ROPE Report Short; Jenni and Michael Talk Testing

Michael and Jenni talk about her appearance on the Sinclair Broadcasting/KOKH-25 special, Crisis In The Classroom. Sinclair made a clip of Jenni saying that "No Child Left Behind left every kid behind" and how the advent of testing ushered in the era of "teaching to the test" which left no time for the broad learning all kids should have.

If we're really going to educate kids, we need to worry more about curricula than testing.

Does Our State Want A Museum, Or Education For Oklahoma Children?

In 2002, George W. Bush took Bill Clinton's reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (created by Lyndon Banes Johnson in 1964), the Improving America's Schools Act, added a little something called AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) and renamed it No Child Left Behind.  This graphic is wonderful in showing that, although the federal Department of Education has no Constitutional authority to act within states in any capacity, states have spent FIFTY YEARS kowtowing to the federal government on education policy,

all the while American educational performance has plummeted, never to recover.

In December of last year, Governor Mary Fallin issued Executive Order (2014-40) that said, in part,

...in order to safeguard against any threat of federal intrusion

Oklahoma would use Oklahomans to create Oklahoma public education standards and tests.

It is apparent Oklahoma has 'federal intrusion' in Oklahoma education today - No Child Left Behind and Oklahoma's No Child Left Behind Waiver.

NCLB under George W. Bush was simply a re-gift to the American people of Bill Clinton's ESEA with one twist - the addition of something called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).  Bush's NCLB said that by 2014, ALL children would be proficient in Math and English as decided by federally mandated yearly testing that would be used to create a 'grade card' for schools.  If schools were labeled failing under AYP (it is estimated that 90% of Oklahoma schools would be thus labeled), and/or if states weren't 'proficient' in Math and English by 2014, schools would be forced to take 20%  of their Title 1 funds (created by the first ESEA) and re-direct it to the federally mandated categories of supplemental educational services (such as reading programs) and school choice efforts.

In Oklahoma, our State Department of Education has said this figure would amount to $27,198 million dollars plus $3.8 million dollars for additional staff to administer the red tape associated with becoming a 'failure'.

We are also told by the OSDE that if we don't test students as required in grades 3-8 and 10-12, we will lose ALL federal funds from the USDE totaling $361,396,105 so the loss of the Waiver only amounts to 8% of all the federal funds we currently take.

Currently, many in our state legislature are concerned about losing our NCLB Waiver and providing the extra money necessary to perform federally mandated services that Oklahoma has already said - through our Governor - we don't recognize.

Why not use the state Unclaimed Property Funds designated to complete the Indian Cultural Center (40 million) to offset any loss of flexibility in spending Title 1 funding? 

Though Oklahomans have been clearly reticent to complete what has become another improperly funded project, the Governor has pushed for its completion.  Despite what Oklahomans want, Mary Fallin wants BOTH Common Core and the Indian Cultural Center.

Clearly she should prioritize CHILDREN over a museum.

Our Governor also needs to follow her own Executive Order and tell the federal government to take a long walk off a short pier. In fact, our Governor and legislature should be on the same page on this issue.  What in would happen if we lost the waiver?  What would happen if we just stopped following NCLB in the first place?

1.  Texas has an account (the Permanent School Fund) they use to offset the need for federal funds, allowing them (when they desire to) hold the federal government at bay and stand on the 10th Amendment. Oklahoma can and should work toward doing the same - now.  The unclaimed property money could seed that account.
2.  Washington State has lost their waiver over TLE.  In a recent blog post, Washington's Policy Center (similar in nature to Oklahoma's OCPA) has said this opens the door to another program that could allow for better implementation of school choice.  How can the argument be Oklahoma will have greater federal control if we throw off federal control?
3.  Indiana is at risk of losing its waiver now that they have attempted to redesign their 'College and Career Ready' standards.  So are Kansas, Arizona and Oregon, according to EdWeek's analysis.  How can Common Core be state led then? Doesn't that invalidate that entire argument?
4.  Gosh, if parents decided they were going to finally take back their parental rights and stop subjecting their kids to unnecessary and punitive testing, our state would break NCLB altogether.  What does that say about federal intrusion into Oklahoma education?
5. The federal government only has the powers the STATES allot it.  Why is it that when we bring up this fact with many legislators, there is eye-rolling (ostensibly, "nobody cares about that", "that's just silly") and/or a discussion about all the federal money we could lose for other projects like roads - again, all unconstitutional.
6.  Oklahoma is already adjusting our NCLB waiver for other issues, if we must pretend the Constitution doesn't exist, we can always amend/adjust the Waiver further.
7.  Much anecdotal evidence exists to indicate that Title 1 monies are not spent as required.  Maybe a loss of Oklahoma's waiver would actually provide desperately needed financial accountability.

