The following information is provided by Ze’ev Wurman.
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The Common Core math standards were written by three people:
Bill McCallum: PhD in mathematics Jason Zimba: PhD in mathematical physics Phil Daro: Masters degree in English, with some involvement in elementary math but almost no knowledge of higher math
What do the math related writers say?
Bill McCallum, a key CCSSM author, said this at the 2010 joint AMS/MAA annual meeting:
“the overall standards would not be too high, certainly not in comparison other nations, including East Asia, where math education excels.”
In March 2010 Jason Zimba, another of the key CCSSM authors, testified in front of the Mass. Board of Ed and said:
“[Common Core’s] concept of college readiness is minimal and focuses on non-selective colleges.”
And just recently we’ve heard from Trevor Packer, Senior VP at the College Board and in charge of its AP program, speaking at the 2013 annual conference of School Superintendents Association (AASA) (video here) and indicating that the Common Core is less rigorous than what high schools routinely teach today and, consequently, the College Board is considering eliminating AP calculus.
“In particular, AP Calculus is in conflict with the Common Core, Packer said, and it lies outside the sequence of the Common Core because of the fear that it may unnecessarily rush students into advanced math classes for which they are not prepared.
The College Board suggests a solution to the problem. of AP Calculus. “If you’re worried about AP Calculus and fidelity to the Common Core, we recommend AP Statistics and AP Computer Science,” he told conference attendees.”
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So, the two authors who are experts in math say the standards aren’t very high, and the AP college board says AP calculus is in conflict with Common Core and students won’t be prepared for it. It appears Common Core has put calculus on death row. How can the Utah state board and state office of education continue to maintain that Common Core standards are more rigorous than our A- rated 2007 math standards which got most students through algebra in 8th grade and allows most students to take calculus in 12th? Common Core gets most students to pre-calculus by 12th grade, leaving them to take calculus in college.
Yesterday the Utah State Board of Education made a presentation to some Utah legislators entitled “Common Core and the Utah Education Transformation Plan”. A small group of concerned parents compiled these questions and facts in response to their slides.
This video contains actual audio from the beginning of the Common Core standards discussion in Utah. Having listened to these meetings, I wanted to make sure some key points were readily accessible and available to everyone.
As human beings, sometimes it’s helpful to go back to original sources instead of listening to talking points. This information on the Common Core process is invaluable in providing insight from those who were there at the time. What was their perspective, and what was their focus?
Please take a few minutes to watch and to understand what was being said about Common Core from the very beginning, not the least of which was the Utah State Board Agenda Item: “National Common Standards”. Contrast this to the Utah State Office of Ed flyer which states: “Fiction: Utah adopted nationalized education standards that come with federal strings attached.” Then ask these questions:
What was the overriding reason for Utah joining in with a group that was developing national, common standards?
Was there any federal involvement, real or implied, that motivated the jump into Common Core?
With all the public involvement, who do you know who was involved in vetting the Common Core standards?
The answers you get may be different from what you are being told.
Links to audio files featured in the video:
May 1, 2009 Utah School Board Meeting, Agenda Item: National Common Standards
“Common Core Standards are here to stay, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and school administrators have been telling us, but what they have not been telling us is that these nationwide standards are opening the door to more and more standardized testing.
And with standardized testing comes companies that make profits not only with tests, but with materials to prepare for those tests, and with ready-made curriculum based on those tests, just like we saw with all of the school districts in Missouri, including Joplin, that fell hook, line, and sinker for McGraw-Hill’s Acuity tests, which were allegedly designed to prepare students for the Missouri standardized tests, which were also made by McGraw-Hill.
It never worked in Joplin, where test scores have decreased ever since administrators bought the Acuity package.
Common Core Standards will be the same thing on steroids.
If students are going to be tested three times a year, then gullible school districts will be shelling out hundreds of thousands for test preparation materials, and before you know it, there will be no time to do anything but teach to the test.
Pearson, one of the companies that has been involved in the creation of Common Core Standards, has been selected by Missouri to create the tests. Pearson, not so coincidentally, is hawking a series of materials to help schools prepare for those tests, out of the goodness of their hearts, I am sure.”
In a great writeup in the NY Daily Post, coauthors Neal Mccluskey, Williamson Evers, and Sandra Stotsky show why the backlash to Common Core is completely justified.
“The Common Core — effectively national math and English curriculum standards coming soon to a school near you — is supposed to be a new, higher bar that will take the United States from the academic doldrums to international dominance.
So why is there so much unhappiness about it? There didn’t seem to be much just three years ago. Back then, state school boards and governors were sprinting to adopt the Core. In practically the blink of an eye, 45 states had signed on.
But states weren’t leaping because they couldn’t resist the Core’s academic magnetism. They were leaping because it was the Great Recession — and the Obama administration was dangling a $4.35 billion Race to the Top carrot in front of them. Big points in that federal program were awarded for adopting the Core, so, with little public debate, most did.
Major displeasure has come only recently, because only recently has implementation hit the district level. And that means moms, dads and other citizens have recently gotten a crash course in the Core.
Their opposition has been sudden and potent — with several states now considering legislation to either slow or end implementation, and Indiana, Pennsylvania and Michigan having officially paused it.
There are good reasons a backlash is now in full swing.” …
Listen to these PA legislators explain the problems of Common Core’s full agenda and their bills and resolutions to stop the encroachments on local control of education.
Rick Hess at Ed Week just published this article exposing how Common Core is basically the same old reform mindset which educators have hated in the past, but for some reason have embraced now.
“In a number of conversations this week over at Jeb Bush’s annual edu-fest, at AEI, and around DC, I was struck by the degree to which the Common Core seems to have become Dr. Pendergast’s miracle cure for everything that ails you (seemingly including heat blisters). The exchanges were eerily reminiscent of the run-up to Waiting for Superman, when smart, enthusiastic people kept telling me how everything was about to change–how suburban voters would wake up and leap on the reform bandwagon. And it reminds me more than a little of conversations had earlier this decade or back in the ’90s about how NCLB, school choice, or site-based management were going to change everything as well.”
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“More to the point, the confidence that the Common Core will wake folks up in 2015, “changing everything,” is an easy way to avoid unpleasant conversations about what it would actually take for the Common Core to connect with suburban voters or deliver on its promise (like, for instance, it might require the policy recommendations that have flowed from our “achievement gap mania” in the course of the past decade). The Kool-Aid allows would-be reformers to postpone facing up to hard truths. And it encourages proponents to regard their primary challenge as “messaging” the Common Core to parents and teachers, rather than grappling with these more substantive issues.”
Alyson Williams sent this in and I thought it was interesting and would post it.
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I was reading a sample chapter of Yong Zhao’s book, “World Class Learners” where he’s describing the difference between centralized control and local control of education. Speaking of local control:
“The second type has no national control of student learning experiences, leaving much of the curriculum decision to local education authorities. The local can be instantiated at the state or provincial level. In some contexts, the local has been defined in an even more granular or grass-roots policy grid that places the determinative decision making at the community or even school level. The United States, Canada, and Australia are traditionally the prime examples of the second category.” Zhao, p. 28
It reminded me of this map I’d seen recently showing world bank projects around the world. I couldn’t help but notice the 3 countries exemplary of local control of education, similarly stand out on this map.
With permission, I am printing the following account from a retired Utah elementary school teacher. I spoke with her personally and she desires to remain anonymous and keep the school, district, teachers, and principals anonymous in her story.
Just to make it abundantly clear, this teacher retired 16 years ago (approximately 1997) and this is not related to Common Core. There is no clear evidence that this exact thing is happening today in Utah, but there are some warning signs which as parents you should be aware of and I share those in a brief Q&A with this teacher, below this account.
Underlining is by the author/teacher, bolding is by me.
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“Cooperative learning: my experience with co-operative learning began in _______ elementary _______ school District, when Mrs. ____ was principal. Once a week the teachers had a meeting with the principal. At this time, we, the teachers, were told to put all desks in a group of four. Teachers were to put one of the best, one of our poorest, and two mediocre students in a group.
Each student had a role to play in the group. The brightest student reported the consensus arrived at in the group. The “happy talker” was one of the mediocre students whose job might be thought of as “climate control.” If a student in the group made an acceptable comment the “happy talker” would say something like “great idea,” “smart thinking.”
We the teachers, we’re given charts to put on the blackboards or bulletin boards where the happy talker in each group of four could see and could verbalize a comment from the chart in response to every comment made by each person in his group. As long as the comments were of an encouraging nature the “happy talker” knew what he could say according to the chart but if one student said something like “I think that is a stupid idea” the happy talker said “no put-downs.”
The first year of cooperative learning this was the acceptable response: “no put-downs.” The second year the response changed and the happy talker was to respond by saying “killer” or “suicide” because the person who negatively reacted to the group or individual was “killing an idea” or causing the idea to self-destruct; thus the explanation for the use of words killer and suicide.
This second year of cooperative learning the teachers were given a game they were to teach to the children in physical education class. The game was called “suicide.”
The teachers were told that their work would be so much less because the four students in the group would receive the same grade because they had received a consensus or a group response to the question so all four students were deserving of the same grade.
The outside of our rooms had been designed for showing individual art. There was a strip of corkboard all around the outside of our rooms which had been a joy to see art displayed respecting individual talents. The principal told us we were not ever to display anything but collectively chosen, collectively designed art projects with the collective names of the four students on it. One large piece of paper was to be given to each table of four combined desks. The four children were to come to a consensus on what the art project would be and each student would work on a portion of the large piece of paper. This was one of the most difficult adjustments for the creativity found within each child.
There were four teachers in our second grade team. One teacher was the “team leader.” She was the teacher who reported to the principal written and verbal reports for the entire second grade teachers.The team leader often walked into our rooms without knocking. Her observation was revealing. Upon much concern and searching for what to do I decided I would appeal to “the best” in my team leader. I went into her room when no children were there and I said: “I’ve taught in a one room country school in Missouri, a school almost a block long in Iowa, a private school in Wisconsin, and I have seen many education ideas come and go. In Iowa schools it was decided by an educator that a child’s first idea was usually right so all erasers were removed from pencils and if a child marked over his first response the answer was considered wrong because it wasn’t his “first” thought. Do you see, I said to her, how ridiculous ideas may come into education but we don’t have to accept them as an ironclad rule? She knew exactly what I meant. She quickly and conclusively told me: “I will do what it takes to keep my job.” This ended the conversation.
At a meeting with teachers and principal ____, a teacher inquired “Mrs. ____, what if the teacher doesn’t do cooperative learning?” Mrs. ____’s response was “she is out the door!”
At this time I had been able to put on a “dog and pony” show which the children and I had carefully planned for when we were to be visited by _____School District supervisors and Mrs. ____. All desks were as a table, happy talkers had the words on charts in mind and we practiced for a week.
What was perceived by the second grade district supervisors and principal I don’t have any way of knowing but when I was called to the principal’s office for an evaluation, Mrs. ____ had given me a #3 of a possible 5. I read it carefully. Mrs. ____’s markdown was stated as a restlessness in the classroom; too much energy. I said “I won’t sign it. I have 32 students in my classroom. I am not, according to state regulations, supposed to have in second grade more than 27 students. Also most of my students; 20 are boys. Boys have a much higher energy level than girls. No I will not sign that evaluation!” She reached across the desk, picked up the evaluation, erased the #3 and changed it to a #5.
It was near the weekend. On Sunday afternoon I went to see brother ____, an attorney in our ward*. Although I had tenure, I felt sure I would be fired. Brother ____’s response was “pray for interference, the Lord can interfere if you ask.”
In all my wild imaginations I could never have dreamed of what happened next. It was in the middle of the school year – not a usual time for teacher or principal transfers to other schools. I believe every teacher may have been as surprised as I was when Mrs. ____called all teachers to the library and told them she was being transferred to a neighboring school, ____. Within a week or so she was gone and Mr. ____ was our new principal. A teacher asked Mr. ____ if we still had to do cooperative learning. Although his answer was “yes,” very little was ever said or done about it in our weekly meetings. It was a relief to most teachers who conscientiously tried to teach the children in their classroom like they would want their own children taught.
I had a teacher friend in the (school where the principal got transferred to). She said Mrs. ____ instigated cooperative learning as vigorously as she had in ____. I do not know if Mrs. ____was using a cooperative learning model (or federal grant) to get more money for the schools from the federal government.
This social experiment passed over as a dark cloud does but leaving some ideas and elements in place; such as the philosophy that it takes a village (not the family) to raise a child.
