New Content at SusanOhanian.Org! March 22, 2014

Susan Ohanian's email from this week merits reproduction here. If you haven't signed the petition, please do so right away.

I've spent the entire week—dawn to midnight— pestering people about the White House petition: My message is not quite 'Sign or die.' But close.

As I mention in 'White House Petition to Stop Data Obscenity,' I'm not so naive as to 'believe' in petitions… particularly petitions to politicos. I started this one to the White House hoping to get media attention. I also started it as a first step for teachers not yet willing to take to the streets to DO something besides whine. But the numbers are showing that  never mind take to the streets; teachers won't even take to putting two initials on a petition.

I'm very discouraged.

Also very angry. I think I've run out of excuses. I don't mean to be insufferable here, but teachers desperately need to figure out the difference between whining and resisting.

As the authors of 'Digital Ocean proclaim, 'Assessment is ultimately about gathering evidence to support claims we wish to make about learners.'

And to support claims they wish to make about teachers, too. All that standardized testing is very much to support claims Bill Gates, the Business Roundtable, et al want to make about teachers.

You should read Digital Ocean—brought to you by Pearson. They say part of the paper is 'aspirational.' Be warned about what THEY wish for and keep a barf bag nearby: http://tinyurl.com/nvbc78w

The bibliography includes a reference to the Journal of Educational Data Mining.

Eggplant is back, as well as some other noteworthy items—such as the police coming to a Colorado house over a threatened opt-out-of-test.

Direct the Department of Education & Congress to Remove Annual Standardized Testing Mandates of NCLB and RttT

New Content at SusanOhanian.Org! March 22, 2014

Research proven: School Libraries and Free Voluntary Reading. Unproven and expensive: CCSS and iPads

Research proven: School Libraries & Free Voluntary Reading. Unproven and expensive: #CCSS & iPads. #LAUSD @skrashen pic.twitter.com/Cg2z5Z7uxM

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) September 26, 2013

The former means engaged critical thinking, but the latter leads to more corporate profits and increased market share for PSO, AAPL, MHGE, NWSA, and others.

• The Power of Reading : Insights from the Research
• Common Core [sic] Standards (Susan Ohanian Speaks Out)

Research proven: School Libraries and Free Voluntary Reading. Unproven and expensive: CCSS and iPads

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

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.

_____
* 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