photo credit: jber

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect you to implement the Common Core Curriculum from the Race to the Top program in this state. I thought you would take the high road as Governor Palin and Governor Perry did. Sadly, you chose the low road of capitulation and appeasement to a federal government out of control. To say I am disappointed would be an understatement. What happened to the Governor who sued the Federal Government on Obama Care? The Race to the Top created “Consortia” are clearly unconstitutional and violates other Federal Statutes.

I am requesting that you remove the state of Alaska from Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and keep Alaska independent of both SBAC and the Partnership for Assessing College and Career Readiness (PARCC). I am asking you publicly. I do not ask this for myself. My children are grown. I ask this for Alaska’s citizens, voters, taxpayers, parents, and the future generations of Alaskans. I ask it to preserve Alaska as America’s a northern bastion of freedom.

In March of 2013 when I discovered Teacher in Service Worshops on the Common Core in Fairbanks announced on the State of Alaska DEED website, I called your office to ask if the Common Core had been adopted by the state of Alaska. Your office staff researched the matter and assured me on April 2, or 3rd, by telephone that the state of Alaska had not, nor did it plan to, implement the Common Core, but if local districts decided to do so there was little the Governor’s office could do. Yet, on April 4th, your office signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with SBAC. The words “Common Core” were struck out, the Race to the Top Definition of the Common Core (College and Career Ready Standards) replaced them. That is very disingenuous. In fact, it is like saying you don’t use a pencil, but a graphite filled writing device. It is the same thing, according the Race To The Top (RTTT) definitions, Governor. I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.

These “consortia” are not vendors or clubs. They are a new form of government that violate federal law, the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution, and Article 4 of the US Constitution. Article 4 of the US Constitution guarantees a Republican form of government. There are no elected officials in the new super-structure of government. Alaska has no elected representative in this new government structure. Article 4 section 4 of the US Constitution clearly says, “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government…” Because this entity known as a consortium can collect revenue from the state and has governing authority and lacks elected representatives from the state of Alaska, I would argue it is in fact a new form of government that violates the guarantee.

There was no legislative approval of this agreement. There was no citizen referendum that allowed you to enter this agreement. 1) you lack the authority to enter into the agreement, 2) it runs counter to everything upon which you campaigned, 3) cannot be supported by the Republicans and Independents in the state that elected you, 4) it conflicts with the other infrastructure improvements that you have established in your legislative agenda, and 5) there are several fiscal uncertainties in this agreement that are not known and are not clearly delineated in the agreement nor were they fully considered by Commissioner Hanley. Of course, nothing with Commissioner Hanley has been followed the process, including his appointment.

Entering into a binding agreement with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is not within your authority as Governor. SBAC is not merely a vendor agreement; it is an agreement that says the State of Alaska will obey the rules of the governing states of the consortium and the members of the executive board. (lines 6 &7 counting from the bottom of page 3, MOU). According to what the consortium asserts and you signed, Alaska cannot even exit the agreement without their approval once you move forward with it (p. 12). In fact, given my study of the document it would seem that the only way the state can exit is if the test is not rigorous enough, because of supplemental documents in the file. Indeed, I will be commenting on the exit provisions in the days ahead. Further, these MOUs come in stages, and I have seen stage 2 MOUs with other states, so I am well aware of what is coming down the trail. I’ve seen the back of this dog, Governor, and I don’t like the view. I don’t think other Alaskans will either. Alaska still has a narrow band of time to withdraw. I urge you to do so.

This agreement is contrary to everything you have campaigned on. By your signature on that document, the state of Alaska has been placed under the authority of governing states and an executive committee that was not elected by anyone in any state (p. 11, MOU). The people who sit on the governing board of SBAC who are so left of Alaskans that it would make Sen. French look like a Tea Party candidate. Indeed, one member, Linda Darling Hammond, is so far to the left that Senate Democrats in 2009 told then President –Elect Obama not to nominate her for Secretary of Education because she could not survive confirmation. This is a woman who was Barack Obama’s campaign adviser. Linda Darling Hammond’s radicalism is something William Ayers can only aspire to and never achieve, for he can never be a sweet grandmotherly figure who can spout Marxist concepts in the same way that Julie Andrews singing about her favorite things. They sound perfectly reasonable until you think it through.

Commissioner Hanley has stated that Alaska is an advisory state and says that Alaska will be advising the Consortia. However, the particulars of the agreement state just the opposite; Alaska will be “ADVISED” by the Consortium and the Governing States such as California, Oregon, and Washington. You do realize, Governor, that Governing states govern and that advisory states are the ones governed?

This is what you did in exchange for the No Child Left Behind waiver (NCLB). Read the document you signed carefully. This document states that Alaska will abide by the rules and decisions of the consortium. While I am an economist and not a lawyer, I do not see how you can possibly have the authority to sign over Alaska’s sovereignty in education or other matters unilaterally. I find no provision in the Alaska Constitution or in any of Alaska’s laws that enable you to do so. Indeed, I find plenty in AS 01.10 to preclude you from such an agreement. Certainly such an act would require at least legislative review; I would think that it would require some sort of change in our State Constitution. Indeed, I think it would require a revocation of our statehood charter. Alaska has fought long to overcome the vestiges of colonialism with respect to its position in the United States. Your own Lt. Governor has lamented that officials would sometimes meet with him during his ASRC days with a flag showing only 48 stars in the office. To place Alaska under the jurisdiction of other states is simply not something I would have ever expected from your administration and validates the colonial notions held about our state by those distant officials.

Where is the representation of parents, taxpayers, and teachers in this agreement? Where was their voice considered? Nowhere, sir. This is education without representation, governance without representation, and yes taxation without representation. This is everything the American Revolution was fought against, pure and simple.

In essence, signing that agreement removed the 49th Star and essentially placed the state as a non-state. That star was Ted Steven’s gift to Alaska. How dare you, sir. It is a significant affront to those who have supported you most. Your signature on that document makes all the shenanigans of the Alaska Republican Party leadership to appear trivial, which is why I did not attend the SCC meeting and made up some other excuse not to be in Homer. Governor, your signature on that document has done greater damage to our statehood than any other prior action of any other prior Alaskan Governor. It gives the federal government and a board of regional governing states complete control over Alaska’s education policy. The person who is a senior adviser to UNESCO’s Institute on International Economic Planning is Linda Darling Hammond is the same Linda Darling Hammond who is the senior adviser to SBAC, not some other person by the same name. You have de facto placed this state under her direct control. Have you even listened to her views? Children belong to everyone? Early childhood education to begin at 3 months of age? This is everything you campaigned against, or so I thought.

The fiscal enormities of this decision are staggering and the philosophical shift is vast and should have been fully vetted before the state legislature and the people of this state. My own questions to the commissioner in regard to the fiscal questions this decision have been posted anonymously here. They were not posted there by me, but nevertheless they are now out there. They deserved an answer then and they still deserve an answer.

The people of this state are worthy of an open and honest dialogue on the issue of educational standards. This cannot happen when the very officials who are charged by you to implement these standards perpetuate narratives and talking points that are, at best, misleading. In some cases, their “facts” are factually false. Dr. McCauley words on this topic sounds more like Susan Rice on Benghazi than something I would have expected from your administration. Even worse, their very disposition in discussing and relating to the public is one of that of nobleman toward peasants. The citizens of Alaska are not serfs, Alaska is not a colony, and we are worthy of an honest and open dialogue as citizens in a way that is not cloaked in the superiority of pretentiousness of unelected bureaucrats.

Dr. McCauley and Commissioner Hanley continue to repeat the mantra “these are not the Federal Common Core.” That was the same approach used in Utah to implement SBAC, and it failed. They claim 200 educators, university officials and business leaders wrote these standards. I looked at the authors of the documents. I know a few of these people. They are not 200, but 9. This document does not reflect their parlance or literary style. Further, if these standards were written by Alaskans as your DEED staff say, then how did they write the exact same words as the Federal Standards? This isn’t just “my word.” Others have examined these standards and arrived at the same conclusion. Calling these standards in their entirety uniquely Alaskan is factually false. Each state has 15% of “uniqueness.” That is all Alaska received was a 15% variance. Look at the links provided by the Truth in Education website.

Lets take a moment to gander into the language of these documents. Do you expect me to believe that any Alaskan Math teacher accepts “Mathematically proficient students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution” page 19 over knowing their math tables in the elementary grades? Let’s compare that statement with p. 6 of the Federal Standards that state, “Mathematically proficient students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution.” Do I really have to publish grade by grade sentence by sentence analysis? These are the exact same words. Did DEED think that if they used landscape in the PDF that no one would know?

Here is why it matters: if a student put down 2 + 2 =5 under the current system of teaching math, that student would find a nice big red check mark next to the answer. But under the new Common Core standards, a plausible explanation allows a lie to become truth. Process and explanation matter but answers do not. This is unacceptable in the field of mathematics by any reasonable standard even in North Pole, Alaska.

There is a reason, Governor, that Lech Walesa chose 2 + 2 = 4 as the symbol of the Polish resistance to the Soviet Union. Ah, but I suppose future Alaskan students will never know Orwell, will they? So much literature is striped out of the Federal Common Core ELA standards, and the Alaska ELA standards, No, they will be busy reading Ho Che Min in 5th grade rather than George Washington and they will be reading executive orders and Microsoft training manuals in the 6th grade, just as has occurred in other states.

I assure you Governor, when an Alaskan employer hires an Alaskan, they don’t want to hear why the wrong answer might be right. Alaskan employers do not want Hegelian dialect cloaked in the language of “deeper understanding.” They want the right answer. They need to know their math facts without taking off their socks. These standards in no way reflect the manpower studies of the department of labor, unless the category “radical Marxist revolutionary” is now the new description of a government bureaucrat.

How is interpreting spread sheets math? While I am not against STEM, there should be a solid teaching of mathematics. STEM may be worthy of their own standards, but they cannot possibly be a replacement for solving the problem without technology. Will spelling now be taught with a spell checker?

Further, if these new Alaska Standards are indeed uniquely Alaskan, why are we using the assessment tool for the Race To The Top Standards? Shouldn’t there be a uniquely Alaskan test for these uniquely Alaskan standards? Given that pay, promotion, and tenure will be based on these assessments, do you think the “Alaskan” part of the standards will win the classroom or the Federal “Race to the Top” component? Do you think Alaskans didn’t see what happened in Utah when their state claimed to have a “Utah” version of the Common Core and claimed “it was only an assessment” that grew to a total buy in?

It became clear by the end of the first week of June what the intent was with this program. Commissioner Hanley assured me that only the end of the year assessment would be used. He repeated this assurance at a June 2, 2013 meeting in Wasilla by the House Education Committee. However, if you compare this to his June 8, 2013 presentation, he very clearly has documents on his agenda from SBAC that make it obvious that he plans to “sell” the curriculum to the school districts. He does plan for formative (throughout the year) and end of the year assessments to be used, and he is angling to entice districts into the curriculum. Because the document is quite long, I thought I would save you computing time and put the documents here. It is pretty clear that he fully intends for a total implementation.

I am still wondering why taxpayers, voters, and parents were not consulted in these standards. Do you plan to be re-elected by “stakeholders” rather than “voters?” Is policy by your administration now undertaken by “stakeholders” and the voters be damned? If you can’t “Choose Respect” for the voters, how can you then expect people to “Choose Respect” in other matters? Your leadership, or lack of it, sets the tone on these matters.

Let’s compare this to how past governors wrote standards.

When Gov. Hickel assembled people to write standards in the Alaska 2000 document which pre-dated NCLB, the collection of people was quite large. The English teachers did not write the math standards; there were diverse groups from each discipline from across the state. All who were writing standards were doing so in their field. As I recall, the corpus of the Social Studies committee were teachers, parents, voters, and I was one of the few academics on it. Copies of various drafts could be found in various schools for discussion and comment. These committees received comment from the public and received comments from them on various proposals. Previously when I had been engaged in a similar process in another state, the experience was similar.

The process followed by you, Governor Parnell is the same that was followed by Gov. Knowles. A small group of technocrats gathering to write what they think they know best hiding behind a small citizen panel. Thus, I was totally shocked to see the small group of people writing the standards across all the discipline areas! I see no evidence of “Alaska generated” standards and all the fingerprints of the Obama Administration are all over these standards. To me, it would appear that the race to the top criteria were given to the group and they were allowed to restate a few things. That is the truth of what happened, and to suggest it was alternatively so is very disingenuous.

Surely you recognize the governing structure of SBAC as an Agenda 21 board? Certainly your AG advised you of the number of boroughs and communities in the state that have laws making the implementation of Agenda 21 illegal? Certainly you have read the GOP Platform rejecting Agenda 21? Are you aware of the Alaska Republican party platform that rejects the implementation of Agenda 21? It is in 2 item H.

The Alaska Republican Party platform specifically speaks against excessive federal control on education. How about III item C on Education which states:

We support local control of public education provided it does not limit competition or parental choice. We oppose all federal control of or influence on education. We support the parental right to have access to all educational information reaching their child.

The Common Core that you, Governor Parnell, signed Alaska into is anti-choice and is most federally intrusive program of all! Even worse, you signed the state up with the one version of the Common Core that parents can’t readily avoid. Parental Choice? The choices that parents will have reminds one of a Monty Python skit on Spam, you can get baked beans and spam or eggs and spam, but all the choices include Spam. This is NOT what Alaskans who support “Parental Choice” had in their minds.

How will these families regard the pledge to be “Good Without God?” How will you explain this to Pastor Prevo or Pastor Duffet or any of the other clergy in this state who have supported you through faith and freedom, right to life, and parent choices? How will this go with your traditional base?

I am certain you are aware that the Republican National Committee unanimously passed a resolution rejecting the Common Core Assessments at their Hollywood meetings in April of 2013. Certainly Governor, must not expect Republican groups to contribute to your re-election campaign after you proceeded with an agreement that is in direct contradiction to the Republican National Committee Resolutions, the National Republican Women, and the Alaska Republican Party Platform?

I am confident you understand that in 2011, the National Federation of Women unanimously passed a resolution rejecting the Common Core and its ASSESSMENTS. Certainly you do not expect local Republican Women organizations to donate to your campaign or support you when you have engaged in an act that is a flagrant disregard of their platform? Or do you intend to allow the debate on SB 21 drown out the debate on your new, radical education policy? Is that the agreement you have with Senate Democrats and former Governor Knowles? That the debate on SB21 and this whole recall movement is ginned up to hide what you are doing in Education Policy?

The nation knows that Exxon Mobile wrote a letter reminding the Governor of Pennsylvania of their philanthropic contributions recently to the Governor of Pennsylvania when that state began a reconsideration of their implementation of the Common Core at the behest of Senate Democrats in that state. Of course, I am certain that you have enough backbone to stand up to Exxon Mobile’s desire to have the Common Core implemented? For I know that SB21 was based on supply side economics and not crony capitalism. For, if you were to implement the Common Core curriculum based on the word of Exxon Mobile, that would certainly make SB21 look like crony capitalism rather than an application of supply side economics. Clearly, Republicans across the state of Alaska would get behind a governor who was implementing supply side economics. I supported it because I felt circumstances had changed that were to the underlying policy assumptions of ACES. However, many would greatly distance themselves from a candidate, even an incumbent who once served with Governor Palin, who was engaged in crony capitalism. Beyond bad optics, it would then lend credibility to all of the allegations of Senate Democrats in the oil tax debate, and that would make the road to re-election road rather bumpy.

Of course, even without Exxon Mobile, parents may well see this program as crony capitalism. Even in New York where the test is being protested by teachers and parents, the Common Core is being perceived as a sell out to Pearson Testing.

Certainly, any governor of any state who implemented the Common Core could never claim the high ground on limited government. The facts are out there in a rather straightforward way. $300 per student assessment is the real figure quoted by SBAC to several states; there is no “Alaska” discount sir, and the contract you signed doesn’t specify cost. Clearly, any governor who intended to introduce a curriculum or assessment that enshrines concepts of collectivism, man-made climate change, alternate family structures, two-spiritness, Israeli occupation of Palestine, along with uncertain math algorithms would find themselves with stiff resistance in 2014. Such a candidate could not call themselves conservative or a candidate of family values! Furthermore, you cannot possibly expect Alaska Natives to willingly participate in this madnessunder the guise of “culturally appropriate” standards?

Have you actually read Linda Darling Hammond’s work and teacher training manuals? Have you not seen Lev Vygotsky’s writings and methodology all over her teacher training materials? Have you actually read Vygotsky’s work? Or even a translation of it? Well, I have read some of it. Do you realize what Lev Vygotsky believed for personal freedom?

‘Only in community therefore, is personal freedom possible.’

How does this philosophy enshrine the works of Adam Smith, John Locke, any of the American founding fathers? You will find additional snippets of it here.

Do you think Alaskans don’t know that Lev Vygotsky was behind both the Czar education of uniformity and oppression, and later Stalin’s psychometric indoctrination architecture of the Cultural Revolution? From your vast knowledge of history, you certainly recall that Vygotsky’s methods were applied by Chairman Mao in the Great Leap Forward, as well as in the reeducation techniques employed by North Korea and Cuba? You realize Vygotsky’s theories are fully implanted in the teacher training and in the data mining? Do you honestly believe that Vygotsky’s name is being made synonymous with the Common Core is an accident? Do you think Linda Darling Hammond and William Ayers are unaware of the totality of Lev Vygotsky’s work beyond childhood learning theory?

Do you think Alaska Natives, or Alaska’s large populations of Koreans, Russians, and Cubans have forgotten how their fared under that system of education? As for Alaska Natives, you might fool those up on the Chandalar (I hope not), but you won’t fool those in other Alaskan communities where the legendary acts of cultural oppression at the hands of Russian educators are alive in their cultural history? Calling it “cultural common core” is an insult to every Native Alaskan and Alaskan Native, and quite frankly, every American. There is only one culture in the common core, and I dare say it is neither an Alaska’s culture, nor America’s culture. Just because there are a few math units on beading and knitting doesn’t make it Alaska Native. The devil is not just in the details here; if you think it is, then you are willingly ignorant of what is going on here.

In addition, this agreement requires a revenue stream, referred to as “fees” in the document and I would consider it a tax. Have you read the page 19 of the Strategy on Educational Equity & Excellence written by Linda Darling Hammond which was the blue print for this program? She clearly plans on dictating how states finance education. They characterized the Race to the Top as MODEST EXPENDITURE. These modest expenditures has set other states reeling from their fiscal impacts!

I honestly don’t know how you intend to fund this program in the face of declining oil revenue. Clearly, you must have been aware of the fiscal provisions of this program. They have no revenue from RTTT after 2014 and have stated they plan to be self financing by then. So you signed us into a consortium that sets policy and will receive revenue ran by an executive committee who believes in income redistribution? This doesn’t sound like a consortium, but a government entity. I suspect you may have misunderstood exactly what you signed.

Certainly you understand that taxing and spending are functions of the legislature. Therefore, how could you possibly entertain the idea of undertaking a program with such a large, uncertain fiscal note without legislative approval? Furthermore, since it is clear that property taxes in every borough of the state will have to increase to pay for this program, shouldn’t the borough governments been consulted? After all, we are talking about a test that was estimated to cost $300 per student in Vermont in 2010, and probably more so now based on the CRESST study performed for SBAC that cited escalating costs!

Nowhere is there any sort of delineation of costs that will upgrade the rather substantial upgrades in data wire, computer hardware, software that are associated with the test alone. After all, do you think Microsoft is funding this to sell Apple’s platform? How large of a contract to Cisco will there be? This program has placed California on the brink of bankruptcy and has so bled the state of Washington that they can no longer afford to maintain their infrastructure. There is no way, from a fiscal perspective, that the state can implement this program and engage in the sort of infrastructure improvements upon which you campaigned unless you plan for boroughs to raise property taxes by at least 25%. No where is this more obvious than in the state of Michigan, an SBAC Governing State, which defunded the Common Core this week to pay for infrastructure. If Econ One is advising you that you can, then they have not fully researched the matter and considered the lack of fiber optics capabilities beyond the road system.

Another revealing aspect of Linda Darling Hammond’s goals lies on page 21 of her Strategy on Educational Equity & Excellence . “…we must also have policies and practices that develop, select and fairly distribute a highly effective teacher workforce to all schools.” Excuse me Governor, this sounds like SBAC, through the state will be deciding which teachers can teach. This sounds like education planning. How would any member of a bargaining unit appeal a decision by SBAC that orders a teacher to move from Fairbanks to say, some village on the slope against their will? With whom would a teacher file a grievance? Is that addressed in current collective bargaining contracts? Teachers are often spouses and parents that have lives that extend beyond the classroom. A decision on where a teacher teaches could have profound impacts on these public servants’s personal lives and on other aspects in a community.

Governor, this “grand experiment” is not just a fiscal disaster in the making; we are talking about people’s lives. We are talking about the lives of children and families. We are talking about people’s careers as educators. The citizens of this state are not just mere objects, but people. The optics in this matter are not good and the winds of change are blowing counter to these “consortia.” I truly believe that Governor Palin had it right on the Race to the Top. I believe staying on the path to the RTTT will lead to higher property taxes, a significant erosion of the state’s permanent fund, and possibly the implementation of a state income tax. It will bleed money out of the state rather than to our own institutions of higher education. It will put Alaska’s students two years behind as it has in every other state, and will obliterate math education in this state. It will institutionalize the agenda of Barack Obama’s collectivist approach. This is a decision that will echo throughout history, and it is a future generation that will pay the price.

Please, Governor, I implore you, withdraw the state from SBAC while you still can. Follow Governor Perry’s lead. If you do not have the intestinal fortitude to do so, then look to Utah, Alabama, Michigan, Indiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina for ideas. If you are feeling particularly brave, I have a solution. While you are at it, clean up DEED. You have people there who do not serve you well, and they serve the people of this state even worse.