Stop Common Core from being embedded in the ESEA !

The GED, the General Educational Development test, is produced by the American Council on Education. In 2011, it  partnered with Pearson and the GED was aligned  with the Common Core State Standards. Pearson is heavily involved with both the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and with Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) which are the assessment consortia developing assessments for the Common Core State Standards.

Beginning in 2014, students taking the GED took the revised test aligned with the Common Core State Standards

According to the e-newsletter SCENE, about 540,000 students earned their GED in 2013. In 2014 with the changes in the GED, that number has dropped to about 55,000. Read the article.

Some states have stopped requiring the GED and have begun to require alternate testing. See the map.

The GED’s new alignment with the Common core means that even students that were homeschooled must become knowledgeable about the Common Core standards if they want to earn their GED.

The new GED test will not only flunk more students but will discourage many from even attempting the exam.

As we said before, robo-graders just evaluate whether a piece of writing contains complex sentences, long words, observes the punctuation and grammar conventions, and has other writing features which can be programmed into a computer. The computer can’t tell if the writer has made factual errors. According to Les Perelman, Director of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “E-Rater doesn’t care if you say the War of 1812 started in 1945.”

To prove his point, he and three students from Harvard and MIT created an app which generates essays that  the robo-grader will deem well-written, according to the algorithms of its programming. They call their program BABEL– Basic Automatic B.S. Essay Language Generator.

Read their hilarious essay. The essay received a top score of 6 points.

Now, because of Perelman’s criticisms–which the assessment company cannot refute–the Educational Testing Service is refusing to cooperate in further verification trials. See the article about Mr. Perelman being censored.

“Automatic Scoring Engines” are the growing rage among education “reformers” as a tool for grading writing assessments. What are they? “Robo-grader” is a more understandable description.  Some may point out that computers have been used to grade tests for years. Yes, but the tests in the past were normed, standardized, multiple choice tests with right or wrong answers. Now we have assessments with open-ended response and essay questions.

We have been told repeatedly that the old multiple choice tests are inaccurate and inferior; essay questions help assess the higher order thinking skills.

So please explain, why are my child’s higher order thinking skills being assessed by a computer which has absolutely no higher order thinking skills????

Les Perelman, a research affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been critical of robo-graders, one example of which is the Educational Testing Service’s (ETS’s)  “e-rater Engine” which is part of the Criterion online writing evaluation service. Students taking the Graduate Record Exam would be evaluated by this capability. Other companies such as Pearson Educational Technologies are also developing similar capabilities. Pearson’s is called “WriteToLearn.”

Perelman says, the problem is–the computer cannot discern truth from falsehood; it can only evaluate the length and difficulty of words in the response, the lengths of paragraphs, the grammatical rules followed, and other programmable elements of writing. The essay could contain glaring factual errors or complete nonsense yet still follow the writing conventions required.

The Educational Testing Services is using the e-rater for students taking the Graduate Record Exam to enter grad school. In the future, this type of robo-grading technology could come to Washington State K-12 Schools. It was referenced in the Memorandum of Understanding between Washington State and the Federal Department of Education when Washington State signed on to be the lead state in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

Read the article, “Facing a Robo-Reader? Just Keep Obfuscating Mellifluously”.

It’s not about what Johnny can learn from his e-tablet; it’s about what the e-tablet can learn about Johnny.

Early in October (2014) the federal agency, the National Science Foundation (NSF),  awarded $4.8 million to a consortium of universities whose task it will be to develop an extensive data collection, storage, and sharing system. The purported goal? To collect massive amounts of data on students to improve instruction.

The data project is called LearnSphere–a typically ambiguous name.  What is being learned? It appears that faceless bureaucrats and researchers will learn information about the students that the students and parents have no idea is being collected–and without parents’ or  students’ permission. Data will be collected on teachers as well. Will they have the option of refusing? Most likely not.

A senior advisor at the NSF states, “”We’re now able to collect massive amounts of information on individual students we weren’t able to collect 10 years ago.”

Education Week writer Benjamin Herold  writes that the data “would likely include, for example, records of every mouse click a student makes when using a software program and information demonstrating a student’s thought process..”  and quotes the lead researcher as saying,  “we have shown some pretty interesting results in being able to detect different [emotional] states from keystroke data.”  (emphasis added)

This grant is only one of several NSF grants dedicated to data-collection.

Read the article.

