Two of my favorite ed reform analysts, Diane Ravitch and Emmett McGroarty come from opposite sides of the political aisle, yet each has called on America to sit up, take notice, and take action against the Common Core movement.
Is Congress too busy, or too conflicted, to pay attention?
Diane Ravitch has long been calling for a Congressional investigation into “Bill Gates’ swift and silent takeover of American education.” She rightly called Gates’ unelected, leviathan influence an unauthorized coup worthy of Congressional investigation and wrote, “the idea that the richest man in America can purchase and — working closely with the U.S. Department of Education — impose new and untested academic standards on the nation’s public schools is a national scandal.”
Ravitch’s congressional investigation needs to happen fast, though, because– once again, we and our children are under the gun.
Emmett McGroarty, pointed out this week, at Townhall.com that the “No Child Left Behind” horror is being refried and re-offered to American school children as a worse, sweatier mess of Gates-inspired, CEDS and Datapalooza -aligned Common Core cement, now being called “The Every Child Achieves Act” (ECAA).
Think of the new ECAA bill as the 2.0 –but not from No Child Left Behind only; also from an earlier version of itself just two months ago. Remember that this “Every Child Achieves Act” bill went down in flames — thanks to actual grassroots moms and dads and teachers screaming NO earlier this year. But it’s risen from the ashes, more sly this time, like a recurring nightmare.
McGroarty writes that the ECAA targets the [parental freedom to say no to high stakes testing] Opt-Out movement. He and co-author Lisa Hudson explain:
“It [ECAA] keeps the testing requirements. A state must still have an “accountability system” that includes as a “substantial” factor student performance on standardized tests. It does try to lessen the teach-to-the-test pressures by allowing the state to determine “the weight” of the tests… But this will not alleviate such pressures. It’s like saying, ‘We’re going to beat you with a wooden bat, not a metal one.’ … each state must demonstrate that it will measure ‘annual progress of not less than 95 percent of all students’ …Now is the time for all the senators and representatives who support local control of education and all those who support federalism to stand up and get rid of the federal dictates on how often and in what subjects our children are tested.”
So, if Congress is debating passage of ECAA, and if many in Congress are pushing the bill, will Congress simultaneously investigate Common Core, and its own governmental and business allies?
Keep in mind Diane Ravitch’s call for congressional investigation of Gates and his federal allies:
“The close involvement of Arne Duncan raises questions about whether the law was broken” knowing that Gates, “one very rich man bought the enthusiastic support of interest groups on the left and right to campaign for the Common Core…”
Ravitch’s call needs to be echoed and re-echoed throughout our nation. She asks:
“Who knew that American education was for sale? Who knew that federalism could so easily be dismissed as a relic of history? Who knew that Gates and Duncan, working as partners, could dismantle and destroy state and local control of education?
“The revelation that education policy was shaped by one unelected man, underwriting dozens of groups. and allied with the Secretary of Education, whose staff was laced with Gates’ allies, is ample reason for Congressional hearings.
“…I could not support the Common Core standards because they were developed and imposed without regard to democratic process. The writers of the standards included no early childhood educators, no educators of children with disabilities, no experienced classroom teachers; indeed, the largest contingent of the drafting committee were representatives of the testing industry.
“No attempt was made to have pilot testing of the standards in real classrooms with real teachers and students. The standards do not permit any means to challenge, correct, or revise them.
…The high-handed manner in which these standards were written and imposed in record time makes them unacceptable. These standards not only undermine state and local control of education, but the manner in which they were written and adopted was authoritarian. No one knows how they will work, yet dozens of groups have been paid millions of dollars by the Gates Foundation to claim that they are absolutely vital for our economic future, based on no evidence whatever…. Local boards are best equipped to handle local problems. States set state policy, in keeping with the concept that states are “laboratories of democracy,” where new ideas can evolve and prove themselves… Do we need to compare the academic performance of students in different states? We already have the means to do so with the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)… Will national standards improve test scores? There is no reason to believe so. Brookings scholar Tom Loveless predicted two years ago that the Common Core standards would make little or no difference. The biggest test-score gaps, he wrote, are within the same state, not between states… the most reliable predictors of test scores are family income and family education.
“… at a time when many schools have fiscal problems and are laying off teachers, nurses, and counselors, and eliminating arts programs, the nation’s schools will be forced to spend billions of dollars on Common Core materials, testing, hardware, and software.
“Microsoft, Pearson, and other entrepreneurs will reap the rewards of this new marketplace. Our nation’s children will not.
“Who decided to monetize the public schools? Who determined that the federal government should promote privatization and neglect public education? … Who decided that schools should invest in Common Core instead of smaller classes and school nurses?
“These are questions that should be asked at Congressional hearings.”
Please, please share these thoughts with your Congressional representatives. Stop the current Every Child Achieves Act. Don’t let Congressmen tell you that they can’t get involved because education is a states’ issue. It is! But because it is a constitutionally designated states’ issue, Congress must get involved and get the feds and the privateers out of our schools.
Folks, there can be no question that the federal government is using Common Core to take away our freedoms.
So why do many people still believe that “there’s no federal control of Common Core”? Because trusted education leaders are not being forthright with –or are not in possession of– the truth. Here in Utah, for example, the Utah State Office of Education, has a “fact-versus-fiction” pamphlet which still says that the standards “are not federally controlled.”
The fact is that states that adopted Common Core standards are being co-parented by two groups in partnership, neither of which takes seriously the constitutional rights of the states to govern education locally: these partners are 1) The federal government and 2) Private trade clubs financed by Bill Gates– NGA and CCSSO.
So first, here’s evidence of terrible federal controls: (click to fact check, please)
And here’s evidence of unelected,corporate controls of Common Core:
1) Common Core copyrights (and “living work” alteration rights) are held solely by two unelected, private clubs, the superintendents’ club (aka CCSSO) and a governors’ club (aka NGA).
2) These two clubs’ Common Core creation was influenced and funded not by voters/taxpayers, by the politically extreme Bill Gates, who has spent over $5 Billion on his personal, awful version of education reform– and that dollar amount is his own admission.
3) No amendment process exists for states to co-amend the “living work” standards. The “living work” statement means that OUR standards will be changed without representation from US as the states; it will be controlled by the private trade groups CCSSO/NGA.
4) Bill Gates and Pearson are partnered. (Biggest ed sales company partnered with 2nd richest man on earth, all in the effort to force Common Core on everyone.)
