THE POLITICS OF COMMON CORE


http://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/a-guide-to-common-core/articles/2014/03/06/the-politics-of-common-core


The Politics of Common Core
By Allie Bidwell
March 6, 2014

The controversial educational standards have political implications as well.


The longer and deeper you hold a beach ball underneath the water, the more quickly and energetically it pops up to the surface. That's how Rick Hess, a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, describes the Common Core State Standards' rapid rise into the forefront of political controversy.

[READ: The History of Common Core]

While he says the standards themselves emerged from an "absolutely privately and state-led" effort, proponents of the academic benchmarks shot themselves in the foot and didn't do enough to drive a public conversation about what the standards were and why people should get on board. 

"No one debated it, nobody was really aware of what it meant," Hess says. "This was unusual in that it wasn't at all debated, even though it was big and national in scope, because people were just excited about the chance of being eligible for a chunk of $4 billion." 

DEBATE CLUB: Are the Common Core Standards a Good Idea?]

Hess is referring to an effort supported by the Obama administration in which states could receive Race to the Top funding if they agreed to adopt college- and career-ready standards. While the government did not explicitly name Common Core – or any other set of standards, for that matter – those who agreed to implement Common Core automatically qualified for Race to the Top cash. Some states, such as Virginia and Texas, however, opted to write their own standards rather than adopt Common Core. In doing so, both states were still eligible to apply for Race to the Top funds, although Texas did not submit an application, and Virginia was not awarded any money. 

In a statement, Gov. Rick Perry explained that Texas chose not to apply for Race to the Top funds because the state's application would be penalized "for refusing to commit to adopt national curriculum standards and tests and to incur ongoing costs."

“Texas is on the right path toward improved education, and we would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education,” Perry said in the statement.

State leaders in Kentucky, on the other hand, were so convinced of the merits of Common Core that they adopted them even before the standards were finalized in June 2010. Still, Republicans in that state in January introduced a bill to repeal the standards.

Now, legislators in many states – both blue and red – have begun pushing a flurry of bills to amend, delay or even ditch the standards altogether.

Indiana, which adopted the standards in 2010, could likely become the first state to completely do away with Common Core. A bill that would prohibit the use of the standards past July 1, and require the State Board of Education to adopt new standards by the same date, passed the House on Feb. 27. 

The bill now heads back to the Senate for final approval before arriving on Republican Gov. Mike Pence's desk. State legislators in April 2013 approved to push the pause button on Common Core implementation, and Pence in his State of the State address gave a strong indication that the state intends to drop the standards completely. 

"Hoosiers have high expectations when it comes to Indiana schools," Pence said. "That's why Indiana decided to take a time-out on national education standards. When it comes to setting standards for schools, I can assure you, Indiana's will be uncommonly high. They will be written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and will be among the best in the nation."

But there has been widespread criticism of the draft of Indiana's newly proposed math and English standards, with many people claiming they're too similar to Common Core.

Kathleen Porter-Magee, senior policy advisor for policy and instruction at the College Board and a policy fellow for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, says Indiana's proposed standards are less rigorous when compared to both Common Core and Indiana's previous state standards. She adds that in a side-by-side comparison of the draft standards and Common Core, many of the English standards are copied verbatim, and others are tweaked in a way that makes them less clear. 

"Looking at it from afar, it seems like a case where politics was prioritized over getting the content right," Porter-Magee says. "Once you start making compromises for political reasons and not for educational reasons, you can go astray pretty quickly."

Other states, like Connecticut and New York, are seeking to delay the implementation of the standards or stakes linked to the Common Core-aligned tests. New York's Democratic-led Assembly on Mondayintroduced legislation to delay Common Core testing, following a similar move by the New York Board of Regents. Other states, such as Florida and Arizona, have simply renamed the standards as the "Next Generation Sunshine State Standards" and the "Arizona College and Career Ready Standards," respectively.

Even voters are rallying behind the growing opposition to the standards. In Florida, incumbent Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, faces an uphill battle with Common Core opponents who recently claimed they would sit out the Nov. 2014 election unless Scott reverses his stance on the standards.

While they said they would not vote for Scott's Democratic opponent, former governor Charlie Crist, conservative critics of Common Core want Scott to do more of an about-face and reject the standards completely rather than make changes like adding standards for calculus and cursive writing and pulling out of one of the two testing consortia that have created assessments aligned to the standards.

Opposing the standards could also be a winning strategy in the primary race for state superintendent in South Carolina, where legislators have also pushed bills to repeal Common Core and at least six candidates are vying for the GOP nomination. And in New Hampshire, gubernatorial candidate Andrew Hemingway is also embracing an anti-Common Core platform. 

In fact, the controversial standards will be "maybe the biggest question of all" in upcoming elections, according to Sandra Stotsky  a professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, a noted expert in academic standards development and a staunch opponent of Common Core. 

"[It's] not what's going on in Ukraine, and not the Affordable Care Act," Stotsky says. "It's going to be the education of the next generation of Americans in this country and what is going to happen to them as a result of Common Core."

While 45 states, the District of Columbia, and four territories have already adopted Common Core, to opponents of the standards the initiative seems like a stealthy attack on states' rights, pushed by the federal government. 

"People felt like they hadn't been told about it," says the American Enterprise Institute's Hess. "To people who were skeptical, they thought, 'How did you sneak this past everybody?'"

Dane Linn, a vice president of the Business Roundtable who oversees its Education & Workforce Committee and was largely involved in the development of the standards in his previous role with the National Governors Association, says state leaders were involved throughout the process and were strongly encouraged to go back to their communities to spread information about the standards. But Hess says they still fell short, and Stotsky says the development process did not give teachers, parents and state legislators enough input or chance for open comment.

"You have several groups suddenly becoming aware of Common Core – people that had mainly been bypassed in the original adoption of Common Core," Stotsky says. "The grassroots waves that have started across this country are accelerating."

To Hess, a perfect storm of problems transformed the Common Core standards into a political football: a lack of communication, a fear of federal overreach and an oversight of practical problems that would stem from the standards – like schools not being able to upgrade their technology for the computerized tests, and the rollout coinciding with massive reforms to teacher evaluations that now rely heavily on student performance on state tests.

"Frankly, I think the fact that Common Core became so controversial is pretty much a direct result of how ineptly the advocates went ahead pushing this thing," Hess says. "If they had been open and public and transparent and just frank about it with people, I think the Tea Partiers would have figured they had much more important fish to fry."

Strong opposition to the standards, particularly from conservative Tea Party members, could be a reaction to failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, points out Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a supporter of Common Core. 

"For many Tea Party folks, they are incredibly frustrated that they can't repeal Obamacare or get their states to pull out of it," Petrilli says. "So this is a target where maybe they can blow off some steam. They actually could succeed in getting a state to pull out of the Common Core because it isn't a federal mandate."

While opposition to the standards was smoldering, increased federal support for the educational standards seemed to light the fuse, Petrilli says.  

"In one word, it's Obamacore," Petrilli says. "That is their argument, that this is to education what Obamacare is to health care."

As the issue of Common Core began gaining traction among conservatives, the Republican National Committee succeeded in passing an anti-Common Core resolution in April 2013, saying it  "recognizes the CCSS for what it is – an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children so they will conform to a preconceived 'normal.'"

Since then, even staunch supporters of the standards have said that there's a need for adjustment – at least in the implementation.

"When I said that the roll out of these standards were worse than the roll out of Obamacare, that's a real problem, particularly since I'm a big believer in the critical thinking skills that this strategy is supposed to do," says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Weingarten points to the $350 million in federal stimulus funds the Department of Education set aside to support the development of Common Core-aligned assessments through two testing consortia: the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Common Core became controversial for the left, she says, when there appeared to be more of a focus on testing and gathering student data, and less of a focus on teaching.

Likewise, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a supporter of the standards, has made it clear the rollout has been less than ideal, and that the implementation of testing, as well as the consequences associated with the tests, should be delayed. 

"While the state's new Common Core curriculum is heading in the right direction, testing on it is premature," Cuomo says in a new television ad campaign, according to Newsday. "It creates anxiety and it's just unfair. And their [children's] scores should not be counted against them."

While President Obama continues to make education a priority for his second term, as he demonstrated in both his 2014 State of the Union address and his 2015 budget proposal, advocates of Common Core say the administration's strong support of the initiative could do more harm than good.