Although data collection is not found within the Common Core Standards themselves, other federal initiatives mandate the extensive collection of personal student information, and the two Common Core Assessment Consortia must allow the federal government access to the data. In addition, there are many other data-collection initiatives, some of the begun many years ago before the Obama Administration. Jane Robbins of the American Principles Project explains data collection under the Common Core.

Here’s another good example of an expression that means different things to different people: School Choice.

Of course people want choices. Who wouldn’t? However, often various education choices are either deliberately or unintentionally mixed together. Private school, homeschooling, online schools, vouchers,  and charter schools are often mixed together as “choices,” but there are big differences.

Private school, homeschooling, online schools, vouchers,  and charter schools are often mixed together as “choices,” but there are big differences. Within these choices, private schools, homeschools, and non-government online schools are independent of government money. In homeschooling and independent online schooling the parents are free to choose a curriculum that fits the child and the parents’ goals for that child. In private schools, the directors of the school choose the curriculum, but must be responsive to the parents’ wishes. However with government online schools, vouchers, and charter schools, all funded by government money, there are strings attached. Various aspects of the education the child receives will be dictated by the state. For example, currently in Washington State, all charter schools must follow the Common Core Standards.

There is a more insidious difference with government-funded education options. They work to destroy representative government. With charter schools, the school board members may be chosen by the charter corporation, not elected by the parents or taxpaying citizens, and thus they are really not accountable to the parents or taxpayers. Some say parents can “vote with their feet” and withdraw their children, but what about taxpayers who don’t have children in that school? They still have to pay taxes for that school.  In New Orleans, all the schools are charter schools, so the people there are disenfranchised with respect to the schools.

I rarely defend the current public school system, but at least the structure is compatible with representative government. The people elect the school board, and the school board makes education decisions for the district. If the people are dissatisfied, they can elect different school board members. I admit, in reality different political interests tug in multiple directions and a sort of stalemate often occurs, but the structure still honors representative government. In the Charter school system the parents’ voting input is so indirect that they are effectively out of the governance structure.

Many people think charter schools are akin to a free-market option. If the government is funding the school and controlling the curriculum, how can it be a free market option?

Please read Anita Hoge’s commentary, “Common Core, Choice, and Charter Schools.” Please be aware that even though the Obama administration is directing the development of Charter Schools, as well as promoting the Common Core and data collection, these concepts have been promoted by people from both parties for decades.

Kindergarten used to be a place to paint pictures, play with clay, make friends, and learn a few social graces. Now it is a place to be assessed and started on the path to be molded into human capital.  What has happened to common sense?

Some teachers are beginning to speak out in defense of their students. Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post writes about a Florida teacher who refused to administer one of the Florida kindergarten assessments, the FAIR test. See the article.

Although she feared she would be fired, she just couldn’t bring herself to subject her students to the assessment. Her gutsy stand led to the principal’s decision to drop the assessment. Read the follow up story.

This trend of early assessments started before the appearance of the Common Core Standards and Assessments. Now that data collection through the Race to the Top and other mandates has become a priority, the assessment machine starts in kindergarten or earlier, giving rise to such non-governmental organizations as the Early Childhood Data Collaborative. The assessments drive the curriculum and facilitate the data collection.  It isn’t even clear whether the assessments reliably or validly measure what they’re supposed to be measuring, or whether constantly assessing students actually improves education. We appreciate people like this brave teacher who speak out against them.

While Common Core math is making kids frustrated, it’s also driving parents and grandparents crazy. If you haven’t yet seen the video about the convoluted way of adding 9 + 6, you can view it at the link below. The focus is on the the process, ostensibly to teach “higher order thinking skills”, but it causes confusion, not higher order thinking. Read the article.

This convoluted, “constructivist” way of doing math did not originate with the Common Core, however. Fuzzy math has been around for years. See the Washington State manual, “Teaching and Learning Mathematics” which shows on page 58, that believing that math is about finding the right answer is a mathematical myth. In the past, states and districts had more flexibility to use the the methodologies of their choice, but now the Common Core Standards along with the Common Core Assessments embed this constructivist method into the curriculum for all participating states.

It’s up to you, parents and grandparents. If you want your student to truly understand math, YOU must teach them!

Common Core Standards are causing much concern among parents of school-age children. Parents of young children should also know that there are Common Core Standards for younger children as well. Experts have analyzed the K-3 Common Core standards and are critical that no one on the development panel has any expertise in early childhood development! Read the article from the Washington Post.