Meet John King, Acting Secretary of Education | ED.gov Blog #AskJohnKing

Meet John King, Acting Secretary of Education | ED.gov Blog:

Meet John King, Acting Secretary of Education

Every New Year offers the chance for each of us to set new personal goals to make us healthier, happier, or more productive. In 2016, I hope you’ll join me as I recommit myself to ensuring that every child in America—regardless of background or circumstance—has access to an excellent education.

I’m honored and humbled by the opportunity President Obama has given me to build on the many accomplishments he and my friend Arne Duncan have achieved over the past seven years.

Education always has been a focal point in my life—both my parents were New York City public school educators. My father was a teacher and a principal. My mother was a teacher and guidance counselor. When I was 8, my mother passed away.  I then lived with my father who was suffering from undiagnosed Alzheimer’s disease and passed away when I was 12.

After that, I moved around between family members and schools. Home was an unpredictable and often scary place. But school, and the remarkable teachers who believed in my potential, offered me a safe haven. Because of them, I went on to become a high school social studies teacher, a middle school principal, and a state education commissioner—and now I have the tremendous privilege to serve you in this new role.

Watch a short video introduction from John King (Español)

Over the past seven years, we’ve made a lot of progress. More students than ever are being taught to college- and career-ready standards; dropout rates are at historic lows and graduation rates at all-time highs; and high quality preschool and higher education are within reach for more families.

But there is a lot more work to do. Our efforts in 2016 must be measured by the progress we make toward educational opportunity for all—so that no child’s fate is left to luck, no student’s destiny defined by circumstances.

In the weeks to come, I’ll be traveling across the country to visit with folks like you—students, parents, teachers, principals and community leaders—to highlight what’s working and hear about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

I’ll also be asking you to help us accelerate progress in more classrooms.

In the meantime, please follow me on Twitter @JohnKingatED and ask me a question anytime using #AskJohnKing. Here’s wishing you a wonderful New Year!

John KingMeet John King, Acting Secretary of Education | ED.gov Blog:

SOPIPA Goes Into Affect January 2016 with Loopholes – Missouri Education Watchdog

SOPIPA Goes Into Affect January 2016 with Loopholes – Missouri Education Watchdog:

SOPIPA Goes Into Affect January 2016 with Loopholes

The endless data gathering on up-and-coming American voters continues with very little to slow it down. I think it is important to use that term rather than students, because that is part of the end game. We have a monster trying to recreate its master, a government trying to form the future voters who will select and supply it.

Yesterday we wrote about the federal government’s plan to collect data on families to “guide” child rearing in America. (Reminder that today 1-4-16 is the last day to provide comments on that pending regulation.) Some people have commented to us that they aren’t worried about that because they don’t provide the data themselves, as if that will stop the government’s collection. They will find other ways to get that data without your informed participation (e.g. your obstetrician, dentist, guidance counselor, DHS gun permits, FAFSA forms, local library, ADHD prescription provider etc.)  There’s more than one way to enter the data mine and private companies know that too.

The Student Online Personal Information Protection Act (SOPIPA) went into affect January 1, 2016. The law prohibits an educational service provider such as Google Apps For Education (GAFE) from engaging in targeted advertising on its own website or any other website “when the targeting of the advertising is based upon any information, including covered information and persistent unique identifiers, that the operator has acquired” from a student’s use of the website. Thus when your child logs in with their student ID at school, none of the data gathered from his/her use of GAFE may be used to create a profile of your child in order to target advertising to him/her.

Lest you think SOPIPA has your privacy concerns addressed, you should understand the rather large loophole contained in the law that lets SOPIPA Goes Into Affect January 2016 with Loopholes – Missouri Education Watchdog:

Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #6 of 9): VAMs as Tools for “Egg-Crate” Schools | VAMboozled!

Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #6 of 9): VAMs as Tools for “Egg-Crate” Schools | VAMboozled!:

Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #6 of 9): VAMs as Tools for “Egg-Crate” Schools

Recall that the peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher (ER) – published a “Special Issue” including nine articles examining value-added measures (VAMs). I have reviewed the next of nine articles (#6 of 9), which is actually an essay here, titled “Will VAMS Reinforce the Walls of the Egg-Crate School?” This essay is authored by Susan Moore Johnson – Professor of Education at Harvard and somebody who I in the past I had the privilege of interviewing as an esteemed member of the National Academy of Education(see interviews here and here).

