The Observation Deck

There are many people trying to understand what Common Core is, where it comes from and what it means for Lakewood Students, Parents, Teachers and the city. To help understand all of the aspects as it is complicated. The Lakewood Observer turned to longtime supporter, writer, and educator Dr. Charles Greanoff.

Not only has he followed it from the first talk, he has looked at all of the various pluses and minuses that come with it. While complicated it becomes easy to understand when it is
broken down and explained, where it comes from, what it is, and what it means to Lakewood
Schools and how they will try to implement it better than others.

What always needs to be remembered is that this is not a LAKEWOOD SCHOOLS idea. It is
in fact a mandate that comes from the state, and is in place in 49 of the 50 states. If you
have kids in schools, know kids in schools or are interested in education, read this first
piece and watch fro the next two.

Dr. Greanoffs comments do not reflect any "official" comment from the Board of Education, the Teacher's Union, or anyone other than Dr. Greanoff.

But they are well worth reading.

http://lakewoodobserver.com/read/2014/01/08/common-core-part-1

Dr. Charles Greanoff is a History Teacher at Lakewood High School, and has a Phd in psychology.

.

.

Hi Jim, as a quick point of clarification (and I may be wrong on this), there are 45 states that have adopted Common Core. Alaska, Nebraska, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia have all opted out of it.

http://www.corestandards.org/in-the-states

I ran across this interview with Seymour Papert and I think it's interesting in light of Dr. G's article.

whole interview here --> http://web.archive.org/web/19970116210111/www.multimedia.hosting.ibm.com/mmtoday/magazine/papert-1.html

Q: Can you pinpoint three major problems with education in this country today, and then, alternatively, three things that you think we're doing right?

A: Let me play on your words for a moment . . . what are "we" doing right? The biggest problem in education is that its thought of as a collective, centralized thing. The best things are not being done by we in the general sense, but by individual teachers, individual schools, individual writers.
Education in this country is a centralized command system, rather like the Soviet Unions was. There they tried to run an economy by making decisions in a central place and applying the same criteria and standards to everybody. It collapsed because it couldn't work.
In this country we take much the same approach. We think of creating national standards. We think of creating a curriculum that applies to all people. More than 99 percent of our schools divide kids into grades, each level teaching the same subjects. This centralization and uniformity is poison, and it makes it almost impossible for serious innovations to be tried.
On the local level, centralization means having a committee decide what the curriculum should be, what should be taught at each age, what education should be given to everybody. I don't believe some people should get an inferior education, but there should be choices in the type of education you can get. Educators talk a lot about choice, but it reminds me of Henry Ford "you can have a Model T in any color you like as long as its black." You can choose anything you like in school as long as its what everybody else is choosing.
This idea of uniformity is the worst thing, but alongside it is curriculum that was decided upon many, many years ago. Most of what we teach in mathematics is totally irrelevant to the world. There is no reason why children, why anyone, should know how to multiply fractions. I bet youve never multiplied a fraction in your life outside of school?

Q: Never.

A: If once or twice in your life you had, it still wasn't worth all the effort and money that was spent on programming you to do it. Remember my story about time travelers from the beginning of The Children's Machine? [see sidebar, "Time Travelers"] That somebody from the eighteenth century would recognize our schools today and understand whats going on there suggests that something is very wrong.

ps. I'm not looking for an argument or to take any sides. I just saw this interview on a website I was visiting and thought it was applicable to what I had read in the Observer.

Matthew Lee wrote:Hi Jim, as a quick point of clarification (and I may be wrong on this), there are 45 states that have adopted Common Core. Alaska, Nebraska, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia have all opted out of it.

http://www.corestandards.org/in-the-states

Matt

This is why, discussions work. As of today it is actually 46 states. Thanks for the note.


Shawn

While one can certainly say, the educational system certainly looks the same to outsiders
as it did in the 50s. We both know that is not true. Classrooms have brought in technology
and new facts to update curriculum. We also know that new teachers are more apt to bring
in new technology and new styles.

So the premise you present is wrong.

Where the premise presented by Dr. Greenoff is spot on.

This was the first of 3 parts. Chuck thought it was best and I agreed.

This is a mandate that comes out of making $$$$$ and privatizing schools. It does not
come out of what is best for the kids. So 8 years of "No Child Left Behind" flows into the
next nightmare "Common Core." There are many parts of Common Core that makes
sense, I like the algebraic thinking, and can see where it would have helped me in class.
But I cannot agree in any way shape or form, mandating GOOGLE ACCOUNTS for every
parent, teacher, student, etc.

I know you have a hard on for real books and printed material. Never mind they are the
most eco-friendly way to get information out. I understand that you have made a name
for yourself with new teaching techniques, and I give you credit for that, really I do.

But that is no reason to whore our children out to technology companies, that are not
even technology leaders in their own real fields. Especially when those companies have
proven time and time again they cannot keep information safe, off the market, or even
really care about security or the people they serve.

I could understand trading books for pads (not really, maybe computers, real computers,
not a Google Chrome) but I think we need to refuse the offer when it turns our children
and their parents into products to both monetize, and control. After all Data-Mining is the
real gold in these days.

But what do I know, I was brought up with stickmen and base 10 as cutting edge. From
what I can tell I am a complete failure.

,

Jim said:

Shawn

While one can certainly say, the educational system certainly looks the same to outsiders
as it did in the 50s. We both know that is not true. Classrooms have brought in technology
and new facts to update curriculum. We also know that new teachers are more apt to bring
in new technology and new styles.

So the premise you present is wrong.

Where the premise presented by Dr. Greenoff is spot on.

Jim--

I too am not happy with basically plugging our children into the internet so that they can attain their basic skills while every bit of their data is mined, and worse, what they learn is controlled by people's whose goal is profit. This is obviously about monetizing. I agree with you there.

I agree that we have to conscientiously do whatever we can to help our schools provide a good education to our kids in the face of this--good and bad-- our District did not choose this.

However, I have not been able to boil this down to premises, and I didn't see that Sean Wheeler presented any premise that could be reduced to "wrong"-- the excerpts he presented were more food for thought.

What do you see Dr. Greanoff's premise that you say is "spot on" to be?

What do you see as Sean Wheeler's premise that is "wrong"?

Thank you. This discussion is important-- meanwhile we have to remember that while we debate it, the debate is over in our schools, it's what they have to deal with.

Betsy Voinovich

Published on Apr 14, 2013
Presented by Joy Pullmann
Managing Editor of School Reform News
and an Education Research Fellow at
The Heartland Institute


__________________________________________________________
October 3, 2013
Common Core: The Great Debate
http://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/c ... eat-debate

Scott Meeson

Betsy

Dr. Greenoff's is spot on in the first of the three articles and each one.

This does not mean that Sean is wrong in the premise he puts forward which I took to be
"Schools and teaching have not changed, and there has to be a better way, why not..."

1) No way that we can opt out that I can see. The financial penalties could destroy a district.

Change simply for change sake rarely makes sense. Especially when built on flawed
premises, and the premise floated here is "Our Schools Are Failing" which is simply from
and artificial premise of testing and test scores.

Can education be improved? Always?

But not at the sake of privacy, loss of security, a faux scoring system, and the loss of many
of the things schools have always excelled at teaching the kids.

I am not against online schools.

What I am against is when this is done principally for a company's bottom line. When it
can create long lasting "life changes" without the very critical thought they claim to teach.

Google a company we are all familiar with, has never cared about security, or moving
anything forward without taking care of their bottom line FIRST. This is a very slippery
slope that parents need to question, and need to be aware of. But the question need to
be directed to the State, not the local School Board.



.

I guess the whole explanation that the Papert interview was just something I happened to come across while doing other research (on early use of the LOGO programming language) didn't come through clearly enough.

I wasn't putting forward a position, so no real need to turn this into a right vs. Wrong, Sean v, chuck thing. If anything the similarity I found was way more in the tendency for education to go through different forms of centralized and/or decentralized control and that much of what happens for the good in education comes less from a gigantic (or corporate) "we", and much more from local groups of change makers working towards meaningful change.

I think Dr. G's article is a valuable contribution to the conversation, and find no fault, and have no argument, with the connections he makes in the piece.

It seems that there are two distinct issues. What the educational standards are, and how the curriculum is being implemented.

If you watch the video that Scott Meeson posted, you can hear in great detail about the fact that the educational standards of the CORE are high standards. The curriculum is rigorous. You can take issue with whether students should still be learning to multiply fractions, but in terms of a work-out for the brain, and learning skills, with a focus on more practical applications the CORE standards seem good.

The main thrust of what Sean Wheeler's article was talking about was whether it was good for ANY centralized system to be applied across the board. That article certainly isn't "FOR" the CORE standards.

Jim, you seem to think that Sean Wheeler would be for the CORE because he takes full advantage of the internet and the ability to have many students online at once and sharing, to teach his classes. This is not all he does and his Maker School idea is extremely hands-on, in the classroom, not parceled out by Google.

There is WHAT is being studied and HOW it is being implemented.

Dr. Greanoff's articles is about removing the ability to educate our children from our local District and teachers, and having it given back to us by signing up to Google accounts, where we all know our children's data will be mined, and God forbid they come from poor families where they will be able to use a FREE computer, which will have ads down both sides of the screen-- tailor-made for that child because his work online is being monitored and collected, including all of his communication, ie "I wish I was paying Mine Craft right now.." Suddenly the newest Mind Craft app appears in the margins, making it so much harder to concentrate on multiplying fractions.

This is what is insidious, and wrong. It is important that we keep the issues separate so we can do something about it. The pro-Google people don't talk about implementation, they talk about the high educational standards of the CORE and say that parents are against them because they can't bear the idea that their kids will have to work harder. This angers parents who then are moved off the subject of the monetization of their children.

