Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?

Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?, by Mercedes K. Schneider. Teachers College Press, 2015, 245 pp,  $29.95 was reviewed by Edd Doerr.

A “common core” of K-12 education in math and reading sounds like a good idea on the  surface, given the complexity and mobility of our society, but the controversial “Common Core State Standards” system (Common Core or CCSS for short) that started off late during the Bush administration is nothing so simple. Mercedes  Schneider, a veteran public school teacher and author of the important 2014 book, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education  (which  I reviewed in Voice of Reason No. 128 at Arlinc.org), traces the development and “selling” of Common Core in this well-researched, carefully documented report on the who, how and why of this  little understood movement in the schools that serve nearly 90% of our nation’s kids. This book is essential to understanding what is happening in American public education today.

Now, to get to the heart of the matter, let’s all too briefly summarize Schneider’s opus, quoting the author. “CCSS is a hurriedly produced product intended to impose high-stakes outcomes onto those without power over it. In general, CCSS is not owned and valued by those  required to institute it – current American public school teachers and administrators nationwide. This alone makes CCSS destined to fail.” Common Core grew out of George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind,” with its “dependence on high-stakes testing outcomes to ‘prove’ that education was occurring – or else.” CCSS was largely pushed by big-money entrepreneurs and so-called “reformers” with little actual connection to teaching, including such conservative school-voucher-promoting outfits as the Fordham Institute,  headed by one Chester Finn, appointed in 2015 to the Maryland state board of education by Republican governor Larry Hogan. (Years ago Finn was a speaker at a Catholic University conference on vouchers; I was there and heard him declare that he was “ashamed to be a Jew” because the main Jewish organizations opposed vouchers; a prominent rabbi in the audience responded appropriately.)

Schneider explains that two groups, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, got “their unsuspecting state education systems” to commit to “what would be a set of inflexible standards tied to punitive assessments,” a set-up that “did not emerge from teacher practitioners and other education stakeholders.” And all this before the CCSS had actually been created. She shows that the CCSS was never field-tested before being foisted on the states by the federal government.  She concludes that “In the name of educating children, profitability assumed center stage – an exploitation that is indeed tragic for its corporate-serving end.” Then: “Those who love and respect the locally controlled American classroom  -- and resist its takeover by profiteers or by right-minded but misguided nonprofits who, for funds received, must produce studies, plans, influence, and results – need not despair.”

Schneider’s conclusions are worth citing. “We  need to put an end to policies and programs that betray our vulnerability for worshipping standardized test scores. Test-centric education allows for incredible scapegoating and profiteering even as it bankrupts our children’s education experience.” And: “A second lesson is that CCSS is principally the creation of those outside of the K-12 classroom. . . . There was no piloting of CCSS, and this incredible oversight continues to be excused by CCSS promoters. . . . [It] reduces public education to a dollar sign.”

The emphasis on endless testing in just two subjects tends to stifle other subjects, such as social studies, the arts, phys ed, languages, etc. Note that the respected 2015 Gallup education poll showed that fully 67% of Americans polled agree.

A short review  cannot do justice to this powerful, important, 5-star book. It needs to be purchased and read by everyone who cares about the future of education in our country.

For a 2014  interview with Mercedes K. Schneider see 

Bill Gates and the Push to Privatize Public Education

Scott Walker & Public Education

by Edd Doerr

We continue to have newly announced candidates for Prez.  The news recently was all about Scott Walker’s announced run for Prez. Here is the response I posted re the Washington Post’s 7/14 editorial on the matter. My comment left out that Walker signed a bill promoting “abstinence only” sex ed in schools.  

Scott Walker has made it abundantly clear that he is an enemy of public education, women's rights of conscience, religious freedom, and our constitutional heritage of church-state separation.

He has worked overtime to undermine public education by increasing the diversion of public funds to special interest (mostly faith-based) private schools, a plan that has been a manifest failure in Wisconsin and other states, while cutting back on public school funding. He strongly supports having government force all taxpayers to support religious institutions that divide kids along religious, class, ideological, ethnic and other lines. He has attacked the University of Wisconsin, whacking its budget.. He has been working hard to shrink women's rights of conscience on abortion, seeking to impose his own narrow values on all women. He has made clear that he has no respect for the rights of working people. He seems unfamiliar with his own state's constitution.

To top it off, Scott Walker says that "My relationship with God drives every major decision in my life." Walker claims that "I needed to be certain that running [for President] was God's calling. I am certain: This is God's plan for me."

This unhinged college dropout evidently wants to turn our country into something resembling Ayatollah Khomenei's Iran or a fundamentalist caliphate. Walker would turn the Oval Office into the Offal Office. 

Majority of Americans give public schools high marks

Edd Doerr, president, Americans for Religious Liberty, Silver Spring, Md. notes this posting in the 

Herald-Mail   ----   June 20, 2015

Majority of Americans give public schools high marks

This letter is in reference to Larry Smith’s June 18 letter criticizing Allan Powell’s June 12 column on Nevada’s unconstitutional lurch toward school privatization.

While our public schools, like everything else, can stand improvement, 40 years of annual Gallup surveys of public opinion on educational issues have shown that two-thirds of Americans consistently give an A or B rating to the public schools attended by their own children. And Maryland public schools consistently rank among the best in the United States.

Can our public schools be improved? Yes. And leading educators have shown how — with more adequate and more equitably distributed funding, smaller classes, universal pre-K education, wraparound social and medical services, enriched curricula, serious efforts to deal with the poverty that afflicts more than a quarter of our kids, and an end to the diversion of public funds to special-interest private schools that tend to fragment the school population along religious, ideological, social class, ethnic and other lines.

School privatization is definitely not the answer. As educators Christopher and Sarah Lubienski show in their 2014 book, “The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools,” any apparent advantage of private schools is due to their undemocratic selectivity.

Further, as Powell noted, millions of voters from coast to coast in 28 statewide referenda have rejected all devices for diverting public funds to private schools by an average margin of 2 to 1. In Maryland, voters defeated tax aid to private schools in 1972 and 1974 referenda, as did Washington, D.C., voters in 1981 by the astounding margin of 89 percent to 11 percent.

Finally, most state constitutions ban tax aid to religious institutions (about 90 percent of private schools are run by religious organizations) because, as Bill of Rights architect James Madison made clear in his 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, it is a violation of religious liberty for government to compel citizens to support religious institutions, their own or anyone else’s.

School Choice Letter Omits Research, Distorts Polling

 Edd Doerr suggests that this letter was published in Education Week on June 15 might be of interest

“School Choice Letter Omits Research, Distorts Polling”

Paul DiPerna’s letter touting school vouchers and education savings accounts (“Governor’s School Choice Essay Ignores Research, Critic Says,” May 20, 2015) conveniently did not mention the research and published findings of University of Illinois education professors Christopher and Sarah Lubienski showing that the apparent private school advantage is due to those schools’ selectivity (The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools, University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Further, the results of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice survey in Delaware that were mentioned in Mr. DiPerna’s letter should be viewed with skepticism as, according to the group Americans for Religious Liberty, they run substantially counter to the results of 40 years of Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa education polls and 28 state referendums over the years, such as those in Hawaii in 2014 and in Florida in 2012.

Dennis Middlebrooks 

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Polling Vouchers for private schools

by Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty (arlinc.org)

On August 20 the Washington Post ran this story, “Poll: Common Core support has eroded across the US”, regarding the new Gallup/PDK poll.  Below is the comment I posted in the Post on line – Edd

This story does not give a very complete view of the new Gallup/PDK poll. Here is what was missed:

Vouchers for private schools are opposed 63% to 37%, almost exactly the % by which vouchers or their variants have been rejected in 27 statewide referenda from coast to coast. Republicans favor vouchers 52% to 48%. Democrats oppose vouchers 77% to 23%. Independents oppose vouchers 63% to 37%.

67% of parents give an A or B rating to the public school attended by their oldest child; 50% give an A or B to the public schools in their community; 17% give an A or B to public schools nationally. What this seems to mean is that parents give a good rating to the public school they know most about, but fall for the barrage of anti public school and anti teacher propaganda dished out by conservative media with regard to schools nationally.

The biggest single problem facing public schools is lack of adequate funding. So say 32% of all respondents, 45% of Democrats, 33% of Independents, but only 21% of Republicans.

Most Americans are vaguely familiar with charter schools but are widely misinformed: Only 50% think that charters are really public schools; they believe they are academically selective by 68% to 29%, which is correct; half believe that charters may teach religion, which is wrong because they are publicly funded; by 54% to 33% they believe that charters are better than regular public schools, while the 2013 Stanford CREDO study found that 3/4 of charters are worse or no better than regular public schools despite their obvious and acknowledged selectivity advantage.

I really wish that the Post would do a better job of reporting on educational issues.
 
Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty (arlinc.org)