A New Atmosphere in Jefferson City Around Common Core?
Yesterday, the House Interim Committee on Improving Government Responsiveness, Efficiency and Accountability met to talk about Common Core, among other agenda items. Chaired by Representative Sue Allen (R-100) the committee contains several teachers and ex school board members who were not afraid to tackle to topic of education. They heard testimony from the general public and then spent time grilling DESE personnel.
Several members of the public provided testimony on their frustration with trying to get answers from DESE regarding common core. Among them were:
Gretchen Logue who addressed DESE's claims of only collecting limited student perdonally identifiable data which conflicted with numerous Agreement signed by DESE and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia which clearly state the intent to collect and share with the US Department of Education who in turn, through changes to the FERPA intends to share individual student, teacher and principal data with other federal agencies and third party researchers and vendors.
Anne Gassel who spoke of the limited information local districts have been given regarding the costs of implementation of common core and the SBAC assessments. She outlined the information she has gathered through her own research, as nothing was available on DESE's site, that show the cost of the testing alone could be very high