An Educator's Argument

You are correct in what you say here. However, the cause is actually the status quo "test and punish" regime that was installed via NCLB in 2002. If too many students are retained, the district would be sanctioned, have their resources limited, and be threatened with closure or takeover. In addition, because standardized tests reveal the effects of poverty, more than anything else, districts in poorer communities were reeling from the punitive effects of the law. Plus, the demographics of failing students seemed to reveal what is considered "discriminatory" - for which civil rights violations have been levied against districts. In response, not only schools, but the state itself began lowering its standards. If you were to have a look at the grade 4 and 8 tests from 2004 (because until RTTT, those were the only grades tested before high school) and a set from 2009, you would see a stark contrast in difficulty. The same would go for the Regents exams. When we were in school, Regents exams were taken by students who were preparing for college in order to earn an additional distinction. With the advent of NCLB, NYS decided to use the touted Regents exam as a graduation requirement for all. As a result, you will also see a decrease in the quality of the exams over the course of that decade. No one wanted to see a decline in graduating students; and certainly no one wanted the sanctions (and civil rights violations). Add in the moving target of cut scores that the state sets AFTER the test is taken and one can clearly recognize the real problem. 
New York State and its standards were the crown jewels of education before the federal government got involved. Now, we want to blame teachers for the results of poor political policy?

Do you know what criteria was used to reach the "30% proficiency?"? Were the questions developmentally appropriate for the ages of the students being tested? Was the number of test items, degree and depth of reading selections, the scope of the questions, or the amount of time given to complete these tasks appropriate?

Were you aware that 13 year olds (8th graders) were expected to read four 2-3 page technical articles written on a 10th grade level, complete 6-10 ambiguously worded multiple choice questions that each required students to go back to the reading passage and for which multiple responses were possible, then students were asked to write 1-2 well-constructed paragraphs for each passage and write an essay unifying ideas from two of the passages. Not so bad, you might say. Higher standards! Except for the fact that they gave these children 90 minutes to do all of the above! This is not a valid approach to measuring a student's abilities.

But the test was not a valid instrument to begin with. In 2013, Commissioner King announced that 70% of students would be failing the tests - this was before ANY items were bubbled. How could he be so sure? Because they spent 4 months massaging the scores in order to achieve the results that had been predetermined. This "data" will not be helping teachers inform their instruction for the children who took the exams - they have moved on. In addition, NO ONE, including the teachers, is allowed to see the actual test results. How is a teacher to be expected to teach to a certain standard when he or she is not permitted to see what the student got wrong and most especially, WHY the child got it wrong? Who in their right mind would consider this sound pedagogy? Why the secrecy? Education MUST be a transparent endeavor or there is something insidious going on that should be investigated. Parents should DEMAND to see these tests and to hold NYSED accountable.

Some state that in prior years, based on too-easy tests and a curriculum that has taught too little critical thinking, we have created an issue where students are unprepared for college and careers. On what do you base this assertion? Of course a child who has not yet completed third grade will not be able to pass a sixth grade test. Were you aware that there were identical items on those two tests? Of course not. Have you investigated the "curriculum(s)" being taught throughout the state? Have you ever been in a classroom to determine that critical thinking is lacking? Have you researched how NCLB has impacted a district's ability to retain students who are underprepared? Have you studied how lack of motivation due to an absence of negative consequences have affected achievement? Have you considered that, contrary to the mission of the "college and career ready" Common Core, every child is not a widget to be prepared for college? I doubt it. We need tradesmen, mechanics, artists, musicians, and poets - not all children should be expected to undertake STEM careers. In fact, were you even aware that the Common Core Standards do not even provide enough Math for pursuit in STEM careers?

Everyone seems to ignore the elephant in the room. They point to children in other countries who seem to be out-performing our own. Has anyone considered that socio-economic levels, demographics, a lack of diversity in population, a relative absence of non-native language-learners, and high level of respect and admiration that people in those countries have towards members of the teaching profession? The students in those countries are tracked and directed into technical or academic programs based on their aptitude. By age 15, those who are academically advanced are permitted to continue on an academic track. Parents and students in those countries take their education very seriously in order to compete for the privilege to continue. These students are not given standardized tests every year.

