GEORGIA, NATHAN DEAL AND COMMON CORE

Get Rid Of Common Core

Despite terrible polling for Common Core especially from the Republican base in Georgia. Nathan Deal has chosen to appeal to the Edu-crats and double down on Common Core.

I spoke with Jane Robbins from the American Principles Project (AUDIO BEGINS AT 58:00) about what’s happening with Common Core in Georgia and South Carolina.  She tells me how Governor Deal is pushing Common Core along with the Georgia Department of Education by signing a 5 year contract with a new test aligned to Common Core which forces the state to be held hostage by these awful standards.  

Governor Nathan Deal needs a “Scott Walker moment.” Common Core was a done deal in Wisconsin and there seemed to be indifference from Scott Walker until very recently.  He read the tea leaves and realized that if he wants to ever have a chance at running for President and be the GOP nominee that he better get rid of Common Core.  Well, Governor Nathan Deal, your election is not a redstate lock by any stretch of the imagination.  You can listen to the poll dismiss-ers or you can make sure conservatives show up for you on election day.  It’s your choice. 

My interview with Jane Robbins of the American Principles Project starts at 58:00.

Illinois school district declines to collect data on infants for Obama-linked institute

http://eagnews.org/illinois-school-district-declines-to-collect-data-on-infants-for-obama-linked-institute/

Illinois school district declines to collect data on infants for Obama-linked institute

RIVER FOREST, Ill. – The River Forest School District 90 has declined to participate in a controversial data collection program involving infants.

The Sun Times reports:

The River Forest School District 90 board has declined participate in the first round of a data collection project by the Oak Park-based Collaboration for Early Childhood Education and Chicago-based Erickson Institute.

District officials said they will see how things go with the inaugural data collection and may join next year.

The data collection is part of an ambitious program, considered unique in the nation, to track and provide services to Oak Park youngsters from infancy through high school to improve their education outcomes.

The newspaper doesn’t elaborate exactly what data would be collected, who would have access to it or how it would be used.

And it misspelled the name of the Erikson Institute – founded in 1966 by Barbara Bowman.

Bowman’s daughter is Valerie Jarrett, who is a senior advisor to President Obama.

The Institute is described as a “graduate school for child development.” Barbara Bowman continues to serve on the board.

“Oak Park Elementary School District 97 already has agreed to participate in the data collection, and area private schools also are expected to be approached to join the study,” the Sun Times reports.

“We had talked about not seeing some clear positives, some clear pro points,” says District 90 board member Anne Gottlieb, according to the paper.

She who acted as the district’s liaison to the Collaboration on the project.

River Forest kindergarten teachers would have required to spend 20 minutes answering a 104-question survey for each child.

“District officials expressed concern that because of their contract, teachers might be willing to volunteer the time but could not be compelled to participate,” according to the paper.

District 97, District 200 and the village of Oak Park entered into a five-year cooperative agreement to fund the collection of data.

Each unit is required to pay up to $2 million to sustain the program.

Comments

Common Core: The Good, The Bad, and The Reality

http://mrsmomblog.com/2014/10/04/common-core-the-good-the-bad-and-the-reality/

Common Core: The Good, The Bad, and The Reality

Last year, I wrote the post “How Common Core is Slowly Changing My Child.”  It struck a nerve with parents and teachers across the country as we all were adjusting to the new Common Core State Standards. I wrote it on a night where everything went wrong and homework was a nightmare for my then third grade son. That day had also been particularly difficult at work as I had begun to teach the first common core module unit to my ninth graders. After the kids went to bed, I wrote. By morning, the response was overwhelming. Two weeks later, I still had parents commenting on the change they had seen in their children due to school.

A year later, almost to the date, the post is making its way onto people’s newsfeed again and I’m getting the same comments from concerned parents and teachers.  It’s been a year since I sat on my couch on that October night, angry at New York State for implementing these standards so hastily, but my thoughts are still the same.

Let me be clear:  I am just one teacher. Just one mom. I am not speaking on behalf of every teacher across the country, nor am I speaking on behalf of every mom of school aged children. But I do think we have a lot in common, and my experience over the past year speaking with teachers and parents across the country is that there is more harm than good that is happening with the implementation of common core.  The standards, in essence, have good intentions. Who can argue that raising the bar and giving all kids in every state a fair shot at these higher standards is a bad thing?  Like I said, the intentions are good.

