Various South Dakota Tea Party folks (bothersomely anonymous on their website and Facebook page, so I can only assume they are South Dakotans) are raising fuss and feathers over the Common Core standards. I wouldn't mind if they got some traction: the Common Core standards do more to distract my teaching colleagues and my administrators from making your kids smarter than to help us improve our daily practical public service.
But when the opponents' complaints include the fact that the South Dakota Department of Education has changed its Common Core logo from a sort of Howard Johnson's blue-orange spirograph to a snappy red flame with eye-catching text, I can only shake my head.
If the Tea Partiers really want to challenge Common Core, they should focus on analyzing and refuting the propaganda offered by Common Core backers like Pam Haukaas, president of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota. Her May 8 column (part of an increasing flow of Common Core explications and defenses I'm seeing from South Dakota education officials, an apparent effort to counter the surging Glenn Beck karaoke against the standards) cloaks the Common Core standards in all sorts of glowing statements that are really backhanded insults to the work we teachers work hard to do independently of whatever bureaucratic distractions the powers in Pierre impose upon us.
Students won’t just memorize facts, but will be able to master increasingly difficult problems and text [Pam Haukaas, "What Is Common Core?" ASBSD: Open Forum, 2013.05.08].
This statement fails on three levels:
- It implies that we teachers are just making students memorize facts right now. That implication is wrong.
- In addition to the problem-solving and critical thinking that we teach regularly without Common Core, we do teach a fair amount of memorizing facts. What's wrong with memorizing some facts? For instance, on page 60 of my French 2 textbook, I give my students a list of sixteen French verbs that use être instead of avoir has their past tense helping verb. I don't need them to think critically about that; I need them to memorize that list so they can get on with building sentences, telling stories, and engaging in conversations.
- The Common Core standards don't magically make fact-memorization go away or make kids better at reading tougher texts. Good teachers will keep doing that, as we have been since before Common Core was born to recodify our professional practices.
As districts begin to implement these standards, professional development time will be required for teachers to become familiar with the standards and to collaborate with peers to design district appropriate curricula [Haukaas, 2013.05.08].
Translation for Tea Partiers: Your school district will spend time and your money pulling teachers away from your kids and your classrooms to spend time reinventing the pretty good curriculum wheels they already have.
The Common Core will focus on the student as learners with teachers teaching for understanding and mastery of core areas [Haukaas, 2013.05.08].
Focus on the student as learners—not only does that sentence lack number agreement (one student is multiple learners?), but it doesn't say anything new. Did we not focus on students as learners pre-Common Core? Hasn't learning always been our main enterprise? Don't we always teach for understanding? Haven't we already built our curricula around mastery of core areas? This isn't a brave new world forged by Common Core; this is the kind of fluff folks in education (including, sometimes, we teachers) start saying to ourselves when we have to make the latest, greatest education reform sound like some new and useful revolution.
No longer will a text be followed from page one simply plodding through until the end; teachers will use multiple resources so that students will experience a curriculum which has meaning as well as depth and rigor. Students will develop the ability to apply learned knowledge to solve new problems and think critically [Haukaas, 2013.05.08].
Again, the insulting implication is that teachers right now plod through their textbooks, and that Common Core standards will save your children from such dull incompetence. Au contraire: I get the distinct impression that the whole point of Common Core is to make curriculum more uniform across the state and across the country. Common Core is supposed to make it easier for children to move from school district to school district without discontinuities in their learning. That advantage accrues only if different school districts align the scope and sequence of their classes more closely to standards. Publishers will provide textbooks closely aligned to the standards, complete with recommendations for and links to multimedia resources to satisfy Common Core. To thus prove their fidelity to Common Core, teachers and administrators will stick even more closely to their new textbooks with the little tabs on each page proving exactly which standards we are teaching in each lesson.
See, Tea Partiers? That's how you tackle Common Core. Forget the logo; attack the logos.
I'm on the fence on this because, to be honest, I'm not familiar enough with Common Core Standards. On the service it seems to make sense but I understand where you are coming from Cory. My wife is a teacher but we haven't talked about it yet.
I have asked about CCS with people who are against it. The responses have been mainly that we don't want the governemnt intruding into our lives, wich I understand. But when I've asked specifically what they don't like about CCS I don't get a response. I've seen posts that show people are against it because they heard Glenn Beck on the Blaze. That alone tells me me I'm for CCS, but not quite yet.
Maybe some of your readers Cory who are against it will answer here on MTimes.
There you go again Cory. If you choose not to see the deception in the state changing it's logo, that's your choice. I know your reasons for disliking Common Core are different from the Tea Party or any conservative. Your reasons for disliking CC are a part of the reasons Glenn Beck or any conservative group dislikes CC. But instead of just simply bringing your unique perspective as a teacher to this debate, you choose to spew venom at people who agree with you about Common Core, throughout your great analysis of Pam Haukaas's column.
And Cory, you know who I am. I am not anonymous. I have sent letters to nearly every paper in the state that have my name on them. I have never been politically active outside of my home and family. But this issue is of great importance to me. I have screamed for 25 years about the indoctrination of public education. This is an issue that both the right and the left can come together on. I don't care about your other political beliefs. I thought you knew that. But if you choose to group me in with a political group, I am grateful that you have put me in with a group that stands for the founding principles of this country.
Owen, please go to sdagainstcommoncore.com and check out some of the links to learn about Common Core. One of the reasons you are not getting an answer from the anti-Common Core people is because the Common Core is not a simple set of standards. There are many things. I have a hard time doing a presentation in less than an hour. And most of all, I'm not asking you to take my word for how wrong Common Core is, please check it out for yourself. Make your own decision based on your research.
Mary Scheel-Buysse
South Dakotans Against Common Core
Glad to see your reasoned argument re CC. The biggest problem I see is that it drives a curriculum from the top (Federal Gov't) down instead of from the local school district level. CC portends a lowering of academic achievement. If you are not familiar with CC, here is a link that has all kinds of background and supporting information about its ill effects: http://bit.ly/11UUlg2
And Cory, do not hold the Tea Party responsible for my small post about if the state is willing to deceive us at that minute level, how else are they willing to deceive us. The Tea Party did not start that page or the website.
Mary Scheel-Buysse
FYI-The Sioux Falls School District is raising taxes 5.5%, a large part of it to pay for a brand new line item of $4.4 million for Chromebooks or iPads for ALL students. Common Core considered a driver in these laptop purchases - will help keep the stats needed to meet Common Core reporting requirements.
So, the result is not only is Common Core costing us as federal income tax payers, but also causing our local property taxes to increase. A 2fer for Big Government.
Stay on target, Mary. The logo is not a lie. It is not evidence of some grand deception.
But thank you for identifying yourself. Your identity is not made clear to any reader on the SDACC website. Owning the issue, posting by name, will lend more credibility to the protest and will help avoid too-casual conflation of the movement with other arch-conservative groups.
While I'm thinking of it, Mary, do you consider yourself a Tea Party member?
Isn't the Common Core program a big part of the ALEC education "model legislation"? I will have to check for sure, but I believe that it is.
Common Core does have a solid ALEC connection. Find the article called "Pearsonizing of the American Mind," by Diane Ravitch in Education Week, June 5, 2012. Pearson is the mega-sized publishing company that has cornered the market on most of the textbooks, testing materials, and teacher evaluations that align with the Common Core movement. There's an unmistakable profit motive going on here. And the whole thing is far more nefarious than most people realize. If this topic interests you, please inform yourselves.
Granny,
First, let me congratulate you on the selection of a great handle. It feels a bit wrong to argue with a "granny" who considers herself "blessed."
I must, however, take issue with this statement: "Your reasons for disliking CC are a part of the reasons Glenn Beck or any conservative group dislikes CC."
Glenn Beck and others of his ilk make it impossible for those of us who have deep misgivings about what the core will continue to do to education in South Dakota and the nation.
There's a big difference between worrying about Pearson taking over education and turning it into a for profit enterprise and conspiracy theories about a logo.
There's a huge difference between worrying that I will teach less literature under the Core and worrying about some shadowy UN mandate that I've heard some express.
There's a huge difference between worrying what implementing the Core will narrow curriculum and eliminate important arts and tech classes because they won't be tested and worrying about whether Glenn Beck will give it his dubious stamp of approval.
As more attacks come from people who create conspiracy theories that distract from the true issues, the chances increase that the core will be implemented.
