In this opinion piece by Massachusetts Education Secretary Paul Reville he explains that the manifesto titled “Every Child A Winner!” inspired the 1993 Ed Reform: “We meant that all students — each and every one — should be able to succeed at high levels.  By adopting the Common Core, we’ve set a clearer, higher target for educational success.“  His opinion seems to revolve around achieving said success by repeating such non specific ideals as:

We should accelerate the implementation of our new “Innovation Schools” model, which has already resulted in the creation of two cutting-edge schools just six months after the passage of the governor’s legislation. We need to continue implementing our six regional “Readiness Centers,” which bring educators, school districts, colleges, and other partners together to address core educational priorities. In short, it’s time to move beyond setting standards to implementing educational strategies which will help our students achieve our high expectations.

Just reading that gives me a headache.  We can implement and innovate on the cutting edge all we want but without textbooks, teachers, supplies and facilities all the innovation on the planet can’t implement learning.

Looking at the results of almost 20 years of reform I can’t say any child has come out of this a clear winner.  Now the Massachusetts Department of Education is backpedaling and attempting to spin its adoption of Common Core Standards as  raising the Ed Reform bar to the next level.  According to the Mass DOE press release last month: Launched in June 2009, the Common Core State Standards Initiative is designed to develop and implement a single set of national standards in ELA and math to define what every student should know and be able to do in order to be fully ready for post-secondary education or a successful career. Massachusetts played a leading role in the development and review of the standards over the past 13 months. Curriculum experts and educators from across the Commonwealth reviewed and submitted comments on drafts that were incorporated throughout the development process to ensure that the expectations set in the final versions met or exceeded the state’s strong standards for students.

Here we are taking our broken system (much like the health care debacle) and inflicting it on the rest of the country.  Then we adopt this new version of what we already do and call it innovation and reform.

The real motivation behind adopting these standards is monetary.  Just six days after announcing the adoption of Common Core Standards the Governor also announced Massachusetts earned a finalist position in the second round competition for Race to the Top funding.

What will Massachusetts do with this money?  The last time I read their RTTT application their primary focus seemed to be data warehousing.  The link t0 the most current application at the bottom of Governor Patrick’s press release is broken.  Of course receipt of this money is set to be revealed in time for the new school year in September – just in time for the government to use it to supplant existing funding as they did with the previous stimulus monies.

Data warehousing would be a great tool if we were giving our students every opportunity and yet they still weren’t successful.  Until we no longer have classrooms without textbooks, sports teams without equipment, schools sharing nurses and class sizes in the mid 30′s it doesn’t take someone with a PHD in education to tell you why students aren’t achieving.  So while our Ed Secretary wants us to believe every child is a winner… I believe the real winners are sitting on Beacon Hill hoping for more money to waste in the name of education and innovation.

I’m certainly not a fan of the MCAS but I can’t say that adopting the Obama’s Common Core Standards will make me any happier about the current state of education for our children.  Massachusetts currently has one of the highest standards in the US so it is surprising that Governor Patrick would acquiesce to the national standards and give up this piece of local prestige.  I’m also disturbed by the willingness of states to give up their rights on such an important issue for the opportunity to compete for an ever smaller piece of funding.  This is just selling out the education of our children for table scraps from Washington!

The political posturing up on Beacon Hill will probably take much of the summer.  My guess is this is a deliberate attempt to take focus off the budget issues that plague our state and let everyone pretend they are doing the best they possibly can for the children.  I especially love this little gem mid way in the article:

Reville sought to tamp down worries that the adoption of national standards would mean an end to MCAS. He said whether the state adopts a new assessment to match the national standards is a “separate” discussion and that Massachusetts is “under no obligation” to do so.

Really?  So we’re planning to adopt the national standards and then make the children still test to the old standards?  We’re under no obligation at all to see that we’re actually teaching to the standards we’ve promised to adhere to?  Then why make the change at all?

While we’re discussing the new Common Core Standards and how Massachusetts fares maybe we should also look at some of the other states.  Perchance we can learn something from California as their standards are “clearer, more thorough and easier to read than the common core.”  Or use Pennsylvania as a cautionary tale of where we could be.

What isn’t discussed in the debate about education is the way our school rating system is structured in Massachusetts and if this will change.  If a charter school fails to meet its charter then the charter is not renewed and the school is closed.  If a public school fails to meet its obligations to students and is failing then we toss more money at the school and allow it to restructure.  The schools which are performing the worst get extra resources and then when the scores improve the resources are taken away.  What exactly is the benefit of success under this model?

RTTT has attempted to push this in the other direction by rewarding those schools with the best plan going forward for achievement and rewarding the schools with the highest achievements.  Unfortunately education doesn’t work this way either.  As long as we are required to educate all of the students in our state regardless of their capacity or desire for such formalized education it is impossible to apply a one size fits all assessment of the success of such a system.  We need to stop treating the education of our children like the herding of cattle!

Massachusetts is looking to reapply for education grants provided through President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program.  I can’t say getting the grant funding would be a bad thing but I have no confidence that getting the money will result in a net benefit to municipalities.  I’m reasonably sure based on the last round of stimulus funding that Massachusetts will cut plenty of other things because stimulus funding will cover it.

Race to the Top is part of the education portion of the ARRA Stimulus that guarantees the children educated under this farce will inherit more debt than ever before imagined.  I had thought nothing could be worse than NCLB – sadly our government proves me wrong yet again!

Apparently these stimulus packages are a 21st century version of the New Deal.  Our government has decided it can save us through extraordinary debt if they can just word it correctly:

It is an unprecedented effort to jumpstart our economy, create or save millions of jobs, and put a down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges so our country can thrive in the 21st century. The Act is an extraordinary response to a crisis unlike any since the Great Depression, and includes measures to modernize our nation’s infrastructure, enhance energy independence, expand educational opportunities, preserve and improve affordable health care, provide tax relief, and protect those in greatest need.

A down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges that comes with a very large mortgage added to the previous mortgages already on our futures for a current total of $12 trillion.

I didn’t really want to discuss the economy no matter how much it alternately terrifies and infuriates me.  I want to discuss Race to the Top and how this will not benefit our students one whit.

First, the President doesn’t understand the concept of having a race with winners and therefore losers.  He makes a very impassioned speech about only rewarding the most innovative states with much needed cash – thereby leaving the rest of the states to follow these “trendsetters” and somehow implement the same programs without funding; then he discusses opening opportunity evenly and equitably across the nation. From his remarks at Graham Road Elementary School:

And here’s how Race to the Top works.  Last year, we set aside more than $4 billion to improve our schools — one of the largest investments in reform in our nation’s history.  But we didn’t just hand this money out to states that wanted it; we challenged them to compete for it.  And it’s the competitive nature of this initiative that we believe helps make it so effective.  We laid out a few key criteria and said if you meet these tests, we’ll reward you by helping you reform your schools.

(snip)

We’ll open up opportunity — evenly and equitably — across our education system.  We’ll develop a culture of innovation and excellence in our public schools.  And we’ll reward success, and replicate it across the country.  These are some of the principles that drive Race to the Top.  These are some of the principles that will drive my forthcoming budget.

So which is it Mr President?  Are we giving everyone across our nation the opportunity to earn a top quality education or only those who live in the most competitive districts across our country?  Should we all move to Tennessee and Delaware to get our children into a winning system?

Second, I read the reviewer’s comments on the proposal Massachusetts laid out for the Race to the Top grants.  Even if Massachusetts succeeds in winning grant money they have indicated to reviewers that it will be spent to: invest in the data systems and technology necessary to support the Pre K -12 teaching and learning system, strengthen and expand educator training and supports for data use, and make state longitudinal data available to researchers through the EDW. (from page 3 of the above linked pdf)  Don’t count on textbooks or teachers or innovative programs or technology or tutoring – we will instead receive new data to describe how little our children are actually learning and instruction for our teachers in how to interpret and use that data.

