Showing posts with label Stotsky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stotsky. Show all posts

ALEC wants our Schools


I discovered a copy of ALEC's Report Card book v18

The general academic feeling is the report card fails.  I think they missed the point of the publication. That happens when you are an academic and still believe order and reason are viable goals.

It is fitting that ALEC begins the v17 version with this paragraph:
In World War II, Great Britain suffered a series of crushing defeats. From the conquest of her continental allies and an ignominious evacuation at Dunkirk to the loss of Singapore in the east, Great Britain was under attack. Germany stood as a colossus with its boot on the throat of Europe. Under the assumption there was no way to win, “realistic” members of the British aristocracy advised reaching an accommodation with Germany. Winston Churchill refused to surrender while the Royal Air Force successfully fought off the German Luftwaffe over the skies of England, deterring a German invasion.
Yeah, WWII, the days of Hitler and the Big Lie. Perfect.
"All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."
—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[1]
All too true. It never occurs to us regular folk that someone would actually -- and on purpose -- tell moutain size lies which fabricate whole political systems. Not only tell them. but then go to the trouble of making several web sites and then writing a full book on the subject. It boggles the mind.

And then we see what Larry Krieger did last year with AP History. The whole thing was a swindle -- so he could get his book business back. Not a single thing he said had an ounce of truth to it, except when he would admit that there was nothing wrong with the AP History course.

As I went through the pages of this ALEC "report card", I found myself making little notes in the margins about the Aggressive Persuasion tactics that were both being described, and being used by the manual. It is a marvelous example of how to acquire people to spread your propaganda, and train them at the same time. It is poetry in motion to be honest.

ALEC has an Education Task Force. They have nine of these "task forces" that are staffed with Think Tanks, such as the American Principles Project, and the Heartland Institute (both highly recommended propaganda outfits by the way. The cigarette companies give them great reviews) who hire people like James Milgram, Sandra Stotsky and Jane Robbins. You'll recall the three of them from the Math Wars days and also how the created the turmoil around Larry Krieger's  AP History swindle last year. They didn't really care about Larry, or the AP. They were after David Coleman, the main guy with Common Core. ALEC doesn't like Common Core. It stands in the way of taking apart the Education System and then making a profit off the parents.

The Review of 2013's Version had this to say:
The 18th edition of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform draws on ratings from market-oriented advocacy groups to grade states in areas such as support for charter schools, availability of vouchers, and permissiveness for homeschooling. The authors contend that these grades are based on “high quality” research demonstrating that the policies for which they award high grades will improve education for all students. This review finds that, contrary to these claims, ALEC’s grades draw selectively from these advocacy groups to make claims that are not supported in the wider, peer-reviewed literature. In fact, the research ALEC highlights is quite shoddy and is unsuitable for supporting its recommendations. The authors’ claims of “a growing body of research” lacks citations; their grading system contradicts the testing data that they report; and their data on alternative teacher research is simply wrong. Overall, ALEC’s Report Card is grounded less in research than in ideological tenets, as reflected in the high grades it assigns to states with unproven and even disproven market-based policies. The report’s purpose appears to be more about shifting control of education to private interests than in improving education.
Sigh. Of course it is moving control over to the private interests. There is money to be made there, and we got to get rid of Common Core as well. A system that will give any lame, poor, backwater school system better educational materials than private schools can afford has to go.

Also, the teachers have to actually be teachers if the CCSS is in place and ALEC wants anyone "who feels the calling" to be able to be a teacher -- at minimum wage -- with no union of course.

I've been looking for versions 19 and 20. The propaganda resources alone are worth any purchase price. This is a whole National level disinformation and confusion campaign -- all planned and explained for you. I have some good tactics myself but ... I guess when you have a team of "think tanks" and a million to put into the effort, you can get more done.




More and More Benchmarking

It is not possible! It is Not Possible! It is Madness! It's Gates! It's Gates I tell you! He's The Devil!


Um... we'll get back to the raving maniac in a bit... just try to ... just don't make eye-contact.

I keep finding more documented benchmarking. It is getting to be a little tiresome actually. I'm wondering if we left anyone out? I'm sure we did. Why benchmark against countries whose idea of rapid math is counting the flies on a dead yak?

This one is kind of a cool find though. It is sort of a closer between Australia and the US. Recall from an earlier post that Micheal Watt pulled up a chair between 2007 and 2009, to watch two countries plan, develop, innovate and benchmark their way through creating Core Standards. He noted in detail the marked similarities and differences between the two teams, and how they proceeded from step to step. He did this across the Internet, as each team would announce their next goal, then publish methods, then publish International Benchmark information that was relevant, and then publish innovations to adapt and utilize, followed by publishing testing, then outcome.

Stotsky's Thoughts
on Stotsky's Criteria

Professor Sandra Stotsky loves to play the tune that the Common Core State Standards were not Benchmarked against International Standards.

As shown several times on many posts, this isn't true -- and not even close to being true for that matter, as the Common Core was Benchmarked against International Standards a recorded four separate times by over 100 people, and then the Validation team (29 individuals) benchmarked them again during that process over the period of six months. Since Stotsky really didn't participate in that process I guess she couldn't have known the extent of effort which went into it -- which brings up a few interesting questions:

  • Does Stotsky reference and utilize International Standards when she is evaluating or researching Standards? 
  • Does she even ask for the opinion or advice of others in the field? 
  • Does Stotsky see anyone else's advice or opinion more valuable than her own? 
  • Does Stotsky see anyone else's advice or opinion as equal to her own?
I have discovered a document that I personally feel, will give insight into the answers to these questions. I base this on the expansiveness and wide-range of investigation the project demands. The project is  covering many different beliefs and educational methods.  Being unfamiliar with that system and the method beliefs behind it, simply coming in cold and judging it -- disregarding the methods behind it completely -- would be highly unprofessional. If you were so crass as to do that, you would, of course,  be very careful to cite sources to qualify your disagreement with their methods. So one person tasked with such a project would, without question, start calling people to help out, and begin building a team of experts -- probably with a bit of panic in their voice as well.

Performing a review of the different standards of 50 States would seem to be such a project. Obviously your first task would be to gather a team of collaboration. As a point of reference to give an idea of the kind of task you are looking at here: evaluating the Common Core was assigned to a team of 29 highly skilled people, and took over six months to complete. That is the evaluation of ONE standard. Surely no single person could be such a megalomaniac as to feel that their experience could possibly cover such a wide range of belief systems and educational viewpoints.

Stotsky, Sandra. "The State of State English Standards, 2005." Thomas B Fordham Foundation and Institute (2005).
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED485523.pdf

"In 1996, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation asked me to do a detailed review of the state standards that existed at the time. Developing a review form with 34 criteria organized in five major sections, I reviewed almost all of the available state E/LA/R standards documents. The standards in 21 of the 28 states I reviewed had been tentatively judged by the AFT to be clear and specific enough to meet its “common core” criterion. My own review, however,published by Fordham in 1997, found few of these state standards capable of serving the intended purposes.

"Two years later, the number of states with approved E/LA/R standards had jumped to 49 (including the District of Columbia). At Fordham’s invitation, I under took a second round of reviews in 1999, using the same criteria. Published in January 2000, the completed report highlighted areas of strength and weakness in these 49 sets of standards and compared the changes since 1997 on 11 criteria. To my knowledge, there has been no detailed review of state standards for English language arts and reading since then."
*please to ignore the misspelling of the great and powerful English god - mine you may point out and ridicule at your pleasure, but not to make pointed humor at the Stotsky

This document covering all 50 states is written solely by Sandra Stotsky with no mention of anyone else helping in any fashion at all. There are zero citations. There are zero references. There are no validations of criteria. Her methods are not cited as being based on any other method at all, by anyone else. They are totally original work. It is enough, Stotsky believes, that Stotsky wrote the criteria, and the methods, therefore, are all unquestionably correct.

What she does have are Footnotes... which are publications she refers to in her "asides", little areas she is giving thoughts about. Of these seven Footnotes, (yes, only seven of her aside-commentary refer to other publications) she references herself twice, her company twice and the three that are left do not have anything to do with the development of standards, or the evaluation of standards.

AND -- I would laugh at this point but I'm too shaken up by the pure audacity of what I'm reading, which I would describe as bordering on psychosis except that she laughed and waved as the border flew by --

These footnotes and asides are not, in anyway, part of the massive study - they are part of a section she puts in at the end as sort of a hint that another study should be done on the Criteria for Hiring New Teachers for each State -- which, of course, Only Stotsky is capable or qualified to do. So, not only is she qualified to judge the Methodology and Educational Values of Every state in the Union, she understands the needs of every state so clearly, that she can evaluate their teachers as well.

So, Answer? -- No. (This answer covers all questions proposed) In fact, Stotsky deems no person or institution up to par except herself. The only time she brings up the standards created by others, is to ridicule them and demonstrate how they do not measure up to... Stotsky. Only Stotsky knows how to teach English. Only Stotsky can review with any accuracy at all, the Standards for teaching English.

All Hail Stotsky! 

Stotsky doesn't object to a National Common Core of Education Standards -- What she objects to is the fact that you didn't hire Stotsky to create it -- which she could have done over the weekend, and shown you how far advanced they were on Monday morning that the idea of benchmarking them against international losers was ridiculous.

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