Back from the Dead With the Core?

Approximately 70% of the state failed N.Y.'s Common-Core tests in 2013.  Core supporters pointed out progress this year (only 65% failed) without mentioning that the cut scores had been adjusted in favor of the students.

Charter school advocates point to their above average scores.  They, of course, fail to mention the "advantages" that allow them to achieve such success:  selective admissions, high attrition, a better student-teacher ratio, public as well as private funding and a focus, in some cases, on test prep.

For those who support the Core, could it be that if they can only hold on and watch progress continue at its current rate through whatever it takes, including cut-score manipulation, the ultimate vindication of total proficiency may be in site at the expense, of course, of a test-driven curriculum.  

How do I know the Core might lead us to proficiency one day?  Well, I imagined a constant rate of approval engineered to increase by increments of 5% and worked out a Kindergarten Common-Core problem:

2013--30% proficiency                     2021--70% proficiency

2014--35% proficiency                     2022--75% proficiency

2015--40% proficiency                     2023--80% proficiency

2016--45% proficiency                     2024--85% proficiency

2017--50% proficiency                     2025--90% proficiency

2018--55% proficiency                     2026--95% proficiency

2019--60% proficiency                     2027--100% proficiency!!!

2020--65% proficiency                                

A more important problem to resolve:  Will (or should) the Common Core even be around in 2027?

Those Were the Days, My Friend

"OK, I just have to get a pillow.  Then, we can start takeoff," I overhear my eight-year old matter-of-factly tell her younger sister.  She had mentioned to me earlier that she was constructing an airplane in the living room when questioned about the apparent mess of chairs, blankets and tents, center stage.  I took it in stride.  I like airplanes.  It seemed like the most natural thing ever.  

As I processed her statement, I had two reactions though.  First:  Oh, how creative!  What a wonderful imagination.  Second:  Why does she need a pillow?  Is she intending that someone will crash or just taking precautions in case a passenger decides to nap?

Next, the oldest sister joined the game.  And, I, of course, am listening with my ear bent in that direction.  She said all the passengers were going to be famous experts.  She was going to be a renowned scientist.  I begin to hear them plan where they are going.  I soon realize how much learning can be incorporated into this simple game, possibly everything from pitch and yaw to Patagonia.  

The game was interrupted by the arrival of the much-awaited letters containing the names of the girls' new teachers.  I imagine the girls will do fine in school and, being familiar with some of their teachers already, I know they are in good hands.  Yet, I also know how this ed. deformity creeps into harm children even at the earliest ages.

I know teachers feel the necessity to test prep.  So much depends upon it.  I have seen conditions of time pressure applied to learning more than ever, doing much to unnerve some children.  I have heard a teacher of the earliest grades tell me how creative play and social interaction have suffered at the hands of a rigorous schedule aimed to meet the demands of high-stakes state tests.  

We did well enough in school, didn't we?  We're doing OK in life, aren't we?  Yet, we never had to sacrifice our childhood to do so.  I saw a Pre-K teacher on the playground last June.  She stopped to talk to me.  I didn't bring up the topic.  She did.  The conversation naturally led to the detrimental changes she has seen in the education of young children.  Somehow, most conversations with teachers naturally turn in that direction today.  

So, I think about how the summer can rejuvenate children and how the Common Core curriculum and the tests that drive it will try to sap so much of that joy from them.  I think about how children tend towards natural creativity, but little on a test recognizes that highest level of learning.  A Common-Core aligned education seems to be at war with all the natural creativity and joy of childhood.

So, here comes another year of Common Core.  What will be the costs for teacher and student alike?  And, realizing these costs, how many more parents will chose the path of opting out?  If only we could opt out our children from the mindset of test prep as well!  Then, these truly would be the days for our children as "those were the days, my friend," for us...

More Venom from the Media

A NY Post editorial, using the picture above,"Back to school--for NYC charters, anyway," recently unleashed more venom against public schools.  These pieces seem to be written by people who assume they have all the answers, as they march along wearing their expensive blinders. 

My initial reaction was to realize these people don't want the truth.  They want to see things only as it conveniently fits their worldview, or Weltanschauung.  In their world, I am a public-school teacher, thus, in my best "Pattonese," I must be a lazy, "son-of-a-bitch."  

In the end, I decided to write my letter to the editors anyway.  Their response or lack of it will be very telling, if not already told.  My letter may go straight to their bin of deleted junk, but I will comfort myself with the notion that I have done something more than say there's nothing I can do and if everyone did the same....  And, I will contemplate what more I can do.  