However, the rushed implementation of these standards and the educational practice that has been going along with them has been nothing short of a disaster.

My experience with common core is first as an educator:  I teach it in my classroom at the high school level, and second as a mother: I see what my children are doing at the middle and elementary level. A line that I wrote in my first post that I did not articulate clearly enough addressed high school teachers and our role in common core: “But let’s work backwards: our high school teachers signed up for this. We can get our kids college and career ready and if we don’t, shame on us.”  High school teachers were angry at that, but what I meant is that since choosing to teach secondary education our goal has always been to prepare our students for the post-secondary education world, whether it be entering the workforce or entering college. Making our students “college and career ready”, the whole basis of common core, is nothing new to us.

What I did not know at the start of the common core implementation, was how common core would look in an elementary classroom, nor was I prepared for what it would do to my children.

The implementation of these standards has also introduced a new curriculum that many schools across New York State have adopted: modules. These modules can be found on the engageNY website, and from what I understand, schools in various states are also using the engageNY modules. Suddenly, rather than allowing teachers to use their expertise, experience, and knowledge to create units aligned to the new standards, teachers were now being handed scripted units to use instead.  Units that were not created by teachers, but rather large businesses that did not take into account the different demographics or needs of each district. These modules have taken the creativity away from the teacher. They have taken hands on activities out of the classroom and replaced them instead with close reads and textual evidence lesson after lesson. Our English teachers are now becoming Social Studies and economics teachers. One of the ninth grade modules had me teaching about hedge funds, Ponzi schemes, leveraged money and Bernie Madoff—to fourteen year olds. The modules I work with are age inappropriate, redundant, and boring.  I am doing the best I can to make them engaging and fun. Every teacher I know who is teaching using the modules, is doing the best they can with the materials they have.

The modules my children are using are no better.  The ELA modules at the elementary level are much the same that I see at the ninth grade level. Passages, close reads, annotating, writing using textual evidence. There is value in that skill. Being an active reader and providing textual evidence is an important skill that is integrated into all subject areas.  But where is the fun?  Yes, the fun.  Elementary school should be equal parts challenging and fun.  Our elementary school teachers are creating lifetime learners who love to learn. Taking the fun out of school is taking the love out of school. These ELA modules have replaced fun with “rigor.” The math modules are so complex that parents can no longer effectively help their children with homework.  We are working on homework for hours.   Last week, my husband and I spent an hour on the engageNY website learning a seventh grade math module lesson, arguing over how to solve for x and y and where to substitute k .  We are highly educated adults, not twelve year olds. How does this translate in an average seventh grade math class?  My guess?  Not well. I can tell you from the anger and frustration on my son’s face as we sat trying to force this concept on him that it has been a unit full of frustration. The same goes for our fourth grade son as well. Homework time at our house is usually met with tears and more often than not, broken pencils and frustrated foot stomping up the stairs to bed.

The concepts are simple. The lengthy process to prove the children understand the concept is not. The reasoning behind the in depth (sometimes six extra steps to solve a simple multiplication problem) is so the children have a better understanding of numbers and how they work. What parents and children are so frustrated about, however, is that our kids know the answer. But after six steps there is more room for error and more room for confusion. Which all leads to more room for frustration.

I stand by my statement that these challenges don’t make our kids feel like they are on the road to being college and career ready in fourth grade.  It makes them feel like failures. Why?  Because even though they know that 6×5=30, they still got the answer wrong on the test because they weren’t able to “decompose” the problem properly.

A year later, I still see a change in my son. My older son is rolling right along.  I wouldn’t say he is enjoying it, he complains about the module packets and the nonstop close reads, but he is faring well. My younger son is still struggling. He lost his love for school that he had in kindergarten, first, and second grade. He’s active in sports and participates in the school band which helps us motivate him to get on the bus but his attitude toward learning is negative. He believes he’s stupid even though we tell him otherwise and even though he is not.  We can’t get back these years with him.

But we can fight for him.

Please like and share if you are fighting the common core fight too.

You can find me on Facebook here

I’m also on Twitter here

Instagram here

Pinterest here

Thank you for reading!

Third Graders Face High-Stakes Reading Targets

Foundation For Excellence in Education center says the vast majority of high school dropouts did not meet third-grade reading requirements.

"...districts are embracing the concept. "We've seen lots of creativity like before- and after-school programs, bringing in senior citizens to help the children, using peer tutors," he said."

These third-grade reading guarantees are implicitly buying into the idea of a fourth-grade shift," she said. "Our data suggests there is no fourth-grade shift."

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5907272?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000020&ir=Education

Third Graders Face High-Stakes Reading Targets

Julie Carr Smyth AP 09/30/14 11:56 AM ET

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- The games, ice cream and play rehearsals that 9-year-old Joshua Rowell experienced during summer school this year weren't just for fun.

Joshua, like thousands of Ohio third-graders, had missed a state literacy target on a standardized test. He faced being held back in third grade unless his reading skills improved.

As fellow summer school students at Clinton Elementary School rehearsed a play, "The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf," Joshua said activities like playing word games, making recipes and practicing play scripts helped, but he also had to work on reading at home.

"Because of my homework, I would have to read 80 or 60 minutes," he said.

Across the nation, the 8- and 9-year-olds in third grade are increasingly feeling the pressure.

Since the idea was pioneered in Florida in 2002, automatic retention for unsatisfactory third-grade reading scores has spread to at least nine states, according to the Tallahassee, Florida-based Foundation for Excellence in Education, which tracks the movement.

In 10 other states, third-grade retention laws have certain caveats, such as giving parents a final say or requiring reading intervention before students can be held back.

The concept is based on education literature that describes third grade as a critical juncture for students, a moment in their education when they shift from "learning to read" to "reading to learn." Reading, in other words, moves from being a subject to be studied to become a tool to be employed. It's also popular among state lawmakers who believe the current education system allows for "social promotion," wherein students are passed to the next grade for social reasons even though they haven't attained educational targets.

Education officials where the idea has been adopted tout myriad benefits, as they face critics who say holding back third-graders is hard on kids and families and adds to the costs of education.

"This will have a positive effect on our whole state," the Florida Department of Education says in online guidance to parents. "It will reduce the need for remedial education in middle and high school and may lower dropout rates and juvenile delinquency."

In Ohio, where the Third Grade Reading Guarantee went into effect this year, more than 12,000 third-graders faced retention after the first round of reading scores were calculated in June.

But there was good news for 25,000 other third-graders who initially had missed the reading target; they now had passed. Many had signed up for summer school as a precaution, Clinton Elementary school principal Kathy Leffler said.

Third-grade teacher David Wilson, who taught the past two summers, said he's witnessed heightened anxiety during both the regular school year and in summer school since the retention requirement was put in place.

"I had one student who was throwing up every day" in the days leading up to the reading test, he said.

Alicia Priest, vice president of the Oklahoma Education Association, said her state's retention law was revamped last year to give families and teachers more say in whether a child stays in third grade or moves on.

"That snapshot of that child's reading on that one day in April was determining whether they should advance to the next grade," she said. "We believe you should look at the whole child: What are the other factors that might have impacted that test, their abilities in other subjects, the social issues involved if they're held back?"

The Foundation for Educational Excellence says any stress from adding retention requirements ultimately will be trumped by long-term benefits. The center says the vast majority of high school dropouts did not meet third-grade reading requirements.

Ohio Department of Education spokesman John Charlton said the state is providing additional opportunities for third-graders to earn a promotion score in reading. Beyond the end-of-year test, there was a follow-up exam in August, along with the option of taking one of three alternate assessments. Third-graders who are held back also may take the reading test again mid-year.

Joshua Rowell's mother, Char, said he thrived in summer school and got a score of accelerated on the August test. He's now in fourth grade.

Charlton said, "We're trying very hard not to stigmatize the student, which is very important to us and to families and educators."

He said districts are embracing the concept. "We've seen lots of creativity like before- and after-school programs, bringing in senior citizens to help the children, using peer tutors," he said.

The expansion of retention laws comes as a recent Dartmouth University study contradicts the widely-held notion that students stop learning to read in third grade.

Associate Professor of Education Donna Coch said her research looked at the elasticity of the brain when it comes to reading by comparing third-graders to college students. Her study found that third-graders' brains had not yet fully developed the processors that allowed the college students to see strings of letters and symbols as words.

