Join NPE’s letter writing campaign to Sen. Alexander and the HELP Committee

Friends,

I  wrote a letter for the Action Network letter campaign "Urge Senator Lamar Alexander and the members of  Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee to put an end to annual standardized testing".

Network for Public Education (NPE) is calling on Congress to support the adoption of Option 1 in Senator Lamar Alexander’s “Every Child Ready for College or Career Act of 2015”, which has been slated for discussion in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on January 21, 2015. NPE supports the proposal to allow states to adopt their own State-designed academic assessment system. More specifically, we are calling for the end of the federal mandate for annual testing. We believe that every child in the United States deserves a sound education. Every child deserves a full curriculum in a school with adequate resources. We are deeply concerned that the current overemphasis on standardized testing is harming children, public schools, and our nation’s economic and civic future. It’s our conclusion that the over-emphasis, misapplication, costs, and poor implementation of high-stakes standardized tests now warrants federal intervention. NPE believes a return to grade span testing (once in elementary, middle and high school) is an important first step toward restoring standardized testing to its appropriate use in education, while still giving policy makers and elected officials a valid snapshot of what is happening in schools.  If you agree, now is the time to act! A few minutes of your time today could bring about the end of standardized testing as we know it.

Can you join me and write a letter? Click here: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/485051f3bf076fafe126447ee4c553073ef2cfe8?source=email&referrer=darcie-cimarusti

Thanks!

Join NPE’s letter writing campaign to Sen. Alexander and the HELP Committee

Standardized: Lies, Money and Civil Rights

Standardized: Lies, Money & Civil Rights h/t @ParentsAcrossAm #LAUSD #edreform https://t.co/m8sqHg3HxO

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) January 31, 2014

Standardized: Lies, Money and Civil Rights

An investigative documentary into the Common Core State Standards Initiative

BUILDING THE MACHINE (2014) - Official Trailer [HQ]

I want to use the same disclaimer here that I did the last time I posted Common Core State Standards (CSSS) related materials from sources that I disavow any connection with. The video is produced by, and also features, individuals that are from fringe-right-wing groups. The last time I published a disclaimer like this, I was subjected to a firestorm of criticism from the right. That's fine, we will never be allies in any sense other than shared opposition to the vile corporate CCSS curriculum being foisted on students. That said, there's a distinction to be made between factual information about CSSS, and ideological opposition. That's why I am posting this film trailer, because the factual case against CCSS can be made from either end of the political spectrum.

An investigative documentary into the Common Core State Standards Initiative

SKrashen: Why is California spending 1.25 billion to implement the common core?

SKrashen: Why is California spending 1.25 billion to impleme...: Why is California spending 1.25 billion to implement the common core? Sent to the Monterey Herald (CA), June 14 ...

SKrashen: Why is California spending 1.25 billion to implement the common core?

SKrashen: S Ohanian: How Gates gets the word out into the ed...

SKrashen: S Ohanian: How Gates gets the word out into the ed...: Susan Ohanian reveals: Here's how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation get their word out into the education community: They fund...

SKrashen: S Ohanian: How Gates gets the word out into the ed...

SKrashen: Common core's claims are false

SKrashen: Common core's claims are false: Stephen Krashen PUBLISHED IN THE CINCINNATI INQUIRER, SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013 http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20...

SKrashen: Common core's claims are false

Wayne Au: Coring Social Studies within Corporate Education Reform

First published on @TCFKSM on May 20, 2013

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"Teachers could stop #CommonCore tomorrow—if they joined hands and said 'Hell, No!' The alternative is loss of profession—and soul." — Susan Ohanian

A local university professor I'm friends with through The Association of Raza Educators (ARE) wrote me yesterday with the following message:

Hi Robert,

I hope you are well... You might be familiar with the work of Wayne Au.  He has developed solid critical work around curriculum theory and practice...  Attached is his latest article, a critique of CCSS..

Interestingly and predictably, Bill Gates is setting up "training" with teacher educators across the CSUs; I just got invited to attend and "learn" about "teacher effectiveness measures" and how they inform CCSS!

The last paragraph is terribly frightening. The paper he attached by Professor Wayne Au is outstanding. For those who don't know, Au is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Bothell. His widely cited Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality is an excellent source for connecting the standardized testing with the eugenicist project. Au's newer book Critical Curriculum Studies: Education, Consciousness, and the Politics of Knowing also comes highly recommended.

Au's latest paper Coring Social Studies within Corporate Education Reform: The Common Core State Standards, Social Justice, and the Politics of Knowledge in U.S. Schools is certainly worth reading and sharing. I'm reproducing the abstract here to whet intellectual appetites.

Abstract

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been adopted in 45 U.S. states. Driven by a wide coalition that includes both major U.S. political parties, the business elite, for-profit education corporations, cultural conservatives, and both major U.S. teachers’ unions, the CCSS have mainly garnered glowing praise in mainstream U.S. media and widespread acceptance amongst political figures and public school districts nationwide. This paper undertakes a critical analysis of the origins and political tensions found within the CCSS, arguing that the CCSS will inevitably lead to restrictive high-stakes, standardized testing similar to that associated with No Child Left Behind. Further this paper specifically examines the treatment of the social studies within the context of CCSS and questions the likely outcomes of the recently drafted College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards within the current political and cultural context of the United States.

Wayne Au: Coring Social Studies within Corporate Education Reform

Teaching Beyond the Bubble: Take a Stand for Meaningful Teaching and Learning in LAUSD!

Teaching Beyond the Bubble: Take a Stand for Meaningful Teaching and Learning in LAUSD!

Thursday, March 21, 2013, 4:00—6:00 PM
LAUSD Headquarters
333 S. Beaudry Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90017

Teaching Beyond the Bubble: Take a Stand for Meaningful Teaching and Learning in LAUSD! by Robert D. Skeels

Our students are sick of mindless worksheets, decontextualized readings, and multiple-choice tests. They deserve access to a robust and meaningful curriculum that challenges them to think outside of the box, not just fill in bubbles!   John Deasy's unilateral directive to use student test scores for 30% of a teacher's evaluation will further intensify the destructive testing culture in our schools. Come out to rally for the schools L.A. students deserve!  

This fun action will include music performances, theater, and a Scantron art contest as well as student, parent, and teacher speakers. Bring signs that show how the testing mania is affecting YOUR school!

Sponsored by Progressive Educators for ACtion (PEAC). For more information, contact Jess at 213-572-8499 or j.kochick@gmail.com, or check out www.progressiveeducatorsforaction.com!

Teaching Beyond the Bubble: Take a Stand for Meaningful Teaching and Learning in LAUSD!

Common Core State Standards Primer

Disclaimer: The publishers of this document, Truth in American Education, have some very disconcerting right-wing membership and advisors. I mean really right wing, like Heritage, Koret, the Teabaggers, and other assorted birthers and Birchers. However, this Common Core State Standards Primer document appears on the Hoosiers Against Common Core site that Professor Ravitch mentions in her recent Two Determined Moms in Indiana Take On Common Core post. Like the old adage: "even a broken clock is right twice a day," this flyer provides factual information on the Corporate, er... I mean Common Core State Standards. While I have major ideological differences with their organization, I find their assessment of CCSS to be pretty much spot on.

Common Core State Standards Primer by Shane Vander Hart

Common Core State Standards Primer

Schools Matter: Continuing skirmishes with CCSS cheerleaders on Diane Ravitch's blog

First published on Schools Matter on December 26, 2012.

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"There is no evidence that standards and tests improve school achievement. The money budgeted for standards and tests to enforce the standards should be used to protect children from the effects of poverty." — Professor Stephen Krashen

The following is my edited commentary in response to comments by a CCSS supporter on the Professor Ravitch post: A Teacher of Latin Writes In Defense of Fiction.

Kaye Thompson Peters, I've grown weary of the trite "apple and oranges" device that you employ everywhere in your stalwart defense of Corporate Core. You even used it in a gushing apology for Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on Hoover's fringe-right EdNext. While you might not be uncomfortable that Pearson Education, Inc. has been promoting your writings on CCSS, it does cause some of us consternation. When discussing CCSS in relation to NCLB and RTTT, we're not conflating apples and oranges, we're discussing a bushel of rotten apples foisted on us by a bunch of billionaires suffering from the Shoe Button Complex.

To be sure, the revenue minded corporate overlords who coined Corporate Core have never considered high-stakes standardized testing a separate issue from their imposition of CCSS. They are one in the same and they serve the same set of goals in the neoliberal project of privatizing public schools. The Gates Foundation and the Duncan led Department of Education (my apologies for that redundancy) have been quite effective in convincing surrogates (some even in the AFT and NEA, sadly) to crow that they aren't inextricably linked. Such propaganda is so transparent that astute people see right through it. Ms. Peters, CCSS isn't a solution to, but instead it is a deliberate doubling down of, the vile policies of NCLB and RTTT.

Privatizer Dr. Catherine Thome's explanation for the impetus of Corporate Core tells us all we need to know about who stands to gain from CCSS:

"All students must be prepared to compete with not only their American peers in the next state, but with students around the world."

David Coleman's contempt for literature in English classes (at least for working class children) reflects both his corporate pedigree and that of his plutocrat handlers. It is no "red herring" to point out this glaring fault of CCSS, but I do agree with Mr. Heller that there are other fundamental flaws to this nationally imposed corporate curriculum. We need far more "Grapes of Wrath" and far less "FedViews" in this society. Sandra Stotsky does an excellent job taking on Coleman's corporate aims in her piece reproduced on the Parents Across America site.

