http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/02/27/georgias-education-chief-has-some-words-for-arne-duncan/

Georgia’s education chief has some words for Arne Duncan

Education Secretary Arne Duncan speaks about the administration’s priorities for education at Seaton Elementary in Washington, Monday, Jan. 12, 2015. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Richard Woods became the State School Superintendent of Georgia last month after spending 22 years in public education in various roles: teacher, teacher mentor, assistant principal, principal, curriculum director, testing coordinator, pre-K director and alternative school director.  He is also a former small business owner and was a purchasing agent for a multi-national laser company. This week, Woods wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and sent it, too, to members of Georgia’s delegation in the U.S. Congress and to the House and Senate education committees, which are currently working on legislation to rewrite No Child Left Behind. One of the key issues is whether annual standardized testing, as mandated in NCLB for grades 3-8 and once in high school, will continue in a new education law.

Woods, in his letter to Duncan, urges changes to federal mandates on standardized testing, saying in part:

Our broken model of assessment is too focused on labeling our schools and teachers, and not focused enough on supporting our students. Our current status quo model is forcing our teachers to teach to the test. We need an innovative approach that uses tests to guide instruction, just as scans and tests guide medical professionals. Oftentimes, we hear teachers called professionals because they have the knowledge and skill set to reach the needs of their individual students, yet in our accountability measures we have not supported or given value to diagnostic tools and tests that teachers need to fully utilize that knowledge or those skills. We must find a balance between accountability and responsibility.

Here’s the letter, which was first published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and which I am republishing with permission from Woods.

Dear Secretary Duncan,

With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) comes an opportunity to address the valid concerns of students, parents, teachers, and communities regarding the quantity and quality of federally mandated standardized tests.

As Georgia’s School Superintendent, I have a constitutional duty to convey those concerns and provide ideas on how to move my state and our nation forward. Georgia recently entered into a $108 million contract to deliver federally mandated standardized tests to our students. That figure does not include the millions of dollars spent to develop and validate test questions and inform the public about the new tests.

This adds to the need for an audit to provide information on the number of tests and loss of instructional time our children endure, as well as a cost/benefit analysis on our current national testing model. As a nation, we have surrendered time, talent, and resources to an emphasis on autopsy-styled assessments, rather than physical-styled assessments. With the reauthorization of ESEA comes an opportunity for a real paradigm shift in the area of assessment.

Instead of a “measure, pressure, and punish” model that sets our students, teachers, and schools up for failure, we need a diagnostic, remediate/accelerate model that personalizes instruction, empowers students, involves parents, and provides real feedback to our teachers.

We need greater emphasis for a federally supported but state-driven formative assessment model that identifies the strengths and weakness of students, coupled with a less intrusive, student-sampled or grade-staggered summative assessment model for the purposes of state-tostate comparisons and world rankings.

Our broken model of assessment is too focused on labeling our schools and teachers, and not focused enough on supporting our students. Our current status quo model is forcing our teachers to teach to the test. We need an innovative approach that uses tests to guide instruction, just as scans and tests guide medical professionals. Oftentimes, we hear teachers called professionals because they have the knowledge and skill set to reach the needs of their individual students, yet in our accountability measures we have not supported or given value to diagnostic tools and tests that teachers need to fully utilize that knowledge or those skills. We must find a balance between accountability and responsibility.

We must give our teachers the tools and trust to be successful or our current path to hyper-accountability will continue to set our students and teachers up for failure. Teachers should not view tests as tools that tie their hands as professionals, but as tools that help them grow in their profession. Students should not view tests as tools that can strengthen barriers to be promoted or to graduate, but as tools that help them overcome those barriers. Schools should not view tests as tools that can doom them to failure, but as tools that serve as a compass pointing them down the path of success.

Testing must be a tool in our toolbox, but we need more rulers and fewer hammers. As Georgia’s School Superintendent, but more importantly as someone with 22 years of Pre-K through twelfth grade experience in education, I strongly urge you to take this moment in history to listen to the concerns of your constituents – parents, teachers, and community members – and reform the federal standardized testing requirements for the betterment of our children. I look forward to working with you to move education forward.

Sent from my iPhone

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/09/01/common-core-blockbuster-mathematician-dr-jim-milgram-warns-common-core-will-destroy-america-s-standing-in-technology/

COMMON CORE BLOCKBUSTER: 

MATHEMATICIAN DR. JIM MILGRAM WARNS COMMON CORE WILL DESTROY AMERICA'S STANDING IN TECHNOLOGY

During a Friday conference call sponsored by Texas-based Women on the Wall, Stanford mathematician and former member of the Common Core Validation Committee Dr. James Milgram, told listeners that if the controversial standards are not repealed, America’s place as a competitor in the technology industry will ultimately be severely undermined.

“In the future, if we want to work with the top level people, we’re going to have to go to China or Japan or Korea… and that’s the future we’re looking at,” Milgram said during the call that was part of a day-long Twitter campaign to target Indiana Gov. Mike Pence‘s (R) decision merely to “rebrand” the Common Core standards in his state, even though he has a Republican supermajority in the legislature and an appointed state board of education. 

Pence was in Dallas Friday for Americans for Prosperity’s Defending the American Dream summit, considered to be an essential stop for presidential hopefuls.

In less than 40 minutes, Milgram floored listeners with information about the Common Core standards, how they will affect the nation’s students and, ultimately, the country itself, and what parents and citizens can do to try to stop them. Listen to the podcast in full below:

Milgram began by addressing the reason why he was on the call: to let Pence know that his “rebrand” of the Common Core was a betrayal of Indiana’s citizens.

Born and raised in Indiana himself, Milgram that it was important to him as a fellow Hoosier that the state do a decent job with replacement standards after repealing the Common Core.

“The state actually paid me to evaluate new standards,” he said about his involvement in the review process.

The Stanford professor then explained to listeners a key reason why the Common Core standards will prevent students from moving into STEM careers.

Milgram said he was “incredibly disappointed that the drafts I was reading [of Indiana’s new standards] looked so much like the Common Core,” but was nevertheless happy to see that advanced math classes like pre-calculus, calculus, and trigonometry were left into the replacement standards.

“These were very well-done and absolutely impossible to teach if all these kids had were Core standards,” Milgram explained. “It was a complete disaster because even the things that they added–that were of high quality–were added to standards that couldn’t support them.”

Milgram described his experience in the 1990s when he was asked to assist with a project that would replace California’s “disastrous” education standards. The mathematician said he strongly recommended that students in the 8th grade take Algebra and that his recommendation was heeded.

From the time the new standards were put in place and until the time of the adoption of Common Core standards in California in 2010, Milgram said two-thirds of the students in the state were taking Algebra in the 8th grade and doing well, with over half of them at least proficient or above.

Milgram said this piece of information is critical because it showed that it was possible for almost every student to handle Algebra in the 8th grade.

“The group that made by far the most progress were the minorities – blacks and Hispanics – who had essentially been written off by the system,” Milgram explained, and then went on to reveal how the fact that challenging minority students – resulting in their increased performance – was a threat to faculty in universities.

“So, their numbers were increasing dramatically and I frankly think that the… faculty in the education schools throughout the country actually got extremely scared by this,” he continued, “because it contradicted everything that they’ve been telling us for the past hundred years about how education works and what one can expect and how one should train teachers.”

Milgram asserted that a strong education in mathematics is essential for success.

“If you don’t have a strong background in mathematics then your most likely career path is into places like McDonald’s,” he said. “In today’s world… the most critical component of opening doors for students is without any question some expertise in mathematics.”

Milgram explained that in the high-achieving countries, where about a third of the population of the world outside the United States is located, about 90 percent of citizens have a high school degree for which the requirements include at least one course in calculus.

“That’s what they [sic] know,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we [sic] know Algebra II. With Algebra II as background, only one in 50 people will ever get a college degree in STEM.”

Milgram warned that with the Common Core standards, unless U.S. students are able to afford exclusive private high school educations that are more challenging, they will be disadvantaged.

“This shows that, from my perspective, Common Core does not come close to the rhetoric that surrounds it,” he continued. “It doesn’t even begin to approach the issues that it was supposedly designed to attack. The things it does are completely distinct from what needs to be done.”

Milgram said, in California, they were able to deal with the problem of their poor academic standards in the 1990s because the curriculum was controlled by the state and the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley threatened to move all its research and manufacturing elsewhere if the problem was not addressed.

“The curricula we were fighting then… they’re back!” he announced. “We are hearing exactly the same kind of things now with Common Core as we heard back in the ’90s!”

“How can you have mathematics problems that don’t have a single answer or correct answer – any answer is correct?” Milgram asked. “Well, of course the answer is mathematically you can’t, and all of this is just a repeat of what went on 20 years ago in California – but this time, it’s national.”

“This time I don’t see any uniform or systematic way of getting rid of it,” Milgram said. “The only way you’re going to get rid of it is state by state and parent group by parent group. And if you’re lucky, industry will join you because high tech is ever a more important part of our economy.”

The bad news, according to Milgram, is that, returning to his experience in California in the ’90s, if students had been in that system with the older, poor standards for three or four years, “the damage couldn’t be undone,” he said.

“All of this should really make you angry at the people who are responsible,” Milgram said, directing himself squarely to the parents listening to him. “And the people who are responsible – I’m going to be blunt about it – are the people in the education schools – they’re the ones who had the ultimate say about all of this and they’re the ones whose beliefs are driving it.”

Milgram explained that a uniform perspective exists on issues in education and what is important to achieve among a vast majority of the faculty in schools of education. Because of this, he said, the same types of standards always come back.

“You must go after the schools of education and the faculty of these schools,” Milgram urged.

Asked about the fact that many industrial giants and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually support the Common Core standards, Milgram responded that in the ’90s, research centers in this country were still very much needed. Now, however, he noted that most of the research in top-level firms has moved out of the U.S. IBM’s main research center, he observed, is in India, and other companies have moved their research centers to Russia, Korea, and China.

“Even Microsoft has moved its software development to Beijing,” Milgram noted. The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, is the primary source of private funding of the Common Core standards.

“Production and manufacturing has also moved out of this country,” Milgram added. “The longer this continues, the more we’ll see our major industry move over to other countries and the jobs they generate will go with them.”

Sent from my iPhone

FLAGPOLE: Phil Lanoue is Winning Awards, but Do the Numbers Add Up?

http://www.flagpole.com/news/news-features/2015/02/25/clarke-county-school-superintendent-phil-lanoue-is-winning-awards-but-do-the-numbers-add-up

Clarke County School Superintendent Phil Lanoue is Winning Awards, but Do the Numbers Add Up?

On Thursday afternoon, Clarke County School District Superintendent Philip Lanoue may be standing on a stage in San Diego, CA,  ready to receive national recognition. He’s one of four finalists for National Superintendent of the Year, and the big announcement will come as hundreds of superintendents pack an auditorium for their national conference. Named as Georgia Superintendent of the Year in November and then finalist for national recognition in December, Lanoue could be the second Georgia recipient in the award’s three-decade history.

“It feels good to talk about our work here in Clarke County and feel pride in what we’re doing, while at the same time acknowledging the gaps we’re facing,” Lanoue says.

At first, Clarke County doesn’t seem fit for national recognition. Four-year graduation rates dropped in recent years—from 70.5 percent in 2012 to 69.5 percent in 2013 to 68.2 percent last year. (The statewide graduation rate has risen 5.1 points since 2011.) The number of low-income students is overwhelmingly high, and test scores are below the target for minority students. More than 240 students need foster homes, and in October, nearly one student a day moved out of a home due to abuse or unstable circumstances.

