Selling the Common Core

I have to compliment Sonja Santelises on an excellent performance. She is obviously very intelligent and committed to her project. She brings a warm personal voice to the discussion about Common Core Standards (CCS) without being wonky and conveys a sense that she understands her topic in a profound way. Unfortunately, she confirmed all of my suspicions that her presentation would be a slick sales job.

She began by declaring that she was not going to address the "political" aspects of the issue, even in light of the "tsunami of opposition" because that would be distracting. Though I didn't like her dismissiveness of other voices, I could see her point. There were time constraints.  She then followed with two personal anecdotes about her father and her husband, both African American males who persevered and got college educations. Her expressions of love and pride for these two men who beat the odds were heartwarming. Of course, they did this before there was a CCS so what was her point? The point is that they were held to high standards by someone in the schools they attended. Done, again, before the CCS.

In Act II she began showing data from her PowerPoint. Here's where the academic sounding mumbo jumbo started flowing. She showed NAEP test questions and Smarter Balance questions, analysed them authoritatively, and boy are we behind. What occurred to me in this part of her presentation was how much it was like an insurance sales pitch. Build up some anxiety that we can then relieve. Actually, the entirety of Madison Avenue tries to do this, create the sense of need which can then be satisfied with product X. In this case the CCS and the ideology behind it was being promoted. She repeatedly said that there was no curriculum, that we were on our own to find the winning combination that would properly implement CCS. She also said that the only way we will know that we are succeeding is by testing and tests are very definitely a product that is for sale. Her presentation assumes that money is already spent.

A good portion (the best portion for me) was when she spoke about how crucial having high standards and expectations are for low income kids. There was very little to disagree with as she spoke authentically about her personal project of educating poor children. Though it was clear that she believes that holding the kids to high standards is crucial, I never felt that those standards had to be CCS. It seems as if any standards would work as long as they were used to teach goal setting and perseverance. And that teachers believed their students could achieve. This point is much more pertinent than any points she made about CCS.

There was a brief Q&A in which she fielded a question about gym and art. Of course, these are important but we don't test them. She expressed genuine concern that these are necessary parts of education but made no commitment. And that was the end of the show.

So her pitch was to convince us to embrace the CCS for the sake of equity and it was masterful on several levels even if the basic logic was flawed. I'm still not buying it. There is no connection between CCS and student achievement and the claim that there is no curriculum to buy is disingenuous. The tests are bought, there is certainty of failure, and curriculum salesmen are ready to support us. By denying politics at the beginning of her talk Santelises was also denying economics and denying economics guarantees a partial picture.

We will continue trying to fill in the rest.

What does a Corporate Ed Reform shill look like anyway?

At our last staff meeting the principal's chipper announcement was that we had a grand opportunity coming up in two weeks to hear a speaker who has taken a special interest in our school in conjunction with two other "poverty" middle schools. She is someone he heard speak at a conference and found her very inspiring and was eager to share and learn more about her way of serving students like ours in the public schools of Baltimore. 

She is Sonja Brookins Santelises and I'd never heard of her so, being the curious librarian type, I started doing some research. One of the first articles I found by her was Abandoning the Common Core Is Taking the Easy Way Out and it was written in her current professional capacity as Vice president for K-12 policy and practice of the Education Trust. 

Further research followed.

OK, so she's a Common Core apologist but what does that have to do with her coming to speak to our schools? I'm going to chase down just one idea at first and it has to do with the issue of the college readiness gap. Santelises seems to be peddling the idea that the Common Core will help close the gap by leveling the playing field at a much higher standard for all. But this idea is a product of magical thinking. It is also anti-diversity. Any standard imposed on a community from outside that community has the effect of imposing conformity, uniformity, interchangeability, assimilation and other psychologically intimidating pressures. This creates a complex stratification in society with a dramatic sort of thermocline between those who can conform to corporate culture and those who cannot.

Those who can conform are rewarded with access to corporate payrolls, even those from lower socio-economic origins. Those who can't are relegated to non-unionized service industry jobs. What the Common Core ideologues are peddling is that college is the key unlocking access to those plush corporate jobs. And here's where it gets interesting. It is worth going into debt to get the keys. Once you are in debt you need to keep those jobs to make payments and become even more willing to conform to the corporate vision for society, which is dangled in front of the eyes of those who don't conform in the first place unless they are willing to indenture themselves as well. 

Now there's a good reason for learning about integers!

I'm backing up a little bit because I made the claim that belief in the Common Core as a cure for our equity ills is the product of magical thinking. That needs a little clarification. I make this claim based on the fully fleshed out ideas of Stephen Jay Gould in The Mis-measure of Man. Human intelligence is not quantifiable. The most we can expect from our attempts to measure student achievement is our own confirmation bias. Other information gleaned may be interesting, mildly helpful at times, should never be prescriptive but is certainly in some way quantifiable. We have the ability to measure certain cognitive functions like memory or number sense. That does not mean we know how any individual will respond in any situation. Intelligence is demonstrated in an individual's response to an unknown situation. The Common Core standards are corporate standards for a corporate agenda and do not address individual accomplishment. Believing any of this will advance social equity is indeed magical thought.

I also claim that Common Core standards are anti-diversity. Standards are standards, how can they limit diversity? Yes, of course, it's not the standards themselves, it is the context in which the standards are used and everything that has been excluded from the standards. Differentiation plays no part in the Common Core standards. No information on student interests, talents, personality types, learning style, multiple intelligence or other preferences is gathered under the Common Core tent. Nothing of Civics or Ethics. Narrow standards.

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. After all I haven't met Santelises yet. She has a positive track record in Baltimore. It's just that I can't ignore the red flags with the Common Core and Education Trust. 

College readiness, college debt, corporate servitude, ed reform. 

There's lots of work for progressive educators trying to maintain a balance and make those needed checks too.