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jcd writes:
"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the primary backer for the inBloom educational grading and service (which also acts as a platform for third-party applications), is catching flak for its role in encouraging the outsourcing of US Education. The article (cited by RMS today) argues that though the Common Core is a scary new concept that takes power away from state and local school governance, the real danger is allowing corporate enterprises to have so much control over our classrooms. The Washington Post also reports a case where Pearson included corporate logos and promotional materials inside its test booklets."
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Backlash for Gates Foundation's Education Plans
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tangaroa on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:12PM
Ana Marie Cox has a fascinating ability to hold two contradictory items in her head at the same time. She starts off saying that nobody has heard of Common Core, then spends three flag-waving paragraphs attacking the Republicans, half of the electorate, who have been complaining about Common Core for years. Later she says that Common Core is not a federal program. It's just that the DOE "has promoted it heavily" and "the Obama administration has essentially drafted it as a de facto set of official national standards." By the same logic, the Iraq War was not a federal program. It was formulated and promoted by the Project For a New American Century, a nonprofit organization; the Department of State promoted it heavily; and the Bush administration essentially drafted it as a de facto strategic policy.
The Republican criticism has been largely unconvincing, mostly in the form of blaming Common Core for any badly written assignment from any classroom [pjmedia.com] without even attempting to show a relationship between the assignment and whatever the Common Core standards are. Whereever they may have a point is where Cox attacks hardest with mockery and denial. Cox laughs away, as "wistful steampunk dystopia" about "stormtroopers" and "biomechanical monitoring", reports that opponents of government policy are being banned from school board meetings [michellemalkin.com] and biometric scanning of students was pioneered by a school district in Florida at the request of a capitalist business [michellemalkin.com]. If these reports came from anyone other than Michelle Malkin the Republican, Cox might be promoting them herself.
Part of the Common Core standards (allegedly) is that states must develop compatible and highly detailed databases of student information. [edweek.org] While the information may today be private and separate, there are plenty of corrupting influences who would want the information and may bend the rules to get it: advertisers, credit reporting agencies, background check companies that build psych profiles of job candidates for employers, the police, foreign intelligence agencies. However, Cox assures us it is "Tea Party paranoia" to worry about the corrupting influences of capitalism or the feds spying on the public.
When Cox finally does declare that there is one politically acceptable reason to oppose Common Core, it is this: people have found a way to make money off a government program by providing desired services to the government. People can write textbooks that meet the new standards. People can automate the correction of standardized tests. They can sell these services to school districts. That to Cox is too much capitalist influence in education, but it is not capitalist influence in education for Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch to develop the school curriculum and use the wealth earned from their businesses to pay school districts to implement it.
All that Cox accomplishes in the article is calling Common Core names: "capitalist", "outsourcing". This namecalling marks Common Core as the enemy so that it is now politically correct to oppose Common Core without worrying that one might be condemned as a Republican and Tea Partier and then become ostracised from one's favoured social circles. Like in the Republican complaints, there's not much in the way of analysis.
So... does anybody out there know what the Common Core standards actually are?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Blackmoore on Tuesday February 18 2014, @10:48PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/w p/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-com mon-core-ravitch/ [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/w p/2013/06/18/the-common-cores-fundamental-trouble/ [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:06AM
A set of definitions of what should be taught in grades K-12.
From the math standards, here are the Standards for Mathematical Practice [corestandards.org] that describe the overarching goals, and here is an example of some specific content specification [corestandards.org]. Both aspects are important. You can navigate to the rest of the standards from there.
Such standards are not new. Prior to the CCSS every state would have their own document serving the same purpose as the 'content specifications' which would form the basis for their own compulsory state tests.
The 'Standards for Mathematical Practice' are a departure from typical state standards - and they are anything but standardized-test-friendly!
Standardised testing is not new.
Outsourcing testing to large publishers is not new.
Judging both students and teachers simplistically based on their students' scores in standardized tests is not new.
At worst, the standards create a 'single market' for this sort of thing and allows 'standardization' of tests country-wide rather than state-wide.
NB: most 'standardization' is based on statistical models that assume there exists a 1-dimensional measure of 'ability' in the subject at hand, that all the questions on the test measure. Discuss.