Common Core Standards: Smoggy in States' Rights

Should Delaware adopt the Common Core Standards? 

Yes, we know, the State Board of Education WILL adopt them.  It goes without saying because DeDOE wrote it into the Race to the Top Application.  But, should they?  Now, that's a harder question. 

There is no doubt in my mind that Delaware needs to develop more rigorous standards.  We rank consistently low when our stardards are compared to those of states.  But, there's something a bit more insidious to this pending adoption.  It's an issue of state's rights, one long ago, acknowledged in D.C. when No Child Left Behind became the law of the land.

While NCLB mandated assessments, the same testing that has caused the pushdown of academic standards across the nation, it specifically did not legislate common academic standards.  Legislators in D.C. along with their USDOE designees struggled with defining where state's rights began and federal jurisdiction ended.  The question of overstep really had t do with what constituted "curriculum" because the choice of curriculum is clearly defined as a right of a state, district, or school.  It doesn't fall under federal domain, see this tidbit from the ESEA. Click the title to link back.

SEC. 9527. PROHIBITIONS ON FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND USE OF FEDERAL FUNDS.

(a) GENERAL PROHIBITION- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school's curriculum, program of instruction, or allocation of State or local resources, or mandate a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act.

(b) PROHIBITION ON ENDORSEMENT OF CURRICULUM- Notwithstanding any other prohibition of Federal law, no funds provided to the Department under this Act may be used by the Department to endorse, approve, or sanction any curriculum designed to be used in an elementary school or secondary school.
(c) PROHIBITION ON REQUIRING FEDERAL APPROVAL OR CERTIFICATION OF STANDARDS-

(1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal law, no State shall be required to have academic content or student academic achievement standards approved or certified by the Federal Government, in order to receive assistance under this Act.
(2) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION- Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to affect requirements under title I or part A of title VI

(d) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION ON BUILDING STANDARDS- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to mandate national school building standards for a State, local educational agency, or school.

It's starting to look a bit like Wilmington on a bad air day - smoggy.  While I can tell you that the preference given to states willing to adopt the Common Core Standard in their Race to the Top Application subverts the rights accorded to the states in the above referenced standard, something of that nature always sounds better coming from a someone with a Ph.D.  So, I found one (which wasn't very hard, because while opponents have been shunned by mainstream media, they are there and they do have a message for policymakers, parents, and teachers alike):

Since the federal government’s legal and political authority to mandate common national standards is contested, the administration has instead applauded and encouraged the work of the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in developing proposed“common core” standards in reading and math (henceforth referred to as the NGA/CCSSO effort). The administration has also announced its intention to “require all states to adopt and certify that they have college- and career-ready standards in reading and mathematics, which may include common standards developed by a state-led consortium, as a condition for qualifying for Title I funding.”3 Likewise, the federal Race to the Top competition for funds gives an advantage to states that have a clear intention to adopt such standards.4 As the NGA/CCSSO effort is the only collaborative effort of this type and 48 states and the District of Columbia are listed as cooperating with the initiative, the NGA/CCSSO standards are poised to become the de facto national curriculum standards.

From the The "Common Core” Standards Initiative: An Effective Reform Tool?  by William J. Mathis, Ph.D, at the Univeristy of Colorado at Boulder, presented by The Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice in Lansing Michigan.  Full report can be found at http://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Mathis_NationalStandards.pdf

What further muddies the water is that the Common Core Standards are on their way to becoming de facto national standards, but the development process was curiously short -- only one year in duration, and lacking the rich participation of many key partners. For instance, Mathis found in the course of his research that:

...the level of input from schoolbased practitioners appears to be minimal, the standards themselves have not been field tested, and it is unclear whether the tests used to measure the academic outcomes of common standards will have sufficient validity to justify the high-stakes consequences that will likely arise around their use. Accordingly, it seems improbable that the common core standards will have the positive effects on educational quality or equality being sought by proponents, particularly in light of the lack of essential capacity at the local, state and federal levels.

So let's talk about the Common Core Standards vacuum.  There's a bit of a timeline here that needs to be acknowledged.

1989 -- Mathis cites "President Bush called the first “education summit,” at which governors agreed to set national goals and pledged support for state-based reform initiatives. Educators were for the most part not represented in these two efforts. As a result, standards-making shifted from the professional sphere to a business influenced political domain."

1990 -- President Clinton signed Goals 2000, legislation based on the first education summit,  into law. "This legislation, provided states with grants to adopt content standards and established a national goals panel. Goals 2000 generated a conservative-
led backlash against the growing federal role in education as well as the specific content of some goals and standards. The tenor of the reaction can be seen in a 1995 Senate resolution, passed on a 99-1 vote, protesting the adoption of history standards, in large part because of a controversy about multiculturalism. Congress eliminated the national goals panel in 1996" (Mathis, p8)

In th ensuring years, Texas became the first state to adopt a common curriculum aligned to standards and assessments. President Bush 2, from Texas, incorporated these policies into his re-authorization of ESEA, or NCLB.  States responded by lowering their standards into order to escape the punitive elements of NCLB.

Which brings us to today -- Mathis has found that:

In April 2009, representatives from 41 states met with CCSSO and NGA representatives in Chicago and agreed to draft a set of common standards for education. Achieve, a corporation founded by the NGA following the 1996 demise of the national standards effort, was commissioned by NGA/CCSSO after the Chicago meeting to draft the new “common core” standards in reading and mathematics. The project was fast-tracked: Achieve was to have a draft by summer 2009 and grade-by-grade standards by the end of the year. Historically, the development of subject-matter standards had been the province of specialists in those subjects working in universities and in schools. By contrast, Achieve workgroups in private and the development work was conducted by persons who were not, with apparently only a single exception, K-12 educators. The work groups were staffed almost exclusively by employees of Achieve, testing companies (ACT and the College Board), and pro-accountability groups (e.g., America’s Choice, Student Achievement Partners, the Hoover Institute). Practitioners and subject matter experts complained that they were excluded from the development process. Project Director Dane Linn said this was because they were (as paraphrased by Education Week) “determined to draft standards based on the best available research about effective math and reading curricula, rather than the opinions of any single organization.”30 The internal review boards consisted predominately of college professors. Of the more than 65 people involved in the common core design and review, only one was a classroom teacher and no school administrator is listed as being a member of the groups.31 In addition to the financial support from the federal government, the Gates Foundation is a significant contributor to the common core standards effort.32 A number of confidential iterations of the standards took place between the developers and state departments of education. The first public release of a draft was on March 10, 2010.33

Bold and Red are mine to highlight areas where I see concern. 

The final standards were released June 2, 2010.  Subsequently, all states hoping to receive RTTT funds in Round 2 were required to adopt those standard by August 2, 2010.  Which brings around to my original question:  Should Delaware adopt the common core standards?

From the perspective of states' rights, I'd say that any adoption would be yielding federally-protected control to the federal government in direct defiance of the ESEA.  It's a gray area.  The Obama administration could have mandated the common core standards, if they had definitively differentiated "standard" from "curriculum."  But they didn't; likely because the ESEA doesn't grant such authority.  It would have been an overstep.  Therefore, Obama charged the task to the governors, like Delaware's own Jack Markell.  The question that remains to be answered is this:  is it legal to require a state to adopt the standards in order to attain RTTT funding? Already discussion have occurred as to whether the feds can tie Title 1 funds to the adoption of the Common Core.  Is this an opening of the door for more erosion on states' rights? 

What's a state to do?  What's a state with abyssmally low standards and falling standardized test scores to do?  Fortunately, I don't have a vote on this one.  It lays at the feet of our Delaware State Board of Education.  I just have to live with the results.

I'll leave you with recommendations that Mathis identified in his report:

• 
  

  
  

  The NGA/CCSSO common core standards initiative should be continued, but only as a low-stakes advisory and assistance tool for states and local districts for the purposes of curriculum improvement, articulation and professional development.

  The NGA/CCSSO common core standards should be subjected to extensive validation, trials and subsequent revisions before implementation. During this time, states should be encouraged to carefully examine and experiment with broad-based school-evaluation systems.

  Given the current strengths and weaknesses in testing and measurement, policymakers should not implement high-stakes accountability systems where the assessments are inadequate for such purposes

Should we choose to follow them, it may make the air a bit easier to breathe...

From Edweek.com:

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Would you send your child to a "Forest Kindergarten?"

And if you would, I have a backyard for rent!

Preschools in Forests Take Root in the U.S.
Vashon Island, Wash.


When they're outside, the children in Erin Kenny's class don't head for cover if it rains or snows. They stay right where they are — in a private five-acre forest. It's their classroom.

They spend three hours a day, four days a week here, a free-flowing romp through cedar and Douglas fir on Vashon Island in Puget Sound.

The unique "forest kindergarten" at Cedarsong Nature School is among several that have opened in recent years in the U.S., part of movement that originated in Europe to get kids out from in front of televisions and into the natural world.

"American children do not spend much time outdoors anymore," Kenny says. "There's a growing need and an awareness on parents' part that their children really need to do more connecting with nature."

In addition to Kenny's, at least two other schools have been established: one in Portland, Ore., and another in Carbondale, Colo.

Kenny opened Cedarsong's doors in 2008, starting out with five children. She plans to expand the school to five days a week next year. She charges $100 a day, whether it's one day a week or three. Kenny says there's a growing waiting list.

The school is located in the quirky Seattle bedroom community kept artificially rural by the lack of roads, and county land-use policies.

Cedarsong is basically a camp. It has three cabins, one being a library, another for equipment and the last one for a compost bathroom equipped with child seats (although sometimes the kids prefer to just urinate in selected spots in the forest).

The camp also has trails and play spots, such as Fairyhouse Land, where there is a forest hut covered with ferns.


It also has tables to make mud cakes, buckets and rakes to scoop mud, a small drawer to keep the children's discoveries (fiddlehead ferns, feathers, lichen and insect-chewed leaves) and a spot for campfires. A plan for an outdoor kitchen is being drawn as well.

The kids munch on what the forest provides, calling leaf buds "forest candy."

For Kenny, the preschool is a culmination of years of working with children and a love for the outdoors. She used to be a lawyer, but was inspired to start her school after reading Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods.

In the book, Louv coined the phrase "nature-deficit disorder" to explain a lack of connection between the country's children and nature. He argues that the decrease in nature dwelling leads to a rise in childhood obesity, attention disorders and depression.

At such a young age, Kenny says, children shouldn't be taught complicated subjects. They shouldn't be force fed math or language. She says she's often asked what children learn at her school. Her reply is that these children are well versed in basic environmental science.

As time goes by, Kenny says, there will be more evidence that these schools are appropriate models for children.

Kenny says children should be left to explore by themselves. She and her assistant teacher use the children's natural curiosity as opportunities to teach. In her school, the children decide what they're going to do each day, not the teachers.

"They tend to retain the information better because they're actually touching and feeling and tasting the lessons," Kenny says.

One of the key lessons taught here however is not for the kids, but for the parents.

To be in this school, parents must know how to appropriately dress their children for all kinds of weather. That's particularly important in this part of Washington, where rain is nearly constant in the winter and showers and sun alternate seemingly minute to minute in the spring.

So, even in May, kids arrive with rain pants, rain coats, mitten, and gloves. If the weather heats up, the layers come off.

Mom Meghan Magonegil says she wasn't sure at first whether an all-outdoor school would work.

"Once we got here, I would pick Finn up and he'd be wet and muddy and smiling and happy and I knew it was perfect," she says of her son.

Since the school opened, only once have the students sought refuge in a small cabin because of the weather, Kenny says proudly. That day, the snow was too deep to walk around.

On a recent schoolday in May, the kids asked questions about leaves and bugs. They already knew which of these leaves were edible. They climbed trees and ran around the property. At one point, they decided to play music and, later in the day, to make cakes out of mud.

In 4-year-old Lorelei Fitterer's opinion, being outdoors is great, especially when it snows.

"Because I get to paint the snow and stick leaves in it, and I used to even taste it. It was so funny," she says.

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