The Common Core Retreat

From the Wall Street Journal:

Five years into the biggest transformation of U.S. public education in recent history, Common Core is far from common. Though 45 states initially adopted the shared academic standards in English and math, seven have since repealed or amended them. Among the remaining 38, big disparities remain in what and how students are taught, the materials and technology they use, the preparation of teachers and the tests they are given. A dozen more states are considering revising or abandoning Common Core.

One reason is that Common Core became a hypercharged political issue, with grass-roots movements pressing elected leaders to back off. Some conservatives saw the shared standards as a federal intrusion into state matters, in part because the Obama administration provided grant funding. Some liberals and conservatives decried what they saw as excessive testing and convoluted teaching materials. The standards are a hot topic in the Republican presidential race. Last month, Barack Obama recommended limiting the amount of class time students spend on testing, saying excessive testing “takes the joy out of teaching and learning.”

But politics isn’t the only reason for the turmoil. Many school districts discovered they didn’t have enough money to do all they needed to do. Some also found that meeting deadlines to implement the standards was nearly impossible.

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Common Core advocates hoped to make standards uniform—and to raise them across the board. Their goals were to afford students a comparable education no matter where they were, to cultivate critical thinking rather than memorization, to better prepare students for college and careers, and to enable educators to use uniform year-end tests to compare achievement. They wanted to give the tests on computers to allow more complex questions and to better analyze results.

But after a burst of momentum and a significant investment of money and time, the movement for commonality is in disarray.

Some states, including South Carolina, Indiana and Florida, have either amended or replaced Common Core standards. Others, including Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana, New Jersey and North Carolina, are in the process of changing or reviewing them. A total of 21 states have withdrawn from two groups formed to develop common tests, making it difficult to compare results.

The issue has become so politicized that some backers have stopped using the name.

Education reformers decided they would try and implement everything all at once - new standards, new tests tied to those standards, new teacher evaluations tied to the new tests tied to the new standards.

The idea was, if we implement this all at once, it will be up and running before anybody can stop us.

Except it's not quite working out that way.

Read the whole WSJ piece - it's a good overview of what has gone wrong with the Common Core Dream and what continues to go wrong with it.

Common Core Shill Group Trots Out Bill Bennett To Defend Common Core

From the Wall Street Journal:

A group that supports Common Core is launching a two-week television ad buy in Iowa, the state that hosts the first presidential nominating contests, in an effort to counter a backlash from conservative Republicans against the national academic standards.

The new television ad by the Collaborative for Student Success features Bill Bennett,  U.S. education secretary under former President Ronald Reagan. “High standards are worth fighting for,” he says in the spot starting Monday. “That’s why so many conservatives are taking a fresh look at Common Core.”

This strategy - to sell Common Core as "conservative" to the Republican base was introduced earlier this year:

With Common Core set to be one of the political flashpoints in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and with it a topic at the upcoming CPAC conference (a Thursday panel is entitled "Common Core: Rotten to the Core"), conservative defenders of Common Core briefed reporters on Wednesday to begin pushing back against critics. 

Karen Nussle, executive director of Collaborative for Student Success - and wife of former GOP Rep. and Bush OMB Director Jim Nussle - said the Common Core are K thru 12 standards in math and English developed by the states. They aren't CURRICULUM standards, she maintained. 

Nussle also said that despite all of the opposition to Common Core, only one state out of the 45 that adopted the standards - Oklahoma - has repealed that support. 

And she adds that only another six Republican governors - 2016ers Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal, plus Arizona's Doug Ducey, Maine's Paul LePage, Mississippi's Phil Bryant, and South Carolina's Nikki Haley - oppose Common Core. All other GOP governors support it. And former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is one of its biggest champions. 

Opponents of Common Core, Nussle said, "are pretty much the political outliers."

Core supporters think if they can rinse the words "Barack Obama" from the public perception of Common Core, they can bring conservatives back on board in support of the standards:

Why the opposition to Common Core? "It comes down to two words - Barack Obama. This is what this is about," added Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas Fordham Institute. While the Common Core standards were created by the nation's governors, the Obama administration tied its "Race to the Top" education money to the standards - and hence the association with Obama.

Thus this kind of video from the Collaborative for Student Success that came before the Bennett video (which you can see here):




It's interesting that at least two of the Republicans in that "Cnservatives for the Core" video from 2013 are now opposed to the Core (Huckabee and Jindal.)

It remains to be seen if Core supporters can turn conservatives back onto the Core as the Obama administration sunsets.

Not sure running a video with Bill Bennett hawking the Core is going to do that.

UPDATE: Turns out Huckabee, who used to be for the Core before he turned against it, is kinda for the Core again.

Farleigh Dickinson Poll Finds Only 17% Of Americans Support Common Core

The support trajectory for Common Core drops dramatically:

As millions of students across the country prepare to take the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) exam or the Smarter Balanced Assessment, the most recent national survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind finds that the educational reform behind these standardized tests remains a mystery to many Americans and faces widespread disapproval.

 Currently, 40 percent of Americans say they disapprove of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), often referred to as just the “Common Core,” with 42 percent who are unsure and 17 percent who favor the standards. The goal of the Core is to establish national standards for learning so that all students, regardless of where they live, leave high school with the skills necessary to enter college or the labor force.

Reformers will use this as pushback:

The survey finds that most Americans say that they don’t know very much about the Common Core standards, and they seem to be right: misconceptions about the content of the standards are widespread – almost half of Americans (44%) think that sex education are part of them – and are strongly connected with opposition to them.

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A lack of information is evident from misconceptions about what topics are included in the standards. In the survey, Americans were also asked if four specific topics – sexual education, global warming, evolution, and the American Revolution – are included in the Common Core. In reality, none of these are part of the Common Core standards, which only include topics in math and reading. Still, two-thirds of Americans say that at least one of these is in the standards, with 37 percent saying that three or four of them are.

But who's at fault for the "lack of information" around Common Core?

Deformers thought they could shove through dramatic eduction reform without the public being clued in - new standards, new tests, teacher evaluations tied to those tests, all in some way connected to the stimulus package, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind waivers - so if there are widespread misconceptions around the Common Core, well, then next time don't shove all this stuff through at once without public discussion and buy-in beforehand.

Elites think they know best but one thing they don't seem to know anything about is how the rest of us respond when shit gets shoved down our throats.

Quite frankly, I don't care if the Core is killed for the right reasons or the wrong reasons anymore.

I just want to see the Core killed.

And with so many people against Common Core, so few in favor and Common Core proponents seemingly unable to persuade the "Don't Know Enough" categories despite all the money they throw into their propaganda, I'd have to say the Common Core is going to die an early death.

Alas, like so many of the zombie lies that pervade education reform (schools are in crisis, teachers are lazy, merit pay works), the Core may re-emerge later on with a new name and new branding.

Common Core Headlines Spell Trouble For Common Core

Common Core advocates are trying to save Common Core from an untimely death but recent news headlines suggest they continue to lose that battle:

Panel starts reviewing Common Core standards in NC

Missouri leaders named in Common Core lawsuit: Foes seek to stop payments to test-making consortium

Green Bay Catholic Diocese Backs Away from Common Core

Quarrel over Common Core: A Pennsylvania Primer 

Common Core US History standards attacked in SC

Not enough play for kindergartners under Common Core?

Last week, a TV production company that had done some propaganda work for the NYSED, the Rhode Island Education Department and ENGAGENY, released a You Tube video ad meant to defend Common Core.

The story about the ad from Politico:

WHEN GRANDPA TAKES ON GATES: Common Core proponents have been saying for a while that they’re going to shake up their PR and one novel approach is about to hit social media. It’s a two-minute video that mocks Bill Gates as one of the “rich computer guys in the nerdy glasses” (who frankly is “not making the best computers any more”) and ends with the decidedly modest tagline, “Common Core. It’s Better Than You’ve Heard.” The video follows a gruff senior as he grills his grandson’s seventh-grade teacher. “You’re not going to make him read stuff just because Bill Gates said so, are you?” he asks. Smiling, the teacher reassures him.

