The Trouble with the Common Core

Via Rethinking Schools

It isn’t easy to find common ground on the Common Core. Already hailed as the “next big thing” in education reform, the Common Core State Standards are being rushed into classrooms in nearly every district in the country. Although these “world-class” standards raise substantive questions about curriculum choices and instructional practices, such educational concerns are likely to prove less significant than the role the Common Core is playing in the larger landscape of our polarized education reform politics.

We know there have been many positive claims made for the Common Core:

• That it represents a tighter set of smarter standards focused on developing critical learning skills instead of mastering fragmented bits of knowledge.
• That it requires more progressive, student-centered teaching with strong elements of collaborative and reflective learning.
• That it equalizes the playing field by raising expectations for all children, especially those suffering the worst effects of the “drill and kill” test prep norms of the recent past.

We also know that many creative, heroic teachers are seeking ways to use this latest reform wave to serve their students well. Especially in the current interim between the roll-out of the standards and the arrival of the tests, some teachers have embraced the Common Core as an alternative to the scripted commercial formulas of recent experience, and are trying to use the space opened up by the Common Core transition to do positive things in their classrooms.

We’d like to believe these claims and efforts can trump the more political uses of the Common Core project. But we can’t.

For starters, the misnamed “Common Core State Standards” are not state standards. They’re national standards, created by Gates-funded consultants for the National Governors Association (NGA). They were designed, in part, to circumvent federal restrictions on the adoption of a national curriculum, hence the insertion of the word “state” in the brand name. States were coerced into adopting the Common Core by requirements attached to the federal Race to the Top grants and, later, the No Child Left Behind waivers. (This is one reason many conservative groups opposed to any federal role in education policy oppose the Common Core.)

Written mostly by academics and assessment experts—many with ties to testing companies—the Common Core standards have never been fully implemented and tested in real schools anywhere. Of the 135 members on the official Common Core review panels convened by Achieve Inc., the consulting firm that has directed the Common Core project for the NGA, few were classroom teachers or current administrators. Parents were entirely missing. K–12 educators were mostly brought in after the fact to tweak and endorse the standards—and lend legitimacy to the results.

The standards are tied to assessments that are still in development and that must be given on computers many schools don’t have. So far, there is no research or experience to justify the extravagant claims being made for the ability of these standards to ensure that every child will graduate from high school “college and career ready.” By all accounts, the new Common Core tests will be considerably harder than current state assessments, leading to sharp drops in scores and proficiency rates.

We have seen this show before. The entire country just finished a decade-long experiment in standards-based, test-driven school reform called No Child Left Behind. NCLB required states to adopt “rigorous” curriculum standards and test students annually to gauge progress towards reaching them. Under threat of losing federal funds, all 50 states adopted or revised their standards and began testing every student, every year in every grade from 3–8 and again in high school. (Before NCLB, only 19 states tested all kids every year, after NCLB all 50 did.)

[readon2 url="http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/27_04/edit274.shtml"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

How Recent Education Reforms Undermine Local School Governance

Via

Local control has historically been a prominent principle in education policymaking and governance. Culminating with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), however, the politics of education have been nationalized to an unprecedented degree, and local control has all but disappeared as a principle framing education policymaking.

This brief examines what the eclipse of local control means for our democracy. It distinguishes two dimensions of democracy that are at issue—democratic policymaking and democratic education—and concludes that the effect of NCLB has been to frustrate our democracy along both of these dimensions.

Pb Localcontrol

Out of Touch and Turning Back the Clock: Romney on Education

It was hard not to be taken aback earlier this month when presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his top supporters, including Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, again demonstrated how out of touch they are with ordinary Americans by voicing their desire to cut back on police, firefighters, and teachers. But the 3 million teachers, cafeteria workers, librarians, and other educators I work with weren't surprised.

That's because Mr. Romney has already revealed how little he understands about the issues that are important to the rest of us. Take his education agenda, for example. Today, few topics unite liberals and conservatives, but almost everyone seems to agree that George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law has failed. There's almost unilateral agreement that NCLB's focus on standardized testing and punishing is wrong; it hurts our schools and our children.

Not only is Romney's education agenda short on details and long on inflammatory rhetoric, but the main proposal seems to be turning back the clock and resurrecting flawed policies from the George W. Bush administration. Romney has even surrounded himself with education advisers from the Bush era.

It's clear that Romney is out of touch with the concerns of middle-class families — his education plan ignores what they want and need for their children, and demonstrates total disdain for public schools and educators. When he made a speech about education, Romney blamed teachers but said nothing about any meaningful plan for building student success, engaging parents, guaranteeing equity, or addressing the special needs of students living in poverty.

Romney hasn't said much about his education record as governor of Massachusetts either — probably because he did little to improve education in the state. In fact, he cut early education and pre-k funding, vetoed $10 million for kindergarten expansion, questioned the benefits of early education, and suggested Head Start was a failure.

