The Dying of the Light: How Common Core Damages Poetry Instruction
Published by Pioneer Institute, a new white paper entitled, “The Dying of the Light: How Common Core Damages Poetry Instruction” — which you can read here— begins by asking whether poetry has a future in the face of Common Core:
“The fate of poetry in the school curriculum may seem like an odd subject for a Pioneer Institute report. But these are unusual times. It is not clear that the literary genre called poetry has a futurein the face of a reduction in literary study that Common Core’s English language arts standards implicitly mandate— and in the context of Common Core’s drive for workforce development.”
I’ve never read an academic research paper more important to me personally. I’ve never read one so beautifully composed that it moved me to tears.
Please read and share this paper.
Maybe it’s the subject. Maybe it’s the writing. Maybe it’s my recognition that these people are defending what has not been defended, and must be.
The title alludes to the Dylan Thomas poem, which says: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” The original poem is about the value of life and the importance of fighting for life regardless of the ultimate inevitability of mortality. But here, the words are about the value of poetry and the importance of fighting for it, regardless of the seeming inevitability of poetry’s death because of education deformations posing as education reformations.
Thanks to the three authors: two literature professors and one Teacher of the Year: Anthony Esolen, Jamie Highfill, and Sandra Stotsky!
The paper contains five sections:
In part I, Dr. Anthony Esolen discusses why students should read poetry, the kind of reading that poetry demands from us, and what poetry has to do with the child’s developing imagination.
In part II, Jamie Highfill explains how poetry has traditionally been taught in the public schools.
In part III, Dr. Sandra Stotsky traces what is known from large-scale studies about the poetry curriculum in this country’s public schools.
Part IV discusses how Common Core’s standards seem to be influencing the poetry curriculum in schools.
Part V explores the fate of poetry in the school curriculum as long as Common Core’s standards and tests shape education and teacher training.
Part I, which answers the question of why students need poetry, has five parts:
A. Raising Children to be Free
B. The Free Arts are for All
C. Beauty, the Common Desire of Man
D. An Education in Love
E. The Love that Moves the Sun and the Other Stars
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I will post the beginning here and hope you will read and share the whole paper:
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“Why should a young person read a poem?
Why should he read those lines from “Ode to Autumn”? We cannot answer that question without asking some more fundamental ones.
What is a child? What is a child for?
He shares life with all the other living creatures upon the earth. He eats and drinks, he moves about, he grows, he may bring others of his kind into the world. All these things he shares in common with cattle, dogs, birds of the air, fish of the sea. Yet we perceive that his life is more than food and drink and raiment. His cup runneth over. What is the life of his life?
It would seem odd, even mad, if someone were to say “I have a new and improved method of raising horses” without having first ascertained what horses are.
It would hardly be sufficient if such a person, or a committee, or a bureaucracy flush with billions of dollars, were to assure us that they could tell the difference between a horse and a camel, that they once rode upon a horse in a parade, that they could spell the word, that they knew how much horse-meat could sell by the pound, and that they had received bids from a glue factory for so much tonnage of equine bones. We would be even more wary, and more ready to call the men from the home for the insane, if they should assure us that their single centrally-directed method must be applied to ponies on the Orkney Islands as well as to wild mustangs in the American plains and draft-horses on the steppes of Mongolia.
Yet what the madmen would do with, or to, that patient dumb animal with the slow sad eyes, the ideologues of education today would do with children all over America.
They would strap them all onto the same treadmill, subjecting their teachers to the same overseers with the same conforming textbooks, computer files, databases, and standardized tests, now and forevermore.
And they would do so without troubling to ask the questions we are asking. What is a child? What is a child for? What is the life of his life? We shall make three interrelated assertions.
The child, as well as the fully realized human person to which his education should aim, is meant to be free; he is meant to behold what is good and beautiful and true; and he is meant to love it because it is so.
None of these assertions is original to us. They are the common wisdom of men and women who have thought and written about education from ancient Greece to the present day. They are to be found, expressed in a variety of ways but true to the central vision nonetheless, in the pagan Plato and the Christian Newman, in the metaphysical Aquinas and the artistic Leonardo, in poets as diverse as the Christian Dante and the skeptic Arnold, and in educational reformers of our own age, such as Maria Montessori, John Senior, and Stratford Caldecott. Let us examine each assertion to see how a poetic education bears upon it…
I’m thinking about Colton High School, in Colton, CA, where I taught English.
This was not necessarily a great school at that time. We had more than our fair share of drugs, poverty, gangster wannabees and teen pregnancy. We had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the state of California.
I remember reading poetry out loud there. I remember the poems students wrote, too.
My classes decided to publish a little yearly volume that students dubbed “Poetryoni”. It contained some great poetry and also some trashy poetry; some sonnets, some limericks, some illustrations, some writings that were more graffiti and smoke signals than literature; some cheesy stuff but also some powerful language that hit a true nerve when you read it; it was such lively, original literature spattered on the pages, all written by teenagers. They wrote after and during the time that they had studied classic poetry and had practiced its different forms for themselves in the class.
Poetryoni mattered to me. I know it mattered to many of them.
I wonder if these types of joys can continue in public schools during teaching time, under the brave new Common Core world that pushes for poetry reduction and pushes for so much time on government/corporate tests?
Alpine School Board member Wendy Hart had an interview with the Teachers’ Association to determine if they would be endorsing her re-election. After that meeting, she wrote this blog post, an open letter to the teachers in her school district. Here’s a portion:
For Teachers Only
“…As an employee, perhaps you can’t speak out if you find things amiss. It’s your job; you have to do it. It’s the same with my job. Sometimes you just have to put a smile on your face and do what needs to be done whether you agree with it or not. I completely understand that. Do I wish it weren’t the case? Yes. But I acknowledge the reality of it. Elected officials, however, are elected for a reason. We can’t be fired or lose our jobs for speaking out, except at the hands of voters. If anyone is going to stand up for teachers against a program that isn’t good, it must be the elected officials. And every new change, program or implementation that comes along really should be debated, discussed and vetted all the way along the line, especially at the local level. Let’s take something we probably agree on: teacher evaluations being tied to SAGE testing. This is wrong. I’ve said so. I will continue to say so. It, too, is state law. We have to do it. But it’s horribly wrong. Placing so much of a teacher’s evaluation and thus, his/her livelihood on a single (pilot) test is absolutely the worst use of a standardized test. Like the Common Core, should we just go along with it and be supportive? I know you all will do the best you can, trying not to focus overly much on the test and still teach as professionals, but it’s got to weigh you down. The direction we are doing is that once all education and all educators are evaluated on a single test, funding will follow. It’s nice and simple, but still wrong. I can’t sit by and be supportive. I have to find a way to scream from the rooftops that this can’t work, and that it gives way too much authority to the test makers over teachers, over local boards, over HOW standards are taught in the classroom.
Let me give you an example. Several years ago, my son had a phenomenal teacher. He LOVED class, loved her lessons, enjoyed nearly every moment. He learned a lot and enjoyed it. She even expressed appreciation that he had shushed the rest of the class one time because he wanted to learn what she had to teach. Do you think I cared what he got on the CRT’s that year? Nope. I don’t think I even looked at them. He had a wonderful year with a wonderful teacher. That was worth more to me (and to him) than any standardized test score. And I am afraid that, despite her best efforts, that love and that thrill of teaching will be reduced to making sure she can keep her job by getting higher test scores. (Note: She was/is his favorite. But he’s had many, many others who were just as wonderful, just as dedicated, and just as appreciated.) I don’t choose and evaluate my kids’ teachers by their test scores. So, back to Common Core. It is top-down, which violates the principle of local control.
A little bit of local control isn’t local control. And just to be clear, my opposition isn’t just with the standards. The Common Core standards come in a nice little package along with tying test scores to teacher evaluations, courtesy of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Waiver. The other two parts of that package are 1) a longitudinal database on students and teachers and 2) “improving” low-performing schools (determined by the test scores and “improved” by shutting them down and bringing in private enterprises, and redistributing successful teachers to these “failing” schools). The entire package is flawed, and it’s flawed on principle. You, as a teacher, need to be able to have the freedom to connect with your students–the freedom to do what you know is best, regardless of where the student falls on the ‘testing’ rubric.
The Common Core Standards are just one tree in that forest of standardizing everything: tests, schools, teachers, curriculum. Already, there are calls to use the copyright of the Common Core standards to ‘certify’ curriculum. And, in the end, if your wonderful lesson plan doesn’t deliver the results on the test (even if it delivers the results you, your students, and your students’ parents want), it won’t be around for very much longer.
You got into teaching because you love kids, and you wanted to be able to affect their lives for the better through education. You have natural talents and professional training on how to make that human-to-human connection that makes teachers irreplaceable. We need more of the individual attention you provide. Common Core, with its associated numbers-driven, top-down, accountability to the state, not parents, can only take education in the wrong direction. The Common Core standards, and the rest of the NCLB Waiver package, will reduce teachers to standards-implementers, test-preppers, and data points. I realize this is your job, and you have to make the best of whatever is presented to you. But that is why we have school boards and a political process. It is my job to fight against policies that interfere with the parent-child-teacher partnership. I am happy to do this job. I hope you will understand that my opposition to Common Core and its “package” is to support you as the professional you are. Our community must stand strong and eliminate all obstacles that stand in the way of you doing your job and realizing the highest aspirations that originally brought you into education.
New Pioneer Institute Study Finds Common Core Standards Weren’t Properly Validated
Five of the 29 members of the Common Core Validation Committee refused to sign a report attesting that the standards are research-based, rigorous and internationally benchmarked. The validation report was released with 24 signatures and included no mention that five committee members refused to sign it, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.
What were the problems?
According to the Pioneer Institute press release, no member of the Common Core Validation Committee had a doctorate in English literature or language –and only one held a doctorate in math. (He was one of only three members with extensive experience writing standards.) Two of these three refused to sign off on the standards.
“Since all 50 states have had standards for a decade or more, there is a pool of people out there experienced in writing English and math standards,” said Ze’ev Wurman, author of “Common Core’s Validation: A Weak Foundation for a Crooked House.” “It’s unclear why so few of them were tapped for the Common Core Validation Committee.”
Wurman describes two studies conducted by members who signed the Validation Committee report in an attempt to provide post facto evidence that supported their earlier decisions. In both cases, the research was poorly executed and failed to provide evidence that Common Core is internationally competitive and can prepare American high school students for college-level work.
One study, conducted by Validation Committee member and Michigan State University educational statistician William Schmidt and a colleague, explored whether the Common Core math standards are comparable to those in the highest-performing nations and what outcomes might reasonably be expected after Common Core is implemented.
Wurman describes how even after Schmidt and his colleague rearranged the logical order in which concepts would be taught to make Common Core look more like the math standards in high-performing countries, there was still less than a 60 percent congruence between the two. Their initial results also found no correlation between student achievement and the states that have math standards most like Common Core.
After engaging in highly unconventional steps to increase both the congruence between Common Core and the international standards and the correlation between Common Core and student achievement (based on states whose standards were most similar to Common Core), Schmidt and his colleague wrote that they estimate congruence “in a novel way… coupled with several assumptions.” They acknowledge that their analyses “should be viewed as only exploratory… merely suggesting the possibility of a relationship,” yet such caution disappears in their final conclusion.
Wurman’s research also uncovered that basic information was coded incorrectly for Schmidt’s study and shows examples of concepts introduced in high school under Common Core listed as being taught in seventh grade.
Other studies have come to very different conclusions. Stanford University mathematician R. James Milgram, the only member of the Validation Committee with a doctorate in mathematics, said that Common Core is two years behind the math standards in the highest-performing countries. Milgram also wrote that Common Core fails to prepare students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.
Ze’ev Wurman is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution and a former senior policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Planning, Development, and Policy Development. In 2010, he served as a commissioner on the California Academic Content Standards Commission that evaluated Common Core’s suitability for adoption in that state.
Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.
Let’s not call this research! This is a fact-checking adventure.
This adventure begins because of the FAQ statements about Common Core posted at the Provo School District website. (See it on their website or just scroll to the bottom of the page where I’ve pasted it.)
This post is not meant to be accusatory or mean. Provo District and other districts tend to trust and echo what’s spoken and posted by the State Office. Clearly, districts and boards, like anyone, can and do make factual errors; but when the errors are very clearly pointed out, those mistakes should be corrected.
I apologize for the length of this article. I chiseled and chiseled but cannot in good conscience make it any shorter.
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Question #1 at the Provo District FAQ states: “The Common Core was a grassroots initiative initiated by state governors and Superintendents in 2007.”
Common Core is far from being “grassroots.” President Obama has been pushing for national standards for many years. In 2007, he was justifying his decision to stop NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration programs to fund “his” new education program. His administration has used different terms to refer to his takeover of local education, but it has also provided a federal, official definition of “college and career ready standards” being “standards that are common to a significant number of states” –which can only be Common Core. He paid for Common Core test development. And Obama’s famous blueprint for reform included four education reforms, one of which was data collection, one of which was common standards and tests, and you can read the rest.
Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, claimed that a federal takeover of education was Obama’s idea. Buried in the second half of a long, glowing official speech about U.S. education reform are these words by Arne Duncan: “The North Star guiding the alignment of our cradle-to-career education agenda is President Obama’s goal” –and he said that even though: “Traditionally, the federal government in the U.S. has had a limited role in education policy,” Obama “has sought to fundamentally shift the federal role, so that the Department is doing much more… America is now in the midst of a “quiet revolution” in school reform.”
Secretary Duncan gloated that many states fell for the financially-baited federal Common Core hook without debating the move, but Duncan always carefully called the Standards a state-led creation, keeping up the ruse. He said that a majority of states “and the District of Columbia have already chosen to adopt the new state-crafted Common Core standards in math and English. Not studying it, not thinking about it, not issuing a white paper—they have actually done it. Over three-fourths of all U.S. public school students now reside in states that have voluntarily adopted higher, common college-ready standards… That is an absolute game-changer.”
Question #1 also misleads us by saying that Common Core was “initiated by state governors and superintendents.” It is true that the governors’ club, (NGA) and the superintendents’ club, (CCSSO) did create and copyright Common Core. Their “frequently asked questions” officially explains: “the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), led the development of the Common Core State Standards and continue to lead…” But not all governors belong to NGA! Not all superintendents belong to CCSSO! Some, in fact, are vehemently opposed to these private, closed-door, non-transparent, unelected trade organizations that wield falsely assumed power. I say “falsely assumed” because they pretend to Congress-like national representational authority for states, but they are not an elected group. No voter can affect what they do. No reporter can report on what they do.
Questions 2, 3 and 4 take on the question of whether standards and curriculum are independent of one another. This is like saying that a skeleton (standards) does not dictate what a body (curriculum) looks like. It’s a half-truth: sure, they are not the same thing. But I defy anyone to build a curriculum and related tests that truly soar above or are very different looking than the standards they are built upon. Watch the statement in a video by main Common Core funder Bill Gates as he explains to legislators that he’s looking forward to schools being a uniform customer base, and that “we’ll only know if Common Core standards work” when the standards, curriculum and tests align. You might also listen to teachers who testify that standards do drive curriculum and testing, as they narrow the autonomy and innovation of a classroom.
Question 5 asserts that the Common Core standards were internationally benchmarked. This is not true.
Dr. James Milgram, the Stanford emeritus professor of mathematics who served on the Common Core validation committee and who refused to sign off on the standards, said:
“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, course in 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…”
Likewise, Professor Sandra Stotsky, who served on the same committee, who also refused to sign off on the Common Core standards because they were academically inferior, has written:
“…we are regularly told that Common Core’s standards are internationally benchmarked. Joel Klein, former head of the New York City schools, most recently repeated this myth in an interview with Paul Gigot, the Wall Street Journal editor, during the first week in June. Not mentioned at all in the interview or the op-ed he co-authored in the WSJ a week later is Klein’s current position in a company that does a lot of business with Common Core. An Exxon ad, repeated multiple times during a recently televised national tennis match, also suggested that Common Core’s standards were internationally benchmarked. We don’t know who influenced Exxon’s education director. Gigot never asked Klein what countries we were supposedly benchmarked to. Nor did the Exxon ad name a country to which these standards were supposedly benchmarked. Klein wouldn’t have been able to answer, nor could Exxon have named a country because Common Core’s standards are not internationally benchmarked. Neither the methodologically flawed study by William Schmidt of Michigan State University, nor the post-Common Core studies by David Conley of the University of Oregon, all funded by the Gates Foundation, have shown that Common Core’s content is close to, never mind equal to, the level of the academic content of the mathematics and English standards in high-achieving countries.”
In which top-achieving country is Algebra pushed to grade 9 instead of grade 8? In which top-achieving country is classic literature being replaced gradually by informational text? The phrase “internationally benchmarked” is misleading millions of people.
Question 6 states that the federal government has no role in the implementation or development of Common Core. This is a half-truth; as shown above, the federal government partnered with private groups who are developing and implementing the Common Core. The role of the federal government has been to heavy-handedly partner with and to promote the Career and College Readiness /aka Common Core Initiative’s full agenda, with grants, speeches, and threats –while saying that localities retain freedom to choose.
Question 7 asks: Will Utah taxpayers have to pay more money to implement the new Utah Core Standards? The Provo District says that it will not cost any additional money. This cannot possibly be true– even common sense alerts us to this, but so does Pioneer Institute, a rare think tank that is not-Bill-Gates-nor-federally funded. Here is that think tank’s report.
Reason this out. When, in the past, have districts needed to throw out and replace virtually all old text books for totally different math and English standards? Never. When have there been so many wholly transformative (for good or ill) teacher development classes statewide? Never. When has the state tested students so often and so heavily to align with national testing practices? Taxpayers even had to fund the marketing and political blitzing of the Utah State Office of Education as it has aimed to persuade parents that Common Core is a positive change.
Question 8 asks, “How does the local school board fit into the Common Core?” Without saying so directly, it answers its own question: the local school board’s job has seemingly become to nod and agree with all that the state pushes upon it, groupthink style.
Question 9 asks, “Do these standards incorporate both content and skills?” While it is true that both content and skills are partially covered in Common Core, it is an important reality that less knowledge and more of what Dr. Stotsky refers to as “empty skill sets,” with much less content, is being taught under Common Core. Virtually everything has changed, and all without field testing or academic research to base the changes upon. Even vocabulary words are changing to less literary, more technical/industrial words, words that are being called “more relevant” than the rich vocabulary offered in the literary classics. And, while small passages of founding documents and classic literature are to be taught and tested, they are not to be placed in context nor read in whole. This, to me, looks like dumbing down. Professor Thomas Newkirk of the University of New Hampshire explains: “The central message in their guidelines is that the focus should be on “the text itself”… The text should be understood in “its own terms.” While the personal connections and judgments of the readers may enter in later, they should do so only after students demonstrate “a clear understanding of what they read.” So the model of reading seems to have two stages—first a close reading in which the reader withholds judgment or comparison with other texts, focusing solely on what is happening within “the four corners of the text.” And only then are prior knowledge, personal association, and appraisal allowed in. This seems to me an inhuman, even impossible, and certainly unwise prescription.” –Speaking Back to the Common Core
The Provo District claims: “In Mathematics, the Common Core State Standards lay a solid foundation in whole numbers, addition, subtraction…” At which ages are these math concepts being taught? Many foundational concepts have been pushed back. Fluency with fractions/decimals/ratios is pushed to junior high, when it used to be foundational for elementary school levels. Most calculus and other higher math concepts are pushed out of high school completely— not available until college. Dr. James Milgram said that Common Core math standards “only require partial understanding of what would be the content of a normal, solid, course in Algebra I or Geometry. Moreover, they cover very little of the content of Algebra II, and none of any higher level course…” Noted math expert Ze’ev Wurman has noted that Common Core math standards, now set in the concrete of nationalized, high-stakes testing, “mark the cessation of educational standards improvement in the United States.”
Question 10 asks whether these math standards cover all the key math topics in the proper sequence. It claims that the Common Core math standards “are coherent and based on evidence” No link to such evidence is given.
Dr. Milgram has said, “There is no point where the student-constructed algorithms are explicitly replaced by the very efficient standard methods for doing one-digit operations. Why does Common Core adopt this convoluted method of teaching math? The stated reason is that learning the standard algorithm doesn’t give students a “deeper conceptual understanding” of what they’re doing. But the use of student-constructed algorithms is at odds with the practices of high-achieving countries and is not supported by research. Common Core is using our children for a huge and risky experiment.”
Question 11 addresses the ongoing discussion about who has control of the classroom. Provo District states that the Common Core standards “do not dictate how teachers should teach. Teachers will continue to devise lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms, as well as select instructional materials they feel are most appropriate.”
But teachers are testifying that this is not true. Utah teachers Ann Florence, Stuart Harper, Susan Wilcox, Malin Williams, Diana McKay and many other teachers have spoken out and risked or lost their jobs to tell a very different story. In addition, we have the above-cited testimony of funder Bill Gates who says that the standards, tests and curriculum will align to prove that the standards “work.” It’s like the old Ford Advertisement: “You can Have Any Color As Long as it’s Black.” The state, federal, and corporate ed sales (textbook companies) say the same thing: “You can have any standards as long as they are the exact same as all other states’ standards.” Almost all the curriculum in the nation is aligning, building a new education system on a very sandy foundation. The fact is that there is a Common Core 15% no-adding-to-the-standards rule in contracts and agreements that is common knowledge, both in testing and curriculum. The USOE continues to dismiss the suffocating 15% rule as “not a big deal.”
Question 12 asks what would happen if Utah were to reject Common Core. The Provo District then says that because the Common Core Standards “are not federal” that this would not alter Utah’s relationship with the federal government. This assertion contains two untrue portions: 1) saying that Common Core Standards are not federal implies that they are not federally approved/federally promoted/federally set as conditions for receipt of federal grants and Title I monies. But they are all of those things.
Although the NGA/CCSSO wrote and copyrighted the standards, the federal government has pushed them more than anyone —has disguised the nature and name of it, deceptive language. Federally, the Common Core Standards are called the “College and Career-Ready Standards.” But at the NGA/CCSSO level, it’s called Common Core. The feds officially defined “College and Career Ready Standards” as “standards common to a significant number of states.” See this official re-definition on the federal education website. Although federal insiders know this, they don’t choose to clarify it.
Question 12 goes on to say that because Utah Law now requires computer adaptive testing, the testing would continue with AIR (American Institutes for Research) even if we rejected Common Core itself. This does not make sense; Utah’s AIR (aka SAGE) test is aligned to Common Core. Why would we stick with that after dropping Common Core? Were we to reject Common Core, we would then create an alternative test with a non-Common Core aligned company using better, independent standards.
Question 12 states that the State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) would still be in place. This is true, and problematic. Since Utah has no proper protections in place over the privacy of student data, and since the federal goverment shredded formerly protective federal FERPA privacy laws, Utah would have to either create proper protections legislatively, or Utah would need to shut down the SLDS and return the $9.6 million that Utah accepted from the federal government to create it, using federally directed interoperability frameworks (see pages 2 and 4 on that grant’s pdf) which created a de facto national data collection system). Since national data collection systems, de facto or not, are illegal, it would be preferable to shut down the SLDS.
Question 12 further states that “Utah would have to go through the expense of writing a new core or adopt the former core–which is not seen as “College and Career Ready” standards… newly purchased materials have to be discarded. If Utah writes unique standards, there will be little or no available materials or textbooks to support their instruction.” This is mostly correct. Utah’s hasty adoption of Common Core has cost her countless millions in newly purchased materials and programs. (See question 7 above, which ironically asserts that the cost of Common Core is not an issue.) There are a limited number of textbook companies that offer curriculum independent from Common Core. Some curriculum companies, such as Saxon Math and Shirley Grammar, still offer editions that have not changed to Common Core to accomodate private schools and home schools. Others, such as the Institute for Excellence in Writing, have re-labeled curriculum, calling it Common Core aligned, but have not made actual changes to it. Remember that all older (classical education) texts are independent of Common Core, since Common Core only began its explosive existence in the past four years.
Question 13 asks what assessments are required by the federal government and answers that ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) aka “No Child Left Behind” requires states to have assessments in math, language arts, and science. This is true. What isn’t explained, and should be, is this: The federal government first of all has no constitutional business requiring states to have assessments. See the U.S. Constitution and G.E.P.A. law (General Educational Provisions Act).
Question 15 contends that “Utah teachers will write all of the questions that will be used in the new assessment system” and that “Every teacher in the state has been invited to participate in the item writing.” Every teacher in the state has not been invited. Ask around. It’s not true. Also, in the words of the actual contract that Utah and the A.I.R. testing company have signed –the contract is available from the State Office of Education– a combination of AIR psychometricians, and also Utah teachers, are co-writing the test items. Why let a single psychometrician anywhere near our children’s academic tests?
Question 16 discusses the 15-parent panel which reviews the AIR/SAGE tests to see that they are strictly academic. The panel’s work has not been given the respect it deserved. Nor can we honestly say that the USOE is not collecting behavioral data, inside the SAGE test or by other state-created methods to be discussed below.
Of her experience on the parent panel, mother Alyson Williams, stated (see the comments section) that:
“There were questions that parents flagged as inappropriate, subjective or biased. We were promised that these test items would be reviewed and addressed and that we would get to see how they were addressed… long after this Spring’s pilot, unfortunately… I feel it is a manipulation of my cooperation to characterize it as unreserved approval of these assessments.”
Another member of the panel, Louisa Walker, stated: “Quoted from [Assistant State Superintendent] Judy Park: ‘… Every parent on the panel… agreed that there was nothing in the questions that was inappropriate.’ I served on that 15 parent committee, and I will tell you that is not true … I wasn’t the only one to flag items because of subjective, inappropriate, or misleading content…”
A third member of the parent panel, Jennie Earl, stated that only 2 or 3 parents actually read each of the questions, due to the huge number of questions and small number of parents permitted to read them. She wrote: “… a parent would read a question they had concerns with to gather additional insight from the other parents in the room… because of the nature of the content in the question or bias in the wording…. These items were flagged in addition to other items parents felt needed revision or removal. We don’t know the final outcome thus far on flagged items… I might add… measuring teachers and schools based on a value-added model or growth model is not a valid measurement tool for identifying effective teachers or schools.”
A fourth member of the 15-parent state panel, Kim Kehrer, wrote: “I was also on the parent panel. The questions were reviewed at most by two members of the 15 parent panel. Here are the facts: 43 questions were removed due to various reasons. 160 questions were changed or modified to address the question of concern and 397 questions will be used in the testing and reviewed again next year. I second Jennie Earl’s comment that we are not a validating committee.”
In addition to these concerns, the idea that the tests were strictly academic must be addressed. That cannot be believed by any rational researcher.
Here’s why:
1- Do a word search on the AIRcontract with Utah; the word “psychometric” comes up 73 times. (Look up that word’s definition and find that psychometrics are psychological and educational measurement using tests.)
2- Look up the AIR company: “AIR’s mission is to conduct and apply the best behavioral and social science research and evaluation”.
3- Look at Utah’s legislation about computer adaptive state testing and learn that HB15, created in 2012, requires the collection of behavior indicators. It calls for “ the use of student behavior indicators in assessing student performance” as part of the testing. This is Utah’s S.A.G.E. test or A.I.R.– test. (There were other, similar laws, years prior to this, as well.) –Are we to believe that although AIR’s purpose is to test behavioral and social indicators, and although Utah law says that the test must test behavioral indicators, the test still won’t?
4- See Utah’s SLDS grant application starting at page 87 and read how non-cognitive behaviors that have nothing to do with academics, will be collected and studied. (This may or may not include information embedded in AIR/SAGE tests) These behaviors will include “social comfort and integration, academic conscientiousness, resiliency, etc.” to be evaluated in part through the psychometric census known as the “Student Strengths Inventory. (SSI)” That inventory –a child’s psychological information– will be integrated into the database (SLDS). The SLDS grant promises to integrate psychological data into the state database.
“With the introduction of UtahFutures and the Student Strengths Inventory (SSI) and its focus on noncognitive data, combining such data with other longitudinal student level data to the USOE Data Warehouse the UDA.” It also says: “… psychosocial or noncognitive factors… include, but are not limited to educational commitment, academic engagement and conscientiousness, social comfort and social integration, academic self-efficacy, resiliency… Until recently, institutions had to rely on standardized cognitive measures to identify student needs. … We propose to census test all current student in grades 11 and 12 using… SSI, a measure of noncognitive attitudes and behaviors.” The Student Strengths Inventory (SSI) is a “psychometric census” to be taken by every 11th and 12th grade student in Utah.
The Utah Office of Education openly admits to gathering student psychological data. It has not yet openly admitted that SAGE/AIR tests do this. But with such a policy, openly shown in the USOE’s SLDS grant, why wouldn’t the USOE also, soon if not now, use the SAGE test along with SSI, to gather attitude and belief data on Utah children? The point is that proper legal protections are not in place. Student data and family privacy is vulnerable.
5– The USOE has a history of working in harmony with even the unconstitutional federal initiatives. The U.S. Department of Education issued a report on school gathering of behavioral/belief data. Read its 2013 “Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perserverance” report. It encourages assessment of student beliefs and personality characteristics, and the keeping of longitudinal records of these traits. The report encourages the use of facial expression cameras, wireless skin conductors, posture analysis seats and other physical devices to measure student attitudes, beliefs and engagement with what is being presented. (see page 44)
Why isn’t the Provo District and the Utah School Board making statements of discontent with the directions in which the federal government is taking education and data collection in light of such federal reports and recommendations?
Question 18, 19 and 20 concern student data privacy. 18 asks what individual student information is given to the federal government from the assessments given in Utah. It says that “districts do not gather personal information from families such as religion affiliation.” It says, “The Federal Government does not have a direct connection with the Utah data base.”
Almost no proper legal protections are in place for student data privacy, while parents are not permitted to opt any public/charter school-attending child out of the state database (SLDS). Also, formerly protective federal FERPA privacy laws have been shredded by the Department of Education. Changes include reducing the requirement (of getting parental consent prior to accessing personally identifiable student information) to an optional “best practice“. At the same time, local privacy laws at least in Utah, are unspecific. Data alliances and data sharing practices among agencies grow and grow, almost unrestrained by privacy laws.
What is in question is whether these D.C. entities have any access to the fifty State Longitudinal Database Systems, which contain personally identifiable information, databases which are (by federal grant-mandate) inter-operable databases. This question was addressed, ironically, by an insider, a writer named David DeSchryver who aimed to persuade readers to agree that ESEA (No Child Left Behind, a federal law) should be reauthorized. While I disagree with that thesis, I appreciate that the author of the Whiteboard Advisors article revealed what should be common knowledge: the federal government is collecting SLDS-collected student data via the IES and NCES.
He writes: “Most readers are probably not aware that the law [ESEA] authorizes the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and other research related work. IES provides much of the commonly used and accepted data on US public schools…. the IES is uniquely positioned… It has access to data from every state and school district… This data… bolstered by longitudinal data systems, will benefit the entire field of education. More data, however, requires more organization and IES plays an important role here… It helps to standardize data structure so that new data can connect to prior data sets and research.”
The CCSSO (Council of Chief State School Officers) which copyrighted Common Core and created it, the same CCSSO that created Common Educational Data Standards –has an openly admitted, openly stated mission to disaggregate student data. (See goal #4) The past and current State Superintendents and the Associate State Superintendent of Utah are members of CCSSO. Assistant Superintendent Judy Park is also a writer for CCSSO. This makes me fairly confident that these Utahns are aware of what the CCSSO stands for and what its goals are.
To dis-aggregate means to move toward specificity: identifying which individual person did what. Disaggregation means that academic bundles of students’ information will be separated into groups that are increasingly easy to identify individually. A press release showed that Choice/Pearson partnered with the state of Utah to create the UTREX system that would disaggregate student data.
(Every Utahns should ask our top education leaders and legislators why, on the CCSSO website, it states that one of its main goals is “Continued Commitment to Disaggregation” of student data. Why do we remain supporters of CCSSO?)
Provo district says that ” The Federal Government has no direct access to this [SLDS/UTREX data] system.” But indirectly, it does. From the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) we read: “states must… continue building linkages [from K-12] … across critical agencies such as health, social services and criminal justice…” So if the federal government has access to any DQC-adhering state’s database, it will have access to the other agencies’ information about citizens linked thereby.
Utah is a Data Quality Campaign adherent. The DQC used Utah in its report as a prime example of how its state foster care services data and its school-collected data were combined to find out information about a certain child. Parental rights or student privacy rights were not mentioned as being a relevant part of that equation.
The federal EDFACTS data exchange claims that it’s gathering national data. The student data dis-aggregation club, CCSSO, is officially partnered with the federal government to use CEDS, common data standards in education which make student data more easily disaggregated. Additionally, the federal government paid for all 50 states to have federally-structured State Longitudinal Database Systems to collect personally identifiable information. National Data Collection Models encourage (but do not require) personally identifiable information to be collected and shared between agencies and among states. And at the Arne Duncan-approved Data Quality Campaign, we learn that the answer to” “Are education data just test scores?” is: “No… Data include student and teacher attendance, services students receive, student academic development and growth, teacher preparation information, postsecondary success and remediation rates, and more.”
Previous to widespread scrutiny of the (federal branch) NCES’s National Data Collection Model (NDCM) and prior to the NDCM removing this information, but, as older news articles, videos and blogstestify— it was suggested by the federal model that student nicknames, religious affiliation, birthdate, GPA, allergies, maternal last name, voting status and many more data fields should be filled by schools. (For evidence see screenshots which were saved from NDCM – minute 27:26 on this video by the Restore Oklahoma Public Education group. I, too, saw and wrote about them here.)
Question 21 correctly asserts that Utah state law (code 53A-1-402.6) allows Utah to “exit any agreement, contract, memorandum of understanding, or consortium that cedes control of Utah’s core curriculum standards.” The problem has never been that we can’t exit; it’s that there is not enough understanding of the gravity of the Common Core error, nor enough political will, to choose to exit.
Question 22 says that adequate public feedback opportunities were given prior to adoption of Common Core. Whether on the national or state level, this is untrue. This assertion has been rebutted by the Alpine School District (minutes) and by Alpine Board member Wendy Hart, as well as by the Karl G. Maeser School Board. Maesar’s statement to the Utah School Board says, “there were no opportunities for review of these standards by local school districts or parents.”
If adequate feedback opportunities had been offered, wouldn’t parents at least know the term “Common Core” prior to being told it was already adopted? If adequate public feedback opportunities had been offered, wouldn’t legislatures that are now paying for its implementation have had some discussion in the newspapers? Wouldn’t teachers (like me) have been sent an email, inviting us to research and submit public comment on the subject? The fact that the public debates on the topic and the vast firestorm of anti-Common Core disapproval is happening now, FOUR YEARS AFTER Utah implemented it, is evidence that it was not properly, adequately discussed prior to adoption. For more on this absurd hastiness, listen to the public record audio “minutes” of the state school board in 2010 as they hastily adopted the standards without even a full first reading, due to federal time pressure on a grant application deadline that was Common Core adoption-dependent:
May 1, 2009 Utah School Board Meeting, Agenda Item: National Common Standards
Finally, for your reference, here is the original Q & A:
_________________________________
Provo School District
Common Core FAQ*
* Provo City School District recognizes Seth Sorensen, the Curriculum and Assessment Specialist for Nebo School District for his work in creating the original FAQ document on which this is based.
Q1. Who led the Common Core State Standards Initiative?
A. The Common Core was a grassroots initiative initiated by state governors and Superintendents in 2007. The nation’s governors and education commissioners, through their representative organizations, the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) led the development of the Common Core State Standards and continue to lead the initiative. Teachers, parents, school administrators and experts from across the country together with state leaders have provided input into the development of the standards.
Q2. What are core standards?
A. Core or educational standards help teachers ensure their students have the skills andknowledge they need to be successful by providing clear goals for student learning. Standards are concepts that need to be taught, such as addition of fractions in mathematics, and the grade level where they should be taught.
Q3. What is the difference between standards and curriculum?
A. Standards are the required skills and concepts for the students to achieve. Curriculuminclude the materials and content that is used to teach the standards.
Q4. Who chooses/adopts state standards and curriculum?
A. The Utah Constitution designates to the Utah State School Board the responsibility to choose state standards. Local school boards and the Utah Legislature do not. Local school boards and schools select the curriculum, which is generally the textbook or program for delivering the standards. Local school teams and individual teachers choose the everyday lesson content. The Federal Government has no say in either standards, curriculum or everyday lesson content. Utah State Code states in 53A-1-402.6. Core curriculum standards: “(1) In establishing minimum standards related to curriculum and instruction requirements under Section 53A-1-402, the State Board of Education shall, in consultation with local school boards, school superintendents, teachers, employers, and parents implement core curriculum standards which will enable students to, among other objectives:
(a) communicate effectively, both verbally and through written communication;
(b) apply mathematics; and
(c) access, analyze, and apply information.”
The Utah Code also spells out local school board control of materials:
“(4) Local school boards shall design their school programs, that are supported by generally accepted scientific standards of evidence, to focus on the core curriculum standards with the expectation that each program will enhance or help achieve mastery of the core curriculum standards.
(5) Except as provided in Section 53A-13-101, each school may select instructional materials and methods of teaching, that are supported by generally accepted scientific standards of evidence, that it considers most appropriate to meet core curriculum standards.” http://le.utah.gov/code/TITLE53A/htm/53A01_040206.htm
Q5. Are the standards internationally benchmarked?
Yes. International benchmarking played a significant role in both sets of standards. In fact, the college and career ready standards include an appendix listing the evidence that was consulted in drafting the standards and the international data used in the benchmarking process.
Q6. Does the federal government play a role in Common Core standards implementation? A. “The Federal Government had no role in the development of the Common Core State Standards and will not have a role in their implementation. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that is not part of No Child Left Behind and adoption of the standards is in no way mandatory. “ http://www.corestandards.org/resources/frequently-asked-questions
Q7. Will Utah taxpayers have to pay more money to implement the new Utah Core Standards?
A. The Utah State Board of Education regularly updates the Utah Core Standards. The funding for the implementation of this latest set of standards will not cost Utah taxpayers additional money. The professional development that takes place in the districts will remain at the same level it has for the past decade; the only change will be the content focus. School districts are concerned with their ability to provide the technology and infrastructure necessary to support electronic testing associated with the new SAGE assessment of the Utah Core Standards. The Utah Legislature has not raised taxes to fund this change. Provo City School District supports the advancement of student access to technology and related programs and has been using existing local and state funding to move in this direction.
Q8. How does the local school board fit into the Common core?
A. School Board powers and duties generally, according to State Code 53A-3-402. include:
“ (1) Each local school board shall: (a) implement the core curriculum utilizing instructional materials that best correlate to the core curriculum and graduation requirements;
(b) administer tests, required by the State Board of Education, which measure the progress of each student, and coordinate with the state superintendent and State Board of Education to assess results and create plans to improve the student’s progress which shall be submitted to the State Office of Education for approval;” http://le.utah.gov/code/TITLE53A/htm/53A03_040200.htm
Q9. Do these standards incorporate both content and skills?
A. Yes. “In English Language Arts, the Common Core State Standards require certain critical content for all students, including:
• Classic myths and stories from around the world;
• America’s Founding Documents;
• Foundational American literature: and
• Shakespeare.
The remaining crucial decisions about what content should be taught are left to state and local determination. In addition to content coverage, the Common Core State Standards require that students systematically acquire knowledge in literature and other disciplines through reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
In Mathematics, the Common Core State Standards lay a solid foundation in:
• whole numbers;
• addition;
• subtraction;
• multiplication;
• division:
• fractions; and
• decimals.
Taken together, these elements support a student’s ability to learn and apply more demanding math concepts and procedures. The middle school and high school standards call on students to practice applying mathematical ways of thinking to real world issues and challenges; they prepare students to think and reason mathematically.”
Q10. Do the math standards cover all the key math topics in the proper sequence?
A. The mathematical progressions presented in the Common Core State Standards are coherent and based on evidence. Part of the problem with having 50 different sets of state standardsis that different states cover different topics at different grade levels. Coming to consensus guarantees that from the viewpoint of any given state, topics will move up or down in the grade level sequence. This is unavoidable. What is important to keep in mind is that the progression in the Common Core State Standards is mathematically coherent and leads to college and career readiness at an internationally competitive level.
Q11. What requirements do the Common Core State Standards give to teachers?
A. The Common Core State Standards are merely a clear set of expectations and curriculum standards for the knowledge and skills students need in English/ language arts and mathematics at each grade level to prepare students to graduate college and career ready. The standards establish what students need to learn, but they do not dictate how teachers should teach. Teachers will continue to devise lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms, as well as select instructional materials they feel are most appropriate for their students.
Q12. If Utah were to abandon the Utah Core Standards, what would that mean?
A. The relationship with Federal Government would not change, because the Utah Core Standards are not Federal. Utah Law still requires adaptive testing, so the testing will continue with AIR. The Longitudinal Data system would still be in place. Utah would have to go through the expense of writing a new core or adopt the former core–which is not seen as “College and Career Ready” standards. There may be an expense if newly purchased materials have to be discarded. If Utah writes unique standards, there will be little or no available materials or textbooks to support their instruction.
Q13. What assessments are required by the Federal Government?
An ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) was originally passed in 1965 and had major revisions in 1980, 1994, and 2001 (This latest revision called No Child Left Behind). The current requirements of this act require states to have assessments in place in Math, Language Arts, and Science. They leave the decision to the states to determine the assessments and this selection is submitted to the U.S. Department of Education.
Q14. What assessments are required by the Utah State Legislature?
A. The Utah State Legislature requires the following assessments in State Statute:
• Computer Adaptive Assessment in Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and an alternate assessment for students with severe cognitive disabilities. These assessments are given to all students in 3rd-11th Grade (CRTs and UAA).
• Statewide Reading assessment given 3 times per year to every K-3rd grade student (DIBELS).
• Kindergarten-2nd grade end of year assessments, which are developed by school districts. • Direct Writing Assessment given to all 5th and 8th grade students (DWA).
• New College and Career ready Assessments given to all 8th -11th grade students (ACT and companion assessments, Explore and Plan).
• An English Language Learning assessment, which places students at various levels of English proficiency (WIDA).
Q15. Who writes the questions that will be used in the new assessment system?
Utah teachers will write all of the questions that will be used in the new assessment system. Every teacher in the state has been invited to participate in the item writing and all volunteers meet together for weeks with administrators and curriculum specialists from the Utah State Office of Education to develop test items that will accurately measure student learning of standards within the core curriculum.
–Q16. Are all questions on the new assessments reviewed by a parent group?
A. Yes. All questions are reviewed by a group of 15 parents. This parent group will verify that all test questions are strictly academic. See the following link: Utah State contract with AIR: http://www.schools.utah.gov/assessment/Adaptive-Assessment-System/136199-AIR.aspx (See page 7 for the language that requires USOE and Parent review to approve any test question before they are used by students.)
Q17. Was AIR assessment required by the Federal Government?
A. No. Utah Legislature passed an Adaptive Assessment law after a successful piloting of adaptive testing. (House Bill 15, 2012) Utah issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for an adaptive assessment vendor and AIR was chosen. AIR is a leader in academic testing and had a superior product for end of level tests, formative tests and interim tests.
Q18. What individual student information is given to the Federal Government from the assessments given in Utah?
A. None. The only data provided to the federal government by the State of Utah is aggregate school-level data. No individual student data is provided. The Federal Government does not have a direct connection with the Utah data base. School districts do not gather personal information from families such as religion affiliation or political party
Q19. What is the Longitudinal Data System in Utah?
A. With 41 school districts and 84 charter schools that use at least 10 different types of student information systems, Utah needed a way to communicate within the education system. The Longitudinal Data system is called UTREx. The first task of UTREx was to assign each student a unique number (SSID), so that two school districts or charter schools could not claim funding from the state for the same student. It is also used to help transfer student transcript information to higher education. A great benefit is the ability to transfer student records for students who move from one district or charter to the next. The UTREx system improves accuracy and efficiency of education. Hundreds of hours of time for school personnel will be saved because of the UTREx system. The Federal Government has no access to this system
Q20. Are we as schools and districts required to collect more student information as a result of Utah Senate Bill 82, known as the “Digital Backpack”, passed in 2013?