In this article, Moore Johnson argues that when policymakers use VAMs to evaluate, reward, or dismiss teachers, they may be perpetuating an egg-crate model, which is (referencing Tyack (1974) and Lortie (1975)) a metaphor for the compartmentalized school structure in which teachers (and students) work, most often in isolation. This model ultimately undermines the efforts of all involved in the work of schools to build capacity school wide, and to excel as a school given educators’ individual and collective efforts.

Contrary to the primary logic supporting VAM use, however, “teachers are not inherently effective or ineffective” on their own. Rather, their collective effectiveness is related to their professional development that may be stunted when they work alone, “without the benefit of ongoing collegial influence” (p. 119). VAMs then, and unfortunately, can cause teachers and administrators to (hyper)focus “on identifying, assigning, and rewarding or penalizing individual [emphasis added] teachers for their effectiveness in raising students’ Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #6 of 9): VAMs as Tools for “Egg-Crate” Schools | VAMboozled!:

4LAKids - Arne in the rear view mirror DUNCAN RESHAPED AMERICAN ED &. MADE ENEMIES

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: Arne in the rear view mirror: HOW ARNE DUNCAN RESHAPED AMERICAN EDUCATION AND MADE ENEMIES ALONG THE WAY:

Arne in the rear view mirror: HOW ARNE DUNCAN RESHAPED AMERICAN EDUCATION AND MADE ENEMIES ALONG THE WAY

by Perry Bacon Jr, NBC News' Meet The Press | http://nbcnews.to/1JTfLgT

 U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan visits with 9-year-old Nadia Garcia in a third grade classroom at McGlone Elementary School in Denver on Feb. 24, 2015. Brennan Linsley / AP file

Jan 2 2016, 2:25 pm ET  ""  Early in his tenure as U.S. education secretary, Arne Duncan was one of the most popular members of the president's cabinet, praised by Republicans likeJeb Bush, invited to play in the celebrity basketball game during the NBA's All-Star weekend and embraced by education experts on the left and right.
 
But Duncan, who officially stepped down this week, leaves Washington as a deeply divisive figure. Over the last seven years, the Chicago native has aggressively implemented his vision for American education, in a more comprehensive way than perhaps any cabinet officer in the Obama administration has changed policy in his issue area. The rise of the Common Core education standards, a huge growth in the use of data in education and a strong push for accountability on colleges are among Duncan's signature projects.

Valerie Strauss, an education columnist at the Washington Post and strong critic of Duncan, recently called him "the most powerful federal education chief in the department's history."

"He definitely expanded the role of the Department of Education," said Tom Loveless, an education policy expert at the non-partisan Brookings Institution.

By wielding that power, Duncan has become the rare figure in an era of deep partisan polarization to be hated by many on the left and right simultaneously. The National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union and a powerful force in Democratic politics, called for Duncan's resignation last year, arguing he was too supportive of standardized testing.

Earlier this month, Congress passed the "Every Student Succeeds Act," a replacement to the Bush-era "No Child Left Behind" law. Included in the ESSA, at the behest of congressional Republicans, are several provisions that explicitly bar the federal Department of Education from setting policy for all of America's schools. Republicans wanted to ensure there are no more Arne Duncans. 

Mission accomplished?

Duncan is one of only two members of Obama's cabinet (Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is the other) to have served in his post since the start of the administration. And he will leave office having accomplished many of his goals.

Duncan helped convince 42 states to adopt education goals based on the Common Core, and 21 of them to use tests that directly align with those standards, which were created by a bi-partisan group and attempt to both make U.S. schools more challenging and the curriculum more similar from state-to-state.


While some liberals dislike charter schools, Duncan has been a strong supporter of them and presided over a huge growth in students attending charters in cities like Washington, D.C. and New Orleans. 
He pushed through, over the objections of some university administrators, a comprehensive "College Scorecard" that creates a database that makes it much easier to figure out which schools don't do well in terms of making sure their students graduate and get jobs after college. Duncan quietly but dramatically changed America's college loan program, putting millions of students into a federally-funded program that caps loan payments at 10 percent of a person's income and forgives most loans after 20 years.