[readon2 url="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/transforming_learning/2012/06/out_of_touch_and_turning_back_the_clock_romney_on_education.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

Ohio's Draft Waiver for NCLB

The Ohio Department of Education has a draft waiver for NCLB. The headline making change is to move away from the current school ranking system to a letter grade (A-f). Other proposals in the draft include:

• Changing the current differentiated accountability system to identify and support the lowest performing Title 1 schools.
• Greater flexibility in the use of federal professional development funds as a trade off with the higher standards and transparency in the accountability system.
• Schools and districts will need to complete fewer forms and reports to use federal dollars.
• Focusing on low-achieving schools to ensure compliance with reform models and mandates, including those in the state budget (HB 153).
• Ensuring a system of rewards and recognitions exist for districts and schools that meet designated achievement levels or levels of expected growth.
• Improving federally approved Differentiated Accountability Model and ensuring that it aligns with state accountability system and consequence.
• Phasing out the Highly Qualified Teachers measure on report card and as data used to determine equitable distribution of teachers and replacing it with four evaluation effectiveness ratings.
• Continuing to expand and provide technical support for school-wide pooling of funds in eligible buildings and expanding transferability to allow schools in improvement status to transfer Title funding.
• Optional flexibility to permit community learning centers to use 21st century funds in supporting expanded learning time during the school day in addition to non-school hours, according to the draft.

Further information can be found here at the ODE website.

NCLB’s 10th Anniversary No Cause For Celebration

Via NEA, to mark today being the 10th anniversary of No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law by former President George W. Bush 10 years ago this Sunday. NCLB changed the focus of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), from emphasizing equal access and closing achievement gaps in education, to focusing on high stakes testing, labeling, and sanctions.

NEA believes the 10th anniversary of NCLB is no cause for celebration and that drastic changes should be made before students and educators are forced to mark yet another anniversary living with this flawed law.

“I meet with thousands of educators as I travel around the country, and the concern I hear most often is the overwhelming burden NCLB presents in classrooms and schools,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “From high-stakes testing to narrowing of the curriculum, this law has missed the mark. Instead of creating a generation of critical thinkers, we are graduating a generation of test takers. Let’s get back to the core purpose of public education and let’s re-balance the federal role: ensuring every student has access to a great education that prepares them for lifelong learning and success in the 21st century.”

School progress cannot accurately be measured by a snapshot of test scores from one test, given on one day in the school year. These high-stakes tests are leaving behind too many students. As members of Congress prepare to consider reauthorization this year, NEA is urging them to get it right this time by listening to those affected most by the law—students, teachers and parents.

NEA’s priorities for ESEA reauthorization are:

• Promote innovation, high expectations, and encourage development of 21st century skills in public schools.
• End the obsession with high-stakes, poor-quality tests, by developing high-quality assessment systems that provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate what they have learned.
• Provide great educators and school leaders for every student.
• Promote public education as a shared responsibility of parents, students, educators, and policymakers.
• Provide increased funding to all states and school districts to meet the growing demand for educating U.S. students to be globally-competitive.

“The time and funds spent on complying with NCLB red tape should be used to promote teacher collaboration, identifying and addressing students’ individual needs and restoring great programs that have been slashed from school offerings because of a focus on math and reading and dwindling funds,” said Van Roekel. “Our students and educators have been calling out to Congress for years now to invest in classroom priorities that build the foundation for student learning.”

Challenging Corporate School Reform and 10 Hopeful Signs of Resistance

“Corporate education reform” refers to a specific set of policy proposals currently driving education policy at the state and federal level. These proposals include:

• increased test-based evaluation of students, teachers, and schools of education.
• elimination or weakening of tenure and seniority rights.
• an end to pay for experience or advanced degrees.
• closing schools deemed low performing and their replacement by publicly funded, but privately run charters.
• replacing governance by local school boards with various forms of mayoral and state takeover or private management.
• vouchers and tax credit subsidies for private school tuition.
• increases in class size, sometimes tied to the firing of 5-10% of the teaching staff.
• implementation of common core standards and something called “college and career readiness” as a standard for high school graduation.

These proposals are being promoted by reams of foundation reports, well-funded think tanks, a proliferation of astroturf political groups, and canned legislation from the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Counsel (ALEC).

Together these strategies use the testing regime that is the main engine of corporate reform to extend the narrow standardization of curricula and scripted classroom practice that we’ve seen under NCLB, and to drill down even further into the fabric of schooling to transform the teaching profession and create a less experienced, less secure, less stable and less expensive professional staff. Where NCLB used test scores to impose sanctions on schools and sometimes students (e.g., grade retention, diploma denial), test-based sanctions are increasingly targeted at teachers.

A larger corporate reform goal, in addition to changing the way schools and classrooms function, is reflected in the attacks on collective bargaining and teacher unions and in the permanent crisis of school funding across the country. These policies undermine public education and facilitate its replacement by a market-based system that would do for schooling what the market has done for health care, housing, and employment: produce fabulous profits and opportunities for a few and unequal outcomes and access for the many.

[readon2 url="http://rethinkingschoolsblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/corporate-school-reform-and-10-hopeful-signs-of-resistance/"]Continue reading to see the 10 signs of push back[/readon2]