In our country, all students are accepted and expected to complete the same program as everyone else to age 18 (or until they age out at 21). US public schools do not/cannot turn students away - schools in other countries can and DO! US schools do not have technical/training programs within the system as do these other countries. Lastly, the NCLB (Federal control of what, according to the Constitution, should be under local control) mandates imposed sanctions on "under-performing" schools - essentially pulling the bread out of the starving man's hand. The mandates made it nearly impossible to retain students who weren't making the gains necessary to matriculate. If a student knows that it is not necessary to do the work and he/she will still be pushed through the system (because if the schools retain them, they will be cited for having too many retentions and will LOSE FUNDING) that student has no motivation to do the work. This is an important distinction - in other countries, a child does not move up until he/she has mastered the material for the grade - thereby ensuring that by the time the PISA test is taken (at age 15-16) every student has either been tracked out of the academic program or is at the same proficiency level. But what is most interesting about that international test that so many are pointing to as the downfall of US education, if you take a look at the actual report, when adjusted for demographics US students actually OUTPerformed their international counterparts.

We do, but unless and until the powers that be recognize that according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, children must have their basic needs met before learning can occur. In addition, those in upper socio-economic strata are provided more broad and enriching experiences, social capital, that enhance their ability to make connections between what they are learning and the world around them.

So, these tests are a monumental waste of time, money and resources. They were created as a remedy to a MANUFACTURED crisis. Bill Gates, the champion of the Common Core initiative addressed the National Conference of State Legislatures to explain how common core IS, in its very essences, teaching to a test and is designed to create a marketplace for corporations to peddle their wares.

An Open Letter to our REPRESENTATIVES

I have contacted you several times in the past in an effort to halt the implementation of the Common Core Standards in New York State. Today, I am once again taking the opportunity to IMPLORE you to PLEASE not allow a companion bill for A8929 to be put forth. 

I believe that Senate bill S6604 (and it's companion, A8844)  takes the right, balanced approach to stopping implementation in order to fully examine the Common Core Standards. We cannot afford to blindly accept the assurance put forth by the non-educators who compiled the CCSS that the Common Core Standards "will provide college and career readiness". There really hasn't been ANY research or proof provided. Would you take a medicine that had not been properly tested, its ingredients not scrutinized, nor its effects not fully researched and proven? Why, then, would we accept the educational equivalent of an un-vetted pharmaceutical? Our children are much too important. 

IF the CCSS are as good as they purport, then they will withstand the sunlight of scrutiny by educators. If they are unsound and developmentally inappropriate, however, wouldn't you agree that it is best to rid ourselves of them before they further damage our children? Why are we rushing to take this drug that we aren't sure isn't poison? 

Please support S6604 rather than A8929, as the former will allow New York State to do what is best for our children, which is to Stop it and Fix it OR Scrap it. 

Standards or Strategies?

Over the past few months I’ve been hearing more and more references in professional circles about “teaching the Common Core way.” This has been perplexing to me, as we’ve been told by the powers that be that "the Common Core is a set of STANDARDS not curriculum." Standards are actually very EASY to work with. Once a teacher knows and understands what each standard

represents, we absorb and incorporate them right into our curriculum. But when Commissioner King talks about walking into classrooms and “seeing” teachers and children working with the Common Core, educators are irritated, and rightfully so. This is because King is actually talking about seeing the “protocols” from the EngageNY scripted modules being used.

So, what are “protocols”?

Well, according to Webster:

a) a system of rules that explain the correct conduct and procedures to be followed in formal situations 

b) a plan for a scientific experiment or for medical treatment 

These definitions are actually very telling. If the “Common Core Way” is to follow “protocols” as defined by Webster (definition a or b apply equally), then the incorporation of Common Core is not about simply adhering to a set of standards, rather, it is the expectation that all teachers will be using the same teaching methods or strategies in order to deliver the prescribed content. If that is the case, we have a very real and legitimate issue regarding the implementation of the Common Core.

