Push against common core
gains momentum
Education Reporter – May 2013
Critics of Common Core say
it is an untried experiment that lacks legitimacy and empirical study and is
now being foisted upon the entire U.S. school system. It has the
potential to waste billions of dollars, multiple years of education efforts,
and the learning potential of all schoolchildren.
Several state legislatures
are considering withdrawing from Common Core (CC), delaying or not funding
implementation, or withdrawing from national testing by government-funded
consortia.
Private organizations
developed CC; it was neither debated in public nor enacted by state legislators.
There is an immense amount
of money flowing to public education because of Common Core implementation, and
also to specific companies that are CC public-private partners that develop
curriculum, create tests, and train educators to teach Common Core.
Federal Education Standards
On a national level, Sen.
Charles Grassley (R-IA) is asking the Senate Appropriations Committee to cut
off funds that allow the Obama administration to cajole states into adopting
Common Core standards and national standardized tests by tying some funding to
CC adoption. Grassley challenges other legislators to co-sign his letter to the
Appropriations Committee which documents that the Obama administration forced
states to sign on to CC as a prerequisite to get Race to the Top money or to
receive No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers. These waivers allow a state to
continue receiving federal funding although NCLB requirements have not been
met. Grassley’s letter also addresses concerns about federalizing education:
The decision about what
students should be taught and when it should be taught has enormous
consequences for our children. Therefore, parents ought to have a straight line
of accountability to those who are making such decisions. State legislatures, which
are directly accountable to the citizens of their states, are the appropriate
place for those decisions to be made, free from any pressure from the U.S.
Department of Education.
Opponents of Common Core
state that nationalized education standards are unconstitutional, citing the
10th Amendment, which limits federal influence over states. The General
Educational Provisions Act also prohibits federal overreach by prohibiting “any
department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States [from exercising]
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. . . .”
Federal Standardized Testing
Critics suggest nationwide
tests will neither improve education nor register whether education is
improving. Some experts point to teachers “teaching to tests” and students who
are anxious over standardized test results as root problems in American
education.
The New York Daily News
reports that students from 33 New York City
schools boycotted state exams that tested students according to Common Core
standards that New York
will not even begin teaching until September. Parents said their students would
boycott tests because they oppose Common Core and the overuse of standardized
testing. When 3rd- through 8th-graders took the tests in mid-April, one-third
of students at the Earth School in Manhattan
opted-out. The New York Times reports that among students who did take the
tests, “many did not finish, and some students said classmates were crying at
the end.” (04-19-13)
A further complication in
the rush to adopt Common Core is that competition to federal tests from private
companies has arisen. The U.S.
Department of Education gave $360 million from the federal economic-stimulus
act of 2009 to two consortia, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for
College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium
(SBAC) to develop national standardized tests.
Some observers say
competition could be the beginning of the end for PARCC and SBAC, as states
like Alabama
opt to use tests being prepared by non-federal competitors, like ACT/Pearson. Alabama chose ACT
because it has background, infrastructure, and many years of successfully
testing students (Fordham Institute, 04-16-13).
Invasion of Students’ Privacy
Common Core gives
unprecedented access to students’ personal information to schools and third
parties and thus may invade student and family privacy. Privacy laws have
previously prohibited such data from being available, but those laws have been
changed and reinterpreted to allow such information as name, address, social
security number, attendance, test scores, learning disabilities, and family
information to be recorded and shared.
The Obama administration
made changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA),
broadening the collection of students’ information and sharing it with other
agencies. This information will not only be available to schools, but also to
researchers and private companies. The
Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.
have funded and developed this database system and recently turned it over to a
nonprofit corporation called inBloom, established for the purpose of controlling
the information. There are security risks involved in the collection and
storage of students’ data.
The New York Daily
News reports that parents were neither informed nor did they give permission
for New York
to allow private data about their children to be collected and shared. The report continues:
If this information leaks out or is improperly used,
it could stigmatize a child and damage his or her prospects for life. The state
and the city are setting themselves up for multimillion-dollar class-action
suits if and when these data breaches occur. The data [which] inBloom receives
from the education department will be placed in a vulnerable data cloud. Many
technology professionals do not trust clouds for their more sensitive data
(03-14-13).
Opponents of the data collection and storage, which
is already in full swing in nine states and scheduled for use in all Common
Core states, include the New York Civil
Liberties Union and ParentalRights.org.
The “sphere of privacy
within the family” is effectively being broken down and destroyed by those who
want to track children. This is in alignment with the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child which “has repeatedly browbeat nations to create a
national database just like this that will allow the government to track
children, purportedly to make sure their human rights are being protected —
different declared purpose, same kind of system, same invasion of privacy for government
purposes,” states ParentalRights.org President Michael P. Farris
(WorldNetDaily.com, 04-25-13).
“Turning massive amounts of
personal data about public school students [over] to a private corporation
without any public input is profoundly disturbing and irresponsible,” the
executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union told the Daily News.
The Electronic Privacy
Information Center
in Washington
is suing the U.S. Education Department in an effort to stop the illegal
collection, storage, and sharing of student data (03-13-13).
Follow the Money
Those who oppose Common Core
are fighting an uphill battle against the money and political forces that
created, fund, and promote Common Core.
Why has Bill Gates spent
millions of dollars to develop, support, and fund the establishment of Common
Core standards and testing in U.S.
public schools?
Why did Exxon Mobil
Corporation blitz television coverage of the Masters golf tournament with ads
promoting Common Core? These questions are not easily answered.
Along with the federal
government, private philanthropies and private companies have dumped money into
Common Core in a manner unprecedented in American education. Arne Duncan’s appointment as President
Obama’s Secretary of Education marked a new era of opportunity for private
influence on public education, and under his watch public-private partnerships
have flourished.
There are also swinging
personnel doors between the Gates Foundation and the Department of Education,
although that would be illegal if they were professional rather than amateur
lobbyists.
The Common Core revolt is
definitely grassroots whereas Common Core has big money behind it. Bill Gates
gave the National PTA $1 million and funds think tanks that favor Common Core.
And the Gates Foundation money isn’t slowing down. It is currently soliciting
proposals from teachers:
The Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation is accepting proposals from organizations, primarily those that
consider themselves to be networks of teachers, to support implementation of
Common Core State Standards in literacy and mathematics. Through its “Shifting
into High Gear: Accelerating the Common Core Through Teacher Networks”
initiative, the foundation will award grants ranging from $100,000 to $250,000
to organizations working to accelerate implementation of the Common Core across
a robust teacher network. Priority will be given to innovative approaches,
which create scalable solutions that travel across networks quickly and broadly
(FoundationCenter.org, 03-13-13).
The Gates Foundation now wields tremendous influence
in American education. Michael
B. Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that
has received millions in Gates Foundation grant money, told the Puget Sound
Business Journal in 2009, “It is not
unfair to say that the Gates Foundation’s agenda has become the country’s
agenda in education.” Mr. Petrilli wrote at the Fordham website in
April 2013, criticizing the Republican National Committee statement against
Common Core, “Republicans used to stand for standards. We’re confident that
once GOP governors and legislators have a chance to give this language a look,
they will again.” Mr. Petrilli seems to suggest that those who oppose Common
Core are opposed to standards. But for many of Common Core’s opponents, the
opposite is true. The more they learn about the standards and the way they are
being implemented, the less they find to like.
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