By the way, Jim, and Dr. Greanoff, and Sean, and Scott, does anyone have an idea of what they would do to stop the Google implementation of the CORE?

Betsy Voinovich

Betsy, Sean

I actually know for a fact that all three of us believe in certain facts, and certain trends in
education. Sean has brought and even designed some marvelous new programs to prepare
young people for future on this earth. Education by its very nature must evolve, and so do
the teaching methods.

But I personally believe implementation of Common Core borders on evil.

If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

This is where it pays to look both at the next step you take, and much farther down the road.

Now I do not have the stakes in the game that either you or Sean has. No kids, no teaching
credentials, very little deep thought outside of a couple meetings, reading some websites,
and looking at the lessons, talking with educators, administration, and other players.

Why would Google a multi-billion dollar company, jump in with so many free offers to help
America's students? Philanthropists? Certainly possible. Dedicated to Education for All? Makes
sense as one should be able to read to use their products. Or to monetize every inch of
both the products and the LIVES of everyone that it touches? And is this day and age where
everyone seems to be a total sluts with their most personal information, is it worth it?

Data is this day and age and going forward is the new GOLD. When the data is on people
over subject matter is it diamond encrusted platinum. When you can build those databases
from birth to death, piling on generations of information, well I would imagine those are
Rhodium values.

Then the companies, collecting this have shown no ability to protect this information, and a
great ability to monetize both information and peoples lives.

So who wins? Certainly those implementing, trillions. Certainly states, less and less money
will be needed so easier and easier to balance budgets, a bain of their existence. Certainly
School Districts, as they no longer have to "waste" resource on books, or other fancy stuff
in the classroom. Parents get them a pad, or Google gives them a "free" one. This appeals
to all, who doesn't want to carry a pad around? Teachers? Certainly for the short term,
especially those not motivated, as they can rely more on the Core. Those as old as me
remember when TVs appeared in the classroom. All of us know the teacher that would turn
it on 5 minutes into the class and turn it off as we left, educated! But this time, it takes on
sooner than later, the need for teachers. With TVs no testing, no engagement, even faux
engagement with a program not a person. So teaching can slip to the wayside, along with
that personal touch, that stops to help someone slower, or help someone faster. And then
the students, which have already been branded as some as "Never going to college anyway,
so why no train them for work at WalMart." College kids are in private schools, the arts,
and many of the things that make us human and Americans. But some will be so much richer
in dollar and cents, and so many others will be poorer in life skills, depth, and experience.

Applebees is phasing out waiters and waitresses! No doubt sped along by one of their servers
posting a receipt about customers having issues with their server's lifestyle.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/applebees-tablets-tables-customers-order-pay-automation/

Why? quicker service, better advertising, pads can be used to see movies or TV, and of
course entertain the young folks. Just swipe your card, and the download, err meal can
begin for all.

Remember when everyone gleefully got excited that Coke was putting machines in the
schools and that the schools would make big money from selling coke products? Well the
only thing that didn't get bigger was the school's bank accounts.

.
.

I think Dr. Greenoff's article starts off on the wrong foot, with a paraphrased statement that is passed of as a quotation, and a perhaps satirical misspelling of Arne Duncan's name.

But most amusing is the part of the quotation that is accurate, at least in that it repeats what Mr. Duncan said, and reveals that the man who is a champion of finer education, is functionally illiterate. Back to basic English, Mr. Duncan: our child is; our children are.

Please read this. I think it'll add to the conversation and says much of what I want to say better than I can say it. It doesn't provide answers so much as clearly lay out the landscape of the discussion.

"The Tyranny of the Datum" by John Kuntz
http://atthechalkface.com/2014/01/03/johnkuhntx-the-tyranny-of-the-datum/

Sean Wheeler wrote:Please read this. I think it'll add to the conversation and says much of what I want to say better than I can say it. It doesn't provide answers so much as clearly lay out the landscape of the discussion.

"The Tyranny of the Datum" by John Kuntz
http://atthechalkface.com/2014/01/03/johnkuhntx-the-tyranny-of-the-datum/

Sean

Good read, I am not worried about what the schools do with the data.

I am worried what all the rest do with the data.

When we bid on the Lakewood Schools website, one of the keys was security, and the
promise of security. I would say the biggest fear was security, especially when you looked
at out designs for what would become a spoke in a huge wheel.

But it would seem that concern has disappeared with the promise of FREE. Much like it has
with Facebook, twitter, etc. but then maybe security no longer matters. I see on the news
today that people shopping at Target have returned, with sales levels at pre-hacked totals. So that when an entity is hacked of millions of people's personal info, cards numbers, buying habits--hacked and sold on the black market--it would seem no one cares anymore.

I think we take real gold from Lakewood, and are trading it for some magic beans.

FWIW

Will, I am sure the typo is on production not on Dr. Greanoff, as he is very serious about
this and has been working on these 3 parts for some time now.

.
.