COMMON CORE 101. Why the anger beyond the junk we see our kids learning? Let me try to answer a few basic questions that I get often and clarify a few things for you. 1. Clarification: Common Core State Standards are otherwise known as CCSS. THOSE are just standards. However, they are the vehicle that will usher in radical changes in our education system in Missouri. There is a reason for that and it is due to our federal governments generous (sarcasm) donations of grant money and stimulus funds. Let me show you why the Common Core really has nothing to do with our kids and their futures and EVERYTHING to do with the control the Feds want over education in our local districts and how they have accomplished that through this Common Core Initiative. The INITIATIVE looks like this: The choice for Missouri to sign on to Common Core was never state led as you have been told over and over again. Governor Jay Nixon UNILATERALLY signed us on to the standards in June of 2009. The standards were not even written and released for ANYONE from Missouri to even review in draft form until March of 2010. In FACT, a group called Achieve, Inc wrote the standards. It was a group of 24 individuals with NO K-12 teaching experience. Those standards were then released to work groups for comment. They were also released to experts in the field such as Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram to validate as members of a validation committee chosen by Achieve, Inc.. Five members of the validation committee refused to validate the standards because they said the CCSS would effectively put American children 2 years behind their international counter parts in Math by 9th grade, and not get kids ready for any 4 year university. Their recommendations were ignored, and their names scrubbed from the validation committee when they refused to endorse the standards. The THOUSANDS of negative opinions/comments from experts about the standards were ignored. A couple of the most important were that of groups such as the American National Standards Institute and the Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals. The American National Standards Institute rejected the Common Core saying this: The Common Core standards cannot be considered standards when judged by the ANSI requirements. According to ANSI, the process of setting standards must be transparent, must involve all interested parties, must not be dominated by a single interest, and must include a process for appeal and revision. Read more about that here: huffingtonpost/di…/common-core_b_5016877.html Additionally, after reviewing the standards there was a statement released by the nations leading early childhood experts expressing grave concerns about how developmentally inappropriate the standards were for young learners. The Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative was signed by educators, pediatricians, developmental psychologists, and researchers, including many of the most prominent members of those fields. As the nations most acclaimed experts in their fields, you will find it interesting that after submitting their findings of the standards, even their recommendations were ignored. Read more about their opinion of the Common Core Standards here:washingtonpost/…/a-tough-critique-of-common…/ Learn more about Achieve, Inc. here:whatiscommoncore.wordpress/…/what-is-achieve-in…/ Learn more about why two of the Countrys most acclaimed standards writers, Dr. Stotsky and Dr. Milgram, did not endorse the Common Core Standards here: https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress/t…/dr-sandra-stotsky/ The reason Missouri signed on to the standards was because Jay Nixon wanted HIS share of stimulus for his coffers. In order for ALL states to get stimulus they had to agree to something called the four assurances in education. This meant that states had to promise to reform education in their states in FOUR areas in order to receive their share of stimulus. The Four Assurances look like this: 1. Adopt a federally approved set of standards (Our agreement to do this is documented in our application to compete for Race To The Top funds in that Memorandum of Understanding). We also had to do this in order to get our NCLB Waiver. A requirement for the ESEA Waiver, otherwise known as NCLB Waiver, was to choose a set of federally approved standards. Missouri had already signed on to the MOU to compete for RTTT and chosen the federally approved Common Core State Standards by the time we submitted our NCLB Waiver request. (Quick fact to know: Memorandums of Understanding…Cooperative Agreements…Memorandums of Agreements are all CONTRACTS in exchange for grant money usually with a governmental agency, but not always. This means states and local districts have to carry out very specific functions based on the contracts signed in exchange for the money. ) 2. Teacher evaluations tied to standardized tests as a result of the NCLB Waiver. (We did this through our application request for the NCLB waiver). * see NCLB Waiver below. NOTE: Teacher evals as tied to the standardized tests have not began in Missouri ….yet. This will begin in 2015-16 school year. 3. Requirement of data collection on students through the SLDS (State Longitudinal Data Systems) also known as MOSIS in our school systems in Missouri. (This language is explicit in the SLDS grant application for Missouri in the amount of almost $9 million). *see the SLDS grant application below. 4. The turn around of low performing schools …this references the accreditation tool in Missouri called MSIP (Missouri School Improvement Program). (This commitment is also spelled out in the NCLB Waiver). Bottom line is simply this…in order to get a waiver from the dreaded, and much hated, NCLB (No Child Left Behind) mandate we had to show proof that we were pursuing the four assurances individually through the grant applications and waiver application process. Those applications were with the federal government signed by one Commissioner of Ed, Chris Nicastro….or our Governor, Jay Nixon. This was not a state led decision in any way. Remember that if you read the ESEA Waiver application (otherwise known as NCLB) you will see that Commissioner Nicastro, IN HER OWN WORDS, acknowledges that Missouri had standards ranked in the top THREE in the country. We did not abandon Missouris EXCELLENT and nationally acknowledged standards because they were bad….Governor Jay Nixon did it for the stimulus money. Read more about the NCLB otherwise known as ESEA waiver here:dese.mo.gov/…/qs-esea-waiver-mo-flexibility-request.… Read about how Arne Duncan defines the four assurances in a speech he gave in 2010 here: www2.ed.gov/news/speeches/2009/07/07242009.html Read about the collection of Personally Identifiable Information being collected on Missouris children as a requirement of the SLDS grant Missouri got to set up our data collection system at DESE here in their grant application here: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/SLDS/state.asp?stateabbr=MO Thus, the new standardized tests will carry a very heavy weight. They will be directly tied to the MSIP and accreditation provision of the Four Assurances, and the teacher evaluation piece. These are requirements of the federal government and committed to by Missouri as a result of the stimulus that we received in agreements that are documented. This is why we say Common Core is NCLB on steroids. The tests tied to NCLB never carried the kind of weight the Common Core tests will. Furthermore, the tests for NCLB were developed by our own state. We have not seen that bookend to the Common Core INITIATIVE fall into place, yet. We will soon. When that happens and teachers realize how much weight is given the tests, things will get ugly very quickly. The tests for Common Core have been paid for and developed by your federal government which we believe to be against three federal laws. General Education Provisions Act (20 USC § 1232a) Department of Education Organization Act (20 USC § 3403(b)) Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (20 USC 7907(a)) Missouri is a part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. This is the entity that is writing and will oversee the testing of Missouri children. Otherwise known as SBAC, they took $350 million to develop the new tests for Common Core from the federal government. In exchange for those funds, the Federal Department of Ed says that their involvement is necessary to carry out a successful project in the Memorandum of Understanding that SBAC signed with the Fed Dept. of Ed. You will find that agreement here:https://www2.ed.gov/…/raceto…/sbac-cooperative-agreement.pdf When you hear people say the Governors worked together to sign us all on to a common set of standards…they did not WORK to do anything. This is one of those empty talking points that sound good, but make our blood boil because it is so misleading. The truth is that the Governors ran for the money. There was not a consensus because they thought it was best for kids…they did it for their states share of stimulus in a tanking economy. Stimulus otherwise known as State Fiscal Stabilization Act. It was blood money. If you check out the SBAC website you will see on their about page they say this: 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 Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by the 2014-15 school year. See that entire website here: smarterbalanced.org/about/ See the MOU Missouri signed to be in the SBAC Consortium here: (NOTE where is says in this agreement the only way you can exit SBAC is with the approval of the Federal Department of Education):dese.mo.gov/divimprove/assess/documents/SBAC.pdf Here is the link to show what Missouri took in exchange for the Four Assurances: ed.gov/…/missouri-receive-more-248-million-addit…) Additionally, many make reference to the governors working together…this is very misleading. They are usually making the assumption that all Governors must belong to a PRIVATE organization named The National Governors Association otherwise known as the NGA. This is one of the PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS that own the standards. The other is called The Council of Chief State School Officers otherwise known as the CCSSO. These two PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS sound very governmental in title, but they are not. Furthermore, the CCSS are OWNED by these two PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS and they hold a copyright on them. Again, the appearance that all governors belong to the NGA is assumed, when in FACT it is a private trade organization that all governors DO NOT belong to. In fact, we cannot even obtain a list of the governors who DO belong because they do not have to honor our requests since it is a PRIVATE TRADE ORGANIZATION. You cannot Sunshine Request or FOIA request anything since these organizations are not governmental. They are sneaky and private. For all we know only 8 Governors even belong. As well, the CCSSO says right on their website that they hold over 100 meetings per year, but the public is not invited. The meetings are by invitation only. See reference to that fact here:ccsso.org/news_and_even…/meetings_and_events.html See copyright here: corestandards.org/terms-of-use/ The federal register entry of July 29, 2009 is explicit. It says that Common Core Standards are to be IDENTICAL in all states. That does not mean your school can adapt and change them as they see fit. That is NOT what the federal register says! They are copyrighted for a reason. If they are changed there is a pretty definite guarantee that those districts that choose to go rogue will be punished in the outcome of the new standardized tests that Missouri will see for the first time in 2014-15 school year. You will only deviate from the standards and explicit ways of teaching them if you are willing to lose your accreditation, or be evaluated very poorly as a teacher and risk losing your job since the new federal mandate ties teacher performance to the new assessments that will be unveiled in Missouri next school year. You will find that federal register entry about standards being IDENTICAL ACROSS STATES here: gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2009-07-29/pdf/E9-17909.pdf Recap: Common Core Standards are JUST standards…but, they are the vehicle by which everything else is changed or reformed in our state as a result of four assurances our Governor made to REFORM EDUCATION in Missouri in exchange for the $1.7 BILLION Missouri took in stimulus funds. So, the next time anyone DARE tell you that Common Core had nothing to do with the federal government, you can counter that and let them know that Common Core had EVERYTHING to do with the federal government and then tell them why. I hope this lesson helped clarify a few things for you. Please share and help others be enlightened. For further information and the illustration of points made here watch this awesome documentary on what Common Core is and why so many of us are concerned: https://youtube/watch?v=zjxBClx01jc
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 18:16:31 +0000
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