ALEC Bails on Opposing Common Core

Ed Week reported that ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) has voted not to adopt the resolution opposing the Common Core State Standards.

The latest news is that on Nov. 19, after several discussions over the past year and at least one postponed vote, ALEC's legislative board of directors has voted  not to adopt the resolution opposing the Common Core, the group announced in an email. ALEC stated that it will remain "neutral" on the common core, "but will continue to oppose any efforts by the federal government to mandate curriculum."

Given that each state is in a slightly different position with Common Core, (what role they play in the consortia, by what mechanism they agreed to adopt Common Core Standards, how much superintendents bought in to implementation etc.) it is not completely surprising that ALEC could not find common ground among legislators as to what position to take.

They do seem to have brushed aside the  biggest point for opposition,

On one side of the debate that went back and forth at ALEC were officials like Indiana Superintendent of Schools Tony Bennett and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Republicans who said the standards are not a federal K-12 takeover but an important way for schools to raise the bar for students. On the other side were policy mavens at places like the Pioneer Institute, the Boston-based think tank, who said that in addition to the political problems the common core posed, the standards themselves did not deliver as advertised in areas like college readiness. As you might expect, the Pioneer Institute was very keen on emphasizing the idea that Bennett's support for the common core was a big contributor to his defeat in the Nov. 6 election, when he lost to Democrat Glenda Ritz.

Stating that the standards are merely a tool for schools to raise the bar contains many underlying assumptions that most opponents of Common Core would not agree with.

The first is that there is a widespread educational crisis in all 50 states that requires immediate remediation. The truth is the majority of schools still turn out high functioning graduates. One need merely look at the increasing enrollment at our top colleges for proof. Unless the likes of Harvard, MIT and Princeton have dropped their standards, we are not doing a horrible job with k-12. We have pockets of underperformance who aren't cutting it with the current standards. Turning those schools on their heads with a completely new set of standards for the teachers to master while requiring these poorer districts to find the funding for the hardware necessary to administer the assessments hardly seems like a recipe for success.

The second is that outside intervention is the only way states would raise the academic bar. The picture it paints is a bunch of State Education Boards wringing their hands and saying, "We give up. If only someone would just tell us what a good set of standards looks like because we have no idea how to find or develop one ourselves." Does anyone remember a line of state superintendents lined up outside the DoEd demanding help with their standards?

The third assumption is that the standards are the only thing objectionable about Common Core. A key component of the standards is the State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) which will collect data on every student enrolled in a public school. It has been said by some that the CCSS were merely a mechanism to get the SLDS instituted and standardized in each state. Again, I don't recall congressional hearings wherein the states demanded that the federal government find some way to track several hundred data points on their citizens.


ALEC stated that their failure to pass a resolution against Common Core is by no means a statement in support of them. This decision merely highlights the limitations of ALEC. It's voting members are state legislators, who "of course have to think about polls as well as white papers." Work will need to be done individually in the states to address Common Core. And so it is.

Educational Reform: It's All George Bush's Fault! Or Right Wing Corporate Greed!

Does this book have ALEC's name on it or the president's?  Who should shoulder the blame for ed reform policies? Rightwing (and other) organizations or Obama?

We have four more years of Obama's educational blueprint.  Some progressives believe this blueprint is being written by right wing organizations.  The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been tagged as right wing because it is funded by private corporations to boost corporate power and profits.  It establishes model legislation for states to use in education as well as other areas.  Think of it as private corporations tapping into taxpayer funding via legislative models (such as charter schools).  StudentsFirst also fits the mold of wanting to create more quasi private/public programs, but founder Michelle Rhee is a Democrat.  Like the heavily demonized right wing organizations, she apparently also loves money, power and control and has fit herself nicely in the "free market" niche that really isn't "free market".  Her TFA program and push for charter schools uses taxpayer money for private companies, which does not meet the test of a true "free market".   She is not technically rightwing (because of her political affiliation) but she certainly fits the mold of private corporations determining how tax money is spent.


Whether or not the organizations funding these "reforms" are left or right is inconsequential and the privatization blame of the educational system should not be placed on the corporations.  These organizations are just doing what corporations are allowed to do via political decisions.  The politicians and appointed officials are the ones to hold responsible in educational legislation, mandates and waste of billions of dollars.  Obama and Arne Duncan are regulating and/or mandating Race to the Top state and district grants, common core standards, teacher evaluations, FERPA revisions.....but  many progressives believe Obama was still the best presidential candidate even though he went against their educational ideas.  Government officials have the power to allow the corporations to use private money in a "free market" ruse and they are ultimately responsible for the privatization of education.

Whether or not Romney would have restored educational control to the states, we'll never know.  I'm not holding my breath that Obama's associate and friend Bill Ayers' letter imploring Obama to change his educational stance will make one iota of difference in the centralization/privatization of education.  It doesn't matter to Obama which private corporations/think tanks are providing services necessary to implement the Federal mandates. Disappointed progressives should be holding politicians/appointed officials accountable for allowing this transformation of education to occur.  When Race to the Top funding was approved, the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House.  The politicians and appointed officials are the ones are responsible for these mandates stagnating public education, not the "right wing" educational cabal now profiting from this legislative decision.

Do you believe George Bush's NCLB was bad?  It was.  So what does Obama do when he assumed office? Did he relax federal standards and mandates?   Not by a long shot. He pursued RTTT, teacher accountability tied to test scores, waivers to NCLB (referred to as NCLB on steroids) and financial help to states by requiring them to sign on to common core standards.  However, the educational progressives believe Obama is preferable to a candidate who at least espoused states' rights for educational decisions.

