Standards Development Work Group Not as Advertised
Members of the Missouri Coalition Against Common Core have been going around the state educating the public on Common Core because it is hard to fight against that which you don’t understand. In each presentation, we make a point of talking about the individuals who constituted the two work groups of CCSSI. The glossy public image, artfully presented by the NGA and CCSSO early on was a group of happy teachers, parents and education professionals (you fill in the definition of those folks) who got together and considered “best practices” which everyone assumed had something to do with helping kids learn the things they really needed to know. The actual picture has been very hard to reveal and, it turns out, very different from this education mega team initially presented to the public.
Mercedes Schneider wrote an excellent post summarizing what really happened and who ended up being on these work groups. Thought it is long, I encourage you to read it to fully understand the Standards Development groups. She provides thorough research details.
Though CCSSI may have started out with the best of intentions, they were racing an artificially created clock to get the work done on time and a host of corners were cut.
For instance, the initial July 2009 press release by the National Governors Association (NGA), said that the ELA and Math work groups were made up primarily of folks from the standards-writing nonprofit (Achieve) and two testing companies (ACT and College Board). They had great intentions to expand that group later in the year to include “additional experts to develop the standards for grades K-12 in English language arts and mathematics. Additionally, CCSSO and the NGA Center have selected an independent facilitator and an independent writer as well as resource advisors to support each content area work group throughout the standards development process.”
But the plan to have all of the work done by December of that year, meant that there was little time to add these other experts and truly consider their work. Making things worse was the fact that Standards Development Work Group Not as Advertised | Missouri Education Watchdog: