"Teacher of the Year" quits over Common Core tests

[Anonymous]

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/441076.page

Here's the thread about kindergarten standards. I suspect you were there. However, enjoy!

[Anonymous]

A previous poster gave this link: http://www.statejournal.com/story/26393059/sandra-stotsky-common-core-gets-things-backward

Because the state standards were developed by three private Washington, D.C.-based organizations — the National Governors Association, The Council of Chief State School Officers and Achieve Inc.— and all funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Stotsky said she finds herself “in the position of constantly contradicting one of the major talking points,” which are that the standards are state-led.

Because they are all private organizations, there is nothing to request under the Freedom of Information Act for detail.

“There was no way anyone could ever get information from any of these organizations about why anyone was appointed to the committees, what their charge was, what they were paid,” Stotsky said. “To this day, you can't find out why people were chosen for the committees they were put on to create the standards and why the chief writers were chosen.”

The absence of high school math teachers, English professors and high school English teachers throughout the process is what prompted Stotsky to ask to be placed on the validation committee and the first thing that “hit me and woke me up — figuring out why the very people who should have been on these standards development committees weren't there,” she said.

Not only were the expected types of people absent, Stotsky said, but the fact that those within the Common Core project set up their own validation committee also left much to be desired.

“If you want something evaluated, you do not ask the people who carried it out to evaluate what they carried out themselves. That makes common sense,” she said. “You ask for an independent group to do it.”

New Approaches, Old Subjects

Once on the validation committee, Stotsky said she quickly realized “we were intended to be rubber stamps” and simply “supposed to do what they told us to do.”

When it came to the public comment draft in math, Stotsky said James Milgram, professor emeritus of mathematics at Stanford University and also a member of the Validation Committee, didn't understand what happened behind the scenes after seeing the final draft. Changes from the public comment draft were so drastic, Stotsky explained.

By 10th grade, many states teach the Euclidian approach to geometry, a proof-based approach to Euclidian geometry and an approach Milgram understands well.

“It's been going on for about 2,000 years so it's nothing new,” Stotsky said. “In any event, the approach that is put into Common Core is so bizarre — it was tried out in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and it was so bad they got rid of it in a few years.

“It's never been tried on a large scale anywhere else. So the question is, ‘Why is it here?'''

Another issue Stotsky pointed out about Common Core curriculum was the disappearance of the pathway to science, technology, engineering and math that was supposed to be included.

“Since we do not have access to any private records, we do not know why Common Core math standards do not allow a pathway to STEM careers,” she said. “(Or) why David Coleman, lead writer for English Language Arts, was allowed to mandate a 50/50 division between literary study and informational text at every grade level.

“Who was he, that he had this authority and power with no approval from English teachers across the country or from the parents with children in public schools?”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/441076.page

Here's the thread about kindergarten standards. I suspect you were there. However, enjoy!

I read that the first time, to my sorrow. No way am I reading it again.

[Anonymous]

From the previous article:

Due to the fact that many college entrance and academic measurement tests, like the ACT and SAT, are aligned or plan to align to Common Core, an independent academic predictive test may become something harder to come by.

The ACT and SAT, which were predictive-based tests, now resemble a Common Core achievement test, Stotsky said.

I find this very disturbing. We don't need to ruin our university systems in this country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the previous article:

Due to the fact that many college entrance and academic measurement tests, like the ACT and SAT, are aligned or plan to align to Common Core, an independent academic predictive test may become something harder to come by.

The ACT and SAT, which were predictive-based tests, now resemble a Common Core achievement test, Stotsky said.

I find this very disturbing. We don't need to ruin our university systems in this country.

Why would the ACT and SAT be less predictive of college achievement as a result of being aligned to Common Core standards?

Also, as I recall, there were a lot of people from ACT and the College Board on the Common Core development committees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So now your claim is that the standards were written by professors?

No, the fact is that there were no classroom teachers involved in the development process. Go do some research. There were some professors among the writers.

Aha -- we're back to "no teachers were involved", except that now it's become "no classroom teachers".