"It's imperative at this point for the feds to stay out of it," Petrilli says. "It's now back in the states' hands to implement these things and that's where it belongs, and the feds need to just stay as far away from this as possible."





Background of Common Core




Common Core State Standards Initiative
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an educational initiative in the United States that details what K-12students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade. The initiative is sponsored by theNational Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and seeks to establish consistent educational standards across the states as well as ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two- or four-year college programs or enter the workforce.[1]
Background[edit]

In the 1990s, the "Standards & Accountability Movement" began in the U.S., as states began writing standards outlining what students were expected to know and be able to do at each grade level, and implementing assessment designed to measure whether students were meeting the standards.[2] As part of this education-reform movement, the nation's governors and corporate leaders founded Achieve, Inc. in 1996 as a bipartisan organization to raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability in all 50 states.[3] The initial motivation for the development of the Common Core State Standards was part of the American Diploma Project (ADP).[4]
A 2004 report, titled Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts, found that both employers and colleges are demanding more of high school graduates than in the past. According to Achieve, Inc., "current high-school exit expectations fall well short of employer and college demands." The report explained that the major problem currently facing the American school system is that high school graduates were not provided with the skills and knowledge they needed to succeed in college and careers: "While students and their parents may still believe that the diploma reflects adequate preparation for the intellectual demands of adult life, in reality it falls far short of this common-sense goal." The report said that the diploma itself lost its value because graduates could not compete successfully beyond high school, and that the solution to this problem is a common set of rigorous standards.[5]
Development[edit]

In 2009, the NGA convened a group of people to work on developing the standards. This team included David Coleman,William McCallum of the University of Arizona, Phil Daro, and Student Achievement Partners founders Jason Zimba[6] and Susan Pimentel to write standards in the areas of mathematics and literacy.[citation needed] Announced on June 1, 2009,[7]the initiative's stated purpose is to "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."[8] Additionally, "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", which should place American students in a position in which they can compete in a global economy.[8]

The standards are copyrighted by NGA Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), which controls use of and licenses the standards in order to control derivatives.[9] The NGA Center and CCSSO do this by offering a license to State Departments of Education which use the standards.[10] However, two conditions apply: the use of the standards must be "in support" of the standards, and the waiver only applies if the state has adopted the standards "in whole".

Adoption[edit]

Forty-four of the fifty U.S. states and the District of Columbia are members of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, with the states of Texas, Virginia, Alaska, Nebraska and Indiana not adopting the initiative at a state level.[11] Minnesota has adopted the English Language Arts standards but not the Mathematics standards.[12]

Standards were released for mathematics and English language arts on June 2, 2010, with a majority of states adopting the standards in the subsequent months. (See below for current status.) States were given an incentive to adopt the Common Core Standards through the possibility of competitive federal Race to the Top grants. U.S. President Barack Obama andU.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the Race to the Top competitive grants on July 24, 2009, as a motivator for education reform. To be eligible, states had to adopt "internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the work place."[13] Though states could adopt other college- and career-ready standards and still be eligible, they were awarded extra points in their Race to the Top applications if they adopted the Common Core standards by August 2, 2010. Forty-one states made the promise in their application.[14][15] Virginia and Texas were two states that chose to write their own college and career-ready standards, and were subsequently eligible for Race to the Top. Development of the Common Core Standards was funded by the governors and state schools chiefs, with additional support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pearson Publishing Company, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and others.[16]

Though the Common Core State Standards do not cover science and social studies content standards, the Next Generation Science Standards are in the process of being developed. They are not directly related to the Common Core, but their content can be cross-connected to the mathematical and English Language Arts standards within the Common Core.[17][18
Assessment[edit]

According to the Common Core State Standards Initiative website, formal assessment is expected to take place in the 2014–2015 school year, which coincides with the projected implementation year for most states.[28] The assessment is being created by two consortiums with different approaches.[29]

The PARCC RttT Assessment Consortium comprises the states of Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. Their approach focuses on computer-based "through-course assessments" in each grade together with streamlined end-of-year tests. (PARCC refers to "Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers" and RttT refers to the Race to the Top.)[29]

The second consortium, called the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, comprises 31 states focusing on creating "adaptive online exams". Member states include Alaska, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.[29][30]
The final decision of which assessment to use will be determined by individual state education agencies. Both of these leading consortiums are proposing computer-based exams that include fewer selected and constructed response test items, unlike the Standardized Test that has been more common.

While some states are working together to create a common, universal assessment based on the Common Core state standards, other states are choosing to work independently or through these two consortiums to develop the assessment.[31] Florida Governor Rick Scott directed his state education board to withdraw from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.[32] Georgia withdrew from the consortium test in July 2013 in order to develop its own.[33] Michigan decided not to participate in Smarter Balanced testing.[34] Oklahoma tentatively withdrew from the consortium test in July 2013 due to the technical challenges of online assessment.[35] And Utah withdrew from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium in August 2012.[36]

Response[edit]

The Common Core has drawn support and criticism from political representatives, policy analysts, and educational commentators. Teams of academics and educators from around the United States led the development of the standards, and additional validation teams approved the final standards. The teams drew on public feedback that was solicited throughout the process and that feedback was incorporated into the standards.[37] The Common Core initiative only specifies what students should know at each grade level and describes the skills that they must acquire in order to achieve college or career readiness. Individual school districts are responsible for choosing curricula based on the standards.[37]

In 2012, Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution called into question whether the standards will have any effect, and said that they "have done little to equalize academic achievement within states".[38] In response to the standards, the libertarianCato Institute claimed that "it is not the least bit paranoid to say the federal government wants a national curriculum,".[38]Some conservatives[who?] have assailed the program as a federal "top-down" takeover of state and local education systems,.[39][40] South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said her state should not "relinquish control of education to the federal government, neither should we cede it to the consensus of other states,".[39]

Educational analysts from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute determined that the Common Core standards, "are clearly superior to those currently in use in 39 states in math and 37 states in English. For 33 states, the Common Core is superior in both math and reading."[39][41]

The mathematicians Edward Frenkel and Hung-Hsi Wu wrote in 2013 that the mathematical education in the United States is in "deep crisis" caused by the way math is currently taught in schools. Both agree that math textbooks, which are widely adopted across the states, already create "mediocre de facto national standards". The texts, they say, "are often incomprehensible and irrelevant". The Common Core standards address these issues and "level the playing field" for students. They point out that adoption of the Common Core Standards and how best to test students are two separate issues.[42]

A spokesman from ExxonMobil said of Common Core: "It sets very important milestones and standards for educational achievement while at the same time providing those most invested in the outcome – local teachers and administrators – with the flexibility they need to best achieve those results".[43]

The Heritage Foundation argued in 2010 that the Common Core's focus on national standards would do little to fix deeply ingrained problems and incentive structures within the education system.[44] A study by Christopher Tienken, Assistant Professor of Education Administration at Seton Hall University, concluded that there was no relationship between the United States' low score and its economic position.[45][46]

A 2014 Mother Jones article, "We Can Code It", which advocates for adding computer literacy and coding to the K-12 curriculum in the United States, notes that computer science is not incorporated into the Common Core requirements.[47]

Marion Brady, a teacher, and Patrick Murray, an elected member of the school governing board in Bradford, Maine, wrote that Common Core drains initiative from teachers and enforces a "one-size-fits-all" curriculum that ignores cultural differences among classrooms and students.[48][49] Diane Ravitch, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, wrote in her book Reign of Error that the Common Core standards have never been field-tested and that no one knows whether they will improve education.[50] Nicholas Tampio, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Fordham University, said that the standards emphasize rote learning and uniformity over creativity, and fail to recognize differences in learning styles.[51]Michigan State University's Distinguished Professor William Schmidt wrote:

In my view, the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM) unquestionably represent a major change in the way U.S. schools teach mathematics. Rather than a fragmented system in which content is "a mile wide and an inch deep," the new common standards offer the kind of mathematics instruction we see in the top-achieving nations, where students learn to master a few topics each year before moving on to more advanced mathematics. It is my opinion that [a state] will best position its students for success by remaining committed to the Common Core State Standards and focusing their efforts on the implementation of the standards and aligned assessments.[52]

The 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.[53] Advancing one Catholic perspective, over one hundred college-level scholars signed a public letter criticizing the Common Core for diminishing the humanities in the educational curriculum: The "Common Core adopts a bottom-line, pragmatic approach to education and the heart of its philosophy is, as far as we can see, that it is a waste of resources to 'over-educate' people,"[54] though the Common Core set only minimum—not maximum—standards. In May 2013, the National Catholic Educational Associationnoted that the standards are a "set of high-quality academic expectations that all students should master by the end of each grade level" and are "not a national curriculum".[55] Mark Naison, Fordham University Professor, and co-founder of theBadass Teachers Association, raised a similar objection: "The liberal critique of Common Core is that this is a huge profit-making enterprise that costs school districts a tremendous amount of money, and pushes out the things kids love about school, like art and music".[56]

As Common Core is implemented in New York, the new tests have been criticized. Some parents have said that the new assessments are too difficult and are causing too much stress, leading to an "opt-out movement" in which parents refuse to let their children take the tests.[57]

Former governor Jeb Bush has said of opponents of the standards that while "criticisms and conspiracy theories are easy attention grabbers", he instead wanted to hear their solutions to the problems in American education.[58]

Early results[edit]

Kentucky was the first to implement the Common Core standards, and local school districts began offering new math and English curricula based on the standard in August 2010. In 2013, Time magazine reported that the high school graduation rate had increased from 80 percent in 2010 to 86 percent in 2013, test scores went up 2 percentage points in the second year of using the Common Core test, and the percentage of students considered to be ready for college or a career, based on a battery of assessments, went up from 34 percent in 2010 to 54 percent in 2013.[59] According to Sarah Butrymowicz from The Atlantic,

"Kentucky's experience over the past three school years suggests it will be a slow and potentially frustrating road ahead for the other states that are using the Common Core. Test scores are still dismal, and state officials have expressed concern that the pace of improvement is not fast enough. Districts have also seen varying success in changing how teachers teach, something that was supposed to change under the new standards."[60]

The Common Core Standards are considered to be more rigorous than the standards they replaced in Kentucky. Kentucky's old standards received a "D" in an analysis by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. School officials in Kentucky believe it will take several more years to adjust to the new standards, which received an A- in math and a B+ in English from the Fordham Institute.[60][61]

The chart below contains the adoption status of the Common Core Standards as of December 1, 2013.[62] At least 12 states have introduced legislation to repeal the standards.[63] Among the territories of the United States (not listed in the chart below), the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the American Samoa Islands have adopted the standards while Puerto Rico has not adopted the standards. [64] As of June 18, 2014, four states have repealed or are withdrawing from Common Core. Nine additional member states have legislation in some stage of the process that would repeal Common Core participation.[64]

From the chart of states showing the progress of adoption of Common Core, most have adopted the new standards. The following have not: Alaska, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.




http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/07/the-wingnut-war-on-common-core-is-a-plot-to-destroy-public-schools.html

The Wingnut War On Common Core Is A Plot To Destroy Public Schools

The Common Core Standards Initiative has been hotly debated since it was first introduced in 2009. But a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center shows that conservatives are pushing a radical fact-free agenda that aims to destroy public education as a whole.

There are plenty of rational arguments for why the Common Core State Standards Initiative is not the solution to reforming public education in the United States.

That the program is part of a liberal conspiracy to indoctrinate children and turn them into the homosexual slaves of a future totalitarian global government, is not one of them.

Common Core has been the subject of intense debate since it was first initiated by the National Governor’s Association in 2009. Created with the failures of past test-based standardization attempts—including No Child Left Behind—in mind, Common Core was designed to streamline K-12 education standards across the states and ensure that graduating high school students are sufficiently prepared to enroll in college courses or enter the work force.

Though the standards were quickly embraced by 44 states and the District of Columbia, they’ve sparked a backlash from politicians and education experts on both sides of the political spectrum. In March, Indiana, the first state to adopt the Common Core standards, became the first state to opt out, and just this year, some 100 bills were introduced in state legislatures to stop or slow the program’s requirements. According to a recent study by the University of Connecticut, only 39 percent of Americans have even heard of Common Core, but of those who have, 27 percent think it will not impact the quality of education in their communities and 30 percent say they think it will be detrimental.
Legitimate arguments against Common Core include the fact that the program is overwhelmingly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; that the short timeline for implementation is unrealistic and amplifies the high-pressure testing culture of No Child Left Behind; and that, while the program is completely optional, only states that have adopted “internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the workplace” are eligible for the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top competitive grants—and states that adopted Common Core standards by August 2010 received extra points on their Race to the Top applications. Education policy expert Diane Ravitch opposes Common Core because the standards were developed behind closed doors, without the help of informed, interested parties like early childhood and special education experts, and thrust upon schools before their effectiveness could be tested. Just last month, comedian Louie C.K. got on the anti-Common Core bandwagon, tweeting pictures of the tests his young daughters are practicing for at their New York City public school, calling it “this massive stressball that hangs over the whole school,” and blaming Common Core for making his kids hate math.

But as a new report by the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center points out, the loudest, angriest voices in the Common Core debate are making a case that is not even remotely based in reality. From the farthest reaches of the Christian right to Conservative pundits and even elected officials, a radical, factless propaganda campaign has been building that, the SPLC suggests, looks poised to take down not only Common Core but the entire institution of public education.

According to the SPLC, the most common falsehoods perpetrated by the Common Core conspiracy campaign include the beliefs that the federal government has created a mandatory curriculum for all schools meant to brainwash students with liberal, anti-Christian dogma; that adopting the Common Core standards means states forfeit local control over education to the federal government; and that the government and big businesses are scheming to track students’ personal information from kindergarten to adulthood through Common Core testing.

“Patriot,” Tea Party, other Christian-Right groups—from the small and grassroots to the Koch-affiliated— are dedicating significant amounts of time, money, and manpower to tearing down Common Core, using incendiary rhetoric.
“Public schools have indeed become the most dangerous places in America,” Anita Staver, president of the John Birch Society-affiliated Liberty Counsel wrote in the group’s August, 2013 newsletter. “We cannot stick our head in the sand while our children are held hostage in government indoctrination camps.”

In a letter to Catholic Bishops that was later re-printed in the Catholic magazineCrisis, Phyllis Schlafly, head of the conservative, “pro-family” Eagle Forum,  slammed Common Core standards for “active promotion of gay marriage, and other federal efforts designed to dismantle society.” She declared, “We cannot remain complacent as this administration takes aim at our children.”

“Children are our righteous seed and Satan is after them,” televangelist and Columbus, Ohio megachurch pastor Rod Parsley wrote in the Christian magazine Charisma. “He has turned our public schools into cesspools of godless propaganda where God is publicly mocked and reviled. It is time to take a stand against the devil.”

While each of these claims may seem more ridiculous than the last, the SPLC report urges that they not be dismissed as the bluster of a few rogue nutjobs. Several popular and far-reaching members of the right-wing media are also getting in on the Common Core conspiracy mongering, disseminating these dramatic and unfounded theories into the mainstream.
In 2010, the SPLC says, right-wing talking head Glenn Beck sponsored two anti-Common Core strategizing conferences organized by self-taught (and widely discredited) evangelical historian David Barton. Since then, Beck has continued to take shots at Common Core on his online TV and radio shows atTheBlaze.com.

“It’s about to go federal,” Beck warned, inaccurately, in one video on his site. “This is top down education from the federal government, dictating to local schools what they must teach and how they must teach it.”

Prolific conservative columnist Michelle Malkin has called Common Core a“Trojan Horse,” and a “creepy federal data-mining racket” that supposedly forces school districts and state governments to “pimp out highly personal data on children’s feelings, beliefs, ‘biases,’ and ‘flexibility’ instead of doing their own jobs of imparting knowledge and minding their own business.”

Cal Thomas, one of the most widely syndicated columnists in the country, appears in more than 500 newspapers including USA Today, is aired on over 300 radio shows and is a Fox News commentator. He has been using these platforms to tell his large audience that “a mass exodus from government schools is the only way to preserve the souls and minds of children.”

In a very handy timeline of events, the SPLC illustrates how Christian Right opposition to public schools and the homeschooling movement have grown over the decades since 1948, when the Supreme Court first declared religious instruction in public schools unconstitutional. Six decades after Brown v. Board of Education led to racial integration in schools, minorities now comprise nearly half of all public school students—that’s nearly twice the percentage of 30 years ago and it’s growing. At the same time, public schools across the country are forming Gay-Straight Alliances and in 2013, California passed the nation’s first lawprotecting transgender students from discrimination at school.

As the federal government and the high court have continued to expand the right to public, discrimination-free education to more groups of students, the number of homeschooled students in the U.S. has climbed from about 750,000 in 1995 to between 1.9 million and 2.4 million in 2006.

The latest iteration of the Christian Right’s crusade against secular education is worth paying attention to because, with an identifiable villain like Common Core, groups with enough resources can wield real political and public influence to take down the program and, in effect, damage the public school system as a whole.

According to the SPLC, The American Principles Project, a group founded by leading Christian Right thinker and major LGBT equality opponent Robert George, says it’s spending $500,000 to fight the Common Core, releasing reports and videos on why the program is bad for America, sponsoring anti-Common Core conferences, and sending representatives to several state legislative hearings to testify against implementing the program.

More recognizable, however, are the advocacy groups associated with the conservative billionaire Koch brothers. According to a Politico report from January, the Koch-affiliated non-profit FreedomWorks, which is credited with giving birth to the Tea Party, is blatantly using opposition to Common Core to rally support for private and religious school vouchers and, eventually, to destroy the U.S. Department of Education altogether. Americans for Prosperity, another Koch-backed group, is pushing the anti-Common Core agenda at town hall meetings throughout the states.
David Koch’s history as a Libertarian politician offers some insight as to why arguably two of the country’s most influential political donors might be interested in this fight. He ran for vice president in 1980 on the Libertarian ticket, the year when his party’s platformreportedly called for “complete separation of education and State” and claimed that “Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”’


As the SPLC points out, the vicious campaign against Common Core is already having an impact on politics at the federal level. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and seven other senators have signed on to sponsor legislation to stop federal funding for any aspect of Common Core. U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma has compared Common Core standards to socialism. And potential Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has come under fire from the far-right factions of his own party for supporting the program.

The SPLC report’s authors explain exactly how harmful destroying public education would be for the huge swath of the country that cannot afford to homeschool their children or send them to private schools. Without public schools, they write, the 48 percent of K-12 students that come from low-income families will have fewer pathways out of poverty. The 21 percent of students whose parents are immigrants will have less of a chance to assimilate. And children of color, estimated to makeup half of all American children within the next five years, “would be unprepared to make their way in modern society, crippling the economy and ruining chances of being globally competitive.” Essentially, dissolving public education would achieve the exact opposite of the idealistic goals stated by the Common Core Standards Initiative.

In her most recent book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, Diane Ravitch, one of the education field’s most outspoken opponents of Common Core, echoes the SPLC’s fears.
Public education “expanded opportunity to more people, distributed the benefits of knowledge to more people, and strengthened our nation,” Ravitch writes. “When public education is in danger, democracy is jeopardized. We cannot afford that risk.”








http://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/26/why-i-cannot-support-the-common-core-standards/

Diane Ravitch's blog
A site to discuss better education for all

Why I cannot Support The Common Core Standards
February 26, 2013

I have thought long and hard about the Common Core standards.

I have decided that I cannot support them.

In this post, I will explain why.

I have long advocated for voluntary national standards, believing that it would be helpful to states and districts to have general guidelines about what students should know and be able to do as they progress through school.

Such standards, I believe, should be voluntary, not imposed by the federal government; before implemented widely, they should be thoroughly tested to see how they work in real classrooms; and they should be free of any mandates that tell teachers how to teach because there are many ways to be a good teacher, not just one. I envision standards not as a demand for compliance by teachers, but as an aspiration defining what states and districts are expected to do. They should serve as a promise that schools will provide all students the opportunity and resources to learn reading and mathematics, the sciences, the arts, history, literature, civics, geography, and physical education, taught by well-qualified teachers, in schools led by experienced and competent educators.

