Common Core As “Technologically Necessary”: A Looming Shift In Sales Pitch?

The term Common Core is so negatively charged that Common Core State Standards (CCSS) proponents are trying their hardest to ditch the term– not ditch CCSS– just the term. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee suggested that states “rebrand” the CCSS product– give it a shiny new name in order to fool the public into thinking its gone.

In my own district, neither CCSS nor its PARCC test were mentioned by name in the letter home to parents regarding the upcoming PARCC pilot test.

In my remarks on March 2, 2014, as a member of the Common Core panel at the first annual Network for Public Education (NPE) conference, I advised that CCSS must die and that if it doesn’t, it could morph into another classroom standardizer.

Today (Sunday, March 16), I received this comment to my post on Bill Gates’ rallying teachers to support CCSS:

Just this last Thursday we had a rainmaker (“expert educator” and CEO) come to our town, Willard Daggett, who was brought here by our award-winning (NY State) superintendent, Luvelle Brown to speak to the “benefits” of Common Core and other areas of “college preparedness.”

In his hours of bloviating what you got from this was essentially that the “industry” is fast forward on technology at all costs. All of the new “techno-learning tools” were being lauded and at least w/Willard Common Core was scarcely mentioned and when done so he backed off his full-on support of CC. That I think in large part due to the firestorm surrounding it.

I believe we will at the least see a restructuring of CC and a re-packaging of it and a greater emphasis on shoving technology down the throats of every district. That certainly seems to be where the money is going at the moment. And from the capitalists point of view it makes sense as the schools will increase their debt burdens through the years w/this technological imperative meaning a constant revenue stream for all sorts of suppliers (Gates being only the obvious and largest financier) and the shutdown of even more schools who can’t keep up with the debt which of course then means even more transfer of public funds to private institutions. [Emphasis added.]

Technology in order to accommodate PARCC testing is indeed “where the money is going” in my district. On the same day that I found out that the class I teach for students who wish to become teachers (called STAR Teaching Academy) is to be cut next year due to budget issues, out computer labs are getting a complete upgrade in order to accommodate the testing tied to CCSS. Slowly but surely, all that is not “core related” is being choked out of the school budget.

At the same time that the “consequences” of PARCC are being “delayed” in Louisiana (not removed; not erased; just delayed), the pilot testing is still required. And that means money spent on the PARCC-required technology.

It makes sense, then, to “rebrand” CCSS into a technological savior. Turn the public’s attention away from the spending of so many millions on CCSS-assessment technology while programs and staff are being cut.

So, one of the ways that CCSS can morph and can make the money spent on technology appear tied to the “standards” (whatever they might be called in an effort to not call them CCSS) is to refocus on how useful untested CCSS will certainly be (tongue in cheek) for Promoting Technological Prowess Necessary to Compete in the Global Economy.

To this end, several web pages already exist in an attempt to sell CCSS (insert new name here) as a Technological Pal. Here is one from Freso, California, and from the now-infamous Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) (infamous for its $1 billion iPad purchase), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Staff Development for Educators (SDE), Common Core and Ed Tech (CCEDTECH)– CCEDTECH is promoted by Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) and the Monterey, California, Office of Education (MCOE).

The list goes on.

In order for CCSS (or whatever it is called) to survive, its sales people (not the least of whom are Bill Gates and Arne Duncan— more on the Gates-Duncan-CCSS triangle in my next post) must reshape CCSS into That Which Is Necessary.

Districts are blowing amazing amounts of increasingly scare funding to meet CCSS technology requirements.

Let’s just tell them that it wasn’t only for the tests.

Let’s tell them that it was for the sake of meeting the *technological rigor* of CCSS (insert more fashionable name here).