When I worked in the U.S. Department of Education in the early 1990s, I was frequently reminded by colleagues and counsel that the Department was forbidden by law from interfering into what was taught in the schools. When the Department made grants to professional groups of teachers and scholars to create “voluntary national standards,” I made a point of never interfering in their work. I extolled the value of having standards that states, districts, and schools might find useful but made clear that the decision to use or not to use the standards was strictly voluntary. There was no thought that the Department could advocate for the standards or use money to bribe states to adopt them. That would have been illegal.
This is what the law says:
Public Law 103-33, General Education Provisions Act, sec 432,reads as follows:
“No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, [or] administration…of any educational institution…or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials…”
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But consider this: in 2009, the federal Department of Education used billions of dollars as part of its “Race to the Top” to lure states to adopt the Common Core standards. That is the reason that 45 or 46 states adopted them. According to Robert Scott, former commissioner of education in Texas, his state was asked to adopt the CCSS before they were finished. Since the Department of Education could not pay for the creation of the standards, the Gates Foundation stepped in and provided the necessary millions. In order to win a waiver from the absurd demands of NCLB, states had to agree to adopt the Common Core standards.
The role of the federal government in offering money to states to adopt the standards may well have been illegal. Secretary Duncan’s fervent advocacy for the standards at every opportunity may well be illegal. His
denunciation and ridiculing of critics of the standards as Tea Party extremists belies his insistence that the federal government had nothing to do with the Common Core standards. If he had nothing to do with them, why is he their number one salesman? Why does he so stridently belittle their critics and mischaracterize their motives?
This is dangerous territory. These are questions that should be carefully considered by Congressional committees, not brushed aside as unimportant. No matter how frequently the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major corporations publish ads to support the CCSS, there remains the question of whether the federal government acted legally and properly.
And we might ask those major corporations why they care so much about the Common Core and so little about the scandalous growth of child poverty in the United States. And we might ask whether they will pledge to stop outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries so that our high school graduates and college graduates are not only “career-ready” but have careers that exist for them once they graduate.
Why hasn’t someone or some group tested this in court BY NOW???
I’ve been asking this for a long long time.
Me, too.
The fix is so completely in that it is unlikely that the courts will be the way out of this standards-and-testing fiasco. It’s going to take a lot of angry parents and concerted action on the part of teachers–UNDER UNION LEADERS WHO UNDERSTAND THE NEED TO DEFEND TEACHER AUTONOMY–to end this. Teachers need to take back their unions from the folks who are acting as shills for the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
In a country in which teachers had real leaders, the unions would long ago have joined with the ACLU to fight the imposition of national standards, the high-stakes testing, the national database of student data, and VAM. Real leaders would fight for the right of local teachers and administrators to make their own decisions about pedagogy and curricula, subject only to a) their elected school boards and b) federal laws protecting the basic freedoms of students and parents, such as the right to nondiscrimination with regard to access to high-quality education.
Diane — I find this fascinating. Now, we need to research the Federal laws on Child Abuse to see if we have grounds for lawsuits against the state in this regard.
Marge
Probably. Words are fickle things; you can twist them however you want. Common Core translates to manipulation of young minds to become what the government wants them to be. Pliable workers. I am in high school, and I hate how much emphasis is put on “core” classes. I have almost been brought to tears by my inability to comprehend complex math, and that is no fault of my own. And yes, I try my hardest. It would not surprise me if there have been suicides because of depression caused by school grades. But then again, who will listen to me if I try to fight against Common Core?
Sarcasm= I am not an adult, so what do I know? I’m only directly affected by Common Core, but that doesn’t make me an expert on it. Oh no, the politicians sitting in the White House know so much more than I do. After all, they have never been affected by it.
Sarcasm off= I hate hypocrites and people who don’t have the courage to do what they suggest to other people.