This anti-CC poster's tactic has been to dodge, deflect, and move the bar (it's "no teachers were involved...." then it's "no classroom teachers were involved" and then it's "only two classroom teachers were involved" and then it's "oh, well so maybe some other people involved who taught the classroom teachers and who do research and analysis into what's developmentally appropriate in academia were involved but they don't really teach in a classroom so therefore by my own rationalization they don't count") but then a minute later move the bar right back to where we started ("no teachers were involved") and repeat the whole cycle over again. We've been through all of this at least 6 or 7 times already. It's ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Because some of the folks who were involved have PhDs and teach in those fields, and have published numerous articles in those subject areas in peer reviewed journals, whereas the typical classroom teacher does not have anywhere near as much depth in the field.

Geez, the teachers are knee deep in the field! More like up to their eyeballs in it. Teachers get treated like they are mindless robots to be "programmed with the standards". Just turn the "on" switch and let them roll.

Classroom teachers aren't doing the research, they aren't longitudinal studies of student performance, they aren't comparing student performance across different environments, they aren't doing detailed analysis of Special Needs students, they aren't researching different teaching methods and outcomes, the only things they know are what are directly in front of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/441076.page

Here's the thread about kindergarten standards. I suspect you were there. However, enjoy!

Yes, I remember that one... and as I recall, it fell apart for the anti-CC folks. Their arguments were so stupid. "OMG, kindergartners shouldn't have to know letters and vowel sounds, that's SOOO inappropriate!"

Such idiocy in that thread. But I guess you were there too

[Anonymous]

From an article called "The Schoolmaster"

The Schoolmaster
David Coleman is an idealistic, poetry-loving, controversy-stoking Rhodes Scholar and a former McKinsey consultant who has determined, more than almost anyone else, what kids learn in American schools. His national curriculum standards and pending overhaul of the SAT have reignited a thorny national debate over how much we should expect from students and schools, and how much is out of their control.



http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-schoolmaster/309091/

With the Common Core, Coleman worked to reshape public education from kindergarten up. Now, as the incoming president of the College Board—the nonprofit that administers the SAT, the Advanced Placement program, and a number of other testing regimens—he hopes to effect change from the top down, by shifting what is expected of students applying to college and, he hopes, by increasing the number of students who apply in the first place. Coleman’s most radical idea is to redesign the SAT, transforming it from an aptitude test intended to control for varying levels of school quality, to a knowledge test aligned with the Common Core. He describes this change as a way to put applicants on an equal playing field, a message to “poor children and all children that their finest practice will be rewarded.”

To critics of standardized testing, this thinking is willfully naive. Whether because of expensive tutors, savvier parents, or more-effective schools, any rejiggering of the SAT is unlikely to close the large test-score gap between affluent and poor students. “It’s hard to use the SAT as a driver of social justice, because tests tend to reproduce, not upend, social hierarchies,” says Nicholas Lemann, the author of The Big Test, a history of the SAT, and the dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. “Everybody is always looking for the test on which people from different races and classes do the same, but it doesn’t exist.”

The tension between Coleman’s idealistic vision of a college-prep curriculum for all and the middling-to-poor performance of most American students has, in recent years, helped reignite one of the most divisive debates in public education. Coleman’s lightbulb moment at Hillhouse High is compelling on a social-justice level, but does preparing students for the Ivy League make sense as a universal priority for education reform?

Anthony Carnevale, the director of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, thinks not. Carnevale is intimately acquainted with the inner workings of the College Board: for 10 years, he served as a vice president at ETS, the organization that partners with the Board to develop the SAT. Any K–12 curriculum whose goal is to prepare all students for four-year colleges is “one size fits all,” Carnevale told me, and so will leave behind the majority of students who don’t feel particularly engaged by academics, or whose socio­economic disadvantages make success in the liberal arts unlikely. If Coleman’s College Board really wants to prevent high-school students from dropping out—a focus of the organization’s latest advocacy campaign—it ought to develop an occupationally focused corollary to its Advanced Placement program, Carnevale suggests: not “Math for Harvard” but “Math for Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning.”

This type of tracking is anathema to many education reformers, and for good reason: As recently as the 1970s, most high schools expected to send only a small minority of their graduates to college, typically white students from well-educated families. Vocational programs were a decent alternative to the academic track when a booming manufacturing economy could guarantee a living wage to non-college-educated workers, and an opportunity for their children to achieve at higher levels than they did. But those ladders have collapsed over the past several decades. In response, policy makers have proposed an educational ideology of “college for all”—whether a four-year bachelor’s degree or a two-year occupational license, both following a uniformly rigorous high-school curriculum.

The problem is that by waiting until college to begin tracking students according to their career interests, the American education system may be consigning more and more young people to poverty. Youth unemployment is at a staggering 17.1 percent in the U.S., compared with less than 8 percent in Germany and Switzerland. These nations link high-school curriculum directly to the world of work, placing students in private-sector internships that typically lead to full-time, paying jobs. The Common Core, on the other hand, has a blanket definition of “college and career ready,” which, according to Carnevale, ignores the reality that each student has different strengths and weaknesses, and that every job requires a specific set of skills—some of which are best taught in the workplace, not in the classroom. Not to mention that with almost 54 percent of recent college graduates jobless or underemployed, and with total student debt surpassing $1 trillion, college has become a much riskier investment than it once was.

[Anonymous]

Classroom teachers aren't doing the research, they aren't longitudinal studies of student performance, they aren't comparing student performance across different environments, they aren't doing detailed analysis of Special Needs students, they aren't researching different teaching methods and outcomes, the only things they know are what are directly in front of them.

Researchers are not trying out curriculum based on the standards or trying to write lessons based on the curriculum that is based on the standards. Researchers do not see the immediate feedback that comes from a real student who is in front of them. Researchers NEED the teacher feedback in order to rewrite the standards. Who do you think is compiling the student performance data? Unless it is all gathered from the tests and only from the tests? Many teachers analyze Special Needs students who are in front of them every day. They see the outcomes that are based on the methods immediately and up close. Yes, teachers only know what is in front of them, but that is A LOT. Especially a teacher who has had a lot in front of them over 25+ years. It adds up. Looking at numbers on pieces of paper can tell you something, but it cannot tell you close to everything. They can theorize based on the data, but the teachers are actually involved in the practice and the practice is where all the theory can come to naught based on the things that are directly in front of them.


Oh, yeah, those things directly in front of them are called students and they are the most important part of this whole business. They are the core.

[Anonymous]

Teachers are being treated so poorly by this process. It makes me sick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/441076.page

Here's the thread about kindergarten standards. I suspect you were there. However, enjoy!

Yes, I remember that one... and as I recall, it fell apart for the anti-CC folks. Their arguments were so stupid. "OMG, kindergartners shouldn't have to know letters and vowel sounds, that's SOOO inappropriate!"

Such idiocy in that thread. But I guess you were there too

You continually ignore posts like the article quoting Stotsky and Milgram. How do you explain away these comments by them saying the standards are seriously flawed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

With the Common Core, Coleman worked to reshape public education from kindergarten up. Now, as the incoming president of the College Board—the nonprofit that administers the SAT, the Advanced Placement program, and a number of other testing regimens—he hopes to effect change from the top down, by shifting what is expected of students applying to college and, he hopes, by increasing the number of students who apply in the first place. Coleman’s most radical idea is to redesign the SAT, transforming it from an aptitude test intended to control for varying levels of school quality, to a knowledge test aligned with the Common Core. He describes this change as a way to put applicants on an equal playing field, a message to “poor children and all children that their finest practice will be rewarded.”

The SAT is not currently and never has been an aptitude test. It has always been a knowledge test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/441076.page

Here's the thread about kindergarten standards. I suspect you were there. However, enjoy!

Yes, I remember that one... and as I recall, it fell apart for the anti-CC folks. Their arguments were so stupid. "OMG, kindergartners shouldn't have to know letters and vowel sounds, that's SOOO inappropriate!"

Such idiocy in that thread. But I guess you were there too

You continually ignore posts like the article quoting Stotsky and Milgram. How do you explain away these comments by them saying the standards are seriously flawed.

In the article (from "West Virginia's only business newspaper) quoting Stosky and Milgram, Stotsky focuses on the sausage-making. I am not interested in the sausage-making. I am interested in the sausage. And Milgram's criticism is that the math standards do not include "a proof-based approach to Euclidean geometry" in 10th grade. I haven't seen anybody on these threads argue that the Common Core standards are bad because they don't require students to do proofs in geometry.

[Anonymous]

I am not interested in the sausage-making. I am interested in the sausage

Sorry, I want to know about the "sausage making.' I sure don't want sausage made with tainted ingredients or stuffed by those who have not washed their hands.