“We face the challenge of having healthy children, mentally and socially, and I think we still have a way to go,” Lanoue says. “We need to ensure that our children can get to high school and have a choice of what they can do.”

At the same time, other numbers have leaped during Lanoue’s six-year tenure. Across the board, passing CRCT scores between 2009–2014 improved for eighth graders: Reading moved from 92 percent to 96 percent, language arts from 84 to 92, math from 58 to 80, science from 45 to 74 and social studies from 52 to 80. Athens Community Career Academy dual enrollment courses shifted from 84 credits in 2012 to 372 credits in 2014, with about 192 credits taken by African American students. Last year, high school biology moved from sophomore year to freshman year, so physical science moved from ninth grade to eighth grade as an experiment. Of the district’s 840 eighth graders, 235 signed up for the class, and 229 passed the high school end-of-course test. Of those, 195 scored 90 percent or better, and 60 percent of those students were economically disadvantaged.

It’s amazing to walk with him and see students high-five him. He knows their names and what they’re learning.

“We ratchet up expectations for kids and ask them to take risks,” Lanoue says. “Not every day is perfect, but on average, I walk out of classrooms feeling good.”

The trick is in the numbers, especially now that “big data” has infiltrated education measurements. Standardized tests, graduation rates and Annual Yearly Progress calculations change every few years, which makes comparison particularly difficult and unscientific. Even state officials who manage Georgia’s test scores and new College and Career Ready Performance Index note the tough nature of determining what exactly numbers mean for a school district. 

“Graduation rates are important, but we have a tendency in our country to want a definitive number. We want to label everything,” says Melissa Fincher, deputy superintendent of assessment and accountability for the Georgia Department of Education. “We don’t want to interpret and understand the nuances of what the numbers mean, particularly in education. Tests are important but not the sum total of what a school does.”

Lanoue is no stranger to tough school districts. He came to Clarke County after four years as an area superintendent in Cobb County, one of Georgia’s largest school districts, where he oversaw some of the lower performing schools with low socio-economic status. He made his mark as a leader by relating to others, often walking the 19 schools in his area to talk to teachers, custodians and administrative staff.

“It’s amazing to walk with him and see students high-five him,” says Alice Stouder, a retired Cobb County area superintendent who worked with Lanoue daily. “He knows their names and what they’re learning.”

He posted “non-negotiable” goals for student success at each Cobb County school and created data teams to determine what needed work. In Clarke, Lanoue experiments with solutions and moves quickly with decisions, such as the Career Academy and a laptop program that gives every student in high school and soon middle school a device to take home. The experimentation and iteration evoke images of a nimble startup company, which can draw either massive support or ire from parents and community members.

“I don’t think he has a lot of patience for excuses. He’s looking for solutions,” Stouder says. “He’s willing to address issues, and I hope this recognition allows him to do more of that at the national level.”

The National Superintendent of the Year award is linked to controversial districts, in a way. Last year, it went to Alberto Carvalho, head of the nation’s fourth largest school system, Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, which faced problems in the past decade with packed schools, mismanaged budgets and cliquish administrators. This year, the award may go to finalist MaryEllen Elia, who served as superintendent of Hillsborough County Schools in Tampa for 10 years but was fired  in late January because the newly elected school board wanted a new start. And you may remember Beverly Hall, Georgia’s first national winner in 2009, who was recognized for Atlanta Public Schools’ “significant gains in student achievement over the past 10 years.” Hall resigned in 2010 amid accusations of inflated CRCT scores and was among the 35 people indicted in the cheating scandal in 2013.

“This isn’t the easiest time to run a school system with all of the state and federal policies, especially in our town,” says Bertis Downs, R.E.M.’s lawyer and a local education advocate. “There’s a lot of noise in education around policy, testing and funding, and Phil is focused on that relationship between teaching and learning.”

Celebrating its 150th year, the American Association of School Administrators, which doles out the national recognition, notes that “while we still face issues like poverty, politics and corporate interests,” it’s still time to celebrate: Dropout rates have been declining since 1972. High school graduation rates are the highest in three decades. Lanoue can celebrate a personal statistic, as well—the typical lifespan of an urban superintendent is about three years.

“You can hire a superintendent who can play the test score game and raise test scores, but he was clear from the beginning that what he would do with the curriculum would lead to better scores,” says Denise Spangler, a school board member who chaired the search committee when Lanoue was hired. “The end goal is to better serve students, which isn’t always reflected in test scores.”

Clarke County schools are facing another big year. This month, the district is asking for public feedback on its charter district application, which will create local governance teams to tie each school to its neighborhood. Changing the name to “Athens-Clarke Community School District,” the charter will further emphasize community and partnerships.

“We’ve done yeoman’s work to get to this level, and getting to the next level is steep,” Lanoue says. “We need help from families to peel back and look at each kid. Our kids should not get a better education anywhere else.”

Sent from my iPhone

COMMON CORE STANDARDS ON THE LINE

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/25/opinion/ravitch-common-core-standards/index.html

Story highlights

The U.S. Department of Education is legally prohibited from having any control over curriculum or instruction in the nation's public schools, but nonetheless Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is a zealous advocate of the new Common Core standards for students' proficiency in English and math.

First, he said their critics were members of extremist groups, and he recently assailed the parents who criticize them as "white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were."

His remarks were prompted by the nearly unanimous outrage expressed by parents -- moms and dads -- at public forums in suburban districts in New York, following the release of the abysmal results of the new Common Core tests.

The parents weren't angry because they found out their child wasn't brilliant, but because most were told by the state that their children were failures. Only 31% of the state's students in grades third through eighth passed or exceeded the new tests. Among students who are English-language learners, only 3% passed the English standards; among students with disabilities, only 5% passed them; among black and Hispanic students, fewer than 20% passed. The numbers for math were better, but not by much.

