The Common Core is probably the best thing that's happened in recent years to education in the United States. I hope we have the grit to work through the challenges: It would put the country in a new place economically and competitively. And the emphasis on critical thinking would improve our democratic functions.

--Deborah Stipek, Dean, Stanford Graduate School of Education
Stanford Graduate School of Education: Q&A: Stipek on how Stanford GSE is meeting challenges in Education, May 30, 2014


According to her vita, Deborah Stipek She served for five years on the Board on Children, Youth and Families at the National Research Council; she was the Chair of National Research Council Committee for Increasing High School Students' Engagement and Motivation to Learn and she directed the MacArthur Foundation Network on Teaching and Learning.

Here's the professional experience she lists:

Professor, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Los Angeles (1977-2000)

Congressional Science Fellow, Society for Research in Child Development, Office of Senator Bill Bradley (1983-1984)

Co-Director, NIMH Training Program in Applied Human Development

Director, Corinne Seeds University Elementary School (UCLA Laboratory School)

Director, Urban Education Studies Center

Stipek is one of the "expert informants" thanked for reading the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology report Draft Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century. Other experts include Paul Tough (author of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character) and Ash Vasudeva, Senior Program Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), and a former Teacher for America corps member, and Ed Dieterle, Senior Program Officer for Research at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2005, Stipek wrote a piece for Education Week, Scientifically Based Practice calling for "evidence-based education practices" and for educators to "impose scientific rigor" on themselves. She also pointed to Bush's Reading First as being "researched-based," concluding, The potential value of such a policy is clearly evident."

Indeed.

Stipek was in the "advisory group made up of key practitioners and experts in the education field provided vital counsel for this project. FSG [Foundation Strategy Group] sincerely thanks them for their guidance and insight." They helped in producing School Turnaround Field Guide.

The report was financed "in part" by the Wallace Foundation. Read the report and you will see that tying teacher pay to student test scores is a key turnaround strategy.

Stanford Charter School, which Stipek headed, began with high hopes--and an extra $3,000 per student. She said, "We rolled up our sleeves and opened a school in a financially and socially-challenged environment so that we could prepare teachers and leaders for the real challenges they will face." But they didn't seem to be able to get off the list of the persistently lowest-achieving schools in California.

At the very same time that the Stanford charter was facing non-renewal, Bill Gates was praising KIPP at the University: "If you ever want to see education that works, go to a KIPP School."

I have no doubt that the Stanford charter school experience was a heart-breaker, but life goes on--for the university folk. The grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation keep rolling in.

Just this year, the Foundation gave another bundle to the Core Practice Consortium: $450,000. You can see descriptions of other grants--totaling millions and millions--all about forming what schools and the teachers in them operate--here

One stands out: In 2013 Stanford received $200,000 "to expand and improve educational opportunities for public school students in California by supporting successful implementation of the Common Core State Standards."

So it is no surprise that the Dean of the Graduate School of Education proclaims the Common Core "probably the best thing that's happened in recent years to education in the United States."

Money talks, and it carries a big stick.