The longer and deeper you hold a beach ball underneath the water, the more quickly and energetically it pops up to the surface.
That's how Rick Hess, a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, describes the Common Core State Standards' rapid rise into the forefront of political controversy. [READ: The History of Common Core] While he says the standards themselves emerged from an "absolutely privately and state-led" effort, proponents of the academic benchmarks shot themselves in the foot and didn't do enough to drive a public conversation about what the standards were and why people should get on board. "No one debated it, nobody was really aware of what it meant," Hess says. "This was unusual in that it wasn't at all debated, even though it was big and national in scope, because people were just excited about the chance of being eligible for a chunk of $4 billion." [DEBATE CLUB: Are the Common Core Standards a Good Idea?] Hess is referring to an effort supported by the Obama administration in which states could receive Race to the Top funding if they agreed to adopt college- and career-ready standards. While the government did not explicitly name Common Core – or any other set of standards, for that matter – those who agreed to implement Common Core automatically qualified for Race to the Top cash. Some states, such as Virginia and Texas, however, opted to write their own standards rather than adopt Common Core. In doing so, both states were still eligible to apply for Race to the Top funds, although Texas did not submit an application, and Virginia was not awarded any money. In a statement, Gov. Rick Perry explained that Texas chose not to apply for Race to the Top funds because the state's application would be penalized "for refusing to commit to adopt national curriculum standards and tests and to incur ongoing costs." “Texas is on the right path toward improved education, and we would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education,” Perry said in the statement. State leaders in Kentucky, on the other hand, were so convinced of the merits of Common Core that they adopted them even before the standards were finalized in June 2010. Still, Republicans in that state in January introduced a bill to repeal the standards. Now, legislators in many states – both blue and red – have begun pushing a flurry of bills to amend, delay or even ditch the standards altogether. Indiana, which adopted the standards in 2010, could likely become the first state to completely do away with Common Core. A bill that would prohibit the use of the standards past July 1, and require the State Board of Education to adopt new standards by the same date, passed the House on Feb. 27. The bill now heads back to the Senate for final approval before arriving on Republican Gov. Mike Pence's desk. State legislators in April 2013 approved to push the pause button on Common Core implementation, and Pence in his State of the State address gave a strong indication that the state intends to drop the standards completely. "Hoosiers have high expectations when it comes to Indiana schools," Pence said. "That's why Indiana decided to take a time-out on national education standards. When it comes to setting standards for schools, I can assure you, Indiana's will be uncommonly high. They will be written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and will be among the best in the nation." But there has been widespread criticism of the draft of Indiana's newly proposed math and English standards, with many people claiming they're too similar to Common Core. Kathleen Porter-Magee, senior policy advisor for policy and instruction at the College Board and a policy fellow for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, says Indiana's proposed standards are less rigorous when compared to both Common Core and Indiana's previous state standards. She adds that in a side-by-side comparison of the draft standards and Common Core, many of the English standards are copied verbatim, and others are tweaked in a way that makes them less clear. "Looking at it from afar, it seems like a case where politics was prioritized over getting the content right," Porter-Magee says. "Once you start making compromises for political reasons and not for educational reasons, you can go astray pretty quickly." Other states, like Connecticut and New York, are seeking to delay the implementation of the standards or stakes linked to the Common Core-aligned tests. New York's Democratic-led Assembly on Monday introduced legislation to delay Common Core testing, following a similar move by the New York Board of Regents. Other states, such as Florida and Arizona, have simply renamed the standards as the "Next Generation Sunshine State Standards" and the "Arizona College and Career Ready Standards," respectively. Even voters are rallying behind the growing opposition to the standards. In Florida, incumbent Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, faces an uphill battle with Common Core opponents who recently claimed they would sit out the Nov. 2014 election unless Scott reverses his stance on the standards. While they said they would not vote for Scott's Democratic opponent, former governor Charlie Crist, conservative critics of Common Core want Scott to do more of an about-face and reject the standards completely rather than make changes like adding standards for calculus and cursive writing and pulling out of one of the two testing consortia that have created assessments aligned to the standards. Opposing the standards could also be a winning strategy in the primary race for state superintendent in South Carolina, where legislators have also pushed bills to repeal Common Core and at least six candidates are vying for the GOP nomination. And in New Hampshire, gubernatorial candidate Andrew Hemingway is also embracing an anti-Common Core platform. In fact, the controversial standards will be "maybe the