A. Yes This Utah bill requires a new system that “collects longitudinal student transcript data from LEAs (districts and charter schools) and the unique student identifiers as described in Section 53A-1-603.5.”
The bill summary states: “This bill:
• defines terms;
• requires the State Board of Education to establish the Utah Student Record Store where an authorized LEA user may access student data in a Student Achievement backpack that is relevant to the user’s LEA or school;
• specifies the data to be included in a Student Achievement Backpack; and requires the State Board of Education to ensure that student data in a Student Achievement Backpack is accessible through an LEA’s student information system by June 30, 2017.”
This bill effectively doubles the amount of data districts are required to send on to the State office of Education. This new data includes things like school attendance, student growth scores, student reading level, student writing sample, student performanceby standard and objective, etc…
Text from SB 82: http://le.utah.gov/~2013/bills/sbillamd/SB0082S01.htm
Q21. Can the State of Utah change their core standards at any time?
A. According to state code 53A-1-402.6. Core curriculum standards.
“(6) The state may exit any agreement, contract, memorandum of understanding, or consortium that cedes control of Utah’s core curriculum standards to any other entity, including a federal agency or consortium, for any reason, including:
(a) the cost of developing or implementing core curriculum standards; (b) the proposed core curriculum standards are inconsistent with community values; or
(c) the agreement, contract, memorandum of understanding, or consortium:
(i) was entered into in violation of Part 9, Implementing Federal Programs Act, or Title 63J, Chapter 5, Federal Funds Procedures Act;
(ii) conflicts with Utah law;
(iii) requires Utah student data to be included in a national or multi-state database;
(iv) requires records of teacher performance to be included in a national or multi-state database; or
(v) imposes curriculum, assessment, or data tracking requirements on home school or private school students.
(7) The State Board of Education shall annually report to the Education Interim Committee on the development and implementation of core curriculum standards.” http://le.utah.gov/code/TITLE53A/htm/53A01_040206.htm
Q22. Was any feedback given from the public or any group on the common core prior to adoption by states?
A. Yes. There were a number of opportunities given for the public, as well as other groups such as educators to give feedback on the core standards, as well as the college and career ready standards.
Some people get hot round the collar when the Common Core Standards Initiative is blamed for the absurd Common Core-aligned horrible worksheets.
“Common Core is just minimum, state-created, better standards,” they insist.
Few people understand that there’s an intimate connection between Common Core standards, tests and curriculum –because there’s an intimate connection between the corporate edu-sellers and the government, both of whom push for Common Core standardization of education –because it increases their power and money flow. (Click here to read about the corporate Common Core gold rush; click here to read about the federal Common Core gold rush. Click here to read about the official partnership between the federal government and the “state-led” creators of Common Core.)
To me, the horrible worksheets are illustrations of what happens when we let slip the reins of local control of education, which is an abdication of our Constitutional duty and right to determine education quality locally. Whether we give up local control to the federal government, to a consortium of states, or to a monopolistic corporate connivance, the fact remains that we’ve given up local control. Central planning by distant, self-appointed “experts” is the opposite of what made America, her scholars, and her universities, great.
What a lot of people don’t understand is that Obama’s 2010 blueprint for education reform had four main points, only one of which is the national common standards. Look at all four, equally being pushed alongside the Common Core, each part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 : (1) Judging teachers and principals by federally approved standards; (2) Collecting more data about students via more tests and state databases than ever; 3) Using Common Core “college- and career-ready standards” along with tests (“assessments aligned with those standards”); (4) Intervening –or closing down– any (government-determined, government test-determined) “low performing” schools.
Think about those FOUR things, not just the standards; now add this: Bill Gates (partnered with Pearson) has paid for virtually all the development, promotion and implementation of the standards (and the rest of the four-part initiative Obama outlined in his blueprint). He has called schools a uniform customer base. He has begun to create, together with Pearson, curriculum to match the national standards and tests. He has said that “we’ll only know if the standards work” when the curriculum and tests all align to the standards. Watch him on Youtube speaking to legislators on the subject.
When you look at these things as a whole, you see that we are dealing with an entire coffle, not just minimum standards. And sure: coffles are efficient, more efficient than “letting” freedom loving individuals (what governments, including our Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, now refer to as “human capital“) run off in any direction they desire.
But is standardization and efficiency worth the loss of freedom, worth the end of American exceptionalism in education?
Speaking of coffles and the ugly history of human slavery, here’s a question for you.
Why did U.S. slavery last so long, when people knew it was wrong, when the founding fathers condemned it, when brilliant thinkers decried the practice? It continued and continued until only bloodshed could end it.
And the reason was simply economic: slavery brought wealth to plantation owners and indirectly to the rest of the nation, even to those who said they opposed it.
So it goes with Common Core. Standardizing American tests, curriculum, standards and teacher development is a mass market for educrats, one never before seen.
So, although an increasing number of Americans are now awake, and know Common Core is wrong, see that the Common Core Initiative is a step away from local control and liberty and real, legitimate, traditional education– the kind of education our ancestors struggled for– they do nothing but pretend to oppose it. Even though they see that the tests are data collection vehicles, that that the academics are problematic, that teachers are being de-professionalized with the central planning and test-score-based judgments of teachers and schools, they don’t stop the Common Core machine.
Common Core will continue to strangle us –until we say no to the money! We must say no to federal grants, federal “rewards” and “incentives” and say no to the corporate gold rush.
We can do it!
Most of what supports our schools locally is LOCAL property tax. Another huge chunk is state money. The smallest fraction of what supports our local schools is federal money.
Ideas for how to tighten the belt: Fire those officials at the Utah State Office of Education who are not friends to liberty and local control, whose fat salaries could fund five or six teachers’ salaries combined. Justify –or fire– all of the money-sappers at the state and federal offices of education. Stop buying absurdly expensive testing technologies before making class sizes smaller and teacher salaries better. Rebudgeting could mean we don’t even need the federal/corporate grants with their absurd Common Core Initiative and data-collecting handcuffs.
We can do this. But will we?
We may be haunted by Sam Adams’s words,echoing in our ears:
“If ye love wealth better than liberty…. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” – Samuel Adams
Go to http://www.resistthetest.org to share upcoming events with allies across the nation. Note, also, that some politicians are beginning to change policies in response to constituent pressure.
“Raise your heads out of the dust and realize that America is great because America bucked against the status quo. Thinking a standardized and common core curriculum is innovative is like discovering water in the ocean and patting yourself on the back for it. This system is not new. Its greatest success was to create a conforming working class for the industrial revolution. It is not fit for a dynamic 21st century that needs constant innovation and the confidence to create new solutions to the problems that continue to beset and confound the smartest minds in the world. ”
Alma Ohene-Opare, now a Utahn, is originally from Accra, Ghana. Alma came to the U.S. at age 19, primarily because of what he called “America’s innovative educational system.” He said, “I was educated from K-12th grade in a Common-Core-like educational system. My family (who owns and runs a private K-12 institution) battles daily because of the system.The end result is seemingly educated (on paper) graduates, with no ability to think for themselves, solve problems or innovate in any way. Parents and teachers alike have become conditioned to place the standardized tests at the forefront of education, leading to what we call in Ghana, “Chew and pour, pass and forget.” Here is his story.
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Common Core – A Failed Idea Newly Cloaked in the Robes of Good Intentions
My name is Alma Ohene-Opare, an alumnus of BYU and a native of Accra, Ghana. Over the past few months, I have followed with much amusement, the nationwide debate for or against the adoption and implementation of the Common Core standards. The arguments have been fierce and passionate on both sides and seem to stem from a universal desire to raise the quality of education in America. The desire is noble. However, this noble desire will not compensate for or mitigate the empirically documentable effects of the failed policy being proposed.
Common Core may be new to America, but to me and the thousands who have migrated to the United States to seek better educational opportunities, it is in large part the reason we came here. If you are wondering what qualifies me to make the assertions I will make in this article, know this; I am one of the few victims of a standardized national education system in Ghana, who was lucky enough to escape its impact. I am also a member of the Board of Directors of a private K-12 institution in Accra, Ghana. Golden Sunbeam Montessori School was founded by my mother in 1989 and is currently leading the fight to rid our country of an educational system that has led to the systematic degradation and deterioration of our human capital.
Let’s get to the core of my argument; pun intended. What Americans are calling Common Core is eerily similar to my educational experience growing up in Ghana. In Ghana, K-12th grade education was tightly controlled by the Ghana Education Service, an organization similar to the US Department of Education. From curricula to syllabi to standardized testing, the government controlled everything.
In 9th grade, all students, in order to progress to high school are required to take a standardized exam known as the B.E.C.E, which stands for Basic Education Certification Examination. Depending on the results of the test, each student is assigned by a computer program to a public high school without regard to his or her interests, passions or ambitions. Each student is then assigned an area of focus for the next three years. Some of the focus areas are General Science, Business Management, General Arts, Visual Arts, Home Economics, Agriculture, etc.
Although things may have changed slightly since I graduated, most students generally did not have a choice as to which area of focus they were assigned. The only way to get a choice was to ace the standardized exam or to call in a favor either through bribery or some other type of corruption. The students who failed miserably were usually those who attended public schools; many of whom dropped out of school entirely.
The process was then repeated at the end of High School with another standardized exam called the W.A.S.S.S.C.E. This exam tested your readiness for college and ultimately determined which course of study you were assigned by the government in college. I did not ace that exam and did not get admission into the state run college of my choice. Instead, I went to a private university founded by a former Microsoft employee and was found smart enough to be admitted to BYU a year later as a transfer student, to graduate with a Bachelor’s in Information Technology and to be hired right out of college as a Program Manager at Microsoft Corporation.
Although the education system in Ghana is not similar in all aspects to Common Core as it is being proposed today, some of the basic tenets are the same. The curriculum was controlled by an external body without input from or accountability to teachers, individual schools or parents. Some argue that teachers and parents have control in Common Core. It pains me to witness such naivety. That myth has always been an inevitable play by proponents of any centralized system. The goal is to make people think they are in control while nudging them blindly towards a perceived public interest. The truth is simple; the institution that controls the exams, controls the curriculum.
By controlling the standardized exams, each school in Ghana was forced to make passing the exam its primary focus rather than actual teaching and learning. Hence anything that was deemed outside the purview of the test was cast aside and treated as non-important. Extra-curricular activities were cut if not totally eliminated and the school day was lengthened to ensure that students had even more time to prepare for the test.
In my case, school started at 6:00 am and ended as late as 6:00 pm. We attended school on Saturdays. Even when school was out we still attended school half day. Our lives were consumed with preparation for the standardized test. We all had booklets of past tests going back 15 years. Those who anticipated failing the test registered in advance to retake the test. The value of teachers was measured solely on the performance of their students on the standardized tests. Scammers who purported to know what would appear on the tests duped schools, parents and teachers alike by selling bogus test questions. Schools with political connections always unanimously aced the tests.
You may wonder why nobody ever tried to change the system. The answer was simple. The government made it impossible by requiring all students who wanted to go to High School or College to take the test. Hence, any time spent trying to change the system meant time taken away from preparing for the test. Parents became completely beholden to the system and would threaten to take the kids to other schools if administrators spent any time not preparing their kids for the test.
Now that you have a sense of how an education system can become trapped in the death spiral of standardized tests, let me interest you with the impact of this system on actual student outcomes. In Ghana, we had a phrase to describe how we felt about standardized tests. We called it “chew and pour, pass and forget”. Translated, it means memorize, regurgitate, pass the exam and forget everything.
Unfortunately that has become reality for many graduates of our educational system. As my father put it in a recent petition to the Ghana Education Service, “the education system in Ghana is akin to an assembly line setup by the government to create employees for an economy largely devoid of innovation, entrepreneurship, originality or risk taking”. Because students never learn to solve problems or think critically for themselves and are largely discouraged from challenging their teachers or the status quo, they are inevitably groomed to maintain the failed traditions of the past while believing they are completely powerless to change anything. The result is the fact that even with an abundance of natural resources, the country in general continues to suffer in the doldrums of socio-economic development without any clear path out of it.
Recently my brother left a well-paying job in the US to return to Ghana to take over my parent’s school. He had dreams of changing the system. He imagined students groomed to become innovators and entrepreneurs. He soon learned it was impossible to achieve any of those dreams if the school was to remain subject to the rules, restrictions and common standards the government had set. The only solution was to completely abandon the system, which he fears would cause parents to withdraw their children from the school. He is now stuck in the limbo of a catch 22 but continues to fight to win students, teachers and parents over to a new beginning for the education of their children.
In December 2012, I returned to Ghana with my family and had the opportunity to speak to 10th grade students at the school. I gave what I thought was an inspiring speech. I proposed to start an innovation and entrepreneurship club which will employ students to identify and propose solutions to some of the problems facing the country. I promised to provide the capital and resources necessary to support these kids in this new challenge. I ended by asking the kids who were interested to write their names on a piece of paper and email it to me. It’s been more than 18 months since I returned. I have received nothing and I don’t blame them. Their parents have paid a large sum of money because they believed our school would help their kids pass the standardized exam. I was not about to distract them from that goal. What a tragedy.
I have personally wondered what makes Africa so uniquely challenged in its attempts at economic development especially when all the innovations needed to do so are readily available to us. I came to a personal conclusion which admittedly is not scientific but captures what I believe to be the elusive culprit. It is contentment with mediocrity and a lack of curiosity to change the status quo. The problem is not inherent in the nature of Africans but rather the imposition of an educational system that burned out the light of innovation and made us content to live on the spoils of the countries brave enough to venture into the glory of the unknown.
When I came to the US, many people would ask what the difference was between the US and Ghana. I responded that in Ghana, I could dream. In America I can do.
In writing this article, I am by no means endorsing the current state of public education in the United States. The problem with the system today is that the US government, aided by self-interested unions, has spent decades and billions of dollars trying to return to a system of education that America abandoned a long time ago; a system which has proven a failure in many parts of the world. Common Core is just the latest iteration of the failed system. Like a wise man once said, oh that I were an angel and could have the wish of my heart; to stand on the mountain top to warn against the path you are choosing to take. As an outsider looking in, I recognize one thing that most Americans lack. Because America has been free for so long, many have no sense of what tyranny looks like and how quickly physical and intellectual freedom can be lost on the path paved with good intentions.
I plead with all you well-intentioned but definitely misguided administrators, teachers and politicians. Raise your heads out of the dust and realize that America is great because America bucked against the status quo. Thinking a standardized and common core curriculum is innovative is like discovering water in the ocean and patting yourself on the back for it. This system is not new. Its greatest success was to create a conforming working class for the industrial revolution. It is not fit for a dynamic 21st century that needs constant innovation and the confidence to create new solutions to the problems that continue to beset and confound the smartest minds in the world.
America is desperate to find a solution to a problem that you solved decades ago. Return to originality. Put teachers and parents in charge of the education of their children. Encourage critical thinking that rejects conformity for the sake of some perceived societal benefit. Teach children to solve problems and not just to regurgitate the solutions of generations past. I have been silent too long and have now seized this opportunity to stand up for what I believe, which ironically is something I have learned from my experience in America.
America, I urge you to learn from the mistakes of those around because, like the plaque in my former bishop’s office read, “you may not live long enough to make all those mistakes yourself.”
This week, the Salt Lake Tribune invited Utah Assistant State Superintendent Dr. Judy Park and me to a filmed interview concerning the increasing number of Utah parents who are opting their children out of the Common Core aligned SAGE testing. Here is the link if you want to watch the half hour at “Trib Talk.”
(I will return to this post to update it soon. There is so much more that needed to be explained about the psychometrics that are apparent when you read the AIR (test writer) contract with Utah; about the data collection SLDS machine that is fed by student participation in SAGE and other digital testing/learning; about the need to defend teaching time and teacher professional judgment which are harmed by this testing; about the national opt out movement that is growing in strength and numbers across the nation. I also want to transcribe some of the questions and answers, word for word, later.)
“I am required to teach key reading comprehension strategies, the writing process, information-gathering skills, grammar, vocabulary, etc., etc. But I also hope to awaken a love of reading and literature, ignite curiosity about our complex world…. “All children are gifted—some just open their presents earlier than others.” I know that every one of my students understands something I don’t and has something to tell the world that no one else ever has. I am a “treasure seeker” and “talent scout,” hoping to help young people discover the gold within themselves and each other.”
This quote is excerpted from the disclosure statement of Utah English teacher Ann Florence who has been placed on forced leave, pending probable termination. How awful. This beautiful quote reveals that Florence is a treasure, not some problem teacher to be forced out. But she has been pushed out, for her act of standing up for the right to teach and the right to be judged on her actual teaching rather than endless government mandated tests.
Administrators have labeled her insubordinate. Read the news. See what has happened.
It seems to me that Ann Florence doesn’t buy the notion that teachers must give up their rights to free speech, nor give up their rights to participation in the political process, just because they are employed by the government. She certainly doesn’t believe that teachers should give up the art of real teaching to bow to government enforced, excessive high-stakes tests that narrowly judge not only students, but teachers as well.
A year ago, Florence wrote an op-ed voicing her concerns. She explained (excerpt):
“Managing teachers through intimidation is not working… teachers are looking for work elsewhere. Teachers who have loved their jobs are discouraging their own children from pursuing careers in education…. we feel exhausted and demoralized by the avalanche of mandates from the state and district… While legislators constantly raise expectations and think they can motivate us by publicly posting test scores, our time for teaching has shrunk….I now administer 19 days of standardized tests, costing me an entire month of instruction. This doesn’t include the days the testing site is down or the system crashes, eating up even more days…. I am held accountable for nine months of curriculum without enough time to teach it… Granite District has required teachers to learn the new Common Core, use a new grades program (which crashes regularly), design a new honors curriculum, use a new online system requiring the scanning and posting of all assignments and a daily summary of class activities, and learn to analyze complex data … No test score reflects the number of students who return to thank a teacher, the number who fall in love with reading again, gain new confidence to speak up in class, find solace in a teacher’s support, decide to try one more time just when they want to quit… We are tired of having our dedication reduced to a number.”
Now, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that after Florence criticized new “standardized tests as a waste of time and irrelevant to what students are being taught” she was “placed on administrative leave and may be fired.”
Her students’ response?
“Oh captain, my captain, you have taught me so much this year. The value of honesty, imagination, and freedom to express myself. I cannot thank you enough for that. You are the best teacher Wasatch could ever ask for.”
Along with the emailed poetry, students launched a petition drive, urging that Florence not be terminated.
The Tribune reported that Granite District spokesman “Ben Horsley said personnel decisions of this gravity take time to make the right choice. He said Florence has been unreasonably aggressive in demanding an answer.”
“Unreasonably aggressive” seems a more appropriate label for the policymakers at the district, state and federal levels who are intimidating and degrading the professionalism of top notch teachers while trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. Shame on them.
Bravo, Ann Florence.
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Update: The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Ann Florence has been fired. I sent a letter today and encourage others to write as well. Every voice counts. Here’s mine, and contact info if you want to write too, down after the letter:
Dear Granite School District, State Board, and State Office of Education:
Granite District made news this week by firing Ann Florence, an honors English teacher who stood on principle and did what she (and I) saw as the right thing to do. I am writing to voice my support for Ann Florence’s actions and to ask the District and State Board to take action to right this wrong.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported, “Florence refused to grade the writing portion of the districtwide Acuity Test. She said the exam was a waste of students’ and teachers’ time, did not further any education agenda and that it was unethical to have teachers grade their own students on a standardized test that then would be used to judge the teacher. In a letter to her students, she said she loved her career but had to stand up for principle.”
Did Granite District actually fire Ann Florence for refusing to enable the District to make money –by using children for unpaid research guinea pigs? What does “professional compliance” and “teacher ethics” really mean to the district?
Ann Florence’s opinion editorial of one year ago in the Salt Lake Tribune deserves careful re-reading. Her concerns included the non-validity of high-stakes testing because of the testing conditions provided at the school, about the push for Common Core and data analysis, and about the non-validity of reducing the whole time and dedication of a teacher to one student-test-based number, a number over which that teacher has relatively little actual control.
The Tribune also reported that this teacher was punished for speaking about her concerns with the high-stakes tests vocally, including speaking out in front of students. Does a teacher lose her Constitutional right to freedom of speech just because she is employed by the government? Are teachers to pretend to political neutrality or should they instead be shining exemplars as vibrant participants in the American process of open debate –and sometimes also in honorable disagreement?
Furthermore, basing the heaviest “accountability measures” of state tests on the federal-corporate collusion known as Common Core State Standards, in my opinion, is not only an error but a form of academic malpractice.
Thus, any teacher who refuses to push the SAGE test on students, or refuses to give or grade the Acuity Test, or to promote other high-stakes tests that do not honestly benefit students nor teachers –tests that exist to benefit powermonering politicians and moneygrubbing corporate aims, is, in my opinion, the teacher who is ethically and morally defensible.
The Granite District has marred its honor by firing Ann Florence. The State Board and Office, by doing nothing in this teacher’s defense, are complicit in the wrong.
A revealing CCSSO letter, leaked to the public, reveals Common Core investors’ collective panic about Ian Reid’s new film, Building the Machine.
Missouri Education Watchdog and Breitbart News reported that CCSSO deputy executive director Carissa Miller’s letter shows top Common Core moneymaking / grant-receiving businesses are combining to discredit the Common Core documentary. Many businessesneed Common Core’s claims to be believed, or they lose this gold rush. So they’re trying to stop it, understandably.
And if the documentary is seen despite their efforts to discredit it, the groups have laid a plan to smother the truth with smooth “positive” talking points and with a soon-to-be-released documentary of their own.
If you watch the film, you’ll know why they’re panicking. Truth is truth.
The documentary solidly wipes out the “higher standards” claims of Common Core’s creators, using filmed speeches by Common Core’s creators and funders, and using interviews with top Stanford professors, Common Core validation committee members and respected members of think tanks, both for and against Common Core. Importantly, it shows that the real issue of education reform is not even about academics, ultimately; it’s about power.
The CCSSO doesn’t want people to know this power struggle exists. But it does exist. In fact, who ends up holding decision-making power is the main conflict inside ed reform, despite all the pleasant words about education standards.
As the backers of the new documentary succinctly put it:
“…This issue is far more than what standards public schools should use. It is about who will decidehow and what our children are taught.” -William Estrada, in Breitbart interview.
You can read the leaked letter here. You can watch the movie here.
I want to point out this part of the panic-letter:
“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fordham [Institute] have put together the attached two documents that can be used to clarify the vast amount of misinformation that will be circulated as a result of the movie. Please note – these are EMBARGOED until Monday, March 31st…. The U.S. Chamber is in the final stages of producing their own Common Core mini-documentary… Below we’ve include some tips for messaging and responding to the critical questions this film may generate in your state. We will send out the Chamber video when it is released.
Regards,
Carissa
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Why do they just include “tips for messaging and responding” rather than including documentation, facts, links to contracts and legally valid, scientifically valid evidence? Evidence is not wanted. Only marketing, “messaging.”
FYI: Carissa is Carissa Miller, CCSSO deputy executive director.
I call the CCSSO a “superintendents’ club”. It does not include all state superintendents nor is it an elected body. The CCSSO seems want the public to believe –as does its twin sister, the NGA– that it has voter-designated authority to boss states around. It does not. Neither has authority and neither represents voters like our Congress does. Repeat: CCSSO and NGA have no elected authority. Do not be decieved by their pomp. They are just private groups that combined to create and copyright Common Core, heavily influenced/ funded by philanthopist-turned-takeover-king Bill Gates.
If you care about the traditional American voice of the local voter setting policy, rather than having closed-door private cliques that partner with the feds setting local policy, please oppose these goals of the CCSSO. Make your voice heard. Let your State Superintendent know you want him/her to bow out of membership in this club to focus energy on local control of education.
–While you’re at it, send your superintendent a link to the movie.
The minds of our children are our most precious asset. They are the most vulnerable citizens and we must protect them.
If my daughter comes to me with a questionable essay test, then I must listen to her and validate her feelings. But more than that, I felt like other parents deserve to know that kind of propaganda that is being pushed on our children.
Abraham Lincoln said, “He who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statues or pronounces decisions”. The public sentiment is being changed here, little by little. These high school students who were in the room with my daughter were not, for the most part, taking this essay test seriously. They thought the questions were a joke. Her daughter was offended by the claims in the articles attached to her test question.
The statement made about books and dyslexia was a complete joke. We know people who have had dyslexia and work through it. Now they are fabulous readers. Books do not discriminate against them.
Even if these questions are just being posed in some alternate universe, they are biased.
Ultimately, the reason why Common Core and SAGE tests are raising so many flags for parents is because we cannot even see the test after the fact.
Why not make test questions available to see after the tests are taken? Why does everything have to be kept secret?
Again, I say, that my daughter was not cheating. No one even felt it necessary to cheat because they were not being graded anyway.
Let’s have some common sense here. Let’s try to reason together for the safety and protection of our children from powerful men and women who want to take over our education system so they can rule the minds of our children.
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Thank you to this mother and her courageous high school daughter.
Now, another Utah mother reported that her high-school attending son took the Common Core writing test this week.
Her son saw bias in a question that was framed around the question of whether property ownership or renting is better. (He didn’t take any screen shots.)
Some readers may not see his test question as propaganda. I do. Property ownership is basic to the pursuit of happiness. Americans have always seen this as true; it’s one reason we fought England in the 1770’s. Being subservient to a landlord will never be superior to the empowerment of owning your own land, in any universe.
Introducing this socialist notion to impressionable minds during a secret test makes a lot of sense to those who oppose personal property ownership. Undiscerning others think it’s fine. They chalk it up to “critical thinking” and the humanists’ idea that truth and God don’t exist. Yet critical-thinking humanists don’t like it when students or parents think critically about the assignments. Ironically, thinking critically about the test is called a shutting down of critical thinking.
In the 80’s when I took high school writing tests, we were given literature-based writing assignments that were not very controversial nor politically charged, yet they demanded strong critical thinking skills –and as a bonus, the test itself exposed students to time-tested classics.
If the shift from classic literature to modern informational text hadn’t taken place, as it did under the Common Core, our students might actually have been exposed to something valuable during these tests, rather than being exposed to the ideas that video games could have more value than libraries of books, or that renting a little apartment might have more value than owning a mansion.
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COMMON CORE 