Oh my. Well, I hold to my heart here. Cory's analysis of Pam Haukaas's column is the perfect example of exactly what I was hoping to be able to post on the web page and the FB page. Local analysis of the local issues. What South Dakotans are facing with the implementation of Common Core. I have shared from Cory before. We are a nonpartisan group of people. Both the Democrats and Republicans have brought our education system to the sad state it is in today. I work very hard to find information that does not degrade one party or the other. The partisan venom throughout this column, prevents me from doing that. Sad day for South Dakota.
Well, you gotta pick your battles. Heck, go ahead and just quote the excerpts that make clear the problems with Common Core.
Kal Lis's separation of Common Core from Glenn Beck shouting is quite sharp. But now if I add the anti-ALEC line Wayne and Robin raise to my Common Core opposition, will I, too make the Common Core argument too esoteric for most voters?
ALEC's position on Common Core seems carefully mixed:
—In Dec. 2011 ALEC's education committee adopted two resolutions, one requiring legislative approval of any Common Core implementation, another opposing federal imposition of any standards.
—But ALEC voted down an anti-Common Core resolution in November 2012, in part thanks to lobbying by Republican corporatist Jeb Bush.
—Longtime teacher Nancy Flanagan points out how Common Core fits ALEC's pro-corporate agenda by generating more business for test makers, consultants, researchers, etc.
—Here's the Ravitch article on Pearson. She mentions a connection between ALEC and a Pearson subsidiary.
—George Will says Common Core demonstrates nefarious government overreach.
—However, if ALEC does back Common Core as part of its privatization agenda, a Ravitch reader shows the core ideological problem Blessed Granny and her compatriots need to recognize: the real threat to our liberty is not socialism, but corporatism!
From everything we’ve seen “choice” is not the goal of these groups, it’s quite the opposite. The corporatist strategy is to convince the public to abandon traditional government services by offering a false “choice” in favor of their corporate counterparts. The choice is false, because political machinations are used to destroy the funding base for public services and the public’s faith in the ability of government to provide these services in order to drive the public to “choose” the corporatist vision. By undermining the government, corporatists like ALEC can then install their vision by claiming that the public demands a “choice” between the failed “socialist” government and the “competitive, efficient, effective free market”.
But the reality is not that at all. The reality is a corporate-controlled governmental behemoth that looks and functions much like the old Soviet government, with corrupt corporate and government apparatchiks leeching the vast wealth of the nation while the public suffers without any recourse [Ravitch, 2013.04.02].
There, Mary. How's that for non-venomous... or at least non-partisan? Can we still work together to beat a practically bad policy?
You're saying the article was about the logo change. It was only about the logo change at the top. Scrolling and reading more would have shown you that the real point being made was that CCS authors folded History/Social Science into Language Arts so as to not have to fight the same battle they lost in the 90s when they tried to "reform" education starting with altering true history facts. A certain German dictator, who shall not be named, did the same thing with the youth in his time. That didn't go so well.
Yes, the logic is the important thing, but so are the political ramifications. We cannot allow big government to change our history books to say something other than what actually happened.
Not naming Hitler does not exempt you from Godwin's Law. Invoking Hitler guarantees you will lose a public campaign against Common Core.
If the Tea Party and the Liberals cannot put aside their differences for this issue, Common Core is here to stay. Neither side can take it out alone. Kal, I'm taking from your comment that you teach. You and Cory have the unique perspective about CC I am looking for. Kal, if you would care to send me an email about your perspective on CC, from a teacher's point of view, that would be great. Cory, if you will email me the part of the story that pertains to Pam Haukaas's column, I will post it as an email that I received from Cory Allen Heidelberger, Teacher in Spearfish, SD. I will not link back to this story in any way. . You have the right to post anything you want, even if it's not true. The Tea Party had nothing to do with my small post. I also have the right to not post. I know Cory has my email, but for all the others who would like to send me email, here it is: mary_s_b@hotmail.com
And Cory, I am for exposing all the evils of Common Core, ALEC included.
Mary, you have the text. Quote it, link it, make the main point. You can even preface the quote and link with text like this: "Cory Heidelberger is a blogger and a public school teacher. As a blogger, he's often wrong. But as a teacher who grapples with Common Core while trying to do the real work of teaching our kids, he's dead right...."