"Back to School" ‏

Sent:	Tue 8/26/14 10:10 AM
To:	letters@nypost.com (letters@nypost.com)

To the Editorial Department of the NY Post:

In an editorial entitled "Back to school--for NYC charters, anyway," you asked readers if they ever wondered why kids at some NYC charter schools get very high test scores while the failure rate is high at traditional public schools.

I am a NYC public school teacher with about twenty years of experience.  Your analysis seems to be based primarily upon ignorance, personal bias or a combination of the two.  If you were truly concerned to present your readers with an unbiased view, you would analyze school populations to determine which type of school helps kids who face the greatest academic challenges, including severe language deficiencies and other huge obstacles to learning, such as those sometimes outlined in I.E.P.s.  You would analyze the student attrition rates at the most successful charter schools and you might even note that one charter school expelled a whole cohort that wasn't up to snuff.  You might analyze how these "successful" charters increase societal segregation.  You might compare class size, student-teacher ratio and the availability of supplies in the two systems.  You might ask yourself if Test Prep mania as evidenced in charter-schools, sometimes even culminating in pep rallies, is really in the best interests of children.  

Sincerely...

Are There No Free Lunches?

Chalkbeat had a piece entitled "Free lunches for middle schoolers could mean new pressure for principals."  Without the incentive of free or subsidized lunches, schools will still need to coax parents to return family-income forms.  If too few forms are returned, schools risk losing their Title I eligibility and tens of thousands of dollars in federal funds used to pay for everything from teachers to technology and textbooks.  

My past experience tells me middle schools have a near impossible task on their hands.  Some schools have realized that desperate times call for desperate measures.  Blueprint Middle School in the Bronx staged a competition to award the most movie tickets to the class that returned its forms the quickest.  It isn't enough though.  We must all pitch in to help the middle schools propose more rewards to increase the return rate for these all-important forms.  

I have a few rewards in mind.  Perhaps the class that returns its forms the fastest can enjoy an opt-out party when the Common Core state tests roll around again.  Instead of suffering through exam hell, maybe the students could actually spend the six days learning in fun ways.  Let the class ban test prep for the year, too.  Can you imagine learning for the sake of learning?

But, here's a more Common-Core aligned solution.  The class that returns the most forms could score a free trip to Albany to quiz our State Regents on Common-Core aligned questions.  Warning:  The cut scores will be set to pass only 35%!

Full Speed Ahead!

The CCSS train is speeding onward.  The train roars ahead, failing to be worried or concerned for those students flung from it and those who willfully jump from it.  In fact, the majority of students no longer remain on the train.  The passengers are dispensable.  The train speeds callously onward without them.  

In this system, teachers and students will go down together.  As Perdido Street School reports, there appears to be no flexibility in the largely test-based N.Y. teacher evaluation formula.  Teacher evaluations are strapped to student test scores.  They will be thrown over the CCSS cliff together, all because NY State was one of the first to sign onto and implement Common-Core-based testing.  When inflexible junk-science idiocy speeds forward no matter the misguided stakes, I seriously wonder where the education of the "reformers" failed.  

The CCSS train speeds onward despite the children on the tracks.  It speeds onward despite the parents and teachers flailing their arms to try to alert the conductor that human life is in danger.  The conductor presses his foot to the pedal.  There's lots of money to be made and the train must keep to its schedule, regardless of human cost.  

Testing is the engine of the train.  It powers what will be taught in schools.  Old questions become the best way to game future tests.  Students do not learn how to think creatively or love learning so much as how to mimic old material.

The children of the ed. reformers, of course, never board this train.  They have their own luxury coach, rolling gently across green pastures of music, art, drama, creative writing and all those good things in life.  Something in society has derailed.

If not standards, then what?

Karen Magee, president of NYSUT, asked in defense of the Core, "If not standards, then what? A free-for-all? Everyone does what they please? No common base? No common method to look at what they're doing?" 

When I first heard these words, I wondered how the president of NYSUT could pose such questions.  Then, slowly with time, I began to see the strange logic in her arguments.  

Yes, what we need is a dictatorship of standards, one set copyrighted in stone, called the Common Core.  Not just in academia, but in all realms.  No more debate.  No more relativism.  Just one set for all eternity.  We certainly don't want a "free for all."  We don't need more chaos, especially of the academic kind!

Magee would surely also agree we need one set of standards for beauty.   "If not standards, then what?  A free-for-all?"  Everyone being as ugly as they please, everyday of their unbearably ugly lives?  Pooh to people who say standards of beauty change across time and culture.  And double pooh to people who say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  The best way to determine beauty, of course, is to subscribe to one superior copyrighted set of standards and then test for it.  If 65-70% of us prove to be God-awful ugly because of the cut scores, it'll only help teach us how to be prettier in the end!  And pooh to your Mom, "sububran, white" or otherwise, pumping up your ego, who says you're pretty.  You know what?  She's ugly, too.   So, how pretty are you feeling now?