We will probably witness four more years of mandates that the Federal Government can't fund and neither can the states or districts.  Teachers will complain, students will perform badly on common tests, and public education will decline even further.  Private corporations (whether from the left or right side of the aisle) will realize tidy profits as a result of the federal mandates on what constitutes a good education (more computers, common assessments, etc).  Meanwhile the progressives will blame it all on the "right" wing school choice organizations (even as some are made up of dedicated Democrats) instead of where it belongs: the Obama administration and the Democratically controlled Congress and Senate in 2008-2010.

Why George Bush is a target for the progressives for his poor educational decisions while Obama deflects criticism for even more onerous educational policies is puzzling.  Right wing organizations  keep getting blamed for educational failure, privatization of public schools and wasted funding.  The blame belongs with the politicians allowing this to occur, both on the national and state level.  But somehow, I bet this is still George Bush's fault.

 

Does Tony Bennett Reflect the GOP's View of Education?

This is what a Republican Superintendent supports in education.  Does this look state driven to you?

What happens educationally in Indiana will happen in Missouri will happen in Florida will happen in Utah....and in any other state signed on to the Common Core standards.

If Romney is elected president, will his new Secretary of Education support these unproven and untested standards?  Will a DOEd secretary support standards and assessments that are decided by private consortia instead of state driven standards and assessments?  Will a DOEd secretary support giving away state power of educational decisions to federally funded consortia busy creating a national curriculum and set of standards?

The Huntington Teacher has published an excellent blog containing these type of questions to Indiana superintendent Tony Bennett.  He has been rumored to be a candidate for Secretary of Education and is currently running for re-election on the Republican ticket for his current position.  Bennett argued in front of the ALEC educational panel in support of these standards.  If Bennett were to be named Secretary of Education, this is a worrisome sign if you are concerned about further federal intervention in education.

From heartland.com and Common Core pushback in ALEC:

Model legislation opposing Common Core standards recently presented at the American Legislative Exchange Council will likely pass later this summer rather than in May following a media and political firestorm.

While approved by ALEC’s education task force in November, the legislation has not passed its board of directors, who say they want to clarify its language before they take a final vote. ALEC is a conservative nonprofit that offers forums for legislators to share policy ideas and model bills.

ALEC’s board did not consider retracting the model legislation’s stand against the Core, said ALEC Education Director Adam Peshek, but “wanted to make sure that the language was tightened up.”

The legislation argues that a de facto single set of education standards impedes local innovation and moves the country toward a nationalized curriculum, neither of which benefits U.S. education. The American Principles Project, Goldwater Institute, and Washington Policy Center authored the model bill.

“[Adopting the Core] almost universally occurred through state education board votes and without legislators' knowledge of what the national standards and tests entailed,” said Jim Stergios, executive director at the Pioneer Institute. “Only in the past year have state legislators started becoming familiar with the $16 billion unfunded mandate on states and localities, the federal legal prohibitions [against] Common Core, and the mediocre quality of the standards.  And now you are seeing a number of states advancing resolutions and legislation to pull back out of the effort.”

The open debate preceding the legislation pit Core proponents led by Indiana Superintendent Tony Bennett against think tanks and scholars who had studied the cost, legality, and quality of the standards, Stergios said.

The Core was initially funded by private foundations and state associations but became centralized when the Obama administration began funding tests correlated to them and required states to adopt them in exchange for federal money or loosened regulations.

Now you know who Republican Tony Bennett is.  Revisit our blog on why we believe Republicans won't rescind the Common Core standards.  If Bennett is indicative of elected or appointed superintendents persuading politicians to be supportive of common core standards, then the idea of constitutional powers given to the state to make educational decisions free of federal mandates and strings is fiction.  

From The Huntington Teacher: "Will Republican Voters in Indiana Get Hoodwinked Again?":

 

Tony Bennett is the Republican candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction in Indiana.  As an incumbent Republican in a conservative state, he’ll probably receive votes by default.  

But will Hoosier Republican voters truly understand what they are voting for if they punch the ticket for Bennett? 

Will Republicans Disapprove of Government Transparency ?
Bennett’s  Department of Education website has come under repeated scrutiny for transparency. 

Dave Bangert of the Lafayette News Online asked several independent researchers to look for information at the DOE.  One researcher described the website as (an attempt to) obfuscate the numbers so that the taxpayer has a lot of trouble knowing what is going on, even though the bureaucrats will maintain that they are ‘transparent,’” 

Will Republicans Accept Private Individuals Spending Public Tax Dollars?
Jon Awbrey puts it this way: “It is a patent violation of democratic principles of representation to dictate that parents alone should have the power to sell off property that belongs to all and to liquidate resources that the long generations before us have entrusted to the future of us all.”

Bennett, Superintendent of PUBLIC schools, has unapologetically supported a voucher system for private, for-profit schools. Instead of improving public schools, Bennett has worked to divert money from them. 

Will Republicans Support Spending Public Tax Dollars on Religious Education?
In the first year alone, $16 million dollars were diverted from supporting public school students in order to pay tuition for private and parochial school students.  Out of 301 private schools receiving public tax money only six were independent, non-religious private schools.  Indiana taxpayers are providing for sectarian, religious education. 

Will Republicans Support Damaging Local Economic Development Efforts to Attract New Jobs?

Mayors have expressed concern about the inappropriately low grades Bennett has given schools in Indiana. (22% of Indiana Schools – compared to its Florida model where 6% of schools received poor grades, despite the fact Indiana schools generally outperform those in Florida) Bennett’s model hurts the recruitment of new businesses to their community.   No stakeholders spoke in favor of the plan last January.  Nevertheless, Bennett pushed it through.  

Will Republicans Want to Replace Local Control of the Schools with Federal Takeover?

Bennett supports the Common Core State [sic] Standards (CCSS).  The CCSS undermines local control of the school system and mandates they follow a federally controlled, federally dictated curriculum.  Bennett has repeatedly been asked to defend this decision. (Despite repeated findings that Indiana standards were better than CCSS.) 

Will Republicans Want the Federal Government to Control a National Database on the Populace?

The information does not only include state wide assessment scores and educational data, it will include invasive personal data on students and families.  This data will be used to track children from birth into careers.  This data will be supplied to various Federal agencies and private researchers/companies determined by the DOE. 

Bennett has been pushing an agenda in public education in Indiana that does not seem to fit with the Republican Platform.  Why?

Bennett sits on the Board of Directors of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). This group was the instrument that developed the CCSS and the need for a  National Database.  According to their own website, they are “working in collaboration with strategic corporate partners.”   

Put simply, Bennett has used his position to sell off our public schools to corporations with vested interests in profiting on the students in Indiana.  He’s counting on Republican voters to support him under such guises of “accountability,” “freedom of choice,” and “rigorous standards”.

Will Republicans fall for this ploy November 6^th?  The huge corporations hoping to profit off Hoosier children hope so.  Investors from around the nation have invested heavily in his campaign.

As a person with a Republican family tradition, growing up in a traditionally Republican town, I can only hope Republicans in Indiana can distinguish between supporting business owners, and handing over our children to them.

Hoosiers and non-Hoosiers alike have reason to be concerned about Bennett's views and if he were to be named DOEd secretary, the idea of states having power to direct their own educational delivery and direction is a constitutional fable.  From EdWeek and "Who Could be Romney's Education Secretary"?:

State chiefs have dominated many people's lists. Often mentioned is Tony Bennett, Indiana's superintendent of Public Instruction, and one of the original members of Chiefs for Change. Bennett's been highly visible on education issues and has lots of fans among Republicans, including former Gov. Bush. 

Still, in testifying before the House education committee, Bennett asked the feds to provide political cover ("guardrails") on K-12 reform efforts. Does that jibe with some Republicans' plans to shrink back the federal role? Would that matter?

Lean to the Right or Left; Common Core is a Disaster...The Sunday Education Weekly Reader 06.24.12

Common Core is a bipartisan disaster. The Left & Right have sold us out.

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 06.24.12.  

This week will consist of a reposting of Susan Ohanian's excellent blog entitled School-Standards Pushback: Conservative Groups Oppose National 'Common Core' as an Intrusion on States.

Susan has corresponded with me over the last year or so and while we may have differences in thoughts about how education can/should be reformed, we can find common ground in our concern about common core state standards and longitudinal data systems (LDS) supplying personal data about student/families to various federal agencies.  Politically we may not see eye to eye on all issues, but taking the politics out of common core/LDS and focusing solely on the issues, it is obvious these "reforms" deny the individualism of students, are being directed by special interests (for monetary vs educational reasons) and infringe on student/family privacy. 

No Child Left Behind has been decried by both the left and the right for its unreachable bipartisan goals; so should Common Core be protested for its bipartisan push for privatization of education that is really the shifting of taxpayer money into pre-selected vendors and touting it as reforming education.   These are not standards written by the states.  Ohanian is correct when she writes:

 ...this section of my website is titled Common Core State [sic] Standards. These are the Bill Gates/U. S. Department of Education Standards. Follow the money.

The LDS should be decried by both the left and the right as infringement on civil liberties.  Why is the ACLU silent on this data grab on American citizens?  Folks are upset about credit card information being breached.  Where is the outcry on data being gathered from birth on children that will be shared with federal  agencies and private researchers?

Thanks to Susan for her many years of educational reporting.  I hope a bipartisan movement will emerge against common core standards and privacy grab by the Federal government.  ALL student data should be protected regardless of party affiliation.  ALL students should be able to learn according to their learning style and not be molded to fit into a "one sized fits all" common core assessment model that private companies craft with taxpayer money.

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From School-Standards Pushback: Conservative Groups Oppose National 'Common Core' as an Intrusion on States:

Ohanian Comment: Conservatives speak out against the Common Core. Liberals are still out to lunch. Godonlyknows what a dither they'll be in if ALEC denounces the Common Core.

The sad fact is this: Liberals sell us down the river on Common Core. Conservatives have fought it from the get-go. Although I do not agree with every point (particularly the curriculum section) they make, Truth in American Education, which is affiliated with a number of conservative groups and individuals, offers a very concise and compelling document in opposition to the Common Core. Their first point is exactly why this section of my website is titled Common Core State [sic] Standards. These are the Bill Gates/U. S. Department of Education Standards. Follow the money.

REASONS FOR CONCERN ABOUT COMMON CORE
Adoption Process

Contrary to proponents’ claims, the Common Core Initiative is not 'state‐led,' but rather the Common Core (CC) standards were created and funded by special interests. States had little to no input.

The federal government has coerced states into accepting the CC standards, by tying
their adoption to Race to the Top funding, No Child Left Behind waivers, etc.

Under the Constitution, the federal government has no role in education policy.
Moreover, three federal statutes prohibit what the federal government has done with
the CC and the attendant assessments.
State/Local Control and Governance

The federal government is funding the creation of the tests that will be aligned with CC and what's on the tests will dictate what's taught in the classroom. The inevitable result
will be a national curriculum controlled by the federal government.

A state must accept the CC standards word for word. It may add 15% content but may
not subtract anything. Anything it adds will not be included on the national tests.

In order to change any strand of the CC, a state must persuade 44 other jurisdictions
(and probably the US Dep't of Education) to agree to the proposed change.

Content Concerns

The English language arts standards in CC de‐emphasize the study of literature and have
been found by a University of Arkansas expert as inadequate to prepare students for
college. She writes: "The wisest move all states could make to ensure that students
learn to read, understand, and use the English language appropriately before they
graduate from high school is first to abandon Common Core’s ‘standards’ . . . ."

The math standards in CC, by moving algebra I from 8th grade to 9th, will ensure that the large majority of students do not reach calculus in high school.

The math standards in CC require that geometry be taught by an experimental method
that has never been used successfully anywhere in the world.

It opens the door for the federal government to push future standards in other subjects.

Cost of Implementation to the States/Localities

The states' costs of implementing CC will be substantial and will include new textbooks,
teacher re‐training, technology, etc. One study estimates $16 billion nationwide in implementation costs alone.

Privacy/Data Sharing

As part of the CC process, the federal government pushed states into creating massive
databases of very personal student and family information, which it can now share with
other federal and state agencies.

My god, how funny is it that The Wall Street Journal becomes the first media that I know of to label the Thomas B. Fordham Institute "right-leaning"? When I looked at 7,000 articles to see how media identified the talking heads they asked for soundbites, here's how Fordham-associated people were identified--over and over and over: policy expert; policy researcher; education reformer. The Institute itself is identified as a "Washington D. C. think tank."
For example, here are some Education Week identifiers for Michael Petrilli:

at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

a vice-president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based research and advocacy group

the executive vice president of the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which favors more flexibility for states

Ask yourself how these identifier inform--or fail to inform--readers about what Petrilli's opinions.

As I noted in an article for Extra! The Magazine of FAIR, the Media Watch Group Race to the Top and the Bill Gates Connection: Who gets to speak about what schools need? on occasion, Education Week uses soundbites from Fordham officials three times in the same issue.

Here's a sample of how The New York Times identifies Petrilli:

, vice president for national programs and policy of the Fordham Institute, a group that supports education reform.

an education analyst and researcher with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

an education official under President George W. Bush

a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research group that studies education policy

a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, an educational research and advocacy organization

And on and on and on, always careful to give no indication of what the Thomas B. Fordham Institute is up to. . . which makes Stephanie Banchero's identifier exceptional.

I found three reporters will to discuss the Gates money connections: Daniel Goldman in Bloomberg Businesweek, Matt Murphy in the Lowell Sun, and Clay Holtzman in the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Gates Foundation personnel are rarely quoted in the press. They don’t need to be: Their money talks for them. Both Golden and Murphy pointed to the tidy sum that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute received from Gates to provide analysis of the Common Core standards.

FYI, here's Fordham's Gates money:

Date: July 2003
Purpose: to strenghten [sic] Ohio's charter school program by recruiting, training, and supporting quality sponsors for existing and future charter schools
Amount: $250,000


Date: July 2005
Purpose: to inform public debate and advance academic achievement in Ohio charter schools by convening charter school leaders, producing research, and disseminating information on charter school issues
Amount: $497,639


Date: July 2005
Purpose: to support the Fordham Foundation in its role as a community school sponsor in Ohio to recruit other high school developers and to share best practices across the field
Amount: $1,849,173


Date: August 2006
Purpose: to support creation of a new education policy network promoting equitable education reform
Amount: $100,000


Date: June 2008
Purpose: to support the activities of an emerging network of state level education advocacy organizations in support of a convening around strategic issues
Amount: $155,000


Date: June 2009
Purpose: to support the PIE Network which brings together policy research groups with state-level education advocacy organizations to advance equity, improve student achievement, share best practices and capture lessons learned in state policy implementation
Amount: $398,534


Date: October 2009
Purpose: to review the common core standards and develop supportive materials
Amount: $959,116

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is the secondary point here. The real point is the failure of the press to inform the public. The vaunted New York Times slogan "All the news that's fit to print" deliberately ignores and omits a lot of important information. Similarly, the reader must be aware that Education Week's banner: American Education's newspaper of Record presents a record tainted by omission.





By Stephanie Banchero

The Common Core national math and reading standards, adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia two years ago, are coming under attack from some quarters as a federal intrusion into state education matters.

The voluntary academic standards, which specify what students should know in each grade, were heavily promoted by the Obama administration through its $4.35 billion Race to the Top education-grant competition. States that instituted changes such as common learning goals received bonus points in their applications.

Supporters say the Common Core standards better prepare students for college or the workforce, and are important as the U.S. falls behind other nations in areas such as math proficiency.

A 2010 report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning educational-research group, said the Common Core standards "are clearly superior to those currently in use in 39 states in math and 37 states in English. For 33 states, the Common Core is superior in both math and reading."

But conservative lawmakers and governors in at least five states, including Utah and Alabama, recently have been pushing to back out, or slow down implementation, of Common Core. They worry that adoption of the standards has created a de facto national curriculum that could at some point be extended into more controversial areas such as science.

Critics argue that the standards are weak and could, for example, de-emphasize literature in favor of informational texts, such as technical manuals. They also dislike that the standards postpone teaching algebra until ninth grade from the current eighth grade in many schools.

A study released this year by a researcher at the Brookings Institution think tank projected Common Core will have no effect on student achievement. The study said states with high standards improved their national math and reading scores at the same rate as states with low standards from 2003 to 2009.

But mainly, critics of Common Core object to what they see as the federal government's involvement in local-school matters.

"The Common Core takes education out of the hands of South Carolina and parents, so we have no control over what happens in the classroom," said Michael Fair, a Republican state senator who plans to introduce a measure that would bar his state from spending money on activities related to the standards, such as training teachers and purchasing textbooks.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who took office after the state adopted Common Core, wrote in a letter to Mr. Fair that the state should not "relinquish control of education to the federal government, neither should we cede it to the consensus of other states."

Common Core could take another hit Friday when the 23-member board of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of more than 2,000 state lawmakers and business members who back limited government and free markets, among other conservative goals, is set to vote on a resolution to formally oppose the standards. The resolution was passed by the ALEC education task force in December.Model legislation often is drafted from the group's resolutions and taken by ALEC members to their state legislatures.

Common Core evolved from a drive by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to delineate world-class skills students should possess. The standards, created with funding from, among others, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, set detailed goals, such as first graders should understand place values in math and eighth graders should know the Pythagorean Theorem.

"We brought the best minds in the country together to create international benchmarks that, once mastered, would make our students more competitive, globally," said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. He said his group has no plans to create national science standards.

As the standards were being developed, the Obama administration launched Race to the Top in July 2009, which awarded points to states that adopted "a common set of K-12 standards" that are "substantially identical across all states in a consortium," according to the grant's policies. The department didn't specifically mention Common Core, but it was the only common set of standards being developed.

As a result, most state's legislatures or state boards of education adopted Common Core.

The standards have yet to show up in many classrooms as states are just beginning to implement them. But in Kentucky, where Common Core rolled out this school year, teachers are altering instruction and searching for new classroom reading materials.

Jahn Owens, a teacher in Owensboro, Ky., said the more rigorous standards require her to teach her fifth-graders how to multiply and divide fractions. Previously, that was taught in sixth grade. First-grade teacher Heidi Dees has added more nonfiction books to her classroom.

"These standards take students much deeper into the subjects and force them to do more critical thinking," Ms. Owens said. "It's been hard work for the teachers because the implementation was so quick, but we are now more purposeful about student learning."

The Obama administration has awarded more than $360 million to two groups to create student assessments aligned to Common Core.

Wireless Generation, an education-technology company owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, recently purchased Intel-Assess, a company that creates student assessments aligned to Common Core.

Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the U.S. Department. of Education, called Common Core a "game changer" but said the administration didn't force states to adopt it. "A bipartisan group of governors created these standards and states collectively adopted them," he said.

But Emmett McGroarty, executive director of American Principles in Action, a conservative lobbying group that wrote the ALEC resolution, said states were "herded" into adopting the standards with no time to deliberate on their worth. He called the standards "mediocre" and costly to implement.

Write to Stephanie Banchero at stephanie.banchero@wsj.com

— Stephanie Banchero
Wall Street Journal
May 09, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303630404577390431072241906.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet

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Who are the "Elves" behind Common Core Standards, Longitudinal Data Systems and Workforce Development? ALEC, Bill Gates and Others Revealed.

Shh! We're not REALLY lobbyists.

 

The following is from an email (reprinted with permission) I received from Kris Alman, a physician in Oregon, who has been following the educational reform that includes Common Core, charter schools, longitudinal data systems, etc.  She was replying to the  EducationNext piece by Michael Petrelli in which he defends "conservatives" such as Christie, Daniels and Jeb Bush and their support of common core standards. 

Many educators, writers and citizens understand there is little difference between Democrats and Republicans, progressives or conservatives, when talking about educational reform.  Dr. Alman explains the marriage of the parties and how this enables political and corporation power and influence to the detriment of students and taxpayers.  

**********************************************************************

 

I believe the ALEC schism reflects the "neo" in conservative and liberal economics of the 21st Century. Neocons and neoliberals are fighting over a bigger piece of the "free" market pie. I made it very clear in my testimony last week to the Oregon Education Investment Board.

www.oregon.gov/Gov/OEIB/Docs/nnAlman.pdf

Neoconservative economics (a wikipedia link) shows several points of disagreement with classical liberalism and fiscal conservatism.

This blog post describes it well on the conservative side, concluding:
http://educationnext.org/common-core-critics-want-alec-to-tell-states-what-to-do/

So which is the true “conservative” resolution? The one that tells states what to do and demands a one-size-fits-all approach (pulling out of the Common Core)? Or the one that trusts states to make up their own minds—without interference from Washington? If you chose the latter, you will be relieved to know that Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Tony Bennett, and Jeb Bush—Common Core supporters all—agree.

Jeb Bush, now sucking at the teat of internet-based education, banks on this political capital . He has taken lessons from brother Neil, who made big bucks on Curriculum on Wheels (COWs) with NCLB money. Yet... as Mother Jones points out, if accountability measures were used, this enterprise would have had the plug pulled a long time ago!
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/jeb-bush-digitial-learning-public-schools?page=1

Now MoJo may not be a magazine that you might read. But here is a key point.

To that end, you have to get policymakers to buy in—and that's the area where Bush has excelled. Bennet Ratcliff, a political consultant who once produced ads for Bill Clinton and now does PR work for Bush's foundation, says Digital Learning Now is all about "advocating for policies in the states and in districts that would promote digital learning. For instance, it could be talking to boards of education, it could be talking to state chiefs, it could be talking to governors, district [superintendents], legislators." None of this, he hastens to add, constitutes lobbying: "I do need to be very clear about that. This is an advocacy and education effort about digital learning. What we are not doing is lobbying." When I asked him who was actually doing the talking, he replied, "Elves."

Consider the muscle power of the Lumina Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York with "Core to College."

Carnegie Corporation has 8 pages of grants (25 per page) going to the rightest of corporate education education reforms. I have included a few relevant ones below--esp. the one to Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE). When Gates sponsored an SLDS project for the WICHE states in 2008, he put corporate reform koolaid in the water cooler of all of Oregon's educational state agencies.

Neoliberal economics is firmly rooted in the very blue state of Oregon. After all, everybody wants a stable pay check and recognition for their strong work.

