In Denouncing Common Core, Ravitch Promotes National Standards

Even back to the days when Diane Ravitch was a trusted employee of the Bush I Administration, she was an advocate for voluntary national curriculum standards.  

She has continued to hold this position, even as her previous pro-corporate vices became untenable for anyone with intellectual aspirations or even a lick of integrity. She said in a New York Times op-ed in 2005 that "unfortunately, the political calculations that resulted in the No Child Left Behind law adopting a strategy of letting the states choose their own standards and tests remain the reality."

Some things change, and some don't.  What has not changed is Ravitch's embrace of national standards, even though she continues to insist that such standards, if we were to have them, would not necessitate national testing.  She had this exchange with John Merrow in August 2009, when asked about the connection between national standards and national tests:

Merrow: If we have common standards, are national tests likely to follow?

Ravitch: Not necessarily. If the standards are worthy, then any testing organization should be able to develop test specifications that are aligned with the standards.

Pearson, of course, has proven her correct, even with national standards that aren't worthy, whatever "worthy" might mean to her.  

But it is not the content of national standards that has Ravitch's dander up these days but, rather, the process of making the standards.  From her post yesterday, now in wide circulation:

The reason to oppose the Common Core is not because of their content, some of which is good, some of which is problematic, some of which needs revision (but there is no process for appeal or revision).

The reason to oppose the Common Core standards is because they violate the well-established and internationally recognized process for setting standards in a way that is transparent, that recognizes the expertise of those who must implement them, that builds on the consensus of concerned parties, and that permits appeal and revision.

The reason that there is so much controversy and pushback now is that the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education were in a hurry and decided to ignore the nationally and internationally recognized rules for setting standards, and in doing so, sowed suspicion and distrust. Process matters. . . .

Process didn't matter, however, to Dennis van Roekel or Randi Weingarten in the years following the somewhat magical appearance and acceptance of Common Core in 2010, and even Ravitch remained agnostic on Common Core until 2013, when it finally dawned on her that the process was "fatally flawed."  

But I interject too much.  Let her finish the point from yesterday's post:

. . . . Lacking most of these qualities, especially due process, consensus among interested groups, and the right of appeal, the Common Core cannot be considered authoritative, nor should they be considered standards. The process of creating national academic standards should be revised to accord with the essential and necessary procedural requirements of standard-setting as described by the American National Standards Institute. National standards cannot be created ex nihilo without a transparent, open, participatory consensus process that allows for appeal and revision.

So the never-held debate on whether national standards are even desirable obviously remains unimportant, it would seem, especially for those who have  already accepted the concept as valid. If we can assure the "process," then it would seem that surely the product will follow.  

To me this reads like a formula that risks the likelihood of concocting another lethal ed reform cocktail, even as it satisfies some long-held desire for national standards.  

Does Ravitch believe that the arrogance-intoxicated corporate overlords she is dealing with are going to be held to the corporate standards of ANSI, the same one they have already flipped off? 

At this point when CCSS is about to collapse, there is a great deal of pressure being exerted by the Oligarchs to strike a deal that preserves the fetid Common Core.  Will their guarantee of fair "process" lure Ravitch to the Roundtable, where she, Randi, and Dennis can do a three-way fist bump before their lunch money is taken away by Bill Gates and Eli Broad, just as AFT's was following Randi's celebratory "contract" for Newark teachers.

We need the debate on if or why national standards are needed, a debate that Ravitch has avoided, going all the way back to 2009, when her former gentle nemesis, Deborah Meier, tried to coax her out of her cave.  

I offer Meier's insights from Ed Week back in 2009, presented here as a way to possibly launch the discussion that never happened. 

    The Power of Big Money & Big State Over Knowledge

    Dear Diane,

    But let’s not postpone our discussion about national standards for too long. It mostly boils down to my fear about official ideologies and centralized power over ideas. Plus, our old disagreement about intellectual “neutrality” and objectivity.

    I found your analysis of Obama’s education policy intriguing: pro-spending, but largely along lines Chicago, NYC, et al have pioneered.

    My disagreements are deep-seated. I want a public system of schooling that has local bases and biases—where we don’t all have to agree on what “social justice” teaching means. It’s a risk—but democracy rests on that risk. The messiness of different standards is, to me, a blessing that creates escape hatches for trying something different—within broad limits.

    The power of Big Money and the Big State over knowledge and its distribution is immense—including in schooling. My early image of charters was precisely that they might be counter-powers, not so different than what in Boston we called Pilots and in NYC Alternative schools: mom-and-pop ventures, built around a few people with interesting ideas and a constituency that wants to join them in carrying it out. In the case of Pilots and Alternatives, they came under the jurisdiction of local labor-management; charters depend on an arrangement with the State.

    But somehow we’ve gotten the worst of both private entrepreneurs and public bureaucrats. Transparency has never been harder to find, whether in our highly centralized urban systems or our continuously enlarging charter sector. There are no serious checks and balances, and lots of private “edu-chains” supported by public funds. There is no “public.” Thus, with virtually no public input, NYC’s mayor is allowed to close neighborhood schools and replace them with charters. Parents meanwhile try to figure out how to manipulate a bewildering array of choices while schools are “empowered” to restrict entrance only to high test-scorers, good writers, whatever. In the name of “fairness and equity” we have more selectivity along racial, class, and ability lines, more (white) gifted classes, and fewer than ever minorities in the prestigious high schools. And flat test scores and rising dropout rates.

    The big business mindset, so destructive nationwide, is being offered a free hand in our schools. Schools are “delivery” systems, teachers are deliverers of curriculum, principals are CEOs. It’s an intensification of the old factory-model for new technology factories. Local empowerment in today’s schools usually means more power to the principal and less for the line workers, students, or parents—now seen as obstructers of progress.

_________________

My question, then, to longtime supporters of national standards: Why must we have them?

MIT Researchers: Higher Test Scores Do Not Translate into Higher Levels of Thinking

MIT Researchers: Higher Test Scores Do Not Translate into Higher Levels of Thinking http://t.co/edCbAClW1g

— Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch) December 17, 2013

MIT Researchers: Higher Test Scores Do Not Translate into Higher Levels of Thinking via Professor Diane Ravitch

Duncan Announces Plan for Year-Round Testing

The flood of easy money to advance the corporate education "reform" agenda shows no signs of drying up, with $330,000,000 now being paid out to two consortia to develop national tests to go with the national curriculum that no federal legislator has had any voice in choosing or approving.  Quite a stunning display of federal policy making without either of the legislative branches involved. 

Here is Monty Neill's assessment of the plan:

Monty Neill
Deputy Director, FairTest
The proposals from SBAC and PARCC are far more similar than different. That is in large part because of the overly constraining requirements imposed by the Department. The Consortia are both likely to produce improved standardized tests, which will not be hard to do. The underlying question, however, is whether after 4-plus years and hundreds of millions of dollars, the nation will end up with the assessments it and its children deserve and need. After reading the two lengthy submissions, my conclusion is, no.

First, continued misuse of high stakes will continue to distort the system. While Duncan’s rhetoric is on helping students learn and on tests that (finally) assess higher order skills, the system remains trapped in its punitive use of tests to evaluate students, schools and now teachers, with resulting narrowing and dumbing-down of curriculum and instruction to beat the test. The accountability structure must change. I agree with Diane: the nation should halt the use high-stakes uses of tests as sole or major stand-alone hurdles for teacher evaluation (being pushed hard by Duncan), school evaluation (per NCLB), and in many states for high school graduation or grade promotion.

Second, the Consortia focus on a limited number of statewide tests, to include one (PARRC) or a few (SBAC) performance tasks, some administered during the year. That is an inadequate number of performance tasks to make a real difference in the ways assessment dominates teaching. It is an insufficient approach to multiple measures. It also is not a system, it is still just a few tests. Both, especially SBAC, talk about ‘formative’ assessments, but true formative assessment – assessment for learning – is teacher controlled, not externally controlled, and tied to specific curriculum and specific students, not generic. While SBAC may create some good tasks for teachers to use, and their support for assembling libraries of high-quality tasks is a good idea, they are not proposing to ensure the development of true classroom and local assessments on which a healthy system would have to rest. Overall, despite some potential improvements in the instruments, the Consortia provide a conceptually and practically inadequate approach to assessment.

Third, the Consortia place enormous reliance on computer and internet technology, SBAC more so than PARCC. The technology is not likely to be ready for prime time by 2014. The Wyoming computer-adaptive testing system totally collapsed this year (as had Oregon’s previously) and a trial of new computer tests in Florida also resulted in many problems. That’s with far less complex technology requirements than the consortia propose.

Fourth, there is likely to be a great expansion of commercial ancillary testing. Teachers will continue to have to assess far more than the few consortia tests. As is now happening, this perceived gap will be filled by a vast flood of new tests, mostly paraded as ‘formative’ and ‘interim,’ many if not most of poor quality, marketed to schools and districts desperate not to fail on the new tests. They will be imposed on teachers, either increasing the amount of testing or replacing classroom-rooted teacher tests (now of uneven quality) with commercial junk. These various shortcuts may or may not boost scores, but they will further corrupt teaching and learning.

Fifth, control over teaching and thus learning is increasingly centralized. Who will control the multi-state consortia in the future is quite uncertain (as Checker has often pointed out). Mistakes will be harder to fix, while people’s sense of any ability to influence education will further diminish, and with it meaningful democracy. In addition, central offices are likely to use commercial mini-tests to more intensely micro-manage teachers, a tendency already growing in some cities, and further de-professionalize teaching.

These last two are, it will be argued, not the fault of the Consortia or the Department. However, the Department has set in motion the development of a system of expanded and intensified testing. The dangers are obvious – but are in no way structurally addressed by the Department or the Consortia. Indeed, the dangers would appear to be ‘benefits’ to the Department.

The federal government could have taken a very different approach to improving assessment, as I outlined in a June Education Week commentary (available at http://www.fairtest.org/better-way-assess-students-and-evaluate-schools). It could have emphasized gathering and evaluating evidence of learning out of actual student work; low-stakes of using a very limited amount of standardized tests; and a school quality review process. The feds could foster such a system and help fund the extensive professional development on which it would have to rest. But, not surprisingly, the Obama-Duncan administration has proposed changes that don’t change enough from the destructive approaches of NCLB and that present all-too-predicable major problems.

Rotten to the Common Core: When Will Parents and Teachers Revolt?

Below is a letter from Georgia teacher, Cindy Lutenbacher, reprinted from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  The Business Roundtable's national standards movement is on Go, and coming along with it is the national testing movement, as announced last week, with two groups of corporate interests vying for control by leading two groups of governors by the nose to the $160 million that will pay the corporations to develop the national tests from which they will then profit mightily:  "Two big coalitions of states are competing for federal dollars to create a series of new national academic tests to replace the current patchwork system."

So please read Cindy's letter and take action through your PTA, your church, your PAC, or individually by calling your elected officials.  Let Duncan know the depth of the opposition.  This is not a foregone deal:

By Cindy Lutenbacher

Amid great fanfare in our state earlier this month, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers announced the release of the “Common Core Standards.”

So, I have a few questions for those who back the standards — including our own governor, Sonny Perdue, who co-chaired the Governors Association effort. In the general celebration over the release of these new standards, it seems very few people are asking what Common  Core Standards will actually mean for our children. And that is a mistake because the Common Core Standards are simply the forerunner to even more (and likely worse) standardized testing.

Why are so few investigating the origin of Common Core, which is largely a creation of Achieve Inc., an outfit that is driven by a dozen or so governors and CEOs of major U.S. corporations?

What do these people know about educating our children? Why would we trust them? Why do we simply accept the claims of “research- and evidence-based” support for the creation of Common Core Standards? Why are we not doing as we were admonished to do during Watergate … that is, to follow the money? Where is this independent research, unattached to corporate monies?

In creating these standards, Achieve, the governors and the school officials ignored the vast body of truly independent research that shows such “standards” and their inextricably linked standardized testing are worse than folly and are sending our children in the exact opposite direction of what they need.

This group of very rich people ignored this body of research that shows that the single most powerful factor in education gaps is poverty and not standardized testing.

Did they forget that the United States has the second highest rate of children in poverty of any industrialized country in the world? In fact, these purveyors of Common Core disregarded everything that at least every great teacher I have ever known believes, says and lives in his/her classroom. What we should be doing in Georgia and the rest of the country is focusing on filling our classrooms with great teachers, rather than with thousands of new standards.

We should be supporting our great teachers, rather than driving them from our schools, as will certainly be the outcome of an even greater emphasis on testing. Why does anyone cite the “A Nation at Risk” report in pushing for national standards even though it’s been so thoroughly discredited? Where is the hue and cry over the million dollars that the Gates Foundation gave to the National PTA in order to promote Common Core?

Who appointed Bill Gates Emperor of Education?

Is money being spent, to borrow a Bushism, to “catapult the propaganda”? Or is that last question simply rhetorical?

The architects of these Common Core Standards did not seem to consider all the research that amply demonstrates that having access to a variety of reading materials and having the time and safe space with which to read are the factors that help children become readers.

Instead, the standards rely on the absurd drilling tactics advocated by the politicians and corporations happily taking our tax dollars for their testing and related materials.

Who is really getting the money from turning our schools into Common Core drill-and-kill testing factories? Will Perdue be willing to read the list of literary texts listed in the 183-page Appendix for English Language Arts and allow me to test him on them? Will Perdue even take the 12th-grade exit exams and allow his scores to be made public? Can Perdue explain to me how “Tartuffe,” Euclid’s “Elements,” Paine’s concept of “ground-rent,” and a bivariate polynomial have helped him in governing our state?

And in related news, we learn that Perdue has vetoed the excellent bill that would have saved millions of dollars for our state and, more importantly, released our first- and second-graders from the hideous spectacle of useless standardized testing. Will he be willing to sit in a desk with 30 other governors, who, like hapless 6-year-olds, will be forbidden to speak to one another and must suffer silently as they are endlessly drilled in preparation for the CRCT?

Furthermore, when will Georgia get a state schools superintendent who actually understands children and how they learn, rather than, for example, one who understands politicians and chambers of commerce?

Will the new superintendent be willing to sit obediently through first-grade test prep for Common Core Standards? Is there anyone, anyone, who actually believes that Common Core Standards and its murderous standardized testing will not lead to even more fanatical requirements that cause teachers to have to teach to the test? There’s no evidence that these “standards” will help my children be lifelong learners.

When will we as a state and we as a nation wake up to the destruction of our children that is being carried out under the sanctimonious and specious names of accountability and reform?

And most important of all, for the sake of our kids, when will we revolt?

Duncan's Extortion Effort to Make Title I Funding Contingent on Adoption of Gates-Broad National Testing Plan

The edu-thugs who came up with the RTTT plan to bribe states to adopt the Business Roundtable plan for segregated corporate schooling in America have done themselves one better. It is called extortion, and it says simply: if you want to keep your Title I money intact, play ball with us on P-21.

No, a P-21 is not a new Pentagon weapon but, rather, a weapon that is being developed by the charlatans who are paid to turn unrestrained corporate greed into national education policies that feed that same corporate greed at the expense of American children. From Ed Week:

The Obama administration’s proposal to make federal funding for disadvantaged students contingent on states’ adoption of reading and math standards that prepare students for college or a career has drawn sharp criticism from groups representing grassroots educators and state lawmakers, even as some governors and members of Congress appear open to the idea. . . .