Bad Science

Let me start by saying that in this post I will be frequently referring to B.S., which, despite any propensities to misinterpret, stands for Bad Science, rather than Bachelor of Science. 

That being said...  Many "reformers" seek to overhaul the educational system based on what they take to be science.  Putting false faith in statistical measures of accountability, they experiment on our children.  

Some "reformers" want all students to receive a basic sound education and become academically proficient.  OK.  That's what teachers want.  That's what I want.

But when the Common Core sets standards artificially high with eyes blind to the real needs of some students, I say B.S. 

When states try to test their way to higher standards by designing questions and cut scores clearly to fail the vast majority of students, I say B.S.  

When companies profit at the expense of young people's pride by creating tests engineered to academically cripple children, I say B.S. 

When teachers are evaluated based largely upon the results of a screwy test-based VAM formulas, I say B.S. again.

When court cases attack teacher tenure without realizing why even the most "highly effective" teachers would defend it, I say B.S.

When public schools are closed and replaced by privatized, profit-making academies or academies that pay their head honcho $500,000, I say B.S.

When Success Academy is applauded for excellent test scores while a blind eye is turned (even by major media outlets) toward its selective acceptance policies and very high attrition rates for those who fail, I say total B.S.

When educational reform leads to pressure to make test prep a priority, I sat total B.S. again.

When elected politicians and their political appointments turn deaf and largely inflexible ears to the cries of students, parents and teachers, I really want to say something stronger than B.S., but let me just say B.S. to the nth degree or, in other words:  Really, Really, Really Bad Science!

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish?

If we start with the premise that there are much bigger crises in the world and at home than the one we have created in education, we might make better use of our limited resources.  If we realized many of the problems in education are just reflections of larger problems in society, we might actually find ourselves on the track to some solutions.  

Think of how much money we could save by cutting the millions upon millions spent upon worthless ed. deformity.

We could cut offices that generate reams of meaningless VAM data. 
We could cut contracts for punitive tests founded on the premise of failing the majority.
We could cut budgetary allocations for test-taking torture technology.  
We could cut the money funneled towards excessive test prep.
We could stop spending money to align everything to a copyrighted Common Core.  
Etc., &c., &c. and so forth...

Common sense comes cheap.  The Common Core doesn't!

Mona Davids Demands the Window Dressing!

I read an article in the NY Post entitled, "Teachers sue to keep lesson plans away from higher-ups."  Whose name should appear in it, but Mona Davids again!  It seems she has nothing better to do, but to become the legal bane of existence for teachers, first with tenure and now with lesson plans.  I understand that she wants children to have the best education, but I also understand that she has very little understanding of the teaching profession.  

In this case, Ms. Davids seems to put an undue stress upon the importance of the lesson plan.  Lesson plans can be like window dressing.  I have seen typed lesson plans, hitting all guideposts, set in stone.  But I have also realized that in the wrong hands, this lesson plan would fail terribly.  I have also realized that the lesson plan fails to grab my interest and, most assuredly, would have a similar effect upon my students.  

The Post article states that the union "defended a teacher who 'merely strung together a list of song titles' and called that a lesson plan.  For an education course, I once created an overambitious  lesson plan to teach the 1960s through many songs.  Looking back now, with loads of experience, I understand that one or two of those titles might have filled an entire class period, perhaps "Give a Damn," "Masters of War" and "Ball of Confusion."  Depending upon the expertise of the teacher, three song titles might work brilliantly or hopelessly flop.  A lesson plan, in and of itself, tells you next to nothing.

As a new teacher, I always wanted to have more than enough material for fear I would be caught with nothing to say.  I rarely needed all that.  It might have looked great on paper, but my lesson plan only worked as I amended and adapted it to meet the interests of my students.  I promise you could take the best Common-Core aligned plans from some curriculum guide, put them in the hands of some real teachers and watch chaos unfold.

A teacher once admitted to me that he has crafted lessons on a napkin.  Rather than being horrified, I realized that with just a few notes, pivotal questions and reminders to one's self, a teacher can put enough on paper to more than educate children and awaken a lifetime love of learning.  Teaching is more of what is inside of an individual, knowledgeable and caring, coming out to directly meet the students, than, what's written on a piece of two-dimensional paper.  And, experience definitely helps.