Who represents Oregon on the WICHE Commission? Dr. Camille Preus, Oregon Commissioner of the Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development was appointed as one of 13 members of the USED National Board of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education; Tim Nesbitt, former AFL-CIO labor leader, appointed as top aid to Governor Kitzhaber on Education Reform; Ryan Deckert, former D-state senator and currently Oregon Business Association President.

http://www.luminafoundation. org/newsroom/news_releases/ 2011-12-19.html
The partners developed Core to College with the assistance of Education First Consulting, which will provide continuing project management. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the program’s fiscal sponsor, is responsible for grant decisions and all aspects of ongoing grant administration.
Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington will each receive $200,000 per year for three years, pending annual reviews of progress against goals.

http://rockpa.org/page.aspx? pid=580
The desired outcomes of this grant activity include a statewide definition of college readiness, postsecondary institution use of CCSS assessments as a determinant of a student’s readiness for credit-bearing course enrollments, and K-12/postsecondary sector alignment to the CCSS around academic courses and sequences, data and accountability, and teacher development.

Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford professor and senior advisor for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, was asked to be an expert witness for Colorado's Lobato v State School funding. She testified, “It would be hard to believe” Colorado can successfully implement new content standards “without investments.” http://www.ednewscolorado.org/ 2011/08/19/23271-lobato-819-a- high-profile-witness

http://www.ednewscolorado.org/ 2012/04/17/36874-a-lobato- debate-in-the-house

On Dec. 9 Denver District Judge Sheila Rappaport ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in the Lobato v. State suit, finding the state’s spending formula for K-12 schools does not meet constitutional requirements for a “thorough and uniform” school system.

Estimates of what it might cost to meet Rappaport’s ruling run between $2 and $4 billion a year on top of the roughly $5.2 billion the state and districts now spend for basic school operating costs.

Critics of the Lobato ruling fear it it will force lawmakers to slash other government programs in order to increase school funding.

On the Oregon Department of Education website:

http://www.ode.state.or.us/ news/announcements/ announcement.aspx?id=7854& typeid=4

Note: Currently the cost for the SBAC Interim and Formative Assessments is above what the Oregon legislature has funded in the past.

When inadequate school funding went to the Oregon Supreme Court, the Quality Education Model was slapped down.

http://www.schoolfunding.info/states/or/lit_or.php3
The Court held that each provision of this inconsistent constitutional clause should be read separately and enforced separately: i.e. the legislature is obligated to appropriate the amount of money that is necessary to meet the quality educational goals, but if it doesn’t meet this obligation, it should issue a report that admits to the under funding and explains to the public why it did not meet its obligation and what impact the under funding will have on the state’s public education system.

**That's why any new unfunded mandates coming from state lawmakers who ride the corporate tidal wave of reforms is irresponsible. In Oregon, the Democrats are the enabling party in control. They don't give a rip about how much new standards, assessments and longitudinal databases cost local schools; how much it tears about the social fabric of communities; how much it narrows opportunities; how much it destroys morale of children, parents and teachers who want to support public education.
 
Dr. Yong Zhao explains it far better than me in his "Ditch Testing" blogs. http://zhaolearning.com/2011/07/17/ditch-testing-part-5-testing-has-not-improved-education-despite-all-the-costs/

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**MEW note:  Dr. Alman's opinion on how the Oregon Democratic controlled legislature operates mimics the Republican controlled legislature in Missouri:

They don't give a rip about how much new standards, assessments and longitudinal databases cost local schools; how much it tears about the social fabric of communities; how much it narrows opportunities; how much it destroys morale of children, parents and teachers who want to support public education.

 

Those elves certainly have worked their way into politics and taxpayer pockets, haven't they?  We find ourselves living in a bad fairy tale.

 

ALEC's Decision on Common Core Standards a Pig-Headed Decision?

ALEC's decision on the anti-Common Core standards issue

It's a decision that isn't really a decision.  

h/t Big Education Ape: American Principle's Project press release on the ALEC vote today on anti-common core standards legislation. 

Washington, DC – Today, the board of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), after considering anti-Common Core legislation introduced by the American Principles Project (APP), Goldwater Institute and the Washington Policy Center last summer, delayed a decision on whether to endorse the legislation until their next meeting.

 

“ALEC’s delay in endorsing the resolution is troubling and plays into the strategy of the multi-billion dollar private entities that are pushing the Common Core,” said APP’s Emmett McGroarty.  ”This issue has been before ALEC for almost a year.  The resolution was approved by the ALEC Education Task Force overwhelmingly last December, and ALEC has discussed it at three of its national meetings.  The well-financed private entities and the federal government are moving forward with their implementation of the Common Core, and Americans have been cut out of the process.”

 

Dr. Tony Bennett, the Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, presented the pro-Common Core case to the board of ALEC.   Dr. Bennett is also on the Board of Directors of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), one of the two trade associations managing the Common Core Standards (along with the National Governors Association).  Additionally, he is the Chairman of Chiefs for Change, an initiative of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education.  The Foundation for Excellence in Education and CCSSO have received $1,000,000 and $70,000,000, respectively, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the primary force financing and pushing the Common Core.

 

Robert Scott, Texas Commissioner of Education, presented the case for the resolution to the board, which then deliberated behind closed doors.  State Rep. Dave Frizzell of Indiana, ALEC’s National Chairman, reported that the board found that there was much to like about the legislation but decided to send it back to the Education Task Force due to concerns about some of the language.  He stated that the board would forward the details of those concerns to the task force.

 

What is there to "like about the legislation"?  It's bought and paid for by special interests and controlled by special interests as well.  It's tainted and circumvents the legislative deliberations.  If ALEC likes legislation developed and controlled by special interests which is then foisted on the American taxpayer and taxpayers and states are mandated to live by those special interests' plans, that may tell us all we need to know about ALEC.  

 

Why should some "concerns about the language" kick it back to the Education Task Force?  If the process is rotten, it doesn't matter if the language is changed or not. 

 

It's lipstick on a pig.  Change the lipstick or the language, the educational reform model is still the same pig.   And that pig is getting fatter every day with Jeb Bush and Bill Gates money at the trough. 

pigheaded:

Adj.

1.

pigheaded - obstinate and stupid bullet-headed, bullheaded obstinate, stubborn, unregenerate - tenaciously unwilling or marked by tenacious unwillingness to yield

 

 

ALEC Board to Vote on Anti-Common Core Standards.

So what's your bet on the vote?

There's a big vote tomorrow regarding common core standards:

• It's not a vote by the taxpayers to determine if they want them in their states.  
• It's not a vote by local districts to determine the educational direction for their students.  
• It's not a vote to rescind the standards by the state boards.
• It's not a vote by state legislatures to refuse funding for the unfunded mandates created by the standards.
• It's not a vote by Congress to refuse funding for the unfunded mandates.

Those would be the reasonable and constitutional votes by the entities if the rule of law had been followed instead of circumventing the voters and Congress to implement the standards.

The vote tomorrow will be taken to affirm the anti-common core resolution ALEC'S Board adopted last year.  From EdWeek:

You may recall that both my colleague Catherine Gewertz and I have written about a resolution at ALEC opposing the Common Core State Standards. The common core, unlike other issues such as model legislation supporting charter schools and vouchers, has caused some dissent in the conservative policy shop. Without getting too deeply into the details, the group's Education Task Force approved the anti-Common Core resolution, but the group's board of directors did not. Now, ALEC is set to consider the resolution again at its meeting on Friday, May 11. 

That reconsideration is being watched very closely. Stephanie Banchero of The Wall Street Journal wrote on May 8 that the group's deliberations could deliver a big hit to common core. Then on May 10, with a headline that read "'Common Core' Education Fight to Test ALEC's Conservative Chops," two other conservative think tanks, the American Principles Project (based in Washington) and the Pioneer Institute (based in Boston), directly appealed to ALEC to approve the resolution opposing the standards, which 46 states and the District of Columbia have agreed to adopt.

 

Both think tanks have produced a "white paper" (jargon for a "report") and a resolution that a state could use as a model to oppose the common core. 

In a press release accompanying the report and resolution, Liv Finne, of the Washington Policy Center (yet another conservative think tank) stated directly that: "The ALEC board should approve the resolution. ... At stake is whether the government responds to the people or to other interests." Emmett McGroarty of the American Principles Project said the report details how the common core was created by "private interests and trade associations" and strongly promoted by the U.S. Department of Education. Finally, the Pioneer Institute's executive director, Jim Stergios, said three federal laws would be violated by the common core's tests.

Will the ALEC Board fulfill its mission for smaller government?

According to the organization's website, members share a common belief that "government closest to the people" is "fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C."

Or will ALEC follow the lead of a pro-common core Democratic and Republican governor?

Not to be outdone, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, a Democrat, announced May 10 that he was "available to defend" the common core on May 11, the day of ALEC's vote. Markell wrote a 2010 op-ed piece with Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, praising the standards initiative. He believes that the standards will positively impact America's place in the world. 

Does it  matter to these governors that these standards are privately crafted, privately owned and if you believe Jim Stergios, they violate three federal laws?  Does it matter to the governors and state boards who agreed to these standards they create more bloated federal control?  Does it matter to ALEC?  Does it matter to you?

The Sunday Education Weekly Reader 12.11.11

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 12.11.11.  Highlighted today:

• Another story comparing education providers to living in the Wild, Wild West to make money , rather than living there to provide better education;
• The tipping over of the education pyramid;
• An analogy on how the Common Core standards are akin to Obamacare and the proposal of one group to stop them.

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Not only are businessmen like Bill Gates and convicted hedge fund managers like Michael Milken setting policies and direction for education, so are social networkers.  From Bloomberg Businessweek:


Reid Hoffman and Matt Cohler, two of Silicon Valley’s social-networking pioneers, are throwing their hats into the education ring.

The entrepreneurs-turned-venture capitalists today led a $15 million investment in Edmodo, a free learning site for teachers and students that claims almost 5 million registered users. The cash pile, from Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital, gives the management team the runway to hire developers and add products without doing the one thing they prefer not to talk about: making money.

Rob Hutter, the company’s chairman, said the new financing gives the company “several years” to build and expand the product without worrying about generating revenue. He and Borg are looking for developers who are passionate about education and want to build something that they say is helping change education. (emphasis added)

Of course, venture capitalists don’t invest in startups unless they see the opportunity to make several times their money back, and Greylock and Benchmark have been among the most successful firms in that regard. 

Question:  How are these social networkers (investors) helping to "change education"?  The delivery of providing education is what they are changing, not the education itself.  Remember, the education (WHAT students are learning) is controlled by the Federal Government, the NGA and the CCSSO.  These venture capitalists are providing the vehicles to deliver education, not crafting the core of what students are learning.  Remember what Scott Joftus said about education:

“You know we’re in a new era when school turnaround firms in the U.S. are being funded out of the Middle East,” Joftus said. “To me, that says there’s money to be made. I call this period the Wild West in education.” 

There IS money to be made in education reform but is it really "for the kids"?  If investors and developers are delivering educational "reform" that  is faulty and insufficient at is core, it doesn't matter how it's presented.  