​For the past two years, I have steadfastly insisted that I was neither for nor against the Common Core standards. I was agnostic. I wanted to see how they worked in practice. I wanted to know, based on evidence, whether or not they improve education and whether they reduce or increase the achievement gaps among different racial and ethnic groups.

After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that I can’t wait five or ten years to find out whether test scores go up or down, whether or not schools improve, and whether the kids now far behind are worse off than they are today.

I have come to the conclusion that the Common Core standards effort is fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted upon the nation.

The Common Core standards have been adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia without any field test. They are being imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools. We are a nation of guinea pigs, almost all trying an unknown new program at the same time.

Maybe the standards will be great. Maybe they will be a disaster. Maybe they will improve achievement. Maybe they will widen the achievement gaps between haves and have-nots. Maybe they will cause the children who now struggle to give up altogether. Would the Federal Drug Administration approve the use of a drug with no trials, no concern for possible harm or unintended consequences?

President Obama and Secretary Duncan often say that the Common Core standards were developed by the states and voluntarily adopted by them. This is not true.

They were developed by an organization called Achieve and the National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states.

​In fact, it was well understood by states that they would not be eligible for Race to the Top funding ($4.35 billion) unless they adopted the Common Core standards. Federal law prohibits the U.S. Department of Education from prescribing any curriculum, but in this case the Department figured out a clever way to evade the letter of the law. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia signed on, not because the Common Core standards were better than their own, but because they wanted a share of the federal cash. In some cases, the Common Core standards really were better than the state standards, but in Massachusetts, for example, the state standards were superior and well tested but were ditched anyway and replaced with the Common Core. The former Texas State Commissioner of Education, Robert Scott, has stated for the record that he was urged to adopt the Common Core standards before they were written.

The flap over fiction vs. informational text further undermined my confidence in the standards. There is no reason for national standards to tell teachers what percentage of their time should be devoted to literature or information. Both can develop the ability to think critically. The claim that the writers of the standards picked their arbitrary ratios because NAEP has similar ratios makes no sense. NAEP gives specifications to test-developers, not to classroom teachers.

I must say too that it was offensive when Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice issued a report declaring that our nation’s public schools were so terrible that they were a “very grave threat to our national security.” Their antidote to this allegedly desperate situation: the untried Common Core standards plus charters and vouchers.

Another reason I cannot support the Common Core standards is that I am worried that they will cause a precipitous decline in test scores, based on arbitrary cut scores, and this will have a disparate impact on students who are English language learners, students with disabilities, and students who are poor and low-performing. A principal in the Mid-West told me that his school piloted the Common Core assessments and the failure rate rocketed upwards, especially among the students with the highest needs. He said the exams looked like AP exams and were beyond the reach of many students.

When Kentucky piloted the Common Core, proficiency rates dropped by 30 percent. The Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents has already warned that the state should expect a sharp drop in test scores.

What is the purpose of raising the bar so high that many more students fail?

Rick Hess opined that reformers were confident that the Common Core would cause so much dissatisfaction among suburban parents that they would flee their public schools and embrace the reformers’ ideas (charters and vouchers). Rick was appropriately doubtful that suburban parents could be frightened so easily.

Jeb Bush, at a conference of business leaders, confidently predicted that the high failure rates sure to be caused by Common Core would bring about “a rude awakening.” Why so much glee at the prospect of higher failure rates?.

I recently asked a friend who is a strong supporter of the standards why he was so confident that the standards would succeed, absent any real-world validation. His answer: “People I trust say so.” That’s not good enough for me.

Now that David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards, has become president of the College Board, we can expect that the SAT will be aligned to the standards. No one will escape their reach, whether they attend public or private school.

Is there not something unseemly about placing the fate and the future of American education in the hands of one man?

I hope for the sake of the nation that the Common Core standards are great and wonderful. I wish they were voluntary, not mandatory. I wish we knew more about how they will affect our most vulnerable students.
But since I do not know the answer to any of the questions that trouble me, I cannot support the Common Core standards.

I will continue to watch and listen. While I cannot support the Common Core standards, I will remain open to new evidence. If the standards help kids, I will say so. If they hurt them, I will say so. I will listen to their advocates and to their critics.

I will encourage my allies to think critically about the standards, to pay attention to how they affect students, and to insist, at least, that they do no harm.