My Summer Project: Left-Right Alliance for Education

My summer project has been working with a group of education advocates across the country to construct a multi-partisan outline of common opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Today we completed the project and published an excellent resource for the Stop Common Core movement nationwide.

Last spring I came away from a Hillsdale collage lecture on the Common Core with a deep concern that the Stop Common Core movements developing throughout the nation were not coalescing around one central message that had the power to cut across the political spectrum and that the opposition to CCSSI was being widely mischaracterized as limited to only one side of the political spectrum, which is hindering the effort to get the opposing message a fair hearing in the public discourse. I was convinced that we needed a serious effort to construct a concise message that would navigate the movement out of the partisan weeds.

The next day I had a discussion with a close friend tied to the Stop Common Core movement in another state who had just that afternoon had a similar discussion with a group of advocates on her side of the country. Within a few hours the Left-Right Alliance for Education was formed to bring together advocates from across the political spectrum, and across the nation, to determine if it is possible to form a multi-partisan alliance for countering the current federal/corporate power driving education reform policy.

After weeks of deliberate, methodical discussions on key points of current education reforms in the U.S. we have finally completed the project we began three months ago. I believe the work we constructed shows that there is a wide spectrum of common political opposition to the CCSSI and I believe we can work together if we stick to those points upon which we agree. The Left-Right Alliance has developed a message as succinct as the CCSSI's own and is a resource that has the potential to be very valuable in shaping the opposition's message.

You can read the document at the Left-Right Alliance for Education but I have also included the report below:

Stop Common Core, Cuts Across Politics

This week I went to a Hillsdale College Kirby Center lecture in Washington DC: "Common Core Common Sense: Why it’s Illiberal and Unconstitutional.” Dr. Daniel B. Coupland gave a measured explanation of the Common Core State Initiative (CCSS) and the general points of opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. There was little presented that I had not already read or discovered in my year of research about the CCSS initiative. What I came away with was a deep concern that the Stop Common Core movements developing throughout the nation are not coalescing around one central message that can cut across the political spectrum and speak to the hearts of every American.

I became convinced that in order to be successful at defeating the CCSS initiative we must do three things, 1) we must set aside those points of opposition that are highly partisan, 2) we must create a clear and succinct message of common opposition and stop haggling over the details, and 3) appeal to the universal desire that all parents have for their children’s education, not just to be “career-ready”, but more importantly to become mature thinkers who are highly-motivated, self-disciplined, hard-working, creative, ambitious, happy individuals who know their own minds and who are prepared to thrive in any life path they choose.

What we are doing to answer the assertions of CCSS supporters is important work, but we are too often pulled away from the central point by engaging them in long drawn out debates about whether the content standards themselves are good or bad, whether the standards will push a curriculum of political indoctrination, or whether the whole public school system is the enemy. What’s lost in these debates is the bigger picture which is that each successive effort to standardize education around a workforce development vision has failed, and Common Core will make those failures look small in comparison.

With CCSS advertising their mission in a clear and consistent way, and grassroots opposition fractured between political poles and decentralized by voluminous websites, bloggers, and local groups, I am not surprised that parents around me are latching onto the one message that consistently breaks through. It is very difficult for most parents, who can't devote so much time to sifting through the arguments, to discover the central point of opposition to the Common Core.

CCSS has this simple message under its logo, “Preparing America’s Students for College & Career.” What parent doesn’t want their child to go to college and have a career? What parent doesn’t want a “consistent, clear understanding” of what their child is expected to learn? What parent doesn’t want a child “fully prepared for the future?” We all do. But what parents wants a “career ready” child who is a simple cog in a managed workforce? What parent wants their child to have a “consistent, clear understanding” of how to navigate the technocratic corporate world or manage the layers of bureaucratic paperwork and rubrics of compliance? What parent would believe that workforce preparation as the central goal of education is going to “fully” prepare their child for the future? What parent isn’t concerned that their child’s education is devastating their innate love of learning?

Instead of sifting through the dozens of complex arguments for and against Common Core, parents need to understand two basic concepts in order to discover the central point: that the Common Core deconstructs the traditional liberal arts education which most contributes to the development of mature, creative thinkers who are prepared to thrive in life. First, they must understand that the CCSS initiative cannot solve the problems inherent in the successive efforts to standardize education because it will mandate standardization on a vast scale. Second, they must understand that by shifting the purpose of education away from the liberal arts in favor of a servile education for the so-called “real world,” the education of their child will be materially damaged.


