Schools Matter: David Coleman's New SAT: Still Racist, Still Classist

Schools Matter: David Coleman's New SAT: Still Racist, Still Classist: It should come as no surprise that the head of the College Board, David Coleman, has made the new SAT more in line with the Common Core.  O...

Schools Matter: David Coleman's New SAT: Still Racist, Still Classist

Corporate Core updates 2014-01-02

Common Core Puts the Unqualified In Charge via @susanoha #LAUSD #CCSS #edreform http://t.co/s23FWMLg63 pic.twitter.com/prE1OWWhjE

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) January 2, 2014

MT @skrashen The CC$$ ignore the evidence: http://t.co/NStMrJYTc3 #CCSS #LAUSD pic.twitter.com/uuxnC9NmPw

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) January 2, 2014

Corporate Core updates 2014-01-02

SKrashen: The common core ignores the evidence

SKrashen: The common core ignores the evidence: Sent to the Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2013 Al Austin, in his letter to the Times (Jan 2) notes that the common core calls for "a s...

SKrashen: The common core ignores the evidence

Common Core’s nonsensical, corporate questions confuse even Shinonome Nano!

Common Core’s nonsensical, corporate questions confuse even Shinonome Nano! #CCSS #LAUSD http://t.co/L1qOH2gQqi

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) November 12, 2013

Common Core’s nonsensical, corporate questions confuse even Shinonome Nano!

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

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: 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