Written by Napp Nazworth

Implementation of the Common Core State Standards Initiative has not gone well, supporters and critics alike now agree. Understanding why the education reform has been so rocky could aid future policy initiatives.

Here are five of the main reasons Common Core has been a disaster.

1) No Deliberative Democracy

Common Core was put into effect sneakily, rather than through the usual deliberative and democratic processes.

The Common Core is a set of math and English standards for K-12 education developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, both of which are non-governmental organizations. Neither Congress nor state legislatures were involved in developing the standards.

For comparison, look at how President George W. Bush’s education reform, No Child Left Behind, was implemented. That legislation was debated in subcommittee hearings, committee hearings, and on the floors of the U.S. House and Senate before being passed on a bipartisan vote. While the debate was taking place in Congress, there was a public debate, with newspaper reports and pro and con arguments presented in editorials, news programs and water cooler talk across the nation. None of that happened when states adopted the Common Core.

The Common Core was developed in a private meeting by a non-governmental body. States were then encouraged to adopt the standards in an Department of Education grant competition that was part of the 2009 stimulus bill.

Even some Common Core supporters now admit that the way it was implemented was a mistake. At an American Enterprise Institute panel in October, Chris Minnich, current executive director of CCSSO and the council’s strategic initiatives director of standards assessment and accountability in 2009, said that Common Core would be better off today if the federal government had not been involved by creating incentives and funding the testing consortia.

By the time the standards had made its way to teachers, students and families, most were taken by surprise. And due to the lack of deliberative democracy, proponents had not gone through the difficult task of building public support before the policy was thrust onto the public.

2) Supporters Demonized Critics

Common Core supporters also made the mistake of characterizing critics as a bunch of crazies. A May Christian Post analysis pointed out many examples of this.

Common Core critics have been derided as “fringe voices,” people who are “comfortable with mediocrity,” an “ideological circus” with “hysterical claims and fevered accusations” from “the market-share-obsessed talk-radio crowd,” “far-right,” a “mediocrity caucus,” and “white suburban moms” opposed to educational progress.

Demonizing critics created additional problems for the Common Core. First, supporters lost legitimacy when these claims were easily demonstrated as false. Some of the harshest critics have been liberals, academics and teachers.

And second, by demonstrating an unwillingness to listen to the critics, Common Core supporters reinforced the critic’s view that Common Core is top-down and elite-driven. The arrogance of these Common Core supporters is similar to that of “Obamacare” architect Jonathan Gruber, who said that implementation of President Obama’s signature healthcare reform law had a “huge political advantage” in its “lack of transparency” due to the “stupidity of the American voter.”

3) No Trial and Error

Rather than pushing Common Core on an unsuspecting public using backdoor methods, supporters should have started small.

In the United States federalist system, states are often described as “laboratories of democracy.” Policies can be tried by early adopter states while other states wait to see the results. If the results are positive, other states will adopt them.

At the AEI October panel, Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at AEI, said that 10 to 15 states likely would have adopted the Common Core on their own, even without the federal incentives. Hess is neither for nor against the Common Core standards, but has been critical of how they have been implemented.

If Common Core had started that way, Hess noted, it would have been “a truly and genuinely kind of state-led effort, which if it was working and being implemented well, others would have wanted in.”

4) No Process to Improve Them

The developers of the Common Core did not leave in place a process to improve the standards.

In a perfect illustration of how the Common Core was put together haphazardly and without much forethought, the standards were created by a panel formed exclusively for the purpose of writing the standards. The panel was disbanded, and then the standards were copyrighted.

So, as education historian Diane Ravitch has pointed out, if a state wanted to change the standards, how would they do so? The answer is not entirely clear.

What if a state wanted to keep part of the standards but throw out other parts? Over 500 early childhood experts, for instance, signed a letter saying that the standards would be harmful for children in the early grade levels. (No early childhood experts were part of the panel that developed the standards.) So some states may want to dispose of at least that part of the standards. Whether they are legally allowed to do that is, however, murky.

Legally, a state should not be able to change a copyrighted product it does not own. But, who would a state go to for permission? And, if a state violated the copyright, who would sue them anyway? Others have even argued that the Common Core is not something that should have been able to obtain a copyright in the first place, because, according to copyright law, “ideas, methods, or systems” cannot be copyrighted.

Some states, like Florida, have made changes to the Common Core. Those changes appear to be mostly additions to the standards, which is legal, rather than changing the existing standards.

Suppose, however, that each state does ignore the potential copyright issues and changes the Common Core to its liking. That would undermine one of the main purposes of the Common Core to begin with. One of the primary impetuses for having a Common Core was that it would be, well, common. Having all, or many, states on the same set of standards, comparisons could be made across states and resources could be pooled for texts and testing materials. So, without a national process for improving the standards, the reason for having common standards in the first place has already been undermined.

5) Cronyism

Now that the secretive, top-down, elite-driven education reform was thrust onto unsuspecting students, parents and teachers, American taxpayers will wonder why they are being asked to pay for what is turning out to be an extremely expensive project with most of the benefits going to a few large companies.

A significant portion of the taxpayer dollars for Common Core implementation will go to testing companies. And these testing companies were also involved in developing Common Core.

As Julian Vasquez Heilig, professor of educational leadership and policy studies and the director of the doctorate in educational leadership program at California State University, points out on his blog, the work groups who designed the Common Core were comprised of five employees of ACT, two employees from a Pearson affiliate, six employees from Achieve, seven employees from The College Board and two employees and co-founders of Student Achievement Partners. Teachers and administrators were part of the group that reviewed the standards but not the group that wrote the standards.

Parents and teachers may look at that situation and wonder if those who wrote the standards did so in the interests of their children or in their self-interest. There is, however, a more important question raised by Common Core cronyism.

In all likelihood, those who wrote the standards see no conflict between their self-interest and what is best for American students. They are, after all, involved in those companies (many of which are non-profit) because they believe the work of those companies is to the benefit of students.

The larger question that should be asked, then, is — why should they get to decide education policy for the nation? As Vasquez Heilig pointed out, those involved in writing the Common Core have a particular view of education (which he wrote more about here and here). It is a legitimate view of how children should educated, but it is not a view shared by all educators, parents and education professors. There are equally legitimate alternatives that should also be part of the national dialogue on education reform.

Americans hold certain expectations of how education should be reformed — with parent and teacher input; through deliberation (both talking and listening) and democratic processes; and through trial, error and re-reforms at the local and state level. Common Core did none of those things and that is why it has been a disaster.

This article was originally posted at the ChristianPost.com website.

This Wednesday, State Representative Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon) will be presenting HR 543 before the House Elementary & Secondary Education Committee.  This resolution will urge the Illinois State Board of Education to delay the implementation of Common Core Standards until a study is conducted showing the costs associated with Common Core.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to create a witness slip in support of Rep. Kay’s bill to delay the implementation of Common Core.  Enter information into all the fields. Click Proponent and Record of Appearance Only. Type in the Captcha Numbers, check the Terms of Agreement, then click on Create a Slip.

Background 

In 2010, Illinois became one of 48 states to opt for Common Core by accepting federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and through the Race to the Top Initiative of the Federal Government.  Over the next few years the Common Core Standards, which are largely untested in the United States, will substantively change the educational standards for students in Illinois, thus affecting every teacher and student in the state.   

The only substantive cost analysis of the implementation of the Common Core Standards was conducted by the Pioneer Institute, a non-partisan, privately funded research organization which estimates the financial impact for Illinois to be close to $773 million over seven years.  Moreover, there are many school districts which lack the technology, infrastructure and funding needed to purchase new textbooks and computers in order to comply with Common Core. 

According to Rep. Kay, “Even local school officials I have spoken to oppose this new program.  With each new administration, there is always a new proposal that is sold as the latest and best way to educate our children.  Without a doubt improving our education system by implementing new technology in the classroom is imperative and crucial to making our next generation competitive in the workforce and global economy.  However, until our state can meet its current obligations to our schools, I urge the State Board of Education to delay the implementation of Common Core.”

The hearing for HR 543 will be held on Wednesday, March 26th, 8:00 a.m. in room D-1 of the Stratton building located at 401 S. Spring Street in Springfield.  People are strongly encouraged to attend. But if you’re unable, please file a witness slip in support of Rep. Kay’s resolution to delay Common Core. 

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Most Americans have heard the term Common Core Standards (CCS), but many have little idea what those standards are, who created them, or what is troubling about those standards, which are a significant step in the movement toward nationalizing public education. What’s remarkable is that this governmental overreach is managing to achieve the nearly impossible: unify the political left and right. Even the extreme leftwing Wisconsin-based Rethinking Schools says that the process by which these standards were developed involved “‘too little honest conversation and too little democracy.’” CCS with their yawn-inducing name are anything but innocuous. Americans best turn off their televisions and spend a little time looking at the history, players, and problems associated with the adoption of these standards while there’s still time to jump ship.

Thanks to the concerted efforts of a relatively small number of vigilant individuals and organizations, a groundswell of bipartisan opposition to this effort is intensifying and with good reason. There are huge problems with adopting Common Core Standards, including the vast expansion of government bureaucracy, loss of local control over education, high costs of implementation, invasive individual tracking of children, and the dumbing down of curricula that will follow in the wake of this Bill and Melinda Gates/Barack Obama/Arne Duncan power grab.

Four states (Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia) have rejected CCS. Minnesota has rejected the Common Core math standards, and Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, and South Dakota are revisiting the implementation of them. As constituent knowledge of CCS increases, so does constituent opposition. (Their opposition extends also to curricula like those developed by CSCOPE).

The deeper one digs into this labyrinthine and incestuous story, the more confusing it becomes, so a few preliminary statements are in order.

First, I will not include—nor could I include—every detail about this story.

Second, when discussing those who stand to profit financially from the CCS initiative, please don’t think IFI is criticizing capitalism. Profit-making becomes profiteering when the process is insulated from market forces. Our concern is the absence of free market forces in the development and sale of curricular, testing, and professional development (i.e., teacher-training) materials. These materials, which align with the CCS, have already been produced—though not tested—and are now available even though the CCS are not scheduled to be implemented until the 2014-2015 school year.

Third, we and many others are concerned that this has been a top-down initiative largely concealed during its planning phase from state stakeholders. Education becomes corrupted when concealed from major stakeholders, which is to say, parents and other taxpayers.

 Background:

There appears to be an unholy alliance between purported non-profit education organizations; for-profit businesses that produce curricula, testing materials, and teacher-training materials; our government schools; and our elected leaders, which needs to be untangled and exposed.

In 2008 the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) (a private trade organization) and the National Governors Association decided to create the CCS with the central goal of developing “some uniform standards to get more low-performing students into college courses without needing remedial courses once they got there.” Actually, according to the American Principles Project, initially  the idea for these national standards came from “private interests [primarily the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] in Washington D.C. without any representation from the states. Eventually the creators realized the need to present a façade of state involvement and therefore enlisted the National Governors Association (NGA) [a trade organization that doesn’t include all governors].” Then the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding to a private organization called Achieve to develop the standards, the final version of which were released in June 2010. (This is not the only troubling involvement of the Gates Foundation in education. More on that tomorrow.)

The next significant step in the propulsion of the CCS was President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s plan to incentivize, or perhaps more accurately, coerce, states into “voluntarily” adopting these standards. That plan was the cunning “Race to the Top” competition. Chicago pals Obama and Duncan made $4.35 billion available to states, but the catch was that bonus application points would be awarded to those states that adopted CCS. In other words, the odds of a state winning Race to the Top money increased if they “voluntarily” adopted the CCS. It was the equivalent of affirmative action college admission policies, and in this lousy economy, it was the ethical equivalent of extortion.

Education historian, Diane Ravitch explains her reasons for opposing Common Core standards:

President Obama and Secretary Duncan often say that the Common Core standards were developed by the states and voluntarily adopted by them. This is not true.

They were developed by an organization called Achieve and the National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states.

In fact, it was well understood by states that they would not be eligible for Race to the Top funding ($4.35 billion) unless they adopted the Common Core standards. Federal law prohibits the U.S. Department of Education from prescribing any curriculum, but in this case the Department figured out a clever way to evade the letter of the law.

It should be no surprise that Illinois, old stomping grounds of Barack Obama and Arne Duncan, has embraced Common Core standards and the filthy lucre ($42.8 million) that is used as a bribe to lure states in.

Achieve has a 20-state consortium called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) that develops Common Core-aligned assessments (i.e., tests), and which received $186 million dollars of federal funds from the Department of Education’s Race to the Top. Greg Forster explains what is so problematic about this:

The Department of Education is forbidden by law from developing a national curriculum. This reflects the clear judgment of the people and their congressional representatives, expressed forcefully on all the previous occasions when this issue has come up, against handing over control of education to a single national body.

In lieu of an outright establishment of a national curriculum, the Department has spent the past year pressuring states to “voluntarily” adopt the education standards promoted by the private organization Common Core. At the same time, it has hired two consortia to develop curriculum materials and tests based on the Common Core’s vision. These materials are being developed behind closed doors, with no transparency or accountability to the public.

To further expose the incestuous relationships among the CCS players without boggling already boggled minds, let’s look at just three of them.

Phil Daro and Sally Hampton served on the committee that drafted the common core standards which were released to the public in June 2010. They also worked for the non-profit educational reform organization America’s Choice, which in August 2010, the for-profit educational publishing company Pearson Education announced it was purchasing. Pearson, which bought the non-profit organization for which Daro and Hampton worked, is now profiting from the “voluntarily” adopted Common Core Standards. Pearson has been awarded “the contract to develop test items that will be part of the new English and Mathematics assessments.”

David Coleman is considered the “architect” of CCS. Until 2007 he worked for McGraw-Hill, a company that publishes educational curricula. He left McGraw-Hill in 2007 to start a non-profit organization that played a critical role in the formation of the CCS. And surprise, surprise, McGraw-Hill already has CCS curricula available. (McGraw-Hill even has curricula available that aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards, about which very few taxpayers have even heard.)

Coleman is now the president of College Board that creates the SAT and AP tests. The College Board has recently announced its intention to redesign the tests to align with CCS, which means that even private and home schools will be compelled to align their curricula with CCS in order for their students to succeed on these critical college admission exams.

As it now stands, 45 states have bought into the Common Core scheme to nationalize education, despite the fact that there has been no field-testing to determine the standards’ efficacy. As with Obamacare, it appears most of the country is going to jump headfirst into stygian waters even as a swelling number of prescient guards are screaming at us to stop.

Tomorrow: Common Core Standards Part 2

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