It is apparent; NCLB is not appropriate for states, schools, parents, or kids. Why would Oklahoma continue to attempt to support NCLB when there are ways to circumvent it and our Governor indicates her disdain for federal involvement?  These are important questions to ask that should be clearly delineated election items in November.

Open Letter to Oklahoma Senators Brian Bingman and John Ford

Dear Senator Bingman and Senator Ford,

I am writing you today because as a former public school teacher (and now a teacher in my own home school) I understand you desire high academic standards for Oklahoma's students.  I understand you desire Oklahoma to be economically competitive.  I understand you desire students stay in school, graduate and go on to be successful in college or a career.  I also understand you to be Republicans.

Republicans are a group of individuals that come together because of a generally shared ideology.  Historically, Republicans have been the party of smaller government and greater self-discipline; economic freedom and lower taxes; individuality over the collective; and state control over federal control.

Republicans have a platform that delineates these shared ideologies at both the state and national levels.  Oklahoma's platform is very specific regarding Education, outlining various methods by which we choose to educate our children.  Among these are;

1. We support curricula that promotes national sovereignty and opposes one-world government and global citizenship.
2. We oppose all un-funded mandates.
3. We believe a public school should protect the privacy of any personal information or data collected by the school on a student or his family and we oppose data mining by a public school.
4. The Federal Department of Education should be eliminated and defunded and its functions transferred to the States. We oppose the imposition of national curricula, testing and teacher certification, Common Core State Standards, and federally mandated programs such as “No Child Left Behind” or “Race to the Top, and PARCC testing.

AND

• We oppose participation by Oklahoma in the Common Core State Standards because it transfers control of local schools, student data and curricula from the local school boards.

So strongly do we as Republicans believe in this last point as documented in our platform, Republican Committee Men and Women from all 50 states came together at their annual meeting and voted for a Resolution repudiating the Common Core State Standards at the national level (April 2013).  Not only was this issue addressed at the national level last spring, but this winter, the State Republican Committee voted for a Resolution repudiating the Common Core State Standards (January 2014).

Quite apparently, the Common Core State Standards are an issue of exceptional interest to Republicans.

Why?  Let's look at the Common Core in direct relation to the pieces of the platform transcribed here, by number.

1.  Please note; on the Common Core State Standards website;

 

Individuals are not only going to compete globally, but whole communities will as well...
 

Quite apparently, American education is bad.  We must look to other countries to tell us how to improve our educational standards, even though no other country in the world has America's unique form of government or level of individual freedom.

2.  The Common Core State Standards were nothing if not an unfunded mandate.  

Agreed to as early as 2009 when Oklahoma took State Fiscal Stabilization Funds (SFSF), Common Core entered state law in 2010 in order to make more competitive our application to the federal government for a Race to the Top grant.  Oklahoma received no money from our RtTT application.  Common Core was not removed from law.  Consequently, every RtTT-related legislative item was left unfunded.

3.  From the very beginning, the Common Core initiative has gone hand in hand with the collection of individual student data.   

Shawn Bay, CEO of eScholar, made this fact very clear at last years' Datapalooza - a conference sponsored by the White House and the US Department of Education in Washington, D.C. - when he made the statement that, "Common Core is the glue that actually ties everything (student data collection) together.”  In fact, Mr. Bay created his company in order to use data to 'manage' student data and track children from school to career and college using the Common Core.  There is simply no way to do this without individual student data - tracking individual students from cradle to career, as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is familiar with exclaiming.  All one has to do today, is search the words "education" and "datamining" and pages full of articles and papers documenting the use of data collection as an education tool by our federal government.