In my mind, it is so much better than the scenario of a teacher with an excessively long lesson plan serving as a security blanket; anxiously, the teacher is always looking down at it for guidance, rather than at the kids.  The teacher fails to digest their ideas and take them a step higher.   Teachers with overly planned lessons, picture-perfect on paper, for the most part, seem excessively nervous and self-absorbed in some grand scheme detached from realities.  Their timing may be poor; yet, the lesson plows on no matter the response of the students.  I learned my first--and maybe most important--lesson in teaching high-school kids on my first day student teaching:  Flexibility means more than the most brilliant plan.  

The best judge of a teacher's performance is a living, breathing administrator who has succeeded as a classroom teacher, just observing the class, not a piece of paper.  It is an administrator who has observed many teachers and values the world of academia as something distinct from the world of business.  It is an administrator who takes his or her job seriously and grows in it.  It is an administrator who remembers his or her first days in the classroom and the pitfalls averted or obstacles overcome.  It is not any individual eyeing the "artifact" of a lesson plan.

I never teach one lesson plan the same way twice.  New ideas occur to me along the way.  One class has greater interest in one question than another.  A student raises a point one period which takes us in a new direction.  I am always reacting and reflecting upon what my students say and do.  This is what makes for a good teacher.  It is not a piece of paper.  

When we had to hand in artifacts this year, I did not hand in my own lesson plan because I knew I had to make it look "snazzy," aligned to something detached from realities.  I modified some lesson from a book.  I would never practically use that lesson.  It wouldn't work.  And, I'm pretty sure my students would be thankful that I didn't deliver it as a script!  Scripted learning, I believe, when followed nearly verbatim, appeals to teachers who lack confidence, skills or souls.  

I don't mind admitting that occasionally, much to my horror, one of my lesson plans gets lost in tons of paperwork at school.  With twenty years of teaching under my belt and knowledge of the kids before me, I can reconstruct a plan in less than five minutes.  And, you know what, no one will ever suspect the calamity that seemed to befall me.  

Lesson plans are like window dressing.  I will always want one on my clipboard, but it doesn't truly speak to what I do with my students.  Without a live person in the classroom assessing the execution of lesson plans, one may be brutally misrepresented by a piece of paper.  The best teachers may look bad and the bad teachers may appear good.  In my mind, and particularly at this stage in my career, the excessive paperwork necessitated to create picture-perfect lesson plans for collection would be a gross waste of my time as well as that of my students--just as Ms. Davids' crusade on behalf of window dressing seems to be a gross waste of her time and money.  

Which Celebrity Would You Nominate to Next Engage in Educational Reform?

The latest craze is for celebrities to become involved in educational reform.  There are quite a few recent examples, including Campbell Brown and Whoopi Goldberg, castigating tenure with little-to-no understanding of its benefits as championed by even the best teachers.  One of the more famous celebrity reformers must be Andre Agassi with his very own charter school.  Since everybody has spent time in school, everybody has some personal experience in education.  (For Agassi, it was up until his tennis career took over in ninth grade.)  Thus, everyone feels justified in putting in his or her two cents, or in some cases millions, towards school reform.

Given the trend, I asked myself which celebrity I might enjoy seeing the most as chief CEO of a newly founded reform group.  Naturally, I chose Animal.

                               

Sure, Animal has some anger or hunger issues, but this might give him some insight into kids with similar issues.  Furthermore, despite the challenges of anger management, he has still crafted a professionally successful career for himself and formed rewarding friendships with colleagues as well as audiences worldwide.  

              

Animal might as well become a charter-school CEO.  Why not?  There are stranger things known to educational reform.  Only the school must be careful that Animal doesn't eat all of its supplies.  

I do know if Animal had a school, he wouldn't over-suspend kids and counsel others out.  Although he might scare a few away, I'm sure his school would be open to a far broader enrollment than the most "successful" charter schools.  His school would serve society, not a segmented part of it.  And, I feel sure, rather than being run as a business, it would be run like a happy family.  

Ed."Reformers" Aren't Career Ready...

Who's "driving" educational reform?  If you've witnessed the current trends in education, you might wonder about the combined teaching experience of some of these self-declared "reformers."  They write and reform away as if they're experts while their engine swerves in and out of lanes, putting little ones at risk.  

Arne Duncan tutored for one year at his mother's tutoring center.  After receiving a nifty education and making the right connections, he moved on to become an educational director, starting with the Ariel Education Initiative and culminating in the Chicago Public Schools System before assuming his role as U.S. Secretary of Education.  He never worked as a classroom teacher.   I'd actually trust him more on the basketball court than in the classroom.

Michelle Rhee taught as a T.F.A. member at Baltimore's Harlem Park elementary school for three years.  She had co-teachers.  During this time, she managed to have her students tape their mouths shut.  She walked away unscathed; they walked away with bleeding lips.  She barely got her feet wet with teaching before she was catapulted into the position of D.C. Chancellor and onto StudentsFirst.  Now, with probably a similar level of credentials in her new "field," she is moving onto lawn care.

Campbell Brown is the new kid on the block attacking public-school teachers.  She's pretty sure that tenure must go, but I doubt many of the most effective, lifetime career teachers would agree with her.  To the best of my knowledge the sum of her classroom experience amounts to teaching English for one year in Czechoslovakia following her college graduation.

In N.Y.C. during the Bloomberg years, there's lots we could talk about with chancellors lacking the proper educational credentials and the need for waivers.  And, then there's David Coleman, former treasurer of StudentsFirst, who tried to become a teacher, but it just didn't agree with him.  So, he went on to become the "chief architect" of the Common Core standards for the rest of us.  

Will the time ever return when those who are trusted to formulate educational policies are actually those who understand the pulse of a classroom because they have devoted their lives to helping the children in it?  With novice "reformers" driving educational policies these days, it's best to keep your children off the road, if you can afford to do so--like so many of the reformers themselves.

Are Teachers Living in a Video Game?

Dante's Inferno of Educational Reform

How can ed. deformers construct with a straight face a world of pre-assembled student failure when they or their children are rarely subject to any of it?  I would never wish it upon their children, but I wonder if a modern-day Dante might not find a special place for people of such hubris inside an educational Inferno of their own making.  Some would surely be left in limbo.  Others might enter another circle due to lust for tests, greed for profits, data gluttony, anger mixed with threats of fist-pounding-and-pushing-in-the-dirt violence, heresy against basic sound educational practices, fraud through data manipulation and treachery through the purchase of public policy.  

One can just imagine who might be there and the contrapasso, or poetic justice, they might face.  Some might find their mouths taped shut, condemned to repeatedly pull off the tape only to expose bleeding lips and another layer of tape against the backdrop of laughter.  Others might vomit up test questions clearly above their cognitive abilities.  Some might drown in the filth of their own junk-science data, sinking through quick sand with their pockets loaded down with nifty grant money.  Others might find themselves sealed in a car with a "white, suburban Mom," condemned to continually test prep on a drive to destinations they will never reach, soccer practice, music lessons, a basketball game...  

I am guessing such an Inferno would be Common-Core aligned, and Virgil would be only too happy to guide them through it.  But a word for the very wise few, obviously aligned to the Common-Core, "Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate"...or for those more inclined to translations, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here"!

What a Wonderful World...Or Is It?

It seems that Utah's Common-Core aligned test results have been released and the state is doing only slightly better than NY.   Fewer than 50% of the state's population is passing.  

In my mind, it is not the students who are failing for lack of effort.   It is the "reformers" who have failed for lack of something else.  The students are their victims and the chosen weapon is standards that have been set ridiculously high and out of reach at this point in time.  If some "reformers" have a point to prove here, it is their own incompetence.  

What a Wonderful World (Revised and Dedicated to Ed. "Reformers" Everywhere)

I see scans of green, red F grades, too,

I see InBloom, for me and you

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world.

I see kids are blue, and flags are white,

The bright blessed peace, split by fruitless fight

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky,

Are also on the faces of Regents going by

I see Tisch shaking hands, sayin', "How did you do?"

She's really sayin', "I Failed you."

I hear students cryin'. I watch them stress.

They'll learn no more than is on their test

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

Yes, I think to myself

What a wonderful world

What will Pearson say in the Year 2525?

I dreamed I saw a textbook page from the monolith special-interest Pearson last night, copyrighted 2525, in which Pearson gives its own slant on why the Common Core failed.  I will reprint it here at risk of a future copyright infringement.  

Why Do Addts Hhave more rights Than Kids? Ansur:_________

As I was making one of my numerous trips in an endless cycle of laundry, I chanced to encounter the above note on the floor beneath my feet.  It was rather hard to see at first with a large load of laundry before me.  I might have taken this scrap for just another odd or end that someone forgot to put away, but something about it attracted my attention.  I put the basket to the side.  I could soon tell that the note had been planted there in my path.  So, I picked it up.

As a teacher, I couldn't help but notice the glaring errors in spelling, but once I made sense of the message in its entirety, I quickly looked beyond.  The message posed a basic philosophical question, showing the highest order of thinking skills:  "Why do adults have more rights than kids?"  The question was followed by a rectangular box, asking for an answer.  I knew at once that this note had the fingerprints of my oldest all over it. 

