Common Core Overview

by Melissa Westbrook May 6, 2014

(Seattle Schools Community Forum blog, saveseattleschools.blogspot.com)


To note from the start these are STANDARDS (guidelines), not curriculum.

They are not telling teachers HOW to teach. BUT, to keep in mind, when you have
standards on one end and assessments on the other end, the curriculum WILL
narrow. What gets tested is what gets taught.

Also to note, the federal government itself did NOT create these standards. (See
Issues: Overview for their creation process.) In fact, no government entity has
rights to these standards; their copyright is privately held.

There is virtually no one who has come out publicly against the use of standards or
testing. I agree with former Deputy Secy of Education and education historian,
Diane Ravitch, who says:

It is good to have standards. I believe in standards, but they must not be rigid,
inflexible, and prescriptive.

Teachers must have the flexibility to tailor standards to meet the students in their
classrooms, the students who cant read English, the students who are two grade levels
behind, the students who are homeless, the students who just dont get it and just dont
care, the students who frequently miss class.

Standards alone cannot produce a miraculous transformation.

I would add:

There is no statistical or research-based data to show that having new standards
will create better outcomes. That fact is worth considering that when spending
resources, energy and time to change an entire nations public education system.

Overview

From Gov Beat at the Washington Post:

The roots of Common Core standards grew out of Achieve, a nonprofit reform group
founded in the mid-1990s aimed at crafting education standards that would lead
to a workforce with the qualifications necessary for business. The initial state
standards were a product of two governors Sonny Perdue, Deals Republican
predecessor in Georgia, and Delaware Democrat Jack Markell working together at
the National Governors Association in the late 2000s.

Then in 2009, there was a push by governors, via the National Governor's
Association (NGA), and state school officers, via the Council of Chief State School
Officers (CCSSO) for national standards. The reasoning was that:

1) The U.S. needed more rigorous standards than most current state standards,
2) The need for clarity in what is being taught as well as more critical thinking and
higher-order skills in learning and
3) The existence of a population of students that are mobile and having national
standards would help them, no matter where they lived.

Only state boards of education OR state superintendent for public instruction had to
okay their use, NOT legislatures (except for five states including Washington State).

(To note: those two groups are non-profit public policy organizations. They do NOT
represent the public even though their members are largely elected officials.
Because of this, states do NOT own Common Core State Standards these two
groups do AND states have to pay to license their use.)

States were not required to adopt Common Core standards but there are
considerable carrot/stick funding issues from the Department of Education around
Race to the Top funds and School Intervention Grant dollars if states do not sign on.

The standards were released in June 2010. Since then, 45 states, four territories, the
District of Columbia, and the Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted
the Common Core State Standards. Minnesota only adopted the English language arts
standards. Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia have refused to adopt the Common
Core.

What is troubling is that the standards were alleged to be written to support
students in being college and career ready without clearly defining those two
areas. In fact, many educators believe the Common Core math standards are really
too low for entry to most colleges and universities.

Polling is mixed on Common Core. When the question is phrased blandly like do
you approve of high standards for U.S. public school students?, Common Core does
well. When it is more specific, the polling tends to find a confused populace.

Diane Ravitch quoted in the Washington Post:

What the advocates ignored is that test scores are heavily influenced by
socioeconomic status. Standardized tests are normed on a bell curve. 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. 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.

Again, I would add this:

No one, I repeat, no one is saying poor children cannot learn. What many of us
are saying is that to ignore poverty (and its effects on educational outcomes)
is wrong.

And, if innovation is the new goal for better educational outcomes for more
students, including students of color, how does one set of standards create
innovation?

Key Issues

Too Much, too fast, too soon with little transparency
Who wrote the Standards?
Testing concerns
Teaching concerns
Influence of the Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation
Effects on Early Learners
Costs to States and Districts
Student data privacy

Too Much, too fast, too soon with little transparency
One of the biggest issues for many parents, educators and administrators is that the
rollout of the Common Core State Standards is happening too fast. The effort is to
rolling out national standards in nearly all states with assessments and, from
creation to implementation, in about six years.

Other educator concerns:
There was no piloting of these standards. Do they work for teachers in the
classroom?
What about feedback and tweaking of the standards?
Lack of professional development
Lack of resources to implement the standards is a huge issue for districts. It
is still unclear how much each state will give to districts to support this
initiative.

In addition, many parents had little idea this is coming, either via the federal
government or state governments. If this was so important and vital, why wasnt
there more media/publicity? Also, many states have changed the name they use for
these standards in order to not use the words Common Core. For example in
Florida, they have been renamed The Sunshine State Standards.

Who wrote the Standards?
Its a complicated story.

There was a 60-person work group that started the creation of the standards.
The majority of input did not come from educators. (But, in different states,
teachers and other educators were asked for input. Whether that input was realized
in the standards is unclear as the working group received about 10,000 public
comments but would not release all of them.

The actual WRITING of the standards is really where there were few educators.
There were just 29 people on the Validation Committee who wrote them. The
majority of the group was affiliated with testing groups like the College Board and
education groups like Achieve.

In fact, the two people on the Validation Committee with most background in
reading standards and math standards refused to sign off on the final standards.
(This would be Sandra Stotsky, EdD for reading and Professor John Milgrem of
Stanford. Both have been outspoken in their opposition to Common Core
standards.)

Testing

Overview
There are two testing consortiums that states may belong to for testing PARCC
(Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) and Smarter
Balanced (Washington State belongs to the latter). PARCC has been testing for the
last two years with wide outcry from both parents and teachers. Smarter Balanced
is doing pilot testing this school year.

Every child in 3rd-8th grades plus one grade in high school will be tested.

Testing Concerns
From a Florida teacher who reviewed the CC standards,
As the review unfolded, it became apparent that we were not working with a holistic,
integrated application of standards It began to look instead like a checklist forming
a platform for standardized testing

From Diane Ravitch in the Washington Post:

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.

Huge numbers of parents in NY state, after receiving these dismal results in 2013,
opted their children out of Common Core testing in 2014.

Some issues about testing include the time it takes during the school year, brand
names and logos being used in test questions, and length, difficulty and content
issues. Students taking exams for medical school have shorter tests than current
Common Core assessments.

Teaching Concerns

Feedback on Common Core Standards as teachers incorporate them into
teaching
There is no way for teachers and administrators those using the standards to
give any feedback. For a national rollout of new standards, this is jaw-dropping.

Curriculum
Again, teachers are allowed to use district-approved materials to meet Common
Core standards. But districts may be forced to buy new materials and, as well, there
are those who believe the curriculum will be narrowed because of the standards.

Math
Dr. John Milgram, who was lead for validation of math standards, feels that the
standards are not really high enough for high school math (as compared to other
countries especially Asian ones).

Interestingly, many who are speaking out against the math standards complain that
they are too high in the elementary grades and too low in high school.

Reading
In the past, the reading for high schools has generally been 50-50 for fiction and
non-fiction. It will now be about 70% non-fiction and 30% fiction. This is based on
the idea that in the workplace, there is more non-fiction reading than fiction and the
skill level needs to be there for analysis and comprehension. There is no research-
based analysis for this change.
The Influence of Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation
The Gates Foundation has spent nearly $200M on Common Core efforts. They spent
more than $20M alone in 2013. For example in November 2013, the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce received $1,383,041 in November 2013 "to lead the effort to engage
and educate state and local chambers to support Common Core State Standards.

Why would the education wing of the Gates Foundation believe it more important to
educate the public via a business entity rather than an education route?

From Diane Ravitch in the Washington Post:

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
standardseven to some that had no experience evaluating standardsand 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.
(The Gates Foundation also poured $100M into a data cloud called inBloom that
was created to store multi-state data records for students. Initially nine states
signed up for the service but now all have dropped out and inBloom recently
announced it was ending its existence.)


Common Core and early learners
A huge concern for many early childhood educators is whether Common Core State
Standards are developmentally appropriate for K-2. There was not one K-3
classroom teacher or early childhood professional who was on the committees that
wrote/reviewed standards for those ages.

From Diane Ravitch:

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.

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.
Their statement reads in part:
We have grave concerns about the core standards for young children. The proposed
standards conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience,
child development, and early childhood education about how young children learn,
what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early
grades.
Costs to States and School Districts
Costs include items like classroom materials, assessments, and professional
development. The biggest cost is technology infrastructure.

All the assessments must be done by computer. That means that districts all
schools must have the necessary infrastructure to do this testing. It also means
the loss of use of computer labs or library spaces for a number of weeks during the
school year.

There will be one-time costs as well as ongoing costs and investments.

It is estimated that California costs would go over $1.6B, in Texas upwards of $3B,
and Virginia costs are estimated at $250M.

Student Data Privacy
For the last ten years, all 50 states have had to create statewide longitudinal
databases to track their students scores on assessments. This was, in part, to collect
Race to the Top funding.
But it is clear that Common Core will increase the collection of student data
including demographics and postsecondary education performancefrom
preschool into the workforce

Additionally, states that are members of the
assessment consortia have committed to expanding their data collection.
In 2011, the Department of Education changed the Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act (FERPA) so that any government or private entity that a district or
state education department says is evaluating an education program has
access to student data without parental notification.
As well, in 2012, the Department of Labor announced $12 million in grants for states
to build longitudinal databases linking workforce and education data
.





Supporters and Opponents of Common Core
Supporters
States that are now heavily invested in Common Core.
Secretary Arne Duncan of the DOE who has been very aggressive in his push
AND his criticism of anyone who raises concerns. He even went so far as to
tell an audience of state superintendents that the pushback was coming from:

white suburban moms who all of a sudden their child isnt as brilliant as they
thought they were, and their school isnt quite as good as they thought they were.

He later apologized but when you have the highest public education official in the
country bad-mouthing mothers, you have to wonder.
Education reformers like Michelle Rhee and DFER (Democrats for Education
Reform)

Companies like Pearson who stand to make billions of dollars off of Common
Core teaching materials and assessments.

Others include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and
the National PTA.

Opponents
Conservatives, especially Tea Partiers, who believe that public education
should be local control and view CC as the first step to a national curriculum
and testing. (To note, this is becoming a political issue for Republicans
looking towards the presidential election of 2016 as well as the mid-term
elections.)
Network for Public Education and its head, Diane Ravitch
The National Education Association (who initially endorsed but then backed
away calling the rollout completely botched.)
Parents and Educators against Common Core Standards, a national group
Parents who have experienced frustration with both Common Core
homework and testing with their own children.
Teachers who have experienced frustration with both Common Core
guidelines and testing.
Principals who have experienced frustration with both Common Core
guidelines and testing.
Elected officials nationwide like legislators and school board/state board
members.
Some PTAs



Where do we go from here?
Some have said there should be a minimum of three years of a moratorium on
Common Core assessments until states (and districts) have fully prepared their
curriculums to meet these standards.

Others want Common Core standards to be abandoned altogether but supporters
say it is to late and states have gone too far down the road to pause or stop.