Common core standards—Students Come First on steroids?
By Jennie Winter
Would any individual farmer, teacher or businessman endorse a business plan that had no budget, no oversight? Would they endorse a construction project with incomplete blueprints and only untested and untried building practices? One would hope they would not, yet it appears that is exactly what has happened with Idaho’s adoption of Common Core Standards, the latest “education reform” in Idaho.
Adopted in 2009 by the State Board of Education and ultimately approved by the Idaho Legislature in January 2011, the Common Core Standards were mandated with hardly a murmur from the taxpayers. Yet they will ultimately foot the bill for the radical changes under which they will have less say over a significant portion of our state’s math and English curriculum, at least 85 percent of which must align with the patented Common Core Standards.
With the current focus of the Idaho School Board Association on revisiting teacher labor issues and the governor’s priority of repealing the business personal property tax, one might be lulled into forgetting that the state budget is in crisis and that any change should be submitted to close inspection, especially one as radical as Common Core Standards implementation which is a complete overhaul of the way that our students will be taught and assessed, and the way education reform—aka Common Core Standards—will be funded.
States that have actually done a cost analysis of such standards have estimated them to be very high; e.g., Washington State estimates a cost of $300 million.
Apparently no such comprehensive cost analysis has been done for Idaho. However, because the standards have been adopted and teachers are already being trained to implement them fully in 2014, an independent cost analysis is urgently needed so that the education task force can be fully informed and taxpayers notified about the new expenditures.
Other states that have signed on to this public school plan that has no price tag, no fully developed tests and is controlled by private corporations which are unaccountable to the taxpayers, are now having second thoughts. However, time is running out in which to opt out of Common Core Standards.
The Pioneer Institute’s February 2012 study lists three significant state costs of Common Core Standards adoption: 1) The new yearly assessments that will accompany the standards, including the costs of computers and Internet bandwidth required for the computer-scored tests; 2) Professional development and training necessary to prepare administrators and teachers to effectively implement the Common Core Standards; 3) The adoption of new textbooks and instructional materials to bring their schools in line with the Common Core Standards — while many schools are using still relevant textbooks (which have a life span of 2 to 6 years) from previous school years, Common Core Standards adoption will require a total overhaul and replacement of educational materials by fall 2014.
In addition to the three main costs, Pioneer’s study predicts additional costs for necessary technology infrastructure and support required for successful Common Core Standards implementation, while noting that no state has released any report on the cost estimates or feasibility of these technological requirements.
Gov. Otter who pushed for adoption of the Common Core Standards from the outset in 2009 could not have chosen a worse time to try for repeal of the business personal property tax which is essential to education funding. His push to do so, however, supports District 25 Superintendent Mary Vagner’s statement in her recent column, “The connection between the appropriation and public school funding has been broken and there’s nobody out there putting this together.”
Other concerns included in the Common Core Standards debate: the merits of the standards themselves, concerns about the shift from a literature-based method of English education to the technical instruction-manual focus of the English Common Core Standards, questions about the efficiency of another topdown federal education overhaul, debate over the role of national standards in charter and private school curriculum, and the fear that a national system could crush education innovation. Most of all, there are valid worries that the adoption of Common Core Standards could leave our teachers and students caught up in an untested, unproved system.
One thing is clear: Like Students Come First, the adoption of Common Core Standards is expensive and will add more strain to school district budgets already at the breaking point. With some smaller districts still operating on a four day week, and levy amounts increasing throughout the state, the big question is how will the state afford to pay for this massive K-12 education overhaul which has no price tag, has no specifics for future funding to meet its mandates, emphasizes expensive testing for student and teacher evaluation, and will be controlled by private corporations held unaccountable to the taxpayers whose money has been committed to pay for all of it.
The Idaho Department of Education should inform the public as to the progress or lack thereof in dealing with Common Core Standards issues. After all, accountability for the success of Idaho public education does not apply only to teachers.
Jennie L. Winter is a retired English teacher who lives in Inkom
Mrs. Winters,
Good article. You made my day rather long as I went to find these Common Core State Standards so I could figure out what you wrote about. They’re rather long and wordy. Somebody got paid by the word, apparently.
Start here: http://www.corestandards.org/
Sorry to report but I came away rather disappointed. It appears high school students are now studying what I was studying at the end of grade school way too many years ago. If anything I suspect the ‘pace’ of learning will turn most students off rather than encourage them. There appears no place for students to excel and move on, they have to wait for the group to catch up, it appears.
Indeed it will cost us dearly, this won’t produce the scientists, engineers, teachers, businessmen of the future. It will produce a LCD type of student that guarantees failure in this world. Everybody doesn’t fit in the same mold type of thing.
Students Come First didn’t work, saw it down here. Money wasn’t the failure element. The most expensive school district in the U.S. is the worst in the failure rank. Indeed this has some problems, however I think I disagree with you on what those problems are. I’m on the students side. Give me classes where students can excel and move on and not be stuck in a common down PC escalator. And yes, if necessary, let’s go back to ‘reform’ schools, they did have a valid place years ago.
You’re accountable to parents and students, first and foremost. Idaho is doing better than this state but it could do a whole lot better. We took $7 billion out of education here and a few things got better. They are experimenting with classes that are one gender only right now and they appear to work very well, even if they do have detractors. The feminists love the female only ones for some reason. They produce students above the average for a start.
No, accountability is local, always has been, either parents are involved or students go wanting.
I remember Inkom growing up, back then we referred to it as Inkom Stinkom. Still have that problem?
Have a good day, ma’am. I know, not proper English but the term I grew up with.
The following premise is well founded:
“Other states that have signed on to this public school plan that has no price tag, no fully developed tests and is controlled by private corporations which are unaccountable to the taxpayers, are now having second thoughts.”
The American Legislative Exchange Council under the umbrella of espousing specific values to advance corporate interests of the educational industrial complex have a boilerplate legislative and public policy structure aimed at leveraging the greatest market share possible that circumvents sound fiscal planning, appropriation, and procurement.
This is not an indictment against private companies who provide valid and justifiable measurable outcomes in pedagogy via the services and resources they can provide.
However, adoption of resources and services in improving education must still adhere to sustainable appropriation and procurement.
There hsa been questionable procurement practices and underlying motive that drove and is driving public education policy in Idaho that should be questioned and scrutinized.
The reason the US education system is in crisis and will continue to be is because we are having the wrong discussion and are focusing on the wrong underliers that produce low measurable outcomes and only aspire to mediocrity.
The education system does not demand parental accountability and responsibility. Education starts at home and the professionals trained in pedagogy are the resource parents can tap into for their child’s education. They are not the substitute for an education.
We have also asked education to do more than should have ever been intended.
Schools are now social service centers, crisis centers, recreation centers, and now we want to train every teacher as POST certified law enforcement officer by qualifying them to also be body guards.
Furthermore, in a world of parents that no longer work the “traditional” work week, i.e Monday to Friday 9 to 5, and where both parents must work just to provide the basics, it is extremely difficult for parents to fully vest themselves as volunteers or be available to interact with teachers, counselors when they are only available at the exact same time of day the parents are at work.
Education is treated as a right with no student or parental responsiblity. When good teachers attempt to assign accountability to parents or the student appropriately, they are subject to litigation rather than supported by the parent for the benefit of the student.
As long as we have education treated as an non-encumbered right rather than a priviledge and the educational establishment does not adapt to societal changes in terms of work weeks and hours for the parents of the students, no amount of core standards or programs is going to make a difference.
Both D.R. and Jayson make good points. My comments will center on one point that D.R. alluded to.
the biggest problem teachers have is that everyone does not learn at the same rate.
However, I’m pretty sure Jennie is well aware that students don’t learn at the same rate.
Teachers have a problem keeping the interest of those who learn at a faster rate while they give those who learn at a slower rate what is felt to be an adequate amount of time to learn the subject matter. At the same time those who learn at a slower rate often get left behind and feel like failures.
The traditional system of education has never addressed the fact that students learn at different rates, but has insisted that the time alloted for learning remain constant for everyone across the board.
Is it any wonder that those who learn at a faster rate get bored waiting for others to catch up, and those who learn at a slower rate become frustrated with school, and feel like failures?
The schools that have solved the problem of different learning rates have incorporated the Competency Based Instruction system with it’s learning/teaching modules approach to learning.
Competency Based Instruction is a rather high-sounding collection of words that means in essence a flexible, individualized program that frees both students and teachers to work at their own rates without fear of failure.
Adequately describing the Competency Based Learning system, including anticipating reader’s questions would take up too much space here. For those who are interested in learning how the system works and why it works for all learning rates, I suggest reading,” Competency Based Learning, A Strategy To Eliminate Failure”, by Thomas S. Nagel and Paul T. Richman, Charels Merrill Publishing Company, A Bell and Howell Company, Columbus, Ohio
Bottom line is, all of society, including public education, rests on the foundation of the fundamental unit of society, the family.
We have permitted the family unit in our society to degrade and to deteriorate (less in our part of the country than some places, but way too much even here), and as with all structures, when the foundation crumbles, the superstructure quickly falls apart.
Did a bit more research on the subject. Seems down here it goes by the acronym CSCOPE.
http://www.scope.us appears to be their website.
“CSCOPE is a program that has been sold to over 850 Texas public, private and charter schools which is reported to be a curriculum management system. CSCOPE is sold by the taxpayer-funded Education Regional Service Centers. Directors of the Regional Service Centers together created a non-profit shell organization which exists in name only. The Regional Service Center directors serve as the directors of this shell non-profit. They meet and work without public oversight, using the non-profit name.
CSCOPE is controversial both by virtue of the secrecy which surrounds it and its financial trail – or lack thereof.
Teachers have been required to sign a form which keeps them from discussing CSCOPE and from publicly criticizing the lesson plans. Parents have not been given access to the lesson plans. Even the elected State Board of Education chairman was not given access to the curriculum for six months.
Some curriculum specialists claim CSCOPE utilizes Common Core Standards, something the Obama Administration has been pushing and which Texas has soundly rejected. Common Core Standards take control away from local educators and increases costs.”
Last sentence above agrees with Mrs. Winter on the cost portion.
It further states: Texas taxpayers and educators across the country have been talking about CSCOPE for months, but now the light of public scrutiny has been shed on the operation and the lesson plans.
Representative Steve Toth has introduced HB 760 which would put the Regional Service Centers and online curriculum under the oversight of the elected State Board of Education.
I don’t know how to compare Idaho vs Texas on this at present. Also a lot of projects go under names which could not be connected with the original, i.e. Red Apple Project and others.
I think this needs to be looked into much deeper before going whole hog on it. From what little I could find on it here, it has raised a bunch of red flags, mainly on what the feds are doing. More so on how much control they would have than anything else.
Good wake up article on the subject. Waiting for the follow up articles, there should be a bunch.
When have our politicians worried about the funding for the laws passed or programs implemented? They pass laws and we the people pay for them.
We should be holding them accountable, but we continue to reelect them because, “He’s a good old boy.”
Strange, I agree with jayhook and get deleted, AGAIN.
Mr Lawyer, explanation please. Article looks the same.
Perhaps I didn’t state strongly enough that the Common Core Standards have become a national education reform movement rather than the voluntary State program they were when adopted by the ISBE. It was accomplished when states were desperate to get out of the financial and other penalties exacted under No Child Left behind and applied for waivers to be able to do so. One of the requirements was to show that standards to improve curriculum were in place. CCSS were already in place in Idaho and other states as well, usually courtesy their State Boards of Education as was the cases in Idaho in 2009, so they opted to use them as a way out. In studying this issue it appears to me that much of the rush to adopt the standards has resulted in an end run around congress by the USDOE and President Obama to usurp state control of our schools. This is an unprecedented act of unconstitutional interference in the democratic process of educating our children and maintaining checks and balances in our political arena. I don’t understand why this has not been at the forefront of our political discourse. The fact that it isn’t appears to be indicative of a bipartisan approval of such a move because it grants more private investment and venture capitalist as well as more venture philanthropic social control in public education rather than state legislatures and school boards. This, in my opinion is comparable to worms eating from the inside out without the host victim knowing what is happening. Oh well, it is only our kids, right? As long as there is money to be made, lets not talk about it. the good ol’ USA doesn’t belong to me and you anymore.