The high failure rate did not happen because the students are dumb, but because the state chose to set an unrealistic passing mark. The state commissioner knew before any student had taken the test that only 30% or so would pass; that is where the state commissioner set the passing mark.

Duncan likes to boast that the Common Core standards were adopted by 45 states, but neglects to mention that the states were required to adopt "college-and-career-ready standards" to be eligible for $4.35 billion in the education secretary's signature program called Race to the Top.

Some states adopted them without seeing a finished draft. The standards, unfortunately, were never field-tested. No one knew in advance whether they would improve achievement or depress it, whether they would widen or narrow the achievement gap among children of different races. It is hard to imagine a major corporation releasing a new product nationwide without first testing it among consumers to see if it is successful. But that is what happened with the Common Core standards.

Experts in early childhood education say the standards for young children are developmentally inappropriate. Teachers say that they have not had the training or resources to teach the new standards. Field-testing would have ironed out many of the bugs, but promoters of the standards insisted on fast implementation.

No one yet has estimated the costs of shifting from state standards to national standards. Duncan awarded $350 million to develop new tests for the new standards, but all of the testing will be done online.

Los Angeles intends to spend $1 billion on iPads for the Common Core Techology Project, designed to help prepare for the standards. If that is the cost to only one district, how many billions will schools across the nation pay for software and hardware and bandwidth for Common Core testing? This will be a bonanza for the technology industry, but will put a strain on public school budgets in a time of austerity.

Arne Duncan remark irks suburban moms  02:01

Sec. Duncan: My wording was clumsy00:58

The Common Core standards emphasize critical thinking and reasoning. It is time for public officials to demonstrate critical thinking and to stop the rush to implementation and do some serious field-testing.

It is time to fix the standards that don't work in real classrooms with real students. It is time to stop testing students on material they have not been taught. American students take more tests than students in any other nation. Our dependence on standardized testing has become excessive.

Standards alone can't right everything that needs fixing in American education, and some experts, like Tom Loveless at Brookings Institution, say they will make little or no difference in student achievement.

Public officials should listen to the moms and dads. This is a democracy, and it is not the role of public officials to impose their grand ideas without the consent of the governed.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

Sent from my iPhone

9 Investigates: Dad protests Islamic lessons at school

http://m.wftv.com/news/news/local/9-investigates-dad-protests-islamic-lessons-school/nj7Ny/

9 Investigates: Dad protests Islamic lessons at school

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. —

A history book used in school districts across the state is sparking controversy in Seminole County.

A parent called 9 Investigates after finding out his son was learning too much about the Islamic religion in a public classroom.

Ron Wagner read from part of his son's world history book, "There is no god, but God. Muhamad is the messenger of God."

---

Raw: School district spokesman storms out of interview

Raw: Full interview with school district

---

Wagner is not reading the Five Pillars of Islam from the Quran, but rather his son's 10^th-grade world history book from Lyman High School.

"Students were instructed to recite this prayer as the first Pillar of Islam, off of the board at the teacher's instruction," Wagner claims. 

Wagner, who is not religious, said he had no idea the public school was teaching so extensively about religion until he spotted a text on his son's phone from a teacher reminding him to complete a prayer rug assignment and study an Islam packet.

"For it to be mandatory and part of the curriculum and in the textbooks, didn't seem right," Wagner said.

Inside of the book is a chapter dedicated to the "Rise of Islam," including prayers and scriptures from the Quran. What's more disturbing for Wagner is that the first 100 pages discussing Judaism and Christianity are missing. The district blames a manufacturer defect in 68 books that are only a year old.

According to Wagner, Dr. Michael Blasewitz, who oversees the high school curriculum, said, "The Pillars of Islam are benchmarks in the state curriculum."

Wagner's concerns prompted a district investigation that found the teacher never tried to indoctrinate or convert students.

Some other students interviewed by administrators said they were not required to recite the prayer aloud. They did discuss a video played during class about the religion, but Blasewitz got frustrated and stormed out when 9 Investigates asked whether the district is considering changes to the curriculum.

"You're just going to walk away from our interview when we're trying to get information," said investigative reporter Daralene Jones.

Before Blasewitz walked out, he further justified the curriculum, saying students learn specific Judaism doctrine, the Bible and its scriptures, in earlier school years.

"If anything, it's a little imbalanced toward Christianity and Judaism," Blasewitz said.

Federal law allows schools to teach aboutreligion, because it's part of history. But public schools may not teach religion.

"There's a difference between teaching of the significance or the impact of a religion and teaching the specific tenets of a religion," Wagner said.

9 Investigates was told the district will reconsider this book when the contract is up in three years. Some districts in South Florida have requested the publisher rewrite portions because of the controversy.

WFTV received the following statement from the Council on American-Islamic Relations Florida:

"In a diverse society, young people should be taught about a wide variety of beliefs, cultures and faiths, and particularly about a faith practiced by millions of Americans and more than one fifth of the world's population.

"Denying all students access to vital information based on the biased political or religious agenda of Islam phobic groups or a handful of misinformed parents does a disservice to our school system, our state and our nation. History is not kind to those who censor information or ban books."

-- Hassan Shibly, executive director

GEORGE WILL : Education Is for the States

http://m.nationalreview.com/article/398120/education-states-george-will

Education Is for the States 

By George Will

| National Review Online

In 1981, Tennessee’s 41-year-old governor proposed to President Ronald Reagan a swap: Washington would fully fund Medicaid and the states would have complete responsibility for primary and secondary education. Reagan, a former governor, was receptive. But Democrats, who controlled the House and were beginning to be controlled by teachers’ unions (the largest, the National Education Association, had bartered its first presidential endorsement, of Jimmy Carter, for creation of the Department of Education) balked.

