Education Policy -- Made Secretly

A great story in The Washington Post about how education policy is made in secret.  This particular reporter, Valerie Strauss, is one of the best around.  She's worked on a number of different stories but, lately, has been full time on education.

The URL below is well worth your time.  It'll take you to her story in The Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/12/secret-policymaking-on-school-reform-is-on-the-rise/

Common Core: The Industrial Tool

The only thing more disappointing than the changes to the Scholastic Aptitude Test is the reporting by the news media on the event, including by yours truly. 

There’s more to this story than meets the eye:  It’s not just a simple case of vertical integration – which, with rare exception, most of the news media missed – it also comes with an added twist, coercion.

The SAT gives every impression of losing ground to its only competitor, the ACT test, another barometer for measuring college-level academic performance and part of many college applications.

The most recent numbers, as provided by The New York Times, show ACT test takers edging out SAT test takers by about 2,000 students, 1.666 million compared to 1.664 million.[i]

As The Times shows, however, this doesn’t necessarily mean the SAT is on the decline.  At least 12 states, the paper says, “now require, and pay for, all public high school juniors to take” the ACT.[ii]

If you’re David Coleman, president of The College Board, which writes, publishes and owns the SAT, this isn’t good news.

The College Board should flat out own the market – not have to share half of it with its upstart competitor.

So what do you do to increase market share?

Answer:  You adopt tactics and strategies to dominate the market and shape the industry’s standards, similar to what Starbucks and McDonald’s do so well in their industries.

Coleman, a former McKinsey & Co., consultant, studied the trends The College Board was experiencing, seeing that the SAT was under fire as being a meaningless test and the ACT was gaining ground.

As Coleman likely saw it, if ever there was a turnaround situation, this was it.

It’s very likely, during his consulting career, Coleman discussed vertical integration with his former employer’s clients.

Vertical integration, in case you don’t know, is a business practice that makes sense if it’s cheaper for a company to own their supplier instead of just buying its goods.  It can also be sound judgment to vertically integrate if it provides an advantage over competitors in the marketplace.

To turn around The College Board’s fortunes, Coleman teamed up experts in education with ones from American industry and created a curriculum that could be adopted in the nation’s public school system, grades K – 12.

In other words, long before the current crop of elementary school kids even think about college, they’re prepping for the SAT because they’re exposed to Common Core.

In time, if those five states holding off on adopting Coleman’s new-fangled curriculum continue doing so, he’ll say their students didn’t do well on the SAT because Common Core was missing from their education.

Common Core is the means by which Coleman has assured the fortunes of The College Board.  The fact that it comes at the expense of an outstanding K- 12 education, especially in Massachusetts, is no matter.  He’s served his master.

The only thing to worry about now is when the ACT will wake up, realizing it, too, needs to develop its own K – 12 curriculum.

And the only question the journalism world needs to answer -- including me -- is why no one saw this story sooner.  I offer no excuses.

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[i] “Testing, Testing:  More Students are Taking Both the ACT and SAT,” The New York Times, August 2, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/more-students-are-taking-both-the-act-and-sat.html?_r=0

[ii] Ibid.

Common Core & the SAT

The most surprising news about the changes in the Scholastic Aptitude Test is that some leading media outlets failed to link the reforms to the one man working hard to prop up revisions he’s already made to American education.

Neither The New York Times nor Time magazine, in their main stories announcing the reforms to the SAT, mentioned that the changes were coming from Common Core’s leading advocate, David Coleman, who runs the College Board, which owns, produces, writes and publishes the SAT test, taken by nearly 2 million high school students annually.

In other words, the question that remains unanswered is the combined commercial interests of Common Core and the College Board; if they're both linked -- and they give every appearance they will be soon -- what sort of money is at stake?

Common Core, nothing more than an all-out assault to dumb down American education, is Coleman’s baby.  He’s successfully pushed it – or, as he likes to say, it was “voluntarily accepted” – by 45 states, some of which are now pushing back against this latest reform effort.

Coleman is a former McKinsey & Company consultant.  His educational background is impressive, including a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Yale University, and he was a Rhodes Scholar, earning another bachelor’s degree from Oxford, in English Literature, and a master’s in ancient philosophy from Cambridge.[i]

Coleman never spent a day teaching kids.  He may have made appearances here and there in a classroom but he’s never been held accountable, professionally, to make sure (the proverbial) Johnny can read, do math or understand science.

In other words, when it comes to day-to-day instruction and how kids go about learning in a classroom setting, he’s clueless.

For that matter, from what I can gather on the College Board’s website and others discussing his background, he doesn’t appear to be a father.

I’m not going to go off on a tangent that one needs to be a parent to fully understand public school education or what it’s like to teach kids; but as a dad closely involved in his kids’ education, I’m here to say it helps – big time!

Yet Coleman’s gained the ear of the high and mighty interested in education, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, President Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the National Governor’s Association as he’s peddled Common Core.

The whole basis of Common Core, from key critics at places like Harvard and Stanford universities, is that it slows math education, putting American kids further behind their peers overseas, and it spends far too much time on “informational texts” rather than literature and, as a result, logical thinking skills are diminished. 

Coleman is all about evidence-based education.  In other words, he wants American kids to consider, when it comes to literature, whether or not an author proved their point.  What evidence did they provide, in other words.

Ask yourself, did Harper Lee, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger, and the many other leading authors in American literature, ever prove a point? 

Of course they didn’t.  They weren’t supposed to!

Their job was to tell a story rich in detail that captivated readers’ imaginations, making them stop and think about their own lives as well as the lives of the characters. 

Since Coleman is such an advocate for evidence-based education, we should wonder why he never proposed so much as a modest test, in some community somewhere, where Common Core could be assessed and compared to another community not using this latest reform effort. 

Probably that’s due to his ego or he feared the worse – his baby would fail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/education/major-changes-in-sat-announced-by-college-board.html

http://time.com/12985/sat-college-board-test-prep/

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[i] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/magazine/the-story-behind-the-sat-overhaul.html

From an expert witness on education

I'm sharing an op-ed article written by Sandra Stotsky, who was a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education and heard the sales pitch on behalf of Common Core.  Her article appeared in the Friday, Jan. 3, 2014, edition of The Wall Street Journal.  This link will take you to it:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304020704579278060483138096?KEYWORDS=sandra+stotsky

I interviewed her, at length, for an article I wrote about Common Core for a monthly parenting magazine in Massachusetts, Bay State Parent.  Sandra brings sharp insight -- and much criticism -- to this latest reform effort in public education.  Her views are not to be dismissed.

Wondering about reading skills & The Catcher in the Rye

Perhaps I should take Harvard University Professor Paul E. Peterson’s advice:  Common Core is just the latest reform movement in education.  There’ll be others, so there’s no need to sweat this one.

But as a concerned dad, with kids in Massachusetts’ public schools, it’s anathema to me to simply leave their education in the hands of the professionals.  I reserve the right to step in. 

And so my biggest worry, after math instruction, is how reading is coming along for my fifth and fourth grade sons.

Last year, when my elder son was in the fourth grade, he was required to produce a book report each month.  He read Wonder; Hoot; Steve Jobs:  Thinking Differently; A Wrinkle Time; and Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets, among others.

Our younger son, when he was in the third grade, also read Wonder as well as many of the Harry Potter books.

But, so far, a book report has yet to show up for either boy.

Still, that hasn’t stopped their school district from implementing another standardized test – the Benchmark Reading Assessment – as a means of determining the kids’ reading abilities.

Louise Snyder, principal of the Dale Street School in Medfield, described the test in her email (provided to you as it showed up in my inbox):

“Irene Fountas and Gay Sue [sic] Pinnell, highly respected teachers of reading and leaders in reading research developed this program to meausre [sic] the many aspects of what makes a person a reader.  This test has students read a passage from a short text aloud.  Teachers record when a student misreads, repeats, or corrects him/herself as he/she reads.  Then the child is asked to read the rest of the passage silently.  The teacher takes note of the student's fluency and grades him/her according to a rubric.  The teacher also calculates the students [sic] correct words per minute. Aftere [sic] the student has completed the reading, he/she has a comprehension conversation with the teacher.  Students are asked literal, inferential and evaluative questions that are within the text, beyond the text, and about the text.  The teacher then grades the student using a comprehension rubric.  All of this information is used to determine a student's reading level.  Some students will read 2-3 levels of books while being tested and others will need to read more to determine the appropriate instructional level.”

The school is checking out this new test, Snyder wrote in her email, on a select sample set of kids:

“First, this endeavor takes time, modeling and conversation for teachers to learn the procedural aspect of the system.  [sic] Secondly, [sic] we have a lot of other new initiatives on the plate this year. (new schedule, new evaluation system, new math tools) so that we did not want this to take a back seat or become too overwhelming and fail.  Thirdly, [sic] we wanted time for teachers to be able to interact with the tool and ask as many questions to feel comfortable with what information the test gives them about their students as readers.”

I responded to her note, saying if the school required more book reports, there would be less of a need for another standardized test.  I also mentioned that my elder son read The Catcher in the Rye during the summer.

Snyder's response is what I should have expected:

“We do need to keep in mind that reading the words and

being able to comprehend the meaning of the story both within the text and

beyond it are critical to developing a strong reader. This new test will

help teachers to better hone their skills to find those books that do all

that for each reader in their class.

Thank you for your feedback.”

Sure, it’s an insulting reply but that’s to be expected when you’re challenging the education industry’s wisdom. 

She’s saying my son just scanned the words, if that much, when I thought he was reading J. D. Salinger’s great novel. 

A far more appropriate response might have been something along the lines like good for you.  Keep up the good work. 

But an acknowledgement like that just might signal parents know their children better than their teachers. 

And heaven forbid that should be the case!

For the record, I’m fully aware of what my son understood when reading The Catcher in the Rye because on more than one occasion he needed my assistance to comprehend the text.

But by reading the book, he disproved the idea that kids can only comprehend “age-appropriate” texts.  He understood most of the story. 

When his reading skills were assessed recently, his fifth grade teacher told me, he scored as reading at the 7^th grade level; another test showed him reading at the 9^th grade level, she says.

Our younger boy is also reading above grade level, so we’re thrilled.

The problem with Common Core, as least how it’s being implemented in our little Burg, is that the thrust of English education – this year – is vocabulary.  I’m not about to knock vocabulary instruction but it’s limiting.  It’s about spelling and definitions.

The broader education – learning how words are used to describe people, situations and settings – is missing.  Literature, like a good history book or a biography, can make a kid think.  That’s what’s not happening now.

So in accepting Common Core, our school system traded the opportunity for teaching kids how to use their minds and imagination for rote memorization.

I suspect that’s good if you’re bringing up robots, but I don’t know any parents who are.

From time to time, especially lately, I wonder how our kids’ literacy skills would measure up if they hadn’t read challenging books, like Wonder or The Catcher in the Rye. 

Not nearly as well, I say!

P.S.  Can someone please edit Ms. Snyder's emails -- before they're sent?

Arne Duncan -- Clueless Man or Male Chauvinist?

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is the most clueless man in America.

He and is ilk take an Orwellian approach to life, saying Common Core, the latest movement in K – 12 public school, educational reform, was adopted and voluntarily accepted by 45 of the 50 states.

It’s all in how you define “voluntarily.” 

As parents across the country are fast becoming aware, it looks more like this:   Under the cover of the darkness of night, their governor or state board of education pulled a fast one, adopting Common Core without putting it before the voters or their state legislature first.

Compare that to how Massachusetts went about reforming its schools, long before there was anything called a Common Core.  Back in 1993, the state legislature very publicly took up the issue of improving the schools. 

It was hotly contested and received a lot of press, providing Bay State parents with time to look at the condition of the state’s public school education and how it compared to what their peers across the country and overseas were doing.

The result was that the State House decided to reform the schools and, 20 years later, Massachusetts can rightfully claim to have some of the best public schools in the country.

In fact, based on some of the latest international testing results, Bay State kids hold their own against some of the best students in the world.  And it was due to the fact that education was focused on pushing the kids to read, write and understand math and science better than they had before.

Still, in spite of being considered a top state for public school education, Massachusetts succumbed to Common Core's tactics, with the only vote approving this latest reform movement done by the board overseeing the state's department of elementary and secondary education.  

And now Arne and his Common Core co-conspirators have a problem.

Parents are organizing, screaming that Common Core’s standards are dumbing down education – and there are plenty of experts to back that up – and, as a result, some state legislatures are taking a look at this thing, scaling it back or putting it on hold for further review.

This is what happens, Arne, when you insult the voters’ intellect, especially parents, and fail to follow President Abraham Lincoln’s maxim – “I’m a firm believer in the people.  If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis.”

Even my elder son’s fifth grade teacher says Common Core is slowing down math education.  It’s not enough to know that 10 divided by 2 equals five; now the kids need to write an essay.  Really?

The public school system in our little Burg may want to treat kids like idiots, but we don’t:  We think our sons are damn intelligent and deserve better.

Which is why, Arne, my wife and I took matters into our own hands and send them to the Russian School of Mathematics.

Which is why, Arne, instead of pushing my elder son to re-read “No Talking,” a book that’s about five steps above “Dick and Jane,” I had him read “Catcher in the Rye.”

Which is why, Arne, from time to time, the boys will read stories in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.

In the 21^st century, Arne, it’s critical our sons have the skills necessary to compete against kids from South Korea, China, Japan – and elsewhere around the globe – where education is taken seriously and kids are pushed to achieve more, not less.

I don’t know where you’ve been, Arne, but you haven’t been standing on the sidelines of baseball and basketball games or on the decks of swim meets, making casual conversation with suburban moms as their children participate in sporting events.

Had you been doing so, you’d come to know them the way I do – incredibly intelligent, committed to their professional success and their children’s education.

In addition, there’s something else, Arne, you don’t know about suburban moms – they’re educated, holding college degrees and then some.  

Maybe they didn’t all go to Harvard like you did, Arne, or Columbia, like your boss, but their college degrees are just as good as yours.

Because today they’re doctors, lawyers, cardiac nurses and registered ones, too, FBI agents, securities regulators, pharmacists, writers, journalists, public relations executives, bank regulators, accountants, sales, marketing and advertising executives, teachers and one I know pretty well manages a sizeable city in a western state.

So Arne, they’re not going to stand for being disparaged as a bunch of no-nothings, and they’re not buying snake oil either!

The taxpayers, Arne, pay your salary.  In this democracy of ours – as suburban moms will be happy to remind you – you report to us!

Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/18/who-are-the-enemies-of-common-core/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/24/more-states-delay-common-core-testing-as-concerns-grow/

http://mrsmomblog.com/2013/10/02/how-common-core-is-slowly-changing-my-child/

Common Core: Will it water down education?

Note:  Below is a story I wrote and that appeared in a Massachusetts parenting magazine, baystateparent, in August 2013.  There were some editing errors as the story was laid out in the magazine so what appears below is the final, edited piece by the editor before it was moved into production.

An interesting note about the debate over Common Core:  Frederick Hess, an adjunct professor at Harvard University and the executive editor of EducationNext.com, told me, while I interviewed him for this story, that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was prone to heavily criticizing opponents of Common Core.  He held to his reputation, when, recently, he said the only people complaining about Common Core were "white suburban moms."

One wonders what the outcry would have been had Mr. Duncan been a Republican, not a Democrat.

Here's a link to The Washington Post story about Mr. Duncan:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/duncan-tries-to-quell-uproar-over-common-core-comments/2013/11/18/b88376d8-5085-11e3-a7f0-b790929232e1_story.html


Common Core:  Will it water down education?

By DOUG PAGE

  Those pushing Common Core see the country’s schools in a desperate situation, needing an immediate fix if the nation’s youth aren’t to be condemned to future economic failure.

  Even Massachusetts schools require further improvement because too many Bay State public high school graduates take remedial classes in math and English in college or if they go directly into the work force, lack the reading and math skills required for the job, according to the Commonwealth’s top education officer.

  But those against Common Core see it as a nefarious plot to reduce the state’s exacting standards for K – 12 education, making them more compatible to the whims of the man putting financial muscle behind the effort – Out-of-state Billionaire and Microsoft Founder Bill Gates – and not in the best interests of the kids.

  One detractor says it’s like something out of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” an effort to tailor the country’s workforce to Microsoft.

  Given these two, very opposing views, what’s a parent to believe?

Ripe for Change

  American public schools remain vulnerable to reform because standardized test scores, like the one administered two years ago by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), showed only 32 percent of U.S. eighth graders proficient in math.

  “Until the test scores improve, schools will be seen as needing to be reformed,” says Paul Peterson, director of the program on education policy and governance at Harvard University.

  Massachusetts students, however, are bucking the trends.

  About 50 percent of all Massachusetts fourth and eighth graders who took the National Assessment and Educational Progress (NAEP) exam two years ago were considered proficient in math and English.

  In another standardized test, also taken about two years ago, called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which measured math and science abilities of Massachusetts eighth graders against their peers in 63 countries and nine U.S. states, Bay State students scored near the top in math, just behind children from South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

  In the science portion of the TIMSS exam, Bay State eighth graders also scored near the top, falling only behind kids from Singapore.

  But Massachusetts Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester sees it differently. “Massachusetts citizens should be proud (of the schools), but having said that, our biggest disadvantage is complacency,” he says. “And so we point out that 50 percent of our students are proficient, but 50 percent are not.”

  “As top-rated as our public school system is, 40 percent of our public high school graduates who matriculate to public universities or community colleges in Massachusetts take at least one remedial, non-credit class because they don’t have the math and English skills needed for college,” Chester says. 

  “Too many of our students can’t read complex texts, technical information and non-fiction information, which is what they have to tackle in college courses,” he says. “They can write a personal essay, but when it comes to critiquing material they’ve just read, they don’t have the skills.”

  “Too many students are also without the math skills that let them tackle more advanced classes. They also struggle to apply math to real-life situations. These are the criticisms I’ve heard from many employers,” Chester adds.

What About MCAS?

  The standardized test kids have been taking since 1998 in the state, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Study (MCAS), will likely be replaced by a new, standardized test that’s given in 22 other states.

  The new test, called Partnership for Assessment Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), will test kids in grades 3 to 11, says J.C. Considine, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

  PARCC tests for what Common Core is all about – career and college readiness. 

  Chester says many high school graduates taking a remedial math or English class in college did well on the 10^th grade MCAS test and that’s the reason for the new PARCC test.

  “We’ll know (with the PARCC test) whether someone in the 10^th grade or 11^th grade is performing on track to finish high school and do well in college or in their career.”

  The first PARCC test is expected during the 2014 – 2015 academic year.

Common Core Defined

  Common Core’s has two components, mathematics and English. 

  The math portion focuses instruction on fewer topics and goes into greater depth. This means first grade math not only introduces addition and subtraction but also makes kids understand the reason behind the answer.

  In the fifth grade, according to Common Core, children are adding and subtracting fractions and graphing data.

  There’s also a push, from the people developing Common Core, to move Algebra 1 from eighth to ninth grade, but Commissioner Chester says that doesn’t apply to Massachusetts.

  “School districts can continue to teach Algebra 1 in the eighth grade,” he says.

  A retired Stanford University math professor, R. James Milgram, who worked on Common Core standards, has expressed much concern that the new Common Core math will put American children behind their peers overseas.

Watering Down Education

  There’s much skepticism about Common Core because leading scholars on education, English and math take issue with it.

  Board of Massachusetts and Secondary Education Member Dr. Sandra Stotsky was on the Common Core’s Validation Committee and refused to approve its standards.

  “We’re dumbing down the entire population,” she says. “That’s what you get when you have standards that have been lowered and you don’t provide any understanding of history and the heritage of the English language.”

  She fears high school English teachers, instead of focusing on literature, drama and poetry, will be forced to teach the writings of political philosophers and how they’re relevant to high school students’ understanding of the U.S. Constitution.

