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Why Conservatives Should Keep a Close Eye on Betsy Devos’ Time at the Department of Education

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In a rare moment where I wonder whether I might be hallucinating, I seem to find myself in agreement with Juan Williams, the liberal Fox News, ex-NPR commentator. In a recent op-ed in The Hill, Williams takes a hard look at Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, and concludes that she might do great things for education … and she might do the exact opposite.

Education policy has long been one of my interests, and with respect to policy there are few evils greater than the Department of Education. Apart from being blatantly unconstitutional (the Constitution makes no mention of education and therefore reserves it to the states, not the federal government) the attempt to federalize education has led to such abominations as high-stakes testing, Common Core Standards, and data collection on students. It’s one of the first departments I would like to see a conservative president eliminate in its entirety. And while Trump has shown no signs of going this far, at first glance DeVos looks like she might be a step in the right direction.

As an education activist in Michigan, she was a strong supporter of school choice and her efforts greatly increased the state’s number of charter schools. Unlike many liberals, Juan Williams recognizes the benefits of choice in education and even admits to sending his own children to a charter school in Washington, DC because charter schools are just better than the public alternatives.

But DeVos is an untested quantity in anything like the role which she is being given, and there is no way to know how her past support for school choice will manifest itself at the federal level. It might take the form of a federalized voucher system, which many conservatives would consider a good thing. I would urge caution, however, before enthusiastically embracing such a system. Yes, federal vouchers would allow you to take your child to a private or religious school you otherwise might not be able to afford, but it also hands the federal government the purse strings of those institutions. If a school teaches something the government doesn’t like, there is always the threat of reclassifying the school in order to deny it voucher money.

Schools will do almost anything to avoid this loss of funding, which means that the Department of Education could essentially control the curriculum or standards of private schools just as it does for public schools now. In this way, what initially seemed like more choice becomes less choice as all schools, public and private, conform to the same standards.

One of Williams’ chief criticisms of DeVos is based on claims that the charter schools in Michigan don’t work, meaning that students don’t perform well on standardized tests or have high graduation rates compared to public schools in the state. There may be some truth in this, but we should always be careful of getting bogged down in data when it comes to education. Despite what the Left would have us believe, it’s not really possible to objectively measure education. It’s necessary for parents and children to decide what kind of school works for them, and that decision can’t be captured in a simple numerical score.

In short, I generally agree with Williams, especially when he says:

To me, no area of public policy is more in need of positive disruption than a public education system that is condemning too many children, especially black and Latino children, to live in poverty because they are not equipped with a good education.

To his credit, Williams recognizes that the status quo is unacceptable, although I suspect we differ on the question of how much public schools, as opposed to other forms of education, should be prioritized.

DeVos looks like she might be willing to shake things up, which is something we badly need, but her success as Education Secretary is far from certain. Her past support of Common Core is concerning, meaning that she does foresee a federal role in testing standards that is fundamentally anti-choice. She has since rescinded that position, but time will tell whether this is a genuine conversion, or a matter of political convenience. (For more from the author of “Why Conservatives Should Keep a Close Eye on Betsy Devos’ Time at the Department of Education” please click HERE)

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What the Founders Thought About the Value of a ‘Classical’ Education

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The generation that produced the U.S. Constitution lived at a time when liberal education was being rethought, redefined, stretched, and challenged.

The Founders lined up on different sides of that debate. They argued over whether or not a liberal education worthy of the name had to be a classical education based on instruction in the Greek and Latin languages. They divided into factions we might call, for convenience, “classicists” and “anti-classicists.”

Among the things most surprising is how early in the Colonial period objections were raised to the teaching of Greek and Latin; how widespread the resistance was; how many very famous Americans weighed in on the debate; and how modern the arguments brought by the anti-classicists sound.

The past is different and distant from us, and yet, in this case, the similarities are striking, leading one to wonder if there is a timeless element to America’s quarrel over the means and ends of good education. We sound like them to a surprising degree, and they sound like us. But not exactly, and the differences do matter.

The anti-classicists appeared in print as early as 1735—40 years before the Revolution. In that year, an anonymous Philadelphian called for a system of private education that would recognize the needs of different students and their families.

Debate Over Dead Languages

Not everyone was destined to be a scholar. Not everyone aspired to the professions of law, theology, or medicine. A thriving society needed farmers and tradesmen, clerks and accountants. Why should these children spend precious years trying to master languages they would soon forget? Why teach them Latin when what they needed in life were skills in English grammar and composition?

This anonymous author cited the English empiricist John Locke, who ridiculed the folly of wasting time teaching Latin to students who would never use it.

Over the ensuing 70 or 80 years, these arguments found renewed expression among some of America’s most articulate statesmen and reformers. Future scholars, they allowed, could continue to devote their childhood to mastery of Greek and Latin, but a young, ambitious, expansive republic on the rise needed to train its citizens in plain and vigorous English and in modern foreign languages for the sake of commerce in goods and ideas.

The nation needed to equip them for a vocation; to provide them with a utilitarian education for the sake of tangible “advantages” in life; to lay the groundwork for progress in science and the discovery of new knowledge; to offer a “universal” education (one open to common people, not just the elite); and to promote a distinctly American, even nationalist, education free from the dead hand of Europe’s antiquated ways of teaching and learning.

(These calls for reform sound like we’ve stepped into a modern debate over STEM education in our schools today.)

To understand the Founders and liberal education, we need to know first that among the Founders, there were champions of the classics who had every intention that Greek and Latin remain central to liberal education in the American republic; second, that there were dissenters who objected strenuously to the classics’ powerful grip on American education; and third, that even the champions of the classics tossed onto the rubbish heap some of the most venerable of the ancients.

All three parts of this argument matter if we want to arrive at a balanced judgment of the Founders and liberal education.

The takeaway from this is that the Founders’ legacy for classical and liberal education is a mixed one: It depends on which ones we quote.

Founders Against Founders

Classical and liberal education have proven to be resilient. So has the opposition. Classicist and anti-classicists alike would be partly pleased, partly disappointed, and partly alarmed if they could visit 21st-century America and the jumble of public schools, private schools, home schools, online schools, classical schools, and vocational schools that make up our educational “system.”

Among the “classicists” we find the ornery New England statesman John Adams, our second president. As an adult, Adams maintained his skill in Latin and Greek along with proficiency in a number of modern languages. Adams read widely in ancient and modern history, philosophy, constitutionalism, and political theory. His indebtedness to liberal learning could not have been greater.

Adams argued that the stability and durability of the young United States rested on the twin pillars of knowledge and virtue, a common refrain among the Founders.

Though a voracious reader of the classics himself, Thomas Jefferson, Adams’ bitter rival during the early years of the republic, was somewhat ambivalent and spoke rather disparagingly of the classicists: “They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors. We were to look backward, not forward, for improvement.”

One of the earliest critics of the prevalence of the classical languages was Benjamin Franklin.

His opposition to a certain kind of instruction in Greek and Latin came not from any anti-elitism, but from a conviction that time spent in this way had become an impediment to education, even an impediment to liberal education, depending on how we define liberal learning.

If “liberal” meant a broad, generous education for a man of the world able to navigate through polite society, then Latin and Greek seemed cramped and pedantic.

Franklin himself was a multilingual, learned man of cosmopolitan tastes and interests, yet he still opposed the classics. Why?

Flexibility

Franklin aimed at a utilitarian education that would equip ordinary citizens for their professions, including competence in their own language.

Education must be useful. The curriculum must include, he wrote in 1749, penmanship, drawing, English grammar and style, public speaking, history (with an emphasis on politics), geography, chronology, morality, natural history, and what his generation called “good breeding.”

The ultimate aim of this useful education was public service to the community. Franklin wasn’t opposed to the training of classical scholars, but not everyone was destined to be a scholar, and a practical education suited to the needs of a dynamic and prosperous society could not pretend everyone was going to be an academic.

Another Founder named Benjamin—Benjamin Rush—in 1789 argued for “liberal education” (his words) without instruction in Greek and Latin at all. Note the flexibility of the phrase “liberal education.” It could be divorced from classical education. Rush regretted the prominence of the “dead languages” as an obstacle to the promotion of “useful knowledge.”

By being so specialized, he thought, classical education could never meet the demands of “universal knowledge.” That is to say, it obstructed not only the progress of practical knowledge, but also the spread of knowledge through all levels of society that would make participatory government possible. The times demanded a new system of education to meet the needs of a new kind of government and society.

The criticism articulated by Franklin, Rush, and others formed part of a much larger story. We see by the end of the 18th century the opening of a distinct divide in educational theory and practice that runs right down to the present.

The emerging industrial, mass democratic, utilitarian, market-driven age turned out to have very different expectations for the kind of people schools ought to produce.

Importance of the Ancients

It should be noted, however, that opponents of classical education did not wage a war of extermination against the classics themselves: 1) They still wanted scholars to master Greek and Latin; 2) they still wanted the ancients read in good English translations; and 3) they wrestled with the inescapable question of whether an education for everyone could be built on instruction in the Greek and Latin languages.

At the same time, the defenders of the classical languages were not necessarily supporters of the whole of the Greek and Roman tradition. They were selective in their judgments. They even rejected parts of the ancient heritage that today many advocates of classical education in particular consider to be foundational to the whole tradition.

Indeed, for the generation of 1787, for the culture that gave the United States its Constitution, the ancient world and its authors and their ideas mattered very much. The Greeks and Romans provided examples of success and failure, models to follow and models to avoid.

If any of the Founders rejected the study of Greek and Latin, that did not mean they rejected reading the ancients in good modern translations. It did not mean removing grammar, logic, and rhetoric from the curriculum—the trinity of subjects at the very heart of liberal education.

That even the generation of 1787 argued about education reminds us that the problem of education in American society and politics has never been a settled question. Not even close. (For more from the author of “What the Founders Thought About the Value of a ‘Classical’ Education” please click HERE)

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Professors as Petty Tyrants

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

The mother of the 16-year-old pro-life demonstrator who suffered a rough confrontation with a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has shown a rare civility — the spirit liberals are forever bemoaning the lack of but rarely exhibit themselves.

The event: A small group of pro-life activists visited UCSB to demonstrate against abortion. They bore posters and leaflets and set up their display on the campus’s “free speech zone.” Professor Mireille Miller-Young was offended, no, “triggered,” by the photo of an aborted baby on Thrin Short’s poster. Together with two or three students, the professor grabbed a large sign, and then pushed and scratched the girl who attempted to take it back. This was captured on video by the pro-lifers. “I was stronger, so I took the sign,” Miller-Young explained later.

Miller-Young has since been charged with misdemeanor theft, battery (Short’s arms bore scratches, also photographed), and vandalism (Miller-Young and her students cut the sign to pieces).

Throughout the unpleasant encounter, the professor and her students let fly with profanity and insults.

The civility: Catherine Short, mother of Thrin, issued a statement reading in part: “Unfortunately, along with the expressions of support we have received, we have become aware of individuals engaging in ad hominem attacks against Miller-Young. We do not condone this, and we ask that such attacks stop.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Will Educational Freedom in Alaska Dawn in New Year?

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Photo Credit: dmcdevit

Photo Credit: dmcdevit

There is no respect in which inhabitants of a low-income neighborhood are so disadvantaged as in the kind of schooling they can get for their children.” — Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman was devoted to freedom — his belief that human free choices and free markets unfettered by government restrictions produce the happiest, healthiest, wealthiest peoples throughout world history. Friedman’s belief in freedom of choice was nowhere more adamant than in the education marketplace — where government-run monopoly public schools often consign poverty families to multi-generational bondage to local failing education institutions. Alaska is fraught with examples from inner city to remote Native regions.

Yet whenever Alaska education choice advocates push for legislation enabling low-income parents more freedom to place their children in the public or private school of their choice, government unions and educratic special interests immediately claim any reform would violate the Alaska Constitution’s Blaine Amendment — which says “No … public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

Rather than debate the many studies which show that both public and private schools perform better when they are competing against each other on a level playing field, the Alaska education cartel simply hides behind this Blaine Amendment.

In order to pave the way for school choice reform, when they re-convene this month Alaska’s Legislature is considering giving Alaska voters the opportunity to vote on abolishing Alaska’s Blaine Amendment.

School choice reform is only one of the many reasons Alaska should rid itself of the Blaine Amendment.

Consider that the U.S. Supreme Court has already declared that state constitution Blaine Amendments are unconstitutional under the federal Constitution, because the 14th Amendment guarantees equal treatment under laws regardless of whether you are religious or not. No prejudicial discrimination is permitted … either for or against a religious organization.

In Mitchell v. Helms (June 28, 2000) the prevailing Court opinion declared: “Hostility to aid to pervasively sectarian [religious] schools has a shameful pedigree that we do not hesitate to disavow. … Opposition to aid to ‘sectarian’ schools acquired prominence in the 1870’s … the [Blaine] amendment arose at a time of pervasive hostility to the Catholic Church and to Catholics in general, and it was an open secret that ‘sectarian’ was code for ‘Catholic’… Nothing in the Establishment Clause requires the exclusion of pervasively sectarian schools from otherwise permissible aid programs, and other doctrines of this Court [i.e., equal protection] bar it. This doctrine [Blaine Amendment], born of bigotry, should be buried now”.

So, in addition to federal unconstitutionality, the second serious flaw in Alaska’s Blaine Amendment is that it’s rooted in religious bigotry.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights conducted a Washington briefing on “The Blaine Amendment & Anti-Catholicism” on June 1, 2007. Panelist Richard D. Komer remarked, “…Blaine Amendments reek of religious discrimination. As such, they are illegitimate relics of a shameful past we have neither adequately acknowledged nor effectively remedied.”

A third flaw with Blaine Amendments is the false narrative that such anti-religious prohibitions are somehow wise or prudent.

Almost 70 years of American history prove repeatedly that religiously neutral student support is effective, efficient and productive.

The GI Bill aids veterans to attend the religious or secular school of their choice with amazing positive results. Child Care and Development Block Grants provide government aid irrespective of the religious (or non-religious) affiliation of the childcare institution with similar positive results. And both federal and state Child Care Tax Credits subsidize parental choice of child care providers with direct credits offsetting expensed regardless of the providers’ religious affiliations.

These are three examples of numerous government aid programs over 70 years which succeeded despite clear diametric conflict with state Blaine Amendments. And the $64,000 question is this: If religiously neutral, competitive, level playing fields are good for college programs, pre-school programs, after school programs, and summertime programs, why aren’t they also good for K-12 regular school programs?

Here’s why: None of these other programs have powerful government unions lobbying against them, opposing any attempts to reform the monopolistic system. That’s the only difference. Politicians need to recognize that key fact and choose sides rather than feigning “constitutionality” crisis issues.

And government union lobbyists need to start debating school choice on the merits of competition. Try refuting the many studies which reveal improved public school performance in school choice marketplaces, rather than clinging to the shameful anti-religious bigotry known as the Blaine Amendment.

Legislators should grant Alaska voters their right to vote on this reeking relic long past its time.

Joe Balyeat ([email protected]) is the state director for School Choice projects for Americans For Prosperity – Alaska. He is a former Montana state senator and National Merit Scholar. He resides part year in his home near Anchor Point.

DOJ Wants to Know ‘Race, Sex, Disability, Age and English-Learner Status’ of Misbehaving Students

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Obama administration, concerned that “zero tolerance” policies are sending too many students to court instead of the principal’s office, on Wednesday urged schools to back off — particularly in the case of minority students and other federally protected groups.

“Racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem today,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who joined Attorney General Eric Holder in speaking about the new guidance. Holder said “students of color and those with disabilities” often receive “different and more severe punishment than their peers.”

While the nation’s schools are under local control, they must follow federal civil rights and disability laws. And the new guidance for the nation’s schools could subject more of those schools to federal discrimination lawsuits. In fact, the crackdown already is happening, as CNSNews.com previously reported.

While the guidance is “voluntary,” it encourages schools to set up a “recordkeeping system” that tracks demographic information on misbehaving students, including their “race, sex, disability, age and English-learner status” along with the infraction, the discipline imposed, who imposed it, etc.

“Schools should establish procedures for regular and frequent review and analysis of the data to detect patterns that bear further investigation,” the guidance says.

Read more from this story HERE.

We Pretend to Teach, They Pretend to Learn

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Photo Credit: James Sarmiento

Photo Credit: James Sarmiento

The parlous state of American higher education has been widely noted, but the view from the trenches is far more troubling than can be characterized by measured prose. With most students on winter break and colleges largely shut down, the lull presents an opportunity for damage assessment.

The flood of books detailing the problems includes the representative titles “Bad Students, Not Bad Schools” and “The Five Year Party.” To list only the principal faults: Students arrive woefully academically unprepared; students study little, party much and lack any semblance of internalized discipline; pride in work is supplanted by expediency; and the whole enterprise is treated as a system to be gamed in which plagiarism and cheating abound.

The problems stem from two attitudes. Social preoccupations trump the academic part of residential education, which occupies precious little of students’ time or emotions. Second, students’ view of education is strictly instrumental and credentialist. They regard the entire enterprise as a series of hoops they must jump through to obtain their 120 credits, which they blindly view as an automatic licensure for adulthood and a good job, an increasingly problematic belief.

Education thus has degenerated into a game of “trap the rat,” whereby the student and instructor view each other as adversaries. Winning or losing is determined by how much the students can be forced to study. This will never be a formula for excellence, which requires intense focus, discipline and diligence that are utterly lacking among our distracted, indifferent students. Such diligence requires emotional engagement. Engagement could be with the material, the professors, or even a competitive goal, but the idea that students can obtain a serious education even with their disengaged, credentialist attitudes is a delusion.

