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The Common Core “Standards” are the Global Competition Warriors’ “Product Specifications”
One common criticism of the English Common Core Standards revolves around Core advocates’ dismissal of the value of personal prose (and fiction more generally). Core architect David Coleman captured the ideological spirit of the Core and education “reform” more generally when he emphasized that business doesn’t care what you f-ing think. How true! But this signifies a change in the basic premise of Anglo-American thought — the claim to defend the individual, individual property, individual choice, individual will, etc. While this individualism can and should be critiqued, the point here is to study...
The Common Core: Whose Standards Are They?
Over the past decades, testing has played a central role in justifying and brining about some of the most controversial reforms, such as school choice via charter schools, merit pay for teachers, and military academies for inner city youth. But possibly the most politically significant reform of all is the adoption of national standards and assessments. Whatever one may think of “choice” and “merit pay” and “boot strapping,” they are undoubtedly the legacy of Anglo-American political thought. But the idea — let alone the adoption of — a national curriculum appears as a sharp break with the foundation of the American Republic, the commitment to “state’s rights,” to decentralization and...
Clever rhetoric won’t save your undemocratic reform from failure: An open letter to Arne Duncan on the occasion of teacher appreciation week
Dear Secretary Duncan, I am sure many have read your May 2, 2011 Open Letter to teachers. I am impressed with its rhetorical slight of hand, how it gently yet forcefully pushes — with all apparent conviction — what more and more of the research community and the public is rejecting. I presume that it is this broad and growing opposition to Race to the Top (the nearly $5 billion in discretionary monies given to the U.S. Department of Education by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) that caused you to...
Evidence on the quality of for-profit higher education?
A confluence of forces: a letter requesting my participation in doctoral dissertation research from a student at the University of Phoenix and an increase in for-profit ads endorsed by the Chronicle of Higher Education in my inbox. While we all make mistakes, the attached letter recruiting subjects for research is a small piece of evidence that appears to confirm our collective worst fears: for-profits are most interested in money, less interested in quality education (I have blocked out the student’s identifying information and the link to the...
Teachers have a right to unionize
The recipe is as follows: use “research” and phony evaluation systems to create a wedge between teachers and the public. Then, legally dismantle the basic right of teachers (and working people in general) to organize to defend their interests and the interests of the sector in which they work. Claim this is necessary to improve schools in order to hide the fact that the real drive is to cheapen education and siphon off the public resources expended on education into the hands of various financial and...
Buffalo News endorses flawed system of teacher compensation
http://www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au Yesterday, the Buffalo News reported that the Buffalo Public Schools and the Buffalo Teachers Federation had negotiated a new teacher evaluation system. But what is particularly significant is that the News simultaneously reported on and endorsed the contract negotiated between Washington, D.C. teachers and administration, and promoted it as a model for Buffalo. The D.C. contract — known as IMPACT but not mentioned by name in the editorial — has, according to the Buffalo News, four key components: performance-based teacher...
Race to the Top Assessment Program: Part II – The Political Significance of Assessment Governance
RTTT is the "Carrot That Feels Like a Stick," says Mike Petrilli (of all people). He "can’t help but feel remorse for the death of federalism." As I prepare for a talk at DePaul University tomorrow, I’m racing (ha!) to review the assessment program of Race to the Top. After having vented yesterday, several things stand out as politically significant in the assessment competition. It is key to understand that the content of Race to the Top is bribery. While in the past the main criticism from various quarters was...
Race to the Top Assessment Program: Part 1 – Danger, Will Robinson, Irrational Discourse Ahead!
Anyone who has read my book or heard me speak about testing might think that I would be happy with the change in language evident in Obama’s Department of Education Executive Summary of the Race to the Top Assessment Program. Not only do we read as much about assessment as we read about assertions to measurement in the document, media outlets claim the initiative will reduce reliance on the often ridiculed multiple-choice test (as if that were the main problem with current policy). Well,...
Is Thinking a “Skill”? Values and Problems in Thinking About the “Liberal Arts”
In today’s online version of the Chronicle of Higher Education, four views regarding the “future of the liberal arts” are presented. While not intending to pick on Martha Nussbaum’s “The Liberal Arts Are Not Elitist” — for in spirit we share a common concern — the piece does nonetheless represent some perennial problems in how public discourse conceptualizes education. As an illustration of these problems I examine some of the assumptions and features of the essay. Nussbaum begins by warning of a crisis in education, a crisis rooted in the quest for national profit or economic gain (interestingly enough this point is made without reference to the dramatic...
Are Tests Measures of Test Taking Ability?
In a recent discussion of my book, A Measure of Failure, the typical argument against any critique of standardized testing was issued in response to a favorable review of the book’s main points. In the comments we read: “A math test, such as the math portion of the SAT for instance, most certainly measures a student’s ability to do the math problems on the test. It is impossible to do well on such a test without the underlying skill that is required to do the math.” It seems hard to argue with this. But the English language does not help the discussion of measurement, as measure can signify both a standard...