  Massachusetts Education Commissioner Chester disagrees. “Literacy skills are the teachers’ responsibility. You don’t expect English teachers to solve this problem alone. This requires history teachers and science teachers to make sure their students understand the vocabulary being used, how a textbook is structured and how to read critically what’s being presented,” he says.

  When the commissioner was asked if he expected high school English teachers to teach informational texts as they relate to U.S. history, Chester said, “No. They’re not teaching U.S. history.”

  “If Common Core standards are going to be set at the international level and against the NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) standardized test, then the American public is in for a very rude shock,” says Harvard University’s Education Policy Professor Peterson.

  He says Common Core is a step up for weak public schools, like those in California, but, he says, “I’d be upset if I was a parent in Massachusetts.”

Who Controls the Curriculum of Common Core?

  Worcester School Committee Member Donna Colorio has just formed a group, The Massachusetts Coalition for Superior Education, that’s opposed to Common Core.

  She worries it’ll lower the educational standards Massachusetts set when it reformed its curriculum about 15 years ago and, eventually, nationalize the K – 12 school curriculum and standards.

  “This is a top down approach to education,” Colorio says. “There’s no local control.”

  She says teachers are worried they’ll be held to a timeline to keep students on track as they teach material that’s part of Common Core and, as a result, won’t be able to help their slower learners.

  Commissioner Chester takes issue with this prediction.

  “There are some states that specify the curriculum and give you textbook lists and have a syllabus of what high school biology will cover,” he says. “We don’t.”

  “We’ve adopted frameworks that include the Common Core standards for English and math. We’re developing resources and model units of study,” Chester adds.

  “Teachers can still customize and individualize education and meet students where they are to move them forward,” he says. “Even if you wanted a lock-step curriculum, it’s not a day-by-day or month-by-month plan. It’s end of the year expectations.”

The Funding Behind Common Core

  The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education was awarded a Race to the Top (RTTT) grant of $250 million by the U.S. Department of Education in Washington.

 The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helped Massachusetts win the grant by paying a Boston-based company, The Bridgespan Group, to prepare the Bay State’s application for the grant.

 Critical to receiving the grant is that Common Core will be introduced into Massachusetts’ educational system as well as into local school districts applying for a portion of the grant.

  So far about 65 percent of the state’s school districts have accepted RTTT funds, including Boston Public Schools as well as the districts of Brockton, Haverhill, New Bedford, Springfield, Worcester, Revere and many others, according to Commissioner Chester. 

  In addition, 44 of the state’s charter schools have also received RTTT funds.

  Common Core came from the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers about six years ago, Harvard’s Professor Peterson says, because results on a standardized test by the National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) differed from standardized test results conducted by individual states.

Future Problems

  The biggest potential problem for Common Core, says one education expert following its progress, is that it’s been done so quietly.

  “Common Core advocates have been perfectly happy to have states quietly sign up for Race to the Top dollars,” says Frederick Hess, a faculty associate at Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Executive Editor of Education Next. “They’ve been perfectly happy to take their bureaucratic victories and just go home.”

  The best reason for Common Core, he says, is the standardized test results around the country.

  “They’re all gobbledygook,” Dr. Hess says. “Massachusetts has some of the best national assessments as the National Association of Education Progress test show, but parents in other states are not getting reliable information about their schools.”

  “While maybe this idea has merit, Common Core’s been done off the radar by a couple of hundred folks, operating out of sight, with the U.S. Department of Education leaning on states to apply for Race to the Top funds, all the while paying little attention to what Common Core means in practice,” Hess says.

  “Common Core advocates want to change the way schools think about math and reading instruction for 50 million kids, and they’ve been very reluctant to publicly debate why this is good,” he says.  “They’ve tended to dismiss critics as ‘no-nothings’ and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said they’re part of some crazy fringe.”

  Emory University English Professor Mark Bauerlein, who’s against Common Core, looks at this reform movement as similar to a science fiction novel.

  “This is more ‘Brave New World,’” he says, with one person, or group of people, determining how future generations will think, act and how they will be employed.

  Indeed, The Boston Globe, recently reported Google and Microsoft executives want Massachusetts public schools to teach computer science and “add computing questions to the state’s standardized tests.”