The 2013 New Year’s Resolution of the Utah State School Board

Michelle Malkin

Last month I learned that the New Year’s Resolution of famous political analyst Michelle Malkin is to stop Common Core.

See her syndicated column and blog here: http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/23/rotten-to-the-core-obamas-war-on-academic-standards-part-1/

So I wrote to the Utah State School Board, asking what their New Year’s Resolutions were. I received one response, from Dixie Allen, a stauch common core and Obama supporter.  I ‘ll post Dixie’s response after my query.

(You’ll be interested to see that my board representative is super excited about adopting Common Core rules for additional academic subjects, (Social studies and science) and that she shows no signs of enlightenment or concern that lost Utah freedoms due to Common Core are getting harder,  the further we invest state time and money, to reclaim.)

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Dear State School Board,

http://michellemalkin.com/ http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/338428/common-core-corrupts-michelle-malkin

This year, Fox News Political Analyst Michelle Malkin’s widely publicized new year’s resolution is to expose Common Core for the disaster it is, to return America to high quality education and to reinstate educational constitutional freedom. So is mine.

I wonder, what is your educational New Year’s resolution?

Christel Swasey
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Christel,

As one of my constituents, I owe you a response to your question. My New Year’s resolution is to work to be sure that our Core Curriculum contains all the objectives necessary to be sure our students are Career and College Ready [Career and College ready is Obama’s code word for Common Core national education standards] as they leave our system of education. That will require our readdressing our Social Studies and Science Curriculum and evaluate if there are any issues with our current Core Curriculum in Math and Language Arts that needs additions or tweaks. This is a constant job of the State Board and our specialists at USOE. However, it is a very worthwhile assignment that truly needs to happen on a continuous basis, as our students change and require different methods of instruction and sometimes different learning objectives to insure they are ready for the 21st Century of higher education and work and are capable of competing on the world’s stage.

Thanks for asking!

Dixie

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Dear Dixie,

Those sound like noble goals.

In order to reach the goals the state board will need to –in writing and on the official Utah website– define “Career and College Ready” higher, and in a more academically sound way than the Dept. of Education has defined it.

The Dept. only defines it as having the same standards as other states. Sameness, as you know, has nothing to do with adequacy. (See the ed.gov website definitions page.)

Since Common Core defines vocational school, 2-year and 4-year college prep as the same thing, it defines college readiness way, way down. It hurts the average and above average student. Please redefine that term for Utahns. Reassure us that we have standards beyond “staying the same as the pack.”

I agree with you that the common core math requires a lot of “tweaking”. It is a very weak math that is far behind impressive nations (and far behind impressive state standards like Massachusetts’ standards were before Common Core. )

To ensure that we retain the power to tweak our math, we will need to make sure that the 15% cap on the standards, that was placed by the Dept of Education, is not recognized as applying to our Utah math standards. The same would apply to their not allowing literature beyond 30% in high school English classrooms, too. We want to give teachers and school districts the freedom to teach as much classic literature as they feel is proper college prep.

Can you get that in writing for us?

Pleas also get in writing from the DOE and from the copyright holders, the NGA/CCSSO, that we will not be limited by the NGA copyright nor by the 15% cap the DOE placed on the copyrighted standards?

We need to proactively assert our own authority over our own Utah standards or we will have no voice very soon.

Thank you for your response.

Christel
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But she neglected to respond to those questions.  I really wish she would have.  Are they not important enough??

If any of you want to write to the board: Board@schools.utah.gov