New GED Discourages Dropouts from Certification

When you think of the GED, what ideas come to mind? I remember the disaffected boys and pregnant girls in my high school classes and hope that somehow they managed to get a GED and further education after dropping out in the tenth or eleventh grade. More recently, I worry about students I knew who failed one or two senior-year courses and never went to summer school to finish.

Until I did some research, I didn't know that the GED was created for returning WWII veterans who had dropped out of high school. Prior to that, no such test purporting to represent equivalence to a high school diploma existed. Maybe it's time to get rid of it.

Now that Pearson has purchased GED testing (don't get me started), it costs twice as much, must be taken on computer, and is aligned to the Common Core (which dropouts were not exposed to)--all aspects turning it into a real money-maker for Pearson. Its customers are unlikely to be among our most affluent citizens.

Supposedly it now measures the "real-life" skills needed for further education. Gag me with a spoon.

Such a test does not measure the real life skills that determine a person's success in higher education. Motivation? Time-management skills? Personal problems? The very parameters that cause students to drop out will never appear on such a test. Instead, the new tougher GED practically guarantees failure and a large outlay of money for those trying to turn around the trajectory of their lives.

Since the "new" GED appeared, passing rates have plummeted.

A few states have rebelled against the Common-Core loaded GED. Since South Carolina's legislature rejected the Common Core, it should allow other tests as substitutes, especially the HiSET sponsored by ETS and the Iowa Testing Service. This test answers the objections above, and SC would not be alone in rejecting homage to Pearson.

Time for change.

Clothespin Your Nose and Vote for Spearman for SC Education Superintendent

Molly Spearman, a former music teacher, is also, fittingly, former director of the SC School Administrators Association. She thinks like them.

Tom Thompson is former dean of graduate studies at SC State University, a place not known for graduate study, and he is now involved with for-profit institutions. He sees federal intervention in education as a positive force.

Both candidates are mouthing platitudes in debate. Neither has any new solutions other than to have high standards and fix funding inequities.Of course, you could throw your vote away on the American party candidate, Ed Murray, but why would he be an improvement over Jim Rex, one of his supporters?

This year's race proves once again that the state's superintendent of education should be appointed by the governor.

No wonder only 13 states have elected superintendents when you contemplate the candidates our primary elections have tossed up for us.

Spearman appears to be marginally less entranced with federal intervention. Of course, she could merely be mouthing what Republican voters want to hear.

A New York Teacher's Disgust with Common Core Standards

 As reported by Diane Ravitch last month

"Common Core was imposed on teachers by non-educators. We were fed a lot of mistruths along the way, as well. However, there would be no backlash if the CC founders gave us an educationally sound reform package.

We are rejecting CC primarily because the standards in ELA are un-teachable and un-testable, abstract and subjective thinking skills - essentially content free, the math standards are the SOS shifted around in developmentally inappropriate ways using unnecessarily confusing pedagogy, and the tests tied to teacher evaluations have become the epitome of educational malpractice. 

Furthermore, the notion of producing educational excellence with standards that cannot be changed, altered, deleted, or improved, is insult to our profession. And until the ESEA is dealt with by Congress, we are stuck inside a very deep hole, whether we support the CC or not."

Whose Math Standards Does Common Core Use?

Pioneer Institute Study Finds 
Common Core Standards Weren’t Properly Validated

Five of the 29 members of the Common Core Validation Committee refused to sign a report attesting that the standards are research-based, rigorous and internationally benchmarked. The validation report was released with 24 signatures and included no mention that five committee members refused to sign it, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.
What were the problems?
According to the Pioneer Institute press release, no member of the Common Core Validation Committee had a doctorate in English literature or language –and only one held a doctorate in math. (He was one of only three members with extensive experience writing standards.) Two of these three refused to sign off on the standards.

“Since all 50 states have had standards for a decade or more, there is a pool of people out there experienced in writing English and math standards,” said Ze’ev Wurman, author of “Common Core’s Validation: A Weak Foundation for a Crooked House.” “It’s unclear why so few of them were tapped for the Common Core Validation Committee.”

