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Common Core Causes Georgia Teacher to Walk Away from Her Job

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Photo Credit: Common Core/Examiner A Georgia teacher, Meg Norris, who is a doctoral candidate in education and a certified teacher in Georgia walked away from her dream job in one of Georgia’s schools because of the controversial Common Core curriculum and wrote an apologetic and explanation letter to her former students on Saturday.

Common Core, a federal education mandate program under the Obama administration, describes itself as internationally bench-marked, aligned with college and work expectations, and states that it is evidence-based.

Teachers like Norris and other opponents say that it is not true, it’s only a government takeover of education and according to Norris, a money making proposition for businessmen.

Norris said in her letter to her students, “Common Core is the first time in the history of this country that a privately written and copyrighted plan has become public policy. There is no research to back it and it has never been tested. Politicians are pushing it because these corporations are giving them money to push it.”

“I saw you struggling with Common Core skills. Even with the new curriculum from the district, no matter how I broke it down for you I could see you didn’t understand. I saw the frustration on your faces… and when time ran out and we had to take the county’s test (on the county’s schedule), I saw the tears roll from your eyes. You failed. I saw you missing school more days than normal. You came early every day for homework help, but it didn’t make any difference. You still could not understand,” Norris said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Tyranny in Maryland: Arrested for Asking A Question About Common Core (+video)

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Is Dr. Dallas Dance, Superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools, so incompetent and clueless that they have to have someone arrested who asks an “unapproved” question about Dr. Zimba’s statements on the Common Core?

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As the push back against Common Core builds momentum, the boot of the state on the necks of the grassroots tightens. Websites, prepaid for 3 years in advance, are suddenly taken down for non-payment even though all the fees were paid. At school board meetings, board members only answer pre-selected questions that have been scripted. No “non-scripted” questions are permitted. Those who violate this, face arrest or other unpleasant experiences. Lord only knows what the child will experience in school as a result of a parent’s question.

Below you will see a video of a parent being ejected, with force, by a security goon, from a school board meeting on common core. The man ejected from the meeting is Robert Small. His crime? He asked a question as reported by the Examiner:

“I want to know how many parents here are aware that the goal of the Common Core standards isn’t to prepare kids for full-fledged universities, it’s to prepare them for community college…..Parents, take control. We’re sick of this. This is not a CNN political game. This is a public town hall… Listen, don’t stand for this. You’re sitting here like cattle. You have questions. Confront them. They don’t want to do it in public…. Parents, you need to question these people….Do the research, it’s online.”

This is the jackboot of tyranny. This is when you know you are no longer in America of the past. This is the America of Barack Obama. This is an American at a school board meeting being arrested for asking a question pertinent to the meeting. How dare an American tax payer ask Dr. Dallas Dance, Superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools, and Lillian Lowery, Maryland Superintendent, a question!

Here you can hear the parents still objecting that their pre-submitted questions were not answered.

I wonder how many people will be arrest at the next meeting in Maryland? These tyrants need to hear from you. Even if you like the Common Core, this is not how taxpayers who payer their salary should be treated. As a citizen, you have the right to speak out. As an American, you are afforded your first Amendment Right. This gentleman did not speak out of turn. He was called on. Yet, he was Forcefully ejected.

If Dr. Dallas is this incompetent, then this superintendent should be fired or recalled. This is an outrageous infringement on the first amendment rights of Mr. Small and other parents in Baltimore, Maryland. This is not a partisan issue. This is an AMERICAN issue. In America, we have the right to debate and discuss policies freely.

If this is how parents are treated, how are they treating children? No wonder children don’t perform well on tests in school, they are afraid to speak out! Clearly, the administration, not the parents or teachers, are the problem.

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Read more from CPR Media Network.

This story appeared first in the Examiner.

Clash over Common Core: Opposition Grows as National Education Standards Approach

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Erika Russell, a mother of four from Maine, had no intention of embroiling herself in the fight over Common Core.

As she put it, “I sent my kids to public school, so I wouldn’t have to worry about what they’re learning.”

Then her then-9-year-old, second-grade daughter returned home from school one day in January of 2012 with a frown.

“She asked me, ‘Mom, Can you home school me?’ I said, ‘What about your friends?’ and she just told me she would see them at sports. Then, I knew something was wrong and I should start looking into this.”

Over the next 18 months, the 36-year-old Russell, who resides in Sidney in the central part of the state, helped found “No Common Core Maine,” a coalition of concerned parents, educators and activists– and one of a growing number of organizations nationwide who have made it their mission to stop Common Core’s implementation.

Read more from this story HERE.

Parents Who Home-School Question Common Core’s Reach

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Photo Credit: FOXNEWS.COM

Photo Credit: FOXNEWS.COM

There are few things 9-year-old Rhett Ricardo relishes more than curling up on his family’s living room couch and delving into a novel, like “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” – his imagination whirling as he reads the fantastical plot about a mysterious sea monster and a submarine, his mother says.

But Jill Finnerty Ricardo, of Dade City, Fla., who home-schools her three oldest children, has concerns about what is known as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) – a national assessment standard adopted in 45 states that, among other objectives, seeks to balance out a perceived literature-heavy English curriculum with more non-fiction reading and writing, particularly informational text..

While the new standards, which purport to emphasize critical thinking and problem solving, are meant for public schools only, opponents say they will affect all children – including those who are home-schooled, especially when it comes to taking state standardized tests that are aligned with the Common Core.

It is up to each state whether home-schooled children must take standardized tests in grades three through eight, and once in high school. But all college-bound home-schooled students take the SAT, which is now being aligned with the new standards. The new head of the College Board, which is revamping the SAT, is David Coleman, the so-called architect of the Common Core.

“We home-school our kids to make sure we can support and encourage their individual interests, gifts and talents,” said 42-year-old Finnerty Ricardo, who holds degrees in marketing, public relations and biology.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Most Dangerous Domestic Spying Program is Common Core

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Photo Credit: ben swann

Photo Credit: ben swann

Earlier this year, revelations about the Department of Justice spying on the Associated Press were quickly followed by revelations that the NSA was collecting phone data on all Verizon, and then all American cell phone, users. Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing drew yet more attention to the issue, and domestic surveillance programs have remained a top issue in people’s minds ever since.

While Americans focus on institutions like the CIA and NSA, though, programs are being implemented which would lead to a much more institutional way of tracking citizens. Obamacare is one of these, but Common Core Standards – the federal educational program – is the most eyebrow-raising.

Bill Gates was one of the leaders of Common Core, putting his personal money into its development, implementation and promotion, so it’s unsurprising that much of this data mining will occur via Microsoft’s Cloud system.

Even the Department of Education, though, admits that privacy is a concern, and that that some of the data gathered may be “of a sensitive nature.” The information collected will be more than sensitive; much of it will also be completely unrelated to education. Data collected will not only include grades, test scores, name, date of birth and social security number, it will also include parents’ political affiliations, individual or familial mental or psychological problems, beliefs, religious practices and income.

In addition, all activities, as well as those deemed demeaning, self-incriminating or anti-social, will be stored in students’ school records. In other words, not only will permanently stored data reflect criminal activities, it will also reflect bullying or anything perceived as abnormal. The mere fact that the White House notes the program can be used to “automatically demonstrate proof of competency in a work setting” means such data is intended to affect students’ futures.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rescind AO 261 to Preserve Alaska’s Privacy

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Janet Napolitano will soon be arriving at the University of California system office to take over the Presidency of the University of California System. What many Alaskans may not realize is that the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia, that testing service that Alaska has joined for Common Core testing, is housed in the University of California system through the UCLA campus. As part of that agreement, Alaska’s Governor also agreed to comply with all data requests and provide them with access to Alaska’s P20 database. For those unaware of the governing document, it is in the document section of Stop Alaska Common Core.

Unlike most states, construction of Alaska’s P20 database occurred independently of the Common Core standards. P20 is an “ultra-secure” file type that will be in cloud storage that goes from Pre-Kindergarten to grade 20 and includes 400 data points. Due to the availability of a $4 million dollar grant, the state of Alaska applied for and received this grant to create a P20 database in 2011. It is maintained at the moment by the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education. The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (AK DEED) served as the fiscal agent on the grant, and the database will be used extensively in “evidence based” education according to Alaska’s 2013 waiver from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Thus, little Susie’s teacher will know Susie’s bus stop times, parent’s voting preferences, religious affiliation, gun ownership, and all sorts of other details essential to educating little Susie. As little Susie grows, her professors and future employers will have access to not so little Susie’s data too, as well as any other tidbits contributed by teachers and other school personnel along the way as Little Susie grows to be a woman.

In order to merge the data, Governor Parnell issued Administrative Order (AO 261) in December 2011. Now at the time, it may have seem like a good idea to remove the firewalls and integrate the Permanent Fund Data, Alaska Housing Finance Authority data, the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development data, and the University of Alaska data, and all other state agencies’ data into one large data set on the “unit” (or person) level. It may have sounded like a good idea at the time, and as someone trained as an econometrician, I get the “desire for data” to do research to make better public policy choices.

However, I don’t think it is such a good idea anymore. It is time for the Governor, and other Alaskans, to rethink this Administrative Order, and Alaska’s membership in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium in light of recent developments.


First, let’s note that Janet Napolitano is not a big fan of civilians owning guns. Let’s also recognize that through the Smarter Balanced agreement, she will have access to Alaskan data at through the via Smarter Balanced Affiliation with the University of California. Let’s also recognize that Smarter
Balanced and the University of California system may do with this data whatever they wish under the new changes for privacy laws. This is unit level data on everyone in Alaska. Does anyone in this state really trust this dataset in the hands of Janet Napolitano?

Second, there is this strange little provision in ObamaCare that allows for home visits if a student scores poorly on tests. There are also other provisions like smoking, being a veteran, and some other variables that can trigger these visits, but poor test results is one that clearly triggers a home wellness visit through ObamaCare. These test scores will be part of the P20 database. Let’s not forget that this database includes the Permanent Fund Dividend data, so even if you do not have a child in school, you appear in the database. Have you ever signed to be able to pick up a niece or grandchild after school? Any adult associated with a child who performs poorly on a test could get a wellness visit.

Remember, the PFD data and the Alaska Housing Finance Data includes banking information, mailing address, physical address, and easily reveals the names of all family members through sponsorship.

The above is disconcerting. Why should the school needs data on people who do not have children in school?

We are heading into an era where our rights and privacy are in a precarious state of affairs with respect to the Federal Government. Governor Parnell says he is against ObamaCare and the Common Core. If this is true, then certainly he will see the wisdom of protecting Alaskans privacy by undertaking the following actions:

A) Rescind AO 261. Put the firewalls between the data sets back in place.

B) Withdraw Alaska from the Smarter Balanced Agreement immediately.

Note:

The page referenced on Obama Care and test scores can be accessed here.

AO

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Dr. Barbara Haney is an economist, political activist, and social media consultant in Alaska. She has previously served as a program director and faculty member at University of Alaska, Eastern Illinois University, University of Notre Dame, and other colleges and research institutions. In addition to her university experience, Dr. Haney has served as an ABE educator and a home school educator. She has served as a district chairman, national delegate, and campaign volunteer in various Republican campaigns. Dr. Haney receives mail at [email protected]

National Expert Says Alaska has Adopted Common Core “but With a Different Name”

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0 (11)On August 12, 2013, Dr. Sandra Stotsky delivered a preliminary review of Alaska’s Standards in English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics. While the teleconference had been arranged a while ago to help legislators and the public evaluate the rigor and changes in Alaska’s standards, interest in Dr. Stotsky observations on Alaska’s standards intensified after the Governor Parnell’s email statement on August 8, 2013 regarding the “misinformation” on Alaska’s New Standards.

Dr. Stotsky is uniquely qualified to speak on the issue of educational standards. She was the only person with a background in English Language Arts on the Validation Committee for the Common Core, and is quite familiar with the standards. Due to the many flaws of the Common Core, she refused to lend her signature to the Common Core standards. As Lt. Commissioner of Education in Massachusetts, she lead the effort that resulted in the revitalization of education in that state and resulted in the highest student achievement scores in the world in subsequent years. Dr. Stotsky has had a distinguished career in the field of education and has recently testified in Michigan and Indiana on their standards.

After giving a brief overview of the basics of the Common Core Initiative and Standards, she compared the Alaska Standards to the Common Core English and Math. The audio of the first section can be found here.

Quoting Dr. Stotsky (at the 2:26 mark)

“… what Alaska has done is simply adopt Common Core but with a different name. It has changed the introductory matter in the document, the text that is there before the standards, but from my perusal of the actual English Language Arts Standards in what Alaska has adopted, it has adopted pretty much exactly what Common Core has. So it is not a different set of standards, there is nothing that is in it that suggests it is tailored to Alaska in any particular way; it is simply, for the most part, a set of skills, generic or abstract skills, and that is what common core consists of…. Alaska adopted the same appendices and supporting material that goes with Common Core’s ELA Standards.”

What does this mean for what Alaska’s teachers will be teaching and the assessments?

Dr. Stotsky suggested that there will probably be more writing than reading in every common core classroom because common core ELA standards stress writing more than reading at every grade level. This is not good because this is the reverse of what a century of research has indicated as the basis for developing reading and writing skills. The foundation for good writing is good reading. Good reading skills are needed in every subject of the curriculum. The implication is that far more time will be spent on writing than reading which is not, as I suggest, is primary for learning how to read well in every subject including English.

The Common Core Standards rarely have anything to suggest as an illustration what the level difficulty of the standard is and what might be an example lesson that could be done to address that standard.

Dr. Stotsky contends that what common core gives you is a skill and it gives it in an appendix, a set of titles that you have to get some idea of a level of complexity for from using readability formula. This is not easily done by a either a reading or an English teacher. It is hard to interpret what the standard means and the examples are not there. The level of complexity in the appendix has such a wide range to accommodate different levels, but by the time you get to the high school level it is unclear what level of difficulty is.

Unless you have examples, teachers have little to guide them.

What are the deficiencies in what Alaska adopted?

Dr. Stotsky states “Alaska has adopted the same limitations that are in the common core standards. I don’t see where they have done anything different. ”

The major issue is that the common core or the new Alaska Standards expect English Teachers to spend 50% of their reading instructional time on informational texts at every grade level. This is not something that English teachers are trained to teach. They are typically trained to teach the 4 major genres of literature: poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction. They are not trained to teach informational texts. There is no body of information that English teachers have ever been responsible for teaching.

There is then a reduction in literary study and increase in something called informational texts. It means that there will be a reduction in opportunities students have for developing critical thinking and college readiness.

If critical thinking or analytical thinking if it comes from anywhere it comes from learning to read between the lines of complex literary texts. So those opportunities are going to be reduced when English teachers have to have less than 50% literary study and more than 50% informational text.

Another deficiency in the new Alaska Standards is that there are many developmentally inappropriate writing standards, especially for average middle school students. They are not linked to appropriate reading standards or to prose models.

Most of common core’s college readiness and grade level standards in ELA are empty skills. They do not provide a list of recommended authors or works, just examples of complexity. They do not require British Literature besides Shakespeare. They require no authors from the ancient world, like the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid. Common Core requires no selected pieces from the Bible as literature, so that students can learn about the influence of the King James Version of the Bible and Shakespeare on English and American literature. Nor does Common Core require the study of the history of the English language, and without requirements in these areas, students are not prepared for college coursework.

The reliance on informational texts distorts the English curriculum.

As the sole member of the Validation Committee of the Common Core with an ELA background, Dr. Stotsky’s committee was charged with ensuring that the Common Core standards were internationally benchmarked and had a research base. Dr. Stotsky kept asking for the documents and evidence that supported the international benchmarking of the standards from the Common Core committee. There was no evidence and eventually the Common Core committee settled for the standards being “informed by” documents in other countries. But there was no research and no other countries named to suggest that our standards as a whole were comparable (which is what benchmarking means)to the best standards in other countries.

There is no body of research that supports the idea that 50% of what students read in the English Class should be informational texts. Of course they should be reading informational texts in other subjects, but there is nothing that suggests that this is a benefit in the English class. It distorts the English curriculum.

Part of the problem with Common Core can be traced to who were the chief writers of Common Core’s ELA standards. Any state group of legislators should want to know who chose them and what their credentials were. We can’t get any information officially from CCSSO and NGA the two groups that sponsored these standards supported by the Gates Foundation. Why can’t we get any information on the credentials and the rationale for the choice of who the standards writers? They are private organizations who have copyrighted Common Core standards. So that there can be no change in them.

Dr. Stotsky continued in her discussion on Alaska’s standards. “Alaska has adopted essentially the same, but it has said it hasn’t adopted Common Core, so I can see they have done an end game around the issue of copyright. As long as Alaska claims it has its own standards, then it can claim the copyright issue doesn’t matter. The question will be will they ever change if they want to stay aligned or the same as what Common Core Standards are, which have been copyrighted by these two private NGOs.”

Now who were the people chosen in ELA? Their names are well known, David Coleman, who is now the head of the College Board, and Susan Pimentel. I knew her well for many years professionally. Neither of them has ever taught in K-12 or in higher education, English or in anything else. Neither of them has ever written about curriculum and instruction, neither of them has any reputation in the area of reading or literary study, nobody knows officially why they were chosen to write the standards. But it was David Coleman’s idea that it should be 50-50 for informational texts and literary study. He insists to this day that students need to spend 50% of their time in an English class learning how to read informational texts. This means that literature teachers all over the country are doing things that they certainly never anticipated having to do. Instead of teaching a whole play, or a whole long Epic poem, they are teaching excerpts. This is the only way they can get in long novels or long plays. This is hardly the kind of literary study that one would want, particularly when literary study is happens to be important for students intellectually in developing critical thinking.

It seems to me that a state that is going to have standards that are called college readiness standards that are tied to college admission requirements … the people you want to consult about quality and rigor of those standards would be your higher education faculty who teach freshman courses in mathematics, science, reading, and English. (as opposed to the Education Department Faculty). No state legislature understands why the most relevant people to look at something called college readiness standards were not even asked as a group. The people who teach freshman college students were never asked to look at these college readiness standards.

Dr. Stotsky concluded her presentation with the following question: “One might want to ask why the math, science and engineering faculty were not asked. Why did you need some far away agencies tell you what those requirements should be?”

Dr. Stotsky then graciously fielded questions from the callers, including Alaska Department of Education staff. There was a very lively discussion on informational texts and literature and how that would enter accountability. She also provided insight on how legislators in other states have addressed the challenges posed by the Common Core. The question and answer section is in part 2 and can be listened to here.

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Dr. Barbara Haney is an economist, political activist, and social media consultant in Alaska. She has previously served as a program director and faculty member at University of Alaska, Eastern Illinois University, University of Notre Dame, and other colleges and research institutions. In addition to her university experience, Dr. Haney has served as an ABE educator and a home school educator. She has served as a district chairman, national delegate, and campaign volunteer in various Republican campaigns. Dr. Haney receives mail at [email protected]

William Ayer’s Staff at “Achieve Inc.” Wrote Alaska’s Standards?

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Many Alaskans may not be familiar with an organization named Achieve, Inc. but it has been the primary driver in the implementation of Barack Obama’s educational agenda. It is an organization that enshrines the mojo of William Ayers and specializes in the implementation of the common core standards and facilitates the entry of states into one of two consortia: Partnership for Assessing College and Career Readiness (PARCC) or Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). William Ayers is a long time friend ofLinda Darling Hammond, the Senior Adviser of SBAC. Therefore, it would hardly be surprising that the use of educational consulting firm that enshrines William Ayer’s mojo would then facilitate the writing of a state’s educational standards would result in a state becoming a member of a consortium headed by Linda Darling Hammond.

That is exactly what happened in Alaska.

The Alaska Department of Education continues to insist that the state of Alaska wrote its own educational standards and that they are “Alaska owned” and “Alaska made” and “cutting edge stuff.” The information submitted by the state of Alaska for funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) clearly conflicts with that narrative. The ESEA Flexibility document is a tedious compendium of nearly 1,000 pages and is hardly a New York Times best seller; on a summer day in Alaska, it is hardly a choice reading. But as you read the actual document, rather than AK DEED’s cherry picked power point about the document, the truth of the matter emerges.

Of course, you have to get to the appendix attachment 5 of the actual document to find it out. This is a stark contrast to Dr. McCauley laughing at Rep. Wilson’s questions on the Common Core at the 8:11 mark here. The nervous laughter by Dr. McCauley is generally an indication to dig deeper.

The narrative that these standards are “Alaska’s Standards” and they were “written by Alaska teachers” was the marketing ploy decided upon early on by AK DEED. It was part of the plan laid out by Achieve, Inc with Commissioner Hanley. This blog will bear that out.

It may be true that Alaskan teachers wrote standards. It may be true that these standards were on a server for public comment. But that is not what was adopted. There are multiple iterations of the standards, and only the initial drafting involved teachers. Achieve’s staff was consulted at each phase of the process.

The Final Standards are not the ones written by the teachers and differ in substantial ways. I won’t bore the reader with gory details of Alaska’s standards that have been discussed by SBAC and in the blogs of other states, but after this article, the curious reader will readily see that these standards were actually not written by Alaskan teachers. With rare exception, they are word for word identical to the Common Core. There never was any intent on the part of Commissioner Hanley to adopt standards written by Alaska teachers. There was an intent to engage in a misinformation/publicity campaign calling the standards “Alaskan Made” as noted in the discussion of the Alaska Board of Education meeting minutes under 4 A1 on page 3 in December of 2011. But this was before the standards were even adopted, and even then they were admitting that the Common Core was the source document. By January of 2013, they were morphed and massaged into the Common Core standards publically licensed by CCSSO.

This is the same tactic that was used in Utah.

As detailed in a letter dated June 7, 2012 from UA President Patrick Gamble to US DOE Secretary Arne Duncan, Alaska’s journey into the Common Core process was tightly scripted. The implementation of the Common Core Standards began in 2010. Alaska DEED, under the direction of Mike Hanley, began planning the implementation of the common core with the assistance of William Ayer’s Achieve, Inc. This can be found buried in the ESEA Flexibility document. For convenience of the reader, this document is listed separately here. Gamble states

“…Alaska Department of Education and Early Development Staff coordinated with Achieve, Inc in the initial planning stages, of the standards revision process in 2010. Staff from Achieve reviewed Alaska’s revision plan and provided feedback via phone conversations and teleconferences. Achieve provided critical guidance for consideration of appropriate stakeholders, identifying key decision makers, and process-specific tasks, which Alaska incorporated into the review.”

Achieve, Inc. is nowhere mentioned in the ESEA Flexibility power point presented to Alaska’s Finance Subcommittee on Education. Indeed, Achieve Inc is not mentioned in the main narrative of the document, except in Patrick Gamble’s letter. Yet the process in Alaska clearly followed the guide written by Achieve Inc. to implement the Common Core.

I wonder how much in consulting fees was spent on that activity by the State of Alaska? The flexibility document discusses $300,000 spent on meetings, but does not list the consulting fees paid to William Ayer’s firm.

Achieve, Inc instructed AK DEED’s staff via telephone consultations at every part of the process. In the initial phase, teachers were pulled together and asked to compare the Common Core Standards to the existing Alaska Grade Level Expectations (AK-GLE). Standards were scored based on a rubric of anywhere from full alignment to not aligned at all. If not aligned, educators were then asked if the Alaska standard was more rigorous or less. Clearly then, the subsequent step would be to involve educators into accepting the Common Core Standards, or nearly so, while leaving them with the impression that they actually wrote them, or at least had a personal investment in them.

According to Patrick Gamble’s letter, Brian Gong and Karin Hess of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment were meeting facilitators. Brian Gong does have a background in psychology and worked for Educational Testing Services (ETS) before his work in Kentucky. Karin Hess’s work is in learning progressions. One could view leading educators from their own GLEs to the Common Core as an application of a learning progression. One could speculate on why psychologists were used to facilitate these meetings, but that is left for the reader to investigate. The process seemed to follow the path that is in the Achieve’s Path to Implementation document on page 20.

After the initial round, the Alaska English standards magically emerged nearly perfectly aligned with the Common Core but lacked informational texts listed in the common core. The Alaska’s math standards had very little in common with the Common Core, perhaps suggesting that psychological maneuvering and jedi-mind tricks are not easily used on math teachers. The reports and scoring of these “teacher driven” standards still exist in archive form.

The creation of the draft standards was probably the last that most teachers involved in the process saw of the standards until they were published in their final form for approval. By December of 2011, the new standards were made available for public comment, according to page 3 of December 15-16 minutes of the Alaska State Board of Education. The Commissioner also indicated in this meeting that the Common Core was used as the starting point and that they intended to promote the Common Core standards were “made in Alaska.” There was also a discussion of a publicity campaign to gain further support for the “roll-out” of the standards as “Alaska made.”

The standards “sat on the server” for public comment and were submitted to the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) for review. This is where the magical transformation of the standards took place. The first set of standards was apparently not quite close enough to the Common Core for approval by the CCSSO and suggestions were made to bring about a greater alignment of Alaska’s standards and the Common Core. That is when another set of standards emerged. These are probably the changes suggested by “stakeholder comments” that are discussed in the ESEA Flexibility document. It is in this period that the Alaska math standards morphed into the Common Core practically verbatim. Pythagorean Theorem, multiplication table memorization, and a host of other math concepts were purged from the state standards. The Common Core informational texts were brought into English Language Arts (ELA) standards and the literature not part of the Common Core removed. EPA manuals and UN publications took the place of British literature and other American classics. These are, quite frankly, major document changes that were undertaken by DEED with little oversight by the legislature, the taxpayers, the parents, and the teachers.

While it may be true that the document sat on the server for public comment, it really doesn’t seem that the AK DEED promoted it much. Certainly it sent out emails to the regular suspects, but these were all pre-defined by Achieve, Inc. Voters, taxpayers and parents didn’t seem to be a priority for DEED. They can spend $300,000 for meetings to fly all over the state to obscure areas, but heaven forbid they spend $5.00 on a promoted post on Facebook that could reach the whole state, or go large and spend $85.00 on an ad on Drudge or Facebook. They didn’t even advertise in papers outside of Anchorage, nor consider the free publications in the state that appear to garner substantial readership in the outer reaches of the state. You can believe that every educational consultant on the planet knew about them, and you can bet these “stakeholders” were submitting comments.

In June 2012, the Final Standards were approved. By August 2, 2012, the exchange between the CCSSO and AK DEED show that the final standards are quite closely aligned, but perhaps not close enough. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Executive Committee approved proposed changes to the SBAC Governance document on 9/18/2012. Under this provision, states that had standards that were “substantially identical” to the common core could enter the consortia. This action allowed Alaska to be considered for membership status. However, the state would have to prove that the standards were “substantially identical.”

By January 22, 2013, Scott Norton, Strategic Initiative Director of the CCSSO issued the memo stating

“…analysis showed that the final Alaska ELA and Math Standards track nearly exactly with the Common Core, employing the same structure and language used in the CCSS, with nearly all the CCSS being used verbatim in the Alaska Standards.”

This should put to bed the notion that Alaska’s Standards were written by Alaskans, owned by Alaskans, or originated in Alaska.

The truth is that the plan was in place long ago by Commissioner Hanley and Achieve, Inc. to call the Common Core standards “Alaska made and owned” and not the common core. Then the state would be entering the consortia and proving their standards were substantially identical while telling the Alaskan public that they were not the common core. After all, the teachers attended the meeting where they were drafted right? So they will defend them, to their own detriment and that of Alaska’s children, parents, and taxpayers.

Are there some minor differences between Alaska’s Standards and the Common Core? Of course, every state is allowed to 15% either in the form of an additional sentence or an additional clause to a sentence to provide clarification. Alaska doesn’t have nearly that much variance from the Common Core. Never fear, Achieve tells states how to deal with that 15% on pages 23 of implementation guide. Anything that is not part of the Common Core is to be ignored. It won’t be on the Consortia tests. As Brian Gong notes in his 2012 presentation, the Consortia drive the process. Retention and promotion for teachers and principals are now tied to the results of the SBAC tests. Only the Common Core content will be on that test, not the “state content.” Thus, anything that varies from the Common Core will be merely letters on a page.

The ESEA Flexibility money totaled $69 Million for Alaska. In exchange for that money and Alaska’s right of self-determination and freedom, they agreed to enter a consortia program that is going to cost billions to implement. Well, now I understand why the state’s finances are in such a bad state and why virtue is so lacking.

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Dr. Barbara Haney is an economist, political activist, and social media consultant in Alaska. She has previously served as a program director and faculty member at University of Alaska, Eastern Illinois University, University of Notre Dame, and other colleges and research institutions. In addition to her university experience, Dr. Haney has served as an ABE educator and a home school educator. She has served as a district chairman, national delegate, and campaign volunteer in various Republican campaigns. Dr. Haney receives mail at [email protected]

Is Common Core Failing the Test? (+video)

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Photo Credit: Ethan BlochPresident Barack Obama’s goal of holding all students across the U.S. to the same high academic standards may be on the verge of unraveling as states take a hard look at the more rigorous tests under development — and balk.

Backed by $360 million in federal grants, some 40-plus states have spent the past three years working with testing companies to develop math and language arts exams tied to the academic standards known as Common Core. They’re minimizing the dreary fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice in favor of more challenging tasks. Kids as young as third grade, for instance, will be asked to write essays synthesizing information from multiple nonfiction texts and to explain their reasoning on math problems.

Yet now that the new tests are almost ready, state officials are complaining that they’re too long and too costly and require too much computer technology. They’re also beginning to push back against the exams as an unwanted federal intrusion on local policy, echoing a groundswell of opposition from tea party critics of Common Core.

Georgia dropped out of the testing collaboration on Monday, saying it would create its own exams instead. Pennsylvania, Alabama, Oklahoma and Utah have already withdrawn. There are strong indications that Florida and Indiana will be next. Other populous states are also teetering. The Michigan Legislature has effectively nixed the new tests by blocking spending on them, though the ban may be revisited next fall. New York is officially undecided but it’s already spending heavily on alternatives. Texas and Virginia never signed on in the first place.

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Common Core: In Pursuit of the New Soviet Man

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Photo Credit: APThe Common Core State Standards Initiative is a federal initiative designed to homogenize diverse state educational curricula.

It is also the latest example of destructive federal overreach into the education system.

Like its predecessor No Child Left Behind, Common Core will not produce vibrant, inspired thinkers eager to tackle the world.

Instead, Common Core is designed to churn out young people who will be educated enough to work, consume, and pay taxes, but who are not encouraged to be creative, or to use critical thinking, or to develop anything remotely characteristic of those who possess superior minds and the ability to achieve great things.

Common Core proponents seem more interested in producing what Russian communists called “New Soviet Men” — people who are selfless, moderately educated, and stripped of all nationalist sentiment — than they are in delivering the next Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, or Steve Jobs.

Read more from this story HERE.