In 1992, the former Tennessee governor was President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of education. He urged Bush to veto proposed legislation to expand federal involvement in K-12 education. He said it would create “at least the beginnings of a national school board that could make day-to-day school decisions on curriculum, discipline, teacher training, textbooks and classroom materials.” The veto threat derailed the legislation.

Advertisement

Today this former governor and former secretary (and former president of the University of Tennessee), Senator Lamar Alexander, is chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. He is seeking 60 Senate votes to, he says, “reverse the trend toward a national school board,” which the Education Department has become.

Time was, before Congress acted on any subject, it asked: Is this a legitimate concern of the federal government? The “legitimacy barrier” (a phrase coined by James Q. Wilson) collapsed 50 years ago, particularly with passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of which No Child Left Behind (2002) was the twelfth major reauthorization.

NCLB mandated that by 2014, every school would have 100 percent proficiency in reading and math. So, Alexander says, “almost every one” of America’s approximately 100,000 public schools are officially failures. This, he says, exacerbates “the irresistible temptation of well-meaning Washington officials” to assert a duty for Washington to approve schools’ academic standards (hence Common Core), define success, determine how to evaluate teachers, and stipulate what to do about failing schools.

NCLB is more than seven years overdue for the reauthorization/revision that will impact 50 million children and 3.1 million teachers. Hence a recent hearing of Alexander’s committee attracted a crowd, with hundreds overflowing into the hall. Alexander hopes to have a bill on the Senate floor by late February and to get 60 votes with the help of some of the six Democratic senators who are former governors.

And perhaps some others. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), the purity of whose liberalism is wondrous, says education today consists of two worlds. One is “of contractors and consultants, and academics and experts, and plenty of officials at the federal, state, and local level.” The other is of those who teach, and “the footprint of that first world has become way too big in their lives.”

Existing law forbids federal officials from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution.” Existing practices ignore the law, especially by using $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funds to bribe states to accept the Common Core standards (to which tests and hence texts are “aligned”). Alexander understands the futility of trying to lasso the federal locomotive with a cobweb of words. His solution is a portion of his 1981 proposal: Devolve to states all responsibility for evaluating schools, students, and teachers.

If Alexander succeeds, this will have an effect on the Republican presidential race. Jeb Bush, who supports Common Core, can say to the Republican base, which loathes it: Never mind, imposing Common Core has been outlawed.

Teachers’ unions hostile to teacher evaluations have part of a point: Schools are supposed to do what parents cannot do as well, such as teach algebra. They cannot, however, supplant families as transmitters of the social capital — habits, manners, mores — necessary for thriving. So, how do you evaluate teachers whose seven-year-old pupils come to school not knowing numbers, shapes, or colors because they come from a cacophonous home culture of silence, where no one, while making dinner, says, “Here are ten round green peas”? Let 50 governors find 50 metrics for K-12 progress.

Although liberal academia deserves its government-inflicted miseries, Alexander’s next project will be deregulation of higher education. The need for which he demonstrates by unfurling the taped-together ten pages — more than nine feet — of forms containing more than 100 questions students must answer when applying for federal aid. Alexander suggests replacing it with a five-by-seven-inch card containing two questions: Family size? Family income? While achieving his impressive curriculum vitae, Alexander has learned to appreciate simplicity.

— George Will is a Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist. © 2015 The Washington Post

State Agency or Actor Who Adopted the Common Core

http://www.ccrslegislation.info/home/adopting-agency

State Agency or Actor Who Adopted the Common Core

The primary role of state legislatures is to enact state statutes through the legislative process. Ultimately, state legislatures write the laws that governors will sign. Under education policy, for example, many legislatures have enacted laws that assign the courses required for high school graduation. State and local education agencies must then provide all high school students the opportunity to enroll in those courses. If it disagrees with a state or local education agency policy promulgated to execute these graduation requirements, the state legislature—for the most part—can modify or nullify those policies. 

In the case of oversight of state education standards, ultimately legislatures have the power to pass legislation changing statutes; except in cases where authority for education state standards is established by the state constitution (for instance, Hawaii—there, the legislature could propose a constitutional amendment to modify that authority). 

In most states, the state board of educationis responsible for formulating and approving state education standards. A handful of states, however, require legislative action. Some examples include:

• Maine – The Maine Department of Education, in consultation with the Maine State Board of Education, is responsible for formulating state education standards. State standards are promulgated by rule of the Maine Department of Education. The Maine State Legislature then has approval authority over rules that are provisionally-adopted by the Department that constitute a “major substantive” rule, i.e., not a “routine technical” rule.

• Nevada – The Council to Establish Academic Standards in Education addresses the establishment and revision of the State’s academic standards. The Council consists of eight members; members are appointed by the Governor (four members) and Legislative Leadership (four members). The State Board of Education reviews and adopts the standards as submitted by the Council. After adopting a regulation concerning the state standards, the Department of Education must submit a copy of the regulation to the Legislative Counsel for review by the Legislative Commission to determine whether the regulation conforms to the statutory authority pursuant to which it was adopted and whether the regulation carries out the intent of the Legislature in granting that authority.

• Texas – The Legislature grants the State Board of Education the exclusive authority to adopt standards. But, the legislature can take away or limit the Board's authority over the standards through statute. The Legislature could adopt standards into statute, which could override Board action.

• Vermont – Standards are adopted through the rule-making process and must be approved by a legislative committee on rule-review. All powers of the State Board of Education are statutory and can be changed. Therefore, the legislature has ultimate control, although there is no express legislative veto provision.

The table below contains information on authorizing entity charged with adopting academic standards. NCSL's Sunny Deye initially compiled this information from responses provided by the Legislative Education Staff Network in September 2010. Updates and adjustments have been made as of March 2014.

Print version available here.

Georgia picks fight with College Board over AP history

http://getschooled.blog.ajc.com/2015/01/30/georgia-picks-fight-with-college-board-over-ap-history-guess-who-loses-again-our-children/

Georgia picks fight with College Board over AP history. Guess who loses again? Our children.

