Run Like Hell From Common Core Scam Pushed by UFT/AFT and DOE/Deformers

Imagine someone trying to sell you a car with a speedometer but no engine.... Patrick Walsh, Raging Horse Blog

Patrick Walsh nails the common core.

Somehow in the frenzied production of all these Common Core based paraphernalia, both city and state failed to insure the production of the element most essential to the possibility of the Common Core having any kind of real educational success.      Somehow both city and state failed to produce a curriculum.  It is difficult to overestimate how grand a failure this is.

There's a scene in the movie "Lincoln" where he does geometry - If A=B and B=C then A=C -- easy and obvious -- not so easy 2300 years ago.

Let me change the equation: If UFT/AFT promotes common core and the DOE/Obama/ed deformers promote common core then UFT/AFT = DOE/deformers and you better run like hell.

I really don't need to know much more. I have my own simple formula: If the union and the deformers agree then it must be bad. Don't bother me with the details. I'm against it.

Now there's lots of amazing stuff out on common core.

See Susan Ohanian's constant onslaught as in this recent post:

Substance went over the top in illustrating my latest Common Core expose, but alas they are offline at the moment. Here's a more modest presentation:
http://susanohanian.blogspot.com/2012/11/heres-how-common-core-assessments-plan.html

The words are the same. George Schmidt has provided lots more pix--with captions.

I can't remember if I sent this cartoon:
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_cartoons.php?id=821

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Common-Core Deal in Florida Sparks Legal Feud
Jason Tomassini and Nikhita Venugopal
Education Week
2012-11-14
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=375

Florida signed a $20 million contract with 'a consulting and software development services company' to build a website planned to prepare teachers and students for the Common Core. Now they are suing each other.

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Middle Schoolers in a Common Core World
Mike Evans
Pearson Always Learning
2012-11-19
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=374

And when you go through the ratio example you'll see that the Pearson computer whizbang wonder--supplanting old-fashioned textbooks for those who feel the Lorelei call of the global marketplace--produces fish swimming in seaweed.

Here's a good one by Paddy Walsh at Raging Horse with some excerpts below (READ IT ALL HERE).

The Common Core: Putting Corporations First. Always

Except, it seems, when tending to the needs of corporations like Pearson and their  (equally misleadingly named ) Common Core State Standards, currently  being presented to the nation as the panacea to all that ails American education.

Not to mention the millions of dollars to be made in the production and sale of Common Core based tests, Common Core Text books, Common Core guides, and Common Core learning aids and accessories of every conceivable (and inconceivable) kind.

In the place of a curriculum, New York City and  New York State   have offered teachers and administrators  the Common Core Standards and sample “bundles”,   implying that said standards,  said “bundles,” and curriculum are more or less the same thing, an error that no one even vaguely knowledgeable in or concerned with education would ever make, not to  mention those determined to “put kids first.”
This is, of course,  one of the many problems with allowing people with little no educational experience  — think Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Dennis Walcott — to completely remake  an education system.
But, in typical fashion,  it has become the problem, not of those who created it but those who must deal with it.  That is to say, teachers.   For New York City and New York State, the solution to their failure to provide curriculum for their teachers is to have teachers write curriculum.   No matter that it is not the responsibility of teachers to write curriculum. (Teachers are meant to write lesson plans from curriculum not lesson plans and curriculum. )


The imperative, it seems clear, is to ram the unproven, untested, unknown entity called   Common Core State Standards into the very center of the educational lives of these   kids and their teachers as fast as possible, ready or not. Now.  Before it’s too late. There’s not a moment to spare.
Let the chips fall where they may.
After all, hasn’t Arne Duncan spent the last four years criss-crossing the country  enlightening all to the notion that  “education is the civil rights issue of our time?” Didn’t Condoleezza Rice declare at the Republican National Convention that education is now a matter of national security?
Seen in those glaring lights,  the absence of a curriculem seems almost petty.
On the other hand, on what planet can this kind of educational malfeasance be considered   “putting children first?” And what about that tricky issue of accountability? Who is responsible for this ?  How is it possible that a screw –up of this magnitude is allowed to go by not merely without heads rolling, but   without barely   a peep in the press?   Where are the hedge funders weeping copious tears for the poor children now?  Where are the apostles of accountability with this travesty?
The larger question, of course, is what is the priority here?  It is kids or corporations?  Is it to help make kids “college or career ready” so as to compete in the ever more savage global economy?  Or is it to shovel millions of taxpayer dollars to Pearson and associates   on Common Core accessories before most people even know what Common Core is?
“ We’ve been working really hard around Common Core, said Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, whose educational experience consists of one year teaching kindergarten.     “We’ve been really light years ahead of the rest of the state in terms of the implementation of Common Core but at the same time, we’re ready for the new curriculum to be put in place as well.”   Asked when that might be, Walcott replied, “I don’t know.  I’ll let you know.”   That was last month.

What we are witnessing here is the slow motion creation of a system that is built to be too big to fail.  It is built to be too big to fail because there is simply too much money to be made in its implementation.  Millions and millions on tests alone.  It will generate more tests than have ever been seen before on planet earth.  That is not hyperbole.  Because of Common Core, writes Diane Ravitch, “Our children shall eat, live and breathe tests, from birth to the end of their education.”

If nothing else the Common Core  is a virtual industry on a scale hitherto unknown in American education. We have seen this before, of course in other fields.   We have seen it with Goldman Sachs or Fannie Mae or any number  of colossi, too big to fail operations that failed anyway and almost brought the entire world  down with them.  We have just never seen this kind of thing   in education before.