"I'm Not an Educator, but I Portray One" Experts in Ed Reform

There are advertising campaigns that successfully employ the technique of "advertised ignorance" or "false authority" where an individual proudly declares that he or she is not an expert  just before rendering an expert opinion. An example for this form of advertising was from a series of promotions for Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup starring actors who portrayed doctors on popular soap operas. Here is the 1986 TV commercial starring Peter Bergman:

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This commercial was the second in a series of successful TV doctor endorsements for over the counter medicines; people responded well to taking medical advice from a celebrity who admitted he was not an expert.

The broad acceptance of this logical fallacy may explain why the creators of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were successful promoters.  With minimal experience as educators or certifications in K-12 education, a handful of individuals convinced the National Governors Association that a set of national achievement standards was necessary to improve education.

These "Architects of the Common Core", David Coleman and Jason Zimba, founded The Grow Network, an internet-based consulting organization before joining with Sue Pimentel to found Student Achievement Partners (SAP), a non-profit organization which researched and developed "achievement based" assessment standards. These three were not experts in education through research or practice, but like the doctor who plays an expert on TV, they were confidently endorsing the Common Core as the cure for all of the nation's education ills.

The exorbitant cost for their diagnosis and cure was the topic of an article that ran in The Federalist (January 2015) by Joy Pullmann  titled Ten Common Core Promoters Laughing All the Way to the Bank. The tagline:

People intimately involved with creating or pushing Common Core are making a lot of money despite having demonstrated exactly zero proven success at increasing student achievement.

In addition to Coleman, Zimba, and Pimental, the article lists other who have endorsed the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for profit. Former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein; Former New York Education Commissioner John King;  Joanne Weiss, Chief of Staff to Education Secretary Arne Duncan; Idaho State Superintendent Tom Luna; Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett; and Dane Linn, Vice President for the Business Roundtable. The lone educator William McCallum, head of the University of Arizona’s math department, has begun a nonprofit curriculum company, Illustrative Mathematics, to generate materials for Common Core.

In her article, Pullman lists the credentials for each of the ten promoters and details how much they have financially gained, or still stand to gain, for supporting the Common Core. What these ten individuals collectively lack in education experience, they make up in business acumen. Like the handsome pretend doctor in the Vicks 44 commercials, who was paid handsomely for his marketing, these quasi-educators endorsing the Common Core will reap profits whether the CCSS initiative is successful or not.

Of course the irony of this form of endorsement is that one of the key shifts in education for the English Language arts standards is that students should place an emphasis on evidence whenever they make a claim:

The Common Core emphasizes using evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information.

If this key shift in the CCSS had been considered when the standards were in their genesis, there might have been an emphasis on requiring evidence for the claims of these CCSS promoters. However, once the standards were announced in 2009, 44 states rapidly moved to adopt the CCSS. Many of these states were spurred on by the Race to the Top federal funding deadlines that awarded extra points to applications completed by August 2010.

The nationwide rush to adopt the standards had been spurred on by non-educators or policy wonks that represented businesses that stood to profit as state after state swallowed what has turned out to be costly, even bitter, medicine.

Whether that CCSS medicine will be effective is yet to be determined, but twelve states who had initially signed on have filed to opt out....A decision not to follow the "doctor's" orders.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]