The application submitted by Governor Patrick waxes more eloquently on the matter but at the top of page 13 they cut to the chase and say that all of their achievement “hinges on the development of a robust state data and information infrastructure.  Through RTTT we will transform our data systems so that they can efficiently deliver comprehensive, accessible, actionable and timely data to all Massachusetts K-12 educators and key stakeholders; invest in technology to support the preK-12 teaching and learning system and associated assessments an a more effective educator workforce; and strengthen and expand training and supports so that educators can use data effectively to inform instructional decisions.” Considering the amount of time our teachers already spend doing non-instructional tasks I can’t see this additional layer of data entry and evaluation as a bonus to education anywhere.  Will we be designing an extra prep period for all of our teachers so they can interpret data daily?  I get that data is important for evaluation purposes but we cannot supplant our children’s education with it.

Third, the hoops aren’t always worth jumping through.  Massachusetts has spent a lot of time and money working on plans and proposals and in negotiations with the various unions affected by the Race to the Top guidelines.  This is grant money with very hefty strings attached over how the money can be used and whether we’ve met the criteria to get the rest of the money.  Some states have already given up. Those who haven’t given up are frantically trying to up their scores by pandering to the sections of the application worth the most points instead of truly assessing the educational needs of their districts.  I found an interesting evaluation of the assessment system used for Race to the Top here. (that pdf links from here)  Massachusetts is examined on page 7 and the writer brings up an interesting point.  The “common standards” being adopted by a consortium of states may be lower than our own in state standards – and we were docked points based on the state’s willingness to allow its people to decide whether or not we wanted to lessen our standards to be more in line with the nation.  How exactly is dumbing down our curriculum considered education reform?

Finally, I cringe whenever we discuss MCAS and testing and data driven evaluations.  We’ve taken to relying too much on two subjects, Math and English, and how the results in these two subjects are portrayed in our MCAS results.  We’ve forgotten as a nation (as is evidenced by Race to the Top) that our education is based on more than regurgitating our math facts and answering essay questions based on story snippets.  We’ve cut the budgets so far that we’ve eliminated any programs which would give our students the opportunity to stretch their creative learning styles.  We’ve gimped them globally by slashing foreign language lessons.  We’ve hindered their ability to pursue careers in anything other than Math and English by offering an ever dwindling variety of courses.

Our children need a quality education today.  They can’t wait for us to argue over reform and beg for stimulus money that may never come.  We need our children to get a quality education today.  We can’t shake them in 12 years like an etch a sketch and start their educations over when something better comes along.  We need to get out of our communities and speak louder than the politicians and get government out of the education process.  Perhaps our legislators need to go back to school to remember what education truly is about?

With the controversial and delusional piece of legislature known as No Child Left Behind up for renewal – educators across the nation look to Washington to see how changes in this law will affect how our children are taught in the upcoming years.  More importantly changes also affect how our children’s learning will be assessed going forward and whether the system of penalties only will yield to one of incentives.

Everyone knows leadership is important.  Good leaders inspire those who follow them through respect and dedication and hard work.  The “because I said so or you will be punished” mentality that doesn’t work on small children also doesn’t work on grownups and fails even more spectacularly when applied to education reform.  The NCLB law as written under the Bush Administration required 100% proficiency for all children by 2014 or else the districts would be punished in a variety of ways.  Districts who met their goals weren’t punished but they weren’t praised either … they simply were ignored.  Unfortunately the closer we come to 2014 the more districts fell into the punishment category.  By 2014 the dream of 100% proficient children will be gone but the reality of 100% of school districts under duress will be realized.  Congratulations on that stellar piece of leadership President Bush.

President Obama has outlined changes to the law that give school districts some much needed funding and support.  The Race to the Top initiative also works to give struggling districts help with tutoring children and professional development for educators – if you meet the federal guidelines.  Haverhill’s application went in about a month ago.  I cannot stress enough how our Superintendent is proactive in these initiatives.  He has consistently worked to be first at getting our district and our children assistance from every possible source.  If only he truly had the support of a School Committee who worked as diligently as he does – imagine the wonderful things Haverhill could accomplish.