Marc Tucker and Common Core Fuel Injection
On March 03, 2016, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), Marc Tucker, published an EdWeek opinion piece entitled, “Why the Common Core Will Be Declared a Failure.” (Based on the link, Tucker’s original title was, “Why the Common Core Will Be Declared a Failure and Why That Will Be Dead Wrong.”)
In short, according to Tucker, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will fail because it is so advanced that the rest of the education system to which it must belong is bumbling by comparison and must be brought into line for CCSS to succeed.
Marc Tucker
To illustrate his point, Tucker uses an automotive metaphor whereby CCSS is “a 2016 fuel injector” that has been installed in the education system of “a 1910 Model T”:
Imagine that you have in your hand a set of fuel injectors for a modern automobile. These devices, used for making sure that each cylinder in your car’s engine gets just the right amount of fuel at just the right moment, are high precision devices, a key component of the car’s engine. Now suppose that a time traveller from 1910, having made this exciting discovery, races back to 1910 and sticks a purloined fuel injector into his brand new Model T, expecting it to produce a remarkable improvement in the performance of his car. Of course, nothing of the sort happens. His Model T won’t work at all. Why? Because a car engine is a system, all the parts of which have to be designed to work with the other parts.
Education systems are, well, systems, and, like cars, don’t work very well if their parts and pieces have not been designed to work in harmony with one another. Only a fool would expect that putting a 2016 fuel injector into a 1910 Model T would enable the Model T to perform like a modern automobile. Similarly, anyone who expected the Common Core standards to produce big improvements in student performance by themselves, without major changes in many other aspects of our education system, was expecting the impossible. Well crafted student performance standards are an essential ingredient in the educational equivalent of the modern high performance education system, but they will make no difference at all to student performance unless the other parts of the education system are crafted to use those standards to get the desired results.
Tucker must assume that CCSS fits the bill of “well crafted student performance standards.” Let’s let that one ride. What particularly caught my attention is this truth:
There is no universal fuel injector.
Tucker is trying to promote CCSS as an American public education universal, yet the analogy he uses is not universal.
Even though there is not much to a fuel injector– it is only an electronically-controlled valve– fuel injectors are manufacturer-specific. (To read about fuel injection, click here.)
There are numerous variations on 2016 fuel injectors. On ebay motors, I selected one: the DENSO 297 2016.
In reading about the DENSO 297 2016, I noticed that prior to purchasing, I was asked to make sure that this particular fuel injector fit the automobile for which I was supposedly purchasing it. So, I looked up a number of 2016 automobiles.
The first I chose was the 2016 BMW Alpina B6 xDrive Gran Coupe Base Sedan 4-Door.
I received a message:
This part is not compatible with 2016 BMW Alpina B6 xDrive Gran Coupe Base Sedan 4-Door.
So, I tried a second vehicle, a 2016 Cadillac Escalade.
And another message:
This part is not compatible with 2016 Cadillac Escalade.
How about a 2016 Jaguar XJR?
This part is not compatible with 2016 Jaguar XJR.
All of the automobiles above are high-end cars. Yet the DENSO 297 2016 fuel injector was not designed for these cars– and the manufacturers of these cars are hardly likely to redesign their vehicles to fit the DENSO 297 2016 fuel injector.
All three of the above high-end cars operate using fuel injection; however, each has fuel injection that is specific to its engine.
So, Tucker’s implication that Common Core is the 2016 fuel injector around which the 2016 automobile must be constructed crumbles when one considers the variation even among 2016 fuel injectors.
And to date, there has been no Gates-funded effort to “scale” fuel injection such that all American automobile manufacturers are baited to sign onto an agreement to adapt the engines of their vehicles to suit a single brand and model of fuel injector– and to do so before such a fuel injector has been designed– and that without any trial or testing prior to agreeing to forsake all manufacturer-specific fuel injectors for that single one.
No automobile manufacturer would be expected to logically agree to such an arrangement– yet this is precisely the ridiculous manner in which CCSS ended up in states across the nation.
Following his Model T analogy, Tucker does acknowledge that not all fuel injectors are alike. Some are “designed for a high performance engine”– as is CCSS, of course– and cannot have that “fighting chance” if installed in a low-performance engine”:
I know of no state in the union that requires its teachers’ colleges to teach its teachers how to teach courses that were created to embody the Common Core. …
…In the rare instances in which the tests given to the students are set to the expectations incorporated in the Common Core, many teachers have a hard time doing what the tests intended for the students requires them to do.
This is a bit like having a fuel injector designed for a high performance engine, but an engine block, head, cylinders, fuel pump and drive shaft designed for a low-performance engine. The reality is that the Common Core has not been implemented in a way that would give it a fighting chance.
Interestingly enough, in February 2015, Consumer Reports published this article on the hushed-up downside of some high performance fuel injection systems: carbon buildup that actually clogs the engine over time and requires unanticipated maintenance and expensive repairs.
Even something as seemingly desirable as high performance could yield unanticipated and costly consequences.
Moreover, let us remember that education systems are more complex than automobiles because the component parts of education systems are human beings, and human beings cannot be manufactured into some “high performance” sameness.