Duncan and his department have successfully urged school districts across the country to stop suspending students in kindergarten or elementary school, arguing such punishments are excessive and tend to disproportionately hit black and Hispanic students. He and his department also forced some colleges to overhaul their systems for preventing and investigating rapes on college campuses.
  
A move by both Duncan and Obama to highlight the importance of community colleges has created a growing movement, even in some Republican areas, to make tuition at those schools free. Amid the rise of for-profit colleges like the University of Phoenix, Duncan has been one of their strongest critics and used the power of his office to impose new restrictions on them.

"I came here very hopeful, also sometimes not sure what the federal government could do and be productive," Duncan told NBC News in an interview last month as he prepared to leave office. "It so exceeded my wildest hopes."

It's too soon to tell if these changes have made lasting impacts on improving college graduation rates, reducing the gap in performance between minority and white students, or getting test scores for the U.S. students closer to those of high-performing countries abroad, some of Duncan's primary goals

The early evidence is mixed. The number of high schools where more than 40 percent of kids don't graduate, dubbed "dropout factories," has declined sharply under Duncan's tenure, and 82 percent of American students now graduate from high school, a record-high.

But national exams given recently to students in 4th and 8th grade across the country showed declines in student scores in math. And scores for black and Hispanic students remained much lower, compared to their white peers.

A fast start

Taking over the Education Department in 2009, Duncan had unusually free rein to set policy. He had the strong backing of Obama, who had befriended Duncan when the two were leading figures in Chicago politics, and both the administration and Republicans in Congress were more focused on the economy and Obamacare than education.

And states had two problems that Duncan could help them fix. There was agreement on the left and right that No Child Left Behind was flawed. And in the midst of the recession, school districts were struggling to pay their bills.

Duncan offered states waivers to get out of the requirements of No Child Left Behind, as well as extra federal funding through a program called "Race to the Top" that was part of 2009 stimulus bill. But the conditions Duncan set for Race to the Top funding and an NCLB waiver were that states agreed to a group of reforms that the education secretary favored, such as creating Common Core-like standards and not limiting the expansion of charter schools.

By 2010, with little fanfare, Duncan had turned the Department of Education, traditionally a backwater cabinet post since the federal government provides only about 10 percent of the 4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: Arne in the rear view mirror: HOW ARNE DUNCAN RESHAPED AMERICAN EDUCATION AND MADE ENEMIES ALONG THE WAY:

School district apps: Concerns about privacy, transparency | The Star-Telegram

School district apps: Concerns about privacy, transparency | The Star-Telegram:

School district apps: Concerns about privacy, transparency

Mark Hoffer Star-Telegram/Mark Hoffer

Data about students, parents and education is a hot commodity, raising privacy questions about how much information is too much.

Tens of thousands of Tarrant County parents, students, teachers, and community members use school district mobile phone apps to find out what is happening in their districts and on their campuses.

In the Fort Worth school district, 51,000 people use the district’s mobile app. Arlington’s app has 32,000 users. About 10,000 people are using the app for the Northwest district.

How much data is gleaned from people using the mobile apps? Experts say the information can fall into the hands of data brokers, marketers and others, despite efforts to keep it private. They also say there is a lack of transparency surrounding how the technology works.

“The average consumer would want to understand exactly what a particular company is doing,” said Sophia Cope, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a national nonprofit organization for digital civil liberties. “The expectations are even greater for parents with children in school.”

“It’s a transparency problem,” Cope said. “The companies are not, we believe, being totally upfront in explaining the technology. Districts don’t know what questions to ask before they sign these contracts, and they’re not informing the parents of what they’re doing.”

But school officials said they are confident the app developers they hired are neither gathering nor sharing information from users.

“They don’t have access to the data …,” said Clint Bond, a spokesman for the Fort Worth school district. “Basically, we can push information out, but there’s not a two-way exchange of information.”

School administrators said app developers they contracted with do not have permission to sell any data gleaned from the apps.

Randy Sumrall, executive director of technology for the Birdville district, said the district’s app contractor, Schoolwires, does not have permission to distribute or sell student information.

“If we found out they were doing it, we would stop using them,” Sumrall said.

Permission granted

Phone apps for the Arlington, Fort Worth, Birdville, Northwest and Mansfield school districts — like most apps — require users to submit to a variety of “permissions,” though just exactly what you’re permitting the app to do is unclear.

The permissions vary by district.

Upon downloading Birdville’s app, for example, permissions are requested for the device identity, the calendar, location, photos, media, files and the camera. Fort Worth’s app requests permissions for modifying or reading the contents of the SD (memory) card. Permissions for the Northwest district app include accessing identity, the calendar, phone call logs, and photos, media and files.

Some of the permissions are required for users to access all features of an app. But it’s not clear what else could be done with the permissions.

“Outside of these generic permissions, it’s hard to tell,” said Grayson Milbourne, director of security intelligence at the Colorado headquarters for Webroot, an international Internet security firm. “You’d have to do an analysis of an app at a code level.”

That requires an advanced knowledge of programming language that most people simply do not have, Milbourne said.

Apps that ask for access to areas such as phone storage or photos are concerning, especially if those permissions have nothing to do with the app’s stated purpose, he added.

“If you don’t need it, don’t put it in there,” Milbourne said.

How private are policies?

But even if information is not being accessed and shared now, wording in a privacy policy within Birdville’s app leaves the possibility open.

A Schoolwires privacy policy on the app states: “One instance in which personal information in educational records may be disclosed to third parties under FERPA is if the information is classified as ‘directory’ information by your educational institution.”

A privacy policy within Northwest’s app states: “By entering your username and password to access HAC (Home Access Center) or MSB (MySchoolBucks) you consent to the sharing ofSchool district apps: Concerns about privacy, transparency | The Star-Telegram:

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/education/article52728555.html#storylink=cpy

Today is the deadline: effective family engagement practices - The Washington Post

Today is the deadline - The Washington Post:

Today is the deadline: effective family engagement practices 

 If you are interested in submitting comments to the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services on a draft policy statement on the implementation of “effective family engagement practices from the early years to the early grades,” today is the deadline. Following is the draft policy statement, and you can e-mail comments to ECD@acf.hhs.gov. You can learn more here.

This is from the Education Department website about the draft policy:

It is the Departments’ position that strong family engagement is central in promoting children’s healthy development and wellness, including:
•social-emotional and behavioral development;
•preparing children for school;
•seamlessly transitioning them to kindergarten; and
•supporting academic achievement in elementary school and beyond.

The draft policy statement:

Draft Hhs Ed Family Engagement[1]

Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.Today is the deadline - The Washington Post:

This Week In Education: Update: The Return Of "Broader, Bolder"

This Week In Education: Update: The Return Of "Broader, Bolder":

Update: The Return Of "Broader, Bolder"

Back in the day, there used to be an advocacy organization called Broader, Bolder that was a counterpoint to some of the education reform ideas being promoted by EEP, DFER, and others.

In 2008, I named it one of the year's big winners in education. Arne Duncan signed onto the agenda for the group -- and also signed onto the agenda for EEP. It was funded by Nellie Mae, Annie Casey, and Atlantic Philanthropies, among others. EPI housed the original effort and Elaine Weiss staffed it. In 2009, I suggested "broader bolder" as an umbrella phrase for critics of reform (which didn't catch on, obviously). 

Officially named the Broader, Bolder Approach, the project seemed less active for a while, replaced in part by outfits like Parents Across America, the National Public Education Network, and others. Take a look at its history in my Twitter feed to get a sense. 

But I'm told now that @BroaderBolder is making a comeback -- relaunching within the next month or two According to Josh Starr, the co-chairs will be himself, Pedro Noguera, Paul Reville, and Helen Ladd.  No word yet on the agenda specifics, staffing, and the funding sources.

Related posts: Who You Calling "Status Quo"? (2008); Broader Bolder Accountability Meeting (2009); More Ways To Measure Advocacy's Impact (2013)

 This Week In Education: Update: The Return Of "Broader, Bolder":

Are Charter Schools the New Subprime Mortgages? | EduShyster

Are Charter Schools the New Subprime Mortgages? | EduShyster:

Are Charter Schools the New Subprime Mortgages?

A new study warns that we may be headed towards a charter school *bubble*…

EduShyster: It’s unusual to see the words *hair-raising* and *academic study* in tandem, but your new study merits that marriage. You and your co-authors make the case that, just as with subprime mortgages, the federal government is encouraging the expansion of charter schools with little oversight, and the result could be a charter school *bubble* that blows up in urban communities. Do I have it right?

Preston Green: The problem of subprime mortgages began in part because the government tried to increase homeownership for poor people and minorities by enabling private entities to offer more mortgages without assuming the risk. Under the old system, the mortgage originator was still at risk if the mortgage went into default. With subprime, they were able to spread that risk by selling the mortgages on the secondary market. You had all these mortgage originators that could issue more mortgages without careful screening because they no longer had skin in the game.Now how are charter schools similar to subprime? In the charter school context, charter school authorizers are like mortgage originators.

EduShyster: There’s a great moment in the new movie The Big Short when Selena Gomez turns to the camera and explains to the world what collateralized debt obligations are. Here’s your opportunity to do the same, but for the convoluted world of charter school authorizing.

Green: Promoters of charter school expansion are calling for an increase in independent authorizers, such as nonprofits and universities. Supporters of charter school expansion believe that multiple authorizers will issue more charters, in part, because they are less hostile to charter schools than school districts. However, our research suggests another reason that multiple authorizers result in more charter schools: multiple authorizers are like mortgage originators with no skin in the game. In other words, these authorizers don’t assume the risk of charter school failure. That means that if something happens with the charter school, the authorizers don’t have to clean up the mess. Multiple authorizers may also weaken screening by giving charter schools the chance to find authorizers who *won’t ask questions.* In fact, CREDO has Are Charter Schools the New Subprime Mortgages? | EduShyster:

Economy Grows But State Funding for Public Schools Continues to Shrink | janresseger

Economy Grows But State Funding for Public Schools Continues to Shrink | janresseger:

Economy Grows But State Funding for Public Schools Continues to Shrink

Here is what Wikipedia says about Grover Norquist:  “Grover Glenn Norquist…  is an American political advocate who is founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, an organization that opposes all tax increases…. A Republican, he is the primary promoter of the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” a pledge signed by lawmakers who agree to oppose increases in marginal income tax rates for individuals and businesses, as well as net reductions or eliminations of deductions and credits without a matching reduced tax rate. Prior to the November 2012 election, the pledge was signed by 95% of all Republican members of Congress and all but one of the candidates running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination… Norquist’s national strategy has included recruiting state and local politicians to support ATR’s stance on taxes.”

How has Norquist described the goal of his campaign against taxes? “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

You might imagine that Norquist is a kind of nut case, but lots of people have signed his pledge. In Ohio, my super-majority Republican state, for years and years our legislative leaders have been signing Norquist’s pledge and cutting taxes. Last week, the Plain Dealerdescribed the plight of municipalities in Ohio caused by a rash of state tax cuts that have diminished funds the state has in the past allocated for essential services.  Although the economy has begun to spring back from the 2008 recession, Cleveland’s Mayor Frank Jackson is reported to have explained that Cleveland, “just cannot compete with a series of policies at the state level that, he says, rob local governments….  The Local Government Fund was created in 1935, as a promise to Ohioans that their support of the state’s first sales tax would mean that 40 percent of collections would come back to local governments and schools… In 2011, however, Gov. John Kasich, faced with an $8 billion shortfall, proposed a state budget that cut 25 percent of local government funding the following year and 50 percent in 2013…. By 2015, Cleveland’s annual share  of the Local Government Fund had been whittled to $26.5 million—a net loss of $29.5 million (annually) from pre-recession levels.” In 2005, former Governor Bob Taft and the legislature eliminated a tangible personal property tax on income and equipment that had helped fund municipal governments and school districts. They replaced it with a Commercial Activities Tax, which was then slashed by Governor Kasich and the legislature in 2011.  “Also built into Kasich’s 2011 budget bill was the controversial abolition of the estate tax.”  And finally at the end of 2014, Governor Kasich and the legislature passed a law to standardize and streamline Ohio’s income tax, a plan that will take effect in 2016 and further reduce state funding for municipalities and school districts (separate taxing jurisdictions in the state of Ohio).

It is axiomatic in public finance: if the federal government cuts taxes and the state Economy Grows But State Funding for Public Schools Continues to Shrink | janresseger:

How Business Got Schooled in the War Over Common Core Standards - Fortune

How Business Got Schooled in the War Over Common Core Standards - Fortune:

How Business Got Schooled in the War Over Common Core Standards

When Exxon Mobil, GE, Intel, and others pushed for the education standards, they incurred the wrath of Tea Party conservatives and got a painful lesson in modern politics.

In February 2014, two of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates and Charles Koch, dined together at a West Coast restaurant.

They made quite the odd couple: the Seattle Microsoft  MSFT -3.06%  co-founder, now devoting his time and fortune to changing the world, and the Kansas industrialist, still running his private conglomerate while working to shrink government to the size of a pea.

The two discussed many subjects and even touched, diplomatically, on topics they disagree about, such as climate change. There was a second sensitive subject that Gates broached, and it didn’t come up by chance. His team at the Gates Foundation had engaged in a process it calls a “faction analysis” and identified Koch as a key opponent on a crucial issue. Gates had a mission that night: He wanted to persuade Koch to change his mind about Common Core.

The two men were bankrolling opposite sides in a raging war over the future of American education. Through his charitable foundation, Gates has spent more than $220 million on the Common Core education standards, aimed at boosting the dismal performance of American children. Starting in 2010, 45 states adopted the benchmarks—which spell out what kids from kindergarten through high school should learn in reading and math—with little controversy. But a backlash ensued, and by early 2014 the standards were under fierce political attack, facing repeal in many states. Koch and his brother David were sponsoring several Tea Party–aligned groups that were fueling the rebellion.

The ABCs of Common Core

• Replacing a hodgepodge of separate guidelines in 50 states, Common Core aims to provide a rigorous, more focused nationwide blueprint for what students should know at each grade in math and English language arts.
• It seeks to improve the U.S.’s poor educational performance relative to other countries’, making graduates “college- and career-ready” and assuring the nation’s economic competitiveness.
• It’s paired with new standardized tests to measure progress in meeting the new standards and to allow comparisons among states.
• Though developed without government funds, Common Core received a boost from Race To The Top, a competition for federal education grants, prompting unexpectedly rapid adoption.

Now Gates tried to convince his dinner companion that opposing Common Core was bad both for Koch Industries, which employs 60,000 Americans, and the rest of U.S. business. “Bill talked to Koch to understand what his concerns were and to explain what he thought was the potential and the promise for the Common Core,” says Allan Golston, president of the U.S. program for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “When someone doesn’t believe in what you’re doing, it’s important to engage with them.”

But Koch wasn’t willing to engage with Gates on the issue. Instead, like a senator politely brushing off a constituent, he gave Gates the name of one of his staffers who focuses on the subject and suggested Gates call the staffer. The Microsoft billionaire left empty-handed. (Both men declined to discuss their dinner.)

This extraordinary tête-à-tête is just one example of how the war over Common Core has personally engaged—and bedeviled—some of America’s most powerful business leaders. Hugely controversial, it has thrust executives into the uncomfortable intersection of business and politics.

In truth, Common Core might not exist without the corporate community. The nation’s business establishment has been clamoring for more rigorous education standards—ones that would apply across the entire nation—for years. It views them as desperately needed to prepare America’s future workforce and to bolster its global competitiveness. One measure of the deep involvement of corporate leaders: The Common Core standards were drafted by determining the skills that businesses (and colleges) need and then working backward to decide what students should learn.

Organizations such as the Business Roundtable have devoted considerable effort to the initiative. The education chair for that association of CEOs, Exxon Mobil  XOM -1.59%  chief Rex Tillerson, has played a particularly prominent role. A stern, commanding figure with an Old Testament glare and a chewy Texas drawl, Tillerson is an unlikely person to lead a campaign of persuasion. (Never a fan of the press, he declined to speak to Fortune for this article.)

Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, has led the Business Roundtable’s advocacy for common core. The staunch Republican has found himself accused of promoting big government.Photo: Susana Vera— Reuters

But Tillerson has taken on the challenge with trademark intensity. He has pressed other CEOs to join the cause, spread the word by appearing at education summits, underwritten TV advertisements, and personally called legislators in multiple states to press for their support. His company went so far as to cut off campaign contributions to some politicians—even those who support the oil and gas industry—who spurned Tillerson’s entreaties on Common Core.

Other companies have been much more timid or have retreated in the face of the controversy. For example, General Electric  GE -2.22% —once among Common Core’s biggest supporters—has fled the fight after becoming a Tea Party target. “There’s a somewhat unwritten rule that if you’re a CEO, you only get your business involved in an issue that rewards your company in some fashion,” says former Intel chief Craig Barrett. Education reform is “such a hot topic,” especially as Common Core made it “more of a tar baby,” that “it’s sometimes difficult to get people enthusiastic,” he adds. “A lot of people just sit on the sidelines.” Adds Barrett, with exasperation: “It’s turned into a political food fight instead of an education discussion … The hope is that rational minds will prevail.”

This is a story about the role Big Business has played in the war over Common Core: how a handful of executives helped turn a decades-old ambition for education reform into reality, their fumbling bewilderment at finding themselves assailed by opposition they didn’t expect or understand, and how they’ve regrouped and rallied to defend what they wrought. It’s a high-stakes conflict that has generated breathtaking political flip-flops (see “The Flip-floppers and the Wafflers”) and upended traditional alliances, turning natural bedfellows into bitter enemies. It has seen some of the nation’s foremost capitalists accused of promoting an “immoral,” “freedom-robbing,” “socialist agenda,” aimed at turning America’s children into “mindless drones for the corporate salt mines.”

Along the way it has reinforced the depth of a growing divide that once would have seemed inconceivable: the gap between America’s most ardent conservatives and Big Business, which the former increasingly view as part of an undifferentiated “establishment” and hence nearly as odious as government. For now, Common Core has established itself in the vast majority of states and seems to be taking root. But the conflict over this issue shares many traits with the crusades over Obamacare, and one of them is this: Its most fervent opponents show not the slightest sign of relenting.

Protesters outside a State Board of Education meeting in Irvine, Calif. in 2014.Photo: Anna Reed—The Orange County Register/Zumapress.com

For decades, CEOs have bemoaned the state of U.S. education—with justification. American 15-year-olds ranked 27th out of 34 industrialized countries in math, and 17th in reading in the most recent international tests. Colleges complain that significant percentages of their entering freshmen require a remedial course. Businesses say they How Business Got Schooled in the War Over Common Core Standards - Fortune:

We're Thinking About ADHD All Wrong, Says A Top Pediatrician : NPR Ed : NPR

We're Thinking About ADHD All Wrong, Says A Top Pediatrician : NPR Ed : NPR:

We're Thinking About ADHD All Wrong, Says A Top Pediatrician

Diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are up around 30 percent compared with 20 years ago. These days, if a 2-year-old won't sit still for circle time in preschool, she's liable to be referred for evaluation, which can put her on track for early intervention and potentially a lifetime of medication.

In an editorial just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, Dimitri Christakis argues that we've got this all wrong. He's a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Children's Hospital in Seattle.

Parents, schools and doctors, he says, should completely rethink this highly medicalized framework for attention difficulties.

"ADHD does a disservice to children as a diagnosis," Christakis tells NPR Ed.

Here's why. Researchers are currently debating the nature of ADHD. They have found some genetic markers for it, but the recent rise in diagnoses is too swift to be explained by changes in our genes. Neuroscientists, too, are finding brain wiring patterns characteristic of the disorder.

But the current process of diagnosis amounts to giving a questionnaire to parents and doctors. If they identify six out of nine specific behaviors, then the child officially has ADHD.

"If you fall on this side of the line, we label and medicate you," says Christakis. "But on the other side of the line, we do nothing."

This process is, necessarily, subjective. But there's an awful lot of infrastructure and, frankly, money behind it, especially in our education system. A clinical diagnosis of "chronic or acute" attentional difficulties gives public school students a legal right to special accommodations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. But a child who falls just short of that diagnosis is left without any right to extra support.

Christakis says that, instead, we should be thinking more about a spectrum of "attentional capacity" that varies from individual to individual and situation to situation.

Think of it as a bell curve: On the far left would be someone like Thomas Edison, Mr. "Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration," laboring for weeks or months on a single problem. On the far right is someone with severe ADHD.

Attentional capacity, Christakis says, is chief among a cluster of non-academic skills that education researchers have recently become very excited about: executive We're Thinking About ADHD All Wrong, Says A Top Pediatrician : NPR Ed : NPR: