The Common Core standards are copyrighted. The copyright belongs to the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Theoretically, states are not allowed to alter them. States can add standards, but they cannot alter what has already been written, which is treated as a holy scripture or the two tablets brought down from Mount Sinai. This, in fact, is a major defect of the standards, because there is a protocol for standard-writing, which the CCSS violates. That protocol, described very clearly by the American National Standards Institute, says that any standard-writing process must include a means of revising them; CCSS does not. It also says that all stakeholders must be involved in the discussion; this was not true for CCSS. And it says that no single interest should dominate standard-writing (as the Gates Foundation did by paying for everything).
Mercedes Schneider brings up another worrisome, if speculative point: since the CCSS are copyrighted, could the holders of the copyright sell it? The likeliest buyer, of course, would be Pearson. Suppose Pearson offered the two D.C.-based organizations $100 million? Would they refuse it? In that case, a private, for-profit organization based in the United Kingdom would be sole owner of the United States’ standards. Why not? It makes about as much sense as having the “national standards” developed and written by a committee that included no classroom teachers, a committee led by a Yale- and Oxford-educated entrepreneur who had never taught, a committee that included no experts on cognition or early childhood education, a committee that had an ample representation from the testing industry.
Some supporters of CCSS think that the standards could be used all by themselves, disconnected from the testing. But that is not the plan. The plan is a system. The system begins with standards, then testing, then teacher evaluation based on the testing, the testing must all be done online, which makes possible data mining and the creation of a longitudinal data base that follows children from pre-Kindergarten through at least the end of high school. At every step along the way, some corporation has a stake in the process: the testing industry, the technology industry, the consultants who sell teacher evaluation rubrics, the data mining entrepreneurs whose numbers are multiplying, the Big Data industry. I am sorry if this sounds conspiratorial. I don’t believe in conspiracies. It is all out there in the open.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
States could, of course, simply stop using the CCSS if Pearson somehow came to “own” it.
Only if the States could afford to relinquish the federal monies attached to using them.
Several states didn’t sign up to begin with. They would seem to be doing just fine.
The Race to the Top funding is about to run out. Perfect time to run away from this mess.
Very provocative. Wasn’t the Pearson product that LAUSD bought called the Pearson System of Courses? Those three paragraphs say a lot, a whole lot indeed.
That would be ideal teaching economist. Whilst I love the Brits, I don’t live in England!
The last map I checked there were 40 States hanging onto those billion carrots………….
The good news there is that a billion dollars is a good deal less than half a percent of the annual expenditure on public education.
If Pearson owned the copyright, the government of Libya, as the 3rd largest shareholder would have substantial ownership. (Mother Jones)
The last three sentences of the above blog posting re CCSS and testing: “I am sorry if this sounds conspiratorial. I don’t believe in conspiracies. It is all out there in the open.”
From deep inside the belly of the self-styled “education reform” establishment, Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, two paragraphs from his December 2013 blog:
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end quote]
The above, with much useful contextual information and a link to the original blog posting by Dr. Hess, can be found at—
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
😎
I have been thinking again about the copyright issue with the Common Core State Standards.
In addition to noting that these are not really standards by the criteria set forth by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) http://www.ansi.org/essentialrequirements I think that the essential structure and constructs in the CCSS are not really subject to copyright.
Here is why this non-lawyer thinks there is a lot of room for modification, and for the menu like choices that the corporate authors warned adopters not to try. That threat may have been a huff and puff of hot air. Here is why I think so.
The CCSS set forth ideas, procedures, processes, a system, concepts, principles, and a method for thinking about education. None of these can be copyrighted. I will leave it to lawyers to work with the fine points, but here is the language posted at http://copyright.gov/circs/circ31.pdf
“What Is Not Protected by Copyright
Copyright law does not protect ideas, methods, or systems.
Copyright protection is therefore not available for ideas or procedures for doing, making, or building things; scientific or technical methods or discoveries; business operations or procedures; mathematical principles; formulas or algorithms; or any other concept, process, or method of operation.
Section 102 of the Copyright Act (title 17 of the U.S. Code) clearly expresses this principle:
“In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.”
What Is Protected by Copyright
Copyright protection extends to a description, explanation, or illustration of an idea or system, assuming that the requirements of copyright law are met. Copyright in such a case protects the particular literary or pictorial expression chosen by the author.
But it gives the copyright owner no exclusive rights in the idea, method, or system involved.
Suppose, for example, that an author writes a book explaining a new system for food processing. The copyright in the book, which comes into effect at the moment the work is fixed in a tangible form, prevents others from copying or distributing the text and illustrations describing the author’s system.
But it will not give the author any right to prevent others from adapting the system itself for commercial or other purposes or from using any procedures, processes, or methods described in the book.
So, if you are in the orbit of some legal eagles you might ask them to look at the 1,620 Common Core State Standards and get an opinion on how much huff and puff has been put into the rhetoric surrounding their use.
Most standards, and the CCSS are not an exception, are replete with recycled ideas, principles, and so forth. For example, this standard at http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RL/9-10/7/ includes a sample assignment from Achieve’s American Diploma Project, and the writers at Achieve recycled it from an Introductory English survey course at Sam Houston University, Huntsville, TX. The exact example in the CCSS for grades 9/10 appears on page 107 in Achieve’s 2004 American Diploma Project (ADP), Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts, http://www.achieve.org/readyornot
Maybe we should be asking who owns the copyright for the federally funded SBAC and PARCC tests and for the curriculum materials they had to develop in order to create the tests.
Are those federally funded work products and items in the public domain? Just thinking and wondering.
Brilliant! Where are the legal and academic minds who can expand this idea?
Well it can’t get much worse than this:
If Pearson owned the copyright, the government of Libya, as the 3rd largest shareholder would have substantial ownership. (Mother Jones)”
Agree mom… Tax dollars intended for American children, in the coffers of foreign governments, with values widely disparate from those of the United States.
WHEN WILL CONGRESS INVESTIGATE???????
“The Common Corpse”
The Common Core’s imploding
And won’t be worth a dime
The main support’s eroding
And will collapse in time
The House of cards is leaning
The Queen of clubs is ripped
The King of Diamonds steaming
As Common Corpse is tipped
This brings to mind NYS Education Law section 211:
“The regents shall periodically review and evaluate the existing regents learning standards to determine if they should be strengthened, modified or combined so as to provide adequate opportunity for students to acquire the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in employment or postsecondary education and to function productively as civic participants upon graduation from high school. Such review and evaluation shall be conducted upon a schedule adopted by the regents, provided that a review and evaluation of the English language arts standards shall be completed as soon as possible, but no later than the end of the two thousand seven–two thousand eight school year. 2. In conducting such reviews, the regents shall seek the recommendations of teachers, school administrators, teacher educators and others with educational expertise on improvements to the standards so that they ensure that students are prepared, in appropriate progression, for post-secondary education or employment.” http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/EDN/I/5/1/211
It’s gonna be really tough for the NYS Board of Regents to comply with this law without violating the CCSS copyright, don’t cha think?
The most infamous “copyright” case involving a Common Core-type reality came when the Chicago Board of Education sued me for a million dollars for “copyright infringement” after I published six of the 22 “pilot” CASE (Chicago Academic Standards Examinations) in the print edition of Substance in January 1999. The “copyright” was invoked to protect the idiocy of those tests from public disclosure — and the Board of Education’s case, brought by Paul G. Vallas, succeeded. The ultimate results were that (a) the Board was allowed to fire me from a teaching job I had at the time because (to quote the federal courts) “copyright trumps First Amendment” and (b) the Board reduced its claim of “damages” from $1.4 million to zero just before we went to trial on the damages claim against me (out Seventh Amendment rights). Why did the Board forego its massive damages after screaming about my “infringement” for four years? Because we had proof that those tests were garbage (including repeated studies by UCLA) and were intent on proving that instead of being worth a million bucks, those tests were a waste of more than a million dollars of taxpayer money.
So it was an even split.
I lost my First Amendment rights and had my teaching career terminated, with me blacklisted city and suburb thanks to the corporate noose around all of our necks.
The Board ran away from its “damages” claim rather than face a jury trial (love that Seventh Amendment, don’t you, as part of the Bill of Rights) which would have proved that they had been incompetent and lying to the public.
The attack on my First Amendment rights (job; career) was ultimately upheld by that odious but clever reactionary Richard Posner, who wrote the decision attacking us for the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (the Supreme Court denied cert; we tried as considerable cost).
So, when “copyright” of a public document is raised and noted in 2014, I suggest we study the precedents from way back in 1999 (it was January 1999 when I published those silly CASE tests) please consider that the whole “copyright” scam may just be a way of avoiding transparency.
Every test that affects a child, teacher, principal, school — or for that matter, the “public” — should become public once it’s been administered and scored. Instead, we’ve had nearly two decades of Orwellian secrecy so that these drones can attack our children. It’s time to legislate against secret tests — and the right of “private” entities to “own” public materials.