Mythbusting the Common Core « PWC Education Reform Blog

Mythbusting the Common Core « PWC Education Reform Blog:

Mythbusting the Common Core

by pwceducationreform

Mythbusting the Common Core

January 25, 2013 — pwceducationreform

The pressure on Virginia to adopt the Common Core State Standards is intense, with the CCSS’s supporters actively spreading false information, grossly exaggerating it’s success, and misrepresenting who is behind the CCSS. Virginia isn’t likely to last long under such intense pressure, so us plain folk need to arum ourselves with knowledge and share our opinions with our state delegation.

Here’s the first of a series from Truth in American Education debunking the CCSS myths – the myth that the CCSS are “state led”.

Most of our elected delegates in Richmond, I’m sorry to say, are not well informed about the Common Core.  We need to educate them.

Here is a handy dandy one clink link to send an email to all of them.  Below the link is a list of their names and 

Missouri Education Watchdog: Common Core Standards and Martin Luther King

Missouri Education Watchdog: Common Core Standards and Martin Luther King:

Common Core Standards and Martin Luther King

from Missouri Education Watchdog by stlgretchen

Add this phrase: COMMON IS EXCEPTIONAL

I received the email below from a teacher about the President's inauguration, Martin Luther King and Common Core standards:  

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This week, President Obama will be sworn into office as the 45th President of the United States of America. As a history teacher, I was elated to learn he would be placing his hand on two Bibles, one belonging to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the other belonging to President Abraham Lincoln, when he takes the oath of office to lead our great nation. Dr. King and President Lincoln helped define civil rights 

MORNING UPDATE: LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 1-25-13 Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:

Getting Ready for the Common Core Testing

by dianerav

A friend of a friend of a friend passed this along, hoping I might be able to answer the question about the appropriateness of this test question in second grade.
What do you think?
“Please read a question on a quiz that my 7 year old son in the 2nd grade got wrong and tell me if I’m crazy for

Nevada Set to Replace Career Teachers with TFA

by dianerav

This is a disturbing interview with Nevada’s State Superintendent of Instruction James Guthrie.
Nevada is 18th in the nation in teachers’ salaries but Guthrie seems to think they are overpaid.
He is certain there are large numbers of bad teachers in the state.
He has the governor’s ear. In his State of the State address, Governor Sandoval made clear that he wants more of those TFA to come to Nevada and raise scores and close the achievement gap.
In his State of the State, the governor said,
“”One of the most successful programs in the country today is Teach for
America – a unique corps of brilliant young leaders from America’s top

Nearly 200 Chicago Schools May Close

by dianerav

The Chicago Board of Education and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who controls the board, have a plan. They want to close down many public schools and open many charter schools. As many as 193 elementary schools may close. One advantage of the plan from the mayor’s perspective, is that the closing schools are unionized but the charters are not.
One of the schools on the potential closing list is the elementary school attended by Michelle Obama.

Jersey Jazzman to NY Taxpayers: Thank You!

by dianerav

Jersey Jazzman wrote to thank the taxpayers of New York, whose dollars subsidize his blog via advertising by Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy network (formerly known as Harlem Success Academy).
JJ notes that this charter chain spends millions of dollars each year on recruitment, advertising, public relations, and marketing. This is a necessary business expense to drum up thousands of applications for a small number

When Students Awaken, Everything Will Change

by dianerav

It is beginning. Teachers, superintendents, local school boards, parent groups, and now students: all are saying the same things. Stop destroying education with high-stakes testing. Stop the chaos and disruption of school closings. Support and encourage, don’t humiliate and destroy.
Are you listening, Secretary Duncan?
Here is a new student group in New Orleans demanding quality education and equity.
Dear Friends,
United Students of New Orleans (USNO) is a coalition of students organizing
and advocating for fairness and justice in public schools across New Orleans. Starting with students from four 

Eli Broad Will Introduce Rhee in L.A.

by dianerav

A friend in Los Angeles sent the following notice of Michelle Rhee’s coming appearance before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.
I hope someone will ask her about the cheating scandal that was described on PBS’ Frontline recently.
Ask if she thinks a 30-point jump in proficiency rates in a single year is suspicious.
Ask if she still believes that “dozens and dozens” of schools improved.
Ask why D.C. has the largest black-white and Hispanic-white test score gap of any city in the nation, which did 