Both my twins are in AP U.S. History this year, and I’m impressed with the depth of the course. They are learning far more about American history than I ever did.

They are being taught more than dates and names. Their assignments require they look beyond what happened to why, how and the long-term consequences.

The goal of the class is understanding our history, the good, the bad and the ugly — and America has it all.

But a resolution in the state Senate – sponsored by the same coastal lawmaker who attempted last year to not only rid Georgia of Common Core, but of any test or class that reflected a national effort – calls for AP U.S. History to be outlawed if the College Board does not present a more sanitized view of American history.

The resolution states:

WHEREAS, approximately 14,000 Georgia students take the College Board’s Advanced Placement U. S. History (APUSH) course each year; and WHEREAS, the APUSH course has traditionally been designed to present a balanced view of American history and to prepare students for college-level history courses; and WHEREAS, the College Board has recently released a new framework for the APUSH course; and WHEREAS, the new APUSH framework reflects a radically revisionist view of American of American history that emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects; and WHEREAS, the framework minimizes discussion of America’s Founding Fathers, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the religious influences on our nation’s history, and many other critical topics that have long been part of the APUSH course; and WHEREAS, the framework presents a biased and inaccurate view of many important themes and events in American history, including the motivations and actions of seventeenth to nineteenth century settlers, the nature of the American free enterprise system, the course and resolution of the Great Depression, and the development of and victory in the Cold War; and

WHEREAS, the framework differs radically from the Georgia Performance Standards for Social Studies; and WHEREAS, despite offering revisions and clarifications to the framework, the College Board has made no substantial changes to the themes and key concepts of the framework, thus requiring all content to be taught in alignment with those themes and concepts;

That the State Board of Education instruct the College Board to return to an APUSH examination that aligns with the restored APUSH course and that respects and incorporates the Georgia Performance Standards;

That if the College Board does not comply with these requests, the State Board of Education and the Georgia Department of Education cease expending any state funds on professional development activities, textbooks, or other instructional materials aligned to APUSH; That if the College Board does not comply with these requests, the Georgia congressional delegation is urged to push for reduction or elimination of federal funding for the College Board;

That if the College Board does not comply with these requests, the Governor is directed to contact other governors of several or all states to join Georgia in its suspension of funds to the College Board; and That if the College Board does not comply with these requests, the State Board of Education and the Georgia Department of Education are directed to explore alternatives to the College Board’s Advanced Placement program that would allow Georgia students obtain college credit by mastering the content dictated by Georgia standards and that the Governor would seek reciprocity among several or all states and urge them to do likewise.

In supporting the resolution, new state school chief Richard Woods continues his mantra about standards that are “Georgia-owned and Georgia-grown.”

I often get emails from newcomers interested in my view of metro school districts. Coming here from states with higher average school performance, they worry about the quality of schools, both public and private, in Georgia.

As an editorial writer, I talked to CEOs of companies newly relocated to Georgia who explained, while their transferring employees were thrilled with housing prices in Georgia, they were wary of the schools. I have also had folks in the tech industry tell me the reputation of Georgia schools dissuades some top innovators from bringing their expertise and their start-ups here.

“Georgia grown and owned” doesn’t impress people when they look at how the state fares on national comparisons. The slogan may make for good politics, but it doesn’t make for good schools.

If Georgia students led the world in academic performance, I would say puff, posture and preen all you want about Georgia owned and grown.

But we don’t lead the world or the country. We never have.

Like the rest of the South, Georgia has never been an academic leader, an outcome of entrenched poverty and an indifference to the importance of an educated populace.

Now, we are trying to shed that past and improve the odds for our children.

So, we ought to be studying the states and nations that outperform us and learn. Our children will be competing with students from those places for jobs. They have to be on equal footing.

Georgia is attempting to improve its schools, although politics keeps derailing the progress. Taking on the College Board over APUSH makes us look provincial.

And I will bet a latte and apple fritter the only states willing to pull their students out of AP are other low-performing ones. Parents in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey – with higher AP participation and college-going rates– would not tolerate state lawmakers meddling with their children’s academic futures.

APUSH is not mandated in Georgia. It’s a choice, typically made by high-performing students eying UGA, Tech or a select private college.

I don’t understand why the Legislature is meddling in AP courses since they have no control over content. I guess they got tired of politicizing the Georgia curriculum.

In writing about schools in Georgia since 1997, I have seen few instances of where General Assembly interference benefited students. In the last few years, most of the General Assembly’s actions have been designed to appease special interests, not help students. Lawmakers are not looking to make progress; they want to make points.

This is another example.

Here is Richard Woods’ statement in support of Senate Resolution 80:

“I am in agreement with Governor Deal and the State Board of Education that our Social Studies – and Science – standards must be Georgia-owned and Georgia-grown. We will conduct a full review of our Social Studies standards to ensure that they have proper focus on the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and all aspects of American History.  We will also forge partnerships to supply every 5th grader in Georgia with a pocket Constitution so the foundations that built our great country are easily accessible to them.

I have deep concerns regarding the College Board’s new Advanced Placement U. S. History (APUSH) framework and testing. I fully support SR 80’s move to ensure that Georgia’s students are being taught using the very best history standards possible. Any opportunity for our academic or our nation’s historical integrity to be eroded must not be allowed.

One important issue to note in Georgia is that all students, including our Advanced Placement (AP) students, must take the state end of course test in U.S. History. That means, regardless of what may be missing from the AP frameworks, our students will be taught the foundational principles found in our Georgia standards and will be required to demonstrate that knowledge on our state test.  This will provide our state the ability to address some of the APUSH shortcomings.  However, more must be done.

