Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy, in Lindon, Utah, is the first public school in Utah to issue a letter to the State School Board that asks the board to reject Common Core and return to time-tested, legitimate education.
The letter is posted here. The board of directors of this public charter school writes that the Common Core Standards compromise Maesar’s educational mission and purpose. They say that Common Core Standards were adopted without an opportunity for the local school districts or parents to review them first. And they urge the state school board, Governor Herbert, and the Utah legislature to replace the Common Core with locally vetted standards.
Parents and teachers against Common Core in New York are celebrating the fact that both Democratic and Republican legislators are now taking a stand against the Common Core.
Why are the two parties coming together?
Senator George Latimer (D) -Westchester County, wrote an article for the Albany Times last month that explained it well:
“For decades we have heard the rallying cry that American students’ performance is falling behind that of students in other countries and for decades education experts have attempted to come up with ONE solution. This time, under the guise of making students more prepared for a global economy, New York has adopted the “Common Core” standards and is forging ahead at breakneck speed to implement a new top-down education mandate on local school districts. Without dissecting the validity of the “global competition” argument, there are elements of the Common Core’s implementation in New York that must be addressed first.
… There is something wrong with asking our students to perform at a higher level without properly preparing them. There is something wrong with asking someone in Albany or beyond to evaluate a student in Brooklyn the same as one in Bedford or Buffalo.
There are many issues with New York’s implementation of Common Core, and the concerns are not limited to a small contingent, as some have suggested. Real people who have students in schools and are of every ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, age and geographic makeup share reservations about the Common Core. It is also an issue that does not pit Democrats versus Republicans; it is truly about the students.
New York is asking students to take exams based on curricula that are not fully implemented in and certainly not readily embraced by those who are actually in classrooms every day. Yet proponents of Common Core continue to move forward without compromise.
With significant corporate interests behind the shifts toward a “global” education system, I think it is imperative to analyze this in a business-oriented manner.
Many business school students and graduates are surely aware of failure of the “New Coke” initiative in the early ’80s, a product that the top brass of Coca-Cola were convinced would usher in a new generation of an already successful brand. Consumers rejected it, prefering they product they already knew and liked.
Aggregate scores from the entire state have already slipped in the first year of these new tests, and we know our students are not X percent less intelligent than they were the previous year. The scores dropped because the top officials at the Education Department, like those at Coca-Cola in the ’80s, are convinced that they have a new “brand” of education that will usher in a new generation of globally competitive students. The scores dropped because in its haste to implement the new “brand” of education, SED did not do “consumer” research and development before bringing this product to New York’s education “marketplace.”
The critics of elements of the Common Core, myself included, are not against having students who are able to understand the “why behind how things work,” but we are opposed to a one-size-fits-all approach to educating children in a state, nation and world where one size rarely fits all.
… the outcry against specific aspects of the Common Core — the lack of preparation, privacy of student data, and over-reliance on testing — is an opportunity for us to respond to consumer feedback and adjust to the market. … [P]roponents have failed to properly assess the need for a completely new product in their market, and if we don’t evaluate the public opposition to the Common Core as a gauge of the education market, we will make a mistake that will hurt our children.”
Two leaders who make judgments for our schools –two whose judgment I wish we were able to trust, each have made statements: that high-stakestests and data mining are unrelated to Common Core standards.
This is a fact-checking post.
First, look at their statements:
Our governor’s education advisor, Tami Pyfer, was quoted in the Morgan News: “whilenot related to the Common Core, data mining and over-testing ‘will not be happening with Utah students.'” The Morgan News also wrote that Pyfer: “is concerned with high stakes testing and test results being used for purposes the tests were not originally designed for. ‘Wedo not support high stakes testing.‘”
Pyfer also wrote, at a blog called The Blue Hat Movement:
“I’m confused about how/why you are connecting assessment issues, like the one in this video, to the Common Core Standards.”
Really.
Meanwhile, Superintendent Martell Menlove has also said in many settings that he has concerns with high stakes testing and data mining –but says that he does not understand the relationship between high stakes testing and the Common Core. In emails to the public he has also written, “I am not aware of any additional data reporting requirements that are associated with Common Core.”
Oh, Dear. Tami and Martell!
Utah’s new school test is inseparable from the Common Core standards.
(FYI, readers, the test goes by many names: Computer Adaptive, AIR/SAGE, Utah Core, Common Core). And neither is the data-mining inseparable from Common Core, with its CEDS (common education data standards) and its SLDS (my nickname: longitudinal student stalking system).
2.) The four assurances or four key reforms for which the executive branch gave ARRA stimulus dollars (in exchange for Utah’s agreement to obey them) included common college and career-readiness standards, tests, and data collection. It was always a package deal.
“SFSF requires progress on four reforms …. 1.Making progress toward rigorous college- and career-ready standardsand high-quality assessmentsthat are valid and reliable for all students, including English language learners and students with disabilities; 2.Establishing pre-K-to college and career data systems that trackprogress and foster continuous improvement; 3.Making improvements in teacher effectiveness and in the equitable distribution of qualified teachers for all students, particularly students who are most in need; 4.Providing intensive support and effective interventions for the lowest-performing schools.”
4. The lead sponsor of Common Core Standards, Bill Gates, spoke at at national Conference for State Legislatures. He said that “We’ll only know if this effort has succeeded when the curriculum and tests are aligned to these standards.” This alignment has been the point all along. (Wouldn’t the man who funded multimillions of dollars toward the creation, development, marketing, implementation, and curriculum development of Common Core know what the goal was to be?)
It is difficult for me to understand how Menlove, who belongs to the CCSSO, or how Pyfer, who works so intimately with both the NGA and CCSSO, can mentally separate the Common Core aligned, high-stakes tests from the goals of the Common Core standards creators themselves.
The Common Education Data Standards Initiative is a joint effort by CCSSO and the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) in partnership with the United States Department of Education. Educators and policy makers need clear, consistent data about students and schools in order to draw valid comparisons between key indicators of educational success and identify areas where we can improve classroom instruction and student support from early childhood through K-12 education to post secondary education and the workforce.
Education Information Management Advisory Consortium (EIMAC)
The Education Information Management Advisory Consortium (EIMAC) is CCSSO’s network of state education agency officials tasked with data collection and reporting; information system management and design; and assessment coordination. EIMAC advocates on behalf of states to reduce data collection burden and improve the overall quality of the data collected at the national level.”
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In light of these five points, can anybody honestly say that they cannot see a connection between the Common Core test and the Common Core high stakes AIR tests? Are we still to be called “conspiracy theorists” (my school board member Dixie Allen’s latest term of endearment for me) –for declaring that the tests and standards are one, are inseparable, and are equally harmful to our schools and to our liberties?
So, having made this point, now let me share what Principal Bob Schaeffer of Colorado shared with me today: a compilation of how bad the national Common Core high-stakes testing is waxing.
Enjoy.
NEWS UPDATE: NATIONAL PROBLEMS WITH HIGH-STAKES TESTS
I sent a an email letter to my representatives, asking them to vote yes on Represenative Dana Layton’s bill HB0342.
The bill would return local control to Utah’s educational system. Utah needs this bill. I hope every Utahn writes to his or her legislators and begs them to pass this bill.
For those who don’t know, Rep. Layton’s bill “specifies procedures for the development and adoption of core curriculum standards for English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies, including: the establishment of a standards development committee consisting of parents, teachers, and representatives of school districts, business, and higher education to assist the board in developing standards; and public review and comment of draft core curriculum standards; equires the State Board of Education to establish a standards review committee consisting of 15 parents of Utah public education students to review proposed core curriculum standards for English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies; requires the State Board of Education to maintain control of, and the power to modify, core curriculum standards for English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies; and requires the State Board of Education, on or before July 1, 2016, to adopt revised core curriculum standards for English language arts and mathematics that are developed specifically for Utah.”
All day, I keep asking myself, why would the state school board NOT want this, not want a return to local control of education?
Anyway, I copied my letter (email number one, below) to legislators also to the school board.
Dixie Allen, my state school board representative, wrote back to me and to the same legislators, saying that what I had written was untrue. It’s not every day that I get called a liar, and I dislike it, for some reason. I doubt the school board enjoys it, either. So rather than rebut the lies, I simply wrote again, asking the legislators to fact-check for themselves. The truth can stand up under close inspection. Empty claims cannot.
Then Dave Thomas, another state school board member, sent the legislators and me the Utah State School Board’s link to a wordy, undocumented, verbiose posting –which is without any footnotes, without links or proof of truthfulness –and he said it “explains its position, inclusive of documentary evidence.”
Sigh. I try to keep giving the board the benefit of the doubt; they were rushed into Common Core adoption; they wanted that Race to the Top grant application turned in so fast; they made trusting assumptions about what the quality of the standards would be once they actually had the opportunity to study them; they asumed the standards had been pilot tested; whatever.
But now, now in 2014, when it’s been made so clear and obvious that the standards are not what they claimed to be, now that it’s so clear and obvious that we’ve traded local control for a substandard mess of pottage– now can’t we just ‘fess up and agree that Utah made a big mistake, a mistake anyone in the shoes of the state board could have made and would likely have made– and just turn around now and walk away from the mistake? Why hold on to this judgment error with such doggedness? It is not too late for us to change our course. In fact, the longer we stay in Common Core, the more money we waste and the more entrenched our curriculums are becoming in this substandard and centrally controlled monster.
So, here are all those emails in case anyone is interested.
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EMAIL NUMBER ONE: (It was very long so I am not copying the whole thing; it’s just the Common Core 101 research that I cut and pasted from the front page of my blog.)
Since many of you are my constituents or my respected representatives at the State Level, I feel like you need to understand that most of what Christel has alluded to is untrue.
First, the standards were written under the control and supervision of the nation’s Governor’s Association and the Chief State School Officers, by experts in the field, including our own experts from USOE and several of our college professors.
We did not receive any money for adopting the standards, but did save money because we did not need to go through the traditional method of upgrading our standards by bringing in experts in the field for days and weeks to help write and rewrite the upgraded standards for Math and English/Language Arts.
We continually at the State Office and State Board level, try to explain that we upgrade Standards in all areas of the curriculum about every 5 years. We have been working on Social Studies for the past two years. We have and will tweak and upgrade the Common Core Standards as we move forward. We have already added back in Cursive Writing into the Language Arts Standards and have asked teachers not to use some recommended readings, as they do not seem to be suitable for the age of students we are addressing. We will continue to upgrade and revise all our standards to insure they are the best standards for the expectations of our students as they move into college and careers.
I have often told my constituents that as a teacher and principal and curriculum director in the public schools for over 26 years, I see such great promise for especially the mathematics standards, as they make it possible for all students to become competent in the higher levels of mathematics, which before was a “stair step approach”, which many were not able to make it through in the 4 years of high school. Now we introduce some of the advanced mathematics concepts in late elementary and middle school, thus providing the opportunity for all students to receive the proper amount of mathematics instruction to enter STEM Fields and almost any college or career program they wish to pursue.
The same advantage is true of the English/Language Arts curriculum as it helps students identify and understand complicated texts, written to explain history, mathematics, etc. All of which is needed at the College and Career level.
Finally, if the legislature or any other group suggests or insists that we throw out the Common Core Curriculum, which has been in place for three plus years in our schools, it will cost millions of dollars to replicate standards that are as effective, and the school system will have to throw out years of work on creating curriculum and assessments to meet these standards.
Please allow the educators in the field, with help from USOE and our professors of higher learning work to upgrade these standards as we move forward, knowing that there has been and will always be invitations to parents and constituents to give input into any upgrades — as was the case with the Common Core. At the State Board and Utah State Office of Education level, we are always frustrated that the invitation to become involved in reviewing standards or test items is overlooked or possibly not shared with all that wish to be involved — however, in the case of the Common Core, I believe that most of those speaking out against the Core are not talking about the Standards or the Curriculum, but the intrusion of the Federal Government. I wish all could see that this set of standards was a coalition of Governors and State School Officers who knew we needed better standards and enough of our Nation using such standards to receive quality textbooks and computer programs to help teachers teach it in our schools.
I do hope that you will look at this issue realistically in relationship to insuring that our students can and will compete for quality higher education and careers, both within our state and throughout the nation and world.
Thank you for your service and continued support of our educational system!!
Sincerely,
Dixie Allen, Region 12
Chair, Standards and Assessment
Utah State Board of Education
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EMAIL NUMBER THREE
From me again:
Dixie,
It is time for the truth to stand up to fact-checking. I have given documented links to all of my statements about Common Core, while you and the state school board continues to give none.
Let the legislators and the people do the fact-checking and look at documentation rather than words and claims.
Dixie, I am an honest and truthful reseacher and I will gladly alter anything if you can show me I have written anything false. Will you do the same?
Christel
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EMAIL NUMBER FOUR:
From Dave Thomas of the state school board:
The State Board has had a website for a long time that explains its position, inclusive of documentary evidence. If you would like to read the State Board’s position it is at http://www.utahpublicschools.org/index.html.
David L. Thomas
Utah State Board of Education
1st Vice Chair
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EMAIL NUMBER FIVE:
From Dixie Allen again:
Christel,
As Dave Thomas suggests, we have done that!!
Dixie
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EMAIL NUMBER SIX:
From me:
Dixie, you have not.
Your claims are never linked to documentation. And you don’t acknowledge ours.
The USOE’s claims about Common Core are wordy and empty. Why not show me where Utah has a voice over amending the shared core? Show me how a teacher can have a voice in what will be tested. Show me where these experimental standards were tried in a classroom anywhere successfully prior to being foisted on all the states. Show me proof that deleting classics will improve literacy!
This is a giant academic fraud no matter how many people say it’s improving standards.
It is false to rob students of classical literature to 70% by senior year. It’s wrong to diminish the teaching of the personal narrative essay.
It is a crime to steal calculus and other higher level math from high school students.
It is absurd to make little children do the type of math they are being forced to do.
Almost weekly I get letters from people who are pulling their children out of math or all of public education. They want to know what they can do. I tell them to ask you. Your board has destroyed good education in this state and we are angry and we are not about to back down until you make it right.
Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune reporters attended the Utah rally; read their reports here and here.
Here’s my shorter version of the events: photos first.
Siri Davidson, a Utah mother who began to home school her children because of Common Core math
Volunteers explained to attendees how to opt out of Common Core tests.
Attendance was strong at Salt Lake City’s rally to Stop Common Core on Tuesday night
Judge Norman Jackson, who gave the prayer, in this photo is on the front row, left.
After a prayer and a song, the rally began with Representative Brian Greene speaking about fairness and transparency in state school board elections. His new bill –if it gets a chance to be heard– creates it: House Bill 228. He asked Utahns to please write to the representatives and ask them to help push that bill out of committeeso legislators may vote on it.
Representative Dana Layton spoke about her bill to restore local control of education, House Bill 342. She quoted Diane Ravitch’s words about Common Core from the speech/article “Everything You Need To Know About Common Core.”
State Senator Margaret Dayton spoke about the need for informed citizens and for a return to local control and away from Common Core.
Psychotherapist Joan Landes spoke about the psychological devastation that the age-inappropriate Common Core and its experimental testing wreaks on students.
Three essay winners read their essays and won boxes of Mrs. Cavanaugh’s chocolates: Brian Halladay, a member of the Alpine School Board; Amy Mullins, a teacher; and Cami Isle, a teacher. All the essays that were entered into the contest will be posted at Utahns Against Common Core.
I got to introduce these three writers, and got to explain why we held the essay contest. In the spirit of restoring legitimate learning and the joy of reading and writing, Utahns Against Common Core aimed to model the practice of written human conversation and critical thought –which happens in personal essays.
Common Core doesn’t encourage personal writing. It prefers technical writing and info-texts. In fact, David Coleman, lead architect of Common Core, explained why he ditched personal writing: ““As you grow up in this world you realize that people really don’t give a !% #*^about what you feel or what you think… it is rare in a working environment that someone says, ‘Johnson I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.’ ” Coleman mocks personal writing and slashed it, as he also slashed the allowable amounts of classic literature, starting in elementary grades at just 50% but cutting more and more– until, as high school seniors, students must devote 70% of their readings to informational texts, allowing only 30% to be fictional stories, the stuff that makes us love reading in the first place. (Excuse me while I pull out my hair and scream.) So. Since Coleman mocks the personal essay and works to incrementally delete classical literature, we must work to restore them.
This is why we held the essay contest.
After the essay readings, teacher and author Sinhue Noriega spoke about Common Core being much more than just standards, and also being –despite proponents’ claims to the contrary– a curriculum; and he spoke about the unconstitutionality of the Common Core.
Attorney Ed Flint spoke about the Common Core-related law suit in which he is involved. Details here.
Radio host Rod Arquette spoke passionately, telling the story of how the Seattle Seahawks won the Superbowl this year in part because of the athlete who often asked the team, as his father had often asked him, “Why not you? Why not us?” Arquette turned the question to the audience. Why can’t we change the course of the Common Core? Why not us?
Representatives from the Left-Right Alliance, Libertas Institute, Utahns Against Common Core, FreedomWorks, and several other organizations spoke for just one minute apiece.
Dad Oak Norton and Mom Alisa Ellis closed the meeting with calls to action.
The words that stayed in my mind more than anything else from the evening were the words of retired Judge Norman Jackson’s opening prayer. These deserve to be remembered and pondered.
Judge Jackson prayed:
“Dear God and Father of us all,
We express our Gratitude for the time, means and opportunity to gather this day at the seat of our Government. We acknowledge our firm reliance on Thy Divine protection and guidance in all the affairs of life. And ask Thy forgiveness of our trespasses as we forgive those of others. Enable us to live with charity for all.
We thank Thee for the endowment of unalienable rights – including life, liberty and the education of our children. May our land, schools and homes be places of light, liberty and learning. Bless us and all citizens with the desire to be governed by correct principles. Bless those who govern with that same desire.
Protect parents, children and teachers from the designs of conspiring men and women. And from the pretensions of those who occupy high places. Preserve the sanctity of our homes from the decay of individual responsibility and religion. Stay the hands of those who would harm and offend our children. Grant us and all citizens the strength to be eternally vigilant in this great cause.
Bless the proceedings and participants of this gathering with Thy guiding influence and sustaining care. Bless us and our children with Thy holy light – we humbly pray in the name of Thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen.”
I like Superintendent Martell Menlove. He’s approachable, pleasant, polite; has a warm smile and even responds to emails.
But there is a problem. Dr. Menlove is not just any Utahn; he’s the State Superintendent. He supports Common Core and he’s a member of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which created and copyrighted Common Core (with the NGA).
Dr. Menlove is also on the Board of Directors of WestEd, an organization with a key role in the creation of the Common Core tests. I don’t know why he remains a member of these groups. Maybe he thinks he can influence them for good instead of having them drag him (and our state) down. Maybe. But Dr. Menlove told me once that the reason he supports Common Core is that the ACT and SAT do. He thinks that our students have to align with whatever ACT/SAT do because of college entrance traditions. (I suggested to Dr. Menlove that now that David Coleman has corrupted the college entrance exams (here and here) down to Common Core standards, we should flee ACT/SAT and find alternative testing for Utah students.) He did not agree.
Yesterday, my friend Oak Norton wrote a letter to Dr. Menlove. He asked him to publically clarify whether Utah Core Standards are the same thing as Common Core Standards because some people are of the false belief that Utah has independent math and English standards. Dr. Menlove wrote back and clarified. Utah does Common Core standards. He wrote: “The Utah State Board of Education adopted the Common Core State Standards as Utah Core Standards in Math and English/Language Arts. I do not believe I have said anything contrary to this. If I have, I apologize.” (See? He is nice.)
But there’s still a problem. It’s never been made clear by him nor other leaders that because we do Common Core, we cannot control our own standards anymore. Whether our leaders don’t understand this, or choose not to understand this, or don’t want the people to understand this, is no matter. What matters is that people are confused.
Let’s not be confused. We can fact-check our leaders who say, “Utah isn’t obligated to Common Core and we can easily alter “our” standards while still belonging to the Common Core Initiative”. It’s wishful thinking at best; lies at worst. Here’s why:
Look at 7 basic facts:
1. The Department of Education’s official website explains the conditions of getting ARRA money. It says:
“As part of its application for initial funding, the state must assure that it will take actions to: (a) increase teacher effectiveness and address inequities in the distribution of highly qualified teachers; (b) establish and use pre-K-through-college and career data systems to track progress and foster continuous improvement; (c) make progress toward rigorous college- and career-ready standards and high-quality assessments; and (d) support targeted, intensive support and effective interventions to turn around schools identified for corrective action and restructuring.”
F.Y.I. – “College and Career Ready Standards and high-quality assessments” means only ONE thing to the federal government: COMMON CORE. Read their definitions page.
Yes, we traded our educational freedom for federal ARRA money. Sad choice, Governor Huntsman. That’s where it all started: there were four assurances in that signup (which included common standards and assessments and data collection) that Governor Huntsman signed us up for in that State Fiscal Stabilization Fund; the standards were one of the conditions. Data collection and testing were also included.
Maybe Dr. Menlove doesn’t know this. He really should.
2. BUT THERE IS MORE: the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) that the school board signed got us started further down the path of Common Core –this MOU, which was used in other federal funding applications, proved we were on the Common Core commitment train.
3. BUT THERE IS MORE: the NCLB temporary waiver application (see page 18) binds Utah to COMMON STANDARDS.
4. BUT THERE IS MORE: the Common Core copyright pageitself binds users to precisely what’s written and offers no amendment process for states governed by the standards;
5. BUT THERE IS MORE: there is a 15% clause in the Achieve implementation manuals (see page 23) and in the NCLB waiver and elsewhere, that is a “ceiling rule”, stifling what Utah can add to the Utah Core, and ensuring that anything Utah adds to the Common standards, including or beyond that 15%, won’t be tested or recognized by the national testers nor written into the “acceptable” Common Core aligned curriculums
6. BUT THERE IS MORE. The lack of any amendment process for the states to alter the common standards should be a red flag to our leaders– whose duty is to protect us from the tyranny of corporate copyrights as well as to protect us from the tyranny of the federal Department of Education.
7. BUT THERE IS MORE. Even if we stand firm and reject the coming science and social studies standards, which Dr. Menlove told us he would do, we are still standing without control over what our students will learn about history and science! We’ve been duped by David Coleman, lead Common Core creator and now College Board President.
This duping is clearly explained in a letter from another friend of mine, Jakell Sullivan, on the subject:
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Dear Legislators,
Oak Norton published Superintendent Menlove’s reply to his email where Dr. Menlove admits that we have indeed adopted Common Core; however, he does not make any effort to address the places where Utah is bound to the federal mandates—this is, in my opinion, a consistent effort by him and Board members to never address the actual reality of the situation. Please see Dr. Menlove’s response, and please keep in mind that the Common Core Standards creators were clever in their approach to telling states they were only adopting Math and English. The actual cover of the English Language Arts standards reads:
“English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects“
This was a sleight of hand by the Standards creators, and why parents around the country are beginning to see such wordy math problems. All subjects will be enmeshed under Common Core standards, providing an easier framework to slip ideas and beliefs into all subjects.
Here is video of CC architect, David Coleman, talking about how he threatened to resign from writing the standards unless “teachers in history and social studies, and tech subjects bear the responsibility of bringing their kids to literacy.”
But, it is not about bringing English into all subjects, it is about bringing all subjects together so that states, who would never accept the anti-American history standards, would be getting those standards through the back door through the recommended curricula.
I hope legislators will find a way to vet what has actually occurred.
JaKell
Please make your voice heard. Call or write to your local and state leaders. Let them know that this loss of local control is NOT OKAY with you. Speak up or you will lose your window of opportunity to defend freedom and your children’s rights. Silence is acquiescence.
There are many Stop Common Core rallies happening now in Utah, Missouri, Louisiana, New York and elsewhere. The rallies come on the heels of a U.S. Senate resolution that denounced Common Core, signed by senators from South Carolina, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Wyoming.
UTAH RALLY
Tonight, Tuesday, February 18th, at 6:30 at the State Capitol Building, Hall of Governors, is the Utah Stop Common Core rally. As the press release indicated, this is an action rally that sends a message to Utah legislators: “Stand up against Common Core or prepare to be voted out of office.”
Please, Utahns, come.
We need many hundreds of people here tonight. Your physical presence speaks more loudly than many other things. There is a battle going on, involving your children and their well-being. Drop your laundry folding and your soccer game and your genealogy club meeting and come; defend. I’ll tell you why.
If you care about liberty and local control, if you care about what your children will be learning in school and you want a voice in that, if you care about teachers being given respect and not micromanaged by an increasingly top-heavy government, if you care about the privacy of student data, if you think that classic literature should remain in schools, not edged out by “informational texts” down to 70% by the senior year, if you think that children should have access to calculus and other higher level math classes if they want to learn it, in high school; if you think traditional math algorithms are more valuable than group discovery of math pathways, if you believe in the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee that states, not federal forces or corporate boardrooms, should be directing schools; if you believe in the Declaration’s guarantee that innocent people will not be subjected to “unreasonable search and seizure” to which the educational SLDS tracking system does subject all schoolchildren; if you think schools should be using educational standards that are un-experimental, time-tested, and actually analyzed and vetted locally prior to adoption; if you want to send a message to the state school board and governor that we don’t want national sex standards, national social studies standards, and national science standards which are waiting in the wings to join our current math and English national standards; if you want to send a message that you believe in representation and not in having unelected corporate boards and untransparent, unelected groups like the CCSSO and NGA making decisions for US that we cannot alter; if you want to see independent thought and not just groupthink taking over the textbooks of our state and nation; if you believe in the principle of honest debate rather than profiteers paying for their version of reforms without the debate of the people ever happening; if you think education reforms should have something to do with parents and teachers rather than with bureaucrats and corporate partners— then COME TO THE RALLY TONIGHT. GOD BLESS YOU FOR COMING.
Speakers will each be giving 5-minute-or-shorter power speeches.
Utah Mom Alisa Ellis will be the Emcee.
Tonight’s speakers will be:
State Senator Margaret Dayton
Representatives Brian Greene and Dana Layton
Radio Host Rod Arquette
Attorney Ed Flint
Alpine School Board Member Brian Halladay – essay contest winner
Teacher Amy Mullins – essay contest winner
Teacher Cami Isle – essay contest winner
Agency Based Education – Oak Norton
Utahns Against Common Core – Renee Braddy
Teacher and Author Sinhue Noriega
Libertas Institute – Connor Boyack
Left/Right Alliance – Autumn Cook
Eagle Forum – Gayle Ruzicka
Mental Health Expert Joan Landes
There will be a meet-and-greet at 6:00 if you want to come early to ask questions.
…AND, IN OTHER PLACES….
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THE NEW YORK RALLY:
The New York iREFUSE Rally will happen before the HST testing takes place in NY which is the following Monday (March 31st ) just after the rally. One of the goals of the rally is to help build awareness that a child can refuse the HST Common Core test. The iREFUSE New York community page: https://www.facebook.com/irefusethegreatamericanoptout
This post aims to be as unmistakably direct and documented as possible. Feel free to use it without asking permission.
DOES COMMON CORE PREPARE STUDENTS FOR COLLEGE?
Not for a 4-year university. It minimally prepares students for the non-collegiate workforce or for non-selective community colleges.
A key Common Core creator, Jason Zimba, said that the Common Core can prepare students for non-selective colleges but that it does not prepare students for STEM careers. He said: “I think it’s a fair critique that it’s a minimal definition of college readiness… but not for the colleges most parents aspire to… Not only not for STEM, it’s also not for selective colleges. For example, for U.C. Berkeley, whether you are going to be an engineer or not, you’d better have precalculus to get into U.C. Berkeley.”
IS THERE AN AMENDMENT PROCESS FOR VOTERS TO ALTER THE COMMON CORE?
No. When it changes, it will be changed by those who wrote them. (See official site .)
DO THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS IMPROVE K-12 EDUCATION?
No one knows. They are an unpiloted experiment. But people who are financially invested in Common Core say yes to the question, while people who aren’t financially interested, and who study and analyze the Common Core standards, say no.
Dr. James Milgram (Stanford University emeritus professor who served on the official Common Core validation committee) reported:
“I can tell you that my main objection to Core Standards, and the reason I didn’t sign off on them was that they did not match up to international expectations. They were at least 2 years behind the practices in the high achieving countries by 7th grade,and, as a number of people have observed, only require partial understanding of what would be the content of a normal, solid, coursein Algebra I or Geometry. Moreover, they cover very little of the content of Algebra II, and none of any higher level course…They will not help our children match up to the students in the top foreign countries when it comes to being hired to top level jobs.“
Dr. Sandra Stotsky (University of Arkansas emeritus professor who served on official Common Core validation committee and also refused to sign off on the academic legitimacy of the Common Core) said:
“As empty skill sets, Common Core’s ELA standards do not strengthen the high school curriculum. Nor can they reduce post-secondary remedial coursework in a legitimate way. As empty skill sets, Common Core’s ELA “college readiness” standards weaken the base of literary and cultural knowledge needed for authentic college coursework, decrease the capacity for analytical thinking… and completely muddle the development of writing skills.” Full testimony here.
IS COMMON CORE LEGAL?
No. Under the Constitution, education belongs to individual states. It is illegal for the federal government to interfere in the states’ right of making educational decisions. National standards are illegal. National data collection is illegal. And the General Educational Provisions Act prohibits the federal government from directing education –very, very clearly:
“No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system…”
DOES COMMON CORE REALLY TAKE AWAY MOST OF THE TRADITIONAL CLASSIC LITERATURE AND NARRATIVE WRITING?
Yes. Although it does not specify which classic books cannot be read, the Common Core contains a chart that explains that in fourth grade, students must cut their classic/fiction reading to 50%. By twelfth grade, students must reduce their classic/fiction reading to 30% with informational text taking up 70% of the time spent reading.
Grade
Literary
Information
4
50%
50%
8
45%
55%
12
30%
70%
WHAT IS INFORMATIONAL TEXT?
Informational text is anything that used to belong mostly in other subjects. It is now taking 70% of high school seniors’ English class readings, in the form of scientific writings, political writings; opinion pieces; almost anything other than classic novels, poetry, plays or other fictional works.