Though legislators and educators alike have been told that the unprecedented collection of data on school children is to prevent drop outs by following children longitudinally across their education arc, proponents fail to explain how interwoven into the fabric of educational data collection are President Obama's pollsters of the last election, Nate Silver and Dan Wagner - the men who created a  database the likes of which Maxine Waters has referred to as

“...a kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life...[which is] going to be very, very powerful.”

4.   Not only does the Republican party repudiate Common Core, but federal involvement in education as well.

While Governor Fallin's Executive Order addresses federal government intrusion into public education, her statements are equivalent to closing the barn door after the horses have run out.  Why?  Because in 2009, under Governor Brad Henry, the state took State Fiscal Stabilization Funds from the Obama Administration.  Inside the application for SFSF funds, Governor Henry agreed to 

Page 98 of the America Competes Act speaks specifically to what this "Improving Standards Assurance" is.  This is what ROPE calls the Four Pillars Of Education Reform; A State Longitudinal Database, College and Career Ready Standards (Common Core), Turning Around Low Performing Schools and Teacher Accountability Measures.

Essentially, Oklahoma became slave to the federal government for their education 'reform' package for taking millions of dollars in ARRA funds, a great chunk of which simply disappeared.

But that was just the beginning of the Federal strings to Common Core.  After the ARRA funds, there came the Race to the Top (RtTT) application.  Though Oklahoma got no money from that application, we did get Common Core cemented in state law (SB2033) because Oklahoma got 20 points on their RtTT application for providing "A description of the legal process in the State for adopting standards, and the State’s plan, current progress, and time frame for adoption." (pg 53)

Following RtTT, there was the No Child Left Behind Waiver.  Again, in order to get the waiver, Oklahoma had to agree (again) to the Four Pillars of education reform.
Not to be rude, but please, tell me again how Common Core is NOT a federal dictate.  Please tell me again how there are no federal strings, how these standards are 'state led' or how Governor Fallin's EO does anything to actually cut the federal strings to Common Core and Oklahoma's other education 'reforms'.

In closing, it is not too late to stop Common Core in Oklahoma, but any or all of the seven bills currently on file this legislative session must be heard.  Yes, it is true - many districts have spent millions of dollars on Common Core implementation.  This situation isn't untenable.  If Common Core is removed from law (and the testing that supports it put on moratorium until a better alternative than the current, expensive, Common Core aligned tests are decided upon), it would be possible for districts to truly exhibit the local control so many Oklahomans covet.  Some schools would most assuredly move forward with their implementation of Common Core, but others, seeking to please and appease their district parents, could scrap it and find something that worked better for that school, the students, the parents and the district.

Please allow any or all of these bills a hearing in committee and permit them to be moved to the Senate floor. One of the beauties of America's truly unique government is that Representatives, chosen by the people, have the voice of the people in their seat of government.  The people can't have a voice, if their representatives do not give them one by blocking bills from committees hence further discussion and vote.  Please allow the Oklahoma State Senate to represent its people.

Thank you for your time and patience

Blessings,
Jenni White
President
Restore Oklahoma Public Education



IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS FOR REFERENCE:

America Competes Act:  http://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PL-110-69.pdf

Oklahoma's SFSF Application:  http://www2.ed.gov/programs/statestabilization/stateapps/ok.pdf

Oklahoma's No Child Left Behind Waiver Application:  http://ok.gov/sde/sites/ok.gov.sde/files/ESEA-FlexAmend8-12.pdf

Oklahoma's Race to The Top Application:  http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase1-applications/oklahoma.pdf

Governor Fallin's Executive Order 2013-40:  http://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PL-110-69.pdf

More on the Core or Yet Again, Common Core is Not OK!