The professoriate plays along because teachers know they have a good racket going. They would rather be refining their research or their backhand than attending to tedious undergraduates. The result is an implicit mutually assured nondestruction pact in which the students and faculty ignore each other to the best of their abilities. This disengagement guarantees poor outcomes, as well as the eventual replacement of the professoriate by technology. When professors don’t even know your name, they become remote figures of ridicule and tedium and are viewed as part of a system to be played rather than a useful resource.

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.

Obama: Feds Will Define What a Good College Is, Punish and Reward Accordingly (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Speaking at the University of Buffalo, President Barack Obama today unveiled an ambitious new plan for the federal government to create a national rating system that will define what a good college is and financially reward or punish colleges depending on how they rank in the government’s system.

He said he intends to have the rating system in placed by the fall of 2015 and intends to work with Congress to enact legislation linking federal aid to colleges to the rating system.

As outlined by Obama, this rating system would look at essentially materialistic and financial characteristics of a college as opposed to intellectual and moral ones.

For example, as the president described it, the rating system will not measure how many of a school’s graduates go on to become exemplary and virtuous in the conduct of their personal and public lives, but it will measure things such as “how many students graduate on time,” “how well do those graduates do in the work force,” whether the college is “helping students from all kinds of backgrounds succeed,” and “how successful colleges are at enrolling and graduating students who are on Pell Grants.”

Federal Pell Grants are gifts of cash–not loans–that the federal government gives to some students, but not others. They are not based on academic merit but on whether a student’s income and his or her parents’ income is low enough to qualify the family as what the Department of Education calls “low-income.”

Read more from this story HERE.

An Open Letter to Governor Parnell Requesting Withdrawal from SBAC

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photo credit: jber

Dear Governor Parnell:

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.

Alaska is Bringing Common Core Through the Back Door

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Photo Credit: truth in american education

After former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said no to the Race to the Top money it looks like Alaska may end up with the Common Core State Standards anyway.

A reader emailed me to let me know that the Alaska Department of Education & Early Development recently announced that they have joined the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium after adopting new standards. Below is their press release from April 19, 2013:

Alaska Joins Multi-State Assessment Consortium

JUNEAU – Following a recent adoption of new student standards, Alaska has chosen to join the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), a state-led consortium developing assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards. Because Alaska’s new standards in English/language arts and mathematics have been vetted as college-ready and career-ready, and are sufficiently similar to the Common Core, the SBAC assessments will provide valid and reliable results for Alaska.

“The Smarter Balanced assessment will allow us to compare our students more closely with those around the country and confirm the rigor of Alaska’s standards compared to the Common Core,” said Alaska Education Commissioner Mike Hanley.

SBAC will produce assessments for implementation by the 2014-2015 school year for grades 3 through 8 and 11. These grades meet the current testing requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. SBAC also will provide formative assessments that may be used during the year to better prepare students and guide teachers in their instruction.

SBAC also will determine the assessment scores that indicate levels of achievement such as advanced, proficient, below proficient, and far below proficient. For the 11th grade assessment, SBAC will work with higher education to define benchmark scores that indicate whether a student is on track to be college-ready, meaning that students should not need remedial courses in English and math in postsecondary institutions.

Students in SBAC states will take year-end assessments on computers in the spring. The assessments will be adaptive, meaning they are individualized to each student by basing questions on the student’s response to previous questions. This method produces a more accurate understanding of each student’s achievement.

As with Alaska’s current standards and assessments, the use of SBAC assessments does not dictate curriculum or teaching methods. Standards and assessments present a goal. School districts retain their authority to decide how to reach this goal.

The Alaska State Board of Education announced they adopted new standards on June 11, 2012, but made no mention of alignment with the Common Core State Standards or how the standards were developed. The state board announced on December 19, 2011 a public comment period for the new standards that would go through May 12, 2012, but again no mention of the Common Core State Standards or how these standards were developed.

As with other states there was not a vote by the Alaska State Legislature.

If you look at Alaska’s math standards you can see they are aligned with the Common Core Math Standards. Now compare the Alaska ELA standards with the Common Core ELA Standards. Yet there is no recognition from the Common Core State Standards Initiative that Alaska has signed an MOU.

I’m curious who authorized them to do this? The larger question is after fighting centralization off why would they give in, and then do it under the radar?

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Originally published at Truth In American Education. Republished in full with permission.