about facts and figures. But we need to move 18 inches south and start talking about a heart message,” said Wes Farno, executive director of the Higher State Standards Partnership, a coalition supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.

In short, expect lots of emotional manipulation in the coming wave of corporate-funded pro-CCSS ads and social media blitz.

The ironic thing is, we just heard two months back about how Common Core proponents were sick of losing the message war over Common Core and were devising a corporate-funded pro-CCSS ad campaign to change the trajectory of the war:

ALBANY—Critics of the Common Core in New York have been winning the debate about the controversial education standards, but now they'll face a counterattack backed by a considerable investment.

High Achievement New York, a nonprofit coalition of mostly business groups, plans to launch a roughly $500,000 phone and digital advertising campaign over the next several weeks in an attempt to promote the controversial curriculum standards.

...

While most of the coalition members are business groups, including several chambers of commerce, the membership also includes advocacy groups that have been vocal in supporting the Common Core and other education reforms, including Educators4Excellence and StudentsFirstNY. The latter has been a major supporter of charter schools.

A spokesman for High Achievement New York would not disclose information about the nonprofit's finances. The spokesman said the bulk of the funding will be grants from philanthropic organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Helmsley Charitable Trust. The group has applied for grants and expects to receive them.

 
Guess the localized ad offensive in New York didn't take, eh?

Judging by the latest Siena poll released last week in which 49% of New Yorkers said they want to see Common Core implementation ended, that pro-CCSS ad blitz did not take.
 

So now it's on to a national ad campaign and social media blitz, one aimed at the "heart" and not the "head" (i.e., one meant to manipulate heart strings.)

I dunno, pro-CCSS groups have a lot of corporate backing and thus a lot of money to throw around.

But I think the messaging war has already been lost long ago.

CCSS proponents were arrogant from the start, they imposed the standards with little input or say from the public, they tried to marginalize critics as "kooks" and "tinfoil hatters" rather than admit to any problems with the Core or the ancillary reforms that came with it, and they never responded well to charges that a coterie of wealthy business interests and individuals were the primary backers and proponents of the CCSS reforms.

Now Common Core supporters think they can win back the hearts, if not the minds, of Americans through an ad campaign and social media blitz funded by the very coterie of wealthy business interests critics and opponents have pointed out were behind the CCSS reform agenda in the first place?

Good luck with that.

I'm not saying manipulation and propaganda can't win a message war.

But they have to be deployed early enough, often enough and skillfully enough, and to be honest, Common Core proponents and supporters didn't do any of those things.

War's over, folks.

You could see that clearly in the response to Glenn Beck's anti-CCSS national townhall last week as well as how quickly even blue states like New York have turned against the Core.

How Quickly New York Has Soured On The Common Core

Dave Weigel at Slate reacting to the Siena poll that found 49% of New Yorkers want Common Core implementation stopped - including 53% of independents:

The new Siena poll doesn't contain many surprises—Andrew Cuomo easily leads his re-election race, challenger Zephyr Teachout has yet to register, etc. It's really just the question, and answers, about the Common Core education curriculum that surprised me.

In a very short time, opposition to Common Core has evolved from a fringe Republican position that blue-staters laugh at to a position that clearly wins out in blue New York. When independents break against something by a 14-point margin, politicians generally look awkwardly for the escape hatches.

Core supporters and proponents continue to act as if CCSS critics and opponents are on the fringe, but increasingly even the most ardent Core proponent and shill has to see how quickly the opposition to the Core is mounting in New York on the entire political spectrum.

Democrats support the Common Core 47%-40%.

That's the best the Core supporters have here in New York.

Independents oppose it 53%-39% and Republicans oppose it 60%-25%.

Given the trajectory of Core support over the past year, I don't think it's unreasonable to predict that it will be underwater even with Dems in six months or so.

And as Weigel notes, when you start to see independents oppose some program or reform by a 14 point margin, politicians start to bail on that program or reform.

I'm betting even the shrillest of the Common Core shills has to be looking at this Siena poll today and thinking "It's over..."

