July 6, 2012
When I first heard the State of Nevada had opted to combine No Child Left Behind with Common Core, in late 2007 – I knew it was a plan to ‘take over and remake our local school system.’ By the time the Nevada State Board of Education adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in October 2010, I knew I was correct.
Since then I’ve done my best to update this article with new information.
Common Core is an Agenda 21 (U.N.) based curriculum that teaches sustainable development, zero-population philosophies and the dangers of humans impacting the environment. It is designed to teach children what kind of action should be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups. The CCSS are sold as a set of academic standards, or learning goals, for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics that states voluntarily adopt.
In order to adopt a global-type-thinking, an individual must be trained to give up their personal sovereignty and adopt phrases like “for the good of the whole.” A key step is to disregard the whole importance of basic human rights held in the Bill of Rights.
They were supposedly developed by governors and chief state school officers, in consultation with higher education faculty and other stakeholders. CCSS, however is really federally mandated.
The standards outline what students should master in each grade and shape curriculum development at each grade level. The standards establish a clear roadmap of academic expectations, so that students, parents, and teachers can work together toward shared goals.
The standards are ‘clear, concise, and relevant’ to the real world, focusing on the knowledge and skills students will need to succeed in life after high school, in both postsecondary education and a globally competitive workforce. Unfortunately, they aren’t.
The push from the federal government for access to your child’s private information all started long before the stimulus and Common Core, but it is all connected in the same tangled web. The assessments, which will be used to collect the data, are aligned to Common Core.
The Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002, Title II, created the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The IES manages the State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) grants — one source of federal taxpayer dollars. Even before that, the America Competes Act 2000 mandated that several elements of data be collected by all the states.
When researched the ‘Birth and Beyond’ grant applications were actually submitted and processed through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) whose purpose, per the website, is to:”…fulfill a Congressional mandate to collect, collate, analyze, and report complete statistics on the condition of American education; conduct and publish reports; and review and report on education activities internationally.”
The NCES site also contains a link to something called Common Core of Data (CCD): “…(CCD) is a program of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics that annually collects fiscal and non-fiscal data about all public schools, public school districts and state education agencies in the United States. The data are supplied by state education agency officials and include information that describes schools and school districts, including name, address, and phone number; descriptive information about students and staff, including demographics; and fiscal data, including revenues and current expenditures.”
Furthermore the Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) project states this: “…a national collaborative effort to develop voluntary, common data standards for a key set of education data elements to streamline the exchange, comparison, and understanding of data within and across institutions and sectors.”
Under CEDS Frequently Asked Questions is “How is CEDS different from the Common Core State Standards?
“… (CEDS) is a set of commonly agreed upon names, definitions, option sets, and technical specifications for a given selection of data elements. CEDS focuses on the meaning of data stored in longitudinal data systems, and is being developed by a stakeholder group facilitated by (National Center for Education Statistics.) CEDS will support systemic education reform efforts by making it possible for states to collect the data they need to fully understand their progress on successfully adopting the Common Core State Standards or any other standards.”
The NCES, adds: “…the consolidated hub of a comprehensive statewide longitudinal data system—comprising individual student, faculty and other relevant data from birth to high school, college, and career – that interfaces with an integrated statewide online portal …”
This started back in 2005 when the organization, ‘Achieve’ launched the American Diploma Project (ADP) Network. Through the ADP Network governors, state education officials, postsecondary leaders and business executives work together to improve postsecondary preparation by aligning high school standards, graduation requirements and assessment and accountability systems with the demands of college and careers.
To close the expectations gap, ADP Network says states have committed to the following four actions: align high school standards and assessments with the knowledge and skills required for the demands of college and careers; establish graduation requirements that require all high school graduates to complete a college- and career-ready curriculum so that earning a diploma assures a student is prepared for postsecondary education; develop statewide high school assessment systems anchored to college — and career- ready expectations; and create comprehensive accountability and reporting systems that promote college and career readiness for all students.