Wurman describes two studies conducted by members who signed the Validation Committee report in an attempt to provide post facto evidence that supported their earlier decisions. In both cases, the research was poorly executed and failed to provide evidence that Common Core is internationally competitive and can prepare American high school students for college-level work.

One study, conducted by Validation Committee member and Michigan State University educational statistician William Schmidt and a colleague, explored whether the Common Core math standards are comparable to those in the highest-performing nations and what outcomes might reasonably be expected after Common Core is implemented.
Wurman describes how even after Schmidt and his colleague rearranged the logical order in which concepts would be taught to make Common Core look more like the math standards in high-performing countries, there was still less than a 60 percent congruence between the two. Their initial results also found no correlation between student achievement and the states that have math standards most like Common Core.

After engaging in highly unconventional steps to increase both the congruence between Common Core and the international standards and the correlation between Common Core and student achievement (based on states whose standards were most similar to Common Core), Schmidt and his colleague wrote that they estimate congruence “in a novel way… coupled with several assumptions.” They acknowledge that their analyses “should be viewed as only exploratory… merely suggesting the possibility of a relationship,” yet such caution disappears in their final conclusion.

Wurman’s research also uncovered that basic information was coded incorrectly for Schmidt’s study and shows examples of concepts introduced in high school under Common Core listed as being taught in seventh grade. 

Other studies have come to very different conclusions. Stanford University mathematician R. James Milgram, the only member of the Validation Committee with a doctorate in mathematics, said that Common Core is two years behind the math standards in the highest-performing countries. Milgram also wrote that Common Core fails to prepare students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. 

Ze’ev Wurman is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution and a former senior policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Planning, Development, and Policy Development. In 2010, he served as a commissioner on the California Academic Content Standards Commission that evaluated Common Core’s suitability for adoption in that state.

Pioneer’s comprehensive research on Common Core national education standards includes: Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare High School Students for STEM; How Common Core’s ELA Standards Place College Readiness at Risk; Common Core Standards Still Don’t Make the Grade; The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers; National Cost of Aligning States and Localities to the Common Core Standards, and A Republic of Republics: How Common Core Undermines State and Local Autonomy over K-12 Education. Pioneer produced a video series: Setting the Record Straight: Part 1, and Part 2, and has earned national media coverage.

Posted April 24, 2014 by Christel Swasey in How the Common Core Initiative Hurts Kids, Teachers, and Taxpayers

Common Core? It's Done

As Diane Ravitch recently concluded:

Common Core is not simply a toxic brand, as some of its defenders believe. It got one of the greatest send-offs in history, adopted by 45 states even though no one was sure exactly what it was. It came wrapped in such grandiose claims that it was bound to flop. There was no evidence that Common Core standards would improve education, raise test scores, narrow the achievement gaps, make children globally competitive or college and career-ready.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this fiasco, it is that process matters, evidence matters. Money can buy elections, but money alone is not enough to buy control of American education. A change as massive as national standards requires the willing and enthusiastic by educators, parents, and communities. Arne Duncan and Bill Gates thought they could bypass those groups, if they funded enough of their leadership organizations. They thought they could design the standards they thought best and impose them on the nation. It is not working. As New York high school principal Carol Burris said recently about Common Core, stick a fork in it, it's done.

The question remaining is whether education officials in South Carolina will keep this flawed program by simply re-branding it.

What Not to Know About Common Core

Why would South Carolinians take the word of an Associated Press writer to educate themselves on Common Core?

Yet that's exactly what the P & C bruited in its above-the-fold headline, "What to know about Common Core," on Labor Day. The article's first sentence is majorly misleading, if not plain wrong: "Common Core education standards have already been adopted by 40 states and are opposed by conservatives across the country."

Perhaps reporter Seanna Adcox thought pretending only conservatives oppose Common Core would gain it more support among newspaper readers. That scheme would suggest she's just arrived here from Mars. That's the kind supposition. The unkind idea would be that Adcox has no idea of the vociferious opposition that has arisen in liberal circles around the United States.

When the lead sentence of an article purporting to contain knowledge is fatally flawed, stop reading.