biggest question of all" in upcoming elections, according to Sandra Stotsky a professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, a noted expert in academic standards development and a staunch opponent of Common Core. "[It's] not what's going on in Ukraine, and not the Affordable Care Act," Stotsky says. "It's going to be the education of the next generation of Americans in this country and what is going to happen to them as a result of Common Core." While 45 states, the District of Columbia, and four territories have already adopted Common Core, to opponents of the standards the initiative seems like a stealthy attack on states' rights, pushed by the federal government. "People felt like they hadn't been told about it," says the American Enterprise Institute's Hess. "To people who were skeptical, they thought, 'How did you sneak this past everybody?'" Dane Linn, a vice president of the Business Roundtable who oversees its Education & Workforce Committee and was largely involved in the development of the standards in his previous role with the National Governors Association, says state leaders were involved throughout the process and were strongly encouraged to go back to their communities to spread information about the standards. But Hess says they still fell short, and Stotsky says the development process did not give teachers, parents and state legislators enough input or chance for open comment. "You have several groups suddenly becoming aware of Common Core – people that had mainly been bypassed in the original adoption of Common Core," Stotsky says. "The grassroots waves that have started across this country are accelerating." To Hess, a perfect storm of problems transformed the Common Core standards into a political football: a lack of communication, a fear of federal overreach and an oversight of practical problems that would stem from the standards – like schools not being able to upgrade their technology for the computerized tests, and the rollout coinciding with massive reforms to teacher evaluations that now rely heavily on student performance on state tests. "Frankly, I think the fact that Common Core became so controversial is pretty much a direct result of how ineptly the advocates went ahead pushing this thing," Hess says. "If they had been open and public and transparent and just frank about it with people, I think the Tea Partiers would have figured they had much more important fish to fry." Strong opposition to the standards, particularly from conservative Tea Party members, could be a reaction to failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, points out Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a supporter of Common Core. "For many Tea Party folks, they are incredibly frustrated that they can't repeal Obamacare or get their states to pull out of it," Petrilli says. "So this is a target where maybe they can blow off some steam. They actually could succeed in getting a state to pull out of the Common Core because it isn't a federal mandate." While opposition to the standards was smoldering, increased federal support for the educational standards seemed to light the fuse, Petrilli says. "In one word, it's Obamacore," Petrilli says. "That is their argument, that this is to education what Obamacare is to health care." As the issue of Common Core began gaining traction among conservatives, the Republican National Committee succeeded in passing an anti-Common Core resolution in April 2013, saying it "recognizes the CCSS for what it is – an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children so they will conform to a preconceived 'normal.'" Since then, even staunch supporters of the standards have said that there's a need for adjustment – at least in the implementation. "When I said that the roll out of these standards were worse than the roll out of Obamacare, that's a real problem, particularly since I'm a big believer in the critical thinking skills that this strategy is supposed to do," says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Weingarten points to the $350 million in federal stimulus funds the Department of Education set aside to support the development of Common Core-aligned assessments through two testing consortia: the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Common Core became controversial for the left, she says, when there appeared to be more of a focus on testing and gathering student data, and less of a focus on teaching. Likewise, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a supporter of the standards, has made it clear the rollout has been less than ideal, and that the implementation of testing, as well as the consequences associated with the tests, should be delayed. "While the state's new Common Core curriculum is heading in the right direction, testing on it is premature," Cuomo says in a new television ad campaign, according to Newsday. "It creates anxiety and it's just unfair. And their [children's] scores should not be counted against them." While President Obama continues to make education a priority for his second term, as he demonstrated in both his 2014 State of the Union address and his 2015 budget proposal, advocates of Common Core say the administration's strong support of the initiative could do more harm than good. "It's imperative at this point for the feds to stay out of it," Petrilli says. "It's now back in the states' hands to implement these things and that's where it belongs, and the feds need to just stay as far away from this as possible."
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Smith JohnsonBorn in Caledonia Minnesota is a land acquisition manager in Pro Garden. He is working in the company from the last 12 years. He is a dedicated manager and keeps his client’s projects on priority. His skills in land acquisition has made him a famous personality in his city. Archives
February 2015
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