Issuu

SARASOTA Observer

YourObserver.com

THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2013

Observer opinion | our view SARASOTA

“If we are to build a better world, we must remember that the guiding principle is this — a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy.” Friedrich Hayek “Road to Serfdom,” 1944 Editor & CEO / Matt Walsh mwalsh@yourobserver.com Executive Editor / Lisa Walsh lwalsh@yourobserver.com Chief Digital Officer / Emily Walsh ewalsh@yourobserver.com Deputy Executive Editor / Jessica Luck jluck@yourobserver.com Managing Editor / Randi Donahue rdonahue@yourobserver.com News Editors / David Conway, dconway@yourobserver.com Nolan Peterson, npeterson@yourobserver.com Community Editors / Nick Friedman, nfriedman@yourobserver.com Yaryna Klimchak, yklimchak@yourobserver.com Managing Editor/Diversions-Season / Stephanie Hannum, stephanie@yourobserver.com Arts & Entertainment Editor / Mallory Gnaegy mgnaegy@yourobserver.com Black Tie Assistant Editor / Heather Merriman hmerriman@yourobserver.com Managing Editor/Design / Nancy Schwartz nschwartz@yourobserver.com Design Editor / Nicole Thompson nthompson@yourobserver.com Director of Digital Sales / Kathleen O’Hara kohara@yourobserver.com Interactive Art Director / Caleb Stanton cstanton@yourobserver.com Digital Content Manager / Clint Weldon cweldon@digitalobservermedia.com Digital Marketing Consultant / Brandon Steinert bsteinert@digitalobservermedia.com Digital Fulfillment Specialist / Jordon Stone jstone@digitalobservermedia.com Digital Content Producer / Alex Mahadevan alexm@yourobserver.com Video Producer / Eddie Kirsch ekirsch@yourobserver.com Director of Advertising / Jill Raleigh jraleigh@yourobserver.com East County Advertising Manager / Lori Ruth lruth@yourobserver.com Sales Manager / Rosemary Felton rfelton@yourobserver.com Senior Advertising Executive / Laura Ritter lritter@yourobserver.com Advertising Executives / Penny DiGregorio, pdigregorio@yourobserver.com Patti Duff, pduff@yourobserver.com Beth Holman, bholman@yourobserver.com Beth Jacobson, bjacobson@yourobserver.com Robert Lewis, blewis@yourobserver.com Suzanne Munroe, smunroe@yourobserver.com Charlotte Owen, cowen@yourobserver.com Brand Marketing Manager / Leslie Gnaegy lgnaegy@yourobserver.com Sales Coordinator/Account Managers / Lori Downey, ldowney@yourobserver.com Susan Leedom, sleedom@yourobserver.com Rachel Livingston, rlivingston@yourobserver.com Classified Advertising Sales Executives/ Maureen Hird, mhird@yourobserver.com Deedie Parker, dparker@yourobserver.com

Director of Production and Information Technology / Kathy Payne, kpayne@yourobserver.com Advertising-Production Coordinator / Brooke Schultheis, bschultheis@yourobserver.com Advertising Graphic Designers / Monica DiMattei, mdimattei@yourobserver.com Marjorie Holloway, mholloway@yourobserver.com Jim Knake, jknake@yourobserver.com Chris Stolz, cstolz@yourobserver.com Luis Trujillo, ltrujillo@yourobserver.com Chief Financial Officer / Laura Keisacker lkeisacker@yourobserver.com Controller / Lisa Schwenk lschwenk@yourobserver.com Office Coordinator/Subscriptions / Donna Condon dcondon@yourobserver.com

Observer Media Group Inc. is locally owned

Publishers of the Longboat Observer, East County Observer, Sarasota Observer, Palm Coast Observer, Pelican Press, Plant City Observer, Ormond Beach Observer, Business Observer and Season Magazine Chairman / David Beliles Editor and CEO / Matt Walsh Vice President / Lisa Walsh

1970 Main St., Third Floor Sarasota, Fla. 34236 941/366-3468

Common Core: Dump it

Common Core Standards. Put them in the same tin can as Obamacare. It’s another attempt, albeit less blatant, to federalize, centralize and nationalize an essential part of American society. And it’s another attempt that is blowing up. Grassroots Americans, thankfully, are seeing where Common Core will lead, and they’re organizing to kill it. When Florida lawmakers gather in 2014, “Common Core Standards” are destined to be at the core of the Legislature’s heated debates. Opposition is spreading in Florida — and nationwide — like a Western wildfire. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, meanwhile, appears to be attempting to squelch, or at least control, the fires with this week’s education summit in Clearwater. He convened 36 political, education and business influencers to discuss Common Core education standards; the tests that will replace the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests; school grading systems; and teacher evaluations. Talk about a tinder box of educational issues. The summit, however, which was in session as this was being written, isn’t likely to put out the Common Core fire. The controversy is on the verge of raging here and nationwide — just shy of the scale of the Obamacare opposition. Nowhere does this issue appear to be more heated than among conservatives — the moderate and neoconservatives on one side and the libertarians on the other. Common Core advocates include the two chief architects of the standards and their founding organizations, the National Governors Association, whose majority consists of Republican governors, and the Council of Chief State School Officers, as well as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his Foundation for Excellence in Education. On the other side is a fast-growing list of strident opponents. On the national scene, Florida’s junior U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio; radio talk-show host Glenn Beck; and syndicated columnist and FOX News commentator Michelle Malkin top the list. Also often quoted against Common Core Standards are Stanford University Professor James Milgram, a mathWhere to find the ematician who Common Core withdrew from Standards: http:// a panel creatwww.corestandards. ing the math org/ standards; and Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, a Massachusetts public-policy institute that hired teams of experts to evaluate how Common Core would compare to Massachusetts’ successful standards. The results were not positive. Beyond these opponents, scores of grassroots parents groups are mobilizing in states that have adopted the Common Core Standards. Commoncorestopit.blogspot. com lists 34 states with formal organizations dedicated to stopping the adoption of Common Core Standards. Florida is among them. The Florida Parents against Common Core and Floridians against Common Core are encouraging parents in all 67 school districts to persuade their legislators either to put implementation on pause or withdraw the Common Core Standards altogether. The Legislature set the standards to go into effect in 2014. Up to this point, Florida Senate President Don Gaetz, a former school superintendent in the Panhandle, and Speaker Will Weatherford have supported Common Core. But they have reservations about one aspect: Gaetz recently told the Miami Herald that he and Weatherford want to withdraw Florida from a consortium of states developing new exams to measure students on the Common Core Standards. They have reservations about the consortium’s data security and whether Florida’s schools have the technology to administer the tests. But among Florida’s legislators, so far only one, Ray Pilon, R-Sarasota, has come out against Florida’s implementation of Common Core. Pilon said on his Facebook page education standards are a local issue, not a national one. Courageously, Pilon

wrote: “My vote is going to be get rid of it.” He’s right.

leached on to the movement and made $4 billion in education grants available to states in his “Race to the Top” program. One of the criteria for obtaining the money: Adopt the Common Core Standards. To the dismay of some Common Core supporters, Obama’s entry onto the scene injected politics into the movement, creating the perception of more top-down, Washington intrusion into local, public education. But the Common Core proponents pressed on. In a matter of two years, 45 states adopted the Common Core Standards. Now, three years later, with parents seeing the meaning of Common Core in their children’s classrooms, parents are protesting. And legislatures are finding out from respected Common Core critics what they didn’t read in the bills they passed. For example: Professor Milgram, who resigned from the math panel, to a Texas legislative committee: “There are a number of extremely serious failings in Core Standards that make it premature for any state with serious hopes for improving the quality of the mathematical education of their children to adopt them … “ … By the end of fifth grade the material being covered in arithmetic and algebra in Core Standards is more than a year behind the early grade expectations in most highachieving countries. By the end of seventh grade, Core Standards are roughly two years behind.” Stergios of the Massachusetts-based Pioneer Institute: After commissioning experts to evaluate the Common Core Standards, “Finding that Common Core is inferior to the previous Massachusetts standards, likely violates three federal statutes and will prove to be a $16 billion unfunded mandate, we have chosen to oppose the national standards.” After learning what’s really in the standards, the legislatures in Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania each voted this year to stop their implementation.

What are the standards?

High cover of central power

COMMON CORE MATH

James Schuls, an Arkansas teacher, encountered Common Core math for his first-grade son. In an article in Education News, he shared the following example of what his son’s teacher sent home: Your child will be completing lots of word problems this year, and they will use a variety of strategies to solve these problems. Below are examples of three strategies your children might use for the following problem.

Example 3.

Please do not have your child stack numbers and add them like this:

What are the Common Core Standards? Good luck understanding them. For now, they are focused on math and language arts (See box above). The idea is to create a national set of standards that sets the bar for America’s school systems so our students have benchmarks by which to be measured against the rest of the world. The genesis for common, national education standards began in the modern era with President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s. His administration proposed creation of voluntary, national standards and assessments. They went nowhere; critics snuffed them. President Bill Clinton tried to create national tests; he failed, too. Then came George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, which was to bring all students to proficiency in math and reading by 2014. This law left the states in charge, but predictably, standards varied across state lines, with many states setting a low proficiency bar. This spawned new life into the national standards movement, attracting yet another Bush, Florida’s former governor and a longtime advocate of school accountability, standards, choice and competition. But to avoid the appearance of having the standards emanate from the federal government, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers said they would create math and reading standards benchmarked to international standards. Thus began the Common Core State Standards Initiative in 2009. It quickly gained momentum. Florida lawmakers adopted a bill in 2010 to shift Florida’s public schools away from its existing curriculum standards and the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests to teach and assess students in line with the Common Core Standards. But, like the Obamacare bill in Washington, which virtually no congressional member read, few, if any, Florida lawmakers read the fine print and details of the Common Core Standards. About the same time, President Obama

But the criticism that comes most vocally from grassroots parents groups points specifically to this major objection: They see Common Core Standards as yet another effort to cast a federal, centralized, nationalized net over everyone in education — one size fits all. This in spite of its proponents saying states will still be in charge of their education destinies. Gov. Bush reiterated that in the National Review Aug. 19, saying, among other things, states’ working together to solve a shared problem is not a violation of federalism.” Still, Neal McCluskey, associate director of the CATO Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, University of Arkansas Professor Sandra Stotsky, a former member of a Common Core validation panel, and Hoover Institution fellow Williamson Evers, a former assistant secretary of education from 2007 to 2009, collaborated in July to write an anti-Common Core op-ed column in the New York Daily News. Citing five reasons why opposition is becoming so strident, they wrote, as their fifth reason: “Making standards uniform across the country reduces the benefits of competition between states and districts, which vie to attract residents and businesses. That stifles laboratories of democracy. Most troubling of all, the Common Core will cripple individual choice, which is highly concerning because all children are unique and need different things.” While many of the standards are suspect, the red-hot core of the issue is exactly that: centralized, common standards and testing for all. In theory, it sounds like a good idea, to have standards and benchmarks by which you can measure your child, his school and his school district against his peers locally, at state levels, nationally and internationally. Everyone likes to see how he stacks up. But, as always, the devil is in the details and execution. Lenore Ealy stated it succinctly in her essay in May for the Foundation for Economic Education: “The core fact of the Common Core, though, is that it’s a relentless and coordinated push by philan-