* Oak Note: For those of you that are not familiar with the LDS religion, individual congregations are called a “ward” and encompass a specific geographical area ranging from a few blocks in densely populated LDS areas, to entire cities in sparsely populated areas.
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Q&A with this retired teacher:
Q: Is it still happening in Utah schools?
A: No direct knowledge of this happening now.
Q: What grade levels did this take place in?
A: Our school was K-6 and I taught 2nd grade. I know it happened in 1-6th grade
Q: What was the game “suicide” about?
A: I never found out. Another teacher and I used to alternate taking both our classes together to phys ed. This teacher was my grade level team leader. When “suicide” started, I quit allowing her to take my students to the gym and just did it solely myself.
Q: It has become somewhat normal to see elementary school desks organized into small groups, or see round tables for desks for multiple children in classrooms. If you see this what should you do?
A: You should sit down in this class and see how this teacher is working with these children. Does the teacher have a plan as to how each child functions in that group and is there consensus building for answers, or are they just grouped together but do individual work? Who is going to be the one that speaks for this group? The most intelligent student? The happy talker? The student who is struggling?
Q: What other concerns did you see?
A:
1) We used to have specialists to send students to for reading or math help such as a special ed teacher who had their own plan to take that child from where they were to a higher level. Now in many cases another teacher comes into the room to try and keep the student on the same schedule as others and the plan is above where that child really needs help. To put it another way, “even though you don’t understand or have the bottom foundation bricks, we’re going to work on these higher bricks.”
2) Gifted and talented students were pulled from rooms for special advancement, but instead of being advanced they got more field trips to put them into job training previews (huge disadvantage to their advancement, and bad for the remaining students who didn’t see good examples in the class). It seemed to be building a tiered society in schools.
Q: What is your advice to other parents?
A: Find out what your children are learning. Sit in their classrooms and watch how the teacher operates. You have that right.
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Oak Comments:
I am not 100% certain of the origin of this insane experiment in indoctrination, but I would suspect it is from John Goodlad and his involvement in our state which began in 1983 at BYU when he set up the Public School Partnership with 5 surrounding districts.
On page 174 of Goodlad’s book, “Access to Knowledge”, he writes that one reason for “cooperative learning strategies” is “to provide more excellent and equitable education.” Equitable is the key word. As seen above, individuality is crushed so that all students can be mediocre. (Matt. 18:6)
Teachers, if you are engaged in any of this type of classroom experimentation on children, I urge you to stop. If it is being forced on you, please let parents know what is happening to their children. I pray they’ll do the right thing.
Anthony Cody at Ed Week just posted this letter from a teacher who a few months ago wrote in support of Common Core. The teacher has done some homework and is seeing the writing on the wall and the coming dangers.
In April I carried a guest post written by New York City elementary teacher Katie Lapham, expressing support for the Common Core standards, but opposing the tests attached to them. Since then, Ms. Lapham has shifted her views. She explains:
When I first learned about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) two or so years ago, I didn’t question their implementation. I’ve always preferred designing my own lessons and was sold on the idea that the standards were mostly a guide; we were free to choose our own curriculum.
Since writing to Dr. John King, head of New York State’s Education Department, about the excessive CCSS state assessments administered in April, I have spent countless hours educating myself on education reform and Race to the Top polices. I now feel duped. CCSS are much more than a set of learning objectives. By attaching them to government initiatives such as high-stakes testing and teacher evaluation plans, the standards are being used as an instrument to standardize and control public education in the US. Teachers and schools feel increasingly micromanaged, which is insulting and demoralizing. We have less autonomy and choice, and my own personalized instruction is being threatened. Below are the main reasons why I, a teacher and parent, oppose the Common Core State Standards.
1.) My biggest concern has always been high-stakes testing, which deprives students of meaningful learning experiences. The NYS ELA and math exams have been redesigned to align with the CCSS. The content and length of these exams are educationally unsound. I have written about this in great detail on my blog.
I now understand that you cannot separate the CCSS from high-stakes standardized testing. The two go hand in hand. I originally thought the CCSS stood alone, used solely as standards to shape instruction. I now see that they are much more than that. The current high-stakes tests in New York State that I so detest are the way they are because of the CCSS.
