Wendy Lecker is a civil rights attorney and an education activist. In this column in the Stamford Advocate, she argues that the Common Core standards violate the Constitution of the State of Connecticut.
The state constitution clearly states (as most people once understood) that the purpose of public education is to equip young people for citizenship. Yet the Common Core standards ignored this fundamental goal and stressed economic purposes instead.
Lecker writes:
The drafters of the Common Core ignored Connecticut’s primary goal for public education: capable participation in democratic institutions. Sources involved in the Common Core’s development process confirm that citizenship was never the focus. In fact, the Common Core’s foundational document mentions “economy” more than 100 times, while the word “citizen” appears only once — in a footnote.
Ironically, although the sole focus of the Common Core was the ability to compete in the global marketplace, the most serious threat to our national and global economy is our government’s current dysfunction. The recent government shutdown cost the nation $24 billion and 120,000 jobs. The International Monetary Fund warns that if Congress cannot agree to raise the debt ceiling, the world might plunge into another recession.
Given the failure of our democratic institutions, our most urgent goal should be to ensure that our children learn the lessons of democracy. Yet the architects of the Common Core disregarded this fundamental purpose of public education.
Perhaps if the Common Core standards were developed in a democratic fashion in our state, Connecticut’s goals would have been considered.
When Connecticut wrote its own standards, it was an open process that involved teachers, administrators, and the public. By contrast, the Common Core was developed behind closed doors.
There was no public comment. The organizations even refused to release the drafters’ names until there was public outcry. The entire development process remains shrouded in secrecy. NGA and CCSSO are not subject to any sunshine laws that governmental bodies must obey.
The members of Common Core validation committee were required to sign confidentiality agreements. This committee was ostensibly charged with ensuring that these standards that were about to be used in schools across America were valid. It is shocking that the public would be prevented from knowing what this committee discussed.
The finished product was eventually presented to states on a “take it or leave it” basis. States that said “no” were not eligible to compete for $4.35 Billion in federal dollars.
It can hardly be surprising that a document developed without a democratic process pays no attention to the roles and duties of citizens in a democratic society.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thankfully, Roles and Duties of Citizens in a Democratic Society are the standards now being highlighted by Common Core precisely because they were flagrantly violated by Common Core over and over, state by state. Any “standards” requiring this level of stealth and secrecy are anti-democratic by nature and intent, no matter the content.
Can you lead me to documents that indicate Common Core now does support Roles and Duties of Citizens in a Democratic Socity?
We spoke yesterday about the common core standards. here’s a really interesting take on the process of arriving at them which is part of the problem.
Sent from my iPad
Finally!!!! Someone gets the two key points:
1. Schools prepared our young for democracy first, and then careers.
2. The adoption of CCSS in the states is unconstitutional.
I hope we start seeing lots of law suits seeking discovery of documents and injunctions against implementing CCSS, including the testing and data gathering. I think strong cases can be made to justify this.
And we have to start discussing what the mission of our schools is. Simply preparing children for “work” will only provide the lowest-common-denominator approach to education and curriculum, with the lowest common denominator ultimately being China or Bangladesh.
Don’t know if you-all saw this:
“The state Parent Teacher Association president is expected Tuesday to announce a statewide advocacy campaign regarding the Common Core academic standards and student testing, issues that have stirred controversy and anger among parents and educators.
Lana Ajemian, of Garden City, will call on the state Department of Education to rethink the timing of implementing the rigorous Common Core standards, reduce testing and
improve professional development for educators, among other points, said an advisory issued Monday.
The campaign is titled “Hear Our VOICE.” The capitalized acronym represents the state PTA’s five major “points of concern,” which include “Value input from parents” and “Create improved, flexible testing.”
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/state-pta-president-hundreds-of-thousands-strong-to-call-for-common-core-changes-1.6421102
I don’t know if this constitutes a “walk back” from the PTA on the CC 🙂
So who will be the first to challenge CCSS in court?
Wendy Lecker is a civil rights attorney. Its time for her to act.
That’s exactly what I was thinking . People have been coming out saying CCSS is unconstitutional, but who is going to challenge it in a court of law.
The irony is, of course, that by reducing learning to an invariant bullet list and to the ability to demonstrate “proficiency” on tests, the CCSS will result in mediocrity, not excellence, not economic competitiveness–so even the stated goals of the CCSS will not be met. But those goals were not, of course, the real goals that those who paid for the development of the CCSS had. The CCSS were an essential first step in carrying out a business plan. As Arne Duncan’s Chief of Staff put it, in a rare moment of candor that revealed the actual etiology of the CCSS,
“The purpose of the new standards is to create national markets for products that can be brought to scale.”
The CCSS were created in order to make it possible to create a monopolistic portal for delivery of computer-adaptive curricula. A uniform set of national standards was a prerequisite to that. No one but a complete idiot would think that having a single set of invariant standards was a laudable EDUCATIONAL goal. But having such “standards” serves the purposes of a would-be monopolist admirably.
Bravo, Robert, great triple posts, thanks!! Can you pls email me off list irashor123@gmail.com a cite for that superb Duncan quote? Thanks. And, you are absolutely right that the CCSS cannot meet its own goals to produce high-achieving college/career ready high school grads, b/c it will narrow the curriculum to a rushed drill to pass the aligned bubble-tests coming to a local school near you soon. And after all, given globalization and computerization depressing world wages(Steve Jobs told Obama before his death that the jobs that left America for cheap-labor China are never coming back.)corporate America would be undone by cohorts of high-achieving grads, something plain for all to see 40 years ago when the orig Baby Boom graduated from college in vast numbers. Pls look at Nixon’s Comm of Ed Sidney Marland’s 1974 book ‘Career Ed’ where he admitted the fear of hundreds of thousands of highly-educated, aspiring students pouring into the job market which has little employment and few good salaries equal to their achievement. He and others in the Admin feared the disappointed young would turn to political rebellion, and quickly designed a downward depressant voc ed campaign to channel youth into lesser occupations. Situation is only worse now for policy princes at top whose CCSS is latest gambit to manage the employment-education collision.
And, I am really getting sick of people referring to the incredibly backward CCSS in ELA as “rigorous.” The fact that kids do worse on the exams doesn’t mean that the “standards” are more rigorous, not at all. The CCSS in ELA are incredibly backward. They appear to have been written by complete amateurs with no familiarity with the sciences of language acquisition and little familiarity with best practices in the teaching of English. The plutocrats hired a couple of hacks to put together a list of every hackneyed cliche about the teaching of English, and thus the CCSS in ELA were born.
Neither the federal government nor a group of amateurs appointed by a few plutocrats have the authority to set standards for the states. But we live in a time in which freedoms are being usurped right and left, by both the right and the left. Who would have thought, a few years back, that politicians and educrats would think that they have the right to turn over private student data to third-parties without parental consent? But several states are now doing this, and there was no public discussion or debate about this. It was a unilateral move, part of our precipitous tobogganing toward totalitarianism.
cx: has, not have
I wonder what a minimal curriculum what equipped young people for citizenship would include. The only way to work science and mathematics into it would probably be through a claim that the students be “informed” citizens, but that seems to me to be a very large loophole that would let a great deal of economic thinking into the curriculum as well. Would anyone care to suggest the outlines of a workable K-12 curriculum that prepared students to be citizens?
And in Ohio ..http://www.plunderbund.com/2013/11/11/how-ohios-teaching-standards-are-lowered-by-teach-for-america/
Okay, the CC violates the Connecticut Constitution. As a civil rights attorney, rather than a corporate lawyer, what will YOU do to move the the legal struggle forward? Just asking, as there have been endless comments regarding the “Standards” from both legal substantive and procedural perspectives, as well as pedagogic and ethical domains.
What would a math and/or ELA curriculum look like to pass the test of teaching students to be citizens? If the CCSS obviously does not it I would think it easy to outline one that would.
Here Here!!!!!
“Yet the Common Core standards ignored this fundamental goal and stressed economic purposes instead.” – Wendy Lecker
As long as we remain in a monetary-based economy, the corporate “Gods” will continue to rule and wreak havoc on the masses. With these harsh implementations in place, one has no room for creativity. From the stressed-out parents trying to eke out a living on minimum wage jobs, to the newly-graduated college students saddled with college debt and trying to secure a decent-paying job, to teachers balancing the CCCS in their classrooms, to the dull, apathetic stares of their students who would rather text on their phones or escape reality and play a video game or socialize on Facebook, we have a nation of citizens who have been traumatized by 9/11 and victimized by the ruthless agendas of the few, elite individuals gobbling the precious resources for themselves, while spewing out laws and mandates meant to further confuse and separate us. Do I sound somewhat paraniod? Maybe some will think so. However, when those in charge view our children as “Data,” what is their true agenda? Should we all submit to being docile worker bees, collecting our checks weekly, only to see it fly out of our bank accounts as cost-of-living spirals out of control? The phrase, “follow the money,” has true relevance in that yes, in a money-driven society, we have no choice but to go out into the world and earn as much of it as we can to survive. Meanwhile, data is being collected and monitored by corporations to determine where their future market will be, and how best to create a new generation of potential buyers to further increase their profits, and create a even wider gap of economic disparity. I’m not sure where I am going with these ideas, but as an educator, I am certain that this idea of “one size fits all” is not going to close any gap, real or fabricated, until there is real equality in our monetary-based economy. I do agree that we need to continue to have constructive dialogue as to how best to deliver a free, appropriate education for all students, but to only address it from the educational, and not the economic side, is to perfectly sidestep real issues faced by us all, and that is one cannot ignore poverty and still expect performance because emotions matter, and our children are not data to mine information from to further exploit the masses for the benefit of the elite. Just saying…any comments or feedback would be appreciated, as these thoughts reflect my inner state of being…LOL!
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation in her arguments…
1. Doing a word search and/or word count isn’t evidence of the purpose of standards. It’s just a number. Similar to student growth isn’t the only measure of teacher performance (huh! go figure). BTW, are CT’s former state standards producing citizens that are capable of participating in democratic institutions, including colleges and their desired careers???
2. States were not required to adopt the Common Core State Standards for RTTT or ESEA waivers. The federal legislation states “college and career ready standards”. Alabama’s standards incorporate CCSS as well as selected Alabama standards. Massachusetts took this same route. States can add additional standards to the CCSS to make their state standards fit the goals of their state. Texas did NOT adopt the CCSS, but developed their own college and career ready standards which made them eligible for an ESEA waiver.
3. There was an open comment period for the CCSS, in which many educators provided revisions and information.