Common Core Considered "Radioactive" And "Toxic" These Days

The AFT leadership may have decided that the Common Core still holds "promise" but much of the rest of America is looking to bury the standards in the same place they put nuclear waste:

The National Governors Association (NGA) owns the copyright – along with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) – to the Common Core State Standards. When the nationalized standards are mentioned these days, however, many governors would rather change the subject.

In fact, the NGA, holding summer meetings in Nashville, had not even placed the controversial standards on its official agenda, a sign, as the Wall Street Journal states, “the bipartisan idea has become a political minefield.”

Much to the surprise of many Washington, D.C., pundits, the standards, and even the name itself, “Common Core,” have “become, in a sense, radioactive,” said Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R), according to the Associated Press.

...

 Indeed, for Republicans, the issue of the Common Core has also been described by former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) as “toxic,” and has served to separate the GOP establishment, supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, from constitutional conservatives who oppose the federal government’s hand in pushing Common Core through President Obama’s Race to the Top (RttT) stimulus program and the promise of relief from federal No Child Left Behind restrictions.

Huckabee used to be a big supporter of CCSS.

Now he's against them.

Bobby Jindal used to be a big supporter of CCSS.

Now he's fighting to pull his state of Louisiana out of using both the standards and the tests associated with them.

Just last January, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin defended the CCSS at a NGA meeting.

Last month, she signed a bill pulling her state out of using the standards, a move that a court backed up today as constitutional.

Even the pro-testing, pro-CCSS Chris Christie is reacting to the changed politics around the Core and the ancillary tests that go with it - he announced a review of the so-called effectiveness of the CCSS tests in his state of New Jersey.

Jeb Bush still loves the standards, as does Arne Duncan, Barack Obama, Randi Weingarten, Michael Mulgrew, Bill Gates and a host of editorial boards around the country.

But when you see all these governors (or former governors like Huckabee) who used to support the standards who are running from them as fast as they can, touting their opposition, that's when you know that the politics around the CCSS battle have really shifted.

Maybe Weingarten and Mulgrew think they've done their part to save the standards after engineering a pro-CCSS resolution at the AFT convention last weekend.

But it's pretty clear from what's happening outside of the Beltway that the trajectory in the CCSS battle is not positive for the CCSS.

That's what happens when a reform becomes "radioactive."

Cuomo Tweaks APPR, Insists New York Remains A "Leader" In Holding Teachers Accountable

Capital Confidential details the program bill Cuomo released today, along with explanatory memo, that tweaks the APPR teacher evaluation system:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s program bill tweaking teachers evaluations related to the Common Core rollout has been released. The legislation would for two years protect teachers or principals rated “ineffective” or “developing” if that score was due to poor performances on the Common Core-related tests for English and math in grades 3-8.

The legislation covers evaluations for the just-ended school year and the one that begins in the fall.

The current evaluation system, set by Cuomo in 2012, derives 20 percent of a teacher’s grade on state test scores and another 20 percent from a circumscribed list of locally set standards.

In short: Any teacher receiving those poor ratings would have a second calculation performed on their score to determine if that below-the-line assessment was due to Common Core tests.

Teachers whose poor scores were the result of non-Common Core tests, however, would still face professional consequences.

“The bill does not include a moratorium or a delay,” the memo states in has warned that New York’s Race to the Top funding could be imperiled by watered-down teacher evaluations.

State of Politics reports:

In an accompanying bill memo, the governor’s office stresses the New York will remain a “leader” nationally in rating the effectiveness of teachers in the classrooms.

NYSUT President Magee claimed on Wednesday that this tweak to APPR is just the first step in a total rewrite of the teacher evaluation laws in New York State:

NYSUT President Karen Magee said Wednesday that negotiators may be closing in a last-minute deal to remove student test scores from the state's teacher-evaluation formula.

"If we remove the scores, there is a hole (in the formula)," Magee told The Journal News. "So we are looking at some sort of recalculation. We are putting the puzzle together, so there are a lot of moving pieces."

Magee said representatives from NYSUT and the governor's office, with input from state legislative leaders, are trying to mold an agreement that would cover this school year and next. Then NYSUT would be committed to seeing a larger rewriting of the evaluation system, known as the Annual Professional Performance Review.

"This is the first step toward an APPR overhaul going forward," Magee said. "We're looking to ensure we get those test scores out of there."

From what was released today, it doesn't sound like Sheriff Andy Cuomo agrees with that statement from Magee.

I'm cynical enough to know that she knows he won't go any further than the tweak we got today.

Quite frankly, I think she's posturing for members, not sending any messages to the governor or the Legislature.

In any case, looks like a minor tweak to APPR for two years is going to happen.

Doesn't seem like much, but given how many states are dropping out of Common Core and the PARCC tests that go with it, who knows what the education landscape is going to look like in two years?

Two former supporters of the Core, Mary Fallin in Oklahoma and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, both pulled their states out of the Core in recent weeks.

If enough pressure is put on Sheriff Andy over the Core and his APPR evaluation nonsense that mandates so much of the extra testing students are subjected to, he might fold like Fallin and Jindal too.