Common Core State Standards aka Missouri Learning Standards

Common Core State Standards (aka Missouri Learning Standards) Un- Tested Un-Approved Un-Funded Unnecessary

Education Is A States Right • Education is not mentioned in the Constitution as a federal responsibility meaning it is reserved to the states to control. • Limitations on Federal involvement in education are specifically noted in at least three congressional acts dealing with education.

Federal Law: General Educational Provisions Act (GEPA) • “No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system…“

Federal Law: Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Aka No Child Left Behind • Section 9529 “PROHIBITION ON FEDERALLY SPONSORED TESTING. (a) GENERAL PROHIBITION Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal law and except as provided in subsection (b), no funds provided under this Act to the Secretary or to the recipient of any award may be used to develop, pilot test, field test, implement, administer, or distribute any federally sponsored national test in reading, mathematics, or any other subject, unless specifically and explicitly authorized by law. ”

Common Core Reform Agenda “Traditionally, the federal government in the U. S. has had a limited role in educational policy. The Obama Administration has sought to fundamentally shift the federal role…” ~ Secretary of Education Arne Duncan 2010 UNESCO Conference

Common Core The Marketing of Lies “The federal government is not involved in Common Core. It is a state led initiative. ”

Federal Involvement 2009 Stimulus Bill (ARRA) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Gave $4. 35 Billion to USDo. Ed who funded: • Race To The Top Grant Program • Testing Consortia • Threatened Title I $$$

Page 3 Memorandum of Understanding Signed by Governor Nixon Committing The State To The Adoption of Core • Federal Role. The. Common parties support a state-led effort and not a federal effort to develop a common core of state standards; there is, however, an appropriate federal role in supporting this state-led effort. In particular, the federal government can provide key financial support for this effort in developing a common core of state standards and in moving toward common assessments, such as through the Race to the Top Fund authorized in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Further, the federal government can incentivize this effort through a range of tiered incentives, such as providing states with greater flexibility in the use of existing federal funds, supporting a revised state accountability structure, and offering financial support for states to effectively implement the standards. Additionally, the federal government can provide additional long-term financial support for the development of common assessments, teacher and principal professional development, other related common core standards supports, and a research agenda that can help continually improve the common core over time. Finally, the federal government can revise and align existing federal education laws with the lessons learned from states’ international benchmarking efforts and from federal research.

Race To The Top Grants States had to agree to include these four elements in their grant application to even be considered for an award. (MO= $250 m) • Adopt a set of national standards • Join a consortium to develop assessments aligned with these standards. • Develop accountability measures for teachers to teach these standards including tying 50% of a teacher’s evaluation to their students’ scores on the assessments. • Develop a turn around model for failing schools.

Race To The Top Grants Missouri’s RTTT grant application estimated the total cost for the implementation of common core, the assessments, teacher training, DESE staff etc. at $740+ million of which they hoped to get $250 m from the federal government. (We did not receive a grant award)

Race To The Top Grant MO 160. 526 it states that “. . . Further, in establishing the academic standards and statewide assessment system, the state board of education shall adopt the work that has been done by consortia of other states and, subject to appropriations, may contract with such consortia to implement the provisions of sections 160. 514 and 160. 518. ” The process followed by the Department in determining Missouri’s Learning Standards, including the Common Core, clearly follows the dictates of the statute. To date, DESE has not sought Senate Appropriations Committee approval for the expenditure of funds to implement Common Core or approval to join the SBAC consortia.

Race To The Top Grant DESE committed to implementing everything in the RTTT grant, regardless of whether they got the award. They said it would just take them longer to complete the full implementation.

Race To The Top Grant “Our vision for reform embraces the notion advanced in the book, Nudge, where Thaler and Sunstein outline the need for ‘choice architects’ to subtly steer choices toward positive results while leaving people, districts and schools ‘free to choose. ’ ” P. 10 MO RTTT application.

What about the standards themselves?

Common Core The Marketing of Lies The Lie: Common Core’s standards were developed by the states—or by experts. Truth: “CC’s standards were written by people chosen by the Gates Foundation to write the standards: David Coleman and Jason Zimba, in particular. Coleman had no credentials for writing ELA standards, had never taught at any grade level, and was not a literary scholar. (Nor had his associate Susan Pimentel. She had taught only in Head Start and had no degree in English. ) Jason Zimba too, had never taught in K-12 mathematics, and had no experience in developing or writing math standards. ” Dr. Sandra Stotsky CCSSI Validation Committee

Common Core The Marketing of Lies The Lie – Common Core standards are fewer and clearer. MO 160. 514. 1. By rule and regulation, and consistent with the provisions contained in section 160. 526, the state board of education shall adopt no more than seventy-five academic performance standards which establish the knowledge, skills and competencies necessary for students to successfully advance through the public elementary and secondary education system of this state; lead to or qualify a student for high school graduation; prepare students for postsecondary education or the workplace or both; and are necessary in this era to preserve the rights and liberties of the people.

In the CCSSI English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects there are 563 separate standards

Common Core The Marketing of Lies The Lie – Common Core standards are internationally benchmarked and designed to make American children competitive in the future global workforce. Truth – Even CCSSI has backed off the claim that they are internationally benchmarked. No other national standards were offered when they were asked to prove this claim.

Dr. James Milgram Stanford University CCSSI Validation Committee “I can tell you that my main objection to Core Standards, and the reason I didn’t sign off on them was that they did not match up to international expectations. They were at least 2 years behind the practices in the high achieving countries by the 7 th grade, and, as a number of people have observed, only required partial understanding of what would be the content of a normal, solid, course in Algebra I or Geometry. ”

Dr. James Milgram (cont. ) “Moreover, they cover very little of the content of Algebra II, and none of any higher level course…. They will not help our children match up to the students in the top foreign countries when it comes to being hired to top level jobs. ”

The Lie – Common Core standards are fewer and clearer. Page 19 Math Standards: “ 5. Fluently add and within 100 using strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction. ”

Common Core The Marketing of Lies Claim: Common Core standards are high quality rigorous standards. Example: Kindergarten ELA Standard “Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text. ”

Alliance for Childhood Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative March 2, 2010 “We have grave concerns about the core standards for young children now being written by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The draft standards made public in January conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development, and early childhood education about how young children learn, what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades. ”

500 Early Childhood Experts Agreed • Such standards will lead to long hours of instruction in literacy and math. • They will lead to inappropriate standardized testing • Didactic instruction and testing will crowd out other important areas of learning • There is little evidence that such standards for young children lead to later success.

Common Core The Marketing of Lies The Lie: Common Core’s standards will produce students who are college and career ready. Truth: Jason Zimba (drafter of CCSS) told the Massachusetts Board of Education in March 2010 that college readiness in CC mathematics means readiness for admission to a nonselective community college.

Career Readiness In testimony before the PA Senate Education Committee, a proponent of these standards was asked about college and career readiness. He responded that a graduate only needed Algebra I to be “career-ready” – which he clarified by specifying that he was referring to working a service or manufacturing job or joining the military.

Common Core The Marketing of Lies The Lie: Common Core Standards are necessary to provide consistency for students moving from state to state. Truth: Statistics shows that less than 1% of school aged children move across state lines during their k-12 educational experience. If students move it is usually within state lines.

The Lie: DESE has testified that “Missouri can change the standards any time they want. ” Truth: CCSSI, created by NGA and CCSSO, owns the copyright to the standards. Changing them violates the terms of use in the license agreement. Changing the standards would negate one of the stated purposes of CC- continuity between states for students who move.

“Common set of k-12 standards means a set of content standards that define what students must know and be able to do, that are identical across all states in a consortium. Notwithstanding this, a state may supplement the common standards with additional standards provided that the additional standards do not exceed 15 percent of the state’s total standards for that content area. ” Federal Register July 29, 2009 (emphasis added)

Collective Punishment Def. - a policy of punishing a large group for the actions of a small group, meant to bring the pressure of the majority upon the smaller group to conform.

“ 93% of our schools are making Adequate Yearly Progress. ” DESE 2010 In 2010, DESE coerced 99% of all districts into signing a Memorandum of Agreement with MO’s RTTT grant application committing them to the adoption of Common Core standards. Coercion, intimidation, collective punishment and policies based on broken theories and antiintellectualism are unnecessary, unproductive and border on institutional abuse.

Common Core The Marketing of Lies “Furthermore we see a disconnect between a public education system charged with the development of innovative thinking, creative thinking, strategizing and problem solving, and public education system being directed and managed through policies based on control and predictable output. The irony is staggering. ” P. 39 The School Reform Landscape – Tienken

Common Core The Marketing of Lies We need a set of common standards and assessments in order to be able to compare student performance state to state.

Where is education reform headed?

President Obama Addresses Congress “……it will be the goal of this Administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education--from the day they are born to the day they begin a career. ”

The public education system has effectively developed a workforce for the industrial age, and its graduates have helped the United States become the most prosperous nation in the world. However, the demands of the new information-based economy require substantial changes to the existing system. American businesses have pointed to a widening gap between the skills of graduates and modern workforce demands. National Broadband Plan http: //www. broadband. gov/plan/11 -education/

MSNBC Melissa Harris-Perry

P-20 Longitudinal Data System • Having recognized that teachers and principals must have timely and meaningful data to make sound instructional decisions, and that local and state policies should similarly be informed by such data, DESE has already instituted a statewide longitudinal data system, the Missouri Student Identification System (MOSIS) in the 2007 -2008 school year, which is among the most advanced in the nation. • MOSIS will enable all stakeholders to utilize P-20 longitudinal data from the Missouri Comprehensive Data System for instructional, research, and planning purposes. • Provide a database accessible to researchers throughout the nation that is the first-ever link between student performance, teaching practices, and leadership decisions. MO RTTT grant application p 15

P-20 Data Collection The National Education Data Model, funded by the Federal Government has at least 350 data sets commonly coded for states to use in elementary/secondary schools to gather personal student/family information such as: • Bus stop information • Base salary or wage • Family Income Range • Health care plan • Dwelling ownership • Religious Affiliation/Consideration • Voting status

Abuse of Standardized Test Data • “Providing incentives to teachers based on school’s performance on metrics involving student achievement, improvement, and the learning environment did not increase student achievement in any statistically meaningful way. If anything, student achievement declined. ” Roland Fryer, Harvard “Financial Incentives and Student Achievement from Randomized Trials. ” • NAEP test results in DC and in New York City show that larger and larger emphases on test data (including dangling cash prizes in front of teachers) during the past 2 - 4 years seem to go hand in hand with lower or stagnant test scores, reversing generally rising trends that had occurred beforehand. GF Brandenbyrg http: //gfbrandenburg. wordpress. com

The Players In The Education Reform Movement

Pearson Sir Michael Barber Chief Education Advisor “If you want irreversible reforms, work on the culture and the minds of teachers and parents”. He says this is important; otherwise, parents or traditionalists might repeal what’s been done because of their “wish for the past. ” He defines “sustainable reform” as “irreversible reform” and aims to “make it so it can never go back to how it was before. ”

Gates Foundation Bill Gates Founder • Funded development of CCSSI • Wants to double college graduation rates by 2020 • Partially funds the Data Quality Campaign which provides services to meet federally mandated data collection. • Spent $2 B over 10 years to fix schools – admitted effort was a failure. http: //www. schargel. com/2009/01/27/bill-gates-admits-that-small-schools-are-not-the-answer/

David Coleman President College Board Architect CCSSI Standards Board Member Achieve Inc. • Achieve Inc. supplies education consulting services, test preparation to ed industry. • Formed Grow Network which he sold to Mc. Graw Hill after he drafted CCSS • Has promised to align SAT to Common Core

Governor Nixon’s Involvement • Gov. Nixon is the only Missouri governor listed on the MO Accountability Portal as having had a membership in the NGA (data available from 2000 -2013); • Nixon listed as NGA Board member in 2010 -2011; • Nixon currently sits on the Board of Directors of Achieve, • NGA and Achieve are NGOs that hold the copyrights to the English/language arts & math, and science standards respectively

Taxpayer $$$ Spent on NGA Dues since 2000 Fiscal Year Governor NGA Activity 2001 -2004 Gov. Holden: no funds paid for NGA membership $0 2005 -2008 Gov. Blunt: no funds paid for NGA membership $0 2009 Gov. Nixon unilaterally signs MOA with NGA to commit MO to adoption of national standards (CCSS)are the only national standards $28, 800. 00* 2010 Gov. Nixon listed on NGA 2010 Tax Form 990 (p. 7) as a member of the board spending an average of 20 hrs. per week for the organization $32, 550. 00 2012 NGA Tax Form 990 not available on Guidestar. org $32, 885. 27 2012† ? ? March Nixon appointed to Achieve’s Board of Directors $130, 200. 00 Search from 2000 to 2013 Tax Form 990 source: Guidestar. org * Difference of approximately $4, 000 † Two payments to NGA in 2012; second payment almost quadruple the first

Who is missing as a player? The local school district • Parents • Taxpayers • School Boards

What Can You Do? • Educate yourself. Go to MOAgainst. Common. Core. com. Join to receive e-mail updates on actions happening in the legislature. • Sign the e-petition to stop common core • Download the School Board Resolution Regarding Common Core and share with your district. • Educate your school board members on the proper role of the Superintendent. • Talk to your legislator to let them know you don’t want common core and individual data collected or shared.

What Can You Do? Spread the word about and plan to attend one of the regional Common Core conferences planned for this fall. “Take Back Your School” • September 21 st St. Louis* • October 5 th Kansas City* • October 19 th Springfield* 9: 00 a. m. – 2: 00 p. m. * Tentative dates

"School boards offer citizens from all walks of life the opportunity to determine the community’s direction and vision for their children’s education. ” Missouri School Board Association website

• “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. ” – Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda