ACHIEVE's Common Core Implementation Guide

Pay particular attention to the 15% guideline beginning on page 22. Further, if you feel like you keep hearing the same talking points every time you speak with a public official, pay attention to the communications and outreach section beginning on page 29.

So Grateful...

It's the middle of the night and of course I can't sleep.  Never-mind, that our County Convention is in the morning and I'm supposed to get up and speak for a resolution effectively rejecting the Common Core State Standards.  I should be sleeping...  but I can't.

I am just thinking about how grateful I am that more and more people are taking notice of the concerns that so many have been trying to expose for such a long time.  Thank you Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin for thrusting this issue into the National scene.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.  My husband and children thank you too.

I'd never heard of Common Core until the spring of 2011 when I was in one of my children's parent/teacher conferences and was handed a pamphlet alerting me to the fact that our school would be adopting the new standards along with 44 other states.  What?  Where was I when this happened?  How did I miss the vote?  or discussion?  You see, I have 7 children and at that time had 5 in the public school system.  I volunteered regularly in the classroom and happily went about serving in my church and in the children's classroom.  Surely, I would have heard something.  It's not like I was an un-involved parent.

I asked a few questions and didn't really get any answers that satisfied me because it was apparent the teacher didn't really know anything either.  I left and looked over the pamphlet.  (Oh ~ how I wish I'd kept that pamphlet.  Little did I know my life would shortly be changed forever)  [Writing that sentence brings tears to my eyes because of the truthfulness of it - I can never go back to the naive and uninformed citizen I was at that time in my life.]

When I read the pamphlet, I thought, this is complete socialism.  How can you take an entire nation, considering all the many demographics, and put them all on the same page without hurting the top and bottoms students?  Anyway, I spent the next 6 months asking all of my friends and teachers about the Common Core.  I searched the internet and could only find glowing praises of the standards.  How could I be the only one that felt this way?

One fateful day I ran into an old neighbor at the store, who I knew was political, and asked if she knew anything about these standards.  She did AND she had some of the same concerns.  FINALLY!  I was getting somewhere.  She told me she was trying to get someone to come to our town and speak about the Common Core and she would let me know when that was.

I went home and tried to find some of the information we'd talked about and ran into walls again.  I still didn't see anyone else talking about the Common Core on the internet except for singing it's praises.  I continued to talk and talk and talk.  Nothing from anyone except from a dear friend down the street and former teacher.  She listened to my concerns and wanted to find out more too.

About 4 months later I got a call from the neighbor I'd run into at the store.  They were having a meeting!  After the meeting I felt like shouting from the rooftops.  EVERYONE needed to know this information.  I went home and didn't really know what to do.  A few weeks later I went to another meeting and finally direction came.

I had been able to process more information and finally had a starting point.  It had been almost a year since I started worrying about this and trying to figure out where to find more information.

I didn't mean to get up in the middle of the night and type up a long drawn out story.  I will skip ahead and get to the heart of the matter.   -- WARNING -- I'm gonna get religious on you.

I went home and started getting direction from above like I've NEVER gotten in my life.

First, I started reading articles but wasn't satisfied with taking the author's opinion.  I looked at their sources and have since spent more time on official Governmental sites than I care to admit.

I continually felt guided with thoughts and promptings.

I was awoken in the middle of the night on many, many occasions with promptings of places to go research, finding documents that were new and helped shed light on how my state got into this mess.

I was awoken one night with the thought to go and check my son's ACT plan tests.  I stayed in bed and started researching on my phone but couldn't find anything so I finally got up and went to the computer.  I then found all this information showing me that ACT was aligned to the Common Core.  The web just kept getting bigger and bigger.

Three nights in a row, I woke up with the phrase "Connect the dots" running through my head.  Shortly after that, I woke up one Sunday morning at 5 AM (I'm sooo not a morning person) with that phrase again and everything I'd been researching started pouring into my mind.  I had a legal pad next to the bed and I wrote down pages and pages of information.  It was information I had researched but hadn't been able to fit together.

The promptings continued:

Crazy things, like the thought, "you need to pull up the Smarter Balanced contract and go talk to the Governor"  WHAT?  ME?  Uh -- no!  Who goes up and talks to the Governor and demands a meeting?  Certainly not me, miss-stay-clear-of-any-and-all-contention-girl.  But next thing I know, I find myself pulling up the contract and walking up to the Governor at a Meet the candidate event and asking him about this contract with his signature.  "I didn't sign anything", he said.  "Really?"  because here it is.  Next thing I know I'm sitting in the Governor's office with a binder full of information to hand over to him.

Or the thought, "you need to get on the agenda at the State School Board meeting".  Um - no I am not a speaker and have no desire to go give a speech to the State Board of Education.  Where do I find myself?  That's right, giving a speech to the school board and then getting pulled into a room with the head of our gifted and talented program and STEM program telling me how wrong I was and how great the Common core is.  Then the next week being told by my Superintendent that I'm the mom the "state is watching".  Seriously?

You moms should hold a press conference.  You should survey all the candidates to find their position.  You should fly in experts and hold a rally.  You should hold a lunch for all the legislators to teach them and on and on.  I was introduced to many others around the state that were trying to fight this.  It was a collaborative effort.

I've had many other experiences that are too sacred to me to share in this forum, but my point to you is I cannot deny the Spiritual experiences I've had and the direct guidance I've felt.  I just can't.  There are simply too many of them and I would be denying God's hand in my journey if I did.

I'm extremely thankful to my Father in Heaven for these very strong feelings and guidance because I couldn't do this without Divine help.  The Savior has given me the strength to carry on.  Remember, I'm miss-stay-clear-of-any-and-all-contention-girl.  This journey has not been easy, I can't lie.  The toll it has taken my house (don't even get me started - just imagine laundry piles for 9 people - oh and dishes!), the alienation from friends and neighbors, the marginalization from school officials, being labeled as "sadly mis-informed" and "living in fear" and the time away from my family has been a very real challenge but we have been buoyed up and strengthened and for that I am eternally grateful.

Pray for those trying to fight this, pray for the children, pray for this Country!  Pray and then stand up and fight for your freedoms.  There is no other way to get our Country back on track.

~Alisa

Education Without Representation:

Education Without Representation:  a response to claims of the Utah State School Board’s Common Core flier  

 

The Utah State Board of Education has circulated a flier which is posted on the official website. http://www.schools.utah.gov/core/DOCS/coreStandardsPamphlet.aspx

 

None of the claims of the flier have been backed up with references. This response will be backed up with references to verifiable sources and legally binding documents.

 

• The flier says that Utah is "free to change the Utah Core Standards at any time,"
• and calls the following truth a myth: "Adoption of these new Core Standards threatens the ability of parents, teachers and local school districts to control curriculum." These half-truths are extremely misleading.

FACT: It is true that Utah can change the current Utah Core. But Utah is not free to change the common CCSS standards. And very soon, the CCSS standards will be all we’ll teach. The CCSS standards are the only standards the common test is being written to. The CCSS standards are the only standards that are truly common to all Common Core states. Unique state standards are meaningless in the context of the tests. This has been verified by WestEd, the test maker.http://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/what-is-wested-and-why-should-you-care/

When teachers realize that merit pay and student performance depend on how well teachers teach the CCSS, and not on how well they teach the Utah Core, they will abandon the state core and focus on teaching to the CCSS-based test. Since there is no possibility for Utah to make changes to CCSS, we have given up our educational system if we take the common test. This is education without representation. Already there are significant differences between the Utah Core and the CCSS (such as, we allow lots of classic literature and CCSS does not; it favors slashing literature in favor of infotexts in English classes). When additional wrongheaded changes come to the CCSS standards, under Common Core, Utah will be unable to do anything about it. CCSS has no amendment process.

FACT: The CCSS standards amount to education without representation. They cannot be amended by us, yet they are sure to change over time. A U.S.O.E. lawyer was asked, "Why is there no amendment process for the CCSS standards?" She did not claim that there was one. Instead, she replied: "Why would there need to be? The whole point is to be common." (Email received April 2012 by C. Swasey from C. Lear)

 

• The flier states that this is a myth: "Utah adopted nationalized education standards that come with federal strings attached.”

FACT:   Utah's Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Department of Education (via the SBAC tests; link below) presents so many federal strings, it's more like federal rope around Utah's neck.

 

The Cooperative Agreement mandates synchronization of testing arms and testing, mandates giving status updates and written reports and phone conferences with the federal branch and it demands that “across consortia,” member states provide data “on an ongoing basis” for perusal by the federal government. This federal control is, according to G.E.P.A. laws and the U.S. Constitution, an illegal encroachment by the federal government on our state.http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-assessment/sbac-cooperative-agreement.pdf

 

FACT: The Federal government paid for the promotion of Common Core. It paid other groups to do what it constitutionally forbiddewn to do. Each group that worked to develop the standards and/or the test were federally funded and each remains under compliance regulations of federal grants. For two examples, PARCC (a testing consortium) was funded through a four-year, $185 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Education to delivering a K-12 assessment system.http://www.achieve.org/achieve-names-three-directors. WestED, the other consortium test writer for SBAC, is funded by the executive branch, including the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Justice.http://www.wested.org/cs/we/print/docs/we/fund.htm. There are many more examples of federal funding and federal promotion of this supposedly state-led initative if you just do a little digging.

 

FACT: To exit the SBAC, a state must get federal approval and the permission of a majority of consortium states.  http://www.sendbigfiles.com/9893a0d64ef55d966b7780a034259c63/  (page 297). 

 

FACT:  When South Carolina recently made moves to sever ties with the Common Core Initiative, Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, began to make angry, unsubstatiated attacks, insulting South Carolina.   http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/statement-us-secretary-education-arne-duncan-1   Duncan had similarly insulted Texas educators on national television and had made incorrect statements about Texas education, when that state refused to join Common Core.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2089503,00.html

 

• The flier states that this is a myth: “Utah taxpayers will have to pay more money to implement the new Utah Core Standards.” 

FACT: No cost analysis has been done by Utah. (Ask U.S.O.E. to see one.)

FACT: Other states cited high implementation costs as reasons they rejected the Common Core Initiative. The Texas Education Agency estimated implementing the Common Core standards in the state would result in professional development costs of $60 million for the state and approximately $500 million for local school districts, resulting in a total professional development cost of $560 million. http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/pdf/120222_CCSSICost.pdf (p. 15) Also, Virginia’s State School Board cited both educational and financial reasons for rejecting Common Core. http://www.doe.virginia.gov/news/news_releases/2010/jun16.pdf

FACT: California is asking for tax hikes right now to pay for Common Core Implementation. http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/california-wants-a-tax-hike-to-pay-for-common-core/

FACT: South Carolina’s Governor Haley is right now trying to escape Common Core’s federal and financial entanglements. http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/sc-gov-nikki-haley-backs-bill-to-block-common-core-standards/

 

• The flier states that “The Utah Core Standards were created, like those in 44 other states, to address the problem of low expectations.”

This is a half-truth. While some dedicated Utahns have been working to address the problem of low expectations for years, the Common Core Initiative was hastily adopted for financial reasons. Utah agreed to join the Common Core and the SBAC long before the common standards had even been written or released, or any cost analysis or legal analysis had taken place. Utah joined Common Core and the SBAC to get more eligibility points in the points-based “Race to the Top” grant application. While Utah didn’t win the grant money, it stayed tied to Common Core and the SBAC testing consortium afterwards. http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase1-applications/utah.pdf

 

 

• The flier states that this is a myth:  "Political leaders and education experts oppose the Common Core State Standards."

FACT:  Stanford Professor Michael Kirst testified, among other things, that it is unrealistic to call four year, two year, and vocational school preparation equal college readiness preparation: http://collegepuzzle.stanford.edu/?p=466

FACT:  Professor Sandra Stotsky who served on the CC Validation Committee refused to sign off on the standards as authentic English preparation for college:http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2011/04/sandra-stotsky-on-the-mediocrity-of-the-common-core-ela-standards/

FACT: Mathematician Ze’ev Wurman has testified to the South Carolina Legislature that the math standards are insufficient college preparation:http://pioneerinstitute.org/pdf/120216_Testimony_Stergios_SC.pdf and http://truthinamericaneducation.com/tag/zeev-wurman/

• The flier states inaccurately states: “Most thoughtful people on this issue have lined up in favor of the Common Core State Standards.”

FACT: Governor Herbert is in the middle of a legal, educational and financial review of the standards right now. He affirmed to Heber City teachers and citizens last month that he is willing to review the standards and the political complications of the Common Core Initiative and to meet again with the teachers and citizens together with his legal team.

FACT: The majority of gubernatorial candidates and candidates for senate and house representation at the Republican convention have stated that they are directly opposed to the Common Core Initiative.  This fact is verifiable via the document published for the 2012 Republican convention by Alisa Ellis, on which each candidate was asked to state whether he/she was for, against, or still learning, about the Common Core Initiative. 

 

FACT:  In less than two weeks, more than 1,500 Utah teachers, parents, taxpayers and students have signed the petition at  http://utahnsagainstcommoncore.com without any advertising or marketing efforts, just by word of mouth.

 

FACT:   There is a significant group of Utah educators who have not and will not speak out in this forum, although they do have serious concerns about the Common Core.  There is a perception that to speak against the Common Core Initiative is unacceptable or disloyal. This spiral of silence spins from the fear educators have of losing their jobs if they express what they really see. Some educators quietly and confidentially reveal this to others who boldly oppose to Common Core. 

 

Utah educators might respond well to an anonyomously administered survey, so that educators might feel safer in sharing multicolored rather than all rose colored, experiences from this first year of Common Core Implementation, without having to identify themselves.  Educators who have had a good experience with this first year of implementation of Common Core dare speak out.  But Utah educators who do speak out boldly against common core, if you pay close attention, are those who are on maternity leave or who have sources of income other than educating, for financial support, and are thus unafraid of losing jobs. 

 

This final point is obviously difficult to substantiate, but ought to be studied and either verified or proven false, by the Utah State School Board. 

 

Christel Swasey

Heber City

Parent and Teacher