The above article in the LA Times also reported that:
The project, which formally launches this week, initially involves training 160 teachers and 24 administrators, who, in turn, will reach about 50,000 educators over three years.
Organizers said Sunday that the collaboration, with the California Teachers Assn., is the largest training effort in the state.
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| http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-history-stanford-20141126-story.html#page=1 |
A related article on November 26, 2014 by Teresa Watanabe reported that "a free, online Stanford University curriculum... is picking up steam nationally as educators grapple with widespread evidence of historical illiteracy among U.S. students."
L.A. Unified became the curriculum's largest booster this year when it signed an 18-month, $140,000 contract with the Stanford History Education Group for training and collaborating on more lesson plans. So far, 385 teachers and administrators — including about 40% of the social science instructors in the nation's second-largest school system — have attended Stanford-led workshops this year....
"This overturns the traditional textbook," said Sam Wineburg, the Stanford education professor whose research more than two decades ago laid the groundwork for the approach. "Students explore questions with original documents and cultivate a sense of literacy and how to develop sound judgment."...
The Stanford group has also developed free assessments, more than 65 so far, that gauge mastery of the targeted skills through short essay questions rather than traditional multiple-choice tests....
"The Stanford curriculum aligns almost perfectly with Common Core," said Kieley Jackson, a district coordinator of social science curriculum.The above articles reminded me of the previous significant relationship between Stanford and the Carnegie Corporation in developing the prototypes for national assessment testing. This laid the groundwork for what is now Common Core. In an article titled "Carnegie Teaching Panel Charts 'New Framework' —Grants Totaling $900,000 Made to Press Reforms” written by Lynn Olson appeared in the May 21, 1986 issue of Education Week. The announced “New Framework”—amongst other things—carved in stone the methodology which teachers would be required to use in order to obtain board certification:
Not all teachers have embraced the lessons. Some say they take too long, typically four days, although Stanford trainers say they can be adapted for one or two. Others say they are short on content. And some instructors prefer their approach of lectures and textbooks. [emphasis added]
The Carnegie Corporation of New York announced here last week that it has awarded two major grants, totaling nearly $900,000, to forward the recommendations of the Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession.
Last year, the corporation created the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, a multi-million dollar initiative designed to help chart U.S. education policy during the next 10 years. The forum assembled the 14-member task force on teaching as one of its first initiatives. The foundation awarded $817,000 to Stanford University for a 15-month research project to develop prototypes of the kinds of assessments the task force’s proposed National Board for Professional Teaching Standards might use to certify teachers....
Graphic accompanying Stanford article in LA Times
The 15-month Stanford study is the “opening gambit in a long and complex campaign to develop assessments for use by the national board,” said Lee S. Shulman [deeply involved with the Chicago Mastery Learning debacle, ed.], principal investigator for the study and aprofessor of education at Stanford.…
“Two major ‘products’ will come out of the Stanford study,” said Mr. Shulman. First, it will create, field test, and critique several “prototype” assessments—most likely in the areas of elementary-school mathematics and secondary-school history.
Second, it will develop a protocol for how to develop such assessments in the future....
You can read the rest of this important historical role for Stanford in my book the deliberate dumbing down of america, pp. 235-236.
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| graphic accompanying Stanford article |
