The Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce and SB707: Are They Misinformed, Or Perpetuating A Falsehood?

Recently, I was sent an email from the State Chamber of Commerce that contained the following several paragraphs:

If you want a test that matters, it matters what you test. Specifically, if you want to make sure that Oklahoma high school students are ready for a career or college when they graduate, use a test that colleges know, understand and look at as part of their entry requirements. That was the point behind

SB 707 (Ford/Denney) which passed in the Senate, but was amended this week in a House committee. The original version of the bill would have allowed the State Department of Education to reduce the number of end of instruction tests and to make those tests relevant. But it was amended to prevent the state from using something like the ACT which a majority of students already take.

Our agenda calls for making sure testing is aligned with college and career readiness. What other reason is there to have end of instruction tests? If your test gives no indication that a student is prepared for life after high school then it is a waste of time and money. The original version of SB 707 keeps control of standards with the state as lawmakers intended with HB 3399 passed last year. The original version of SB 707 had wide support in the education community. It's important for students, parents and the business community that the original language be restored.The language to which the email's author is referring is what we've explained numerous times will disconnect Oklahoma standards from Oklahoma tests so that what is taught does not have to be tested.

Let's parse the State Chamber's argument here:

1. First of all, the State Chamber argues that Oklahoma should be using "a test that colleges know, understand and look at as part of their entry requirements". This language is euphemistic for ACT. Yes, some colleges use the ACT (or SAT, or a combination of both SAT/ACT) to decide admissions, but they also use grade point average to a larger degree than either test as it is a better predictor of college success than the ACT (OU and OSU say as much on their freshman admission requirements page). If the Chamber's argument is college success, then the ACT is just a portion of what is expected for college readiness so why go to battle over this issue?
2. The Chamber argues here that SB707 was amended to prevent the state from using ACT by putting back in the words "corresponding student assessments" after the words, "The subject matter standards and". (Don't forget, SB707 changed the Common Core repeal bill from last year (HB3399) to unhook the standards from the tests by removing "corresponding student assessments"). The Chamber felt that 'unhooking' the tests from the standards was necessary to allow the state to use the ACT. Apparently, they didn't do their homework. They've already made this argument about a different part of HB3399 last year while fighting the repeal and that was proven to be a false assertion. This year, I understand several legislators consulted Capitol legal staff for their 'read' of the testing language and both the Senate and House legal staff concluded that the original language from HB3399 does NOT prevent the state from using the ACT. Did the Chamber do any research on this issue before they began to support this bill? What about the original senate author? It would appear not.
3. The State Chamber maintains in this email that their agenda calls for creating tests that are aligned with college and career readiness. Didn't we just go through the process of proving Oklahoma's educational standards as college ready? Yes. It was determined - in order for the state to get back its coveted NCLB waiver, that Oklahoma's previous-to-the-Common-Core-standards - PASS - met the also-coveted College and Career Ready label. PASS has been certified College and Career Ready, therefore any tests created from PASS would hold students to "College and Career Ready" knowledge. The ACT then, is a red herring and there is no reason to change SB707.
4. As though they're not informed enough to understand the real argument here, the State Chamber goes on to indicate that SB707 "keeps control of the standards with state lawmakers as intended with HB3399". Not to be rude, but so what? The Oklahoma Constitution holds the veracity of this statement - not HB3399. We found that out after the State Board of Education sued the state over HB3399 and the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers have the final say on Oklahoma educational standards. This is another red herring offered up by the Chamber to solicit support from parents by misleading them. I find that distasteful because it's another fallicy - appeal to emotion.
5. They end their email with yet another form of fallacious reasoning by pleading that this bill had 'widespread community support'. It certainly has no support in the community of grassroots education activists who worked for years to try and rid the state of the Common Core State Standards. These people are still engaged and active and understand that their work is in jeopardy if HB3399 is allowed to be changed to unhook standards from tests. But then, according to their constant pushback against our efforts, it would seem they don't care about our informed opinions.

In the end, it is important to really read information provided by ANY of the organizations who pushed back against the repeal of the Common Core to discern their agenda and the voracity of their statements. This particular email from the Oklahoma Chamber is full of fallacious reasoning and incorrect statements. Please research and determine this to be true and examine with a critical eye ANY information regarding your child's education. Only parents have their children's best interest at heart and those doesn't follow a legislative agenda.

Is Common Core Really Over In Oklahoma?

Some time ago I created the meme above based on the notion we've been fed by the Chambers of Commerce that Common Core is necessary in order to train kids for jobs.  Since the standards were forced onto the national scene through Obama's Race to the Top application, the rallying cry has been that business in America is suffering because we are not properly educating our children to be workers.  We must have an educated workforce in order to stimulate our economy.

