Monday -next week could be the day the House votes on the Common Core Bill. Please ask your legislator to Vote NO --to send it to Conference Committee then amendments can be made. I have recommended 7 amendments to HB 3399 in a letter to legislators. Oklahoma needs to have these issues on the table to know and understand where we are and where we are headed in this reform. Here are the 7 Recommendations excerpted from the letter which is found in the comments : 1. Allow Schools to Keep PASS until REAL NEW STANDARDS are delivered to them. 2. Give the revision of our standards a longer period of time than 1 year. A minimal amount of time to produce a good Oklahoma product would be 2 years. 3. Establish a Task Force representing Oklahomans to revise our PASS Standards. One suggestion is to allow each Senator to appoint a parent and a teacher from their Senate district to serve on a task force, not just a representative of PTA which has received Gates money for Common Core or a representative from OEA an affiliate of NEA which also received Gates money and supports Common Core. 4. Stop the Common Core Tests/Assessments from Measured Progress and McGraw Hill. (Measured Progress works with McREL and PARCC according to their own documents. They are both federally funded and are REQUIRED to create Federal Compliant testing and teacher training so teachers can make sure students pass the tests. Their contract is 34.45 million for 5 years, 3 – 8th grade common core assessments. ) (McGraw Hill is contracted for common core aligned EOI testing and 8th grade writing tests. McGraw’s contract was 22 million dollars at one point. I do not know if that is covering next year’s cost or not. We must get these huge multi-million dollar contracts under control and put that money to better use for educating students. 5. Give our teachers and students a test that aligns with PASS next year (2014-15), like we are expecting to have this year, to give time to find “new testing” which is not Common Core aligned. (One suggestion is Riverside publishing company which has been in business 90 years and still produces validated tests that can be compared with other states. They can also produce tests that are “criterion referenced” based on the new standards we produce. 6. Remove “American Diploma Project” and it’s benchmarks from law, found copied in page 31-32 of HB-3399. (American Diploma Project is another program from ACHIEVE.) 7. Remove ACT found on the above named page. The ACT test is now being Common Core aligned according to the company. Representatives from ACT sat on the panel writing Common Core Standards. The Plan and Explore tests from ACT are being dropped and replaced by Aspire which is a Common Core Assessment and the platform designed by Pearson global which is the largest curriculum and assessment producer in the world and is Common Core aligned. This is all according to ACTs documents. The ACT test would not be removed from schools if my recommendations are followed. It would be removed from law which ties us to it and what ever it becomes. The transition of the ACT to Common Core is underway according to their own announcements.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Apr 2014 14:42:18 +0000