— The ad comes from the media firm Six One Seven Studios, based in a Boston suburb. Executive Producer Bryan Roberts said the firm self-funded the video after learning about the Common Core debate through work with clients including the New York and Rhode Island state education departments and EngageNY, a website that provides curriculum resources to New York teachers. “Too many of the pro-Common Core videos were PowerPoints and talking heads,” Roberts said. “So we put out this video to help folks see the power of telling a fun but simple story with real people.” He has more planned. Watch: http://bit.ly/1Bq4mST

This video showing a "simple story with real people" that was meant to defend the Common Core was itself put on the defense when critics pointed out how ham-handed and awful it was:

The video features a Cartoon Old Guy, who's insulting on so many levels. He's dismissive of the kid. He is wrapped up in his own stupid stories. He can't remember the teacher's name (aging brain function-- hilarious). He's ethnic. He's an ignorant war vet of some war-- he looks like a stereotypical WWII vet, but that would make him ninety-ish. Could be Korea, which would make him seventy-ish. He thinks Gates runs Apple (har!) and he measures the value of his grandson's ability to "figure" in how it can calculate money. Oh, and he plays the lottery.

He's worried about the Common Core stuff he's heard about on TV, and I'm wondering where on TV he's hearing bad things about the Core, because Core proponents have that media pretty well locked up.

The message here? Common Core critics are uninformed fools. Note that the nice teacher lady does not actually offer a single piece of fact-based data about the Core to contradict Old Bat-brained Granddad. She doesn't have to (though she might have mention that Hector will have to put a stop to figuring out math problems in his head). He's so obviously a dope that we are meant to simply discount his complaints because, well, he's a dope. He is truly the most wondrous animatronic straw grampaw ever.

I'd like to save the video for posterity's sake, but it was pulled from the Internet and the "Common Core" account that posted the video on You Tube was deleted.

So much for that defense of Common Core.

Earlier in the month, former Secretary of Education William Bennett wrote a pro-Common Core defense in the Wall Street Journal that was widely rebutted by Common Core critics and skeptics for doing exactly what Bennett claimed Common Core critics do in their criticism of Common Core - misleading people:

This morning, former Reagan administration education secretary Bill Bennett took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to make the “conservative” case for the Common Core. In that effort, he actually made a great case for Core opponents, illustrating the contradictions of the Core while furnishing several examples of all-too-frequent Core spin. And he did it, ironically, while implying that Core opponents have “badly and sometimes mischievously muddled” the Core story.

Read the rest of Neil McCluskey's piece, which takes apart every point in Bennett's WSJ column.

Rick Hess also did a good job of refuting the Bennett piece.

Bennett was further put on the defensive when he it was revealed he was paid to "write" the piece:

While in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday, former Reagan Secretary of Education Bill Bennett put out what was described as the “Conservative Case for Common Core,” he admitted he is paid by a lobbying firm for his continued work in support of the controversial standards.

 Bennett’s admission, reported by Politico, that the public relations, lobbying, and business consulting firm DCI Group paid him to write the op-ed perhaps explains why it doesn’t sound much like the writing of the Reagan appointee who agreed with his president that there was no real necessity for a federal Department of Education. 

So we have two "defenses" of Common Core that were themselves put on the defensive this past week and a half and a whole host of headlines that show more trouble's 'a-coming for Common Core.

Given the inept pushback Core advocates, proponents and supporters have engaged in so far, I can't imagine the trajectory for the Core is going to turn around any time soon.

We keep hearing about how the pro-Core side is going to get serious in their defense of the Core, with serious dollars in pro-Core ads and other propaganda.

We keep hearing how the pro-Core side is going to stop talking down to people, stop mocking Core opponents, critics and skeptics.

We keep hearing how the pro-Core side is going to try and connect emotionally with parents and students to win them over to the Core.

But so far what we see are ham-handed attempts by Core proponents to defend the Core like the You Tube ad that's been pulled and the column Bennett got paid to put his name to.

We see continued obfuscation of the issues around the Core, particularly in the "the Core isn't a curriculum" defense, which is false since the testing that comes with the Core and the Obama administration NCLB waivers absolutely prescribes what must be taught in schools.

And we see continued mocking of critics from the pro-Core side, as best embodied in the grandpa in the pulled pro-Core You Tube video.