          I came to this realization during a recent “Module Training” seminar, but THIS article written by Lynne Munson, one of the NON-EDUCATOR architects of the Common Core Math curriculum, solidified the concept for me. Munson’s article fawns over these “new” protocols in the “math curriculum for New York students and teachers that routinely requires students to "turn and talk" and explain the math they learned to their peers.”  What Munson fails to realize, however, is that methods such as these are not new! These are strategies that actual TEACHERS have been trained to use throughout their professional education and certification processes, Master’s degree programs, post-graduate work and through professional development over the course of their careers. The patronizing condescension dripping from Munson’s article is actually insulting and infuriating to real teachers because, unlike Munson, we actually know when to use such methods and which students would benefit the most from each one. We also know what children at certain ages are capable of because we've studied it. Munson has no idea who Piaget is, and does not understand why simply pushing material from upper grades down to lower grades in order to raise expectations of what children of a certain grade should be able to do is developmentally inappropriate and physiologically impossible. Granted, not every teacher knows every strategy, and we welcome true professional development that presents new, researched-based methods and allows us to learn them and incorporate them in our own lessons in ways that work for us. But, the only folks who need to be told which methods and strategies to use are the "highly qualified" (snort) Teach For America scabs who are using the backs of schoolchildren to build their corporate career ladders.

So, What's the Big Deal?

      The problem lies with such strategies being inextricably tied to the term “Common Core” – no wonder folks are so confused! Standards and Strategies are (and should be) mutually exclusive terms. This is also why the standardized tests “based on Common Core” are troublesome. If, in fact, these methods and strategies are the true crux of the Common Core, then the Standardized tests are not actually testing whether students have met the standards, they are testing whether teachers have familiarized students with aspects of specific learning strategies. The test becomes not a measure of whether a student has learned to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, but whether the teacher has used the new buzzwords such as such as "tape diagram" and "number bond". It is essentially a vocabulary test to measure how much teachers have indoctrinated students with jargon developed by 60 uninitiated hacks who decided to play in someone else’s sandbox.

 Buzzword: :  an important-sounding usually technical word or phrase often of little meaning used chiefly to impress laymen

The Devil is in the Data - Issues with inBloom

"Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: 'Trust us. We won’t abuse the data we collect.' For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power. It depends on the law to constrain those in power."

President Obama, Jan 17, 2013

Our President's recent declaration regarding the government's place in data collection is in such direct opposition with the requirements outlined in the Race to the Top, that this post was necessary if not to simply try to wrap my head around the hypocrisy.  As outlined in my previous posts, the Race to the Top program was implemented at the beginning of the recession in order to entice states to sign on to its provisions, with the promise of $4B to be distributed among those who committed to the program the fastest. Not only is the swift implementation wrought with myriad problems with educational programs, curriculum, and testing, but its arrival in the dark of night without proper legislative and public review has left many citizens without sufficient understanding of the full implications. In an eerie instance of slight of hand, US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan instituted changes to the FERPA law, which in its essence, strips parents of the right to withhold consent to data sharing in a new Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS). 

Let's break that down: 

Statewide - across all states. The argument for the SLDS is that up until now, school systems have used their own data systems, and if a student moves from one state to the other, the new school can access their records immediately. This is said to conjure images of schools awaiting a package of records to arrive cross-country via pony express. Any person who has been sentient within the 21st century knows that records can be transmitted digitally and received almost instantaneously - but the contrary advertising is quite strong. 

Longitudinal - over time. This should be the most disconcerting word of the phrase. The RttT verbiage reveals the intent to track students from P-20. Preschool through age TWENTY. How early is preschool anyway?  The mantra of the high-stakes testing crowd is that "parents should want to know if their children are on track to be college and career ready." How can anyone surmise whether an 8 year old, or even 13 year old, is "on track"? What is the end-game in tracking a student's performance data in such a way? Will we be directing students into programs more "suited" to their individual aptitudes and abilities? If a child scores poorly on the high-stakes testing I wrote of in an earlier post, will he or she be relegated to a "vocational track" ? And at what point in a child's schooling do we begin to determine their "college and career readiness"? Students change and grow in so many ways throughout their schooling. I can't even count how many students, who were ambivalent about their studies in the ninth grade, who have come back to visit me in their senior year to not only thank me for what I taught them (either about literature or life), but also to apologize for not taking their classes more seriously. Over the course of 4 years, these students learned, grew, changed, focused, and developed goals for their lives and themselves. How dare we, as a nation presume to track and pigeonhole students based on hollow points of data? 

"I look forward to the day when we can look a child in the
eye at age 9 or 10 and say: You are on track to  succeed
in college and careers."  - Arne Duncan

Even more concerning is the SLDS's similarity to the Federal Data Services Hub required through the Affordable Care Act. I can't help but wonder whether these two webs were envisioned and designed to dovetail each other. The implication would result in cradle to grave tracking of an individual. But how much information could they really have anyway?

Data - information. According to the inBloom website, states will be collecting up to 400 points of data to upload into the inBloom system https://www.inbloom.org/sites/default/files/docs-developer-1.0.68-20130118/ch-data_model-enums.html. These points include Personally Identifiable Information on students. Aside from grades and assessment scores, such as their names, addresses, phone numbers, religious affiliation, social security number, discipline records, ethnicity, disabilities and health issues. Although New York State Education Department officials have repeatedly indicated that "these types of data points have 'always' been provided to the state", they are being somewhat disingenuous. This information has always been provided in the AGGREGATE - meaning the information is not attached to individually identified students, but rather as a whole cohort. For example "there are 270 students classified as special education, 32 receive speech services, 120 receive a 3 on grade level assessment, etc.. "

inBloom information would look like this:

Johnny Appleseed, 32 Maple Lane, Birchwood Commons, NY (718) 555-6789, 

A history of the development of inBloom can be found here:
http://bit.ly/1aAWbEp

(insert race),  D.DO.B: 4/22/2001; 
receives free lunch, lives with grandmother, single parent home,

 receiving counseling 2x per week of Oppositional Defiance Disorder, ADHD

Currently placement:  Self-Contained Special Education

Assessment Scores Grade 6:  ELA - 1; Math - 2

Out of School suspension 3x in year 2014-2015, 
stabbed teacher with pen, set test on fire, punched lunch aide, 

Vocational Track, etc.

Now imagine this type of information following a child and being accessible to virtually ANYONE, including potential employers, colleges, law enforcement, etc. until the child turns 20 (or beyond, as parameters for data wipe have not been addressed). And remember, because of the changes to the FERPA law, parents cannot advocate for their children's right to privacy against this data being shared through the state education department to inBloom. Like it or not, the PII will be uploaded to the inBloom cloud.

 System - an institution. The proponents of the SLDS have indicated that this type of data accumulation and storage will "assist parents, teachers, and school administrators in identifying at-risk indicators and/or selecting programs tailored to individual student needs." This sales-pitch neglects the fact that schools (and teachers) have been doing this forever through their established community relationships. It is not clear how providing data for market-based consumption could improve the individualized instructional strategies cultivated through personalized attention and rapport within the existing student support systems. And better yet, having every one of the nation's children's personal and individually identifiable information in a data-cloud creates an almost irresistible target for identity thieves. 

It's also an irresistible marketplace for software developers, publishers, even pharmaceutical companies. In the 21st century, data is king. One needs only to look at how google's algorithms crawl your personal email and tailor advertisements to your "interests", or how the search engine monitors your internet queries and offers related ads. And this is actually the primary reason for the relentless push for the adoption of the provisions of Race to the Top. According to Bill Gates, the foremost proponent of the CCSS, in an address to the 2009 National Conference of State Legislators: "For the first time, there will be a large uniform base of customers eager to buy products."  In other words, the inBloom system is merely the largest lead-bucket in the history of direct marketing. Companies will not only have access to information driving the types of products that they need to develop, but they will also have all the information they need to directly contact the end-users. Imagine receiving the following email, produced through inBloom data mining: "Have a child with ADHD? Try our new stress-relief program designed specifically for parents!" 

Given the Target data breach, the subsequent revelation that Neiman Marcus and several other department stores were also hacked for consumer financial data, and instances of NSA and IRS over-reach, Americans' concerns with data security is at the forefront. This government, through its Race to the Top mandates, has no right to put our children's identity and future at risk.

Starve the Beast

New York is currently the ONLY state to still be considering uploading our children's data for corporations to sift through. There are a number of bills that have been offered for consideration during the current NYS legislative session.  Contact your state Senator and Representative to voice your concerns about this very important invasion of privacy and ask them to support the bill to WITHDRAW completely from inBloom.

Have your children refuse to take the High-Stakes tests that have no positive impact on their education. See the links on the right for more information.

  Fighting the federal intrusion into what should be a state and local matter has proven to be comparable to battling the Krakken. There are many more tentacles ( the intrusion of unqualified TFA ranks; privatization; etc…) that will be addressed in upcoming entries.

The Specter of High-Stakes Testing

            In my last entry, I explained some of the major issues with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) themselves. Today, I’d like to delve into the testing mandate intertwined with CCSS through the Race to the Top initiative. First, a little background.

            When the U.S. Department of Education dangled $4 billion dollars over states that were struggling with fiscal crises following the 2008 market crash, it would have been conceived as gross negligence to reject the federal government’s offer. The Race to the Top, as it was billed, would “free” states from the mandates and sanctions of No Child Left Behind AND give them a much-needed financial boost. But swallowing the bait meant the line was still attached. States must adopt the CCSS for their schools, they must construct and connect to a Longitudinal Data Base (inBloom – to be covered later) and they must test students every year at the end of grades 3-8 and before graduation, to ensure that their students are progressing and that teachers are “Effective”. States gobbled it whole in 2009, not entirely cognizant of the implications (or associated costs) until much later. In fact, the CCSS weren’t even published until 2010!

What are "High Stakes" tests?

            The term “High-Stakes” is used to describe any test that is used to determine a student’s promotion into certain programs or even the next grade. The stakes become even higher when they are tied to a person’s career. For the first time in history, how a child performs on a test does not reflect on him or her, but only on the teacher. This is a very slippery slope. Imagine if a doctor, let’s say a cardiologist were to be measured on whether or not their patient's health improves. Patients are assigned a doctor for one year only, and move on to another the next year. If the patient’s health does not improve significantly within the year, as measured on a blood test (Why not an EKG? We’ll get to that later) the doctor is deemed “Ineffective.” If the doctor is ineffective for two years, he or she is no longer permitted to practice medicine. Surely by now you are considering all of the factors outside of the doctor’s control: heredity, past medical care, a lack of motivation to become well, the doctor has a bedside manner that differs from one the patient prefers, a preference for cheese, etc. Yet, this is precisely what these High-Stakes tests are designed to do, and the measurement vehicle lacks validity.

            The Race to the Top initiative factors these scores into a teacher’s Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR). In fact, High Stakes tests account for 40% of a teacher’s APPR. So if a teacher receives a perfect score on every other aspect of evaluation, he or she may still be deemed "ineffective" if students do not show "growth" (this is a nebulous term, as the goalposts are unknown and are moved every year) on the high-stakes tests. Teachers working in high-needs areas, poverty stricken communities, with special education students, or even honors students(!) are virtually assured of an “ineffective” rating. In a seeming attempt to “soften” that blow, and to address objections made by teachers of subjects without State tests, New York introduced SLO Testing (Standard Learning Objectives) to account for at least 20% of the teacher’s APPR. Again, students may demonstrate "sufficient" growth on this measure (assigning the teacher 80% effectiveness) but it is the nebulous growth metric on the State Exam which actually determines the teacher's rating. Imagine getting an 80 on a test and being told that you failed! Teachers of subjects such as Art, Music, Home and Careers, etc., may still be held accountable for their students’ ELA or Math grades, even though they do not teach that subject, otherwise their SLO accounts for the full 40% of their APPR. In essence, students are given a pre-test in the beginning of the year and a post-test at the end of each course. So now, not only do students have a high-stakes test at the end of each year in ELA and Math, but they must also take pre-and post SLO’s in every subject. That seems like an awful lot of time being spent on High Stakes Testing, doesn’t it?

The Effect on our Students and Schools

So why should parents be concerned? Students who do not perform well on these tests must, by mandate, be placed in remedial classes. This results in a narrowing of the curriculum for many students. Imagine if you were feeling ill (or hungry), but had to go to work. You are expected to perform at your peak for an annual review that day – whether or not you get a raise depends on it. But due to the fact that you are not feeling well (or are hungry) you avoid, or are curt with your customers, you make mistakes on simple addition, costing the company hundreds (or thousands) of dollars, or you can’t finish the day because you are simply too exhausted (or hungry) to continue. How would your performance review turn out? For students taking these tests, any number of factors can influence their performance on a given day. Imagine that these children know that they will not be allowed to have recess, or art, or music, or go to gym class next year if they do poorly on the Math or ELA exam – or both – because they must take a remedial class for the subject they tested poorly on. What if the entire school does poorly, but a handful of children do well? A school is going to program for the majority, and if it means cutting music sections in order to add four more sections of ELA Academic Intervention Services, that is what will happen. With their limited resources, schools will place even the top scoring students within these mandated classes rather than offer non-mandated enrichment. That’s pretty high-stakes, if you ask me. If my child knows that she will have to drop Art to take Math AIS based on a low score on a high-stakes test, she is under a tremendous amount of stress when she takes that test. It is not stress induced by her teacher, or myself; it is induced by the High Stakes.

