Jeb Bush Under the Microscope

In a June 23 Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Governor Jeb Bush and Joel Klein made a case in favor of national standards. "The Case for Common Core Standards" reflects their views on the rationale and importance of national standards:
The success of today's students will determine our nation's destiny. America's economic strength and standing in the world economy are directly linked to our ability to equip students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in the 21st-century economy.

However, Greg Forster, posting on Jay P. Greene's blog, that instead of making a case for national standards, Bush and Klein were actually making a case against them. In "Confusion of National Standards," Forster asks:

Bush and Klein argue that standards are being set nationally (in “common”) but pedagogy isn’t. Once again, let’s leave aside the reality that you can’t have national (common) standards while preserving freedom and diversity of pedagogy. Let’s pretend you can set national standards and then let a thousand flowers bloom on pedagogy. Why do it? Why is it valuable to set a single national (common) standard? The article’s title promises an answer to that question, but the article doesn’t deliver.

Read more here.
Equally interesting are the posted comments including this one:

"Joel Klein is the new education czar (CEO of the educational division) for News Corp, the parent company of WSJ. Those who have the media in their hands and foundation/government money behind them, plus other like-minded contacts in high places, exert an incredible amount of influence over education policy and funding. The WSJ op-ed by Bush & Klein made no case whatsoever to the rational person, as circular logic built on false premises is a conduit to deception."

For a fact-based review of the Common Core Standards initiative, go to the Truth in American Education here. This four-page document provides pertinent information so that non-educators can understand. Read it and decide for yourself.

Posted for Grumpy and Sandra

Footnote: Tennessee is beautiful and the grands are delicious. Hope you all have a happy and safe 4th of July. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA

Fishy

Libertarian View: Bill Evers Rejects "Common" Initiatives

Posted For

Sandra in Brevard


Bill Evers is on the list for Florida Commissioner of Education. However, given recent legislation, Race to the Top funding, and Florida's involvement in one of the national assessment consortium, his views may not give him enough points for serious consideration. Evers served under President Bush as Assistant Secretary of Education. He is now associated with the Hoover Institute at Stanford.

View a video of his views on common standards and common curriculum



Read the full transcript below:

TOP-Ed’s John Fensterwald interview with Bill Evers, May 2011

FENSTERWALD: I’m speaking today with Bill Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, specializing in education policy. From 2007 to 2009, Bill was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. He is what columnist Jay Mathews of the Washington Post—affectionately, I believe—calls “an inexhaustible trouble-maker.” The reason we have him here today is that he was a co-author and organizer of the so-called counter manifesto, “Closing the Door on Innovation: Why One National Curriculum Is Bad for America.” Bill, welcome!…

Bill, it’s a response to what? And take a couple minutes and explain exactly what is in this manifesto.

EVERS: It’s an extremely important topic because, for all of us that care about children, and children’s academic success, what teachers teach in the classroom, how they teach it, what instructional materials they use, what lesson plans they use, and how these are all put together, is the essence of what goes on in the classroom. Now, in the past, this has been a kind of thing that’s been decentralized in how it’s organized.

FENSTERWALD: Yes. And so what’s the point of this manifesto, Bill?

EVERS: Some people, particularly organized by a spinoff of the American Federation of Teachers called the Albert Shanker Institute, called for a national curriculum – in other words, a curriculum organized and sponsored by the federal government. And, to some extent, the Obama administration has been already doing this. It’s put millions of dollars into curriculum development aligned around a national framework.

FENSTERWALD: So this is all related to the Common Core standards, which 40-some states have adopted. So…what’s the goal here, Bill? Is it to stop Common Core? Is it to stop the—have Congress defund the—assessments for Common Core? What’s ultimately your objective here?

EVERS: I would say it’s mostly to turn around the testing and the curriculum-development piece of this. The original idea with these Common Core national standards was that the states and the state superintendents were going to put together some model standards that people could adopt and, hopefully, would gather a lot of support. But the federal government used its financial leverage essentially to compel the states to sign up.

Read The Rest

http://grumpythings.blogspot.com/2011/06/libertarian-view-bill-evers-rejects.html

Where Real Reform Must Start

Sandra found this interesting video and posted it first on Grumpy Educators..

Warning... this is a fast moving moving video



From Ken Robinson's Website
There is a paradox. As children, most of us think we are highly creative; as adults many of us think we are not. What changes as children grow up? Organizations across the globe are competing in a world that is changing faster than ever. They say they need people who can think creatively, who are flexible and quick to adapt. Too often they say they can't find them. Why not?

Why is it essential to promote creativity

What's the problem?

What can be done about it

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Common Core Standards Spur the Marketplace

Posted For

Sandra in Brevard




According to press reports, the Bill Gates Foundation and the Pearson Foundation are partnering to create "complete, online curricula" for English/Language Arts and mathematics, based on the recently completed Common Core Standards. The effort is to offer school districts across the county a smooth transition to implementing the standards. Six states have not adopted the standards, the New Hampshire legislature will vote soon to reverse their decision to adopt them, and a similar proposal was presented to the Massachusetts legislature. School boards, organizations, experts, and parents have concerns about the Common Core Standards and their implications. One group expresses these shared concerns in a document called "What Parents, Taxpayers, and School Boards Should Know."


The Gates/Pearson partnership will offer 24 courses using "technological advances such as social networking, animation, and gaming to better engage and motivate students." Four courses will be available for free through the Gates Foundation. The rapid development process will release the math courseware for secondary students, and English/language arts for elementary students in the 2013-2014 school year, with "accompanying tools" to follow in 2014-2015.

Teachers will be part of the development process as well as experts from abroad.

"

Officials from the two foundations also said they are working with a range of experts not only in the United States, but also from such countries as Japan, Singapore, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Australia in building the new curricula."

The article does not specify the precise type of input that will be provided by the international community.

Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, a former director of the U.S. Department of Education research arm, expresses concern over the initiative this way:

“The question will be, and it’s a reasonable one to ask: Who profits from this? People will have to profit from it; you can’t deliver education products into the marketplace for free. But it will be interesting to follow the money and see who manages to monetize the nation’s investment in common-core standards and assessments.

Nevertheless, Mr. Whitehurst said, it’s good to see someone tackle a curriculum spanning so many grades, so one grade can build effectively upon another. And done well, the work could serve as a valuable lever in the industry to prompt more curriculum development, he said.

Still, Mr. Whitehurst said, it will be a daunting task to complete the curriculum systems in three years."

What do you think?


http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/27/30pearson.h30.html?tkn=WNPFBe2J3HKGwyQI5rTI4uAlCURTf%2FytzB26&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2

Read all of Sandra's Education Reform Blogs at Grumpy Educators