Mercedes Schneider has identified 17 states where protests against Common Core standards are heating up, in some cases leading to a slowdown or cancellation of implementation.
She writes:
“Over one-third of the states whose governors and state superintendents signed the CCSS Memorandum of Understanding as part of US Department of Education Race to the Top (RTTT) funding are now percolating with CCSS misgivings.
“That is what happens with top-down reform. The “bottom”– those directly affected by the “top’s” decisions– eventually seethe.”
She provides a description of each state where CCSS is in trouble.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Roy F. McCampbell's Blog.
Catherine Gerwitz at Education Week says that states may be backing away from PARCC and Smarter Balanced;
quote: “A 2012 report by the Center on Education Policy reported that some states were planning to peg high school graduation to PARCC and Smarter Balanced test results. Checking with about a half-dozen recently, I’ve found that number dwindling. That’s in part because some of those states have withdrawn from consortia work or are on the fence about using the consortium tests. But it’s also because they’re more uncertain that it’s wise to condition high school graduation—at least just yet—on meeting the “college-readiness” bar of the new tests.”
I went to Mercedes Schneider’s blog and went to the link for the article from Wisconsin Public Radio News. The first paragraph in this article states: “The Common Core State Standards were developed by teachers, school administrators, and other education experts in an effort coordinated by state school commissioners and governors around the country.” There are still a lot of misconceptions out there regarding the origin, intent, and implementation about Common Core.
Marianne: I emailed this to Durst who is cited as the journliast on the WPR article:
To the editors at WPR.
This quote from K Drust does not represent the truth.
quote; “The Common Core State Standards were developed by teachers, school administrators, and other education experts in an effort coordinated by state school commissioners and governors around the country. ”
Teachers DID NOT participate and were not invited to participate. The standard setting used a modified Angoff panel method of “experts” to set standards. The two curriculum people (sandra stotsky and a math professor) on the panel refused to testfiy that the standards represent anything like the curriculum/standards of schools in Europe (Finland etc).
You need to make a correction on this story.
I suggest you do some research and read Jim Stergios’ Pioneer Institute web in Boston and search out and download all of the information written by Sandra Stotsky; also, look up her testimony in the various states
You are doing a dis- service for your readers in Wisconsin (i.e., listeners). You need to correct this and apologize to all of us (retired teachers like me) ; I participated in the Massachusetts building of tests prior to MCAS and I know how the standards were set in appropriate ways working with Educaional Testing Service. The Pearson tests are expensive, experimental and have no predictive validity so in essence you are spreading “fraud” (snake oil) to your public and this is not responsive journalism.
jean e. sanders, ed.d.
Your response has more factual information and reporting than the article. Please keep us posted about any responses from Durst or Wisconsin Public Radio.
Looks like we made the list in WI!
Not listed in New York is Senator Jack Martins hearings in Mineola and elsewhere, his call for the resignation of the Commissioner King, as well as legislation that would protect children’s data, which is the same package.
I prefer the spin that Gerwitz in Education Week puts on the Massachusetts scene rather than the Boston Globe but this school committee member in MA sees the concerns that many of us have when they push the Arne Duncan wrong-headed policies.
quote from Globe: ” During public comments, Tracy O’Connell Novick, a Worcester School Committee member, urged the board to give districts more time to prepare for the new tests, noting that many schools will have to find money to buy more computers and broadband.
“That money will, again, come from our budgets,” O’Connell Novick testified. “We will take money from teachers, from school repairs, and from student supplies to provide for this testing. This is not right.”
The Globe reports that some fear if the tests are tried out for 2 years that it is a de facto acceptance of the Pearson tests (along with the license agreements that will be costly in the future).
Missouri continues to be forgotten in these lists. Last year we had two bills against Common Core, HB616 and SB210. SB210 made it all the way to the last day of session, was voted out of the House and only died in the Senate due to politics having nothing to do with common core. We are making tremendous strides in our state and will have legislation this next session starting in January addressing both common core and data collection. House leadership is with us as are a significant number of representatives and senators. Look for big things coming from Missouri in 2014. http://missourieducationwatchdog.blogspot.com/2013/05/sb210-is-laid-aside.html
Utah is also left off this list. We were the first state to pull out of the SBAC. I wish Utah would pull out of the entire enterprise, but I guess it’s a start.
Well, this is a start. A feeble one, to be sure, but at least a few people are starting to think for themselves about the importance of thinking for themselves.
Robert, I don’t think it is a feeble start. I think this is notable progress.
A number of additional states evidence public unrest that has not yet altered policy/CCSS timelines. But I believe it is coming, if for no other reason that the looming PARCC/SBAC price tag.