               

What are the tests for?

             So, why such an emphasis on these tests? One may have heard that these tests inform instruction and give teachers the data they need about a particular student’s strengths or weaknesses. This could not be further from the truth. They also measure how a particular child felt about himself, school, his friends, the weather, his teacher, whether his mother yelled at him, etc. on one particular morning in April. Teachers will not see the test results until roughly 6 months after the tests have been taken. By then, the students who took them have moved on to other teachers. In addition, teachers receive a score and nothing more. They know the question number and the “standard” the question was supposed to have addressed, but there is no way for the teacher to know WHY the question was answered incorrectly – or if it was even answered at all. Unfortunately - the type of data that would actually answer these questions will NEVER be released. Honestly, those tests could have been graded within days (NOT MONTHS) and to be of ANY value, those tests could and SHOULD have been brought back to the classroom for interpretation, analysis, and exploration with the students who took them. But teachers will never see exactly what their students got right, or what within the questions may have tripped them up.

Have you seen the cherry-picked questions and the paragraph-long explanations that accompany why a particular answer was correct/incorrect on the NYS Exams given in April 2013? If it takes that much explanation to determine why a choice is wrong, there is something wrong with the measurement instrument. What you will also notice is that many of the correct responses (I'm using the ELA) required interpretation of connotations and nuances - SOCIAL constructs that require cultural capital rather than content-specific comprehension. These students were expected to then conduct these types of "nuanced analyses" (have a paragraph-long inner monologue arguing the merits of each answer choice) for EVERY question - for 90 minutes - for THREE days. A handful of these types of questions would have been sufficient to challenge the intellectually advanced students - which STATISTICALLY should only be 15%. Three-days worth is abusive - it is inappropriate for the physical and mental developmental stages for these children.

Simply put, Pearson's tests were inaccurate measuring tools that were then scored according to "normative" processes rather than standards-based. The cut scores were then deliberately set so that more than half of the top of the bell were considered "failing". If I know anything about statistics, it's this: "statistics can be made to say whatever you want them to say." To then tie these types of “cooked books” to the professional careers of thousands of teachers throughout the country is unconscionable. When this practice inevitably dismantles the teaching profession, then what? Well, then there’s a lot of money to be made...

Starve the Beast

Have your children refuse to take these High-Stakes tests that have no positive impact on their education. See the links on the right for more information.

            Fighting the federal intrusion into what should be a state and local matter has proven to be comparable to battling the Krakken. There are many more tentacles (the commandeering of student’s private, personally identifiable information by third parties; the intrusion of unqualified TFA ranks; privatization; educational programming based on student-aptitude tracking, etc…) that will be addressed in upcoming entries.

My Contentions with Common Core

     As a parent and a teacher, I have the privilege of viewing the implementation of the Common Core State Standards from two distinct perspectives. I don't like what I see from either side. Ever since I saw the first common core aligned state exam in ELA, I have been gathering research and watching a grassroots opposition form. In an attempt to divide and conquer, pro-core sentiment has ranged from calling its dissenters "teabaggers" to "lefties" and everything in between. Education officials have dismissed offhand the growing resistance as nothing more than "special interests" or my fave,“white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” It was all I could do to refrain from correcting our U.S. Secretary of Education's grammar in order to illuminate the irony of it all. Today's post is about why the Core doesn't come with a bag of chips.

       Those who oppose the Common Core State Standards do not do so because they are "afraid of change" or "don't want high expectations". It's actually quite the opposite. Over a hundred years of scientific research have taught us how the human brain develops and learns. The CCSS do not take ANY of this research into account - most prominently, the work of Piaget, who outlined the cognitive stages of development. The cognitive processes expected of the youngest learners by the Common Core Standards are physiologically impossible. It's like trying to push a toddler down the stairs, when that familiar "step-together" method is taking too long, because eventually they will need to learn how to alternate feet. They will get it when their brains are developed sufficiently to do so, and no sooner.

