Bricks in the Wall: National Common Core

1. Bricks in the Wall: National Common Core Cena Clark Cristin DuBose Lisa Jolly

2. Question 1(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts for one-third of the total essay section score.) Directions: The following prompt is based on the accompanying six sources. This question requires you to synthesize a variety of sources into a coherent, well-written essay. When you synthesize sources, you refer to them to develop your position and cite them accurately. Your argument should be central; the sources should support the argument. Avoid merely summarizing sources. Remember to attribute both direct and indirect references. Introduction As the global society becomes more competitive, America is trying to create a system to educate its citizens to excel on an international level. Recently, 44 states have adopted the federal initiative: National Common Core Standards. These standards were created to “provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help” the students. Many people believe that this initiative will create a negative uniformity which will hinder educator and student creativity and individual thought. However, others believe this create an even playing field for all citizens to access a quality standard of education. Assignment Read the following sources carefully. Then, in an essay that synthesizes at least three of the sources for support, evaluate the important factors a state should consider before implementing the National Common Core. Source A (Schenker) Source B (Finn) Source C (“Common”) Source D (Marcia) Source E (Bozeman) Source F (Fuller)

3. Source ASchencker, Lisa. “Utah Teachers Prepare for New Common Core Academic Standards.” The Salt Lake Tribune. 13 June 2011. Web. 21 June 2011. The following is an except from an article from a local newspaper. More than 5,000 Utah teachers will go back to class this summer — to learn how to teach to new state academic standards that, in some cases, will go into effect starting in the fall. Over the next six weeks, teachers will attend four-day training sessions across the state to learn how to teach to new Utah Common Core State Standards. The standards, which so far have been adopted by 44 states and U.S. territories, will change what students are expected to learn in each grade in math and language arts. The standards will be phased in over the course of a few years in grades K-12. As the first part of the phase-in, sixth and ninth-graders will take classes starting this fall modeled on Common Core math standards. Most ninth-graders, who might normally take Algebra, will take a new course in the fall called Secondary Mathematics 1, or an honors version of that course, which will include concepts in algebra, geometry, statistics, and pre-calculus, said Brenda Hales, state associate superintendent. […] And Lt. Gov. Greg Bell thanked lawmakers at a news conference Monday for helping to fund the training with $2 million. Lawmakers also put $1 million toward helping change state assessments to reflect the new standards, and the State Office of Education also contributed about $1 million toward the training, using money saved from cutting back on previous teacher trainings, said Hales. […]

4. Source BFinn, Checker and Mike Petrilli. “Fordham Responds to the Common Core ‘Counter—Manifesto.”’ The following is an except from an on-line article. The “counter-manifesto” released this week in opposition to national testing and a national curriculum is full of half-truths, mischaracterizations, and straw men. But it was signed by a lot of serious people and deserves a serious response. First, let us dispatch some silliness. To the best of our knowledge, and based on all evidence that we’re aware of, neither the signers of the Shanker Institute manifesto, nor leaders in the Obama/Duncan Education Department, advocate a “nationalized curriculum” that would “undermine control of public school curriculum and instruction at the local and state level” and “transfer control to an elephantine, inside-the-Beltway bureaucracy.” Nor is anybody calling for “a one-size fits all, centrally controlled curriculum for every K-12 subject.” We certainly wouldn’t support such a policy—and can understand why the conservative luminaries who signed the counter-manifesto wouldn’t want it, either. As parents, grandparents, charter-school authorizers, and champions of school choice in almost all its forms, we believe deeply in the importance of schools having the freedom to shape their own unique educational approaches. So let us be clear: While the assessments linked to the Common Core State Standards will be mandatory (for schools and districts in states that choose to use them), the use of any common curricular materials will be purely voluntary. We don’t see any evidence to indicate otherwise. […] Now for some specific advice: Drafters of the counter-manifesto: Make sure your signers—including the famous ones—understand that nobody is calling for a single mandatory “national curriculum,” and see how many folks you lose. Shanker Institute: Make clearer than your original document did that you are not proposing that there be only one “common” curriculum for all schools. Secretary Arne Duncan: Ask the two testing consortia to sign agreements swearing not to mandate—directly or indirectly—the use of curricular materials they develop. The PARCC consortium: Figure out a way for schools to opt out of the through-course assessments and take a single end-of-year test instead. Supporters of the Common Core: Encourage states to enact laws barring their education departments and state boards from mandating any particular curricular or instructional approaches—including those developed through the Common Core effort. And big funders and nonprofits that care about this stuff: Devise a really powerful version of “Consumer Reports” by which to vet curricular materials (commercial and “open-source” alike) that purport to be “aligned” with the Common Core so as to gauge their validity—and whether they’re quality materials worthy of the attention of practicing educators. These steps won’t resolve all the tension between national standards and “local control.” But they offer some reasonable safeguards and a clear path forward. Any takers?

5. Source C“Common Core Standards Initiative.” Edinformatics.com 20 January 2011. Web. 21 June 2011. This is an article from an on-line source. Why is the Common State Standards Initiative (CCSI) important for the country? "Today we live in a world without borders. To maintain America’s competitive edge, we need all of our students to be well prepared and ready to compete with not only their American peers, but with students from around the world. CCSSO and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) in partnership with Achieve, Inc., ACT, and the College Board have initiated a state-led process of developing and adopting a common core of state standards (Common Core State Standards Initiative). This initiative will build off of the research and good work states have already done to build and implement high-quality standards. This work presents a significant and historic opportunity for states to accelerate and drive education reform toward the ultimate goal of children—from states across the country—graduating from high school ready for college, work, and success in the global economy. CCSSO and the NGA Center believe every student must be as prepared as their peers in all states across the country and those peers in high-achieving countries." source: Council of Chief State School Officers NATIONAL TESTS How will testing under the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) be performed? States appear to be ready for testing in 2014, many will develop an online strategy. The tests will be developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). Both of these organizations were awarded funds in September 2010 from the Race to the Top Assessment Program to create national online state standardized tests in mathematics and English language arts in line with Common Core State Standards (United States Secretary of Education Duncan, 2010). Read more -- Feds Award $330 Million To Find Alternatives to High-Stakes Bubble Tests PARCC, a coalition of 26 states and administrative divisions, will focus on an approach that is designed eliminate the end term tests with assessments administered several times during the year resulting in an average final score. SBAC, a coalition of 31 states, will take an approach that makes use of computer adaptive technology that will ask students tailored questions based on their previous answers.

6. Source DMarcia. “National ‘Common Core’ Standards.” 10 June 2011.  What Would the Founders Think?  21 June 2011. < http://www.whatwouldthefoundersthink.com/national-common-core-standards>. This is an except from an on-line article. Unless the electorate awakes in 2012 from its Obama induced coma, it won’t be The Affordable Health Care Act that will be remembered for putting the nation on the road to serfdom, but the Washington hijacking of education. While Americans have been preoccupied with recession, unemployment, congressional peccadilloes, and foreign and natural disasters, cash hungry states, 43 at last count, quietly sold our children’s birthright of freedom to the national government. (The term “federal government” is no longer accurate because the structure built by the Founders is now unrecognizable.) Never mind that the Constitution reserves education to the states. The Obama administration got around that inconvenience by tying federal funds to state approval of the so-called Common Core Standards. To obtain the money, the majority of states went along with, what can only be described as, an end run around the Constitution. As Bill Evers, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Policy under President George W. Bush, et all, explains on The Hill’s Congress Blog, The new national curriculum is designed to complement a federally-funded national testing system that will test every public school student in America. Left unchallenged, this federal effort will establish for America a new system of national tests, national academic content standards, and a national curriculum. Tyrants have always known that their longevity depends upon controlling the minds of the next generation. Bureaucrats know it, too.

7. Source E“Common Core is Reasonable Alternative to No Child Left Behind.” 17 May 2011. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Web. 21 June 2011. The following article is excerpted from an editorial page. […] Educators nationwide have blasted NCLB for imposing one-size-fits-all testing and standards for highly diverse student populations from around the nation and along the socio-economic scale. They say the act is forcing teachers to teach to tests rather than engaging in creative education methods tailored to individual students' needs. There does seem to be real issues with NCLB, but educators' seemingly relentless resistance to measuring the quality of our schools is troubling. There must be a way to gauge their success, and doing so is a national imperative. Juneau is proposing the state adopt "common core" standards that 43 states have already adopted. She says the common core standards are much clearer than NCLB's and measure students' progress at every grade level, rather than just the three grade levels measured under NCLB. Supporters of the new system say the common core replaces highly variable standards adopted by individual states as they tried to conform with NCLB. They contend the new system will make it easier to measure progress and compare progress between states. This much is certain: Our nation's education system needs to improve. U.S. students' abilities in math and science lag behind those in some 20 other developed nations. In Montana, 84 percent of students read at grade level, while 67 percent meet grade-level math skills. While those numbers stack up pretty well when compared to national averages, they are still below what we should expect. And if we are to improve them, we need a way to measure our schools' success and give them strategies for improvement. Juneau seems to have accepted that and is proposing Montana adopt a reasonable alternative to No Child Left Behind. Educators nationwide need to do the same.

8. \Source FFuller, Bruce. “Will National Standards Improve Education?: The Pros and Cons of Mandating What American Schoolchildren Should Know. Understandable, but Wrong” The New York. New York, 25 January 2011. This is an article from an on-line newspaper. After showing robust vital signs in the 1990s, test scores have flat-lined in recent years. According to President Obama and a bipartisan majority of governors, the way to fix that is to develop a shared set of curricular standards. Countries with centralized standards and national tests are eager to undo rote learning and nurture creativity. It makes sense. The early days of standards-based accountability clearly produced gains, especially for children with weak literacy skills. And common standards push states to define in uniform ways which students are truly proficient. (Right now a child deemed a "proficient" reader by officials in Texas is reading at the below basic level in Massachusetts.) But will national standards rekindle student progress, or prove to be an illiberal reform from a progressive president? Arne Duncan, Obama’s education secretary, points to Germany and Japan, where centralized standards and national tests coincide with strong student performance. Yet correlation does not prove causality. And these societies are eager to undo rote learning and nurture greater inventiveness among their graduates – a key driver of technological advances and value-added returns to the national economy. The strange thing in all this is that the political left is now preaching the virtues of systems, uniformity and sacred knowledge. Lost are the virtues of liberal learning, going back to the Enlightenment when progressives first nudged educators to nurture in children a sense of curiosity and how to question dominant doctrine persuasively. Sure, all children must first learn how to read. But standards will likely be swallowed as sacred knowledge, transmitted through efficient didactics, oddly endorsed by contemporary liberals. The Obama administration is wisely trying to get back to a surgical way of holding schools accountable: distill the complicated enterprise of human learning down to concrete, uniform bundles of knowledge. Then, stimulate local educators to devise more motivating classroom practices, spurred by market competition from charter schools and parental choice. But standards threaten to further routinize pedagogy, filling students with bits of reified knowledge -- leaving behind the essence, the humanistic genius of liberal learning.