COMMON CORE (NATIONAL) STANDARDS

At first blush, Common Core sounds great: a nation-wide curriculum, putting everyone on the same page so to speak, with common assessments supported by rigorous study, higher standards, and the ability to compare education results *(see Mission Statement below)

Then comes the next question, which has not been addressed: why?

What would be the great value in having all third graders measured by the same standards, whether in Hawaii, California, Mississippi, New York or Utah? Shouldn’t each state have the right, and the responsibility, to determine educational standards for its schools?

And even more important, is there a down-side?

Imbedded in this program is the underlying concept that states are not capable of directing their own education standards, that bigger is better, and that overlaying the entire education of the United States with a pound and a half of bureaucracy will increase student achievement.

This is a fundamental move from parents taking the basic responsibility for
education of their children, trusting teachers and administrators whom we know and who are accountable, to abdicating our role in favor of a nameless,
faceless “program” that will take care of that pesky problem for us. We may
have been heading down this road for some time, but this is full-tilt, no speed
bumps or stop signs, just freeway speeds and keeping in your own lane. Our job is now to put into motion that which “somebody else” decides.

So who is “somebody else”? It would seem that with a lot of smart people getting together to decide on standards, we could come up with some great consensus. However, it doesn’t quite work that way. What we get is the Federal government (what, you say? They have assured us this is not a Federal program!!) funding $330,000,000 to two consortia to develop assessment. Utah is going with the SMARTER Balance, the group headed by Linda Darling-Hammond**, a leader in the movement to create social justice through educating the next generation—and there is no definition anywhere of social justice that does not include the redistribution of wealth, and even of property.

I have been stirring the pot with questions. The answer seems to be that since Utah citizens as a whole do not embrace this progressive philosophy, our teachers will sort it all out and be able to teach correct principles to our
children. Since this program is so awesome, our main job is efficient implementation. And Utah is efficient! (+ see The Deseret News 6/14/2011)

I assure you, with 25 years in the classroom, teachers will teach to the test!Of course we do, it wouldn’t be fair to students to test them on something they have not been taught. That’s how test scores always rise—as soon as teachers see the test, they know what they should be teaching and emphasize that the next year. That is why home schoolers don’t score as well on the standardized test—Mom only teaches that grade once, so she doesn’t learn the ropes. But the tests the consortia are creating are not just end-of-level, the new CRT’s for the state of Utah, but bench-mark assessments all along the way. Don’t you want your money’s worth for $330 mill? So the questions can turn To Kill a Mockingbird into a novel of racial injustice about Tom Robinson and supporting progressive philosophy, while ignoring Boo Radley as another innocent mockingbird destroyed by family pride and arrogance, or Mrs. DuBose and her personal courage, or, tee hee, the lambasting of progressive education and the progressive theory of equality presented with drama and outrage by our beloved Atticus Finch.

The standards at this point are for math and language arts (although they are already quietly moving into social studies and science through the literacy component—the complete title: The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects). As an English teacher, it’s a little harder to project what progressives will do with math—language arts is content, whereas math is more process. But here is the most frightening part of Common Core:

• IT HAS NOT BEEN TESTED—no small control group feeding data back to the decision-makers, no pencil-pushers examining proven results, just a philosophical decision by academia that this must be a good way to educate the nation (can you say “Investigations Math”?) And that for a district that prides itself on the concept of data-driven. There is NO data!
• THE TEXT BOOKS HAVE NOT BEEN WRITTEN—so
  maybe Animal Farm will still have the pigs as Communists, as George Orwell intended, not as some revisionists have it, nasty old Capitalists (all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others). Who knows?
• THE ASSESSMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN WRITTEN—actually that may not be true, the consortia have had a head start on us, but for sure they have not been examined. And the consortia chosen by the
  Utah State Office of Education, with no public input or oversight, is led by proponents of Social Justice through education. And even if the assessments appear to be benign, on this slippery slope, how can we keep them so? Once we embrace Common Core State (??) Standards, there will be no going back. We will be required to follow the entire program (thus the ?? in the above title—this is Common Core National Standards, in no way reflecting the responsibility of the State of Utah, let alone parents, to determine the direction of education for our students)

How did this happen?

Danged if I know. The first I read of it in the newspapers, the State School
Superintendent (Patti Harrington then) and the Governor (Jon Huntsman) had gone to meetings and decided for all of us, with no public information or feedback. This was long before I was involved with the school board, but I immediately fired off an email to my representative objecting long and loud.

Do we have to accept it?

Apparently. The State Office has mandated this as the official testing for the state of Utah. Look at the furor when Canyons District dared to use a different reading test. But … shouldn’t this be examined? Questioned? Just what rights do individual school districts have? What rights do individual states have?

Do we have any say?

That’s the question I have broached. If the job of the superintendent is to implement mandates from the State Office, why have a School Board? (and let’s stop giving lip service to “local control”)

The quote from the Federal Register is: “Common set of K-12 standards means a set of standards that define what students must know and be able to do, and that are identical across all States in a consortium.  Notwithstanding this, a state may supplement the standards with additional standards, provided that the additional standards do not exceed 15 percent of the State’s total standards for that content area.”

So we may SUPPLEMENT, but we cannot pick and choose.  It appears that we can’t redact any standards.

When will it be implemented?

Letters are going out to parents of all 5th and 8th graders this next school year, but to ASD’s credit, they are waiting a year for full implementation to see what bugs may be in the program. Meanwhile, your tax dollars (almost a million dollars allocated in the current budget) are going for curriculum development, professional development, logistics development, and hours and hours of really great people working for an untested program coming down from the vague “top,” rather than using our wealth of talent and our limited funds to develop what is best for our own children in our own place with our own values. We have administrators in the $100,000 salary range, with doctorates in education, and an entire curriculum department, yet our local talent is being used to implement, not to examine, challenge, question, create or modify.

Is there opposition?

The Cato Institute, strong advocates of school choice, has come out against (++ The National Review). The Heritage Foundation (Heritage.org/standards) has a video on YouTube, “Washington’s Latest Education Overreach: National Standards for Schools” featuring states that have refused to join the consortium,  Texas, Virginia and South Carolina, and a strong objection from our own Rob Bishop, Utah House of Representatives for District 1. http://www.youtube.com/watchfeature=player_embedded&v=1DOCH1YT6Uk

Are there checks and balances on the assessment?

As I understand it, the national organizations of school superintendents and that for governors own the copyright. I don’t know what would stop “someone” from arriving at summary conclusions and simply implementing what they decide is best for all anywhere down the road. Hey, I have a car for you—the government has already paid for it, so it’s yours to enjoy. We’ll even haul your old junker away for free. Just one eeensy limitation, you have to report your mileage. Go, enjoy! But the next year the rules increase, and now you can’t drive it on Sunday. No problem, you can work around that, you still have a free car. But the next year the rule is you can’t drive it to Wal-Mart—now this is getting serious, but how can you afford a new car now? You don’t even have a trade-in? Too bad that Wal-Mart fails, but heck, it’s not your fault. Now what will be next on the hit list?

Why are we doing this?

Because it sounds so good! Doesn’t universal health care sound good? How about taking care of the poor? Regulating commerce? Loving our planet? Higher standards to create better student achievement? Untested, untried, but hey, it sounds so good! However, the devil is in the details, and if our programs are not based on solid principles following a determined path, we will be swept away. And the principles we are violating are parental responsibility and local control (never mind that the individual states have the Constitutional right and responsibility for education). No Child Left Behind mandated that by 2012, every child in the United States would
be on grade level for reading and math, and all second language learners would be fluent in English. So, with one year to go, how is that that working for us? Didn’t we learn that you can’t mandate excellence? Kind of like repealing the Law of Gravity—go ahead, but I wouldn’t jump off of any buildings. So now “rigorous standards” are going to create excellence. Weird logic.

What should we do?

We could start with an in-depth comparison of the CCSS and our current Utah State Standards, side-by-side, with specifics as to what CCSS allegedly has to offer Utah education. We need to explore the viability of creating our own version of “robust and relevant,” using our own talent and based on our own values. Is there possibly any need for national standards? Is the tail wagging the dog, and we are all concerned with some mythological school system somewhere with standards so low that if we show tell them what they are doing wrong, they will do better?

What is the need and what is the rationale for abdicating our leadership and handing the responsibility to a national consortium? What will be the unintended consequences? Let us consider the long-term and question the principles on which our decisions are based.

*http://www.corestandards.org

MISSION STATEMENT: The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our
communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global
economy..

**http://www.amazon.com/Linda-DarlingHammond/e/B001JS5N1S/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

Biography Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University. Her books include The Right to Learn, Professional Development Schools, Learning to Teach for Social Justice (italics mine), and Authentic Assessment in Action. This biography was provided by the author or their representative.

+ http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705374441/Utah-education-officials-launch-training-for-new-academic-benchmarks.html?s_cid=Email-1 “Utah’s approach … is the best he’s seen.”

++ http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13124

Neal McCluskey National Review (Online)  May 23, 2011.

Under the guise of voluntary measures, and obscured by nebulous terminology, the nationalization of what your children will learn has been proceeding apace. And Congress is working right now on reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, through which federal domination will be cemented. But an organized opposition has formed, and it’s time for conservatives to decide: Are you going to let the federal government dictate what your children learn, or will you fight?