The price tag is a big one. By the gods, can’t these people even count!!!
And then there are the tests–the idiotic tests being developed. If we get as far as THOSE being given nationally, the deform movement’s days will be numbered, and all the collaborators with that movement will find themselves scrambling to explain how they really didn’t support this idiocy, how they were misunderstood, how their subtle warnings about it had been ignored.
Anyone have an opinion why western states are not on Mercedes list.?
Jon, this from AZ on Oct 30:
“Before the meeting, Andrew Morrill, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s teachers union, said, ‘A symposium without debate … without the input of educators, is questionable in its value and would appear to be more driven by a political agenda than an honest intent to learn more about an education issue.’
“[State Senate President] Biggs refuted that claim: ‘That’s a bunch of crap to say that it was politically motivated. … What we had was a great dialogue and discussion.’ …
“Biggs said he has no intention of sponsoring a bill to withdraw Arizona from Common Core and does not know of any such plan by other lawmakers.”
http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20131031arizona-split-school-standards-shows-hearing.html
This from Colorado:
“…New, more challenging math and English tests based on the new standards will debut in Colorado during the 2014-15 school year, and educators are bracing themselves for lower scores. In Kentucky and New York, where scores plummeted after students took new Common Core-aligned exams, opponents of the new standards have seized the opportunity to suggest that the standards are too rigorous.
“Educators around the state are hopeful, however, that in the long term, the changes will ultimately lead to significant improvements in student achievement.
“‘We’re going to find out a lot about the readiness of schools and districts—and where they thought they were, and where they really are,’ said Sevier. ‘This is going to be a heavy lift over the next few years.'”
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_24316515/new-common-core-standards-rolling-out-colorado-schools
Colorado article is also from October.
And this from New Mexico, from the editorial board of the Albuquerque Journal16 hours ago:
You just have to read it:
http://www.abqjournal.com/307686/opinion/nm-needs-to-pass-not-fight-education-tests.html
Thanks for the responses. The west reformers are still in denial. The public will have to step it up like they have in other regions of the country. Seattle is the only area that I’ve heard of any push back.
You missed Utah, Mercedes. Utah was the first to pull out of a testing consortia, over a year ago now.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/mobile/54627081-68/utah-state-standards-consortium.html.csp
Someone needs to forward this to Frank Bruni at the New York Times. His column today was, to put it kindly, uninformed.
Not necessarily. note below
We still need louder actions legislators in Wash DC have not been moving with haste! If my good friends in Minnesota can put pressure on John Kline (R) Chair of Education and Workforce, House of Representatives to hold hearing on Common Core development! California friends can put pressure on Congressman Issa to start investigations of whether Common Core is constutional and did Arne Duncan break Federal Laws with his active particpation in developing Common Core! Justice Dept and FBI need to investigate National Security implications of educational standards and cirriculm developed with no scientic reserach yet in being used in 85% of American children classrooms. And will affect homeschoolers and private school children taking SAT and using textbooks. A scheme to make second class citzens and industrial class workers out of America’s future, our most precious resource “children.”
Reading the statements of the 17 states – the majority of the criticism is about implementation failures, funding, testing, timing, too many changes simultaneously, misguided evaluation, and blaming many legitimate problems of current reforms and RTTT on CCSS.
CCSS do not require excessive standardized testing and we’d have the testing mess with or without the CCSS
CCSS do not require using high-stakes test scores and turning local assessments into high-stakes tests to evaluate teachers. RTTT drives that train, not CCSS and with or without them, we’d be stuck with RTTT regulations.
CCSS do not require states to develop tightly aligned curriculum and scripts or to purchase curriculum with the CCSS stamp of approval.
CCSS does not promote a timeline – and the states wanting to delay implementation don’t necessarily disagree with them.
Among the many ironies is that the politicians and reformers who want tout states rights and local control don’t have the courage to develop their own reforms and curriculum. If they weren’t so hung up on test scores, they wouldn’t worry if their curriculum was not 100% linked to the standards. CCSS is their scapegoat for their lack of any stance of their own.
Except, of course, Texas who is very willing to ignore the standards and implement creationism and take evolution out of the curriculum.
Oddly, few of the critiques in the states have to do with the content and direction of the standards. And, while there are content and direction issues – those changes are easily addressed – or ignored.
The sections of the CCSS in ELA that deal with literature are just peachy except for one thing: they leave out any reason, whatsoever, for wanting to study literature.
SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel—
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens—
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, 5
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, 10
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure—
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers—
Blind to all of it all my life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, 15
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?
Petit, the Poet, by Edgar Lee Masters
Thank you, Mercedes, for all the amazing work you are doing! Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful!!!!