The Truth about the Common Core in Utah

Truth about the Utah Common Core

A group called “Utahns Against Common Core” is rallying support for repealing the Common Core in Utah. 

This article is to refute and explain why their “evidence” is just plain wrong or misguided. 

Below are their claims in Italic. 

1. Utah did not seek out CCI; the initiative was presented as an eligibility enhancement by the U.S. Department of Education in its The Race To The Top grant. Joining the SBAC, too, improved eligibility in the grant application. When Utah agreed to join the CCI and SBAC in 2009, the standards had not yet been written.

Utah joined both the CCI and the SBAC to win points toward getting the grant, and although Utah won no money, the extremely expensive and educationally restricting consequences of having agreed to sign up for CCI and SBAC remain.

Just because the Federal Department of Education supports the Common Core doesn’t make it evil or bad. Even a broken clock is right twice per day. The Common Core Standards should be evaluated on their own merit and not dismissed because it improved eligibility for a grant. 

Utah withdrew from SBAC in August of 2012. So, SBAC does not, in fact, remain. This proves that Utah’s adoption of these measures is completely voluntary and up to Utah.

2. Utah has two new, conflicting sets of educational standards to juggle– the Utah Common Core, to which we currently teach, and the CCSS, to which our tests are being written. Utah is not likely to stick with the Utah Common Core when testing begins based on the federal CCSS in 2014. The appendix to the SBAC states that the tests will be based on the CCSS (federal) standards, and the SBAC project manager, WestEd, has affirmed:

“In order for this [testing] system to have a real impact within a state, the state will need to adopt the Common Core State Standards (i.e., not have two sets of standards.)” -April 2012 statement from WestEd Assessments and Standards Senior Research Associate

Yes, we have two sets of standards in Math and English. This would be the case every time we enhance, upgrade, or improve our standards. The Utah Core Standards are always evolving and changing.  While calling for enhanced or improved standards this group also seems to feel that could happen without changing. Whatever Utah did with its standards inevitably we would have to transition. 

The new CCS are not that much different than Utah’s current standards. We are not going to start to teach physics in the first grade, for instance. It’s only a matter of moving some small subset of standards up a grade or back a grade.

And of course, the testing system will have to align with what is being taught, that is just common sense. 

3. There is no amendment process for the CCSS (federal standards) and withdrawing from the SBAC requires consortium and federal approval (page 12). If we delay the state will be too financially invested and legally entangled to withdraw.

First, the CCSS is not a federal, meaning government, standard. The standards are designed and agreed to by the people who sign up for them. As long as Utah is a member of the Common Core Standards Initiative we will have a voice in the standards. 

Withdrawing from the SBAC does not require Federal approval. Utah already withdrew based on a vote by the State School Board. See this link for the article. -> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/utah-withdraws-from-smart_n_1752261.html

 

4. There has been no cost analysis, legal analysis, legislative input or public input regarding CCI/SBAC.  Implementation of CCI has already begun in Utah schools; full implementation of the initiative and its tests will be completed in the 2014-2015 school year.

The Utah State School Board is a public body and is subject to the same open meeting laws as all public bodies in Utah. 

Is there a cost to changing standards? Yes, there is, but that would have been the case for any new standard. The alternative would be to never change our standards which no one is proposing. There are very low cost ways of changing over to the new standards. Teachers can use current text and curriculum and enhancing them with free resources. There are lots of ways to use the web and free resources creatively to enhance classroom teaching. Most teachers know how to do this because it’s what they do all day long. 

5. Utah leaders have signed Utah on as a governing member of the SBAC. As a governing member we get one vote out of 21 governing states to influence deviations from the original assessment structure and scope, consortium policy, and consortium governance. Utah can be held hostage by other states.

Utah withdrew from SBAC. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/utah-withdraws-from-smart_n_1752261.html

6. 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.

If Utah doesn’t want to participate in these programs then Utah should turn down the money from the Federal Government. But these acts have absolutely nothing to do with the Common Core Initiative. They are completely separate things. 

The America Competes Act was signed into effect by President Bush in 2007. If there was a requirement to create a massive Federal Database of our children in this act, then we should have it by now. There is no such database.  Likewise the ARRA act and the Race to the Top Grant were awarded in 2009, still no massive federal database. In addition, only 12 states received the funds and Utah was not one of those states. 

If Utahans don’t want Federal intrusion into Utah schools it’s quite simple to do that, just stop requesting and taking the Federal money. 

As an educator, I can assure you that there has been no request for any student identifiable information from the school to report to the Federal Government. 

All grants from the State of Utah and the Federal Government require some form of reporting of how money was spent and how students were served. This is not new to these grants. This reporting is always and everywhere summary data and is presented in the form of  a report not loaded into a database.

7. 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. SBAC assessments’ inclusion of  psychometric testing for database profiling purposes and is a violation of Utah law per code section 53A-13-302.

Utah is not part of the SBAC so there will be no psychometric testing. The Common Core initiative has nothing to do with collecting information about students. It is just a list of standards in reading and math. 

If Utah doesn’t want federal involvement in Utah schools, then Utah should stop asking for and receiving money from the Federal Government.

8. 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”

Utah is not part of the SBAC and has contracted with a completely different testing group.   The "Cooperative Agreement" link above is with the DOE and Washington State. It has no affect on Utah. Further the grant was under the auspices of the Race To The Top grant which only went to 12 states and also does not have anything to do with Utah.

9. The Department of Education has eviscerated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) by issuing new regulations that allow nonconsensual tracking and sharing of this personal data with other federal agencies, with government agencies in other states, and with private entities.

As a school administrator I can tell you that there has not been any information promulgated to Utah Schools of any change to FERPA.   I believe this statement to be completely false.  As of today, May 5^th 2013 the US Department of Education page on FERPA has the following statement:

"FERPA generally prohibits the improper disclosure of personally identifiable information derived from education records. Thus, information that an official obtained through personal knowledge or observation, or has heard orally from others, is not protected under FERPA. This remains applicable even if education records exist which contain that information, unless the official had an official role in making a determination that generated a protected education record."

The Department of Education can’t change legislation by Congress. Only Congress can change legislation.  If the Department of Education is changing rules and regulations regarding FERPA then Utah should sue them and have it changed back. But attacking the Common Core because of what the Department of Education may or may not have done regarding privacy laws is completely non-sensical. One has nothing to do with the other. 

10. Utah has ceded her voice and educational sovereignty because Utah’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 Utah education leaders, the right to soar seems a freedom not worth fighting for, and maintaining state educational sovereignty is not a priority.

In an April 2012 statement from the Utah State Office of Education’s legal department: ” The whole point is to get to a place where there is a ‘common core’ – that would mean the same standards for all the states that adopt it.  If the states had the freedom to ‘disagree’ and ‘change’ them, I guess they would no longer be ‘common’.”

Utah also has agreed to standard weights and measures and the width of railroad tracks and other standards that exist across the country. Does this mean that Utah has ceded its sovereignty over how many ounces are in a pound and how many inches are in a feet? Utah didn’t cede its sovereignty because it can withdraw from the Common Core Standards at any time, just like it withdrew from SBAC. 

Frankly, Utah cedes its sovereignty every time it takes a dollar from the Federal Government, not by agreeing to be part of a completely voluntary non-government controlled program. 

11. 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.”

Ask a Utah educator if the standards are better than what Utah has now. I believe they are. Naming one person who disagrees with them is hardly an argument. We can move to this set of standards which are more precise and higher than what we have now, then work to improve on them. Deciding to stay where we are is not an option because most people agree we need better written standards that have higher standards. 

12. The Common Core standards are experimental, expensive, controversial, and have not been piloted.

This is not actual evidence, it is more of a statement of opinion. We are not trying out a new vaccine for stupidity, we are just moving from our current standards to a slightly better set of standards. Further the new standards, though better, are not radically different from our current state standards.

13. Common Core standards are not considered among the best standards in the nation, and there are clearly superior standards.  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.

They may not be the best standards, but we can’t allow perfection to be the enemy of the good. We can choose to remove ourselves from the Common Core Initiative at any time. The new standards are better than what we have now. Let’s move from strength to strength and then work on improving the standards through the completely voluntary and state based standards organization over time. 

14. 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.

Not true. The English texts are a wonderful collection of classical literature. The literature collection is not even part of the Standards, it is only a suggested reading list. States can adopt their own reading list. Also, some of the informational texts include: The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, etc. 

15. 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.

Untrue. The Common Core Standards is only a list of what children should have learned by grade level in reading and math. No part of the Common Core Standards directs children on how to lead their lives. If anything it increases the standards so that children will have more choices.   

16. Common Core has not proven to be state-led nor strictly voluntary; the U.S. Department of Education Secretary rages against states who reject the Common Core Initiative.

The fact that states have voluntarily not agreed to the common core seems to invalidate your argument. If states can pull out of it, then, by definition, it is voluntary. 

17.  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.

Let’s evaluate the Common Core Standards on their own merit, not based on conspiracy theories. If you don’t like the Federal Department of Eduction, then work to abolish it or stop receiving the funding. 

The Common Core Initiative is a product of the State Governors Association belief in the need for common state education standards to assist students and families. 

18.  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: 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.

Again, then work against these things which are completely separate from the Common Core Standards. Utah doesn’t have to accept Federal Funds. 

Finally, the Common Core Standards in no way tell States or Agencies what curriculum or texts to use.

19.  Transparency and  public debate about Common Core are lacking.  Utah 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.

It seems like we are debating it right now.

Michelle Malkin is wrong about the Common Core

Michelle Malkin Part 2 

Michele Malkin is a blogger, conservative syndicated columnist, author, and Fox News Channel contributor. 

Below is my response to her irresponsible articles on the Common Core.  You can find Part 2 here -> 

 http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/25/rotten-to-the-core-part-2-readin-writin-and-deconstructionism/

 

Ms. Malkin, is obviously not an educator because she doesn’t know the difference between standards and methods. The common core standards are only standards and don’t define how the standards should be taught. In addition Ms. Malkin doesn’t understand the difference between standards and curriculum. Standards are the things students should know, but curriculum is the material used to teach the standards. Ms. Malkin confuses standards and curriculum. 

She begins: 

Thanks to the “Common Core” regime, funded with President Obama’s stimulus dollars and bolstered by duped Republican governors and business groups, deconstructionism is back in style.

First, the stimulus was spent a long time ago. ARRA money was given and spent 2 years ago and has nothing to do with the common core adoption. The #StopCommonCore group believe that the Race To The Top (RTTT) grant was a payoff to states for adopting the Common Core Standards Initiative. (CCSI) They are wrong. The RTTT grant was a competitive grant that states could choose to apply for. Only 12 states received funding. Unless the #StopCommonCore group now feels that the US only consists of 12 states, their assertion that this is the evil plan to take over 50 states' education departments, is weak. 

The grant does require states who get the grant money to adopt standards. There is absolutely no requirement to adopt CCSI. None. Nada. The state could adopt its own standards. Most states had core standards prior to the CCSI and continue to have them without the CCSI.  And, only 12 states received money from this grant. Is there some other super top secret funding they won't tell us about? 

They are also confused by the requirement that states who apply as a consortium, have to adopt common standards. In education speak, a consortium is a group of agencies that apply together. So if, for instance, Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont decided to apply together as one group, then they and only they would have to create common standards. Even these states don't have to adopt the CCSI, they could create their own standards. 

Traditional literature is under fire. Moral relativism is increasingly the norm. “Standards” is Orwell-speak for subjectivity and lowest common denominator pedagogy.

There are no literature requirements of the common core, there is an appendix to the common core which specifically states: “They expressly do not represent a partial or complete reading list.”  Pedogogy is the method to teach the standards, which is not specified in the core.

the new achievement goals actually set American students back by de-emphasizing great literary works for “informational texts.”Challenging students to digest and dissect difficult poems and novels is becoming passe. Utilitarianism uber alles.

What exactly does Ms. Malkin not like about the following books?  “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, “The Secret Garden”, “The Black Stallion”, “Little Women”, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, “The Odyssey”, “Metamorphoses”, “ The Gift of the Magi”, “The Grapes of Wrath”, “Fahrenheit 451”, “Euclid’s Elements”, “The Canterbury Tales”, “Pride and Prejudice”. Most of these books are also recommended in the most conservative schools in the country. The examples of texts given in the core are some of the best loved books in English Literature and classics in their own right.  These are only the novels. I have not even listed the “informational texts” like the “Declaration of Independence” or the “Constitution” that Ms. Malkin seems to think are not challenging.

The Common Core English/language arts criteria call for students to spend only half of their class time studying literature, and only 30 percent of their class time by their junior and senior years in high school.

Nothing in the Common Core standards specifies class time spent on any specific material.

Under Common Core, classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” are of no more academic value than the pages of the Federal Register or the Federal Reserve archives — or a pro-Obamacare opinion essay in The New Yorker. Audio and video transcripts, along with “alternative literacies” that are more “relevant” to today’s students (pop song lyrics, for example), are on par with Shakespeare.