Once Common Core was repealed in Oklahoma, and the process created by which new standards will be established, Oklahoma is now officially free of Common Core.  Or are we?

The short answer is NO.  Common Core is the name for a set of educational standards predicated on the notion that children must be "College and Career Ready".  Sadly, this prevailing thought has been steeped through nearly every pore of the business machine through both the Chamber of Commerce and the National Governor's Association.  The standards may now be in Davy Jone's locker, but the idea behind them is not.

Take Governor Fallin's recent Oklahoma Now column, "Education Beyond High School is the “New Minimum” for Success in Today’s Economy”.  Here, she makes the case that the state should drive education in order to secure a better future for individuals when she says,

Solving this problem, however, (of “preparing our citizens to succeed in a more competitive economy”) requires state-level action. It requires a commitment to reform. Above all, it demands recognition that the status quo is no longer adequately serving Oklahoma students in today’s competitive, global job market.

It seems apparent from our Governor’s perspective that the state determines the best course for Oklahoma’s students.

In fact, she closes by saying,

My job as governor is to push forward, to demand more, and to work with teachers, parents, and administrators to ensure our students graduate high school ready to continue their education and become college and career ready. Nothing is more important to the individual prosperity of our students or the continued prosperity of our state.  

I very much disagree with her assessment of her job.  Her job is NOT to demand, it’s a parent’s job to demand.  It’s not her job to ‘ensure’ Oklahoma’s students do anything – it’s the parent’s job to direct the education of their children.  In fact, if you've been a parent, you know you can’t ENSURE anything about your children’s future – all you can do is the best you can do and pray.

Recently, I was in Enid speaking with the Sons and Daughters of Liberty – one of my favorite groups in the state.  A man attended the meeting and began to ask very pointed questions about the course of education in Oklahoma.  Sadly, he quite apparently believed it the state’s job to provide accountability for education.  In his opinion, unless we test public education students rigorously, Oklahoma will continue to suffer poor educational outcomes.

I think the only way to describe the disjointedness of this thought process is to share a comment I made to our Facebook page the other day on just this subject.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Those of us that pay taxes to support public schools are being manipulated by a growing chambercrat/statist cadre who care nothing for students excepting their ability to become employable and drive the economic engine that keeps them at the top of the food chain. If we’re not wise, we’ll soon be asked to genuflect and kiss their rings. I’m not talking entitlement – no 99%’er philosophy here – I’m talking about individual liberty and the fact that the more government grows and the more fingers it has in our lives, the less liberty we have as individuals . School reform should be local, individual and parent-driven – not predicated on automaton-generating sameness tidied up with a red bow to sucker parents into believing their children should be educated by the state solely to get a job when they graduate. True education elevates the individual and provides the foundation for a free society. Today’s education ‘reform’ is the exact opposite.

So what is my definition of education?  This is the definition I provided on my application to serve on one of Oklahoma’s new standards writingcommittees when asked to define College-, Career- and Citizen-Readiness.

Students ready to tackle the challenges of the world are the product of a well-rounded education in a school that provides an environment in which every child is responsible for his or her actions. Students should study a variety of broad, rich subjects such as world history, music, art and classic literature to expand their minds and ignite the desire for learning; however learning isn’t predicated simply upon coursework.

The creation of productive, capable individuals ready to enter the world in whatever capacity they desire requires a mixture of education and expectation. Schools must impart knowledge to students, but also the mechanics of personal responsibility.

Students not taught to take responsibility for their learning, perceive education as a job – a rote mechanical effort done becomes someone else wants it done. When students are allowed to move forward in their education without meeting the requirements of courses as prescribed by the teacher and administration, the student learns that knowledge isn’t important – that ‘school’ is a game to manipulate to their own end.

When students are allowed to behave against expectations without prescription and delivery of a reasonable, identifiable punishment for those behaviors, students are provided no framework for authority. Without a framework for authority, there is no trust. Without trust, students are unable to see the value of education in their lives and learning cannot occur.

Oklahoma can create the best set of standards in the world, but until it is understood that education is a mixture of education and expectation – and follow through on that understanding – Oklahoma will continue to see poor educational outcomes. 

Here’s how the NGA defines College and Career readiness:

A college- and career-ready student is an individual that is ready to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing, academic college courses and in workforce training programs.  College refers to two- and four-year postsecondary schools.  Workforce training programs pertain to careers that offer competitive, livable salaries above the poverty line; offer opportunities for career advancement; and are in a growing or sustainable industry.

*National Governors Association, “Common Core State Standards Initiative: Standards Setting Criteria” (Washington, D.C.: 2009).

With which definition do you most agree?

Made in the USA? Why Common Core Standards Will Never Produce A Stronger America

Since 2010, the Chamber of Commerce, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governor's Association (all private, dues-paid organizations - all who owe some debt of gratitude to the Bill Gates Foundation for helping them to fund their efforts to shove Common Core down the throats of American students and parents) have told us that America MUST have every student on the same educational page utilizing the Common Core State Standards in order to produce college and career ready Americans.  America must use Common Core in order to graduate students from high school.   America must have high school graduates become college graduates because American companies will be unable to fill job openings from a pool of any other than college and career ready graduates.  American students not college and/or career ready will lie impoverished in the street with neither a job nor career.

This idea of nationalized standards intertwined with college and career readiness has been proposed at many different times across American history really, but not so fully as when Bill Clinton became president and used friend Marc Tucker's (president of the National Center on Education and the Economy) seminal work, Tough Choices Or Tough Times, as the basis for his administration's education and economic policy.

First, a vision of the kind of national — not federal — human resources development system the nation could have. This is interwoven with a new approach to governing that should inform that vision. What is essential is that we create a seamless web of opportunities, to develop one's skills that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone — young and old, poor and rich, worker and full-time student. It needs to be a system driven by client needs (not agency regulations or the needs of the organization providing the services), guided by clear standards that define the stages of the system for the people who progress through it, and regulated on the basis of outcomes that providers produce for their clients, not inputs into the system.

This idea is silly of course.  Without either college or career ready national standards, America was exceeding every country in the world in nearly every area possible - including putting men on the moon - until 1964 and LBJ's great Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 

I have attempted to refute this silliness since 2010, however a recent interview with Mike Rowe (creator and director of the recently-ended Discovery show, Dirty Jobs), gave me the impetus I needed to meet these charges head on.

For nine years, Mike Rowe traveled across the United States working various manual and skilled labor jobs (at the request of viewers) while recording his efforts for the show.  You could say that Mike has actually made studying 'jobs' his vocation and he speaks eloquently and intelligently about the issue. 

In the interview, he asks why it is that we as Americans are asking students to leave high school and attend college, where they inevitably become indebted to study a vocation for which they may never even be able to find a job that will allow them to repay their indebtedness.

“We’re lending money we don’t have, to kids who will never be able to pay it back, for jobs that no longer exist. That’s crazy, right? That’s what we’ve been doing for the last forty years.”

He also explains that today, there is a plethora of skilled trades open and in demand. 

"In fact, there are 3 million jobs out there (in the US) that companies are having a hard time filling."

Of these, only 8-12% require a college degree.

Additionally, a recent interview with John Ratzenberger (Cheers), describes his reasoning for wanting to create a new series called, "Made in America"..."We're running out of people who know how to make things. The average age of someone who knows how to actually make something in manufacturing is 58 years old."

Goodness.  It seems to me as though neither JOBS nor CAREERS are the problem here.

So, what is the problem?  Why would we be sold a bill of goods telling Americans that we must have COMMON standards by which to educate our children for college and a career?

Well, I think it might have something to do with the fact that we tax many businesses at such an exorbitant rate, many can make better profit by using cheaper labor and materials from overseas, so overseas they go - taking their jobs with them.

How about the fact that for years, powerful labor unions have destroyed business after business (look at the American steel industry) as CEO's - too fearful of a work stoppage and their all-important bottom line - cave in to union demands of more and higher wages and pensions than can even be supported by the returns it generates.  

What about the fact that we simply don't teach the basics in public grammar school anymore.  Goodness, we don't even call it 'grammar' school anymore because we rarely teach grammar to young children anymore - it's passe' - it's not as exciting or stimulating as allowing young children to experiment with spelling and word usage in a non-graded journal of their own creation.  We don't teach kids how to sit still and copy letters, or sit still and write cursive, or, well heck, SIT STILL.  After all, in our world of creativity and repudiation of all that is boring, why in the world would we want to foster skills that train children to be patient and still and quiet?

Then there's the post WWII era mentality of, "our kids will have better than us", which gave rise to a generation of kids that believed they deserved to leave college and enter the workforce behind a desk with a six figure salary.  A generation, which itself, spawned a generation with an entitlement load of even greater toxicity level.  Today, many young people can't be bothered to be at work on time or respond to the needs of customers or bosses because work ethic has taken a backseat to the instant gratification afforded by everything in their lives, from fast food to personal communication.

Face it:  many kids today don't WANT to have a job in a warehouse - even if that job would more than sustain them.  This is viewed as 'grunt' work by our current coddled and entitled generation who has been told they 'deserve' everything from a big screen TV to phones and cars.