Teachers, Not Their Unions, Finding Common Core Standards Contemptible

Diane Ravitch reports: A poll commissioned by "Education Next," a conservative journal, finds that the public supports the idea of common standards but the support drops sharply when asked about Common Core. See the Edweek account here The biggest declines from 2013 to 2014 were among teachers and Republicans. Support among Democrats remained steady at about 63-64%. The proportion of Republicans supporting Common Core dropped from 57% to 43%. Certain prominent Republicans continue to promote Common Core, including Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Other Republican governors. The biggest decline in support was among teachers. Support dropped from 76% to 46%. This sharp decline is notable not only for its size but for two other reasons: first, both national teachers' unions have endorsed Common Core and reiterated their support for Common Core at their national conventions just weeks ago. Second, of the various groups questioned, teachers are the most knowledgable about the Common Core since almost every state is training teachers to Implement the new standards. Peter Greene explains the decline of support among teachers with this phrase: "Familiarity breeds contempt." He says, "I'm hoping leadership in both unions takes a good hard look at this result. Again-- a group that is committed to promoting CCSS, that has a vested interest is being able to say that people and teachers love the Core, has determined that teachers do not love the Core much at all. Please pay attention, union leaders." The editors of "Education Next" are known for their hostility to teachers' unions and teacher tenure and their advocacy for school choice, including charters and vouchers.

Charleston's Kobrovsky Says, "Put a Grade on It"

Whether students receive conduct grades in the State of South Carolina depends on the policies of each school district. If State Board of Education member Larry Kobrovsky has his way, all students will receive such grades.

"Effort, punctuality, and neatness" would receive letter grades under the system. Charleston's Kobrovsky believes that such "skills" (let's call them habits?) are necessary for success. Such grades would stress personal responsibility.

Maybe these standards could be written so that parents can understand them, unlike some of the more esoteric standards for Common Core.

Why SC's High School Exit Exam Was Dropped

Last April after 30 years of requiring students to pass an exit exam to receive a high school diploma, the South Carolina state legislature, with the blessing of the education establishment in the state, dropped the requirement and even told those who had not received their diplomas in the last seven years to apply for them. What caused this change of heart?

We could surmise that the edublob feared falling scores due to implementation of Common Core.

We could conclude that, despite a continual dumbing down of the exit exam (HSAP), students were still failing at too high a rate for the comfort of the edublob.

Whatever it was, let's not forget the original purpose of that exam: students were receiving diplomas without the reading and computing skills needed to thrive in college or at work. Dropping the test will not change that  deplorable outcome one iota. If the items on the HSAP didn't correctly identify those who were deficient, then why did South Carolina pay out the millions it contracted to the edublob to create and then refine the test?

We are assured that WorkKeys and the ACT or SAT will fill the void left behind. While the purposes of those tests are valuable to students, will they truly reflect how well a particular school or school system has educated the student? Probably not.

What happened to accountability, folks?

State Superintendent Campaigns Dither on SC Test Scores

First, lame-duck State Superintendent Mick Zais didn't allow districts time to get their stories straight on why South Carolina students' test scores plummeted in most subjects this year. Looks like he didn't give Molly Spearman, Republican nominee for his replacement, or her Democrat opponent a chance to prepare talking points either, for neither campaign "could be reached for comment" for the lengthy and confusing article on test results prepared by the associated press reporter.

Ever hear of a major campaign that can't be reached? Right.

If the standards by which students are tested are changed every year, who cares what the results show? It's apples to oranges every time, just as the educrats like it. They are the ones who support Common Core with all of its drawbacks. If more students test as exemplary, while most scores fall, the results suggest that the test measures more native intelligence than learned subject matter.

Our major candidates for state superintendent are hiding from the press because both of them support the implementation of Common Core, and they sense the majority of voters do not.

Chicken!

Selling Common Core to the Masses

Reported by Diane Ravitch:

Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post reported that the Hunt Institute in North Carolina received more than $5 million from the Gates Foundation to organize support for the brand-new, unknown, untested Common Core standards. Organizing support meant creating the message as well as mobilizing messengers, many of whom were also funded by the Gates Foundation.

