This Teacher's Alarming Resignation Letter Shows How Much Schools Have Changed Since You Were A Kid

[ipaint]

15. You think this is about minimal standards? Seriously?

It's just about another major taxpayer money grab.

Everyone wants the best public education system. The people behind common core are not going to get us there. Their goals are not our goals, they are not democratic nor are they in the public good.


"But while the corporate-funded technocrats of the Democratic party are pushing their education policies down the throats of as many Americans as they can, inspiring more mobilization from the right, what is left of the union-supported Populist wing of the party is steaming mad. The Tea Party has been successful in its Grover Norquist inspired strangulation of government at all levels, and the Democratic Party is cooperating with corporate-led attempts to break public unions. The Obama administration has gone after teacher unions with a vengeance.

According to Head, most Americans can’t see the big picture because “CBSs (Computer Business Systems) are the semi-discovered black holes of the contemporary economy.” (3) He argues that Information technology is creating income inequality by driving down wages in the white-collar professions that could not be previously “Taylorized.” “By making us dumber, smart machines also diminish our earning power.” (3) In other words my doctor and I face the same set of issues: as machines and algorithms take over, our work can be divided into units and our efficiency can be statistically measured. We are in the same boat as weavers who worked the “putting out” system in the late eighteenth century—they were paid for each piece produced. In other words, corporate bosses are trying to push teachers, doctors, and all white collar-service workers into a work structure that is increasingly deskilled to justify lowering salaries and benefits, busting unions and professional organizations, increase productivity, and forcing all white collar workers to compete through the use of digitalized efficiency reports and student and student test data banks. This data will be shared with consulting firms like McKinsey to evaluate potential and current employees world wide. Troublemakers, union organizers, and those with low productivity and test scores will be funneled into the lowest-paying service jobs.

"The reason Mr. Gates and Mr. Duncan become very upset when states want to drop the Common Core, PARCC, data collection, or standardized testing is that all of these components are required by CBS. Pearson Education, a British company that gave ninety-four percent of its campaign contributions to the Obama campaign, is working with Microsoft and InBloom to scale up data collection. All of these companies are scaling up the de-skilling of the education workplace and they are breaking what is considered learning down to discrete, easily measured units. The global teaching profession at the school and university levels is being set up for work speed-ups with productivity gains going to management and investors. Assessment data for all teachers will be stored to determine salaries based on effectiveness as measure by student test scores. Students will also have their data collected and evaluated at each stage of their academic and professional careers. Based on McKinsey’s model of employment disruption, CBS and data analysis will be used to force white-collar employees to compete with employees around the world. Layoffs will be frequent to motivate greater productivity…."

http://dianeravitch.net/2014/02/27/paul-horton-common-core-standards-are-not-about-education-but-about-profits/


" Let me say for the record, if it need saying,
that I have no sympathy for the Tea Party. I want more government
support to alleviate social and economic problems. I want the
federal government to return to its role as a guarantor of equity,
not a force to compel states to enact policies that are harmful to
children and to public education. I want more funding for programs
that benefit needy children. I think their obsessive hatred for
everything associated with President Obama is absurd. I disagree
with President Obama about education, but I voted for him, and I
support him in other areas, especially if he is serious about
inequality, which is the cancer of our society. I oppose the Common
Core in its present form because I fear that it was designed to
make public education look bad, that it was designed as part of a
larger plan to measure every child and every teacher, and that it
was designed to enrich big corporations like Pearson and the dozens
of other entrepreneurs now sucking public money out of the schools.
Until teachers in every state have a chance to revise the Common
Core and make it developmentally appropriate, I will continue to
oppose it. Until the Common Core is decoupled from the Common Core
testing, I will continue to oppose it. The passing marks on the
federally-funded tests were set far too high for most students, and
we will see massive failure rates among our neediest students if
the cut scores are not readjusted to align with the reality of how
children learn and what they know and should know. The Common Core
will die a natural or unnatural death at the hands of parents,
teachers, school boards, and citizens if it is not open to
criticism and revision."

http://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/27/karen-wolfe-why-liberals-dont-like-the-common-core/