Daily News Continues To Shill For The Common Core

A Siena poll released today found the following:

BY a 49-39 percent margin, voters want to see implementation of the Common Core stopped rather than continued.

Despite these numbers, Common Core-supporting newspaper the Daily News reports voters are "split" on the Core here in New York.

Here's their headline:

Voters back Cuomo; split on Common Core and hydrofracking: Siena Poll

Since when is 49%-39% - a 10 percent plurality in opposition to the Core - a "split"?

50%-50% is a split.

51%-49% is a split.

Hell, I might even go with 52%-48% is close to a split if the argument you make to back that up is good enough.

But 49%-39% is a "split"?

Nahh - that's a 10 percentage point plurality of NYers who are opposed to the Core.

Leave it to the pro-CCSS hacks at the Daily News, ever the evangelicals for the Common Core, to continue to carry the Gospel of the Common Core to the masses in their Siena poll story headline even as the masses turn against it.

No wonder the print edition of the Daily News isn't long for this world.

When you're buying a newspaper, you kinda want it to, I dunno, cover the news accurately and truthfully.

Siena Poll Finds 49% Of New Yorkers Say Common Core Needs To Go

These poll numbers are going to make NYSED Commissioner King and Regents Chancellor Tisch very, very sad:

BY a 49-39 percent margin, voters want to see implementation of the Common Core stopped rather than continued.

Digging into the numbers:

"While a majority of New York City voters and a plurality of Democrats think Common Core standards continue to be implemented, a majority of Republicans, independents and upstaters, and a plurality of downstate suburbanites think implementation should be stopped. A majority of white voters want implementation stopped, a majority of black voters want implementation continued, and Hispanic voters are evenly divided," Greenberg said.

Support for the Common Core has plummeted across the state, with New York City the only stronghold of support remaining.

But if I were John King, Merryl Tisch, Andrew Cuomo or any other Common Core proponent, I wouldn't take much solace from that because the trajectory of CCSS support is clearly tanking.

By a 47%-40% margin, Dems in the state support CCSS.

By 60%-25% margin, Republicans oppose CCSS.

And by a 53%-39% margin, independents oppose CCSS.

Common Core proponents have completely lost Republicans, they have lost a majority of independents and they've lost 40% of Dems, maintaining a slim 7 point plurality in Dem support for the Core.

So far, Core proponents have been able to keep the Core alive and well in NY State and until politicians are made to pay for their political support of the Core and the ancillary reforms like testing and teacher evaluations tied to tests that go with it, I don't see that changing in the short term.

But as support for the Common Core continues to erode, political support in Albany is going to soften and eventually erode too.

We're at 49%-39% in opposition to the Core.

It's a 10 percentage point plurality.

Back in February, here's where voters were:

Most New York voters back a two-year delay in the implementation of the controversial Common Core education standards, but they remain divided on the quality of the curriculum itself, a new Siena College poll found.

The poll found a bare majority – 50 percent to 38 percent – of New Yorkers backs a two-year delay of the roll out of the standards, which has come under criticism from parents and teachers alike for a reliance on standardized tests and lack of preparation.

But voters are divided on the learning standards themselves, the poll found.

Thirty-six percent say the standards are too demanding, while 24 percent believe they aren’t demanding enough. Just 23 percent believe the standards strike the right balance.

Different questions asked about the Core back in February, but you get the idea here how opposition to the Core in New York State is beginning to solidify.

It is incumbent upon Core critics and opponents to continue to grow the opposition to the Core and make some politicians who support the CCSS pay a political price for that support.

Common Core Considered "Radioactive" And "Toxic" These Days

The AFT leadership may have decided that the Common Core still holds "promise" but much of the rest of America is looking to bury the standards in the same place they put nuclear waste:

The National Governors Association (NGA) owns the copyright – along with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) – to the Common Core State Standards. When the nationalized standards are mentioned these days, however, many governors would rather change the subject.

In fact, the NGA, holding summer meetings in Nashville, had not even placed the controversial standards on its official agenda, a sign, as the Wall Street Journal states, “the bipartisan idea has become a political minefield.”