The Secret Strategy of Corporate School Reform?

by dianerav

I want to test out a theory. I invite you to tell me what you think. It’s a thought experiment but very close to reality.
Suppose you wanted to destroy public education.
Suppose you wanted to make it so unpleasant to be a teacher or a student in a public school that everyone began to long for a way out. What would you do?
Let’s see. You would subject kids to tests repeatedly to the point that their parents complained bitterly. You would take away art and music, maybe physical education too, to make more time for testing. You would open a few charters, which would scoop up the best students, the strivers, and exclude the troublemakers. You would

Hilarious! Louisiana’s New Website

by dianerav

Crazy Crawfish is a blogger who worked in the Louisiana Department of Education. He cares a lot about accurate data. He noticed, as did other researchers in Louisiana, that all the historical data for the past ten years disappeared overnight and have been replaced by press releases about the glorious success of Governor Jindal’s marketing slogan, which the Jindal team call “Louisiana Believes.”
Don’t miss this one. It is called “Louisiana Believes Anything.”

Good News: Major Re-Analysis of International Tests

by dianerav

Richard Rothstein and Martin Carnoy, both highly accomplished scholars, have reanalyzed the international test score data and arrived at some startling and important findings.
Their study is titled “International Tests Show Achievement Gaps in All Countries, with Big Gains for U.S. Disadvantaged Students.” It includes not only their major analysis of international test scores, but critiques by the leaders of OECD and PISA, and their response to the critiques.
This important study should change the way international tests are reported by the media, if they take the time

Diane in the Evening 1-24-13 Diane Ravitch's blog

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 3 hours ago

Diane Ravitch's blog: You Are Invited to a Webinar on High Stakes Testing by dianerav Parents Across America is hosting a Webinar on high stakes testing. Think about joining and meeting some of the leading figures in the opt-out movement. Let’s Talk: A Webinar on High Stakes Testing and Opting Out On January 27 at 1:00 PM PST, 3:00 PM Central and 4:00 PM EST, Parents Across America will be hosting an online seminar on high stakes testing and opting out of these tests. Our guests will be: Jesse Hagopian, teacher at Garfield High School and part of the MAP test boycott Shaun Johnso... more »

Is computer-delivered education equivalent to one with a flesh-and-blood teacher and hands-on experiences? | Get Schooled

Is computer-delivered education equivalent to one with a flesh-and-blood teacher and hands-on experiences? | Get Schooled:

Is computer-delivered education equivalent to one with a flesh-and-blood teacher and hands-on experiences?

by Maureen Downey

Shannon Howrey is assistant professor of literacy education at Georgia Gwinnett College and parent of three school-aged children.  In her first op-ed for the Get Schooled blog, she writes about the spread of MOOCs, massive open online courses delivered over the Internet to anyone who enrolls without charge.
MOOCs award students certificates rather than college credits.
The nation’s elite colleges are rushing to create MOOCs to enhance their brand and to be part of the most talked about innovation in higher education. At some point, colleges are expected to use the evolving and dynamic MOOC market to make money. Among the possible revenue sources: Data mining, selling the course material, selling sponsorships, charging tuition.
In her interesting piece, Howrey considers the future and benefits of MOOCs.

By Shannon Howrey
The AJC reported Monday that Georgia State University is entering the growing market of massive open online courses, better known as MOOCs, and plans to offer …

OUSD board stands firm on American Indian charter school recommendation - The Education Report - Katy Murphy's blog on Oakland schools

OUSD board stands firm on American Indian charter school recommendation - The Education Report - Katy Murphy's blog on Oakland schools:

OUSD board stands firm on American Indian charter school recommendation

Thursday, January 24th, 2013 at 1:21 pm in 1 Comment

The Oakland school board voted 6-1 last night to issue a “notice of intent to revoke” the charters for three schools run by American Indian Model Schools: American Indian Public Charter School (6-8), American Indian Public Charter School II (K-8) and American Indian Public High School.
The next hearing will be Feb. 13. The final decision comes in March, possibly on March 20.
The OUSD board members — with the exception of Chris Dobbins, who cast the dissenting vote — made it clear they didn’t want to hear defenses or excuses. They said they wanted better accounting controls and governance practices — and assurances that the organization’s founder, Ben Chavis, and his wife, Marsha Amador, would be separated from all aspects of managing the organization and its finances.
Read the rest of this entry »

Teachers Hate Rick Scott « Tangerine, Florida

Teachers Hate Rick Scott « Tangerine, Florida:

Teachers Hate Rick Scott

by 5redherrings

Via Firing Rick Scott
Governor Rick Scott’s PR stunt today indicates nothing more than that Scott has made a habit out of cutting funding and then at a later date getting publicity for restoring it. We saw this song and dance when he cut $1.3 billion from public education funding in 2011 and then a year later touted a billion dollar promise to those very same schools. It is just another slight in a series of insults for middle class Floridians.
The governor is boasting about budget surpluses and pay raises when he is doing nothing more 

Tony Bennett, State Board Wants More Capital Outlay For Charter Schools, None for Public Schools | Scathing Purple Musings

Tony Bennett, State Board Wants More Capital Outlay For Charter Schools, None for Public Schools | Scathing Purple Musings:

Tony Bennett, State Board Wants More Capital Outlay For Charter Schools, None for Public Schools

by Bob Sikes

From the Bradenton Times:

BRADENTON — In 2012, charter schools were narrowly unsuccessful in getting a state bill passed to require public school districts to give charter schools some of their local property tax revenue, though they received about $55 million for school construction through Governor Scott’s controversial decision to give them all of the state’s available capital outlay funding. If a recently proposed FLDOE budget is adopted, they’ll get even more next year, while school districts again go without.
Last week, The Palm Beach Post reported on a report the FLDOE gave a Florida Senate 

Florida PTA on Board With Raising Teacher Salaries to National Average

by Bob Sikes

. Its one thing for a couple of democrats to advance a bill which would benefit teachers. It’s another thing all together for the state’s largest public school parent organization to do so. From the Orlando Sentinel’s Leslie Postal:

The Florida PTA said today it appreciated Gov. Rick Scott had listened to teachers and parents and proposed a $2,500 raise for classroom instructors.
But the group urged the governor and the Florida Legislature to do more – and provide enough funding to boost Florida teachers’ salaries to the national average.
“By doing this, it will encourage experienced teachers to stay in the classroom by fully funding a 

The real problem with multiple-choice tests:

The real problem with multiple-choice tests

Posted by Valerie Strauss on January 25, 2013 at 6:00 am

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Q) What is one responsibility that modern Presidents have NOT described  in the  Constitution?  (From the 2010 NAEP exam)                                        

a) Commanding the armed forces b) Proposing an annual budget to Congress c) Appointing Supreme Court justices d) Granting pardons     

One of the biggest complaints about standardized tests is that the multiple-choice questions don’t measure deep thinking skills. Here’s a new look at the problems with multiple-choice questions, written by Terry Heick, curriculum director atTeachThought, an online platform that that explores innovation in education.

Heick is an educator, husband, and father of three who is interested in improved social capacity through the design of progressive learning forms. An excerpt of this post appeared on TeachThought, and a fuller version on Edutopia. 

(The answer to the question above is B, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2010.)

By Terry Heick

The multiple-choice problem is becoming a bit of an issue.

While it has been derided by educators for decades as incapable of truly measuring 

Rocketship charter schools revamping signature 'Learning Lab'

by Valerie Strauss

The Rocketship network of charter schools has made a name for itself in the world of school choice -- and attracted $2 million from the Obama administration to help it grow -- with its "blended learning" model that incorporates traditional classroom settings with a computer "Learning Lab" for students.
Read full article >>

The real problem with multiple-choice tests

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 3 hours ago

Q) What is one responsibility that modern Presidents have NOT described in the Constitution? (From the 2010 NAEP exam) a) Commanding the armed forces b) Proposing an annual budget to Congress c) Appointing Supreme Court justices d) Granting pardons Read full article >>

Rocketship charter schools revamping signature 'Learning Lab'

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 5 hours ago

The Rocketship network of charter schools has made a name for itself in the world of school choice -- and attracted $2 million from the Obama administration to help it grow -- with its "blended learning" model that incorporates traditional classroom settings with a computer "Learning Lab" for students. Read full article >>

California's Gov. Brown blasts state, federal education policy

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 17 hours ago

California Gov. Jerry Brown smacked state and federal education policy in his State of the State Address Thursday, calling for more local control of school issues and saying, "I would prefer to trust our teachers who are in the classroom each day, doing the real work lighting fires in young minds." Read full article >>

Texas House eliminates funding for standardized testing

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 1 day ago

The revolt against standardized testing in Texas has taken a new twist: The Texas House has put forth a draft 2014-15 budget that zeroes out all funding for statewide standardized assessment. By way of explanation, Speaker Joe Straus said, "To parents and educators concerned about excessive testing, the Texas House has heard you." Read full article >>

Caution urged on Common Core -- from a supporter

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 1 day ago

Even as schools across the country change curriculum and assessments to align with the new Common Core State Standards, there are plenty of people -- including Common Core supporters who think implementation is being rushed. Here is an open letter on this subject to the Illinois State Board of Education from Paul Horton, a history teacher at the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (where President Obama's daughters attended before moving to Washington D.C.), and state liaison to the Illinois Council for History Education. In this letter Horton said he refers to him... more »

Questions about newly named head of National Independent Schools Association

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 1 day ago

The choice of John Chubb, a vocal advocate of school choice who was part of Mitt Romney's campaign education advisory team, as president-elect of the National Association of Independent Schools has sparked some controversy in that part of the education world. Read full article >>

Teacher may lose job over students with mouths taped shut

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 1 day ago

Some of you may remember when school reformer and former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee addressed a group of new teachers back in 2010 and disclosed that when she was a young second-grade teacher at Baltimore's Harlem Park Elementary, her class-management skills were so bad that she taped the mouths of her students. (This was either before or after she smacked a bee that had landed on her desk and then swallowed it, also in an effort to get her students to pay attention.) That didn't have any effect on Rhee's career as celebrity school reformer, but a teacher in Ohio isn'... more »

Proposed Loudoun charter denied application extension

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 1 day ago

An effort by a group of Turkish immigrants to get more time to develop their application to open a charter school in Loudoun County -- which would be the first there and possibly in Northern Virginia -- was rejected by a 6-3 vote of the county's school board. The vote means that the board will decide on the controversial application in late February. Read full article >>

Mom pays for armed guard at child's school

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 2 days ago

And now, a privately funded deputy guarding elementary school kids. The mother of a young girl in Florida is paying $32 an hour for an armed deputy to guard her daughter's school, Old Kings Elementary, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Read full article >>

Popular study strategies called ineffective -- report

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 2 days ago

Researchers who evaluated 10 learning techniques believed to improve student achievement found that five of them -- including highlighting or underlining, are not very effective. The report, called "Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques," says that one reason that ineffective study habits form is because there is too much research for educators to evaluate to figure out how to advise their students. Published in the January issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, the report was written by John Dunlosky and Katherine A. Rawson of Kent State ... more »

D.C. public schools may drop U.S. government requirement

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 2 days ago

In the you-can't-make-up-this-stuff category: The public school system in the nation's capital may let high school students graduate without taking a high-school-level course in how their country's government works. Read full article >>

Where's the 'collective action' in Obama education policy?

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet - 2 days ago

President Obama's second term now officially begins, and in his inaugural address he spoke about the need for "collective action" to solve America's problems. Here's an argument that his own education policies have violated that principle, with suggestions on what he can do to remedy that. This was written by Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. Read full article >>

Creating, Tinkering, Inventing and Imagining Our Way to the Top | toteachornototeach

Creating, Tinkering, Inventing and Imagining Our Way to the Top | toteachornototeach:

Creating, Tinkering, Inventing and Imagining Our Way to the Top

by aristotlethewise

Creating, Tinkering, Inventing and Imagining Our Way to the Top
by Dori Roberts
If you were to peek through the door of most preschool classrooms or observe young children playing at home, you would likely find kids creating, tinkering, inventing and imagining. Their hands would be busy and their minds would be racing a hundred miles a minute with all different types of creative possibilities: A rollercoaster using foam pipe insulation! A rocket from a plastic water bottle! A bridge from paper and tape! These kids are engineers. Most just don’t know it. Yet.
I began my career as a high school technology and engineering teacher. During that time, I witnessed amazing ideas high school students developed and implemented around engineering-related challenges. I saw firsthand