"These third-grade reading guarantees are implicitly buying into the idea of a fourth-grade shift," she said. "Our data suggests there is no fourth-grade shift."

BUILDING THE MACHINE

http://youtu.be/XRrG6-g2jMk

DATA COLLECTION ALIGNED WITH EARLY EDUCATION EMPOWERMENT ZONES

http://decal.ga.gov/BftS/EarlyLearningChallenge.aspx

DECAL - Early Learning Challenge

Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge Grant

“Increasing the percentage of Georgia students reading on grade level by the completion of third grade has been a top priority of my administration. With this strategic investment in our state’s work, we will be able to ensure that more of our youngest students are positioned to meet this critical benchmark and thus improve our long-term economic competitiveness,” said Governor Nathan Deal.

Jointly administered by the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant provides funding for states to create an early learning agenda that builds and strengthens current early learning and development systems.

In December 2013, Georgia was named a winner in the third round of applications, receiving the second highest score among 16 applicants. The state will receive $51.7M over the four-year grant period, the largest award given to any state in round three. Georgia's application focused on expanding these five critical areas:

1. Building Successful State Systems
• Develop Early Education Empowerment Zones (E3Zs), where we will align supports, activities, and services in four geographical areas with large numbers or high percentages of children with high needs and improve infrastructure for high-quality early learning programs
2. Increasing High Quality, Accountable Programs
• Validate Quality Rated and expand research and data activities that will evaluate current and future efforts and support policy revisions
• Drastically increase program and parent participation in Quality Rated
3. Promoting Early Learning Outcomes
• Expand the comprehensive roll-out of the newly launched Georgia Early Learning and Development Standards (GELDS)
• Expand Georgia’s home visiting program, Great Start Georgia, by creating home visiting and family engagement hubs in 3-star child care centers in each E3Z
4. Developing a Great Early Childhood Education Workforce
• Increase articulation among institutions of higher learning to increase student success and persistence in achieving advanced credentials in early childhood education
• Expand SCHOLARSHIPS and INCENTIVES programs to increase the number of early childhood educators moving along a knowledge and career pathway
5. Measuring Outcomes and Progress
• Create a Task Force for Comprehensive Assessment to identify a single set of common child assessments with professional development and policy guidelines
• Design and implement a formative assessment that will be conducted during the first six weeks of children’s Kindergarten experience so each student receives a measurement of Kindergarten readiness that teachers can use to individualize instruction
• Expand the quality of data collected for children, programs, and educators by pooling additional, existing data feeds from participating state agencies to expand the Cross Agency Child Data System

For more information, please contact DECAL Deputy Commissioner for System Reform Kristin Bernhard at kristin.bernhard@decal.ga.gov.

To sign up to receive quarterly updates about the ELC, click here.

This is What Common Core Looks Like

http://www.erickerickson.org/blog/2014/09/30/this-is-what-common-core-looks-like/

This is What Common Core Looks Like

The picture above is from my third grade daughter’s math book. This is the only page that explains that method for subtraction. There are, for the record, four ways to subtract that my third grader must learn.

“The only champions of common core I know are paid to like it and most of them have no kids.”

This is the only page explaining that method. This is the only example. The very next page goes to arrays. The page after that goes to multiplication. This is it.

The traditional method of subtracting, borrowing and carrying numbers, is derisively called the “Granny Method.” The new method makes no freaking sense to either my third grader or my wife.

We send our child to a Christian private school. We thought our child could escape this madness. But standardized tests, the SAT, and the ACT are all moving over to Common Core. So our child has to learn this insanity. But we cannot help her. The book offers only one example.

This is maddening and angering and frustrating. This is why so many parents are so upset. They cannot help their children. The math makes no sense and seems to offer no practical purpose other than it is new. The teachers privately concede the uselessness of it.

But major corporations and government entities insist that it be done. Parents and children feel helpless. My wife wants to murder someone over it.

This is why Jeb Bush will not be President. It is also going to end very, very badly for many other politicians. The only champions of common core I know are paid to like it and most of them have no kids. These people want worker bees in their cogs. They want automatons. They do not want productive, independent citizens.