The Problem with Common Core Forum, Boise

On Saturday morning, July 27th, an informational forum was sponsored by Idahoans for Local Education and The 9-12 Project, Idaho, Inc. to educate those interested in “the problem with Common Core.”  The two hundred or so that attended may have left thinking that the title of the forum would have more accurately been expressed as the “problems” with Common Core.

The three main speakers (plus a video appearance by Michelle Malkin) were much more than a group of rabble rousers and fist raisers.  The three are very experienced and accomplished educational professionals who know what they are talking about and came prepared not only to debunk the claims of  Common Core proponents but leave one feeling that anyone in favor of it simply doesn’t know what they’re talking about or are perhaps hiding

There were a number of Idahoan teachers present as well as several legislators who took the time to attend, much to their credit.

The panel consisted of Jane Robbins, Sandra Stotsky, and Ze’ev Wurman, all exellent  speakers that know Common Core so well that they could easily demolish the arguments of the most fervent believer in the Standards.

Jane Robbins began the onslaught of facts and debunking with an overview of the murky origins of CCSS.  She said the reason that there has been so much misunderstanding of it is simply because its promoters did not want us (the general public) to know about it, nor did they want legislators to get wind of it until it was a done deal.  She very succinctly revealed the details of the participation of the National Governors’Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, and ACHIEVE as well as their opacity and reluctance to provide information regarding their memberships.  Rather than detail her presentation here, you would be very well served to view this video:  Stop the Common Core

The next speaker, Sandra Stotsky, Ed.D, Professor Emerita, at the University of Arkansas, was just as devastating as her predecessor.  Professor Stotsky knows well the creation and development of standards for K-12 as she is credited with the developing of Massachusett’s standards while serving as Senior Associate Commissioner in the state’s Department of Education from 1999-2003.  She was also one of the 25 original members of the Validation Committee for Common Core who became so frustrated by the lack of cooperation and openness that she was obliged to resign.

This morning she began with challenging the claim that the CCSS are “rigorous”, and quickly left anyone listening scratching their heads over why anyone could possibly consider them so.  As it turns out, few, if any, of those who have the expertise to judge are on record as supporting this claim.  She went on to explain why:  the architects of CCSS have no background at all in K-12 education.  Indeed, they were written by private companies who don’t have to share their copyrighted information with anyone which, of course, they don’t.

Please watch her video and determine for yourself if this woman knows of what she speaks:

The third speaker was Ze’ev Wurman, who is particularly qualified to address the mathematics component of CCSS.  He was a U.S. Department of Education official under George W. Bush,  served on the California Academic Content Standards Commission that evaluated the suitability of Common Core’s standards for California, and is coauthor with Sandra Stotsky of “Common Core’s Standards Still Don’t Make the Grade” (Downloadable here).  He reported that the Common Core math standards were written by three people whose writing experience was minimal for such a task and who actually had no experience at all with writing standards.  He made it very clear that the math standards proposed by CCSS would actually be lower than those in place in most high schools today.  Illustrating it by the simple fact that high school algebra would be dropped or pushed on to first year college.  A student waiting to take Algebra I or II until college would have scant hope of continuing on to any kind of scientific or technical profession as a result of this handicap.

Other topics addressed by the three included the huge amount of money being donated by Bill Gates of Microsoft to achieve and market CCSS ($470 billion and counting); the enormous amount of personal data being accumulated by various government agencies; how CCSS will effectively reduce American students’ academic levels by two grades; the greatly increased expense of testing; and how the most vulnerable kids will be penalized.

The forum presented massive amounts of information and data that anyone who is pro-CCSS would be hard pressed to rebut, so much so in fact that it quickly became obvious that attempting to record it all would be a fool’s errand.  I asked one of the organizers, Valerie Candelaria, if the Power Point program used to support it would be made available and she agreed to do her best to make it so but couldn’t promise a date.  If and when it does become available we will certainly share it with you here.

As formidable as the juggernaut of CCSS appears to be, all three of the speakers agreed that not only is it not too late to stop it but that it is very possible and, indeed, they believe it will be stopped.

Learning more about CCSS is all it will take to convince yourself that something must be done now.  Arm yourself will all the information and facts you can and contact your state legislators immediately – we can do this!