Ultimately we must resist CCSS. Susan Ohanian, Professor Stephen Krashen, and the Schools Matter camp are leading the way on this. My recent short on Schools Matter has some great resource links for fighting CCSS.

Schools Matter: Continuing skirmishes with CCSS cheerleaders on Diane Ravitch's blog

Debunking Common Core Curriculum's so-called Four C's

First published on Schools Matter on December 26, 2012.

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"When you go to doctors, they don’t take all your blood, they only take a sample." — Professor Stephen Krashen

Professor Diane Ravitch had a brief comment entitled The True Goals of Education? this morning where a reader suggested a sort of whole child approach based on virtues as opposed to tedious test preparation. That in itself wouldn't merit much attention, but oddly one of the readers posted a comment suggesting that those self-same virtues were the stated intent of Common Core State Standards. The following was my response to that assertion:

For the plutocrat sponsors* of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to suggest that it has any goals beyond imbuing corporate servitude, compliance, petty jingoism, and acceptance of austerity is nothing short of pernicious propaganda.

Certainly David Coleman and Co. coined their "four C's" well after the fact, and clearly this was in response to to cogent criticisms by actual educators including Susan Ohanian, Professor Stephen Krashen, and others.

• Common Core State [sic] Standards
• Stephen Krashen brings Common Core debate to pages of the Sunday New York Times in time for the testing debate at the AFT convention
• BOONDOGGLE!
• High Tech Testing on the Way: a 21st Century Boondoggle?

Everything in Corporate Core Curriculum is designed to discourage critical thinking skills, and this is why CCSS won't be required outside of public schools (eg. charters, parochial, and private schools). There definitely won't be any canned corporate curricula sponsored by the Gates Foundation inflicted on the children of privilege at schools like Sidwell Friends.

Like its fellow malignant projects "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top," CCSS has goals directly aligned to neoliberalism:

• Cause the appearance that the public school school system is broken, and that market solutions (charters/vouchers) would fare better.
• Control the curriculum and combat any chance that "dangerous" curricula that might cause people to resist neoliberalism or question corporate dominance is taught.
• Further sort students by race and class, and further subject them to endless mind numbing test preparation. Ultimately discouraging any critical thinking skills in any class outside those running society.
• Serve as the perfect excuse for union busting and the total deprofessionalization of teaching. Ultimately leading to low cost, but highly profitable delivery of necessary information (informational texts anyone?) to those not deemed as needing critical thinking. Real teaching will continue to exist in the hallowed halls of elite private schools for scion of the ruling class.
• Obscene profits for charlatans like Pearson, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Gideon Stein, and everyone else associated with the diverse markets connected to school privatization, real estate, and the standardized-testing-industrial-complex.

We must resist Corporate Core by every means posible. Paris 1968 is a good model for us to follow. If we don't, we may as well begin writing our eulogies for public education today.

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* I'm not saying Mr. Mindlin is working for one of them. He did, after all, say the so-called "four C's" were "allegedly" at the heart of CCSS.

Debunking Common Core Curriculum's so-called Four C's

Schools Matter: Tami Abdollah and John Deasy gush that 'Size Matters'

"Just continue to follow the money. This Race to the Trough will make the Reading First crooks under Bush look like dopey Boy Scouts." — Professor Jim Horn

The neoliberal cabal at Southern California's KPCC can't cheerlead for school privatization loud or frequently enough. Not content with Pat Morrison lobbing softballs to Broad Superintendent Academy graduate and former Gates Foundation employee John Deasy once a week, KPCC's intrepid education beat reporters are always looking for the latest anti-public-school story angle.

See my Schools Matter post, Tami Abdollah and John Deasy gush that 'Size Matters', for the rest of this essay.

Published 2012-08-15 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: Tami Abdollah and John Deasy gush that 'Size Matters'

Schools Matter: Obscuring history and human agency through NCLB, RTTT and CCSS

"Prior research, then, strongly suggests that charter programs have not lived up to their initial promise of transcending the segregating effects of traditional district boundary lines. In fact, these studies indicate charters exacerbate already rampant school segregation, particularly for Black students." — Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Jia Wang

The Smith and Carlos Statue
at San José State University

I was reading Dave Zirin's latest piece, Fists of Freedom: An Olympic Story Not Taught in School, this morning and several things stood out and had me thinking in terms of how Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and its related high-stakes testing regimes not only distort curriculum, but how they are intended to distort students' consciousness of their reality.

See my Schools Matter post, Obscuring history and human agency through NCLB, RTTT and CCSS, for the rest of this essay.

Published 2012-07-25 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: Obscuring history and human agency through NCLB, RTTT and CCSS