SBAC Cooperative Agreement Proves Nationalization

Here’s one comment that has been submitted to the USOE during this week’s comment period.

Click to open: SBAC Cooperative Agreement PDF

I was looking at the cooperative agreement of the SBAC which Washington is the “recipient” and Utah is considered a “sub-recipient” dated January 7th, 2011.  In this contract, ED represents the US Office of Education.  This contract from what I understand, is the agreement we have as a sub recipient with the federal government as we develop the assessments with the SBAC.

Is Common Core truly state led and do we have full control?  The federal government states clearly in this contract what we are required to do.  With this criteria, why did we sign such a contract and say we will have control?

On page 2 it states our responsibilities including we will have to give status updates, report our effort, deliver written reports and student data to the U.S. Dept of Education.

On page 3 it clearly states the “federal responsibilities”.

On page 9 it states: ”the Grantee is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of grant and sub-recipient-supported tasks and activities. This includes: 1) The Grantee and its sub-recipients actively participating in all relevant convenings, communities of practice, trainings, or other activities that are organized or sponsored by the State or by ED. ”

On page 10 it states clearly our cooperation with the federal government: “This supplement is awarded to support the consortium and its participating States efforts successfully transition to common standards and assessments. ”  It also states, ”The Grantee must provide timely and complete access to any and all data collected at the State level to ED.”

On page 7 it states the failure to comply clause, “Failure to comply with the content of this agreement may result in the Secretary imposing special conditions on the award pursuant to EDGAR §80.12 or taking other enforcement actions, including partly suspending or terminating the award, pursuant to EDGAR §80.43

Question: What are “the other enforcement actions” should we not be able to fulfill our part of the bargain? Will we have to pay back the amount utilized on our behalf to create CC if our efforts are not “good” enough?

Thank you for addressing my concerns.