At first, I was amused, proud and concerned that a nine-year old would think to ask this question.  I thought about some of the first theorists on the idea of human rights.  I thought about those who had taken those words and fought to win those rights.  I thought about the continuing struggles of people and the necessary expansion of human rights.  And, I wondered why the answer box my daughter had left for me was so small.

Then, I wondered why my daughter would pose this question.  Had something happened that day that had greater significance than I realized?  I had no answer.  So, I decided to keep that laundry basket grounded and seek out my daughter.  

We sat down and talked, not about the spelling errors or the failure to proofread, although sometime I might drop some subtle hints here; after all, I am a teacher.  We talked about rights and responsibilities.  And how people gain rights and responsibilities as they mature.  We talked about which rights she might want that she currently lacks.  She seemed peeved that all she could do was cook scrambled eggs.  I thought it interesting that whereas some would see this as a responsibility, she was defining it as a right.  I quickly saw that if we could find some middle ground, something short of giving her the car keys, we might find a solution to please both sides.  It was a good discussion and, I am sure, one that will need to be revisited many times, with more serious concerns, as she rapidly matures.  

I will always hold on to this note.  Not just because of the pride it gave me in my little girl, but because it is a reminder to me that there is so much more to educating real people than pure academics or proper spelling.   And, it is a constant reminder that the job of a parent is probably the hardest on earth, but that it isn't always easy being a kid either.  

Time to Ground Our Planes?

I've been vaguely uneasy these past few days, reflecting upon the devastation caused by the Common Core. When about 65% of a state is failing by a set of standards developed less than five years ago, it is entirely worrisome, particularly given the fact that these standards are supposed to measure college-and-career readiness.  Have you ever wondered how many people who predate the Core must be running around, falsely believing themselves to be successful when they were never actually college and career ready?  They are sleeper cells, waiting to erupt in incompetence at any moment.  

I now begin to doubt whether I was truly college-and-career ready.  It seemed I did well in college and it seemed the college thought so too, but it just might be that we were all mistaken.  Worse yet, I thought I was doing well in my classroom as a teacher.  Now, I must seriously reconsider.  Have we all been playing a terrible joke on ourselves?  Since I was never Common-Core aligned, I may never have been "career ready."  I could be inflicting undue harm upon the world by my lack of career readiness.  People have trusted me to teach their children, but the trust may have been completely unwarranted.  I am saddened and depressed by this thought.  What would David Coleman think of me?

There is a yet more disturbing question in my mind.  Why didn't my A.P.s, parents of students, colleagues drop subtle hints as to my lack of preparation?  Could it be that they, too, were never college or career ready?  How many citizens are walking around today under the false impression that they are successful when they have never truly been made college and career ready?  How many people are running around making laws, dispensing medicines, building cities, rescuing people or making reforms who were never truly college-and-career ready?  Society's foundations may be shaky at best. 

This is a state of emergency.  The only parallel that comes to mind is the horrific situation that made the grounding of all planes on 9/11 completely necessary.  Shouldn't we ground all persons in a college or a career until we make full certain that they meet the Common-Core standards?  We need to start again, deconstruct so much founded upon false assumptions and then, only then, begin to rebuild from the ground up, only in that way will we ensure our society is truly Common-Core aligned!  Isn't it time to ground all "our planes"?  Shall we start in D.C. or Albany?

Thou Shalt Not Question the Core!

Will the Common Core Meet the Needs of Ferguson, Missouri?

Imagine an ed. reformer confronting me on the street and asking, "Hey, NYC Phoenix, if schools don't need the Common Core, then what do they need?  Aren't all students created equal?  Shouldn't they all have the same first-rate set of standards preparing them for college and career?" 

Here's my answer: "I don't share in your hubris.  I don't have the golden key that unlocks the door to every student's needs.  No one has that key.  Do you know why?   Because there isn't just one key.  There are so many different keys.  Equality doesn't mean standardizing standards.  It doesn't mean using one key.

"Instead of killing local control through the destruction of school boards and the concentration of power in hands that are often grabbing for money, why don't you ASK PEOPLE IN LOCAL COMMUNITIES WHAT THEY NEED AND WHAT THEY WANT?  And work from there.  If some say they want the Core, then far be it for me to deprive them of their democratic voice.  I know you''ll spend millions advertising your Core.  And, I know you want parents to demand it.  But so much of the demand that is so little is a creation of your own imagination.  The people who want it are the ones that don't have it.  And, if they or their children get it, they won't want it."  

I read a post by Diane Ravitch yesterday morning, "This was Michael Brown's High School."  It describes conditions of abysmal poverty that take me back to the study on the Appalachia that preceded the War on Poverty.  Is there anyone who reads that article and thinks for one moment that these people are crying out for the Core?  Is there anyone who thinks for one moment a higher set of standards engineered by an SAT-loving, out-of-touch elite will really meet these people's needs? 

I cannot believe the audacity of the reformers.  I cannot believe their lack of concern for democratic voices.  The people opposed to the Core run the full gamut of the economic, political and social spectrum.  And we're supposed to believe that the likes of Jenny Sedlis and her StudentsFirstNY has the single answer to society's problems.   She says, "Blaming high standards for producing poor academic performance is like claiming doctors produce illness."  But if a doctor recommends a fitness program far above the current capabilities of your heart or prescribes a medicine that causes you to go into cardiac arrest, then how's your doctor?  

Sedlis says, "anybody who claims that higher standards caused disappointing test scores is at best wrong and at worst disingenuous."  I would say, "anybody who claims that one set of higher standards will solve the crises in our society or meet the needs of all students is at best ignorant and at worst villainous."

Down the Up Staircase: Common-Core State Tests Slam Students Again

Reformers today seem to be enjoying a grand old time making sure the vast majority of kids, but not their own, taste utter failure. The 2014 Common-Core aligned NY state test scores were released yesterday.  Although in aggregate, the scores inched up, the rate of proficiency still remains lower than 40% for both ELA and math statewide.  The overall message, in my mind, seems to be "unmitigated failure."  

Still, Regent Tisch and Commissioner King chose to "accentuate the positive."   It is probably a good idea given the growing backlash against State policies.  Tisch said, "The test scores show that students from all economic, race, ethnicity and geographic backgrounds can and are making progress.  This is still a transition period.  It will take time before the changes taking place in our classrooms are fully reflected in the test scores.  But the growth we see is directly attributable to the dedication and determination of so many classroom teachers and school leaders across the state."

I would attribute it to something else.  I would attribute the slight improvement in part to the manner in which test questions and cut scores are politically engineered.  I would also attribute it to a better knowledge of the content of the exams and an increased use of classroom time for test prep.  Teachers are prepping to save their pants as well as those of their school.   Do you think Tisch ever wonders about tradeoffs?

When Tisch speaks of "changes taking place in our classrooms," I am sickened.  She has no idea, nor a care, for what is happening in classrooms.  Students and teachers are stressed to the max to prep for senseless tests that aim to fail them from the start.  It is as if, they are worshiping an idol that will ensure only their own failure.  Education is upside down because people with little-to-no experience in the field wear blinders.  They hold the reins of power and charge recklessly onwards with ears closed to public opinion and hearts closed to the damage they inflict upon children.  

And, who is truly succeeding by these standards?  Well, the Success Academy, of course.  While perusing the results of some school districts, I hit on the page with the results of the Success Academy.  A number of Success Academy schools had passing rates over 90%.  Harlem Success Academy Charter School 4 had a 100% passing rate on the 6th-grade math test.  For anyone who tells me, it's because the school or the teachers are so great, I'd ask you to check the school's entrance policies and attrition rate.  The magic formula for success is usually little more than counseling out those who fail.    

I wish these reformers, if they must experiment, would do so upon their own children instead of mine.  Then, they could really show that they have the courage "of their convictions."   

But I would prefer to imagine a world in which educational reformers set children up for success, rather than failure and help all children, rather than only those who seem quite able to help themselves.  Wouldn't that be wonderful?  Instead, so many of the children pictured racing to the top of those Common Core State steps have been pushed down the up staircase yet another year!

Rhee Promises Reforms in Gardening

Michelle Rhee, now preferring to be called Michelle A. Johnson, has stepped down from leadership (but not the organization altogether) of StudentsFirst and become a Board member of Scotts Miracle Gro.  Perhaps given the Miracle Gro she witnessed in test scores in D.C., Scotts, not hearing of the abnormally high incidence of erasures, thought the association only natural.  Who knows what the future holds?  But if Michelle Johnson has as much "expertise" in gardening as Michelle Rhee had in education, you might want to reconsider some lawn-care options.

Rhee has a proven history of dealing with bees.  But the buzz on the street is that she has now moved on and will leave these natural pollinators alone to do their vital work. 

  

Yet, she can surely take all the old Rhee that we have come to love and adore and apply it to her new role as Garden Reformer.

