La. Legis Auditor Steps Into Common-Core-Promoting Game
On September 22, 2014, Louisiana Auditor Daryl Purpera issued a report on his objective opinion (?) of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
Whether Purpera intended it or not, he is now part of the game.
Purpera’s report is little more than another brochure for CCSS, one that glosses over issues such as who actually controlled the writing of CCSS– not the least of whom is David Coleman, a non-teacher who cashed in on No Child Left Behind (NCLB)-related assessment work with his first company, Grow Network– and whoseconnections to current US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan extend back to Duncan’s days as Chicago schools CEO– and who then benefited from CCSS via his second education business-gone-nonprofit, Student Achievement Partners (SAP), and who now conveniently is president of College Board, one of the three insider groups specifically named for CCSS development (the other two were ACT and Achieve).
Cozy– and worthy of closer scrutiny of one called “auditor.”
Purpera’s report also makes no mention of Coleman’s and then-CEO of Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) gene Wilhoit’s asking billionaire Bill Gates to bankroll CCSS in 2008.
As a billionaire funding a major American education initiative, Gates escapes audit. However, he has not escaped public suspicion for his continued purchasing and actively promoting– often via some strategic speeches — his views of how mass education “should be.”
The Gates role in buying CCSS– and a former CCSSO president’s asking him to do so– should have given Purpera pause.
Should have.
I suppose the most obvious indicator for me of Purpera’s blindly accepting the brochured CCSS “history” is the fact that he writes of the CCSS “anchors” and states that such can be found in Appendix B of his report– yet there exist no “officially publicized” math anchors. The CCSS website has none. (Google “common core anchor standards”– only ELA anchors appear.) The CCSS math anchors mysteriously went missing in 2009. So, contrary to Purpera’s report, CCSS math is “unanchored.”
Surely Purpera investigated this.
Now, Purpera’s Appendix B does include purported CCSS math anchors– a brief La. Legis Auditor Steps Into Common-Core-Promoting Game | deutsch29: