What is Common Core?
Common Core is the
conclusion of many years of the expansion of nationwide controls over
educational issues, which should for all intent, should remain at the local
level. Twenty years ago, the proponents of these standards presented a proposal
that was so progressive and politically correct that the US Senate voted 99 -1
for a bill (SR 66) that prevented its enactment. The supporters learned quickly
that for them to get any new criteria enacted, they would need to impose these
standards swiftly and silently and to start with less controversial
subjects. The current Common Core standards are limited to English and
Math, but will expand to include all subjects in coming years.
The beginnings of Common
Core can be traced to the 2009 Stimulus bill which gave $4.35 billion to the
federal Department of Education which then created the “Race to the Top”
competition between states. In order to qualify for funding, the states needed to
adopt Common Core sight unseen. An added incentive to adoption of CCS was that
participating states would be exempted from many of the more onerous provisions
of George Bush’s “No child left behind” program.
These Common Core standards
have been very quietly accepted by 45 states, but exposure of the consequences
of this intrusion into local and state control of education has caused a
groundswell of opposition to adoption of the bill. The opposition has created
an unusual alliance of school boards, school choice proponents, teachers’
unions and grass roots freedom groups. Opposition to Common Core is developing
in many of the states already planning to implement CCS including Utah, California, Indiana, and Missouri
to name a few.
A rising number of teachers, parents and taxpayers are expressing
concerns about New York’s
adoption of the Common Core Initiative (CCI), its accompanying federal
standards for states (CCSS) Why?
New York did not seek out CCI; the initiative was
presented as an eligibility enhancement (1) by the U.S. Department of
Education in it’s The Race to the Top Grant. New York agreed to join the CCI in 2009, the
standards had not yet been written. New York was rewarded 700 Million from the
2009 Stimulus for RTTT
There has been no cost analysis, legal analysis, legislative input or public input regarding CCI. Implementation of CCI has already begun in New York schools; full implementation of the initiative and its tests will be completed in the 2014-2015 school year. An independent think tank in Massachusetts states that the cost over the first 7 years to states will be 16 billion dollars (2), or over 200 million per state, on top of regular educational needs. The Congressional Budget Office was not asked to do a cost analysis because asking would have pointed out that this was not a state-led initiative, contrary to the claims of its proponents. States’ commitments to CCI require billions of dollars in implementation and maintenance spending, money that competes with already-stretched educational budgets.
The U.S. Department of
Education (through the America COMPETES Act, the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act, and the Race to the Top competition) has required the
states to develop massive databases about school children.
The Common Core initiative
represents an overreach of federal power into personal privacy as well as into
state educational autonomy. There will be personal student information
collected via the centralized testing-data collection, accessible to the
Executive Branch.
Both of the CCI’s testing
arms (SBAC and PARCC) must coordinate tests and share information “across
consortia” as well as giving the U.S. Department of Education phone responses,
written status updates and access to information “on an ongoing basis.” Data
will be triangulated with control, oversight and centralization by the
Executive Branch (U.S. Dept. of Education). “Cooperative Agreement between the U.S. DOE and the SBAC (3)”
The Department of Education
has eviscerated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) by
issuing new regulations that allows non-consensual tracking and
sharing of this personal data with other federal agencies, with government
agencies in other states, and with private entities.
New
York has ceded her voice
and educational sovereignty because New
York’s top educational leaders are persuaded that
having standards and testing in common with other states matters more than
holding onto the state’s right to raise standards sky-high. To New York education
leaders, the right to soar seems a freedom not worth fighting for, and
maintaining state educational sovereignty is not a priority.
The effort to nationalize
and centralize education results in severe loss of state control of education
and pushes states into a minimalist, common set of standards. Dr.
Sandra Stotsky, an official member of the CCSS Validation Committee, refused to
sign off on the adequacy of the standards and testified that “Common Core has
yet to provide a solid evidentiary base for its minimalist conceptualization of
college readiness–and for equating college readiness with career readiness.
Moreover…it had no evidence on both issues.”
The Common Core standards are experimental, expensive,
controversial, and have not been piloted (4).
Common Core standards are
not considered among the best standards in the nation, and there are clearly superior standards (5).
Additionally, the CCI robs states of the sovereign right to raise state
standards in the future. There’s no provision for amending the CCSS federal
standards, were we to choose to still remain bound by them.
The Common Core English
standards reduce the study of literature in favor of informational texts designed
to train children in a school-to-work agenda. The unsophisticated composition
of those selected to write the Common Core Standards and the lack of
transparency about the standards-writing process also raises concerns.
CCSS states a goal to
promote “career and college ready standards,” a euphemism for “school-to-work”
programs, diluting individual choice by directing children where to go and what
to learn. They make no distinction between 2-year, 4-year or vocational
standards.
Common Core
has not proven to be state-led nor strictly voluntary (6); the U.S.
Department of Education Secretary rages against states that reject the Common
Core Initiative. When South Carolina Governor Haley backed away from the
“voluntary” CCSS, she drew a sharp response from Arne Duncan (7), the federal Secretary
of Education. Duncan also publicly
insulted all Texas students on television,
saying “I feel very badly for Texas
school children,” following Texas Governor Perry’s refusal to join the CC
initiative. (Yet Texas
math standards are higher than Common Core standards.) Messages in public
letters from Duncan to New York leaders conflict with multiple,
legally binding documents signed by his team at the U.S. Department of
Education.
The Common Core Initiative,
far from being state-designed, is the product of the U.S. Department of
Education funding and directing special interest groups (NGA, CCSSO, NCEE,
Achieve, Inc., WestEd, and others) via federal grants.
The Common Core Initiative
violates fundamental laws that protect states’ independence. The Federal
Government’s creation of national curricular materials, through contractors,
and its control and oversight of testing and data collection, and its tests
written to federal, nationalized standards, are in violation of three existing laws (8): NCLB, the
Department of Education Organization Act, and the General Education Provisions
Act; States have a responsibility to protect the balance of powers granted in
the Constitution.
Transparency and public
debate about Common Core are lacking. New York educational leaders have a
responsibility to encourage public discussion and lively debate about Common
Core, because the initiative will impact children, taxpayers and teachers for a
long time to come.
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