Much to the surprise of many Washington, D.C., pundits, the standards, and even the name itself, “Common Core,” have “become, in a sense, radioactive,” said Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R), according to the Associated Press.

...

 Indeed, for Republicans, the issue of the Common Core has also been described by former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) as “toxic,” and has served to separate the GOP establishment, supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, from constitutional conservatives who oppose the federal government’s hand in pushing Common Core through President Obama’s Race to the Top (RttT) stimulus program and the promise of relief from federal No Child Left Behind restrictions.

Huckabee used to be a big supporter of CCSS.

Now he's against them.

Bobby Jindal used to be a big supporter of CCSS.

Now he's fighting to pull his state of Louisiana out of using both the standards and the tests associated with them.

Just last January, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin defended the CCSS at a NGA meeting.

Last month, she signed a bill pulling her state out of using the standards, a move that a court backed up today as constitutional.

Even the pro-testing, pro-CCSS Chris Christie is reacting to the changed politics around the Core and the ancillary tests that go with it - he announced a review of the so-called effectiveness of the CCSS tests in his state of New Jersey.

Jeb Bush still loves the standards, as does Arne Duncan, Barack Obama, Randi Weingarten, Michael Mulgrew, Bill Gates and a host of editorial boards around the country.

But when you see all these governors (or former governors like Huckabee) who used to support the standards who are running from them as fast as they can, touting their opposition, that's when you know that the politics around the CCSS battle have really shifted.

Maybe Weingarten and Mulgrew think they've done their part to save the standards after engineering a pro-CCSS resolution at the AFT convention last weekend.

But it's pretty clear from what's happening outside of the Beltway that the trajectory in the CCSS battle is not positive for the CCSS.

That's what happens when a reform becomes "radioactive."

Weingarten Criticizes Astorino For Common Core Dodge Even As She Pulls Another CCSS Dodge At The AFT

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY:

ALBANY—American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino is using an anti-Common Core campaign to “cloak” his other positions on education issues that would be far less palatable to public school advocates.

Weingarten, the former president of New York City's United Federation of Teachers, said during a telephone briefing with reporters on Friday that Astorino's proposal to run on a “Stop Common Core” ballot line in the November's election might appeal to some teachers who also oppose the standards, but his other positions likely wouldn't.

“I'm sure that he's intending it to cloak his other positions, like less funding in an already underfunded system of education in New York state, and his other positions about getting rid of due process and his very Wisconsin Walker-like positions about collective bargaining,” Weingarten said. “I'm sure he wants to try to cloak those positions by using this new line. I suspect you're going to see a whole lot of people make sure there is a real education campaign about who Rob Astorino really is.”

Is Astorino cloaking his true intentions with the "Stop Common Core" ballot line, trying to get some lefties opposed to the Common Core to vote for him despite some of his other anti-public education and anti-union stances?

Perhaps.

But Weingarten and her AFT/UFT minions cloaked their true intentions over the future of Common Core last weekend at the AFT convention by saying they were going to allow a full and fair debate about the AFT's support for Common Core, then by rigging that debate in committee to ensure that the leadership's pro-CCSS resolution passed (see here and here.)

So if anybody knows about cloaking their true intentions with jive, it's Randi Weingarten and the AFT leadership.

No wonder she could call Astorino out on his "Stop Common Core" jive.

She's full of it herself.

Texas In The Vanguard Of The Anti-Common Core Movement

Texas never jumped on the CCSS bandwagon, but the vehemence of this opposition is interesting:

AUSTIN — Attorney General Greg Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign turned up the rhetoric against federal education standards Monday, soliciting donations with a fiery call to arms that “We must crush Common Core.”

“Help Greg Abbott ensure that President Obama’s Common Core stays OUT of the Lone Star State by making a contribution today,” said the email from campaign staffer Lynn Haueter, adding that “we can’t let the Obama Administration get its hands on Texas schools.”

Of course, the national standards crafted by governors across the country and adopted by almost all states are already not much of a threat to the Lone Star State because of the efforts of Abbott and others. Texas formally rejected Common Core in 2010 and passed a law prohibiting public schools from adopting them. Last month, Abbott confirmed that in a new ruling.

Abbott has vowed that “as governor, I am not going to allow Common Core in Texas.”

His Democratic opponent, state Sen. Wendy Davis, has also said she opposes Common Core, but has not made it as central to her campaign.

While Texas was joined by only Alaska in refusing to help develop the standards, several states have since joined the anti-Common Core movement, the Texas Tribune reported Monday.

The birthplace of No Child Left Behind is also in the vanguard of the anti-CCSS movement:

“Texas was in front of opposing the standards right before they even came off the press. But the other state boards of education weren’t paying attention to Texas’ reasons. What Texas was doing just wasn’t on the horizon for them,” said Sandra Stotsky, an education researcher and longtime opponent of the Common Core.

In the years since, similar concerns have driven four Republican controlled states — Indiana, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oklahoma — to announce that they were dropping them from their public schools. Several other states, including Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio and Missiouri have faced pressure to do the same.

...

Only Alaska joined Texas in refusing to sign on to developing the Common Core standards. A few months later, Texas was among the earliest states to turn down participation in the Obama Administration’s signature education program, the Race to the Top competition, a decision that was dismissed as politically motivated posturing from Gov. Rick Perry, who was facing a primary challenge from then-U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. The program had initially set aside $4.35 billion in grants for states that agreed to put in place overhauls like Common Core.

“This effort can be seen as a step toward a federal takeover of the nation’s public schools,” wrote Education Commissioner Robert Scott, who expressed his concerns in a November 2009 letter to the state’s congressional delegation. “I believe that the true intention of this effort is to establish one set of national education standard and national tests across the country.”

When Texas decided not to participate in Race to the Top, Scott, along with Perry, were the Common Core’s “most explicit and vocal critics,” said Rick Hess, an education policy expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. What they identified would form a key argument against the standards that their proponents would have a difficult time shaking, he said.

“Part of what they pointed out is that Common Core is not just reading and math standards; it’s also an invitation for the federal government to play an increasingly large role through this national program,” he said. “If you don’t trust the federal government to mind its P’s and Q’s, that’s probably a lot more significant than whether you think they are slightly better reading and math standards.”

So far, much of the political opposition is coming from Republicans.

Many Democrats remain supporters (though quiet ones) of the Common Core, as do Democratic Party functionaries like the teachers unions.

But Wendy Davis, the Democrat running for governor of Texas, is an interesting exception to that.

Political expediency says even if she wanted to support the Core, to do so in Texas would be political suicide.

As that environment starts to spread nationally (and you can see it happening already - the polling trajectory of the Common Core is squarely negative - see here, here and here), it will be come more advantageous for Democrats in other states to jump on the anti-CCSS bandwagon too.

We're not there yet, but we're getting there and when we do, that's when it will become official - Common Core will be deader than disco fashions from the 70's.

The polling shows something that is very, very important to understand:

The more people become familiar with the Common Core, the less they like it.

And the less people like the Common Core and the more the opposition to it grows, the more politicians we're going to see oppose it and the quicker we'll see it die.

What Would Mark Twain Think About The Common Core?

David Perrin in The Atlantic:

It's not hard to guess what another great American satirist would have had to say about the Common Core curriculum. Mark Twain had an abiding concern with education, and he treated formal schooling derisively in his writings. His 1917 autobiography describes his education in the mid-19th century, at the dawn of the public school movement; his acerbic portrayal of Mr. Dobbins in the school scenes of Tom Sawyer is based on Twain’s remembrances of his own teachers and experiences. In one scene, set on Examination Day, Twain mocks the vacuous nature of writing instruction as he shows Tom Sawyer's classmates reading their essays aloud: “A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of ‘fine language’; another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out.” The examinations come to an abrupt halt when Tom and his friends hide in the garret, lower a cat on a string, and watch it snatch the wig off the teacher's head.

...

 In Following the Equator, Twain compared the instructional methods in American asylums for the “deaf and dumb and blind children” to those used routinely in Indian universities and American public schools. As a friend of Helen Keller and a champion of her education, Twain was familiar with the methods of asylums; he'd convinced his friend H.H. Rogers to finance her schooling at Radcliffe in 1896. In Following the Equator, he chastises public schools for emphasizing rote learning and teaching “things, not the meaning of them.” He applauds the “rational” and student-centered methods of the asylums, where the teacher “exactly measures the child’s capacity” and “tasks keep pace with the child’s progress, they don’t jump miles and leagues ahead of it by irrational caprice and land in vacancy—according to the average public-school plan.” In contrast, Twain quips, “In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when they find out he doesn’t know anything, they put him into literature, or geometry, or astronomy, or government, or something like that, so that he can properly display the assification of the whole system.”

 ...

In Twain's writings, he returned again and again to a simple theme: Education should be practical and meaningful. When high marks on exams are the goal, students end up focusing on isolated facts and writing in what Twain described in Tom Sawyer as a "wasteful and opulent gush." He would have almost certainly had something to say about essay-grading software and corporations that refuse to reveal their testing methods. With so little transparency, and with so many dollars and futures at stake, Twain might have condemned an “assification of the whole system” that wields its technology as recklessly as Hank Morgan infiltrated Camelot. 

I suspect the arrogance of Bill Gates, David Coleman et al. would make a pretty fine target for the skewer of Twain's pen.

That The Atlantic is putting such a prominent piece about Twain and the Common Core into the magazine is yet one more example of how the Common Core is dying the death of a thousand cuts.

Wisconsin May Be Next To Drop The Common Core

From Urban Milwaukee:

If you think there was a fight over Common Core educational standards in the Capitol earlier this year, think again. Interviews with dozens of candidates show that it was just a warm-up for the war coming next year over those standards.

No matter who is elected governor, and which party controls the Senate in the 2015-16 session, Assembly Republicans – who all sides privately concede will keep control for the next two years – will push to reverse Wisconsin’s 2010 decision to join most other states in adopting Common Core standards. Several of those Assembly Republicans want Wisconsin to join Louisiana and other states that have withdrawn or repealed Common Core standards.

Six of the 14 Assembly Republicans who sponsored a bill (SB 619) last session that would stop implementation of Common Core standards and let legislators control new educational standards, and who drafts them, are unopposed in Nov. 4 elections. Another Assembly sponsor of that bill, Rep. Steve Nass, of Whitewater, is running for a Senate seat Republicans have controlled for decades.

Three of the five Republican senators who co-sponsored SB 619 aren’t up for election this year; a fourth Senate sponsor, Sen. Leah Vukmir, faces a Libertarian Party challenger. Two Republican senators who kept SB 619 from being debated – Senate President Mike Ellis and Dale Schultz – have retired.

WisconsinEye interviews with more than 70 candidates in Aug. 12 primary elections show that scrapping Common Core standards, or reasserting the authority of local school boards to set their own academic goals, is a top priority of Assembly Republicans. Most Democratic candidates defend Common Core.

Just something to keep an eye on if you're like me and you like to keep track of how many states have already dropped out of the Common Core and how many more are likely to follow.

Common Core Proponents Get Nixonian In Their Retaliation Tactics

Jay Greene:

The entire Common Core enterprise has been characterized by shocking political naivete and over-reach.  Despite investing a fortune in political operatives and holding weekly conference calls “directed by Stefanie Sanford, who was in charge of policy and advocacy at the Gates Foundation,” the folks pushing Common Core did not anticipate that the Unions would betray them and oppose the implementation of Common Core as soon as it suited their purposes.  They did not anticipate that there was no authentic constituency for the proper implementation of the new standards and aligned high stakes tests.  They did not anticipate that the combined forces of the Unions and conservative opponents of centralized control would overwhelm the largely paid mercenaries they had on their side.  For people who imagine themselves politically sophisticated they look like a pack of amateurs.

...