Though this is a short-term solution, SR 80 provides steps to address the long-term problem of high school students not being taught key people, events, and documents that are the cornerstone of the history of our nation. I applaud the members of our General Assembly for working together to protect the education of Georgia’s students.”

And here is the College Board’s response to this effort:

The College Board’s Advanced Placement Program has a 60-year history of delivering excellence in education to millions of students across the country.

College faculty and AP teachers collaborate to develop, deliver, and evaluate AP courses and exams. Their partnership ensures that these courses align with the content and rigor of college-level learning, while still providing teachers with the flexibility to examine topics of local interest in greater depth.

Because they trust AP, more than 3,300 colleges and universities across the globe use AP Exam scores for credit, placement, or consideration in the admission process.

At the root of current objections to this highly regarded process is a blatant disregard for the facts. Despite the principled engagement and unwavering cooperation of the College Board in addressing concerns, the most vocal critics have prioritized their own agenda above the best interests of teachers, students, and their families.

The redesigned AP U.S. History course and exam have the highest support of the history profession, with strong endorsements from the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the National Council for Social Studies, and the National Council for History Education. As important, the redesigned AP U.S. History course has received overwhelming support from AP teachers nationwide, and is currently in use in classrooms across the country. The College Board has the greatest confidence that AP U.S. History teachers understand how to reflect state and local requirements and the great story of America in their instruction.

In the face of these attacks on our long-standing and highly respected approach to developing college-level courses, AP teachers and students, our member institutions, and the American people can rest assured: The College Board will not compromise the integrity of the Advanced Placement Program.

See More Posts

#26 - “Without Government Schools, Most People Wouldn't Get an Education"

http://fee.org/freeman/detail/26-without-government-schools-most-people-wouldnt-get-an-education?utm_source=Foundation+for+Economic+Education+Current+Contacts&utm_campaign=8621d31e4d-In_Brief_1_30_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_77ef1bd48e-8621d31e4d-13798598

#26 - “Without Government Schools, Most People Wouldn't Get an Education"

CLICHÉS OF PROGRESSIVISM

OCTOBER 10, 2014 by MAX BORDERS

Filed Under : Education, Cliches

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is proud to partner with Young America’s Foundation (YAF) to produce “Clichés of Progressivism,” a series of insightful commentaries covering topics of free enterprise, income inequality, and limited government. See the index of the published chapters here.
 

#26 — “Without Government Schools, Most People Wouldn't Get an Education” 

(Max Borders is editor of FEE’s journal, The Freeman, and FEE’s director of content.)
 

Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, the old saying goes. This is one of those cases.

The fact is, people go without education despite a well-funded system of government schools. One might go as far as to say that people go without education because of government schools.

According to the U.S. Department of education, during the 2009-10 school year, 78.2 percent of high school students nationwide graduated on time—a notable increase from the 73.4 percent recorded in 2005–06. One might see this increase as cause for celebration. But, as The Denver Post admits, “Too many students are graduating from high school without the skills or knowledge to succeed in college or vocational training without significant remedial education.” Indeed, the Colorado Department of Higher Education finds that “They graduate, but are unprepared for the next level.”

In other words, a 22 percent dropout rate is only good news if graduates are getting value from their K-12 education. And, of course, all of this assumes that traditional government schooling is valuable for everyone.

Today’s schools have become standardized, homogenized and regimented. The unhealthy obsession with testing (coming from remote politicians and bureaucrats) drives the incentives of teachers and administrators alike. The result is a perverse factory model governed by one-size-fits-all curricula and five-year plans reminiscent of the failed central planning of now-defunct socialist regimes. Of course, such plans are at odds with local experimentation and innovation. No one has pointed this out with more passion than John Taylor Gatto (former New York State Teacher of the Year) who, in Weapons of Mass Instruction, writes:

The frequent ceremonies of useless testing—preparation, administration, recovery—convert forced schooling into a travesty of what education should be; they drain hundreds of millions of days yearly from what might otherwise be productive pursuits; they divert tens of billions of cash resources into private pockets. The next effect of standardized testing is to reduce our national wealth in future generations, by suffocating imagination and intellect, while enhancing wealth for a few in the present. This occurs as a byproduct of “scientifically” ranking the tested so they can be, supposedly, classified efficiently as human resources.

All this standardization—from the Common Core to the CAT—benefits special interests at the expense of young people. The result is a “tail wagging the entire monster of forced institutional schooling.”

Progressives have always dreamed of forcing students into government education. During the 1920s, for instance, Oregon Progressives passed a law that would have required every student to attend a government school. The Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters struck that law down. But what might education look like today had they succeeded?

Early Progressives give us shockingly clear and frightening glimpses into what they envisioned. Government education, they argued, is meant to serve the government far more than it’s intended to serve the students. Consider this extended passage from George H. Smith’s article, “The Roots of State Education”:

Systems of public education, declared an Illinois superintendent of schools, should be “conceived, designed, and carried out with direct and persistent reference to the maintenance and stability of the existing political order of the government.” A New Hampshire superintendent of public instruction argued that it is proper for government to provide education “when the instinct of self-preservation shall demand it.” A U.S. commissioner of education maintained that the individual “owes all that is distinctly human to the state” and that government education is “a means of preservation of the state.” The government should provide education, echoed a California superintendent, “as an act of self-preservation”; children “belong not to the parents but to the State, to society, to the country.”

Similar reasoning carried into the twentieth century. According to a 1914 bulletin of the U.S Bureau of Education, “The public schools exist primarily for the benefit of the State rather than for the benefit of the individual.” This is the logic that justified compulsory attendance laws. As the New Hampshire Supreme Court put it in 1902:

“Free schooling…is not so much a right granted to pupils as a duty imposed upon them for the public good. If they do not voluntarily attend the schools provided for them for the public good, they may be compelled to do so. While most people regard the public schools as the means of great advantage to the pupils, the fact is too often overlooked that they are governmental means of protecting the state from consequences of an ignorant and incompetent citizenship.”