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Education Week reports on the "education pyramid".  The pyramid is:

the prevailing model of ed policy decision-making, illustrated in The Mitchell 20 film: a hierarchical pyramid, with decision-making power concentrated at the peak--Congress and the Department of Education-- flowing down through layers and layers of state bureaucracy, district offices and administrators, and ending up on the shoulders of teachers.

 The author envisions what it might be like if that pyramid is turned on its side and the power would flow horizontally so teachers would have more voice (megaphones) in the actual teaching of children.


I would add additional stakeholders to the pyramid.  Parents and taxpayers need admittance into that pyramid and a turn at the megaphone.  Everyone wants a seat at the table but parents and taxpayers seem to never be mentioned as an important stakeholder.  After all, they are the ones paying for the education and they provide the human capital necessary to staff these publicly funded halls of learning.


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Will conservatives finally push back on the educational version of Obamacare? Why haven't more legislators made the connection the educational reforms are as constitutionally egregious as the health care plan?  From Heritage and its reporting on model legislation waiting for adoption by ALEC:


For the past two years, the Obama Education Department has been supporting an effort to implement national education standards and tests. The national standards push, which will affect all public schools, has been underway outside the normal legislative process. At least (to quote Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute) Obamacare went through Congress.


It’s time for state leaders to stand up to strong-arming from Washington, instead of faulting conservative organizations for pushing back on this latest federal overreach. A nationalization of education is underway, and unless conservatives work to fight Washington’s power grab, Obamacare won’t be the only overreach we’ll have to live under.

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Educational quote for the week:


Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.




H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946), Outline of History (1920)

Bill Gates' Gift to ALEC: "376,635 Reasons to Circumvent the Constitution"?

We might as well refer to the Department of Education as the Department of Bill Gates.  He has spent an enormous amount of money on the initiatives benefiting Microsoft and pre-determined vendors.  We'll spell it out again how Gates is becoming the czar of education (it's really quite creative):

• He is taking over the public education realm by his foundation providing Common Core Standards (they are all "free"-think philanthropy) to states if they will agree to use its blueprint.
• If the states agree to do so (under financial pressures from the Federal Government), the Gates Foundation can control what and how students learn. 
• He's done this by crafting the standards under which students will learn. 
• The states have been ruled impotent in exercising their sovereign right to educate their citizens in the manner deemed appropriate by the state by this takeover of education.

That's it in a nutshell.  He gives money to the government and schools to further his agenda and he reaps the benefits of the business that agenda creates.   The common core is an integral part of that agenda.  If the common core standards are not implemented, the whole plan falls apart.

I was interested when I read The American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) education task force just last week called for the demise of the standards:

A package of model legislation opposing the common standards gained ground yesterday at the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The organization's education task force approved the package, we learned from a couple of folks who attended those sessions of ALEC's meeting this week in Scottsdale, Ariz.
 

This is listed on ALEC's website and describes its mission:

… to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty, through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector, the federal government, and general public.
… to promote these principles by developing policies that ensure the powers of government are derived from, and assigned to, first the People, then the States, and finally, the Federal Government.

If ALEC takes its mission seriously, then this model legislation is long overdue and should have been introduced when the talk of common core and a national curriculum was introduced by Bill Gates, the NGA, the CCSSO and the Department of Education.

This is good news, right?   W**A**I**T.

On the heels of this announcement, did Mr. Gates say to ALEC...."not so fast"?  Bill Gates is not only buying the Department of Education, it seems he is attempting to buy out ALEC as well.  A grant was given to ALEC by Gates for educational reform in November 2011.  From the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website:

American Legislative Exchange Council

Date: November 2011

Purpose: to educate and engage its membership on more efficient state budget approaches to drive greater student outcomes, as well as educate them on beneficial ways to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate effective teaching based upon merit and achievement

Amount: $376,635

Term: 1 year and 10 months

Topic: Advocacy & Public Policy

Region Served: Global, North America

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia

Grantee Web site: http://www.alec.org

Now to be fair, this $376,635 grant is not for common core standards.  This $376,635 grant it is to assist in  enacting the ADDITIONAL Race to the Top mandates. He is employing the same methods used in setting Federal Education Policy: he is giving money to an organization to establish his agenda.

Do you think this is a subtle or not so subtle message to the ALEC Board by the Gates Foundation to support the Gates vision of education...even though the common core standards are not constitutional?   Will the ALEC Board fulfill its mission or will it be bought out like the Department of Education? The Department of Education turned over a government website to the Gates Foundation to monitor.  From the Washington Post:

The decision to turn over TEACH to Partners in Learning serves to expand the already outsized influence Gates and his fortune have on public education.


The topic of Gates and education reform has been explored before on this blog, including earlier this month in this piece, and here. The latter piece, by Economic Policy Institute research associate Richard Rothstein, explains how Gates misinterprets facts about education in his expensive to mold education reform down the path he supports — even when there is no evidence to back up his actions.  Gates has also spent many millions of dollars in public relations efforts to persuade the public to support his efforts.

Gates is spearheading the implementation of common core standards, teacher hiring and teacher evaluations.  State legislators can stop the implementation of standards and unfunded mandates.  Will the ALEC Board support this model legislation?  Or will it fold like Arne Duncan, take the money....and pretend it promotes Jeffersonian principles?

Gates is intent on a complete takeover of the educational delivery and content while utilizing taxpayer money.  From our previous article "The Outrage of the (Bill and Melinda) Gates Foundation is Misdirected":

In the interview Mr. Gates clearly states that his goal is "to leverage private money" in a way that "redirects" how tax dollars are spent inside public education. Mr. Gates is using his personal philanthropy to direct government policy, to channel taxpayers' funds to pay for the national curriculum he personally wants. (emphasis added)

Question to the ALEC Board: is the possible sell out of the Constitution via implementation of common core standards worth $376,635?