The Latest on Common Core Founder David Coleman (Ugh…)
Here I go with another piece about David Coleman, creator of the Common Core Standards. I’m not trying to pick on Mr. Coleman. Sincerely, I’m not. However, he makes is so easy that it’s not even funny.
In this installment of the Coleman Saga we will visit his witty banter and self-deprecating countenance. Of course it’s all meant for a laugh. The problem is we aren’t laughing. It’s not funny when it’s true and it pertains to the takeover of public education and our children’s future.
As a recap you can read here about his background and non-educational experience. He has ties to the terrorist Bill Ayers. And he’s re-writing the SAT to match the Standards.
Our story starts in December of 2011. Many of us Core Warriors are shocked that it took us 2 years to uncover this unflattering picture of Coleman, actually.
At a 2011 Institute for Learning Senior Leadership Meeting David Coleman was Keynote Speaker.
It was held December 8 and 9th and the speech was called “What Must Be Done in the Next Two Years.”
A full transcript of the speech can be found here, at Truth in American Education.
For the sake of time and in an effort to boil it down for you I will showcase some of the most egregious parts of the speech.
Lauren Resnick, an educational psychologist introduces Coleman. She goes through the story of how they met, how the standards were being developed and things like that.
The one thing that sticks in my mind the most about her introduction is this:
Okay, so this is the kind of person we are gonna be privileged to hear tonight. He has been involved in virtually every step of setting the national standards, and he doesn’t have a single credential for it. He’s never taught in an elementary school – I think. You know, I actually don’t know. He’s never edited a scholarly journal, but I think he has written scholarly papers. And a variety of other things that have – you know, everybody here has done some of, he hasn’t done.
Isn’t that a comforting statement? It’s like getting on an airplane and hearing that the person who built the engine wasn’t a mechanic and knew nothing about airplanes. But, hey, he wrote a story about an airplane once, so sit back and relax.
Coleman takes the stage and says a lot of things that mean nothing to me and then a shining moment of honesty where he admits his deficits.
In discussing his organization, Student Achievement Partners he talks about himself and two others, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba being the lead writers of the Common Core Standards, he drops this:
One is we’re composed of that collection of unqualified people who were involved in developing the common standards. And our only qualification was our attention to and command of the evidence behind them. That is, it was our insistence in the standards process that it was not enough to say you wanted to or thought that kids should know these things, that you had to have evidence to support it, frankly because it was our conviction that the only way to get an eraser into the standards writing room was with evidence behind it, cause otherwise the way standards are written you get all the adults into the room about what kids should know, and the only way to end the meeting is to include everything. That’s how we’ve gotten to the typical state standards we have today….
…I probably spend a little more time on literacy because as weak as my qualifications are there, in math they’re even more desperate in their lacking.
So our kids are flying in an airplane, destination unknown, built by a crazy “architect” who had no business even refueling said airplane.
It also makes me feel warm and fuzzy knowing that not only does he not know a thing about education but he acknowledges it. He shares it with everyone, including the “powers that be” with amazing arrogance and pride. And they also love it.
In case you aren’t ill already, here is a video of the full introduction and speech.