WHY DON’T COMMON CORE PROPONENTS WANT STUDENTS TO LEARN MUCH MATH?
It costs money to educate beyond minimal workforce training. In this 2013 document put out by the NCEE (National Center on Education and the Economy) we learn that it’s not important under Common Core to have high educational standards in high school; it’s seen as a waste of time to educate the high school graduates past Algebra II. They’re pushing for an emphasis on the lowest common denominator, while deceptively marketing Common Core as a push for “rigorous” academics.
Read these Common Core proponents’ lips: “Mastery of Algebra II is widely thought to be a prerequisite for success in college and careers. Our research shows that that is not so… Based on our data, one cannot make the case that high school graduates must be proficient in Algebra II to be ready for college and careers. The high school mathematics curriculum is now centered on the teaching of a sequence of courses leading to calculus that includes Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-Calculus and Calculus. However, fewer than five percent of American workers and an even smaller percentage of community college students will ever need to master the courses in this sequence in their college or in the workplace… they should not be required courses in our high schools. To require these courses in high school is to deny to many students the opportunity to graduate high school because they have not mastered a sequence of mathematics courses they will never need. In the face of these findings, the policy of requiring a passing score on an Algebra II exam for high school graduation simply cannot be justified.”
The report goes on to say that traditional high school English classes, with their emphasis on classic literature and personal, narrative writing, is useless. The report says that Common Core will save students from the irrelevant classics with a new emphasis on technical subjects and social studies via the dominance of informational text:
“The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts (CCSSE) address reading in history/social studies as well as science and technical subjects, and in so doing may increase the relevance of high school instruction.”
In calling classic literature and personal writing irrelevant, these Common Core proponents underscore the idea that job prep matters, but not the pursuit of wisdom or knowledge.
WHY DID ALMOST EVERY STATE IN THE U.S. DROP THEIR EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS, WHETHER LOWER OR HIGHER, TO ADOPT COMMON CORE STANDARDS?
Proponents say that the reason was to improve education. Opponents say that it had nothing to do with education; that the standards were adopted without analysis or any vetting because the adoption was offered by the federal government under time pressure, in exchange for a chance at large federal grant monies called Race to the Top. Even those states that applied and won no money (like Utah) stayed with Common Core, because there were many other federal reasons and incentives to do so.
WILL THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS REMAIN AS THEY ARE TODAY?
No. Common Core’s official site says: “The Standards are intended to be a living work: as new and better evidence emerges, the Standards will be revised accordingly.” There’s no way for the governed to revise the document by which they’ve agreed to be governed.
WHY DOES THE STATE SCHOOL BOARD SAY WE’RE FREE TO CHANGE THEM?
States can’t delete anything. We can add –a tiny bit. A Common Core 15% rule says: “A State may supplement such standards with additional standards, provided that the additional standards do not exceed 15 percent of the State’s total standards”
(This rule is repeated in the federal waivers from No Child Left Behind, in the Race to the Top Assessments Grant application, in documents of both PARCC and SBAC testing groups, and in the implementation guide of Achieve, the group contracted to create Common Core.)
WILL THE CREATORS OF COMMON CORE CHANGE THESE STANDARDS WITHOUT OUR APPROVAL?
Yes. Common Core’s official site says: “The Standards are intended to be a living work: as new and better evidence emerges, the Standards will be revised accordingly.” There’s no invitation for the governed to revise.
WHERE DO PROPONENTS GET THE NOTION THAT COMMON CORE WILL IMPROVE EDUCATION?
No. The standards’ development and marketing was paid for primarily by Bill Gates. The Common Core tests for most states was paid for primarily by the federal government.States pay countless millions for the rest of the Common Core Initiative: the re-training, new text purchases, aligned computer technologies, etc. They incorrectly say that these high costs would have been spent anyway, even without Common Core.
WAS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT “HANDS-OFF” THE STATES’ ADOPTION OF COMMON CORE?
No. Secretary Duncan announced and praised the release of the standards in 2010. He bribed states using Race to the Top grant money. He contracted with the testing groups to micromanage the Common Core tests, in exchange for federal grant money.
DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BRIBE STATES TO ADOPT COMMON CORE?
Yes. But Secretary Arne Duncan told the American Society of News Editors that opponents make “outlandish claims. They say that the Common Core calls for federal collection of student data. For the record, we are not allowed to, and we won’t.”
WHAT SPECIFICALLY DID THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DO TO REMOVE PRIVACY FROM STUDENT DATA?
— It bribed the states with ARRA Stimulus monies to build 50 linkable, twinlike State Longitudinal Database Systems (SLDS). This created a virtual national database.
— It altered the (previously privacy-protective) federal FERPA (Family Educational Rights Privacy Act) law to make access to personally identifiable student data –including biological and behavioral data– “legal”. Now, the act of requiring parental consent (to share personally identifiable information) has been reduced from a requirement to just a “best practice” according to the altered federal FERPA regulations.
For more information on this, study the lawsuit between the Electronic Information Privacy Center and the Department of Education.
For a 15-minute crash-course on Common Core’s connection with student data mining, watch this video by Jane Robbins of the American Principles Project:
IS THIS ABOUT MAKING MONEY AT THE EXPENSE OF QUALITY EDUCATION?
Yes. Educational gains are not the motivator for Common Core. Notice that proponents are either financially invested in the implementation of Common Core, or else must be subservient to it and call it good because they rely on payment from those who are invested. The financial obligation should make the following groups’ promotion of Common Core extremely suspect:
“What appalls me most about the standards … is the cavalier contempt for great works of human art and thought, in literary form. It is a sheer ignorance of the life of the imagination. We are not programming machines. We are teaching children. We are not producing functionaries, factory-like. We are to be forming the minds and hearts of men and women… to be human beings, honoring what is good and right and cherishing what is beautiful.”
The standards are portrayed as so consensual, so universally endorsed, so thoroughly researched and vetted, so self-evidently necessary to economic progress, so broadly representative of beliefs in the educational community—that they cease to be even debatable… The principle of opportunity costs prompts us to ask: “What conversations won’t we be having?” Since the CCSS virtually ignore poetry, will we cease to speak about it? What about character education, service learning? What about fiction writing in the upper high school grades? What about the arts that are not amenable to standardized testing? … We lose opportunities when we cease to discuss these issues and allow the CCSS to completely set the agenda, when the only map is the one it creates.”
“Yes, man is made for work, but he’s also made for so much more… Education should be about the highest things. We should study these things of the stars, plant cells, Mozart’s Requiem… not simply because they’ll get us into the right college or into the right line of work. Rather, we should study these noble things because they can tell us who we are, why we’re here… If education has become –as Common Core openly declares– preparation for work in a global economy, then this situation is far worse than Common Core critics ever anticipated. And the concerns about cost, and quality, and yes, even the constitutionality of Common Core, pale in comparison to the concerns for the hearts, minds, and souls of American children.”
“Education reform in the United States is being driven largely by ideology, rhetoric, and dogma instead of evidence…. Where is the evidence of the efficacy of the standards? … Let us be very frank: The CCSS are no improvement over the current set of state standards. The CCSS are simply another set of lists of performance objectives.” Dr. Tienken also has two powerful short videos on the subject of standards and of assessments.
“The Core standards just set in concrete approaches to reading/writing that we already know don’t work very well. Having the Core standards set in concrete means that any attempts to innovate and improve reading/writing instruction will certainly be crushed. Actual learning outcomes will stagnate at best. An argument can be made that any improvement in reading/writing instruction should include more rather than less attention the reading/analysis of stories known to effective in terms of structure (i.e. “classic” time-tested stories). An argument can be made that any improvement in reading/writing instruction should include more rather than fewer exercises where students write stories themselves that are modeled on the classics. This creates a more stable foundation on which students can build skills for other kinds of writing. The Core standards would prevent public schools from testing these kinds of approaches.”
Dr. Bill Evers of Hoover Institute at Stanford University noted:
“The Common Core — effectively national math and English curriculum standards coming soon to a school near you — is supposed to be a new, higher bar that will take the United States from the academic doldrums to international dominance.
So why is there so much unhappiness about it? There didn’t seem to be much just three years ago. Back then, state school boards and governors were sprinting to adopt the Core. In practically the blink of an eye, 45 states had signed on.
But states weren’t leaping because they couldn’t resist the Core’s academic magnetism. They were leaping because it was the Great Recession — and the Obama administration was dangling a $4.35 billion Race to the Top carrot in front of them. Big points in that federal program were awarded for adopting the Core, so, with little public debate, most did.”
“Literature is the study of human nature. If we dissect it in this meaningless way, kids not only do not become college and career ready, they don’t even have a love of learning; they don’t even have an understanding of their fellow men… The thing that bothers me more than anything else is found on page number one of the introduction. That says that Common Core is a living work. That means that the thing that you vote on today could be something different tomorrow, and five years from now it is completely unrecognizable.” (Dr. Moore also wrote a most excellent book about Common Core English standards, entitled “The Storykillers.”)
Dr. Sandra Stotky (spoken of at the top) has written:
“The wisest move all states could make to ensure that students learn to read, understand, and use the English language appropriately before they graduate from high school is first to abandon Common Core’s ‘standards’…”
“The notion that Common Core’s college and career readiness standards are “rigorous” needs to be publicly put to bed by Arne Duncan, his friends at the Fordham Institute and the media. Two of Common Core’s own mathematics standards writers have publicly stated how weak Common Core’s college readiness mathematics standards are. At a public meeting of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in March 2010, physics professor Jason Zimba said, “The concept of college readiness is minimal and focuses on non-selective colleges.”
Dr. Stotsky also testified that:
“Beyond the lack of clarity from the outset about what college readiness was intended to mean and for whom, Common Core has yet to provide a solid evidentiary base for its minimalist conceptualization of college readiness–and for equating college readiness with career readiness. Moreover… it had no evidence on both issues.”
“Common Core supporters still can’t figure out how to deal with legitimate criticisms of its English language arts (ELA) standards. So they just keep parroting the line that Common Core’s ELA skills are actually standards, are rigorous and prioritize literary study, when it’s quite obvious to any English teacher that they are none of the above.”
“Common Core was/is not about high-quality national education standards. It was/is not about getting low-income, high-achieving students into advanced math and science courses in high school and then into college. CCSSI was and is about how to lower the academic level of what states require for high school diplomas and for admission to public colleges.”
“Of course, Common Core proponents can’t say that lowering academic standards is their goal. Instead, they claim that its standards will reduce the seemingly terrible problems we have with interstate mobility (actually less than 2 percent nationally) or enable Massachusetts teachers to know how Mississippi students compare to theirs (something they never said they were eager to learn), or facilitate nationally the sale of high-tech products to the public schools (something the P-21 skills folks were eager for). They have looked desperately for motivating issues and these are the best cards in their deck, as poor as they are.”
“Their major selling point is how poor our K-12 public education system is in too many states. But it needs to be strengthened, not weakened. We continue to need capable doctors and engineers who build bridges and tunnels that won’t collapse.”
“Are we as a society really ready to agree to Common Core’s low-expectations for college readiness (as professors Zimba and McCallum indicate)? Are we willing to lower the bar as a way of closing the achievement gap?”
“We hear no proponents or endorsers of Common Core’s standards warning this country about the effects of the college-readiness level in Common Core’s mathematics standards on postsecondary and post-baccalaureate academic and professional programs. We hear no proponents or endorsers of Common Core’s standards advising district superintendents and state education policy makers on the kind of mathematics curriculum and courses they need to make available in our secondary schools if our undergraduate engineering colleges are to enroll American students. At this time we can only conclude that a gigantic fraud has been perpetrated on this country, in particular on parents in this country, by those developing, promoting, or endorsing Common Core’s standards. We have no illusion that the college-readiness level in ELA will be any more demanding than Common Core’s college-readiness level in mathematics.” – Sept. 2013 paper: Can This Country Survive Common Core’s College Readiness Level? by R. James Milgram and Sandra Stotsky
“The adoption of a set of standards and assessments, by themselves, is unlikely to improve learning, increase test scores, or close the achievement gap. • For schools and districts with weak or non-existent curriculum articulation, the CCSS may adequately serve as a basic curriculum. • The assessment consortia are currently focused on mathematics and English/language arts. Schools, districts, and states must take proactive steps to protect other vital purposes of education such as citizenship, the arts, and maximizing individual talents – as well as the sciences and social sciences. As testbased penalties have increased, the instructional attention given to non-tested areas has decreased. • Educators and policymakers need to be aware of the significant costs in instructional materials, training and computerized testing platforms the CCSS requires. It is unlikely the federal or state governments will adequately cover these costs. • The nation’s “international economic competitiveness” is unlikely to be affected by the presence or absence of national standards.”
———————-
Parents and retired teachers, it is up to us to stop this thing. Teachers who are currently teaching, or principals, or others who work in the education sales industry dare not speak up too loudly or risk losing their jobs. It is up to us.
ESSAY CONTEST for FEBRUARY 18th STOP COMMON CORE RALLY
On the 18th of Feburary at 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., hundreds of Utahns will gather at the State Capitol to take a stand against Common Core. As part of that event, Utahns Against Common Core has announced an essay contest. Three essays will be chosen and read by their authors at this event. Here’s the announcement:
——————————————————————————————
What’s the powerful reason that you’ve taken a stand against Common Core? Why do you want the restoration of high quality, time-tested education standards and local control in Utah? Do you have a great story? Utahns Against Common Core wants to hear it!
——————————————————————————————
Submit your essay to Utahns Against Common Core at consecutiveintegers@yahoo.com by the deadline: midnight on February 15th. Three essays will be selected to be read at the State Capitol Common Core Event on February 18th from 6:30 to 8:00. Winners will be notified on February 17th and winners will be announced at the public meeting. Winning and non-winning essays will be posted at Utahns Against Common Core. If you do not want your essay made public, please let us know.
——————————————————————————————
Topic: Why I oppose the Common Core Initiative
Length: Essay must be readable in less than three minutes.
Deadline: 12:00 midnight on February 15th, 2014
Prize: You get to share your story/essay at the State Capitol Common Core Event
If you are a Utahn, did you notice Utah is on the “to be announced” list? We have no stop Common Core bill yet. We have too little political pressure from the people upon our leaders. So please: please come to the State Capitol next week, on Feb. 18th at 6:30-8:00 to show your concern for this issue. Please share this event where we will hear from and speak with legislators, parents and organizations who are opposed to Common Core. We need large numbers of people to show up and to show support, to get proper protections for our children here in Utah.
Last July, the last time Utahns got together at the State Capitol to discuss Common Core with legislators listening, there was standing room only. Television stations and newspaper reporters were there. So many people wanted to stand and speak that hundreds and hundreds were turned away due to time running out.
This time it will be a bit different, and better. This time, along with listening, some Utah legislators will be speaking out about the problems of the Common Core Initiative. We hope to fill the capitol —not only to standing-room-only– but to overflowing: past the doors and into the parking lots.
This time –February 18th, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., the speaker lineup includes State Senator Margaret Dayton, Representative Dana Layton, radio host Rod Arquette, Representative Brian Greene, Left-Right Alliance Spokeswoman Autumn Cook, and others that I can’t yet announce (yet to be confirmed). Please save the date and come. Show by your presence that you are awake and aware, that you claim authority over your own children’s learning and testing and data privacy — and that you are not going away. Let’s give the local media something of importance to take pictures of, to write about; please, come if you can.
Mom Alisa Ellis speaks with Rep. Curt Oda about Common Core (at the 2013 State Capitol event)
Professor Tienken turns his critical thinking on the testing megastrosity of Common Core.
Please share. You’re going to love this one.
Unless, of course, like millions of Americans, Bill Gates or Secretary Arne Duncan are paying the folks that you happen to work for, to believe otherwise.
Michelle Malkin has called The Storykillers “a stopcommoncore must-read.”
It is a must-read. It’s interesting and important. It’s packed full of understanding about the Common Core English standards, which are ruining the love of learning as they distort what it means to be educated.
The book pits logic and common sense against the theories, deceptions and absurdities of the Common Core. It cuts through the Common Core’s wordiness and plainly states this truth: that Common Core is stunting and killing both the classic literature stories themselves and The Great American Story of liberty and self-government, stories that our children and our country cannot do without.
In The Story Killers: a Common Sense Case Against Common Core, Dr. Terrence Moore tells us that the restoration of legitimate, time-tested classic literature —“the best that has been thought and said and done and discovered“– can solve America’s educational decline. The faulty theories of Common Core can not.
If you don’t read book, please remember Dr. Moore’s most important point: We Must Fight For Our Stories— which Common Core is stealing.
The great stories are not disposable! Who persuaded us that they were? Losing them means losing, piece by piece, what it means –or meant– to be us. No amount of supposed career prep info-texts can pretend to make up for that.
Good readers, regardless of what they did after they grew up, developed the love of reading/learning by reading stories. Young and old need stories to process life. Great learners fall in love with learning not because of manuals, articles, and informational texts but because of fascinating stories. Classic works of literature are being neglected, shortened, misinterpreted and replaced, under Common Core. And THE Great American Story– the story of freedom — is being undermined along with the other classics that Common Core neglects. The book explains exactly how this is happening, using the standards themselves as its centerpiece.
We must fight for our stories.
Dr. Moore’s book asks questions like this one: Why does the new Common Core edition of the American literature textbook, The American Experience, by Pearson/Prentice Hall 2012, contain sections on government forms, and an EPA report? Is this the new and “more rigorous” literature that will prepare our children for college? Or is it an attempt to “keep the nation’s children from reading stories, particularly traditional stories that run counter to the political ideology” of the authors of Common Core?
Dr. Moore points out that a widespread, fraudulent adoption of Common Core brought us the fraudulent reading (and math) theories upon which Common Core Standards rest. Common Core was never pilot tested as it should have been, before virtually the whole country adopted it.
“You know how long it takes for a new drug to get on the market before it receives approval from the FDA,” he writes, “Yet here is the educational medicine, so to speak, that all the nation’s children will be taking every day, seven hours a day– and no clinical trials have been done.”
Dr. Moore points out, too, that “most of the money that funded the original writing of the standards came from the deep pockets of Bill Gates. Perhaps related to this fact, the Common Core will have students working far more with computers… the people behind the Common Core also have a hand in running the tests and stand to gain financially…. the other people who stand to make out like bandits are the textbook publishers. If that’s not enough to get one wondering, it turns out that the actual writing of the standards was done in complete secrecy.”
(Shocking! Terrible! And true. Yet how many people know these facts in the face of so many ceaseless Common Core marketing lies being put out by the likes of Exxon, Harvard, Jeb Bush, the National Governors’ Association and even the National PTA, all of whom were paid by Bill Gates to say what they say about Common Core. Don’t listen to them! They are financially bound to say what they say. Listen to people like Dr. Moore, who do not accept money from the Gates club.)
In his book, Dr. Moore talks a lot about what is NOT in the English standards as well as what’s there.
The traditional aims of education– to pursue truth, to find true happiness, to be good, to love the beautiful, to know the great stories of our American tradition– are not the designs of Common Core, he says. The Common Core is a program that kills storiesin order to direct people to “be preoccupied with only the functional aspects of human existence and to have almost no interest in the higher aims of life.”
Dr. Moore reminds us that controlling stories (or the lack of stories) is the same thing as controlling people: “Plato pointed out in his Republic— a book never read in today’s high schools, nor usually even in college– whoever writes the storiesshapes —or controls– the minds of the peoplein any given regime.”
The book’s title describes the killing of two important types of stories:
“The great stories are, first, the works of literature that have long been considered great by any standard of literary judgment and, second, what we might call the Great American Story of people longing to be free and happy under their own self-government. The Common Core will kill these stories by a deadly combination of neglect, amputation, misinterpretation…”
Then,
“On the ruins of the old canon of literary and historical classics will be erected a new canon of post-modern literature and progressive political doctrine. Simultaneous to this change, fewer and fewer works of literature will be read on the whole. Great literature will be replaced with ‘information’ masquerading as essential ‘workforce training’.”
Moore explains that the proponents of Common Core hold up “the illusion of reform” while continuing to “gut the school curriculum” and to remove its humanity. He points to page five of the introduction to the Common Core where this chart appears for English readings:
Grade
Literary
Information
4
50%
50%
8
45%
55%
12
30%
70%
So our little children under Common Core aligned school books won’t get more than 50% of their reading from stories. And our high school seniors won’t get more than 30% of their reading from stories. The bulky 70% of what they read must be informational text: not poetry, not plays, not novels, not the books that move our souls. In English class.
“Thus literature is on the wane in public schools,” Dr. Moore writes, and traditional literature classes are being eroded, despite the fact that the Common Core proponents aim to deceive us and make the “public believe that they are requiring more rigor in reading.”
Dr. Moore calls us to fight for our children’s access to the great stories.
“There has never been a great people without great stories. And the great stories of great peoples often dwell on the subject of greatness. They dwell on the subject of plain goodness as well: the goodness that is to be found in love, marriage, duty, the creation of noble and beautiful things. It is patently obvious that they authors of the Common Core are uncomfortable with these great stories of the great and the good.They are plainly uncomfortable with great literature. And they are even more uncomfortable with what might be called the Great American Story.”
Read much of what the so-called education reformers are speaking about lately, and you’ll see it: they call for sameness, common-ness, for the forced redistribution of teachers and funds, and above all, for equality of results. Not greatness. Not the ability for a single student or school to soar above the rest. No exceptionalism allowed. (Anyone ever read Harrison Bergeron?)
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Obama advisor Linda Darling-Hammond, the testing companies, the Common Core copyright holding groups– the reformers seem to avoid the concepts of goodness and greatness in favor of a twisted version of “social justice” equality, which is, frankly, theft, along with being as foolish as the reasoning behind the society of Harrison Bergeron, which is in no way truly fair, or truly helpful.
“…They fully expect us to shrug with thoughtless indifference. Do not be fooled. The fate of our stories is the fate of the nation,” writes Dr. Moore.
Dr. Moore does the unthinkable: he subjects the Common Core Standards to actual critical thinking (which they claim to promote).
“Since everyone loves the expression ‘critical thinking’ these days, let us subject these standards to a little critical thinking.”
He questions the Common Core Initiative’s obsession with technology and testing.
“Computers are a lot more like televisions than anyone is willing to admit… it is true that art teachers can now much more easily show their classes great paintings and sculptures by using the internet. It is likewise true that history teachers can employ actual speeches of Churchill or Reagan using videos found on the web. Ninety percent of the time, though, that is not how the computer is being used… The arch-testers of the Common Core champion the use of the technological elixir that cures all illnesses and heals all wounds without even pausing to warn us of the potential side effects… we are not invited to consider how much technology is compromising the old literacy. Least of all are we supposed to realize that the remedy for our growing twenty-first-century illiteracy is traditional, nineteenth-century education.”
He asks us to re-examine the assumption that because technology has changed so much, schooling should also change so much. “Does schooling belong in that class of things that does not get ‘updated’ every week… human institutions and relations for which we must be initiated into certain permanent ways of thinking, lest we be cast adrift on a sea of moral, cultural, and political uncertainty?”
He points out that education should not be confused with job training and that “going to college” is not the same thing as gaining knowledge; and that the authors of Common Core are “lumping college readiness and career readiness together” without stopping to explain what either means nor how either will be affected by the lumping.
He points out that while the standards claim to wield the power to prepare children for “the twenty-first-century global economy,” that claim is based on nothing. It’s just a claim. And we have had economies to worry about since the beginning of time, none of which would have succeeded by taking away stories and classics, the very core that made people in the not too distant past far more literate than we are today.
He opposes this “pedestrian preoccupation with what will happen when children turn nineteen” because it “undermines the powers of imagination and of observation,” powers which are too important to ignore. Think about it: imagination makes children read and helps them to love books. No little child is motivated to read because he/she is concerned about college and career, years from now. The child reads because the story is interesting. Period.
Dr. Moore also points out that the history of successful literacy shows a very different path from the one Common Core is leading America to follow.
Historically, what created the highest literacy rates? Dr. Moore points out that it was high church attendance, combined with emphasis on the Bible, and schooling with an emphasis on traditional learning! (And the Bible is composed mostly of stories and lyrical language, not of “rigorous informational texts.”)
Dr. Moore points out that Colonial Massachusetts and 18th-century Scotland had nearly universal literacy. Newspapers in the 18th century were written at a far higher level than the journalism of today (which is written at the sixth-grade level.)
“Yet the authors of Common Core insist that students should read far more recently written, informational texts, such as newspaper articles… Ergo, the literacy for the twenty-first-century global economy will be built upon the cracking foundation of our present semi-literacy. Was there not once a famous story-teller who said something about not building a house upon sand?”
He asks us to remember that the careful reading of stories enables us to “learn about good taste and manners. We learn all the the individual virtues and vices… human emotions… Through this vicarious activity, we are compelled to examine ourselves and thereby attain what used to be called self-government… What is a better study of ambition leading to ruin than Macbeth? Wat is a better study of indecision and imprudence than Hamlet? What is a better example of adolescent love and passion in their raw state than Romeo and Juliet? What is a better model of command than Henry V?… We hang onto these stories… that teach us who we are and who we ought to be.The study of human character through great literature, then, teaches us how to live.”
In the book’s last chapter, Moore explains that what is permanently valuable to students does not change very much. He writes that a genuine common core would have included a group of magnificent books that each truly educated person would have read, at the very least. Under THE Common Core, however, mostly informational, unproven texts and text excerpts are listed –and there is no set core of classic books. He writes, “Had the Common Core English Standards held up just a few great books, college professors could finally know what their incoming students had actually read. Heck, even advertisers and comedians could know what jokes they could tell about literary characters” Moore says that “the Holy Grail of school reform” is the set of “great books of our tradition.”
He recommends that students would read –PRIOR to high school– titles such as The Tempest, Animal Farm, A Christmas Carol, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Then Dr. Moore lists a classical high school curriculum (which he says has been working in the schools in which he has helped to implement it):
Homer’s Iliad (The whole thing, not a drive-by excerpt); the WHOLE of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth; the WHOLE U.S. Constitution; Le Morte D’Arthur, Pride and Prejudice, Plutarch’s Lives; Moby Dick; Huckleberry Finn, 1984; A Tale of Two Cities; Crime and Punishment; The Scarlet Letter, The Mayflower Compact; Uncle Tom’s Cabin The Prince; Confessions of Augustine; poetry by Frost, Longfellow, Dickinson, Poe, Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare; biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, speeches by Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan; and so on and so on.
Despite everything that is being taken away from the American English curriculum because of Common Core, despite the damage that is being done to children’s love of learning by removing the thing that makes people love to read and become great readers– stories– despite all else he exposes about the Common Core, Dr. Moore’s bottom line remains this one:
“Anyone who thinks I have travelled too far afield or have jumped to conclusions about the true aims of the Common Core should read one further phrase found on the opening page of the English standards. That phrase is more alarming and more revelaing than all the jargon about a new literacy and college and career readiness. ‘The Standards are intended to be a living work: as new and better evidence emerges, the Standards will be revised accordingly.’ …The authors of the Core are forecasting that their program will change over the next ten, twenty, forty years… but the same people will be in charge. What will be the new and better evidence that emerges? Who will get to decide what constitutes better evidence? Who will do the revising?”
I have only scratched the surface of this important book here. I hope you will buy copies for your friends, your school board, your legislator, your governor, and especially for your favorite English teacher. This book is a powerful tool in the fight to reclaim legitimate K-12 and college education in this country.
Joan Landes, a Utah mental health therapist, has spoken out in opposition to Common Core. The speech posted below comes from a recent conference where she spoke. She has given permission to post her findings here, and they are also posted on her blog here: Not with my child you won’t!
Thank you, Joan Landes.
National Educational Standards are Based on Myths and False Premises
Myth 1: International standardized tests are important indicators of international competitiveness
Fact: The U.S. has never scored well on these tests, but still led the world in all economic indicators.
The international tests began in the mid-sixties and the most important test, PISA began more recently. Since the 1960s, the U.S. has led the world in every significant prosperity indicator including patents, research and development funding, business formation, growth in productivity (Baker, 2007). During this time, the number of years that U.S. students topped the international test scores? None. (Ravitch, 2013)
High test scores are negatively correlated with national indicators of innovation and entrepreneurship (Baker, 2007). China and Singapore know this and are worried (Zhao, 2012).
Twenty-five years ago, mediocre scores triggered biased groups to warn “that America’s inadequate education system and workforce skills imperiled our competitiveness and future. Their warnings were followed by a substantial acceleration of American productivity growth in the mid-1990s, and by an American economy whose growth rate surpassed the growth rates of countries that were alleged to have better prepared and more highly skilled workers”(Strauss, 2013).
Myth 2: International tests prove American students don’t perform as well as other industrialized nations’ students.
Fact: The tests don’t compare “apples to apples” for many reasons.
For instance, the scores from China come only from Shanghai which is the richest and most educationally elite city in China, which forbids migrant children and represents a mere 2 percent of the students in China. (Nisan, 2013).
U.S. scores, by contrast, are a much more representative sampling of our complex demographics. In fact, students from affluent suburban school districts in the U.S. are very competitive with other students. The student groups who don’t perform well tend to come from dysfunctional families and communities of which the U.S. samples contain more than most other OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) nations (Strauss, 2013; Carnoy & Rothstein, 2013).
The score spread between all countries is fairly narrow. Between the highest performing state in the U.S. and the highest performing nation in the world (Taiwan) in 2009 is only about a 10% difference in raw scores (Schneider, 2009). Even the spread between Taiwan and the lowest performing “state” (Washington D.C) is only about a 30%. So, that would mean Taiwan scores an “A”, Massachusetts an “A- or B+” and Washington D.C. earns a C-.
The validity and reliability of the test itself is under serious question (Carnoy & Rothstein, 2013). Translations may not be good, scoring has not been validated and many student groups are not tested (Schneider, 2009). Many countries “cheat” on the test by using non-representative sampling and by “teaching to the test” to increase student scores (Stephen, 2013).
Myth 3: We should seek to emulate China and Singpore’s rigid educational system because they score well on standardized tests.
Fact: China and Singapore are very low on indices of innovation and creativity.
High test scores are inversely related to high levels of creativity and innovation. Merely 473 innovations from China were recognized by the world’s leading patent offices outside China in 2008 versus 14,399 from the United States. (Zhao, 2012).
Other indicators of happiness/prosperity/creativity are also inversely related to high test scores (Baker, 2007).
A noted expert on Asia predicted at the World Economic Summit: “The next Apple, the next Google will come, but probably not in China, at least not in the 100 years . . .If China wants (to have an Apple or Google), it must rebuild its education system.”
Another expert states: “Standardized, narrow, and uniform educational experiences, high-stakes standardized testing, (and) a push for conformity . . . are . . . identified in China and Singapore’s education system for destroying the nations’ creativity and entrepreneurial spirits” (Zhao, 2012).
Steve Wozniak from Apple said of rigid systems like Singapore, “When you’re very structured almost like a religion . . . Uniforms, uniforms, uniforms . . . everybody is the same. Look at structured societies like Singapore where bad behavior isn’t tolerated. You are extremely punished. Where are the creative people? Where are the great artists? Where are the great musicians? Where are the great singers? Where are the great writers? Where are the athletes? All the creative elements seem to disappear” (BBC, 2011).
The highest performing nations on the tests (China, Singapore, India, Korea) are moving away from constant testing and rigid structure while the U.S., with the Common Core assessments are diving headlong into old methods that will kill innovation.
In fact, an educational “superstar”, Finland, has NO assessment program until the end of high school, shorter school days and a 3 month break in summer, and very little homework. Furthermore, school is not compulsory until age 7! (Hendrickson, 2012). In addition, the national curriculum is not used to roll spindle and mutilate students and teachers through punitive assessments. The nation has a very “hands-off” attitude toward individual schools and understands that individual customization of curriculum and independence of teachers and schools creates the best results overall (Hendrickson, 2012).
After an average level of educational achievement is attained, further emphasis on tests is counterproductive to innovation (Baker, 2007).
“Among high-scoring nations, a certain level of educational attainment, as reflected in test scores, provides a platform for launching national success, but once that platform is reached, other factors become more important than further gains in test scores. Indeed, once the platform is reached, it may be bad policy to pursue further gains in test scores because focusing on the scores diverts attention, effort, and resources away from other factors that are more important determinants of national success.” (Baker, 2007)
Myth 4: We should embark on a national, top-down restructuring of educational standards such as Goals 2000, Outcome-Based Education, No Child Left Behind and the Common Core Standards to improve our scores and thus future prosperity.
Are you kidding?
Fact: National Standards in themselves do not determine student excellence. Both the highest and lowest performing nations have national standards. National standards/programs don’t correlate with high achievement on international testing.
But what does make a difference?
Unique state standards do make a difference in student achievement when combined with other layers of teacher requirements, moderate levels of subject mastery assessments and customizable programs for individual students. Massachusetts had a true state-led effort to craft excellent standards and supports. This process was transparent and involved years of public debate and input before a consensus was reached. The results were the envy of the rest of the U.S. and, even with the disparate SES, managed to compare favorably on international tests with the highest performing students in the world.
Using the 50 states as individual laboratories, each state and even each district can learn from the successes and failures of the others. An excellent example of this process is our neighbor to the north, Canada.
When international testing commenced, Canada occupied the middle of the pack, similar to the U.S. They have about 24% of students who are immigrants. But within a few decades, Canada was able to shoot to the top tier, while the U.S. remained stuck. What did Canada do? Did they fund a federal department of education, impose a draconian, coast-to-coast set of uniform standards, assessments and eventually curricula?
No, they did not (Edwards, 2013).
In fact, Canada’s educational system is much less structured than ours. They don’t have a national department of education or provide any federal funding. Each separate province (similar to States) is very competitive with the other provinces and seeks through a process of competition to quickly innovate and implement strategies which make real differences for students (Macleans, 2010). The gains have been real and well-documented by research. This kind of real evidence is what should drive educational decisions—not the machinations of special interests, crony governmentalism, and federal bribes from the Department of Education.
With monolithic national standards, students are effectively trapped with nowhere to escape for a better education. Unless they move to Canada.
Common Core Standards ignore recent research in neuroscience
Science/Research findings are of limited value and can be biased. If the findings of a particular study don’t sound intuitively correct, be very skeptical. Poor science has been used in the past to justify very harmful practices.
Example of the limits of Science: Marasmus
In the early part of the 20th century babies in orphanages were dying at an alarming rate. Scientists were flummoxed. They called the fatal disease “Marasmus” (Montagu & Matson 1979). Assuming the mortality rate was due to bacteria, they prescribed strict separation for the babies from touching or contact. Only ultra-hygenic feeding and diapering were allowed with no extra handling.
The babies continued to die as if in a plague.
Finally, some bright soul decided to start cuddling and hugging the babies. They stopped dying and started thriving. “Marasmus” was nothing more than the deprivation of attention and love (Stout, 2005).
Programs like Common Core Standards may be the “marasmus” of the 21st century. Will our children have to suffer because of badly researched programs?
No experts on child development, mental health, or neuroscience helped to craft Common Core
CC is based on old motivational science from the 1910s and 1930s with B.F. Skinner.
He studied “stimulus-response” patterns to learn how to manipulate animals and people.
Skinner developed ways to train people and animals through the coercion of punishments and rewards.
He even had his own baby daughter in a glass box crib for the first years of life although he said the contraption was a solution to keep her warm without bedclothes (Snopes, 2014)
Unlike factory production methods from the 1910s, recent findings from neuroscience support the idea that relationships foster better, faster and more permanent learning for children (Cozolino, 2013).
Stressors from Common Core Assessments can interfere with two important types of learning
Cognitive learning: Facts, procedures, memory, etc.
Emotional learning: Interpreting others intent, expressing and identifying feelings, self-soothing, risk-taking, etc.
Common Core over-testing creates anxiety
Common Core Assessment partners SBAC and PARC add even more testing than NCLB requires at present. In addition their tests are longer and the consortiums encourage interim testing 2 or 3 times during the year besides the year-end test-weeks. In addition, these tests will be used improperly to decided teacher evaluation and sometimes pay, school rankings, child-progress and possibly even graduation (FairTest, 2014).
Common Core over-testing creates an environment of “conditions of worth”
Children need to feel intrinsically loved and valuable. Failure at tests, and even the testing itself can stress even the most resilient children. The are convinced that their worth is based on their performance.
Vulnerable children respond negatively to even normal stressors
Children who have been abused, neglected or traumatized often display alarming responses to stress– especially outside of a safe, loving relationship. (Cozolino, 2013; Adams, 2014).
Studies show that mammals and human that experience little nurturing in early childhood result in lower abilities to emotionally regulate themselves. (Raabe & Spengler, 2013)
Current neuroscience shows how early stress creates later emotional dysregulation
Epigenetic studies show how the relational stress of maternal deprivation or early trauma creates genetic changes in protein synthesis resulting in the failure to uptake cortisol. This results in longer periods of distress to smaller triggers. (University of Utah, 2014; Weaver et. al, 2004)
Common Core Will Widen the Achievement Gap and Hurt the Most Vulnerable Children.
20% of students in school have a “serious” mental/emotional condition that could receive a DSM diagnosis (NIH, 2013)
Sexual and other abuse is not rare. Approximately 20% of girls and 10% of boys have been sexually abused and have many resulting emotional, cognitive and behavioral problems. (Bolen, 1999)
Many more students have experienced physical/emotional abuse and neglect and other traumatizing factors which create problems for learning (Childhelp, 2014; Adams, 2014)
With conditions of supportive relationships and few other resources, even traumatized students will tend to blossom (Cozolino, 2013, Adams, 2014).
Marva Collins taught “unteachable” inner city students in her home with practically no resources and they learned Shakespeare in third grade! Why? She first established a relationship! “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care” (Cozolino, 2013)
Relationships are Better Motivators Than Material Rewards
Children will perform better because of a relationship (I want my teacher to be proud of me!) more than for material rewards (I earned a candy bar!). Psychic rewards tend to be more powerful than material rewards.
Optimal Brain Development Requires Early Activation of Many Learning Modes
Visual processing: drawing, painting, animation, and art appreciation, optical illusions, Where’s Waldo, video games.
Auditory processing: foreign language, music, reading aloud, being read to, singing
Emotional centers: identifying emotions, reading emotions on others, self-soothing strategies, emotional expression in safe environment (drama)
Memory centers: short term memory, long-term memory
Common Core Neglects Many Brain Modalities
Common Core focuses huge amounts of time developing the left, prefrontal cortex activities in children to the neglect of other modalities. This will result in later difficulties in synthesis required for higher order thinking tasks such as creativity, innovation, critical analysis, perseverance in the face of opposition, etc. (Young & Doidge, 2013).
Common Core Reduces Experience with Literature
Common Core’s mandates for informational texts over literature deprive student’s brains of context (relationships). Stories/narratives foster larger areas of brain activation and memory activation than dry facts (Cozolino, 2013) Kids tell stories for a reason. The context gives meaning and meaning signals to the brain to remember (Cozolino, 2013)
Literature teaches both cognitive and emotional skills that informational texts can’t teach
One of the most important mental health purposes of education is to teach children to be empathetic, kind, to delay gratification and to become sensitive to their internal self-talk (conscience). Literature can assist with this through social learning. If these skills are not developed, the child becomes a heartless “clever devil” or as C.S. Lewis described, “Men without chests.” (People with active intellects and libido, but no heart or compassion). More admirable literature, not less, is what is need for children’s resilience.
Common Core Assessments Violate Student Privacy and Professional Ethics
Hundreds of assessment points on students and parents have been authorized by the DOE (NCES 2014) including substance abuse, record of child protective services, illnesses, affiliations, etc. These are information points which in the medical or mental health profession would be protected by HIPAA regulations.
New FERPA Changes Violate Privacy
Because the Obama administration made significant, executive changes to FERPA, student information can now be accessed by corporations, school personnel or any other entity that the state approves.
If doctors or psychologists did this, they would be fined at least $100,000 for each instance. And they could lose their license because of breach of confidentiality.
Why can the government get away with this violation?
Common Core is Completely Untested
Common Core Standards are completely untested experimentally yet are being inflicted on virtually every student in the entire U.S. from K-12 with NO PREVIOUS TESTING. This is an egregious violation of basic ethics and good science and shows the developers’ absolute disregard or ignorance of potential harms to children. The EPA conducts more testing for the food dyes in Kool-Aid than has been conducted on Common Core which kids will live with for 8 hours a day for 12 years.
No Hard Evidence Supports Common Core
Unlike other professions, educational bureaucrats are not using “evidence-based practices.”
Instead of funding yet another untested scheme, we must demand “Evidence-based Education”.
Show us the evidence FIRST.
Common Core Aligned Curriculum Provides Validation for Radical Lessons Which Can Harm Children.
CC alignment makes it more difficult for parents to challenge because the administrator appeals to the authority of the standards, “But it’s Common Core aligned!” However, the developers are careful to distance themselves from curriculum development so they can’t be held responsible for damaging lessons. We as parents can’t let them have it both ways. Either the Standards are RESPONSIBLE for the curriculum that is validated by “alignment” or they shouldn’t allow the label “Common Core Aligned.”
Numerous Examples Exist of Radical Curricula “Aligned” or Even Officially Recommended by Common Core:
The examples are multiplying every day, but here are just four problematic sources:
ELA recommended books for 11 graders (Common Core Standards, 2012)
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison (Landes, 2013) Graphic child sex abuse depictions. Landes is a mental health professional who asserts that this book could endanger youth who are victims of sexual abuse by forcing them to relive their trauma while justifying the perpetrator.
Dreaming in Cuban, by Cristina Garcia (Berry, 2013) Graphic sex depictions.
Other texts/books aligned with Common Core
The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison (Kane, 2013) Graphic rape depictions.
Voices in Literature and Writing, (Landes, 2013) Teaches first-graders how to create propaganda and trains them in mental health cognitive distortions.
Arrowsmith-Young, B. & Doidge, N. (2013). The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: And Other Stories of Cognitive Transformation. Published by Simon and Shuster, New York; NY USA.
Baker, K. (2007). Are International Tests Worth Anything? Phi Delta Kappan, 89(2). 101-104
BBC. (2011, Jan. 20). Steve Wozniak: “Think for yourself.” www.bbc.co.uk
Common Core Standards (2012). Appendix B: text exemplars and sample performance tasks. Retrieved from: http://www.corestandards.org
Cozolino, L. (2013) The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom. Published by W.W. Norton and Company. New York: NY USA.
Nisan, M. (2013). Why Shanghai’s Amazing Test Scores are “Almost Meaningless,” Business Insider, December 3, 2013.
Raabe, F.J. & Spengler, D. (2013). Epigenetic Risk Factors in PTSD and Depression. Frontiers of Psychiatry. 2013; 4: 80. Published online 2013 August 7. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00080 PMCID: PMC3736070
Ravitch, D. (2013). What You Need to Know About the International Test Scores, The Huffington Post. December 3, 2013.
Schnieder, M. (2009) The International PISA Test. EducationNext. Fall 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 4.
I know many of you are in support of Common Core, and that’s fine. One of my biggest complaints about the whole process was the lack of transparency in the adoption process. I have found that the more people who can weigh in on an issue, the greater the opportunity we, as elected officials, have to see all the potential ramifications. I have been told that we, the public, just didn’t show up when we had the opportunity.
In point of fact, the Alpine School Board minutes do not make mention of Common Core or new standards at all until well after the formal adoption by the State Board in Aug. 2010. With all due respect, the public and, at least, the Alpine School Board were kept in the dark.
All that is to say, feel free to advocate for whatever position you see fit. I will not be offended.
I hope you will not be offended by my standing for what I believe.
Why I Oppose Common Core
Who is in control of our children’s education?
This shift to the Common Core is a huge lurch away from bottom-up, local control to top-down, centralized control. Common Core is about creating a single pathway to supposed economic and educational success. Think about it, 45 states all adopting the same standards at the same time. 45 states all implementing Common Core testing, nationwide, at the same time. All the publishers and teacher training courses aligning to Common Core at the same time. And, what about college? the ACT and SAT? They, too, will be aligning to Common Core. What are the options should you object, as a parent, as a school, as a district?
What are the options if we decide, once we have full implementation and actual experience to back up the Common Core experiment, that we made a mistake? How do we amend? How do we turn back? A few years from now, it will be too late. We have just signed on to a system to eliminate, through attrition, virtually all other options in public education.
And who made this decision about what our kids will learn? Five people with a nod from Bill Gates and a couple of D.C. lobbying groups, were able to get their untested vision implemented via financial and legal incentives, as well as disputed promises of ‘greater rigor’, ‘college and career readiness’, and ‘international benchmarking’. We have decided to go down this path due, in part, to incentives, but also to the idea of not being left behind the rest of the states. That, somehow, Utah wasn’t capable of taking care of our own. It shows a supreme lack of confidence in the people, teachers, and principals of Utah that our State Board thought they needed to rush to adopt the Common Core, along with other states to get the federal money, instead of allowing the debate, discussion, and involvement of local Utahns in this process.
People will say, “It doesn’t matter where we get it; the ends justify the means.” We must reject that notion. What we are saying, in effect, is that the principles we stand for don’t matter. That parents and local communities don’t matter—only the opinion of the so-called experts matters, as long as our kids learn what the experts want them to learn. Why would we want to encourage a system where the people are not involved in creating the best schools? Instead, we have a system where we trust the experts to tell us what ‘the best’ actually means. And in this case, those ‘experts’ are in control.
In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter about education and linked it to the proper role of government. In it, he articulates two important principles. He said, “if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience. …
No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.”
Common Core violates both these principles: 1) Parents must direct the education of their kids in school, not the government, and 2) Good and safe government, and that includes public schools, comes from dividing and distributing power. Consolidated power is not safe, and creates the potential for corruption, and, at the very least, destroys the means for innovation and outside the box thinking.
Jefferson goes on to say,“What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body…”
This is EXACTLY what Common Core does.
We are at the crossroads. We can abdicate our parental and local responsibilities to the so-called experts and the rich philanthropists, or we can reclaim bottom-up, parent-controlled education. In the end, I will stand on the side of parents, local teachers, and local communities deciding what is of most worth to pass on to their own children.
————
Wendy Hart has also explained Utah’s unthinking adoption of Common Core in this video.
Guest post by Chicago high school history teacher Paul Horton, also posted at Edweek
Back before the President was elected, he spoke to the 80th annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). It is useful to compare the President’s speech to the AFT in July of 2008 and his state of the union address last week. In his state of the Union speech of 2013, he spoke of states “voluntarily” complying with the DOEd’s Race to the Top program. He is fond of saying that learning “is more than bubble tests,” and that “change is hard.”
It is also interesting to note that the President began this year’s state of the union speech with a compliment to teachers–an election cycle is approaching—but that he stuck with the “bubble test” line, and, most importantly, with the “change is hard” line.
My guess is that he dropped the “voluntary” line because many teachers, students, and parents don’t buy it anymore. Too many folks know too much.
I have just taken a closer look at the history of Illinois compliance. This example might be similar to what happened in many other states.
On January 13 and 14 of 2010, Governor Quinn and state Education Superintendent Christopher Koch signed the first round RTTT Illinois Application. Initial endorsements came from the Commercial Club of Chicago’s who’s who.
When Tennessee and D.C. won the first round, the pressure was on to beef up endorsements for the 2nd round of grants. This is where the heavy political muscle was applied. Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) put out fact sheets indicating that Illinois’ first application lacked broader support from education, business, and political leaders, the state legislature then magically brought a bill to the floor that called for a 1% increase in Education funding right at the point when Federal money that had allowed districts to retain thousand of teachers was cut off for the next fiscal year.
The money available would be dangled before the states facing huge cuts in the form of a Race to the Top grant competition. According to Illinois AFT President Ed Geppert, “Illinois is on the brink of budget disaster.” (Illinois AFT Facebook posting, March 10, 2010)
In response, AFT mobilized its base in rallies to increase state funding. But the state legislature had the NEA and AFT over a barrel. Not surprisingly, as the state Education bill was being negotiated, NEA and AFT both sent in phase two RTTT application endorsement letters. At the same time (February-July), district superintendents and NEA and AFT locals were being pressured to sign Memorandums of Understanding (MOUS) to mandate adherence to the Common Core Curriculum (CCCS), standardized testing based on the CCCS, Value Added Assessments (VAM), greater openness to charter school openings, and more support for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education (STEM). This all sounded great to districts and locals facing huge job cuts, they could see the gruesome budget guillotine out the window.
With some resistance from better-funded north shore (Chicago) districts (i.e. Evanston) the state achieved “voluntary” buy-in when districts gave up local control of curriculum and union locals begged for crumbs at the legislative bargaining table.
A question that could be asked is: how could the state legislature be lined up so quickly to apply the pressure on districts and unions? My educated guess is DFER. DFER had access to “insider information” from DOEd.
A very porous membrane exists between the Department of Education, Democrats for Education Reform, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Pearson Education.
DFER made it known to the Illinois House Speaker and Governor that Illinois’ application did not look “voluntary” enough. The House Speaker and the Governor’s allies in the state legislature came up with the idea of an underfunded Education bill as the leverage needed to create “voluntary” support for RTTT. Dozens of letters of endorsement began arriving to the Governor’s office in early May.
“Voluntary” my…. foot!
Back to the President’s campaign speech in July 2008 to the AFT convention. At this point Bill Gates was playing pretty coy with the President’s campaign. Candidate Obama already had strong ties to DFER, having worked with DFER as a state senator and US senator. His close circle of friends, the friends who had provided him with the cash to make it through the primaries, all supported charter schools. John Rogers created created the Ariel Academy and the Ariel Foundation. Marty Nesbitt and Penny Pritzker were breaking into the business of creating charter schools: the Noble Charter chain. Mr. Nesbitt, Diana Mendley Rauner, Rahm Emanuel, and Valerie Jarrett had close ties with the Chicago Housing Authority. Mr. Nesbitt was the CHA Board Chairman and worked to implement a Federally subsidized plan (Hope VI) in the Plan for Transformation that demolished public housing units and created public-private partnerships for mixed income development on the west and “mid-south” sides.
At the same time, the Commercial Club of Chicago hatched the Renaissance 2010 plan that sought to close 60 public schools in these mixed income developments and replace them with a mix of 100 public and private charter schools. The push for the Olympic bid for 2016 was intended to speed up south side gentrification to create a developer’s profit bonanza. Brand new “streamlined” charter schools would attract upper middle class buyers into mixed-income neighborhoods. (Pauline Lipman, The New Political Economy of UrbanEducation, 74-99)
The Olympic bid fell flat on its face, and the neighborhoods were not mixing as rapidly as developers hoped in the wake of the 2008 crash.
But the charter schools are still being built and public schools are still being closed in gentrifying areas. Former public housing residents are pushed out of these mixed income neighborhoods. Because the neighborhood schools lose enrollment, they are closed. Public schools are then replaced by charters that require an extensive application process. This story is the narrative of “reform” in several major cities. (Lipman, 95-99)
Candidate Obama, in his speech video cast to the American Federation of Teachers convention, insisted, “that we must fix the failures of “No Child Left Behind by providing the funding that was promised, giving states the resources that they need, and finally meeting our commitment to special education.”
“It is time to start treating teachers properly….In May, I visited a school in Colorado where just three years ago, only half the seniors are accepted to college. But thanks to the hard work of caring parents, innovative educators, and some very committed students, all forty-four seniors at this year’s class were accepted to more than seventy colleges and universities across the country. And that example trickles down.”
What the President did not tell the AFT crowd in 2008 was that the school that he was describing was a charter school that had closed its doors to a large percentage of students who started with the class that the future President was holding up as a model for all educators. He was also very careful not to mention that the school employed non-union teachers and was created by a former Teacher for America teacher—Michael Johnston.
The President knew what he was planning because his closest friends, and most important bundlers: John Rogers (Arne Duncan’s best friend), Marty Nesbitt (the President’s best friend), and Penny Pritzker (Marty Nesbitt’s boss who invested $50 million in his “Parking Spot” start-up), all board members of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (who served on that board with Michelle Obama), were heavily invested in the Noble charter chain.
For President Obama, education policy will not change because he owes the DFER bundlers, his closest friends, and Bill Gates a huge payback for their investment of time and funds into his campaign.
Our education policy is their education policy. It is a policy for those who own stock in charter chains, Microsoft, Apple, HP, and Pearson Education.
“Change is hard.”
Should Corporations and political friends be allowed to dictate Education Policy?
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) will introduce a resolution strongly denouncing the Obama Administration’s coercion of states into adopting Common Core State Standards by conferring preferences in federal grants and flexibility waivers. The resolution is co-sponsored by Senators Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi), Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), and Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming).
“The Obama Administration has effectively bribed and coerced states into adopting Common Core,” said Graham. “Blanket education standards should not be a prerequisite for federal funding. In order to have a competitive application for some federal grants and flexibility waivers, states have to adopt Common Core. This is simply not the way the Obama Administration should be handling education policy. Our resolution affirms that education belongs in the hands of our parents, local officials and states.”
“Educational decisions are best made by parents and teachers – not bureaucrats in Washington,” said Scott. “While Common Core started out as a state-led initiative, the federal government unfortunately decided to use carrots and sticks to coerce states into adopting national standards and assessments. That is simply the wrong choice for our kids.”
“It is crucial that the money being spent on education in Oklahoma be controlled by Oklahomans who are familiar with the needs of our schools and students,” said Inhofe. “This is why I am proud to join Senator Graham in introducing a resolution that enforces vital education practices of leaving the decisions of children’s educational needs to the state and the parents.
“Common Core is another example of Washington trying to control all aspects of Americans’ lives, including the education of our children,” said Cruz. “We should not allow the federal government to dictate what our children learn; rather, parents, through their teachers, local schools and state systems, should be able to direct the education of their children.”
“Common Core has become polluted with Federal guidelines and mandates that interfere with the ability of parents, teachers and principals to deliver the education our children deserve,” said Lee. “Rather than increasing coercion, we should be demanding that further interference by the U.S. Department of Education with respect to state decisions on academic content standards be eliminated.”
“Decisions about what content students should be taught have enormous consequences for children and so should be made as close as possible to the affected parents and students,” said Grassley. “Federal interference in this area disrupts the direct line of accountability between parents and those making decisions about their children’s education. It also takes away needed flexibility from state education leaders to make changes as they learn more about what works and what does not.”
“This Administration favors a national school board approach to education and likes to ignore individual states’ decisions,” said Enzi. “It uses ‘free’ money as the carrot to dangle in front of the states. In effect it is trying to force states into accepting a one-size-fits-all approach. This coercion with Common Core is another example of the federal government trampling on states’ rights and is the wrong approach to fixing our education system in this country.”
The major provisions of the resolution affirm:
Education belongs in the hands of parents, local education officials, and states.
The federal government should not coerce states into adopting common education standards.
No future application process for any federal grant funds or waivers should award additional points, or provide any preference, for the adoption of Common Core.
FACT SHEET :
Strongly denounces President Obama’s coercion of states into adopting Common Core by conferring preferences in federal grants and flexibility waivers.
Strongly supports the restoration and protection of state authority and flexibility in establishing and defining challenging student academic standards and assessments.
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By the way, the Utah State Office of Education still claims that there are “no federal strings” attached to Common Core. Will they ever tell the people of Utah ?
New York Professor’s Run-in With NY Common Core Promotion Machine
Guest Post by Professor Alan Singer
This story is posted with permission from Professor Singer, and the article is also posted at the Huffington Post under the title: “Questions about Common Core – NYS Education Officials Do Not Want to Hear About It.”
In December 2013, the New York Regents, the policy making body for education in the state, formed a sub-committee to evaluate implementation of the national Common Core Standards. Merryl Tisch the chair of the Board of Regents and John King, the state’s educational commissioner, are both strong advocates for the rapid introduction of the Common Core accompanied by high-stakes testing of students and the evaluation of teachers based on student test scores. However, in a series of public forums across the state, Commissioner King was sharply criticized by both parents and teachers. Some Regents, including Roger Tilles who represents Long Island and Geraldine Chapey of Belle Harbor in Queens, have also been very critical of implementation of Common Core.
New York State United Teachers, the umbrella organization representing unionized teachers in New York State responded to the campaign to rapidly introduce Common Core and new high-stakes tests by calling for the immediate removal of the Commissioner of Education John King by the Board of Regents and postponement of Common Core graduation requirements. This move is supported by Randi Weingarten, president of the national union, the American Federation of Teachers. In addition, a coalition of 45 educational organizations called the NYS Allies for Public Education has launched a campaign to have four new members elected to the state educational governing body, all of whom have expressed reservations about the rapid implementation of Common Core in the state. Members of the Board of Regents are elected by the New York State Legislature.
In May 2011, in an essay published in New York Newsday and on the Washington Post website, Regent Tilles raised concerns about Common Core that have been largely ignored by its proponents for the last three years. Tilles argued “Student learning is complex” and “impacted by many factors which include, but are not limited to, prior learning, family background, level of poverty, classroom and school culture, access to private tutors, learning disabilities, access to adequate resources, and even school district governance,” none of which are taken into account by the Common Core standards, the testing program, or teacher evaluations. He objected to “using the student results of New York’s standardized tests to evaluate teachers” because it contributed to “the corrupting influence of high stakes on the education programs.” He was especially concerned that the focus of Common Core and the high-stakes assessments on reading and math skills was “snuffing out the creative thinking” and worried “that all of the above is an attempt to promote charter schools and dismantle the public school system.”
There are legitimate questions about how serious Tisch and King are about rethinking Common Core. At the same time as Tisch announced formation of the Regents sub-committee, Tisch and King, in an opinion article published in the Albany Times-Union declared “We want to hear from teachers, parents, and students about what’s working and what could work better. But we also know that moving forward with Common Core is essential.”
As far as I can see, there is little real discussion going on about the Common Core standards. Politicians and corporations who are selling the standards to the public and forcing it on teachers and schools ignore both supportive suggestions and opposition. The story I report here says that the champions of Common Core, no matter what they say, do not want to hear any other ideas.
In New York State, Common Core is promoted by EngageNY, a website “created and maintained by the New York State Education Department,” and a secretive non-governmental group called the Regents Research Fund. As the EngageNYwebsite makes clear, its primary purpose is promoting Common Core.
“The New York State Education Department (NYSED) is engaging teachers, administrators, and education experts across the State and nation in the creation of curriculum resources, instructional materials, professional development materials, samples of test questions, test specifications, and other test-related materials that will help with the transition to the New York State P-12 Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS).”
The actions of the Regents Research Fund are a little harder to pin down. The Albany Times Union calls it a “shadow government” within the New York State Education Department. It is supported by $19 million in donations from wealthy individuals and foundations.
On the EngageNY website and for the Regents Research Fund the chief salesperson for Common Core is Kate Gerson, a very attractive woman who appears to have minimal teaching experience. Although she is not an actual employ of the State Education Department, Gerson represents them at Common Core meetings across the state and is the featured Common Core cheerleader on EngageNY online videos. The Times Herald-Record, based in Middletown, New York, described Gerson’s performance at a staff development workshop for teachers in the Monticello school district this way.
“With a microphone dangling under her chin, Kate Gerson paced the front of the high school auditorium in sweater dress and heeled boots, prodding teachers to rethink the Gettysburg Address. She used the word “text” over and over again.”
Gerson’s advice to teachers was “Try it out; get smarter at it. This is hard work. Pick a text and dive in, and build a unit around a text that you are devoted to, that you have to teach anyway, and teach it differently.”
You can view Gerson’s traveling show at the EngageNY website. In a fifteen minute video titled “Quick Explanation of the Shifts by Kate Gerson,” she basically tells the audience that they are already doing Common Core in small bursts, but they now have to do it more systematically and have students think more deeply about what they read.
I did not have many disagreements with the goals Gerson presented in her show, but I was very surprised by two things. It was very unclear how deeper literacy was going to be achieved in classrooms where students have serious academic difficulty. Mostly she just repeated educational clichés – we were going to have a shift in focus, text-based instruction, rigorous standards, and students would think deeply and marshal evidence. Teaching these academic skills to real students in actual classrooms was almost a hopeful wish on her part.
