More research further discrediting Corporate [Common] Core State Standards (CCSS)

http://ucresearch.tumblr.com/post/112788248272/whats-the-best-way-to-teach-math-to-struggling

More research further discrediting Corporate [Common] Core State Standards (CCSS)

SKrashen: A common core for community colleges?

SKrashen: A common core for community colleges?:

Sent to the New York Times, Jan 11, 2015

The President's plan to fund community colleges sounds great: It would reduce the high costs of college and also provide job preparation in areas where there are shortages, such as carpentry, electrical work, construction, and plumbing, specialties that do not require a four-year degree.  ("Obama, in Tennessee, Begins Selling His Community College Tuition Plan," January 9).

Our concern is the requirement that "Community colleges must also adopt promising and evidence-based institutional reforms to improve student outcomes." Does this mean an expansion of the common core,  bringing expensive and untested standards and nonstop testing to the college level? 

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California

Kris Nielsen
Author, Children of the Core (2013)

Source for "Community colleges must also adopt promising and evidence-based institutional reforms to improve student outcomes. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/01/08/president-proposes-make-community-college-free-responsible-students-2-years


Original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/us/obama-announces-plan-to-pay-for-community-college.html

SKrashen: A common core for community colleges?

Schools Matter: We need to remember that the impediments to self-directed learning are by design

First published on Schools Matter on June 14, 2014

---

"When teachers are told exactly what and how to teach, when they feel pressured to produce results, they in turn tend to pressure their students. That is exactly what another study found: teachers who felt controlled became more controlling, removing virtually any opportunities for students to direct their own learning." — Alfie Kohn

As always the wonderful Alfie Kohn is right on target. What's left out of his important analysis is that these conditions are exactly what our ruling class—namely, but not limited to the Gates, Broad, and Walton Family Foundations—wants. From their self-serving perspective, self-directed learning is for the scion of the 1%, not for us working class rabble. Completely control both educators and their pupils through fear (Vergara), and deployment the banking model of pedagogy (Common Core State Standards CCSS), and you control access to the one thing that could allow us to overthrow our oppressors.

---

Works Cited

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2000. Print.

Kohn, Alfie. The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "tougher Standards". Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1999. Print.

Schools Matter: We need to remember that the impediments to self-directed learning are by design

@ THE CHALK FACE: Humanities and LSAT reflect Critical Thinking versus Core Knowledge debate

First published April 28, 2014 on @ THE CHALK FACE

---

"In short, the real literacy crisis occurs whenever we deploy a pedagogy that asks our students only to consume texts and not to produce them as well." — Richard E. Miller

The ABA Journal recently posted a piece entitled "Students with these college majors had the highest LSAT scores" that discusses the findings of Pepperdine University School of Law professor Derek Muller. Humanities majors held three of the top six spots; with Classics [1], Art History, and Philosophy taking the one, four, and six spots respectively. Moreover, preparatory curricula like pre-law were at the bottom, as were most forms of business majors — stealing from workers doesn't require much critical thinking. Professor Muller's own post is entitled The Best Prospective Law Students Read Homer. Unlike David Coleman and Bill Gates, I think everyone should read Homer. Some of us are fortunate enough to have read it in the original Greek. Here are my slightly edited comments on the UCLA posting where the ABA Journal was linked.

It's telling that these findings parallel the debates over pedagogy between critical thinking camp of those including Stephen Krashen and Peter McLaren versus the "core knowledge" camp including E. D. Hirsch and David Coleman. The latter, who are responsible for both Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and much of the current thinking behind the Administration's education policy, espouse narrow preparatory pedagogies like pre-law. Moreover, the President himself recently mocked Art History as a major during a speech [2]. The fact that Classics and Art History are 1 and 4 respectively on this listing goes to show that broad curricula that require abstract and critical thinking are preferable to canned curricula. Unfortunately, the dominant narrative in society tends to drown these important facts out.

While I don't have the time to explore this fully—and it deserves to be explored fully—I was in a conversation with Dr. Cynthia Liu recently and she was discussing how damaging Hirsch's wrongheaded ideas are. Rightfully so, her biggest complaint is how Hirsch's "core readings" are essentially devoid of people of color, women, and other marginalized groups like LGBT. The more I started researching the connections between Hirsch, Coleman, and the whole deemphasis on literature in CCSS derived from Hirsch's so-called "functional literacy", the more I realized that our greatest fears about CCSS are firmly grounded in fact. With CCSS we've established "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" as our official national curriculum.

I'm posting this to start the discussion. These LSAT findings confirm that narrow, preparatory type curricula are inferior to broad, abstract ones. As we watch the neoliberal corporate reformers eliminate every part of the education experience that humanizes children in favor of chimerical "college and career" readiness, and hear of a President that disparages the study of humanities [2], there must be increased struggle to resist CCSS and all its attendent reforms. Additionally, we need to make the case for returning free voluntary reading, play, arts, drama, music, literature, and the humanities to our classrooms, as well as making ethnic studies and other critical studies available to students.

---

[1] Disclaimer, I just received my B.A. in Classical Civilization from UCLA. Our department's facebook page exposed me to the ABA article. For many years I've heard that Classics majors cited as top prospects for law school, so the Pepperdine findings appeal to my admitted confirmation bias. The matriculation findings are of interest as well.
[2] I haven't saved all of them, but I did consolidate many of my comments on the infamous Obama attacking Art History majors incident mentioned above.
* The opening Miller quote is from a paper available on the ERIC archives. I reviewed the paper on WorldCat.

@ THE CHALK FACE: Humanities and LSAT reflect Critical Thinking versus Core Knowledge debate

Responding to Karin Klein of the LA Times' 'Why my family is opting out of the Common Core testing'

First published April 9, 2014 on School Matter

---

"The U.S. can do a much better job evaluating children, teachers and schools. That's why protests against standardized testing misuse and overuse are exploding across the nation."—FairTest

The Los Angeles Times' long time school privatization cheerleader Karin Klein penned an interesting piece today entitled Why my family is opting out of the Common Core testing. The following is my response to her editorial:

Ms. Klein:

For roughly a decade you've mocked both education experts and activists who have maintained that high-stakes standardized tests narrow the curriculum, and now you've had an epiphany? Your newspaper, the one that recklessly published pseudoscientific VAM scores from those selfsame tests, and has been the biggest cheerleader of the testing-industrial-complex, is now suddenly concerned with the "socially responsible" thing to do? Call me cynical, but I'd posit that this one editorial does not absolve either of you of your complicity in the long string of neoliberal corporate reforms that have been inflicted on an entire generation of children with your blessings.

I'm glad that you're sparing your own child the abject effects of this year's test. However, I recall sitting across a table from you in early 2013 when you conducted the school board endorsement interviews and having to endure your scoffing at me for suggesting that we end the high-stakes standardized test regime for all students. Your exact words were "if we do that, we'd go back to the 'Johnny Can't Read' days." I remember how astonished I was that a professional journalist covering education could be so ignorant of pedagogy that they'd cite Flesch's right-wing phonics garbage as their defense of the unholy policy trio of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core State Standards.

So don't expect those of us who have been trying to defend all children from the effects of standardized tests—the worst of which robs them of that very fleeting joy of learning—to welcome you aboard. Unlike your offspring, privileged in every regard, there are countless other children who have had their opportunity to love learning stolen by mind numbing test preparation in the name of profits and propaganda.

Robert D. Skeels

Responding to Karin Klein of the LA Times' 'Why my family is opting out of the Common Core testing'