NFL Adopts Common Core Playbook--Copying Education Reforms

  

(Washington, D. C.) In a surprise news conference today U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell announced plans to improve NFL performance in coming seasons. 

Unlike news conferences on education, which draw sparse crowds, representatives from hundreds of newspapers, television and radio networks, and ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN for Kids and ESPN Tales from the Crypt were in attendance. 

One playbook that will work for every player and every team.

 

Mr. Duncan spoke first. “We are pleased to announce a partnership involving the U.S. Department of Education and the NFL,” he explained. “We will call this new effort to improve pro football ‘Race to the End Zone.’ All the leading school reform experts insist this approach will dramatically improve the quality of football play.” 

“Frankly,” Commissioner Goodell admitted, “this joint effort developed out of a concern for failing NFL franchises. We have watched the brilliant successes wrought by Mr. Duncan and others like him in recent years. We believe it is time to adopt a variety of sports reforms, similar to school reforms, and introduce them in our league. We believe with such changes in place the Cleveland Browns can finally reach the Super Bowl and win.” 

“We in the NFL love the Common Core Curriculum that Mr. Duncan is pushing on schools here in D.C. and in forty-five states,” Goodell continued. “Just as he believes Common Core Curriculum can save the schools, we believe a Common Core Playbook will save our struggling teams. Beginning with the 2013 season every coach and every team will use the same playbook.” 

A collective gasp went up from the audience. “Does Bill Belichick know about this?” a reporter from ABC wondered. 

An MSNBC reporter shouted from the fifth row: “Do you truly believe if all teams run the same plays, they’ll all have the same success?” 

“Of course,” Mr. Duncan interjected. “It’s going to work in education, too. I promise. And I went to Harvard. So you have to listen to me.” 

“You don’t know anything about NFL football…” a Fox Sports Channel representative pointedly remarked. 

“Yes, well, Mr. Duncan never taught school, either,” Goodell offered in lame defense. “And look at the fantastic job he’s doing fixing U.S. schools. Only $4.35 billion spent on ‘Race to the Top’ and scores on standardized tests are soaring.” 

 

At this point, reporters could be seen shooting each other strange looks. Frankly, none of them paid the slightest attention to stories about American education. For all they knew, Goodell might be telling the truth. 

“We believe with this system in place every player can succeed,” the Commissioner added. “By 2020 we believe every player in the league will be proficient in blocking, tackling and pass catching.” 

“Are you saying that a new playbook – nothing more than diagrams on paper – will magically change the game?” a representative of local television station WJLA wanted to know. 

“From now on every quarterback will be calling the same plays,” Goodell replied. “In other words, all of them will play like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.” 

“Even Mark Sanchez?” asked a dubious correspondent from the New York Post. 

“That’s the beauty of the Common Core Playbook,” Duncan explained. “We draw up new standards, kind of like we said we would do under No Child Left Behind. But this time the standards really work, because I promise they will. After all, I’m really smart. Did I mention that I went to Harvard? See: all the running backs run the same plays, and all succeed the same way, because the coaches don’t try to design their own schemes.” 

“Naturally, all defenses will be set up in the same way,” the Commissioner added. 

A young lady standing in the back of the auditorium raised a hand. The Secretary called on her to state her question. 

“I’m sorry. I’m not a sports person. I’m just a third-grade teacher visiting the capital on vacation. Are you saying that if all coaches follow the same plays and all players follow the same offensive and defensive plans this will guarantee success for every player and every team?” 

“Yes…” Duncan began; but the teacher had more to say. 

“Wouldn’t it be wiser to let the coaches design their plays? Aren’t coaches skilled in their field and doesn’t knowledge gathered over many years in the game count for anything? Don’t players have different strengths and weaknesses, so that coaches must tailor plans to meet their needs? Don’t players, themselves, have a dramatic impact on their own success or failure during the games and the success of their teams? No playbook in the world would have saved Aaron Hernandez if he was truly intent on committing murder this past week. And I’ve heard Peyton Manning studies more game film than anyone else…” 

By now, Duncan was shifting nervously from foot to foot at the podium. “Did I mention I went to Harvard? I think we experts can fix the NFL, just like we’re fixing the schools! Pretty soon, we’ll be like Finland, whose students rank #1 in reading and math whenever international competitions are held. Just listen to me and all the other school reformers. By the way, I went to Harvard, in case you’ve forgotten.” 

“I don’t think that guy knows s$%# about football,” a sportscaster from Chicago could be heard telling the teacher. 

“I don’t think he knows anything about education, either,” she nodded glumly. Unlike school reformers, she had learned about helping students by actually helping students for nine years. She already knew a great deal about what worked in a classroom. She understood that writing a bunch of standards had almost nothing to do with real success. 

(Standards in education, she realized, were like diet advice. Losing weight boiled down to motivation in the end.) 

She tried one last question: “Mr. Duncan, I know experts say Finland’s scores are high because they have better teachers. Do you think we should copy their system in other ways? For example, their schools have no sports teams and focus entirely on academics. Might we copy them in that respect? Might we do away with organized sports in our schools?” 

At that point pandemonium ensued, with shouting ESPN reporters and fainting sports columnists, and Goodell looking aghast. A Fox Sports correspondent jumped on stage and tried to wrestle the microphone away before Secretary Duncan could posit an answer. No one in the audience could even fathom the idea. 

Insanity, surely, putting academics first, and right here in America, too! 

The teacher smiled at the irony and exited from the room.

Here’s how Common Core Playbook will work: 
All teams will use identical plays.

Coaches' and players' strengths and weakness 
will no longer be paramount.

Written standards of play are clearly the key –
just as it now is in U. S. education. 

It’s not “how you play the game.”

It’s a bureaucrat’s dream of how you play the game.

 

(This is satire only; but real teachers know this is how dumb our leaders in education reform have been.)

*** 

If you liked this post, you might like my book about teaching, Two Legs Suffice. I can send you a free digital copy, if you like. 

(Email me at vilejjv@yahoo.com.)

 

My work is meant to be a defense of all good teachers and an explanation of what they can do, and what they cannot be expected to do without help. 

Two Legs Suffice is also about what students, parents and others involved in education must also do if we want to truly enhance learning.

Lesson One: A Tea Partier's Guide to Teaching in America



Abby, my oldest daughter,
was a very strong student.
So what is the key variable in schools?


I've been trying to pump up my blog traffic recently; and several of my conservative friends have been kind enough to log on and read a post or two.  I'm pretty much a flaming liberal, as most of them know--out of the closet, politically, I suppose you'd say.  I still have my Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on my car from '04 and my Obama '08, too.  So, yeah, I'm coming from a different direction than the typical Tea Party supporter.

I probably ought  to scrape off Edwards' name, I admit...that cheating scumbag.

Then again...Newt...really???  But I digress.

That still doesn't mean a friend who lives across the street can't come out a couple of weeks ago and lend me his leaf-blower when he sees me using an old-fashioned rake.  He's a wonderful neighbor and a Tea Party supporter, himself; but when it comes to education issues he's probably a bit conflicted.  His daughter is a teacher in the public schools.  (I think he might even have cast his vote against Issue 2, here in Ohio.)

As far as I can tell, conservatives believe that American education is in precipitous decline, that our system sucks tax dollars out of citizens' pockets and leaves them with nothing but heartbreak, that teachers' unions exist only to protect the incompetent, that members of those unions are "thugs" and "parasites," and liberals are the minions of the devil. 

And so, only private schools and charter schools and vouchers and business control in education can save us in the end.

Another conservative gentleman I know, and a good man by every measure I can think of, told me recently he couldn't understand where I was coming from in a recent post, "U. S. Education by the Numbers."

So:  let me try to explain how teachers really feel to the Tea Party folks.  Imagine, my conservative friends, that your favorite football team (let's say the Bengals) is finally playing well.  At the end of three quarters, Andy Dalton has the boys in stripes leading 21-10.  Then the referees wave the Cincinnati players off the gridiron and the Ravens are allowed to keep throwing passes down an empty field and they score six touchdowns and the fans in the stands start booing the defenders and crying in their $8 beers.

That doesn't make a bit of sense.  Yet, it's exactly the kind of comparison critics make when denigrating American public schools, and praising, for example, the "superior" Japanese education system. Here's how a teacher in this country sees the situation:  Japanese children attend school  240 days a year.  U. S. students go to class for 180 days. 

Four quarters of football vs. three.

Or:  consider the South Korean education system--also held up as model of success, and then used to shine a glaring light on America's failing schools.  In a recent international comparison, South Korean kids finished #1 in reading, #1 in math and #3 in science, out of 65 nations.  American students were #12 in reading, #17 in science and #25 in math.

If you're a Tea Party American, at this point, you probably gnash your teeth and start to grumble about the evil unions.  But if you're a Teacher American (even a Teacher American/Union Member American) the number that grabs your attention is "14." 

That's how many hours the average South Korean student spends every day in school, completing homework, and attending after-hours tutoring sessions, a kind of mania in that nation.

If you're a public school teacher in the U. S. you think, "If I asked students to shoulder that kind of load parents would be apoplextic.  They'd be calling my principal and demanding that she lop off my head and they'd want her to spike it on the front lawn of the school to serve as a warning. 

So, you dream of saying to a conservative friend:  "Both of us are going to get paint brushes and buckets and ladders and we are going to start painting this house today, at 8 a.m.  The winner, the person who covers the most surface, before they run out of paint, is going to receive $100,000 and the loser will get nothing but a lump of coal in their stocking on payday." 

Then you add this caveat:  "I will use these fourteen buckets of paint.  You can have nine."

Your conservative friend is going to question the fairness of such a contest, but that's how teachers see it when they hear South Korean schools are better--or schools in Finland or Liechtenstein or Glennbeckistan--and the reason for the difference is that America's teachers are unionized crooks and fools.  If an American kid spends nine hours on academics, which is close to the average, you figure that five hours extra every day, multiplied over the years, might give South Korean kids a slight advantage, academically speaking.

I suppose, in one respect, I think like a Tea Partier, myself.  I don't believe that U. S. education can ever be fixed by pouring in more money.  In fact, my experiences in life (I was a lazy student once) and in the classroom seem to prove that if you give me 35 students, ready to work, and I am willing to work hard, too, and parents will back me up if I'm truly, truly demanding, then I can teach effectively in a barn, with all my students seated on bales of hay.

That doesn't mean that the conservative perscription for fixing the public schools is correct.  That's just my spiel for today.

U. S. Education by the Numbers

The year now coming to an end has been good for education reformers.  That doesn't mean it has been a good for education, necessarly; but reformers have had a field day, blaming teachers and teachers' unions for almost every problem in the schools. 

In 2011 we were warned that America's educational decline undermined our standing in a global economy.  We heard that charter schools and vouchers would save U. S. education.  Arne Duncan, U. S. Secretary of Education, pushed the idea that standardized testing was the key.  Michelle Rhee, the Queen of Hearts in reforming circles, insisted that all school improvement boiled down to better teachers in the classrooms.  Steven Brill--a lawyer, by trade--wrote a book, laying out the same essential case.  And Davis Guggenheim's savaged teachers as lazy, incompetent union bums in the movie Waiting for Superman.

Meanwhile, I continued to amuse myself, trying to write a book about teaching.  Naturally, I am making myself the handsome hero of the story.  When Hollywood buys the rights, I even know who I want to play me in the film version:  Brad Pitt. 

(I think we look like twins.)

At any rate, here are some education statistics you might have missed recently:

0:  We know U. S. schools are killing our nation's standing in the global economy, right?  This number represents the growth in the Japanese economy since 1991 (it was $5.7 trillion two decades ago and it's $5.7 trillion now), despite a "superior" education system.  In a survey done in 2009, comparing fifteen-year olds from 65 countries, Japanese students ranked #5 in reading, #4 in math, and #2 in science.

1:  Number of unions representing teachers in the Wyoming City Public Schools, here in Ohio, where graduation rates are 98% and 2% of children qualify for the federal free lunch program.  Same number representing teachers in Cincinnati Public Schools (bordering the Wyoming schools) where graduation rates are 81.9% and roughtly 60% of students qualify for the same program.

1.8:  Estimated % growth of U. S. economy in 2011; critics say it's the public schools' fault.  (U. S. public school teachers are apparently a bunch of miscreants.) 

4.4:  In 2009, Finland ranked #2 in that same survey of fifteen-year olds in reading, #2 in math and #1 in science. Finland is also a socialist country and only 4.4% of children grow up in poverty. In the United States, the comparable figure is 22%. 
5:42:  Hours and minutes spent daily watching TV or playing video games, average child in the U. S., age 8-18, compared to 38 minutes with printed material.  (See:  U. S. test scores below.)

6:  Number of years actually spent in the classroom by leading voices in education reform, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, Joel I. Klein and Catherine Black, two recent chancellors of the New York City schools, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates and Eli Broad, billionaire philanthropists, Jon Schnur, who runs the school-reform group New Leaders for New Schools, Brill, Rhee, who promised to save the Washington, D. C. schools, Guggenheim, Chester Flynn Jr., think tank expert and staunch advocate of No Child Left Behind, Duncan, and six other U. S. secretaries of education, combined.  That's right:  combined.

8:  Percentage growth of Brazilian economy in 2010.  Brazil ranks 52nd in reading, 57th in math and 53rd in science out of 65 nations.

10:  Percentage of babies born in Scioto County, Ohio, with illegal drugs in their blood.  (You can see where this might be hard to pin on teachers.)

12:  U. S. ranking in survey of 65 nations in reading (three-way tie with Iceland and Poland).

14+:  Hours the average student in South Korea spends per day in school, doing homework, and in special after-hours tutoring sessions. In 2009, South Korea ranked #1 in the international survey noted above in reading, #1 in math and #3 in science.

15:  One out of every fifteen U. S. high school students admits smoking marijuana on a nearly daily basis in 2011.

17: U. S. ranking in science knowledge, for fifteen-year-olds, out of 65 nations.

25:  U. S. ranking in math, above.

33:  U. S. standing, out of 33 "advanced economies," in a survey by the International Monetary Fund, in a ranking of preterm births and infant mortality.

36:  Dollars per month, average pay for garment workers in Bangladesh, where exports have doubled since 2004.  (You figure a superior system of education has nothing to do with this trend.)

43:  Number of points higher--average SAT math scores--of Asian American students, who attend the same "failing schools" as white, black and Hispanic students.

46:  Percentage of American adults who admit they did not read a single book last year not required for school or work.  (See U. S. reading scores above.)

96:  Number of reporters who showed up in 2009, to watch Tom Brady's first practice after missing most of the preceding NFL season with a serious knee injury.  (You couldn't get 96 reporters to show up to watch the best teacher in America work in the next 96 years.  We don't exactly focus on education in this country.  See Japan and South Korea, above.)

108:  Number of major league baseball players taking prescribed medications for A.D.D. and A.D.H.D. in 2008,  after Major League Baseball began testing for amphetamines.  (It makes you wonder if doctors might not be over-doing.)  More generally, the Mayo Clinic estimates that 7.5% of all U. S. students are now taking Ritalin for A.D.D. and A.D.H.D.

200:  Estimated murders of children in the U. S. by their parents every year.  (Not all parents are the same and it's hard to see how vouchers will solve every "school" problem.)

240:  Days spent per year in school by the average Japanese student.  If U. S. students score lower than the Japanese it may be due in part to the fact that the Japanese boy or girl attends as many days in 3 years as his or her American peer does in 4.

245:  Chicago public school students killed or wounded, mostly as a result of gang violence, during the 2009-2010 school year, almost entirely outside of schools and off school grounds.  (This is the district Arne Duncan "fixed," by the way.) 

670:  Length in pages of the No Child Left Behind Law, designed to close the achievement gap between races, (see Asian American students, above) and passed by Congress in 2002, requiring schools to insure that every child is proficient in reading and math by 2014.  This gap is entirely the fault of schools, even though black males are six times more likely to be murdered than white males, blacks have an unemployment rate twice as high as whites, a life-expectancy four years shorter, and are three times more likely to raise their children in single-parent homes.

8,500:  child abuse and neglect cases in one year in Hamilton County, Ohio.  Call Children's Services in your area for comparable statistics.  (See:  vouchers and charter schools, above.)

17,000:  School resource officers presently employed in U. S. schools (a euphemism for "police" in halls). 

132,000:  Students now in U. S. public schools, classified as "severely disabled" .  (See:  No Child Left Behind, above.)  This represents only a small fraction of the 6.5 million students on special education plans in the public schools.

954,914:  Homeless children in America, according to most recent statistics by the U. S.  Department of Education.  (Charter schools?  Really?  That's your answer?)

1,500,000:  U. S. students, grades K-12, with at least one parent behind bars at any given moment.

5,000,000:  yearly salary of Ronald J. Packard, chief executive of K12 Inc., the biggest for-profit company in on-line education.  Packard's schools are almost entirely funded by taxpayer money, based on number of students enrolled. 

26,500,000:  Money spent by K12 Inc. in 2010 on advertising; i. e. spending taxpayer money to convince students to sign up for internet classes, funded by taxpayer money.  (Repeat cycle until taxpayers get too dizzy.)

31,650,000:  Value in dollars, added incentives not included, of 8-year contract signed by John Calipari in 2009 to coach the University of Kentucky men's basketball team.  Ironically, schools where Calipari coached previously were twice forced to forfeit games due to NCAA rules violations.  Memphis forfeited its entire 2007-08 season (38 wins) after investigators discovered that at least one star player, reportedly guard Derrick Rose, and probably two, had other students take the SAT tests for them.

Could it be that we have a social problem in this country, not really a school problem?

As I. F. Stone once noted, "There are countries in which the ignorant have respect for learning.  This is not one of them."