By Mary Grabar | February 19, 2014
Hillary
Clinton’s Think-Tank
“Conceived as the Democratic answer to the Heritage
Foundation,” the George
Soros-founded and funded Center for American Progress (CAP) was considered
Hillary Clinton’s think-tank at its inception in 2003. President and CEO John
Podesta, once Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, was seen as its nominal head.
CAP was viewed as “a kind of Clinton White-House-in-exile
– or a White House staff in readiness for President Hillary Clinton,” according
to Nation
reporter Bob Dreyfuss in his illuminating 2004 article
entitled, “An Idea Factory for the Democrats.” Many of those mentioned have
since populated the Obama administration, while CAP has become the president’s
favorite think-tank.
Dreyfuss, who quotes Hillary Clinton, writes, “We’ve had
the challenge of filling a void on our side of the ledger for a long time,
while the other side created an infrastructure that has come to dominate
political discourse. The center [CAP] is a welcome effort to fill that void.”
Podesta who has fulfilled the need for a “progressive
counterpart” to the conservative Heritage Foundation is now back at the White
House as presidential advisor. Neera Tanden the former aide to Senator Clinton
is now CAP’s president. Before Podesta’s recent departure, the policy
initiative known as Common Core became a major public
education project for CAP.
Explaining the
Plummet in Test Scores under Common Core
But students’ test scores are plummeting under Common
Core, especially in New York State. What is the solution proposed by the Center
for American Progress? A longer school day, of course. Never considering that
the standards themselves might be flawed, they make the unsubstantiated
assertion that drops in test scores show that the standards are more “rigorous”
and therefore require more time. That’s their argument in their recently
released report
called “Redesigning and Expanding School Time to Support Common Core
Implementation.”
One thing is for sure: the standards have never been
tested, and even proponents like Dr. Dana Rickman, director of policy and
research at the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, have admitted
that “It is believed they will lead to
improvement.”
Are we to trust the beliefs of those promoting Common
Core, like the authors of the report? One of them, Tiffany D.
Miller, associate director for school improvement, has among
other things been a fundraiser for the Democratic Party.
Two of the report’s authors come from the National Center
on Time & Learning (NCTL): David A. Farbman, a senior researcher, and David
J. Goldberg, vice president for national policy and partnerships. NCTL itself,
however, is an outgrowth of the Center for American Progress. It was “launched
in October 2007 at an event at the Center for American Progress in Washington,
D.C. featuring Senator Ted Kennedy,” and grew out of the work of a Boston-based
nonprofit, Massachusetts 2020, which led the first statewide expanded learning
time grant program in the country, according to Wikipedia.
NCTL was formed to expand that work to more states and to develop policies at
the federal level.
The report serves this effort: to expand the role of
public schools, fulfilling Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s vision of
“community schools” on a national scale. These would pretty much replace home
life by offering such things as homework help, three square meals, and health
clinics.
The “report” masquerades as a legitimate report. But when
one looks at the sources and methods used, it is clear that there is no real
review of evidence.
Questionable Sources and Grandiose Claims
The first paragraph signals more hype than evidence with
the grand claim, “Implementation of the standards, as currently planned in 45
states and the District of Columbia . . . means that the vast majority of
students will soon be held to the highest set of English language arts and math
literacy expectations in U.S. history.” This grandiose statement comes from the
Fordham Foundation, itself a promoter of Common Core and recipient of funds
from the biggest
Common Core funder, the Gates Foundation.
The report is full of such sweeping, unsupported
assertions and such frequently bandied terms
like “deep” and “deeper,” as well as “critical thinking.” In Common Core
promotional material such terms have become commonly accepted truisms; they are
repeated by proponents as if they were proven measurements. (These are unstated
references to Bloom’s taxonomy.)
The generalities abound: “Replacing lectures with
interactive learning between teachers and students, especially learning to a
richer and higher level, will require more classroom time, as teachers will
have to personalize their attention to individual and small groups of
students.”
The report’s authors quote a Chicago teacher who has been
told that she needs to be a “facilitator” instead of a teacher in order to
properly teach the Common Core standards. The source for the quotation is Catalyst Chicago,
published by the Community
Renewal Society, another progressive advocacy organization.
The report’s authors continue to bandy about terms that
imply intellectual sophistication: “High-quality expanded-time schools are
already using the opportunities inherent in longer classes to build in
individualized instruction, critical thinking, and problem solving. . . .”
The authors refer to a report by the “policy group
Achieve”: “Teachers will likely need more instructional time in order to teach
more rigorous, higher-level content in more depth and to integrate literacy
skills into their lessons.” Achieve
is the well-connected non-profit that was the architect for Common Core.
For math, the authors write, “Common Core will bring a
shift in focus from briefly and superficially covering many topics to studying
fewer topics in much greater depth.” The authorities they cite are Common Core
proponents: Educational Testing Service and EngageNY, of the New York State
Department of Education, which has adopted Common Core.