Duncan (and Vallas) must feel that they’ve had some kind of success… because they’ve just had a trip down to Haiti to mess with their education system too. It’s bad enough that they’ve screwed up U.S. education, but now they’re going to spread their brand of educational dysfunction to other countries?! As if Haiti doesn’t have enough issues on their plate to deal with!!! The trick is that they dangle money (which others see as some type of relief, albeit temporary), and that’s how they get their “prey” to bite the “hook.” It’s cruel to play that game with impoverished people (or in the U.S. case, impoverished state education departments).
A line has certainly been crossed. We must also be aware of what states like Pennsylvania are doing by basing their own standards on the CCSS and giving them a different name. We all know a rose by any other name…
It is a dangerous game and we must not only focus on the states who have adopted the CCSS, but those states who have already seen the writing on the wall and are finding loopholes. The others will be sure to follow.
Our kids deserve so much more than this.
Sounds like AFT should make a case against this. Perhaps we can draft a resolution for the convention this summer.
Unfortunately, Kati, the leadership of the AFT, a recipient of Gates Foundation money, supports it, and is co-managing its roll-out.
Until teachers in NYC (whose UFT is the main power in the national union,) wake up and purge their misleaders, we’ll have to rely on parents and students to break the chains of CCSS.
Randi Weingarten sung the praises of TFA yesterday. She’s completely sold real teachers down the river for a song, and the deformers are laughing their heads off about it.
Erin,
Do you have a link for that?
Duane,
Here it is, further disgrace heaped on the Weingarten legacy: http://theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/why-isnt-Harvard-training-more-teachers/281432
The piece is quite a hoot, since Harvard may not be training teachers, but it certainly is turning out plenty of Shock Doctrinaire so-called reformers.
@Fiorillo.. thanks for sending the Weingarten link… it is somewhat appalling reading her commentary. First and foremost, professional autonomy and dignity need to be restored to the profession before anyone today (Harvard or otherwise) could seriously consider public education as a career. And then of course there is the thought… Why would Harvard students choose to limit their Harvard classes to ones geared toward education when they can just apply to TFA in their senior year and be teaching in 5-6 weeks after graduation with a guarantee of being involved in a well-networked and nepotistic organization like TFA that will propel them to authority positions in education or help them get into grad school in other areas. And it sickens me to read a recent and direct quote of Weingarten where she states:
“I think TFA has done a lot in terms of elevating the profession of teaching and elevating the importance of public education and education generally,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in conversation with Isaacson, CEO of The Aspen Institute, and Ryan…” It saddens me that anyone could have faith in Weingarten’s ability to lead public school teachers if she truly believes that TFA has ELEVATED the teaching profession! Ughh.. If anything TFA has cheapened the teaching profession. As long as you are smart, you can go into a school classroom after 5 weeks of training. In fact TFA also preaches the corporate testing gospel and that its teachers get “higher result” on the tests therefore making the assumption that they are better teachers. I don’t know Weingarten and it is entirely possible that she might be a really fun personable person in her private life. But as a public figure, she is in no way a person who should represent teachers or whom teachers should rely on.
Frog-march Arne and others. Not only a crime with Rttt and inBloom, Inc., partnership, but also a crime against children and communities.
Way too TRUE, Mark. It’s awful.
“. . . also a crime against children. . . ”
The worse kind of “crimes against humanity”!
How long till a protesting parent is branded a criminal or a terrorist?
Or a protesting student, for that matter. Common Core is bad, really bad. It reminds me of indoctrination, and of the Hitler Youth. And the slaves in early America. The slaves were kept uneducated. Why? So they would be easier to control. Indoctrination: if you don’t know anything different, why would you question it? Nationwide standards are dumb. Everyone has the chance to be brilliant…they just need to find out what their strengths are and pursue them. For me, I am a good writer, and I enjoy it. I am not good at math, yet I am constantly told that to succeed I need to be good at math. Common Core will only produce one thing: common students, easier to control students, passive students which will lead to common people, easier to control people, passive people. The purpose of education is to nurture young minds to their highest potential. Common Core is not making thinkers and inventors, it is making workers. It is diluting minds, forcing them to try to become adept at a particular subject that they do not understand. When they can’t get it down, they fail the class, they have to do credit recovery or be held back, they are told they aren’t good enough, and all because of worthless numbers and letters. THERE IS NO ACCURATE WAY TO MEASURE INTELLIGENCE!!! Wake up, people! But I am pretty sure you know exactly what you are doing…
Unfortunately, I think they’ve toed the line very carefully.
As the congressional research service reported years ago, Duncan had the authority to issue waivers for NCLB under the law, and had the ability to attach strings to those waivers to change policy – http://www.nsba.org/SchoolLaw/Issues/NCLB/CRS-Report.pdf
So we know he could use his pulpit to make schools and states change. It is Congress’s responsibility to provide relief from ESEA through reauthorization and they have chosen to not strip Duncan of his ability to bully states with the law.
As to the endorsement of specific standards or curriculum, Duncan was clever (or at least his staff was) in requiring states adopt college and career readiness standards, without specifying which standards to adopt. Is it legal for him to say states are obligated to adopt ANY standards even if they had a real choice? That’s where the legal ground would be – but I think that would be pretty shaky since you’d be arguing that states should not have any standard by which they should be measured and NCLB established very well that, that is legal.
That common core happened to be the only game in time when states had their back against the wall on the timeline and had very little time to develop their own CCR standards (and that the DOE had to agree that they were rigorous enough).
So Duncan is truthful when he says he didn’t prescribe “Common Core” per se – it just happened to become what was required de facto even though it wasn’t prescriptively suggested.
If the Government has the ability to demand that states measure students against some standard and doesn’t say what that should be, then I think they walk the line and get what they want without breaking the law simply because there was no other place for states to turn.
Alignment of state standards with the CC was also a condition of accepting federal ARRA funds. Our state could not turn away the $ in the midst of the recession. It was a soul-selling deal. Considering the question of legality would be a wise move, especially in light of the PURPOSE of public education – preparing students to function successfully and thoughtfully in a democratic society.
Congressional investigation would be refreshing; but, sadly, legislators at that level can be bought as well. I have lost all confidence in federal elected officials to do what is right- about anything.
These people have been very careful to violate the spirit of the law without violating its letter.
The USDoE has doubled down on the doubletalk to justify what it has been doing:
And be these juggling fiends no more believed. That palter with us in a double sense. –Shakespeare, Macbeth
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
It looks like someone in Oregon has filed a complaint against our appointed Deputy Superintendent of Education. It would be nice to see this catch on.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tHpHc0Q79Rx5bOdEAaQPp7tXOu8WKRfE8mZNHqN6X8k/edit?pli=1
The only thing I know is that Duncan has one heck of a jump shot. If that doesn’t qualify him to run the Dept. of Education, then I don’t know what does.
LOL. Exactly!
Breaking the law is an everyday occurrence, in every department of government and often in the private sector. But the government prosecuting itself or its benefactors rarely happens.
Someone should be able to file against his latest move where he wants SPED students to meet the standards with zero accommodations/modifications. He thinks this will help these kids. They are trying to kill our IEP’s. Isn’t that a direct violation of federal law?
Matthew Searing,
Eliminating accommodations/modifications is a direct violation of federal law. Where are the lawsuits?
I am not sure about teachers unions, but I do know the United Steel Workers are having a vote for a position in a local area, complying with an International Constitution! From what I can tell, we are not required to be involved w/ this constitution, but because several countries are, those restrictions are being upheld. I do know the AFL-CIO of the USW, has been pushing for a worldwide union…I am not sure of how that fits here.
Check with your state constitutions,. In our state, several statutes have been violated. Ut may be what gets us around Arnie Duncan.
Duncan, IMO was given a pass to bribe…maybe going a little more into NCLB. could help.
KC, federal law is clear: no agency or official is allowed to interfere with curriculum or instruction.
Indeed! I forgot. Yes, I have heard that !
Public Law 103-33, General Education Provisions Act, sec 432 :))
Last night I attended a farm family function that had a small crowd. As I sat there enjoying families watch each other ride horses in the different events, it crossed my mine that not one of them could ever have a political influence over the billions being spent by corporate interest! Yet this was the hard working heart of America.
Yes, probably he did break the law. As you noted, the CCSS goes against that statute. It certainly goes against decades-long relegation of such authority to state governments. Have Obama and Duncan repealed the 10th Amendment?
The CCSS creation process deserves greater attention and public discussion.
Furthermore, the creation of the Common Core was a private operation, unprecedented, chartered by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, not by states or legislatures themselves. The process (sponsored by Bill Gates) was conducted under the greatest of secrecy. This allowed the process to be shielded from any public scrutiny as there is in conventional law-making.
The process is further analyzed here:
http://nyceye.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-common-core-and-gates-education.html
Reblogged this on Victory Herald and commented:
I will be speaking for my allowed 3 minutes, at our board meeting, which cannot seem to grow with attendees. I am the lone challenger in our district, which only cares about their dear sports programs. My subject will be about the federal and state illegality of Common Core. Will the board members really feel alright about voting yes for anything CC has to offer next Spring OR now, that vote condoning illegal activity, being on their own heads?
Greetings Diane…
I stumbled on this (which may be old news to you) and wanted to share it because it seems to tie right in with this post. For all I know you may have contributed to it or one of the many source documents referenced. I’m getting brain freeze trying to make sense of all this. I have no doubt you (if you haven’t done so already) will be able to eat the meat and spit out the bones.
http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/the-road-to-a-national-curriculum-the-legal-aspects-of-the-common-core-standards-race-to-the-top-and-conditional-waivers
The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers
VI. Conclusions
“Joseph A. Califano, Jr., former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare once wrote, “In its most extreme form, national control of curriculum is a form of national control of ideas.”142 Unfortunately, in three short years, the present Administration has placed the nation on the road to a national curriculum. By leveraging funds through its Race to the Top Fund and the Race to the Top Assessment Program, the Department has accelerated the implementation of common standards in English language arts and mathematics and the development of common assessments based on those standards. By PARCC’s and SBAC’s admission, these standards and assessments will create content for state K-12 curriculum and instructional materials.
>>> The Department has simply paid others to do that which it is forbidden to do. This tactic should not inoculate the Department against the curriculum prohibitions imposed by Congress. <<<
The authors understand that the Common Core standards started as an initiative—of the NGA Center and the CCSSO, but the Department’s decision to cement the use of the standards and assessment consortia through ESEA waiver conditions—a power that Congress has not granted in the waiver statute—changes matters considerably. Given the intense desire of most states to escape the strict accountability requirements of the ESEA, most states will agree to the Department’s conditions in order to obtain waivers. By accepting the Department’s conditions, these states will be bound indefinitely to the Common Core standards, PARCC-SBAC assessments, and the curriculum and instructional modules that arise from those assessments. As already evidenced by the eleven states that have already applied for waivers, most states will accept the Common Core standards and the PARCC-SBAC assessment consortia conditions. Once this consummation occurs, the Department will not permit a state to walk away from that commitment without the state losing its coveted waivers. It is also highly doubtful that states will turn away from the Common Core standards and assessments after making the heavy investment that these initiatives require. In the view of the authors, these efforts will necessarily result in a de facto national curriculum and instructional materials effectively supervised, directed, or controlled by the Department through the NCLB waiver process."
Here's hoping you and/or some of your followers may find this helpful. As far as I'm concerned Fed Ed need to be served with an immediate injunction to cease and desist!!!
All the best to you, from a very grateful MadMamaBear