In Layton's blockbuster article about how the Gates Foundation underwrote the rapid adoption of "national standards" by spreading millions of dollars strategically, this remarkable story was included:

"The foundation, for instance, gave more than $5 million to the University of North Carolina-affiliated Hunt Institute, led by the state’s former four-term Democratic governor, Jim Hunt, to advocate for the Common Core in statehouses around the country.

"The grant was the institute’s largest source of income in 2009, more than 10 times the size of its next largest donation. With the Gates money, the Hunt Institute coordinated more than a dozen organizations — many of them also Gates grantees — including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Council of La Raza, the Council of Chief State School Officers, National Governors Association, Achieve and the two national teachers unions.

"The Hunt Institute held weekly conference calls between the players that were directed by Stefanie Sanford, who was in charge of policy and advocacy at the Gates Foundation. They talked about which states needed shoring up, the best person to respond to questions or criticisms and who needed to travel to which state capital to testify, according to those familiar with the conversations.

"The Hunt Institute spent $437,000 to hire GMMB, a strategic communications firm owned by Jim Margolis, a top Democratic strategist and veteran of both of Obama’s presidential campaigns. GMMB conducted polling around standards, developed fact sheets, identified language that would be effective in winning support and prepared talking points, among other efforts.

"The groups organized by Hunt developed a “messaging tool kit” that included sample letters to the editor, op-ed pieces that could be tailored to individuals depending on whether they were teachers, parents, business executives or civil rights leaders."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the advocates for the Common Core standards have the same rhetoric, the same claims, no matter where they are, because the campaign was well organized and well messaged.

What the campaign did not take into account was the possibility of pushback, the possibility that the very lack of public debate and discussion would sow suspicion and controversy. What the advocates forgot is that the democratic way of making change may be slow and may require compromise, but it builds consensus. The Common Core standards, thanks to Gates' largesse, skipped the democratic process, imposed new standards on almost every state, bypassing the democratic process, and is now paying the price of autocratic action in a democratic society.

dianeravitch | July 10, 2014

Common Crore Basic Reading Standards Meant for Top Students Only

Even those who helped write the standards for Common Core are upset. Read on.

CCSS Writer Blasts CC Basic Reading Standards by dianeravitch Dr. Louisa Moats was part of the team that wrote the foundational reading standards for the Common Core. In "Psychology Today," she strongly criticized the standards. Among other things, she said: "I never imagined when we were drafting standards in 2010 that major financial support would be funneled immediately into the development of standards-related tests. How naïve I was. The CCSS represent lofty aspirational goals for students aiming for four year, highly selective colleges. Realistically, at least half, if not the majority, of students are not going to meet those standards as written, although the students deserve to be well prepared for career and work through meaningful and rigorous education. "Our lofty standards are appropriate for the most academically able, but what are we going to do for the huge numbers of kids that are going to “fail” the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) test? We need to create a wide range of educational choices and pathways to high school graduation, employment, and citizenship. The Europeans got this right a long time ago. "If I could take all the money going to the testing companies and reinvest it, I’d focus on the teaching profession – recruitment, pay, work conditions, rigorous and on-going training. Many of our teachers are not qualified or prepared to teach the standards we have written. It doesn’t make sense to ask kids to achieve standards that their teachers have not achieved! "

Bill Gates Owns Common Core: How that Happened

According to Diane Ravitch,

Horton: Not a Conspiracy Theory: The Gates Foundation Bought Control of U.S. Education
by dianeravitch

A year ago, Paul Horton wrote a letter to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, asking him to conduct hearings on the Common Core and Race to the Top, and specifically to inquire about the role of the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation in shaping federal education policy. Nothing happened. Now that the world knows that the Gates Foundation, working in alliance with the U.S. Department of Education, underwrote the creation and promotion of the Common Core standards; now that we know that Bill Gates bought and paid for "a swift revolution" that bypassed any democratic participation by the public; now that we know that this covert alliance created "national standards" that were never tried out anywhere; now that we know that the Gates Foundation's willingness to invest $2 billion in Common Core enabled that foundation to assume control of the future of American education: it is time to reconsider Horton's proposal. How could Congress sit by idly while Arne Duncan undermines state and local control to the chosen designees of the Gates Foundation? How could Congress avert its eyes as public education is redesigned to create a marketplace for vendors?

Public education IS a marketplace for vendors. Now one of them has cornered the market!

Expose: How Gates Bought Common Core with Obama Administration's Collusion

From The Washington Post, via Diane Ravitch

The Inside Story of How Bill Gates Bought the Common Core Standards
                by dianeravitch
In a remarkable job of reporting, Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post describes the creation of the Common Core standards. Two men--Gene Wilhoit and David Coleman--went to see Bill Gates in 2008 to ask him to underwrite national standards. He agreed, and within two years, the standards were written and adopted by almost every state in the nation.

This is the closest thing to an educational coup in the history of the United States. Our education system is made up of about 14,000 local school districts; most education policy is set at the state level. But Bill Gates was able to underwrite a swift revolution. It happened so quickly that there was very little debate or discussion. Almost every consequential education group was funded by the Gates Foundation to study or promote the Common Core standards. Whereas most businesses would conduct pilot testing of a major new product, there was no pilot testing of the Common Core. These national standards were written with minimal public awareness or participation, and at least one state--Kentucky--adopted them before the final draft was finished.

What made the Gates' coup possible was the close relationship between the Gates Foundation and the Obama administration. When the administration launched its Race to the Top competition, it issued a list of things that states had to do to be eligible for a share of $4.35 billion. One was to agree to adopt "college and career ready standards." Administration officials, Layton writes, originally planned to specify that states had to adopt the Common Core, still not yet finished, but were warned to use the term "college and career ready," to avoid the appearance of imposing the Common Core (which was their intent). Leave aside for the moment the fact that it is illegal for any federal official to attempt to direct, control, or influence curriculum or instruction.

Never before has one man had the wealth, the political connections, and the grand ambition to buy American education. But Bill Gates did it.

Arne Duncan Reveals Ignorance of SC Standards

Who does Arne Duncan think he is? Apparently he's so smug and arrogant that he believes that the Common Core standards are higher than what South Carolina had previously. That's what he stated (remotely, of course) at the Charleston County School District's indoctrination symposium last week.

Basically, he's lashing out now because he senses the battle for Common Core has been lost. South Carolina's standards haven't been its problem, but Duncan wouldn't know that.

The state's edublob spokesperson, CCSD's Superintendent McGinley, plans to end run the state legislature and implement Common Core without its name. She's just waiting for the next election to produce a state superintendent of education more amenable to CCSS, either a Democrat or RINO Molly Spearman.

Ravitch Exposes Faults of Common Core Standards for K-3

Why the Common Core Standards for Grades K-3 Are Wrong by dianeravitch A group of early childhood educators explain here why the Common Core is inappropriate for children in grades K-3. This statement is an excerpt from their joint publication "Defending the Early Years."  The first mistake of the Common Core is that it "maps backwards" from what is needed for high school graduation and ignores the kind of learning that is developmentally appropriate for young children. "An example of a developmentally inappropriate Common Core standard for kindergarten is one that requires children to “read emergent reader texts with purpose and understanding.” Many young children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten and there is no research to support teaching reading in kindergarten. There is no research showing long-term advantages to reading at 5 compared to reading at 6 or 7."  The second mistake is that the CCSS assumes that all children learn at the same rate and in the same way. However, "Many of the skills mandated by the CCSS erroneously assume that all children develop and learn skills at the same rate and in the same way. Decades of child development research and theory from many disciplines (cognitive and developmental psychology, neuroscience, medicine and education) show how children progress at different rates and in different ways. For example, the average age that children start walking is 12 months. Some children begin walking as early as 9 months and others not until 15 months – and all of this falls within a normal range. Early walkers are not better walkers than later walkers. A second example is that the average age at which children learn to read independently is 6.5 years. Some begin as early as 4 years and some not until age 7 or later – and all of this falls within the normal range."  Part of the second mistake is that young children are being assessed in ways that make no sense: "The CCSS are measured using frequent and inappropriate assessments – this includes high-stakes tests, standardized tests and computer-administered assessments. States are required to use computer-based tests (such as PARCC) to assess CCSS. This is leading to mandated computer use at an early age and the misallocation of funds to purchase computers and networking systems in school districts that are already underfunded."  A third mistake was that those who wrote the CCSS did not include anyone knowledgeable about early childhood education: "The CCSS do not comply with the internationally and nationally recognized protocol for writing professional standards. They were written without due process, transparency, or participation by knowledgeable parties. Two committees made up of 135 people wrote the standards – and not one of them was a K-3 classroom teacher or early childhood education professional."  A fourth mistake was that "There is a lack of research to support the current early childhood CCSS. The standards were not pilot tested and there is no provision for ongoing research or review of their impact on children and on early childhood education." Those of us who urged field testing of the standards were ignored.  Read the rest of the article to read the other mistakes that CCSS made in writing standards for K-3. Then you will understand how foolish it was for a kindergarten class to cancel the annual class play because the children needed more time for rigorous academic studies. If educators think that CCSS cancels out the well-researched principles of child development, they make a terrible mistake.  dianeravitch | May 12, 2014 at 10:00 am | Categories: Education Reform | URL:http://wp.me/p2odLa-7OK

SC Senate Gets the Message on Common Core

It  may be a bit late, but the South Carolina State Senate woke up this week to ban Common Core standards from state schools beginning in 2015-16. South Carolina will return to using its own standards.

Now we merely must cope with the mess to be cleaned up over the next two years.

Common Core's Becoming the Edsel

Why does Common Core have attackers from both left and right? A recent article in Salon by Jeff Bryant suggests a few answers:

"Diane Ravitch, who had previously been an advocate for national standards, looked at how the Common Core was being sold to the American public and warned, “To expect tougher standards and a renewed emphasis on standardized testing to reduce poverty and inequality is to expect what never was and never will be … We have a national policy that is a theory based on an assumption grounded in hope.” (emphasis added)

Educators on the ground also sounded warnings about the Common Core, as award-winning Long Island school principal Carol Burris did at The Washington Post. “When I first read about the Common Core State Standards, I cheered, she explained. “I even co-authored a book, “Opening the Common Core.” But her opinion soured as she gradually realized that support for the Common Core included accepting the features that came with it, including more standardized tests that are used to evaluate and fire teachers. Burris realized. “The promise of the Common Core is dying and teaching and learning are being distorted. The well that should sustain the Core has been poisoned.”

More recently, opposition to the Common Core has spread to parents. In New York, thousands of parents and teachers, from the lower Hudson Valley all the way upstate to Buffalo, have packed school auditoriums and demanded changes to current education policies that enforce the new standards. At a recent town hall meeting in Long Island, a classroom teacher charged state officials with “child abuse” and was roundly cheered by an audience of hundreds of disgruntled parents and educators. 

All this unrest prompted U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to lash out at critics of his agenda by saying they inhabit “an alternative universe” and by demeaning them as “white suburban moms” who are upset at anything that might reveal “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.” 

Although Duncan eventually apologized for his remarks, it will do little to quell the anger.

As parent and Connecticut journalist Sarah Darer Littman recently explained, “Democrats from Arne Duncan on down are trying to frame the growing nationwide revolt by parents, K-12 educators, university professors, and child development specialists as ‘Tea Party extremism’ or overwrought ‘white suburban moms.’ … Those of us with older children can see the qualitative difference in curriculum since the Common Core roll out began – and we are not impressed. We’re angered by the loss of instructional time to testing for a benefit that accrues to testing companies rather than our children.”

Clearly, the reformers’ ad campaign is no longer working, their jeering response to opposition has inflamed resistance, and now politicians are feeling the heat generated by the pushback.

A recent review of the state of the Common Core by Education Week found, “a spate of bills in state legislatures calling for the slowdown or abandonment of common-core implementation, or withdrawal from the state assessment consortia designing aligned tests. Although none of the bills that would pull states out of the Common Core so far has garnered enough support to become law – with the notable exception of one in Indiana – a half-dozen states in recent months have pulled out of the coalitions developing common tests.”

The Big Mistake Reformers Make

It’s now obvious that advertising claims behind current education policies like the Common Core were never based on strong objective evidence. More Americans are noticing this and objecting. And politicians are likely to get more circumspect about which side of the debate they lean to. 

So what’s an education reformer to do? 

So far, the strategy is to churn out more editorial, along the lines of what David Brooks wrote, to exhort Americans to “stay the course” on what is becoming a more obviously failing endeavor.

But as this sloganeering wears thin, we’re likely to get a new and improved “message” from the policy elite – a Common Core 2.0, let’s say, or a “next generation” of “reform.”

What’s really needed, of course, is to see the marketing campaign for what it really is: a distraction from educational problems that are much more pressing. Why, for example, focus on unsubstantiated ideas like the Common Core rather than do something that would really matter, such as improve instructional quality, reverse school funding cuts that are harming schools, or address the inequities and socioeconomic conditions that researchers have demonstrated are persistent causes of low academic performance?
But that would require something much more than another marketing campaign. It would mean developing a whole new product."

Jeff Bryant is Director of the Education Opportunity Network, a partnership effort of the Institute for America's Future and the Opportunity to Learn Campaign. Jeff owns a marketing and communications consultancy in Chapel Hill, N.C., and has written extensively about public education policy.

Who Wrote Common Core Standards? See Below

From Diane Ravitch; [italics mine]

Mercedes Schneider: Who Are the 24 People Who Wrote the Common Core Standards?

A few days ago, I posted the names of the members of the "work groups" that wrote the Common Core standards. There was one work group for English language arts and another for mathematics. There were some members who served on both work groups.

Altogether, 24 people wrote the Common Core standards. None identified himself or herself as a classroom teacher, although a few had taught in the past (not the recent past). The largest contingent on the work groups were representatives of the testing industry.

Mercedes Schneider looked more closely at the 24 members of the two work groups to determine their past experience as educators, with special attention to whether they had any classroom experience.

Here are a few noteworthy conclusions based on her review of the careers of the writers of the CCSS:

In sum, only 3 of the 15 individuals on the 2009 CCSS math work group held positions as classroom teachers of mathematics. None was a classroom teacher in 2009. None taught elementary or middle school mathematics. Three other members have other classroom teaching experience in biology, English, and social studies. None taught elementary school. None taught special education or was certified in special education or English as a Second Language (ESL).

Only one CCSS math work group member was not affiliated with an education company or nonprofit....

In sum, 5 of the 15 individuals on the CCSS ELA work group have classroom experience teaching English. None was a classroom teacher in 2009. None taught elementary grades, special education, or ESL, and none hold certifications in these areas.

Five of the 15 CCSS ELA work group members also served on the CCSS math work group. Two are from Achieve; two, from ACT, and one, from College Board.

One member of the work groups has a BA in elementary education but no record of ever having taught those grades.

Almost all members who had any classroom experience were high school teachers.

Schneider concludes:

My findings indicate that NGA and CCSSO had a clear, intentional bent toward CCSS work group members with assessment experience, not with teaching experience, and certainly not with current classroom teaching experience.

In both CCSS work groups, the number of individuals with “ACT” and “College Board” designations outnumbered those with documented classroom teaching experience.

The makeup of the work groups helps to explain why so many people in the field of early childhood education find the CCSS to be developmentally inappropriate. There was literally no one on the writing committee (with one possible exception) with any knowledge of how very young children learn. The same concern applies to those who educate children in the middle-school years or children with disabilities or English language learners. The knowledge of these children and their needs was not represented on the working group.

SC Superintendent Zais No Lame Duck on Smarter Balanced

If the Democrats manage to get control of the SC Department of Education by electing Mick Zais's replacement, those opposing the imposition of Common Core and its attendant government-mandated testing will think of these as the good old days.

Retiring Superintendent Zais earlier this week used his position to withdraw South Carolina from the consortium pushing Smarter Balanced Testing for the Common Core standards. Other mealy-mouthed politicians in the state are hedging their bets with comments on how, since we started down the Common Core road (under a Democratic Superintendent) we must continue. South Carolina is not alone in its rejection of the federal take-over of education by dangling Race-to-the-Top funds in front of ignorant noses.

We're going to miss Mick.