This has not stopped the attempt to characterize opponents as kooks and extremists.  To be fair, some opponents are kooks and extremists, but many are not and Common Core supporters have had a bad habit of avoiding substantive debate by trying to dismiss their opponents as crazy.  There is something vaguely authoritarian about trying to centralize all education standards and testing, so not surprisingly Common Core supporters have also resorted to authoritarian tactics.  Taking a page from Tricky Dick, they have begun to use the power of the government to identify and punish opponents.

No, I’m not just talking about the threat that NCLB waivers and RTTP money would be more available to those who played ball with Common Core.  I’m talking about going after individuals who dissent.  Check out this story about  Brad McQueen, a teacher in Arizona, who published an op-ed against Common Core.

The state’s Associate Superintendent, Kathy Hrabluk, alerted her subordinates to this teacher’s dissent and asked them to “check your list of teacher teams (from which teachers are selected to work on tests at the Dept of Education)” so that he would not be involved in future teacher workgroups on state tests and other matters.  McQueen had been on those workgroups for the previous five years for which he received extra compensation.  No more.  As the Deputy Associate Superintendent for Assessments, Irene Hunting, replied to her boss, “We have made a note in his record.”  Another state official replied, “This was such a surprise for Arizona as Brad has been on many committees…  Let’s make sure he is not going to Denver later this month [to work on the new tests]. Please remove Brad McQueen from the list.”

Another Arizona education official, displaying all of the political sophistication of the Common Core movement, then replied on her government email, saying: “What a f*cktard.”

State education officials, doing their best to be the Common Core equivalent of the White House Plumbers, then proceeded to work on identifying one of McQueen’s fellow teachers to lend his or her name to a rebuttal op-ed that they would ghost write.  The bureaucrat in charge of PARCC for Arizona also called McQueen in his classroom to challenge him on why he opposed her test and quiz him about whether he was teaching the required standards.  McQueen feared they were fishing for grounds to terminate him and got off the call feeling like he has been threatened by a senior state official.

It’s an ugly story.  But this is what happens when you flirt with authoritarian reforms of education.  You start acting like an authoritarian.

This is how you know Common Core is dead in the water - when supporters and proponents channel the Nixon administration to save it.

Nixonian tactics work for a while, as we know from Tricky Dick's career longevity.

But in the end, they often come back to do more harm than good for the people employing them.

Have you heard of any other stories of CCSS supporters and proponents employing Nixonian tactics to smear and retaliate against CCSS critics and opponents?

NYSED Commissioner John King: No Retreat, No Surrender, No Quarter On Education Reform Agenda

The NYSED Commissioner does not seem to be chastened in the least by all the criticism of his tenure as head of the State Education Department or calls for his resignation or firing:

Under sustained attack over new standardized tests and learning standards, the New York State education commissioner told an audience on Thursday that “we’re not retreating” and that the constant criticism was damaging an overdue effort to raise student achievement.

“The road to change will always be bumpier for some than for others,” the commissioner, John B. King Jr., said in a speech to officials, educators and public policy students at New York University. “But that’s no reason to stop.

“We teach our children to meet failure and challenge with renewed effort. Adults must do the same.”

...

In his speech, Dr. King, who was booed at Common Core forums around the state over the past year, showed no signs of deviating from his course. “We’re not — not — going backwards,” he said. “We’re not retreating.”

It's interesting how King, and the education reformers who back him, believe teachers who "fail" should be fired and schools that "fail" should be closed but SED Commissioners who "fail" get to go on with "renewed efforts."

Until the politicians who put the Regents in place are made to pay for these policies, until they are made to pay for in effect supporting King by not taking out the Regents who support him and his agenda, nothing is going to change in this state.

There MUST be a political price to be paid by politicians for supporting this agenda.

You take out a couple of legislators in primaries or general elections for supporting the Common Core/Endless Testing agenda and Dr. King and you'll see a change in the policies real fast.

Until then, however, you'll see lip service paid to critics and opponents and not much more.

To be blunt here, John King did a victory lap yesterday and gave the finger to every critic and opponent of his agenda - a big "Screw you! I'll do whatever I want to your kids and their schools and there's nothing you can do to me!"