If the DENSO 297 2016 is properly installed in the automobile for which it was made (it happens to be an after-market fuel injector designed specifically for Ford-Lincoln-Mercury vehicles from 2001-2005), then it will work. The other parts of the car will not resist. However, if teachers and administrators do not view CCSS (or components of CCSS) as suitable to teaching and learning, then even in states in which CCSS is formally adopted, those teachers and administrators are able to reject CCSS as an act of the will.
Tucker’s analogy not only fails because there exists no single, specific fuel injection valve around which all auto manufacturers center the construction of their engines; his analogy fails because it is mechanical.
Human systems are a whole lot messier.
He writes that his conclusions are informed by his studying “the best education systems in the world.” How that leads to CCSS as the center of American public education Tucker does not detail.
Nor does he offer a peep about any potential unanticipated consequences of the CCSS-centric education system.
He writes about the tests, and curriculum, and training teachers specifically to teach CCSS– and he concludes with the following floral arrangement:
Treat standards like a silver bullet, and they will go down to defeat just like all the other silver bullet solutions. Treat them like an essential component of a high performance system and put the other components of the systems in place and get out of the way before you are run over by the improvements you will see in student performance. A few states are beginning to accept this challenge. Those are the states to keep your eye on.
No amount of adjusting the testing, or the curriculum, or professional development, is able to force teachers and administrators to conform to CCSS. Many will only continue to finesse this test-score-centered education reform byproduct:
Game the system.
You see, gaming the system is the real fruit of corporate reform in these United States, and CCSS is only a part.
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Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.
She also has a second book, Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?.
deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog 
This is a solid Classic. Brilliant and right on point (and points).
Many thanks for this one!
Will Fitzhugh
Sent from my iPad
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Thank you, Will. 🙂
Marc Tucker is condescending and out of touch with the classroom and the kids sitting in front of me. He acts as if the Common Core standards are the new commandments set forth in stone. I’ll take the old Mass frameworks, thank you. I think they’re better. And the test? We took PARCC online. The less said about that the better. Thank you for a great post.
Just perfect. The smug assumption that what he knows about the subject is enough to be right and clever– that’s the reformster way. But he doesn’t really know what the hell he’s talking about, either when it comes to cars or schools. Well done.
True.
I would like to have heard him wax on less about his wonderful fuel injection analogy, and more about the specific systems in the classroom where he perceives that the Common Core is too advanced for our Model-T education system.
All these education “reformers” act like the rest of us were writing on stone tablets when they arrived.
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware.
This is really wonderful writing, research, and story telling. Classic for Mercedes Scheider.
Tucker is part of the PR machinery trying to shore up the Common Core. In addition to his own lack of understanding of education, EdWeek is thoroughly compromised by funding from Gates, Walton, and about fourteen foundations who push editorial topics of interest to those foundations.
Gates in particular is still insisting that the Common Core be part of his funding initiatives. Lynn Olson, once a senior editor at EdWeek has replaced Vicki Phillips who counted the “acceptance” of the Common Core as one of her achievements. But, at last count, only four states were trying to use the CCSS standards, as is,verbatim. Most had rebranded or dumped them.
In an ongoing exercise not yet finished, I have been constructing a numerical count of Pre-k to 12 standards issued by various groups since the CCSS were published. Many have been written in the hope of claiming time in the curriculum. Some groups have constructed formal links to the Common Core. Many have uncritically adopted the college and career meme as if the CCSS, and the forerunner American Diploma Project, had settled that matter for all time.
The newest initiatives on standard-setting are trying to address social-emotional learning (SEL), a secular version of moral/ character education and increasingly viewed as a substitute for full-service school counseling and school social work. By now most have heard of the terms “grit” and “mindset,” both of these viewed as the product of learned skills. There are many other constructs in play under the banner of “self- management” and ” relationship skills” — phrases that give me the creeps.
Measuring these “skill sets” and linking them to indicators of school climate and academic achievement are “tasks” being undertaken and marketed as essential for school accountability. Gates and others are supporting this initiative. More to come. I am improvising on my iPad.
I love your choices of automobiles and research on fuel injectors. Wonder how Google self-driving cars fit in. I guess that is the on-line learning bit, with algorithms determining the pace of instruction.
Nice analysis of his analogy!
Tucker believes that the common core is just like advanced technology from the future.
When I think of the Common Core, and technology from the future I am reminded of Ralph Cramdon, (Jackie Gleason) from Honeymooner’s, in the episode where he portrays the “Chef Of The Future” trying to: “core A apple”. If your not familiar with this episode you might want to check it out. It is very funny, and aptly shows how if a little innovation is good, more is not necessarily better.
There is the dreck that the edu-reformistas put out on their Gate$ paid-for blogs, with their bad analogies, smug attitudes and complete lack of humor.
Then there is the glorious writing of those on the right side of the battle: Mercedes Schneider, Peter Greene, The Edushyster, José Vilson, Diane Ravitch and others. No wonder our side will win!
Perfect! My students are studying fallacies of logic. I will share this post with them. Thanks.
I don’t give a damn about your fuel injector because your car is running over my five-year-old.