If you know Michelle like I know Michelle, she's got some definite reforms in mind for Miracle Gro.  She'll soon be launching YardownersFirst with the stated goal of raising a billion dollars in one year.  So, what will be some of her ideas for reform?  Well, for one, there's a great new recipe for compost.  It includes piles of high-grade, entirely shredded, vintage D.C. testing materials, guaranteed to bring as much green to you as they did to D.C. teachers awarded merit pay.

        

Michelle Johnson realizes more than the average reformer the importance of weeding out ineffective gardeners.  After all, if your crops fail, flowers wilt or grass browns, the gardener is the logical one to blame.  It can't be the lack of water, over-watering, intense heat or any one of a number of other factors.  Michelle will introduce a new VAM formula.  An upgrade from Garden Weed Preventer, it will actually weed out ineffective gardeners.

Michelle has designed a strict system of accountability to determine which gardeners are succeeding and which gardeners are failing.  For those who fail, their business will be closed and taken over by Success Gardeners, a newly chartered company with "branches" in many states.  Its day-laborer employees have great pride in working hard every day--despite their lack of any and all job protections.  Baking under the bright sun, the merry band of workers can sometimes be heard raising their voice in song from the fields, odes to Cesar Chavez and calls to God.  

In a variation on a popular product, Michelle has developed ULTRA INBLOOM, a data base to store information about every customer's yard with special offers to purchase additional Scotts' products.  The site will also contain gardener ratings.  It seems some of the worst gardeners live among the Samburu in northern Kenya; others in the Gobi and Sahara.  

Richard Gibson, a dairy farmer from Devon, England, saw his gardener APPR ratings take a devastating dive shortly after filming this scene for the BBC.  So, YardownersFirst is developing a program to bring talented, GFA, Garden for America, youngsters, fresh out of the Ivy League, to solve the problem.  The Samburu will accept a new Common Seed planting program in return for accepting large federal Race to the Root grants.

Some members of the Samburu rose to reject the money and defend the reputation of Mr. Richard Gibson.  Michelle was ready.  She delighted in showing them a trick for quelling tribal dissension.  Given Michelle's level of expertise, the company is now considering a new line of Scotts' Tape.

With Michelle working for you, what could possibly go wrong?  Your garden will grow, not inch by inch, but yard by yard.  You can have full faith that you and your family will enjoy your garden for many happy years to come!

But just in case things don't go as planned, you might want to be ready!

If the Common Core Kills a Kid, Is there No Legal Redress?

The Common Core, of course, is copyrighted.  I've read the Public License and several articles on the topic, yet I am by no means an expert on copyright law--by choice.

I read in the Public License that "ANY USE OF THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE OR COPYRIGHT LAW IS PROHIBITED."  Bummer!  I'd like to see how far it can fly before it crashes!

The License further states, "ANY PERSON WHO EXERCISES ANY RIGHTS TO THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS THEREBY ACCEPTS AND AGREES TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE."

There is some debate about the flexibility of the copyrighted Core.  Some are of the opinion that 15% can be added.  I don't mind admitting I have no idea how 15% would be determined.  Perhaps this is because I am not adequately aligned to the Core.  Others feel more can be changed, but only at the risk of making the standards something less than "common."  God forbid some of us should become extraordinary by another set of standards!

The Core's copyright, held by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), apparently allows states that fully adopt the Core to reprint portions of it without violating the public license.  It is a "limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to copy, publish, distribute, and display the Common Core State Standards for purposes that support the Common Core State Standards Initiative" (emphasis added).  I guess this means that those who oppose the Core cannot refer to specific excerpts from the Core in their criticism without risking copyright infringement.  Thus, opponents can do a "close reading," but may either fail by Core standards to cite adequate evidence in their argument or end up committing a crime!  Oh, that's the rub!

Furthermore, the license states, "THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS ARE PROVIDED AS-IS WITH ALL FAULTS," including possibly, lack of "FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PUROPSE."  The NGA and CCSSO seem to think they are in no way liable for anything, including "NEGLIGENCE...ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH RISK AND POTENTIAL DAMAGE."  I already see the side effects on our children and I feel many more silent effects.  Sometimes, it seems like child abuse to me.  Yet, the copyright claims the NGA and CCSSO are "sue-proof." 

The only reassuring statement I found in the document was the following:  "NGA Center and CCSSO reserve the right to "stop distributing the Common Core State Standards at any time."  I wonder how many would agree with me that "there's no time like the present," especially when we risk so much harm to our children by its hand--while the children of its architects escape its wrath.  So, I naturally wonder:  If the Common Core kills a kid or wreaks irreparable harm, is the Core and the holders of its copyright actually "sue-proof?"  Is there no legal redress?