Ms. Malkin makes another bold and completely false statement, here. There is nothing in the common core that requires any specific material to be taught to teach the standards. No opinions are given about the value of any material. Teachers, school districts, and states are completely free to pick their own books and emphasize any material they choose.

I found one Common Core “exemplar” on teaching the Gettysburg Address that instructs educators to “refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset.”

Let me reiterate that the common core doesn’t determine how to teach which the quote above seems to indicate. Are there some companies in the market place trying to sell curriculum and training around the common core? Sure, it’s America, why wouldn’t some  companies do that? If a text book company is trying to provide guidance on the Common Core Standards Initiative that is idiotic, then rail against that text book company, not the CCSI. Put the fault where the fault lies instead of with the CCSI.

Bipartisan Common Core defenders claim their standards are merely “recommendations.” But the standards, “rubrics” and “exemplars” are tied to tests and textbooks. The textbooks and tests are tied to money and power.

The common core only has standards, there are no rubrics or exemplars that are part of the CCSI. Yes, there will be text book publishers who want to sell their line of texts and tests, but no State or School district has to purchase the texts. Teachers can build their own curriculum. Most high school teachers I am aware of don’t use a text book for their Literature curriculum or buy standardized tests. The State Tests are devised by each state to test to the standards. No curriculum or pedagogy is required or recommended by the Common Core Standards.

Federally funded and federally championed nationalized standards lead inexorably to de facto mandates. Any way you slice it, dice it or word-cloud it, Common Core is a mandate for mediocrity.

Ms. Malkin doesn’t provide a source for the statements above. I would like to know where the funding is coming from. What law did Congress pass to provide funding for the states to adopt common core? Again ARRA money has been spent by the states long ago.

 Is CCSI federally championed? Sure, it is. It’s a good idea to have national standards. The only law which is currently pending which specifically refers to the Common Core Standards Initiative is a two page resolution of support which provides no funding and doesn't require any state to use the standards.  It is merely that, a resolution of support.

The hysteria surrounding the Common Core is completely out of proportion to its affect in the education community. 

Michelle Malkin is wrong about the Common Core - Part 1

Part 1.

Michelle Malkin is posting articles promulgating inaccurate and irresponsible information about the "Common Core". I have excerpted her information in the indented sections. Below each section are my comments.  Her comments are from the article found here.

For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity and social justice. “Progressive” reformers denounced Western civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed ability grouping of students (tracking) bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling and multicultural claptrap.

Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers — empowered by Washington education bureaucrats and backed by misguided liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates — are now presiding over a radical makeover of your children’s school curriculum. It’s being done in the name of federal “Common Core” standards that do anything but raise achievement standards.

Michelle doesn't understand the difference between standards and curriculum. Think of ends vs. means. The standards are the ends, the curriculum is the means. Standards determine what kids should have learned after they have studied. The curriculum is the method by which they study.  The Common Core Standards do not determine what text books your child will use or how they will be taught. The same standards could be taught using the Great books or they could be taught using the progressive claptrap Michelle eschews.

For example: CCSS.Math.Content.4.OA.A.1 Interpret a multiplication equation as a comparison, e.g., interpret 35 = 5 × 7 as a statement that 35 is 5 times as many as 7 and 7 times as many as 5. Represent verbal statements of multiplicative comparisons as multiplication equations.

This standard could be taught by any number of methods or texts. No text or method is prescribed or proscribed by this standard, it only states that at the end of 4th grade, students should be able to understand that when we multiply, we are multiplying groups of things a specific number of times.

Common Core was enabled by Obama’s federal stimulus law and his Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” gimmickry. The administration bribed cash-starved states into adopting unseen instructional standards as a condition of winning billions of dollars in grants. Even states that lost their bids for Race to the Top money were required to commit to a dumbed-down and amorphous curricular “alignment.”

The Race to the Top grant is a competitive grant and states don't have to apply. If they do apply, there is no reason to believe they will receive the money. The Race to the Top grant does not require states to use the "Common Core" standards, only that states involved in a consortium should develop some common standards and that the schools who participate should comply with them. Again, many states didn't participate in this program. No one was required to adopt the "Common Core" even if they won. They could have adopted their own standards.

In practice, Common Core’s dubious “college- and career”-ready standards undermine local control of education, usurp state autonomy over curricular materials, and foist untested, mediocre and incoherent pedagogical theories on America’s schoolchildren.

States can adopt the "Common Core" or not, as they chose. Also, the "Common Core" doesn't require any specific curriculum. The "Common Core" does not "foist untested, mediocre... pedagogical theories on America's schoolchildren", because the core doesn't talk about pedagogy (how to teach), it only talks about outcomes.

Over the next several weeks and months, I’ll use this column space to expose who’s behind this disastrous scheme in D.C. backrooms.

Michelle makes it seem as if this is a program driven by the Federal Government. In fact there have been several state regional efforts to develop common core standards. The current "Common Core" is an outcome of the state's efforts to develop a common core. The "Common Core" initiative is published by the National Governors Association, not a Federal Government agency.

Previous to the common core, large states like California and Texas were able to drive core standards without input simply because they were large purchasers of text books and text book companies catered to them in content areas. The new way of having a national standard is much more egalitarian in that educators all over the country have input into the standards and not just a few bureaucrats in a few states.

Professor Jonathan Goodman of New York University found that the Common Core math standards imposed “significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries.”

The paragraph above promulgates the myth that standards are maximum standards. That somehow if a school wants to have higher standards they are prohibited. Any state, school or teacher can exceed the standards and teach at a higher level. Nothing in the "Common Core" would prevent accelerated classes.  Further the "Common Core" spreads Geometry and Algebra throughout all the grade levels instead of treating it as a separate subject.  If you look up the math standards there are Algebra and Geometry standards in each grade.

Under Common Core, as the American Principles Project and Pioneer Institute point out, Algebra I instruction is pushed to 9th grade, instead of 8th grade, as commonly taught. Division is postponed from 5th to 6th grade. Prime factorization, common denominators, conversions of fractions and decimals, and algebraic manipulation are de-emphasized or eschewed.

 Algebra I is not pushed anywhere because Algebraic thinking is infused within the entire K-8th grade curriculum as a strand and not as a separate class.  Division is not pushed from 5th to 6th grade because division is introduced in the 3rd grade. Fractions are also introduced in the 3rd grade and represent a significant strand in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. Algebra is again a strand in all the lower grades. Factorization of all number from 1-100 is required in the 4th grade. Fractions are introduced in the 3rd grade.

Traditional Euclidean geometry is replaced with an experimental approach that had not been previously pilot-tested in the U.S.

Euclidian Geometry can't be replaced by and experimental approach because the standards do not indicate any approach to geometry, only the things students should know.

Common Core delays proficiency with addition and subtraction until 4th grade and proficiency with basic multiplication until 5th grade, and skimps on logarithms, mathematical induction, parametric equations and trigonometry at the high school level.

This is so blatently wrong that I can't even begin to understand where she got this information. Proficiency for grade 2 is to "know from memory all sums of two one-digit numbers."  That seems fairly proficient for me. Multiplication proficiency for the 3rd grade is to "Fluently multiply and divide within 100".

Whether the common core skimps on high school math is up to the states. States can choose to supplement any of the standards or teach to a higher level of proficiency. Nothing in the "Core curriculum" would keep a state from teaching more or offering accelerated classes.

Moreover, there are organizations that have reasons to work for lower and less-demanding standards, specifically teachers unions and professional teacher organizations.

I don't know how teacher's unions could use the "Common Core" to fight for lower standards.  They seem to be fighting for the lowest possible standards now.

This is all in keeping with my own experience as a parent of elementary- and middle-school age kids who were exposed to “Everyday Math” nonsense. This and other fads abandon “drill and kill” memorization techniques for fuzzy “critical thinking” methods that put the cart of “why” in front of the horse of “how.” In other words: Instead of doing the grunt work of hammering times tables and basic functions into kids’ heads first, the faddists have turned to wacky, wordy non-math alternatives to encourage “conceptual” understanding — without any mastery of the fundamentals of math.

 Michelle may not like the curriculum or pedagogy her children used, but the common core doesn't standardize curriculum or pedagogy. Schools can decide what curriculum to use and what methods to use to teach the standards. Michelle also has choices if she doesn't like the curriculum her school is using. She can try to change the curriculum by getting on the parent organization, or running for school board. She can opt out of the state school system by sending  them to a charter school, or a private school.

Sorry, Michelle, but you are wrong, wrong, and wrong.