Tech Thursday: Adult CCSS Reading

Would you believe an almost $10 million dollar grant given to the National Research and Development Centers was given back in 2012 and ends in 2017? Would you believe it’s tied to Common Core ELA? Would you believe it’s geared for ADULTS both in the USA and Canada? Read on, my Warriors!

The Grant:

You can find the grant information by following this link: http://ies.ed.gov/funding/grantsearch/details.asp?ID=1343
The government organization awarding this money? The IES (Institute for Educational Sciences)
How much money was awarded? Exactly $9,999,985.00!
The institution receiving all that dough? Georgia State University.
The purpose? Research and Development for Adult Literacy. Here’s an excerpt about the purpose, “The Center for the Study of Adult Literacy (CSAL) seeks to improve our understanding of ways to advance the reading skills of struggling adult learners reading at the 3rd to 8th grade levels. The Center will both conduct exploratory work on underlying cognitive and motivational processes that contribute to or impede reading development and develop and evaluate a multi-component reading intervention for this population. In addition, CSAL will examine the adequacy of measurement instruments and assessments for this population. CSAL is a collaborative effort across four research sites: Atlanta, Georgia; Memphis, Tennessee; and Toronto and St. Catharines, Canada. Struggling adult readers in both the United States and Canada will participate.”

Now, it’s important to point out that staff members of CSAL include experts in childhood and adult education, psychometrics, educational technology, and statistics. Helping all this reading intervention along? AIR (American Institutes for Research)! How did I discover that pro CCSS/CTE backing group? On the grant project’s website. (see: http://csal.gsu.edu/content/homepage)

Before we proceed, I want to highlight the incentous relationship between the IES, the CSAL, the NCER, and the U.S. Dept. of Education. First, you have the head: the U.S. Dept. of Education, follow that with the IES as the neck. Then, two arms, one for the NCER and the other for the CSAL. So, what you have is lots of money staying within the U.S. Dept. of Ed, but in different arms of it. Confused yet?! Don’t fret, the bottom line is that money is being used for adult literacy educational reform. But..it is Common Core ELA? Let’s press on…
(*Note: If you’d like to see ALL the related ‘body parts’ of the IES, see: http://ies.ed.gov/ncer/randd/ Be sure to look at all the current research grant programs going on)
The Fact Sheet:

If you want the ‘facts’, here’s a link for you. This one takes you to the flyer GSU and the rest of the grant project have put together. See: http://csal.gsu.edu/sites/csal.gsu.edu/files/CSAL_Factsheet_2015.pdf
Here are just two of the ‘facts’ I’ll share, you can read the rest of them on your own.
1) A curriculum is being written for learners to use.
2) A computer program will teach them to read.

The Common Core/CTE?:

Okay, so far, we’ve gotten the U.S. Dept. of Education and some of its sub-departments, so we know that’s ONE aspect of CCSS/CTE (Common Core State Standards/Career Technical Education); we’ve seen that AIR’s connected, so that’s a SECOND aspect of alignment. But..is there more?!  Oh yes, my anti CCSS Warriors, there most certainly is! Where did I find those featured below? On the website of the almost $10 million grant project!

“Equipped for the Future” from the University of Tennessee (see: http://eff.clee.utk.edu/)
To see the executive summary of how aligned EFF is to the CCSS: EFFUT

“Council for the Advancement of Adult Literacy” (CAAL), based in New York, NY. (see: http://www.caalusa.org/about.html)
To see how CCSS/CTE bound this group is, be sure to read the portion of the website’s homepage where Carnegie Foundation and the Ford Foundation are given credit for helping create the Council. More CCSS/CTE pro supportive groups also give lots of money to the Council (see: http://www.caalusa.org/funders.html). There you’ll see some of the most familiar CCSS funders like Lumina, Verizon, the Joyce Foundation, and many more.
Among the CAAL publications, is this ‘gem’. It’s all about the data mining for Career Pathways! (CP is another part of the Career Tech Education)Please note that the published date is 2010, before the GED was aligned, before the Longitudinal Data Collection systems were united. Also of note, the CLASP(Center for Law and Social Policy) is mentioned in the footnotes concerning data mining. I’ve written about CLASP before to expose their CCSS/CTE ties. See this article: https://www.commoncorediva.com/2015/03/19/tech-thursday-ccss-workforce-pushing-labor-reform/
To see the CAAL publication: LongitudinalCoreTrackingElements-Indicators52710

“Commission on Adult Basic Education” (COABE), based in Syracuse, NY.
(see: http://www.coabe.org/)

To see their CCSS/CTE allegiance, just look at the screen shot below:

This Commission has around 13, 000 members devoted  “To promote adult education and literacy programs, including Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, English for Speakers of Other Languages, Family Literacy, Skills Development, Workforce Development, and other state, federal, and private programs which assist undereducated and/or disadvantaged adults to function effectively.” If you’d like to read the rest of the Commission’s mission, see: http://www.coabe.org/mission/
If you look around the website a bit more, you’ll see the USA is divided into regions.
You’ll also find their new publication about “New Pathways” which details how the COABE is embracing the WIOA’s(Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014) education/workforce alignment. (in other words, MORE Common Core Career Tech and Pathways). See: COABE_stratg_broch_v4

“Center for Applied Linguistics” based in Washington, D.C.
See: http://www.cal.org/
This group (non profit) has an entire Common Core State Standards section. See: http://www.cal.org/content/search?SearchText=common+core+state+standards
Founded in 1959 with a Ford Foundation grant, CAL is very supportive of the CCSS/CTE.
Be sure to access their 2014 Annual Report where you can find out that this group impacts K-12 educators, those working with immigrants and refugees, and how they are helping with the ‘next generation of assessments’. See: http://www.cal.org/who-we-are/annual-reports

Are there others groups like the ones above? Yes, there are. I’ll be looking up close at them in a later, not yet written article.

Closing:

While all the information above is certainly very revealing about how in-depth the CCSS/CTE Machine is going beyond K-12, I want to re-direct your attention to one of my very first anti CCSS blog articles where the CCSS Adult Standards were shared.
https://www.commoncorediva.com/2014/09/04/common-core-after-high-school-reality-check/

How does it all interconnect? Simply put: the Common Core curriculum