Fight Back Against the Misinformation Campaign

An Indy Star letter to the editor is typical of the misinformation being spread about Common Core. Here is an excerpt from the letter by Kristine Shiraki, interim executive director of Stand for Children Indiana, a privately funded organization whose donors include the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and New Profit Inc. Their mission is to push the education reform agenda including Common Core.

"To address these needs, a group of state leaders and experts came together to improve standards for all students. They talked to universities to see what was expected from incoming freshmen. They consulted businesses to see what new entrants to the workforce ought to know. They made sure the standards were rigorous, clear and concise. The result was the Common Core State Standards.

The Common Core Standards were so strong that 45 states, including Indiana in 2010, adopted them separately and voluntarily.

Years later, these standards that were developed by state leaders, without a hint of political motivation, are now being challenged, mostly for political reasons. And Indiana is ground zero for the assault.

...It has been said that Indiana’s old standards were good, but they were a mile wide and an  inch deep.

...That’s why the experts who developed the standards gave states the flexibility to add their own materials on top of what the Common Core requires, such as Indiana’s robust reading lists. And, of course, these standards are state minimums that local school corporations are always free to add to."

What follows in the Comments Section is the counterstrike that needs to occur every time these kinds of lies or unsubstantiated comments are put out there about Common Core.

• We both know that states can only add 15% to the common core standards and they may not delete or edit any standards as they are copyrighted and owned by two trade organizations in Washington DC, NGA and CCSSO. Stand for Children should be honest on this point. The new PARCC test that is replacing IStep will not test over the 15%. In this world of high-stakes testing, few, if any, teachers will have the time or incentive to teach any additional standards.

The idea that the common core standards are "fewer, clearer, deeper" is also untrue. The only people claiming Indiana's former standards were "a mile wide and an inch deep" are Tony Bennett and your organization.   - Erin Tuttle

• Statements and claims are commonly made that the CCSS are internationally benchmarked. This is a carry over from a promise that was made before the standards were written. The National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) made this promise and it is often repeated as if true. The standards are not and were never internationally benchmarked. The CCSSI did not deliver on this promise and now says the standards “are informed by other top performing countries”. - Mathematically Sound Foundations 

As one commenter noted - "There were many great points made and questions asked. I find it interesting that none of the questions were answered nor were the points countered."  Nor are they likely to be because the initial statements are not backed up by facts. They seem to be relying on a strategy of, "If we say it often enough, it will become true." If we let their misinformation go unchallenged, their strategy has the potential to work.

We will keep Dr. Tienken's report, which addresses most of the statements Ms. Shiraki makes, on the Missouri Coalition Against Common Core (MCACC.webs.com) website under Resources tab for everyone to access to address the misinformation campaign that is in full swing on Common Core.

The full court press to support CCSS will come within the next few months as schools begin using the new standards full time. Watch for burn out in the faculty first. Once the assessments begin in earnest in 2014 watch for the same burn out in students, especially the youngest ones. No one will be happy; from the superintendents, who watch their district's scores tank on the first rounds of testing, to the teachers who have to completely rethink the way they teach and whose jobs will be on the line depending on how their students score, to the students who have to be rotated through multiple on-line assessments, to the parents who watch their children come home lost and frustrated and see the request from their school board for more money to fund whatever it is that is making their kids so miserable.

If Common Core was anything like it is being made out to be, it might be worth the pain of the change, but numerous experts have weighed in and said it is the wrong tool, to address a problem that doesn't exist, that cannot possibly achieve the results it claims.

More Common Core Battles Emerging

"CCSS isn't a solution to, but instead it is a deliberate doubling down of, the vile policies of NCLB and RTTT."

The Common Core Standards battles are occurring more frequently.  Education activists and teachers are confronting teachers/education industry reformers and are not mincing words in their concern of individuals/corporations supporting the standards. Robert Skeels in Schools Matter weighs in on the support an educator (a Latin teacher) gave CCSS:

The following is my edited commentary in response to comments by a CCSS supporter on the Professor Ravitch post: A Teacher of Latin Writes In Defense of Fiction.
 
Kaye Thompson Peters, I've grown weary of the trite "apple and oranges" device that you employ everywhere in your stalwart defense of Corporate Core. You even used it in a gushing apology for Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on Hoover's fringe-right EdNext. While you might not be uncomfortable that Pearson Education, Inc. has been promoting your writings on CCSS, it does cause some of us consternation. When discussing CCSS in relation to NCLB and RTTT, we're not conflating apples and oranges, we're discussing a bushel of rotten apples foisted on us by a bunch of billionaires suffering from the Shoe Button Complex. 

You can read more here.

This article came in my email late last night about another Common Core proponent's (a paid education reformer) stance on the standards,  My View: Common Core means common-sense standards:

Common Core fixes previous shortcomings by setting rigorous standards that ensure a child is mastering necessary material, not just memorizing it. It has been said that Indiana’s old standards were good, but they were a mile wide and an inch deep. The old standards expose students to everything but do little to ensure they truly understand any of it. The Common Core is focused on targeting key materials students need to know, coherent so that student learning builds upon the previous grades, and rigorous to ensure students master the concepts and processes behind the information.

The writer, Kristine Shiraki, is interim executive director of Stand for Children Indiana.  What is Stand for Children?

Stand has seen an enormous influx of corporate cash. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation began by offering a relatively modest two-year grant of $80,000 in 2005. In 2007, Stand for Children received a $682,565 grant. In 2009, the point at which Stand’s drastically different political agenda became obvious, Gates awarded a $971,280 grant to support “common policy priorities” and in 2010, a $3,476,300 grant.

Though the Gates Foundation remains the biggest donor to Stand for Children, other players in the world of corporate education reform have also begun to see Stand as an effective vehicle to push their agenda.

New Profit Inc. has funded Stand since 2008—to the tune of $1,458,500. According to its website, New Profit is a “national venture philanthropy fund that seeks to harness America’s spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship to help solve the country’s biggest social problems.”

The Walton Family Foundation made a 2010 grant of $1,378,527. Several other major funders are tied to Bain Capital, a private equity and venture capital firm founded by Mitt Romney.

 The commentors to Ms. Shiraki's letter to the editor question her statements and ask her to provide data to confirm her contentions.  From the online version of the article:

Kristine, Could you post to this comment section the names of any teachers from Indiana who were on the writing team for the common core English or math common core standards? I have attached a link for Hoosiers to see how much representation Indiana had on the creation of the common core. http://

www.corestandards.org/assets/CCSSI_K-12_dev-team.pdf Some readers may recognize the name Mark Tucker who is on the ELA team, a highly controversial political figure.

We both know that states can only add 15% to the common core standards and they may not delete or edit any standards as they are copyrighted and owned by two trade organizations in Washington DC, NGA and CCSSO. Stand for Children should be honest on this point. The new PARCC test that is replacing IStep will not test over the 15%. In this world of high-stakes testing, few, if any, teachers will have the time or incentive to teach any additional standards.

The idea that the common core standards are "fewer, clearer, deeper" is also untrue. The only people claiming Indiana's former standards were "a mile wide and an inch deep" are Tony Bennett and your organization. See for yourself here http://hoosiersagainstcommoncore.com/whats-in-the-common-core-state-standards-content/

and

I'm pretty sure that Shiraki's days as interim are numbered, in part because she lacks a fact checker so she gets her facts dead wrong and her flacking falls apart. For instance, Shiraki, can you or duh Star tell us (call Tony for help if you need to) just which particular countries were the Kommen Kore "standards" benchmarked against? Since, we both know that you will have to look them up, when you reply please do cite page numbers from which you are consulting. My gentle suggestion is, Shiraki, you won't find that page because it doesn't exist anymore than your claim of international benchmarking does.

Why would Fordham suggest to Indiana that Indiana keep its higher and better academic standards and not adopt Kommen Korps? While one may argue about the benefit or value of high standards no one argues about the value of the carrot suspended in front of the horse drawn wagon.

So, (and any other flack can help her) Name the Counties against which CC is benchmarked. Or, retract your mis statement and admit that Stand for Children actually supports dumbing down standards.

More and more citizens are starting to question organizations like Stand for Children, Bill Gates Foundation, The Walton Foundation, CCSSI, the National Governors Association and other education reformers who seem to believe that deciding and setting "common policy priorities"  for the citizenry might not be as appreciated by the taxpayers as they had once thought.   They may not have even given the taxpayers a thought in the crafting of these policies, actually, since none of them were involved (or are currently) in the implementation of the standards in school.  The elites have come up with the plan and we get the pleasure of paying for it. 

If groups/individuals complain or lobby their legislators,  you then will see education reformers' letters to the editor written about how wonderful these unproven, untested and unfunded these standards really are.  Their message?  "Trust them.  They create more federal control but really, they are in your state's best interest. "

 Who is setting the "common" priorities taxpayers get the pleasure of paying for and these same taxpayers are not directing their own community's educational direction?  And the second question: why are these groups putting millions of dollars into this legislative fight against grassroots organizations/citizens who don't want this education reform that has been crafted by private corporations and paid for by tax dollars?