Sweetwater Schools Embrace “Corporate Education Reform”
At November’s monthly Mar Vista High School staff meeting, the CORE Districts accountability protocol was formally presented. In June, the Sweetwater Union High School District’s (SWUHD) board agreed to a $39,200 per year fee for CORE Districts membership. By accepting the CORE agenda, SWUHD receives data services; digital tools; professional development and an opportunity to partner with the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) Research Collaborative. This act aligns SWUHD with the “corporate education reform” agenda; including top down control.
CORE Districts is Another Faux Government Agency
The NCLB version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 demanded that by 2014 one-hundred percent of all students would be judged proficient in mathematics and English based on standardized testing. Then Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan used this non-sense provision of the failed law in legally suspect ways – waivers – to bribe schools into accepting several federal mandates. Included in his list of demands was using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers, a practice that is both expensive and has been thoroughly debunked going back as far as 1999. When California refused Duncan’s evaluation demand, its waiver application was rejected.
CORE Districts first gained attention when six renegade districts financed by corporate dollars made a deal with Arne Duncan for an NCLB sanctions waiver. John Deasy, the soon to be failed superintendent of Los Angeles Unified Schoolsand five other school district superintendents made a legally questionable side deal bypassing state officials.
The vehicle used to justify the district direct waivers was the deceptively named California Office of Reform Education (CORE), a non-profit with no official governmental status.
In 2015, American Institutes for Research (AIR), wrote a fifty plus page report on CORE that captures the names of the players and the history of CORE. AIR is a large provider of testing materials for k-12 education so it is not surprising that the report is favorable to the pro-assessment CORE. AIR details that CORE predates the 2013 waivers which garnered nationwide attention and recounts:
“By the time CORE officially began in fall 2010, two established venues had helped build relationships among participating district leaders through which they communicated regularly about their work. The first venue was the Urban Education Dialogue (UED), a forum of large urban district superintendents designed to foster dialogue about the challenges and opportunities associated with running K–12 school systems in California. Six of the superintendents who eventually brought their districts into CORE regularly attended the semiannual UED meetings. Through these interactions, those leaders developed an understanding of one another’s situations and general approaches to district leadership. They also built a set of personal relationships with peers who faced similar challenges and had similar priorities.”
he report also shows how deeply involved some of the original CORE district leaders were with forces sympathetic with privatizing public schools and using Sweetwater Schools Embrace “Corporate Education Reform” | tultican:
Big Education Ape: Calif. CORE Districts Plot Privatization Measures - On California - Education Week - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/11/calif-core-districts-plot-privatization.html
Big Education Ape: California Data Show Flaws in Federal Regulations - On California - Education Week - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/08/california-data-show-flaws-in-federal.html
Big Education Ape: CORE Districts are "Fronts" for Gates, Waltons, Broad et al - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2015/04/core-districts-are-fronts-for-gates.html
Big Education Ape: CORE Waivers: The Movement to Privatize California's Public Schools - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2015/04/core-waivers-movement-to-privatize.html
Big Education Ape: California Office to Reform Education District Waiver Request - Letters (CA Dept of Education) - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2013/03/california-office-to-reform-education.html