5) The speech of corporate sponsor Bill Gates when he explains that “We’ll only know [Common Core] this works when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards.” This explains why he is giving away so much money so that companies can be united in the gold rush of creating Common Core curriculum.
6. Virtually every textbook sales company now loudly advertises being “common core aligned” which creates a national monopoly on textbook-thought. This, despite the fact that the standards are unpiloted, experimental (in the words of Dr. Christopher Tienken, Common Core is education malpractice.)
7. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and many huge corporations (ExxonMobil) are loudly selling Common Core as a way of creating wealth, despite the standards’ untested nature.
The federal partnering with the private groups like CCSSO/NGA, means that mandates and thought-monopolies of Common Core are truly beyond even legislative control. –Because they are privately controlled, they’re beyond voters’ influence.
This is why nothing short of an outright rejection of all things Common Core can restore us to educational freedom.
Why should you care? Why should you fight this, even if you don’t have children in school? Because of the Constitution.
The Constitution sets us apart as the only country on earth that has ever truly had the “freedom experiment” work. This makes us a miraculous exception. Why would we ever shred the Constitution by accepting initiatives that disfigure our representative system?
The G.E.P.A. law states that “No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system…”
So the federal government is prohibited from creating tests or instructional materials– but the private groups NGA and CCSSO, funded by Gates, are not! This is why the federal Department of Education officially partnered with these unelected, private corporate interests –groups which are not accountable to G.E.P.A. laws, to teachers, principals, taxpayers, voters or children. (This may also explain why Arne Duncan goes to such great lengths to distinguish between standards and curriculum. Everybody knows that standards dictate curriculum like a frame dictates the height and width of a house. But GEPA law doesn’t use the word “standards.”)
We are in unrepresented dire straits: In no way do voters or teachers (or states themselves) control what is now set in the Common Core standards.
This is true in spite of the so often-repeated “the standards are state-led” marketing line. Don’t believe the marketing lines! So much money is money being spent on marketing Common Core because of Bill Gates. Gates sees this whole Common Core movement as a way to establish his (and Pearson’s) “uniform customer base.”
Please don’t let people keep getting away with saying that the Common Core is free from federal controls, or that “we can add anything we want to it” and “there are no strings attached.” It simply isn’t true.
It’s always fun to watch smart people debate an important topic, but it’s especially satisfying when the person whose side you are on wins the day. That is Yong Zhao, who seems to me not only smart but also wise.
More Questions about the Common Core: Response to Marc Tucker
17 January 2013
…It is impossible, unnecessary, and harmful for a small group of individuals to predetermine and impose upon all students the same set of knowledge and skills and expect all students progress at the same pace (if the students don’t, it is the teachers’ and schools’ fault).
I am not against standards per se for good standards can serve as a useful guide. What I am against is Common and Core, that is, the same standards for all students and a few subjects (currently math and English language arts) as the core of all children’s education diet. I might even love the Common Core if they were not common or core.
Tucker disagrees. He argues it is both possible and necessary to predetermine and impose upon all students the same knowledge and skills and America is immune to the damages of such efforts that have been experienced in China and other similar East Asian countries.
Now response to Tucker’s arguments point by point.
Tucker: It is now more important than ever to figure out what all young people need to know and be able to do.
Zhao:First, it is not true that “it is now more important than ever to figure out what all young people need to know and be able to do.” Over a hundred and fifty years ago, the British philosopher Herbert Spencer thought it was so important to decide what children should learn that he wrote the essay What Knowledge is of Most Worth and came up with the answer “science” and his criteria was the utilitarian value of knowledge. He did not think Latin, Greek, and the classics were of much value for a person to live in a society being transformed by industrialization and history , to Spencer was “mere tissue of names and dates and dead unmeaning events…it has not the remotest bearings on any our actions.”
In 1892, the National Education Association (NEA) thought it was so important that it appointed the Committee of Ten, chaired by Harvard president Charles Elliot, to figure out what schools should teach.
In early 1900s, The NEA had another commission to rethink the curriculum and came up with The Cardinal Principals of Secondary Education
Activities intended to determine what all students should know and be able to do never actually stopped. In recent years, the 1994 Goals 2000 Act under President Clinton provided funds to develop standards that “identify what all students should know and be able to do to live and work in the 21st century.” Under NCLB, states were mandated to develop both content and academic achievement standards in reading/language arts, mathematics, and science.
There has never been a lack of attempts to figure out what all young people should know and be able to do, consequently there is no shortage of standards around. The fact that there have been so many attempts suggests the difficulty of the task. People simply cannot seem to agree what all children should know and learn in general. People cannot even agree what to teach in math, the supposedly the most straightforward, and have fought many math wars over the last century. It is actually a good thing, in my mind, that people cannot come to agreement and the American federal government was not given the authority to impose its own version upon all children. But despite the lack of a consistently implemented nationalized curriculum and standards, America did just fine as a nation.
The Common Core initiative seems to suggest that either there are no standards in America or the existing standards are not good enough. But what evidence is there to show the Common Core is better than previous ones, including those from all 50 states? Granted that things change and what students learn should reflect the changes, but how frequently should that happen? The state standards developed under NCLB are merely a decade old. If we have to make massive changes every five or 10 years, does not it mean it is nearly impossible to come up with content that is valid long enough for the nation’s over 100,000 schools to implement before it becomes outdated? If so, would it be much more likely that individual schools and teachers have a better chance to make the adjustment faster than large bureaucracies?
An anecdote: For hundreds of years it was possible for the adults in my little village in China to figure out what all children should know and be able to do: handling the water buffalo was one for the boys and sewing for the girls. My village was small and isolated, with around 200 people. But that predication became invalid when China opened up to the outside world in the 1980s. The common standards in my village proved to be wrong later in at least two cases. First it did not work for me. I was pretty bad at what my village’s Common Core prescribed (handling the water buffalo) so I had to do something else (coming to America to debate with Marc Tucker, for example). Second, it did not work for the rest of the children in the village either, because working as a migrant worker in the city is different from handling a water buffalo.
Tucker: Truly creative people know a lot and they have worked hard at learning it. They typically know a lot about unrelated things and their creativity comes from putting those unrelated things together in unusual ways. Learning almost anything really well depends on mastering the conceptual structure of the underlying disciplines, because, without that scaffolding, we are not able to put new information and skills to work.
Zhao: Very true, truly creative people know a lot and they have worked hard at learning it, but do they know a lot about what they are passionate about, or what the government wants them to know? Do they work hard at learning something that is personally meaningful, or do they work hard at learning something prescribed by others?
Also true that learning anything really well depends on mastering the conceptual structure of the underlying disciplines, but what disciplines: math, science, the arts, music, languages, or politics? I am embarrassed to admit as a Chinese, I had horrible math scores in school, which is why I chose to study English, but somehow I am good at computer programming and developed large-scale software. I am also good at understanding statistics and empirical evidence.
Tucker: Zhao says that we will not be competitive simply by producing a nation of good test takers. That is, of course, true. Leading Asian educators are very much afraid that they have succeeded in producing good test takers who are not going to be very good at inventing the future. But that does not absolve us of the responsibility for figuring out what all students will need to know to be competitive in a highly competitive global labor market, nor does it absolve us of the responsibility to figure out how to assess the skills we think are most important.
Zhao: Is it responsibility or arrogance? Almost all totalitarian governments and dictators claim that they have the responsibility to engineer a society so their people can live happily and that their people are not capable of knowing what is good for them and top-level design is necessary. For example, they claim that their people cannot defend themselves against bad information, thus the leaders have to impose censorship. The leaders should decide what their people should view, listen to, and read. This self-assigned responsibility comes from the assumption that the authority knows best. By the way, we adults (parents and teachers) often committee the same error of arrogance: we automatically assume we know better than our children.
Tucker: It is true that the future will be full of jobs that do not exist now and challenges we cannot even imagine yet, never mind anticipate accurately. But, whatever those challenges turn out to be, I can guarantee you that they will not be met by people without strong quantitative skills, people who cannot construct a sound argument, people who know little of history or geography or economics, people who cannot write well.
Zhao: Almost true but strong quantitative skills are not the same as the skills to mark the right choice on a multiple choice exam, constructing a sound argument is different from repeating the “correct way” of arguing, and writing well certainly does not mean scoring high against a writing rubric. More importantly, as far as I can tell, the Common Core does not include what Tucker wants: history, geography, or economics. Where do the children learn these and other “unrelated things” when they are pushed aside by the Common Core?
Tucker: Zhao grew up in a country in which the aim was not learning but success on the test. There was wide agreement that the tests were deeply flawed, emphasizing what Mao called “stuffing the duck”— shoving facts and procedures into students—in lieu of analysis, synthesis and creativity. But few wanted to change the system, because the tests were one of the few incorruptible parts of a deeply corrupt system.
Zhao: Very good observation but I cannot help but pointing out that Tucker just published a book entitled Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems. If it is such a bad system, why does Tucker consider it one of the world’s leading systems and want to build American education on it? If it is so bad, what is it in Shanghai, a city of China, he wants America to surpass? And by the way, it is not true that “few wanted to change the system, because the tests were one of the few incorruptible parts of a deeply corrupt system.” Many, perhaps, most people in China, want the system changed. The Ministry of Education and provincial governments have been making changes over the past few decades (for details read my books Catching Up or Leading the Way and World Class Learners)
Tucker: So Zhao is very much aware of the consequences of a rigid system set to outdated standards. But that is not the problem in the United States. We don’t suffer from ancient standards wildly out of tune with the times, enforced by tests that are no better. We suffer from lack of agreement on any standards that could define what all students must know and be able to do before they go their separate ways. We suffer in a great many schools from implicit standards that translate into abysmally low expectations for far too many students.
Zhao: I am very appreciative of Tucker’s understanding of my background but I am not convinced that the U.S. is immune to the same problems China has suffered from testing. Is it not the goal of the Common Core to instill a rigid system? Isn’t the Common Core to be enforced by tests? If not, why do we have the Common Assessment? Why are we connecting teacher evaluation to test scores? Moreover, haven’t we seen plenty of cases of cheating on standardized testing in our schools under NCLB? Isn’t there enough evidence of states manipulating data and cut scores? For more evidence, read Collateral Damage: How High-stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools by Sharon Nichols and David Berliner.
Another by the way: When I described the teacher evaluation efforts mandated by the Race to the Top to a group of science teachers from Beijing to study American science education this week, they were appalled and commented: Isn’t that a violation of human dignity?
Tucker: Without broad agreement on a well designed and internationally benchmarked system of standards, we have no hope of producing a nation of students who have the kind of skills, knowledge and creative capacities the nation so desperately needs. There is no substitute for spelling out what we think students everywhere should know and be able to do. Spelling it out is no guarantee that it will happen, but failing to spell it out is a guarantee that we will not get a nation of young people capable of meeting the challenges ahead.
Zhao: This I will have to respectfully disagree with. The U.S. has had a decentralized education system forever (until Bush and Obama) and it has become one of the most prosperous, innovative, and democratic nations on earth. The lack of a common prescription of content imposed on all children by the government has not been a vice, but a virtue. As Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz wrote in their book The Race between Education and Technology: “We must shed our collective amnesia. America was once the world’s education leader. The rest of the world imported its institutions and its egalitarian ideals spread widely. That alone is a great achievement and one calls for an encore.”
Tucker: Zhao apparently believes that standards mean standardization and standardization would inevitably lead to an inability to produce creative solutions to the problems the workforce will face in the years ahead. That could certainly happen. But it need not happen.
Zhao: Yes, it does not need to, but it does happen, has happened, and is unavoidable. When standards are enforced with high stakes testing, when teachers and principals are evaluated based on students’ test scores, when students’ fate are decided by test scores, the teaching and learning must become standardized and constrained. One does not have to go to China to see this. Just take a look at what happened under NCLB. It did not ask schools to narrow the curriculum, to reduce time for music and the arts, for social studies and science, or for lunch and recess, but it all happened. For the impact of NCLB on instructional time and curriculum, check out these reports (1 and 2)from the Center on Education Policy.
Tucker: It is simply not true that our inability to predict the jobs people will have to do in the future and the demand of creative, entrepreneurial young people relieves us of the obligation to figure out what skills and knowledge all young people need to have before they go their separate ways, or the obligation to translate that list of skills and knowledge into standards and assessments that can drive instruction in our schools.
Zhao: It is simply not true that the Common Core will prepare our children for the future. To conclude, I quote a comment left on my Facebook page by one of my personal heros, former president of America Educational Research Association (AERA) and widely respected educational researcher Gene Glass: “Common Core Standards are idiots’ solution to a misunderstood problem. The problem is an archaic, useless curriculum that will prepare no child for life in 2040 and beyond.”
It doesn’t feel like the happy neighborhood schools we used to have. Principals are trained to put off parents and just stand firm on what the districts dictate. Parents have become afraid to speak, too, because they are singled out.
I came clean with a few parents at parent teacher conference and tried hard to express my discontent in a friendly way, not making the district look too harsh, but they are.
They ask teachers out of formality to make it look like they respect us, then go ahead with their own agenda.
I am glad to share – I had a lot of emotional, upset moments in the publics schools over this and held SO MUCH INSIDE. Everyone is afraid – it feels like communism, really.
Parents need to be reading and speaking up. They need to be going to EACH school board in hoards, and protesting this but there has been NO discussion amongst parents at all, no voting, as you said in the website, and we have just been told as teachers what to teach and how to teach it. That is not what any of us want for our public schools! I can only speak from experience, but at least you know you are getting one teacher’s story.
I’ve been reading about last month’s historic Berlin Declaration. I want to share highlights from World News Daily and The New American.
The Berlin Declaration is a human rights and parental-rights affirming document that says:
“We remind all nations that numerous international treaties and declarations recognize the essential, irreplaceable and fundamental role of parents and the family in the education and upbringing of children as a natural right that must be respected and protected by all governments…”
According to the New American magazine, leaders in the homeschooling movement from two dozen countries signed a document –the “Berlin Declaration” on November 3, demanding that governments around the world “respect families and the fundamental human right to home education…”
The New American writes that the Declaration argues that the right to home educate must be respected and cites multiple human rights documents and a growing body of evidence showing the benefits of homeschooling. The Declaration’s signatories say the senseless persecution of homeschooling families must end.
“It’s an expression of the growing confidence among homeschoolers that this is just another historical struggle for human rights and that we will win,” said Jonas Himmelstrand, Swedish Home Education Association (ROHUS) chief and Global Home Education Conference (GHEC) Chairman, who fled Sweden with his family. “The Berlin Declaration shows that these rights are already recognized in various human rights conventions; they simply need to be manifested all over the world.”
The magazine continues: “Even the controversial United Nations, widely perceived among critics as a dictators club, has recognized home education as a fundamental human right. In 2007, for example, the UN Special Rapporteur on Education officially condemned the German government’s vicious oppression of homeschoolers while stating that home education is an entirely legitimate alternative to state schooling. Multiple binding European human rights treaties are also cited in the Berlin Declaration….”
I’ve been enlightened by Jonas Himmelstrand’s writings, research and speeches before. The fact that he’s a leader in this declaration is a big deal to me.
The Berlin Declaration is a very bright spot on the map of world news.
Wasatch County School Board: Cowley, Kelson in front; Jones, Baird, Horner in back.
I would be happy to sit by them at the Heber rodeo or say hello at the grocery store, but I would not cast a vote for a single one of these nice people. Sorry.
I’d put up a yard sign for Mark Davis and Shad Sorenson, though.
The old school board might be good people. But part of that goodness does not include studying what the heck is going on in American education today.
There’s been a national betrayal in public education and they don’t even know about it. Not studying it and not informing the local citizens, teachers and parents of students of both sides of the issue is irresponsible.
They let the state board call the shots without listening to parents or teachers. The state board defines Common Core for all. But the state board is guided by the Common Core-promoting philosophies of Sir Michael Barber, CEA of Pearson; the SBAC’s socialist Linda Darling-Hammond, bomber-and-education reformer Bill Ayers, federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama. Extremists.
These local incumbents don’t seem to perceive how the state board’s tolerance of Common Core is damaging. Their unwillingness to study these issues deeply and diligently will hurt us.
The district website still sings the praises of the highly controversial Common Core.
Check it out. Compare what they say, below, to what Utah’s Sutherland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Boston’s Pioneer Institute, Bill Evers at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, or thousands of other patriotic, education-loving, anti-Common Core parents, teachers and intellectuals have to say:
— and there are so many more who have pointed out that “facts” about Common Core, as they are being presented by our school board on our local district website, are simply not true, or are only half-truths. It is quite sobering.
So, why do they do it? Why not show the facts and the national dialogue about Common Core, to be transparent about the pros and cons and real concerns of teachers, students, and parents? I do not know. But I have a solution.
Solution: vote them out. Vote for people who will study the issues, and who won’t rubber stamp everything Arne Duncan’s troops and the state board push as “good for” the local people.
Vote for Mark Davis and Shad Sorenson.
Wilma Cowley, nice and grandmotherly though she is, simply does not return emails. It is not acceptable to ignore the community that voted for you in the first place and to disregard serious concerns.
She refuses to study the pros and cons of Common Core and refuses to explain why. She never says anything during the school board meetings and just allows others to talk. Kind, adorable, but not tough and not diligent in researching enough.
It matters.
Her opponent, Mark Davis was willing to meet with concerned citizens and was willing to listen to our concerns about the dramatic changes in the way our state collects student data (via the Utah Data Alliance, the State Longitudinal Database, and the P-20 child tracking systems.)
He was also open to hearing the truth about Common Core. He was not automatically buying all the drooly praise that Obama and his educational elites offer concerning the Common Core without seeing some references. He is no wimp. He stands up for what he believes in, which I know only because he told us some stories that I don’t have permission to share here.
Vote Mark Davis.
Shad Sorenson said, in the “Meet the Candidates” forum, that he was glad Utah had backed out of the SBAC testing consortium. So he gets it. He understands that Common Core hurts local control.
I prefer Shad Sorenson to Jen Kelson because Shad has done some homework on Common Core, which Jen has not. Kelson (like Wilma Cowley) never returns an email. She talks, talks, talks at board meetings and never listens to concerned teachers and citizens like me. We don’t even get a return email–nothing.
School board members should study the facts and the scary contracts and academic limitations of Common Core. Our current board simply doesn’t address anything that the USOE and Arne Duncan aren’t selling. I can’t respect that. I want new people in there.
There are serious issues in American education today, and we need local school board members who know it and who study it so they can be in a position to protect our children and the quality of their education and their data privacy.
Vote Shad Sorenson.
Lastly, I have no comment about whether anyone votes for Blaik Baird or his opponent; they both, at the Meet the Candidates event, seemed to be unconcerned in any way that Common Core might be harming our educational system. They believe it’s all Arne Duncan and Obama and Larry Shumway have said. Even though it ain’t the truth.
After all this time, they still haven’t cracked the books on it. So it’s probably not going to matter which one of those two gets elected.
But Sorenson and Davis are better, I think; I hope.
Socialism sounds so great on the surface, but it leads to less and less freedom. This interview of Swedish Homeschooler Jonas Himmelstrand by WellBoyFilms in Ireland explains how the good intentions of the Swedish Government went too far, and is pushing families out of the country. Here are some highlights:
“In Sweden, everyone has a personal number that you’re given at birth and that registers where you live, so the local authorities will just simply look at the list of how many children are seven years of age– this year they should be in school– and if that number is not registered in any school, then they will start and will track you down….they basically know everything about everybody. Unless you are living at a secret address…
They are very hard on truancy… from the standpoint of the authorities, homeschool is just another truancy… Basically, there’s no support in parliament for homeschooling at the moment…. Swedish media tends to want to support certain government policies and they think that the school obligation, general equality, day care are such good things that everybody should support, they just don’t write about it… many Swedish families are dissatisfied in Sweden… so, it’s a sensitive subject and somehow, Swedish media don’t have that courage to be open in expressing about it…
Unfortunately, it’s going to have to get worse before it gets better. It think it’s going to have to become more public what a form of oppression and harrassment and humiliation Swedish government is now doing to homeschooling… and of course, eventually we will win because Homeschooling is a great educational alternative.
It’s a bit uncomfortable for Sweden to say that education was made illegal in Germany in 1938 and it was made illegal in Sweden in 2011. That’s uncomfortable…” –Jonas Himmelstrand
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Cooperative Agreement with Utah and the other SBAC exposes itself in the fact that Common Core is an educational movement masterminded not by a group of state Governors, but by federal forces (and, FYI, pushed and approved by internationalist forces.) http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_25.shtml
Common Core State Standards and these assessments pave the path for teaching children a nationalized curriculum and values and taking away, incrementally, pieces of our local educational freedom, local control and personal privacy.
It is a very slow, boiling-the-hapless-froggie-program, and was adopted by Utah in 2009/2010, with full Common Core testing implementation not to be completed until 2015 in Utah. The assessments are key to controlling what gets taught. And the assessments are written to federal standards, not to any unique set of standards for which Utah wanted to test kids. Just ask WestEd. I did. https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/what-is-wested-and-why-should-you-care/
Utah’s Superintendent Larry Shumway received a letter from Sec. of Education Arne Duncan.
–Which is so important and should be true, but under Common Core, is not so. The tests take away most of the control over Utah’s standards because teachers will teach to the test, and the test (WestEd, the test writer verifies) is written to federal, not individual states’, standards and values. https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/what-is-wested-and-why-should-you-care/
Utah might still legally have the right to determine her own learning standards, but by joining the testing system Duncan incentivized, to be tested on national CCSS standards, which standards and test Utah has no liberty to amend, Utah’s lost her educational sovereignty– maybe forever.
COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT Between the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
and the
SMARTER BALANCED ASSESSMENT CONSORTIUM
and the
STATE OF WASHINGTON (fiscal agent)
[WA is the lead state for SBAC; Utah’s agent under Common Core testing system]
Date: January 7, 2011. PR/Award #: S395B100003 and S395B100003A
In accordance with 34 CFR 75.200(b)(4), [refers to a grant I.D., not to a law] this award is a cooperative agreement because the Secretary of Education (Secretary) has determined [ONE MAN DETERMINED IT –WITHOUT AUTHORITY] that substantial communication, coordination, and involvement between the U.S. Department of Education (Department or ED) and the recipient is necessary to carry out a successful project. Consistent with 34 CFR 75.234(b),[not a legal reference, but a grant I.D. number] the terms and conditions identified in this cooperative agreement set out the explicit character and extent of the anticipated collaboration between ED and the award recipient.
PURPOSE
The purpose of this agreement is to support the consortium recipient in developing new, common assessment systems that are valid, reliable and fair for their intended purposes and for all student subgroups, and that measure student knowledge and skills against a common set of college- and career-ready standards in mathematics and English language arts. In light of the technical nature of this grant and the fact that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) will likely be reauthorized during the course of this project, the Department will provide necessary flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, technology, and laws by working collaboratively with the recipient through this agreement. The objective is to assist the consortium in fulfilling, at minimum, the goals articulated in the consortium’s approved Race to the Top Assessment (RTTA) application, requirements established in the RTTA Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) for New Awards for Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 that was published in the
Federal Register on April 9, 2010, and any subsequent additions detailed through this agreement.
SCOPE OF WORK
The work to be performed under this agreement shall be that described in the consortium’s approved RTTA application, requirements established in the RTTA NIA, conditions on the grant award, and any subsequent additions detailed through this agreement (e.g., plans for development and delivery of the technology platform for assessment), along with any modifications or specifications ED and the consortium determine to be necessary to carry out this work in accordance with the approved application and requirements. Any subsequent changes in the scope of work must be communicated by the grantee to the Program Officer in writing and approved by the Officer in writing. 2
ARTICLE I STATEMENT OF JOINT OBJECTIVES
A. OBJECTIVES TO BE ACHIEVED
The recipient, with the Department’s support, will use RTTA grant funds to develop assessment systems that are valid, reliable, and fair for their intended purposes and for all student subgroups; support and inform instruction; [that just said that Utah, with the federal government holding our hand, will support and inform instruction. That’s our sovereign instructional system they are talking about.] provide accurate information about what students know and can do; and measure student achievement against standards designed to ensure that all students gain the knowledge and skills needed for successful entry to college and the workplace. These assessments are intended to play a critical role in educational systems; provide administrators, educators, parents, and students with the data and information needed [This is key; the feds want our data and they want easy access to it, and educational reasons are only part of the reasons they want that data] to continuously improve teaching and learning; and help meet the President’s goal of restoring, by 2020, the nation’s position as the world leader in college graduates.
B. RESULTS EXPECTED
Specifically, the recipient will develop an assessment system that measures student knowledge and skills against a common set of college and career-ready standards in mathematics and English language arts in a way that covers the full range of those standards, elicits complex student demonstrations or applications of knowledge and skills as appropriate, and provides an accurate measure of student achievement across the full performance continuum and an accurate measure of student growth over a full academic year or course. This assessment systems will include one or more summative assessment components in mathematics and in English language arts that are administered at least once during the academic year in grades 3 through 8 and at least once in high school and that produce student achievement data and student growth data that can be used to determine whether individual students are college- and career-ready or on track to being college- and career-ready. [By the way, they’ve redefined “college and career ready” to make it the lowest common denominator, effectively dumbing us down. http://collegepuzzle.stanford.edu/?p=466 ] Additionally, the recipient’s assessment systems developed with the RTTA grants will assess all students, including English learners and students with disabilities (as defined in the NIA). Finally, the assessment systems will produce data (including student achievement data and student growth data) that can be used to inform (a) determinations of school effectiveness; (b) determinations of individual principal and teacher effectiveness for purposes of evaluation; (c) determinations of principal and teacher professional development and support needs; and (d) teaching, learning, and program improvement. [Do you notice that all this effectiveness accountability is toward the federal government, rather than to local parents or administrators? This is not good.]
ARTICLE II PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN
A. RECIPIENT’S RESPONSIBILITIES
In addition to carrying out the tasks and activities described in the recipient’s application, as indicated in the Scope of Work section of this agreement, the recipient will:
1) Perform tasks identified in Article I of this agreement.
3
2) Provide updated, detailed work plans and budgets for all major activities identified in the recipient’s application, including but not limited to: • development, quality control, use and validation of artificial intelligence for scoring;
• selection of a uniform growth model consistent with test purpose, structure, and intended uses;
• development of performance tasks (addressing items such as technical challenges of scoring, reliability, and large-scale administration of performance-based items);
• development of a research and evaluation agenda (addressing items such as validity, reliability, and fairness);
• development and delivery of the technology platform for assessment.
3) Actively participate in any meetings and telephone conferences with ED staff to discuss (a) progress of the project, (b) potential dissemination of resulting non-proprietary products and lessons learned, (c) plans for subsequent years of the project, and (d) other relevant information, including applicable technical assistance activities conducted or facilitated by ED or its designees, including periodic expert reviews, and collaboration with the other RTTA recipient. [This triangulates testing and data collection with the other consortium, nationalizing our educational systems which used to be sovereign for each state, now under the supervisory nose of the federal government, our nanny dictator of Common Core.]
4) Be responsive to requests from ED for information [of course] about the status of the project, project implementation and updated plans, outcomes, any problems anticipated or encountered, and future plans for the assessment system, including by providing such information in writing when requested.
5) Comply with, and where applicable coordinate with the ED staff to fulfill, the program requirements established in the RTTA Notice Inviting Applications and the conditions on the grant award, as well as to this agreement, including, but not limited to working with the Department to develop a strategy to make student-level data that results from the assessment system available on an ongoing basis for research, including for prospective linking, validity, and program improvement studies; subject to applicable privacy laws. [Even though Utah got no money from the RTTT grant application, the fiscal agent did, so Utah is bound to these grant requirements and compliance mandates.]
B. FEDERAL RESPONSIBILITIES
The Program Officer is responsible for supporting the recipient’s compliance[love the language– supporting compliance is the same thing as forcing us] with Federal requirements and is the liaison with the recipient. The Program Officer will ensure project consistency with the recipient’s approved application, Department goals and objectives, as well as to assist the recipient in meeting its benchmarks and objectives by providing necessary support and flexibility. The following are, at a minimum, the activities that the Program Officer may be involved in to exercise his or her responsibilities on behalf of the Department:
1) The Program Officer will work collaboratively with the recipient as it carries out tasks identified in this agreement. [Thank you, federal government, for the grant that you gave the SBAC but we really don’t want to work with you because, you see, we are SOVEREIGN over our own educational system. –Or used to be.]
2) The Program Officer will provide feedback on the recipient’s status updates, annual reports, any interim reports, and project work plans and products, including, for example, selection of key personnel, and review of provisions of proposed subcontracts by recipient.
3) The Program Officer will help identify sources of technical assistance for the project to the extent these are available.
4) The Program Officer will facilitate interaction with other offices of the Department [Oh, this just means our data will also be shared with other controlling federal Departments, besides the Dept of Education.] as needed to assist the recipient in the execution of its plan, as well as interaction across consortia when necessary. [interaction across consortia means nationalizing education under one D.C. hub called the Dept. of Ed.]
5) The Program Officer will review and approve modifications to the design of activities proposed under this Agreement. Any recipient requests for changes shall be submitted in writing directly to the Program Officer. Requests are not approved until the grantee has received authorization and notification in writing from the Program Officer.
6) The Program Officer will maintain the Department’s communication and coordination with the project, by, for example, providing leadership in identifying issues to be addressed by the project; stopping or redirecting proposed activities if the methodology proposed appears vague [love it. redirect = boss. mandate. control.] [“appears vague”– kind of like how they called Common Core “state-led” and “voluntary” in a non-academically threatening, non-financially binding, vague kind of way?] or requires further justification or the projected outcomes are inconsistent with the intended project outcomes.
7) Except as provided elsewhere in this agreement, the Program Officer is not solely authorized to make any commitments or otherwise obligate the Government or authorize any changes that affect the agreement amount, terms, or conditions.
C. JOINT RESPONSIBILITIES
1) The Program Officer and Project Director will maintain frequent communication[will = compulsory language] to facilitate cooperation under this agreement.
2) The Program Officer will work with the Project Director to determine a timeline for project updates that will be provided by the Project Director through the course of each project year.
3) The Program Officers for the RTTA and the General Supervision Enhancement Grants consortia to develop Alternate Assessments based upon Alternate Academic Achievement Standards ( GSEG AA-AAAS) projects and the respective Project Directors for RTTA and GSEG AA-AAAS will collaborate to coordinate appropriate tasks and timelines to foster synchronized development of assessment systems supported by these grants. [sychronize assessments= nationalized educationcare]
4) The Program Officer for the RTTA grantees will work with the Project Directors for both RTTA grantees to coordinate and facilitate coordination across consortia. [coordination across consortia under federal direction = nationalized educationcare]
ARTICLE III FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND BUDGET MODIFICATIONS
A. The estimated cost for the work to be performed under this Agreement is $159,976,843 and $15,872,696 for the supplemental award.
B. The detailed budget for the implementation of this project is the budget contained in the application; and for the supplemental award for this project, the budget submitted by the recipient and approved by the Program Officer, attached to this agreement. The work of the project will be performed according the budget negotiated and approved in the application and confirmed by this cooperative agreement. With respect to 34 CFR section 80.30(c) “Budget changes” provisions, the Grantee and sub-recipients must obtain prior written approval from ED for transfers among direct cost categories and among separately budgeted programs, projects, functions, or activities that exceed $100,000 of the current total approved budget.
ARTICLE IV COMMUNICATIONS AND REPORTS
The recipient will undertake communications and submit reports in the quantities and frequencies shown below:
Monthly Project UpdateBrief update submitted electronically to the Program Officer followed by callMonthlyMinutes from regularly-scheduled Consortium Executive Committee Meetings, maintained by the PMPSubmitted electronically to the Project Officer, as requestedMonthly, for previous monthSemi-annual Performance check-in against timeline and benchmarksUpdate submitted electronically to the Program OfficerSemi-annualReporting Required by Sec. 1512 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)Submitted via the http://www.federalreporting.gov websiteQuarterly, schedule available at: http://www.recovery.gov/FAQ/Pages/ RecipientReporting.aspx#schedule
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION ARNE DUNCAN:
A MAN WHO WORKS HARD TO DELETE STATE SOVEREIGNTY OVER EDUCATION
AND TO CREATE NATIONALIZED EDUCATION WITHOUT PRIVACY OR PARENTAL RIGHTS
How do Virginia, Texas and South Carolina think differently from how Utah thinks?
Why are their Governors and school boards savvy enough to reject Common Core (or are trying to, amid opposition) –when top Utah’s leaders are not? Here, in their own words, are the freedom fighters who value liberty in education, speaking out across America today:
South Carolina’s Governor Nikki Haley:
South Carolina’s educational system has at times faced challenges of equity, quality and leadership – challenges that cannot be solved by increasing our dependence on federal dollars and the mandates that come with them. Just as we should not relinquish control of education to the Federal government, neither should we cede it to the consensus of other states. Confirming my commitment to finding South Carolina solutions to South Carolina challenges, I am pleased to support [Senator Fair’s] efforts to reverse the 2010 decision to adopt common core standards.
While I understand and agree with looking outside South Carolina for ideas to improve educational outcomes, I firmly believe that our government and our people should retain as much local control over programs as possible. The solution to many of South Carolina’s educational challenges will be found by sending more of our limited resources to the classroom and offering educational choices to meet the needs of South Carolina’s students. Our children deserve swift action and the passage of a clean resolution that will allow our State to reclaim control of and responsibility for educating South Carolinians. -excerpted from Governor Haley’s public letter to Senator Fair of South Carolina http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/sc-gov-nikki-haley-backs-bill-to-block-common-core-standards/http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/10/obamas-education-plan-gets-closer-look/
South Carolina’s Senator Mike Fair ‘s bill (S.604) simply stated:
Why did Senator Fair write that bill for South Carolina’s educational freedom from Common Core?
Senator Fair explained in an op/ed piece for the Greenville News:
“…If the federal government didn’t create Common Core, how is this a federal takeover? Simple– the Department of Education is funding the development of the national tests aligned with Common Core. Even Common Core proponents admit that whoever controls the test will, for all practical purposes, control what must be taught in the classroom.
And once Common Core is implemented, no one in this state will have the power to change any standard… The Legislature never had a chance to review Common Core because the feds timed their deadlines for adopting them to fall when the Legislature wasn’t in session. So, to qualify for a shot at Race to the Top money in 2010, the (previous) state superintendent and the (previous) governor had to agree to adopt Common Core– standards that had not even been published yet… By the way, South Carolina wasn’t awarded Race to the Top money, so we sold our education birthright without even getting the mess of pottage.” http://www.electmikefair.com/?p=220
Texas’ Governor Perry said:
“I will not commit Texas taxpayers to unfunded federal obligations or to the adoption of unproven, cost-prohibitive national standardsand tests” — excerpt from Gov. Rick Perry’s letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. http://governor.state.tx.us/files/press-office/O-DuncanArne201001130344.pdf
Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott explained:
The standards were “originally sold to states as voluntary, [but] states have now been told that participating in national standards and national testing would be required as a condition of receiving federal discretionary grant funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA),” Scott wrote. “Texas has chosen to preserve its sovereign authority to determine what is appropriate for Texas children to learn in its public schools…” http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2010/03/25/alaska-texas-reject-common-core-standards
Patricia Wright, Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction, said:
“The Board of Education supported — and continues to support — the development of internationally benchmarked standards for states to adopt outright or to use as models to improve their own standards. The board, however, opposes the use of federal rulemaking and the peer review process as leverage to compel word-for-word adoption of the Common Core State Standards.”
The Virginia State Board of Educationsent out a press release June 24, 2010 announcing its unanimous adoption of the following statement at its June 24, 2010, meeting in Richmond:
“The Board of Education is committed to the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) program and opposed to adoption of the newly developed Common Core State Standards as a prerequisite for participation in federal competitive grant and entitlement programs.
“[Virginia’s] Standards of Learning are clear and rigorous and have won the acceptance and trust of Virginia educators. Whatever adjustments might be warranted to ensure alignment of the SOL with the Common Core State Standards can be made within the process through which the Board of Education exercises its constitutional authority to establish standards for the commonwealth’s public schools.
…The subtle differences between the SOL and the Common Core do not justify the disruption to instruction, accountability, professional development and teacher preparation that would follow word-for-word adoption.
• Adoption of the Common Core would leave teachers without curriculum frameworks, scope and sequence guides and other materials specifically aligned with the standards students are expected to meet. Experience shows that these supports are critical to successful standards based reform.
• Virginia’s accountability program is built on a validated assessment system aligned with the SOL; validated assessments aligned with the Common Core do not exist.
• Virginia’s investment in the Standards of Learning since 1995 far exceeds the $250 million Virginia potentially could have received by abandoning the SOL and competing in phase two of Race to the Top.
Alaska’s Dept. of Education said:
“The Race to the Top application didn’t ask open-ended questions about what states think will work… We didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a losing battle. We wanted to formulate our own plan…[Alaska] would like to be the entity that declares its own standards.” -Eric Fry, spokesman for Alaska’s Department of Education. http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2010/03/25/alaska-texas-reject-common-core-standards
Massachusetts Almost Rejected Common Core:
Massachusetts State officials wanted assurances that national standards would not dilute existing state frameworks.
MA Education Secretary Paul Reville has said the Commonwealth would not adopt the common core standards if they were lowerthan those established in the state. “We are not going to endorse anything that is not at least as rigorous as our own standards,” Reville told the Boston Globe. Minnesota also cited concerns over the math standards as reasons not to adopt the Common Core. But, caving to political pressure, Massachusetts did give in, at last. http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2010/03/25/alaska-texas-reject-common-core-standards
Caving to political pressure eventually,however, Massachusetts adopted the Common Core in 2010.
Minnesota:
Minnesota opted half-in, half-out: State Rep. Carlos Mariani (D-St. Paul), chairman of the Minnesota House K-12 Education Policy and Oversight Committee said:
Minnesota has opted out of the math portion of the Common Core national frameworks. The Gopher State was among the first to join the effort by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers in 2009 to develop common English and math frameworks. But now Minnesota officials have decided to step back—and risk losing a portion of federal Race to the Top and Title I funds—in order to maintain control of their own education standards.”
Although Alabama adopted Common Core, that may soon change.
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF REPUBLICAN WOMEN RESOLUTION
Defeat National Standards for State Schools Passed Unanimously at the NFRW36th Biennial Convention Kansas City, MO – October 1, 2011
WHEREAS, The national standards-based “Common Core State Standards” initiative is the centerpiece of the Obama’s Administration’s agenda to centralize education decisions at the federal level;
WHEREAS, The Obama Administration is using the same model to take over education as it used for healthcare by using national standards and boards of bureaucrats, whom the public didn’t elect and can’t fire or otherwise hold accountable;
WHEREAS, National standards remove authority from States over what is taught in the classroom and how it is tested;
WHEREAS, National standards undercut the principle of federalism on which our nation was founded;
WHEREAS, There is no constitutional or statutory authority for national standards, national curricula, or national assessments and in fact the federal government is expressly prohibited from endorsing or dictating state/local decisions about curricula; and
WHEREAS, The Obama Administration is attempting to evade constitutional and statutory prohibitions to move toward a nationalized public-school system by (1) funding to date more than $345 million for the development of national curriculum and test questions, (2) tying national standards to the Race to the Top charter schools initiative in the amount of $4.35 billion, (3) using the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) to pressure State Boards of Education to adopt national standards with the threat of losing Title 1 Funds if they do not, and (4) requesting Congress to include national standards as a requirement in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act (No Child Left Behind);
BE IT RESOLVED, That the National Federation of Republican Women vote to encourage all State Federation Presidents to share information about national standards with their local clubs; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That State Federation Presidents ask their members to (1) contact their State Boards of Education members and request that they retain control over academic standards, curriculum, instruction and testing, (2) contact their Congress Members and request that they (i) protect the constitutional and statutory prohibitions against the federal government endorsing or dictating national standards, (ii) to refuse to tie national standards to any reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, (iii) defund “Race to the Top” money, and (iv) prohibit any more federal funds for the Common Core State Standards Initiative, including funds to assessment and curriculum writing consortia, and (3) spread the word about the threat of a federal government takeover of education.
Submitted by: Alabama Federation of Republican Women Elois Zeanah, President
Co-Sponsors:
Nebraska Federation of Republican Women
Delaware Federation of Republican Women
Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women
Georgia Federation of Republican Women
Tennessee Federation of Republican Women
I wish Utah would do the same thing! We need our educational freedom. Wake up, everyone! Please stand against the nationalized oppression of Common Core and stand for liberty and educational sovereignty for states!
The Common Core Initiative: What’s hidden between the lines?
by Christel Swasey
Ever since I saw Alisa Ellis and Renee Braddy’s “2 Moms Against Common Core,” I’ve barely slept. My laundry is backed up. I’m losing weight. All I do is research the Common Core Initiative (CCI).
I talk to teachers. I read think tanks and pester the U.S.O.E. I compare the Education Secretary’s public letters to his dense grants and legal agreements.
On Wednesday I joined Alisa and Renee to petition the Governor to study Utah’s loss of control of education under CCI.
We noted that all academic elements of Common Core are in public domain; if we like them, we can keep them. But CCI membership comes with federal intrusion that robs Utah of sovereign rights, commits Utah to foot the bill, and silences educational freedom. A collection of evidence is posted at whatiscommoncore.blogspot.com.
How did Utah’s educational freedom get hijacked without a peep out of Utah? How did CCI slide under the radar of legislators and taxpayers? Can we turn around this loss of state control over education? YES– if people view CCI as more than an academic change. It’s up to us to act.
The State Superintendent won’t act. He sits as board member of three pro-Common Core groups. Two promoted and developed CCI’s federal standards; the other is the test maker.
The State School Board won’t act. That board is so collectively pro-CCI that they’ve devised a way to make sure nobody can get elected who isn’t pro-CCI: a survey for candidates for School Board asks, (first question): “Are You For Common Core?”
The Governor might act. His lawyers are studying statements from Arne Duncan versus compliance rules written by Duncan which do conflict.
The burden of proving CCI is an asset rather than a liability to Utah, rests on Utah leaders and lawyers who refuse public debate, dodge phone calls and won’t answer questions such as:
1. Why haven’t teachers been told that everything about CC was already available under public domain law? CCI membership doesn’t give us anything but does dilute freedom.
2. Why has no cost analysis or legal analysis been done? A think-tank estimates CCI will cost each state hundreds of millions over the first seven years and will make states’ unique standards irrelevant. CCI violates laws against federal intrusion on states’ educational sovereignty. Why allow it?
3. If CCI is state-led and voluntary as it claims, why did Secretary Duncan rage when South Carolina withdrew? Why has Duncan required that testing arms must coordinate reporting to him and “across consortia”? Why can’t a state withdraw from SBAC without federal permission?
3. Why was no public or legislative input taken? Utah didn’t seek out CCI; we joined as an afterthought, as a condition for candidacy to win a grant which we didn’t win.
4. Why did Utah agree to standards and assessments that hadn’t even been written in 2009 when we joined?
5. Why stay in? We have wiggle room now to get out; it’s the beginning of implementation. Later, we’ll be too financially and technologically invested.
6. Why are there two different sets of standards? The Utah Common Core (UCC) is being taught, while the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will be the basis for the SBAC tests in 2014.
7. Why did Utah take the CCI’s word for the idea that the standards were high enough? CCSS won’t ready students for average colleges like University of California, said Mathematician Ze’ev Wurman. Stanford Professor Michael Kirst and Validation Committee Member Professor Sandra Stotsky called CCSS standards low.
8. Why did Utah join, when free-thinking states like and Texas and Virginia refused? CCI was cost prohibitive, lowered some standards, and deleted sovereignty, they said.
9. Why did the National PTA accept a two million dollar “donation” to one-sidedly promote CCI?
10. Why is there no amendment process for the federal standards upon which kids will be tested?
11. Why has no one noticed that the SBAC test is as much a nationalized personal data collection vehicle as it is an academic test?
12. Why is there no transparency? Educators are in a spiral of silence that prevents them from voicing concerns.
Who will stand up and respond with real evidence to these questions?
The lawyer at the Utah State Office of Education asked me to not engage in public debate. She deflected questions rather than answering them. Isn’t it my right and responsibility to ask questions? As a lawyer for the Utah State Office of Education, doesn’t she have a duty to answer?
COMMON CORE 