From Achieves 2006 report ‘Closing the Expectations Gap’: “To help states put stronger educational data systems in place, 10 national organizations including Achieve, NGA, the Council of Chief State School Officers, State Higher Education Executives Organization and the National Center for Educational Accountability teamed up to launch the Data Quality Campaign. The campaign is a collaborative effort to encourage state policy-makers to improve the collection, availability and use of high-quality education data from prekindergarten through the postsecondary level and to provide tools and resources that will assist them.”
As for the Data Quality Campaign, it aims is to implement state longitudinal data systems, which has been described as a “womb-to-workplace” data collection system . This creates and collects information in these 12 areas:
1. An unique identifier for every student that does not permit a student to be individually identified (except as permitted by federal and state law);
2. The school enrollment history, demographic characteristics, and program participation record of every student;
3. Information on when a student enrolls, transfers, drops out, or graduates from a school;
4. Students scores on tests required by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act;
5. Information on students who are not tested, by grade and subject;
6. Students scores on tests measuring whether they’re ready for college;
7. A way to identify teachers and to match teachers to their students;
8. Information from students’ transcripts, specifically courses taken and grades earned;
9. Data on students’ success in college, including whether they enrolled in remedial courses;
10. Data on whether K-12 students are prepared to succeed in college;
11. A system of auditing data for quality, validity, and reliability; and
12. The ability to share data from preschool through postsecondary education data systems.
In 2010, Nevada joined the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), a state-led consortium working to develop next-generation assessments that accurately measure student progress toward college- and career-readiness. Smarter Balanced is one of two multistate consortia awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Education in 2010 to develop an assessment system aligned to the CCSS by the 2014-15 school years.
The second multistate consortia (a fancy word for a partnership) are the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).
In 2012, Nevada received the National Governors Association (NGA) CCSS Postsecondary Collaborative Grant to identify steps necessary for a seamless transition from K-12 into college and careers. Areas of examination under the grant include transition courses and options to help high school seniors who do not meet college-readiness benchmarks under the new assessments based on the CCSS; communication strategies to explain to students, parents, policymakers, and other stakeholders the anticipated impact of the more rigorous CCSS and related assessments; and NSHE faculty preparation to understand the value and positive, tangible impact of the CCSS in educating future Nevada System of Higher Education students.
In March 2013, the Board of Regents adopted a new K-12 Alignment policy under Title 4, Chapter 16, Section 2 of the Handbook authorizing institutions to enter into agreements with school districts to provide college readiness programs, including remedial and 100-level courses at a registration fee appropriate to cover at least the costs of the program, including but not limited to the instructor’s salary, supplies and equipment needed, and appropriate overhead costs. The registration fee must be approved by the President.
Institutions must report annually to the Board on the programs offered, the number of high school students served, and the approved registration fees charged.
At the end of May 2013, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium released sets of example test questions for grades 3–8 and 11 in both English language arts/literacy and mathematics. The Practice Tests are freely available on the SBAC website.
In June 2013, Governor Brian Sandoval created the Common Core State Standards Steering Committee co-chaired by the Chancellor of NSHE and the Nevada Superintendent for Public Instruction, through Executive Order #2013-06.
In July 2013, the Board of Regents adopted a resolution expressing support for and encouraging long-term commitment by the State of Nevada in the adoption and implementation of the CCSS.
The CCSS are supposedly anchored in expectations for college readiness. Higher Education will benefit as students graduate from high school better prepared for college and need less remediation.
College students who do not need remediation are also more likely to earn a degree or finish a certification program and at lower costs to themselves and their institutions, which will mean resources for other areas. Higher education faculty will also be able to spend more time going deeper in to complex material with their students.
NSHE is a key partner in the successful implementation of the CCSS in Nevada and is actively participating in many related efforts:
Over the years, individual NSHE institutions have often worked with local school districts in their service areas on various educational issues important to K-12 and postsecondary students. The partnership between UNR, TMCC, and the WCSD to offer college-prep courses in local high schools was highlighted at the June 2013, Board of Regents meeting.