     The unfortunate blunder of the architects of the CCSS - none of whom actually had any background in teaching and learning (google "the secret sixty") - was to back-map the curriculum. This is akin to building a house from the roof down. What we are left with, then, are expectations requiring operations of a pre-frontal cortex that is not physically developed yet. This is why parents of students in the primary grades are seeing such frustration from these children. While there may be some valuable material within the standards, when the foundation is un-sound, the walls will crumble.

      In fact, There is NO RESEARCH whatsoever buttressing the supposition that these standards are effective. Bill Gates - THE major financial contributor to the development of the standards - has been quoted as saying, "We won't know for another 10 years whether our education stuff worked." David Coleman, the "architect" of the Common Core State Standards was quoted as saying: "we're composed of that collection of unqualified people who were involved in developing the standards...I probably spend more time on literacy because as weak as my qualifications are there, in math they're even more desperate in their lacking." This is the person who has just been appointed to upend the SAT to make it Common Core aligned! He was introduced by Lauren Resnick as having "been involved in virtually every step of setting the national standards and he doesn't have a single credential for it."

     Two major educational leaders, who were on the validation panel for the standards REFUSED to VALIDATE them. Dr. Sandra Stotsky - the writer of the ELA Standards for Massachusetts reiterated that the standards were developmentally inappropriate and do not focus on literature enough to effectuate the "critical thinking and analysis" that the CCSS purport. Dr. James Milgram, the ONLY mathematician on the panel advised that the standards would leave students 2 years behind in math by grade 7 - ensuring that most students would not have the background courses needed to attend a 4-year University. In fact, the creator of the math standards, Jason Zimba admitted this inconvenient truth - that our students will be prepared only for Community College. Those of us who have been paying our school taxes to ensure that our children get a great education and go on to excellent colleges should be OUTRAGED by this!

     So why rush headlong into adopting these poorly constructed, developmentally inappropriate, and ultimately inadequate "standards"? Follow the MONEY. Gates, Pearson, the Waltons, Murdoch, and their ilk stand to make BILLIONS by siphoning off money earmarked for public education into private, corporate hands. Gates was clear about this at the 2009 National Conference of State Legislators, while speaking of Common Core: "For the first time, there will be a large uniform base of customers eager to buy products."

Fighting the federal intrusion into what should be a state and local matter has proven to be comparable to battling the Krakken. There are many more tentacles (high stakes testing; the commandeering of students' private, personally identifiable information to third parties; the intrusion of unqualified TFA ranks, privatization, educational programming based on student aptitude tracking, etc....) that will be addressed in upcoming entries.

Why Wait?

Why wait – I guess because I can. There’s an old adage – “Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?” That about sums it up. I am a chronic procrastinator. My mind has never worked in small, measured increments. Of course, this makes things difficult when I’m trying to impress upon my students to do their assignments a little at a time instead of trying to cram everything in at the last minute. But, who am I to talk?

I am a crammer. I know what has to be done. I mull things over in my mind for days, weeks, sometimes months. I have been both blessed and cursed with the ability to put big projects off and then complete them in a flurry of frenzied activity. Funny thing is, I always manage to pull these things off flawlessly.

I read somewhere that procrastination is the mark of the perfectionist. Me? Perfectionist? If you’ve ever seen my house, or my desk, it’s hard to fathom. But my organized clutter is actually the stamp of the perfectionist. I blame it on a third-grade friend. I was a huge fan of Nadia Comaneci at the time. Remember her? Perfect 10’s in every event? See, this friend had given me a poster of Nadia on beam in her signature pose – the caption: “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.”  It’s a phrase that still resonates with me today. If I can’t complete a task perfectly, it won’t get done. Things must be done “just so,” and if I haven’t the time to do it the way it “must” be done – it doesn’t get done.

And so it goes with my schoolwork. For as long as I can remember, I have never completed assignments little by little. I always wait for a time when I can concentrate my full, uninterrupted attention to the task. Set aside time each day to do it? BWAAAHAHAHAHAA! No – I must be able to sit and devote my full energies on it from start to finish. This approach has always worked well for me. My grades have always been stellar. As I write, I have three 15-credit courses sitting on a shelf. Yet, here I sit – blogging.

 Hi, my name is Lisa, and I’m a chronic procrastinator. Do they have a twelve step for my condition? If they do, the meeting is probably tomorrow.