Yes, Marc Tucker and his ilk have done their job.  They have made "dirty jobs" a thought as unwelcome as the loss of an iPhone.  They have turned America into an amorphous, squeamish, bloated, government-dependent nightmare from which those of us who value "work" and all that can provide in life from money to wisdom can't awake.

So no Virginia, common national standards are not solution to the problems this country has with college or career - WORK is.

Ahhhh....The Joy of Sameness

My friend Betty Peters, state school board member in Alabama, sent me this video this morning.  The video is from Madison City, Alabama extolling the virtues of their adoption of the Common Core State Standards.  Oh please watch it, it's only 6 something minutes.  Then, see if I'm just way off base on my commentary below.

Okay...humor me here...if this is such a great idea, why, at 2:09 on the video do you see the following on the 'blackboard', 

“In small groups take two to three minutes to brainstorm a lot of rumors you have heard and/or “burning questions that you hear about CCS.”

Why do we have to debunk rumors about standards to put them into practice?

 

At 2:20 listen to all the 'teams' Madison Ciy has/is having to train to prepare teachers and students for the standards. 

Why? If these standards are so great, shouldn't they be common sense to trained teachers?  Shouldn't teachers simply know how to teach standards that should be 'common' to all children in the course of their education?

Why do districts have to pay to teach teachers to teach all over again? 

Not only that, but every school has their own plan for rolling the Common Core out. How are they "common" then? How are schools all on the same page? How will they all take the same tests?  How in the world do you get a number of schools in a district all with individual numbers of teachers supposedly teaching the exact same thing at the exact same time.  Wow.  The odds of that are something akin to putting watch parts in a watch, shaking it and having it turn into a working watch!

Madison City has had to contract with Learning Focused - a private company - to train all Madison City teachers to 'roll out', 'unpack' and 'unwrap' these standards. I wonder how much that cost? Learning Focused has a huge variety of things the district can purchase to help 'roll out', 'unpack' and 'unwrap' these standards...

At 4:03 it is interesting to note that as the woman is explaining how wonderful the Common Core State Standards are, there is NEVER a time she breaks with the given vocabulary of teaching students what they need to 

"know, understand, and do "after you [teachers] 'unwrap' and 'unpack' the standards. 

Really? 

About the 'assessments'...We call them tests - assessments make JUDGEMENTS about someone...is that what we're trying to do here?  Judge children?

Well...the 'assessments' have to be changed because, 

"You can't have knowledge recall questions when you're trying to teach something at the application level." 

Really. You can teach a child to think by GIVING THEM A TEST - or assessing them into knowledge? What education model says that - anywhere? Ever? 

"You really have to think about that problem based learning so that kids are applying the content." 

Bells should be going off here because none of this makes any sense other than in the realm of, 

"how many education buzzwords can I get in one sentence so that I can sound like I know what I'm talking about?" 

Maybe parents and taxpayers don't like the Common Core because there's so much talking over one's head!  It all seems so covered under the phrase,

"Baffle them with bull#$%"

At 5:07. Madison expects their students to be 'doers'. 

This is constructivist/progressive teaching. It's what ROPE has always said about Common Core! It is Constructivist at heart. 

Really think about this...how can you expect children to be self directed or teach one another important concepts and master methods of learning when many young kids can't even put their shirts on the right way without instruction? 

If children are going to be 'doers' and teach one another, why the HECK are we paying teachers? Let's just let children mill around in a gym for a day with one or two supervising 'wardens' and call that education! It would sure be a heck of a lot cheaper than all this tripe!

What is "college and career ready" and "21st Century standards" and "life ready"? What do these terms mean?  What is all this nonsense?  Did the Greatest Generation have to have be "college and career ready" for application of "21st Century Standards" in order to be "life ready"?  If not, how then did they become the Greatest Generation?

My favorite comment comes at 5:50. 

"[Teachers] if you don't like what we're doing here, get out. We'll find someone to replace you." 

Wow! That's friendly! So, 

"If you don't like it, lump it!"

is the new Common Core implementation cheer leading cry? 

If you're a teacher and you aren't passionate about turning all our schools into little homogeneity factories, scrap your teaching certificate and get out of Madison City, Alabama. 

Fortunately, our instructor here closes using every CCSS buzzword ever invented in an effort to make sure she has gotten everyone fired up about the standards.

If you don't see the problems here, I don't know how to make it plainer other than this blog posted here yesterday by Diane Ravitch, "How to Evaluate a Dentist".  I guess if you don't see it after that - GET OUT and I'll find someone who does to REPLACE YOU.