According to Corestandards.org, the CCSS are:
1) Research and evidence based
2) Clear, understandable, and consistent
3) Aligned with college and career expectations
4) Based on rigorous content and the application of knowledge through higher-order thinking skills
5) Built upon the strengths and lessons of current state standards
6) Informed by other top-performing countries to prepare all students for success in our global economy and society
Standards shouldn’t be attached to school subjects, but to the qualities of mind it’s hoped the study of school subjects promotes. Subjects are mere tools, just as scalpels, acetylene torches, and transits are tools. Surgeons, welders, surveyors — and teachers — should be held accountable for the quality of what they produce, not how they produce it.
The world is changing and the future is indiscernible. Clinging to a static strategy in a dynamic world may be comfortable, even comforting, but it’s a Titanic-deck-chair
The Common Core Standards assume that what kids need to know is covered by one or another of the traditional core subjects. In fact, the unexplored intellectual terrain lying between and beyond those familiar fields of study is vast, expands by the hour, and will go in directions no one can predict.
So much orchestrated attention is being showered on the Common Core Standards, the main reason for poor student performance is being ignored—a level of childhood poverty the consequences of which no amount of schooling can effectively counter.
Common Core kills innovation. When it’s the only game in town, it’s the only game in town.
The CCSS are a set-up for national standardized tests, tests that can’t evaluate complex thought, can’t avoid cultural bias, can’t measure non-verbal learning, and can’t predict anything of consequence (and wastes money).
The word “standards” gets an approving nod from the public and from most educators because it means “performance that meets a standard.” However, the word also means “like everybody else,” and standardizing minds is what the Standards try to do.
CCSS fans sell the first meaning; the Standards deliver the second meaning. Standardized minds are about as far out of sync with deep-seated American values as it’s possible to get. The standards stated aim — “success in college and careers”— is at best pedestrian, at worst an affront. The young should be exploring the potentials of humanness.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been defending the Common Core, which has been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia and is reportedly designed to raise student achievement.
He got himself in trouble in 2013 for remarks made about “white suburban moms” becoming critics because the new, harder exams have shown suddenly that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.” But the opposition has grown, from the left, the right and the middle, expressing different concerns about the Core and its implementation.
And though Duncan has said repeatedly that Common Core is a state-led, voluntary initiative, the Obama administration has supported the standards, and critics on the right charge that the federal government has used it to develop a national curriculum. Critics on the left and the middle have argued that the standards are not based on substantive research, which they ignore what is known about early childhood development and/or that reformers have rushed implementation before teachers have had time to absorb them and create materials to teach them.
One prominent Core supporter, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, blasted the implementation, saying, “You think the Obamacare implementation is bad? The implementation of the Common Core is far worse.”
They arrived at a time when American public education and its teachers were and remain under attack. Never have public schools been as subject to upheaval, assault, and chaos as they are today.
Unlike modern corporations, which extol creative disruption, schools need stability, not constant turnover and change. Yet for the past dozen years, ill-advised federal and state policies have rained down on students, teachers, principals, and schools.
George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top (R2T) have combined to impose a punitive regime of standardized testing on the schools. NCLB was passed by Congress in 2001 and signed into law in 2002.
NCLB law required schools to test every child in grades 3-8 every year; by 2014, said the law, every child must be “proficient” or schools would face escalating sanctions.
The ultimate sanction for failure to raise test scores was firing the staff and closing the school.
Because the stakes were so high, NCLB encouraged teachers to teach to the test. In many schools, the curriculum was narrowed; the only subjects that mattered were reading and mathematics.
What was not tested—the arts, history, civics, literature, geography, science, physical education—didn’t count. Some states, like New York, side-stepped the system by dropping the passing mark each year, giving the impression that its students were making phenomenal progress when they were not.
Some districts, like Atlanta, El Paso, and the District of Columbia, were caught up in cheating scandals. In response to this relentless pressure, test scores rose, but not as much as they had before the adoption of NCLB.
Then along came the Obama administration, with its signature program called R2T. In response to the economic crisis of 2008, Congress gave the U.S. Department of Education $5 billion to promote “reform.”
If states wanted any part of that money, they had to agree to certain conditions. They had to agree to evaluate teachers to a significant degree by the rise or fall of their students’ test scores; they had to agree to increase the number of privately managed charter schools; they had to agree to adopt “college and career ready standards,” which were understood to be the not-yet-finished Common Core standards; they had to agree to “turnaround” low-performing schools by such tactics as firing the principal and part or all of the school staff; and they had to agree to collect unprecedented amounts of personally identifiable information about every student and store it in a data warehouse.
It became an article of faith in Washington and in state capitols, with the help of propagandistic films like “Waiting for Superman,” that if students had low scores, it must be the fault of bad teachers. Poverty, we heard again and again from people like Bill Gates, Joel Klein, and Michelle Rhee, was just an excuse for bad teachers, who should be fired without delay or due process.
These two federal programs, which both rely heavily on standardized testing, has produced a massive demoralization of educators; an unprecedented exodus of experienced educators, who were replaced in many districts by young, inexperienced, low-wage teachers; the closure of many public schools, especially in poor and minority districts; the opening of thousands of privately managed charters; an increase in low-quality for-profit charter schools and low-quality online charter schools; a widespread attack on teachers’ due process rights and collective bargaining rights; the near-collapse of public education in urban districts like Detroit and Philadelphia, as public schools are replaced by privately managed charter schools; a burgeoning educational-industrial complex of testing corporations, charter chains, and technology companies that view public education as an emerging market. Hedge funds, entrepreneurs, and real estate investment corporations invest enthusiastically in this emerging market, encouraged by federal tax credits, lavish fees, and the prospect of huge profits from taxpayer dollars.
Celebrities, tennis stars, basketball stars, and football stars are opening their own name-brand schools with public dollars, even though they know nothing about education.
No other nation in the world has inflicted so many changes or imposed so many mandates on its teachers and public schools as we have in the past dozen years. No other nation tests every student every year as we do.
Our students are the most over-tested in the world. No other nation—at least no high-performing nation—judges the quality of teachers by the test scores of their students.
Most researchers agree that this methodology is fundamentally flawed, that it is inaccurate, unreliable, and unstable, that the highest ratings will go to teachers with the most affluent students and the lowest ratings will go to teachers of English learners, teachers of students with disabilities, and teachers in high-poverty schools. Nonetheless, the U.S. Department of Education wants every state and every district to do it.
Because of these federal programs, our schools have become obsessed with standardized testing, and have turned over to the testing corporations the responsibility for rating, ranking, and labeling our students, our teachers, and our schools.
The Pearson Corporation has become the ultimate arbiter of the fate of students, teachers, and schools. This is the policy context in which the CCSS were developed.
Five years ago, when they were written, major corporations, major foundations, and the key policymakers at the Department of Education agreed that public education was a disaster and that the only salvation for it was a combination of school choice—including privately managed charters and vouchers– national standards, and a weakening or elimination of such protections as collective bargaining, tenure, and seniority. At the same time, the political and philanthropic leaders maintained a passionate faith in the value of standardized tests and the data that they produced as measures of quality and as ultimate, definitive judgments on people and on schools.
The agenda of both Republicans and Democrats converged around the traditional Republican agenda of standards, choice, and accountability. This convergence has nothing to do with improving education or creating equality of opportunity but everything to do with cutting costs, standardizing education, shifting the delivery of education from high-cost teachers to low-cost technology, reducing the number of teachers, and eliminating unions and pensions.
The CCSS were written in 2009 under the aegis of several D.C.-based organizations: the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve. The development process was led behind closed doors by a small organization called Student Achievement Partners, headed by David Coleman.
The writing group of 27 contained few educators, but a significant number of representatives of the testing industry. From the outset, the Common Core standards were marked by the absence of public participation, transparency, or educator participation.
The U.S. Department of Education is legally prohibited from exercising any influence or control over curriculum or instruction in the schools, so it could not contribute any funding to the expensive task of creating national standards. The Gates Foundation stepped in and assumed that responsibility.
It gave millions to the National Governors Association, to the Council of Chief School Officers, to Achieve and to Student Achievement Partners.
Once the standards were written, Gates gave millions more to almost every think tank and education advocacy group in Washington to evaluate the standards—even to some that had no experience evaluating standards—and to promote and help to implement the standards. Even the two major teachers’ unions accepted millions of dollars to help advance the Common Core standards.
Altogether, the Gates Foundation has expended nearly $200 million to pay for the development, evaluation, implementation, and promotion of the Common Core standards. And the money tap is still open, with millions more awarded this past fall to promote the Common Core standards.
Some states—like Kentucky–adopted the CCSS sight unseen. Some—like Texas—refused to adopt them sight unseen.
Some—like Massachusetts—adopted them even though their own standards were demonstrably better and had been proven over time.
The advocates of the standards saw them as a way to raise test scores by making sure that students everywhere in every grade were taught using the same standards. They believed that common standards would automatically guarantee equity.
Some spoke of the CCSS as a civil rights issue. They emphasized that the standards would be far more rigorous than most state standards and they predicted that students would improve their academic performance in response to raising the bar.
Integral to the Common Core was the expectation that they would be tested on computers using online standardized exams. As Secretary Duncan’s chief of staff wrote at the time, the Common Core was intended to create a national market for book publishers, technology companies, testing corporations, and other vendors.
What the advocates ignored is that test scores are heavily influenced by socioeconomic status. Standardized tests are normed on a bell curve.
To expect tougher standards and a renewed emphasis on standardized testing to reduce poverty and inequality is to expect what never was and never will be.
The upper half of the curve has an abundance of those who grew up in favorable circumstances, with educated parents, books in the home, regular medical care, and well-resourced schools. Those who dominate the bottom half of the bell curve are the kids who lack those advantages, whose parents lack basic economic security, whose schools are overcrowded and under-resourced.
Who supported the standards?
Secretary Duncan has been their loudest cheerleader. Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and former DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee urged their rapid adoption. Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice chaired a commission for the Council on Foreign Relations, which concluded that the Common Core standards were needed to protect national security.
Major corporations purchased full-page ads in the New York Times and other newspapers to promote the Common Core. ExxonMobil is especially vociferous in advocating for Common Core, taking out advertisements on television and other news media saying that the standards are needed to prepare our workforce for global competition.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed the standards, saying they were necessary to prepare workers for the global marketplace. The Business Roundtable stated that its number one priority is the full adoption and implementation of the Common Core standards.
All of this excitement was generated despite the fact that no one knows whether the Common Core will fulfill any of these promises. It will take 12 years whether we know what its effects are.
The Obama administration awarded $350 million to two groups to create tests for the Common Core standards. The testing consortia jointly decided to use a very high passing mark, which is known as a “cut score.”
The Common Core testing consortia decided that the passing mark on their tests would be aligned with the proficient level on the federal tests called NAEP. This is a level typically reached by about 35-40% of students.
Massachusetts is the only state in which as many as 50% ever reached the NAEP proficient level. The testing consortia set the bar so high that most students were sure to fail, and they did.
In New York state, which gave the Common Core tests last spring, only 30% of students across the state passed the tests.
Only 3% of English language learners passed. Only 5% of students with disabilities passed. Fewer than 20% of African American and Hispanic students passed.
By the time the results were reported in August, the students did not have the same teachers; the teachers saw the scores, but did not get any item analysis. They could not use the test results for diagnostic purposes, to help students.
Their only value was to rank students.
When New York state education officials held public hearings — parents showed up en masse to complain about the testing. Secretary Duncan dismissed them as “white suburban moms” who were disappointed to learn that their child was not as brilliant as they thought and their public school was not as good as they thought.
But he was wrong: the parents were outraged not because they thought their children were brilliant but because they did not believe that their children were failures. What, exactly, is the point of crushing the hearts and minds of young children by setting a standard so high that 70% are certain to fail?
The financial cost of implementing Common Core has barely been mentioned in the national debates. All Common Core testing will be done online.
This is a bonanza for the tech industry and other vendors.
Every school district must buy new computers, new teaching materials, and new bandwidth for the testing. At a time when school budgets have been cut in most states and many thousands of teachers have been laid off, school districts across the nation will spend billions to pay for Common Core testing.
Los Angeles alone committed to spend $1 billion on iPads for the tests; the money is being taken from a bond issue approved by voters for construction and repair of school facilities. Meanwhile, the district has cut teachers of the arts, class size has increased, and necessary repairs are deferred because the money will be spent on iPads.
The iPads will be obsolete in a year or two, and the Pearson content loaded onto the iPads has only a three-year license. The cost of implementing the Common Core and the new tests is likely to run into the billions at a time of deep budget cuts.
Other controversies involve the standards themselves.
Early childhood educators are nearly unanimous in saying that no one who wrote the standards had any expertise in the education of very young children. More than 500 early childhood educators signed a joint statement complaining that the standards were developmentally inappropriate for children in the early grades.
The standards, they said, emphasize academic skills and leave inadequate time for imaginative play. They also objected to the likelihood that young children would be subjected to standardized testing.
And yet proponents of the Common Core insist that children as young as 5 or 6 or 7 should be on track to be college-and-career ready, even though children this age are not likely to think about college, and most think of careers as cowboys, astronauts, or firefighters.
There has also been heated argument about the standards’ insistence that reading must be divided equally in the elementary grades between fiction and informational text, and divided 70-30 in favor of informational text in high school.
Where did the writers of the standards get these percentages?
They relied on the federal the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) –which uses these percentages as instructions to test developers. NAEP never intended that these numbers would be converted into instructional mandates for teachers.
This idea that informational text should take up half the students’ reading time in the early grades and 70% in high school led to outlandish claims that teachers would no longer be allowed to teach whole novels. Somewhat hysterical articles asserted that the classics would be banned while students were required to read government documents.
The standards contain no such demands.
Defenders of the Common Core standards said that the percentages were misunderstood. They said they referred to the entire curriculum—math, science, and history, not just English.
But since teachers in math, science, and history are not known for assigning fiction, why was this even mentioned in the standards? Which administrator will be responsible for policing whether precisely 70% of the reading in senior year is devoted to informational text and who will keep track?
The fact is that the CCSS should never have set forth any percentages at all. If they really did not mean to impose numerical mandates on English teachers, they set off a firestorm of criticism for no good reason.
Other nations have national standards, and I don’t know of any that tell teachers how much time to devote to fiction and how much time to devote to informational text.
Another problem presented by the CCSS is that there is no one in charge of fixing them. If teachers find legitimate problems and seek remedies, there is no one to turn to.
If the demands for students in kindergarten and first grade are developmentally inappropriate, no one can make changes. The original writing committee no longer exists.
No organization or agency has the authority to revise the standards. The standards might as well be written in stone.
This makes no sense.
Furthermore, what happens to the children who fail? Will they be held back a grade?
Will they be held back again and again? If most children fail, as they did in New York, what will happen to them and how will they catch up?
The advocates of the standards insist that low-scoring students will become high-scoring students if the tests are rigorous, but what if they are wrong? What if the failure rate remains staggeringly high as it is now?
What if it improves marginally as students become accustomed to the material, and the failure rate drops from 70% to 50%? What will we do with the 50% who can’t jump over the bar?
Teachers across the country will be fired if the scores of their pupils do not go up. This is nuts.
We have a national policy that is a theory based on an assumption grounded in hope. And it might be wrong, with disastrous consequences for real children and real teachers.
In some states, teachers say that the lessons are scripted and deprive them of their professional autonomy, the autonomy they need to tailor their lessons to the needs of the students in front of them. Behind the standards lies a blind faith in standardization of tests and curriculum, and perhaps, of children as well.
Yet we know that even in states with strong standards, like Massachusetts and California, there are wide variations in test scores.
Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution predicted that the Common Core standards were likely to make little, if any, difference. No matter how high and uniform their standards, there are variations in academic achievement within states, there are variations within districts, there are variations within every school.
Teachers must have the flexibility to tailor standards to meet the students in their classrooms, the students who can’t read English, the students who are two grade levels behind, the students who are homeless, the students who just don’t get it and just don’t care, the students who frequently miss class. Standards alone cannot produce a miraculous transformation.
The numerical demands for 50-50 or 70-30 literature vs. informational text should be eliminated. They serve no useful purpose and they have no justification.
In every state, teachers should work together to figure out how the standards can be improved. Professional associations like the National Council for the Teaching of English and the National Council for the Teaching of Mathematics should participate in a process by which the standards are regularly reviewed, revised, and updated by classroom teachers and scholars to respond to genuine problems in the field.
The standards should be decoupled from standardized testing, especially online standardized testing. Most objections to the standards are caused by the testing.
The tests are too long, and many students give up; the passing marks on the tests were set so high as to create failure. Yet the test scores will be used to rate students, teachers, and schools.
The standardized testing should become optional, include authentic writing assignments that are judged by humans, not by computers and it needs oversight by professional scholars and teachers. In the present climate, the standards and testing will become the driving force behind the creation of a test-based meritocracy.
With David Coleman in charge of the College Board, the SAT will be aligned with the Common Core; so will the ACT. Both testing organizations were well represented in the writing of the standards; representatives of these two organizations comprised 12 of the 27 members of the original writing committee.
The tests are a linchpin of the federal effort to commit K-12 education to the new world of Big Data. The tests are the necessary ingredient to standardize teaching, curriculum, instruction, and schooling.
Only those who pass these rigorous tests will get a high school diploma. Only those with high scores on these rigorous tests will be able to go to college and no one has come up with a plan for the 50% or more who never get a high school diploma.
In 1958 Michael Young’s book The Rise of the Meritocracy, was published and it has gone through many editions since. A decade ago, Young added a new introduction in which he warned that a meritocracy could be sad and fragile.
He wrote: “If the rich and powerful were encouraged by the general culture to believe that they fully deserved all they had, how arrogant they could become, and if they were convinced it was all for the common good, how ruthless in pursuing their own advantage. Power corrupts, and therefore one of the secrets of a good society is that power should always be open to criticism. A good society should provide sinew for revolt as well as for power.
But authority cannot be humbled unless ordinary people, however much they have been rejected by the educational system, have the confidence to assert themselves against the mighty. If they think themselves inferior, if they think they deserve on merit to have less worldly goods and less worldly power than a select minority, they can be damaged in their own self-esteem, and generally demoralized.
Even if it could be demonstrated that ordinary people had less native ability than those selected for high position, that would not mean that they deserved to get less. Being a member of the “lucky sperm club” confers no moral right or advantage. What one is born with, or without, is not of one’s own doing.”
We must then curb the misuse of the Common Core standards: Those who like them should use them, but they should be revised continually to adjust to reality. Stop the testing. Stop the rating and ranking. Do not use them to give privilege to those who pass them or to deny the diploma necessary for a decent life. Remove the high-stakes that policymakers intend to attach to them. Use them to enrich instruction, but not to standardize it.
We cannot have a decent democracy unless we begin with the supposition that every human life is of equal value. Our society already has far too much inequality of wealth and income. We should do nothing to stigmatize those who already get the least of society’s advantages. We should bend our efforts to change our society so that each and every one of us has the opportunity to learn, the resources needed to learn, and the chance to have a good and decent life, regardless of one’s test scores.
Federal Common Core standards are already being tested in Washoe and Clark counties. But a state-wide implementation plan set for next school year is already raising plenty of questions.
“Are these the right standards? There’s some issues with that, they aren’t tested,” said Assemblyman Randy Kirner.
Advocates of the new education system said it is a transition for the next generation of students.
“Standards that are now asking students to now reach a deeper level of knowledge than they may have in the past,” said Nevada Department of Education Board Member Steve Canavero.
Proficiency exams for grades 10-12 are being phased out in favor of end of course exams. New career and college readiness assessments are also set to enter the classroom, all by the 2014-2015 school year.
“Many other states are stopping or slowing this and were not doing anything except moving full steam ahead,” said John Appolito from Stop Common Core Nevada.
Opponents of the change said the system is moving into Nevada at a rapid rate.
“I’d like to see them slow things down, look at the data collection, look at the SBAC testing and lok at Common Core all together,” added Appolito.
Assemblyman Kirner said Common Core tests inside the Washoe County School District are a prime example of successful implementation. These meetings come a year before the 2015 legislative session, where lawmakers have the ability to opt out of the federal program.
“I’m not quite sure where we’ll end up going on the standards and curriculum and that kind of stuff,” said Kirner. “I suspect there will be conversations about it, but it’s hard to say where that would go.”
“I certainly know there may need to be some clean up that we would like to do to ensure that we get it right and that were thoughtful in our approach,” added Canavero.
It is going to be a big change for thousands of teachers and students in Washoe County and across the state.
“What we are trying to impress upon teachers right now is what will have to shift instructionally in order to meet these new outcomes,” WCSD Common Core teacher Aaron Grossman said.
Grossman is one of the teachers assigned to train other teachers to accommodate the new standards. The new method requires teachers to boost the level of difficulty, ask their students to do closer readings of the text, and come up with their own answers and theories through discussion with their peers.
If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is the same basic method that instructors use– in college.
“If you think about your own college experience,” Grossman said, “no college professor ever said to you, ‘I am going to give you a lot of background, let’s preview it, define a purpose, and give you some skills.’ Instead, they said, ‘Take this home and read it.'”
The idea is to encourage more independent thinking among students and give them more ownership over the material.
It is a result that Brown Elementary School teacher Corinn Cathcart has seen first-hand with her fourth graders. Common Core was implemented for K-8 in 2011.
So, she gave it a try last school year. She gave her fourth graders a poem called “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus. Before Common Core, this level of material was given to eighth graders.
“Once they start getting into it,” Cathcart said, “They really start to feed off of each other and they discover for themselves what’s going on in the text as opposed to me telling them.”
“Common Core will increase the rigor, and therefore the expectations,” WCSD Chief Academic Officer Scott Bailey said. “What we’ve found, history would dictate, is that when you raise that bar, the students will rise to the occasion.”
Cathcart added that for the students, it is not just about learning the material. It is about learning how to learn, so that when they graduate, they can problem-solve in any situation.
“[It’s about] being able to be given something, any type of text, whether it’s directions, whether it’s anything, and being able to take it apart and figure it out,” Cathcart said. “They need to be held to a higher expectation in order to be successful.”
On the state level, boosting our education system is something Nevada needs to be successful. The Nevada Department of Education said that implementing the Common Core Standards will make the Silver State more appealing to parents and businesses.
“I think it’s really exciting,” NDOE Assistant Director Cindy Sharp said. “I think it’s going to be really good for Nevada.”
Common Core will have its own method of testing for progress, but it isn’t replacing No Child Left Behind. Sharp said both systems will be in place together, but adding Common Core will allow the state to monitor student growth, instead of just proficiency.
NDOE plans to have Common Core fully implemented at all levels by 2015.
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