What Common Core means to education’s stakeholders

Editor’s Note: This is the seventh article in an eight part series exploring Common Core

It’s been made evident over the course of this series that Common Core is an unwelcome addition to our educational system – it’s an all-out assault on classroom performance, individual privacy, and America’s competitive position in the global economy.

To further this analysis, let’s briefly look at the impacts Common Core is having and will have on key stakeholders: 

Taxpayers: Undertaking such a transformation of American education does not come without a considerable investment of resources. School districts need to re-align their policies and procedures and management systems. Teachers need to be re-taught how to teach. Text Books, curricula, software, and hardware need to be developed and/or purchased.

What does all of this mean to taxpayers? Billions.

The Pioneer Institute released a white paper in 2012 on the cost of Common Core implementation. Over the 7-year roll out, participating states will spend $1.2 billion on new assessments, $5.3 billion on professional development, $2.5 billion on textbooks and instructional materials, and $6.9 billion on technology.

Their report was fairly concise but left out the $4.35 billion that the feds are spending on Race to the Top, the official federal program to launch Common Core. Their report may have been too conservative, as well: Other organizations, such as the Washington Policy Center, estimate the total nationwide cost of implementation at $30 billion, twice what they had estimated.

Educators: Over the past 7 weeks my inbox has been flooded with emails from teachers concerned about Common Core. A pessimist might say, “of course they are concerned. They are getting graded on the results, too.” That’s not the case. Not one email of the dozens I’ve received has mentioned teacher evaluations at all. Every writer to a person expressed his or her frustrations with the standards and what the new curricula will mean to their pupils and how children’s development will suffer because of it. I have yet to receive an email from an educator who is in favor of the new way.

If my observations are too anecdotal for you, consider a survey conducted by Education Week. Of the respondents (all of whom were teachers), only 49% thought Common Core would improve the quality of education. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “very prepared”, those same teachers rated their students as being 2.8 in terms of preparedness for Common Core, while rating their schools districts as 2.9 and their states as 2.8. Those numbers don’t bode well for the launch and sustainability of Common Core.    

Employers: Businesses should have a vested interest in education because the hopeful final product of schooling – an educated and capable adult – is the most important thing to any business. Without a proliferation of good people in the workplace and the workforce, businesses and economies fail.  

If you believe everything that the US Chamber of Commerce (the national lobbying group representing the interests of many businesses and trade associations) says, you would think that all business support Common Core. The Chamber says “the standards are relevant to the real world, focusing on the knowledge and skills students will need to succeed in life after high school” and provide “a clear roadmap of academic expectations” so “students, parents, and teachers can work together toward shared goals.”

Anything the Chamber says needs to be taken with a grain of salt. They don’t speak for small business owners. After all, this is the same organization that loves dangerous free trade agreements, endless supplies of cheap immigrant laborers, and fought against the “Made in USA” provision of the Great Recession’s stimulus plan.

Many entrepreneurs are frightened by Common Core. As I had mentioned a few weeks ago, I want people working with me, inside and outside my company, who can think on their feet, be creative, react positively to the circumstances before them, and thoughtfully ponder how to make their lives easier and their customers’ experience better. By devaluing creativity, even making it a sin, Common Core won’t develop such a free-thinking labor pool so critical for economic growth.

So, if these stakeholders – and more -- are being hurt by Common Core, who really benefits?

I’ll answer that question in next week’s series finale when I identify some of the public and corporate interests that actually do benefit. It all comes down to power and profits.         

Big Brother in the classroom

Editor’s note: This is the sixth article in an eight-part series exploring Common Core

In my last column I looked at New York’s mass data-mining experiment related to Common Core in which the Empire State is collecting individual academic histories of every student to be shared across school districts, in the state’s educational bureaucracy, and with commercial third parties.

Such data collection is not without controversy because it’s a disturbing assault on families’ right to privacy.

Realize, though, that what the state is doing now is the tip of the iceberg.

When the federal government created a grant program for the development and institution of so-called Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (which is what New York’s Common Core data collection machine is most accurately called), the National Center for Education Statistics – an arm of the US Department of Education – issued a document detailing the goals of the program and what is expected from participating states.

The NCES’s brief details secondary identifiers and characteristics which can be used to track students and segregate their strengths and weaknesses based on the effects of those items.  Here is the expanded list of items that the NCES notes could be contained within a student’s records:

·         Political affiliations or beliefs of the student or parent

·         Mental and psychological problems of the student or the student’s family

·         Sex behavior or attitudes

·         Illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, and demeaning behavior

·         Critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships

·         Legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers

·         Religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or the student’s parent

·         Income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such program)

It so happens that New York won one of the aforementioned federal grants and is the only state of the 24 that did that is following through on total implementation of the Statewide Longitudinal Data System. That said, this year, and in the coming years, will New York’s children be subjected to surveys asking for some or all of this highly-specific and highly-private information?

If they are, will our kids be tagged as “troubled” students for matters entirely unrelated to public education? Will those factors once identified and categorized be used as cues to encourage home visitation and/or intervention by Child Protective Services and other government agencies? And will those same identifiers dog them our kids for the rest of their lives?  

Based upon the above list, one can easily see students and their families targeted for any of the following: non-standard political beliefs (such as libertarianism); a parent who is coping with mental illness (even something as common and treatable as depression); disagreements with the concept of same-sex relationships; exhibiting once-normal behavioral traits now deemed to be anti-social (such as playful kidding now classified as vicious bullying); maintaining friendly relationships with reformed individuals who paid their dues to society; regular utilization of the services of medical doctors; regularly attending church services; and family income (“too low” or “too high”).         

The possibilities for abuse of this data are endless. It could be done in the classroom (by a maverick teacher with a personal agenda), at the district level (by one trying to improve its statistical outcomes by sequestering alleged troubled youth), and well into the future --- these corrupted records would follow the youth into the SUNY/CUNY system (impacting their eligibility and/or studies) and could likely be made readily available in their pursuit of gainful employment.

What you see before you is the slippery slope: The data collection being done now is intrusive enough, but it’s nothing compared to what will happen once districts and unknowing parents have warmed up to the practice and accept data-mining as a normal part of public education.

There’s a Big Brother in the classroom…and it’s not anyone’s sibling.    

Common Core and your family’s data

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in an 8-part series exploring Common Core

In May 2010 the New York State Education Department reveled in the receipt of a $20 million grant from the federal government that was dedicated to the implementation of a statewide longitudinal data system (LDS). The alleged goal of the new system was to begin the matching of student, teacher, and course information at the pre-school through Grade 12 levels and ultimately link the vast amount of amassed information with the State University of New York (SUNY) and the City University of New York (CUNY).

This master plan was not the result of an independent need as determined by the State. Rather, it was a submission to the federal government, as the only way to secure more of the $4 billion in Race to the Top funds was to include an LDS project in the application. Race to the Top is also the Obama Administration’s funding tool – and attractant -- for Common Core adoption.

Common Core’s reliance on individual and aggregate student data was not entirely unexpected as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation remains the largest funding source for Common Core, Inc. Look at who benefits from new, mandated computer systems: Bill Gates’ Microsoft (more on this in part 8 of the series). Data-mining is also par for the course in modern government --- look at what the National Security Agency (NSA) gleans from our cell phones, emails, and internet searches. 

As is the case with the NSA’s data collection, citizens should look at Common Core’s with a concerned eye.

The primary software manager and data hoarder behind Common Core’s computer system is inBloom, an Atlanta-based company founded by the Carnegie Corp. and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (they they area again!). inBloom will manage every students’ grades, test scores, and attendance reports. On top of that, New York will also collect suspension records, medical diagnoses and economic status. All of the information will be held in a cloud managed by Amazon.com which is accessible by every school administrator across the state, unknown numbers of SUNY and CUNY personnel, federal officials, and inBloom’s commercial clients who will allegedly use the data only to develop teaching modules and learning products. Many more may gain access because inBloom openly admits – despite the expertise of its backers – that it “cannot guarantee the security of the information stored…or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted.”

Parents across the country have raised a stink about the data-mining. Beyond the security fears, many parents see their child’s school records as being something that only they and their local districts can possess and only the parents should be able to decide who else sees. It’s not something that should be shared with just anyone without consent. The thinking is that detailed school history – especially with the finer nuances included - is just as sensitive as an individual’s medical records and should be treated with the same dignity. 

This invasion of privacy and sharing of information across multiple sectors was not what was intended or, more accurately, it’s not what was originally portrayed to the masses. In the press releases that accompanied New York’s acquisition of the database grant in 2010, Senior Deputy Commissioner for P-12 Education John King was quoted as saying, “We are building a data rich foundation for the continuous analysis and improvement of the state’s education structure.” There was no mention of federal or commercial interests and their ability to acquire the same information for their uses.

It just so happens that King is now the state education commissioner and he remains the only education head in the US still pushing ahead with a statewide data-mining plan. Other states that received grants (like Georgia and Delaware) have pulled out while Massachusetts is experimenting with inBloom in just a select few districts.

Others still are watching and waiting. Educators and bureaucrats across the nation want to learn from our experience with inBloom: They want New Yorkers to work out the bugs for them; suffer the consequences of software and security flaws and lawsuits; and make the initial abandonment of families’ right to privacy.

New York is, for once, a leader --- but not in a way any self-respecting parent would like.         

COMMON CORE LACKS CREATIVITY

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in an 8-part series about Common Core

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

That quote was courtesy of one of the greatest minds of all-time, Albert Einstein. He understood what helped to develop his incomparable intellect and could do the same for future generations – early and frequent exposure to fictional works.

This is something that language arts teachers (more popularly known as English teachers) have known and practiced for years. By focusing on the readers’ ability to understand and interpret in their own way a masterpiece of literature or poetry, and also affording them the chance to write their own masterpieces, teachers could encourage and hone creative thinking, the single most important tool for personal and professional success.

That is atypical to most schooling. Science, math, and history classes take what is known or proven and ask that students master facts and processes; there is little if any room for exploration or personal interpretation. That is the nature of the beast within those subjects.

English classrooms were always the only places in schools where higher order thinking skills could be fostered. But, those days appear numbered. Because of Common Core, the English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum is devolving and English is becoming yet another class where facts are to be regurgitated and expression is stymied.

The alleged goal of Common Core is to make students workforce-ready so, to that end, the developers at Achieve Inc. decided to emphasize nonfiction. Novels and short fiction that once dominated the routine have been diminished in their volume, with newspaper articles, dry text and even boring owner’s manuals taking over.  If you thought Moby Dick’s pithiness was a test of your focus as a student, imagine your child’s disdain for manuals.   

Common Core’s original plan was to divide the eighth grade curriculum along the lines of 55% nonfiction and 45% fiction. That isn’t what is being enforced. Nor is it what students and teachers alike are being graded on. Last year’s Grade 8 ELA test was 79% nonfiction and 21% fiction, a far cry from what was sold to the schools.

I shudder to think of what employers Achieve Inc. consulted in proceeding in this manner. As a businessman, I want people working with me – inside my company and outside of it -- who can think on their feet, creatively and positively react to the circumstances before them, and thoughtfully ponder how to make their lives easier and their customers’ experience better. With creativity stifled in their formative years, they will be unable to perform as well as one would hope in the workplace.

As a parent, I can’t help but wonder how Common Core will help my daughter at all when the time comes. I spend much time thinking about how my wife and I will be investing considerably more effort into her intellectual development to overcome what Common Core doesn’t give her. 

What it could give her can be pretty scary.

Consider an assignment given to third graders at various school districts across the US. After reading the following text, students were asked to complete an exercise where the solutions can only be provided by making logical inferences and explaining how they got their answers:

“Ruby sat on the bed she shared with her husband holding a hairclip. There was something mysterious and powerful about the cheaply manufactured neon clip that she was fondling in her newly suspicious palms. She didn’t recognize the hairclip. It was too big to be their daughter’s, and Ruby was sure that it wasn’t hers. She hadn’t had friends over in weeks but here was this hairclip, little and green with a few long black hair strands caught in it. Ruby ran her fingers through her own blonde hair. She had just been vacuuming when she noticed this small, bright green object under the bed. Now their life would never be the same. She would wait here until Mike returned home.”

Let that sink in. Third graders were given a story about entirely-adult content (infidelity) that is beyond their realm of maturity and understanding. Most of them have no idea what’s going on here (and any parent worth their salt would not want them to) and any student who does is likely experiencing a painfully dramatic and emotionally damaging home life.

This is the present and future of education in America under the Common Core regime. How is any of it supposed to make our nation smarter and stronger?