For math, the authors claim that fractions will be
introduced at earlier ages, but that as time goes on students will draw upon
their accumulated knowledge to solve increasingly complex problems—hardly a new
practice in education. What they don’t mention is that algebra is being moved
to ninth grade from eighth grade, and that the standards impose tasks on young
children far above their maturity levels.
Masking the Read Aims
Part of the overall (but often unstated) goal of Common
Core is closing the “achievement gap.” Proponents like to hide the fact that
slower learners will have endless opportunities to learn the material under the
cover of “deeper learning.” Consider these two sentences in the report:
“Allowing students to both try and fail and requiring
them to find more than one route to success will mean providing them with more
time to explore and learn on their own than is the norm in today’s classrooms.
Students will then be asked to explain their reasoning, a process that consumes
time but fosters still deeper learning.”
Such demands to demonstrate deeper learning have led to
bizarre math. Much of the parental opposition to Common Core has been
instigated by the math homework. To truly understand how convoluted the new
math is one needs to see the examples. One sign at an anti-Common Core rally at
the Georgia state capitol, on February 4th, did this and exclaimed,
significantly, “Parents Can’t
Help.” Indeed, parents are being cut out in more ways than
one.
The sign set side-by-side a long multiplication problem
under traditional math and then under the new Common Core math. One glance will
show how math is being unnecessarily complicated in the demand to have students
“explain their reasoning,” while allowing credit for those students who get the
wrong answer but provide pleasing explanations. (In English Language Arts, more
time is to be spent on “deep reading” and “deep discussion.”) This is one way
to close the “achievement gap.”
Indeed, the CAP report states that the aim of a longer
school day is to close the achievement gap: underprivileged students need time
to catch up. However, the authors also claim that a longer school day is needed
to teach the more rigorous standards. They want it both ways.
“Collaboration”:
More Money for Failed Progressive Teaching Methods
Another reason for the longer school day is for time to
“collaborate”—hardly a new idea in education,” as references to
such practices as “cooperative reading” in the 1990s
indicate. “Intra-student communication and collaboration” will presumably
prepare students for what they will encounter in higher education and the work
force. But this requires more time, even as the students seem to be left to
themselves: “Having regular opportunities for student collaboration
necessitates many group projects and the continuous integration of a technique
known as ‘turn and talk,’ where students discuss the topic at hand with each
other and seek to gain insights from their peers.”
Teachers are supposed to be “facilitators” to their
students, and spend their time analyzing student data and determining which
teacher fits best with which “cohort” of students. Extra time is needed for
teacher collaboration and “professional development,” presumably to improve
teaching. But as is the common wisdom among teachers, such “collaboration” is a
means to control teachers, to make sure they don’t go off script and improvise.
Of course, the longer school day means spending more
tax-payer money for keeping schools open and more pay for teachers. According
to the report, the Department of Education is already spending money on longer
school days through School Improvement Grants. Flexibility waivers allow
funding to be set aside for tutoring under the Supplemental Educational
Services program for “whole-school expanded learning time.” The 21st Century
Community Learning Centers waiver also allows in-school expanded learning time.
No doubt, there are cases where students require extra time and extra help. But
it seems that the longer school day will mean for most students time to sit in
groups endlessly discussing preselected topics with their peers, devising
byzantine ways to explain through drawings and stories their thinking on
otherwise straightforward math problems—all while gaining little actual
knowledge.
Collaboration, facilitation, critical thinking, etc., are
the hallmarks of progressive, student-centered teaching methods that have long
been demonstrated to be counterproductive. As Jeanne S. Chall stated in her
2000 seminal survey, The Academic Achievement Challenge, “The
major conclusion of my study in this book is that a traditional,
teacher-centered approach to education generally results in higher academic
achievement than a progressive, student-centered approach.” She found this to
be particularly true for students who came from low-income and middle-income
families, and had less school preparation. Unlike the authors of the CAP report
and the reports which appear in their bibliography, Chall was a scholar, a
Harvard University education professor and was recognized in the New York Times
as “having written the definitive analysis of reading research.”
The traditional teaching methods that Chall describes are
also much more efficient. But then again, efficiency and real education are not
what the Center for American Progress is about
This appeared here
and I would like to thank Mary for allowing me to publish her work.
Mary Grabar, Ph.D.,
has taught college English for over twenty years. She is the founder of the Dissident Prof Education Project,
Inc., an education reform initiative that offers information and
resources for students, parents, and citizens. The motto, “Resisting the
Re-Education of America,” arose in part from her perspective as a very young
immigrant from the former Communist Yugoslavia (Slovenia specifically). She
writes extensively and is the editor of EXILED. Ms. Grabar is also a contributor to SFPPR News & Analysis.
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