Common Core: New Frontiers in Profit

[HiPointDem]

How does the growth of charter schools depend upon the Rotten Common Core? See below.
Thanks to Stan Karp:

The new report was developed by the Parthenon consulting group, a Boston-based global management firm that identifies investment opportunities in education. Last summer, Parthenon executive Rob Lytle made a presentation on "private equity investing in for-profit education companies” to an elite group of investors in NYC.

He told them the coming implementation of the common core standards and assessments would create a lucrative opportunity: “Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it. You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up…It could get really, really big."

Anderson is scheduled to present the Parthenon report to the Newark Advisory Board tonight.

Latest Newark ‘performance report:’ blueprint for more closures/charters?

A new report & presentation from Newark State District Supt. Cami Anderson may lay the groundwork for more school closings, charter expansion, co-locations and staff firings. Anderson has already closed twelve schools during her 18-month tenure, leased district facilities to charters over the objection of the local school advisory board, and negotiated a new teachers contract that provides for “turnarounds” in up to 10 schools in each of the next three years. According to an NJ Spotlight story, Anderson said the new school performance report, “didn’t change any of her own reform strategies for the district, but rather helped ‘sharpen our goals.’

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/12/with-common-core-you-start-to-see.html

[Igel]

1. Yup.

Problem is, all by themselves the schools are going to look really bad. Then the question is, What to do about it?

This is an expensive, not altogether useful fix. But the alternative is to do a lot of firing and retraining--which will also be an expensive and not altogether useful fix.

We expect the above average to do above average.

We expect the average to do above average.

We expect the below average to do above average.

I have a kid who lives for his vocational classes. Can rebuilt motors and engines. Can fix almost anything. Enjoys it. Has a gift for it. And I'm trying to get him to solve an equation for force given mass, stopping distance, and initial velocity. He looks at the math and gets every step wrong. He shouldn't be made to take my class. He's a senior, for the second year. He got a mercy pass from algebra I the second time he took it, 10th grade. He still can't tell me that if 10 = 5x then x = 2. "10 - 5?" "5 / 10"? All the same to him. If x = 2 in 10 = 5x, then it has to equal 2 in 18 = 3x.

Foolishness. The college-educated saying that everybody is equal or must be equal and therefore everybody should be like them.

[duffyduff]

2. Anything with the Gates Foundation attached to it is no good by definition.

I am referring to the very concept of "common core" standards.