The Big Crash

The Common Core State Standards or CCSS were never field tested nor were they written by educators. See here and  here. They are tied to high stakes tests that will be used to evaluate teachers which is very unreliable. See here. They emphasize non-fiction reading material and math concepts that already show they are especially inappropriate at the lower grades. You don't make kids smarter just by making school harder.

But, the Standards are under the control of the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. These are private, not public bodies. The tests are based on the Standards. If the Standards don't work they will need to be changed. But, changing the Standards will necessitate changing the tests. Therefore, nothing will change, hence the Big Crash.

Parents are objecting to their children being labeled failures. Student learning will not improve and their experience of school will suffer. Teachers are objecting to being evaluated using unreliable measures. Reports indicate there is a disconnect between the Standards and the tests! See here.

Many states are seeing that they have been sold a bill of goods and Common Core is failing out of the gate. See here.

The education reform monster was developed inappropriately, rolled out prematurely and adopted illegitimately (for Race to the Top eligibility). It is failing already. The BIG CRASH is coming.

What to do?

David Coleman - Architect and Author of the CCSS

Not Just Another Brick In The Wall

From Diane Ravitch's bolg... On a Gates Foundation website, seeking to persuade businesses how much America needs the Common Core–even though it has never been field-tested to gauge its real-world consequences–Alan Golston wrote this execrable sentence: “Businesses are the primary consumers of the output of our schools, so it’s a natural alliance.” 

Peter Greene almost jumps through the page–or, the Internet–shouting NO! He writes:

“Output of our schools. Students are not output. They are not throughput. They are not toasters on an assembly line. They are not a manufactured product, and a school is not a factory. In fact, a school does not create “output” at all. Talking about the “output” of a school is like talking about the “output” of a hospital or a counseling center or a summer camp or a marriage. When talking about interactions between live carbon-based life forms (as in “That girl you’ve been dating is cute, but how’s the output of the relationship?”), talking about output is generally not a good thing. Primary consumers. Here’s another thing that students are not– students are not consumer goods. Businesses do not purchase them and then use them until they are discarded or replaced. Students are not a good whose value is measured strictly in its utility to the business that purchased it.”

They don't walk, talk or think like educators, yet they are foisting their unsophisticated, uninformed and misguided education policies on the entire country, not because they are wise, but because they can. See here.

VAM - Value Added Measure

Common Core tests will tell teachers nothing about how they or their students can improve. They will do nothing to inform instruction. They will be used to judge your teaching ability. VAM's are neither reliable nor stable. The best teacher at a school with 95% poverty will likely score lower than the worst teacher at a school with 5% poverty. This is an interesting article about VAM's.

The Cancer Grows

 The new Mayor of New York approved 14 of 17 new charter schools. This insult resulted in the Democratic governor and legislature passing legislation that...

• established a right to space for charter schools within overcrowded public schools up to and including the right to push all public students out, 
• public schools have to pay for private space rented by new charter schools, 
• increased funding for students going to charter schools.

Who wanted this? Hedge fund managers, charter school operators backed by billionaires, politicians in need of campaign dollars, the usual suspects.

Media Coverage

March 24, 2014 State rejects Deficit Elimination Plan
March 24, 2014 5 things to know about the District's finances
March 26, 2014 Teachers / Administration to meet
March 27, 2014 Board sets special meeting
March 28, 2014 Tentative Agreement
March 31, 2014 Live Blogging School board meets
March 31, 2014 We're going in the right direction.
April 11, 2014 Teachers vote to approve contract, Board approves
April 17, 2014 State approves DEP