“State-Led” Common Core Primarily Had Only Five Writers
Joy Pullmann at School Reform News wrote an excellent piece that helps to further demonstrate that the Common Core State Standards were not state-led. While there were many people who served on various committees and work groups all of the feedback was filtered by only five people.
After giving a brief history of what led to the development of the Common Core, Pullman writes:
By July 1, 2009, NGA and CCSSO had formed more committees. There were two work groups, whose dozen members in math and English wrote the standards. These included no teachers, but did include a few professors. Second were two feedback groups, who were supposed to provide research and advice to the writers. Those had 18 members each, who were mostly professors but included one math teacher. Third was the validation committee, announced in September 2009, which acted as the final gate for Common Core. Their job was to “ensure [the standards] are research and evidence-based.”
While many people sat on these various committees, only one in sixty was a classroom teacher,according to teaching coach and blogger Anthony Cody. All of the standards writing and discussions were sealed by confidentiality agreements, and held in private. While Linn says six states sent intensive teacher and staff feedback, committee members weren’t sure what effect
Joy Pullmann at School Reform News wrote an excellent piece that helps to further demonstrate that the Common Core State Standards were not state-led. While there were many people who served on various committees and work groups all of the feedback was filtered by only five people.
After giving a brief history of what led to the development of the Common Core, Pullman writes:By July 1, 2009, NGA and CCSSO had formed more committees. There were two work groups, whose dozen members in math and English wrote the standards. These included no teachers, but did include a few professors. Second were two feedback groups, who were supposed to provide research and advice to the writers. Those had 18 members each, who were mostly professors but included one math teacher. Third was the validation committee, announced in September 2009, which acted as the final gate for Common Core. Their job was to “ensure [the standards] are research and evidence-based.”While many people sat on these various committees, only one in sixty was a classroom teacher,according to teaching coach and blogger Anthony Cody. All of the standards writing and discussions were sealed by confidentiality agreements, and held in private. While Linn says six states sent intensive teacher and staff feedback, committee members weren’t sure what effect
The Real Truth About the Common Core State Standards
Wisconsin legislators invited Kathleen Porter-Magee of the Fordham Institute to testify before a joint committee on education about Common Core Standards. She also wrote “The Truth about Common Core” for National Review online. Ms. Porter-Magee’s testimony and article lack a basic understanding of the reasons that tax payers are opposed to Common Core. A most prominent reason that parents and teachers reject Common Core is: that federalizing education will severely limit local control of schools and make reforming education no more possible than reforming Social Security or Medicare.
Under Race to the Top, the federal government has used its power and federal tax dollars to develop a set of curricula guidelines even though the Constitution, The General Education Provisions Act, the Department of Education Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 place limits on the federal government’s authority to direct or supervise instructional materials. The federal government has used its power and federal tax dollars to motivate textbook publishers and testing consortiums to create texts and tests that align with Common Core. Leaders from both parties ignore the wisdom of limits that have been placed on federal control of education; they do not recognize the relationship between lower academic achievement and each new federal program.
During the 1970s when I first began teaching, our history book contained two sentences about a republic. One provided a definition and the other stated that America is a republic. The rest of the chapter focused on democracies. Teachers were free to alter their curricula, so many of us provided supplementary material on the