Why Common Core is Wrong For America
By Anita Hoge
1. Power shift: The key aspect of Common Core is that it is a power shift away from the local level. Under teaching traditional education, locally elected school boards had the decision making authority over curriculum. Teachers had authority over what to teach in her/his classroom. Once a district accepted Race to the Top federal funds, standards were mandated. The Chief State School Officers, CCSSO and the National Governors Association copyrighted the Common Core. Local control is dissolved as standards controlled from the government dictate what is taught and what is learned. Common Core creates a national curriculum and a national test.
2. Standards are geared toward workforce skills: Common Core College and Career Citizenship Standards were developed and benchmarked by ACT [American College Testing] in 2003 before the copyright was brought forward by CCSSO and National Governors Association. The Department of Labor went into contract with ACT to develop workforce standards in the 1990’s in the SCANS documents. Secretaries Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills laid out the plans for ACT and the College Board to define the standards for workforce readiness. The standards include competencies that are basic [functional], thinking skills, and personal qualities. Personal qualities include psychological testing and interventions. CCSSO incorporated the personal qualities, dispositions into the Common Core. Attitudes and values will be tested, remediated, and is being developed in the research, development and dissemination (RD &D) in the Innovation Lab Network.
3. Opposite of traditional education: No competition-the bell curve is flattened. A standards based system of education is the opposite of traditional education. Traditional education is a floor, where Common Core is a ceiling. In traditional teaching, the teacher is in control of what is taught where the sky is the limit to teaching and learning. In Common Core, there are only a set of standards that the teacher is forced to teach which are monitored,evaluated, and controlled by the state, which was nationalized through a copyright, [CCSSO and NGA] being accepted nationwide. There is only a specific set of standards that will be taught and tested. Common Core creates a de-facto national curriculum with a national test currently being designed. [PARCC and Smarter Balanced and ACT Aspire]
4. Standardization: The Common Core copyright guarantees that the standards will be uniform in all 50 states. This standardization allows the business model to function, called total quality management. Every state had to also comply to a set of uniform data elements for data collection called a state longitudinal data system, on every student, every teacher, every principal, every superintendent, every school, every school district, every state. This cross referencing capability allows a decision making model to function where any person on the continuum can be pinpointed for evaluation, interventions, and compliance toward the standards.
5. Demands an individual education plan including attitudes, values, opinions, and dispositions that will be taught, tested, and remediated. The affective domain will be incorporated into Common Core Standards. The CCSSO and NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, have incorporated dispositions into the Common Core. Response to Interventions, RTI, includes interventions into each child’s personal career plans to meet behavioral and emotional standards. These non-cognitive standards demand an individual career plan or personal opportunity plan for each individual student. [small letter iep]. This plan addresses all interventions needed for the student to meet government psychological outcomes for college and career readiness. These individual, personalized plans are called personal opportunity plans or career pathways for college and career readiness.
6. Total Quality Management: Grades will be eliminated [ABCDF]. Students meet outcomes, and if they don’t, they must go through intervention services. The Common Core is a business model that forces students to master outcomes and forces teachers into compliance of only teaching to the test. Students are evaluated through meeting standards not graded levels of achievement. No competition. A TQM system can link and identify any individual not complying to the standards. This is why each state had to have a state longitudinal system for tracking each individual in the school system: student, teacher, principal, superintendent, school, district, state. The key, no parent, school board, or state official has control of the standards. This is a top down system where decisions are made beyond the control of the elected at the local level.
7. Teacher pedagogy is primary focus: Teachers are held accountable and evaluated by VAM, value added measurement, or value added model, of how their students are tested not on how well they teach. Teachers are held captive to only teach to the national test. Therefore, teachers are forced to ‘teach to the test’ not what is best for their students. Traditional teachers are being dismissed and replaced by a troop of Teach for America newcomers, unexperienced and easily groomed for the new system. This is TQM. Teach to the test. Individual teachers will be monitored for compliance through accountability measures or be fired. Schools will also be monitored through accountability measure or be taken over by the state, academic bankruptcy or turnaround schools.
9. BF Skinner’s Operant Conditioning or Mastery Learning is used: In order to force ALL children to perform exactly the same on meeting standards, operant conditioning, Mastery Learning, must be used [BF Skinner] to control the outcomes. Functional literacy, teaching math and reading through mastery learning, following directions or reading to assemble an item is assumed to be functional. Operant conditioning does not have transference of cognitive abilities because of the Pavlovian aspect of training. If you command a trained dog to roll over and has never been taught that command, they just sit there. That is called not having transference. Transferring knowledge is essential for comprehension and true higher order thinking, not controlled thinking. Behavioral conditioning is used in the Common Core pilot districts, called Innovation Lab Network. Do not be deceived by the term higher order thinking, critical thinking skills, or deeper thinking.
10. Equity in Education: No more grade levels, no competition: Common Core levels the bell curve. There will no longer be grade delineations like sophomore, junior, and senior. Students will work at their own pace on a computer. Everyone is given the same curriculum. Everyone must meet the same standards, only some will move faster or slower through the process. Common Core identified the individual child for the federal government so that mandated programs and interventions will be funded from the federal level…Title I funds to identify and assess (test). IDEA funds (special Ed) will be used for interventions. The state longitudinal data system monitors individuals in the data collection for identification, analyzing, decision making, interventions, in a continual cycle called feedback loop control.
This is equity in education where all students will be forced to be the same. ESEA Flexibility Waivers will identify children ‘at risk’ under Title I. What is the definition of ‘at risk?’ Students not meeting outcomes. Poverty levels, free and reduced lunch, are removed so ALL children become Title I under schoolwide. Title I funding follows the child for equity in funding. This is the set up for future federal choice in education where ANY child can receive a federal stipend under Title I, when that child can go to any private or religious school taking their federal choice stipend with them in their backpack with their name on it. Therefore, federal CHOICE mandates that all schools must teach Common Core, private and religious schools, too. The ReAuthorization of ESEA has not been passed yet, although Republicans have attached these choice amendments to allow funding to follow the child, but Obama’s Flexibility Waivers have, by fiat, accomplished the same goal….accessing ALL CHILDREN through Title I. ALL SCHOOLS WILL BECOME GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS…if federal choice is passed in the ReAuthorization of ESEA.
Nationalizing Education in the United States.