Good times if you are a Core skeptic, critic or opponent.

Common Core On Life Support

Here's the second poll this week showing the public has turned against the Common Core:

While more people know what the Common Core State Standards are than last year, a majority of them oppose the standards, according to the 46^th edition of the PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools.

Overall, the wide-ranging survey found, 81 percent of those polled said they had heard about the common standards, compared with 38 percent last year. However, 60 percent oppose the standards, generally because they believe the standards will limit the flexibility that teachers have to teach what they think is best. Last year's poll did not specifically ask respondents whether or not they supported the standards. 

The poll also highlighted a partisan split in opinion on the common core: 76 percent of Republicans  and 60 percent of independents said they oppose the standards. Democrats were the only category of respondents polled in which a majority said they support the standards, 53 percent in favor compared to 38 percent opposed. 

If the best Common Core supporters can get is 53%-38% from Dems, Common Core is finished.

Core supporters can roll out their propaganda tour all they want - the trajectory for Core support is clear.

The more the public becomes familiar with Common Core, the more teachers are forced to work under the standards, the less both those groups support the Core.

Yesterday's Education Next poll found teacher support for the Core plummeted in just one year, from 76% supporting the Core last year to just 46% supporting the Core this year.

In addition, opposition to the Core among teachers jumped from 12% to 40%.

So in one year, Education Next, a reform-friendly outfit that frames their polls to get reform-friendly results, saw support for the Core among teachers go from 76%-12% to 46%-40%.

Think about that for a minute.

Last year, teachers supported the Core 76%-12% according to the Education Next poll.

This year, teachers support the Core 46%-40%.

What's the likelihood that trajectory gets turned around?

Not good:

"Given the increased media coverage this year, we were not surprised that an overwhelming majority of Americans have heard about the Common Core State Standards, but we were surprised by the level of opposition," William Bushaw, CEO of PDK International and co-director of the poll, said on a call with press Tuesday. "Supporters of the standards, and education in particular, face a growing challenge in explaining why they believe the standards are best in practice."

That the Core and the tests that go with them got rolled out before the whole thing was completely baked has not helped, of course.

That Core supporters decided to link teacher evaluations to test scores at the same time they pushed the Core Standards and tests have not helped support among teachers either.

That the Obama administration pushed all of this through first Race to the Top and later through No Child Left Behind waivers has not helped either.

Finally, that reformers thought it was a done deal once they got all their changes instituted hasn't helped because they a) got complacent on the messaging around the Core and ancillary other Core reforms like testing, data tracking and teacher evaluations tied to Core tests, and b) got hubristic when they finally did push back, mostly insulting critics of the Core as wingnuts and crazy people.

Well, the hubris and short-sightedness of their reform push has come back to bite them big time.

The Common Core is on life support with the public and teachers these days and looks like its going to be DOA soon.

Common Core Proponents Mount - Yet Again - A Public Relations Offensive

Politico's Stephanie Simon writes that Common Core Federal Standards proponents are putting together a new P.R. offensive:

Supporters of the Common Core academic standards have spent big this past year to persuade wavering state legislators to stick with the new guidelines for math and language arts instruction. Given the firestorm of opposition that took them by surprise, they consider it a victory that just five states, so far, have taken steps to back out.

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But in a series of strategy sessions in recent months, top promoters of the standards have concluded they’re losing the broader public debate — and need to devise better PR.

...

So, backed with fresh funding from philanthropic supporters, including a $10.3 million grant awarded in May from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, supporters are gearing up for a major reboot of the Common Core campaign.

“We’ve been fighting emotion with talking points, and it doesn’t work,” said Mike Petrilli, executive vice president of the Fordham Institute, a leading supporter of the standards. “There’s got to be a way to get more emotional with our arguments if we want to win this thing. That means we have a lot more work to do.”

Step one: Get Americans angry about the current state of public education.

To that end, expect to start hearing from frustrated college students who ended up in remedial classes even though they passed all their state tests and earned good grades in high school. “These kids should be as mad as hell” that the system failed them, Petrilli said.

Expect poignant testimonials, too, from business owners who have tried to hire kids from the local high school only to find they can’t do tasks involving basic math, such as separating out two-thirds of a pile of lumber.

Step two: Get voters excited about the prospects of change. Teachers who like the standards are going to be sharing more concrete examples of benefits they see in their classrooms. Groups representing minority students will likely be more vocal, too. The National Council of La Raza, for instance, is promoting a new video featuring a little girl who credits the standards with teaching her the word “whimsical.”

And there will be a whole lot more from the pro-Common Core side on social media, including Pinterest pages full of student work. A coming Twitter blitz will aim to stir up buzz for a new video that tracks a debate between four people who at first seem to want very different things from their schools — but end up discovering they all support the standards. The video, produced by an Arizona coalition, doesn’t once mention the well-worn talking points “academic rigor” or “international benchmarks.”

“The Common Core message so far has been a head message. We’ve done a good job talking about facts and figures. But we need to move 18 inches south and start talking about a heart message,” said Wes Farno, executive director of the Higher State Standards Partnership, a coalition supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.

In short, expect lots of emotional manipulation in the coming wave of corporate-funded pro-CCSS ads and social media blitz.

The ironic thing is, we just heard two months back about how Common Core proponents were sick of losing the message war over Common Core and were devising a corporate-funded pro-CCSS ad campaign to change the trajectory of the war:

ALBANY—Critics of the Common Core in New York have been winning the debate about the controversial education standards, but now they'll face a counterattack backed by a considerable investment.

High Achievement New York, a nonprofit coalition of mostly business groups, plans to launch a roughly $500,000 phone and digital advertising campaign over the next several weeks in an attempt to promote the controversial curriculum standards.

...

While most of the coalition members are business groups, including several chambers of commerce, the membership also includes advocacy groups that have been vocal in supporting the Common Core and other education reforms, including Educators4Excellence and StudentsFirstNY. The latter has been a major supporter of charter schools.

A spokesman for High Achievement New York would not disclose information about the nonprofit's finances. The spokesman said the bulk of the funding will be grants from philanthropic organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Helmsley Charitable Trust. The group has applied for grants and expects to receive them.

 
Guess the localized ad offensive in New York didn't take, eh?

Judging by the latest Siena poll released last week in which 49% of New Yorkers said they want to see Common Core implementation ended, that pro-CCSS ad blitz did not take.
 

So now it's on to a national ad campaign and social media blitz, one aimed at the "heart" and not the "head" (i.e., one meant to manipulate heart strings.)

I dunno, pro-CCSS groups have a lot of corporate backing and thus a lot of money to throw around.

But I think the messaging war has already been lost long ago.

CCSS proponents were arrogant from the start, they imposed the standards with little input or say from the public, they tried to marginalize critics as "kooks" and "tinfoil hatters" rather than admit to any problems with the Core or the ancillary reforms that came with it, and they never responded well to charges that a coterie of wealthy business interests and individuals were the primary backers and proponents of the CCSS reforms.

Now Common Core supporters think they can win back the hearts, if not the minds, of Americans through an ad campaign and social media blitz funded by the very coterie of wealthy business interests critics and opponents have pointed out were behind the CCSS reform agenda in the first place?

Good luck with that.

I'm not saying manipulation and propaganda can't win a message war.

But they have to be deployed early enough, often enough and skillfully enough, and to be honest, Common Core proponents and supporters didn't do any of those things.

War's over, folks.

You could see that clearly in the response to Glenn Beck's anti-CCSS national townhall last week as well as how quickly even blue states like New York have turned against the Core.

Texas In The Vanguard Of The Anti-Common Core Movement

Texas never jumped on the CCSS bandwagon, but the vehemence of this opposition is interesting:

AUSTIN — Attorney General Greg Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign turned up the rhetoric against federal education standards Monday, soliciting donations with a fiery call to arms that “We must crush Common Core.”

“Help Greg Abbott ensure that President Obama’s Common Core stays OUT of the Lone Star State by making a contribution today,” said the email from campaign staffer Lynn Haueter, adding that “we can’t let the Obama Administration get its hands on Texas schools.”

Of course, the national standards crafted by governors across the country and adopted by almost all states are already not much of a threat to the Lone Star State because of the efforts of Abbott and others. Texas formally rejected Common Core in 2010 and passed a law prohibiting public schools from adopting them. Last month, Abbott confirmed that in a new ruling.

Abbott has vowed that “as governor, I am not going to allow Common Core in Texas.”

His Democratic opponent, state Sen. Wendy Davis, has also said she opposes Common Core, but has not made it as central to her campaign.

While Texas was joined by only Alaska in refusing to help develop the standards, several states have since joined the anti-Common Core movement, the Texas Tribune reported Monday.

The birthplace of No Child Left Behind is also in the vanguard of the anti-CCSS movement:

“Texas was in front of opposing the standards right before they even came off the press. But the other state boards of education weren’t paying attention to Texas’ reasons. What Texas was doing just wasn’t on the horizon for them,” said Sandra Stotsky, an education researcher and longtime opponent of the Common Core.

In the years since, similar concerns have driven four Republican controlled states — Indiana, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oklahoma — to announce that they were dropping them from their public schools. Several other states, including Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio and Missiouri have faced pressure to do the same.

...

Only Alaska joined Texas in refusing to sign on to developing the Common Core standards. A few months later, Texas was among the earliest states to turn down participation in the Obama Administration’s signature education program, the Race to the Top competition, a decision that was dismissed as politically motivated posturing from Gov. Rick Perry, who was facing a primary challenge from then-U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. The program had initially set aside $4.35 billion in grants for states that agreed to put in place overhauls like Common Core.

“This effort can be seen as a step toward a federal takeover of the nation’s public schools,” wrote Education Commissioner Robert Scott, who expressed his concerns in a November 2009 letter to the state’s congressional delegation. “I believe that the true intention of this effort is to establish one set of national education standard and national tests across the country.”

When Texas decided not to participate in Race to the Top, Scott, along with Perry, were the Common Core’s “most explicit and vocal critics,” said Rick Hess, an education policy expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. What they identified would form a key argument against the standards that their proponents would have a difficult time shaking, he said.

“Part of what they pointed out is that Common Core is not just reading and math standards; it’s also an invitation for the federal government to play an increasingly large role through this national program,” he said. “If you don’t trust the federal government to mind its P’s and Q’s, that’s probably a lot more significant than whether you think they are slightly better reading and math standards.”

So far, much of the political opposition is coming from Republicans.

Many Democrats remain supporters (though quiet ones) of the Common Core, as do Democratic Party functionaries like the teachers unions.

But Wendy Davis, the Democrat running for governor of Texas, is an interesting exception to that.

Political expediency says even if she wanted to support the Core, to do so in Texas would be political suicide.

As that environment starts to spread nationally (and you can see it happening already - the polling trajectory of the Common Core is squarely negative - see here, here and here), it will be come more advantageous for Democrats in other states to jump on the anti-CCSS bandwagon too.

We're not there yet, but we're getting there and when we do, that's when it will become official - Common Core will be deader than disco fashions from the 70's.

The polling shows something that is very, very important to understand:

The more people become familiar with the Common Core, the less they like it.

And the less people like the Common Core and the more the opposition to it grows, the more politicians we're going to see oppose it and the quicker we'll see it die.

Wisconsin May Be Next To Drop The Common Core

From Urban Milwaukee:

If you think there was a fight over Common Core educational standards in the Capitol earlier this year, think again. Interviews with dozens of candidates show that it was just a warm-up for the war coming next year over those standards.

No matter who is elected governor, and which party controls the Senate in the 2015-16 session, Assembly Republicans – who all sides privately concede will keep control for the next two years – will push to reverse Wisconsin’s 2010 decision to join most other states in adopting Common Core standards. Several of those Assembly Republicans want Wisconsin to join Louisiana and other states that have withdrawn or repealed Common Core standards.

Six of the 14 Assembly Republicans who sponsored a bill (SB 619) last session that would stop implementation of Common Core standards and let legislators control new educational standards, and who drafts them, are unopposed in Nov. 4 elections. Another Assembly sponsor of that bill, Rep. Steve Nass, of Whitewater, is running for a Senate seat Republicans have controlled for decades.

Three of the five Republican senators who co-sponsored SB 619 aren’t up for election this year; a fourth Senate sponsor, Sen. Leah Vukmir, faces a Libertarian Party challenger. Two Republican senators who kept SB 619 from being debated – Senate President Mike Ellis and Dale Schultz – have retired.

WisconsinEye interviews with more than 70 candidates in Aug. 12 primary elections show that scrapping Common Core standards, or reasserting the authority of local school boards to set their own academic goals, is a top priority of Assembly Republicans. Most Democratic candidates defend Common Core.

Just something to keep an eye on if you're like me and you like to keep track of how many states have already dropped out of the Common Core and how many more are likely to follow.

The Hubris, Arrogance And Authoritarianism Of Common Core Proponents

Some of the comments on Jay Greene's Common Core Political Naivete and the Enemies List post get at this:

"The main problem has not been intention, I think, but strategy. I have no doubt many Core supporters really think national standards are educationally important. The problem is, to get what they thought was good, they adopted a strategy that was — and is — highly destructive: Drive adoption through stealth and federal coercion, likely to avoid the ignominious fate of open national standards efforts in the 1990s. Demean opponents, as Jay so rightly points out, as kooks and extremists worthy only of derision, not engagement. Perhaps worst of all, refuse to forthrightly acknowledge crucial facts once the public was fully confronted with the Core, including that Core-ites wanted federal coercion, got federal coercion, and that the Core intentionally has a major influence on curricula. 

People may think I am obsessed with the federal role in Core adoption because I constantly repeat the facts about it. And, of course, by itself the federal role is a crucial issue, invoking major constitutional questions, legal questions, and federalism concerns. But what is especially disturbing about the federal role is that Washington’s coercion essentially ensured that we would never get to have a substantive debate — a debate I, I think among many people, would like to have — about the merits of national standards, national tests, etc. Instead, the goal seemed to be to stick the public with nationalization without any public debate. In other words, we never got to have the more substantive national standards discussion because the federal government, at the urging of Core supporters, made having it irrelevant." -- Neal McCluskey

 ...

"I don’t agree with the notion that the Common Core advocates were ever naive. They were simply never honest about what they were trying to do–and didn’t think honesty would get them most of the K-12 system, public and private (remember, they went after Catholic parish schools right away–and Christian Day schools). They wanted control–the power to push buttons as they saw fit–because they thought so highly of themselves–with nothing to show for it in education (which is a good part of the problem.) Duncan didn’t accomplish anything in Chicago, Fordham has never accomplished anything in education that’s been academically effective. And Gates couldn’t discern the difference between third-rate minds in education and first-rate minds in technology, which is why he ended up with hiring third-rate minds for his Foundation. I doubt he ever read a book by Jacques Barzun, for example or reflected on the questions raised by Great Books writers to develop some insight into human behavior.

The first draft of the “anchor” reading standards that came out (sneaked out in July 2009 but changed before its official September debut), the membership of the standards development work group in sprint 2009 (mostly in test development), and the first draft Jim Milgram ever saw of the math standards with Algebra I as the “college readiness level” revealed designer intentions to anyone spending time pondering what was going on. The intentions behind CC were never academic–to upgrade the public schools in K-12 for all kids–even though that was what was needed, and still is. It’s not a “trahison des clercs” for most of them because that would credit Gate, Duncan, Finn, Petrilli, et al with more intelligence than they have. It’s a kind of hubris, but not of the Greek tragic mode." -- Sandra Stotsky

Both McCluskey and Stotsky make important points here.

The people behind Common Core believe they're geniuses and everybody else are morons - you can see that in the arrogance of David Coleman and Arne Duncan, the certitude of Bill Gates.

They decided that only their genius could save the country from the rest of us morons and decided to "save us" without actually asking us if we wanted to be, you know, saved.

They devised their strategies in secret and decided that their plans would be need to be implemented as quickly and as quietly as possible for maximum impact.

Previous incarnations of national standards died when there was pushback from states and localities - so this time, the geniuses decided the whole thing would happen so fast, there would be no time for pushback.

The '08 financial collapse became a convenient cover and excuse to push through what they wanted to push through - national standards connected to national tests that would be used to evaluate teachers, thus ensuring the standards were taught (and driving curriculum as well, since what gets tested is ultimately what gets taught.)

Race to the Top was the carrot, No Child Left Behind waivers were the stick and the USDOE was the driver of it all.

It's all falling apart for a number of reasons, not least of which are, the CCSS standards themselves are half-baked (because they were rushed and not tested anywhere), the ancillary testing that goes with CCSS is facing a mounting opposition from all political sides and the data programs that were supposed to track all the stats are under assault from parents and privacy advocacy groups.

But perhaps the biggest reason it's all falling apart is the hubris, arrogance and authoritarianism of the people behind the movement itself - this coterie of oligarchs and their functionaries thought they could get what they wanted quickly and quietly, with no muss and no fuss, by developing it in secret, pushing it through while everyone else was paying attention to the financial crisis of 2008/2009 and attacking anybody who criticized their genius as crooks or kooks.

They've created the pushback themselves through the strategies they developed to push through their agenda.

Greene calls that "naivete," though Stotsky disagrees and calls it "dishonesty."

I think it's a little of both.

At the core, the Core proponents are dishonest people - Gates, Duncan, Coleman, et al will lie and cheat to get what they want, the last few years shows that quite clearly.

But they were also naive to believe that there wouldn't be a significant counterattack to their agenda and they've been amateurish (as Greene notes in his post) in their own pushback.

Witness Duncan's ill-advised "Soccer moms are pissed to find out their kids are stupid" comments or Gates whining in the Washington Post about how he's just trying to save the world if only people would let him.

Instead of engaging critics and opponents on point, CCSS proponents attacks and dismiss.

They've sowed the seeds of the demise of their agenda themselves, first through through the authoritarian way they pushed it through, then through the amateurish way they've tried to deal with critics and opponents.

As Stotsky notes, this isn't hubris on a grand, Greek tragedy scale, but it is hubris.

And in the end, it's what's going to do the Common Core and the ancillary other reforms that came with them in.

Will Oklahoma Be The Second State To "Ditch" The Common Core?

From National Review Online:

The Oklahoma state senate passed a bill Tuesday to withdraw the state from the Common Core standards. If the bill is signed by Governor Mary Fallin, Oklahoma will become the second state to withdraw from the Common Core.

Indiana withdrew last week, with Governor Mike Pence’s signature.

The bill to get the Sooner State was hugely popular in both houses. House Bill 3399 was approved by the state house in a 78 to 12 vote before being sent to the state senate for amendments. On Tuesday, the state senate voted 37 to 10 in favor of the bill. The bill will now go to the House for another vote before being sent to the governor’s desk.

Oklahoma was one of the first states to adopt the Common Core standards in June of 2010, after a vote by the state board of education. However, the Sooner State later dropped out of the Common Core’s standardized testing consortium in the summer of 2013.

State representative Jason Nelson, an author and co-sponsor to withdraw the state from the CCSS, told NRO the bill will pass the Assembly a second time and be signed into law by the governor.

Some of these states that are allegedly dumping Common Core are simply renaming the standards and making minor changes - and Oklahoma sorta sounds like they're going down that road.

Listen to the ed jargon from Governor Fallin:

Fallin wrote that she would support legislation repealing the Common Core, if the legislation “increases classroom rigor and accountability while guaranteeing that Oklahoma public education is protected from federal interference.”

And indeed, here is what the bill, if passed into law, would do:

HB 3399 still allows the Oklahoma state board of education — in consultation with the state’s higher education and vocational training systems– to preserve aspects of the Common Core standards, if it so chooses.

“Specifically, the bill says that the state cannot cede its control over our standards or our student assessments,” Nelson says, “or relinquish our authority over those standards and assessments.” The bill, he says, would still leave the state free to use selected Common Core standards.

So while it sounds exciting that Oklahoma is potentially joining Indiana in dropping the CCSS, the devil is in the details of what comes next if and when the bill is signed into law.

There's an awful lot of posturing on the part of legislators trying to make the CCSS critics and opponents happy while keeping the CCSS basically in place.

We've certainly seen that in NY State and we're kinda seeing that in states that are allegedly "dropping" CCSS too.