There seems to be a compunction to continue dissecting the reasons why Common Core is not OK.  This morning, I chose to tackle a few:

STANDARDS DO NOT DRIVE CURRICULA

Yes and no.

Yes.  Teachers are free to pick and choose curricula with the Common Core (just as they were with PASS) for use in their classrooms.

No.  When you have a state test over standards that now determine whether or not a local  school will be managed by the State Department of Education should it fall below a D or F grade on an unproven grading scale - you must be very careful to use specific curricula aligned with the specific standards.  Therefore, there is no way to get around the fact that standards do drive curricula to some extent.  Not only that, but because Common Core is now the law of the land for so many states, curricula (especially in math) has become extremely homogeneous.  Economics drives that issue.  Booksellers can't compete in the marketplace if their books are too very different than what teachers expect to teach to the standards.  There's a great letter written by a book publisher who lives in Oklahoma that can explain this and you can find his written testimony to the Common Core Interim Study here http://www.scribd.com/doc/181696903/Written-Testimony-of-Andrew-Pudewa-to-Common-Core-Interim-OK.

EDUCATION CAN BE MANAGED AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL

The Founders of this country meant for education to be localized.  In fact, I understand that in order for new states to be admitted to the union after the original 13, incoming states had to present a plan for the education of their citizens.  Students in different Oklahoma counties/districts may not have been all on the same educational path in the past.  Why should they have been, or be so now?  Ada is not Tulsa; Oklahoma City is not Woodward.  District taxpayers support their schools.  School board members are elected by taxpayers from their district/community.  Board members have an obligation - through those they serve - to create schools that reflect the values and needs of that community.  That is not to say we should not have state standards to model or even a yearly state test to assess student progress, but those mechanics are not the micromanagement of education we are seeing today with the Common Core.


ARE COMMON CORE STANDARDS NECESSARY?


It is interesting to note that when the Fordham Institute - a very pro-Common Core organization - chose to examine each state's standards against the Common Core, Oklahoma was given an excellent grade for their existing standards (http://standards.educationgadfly.net/).

So why would we need Common Core?  The answer lies in No Child Left Behind.  This FEDERAL law, forced states who wanted to continue to keep their Title funding (Titles 1-9) to accept the fact that they would have 100% of their state's students proficient (scoring 60 or above) in Mathematics and English/LA by 2014.

I often say this pie-in-the-sky edict that could only have originated with a very far out of touch federal government, only works when riding on a unicorn across a rainbow bridge.  Yet, it was made federal law.  Consequently, states began to dumb down their state tests (which stemmed from their state standards already in place) in order for students to more easily obtain a higher score.  This discrepancy finally came to light (ostensibly one possibility Superintendent Garrett chose not to run again) and upset lawmakers and parents, in Oklahoma and across the nation, alike.  Instead of realizing the real problem lay with a ridiculous, onerous edict in NCLB, a group of elite bureaucrats and businessmen stepped in to say they had the answer to failing schools all across the country.  But how could they?  Is Massachusetts really like Kansas?  What about Florida and Idaho?

Because government tends to favor those with the most money and those with the most money are able to message the loudest, the Common Core was sold to lawmakers as the greatest opportunity for students since the pencil.  That didn't make it so, it simply gave this group a louder voice. 

BUT OKLAHOMANS WERE INCLUDED IN THE WRITING OF THE STANDARDS

By now, many anti-Common Core organizations have shown that not only did the Common Core Standards writers not even have educational backgrounds (save one - Jason Zimba - in math), they did not even utilize comments from the committee they formed to help write the Standards, though we are told that even Oklahomans had a voice in writing the standards.  If several nationally known math and English professors (Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram) weren't heard, how were Oklahomans?

THE COMMON CORE ARE NOT FEDERAL IN NATURE

No, the Common Core were NOT federal in nature.  They were created by using private, dues-paid organizations unresponsive to the people to create and push the standards out.  However, the Obama Administration has taken the standards  (along with 3 other educational 'reform' ideas - here under Program Description http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html) and made them necessity for states to get State Fiscal Stabilization Funds, Race to the Top funding and the whole series of No Child Left Behind Waivers.  It would seem historically apparent (although completely incompatible with the US Constitution) that whatever Washington values, states become coerced in some way to adopt.  Consequently, this makes Common Core an historically unprecedented take over of education at the local level, generally incompatible with our Constitution.