I was also struck by Gerson’s lack of knowledge about the English Language Arts curriculum in New York State. According to Gerson, as part of the new rigor and higher standards, students would read To Kill a Mocking Bird in eighth grade rather than in ninth grade. But students always read To Kill a Mocking Bird in eight grade because that is when they learned about the Civil Rights movement in social studies. Students were also going to read Achebe’s book Things for Apart in 10th grade rather than in12th grade, but students always read Things Fall Apart in 10th grade because that is when they study the impact of European imperialism on traditional societies in Global History.
Gerson is promoted as a former New York City teacher and school principal who brings legitimate educational credentials and experience to the discussion of Common Core. According to her LinkedIn site, Gerson has a B.A. in Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona and a M.A in Language Education from Indiana University. She began her career as a teacher in Indiana, but only worked in New York City for two years at a transfer school for over-aged-under-credited students before leaving for an organization called New Leaders for Schools where she worked from 2007 to 2010. Gerson is also associated with Frederick Hess, Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies at theAmerican Enterprise Institute, which pushes free market pro-business solutions to educational and social issues.
Gerson will be the keynote speaker at an Uncommon Core at a conference in Binghamton, New York on March 14, 2014.
I was also invited by conference organizers to speak there because of my Huffington Posts on Common Core where I am critical of Common Core, but also offer practical suggestions and lesson ideas on how it can be useful in the classroom. For example, I recently posted a blog on Huffington Post with quotations from two speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. where he offers a more radical critique of American society.
My position on Common Core is that it is useful to teachers and schools as a guideline but not as a mandated set of skills that must be achieved in a specific time frame by every student. I am also disturbed that the almost universal focus on skills acquisition will interfere with the teaching of subject content. AsRegent Tilles argued, to be most effective, Common Core Standards must be separated from high-stakes testing for students and the evaluation of teachers. State Education needs to provide teachers with sample material that defines what they mean by “college and career ready,” but scripted lessons that inhibit teacher creativity and eliminate flexibility are not useful. Among the things I like about Common Core is that it encourages the Horizontal (across subject) and Vertical (across grade level) Integration of instruction and it supports systematic planning and conscious decision-making by teachers. However, to the extent that it is tied into the privatization of curriculum, staff development, student assessment, and teacher preparation it is undermining public education.
The problem with the invitation to speak at the Binghamton conference with Gerson is that the conference organizers were not be able to pay an honorarium despite the fact that I would have a ten-hour round trip drive from New York City and have to spend the night. This basically meant I am unable to participate.
Merryl Tisch (non-responder)
I emailed Merryl Tisch, Chair of the New York State Board of Regents, Education Commissioner Jon King, Ken Wagner, Deputy Commissioner for Curriculum, Assessment, and Educational Technology at the New York State Education Department, and Kate Gerson and Joshua Skolnick of the Regents Research Fund in an effort to secure financial support to participate in the conference. I did not get a response from Tisch, King, or Skolnick. Gerson emailed back that she had forwarded my request to Skolnick and Wagner.
Ken Wagner, Deputy Commissioner for Curriculum, Assessment, and Educational Technology and a person in charge of implementing Common Core standards in New York State
I received a curt response from Wagner, Deputy Commissioner for Curriculum, Assessment, and Educational Technology at the New York State Education Department. According to his LinkedIn page, Mr. Wagner has a very interesting resume. He has worked at the State Education Department in different capacities since 2009. Before that he was a district administrator in Suffolk County for three years, an assistant principal and a principal for five years, and a school psychologist for four years. However, Mr. Wagner rose to become Deputy Commissioner for Curriculum, Assessment, and Educational Technology and a person in charge of implementing Common Core standards in New York State without ever having been a classroom teacher.
Mr. Wagner emailed me: “There is no funding available. Perhaps you should cancel.”
I later emailed Mr. Wagner the Common Core based lesson on the speeches of Martin Luther Kin, Jr. that I had developed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemorations in local secondary schools.
This time he responded:
Hi Alan,
Please remove me from your list.
Thanks a bunch,
Ken
I emailed him back:
“I thought you were a state official and this was a public email address?
Any update on the honorarium so that I can present on Common Core at the Binghamton Uncommon Core Conference?”
Mr. Wagner responded, denying funding for the conference again, and this time accusing me of sending spam in violation of federal law:
From: Ken Wagner
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 8:28 PM
To: Alan J. Singer
Subject: Re: The Other Martin Luther King – Alan’s Latest Huffington Post
No worries, thanks.
It is generally best practice for authors to provide their readers with options and choice. Self-publishing has changed all that, I suppose.
You should be aware, however, that sending unsolicited email without the ability to decline meets the federal definition of Spam.
As I said, funding is not an option.
Ken
At least in my experience, education officials in New York State are not interested in what anyone else has to say about Common Core.
Post-It Note: I checked the federal definition of spam. According to the CAN-SPAM act of 2003 spam is “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service.”
I fail to see how a lesson on Martin Luther King, Jr. aligned with Common Core that I am making freely available to teachers and available to state curriculum officials constitutes spam under this law,but I guess Mr. Wagner, as an expert on Common Core, is able to understand the statute’s deeper meaning.
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Alan Singer, Director, Secondary Education Social Studies Department of Teaching, Literacy and Leadership 128 Hagedorn Hall / 119 Hofstra University / Hempstead, NY 11549
Boiling down the conflict about personal data, we get to two ideas; which one do you value more?
It’s either:
1) – Our Constitutional right to be free from “unreasonable search and seizure” of “private effects” (unless there truly is some “probable cause” of our guilt)
OR:
2) – The corporate and government-backed movement to gather and share “robust data” to enable “data-driven decisions” that may serve educational research.
Take some time. Think about it. We cannot have our cake and eat it, too.
Many organizations, agencies and movements have begun to depend on the second philosophy and Utah has aligned its school systems and other government agencies to it– without thinking too deeply about it.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hosts the White House “Datapalooza” event and gives speeches about the wonders of data collection. He persuades unrelated governmental agencies to share personal data. His right-hand woman, Joanne Weiss, encourages inter-agency “data-mashing.” And Duncan not only supports, but has been the main speaker at Data Quality Campaign’s summit. This is key. I’ll tell you all about the DQC.
“Data Quality Campaign” has many partners including (no coincidence) all of the Common Core creators and testers! “Achieve,” “National Governors’ Association,” “Council of Chief State School Officers,” “American Institutes for Research,” “PESC” (a council that makes data standards common) and MANY more share the DQC’s “vision of an education system in which all stakeholders… are empowered with high-quality data from the early childhood, K–12, postsecondary, and workforce systems.”
From the DQC’s site: “as states build and enhance K12 longitudinal data systems they continue building linkages to exchange and use information across early childhood, postsecondary and the workforce and with other critical agencies such as health, social services and criminal justice systems.”
Do you share that vision?
On November 12, 2009, at a Data Quality Campaign conference, (note: the keynote speaker was an NGA leader; NGA copyrighted Common Core) they encouraged “the status of states’ ability to link data across agencies and provided several state case studies of promising strategies to sharing individual-level data across systems and agencies.”
And Utah was “honored” by DQC for providing an example of linking criminal justice agencies, educational agencies, medical agencies, etc. using school-collected data and common data standards. Some data on a child that had been USOE-collected (private student data) was accessed by Utah’s Department of Human Services, according to this DQC brief, because of Utah MOUs that permitted data exchanges. Excerpt:
“Utah’s State Office of Education (USOE) has an extensive data warehouse, but initially, concerns about student privacy protection, especially related to the federal FERPA legislation, prohibited data sharing. However, Human Services worked with the USOE to develop two memoranda of understanding (MOUs) to permit data exchange and mitigate student privacy concerns. One MOU established that the state serves as the child’s parent when the child is in state custody. Although this MOU often is not employed, it did clarify the role of the state and its permission to attain and view student records housed in the USOE. The second MOU established that by connecting these two databases to evaluate the educational outcomes of children who aged out of foster care. Utah Human Services was conducting research on behalf of the USOE and, therefore, could be granted access to student-level data. http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/files/65_meetings-dqc_quarterly_issue_brief_091807.pdf
Why isn’t this stuff in the papers?
But DQC reminds us that “Every Governor and Chief State School Officer agreed to build longitudinal data systems that can follow individual students from early learning through secondary and postsecondary education and into the workforce as a condition for receiving State Fiscal Stabilization Funds. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) not only provided states the venture and political capital to build on the growing momentum behind statewide longitudinal data systems, but also offered state agencies the chance to think creatively and break down traditional silos. For policymakers, educators, parents, and students to have the information they need to improve student and system performance, state K-12 longitudinal data systems must be able to exchange and use information across the early learning, postsecondary, and workforce sectors as well as health and social services systems.”
So, to ponder how this affects YOUR child:
DQC is partnered with American Institutes for Research (AIR) which is Utah’s Common Core test maker for the Computer Adaptive Math and English Common Core test, also known as the SAGE test. (FYI, AIR is fully partnered with SBAC, the testing group Utah dropped in 2012.)
American Institutes for Research will not only test Common Core standards teachings, but will also upload all Utah student test takers’ personally identifiable information, academic and nonacademic information into its database.
(Why the nonacademic information too? Because Utah’s HB15 mandates that behavioral indicators will be tested and conveniently, AIR is a psychometrics specialist.)
Understandably, all over the country and in my own home state of Utah, legislators are scrambling to create student data protection bills. But they face a problem that most maybe don’t want to see.
Every state has a federally-invented SLDS: State Longitudinal Database System. In Utah, we have been recipients of millions of dollars (and have been entangled in the federal strings that have come with those dollars) because we agreed to the four education reform assurances that came with the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund money (ARRA Stimulus funding). And we agreed to build our SLDS (State Longitudinal Database System) to federal specs. So did all the other states. It’s an illegal, de facto national database because of that interoperability factor and because we’ve agreed to it through PESC.
We built the SLDS monster. Now legislation is trying to put a muzzle and a leash on him. Why keep him around at all?
The SLDS’s core function is “to fulfill federal reporting.”This fact comes from the PESC State Core Model, which Utah agreed to when the Utah Data Alliance agreed to the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC) Model and the SIF (interoperability framework) in the SLDS grant application –which means all of our data will be interoperable and sharable across state lines. The PESC’s State Core Model deliberately aligns different states’ SLDS data systems so that they all match.
Not surprisingly, the PESC model was developed by the unelected, private trade group, CCSSO, as part of the Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) funded by the Gates Foundation. (CCSSO is the same private group that developed and copyrighted Common Core standards). The PESC “establishes comparability between sectors and between states” and brags that it “will do for State Longitudinal Data Systems what the Common Core is doing for Curriculum Frameworks and the two assessment consortia. The core purpose of an SLDS is to fulfill federal reporting…”
The agreement is stated on page 4 of section 1 (page 20 on the PDF) of Utah’s 2009 ARRA Data Grant: “The UDA will adhere to standards such as the School Interoperability Framework (SIF), the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC)
Not good.
Nothing’s preventing agencies from sharing data. In fact, the DQC praises those who, like Utah’s USOE, have created ways to share data with other agencies.
But there’s an even bigger fish to fry.
Although, years ago, there was a protective federal privacy law called FERPA, it’s been corrupted by the Department of Education.
The U.S. Department of Education’s intentions are further, very clearly, revealed in the student-level data-sharing mandate in its cooperative testing agreements (and in the contrast between what Secretary Arne Duncan says and does.)
The bottom line is that we should not align any privacy law with federal FERPA and we should shut the SLDS monster’s big mouth by creating opt-out allowances for parents to protect their children from this big government stalker.
I have serious concerns about a bill that’s being written in Utah right now, SB0049, which aligns with federal FERPA’s definitions of “personally identifiable information” and “authorized representative.”
Reading this bill, I could hardly believe that Utah legislators care to protect us.
Surely legislators have read that the Department of Education has, without Congressional approval, altered federal FERPA to loosen privacy protections by having redefined terms. (This resulted in a big law suit with the Electronic Privacy Information Center.) The loosening of student privacy protections by the federal government took place during the same time as the Department of Education was creating national school assessment contracts that stated that the Department would access student-level data through the assessments “subject to applicable privacy law.” Thus they changed the law to suit their data-hungry point of view. The federal FERPA reduced parental consent over student data from a requirement to a “best practice”!
It changed the definition of “personally identifiable information” to include biometric information, which includes DNA, handwriting, iris scans, fingeprints, as well as behavioral information
Is this what we want for Utah?
Behavioral and belief-based information on a child is without question going to be collected by Utah’s math and English tests by psychometric embedding by test writer and psychometric specialist AIR -American Institutes for Reasearch. Utah gave AIR $39 million to do this terrible mistake when the Utah legislature mandated it, in HB15, the Computer Adaptive Testing bill.
To align state privacy laws with federal definitions is to guarantee a toothless and spineless pretense of protection.
This is not hyperbole. Follow the money trail to see who has a vested interest in denying parents and students authority over their own private data. We can’t afford to give our ear to those who are making the money from the exposure of student data to “researchers” —who are really just greedy vendors.
Microsoft owner Bill Gates, who has called schools a “uniform customer base” has paid hundreds of millions to align common data standards with common educational standards. He has partnered with Pearson (who is contracted to make Utah’s UTREX) which pushes the same thing. Gates/Pearson partnered with the Midvale, Utah-based School Improvement Network, which pushes the same thing. They give lip service to student privacy, but none of these groups seems to want to see REAL protection for privacy.
How would you like to be a fly on the wall in a teacher education classroom? What are colleges training teachers to teach today? Is it legitimate education?
Barry Garelick, a California math teacher, has written a book (his introduction is below) based on his university teacher- education experiences, and experiences as a student teacher. Garelick used two pen names, “Huck Finn” and “John Dewey” –to avoid ruining his chance of obtaining a teaching credential at the time, and to avoid being blackballed from teaching because of differences in teaching philosophy.
The insightful and sometimes very funny chronicles show that the one-size-fits-all mentality displayed by Common Core starts before our children enter K-12 classrooms; it starts in the groupthink of teacher education schools.
Thanks, Barry.
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In Which I Explain Myself Without Apology
Guest post by Barry Garelick
I have written a book entitled “Letters from John Dewey/Letters from Huck Finn: A Look at Math Education from the Inside”. It is a collection of letters that I wrote which chronicle my experiences in a math teaching methods class in Ed. school (using the name John Dewey) and my experiences student teaching (using the name Huck Finn). I teach mathematics in California. I have a degree in the subject and an intense interest in how it is taught.
When my daughter was in elementary school I saw things I didn’t like about the way she was being taught math. I was also tutoring high school students in math and saw disturbing weaknesses in basic math skills. This caused me to embark in research about what is going on in math education. I decided that the way I could possibly make a difference was to teach mathematics in middle or high school. In the fall of 2005, with six more years left until I could retire, I enrolled in education school.
By way of a short background, the debate over how math is best taught in K-12 (and which is known as the “math wars“) has been going on for many years, starting perhaps in the early part of the 20th century. The education theory at the heart of the dispute can be traced to John Dewey, an early proponent of learning through discovery. Fast forward to 1957 when Sputnik was launched and the New Math era began in earnest, which continued until the early 70’s. Then came the “back to basics” movement, and in 1989 the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) came out with The Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, also known as the NCTM standards.
The NCTM’s view was that traditional teaching techniques were akin to “rote memorization” and that in order for students to truly learn mathematics, the subject must be taught “with understanding”. Thus, process trumped content. Showing how students obtained the answer to a problem was more important than getting a right answer. Open-ended ill-posed problems became the order for the day. The prevailing education groupthink was (and still is) that teaching the mathematical procedures for particular types of problems was just more rote. Such approaches didn’t teach students “higher order thinking skills”, “critical thinking” and many other terms that are part of the education establishment’s lexicon.
By the time I enrolled in Ed. school, I pretty much knew what I was in for. I was well acquainted with the theories of teaching and learning which dominated the education establishment in general and education schools in particular. Nevertheless, I was surprised at what I heard when going through the candidate interviews, which was part of the application process. Future teachers of science and math were herded in one group and given a brief talk by the coordinator of secondary education. Among her opening remarks was the announcement that “The way math and science are taught today is probably not how you were taught when you were in school.” A few sentences later, the coordinator, with index finger pointing to the ceiling for emphasis, said “Inquiry-based learning!” Though a bit unnerved, I at least knew where I was.
All in all, my Ed. school experience had some redeeming features. Most of my teachers had taught in K-12, and had valuable advice about classroom management problems and some good common-sense approaches to teaching that didn’t rely on nausea-inducing theories. Also, I learned how to make it sound like my approach to teaching was what was being taught. I learned to talk about discovery approaches and small group exercises—no one has to know that such techniques are not going to be your dominant teaching approach. In short, since future teachers will be working in a bureaucracy that is often dictated by the groupthink of the education establishment, Ed. school serves the purpose of teaching survival techniques.
Sometime after I took my first course, I decided to write a series of letters documenting my experience in Ed. school, using the pseudonym of John Dewey. There was a new education blog that had emerged called Edspresso, edited by a genial and talented young man named Ryan Boots. (Unfortunately, he left Edspresso several years ago). I pitched the idea to him, asking him what he thought. He responded almost immediately along the lines of “An Ed. school mole writing about his experiences? When can you start?”
My series of letters for Edspresso covered mainly one class—the beginning math teaching methods class. The letters proved to be very popular and many people left comments—some supportive, and some very angry. I wrote the letters almost in real time—there was perhaps a one or two week delay between the letter I was writing and the events of a particular class.
As I progressed through the class, I noticed that while my views on teaching may have differed from that of the teacher (an adjunct professor who I refer to as Mr. NCTM), there were certain views that we shared in common. We were both around the same age, and he had taught high school math for 30 years. He had very good advice and it was clear that he liked me. I came to the realization that though there were vast differences in teaching philosophies within the teaching profession, one had to work with fellow teachers as well as the people in power on a daily basis. The trick would be to find a situation in which I could be loyal to how I believed math should be taught, and find that common bond with the other teachers and the administration that would allow us all to get along.
I decided to stop writing the letters when the math teaching methods class ended. This was not only because of the time involved in writing them, but because of a fear that their continuation would ultimately lead someone to discover the identity of the author. I didn’t want to ruin any chance of obtaining a teaching credential, nor to be blackballed from any teaching positions because of differences in teaching philosophy.
After several years, I had completed all my coursework and was ready to move on to student teaching. I had a few months to go until retirement, and then could take on the commitment for the remaining task. I felt that this phase called for a resurrection of John Dewey, but my initial draft of a letter seemed forced and the voice of Mr. Dewey no longer seemed appropriate.
Around that time, I had the good fortune to have seen a performance of Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain. Mr. Holbrook was 85, so I knew this might be my last chance to see him. The performance lived up to everything I had heard about it, but one part of the evening stood out. He did a reading from Huckleberry Finn that was extremely moving and convincing. I heard the voice of a naive young boy commenting on rather serious matters over which he had no control, but about which he was beginning to form life-changing opinions. I realized the next day that Huck Finn was the perfect choice for the author of the letters about student teaching, immersed in the polarized world of education, and drifting along the ideological, political and cultural divide.
I asked Katharine Beals who runs the blog “Out In Left Field” if she wouldn’t mind publishing some letters from Huck Finn about the process of becoming a math teacher. She was excited about this and so I decided to give it a go. I was grateful for her taking Huck in; she is known as “Miss Katharine” in the letters. The name seemed to fit her quite well.
The first two Huck Finn letters are about a year apart, and then they follow the student teaching. I couldn’t write those in real time since the teaching kept me rather busy, so I wrote the letters after I finished. After another year I wrote six more episodes, this time looking at Huck’s experience as a substitute teacher.
I’m trying to think of something profound and moving to close with here and the best I could come up with was “For anyone wanting to make a movie based on these letters, please don’t have me played by Matt Damon.” Actually, a comment I received on one of the Huck Finn letters from Niki Hayes, a former teacher and principal, is much better I think, so let me close with that and offer it to you as advice:
So you learned what teaching is about: The dispensing of content information so that kids don’t have to “struggle” repeatedly to understand it (which makes most humans turn off the learning switch) AND experiencing those wonderful young eyes that make you want to be a better teacher and person. You’ll always remember these kids because they were your first “tutors.” Let me assure you, there will be many more as you enter the special land of teaching.
My goal is to get this book to be required reading in math teaching methods classes at ed schools. So if you know anyone in an Ed. school with influence, please tell them about this book. -Barry Garelick
With all the pushback across our country against Common Core standards and testing it’s almost impossible to keep up!
Here is an incomplete list with links to some important, recent news stories you may have missed.
SOUTH CAROLINA: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is taking on the Common Core standards in a draft resolution that he says is “an incentive-based mandate from the federal government.”
KANSAS: U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts introduced a bill Thursday targeting the U.S. Department of Education over the Common Core mathematics and English standards. The bill would stop the federal government “from coercing states to adopt education standards like Common Core” and would “strictly forbid the federal government from intervening in a state’s education standards, curricula, and assessments through the use of incentives, mandates, grants, waivers or any other form of manipulation.”
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Nashua, New Hampshire principal writes a letter to the superitendent, saying his school staff “believe that the Smarter Balance [Common Core] Test is inappropriate for our students… this test will not measure the academic achievement of our students; but will be a test of computer skills and students’ abilities to endure through a cumbersome task.” http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/1027308-469/nashua-middle-school-principal-outlines-serious-concerns.html#
Utah mother Alyson Williams has given permission to post her letter that was written this week to former State School Board member Joel Coleman in response to his suggestion that citizens should “ask the members of the board” to alleviate their concerns about Common Core.
Joel, many of us in this group have indeed asked members of the board about the adoption and more, and when their answers didn’t match up with the verifiable facts, our confidence in them was understandably diminished.
I understand what you are saying about the Board reviewing the standards for months… you are probably referring to the DRAFT of the standards that had been made public. Funny thing though, the board’s feedback resulting from this months-long review has never been publicly shared so I guess we’ll just have to take their word for it in spite of the fact that representative government doesn’t typically require blind trust. Perhaps they felt confident that private reviews of the draft was adequate, but if they had anticipated that the standards writers would actually incorporate any of the feedback of those select few who were even able to give it, wouldn’t they also be anticipating the possibility of significant changes in the final version? Or, is this an admission that everyone knew the standards would be what they would be and that the board’s decision was really about whether to go along with the other states, and not about the standards on their own merits?
You’re right, meeting minutes can be vague at times. Good thing we have the audio. As Brenda had so succinctly put it in the meeting where the board authorized the initial MOU for the state to participate with the Common Core initiative in the first place, “half a billion is no small chuck of change” and “it doesn’t concern me that it will be so wildly out of line that we couldn’t live with it.”
Two Days after the final draft was released the board voted to adopt on first reading. Then a handful of weeks more there was the final vote. Why the rush? They wouldn’t be implemented for over a year. In the audio of that first board meeting that Connor referred to, Larry Shumway makes it clear that the standards had to be adopted for an upcoming interview about the State’s Race to the Top application. Now, after losing out on that grant, the board inexplicably insists that there was no Federal influence on their decision!
Dave Thomas stated in our recent debate that the Federal government was deliberately excluded from the initiative, implying the USED jumped on the bandwagon later with Race to the Top. I wonder, did he read the MOU the board had authorized the superintendent to sign in 2009 that clearly outlines what the Federal role would be? It’s only a couple of pages long.
Or, there is the congressional hearing around that same time where T. Kenneth James, then president of the Council of Chief State School Officers said, “I think it [the Common Core Initiative] can be done without the perception that the federal government is driving the train.” Then they discussed how the Feds leverage education funding and use their “pulpit” to promote it.
On your blog, Joel, you talk about the public comment on the standards to the board as evidence that the public was aware of what was happening and link to the minutes of two State Board Meetings as evidence. If anyone bothers to click on the links and read, they will see that Oak (one person, not plural) was one of two “public” and the only one to comment on standards. It turns out that at that time he was talking about Utah’s own Social Studies Standards, not Common Core. He also presented the board with a petition that you mention, also not about Common Core, but about including instruction about our country as a Republic in our state Social Studies Standards. At the end of Oak’s comments in one of the two meetings he makes reference to some new, national standards that he’d heard of saying something about how he hoped we wouldn’t go that direction. Evidence of the board’s representation, of their engagement with their constituents, or should I say constituent, on Common Core?
Some of us have asked about the costs and why there wasn’t a formal cost study done. There was the claim you shared with me on FaceBook about the tens of millions saved by adopting the Common Core. Didn’t you say $75 million? I read over the budget for the past four years and couldn’t find that. I asked you for a reference then and am still waiting.
You probably don’t recall the “bagels and bills” event that I attended and sat at the same table as you did. I had come in hopes of meeting my State Board representative with whom I’d been unable to connect via email or phone. Instead I sat dumbfounded as he used his time to talk to the audience about the crazy moms (lumping all mothers’ voices into one) who were publicly discussing their concerns about Common Core, which he called “conspiracy theories,” and basically asked the local school board and local chamber to disregard what he characterized as unfounded fringe opinions, as he had determined to do. All this without his ever having engaged in a conversation with a single one of us. I never was able to introduce myself to him that day.
There was the time that Christel was speaking to a board member about why the board was unwilling to meet and discuss with some of us our concerns. The board member said she had met several times with Ms. Swasey. Christel had to ask, “Did you know that is me? I’m Ms. Swasey?” I could go on, but as you can see, it’s kind of embarrassing and that is not my goal.
It’s not these interactions alone that shake people’s confidence. I am always told to “read the standards” as if they are so wonderful I couldn’t possibly have concerns if I’d actually read them. We parents don’t have the benefit of the official professional development to help us overlook the obtuse and jargon-filled wording of the standards themselves to construct generous interpretations of their quality.
I went to the Logan debate prepared to discuss the standards themselves and instead fielded nebulous questions about what my “dream education system” would look like. I thought it silly that as Tami talked about the standards that night she gave examples of counting to 100 and basic addition – as if that’s all the standards are, as if we didn’t teach those things before Common Core. She got applause for claiming that with common standards kids will be able to move from state to state and be on the same page. Is she not aware that there are four adoption paths outlined in Appendix A of the CC Math Standards? Utah adopted was is called the “integrated” path that spreads the topics across classes and grades so uniquely that it seems likely that Utah will be even more out of sync with what other states (including those that adopted CC) are teaching, and in what order, than ever. Only one other state did this. So, unless those who were applauding are planning to move to Vermont they may be in for a rude awakening. What about all those students who move here from other states, or a homeschool student trying to be placed back into public school, but who had been studying math by discrete subject? How will they fit into a system that teaches a little algebra here and a little geometry there? Did the board study that? If commonality is the most appealing benefit that is supposed to compensate Utahans for what we’ve given up, why are we implementing it the way we are?
Then there is the increase in informational texts recommended for ELA. Appendix A of the ELA standards is the “research” for the standards. It is basically just an essay about text complexity with only a couple of footnotes through which the writers notably, in the first instance, consult themselves. It offers some kind of interesting insights about how text complexity is measured and how text complexity differs across various media and over time. Then, it puts forth what is basically a hypothesis that if kids dissect a graduated complexity of informational texts they will be more career-ready. It is followed by a list of other research papers (not directly referenced to anything in the text itself as one would expect of a “research”paper), also primarily about text complexity. There is no Newkirk, who wrote about how kids who read a lot and are intrinsically engaged in what they read are better readers and writers. There is no Oatley who has been recognized internationally for his research on the psychological effects of reading and writing and the importance of reading fiction. The Common Core hypothesis for ELA is that in college and as adults we typically read more informational text, therefore we should read more in K-12 as well. It’s nothing more than an untested theory that is made all the more concerning by the fact that there does exist research that might suggest the opposite is true – that, for that very same reason, students ought to be reading more classic literature and fiction to voluntarily increase reading stamina and to develop a more sure foundation in the ideas of the best thinkers and observers of our civilization as can only be conveyed in the great literary works that have outlasted the educational fads of the moment.
I’m not saying I am absolutely right or have all the answers but am discouraged that the board can’t offer anything of substance to counter concerns, but tend to rely on endorsements as if it were evidence.
They don’t even seem to be familiar with the basics of the agreements they authorized to be signed, like the 15% cap on adding to the standards. The board gave a presention to members of the legislature in which they denied that such limitation even existed despite the fact that we were able to show them several places in primary governing documents where it did exist, not counting the minutes of the board meeting where the 15% was stated expressly in their adopting vote. (See slide 20 of the board’s presentation posted here:http://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/rebuttal-to-usbe-presentation-on-common-core/)
Sorry about rambling on. I share all this “water under the bridge” stuff only to make the point that many of us have “asked the board” and discovered that as much as we like you and the members of the board personally, and as well-intentioned as they undoubtedly are, they haven’t proved to be a reliable source of information or insight on these topics. That is why your advice here “to ask” comes across as a little condescending and why many of us are looking forward to enabling a process of getting members on the state board who are more electorally accountable to their constituents, who might demonstrate a little more independence of thought instead of parroting the company line, and who might be a little more diligent with the details.
It’s not about finding someone who always agrees with one view on Common Core or another. I’d prefer disagreement in the context of an honest discourse about the pros and cons of de facto national standards,
or about what is really meant by the “critical thinking”that seems to be the magic sauce of the standards according to proponents, (you thought “state-led” had a lot of different meanings!)
or about the obligations associated with and our reliance on federal funds,
or about whether workforce preparation should be the primary goal of education
and about how the adoption of the Common Core standards and the other stimulus-driven reforms affect Utah in all of those areas.
In conclusion, repeating to parents ad nauseam talking points about how the standards are “rigorous” (because we said so) and“internationally benchmarked” (“in spirit,” to quote directly from the CCSS) smacks of propaganda. I really don’t think I’m the only person who is tired of such nonsense and that’s why I believe the controversy around this topic is not going to die down any time soon. Advising clearly frustrated constituents who have done their homework to “ask” board members who haven’t been able to demonstrate that they’ve done theirs only adds fuel to the fire.
j
COMMON CORE 