Perhaps the most chilling description of the role of state education came from the influential progressive sociologist Edward Ross (1866-1951):

“To collect little plastic lumps of human dough from private households and shape them on the social kneading board, exhibits a faith in the power of suggestion which few people ever attain to. And so it happens that the role of the schoolmaster is just beginning.”

Today such efforts take other less overt forms and less candid rhetoric, including tax and regulatory policies that hamstring private efforts and claims that “it takes a village” to raise or educate a child. And the college admissions complex routinely colludes with government schools to make college dependent on standardization and testing. Progressives flock to standards boards, of course, in order to be architects of a great inculcation.

There is nothing wrong with testing per se. Some schools use it as a means to determine whether students are learning. But testing is increasingly being used as an instrument of control. Government-school functionaries—while enforcing certain views on environmental policy, multiculturalism and "tolerance" issues—are often hostile to various forms of religious expression—which is explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights. Even if one agrees that religious indoctrination has no place in the public classroom, schools increasingly mute such expression, and tamp down certain kinds of discourse in favor of other types (such as the illiberal bromides of “social justice”).

By contrast, in a robust system of private education, schools try different methods and modes. Some will “follow the child” as Maria Montessori did, in order to reinforce children’s strengths and passions. Others will try gamification and interactive learning; still others will try apprenticeships, project-based learning, or self-guided learning (autodidacticism). All of this experimentation gives rise to innovations that eventually become best practices. And none of these best practices need to be determined by school boards or central committees. Great methods and modes in education are emergent phenomena. And these methods and modes will work better with some kids than others.

In the absence of experimentation, however, many schools are little better than daycare facilities. As educators are paid to teach to the test, they become part of a system in which everyone is rewarded to push the lever and get the pellet. Real learning—the kind which comes from aligning a child’s natural curiosity with the wonders of the world—gets lost as children spend hours sitting still, paying attention and regurgitating curriculum. If kids aren’t learning at schools, then they are merely being warehoused so that parents can work and the State can track their whereabouts. In such a system the State comes to think of itself as a child’s parent for many hours of the day. As MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry famously said: “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

Like many public school advocates, Harris-Perry conflates community with the State. Community is not something that can be fashioned by elites or simply coerced into being. It is the product of intertwining commitments, built by free people and held together by invisible bonds—bonds of love, charity, and trust. So, yes, communities can certainly participate in the development of children, but it’s not clear that government institutions pass any meaningful test of community.

Finally, some forms of education are best gotten outside the schools. Not every person is a good fit for college. Likewise, not every student needs to have a formal, academic K–12 education. I realize this will be a controversial claim for many. But when considering different tracks for different students, we have constantly to ask: “What are the available alternatives?” Sadly, the answer for many is too narrow. By default children are placed in environments in which they cannot flourish—to be supervised by people who find no passion in reading from a script. Teachers act as managers on a factory floor, with children turned out on a conveyor belt.

When teachers are free to act as guides on quests—as opposed to proctors of tests—teachers and parents can see whether a student is missing certain educational milestones, or is demonstrating passion and aptitude in non-academic areas, such as art, design, building, business or even information technology. Knowing how to help children flourish isn’t easy. But one thing’s clear: there is a difference between education designed to get children to serve some ideal and education that helps children to become captains of their own lives.

Some students do okay in the status quo and the finest test takers form a cognitive elite that stands to inherit the few spots in those great, bloated guilds we call universities. Others not cut out for formal academics are stifled in cultivating any of a thousand talents. At least they’re not out committing crimes, we’re told.

Leaving aside debates about the best means of evaluation, suffice it to say each individual is unique. He or she will come with unique gifts. And yet the entire premise of government schools—at least as they are currently offered—is to treat people as statistical abstractions. Their interests and aspirations are viewed as secondary to their ability to tolerate and navigate an increasingly byzantine system. Their dynamic minds are treated as buckets into which the thin gruel of State curricula must be poured.

It’s time we embraced a new educational paradigm, one marked not so much by standardization and centralization, but by experimentation and innovation. Academic high-performers will gravitate to what ignites their minds. Non-academic students will discover activities that get them out of bed every day. Even the most disadvantaged children among us would benefit more from creative arrangements such as work-study, apprenticeships, and other alternative forms of education that allow them actually to participate in community.

The next time you hear someone say that the government schools are necessary for everyone to get an education, ask them how much longer we’ll have to wait.

• This oft-stated cliché assumes from the start that some students will fall through the cracks if education isn’t provided by the state but even more importantly, it assumes incorrectly that students won’t fall through the cracks if the State is in charge. Statistics and experience show otherwise, which is why public education is in chronic crisis these days.
• A one-size-fits-all approach to education is the last thing needed when what you’re attempting to educate are millions of unique individuals, each with his own traits, learning speed, etc.
• Education is sorely in need of the very things that prompt other activities in a free environment to excel: choice, competition, accountability, experimentation, diversity, and options!
• For further information, see:

“The High Cost of Government Schooling” by Lawrence W. Reed: http://tinyurl.com/mlboro9

“Dissatisfaction Guaranteed and No Money Back” by Lawrence W. Reed: http://tinyurl.com/q5ze6d8

“The Origins of the Public School” by Robert P. Murphy: http://tinyurl.com/plr9ql9

“Can the Free Market Provide Public Education?” by Sheldon Richman: http://tinyurl.com/m8vjqvp

“Market Education: The Unknown History” by George C. Leef: http://tinyurl.com/q2e8xqu

“The Global Education Industry: Lessons from Private Education in Developing Countries” by Anthony Flew: http://tinyurl.com/p49qwjn

BILL BENNETT vs. TX Gov GREG ABBOTT

VIDEO: Fox News Sunday Jan 31,2015

http://youtu.be/Rr7XDInM6eo