So, to sum up, there are certainly good things about the Common Core - including many of the people involved - unfortunately, it is not appropriate for use in America today and certainly not Oklahoma.



*(See our previous blog for more citations and further reading http://restoreoklahomapubliceducation.blogspot.com/2013/12/rope-response-to-gov-fallins-executive.html)

Common Core - An Exercise in Government Expansion

I wrote the following editorial two years ago now, but I feel it still applies. No matter how the Oklahoma Department of Education likes to spin it - Common Core was NOT local at its inception, and will NEVER serve taxpayers and parents at a local level.  It is a construct of business leaders and the nation's governors who felt that schools were creating a crisis in education for the nation simply because business leaders did not want to pay for on the job training - they wanted STATES to pay for it for them in public/private partnership deals and tax credits.  These people did not believe - nor will they ever believe - that parents and communities can solve education issues on their own.  They will always believe they know better than those being served by the institutions they desire to usurp from local control and run for themselves.  To them, taxpayers, parents and education officials are the little people - too stooopid to do it themselves. Sadly, many of us have decided this is the case and simply abdicate our personal and parental authority to the government now on a regular basis - acting like the babies the elites believe we are.

The longer we go into this Common Core exercise, the more we realize how right Thomas Jefferson was when he penned, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have."  And so in that spirit...

A number of recent Oklahoman editorials have disparaged those NOT backing  ACE tests and the A-F grading system.  Apparently, those of us begging to differ with these complicated, federally-derived, accountability systems want dumbed down standards that will graduate scores of unemployable public school students all across Oklahoma. 

Not to dodge credit, but that trend likely began in 1965 when the first 31 page, 605 section Elementary and Secondary Education Act (now No Child Left Behind – NCLB) unleashed a tidal wave of federal regulations upon local schools and established the ‘pay for play’ scheme that keeps states towing the line.  Today’s NCLB is 9,601 sections and an untold number of actual printed pages.

Could unchecked growth of federal control over public education be why NAEP reading scores for 17-year olds have increased only one point since 1971 and NAEP math scores for 17-year-olds have increased only two points – over 41 years?  Why have SAT scores in the verbal category dropped 25 points since 1972 and math scores increased by only one?

According to Federal Compliance Works Against Education Policy Goals, “…fiscal and administrative requirements often lead to expensive and time-consuming compliance processes that are not related to improving student achievement or school success.”  Lindsay Burke reports in The Dead Hand of Education Reform that, “…while the feds provided just 7% of education funding, they accounted for 41% of the paperwork burden imposed on the states…”

Santa Fe South High School in Oklahoma City personified this thesis recently when they submitted their NCLB waiver (A-F) paperwork to the SDE only to find out that, while their test scores were fine, they were placed on the failing school list because their paperwork wasn’t filled out properly. 

The day the A-F rules disapproval passed the Administrative Rules and Government Oversight Committee, Governor Fallin issued a press release supporting the rules and the SDE touted their receipt of nearly 7 million dollars in School Improvement Grants to be used for “turning around” schools graded as ‘failing’ under the NCLB-prescribed A-F grading system.  

My son, in first grade at our local public elementary, doesn’t know his basic math facts or parts of speech, but has had week long units on Global Warming and Rainforest Ecology between his 2 days a week of Art (his is an Arts Integration school).  Recently, his teacher told me she just “doesn’t have time to teach [math facts] to mastery” because she has to teach to the test – the results of which will soon determine whether she keeps her job.

Vilifying those of us who believe education is a local issue best dealt with by parents, district school boards and education officials rather than nameless faceless bureaucrats at the federal – or even state level – will not change the fact that a layered top down bureaucracy will never solve governance problems like a locality.  Government closest to the people (parents) is always best because it is nearest the needs of the people (students/parents) being served and paying for the services (parents).