We oppose the CCSS initiative because it continues the failed education reforms of the past by mandating minimum, common, and quantifiable standards and high-stakes testing which leads to the hyper-focus on quantifiable skills at the expense of the greater characteristics of sound education.


When asked about the standards themselves, The Hillsdale lecturer, Dr. Daniel B. Coupland, said he had found that for the most part they are solid standards. But then he went on to explain the limitations of standards. Common Core standards are just what standards always have been. Standards represent coalescence at the middle, whether that middle is nation-wide or state-wide; they represent minimum standards of quantifiable skills. Even good rigorous standards when combined with high-stakes accountability measures will usually result in the hyper-focus on those quantifiable skills that will be tested, upon which school funding and teacher progress will be measured. Inevitably this focus will squeeze out those portions of education that most contribute to the development of mature thinkers who are prepared to thrive in any chosen life path.

This has been the universal criticism of the last federal effort to standardize education, NCLB. Award-winning reporter Peg Tyre, in her series on the Common Core, started by reviewing the failures of NCLB, highlighting that the failures of NCLB center on high-stakes testing rather than standards:

“Testing kids was a good way of coming up with data on how kids did on the… test, but it didn’t… actually improve what happened in the classroom. In fact, to accommodate NCLB, schools began teaching—and children began learning—less. Under No Child Left Behind, school administrators and district leaders quickly figured out the ugly consequences for schools when they failed to improve their students’ test scores... So in response, many schools demanded that their teachers dumb down instruction… teachers were made to teach to the test in the most direct and simplistic way possible so more kids would do better on the tests. This made school pretty boring… [And was particularly] a profound setback for poor kids. The unintended consequence of NCLB was that it created a “bottom” level of acceptable instruction, but that geared the whole education system toward that low level.”

The architects of the Common Core said this quasi-federal initiative was set apart from NCLB because “They had a vision of creating a high goal for schools to strive for, instead of a bottom set of standards that would ultimately doom them.” But how was their vision different from NCLB in real terms? They didn't create a set of voluntary goals for schools to “strive for”. The CCSS did nothing to address the negative effects of NCLB high-stake testing and the standards are described differently by almost every supporter of the initiative. The architects called them something to "strive for" like an ideal, some repeatedly describe the standards as a "solid baseline", and multiple reports have indicated that the CCSS are set somewhere in the middle when they are compared with state standards prior to the initiative. So which is it, an ideal, a middle, or a baseline?

The idea the the CCSS initiative is designed to correct what is wrong in education, to set high standards and give schools the tools to excel is certainly suspect when schools whose standards were stronger before CCSS are told not only that they can't alter the standards but they can add no more than 15% in any content area. Sound more like their placing limits on achievement that setting high goals to strive for. It's a speed limit in education. Some Schools will inevitably fall well short of their limit (as the farm tractors you get stuck behind on the road) but anyone caught trying to get ahead will be penalized.

We oppose the core vision of the CCSS initiative to build a system for centrally managed student training with the purpose of fitting the future generation as cogs in a managed workforce for the “Global Economy.” This central goal will dismantle liberal arts education which most contributes to the development of mature thinkers who are prepared to thrive in any chosen life path.

CCSS has built its mission around a central idea that exposes how they see the core purpose of education in the “21st Century.” That core purpose is to train kids to be “Career-Ready” to compete in a “Global Economy.” Thier core purpose is to turn education in America into job preparation. Dr. Coupland said that this was the central concern he has about the Common Core. The architects set this as the “goal” for all students to “strive for.” Coupland said that the pre-modern educational models made a clear distinction between the liberal arts and servile arts. James Daniels, a proponent of classical liberal arts education described it this way, “The two models are different in regard to the goals that they pursued. The goal of the liberal arts was to cultivate a wise and virtuous man. The goal of the servile arts was to cultivate skills for a given trade.” The CCSS initiative has made a choice to pursue the servile arts as more “relevant to the real world” and more competitive in the “global economy.”

C.S. Lewis described the purpose of servile schooling this way :it “aims at making not a good man but a good banker, a good electrician… or a good surgeon.” There’s nothing wrong with having good electricians or surgeons, but to pursue “training” at the expense of development of human character comes with a stern warning from Lewis.Hhe writes, “If education is beaten by training, civilization dies… the lesson of history is that civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost.” Dr. Coupland further explained how these two purposes should be applied in education. He said, “To support one’s self is only one part of a good education.” In order for us to be truly free we must have so much more. A broad liberal education is an imperative for the development of “mature” free-thinking people who know “who they are, why they are here, and understand their relationship to others and the world around them.” Coupland said that the CCSS initiative contains in it a “cavalier contempt for the great works of art” and approaches education as though building human beings is like “programming machines.”

The education reforms of the past three decades have incrementally dismantled our liberal arts education in favor of workforce development on the conveyor belt of standardized outcome-based schooling. There is no evidence that this has been good for our children, that it has made them more intelligent, more capable workers, or more moral human beings. In fact, it is apparent that our society has taken a change for the worse and that our kids are being “dumbed down” despite the best efforts of their parents. Parents are sick of their children being deluged in test-taking skills and assignment rubrics that leave no room for creativity. We instinctively know that this has been devastating to the development of our children's minds and character. We know that our children are born with the light and love of learning in abundance, and then we send them to school where within a few short years that love is replaced by boredom or utter frustration, and for some settles in as hatred of and failure in school.

The CCSS initiative threatens to sink the future generation into a system where they are fitted as cogs in a managed economy. The results of this federal initiative will not turn us around and get our society back on track, rather this federal initiative will be the worst of them all. It will bring about the total deconstruction of our children’s intellects and moral character by cutting our children adrift from self-discovery accomplished through learning the sound ethics and morals which are found in the pages of the great literary works, the discoveries of the great scientists, the thoughts of the great historians and mathematicians, and all the other elements of a broad liberal arts education. What will CCSS prepare them for? They will be prepared to navigate the regulated technocratic corporate world, to manage the layers of bureaucratic paperwork and rubrics of compliance, and to be adept at storing factual information and regurgitating it upon request. It won't matter that they don’t know their own minds because no one will care to ask what they think. Just ask David Coleman, the director of the CCSS development process and now president of the College Board, who said “As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a s--t about what you feel or what you think,” and “It is rare in a working environment that someone says, ‘Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday, but before that, I need a compelling account of your childhood.’”

This construct is seriously damaging to our children and to the future of our civilization. We should not set as education’s central goal “career readiness” at the early age of 3, 5, or even 10. We should focus on providing a strong, quality liberal arts education first, and then when our children are moral, mature, highly-motivated, self-disciplined, hard-working, creative, ambitious, happy individuals, they will not only be prepared for the rigorous study and application of excelling in any career path of their choice, but they will be capable of governing their own lives and sustaining a free society.

Why we oppose the Common Core: 

We oppose the CCSS initiative because it aims to operate a system of centrally-managed student work training, while discarding the vital qualities of a sound education that contribute to the development of mature thinkers who are prepared to thrive in any chosen life path.

Three Points of Opposition: 

1. We oppose the core vision of the CCSS initiative: to build a system for centrally-managed student training with the purpose of fitting the future generation as cogs in a managed workforce for the “Global Economy.” This central goal will dismantle liberal arts education, which most contributes to the development of mature thinkers who are prepared to thrive in any chosen life path and sustain a free civilization.

2. We oppose the CCSS initiative because it continues the failed education reforms of the past by mandating minimum, common, and quantifiable standards and high-stakes testing which leads to the hyper-focus on quantifiable skills at the expense of the vital characteristics of sound education.

3. We oppose the CCSS initiative’s use of highly predictive computerized testing for the tracking of students. There are serious concerns that CCSS violates our children’s privacy rights as these tests can be manipulated to measure physiological, behavioral, and attitudes, which data will be collected along with extensive intimate data in the P-20 database available across stateliness, by the US DOE, and special interests. 

Common Core: The Cost of Uniformity

Outcome Based Education: From Goals 2000, NCLB, RTTT, to Common Core

Well intentioned school reformers have been pushing the idea of outcome based education for decades. What is outcome based education? It's the idea that educating kids is like building a product on an assembly line. The idea that you get predictable quality controlled equality of outcome from every student by an equality of inputs. This has created a paradigm shift in education. Viewing the education of children in an unnatural way and transforming classrooms through the one-size-fits all standardization of education. 

It is not surprising that this idea got teeth after the creation of the Federal Department of Education. Consistent with the compulsory regulatory nature of government, the DOE began it's work by "encouraging" uniform regulation compliance in exchange for federal education dollars. This pursuit of equality of inputs has pushed all the education "reforms" that parents, teachers, and students are fed up with, including the newest, "Common Core". Each "reform" gets progressively more controlling as each one fails to attain the equality of inputs/equality of outputs that is desired.

I believe those who continue to push this idea have a warped view of reality that is seriously dangerous in practice. I struggle to understand their confused thought processes that are coloring everything our kids are taught overt and subliminal. They carry with them a strange dichotomy that pushes "equality" through uniformity, and simultaneously teach the relativity of multiculturalism that supposedly celebrates diversity. These competing messages make for messy minds and kids ill equipped to make sound judgments about themselves and the world around them.

They will not stop pushing their outcome based education philosophy because it is rooted in their misconceived notions of what "equality" is. They keep trying newer forms of "quality control" because in their view the obvious failures are the fault of never quite reaching the equality of inputs (making everyone the same). They say there are still too many schools doing things in too many different ways. Basically we don't have the conveyor belt model down to a science yet.

The pressure this has put on teachers (and by extension students) has changed education from the "lighting of a fire to the filling of a pail" and prompted schools to shift their mission from extending educational opportunity to all, to a promised "guarantee" of success for all" (Thus "No Child Left Behind) -- which of course fails not only because we are all different but because there is not one singular definition of success.

My sons middle school principle once explained it to me this way as he defended the paradigm shift -- because of the failures of parents "now days", schools have a greater responsibility to ensure students succeed in a more direct way. Instead of providing opportunities and then leaving it to the student, aided by their parents, to take hold of those opportunities, school today must “guarantee” that their students will learn. He said, In education today it is “no longer the mind set to give students opportunity,” but it has become, “I’m going to make you learn it.”

My school district’s mission statement exemplified this thinking. The statement said the mission of our schools “is to guarantee that each student develops the character traits and masters the knowledge and skills necessary for personal excellence and responsible citizenship…” Can schools guarantee that children will develop character and master knowledge? How is it done? It is done as my principal suggested, by taking the attitude, “I’m going to make you learn.”

There has always been a certain segment of society that has believed you can guarantee a certain outcome through compulsory means. Whether or not that is true, I believe it is a dangerous way to be teaching American children. John Adams said that, “Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.” How can we instruct them in the principles of freedom through compulsion?

This changing paradigm is moving us into an era where children are not empowered to pursue excellence, and largely because they are no longer free to manage their own success or to suffer the consequences of their failure. How do the character traits of responsibility and self-motivation develop without experiencing failure and true life consequences? Can any lasting life lessons be learned in a controlled, sterile, forced environment?

The lofty plans of these "reformers" to transform education may achieve the result of universal C-level proficiency. But at what cost? At the cost of highly motivated, self-disciplined, hard working, creative, ambitious, happy children.

If we force “learning” – which in this new philosophy means successfully regurgitating information on standardized tests – we will teach children far more damaging lessons. We will teach them that they are not free. Or even worse, we will teach them that freedom is dangerous because it allows for failure. We will teach them that failure is an unacceptable part of life. Therefore, freedom must also be unacceptable.

This loss of freedom and failure teaches a twisted reality and confuses and harms our children. It removes true accountability and ultimately teaches them that they are weak and reliant on others for their success. In this climate, we raise lazy, entitled children who are unsatisfied with themselves and others and are far more likely to fail in the real world and be unable to recover from it.

We ought to remember the wise words of Abraham Lincoln, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” If the philosophy of the school room in our generation is to seed mistrust in freedom and accountability then Lincoln's words are a true prediction of calamity for our government in the next.

National Standards Do NOT Require a National Curriculum: True or False?

A reader recently commented on my blog post, "What's Wrong With the Common Core," and I've decided to post a response because his point is so often repeated by supporters of the Common Core Stare Standards Initiative.

His comment refuted my claim that Common Standards push a Common Curriculum. He wrote, "National standards do NOT require a national curriculum. Study the CCSS and you will find for the most part skills and abilities outlined. In the area of language arts, for example, challenging writing skills are outlined. Whether a student in Oregon demonstrates these skills by writing a paper on arguing the validity of MLK assertions in his Birmingham jail letters or whether a student in Illinois writes similarly while studying women's rights, much freedom remains in the curriculum for how the challenging skills are acquired. Currently, I see the CCSS as standards which are challenging educators and students to move to high levels of universally recognized skill levels."

To defend my position that CCSS will lead to a Common Curriculum I would like to share a few logical real life examples of my own.

I often speak to teachers about education policy and how it translates into the everyday classroom. While speaking recently to a 6th grade English teacher (living in Maryland, a state who has fully implemented the Common Core) she expressed her immediate dislike of the changes made to the curriculum in her classroom since the state implemented the new ELA standards. Her chief concern was the decrease in literature and the increased focus on non-fiction reading which she says has made it more difficult to motivate reluctant readers and has shifted student writing skills to favor technical writing styles over creative writing.

This curriculum change is directly related to the Common Core State Standards and what unelected boards believed was "relevant to real life". While it is true what defenders of the Common Core say, the standards don't dictate this book over that, they certainly dictate that all schools de-emphasize literature regardless of what individual students, teachers, or schools feel is best in building strong readers and writers.

Another example of how the Common Core is pushing a national curriculum can be found in the uniform reports of parents in states who have adopted Common Core Math (reports you can read if you join education social media groups). These descriptions reflect an immediate and distinctive change in the curriculum and instructional methods used to teach math especially to the early elementary students.

This account is from a personal friend but her account echoes dozens of similar accounts from parents coast to coast: "He was coming home with this insane math that didn't actually teach him much about how to solve the problems. He COULD solve the problems using the methods they taught, but in the time it took him to answer ONE question FIVE different ways, he could've answered so many more! I had NO idea how to help him solve the problems, so if he got stuck, I'd have no idea how to help."

Need more evidence of how common standards push a common curriculum that will permeate every corner of your local school? Just do an Internet search for Common Core teacher helps and Common Core curriculum models. There are thousands of training videos for teachers to help them integrate Common Core into their curriculums and instruction methods. Achieve, the private company who published the Common Core has received federal grants to begin producing curriculum models for alignment.

Need more evidence? Read the market news reports for Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Saxon. Nearly all producers of curriculum and text books have already or are rapidly aligning their material to Common Core. This is widely discussed among Homeschool groups nationwide.

These companies are ecstatic about these national standards because it will mean producing one text book for every grade and subject instead of catering to schools on a state by state basis. The business model alone is proof that we will have a Common Curriculum as a result of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Former Maryland state Superintendent, Nancy Grasmick stated that the Common Core is a "national curriculum... No longer are education initiatives developed state by state, but in a model similar to European countries." Nancy Grasmick now works as a prominent professor at Towson University, a renown teachers collage, where she was appointed a Presidential Scholar for Innovation in Teacher and Leader Education. Her job is to orchestrate a "broad overhaul of the programs at the university" that will train teachers in Common Core alignment. She has spoken openly about how Common Core will fundamentally shape education and her role in reshaping teaching methodology to align with Common Core.

While it certainly is true that curriculum is taught with variation classroom to classroom and that children will differ in the books they read or the subjects they choose to write a report on, it is equally true that text books will become uniform throughout the country and teachers will be commonly trained to administer a common curriculum. Further, universities will align the education they give their aspiring teachers to reflect the methodologies of the Common Core State Standards.

I just don't see how people defending the Common Core can make a logical argument that standards don't drive curriculum. They certainly shape the test, and of course it naturally follows that in order to perform well on the test the curriculum must be tailored to the standards. To deny the real tangible connection between standards, testing, and curriculum -- and of greater impact the standardization of teacher training and methodology -- is a disingenuous argument at best, and manipulative at worst.

Stop Common Core from the Left and Right: Can we build common ground on Common Core?

While reading a recent article from The World Socialist Website in opposition to the Common Core State Standards, I was amused by the interesting bedfellows the war over Obama's education reforms has made. A conservative like myself agreeing with the World Socialist's points of opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative — And an accused socialist like Obama sending Arne Duncan to ask the conservative Chamber of Commerce to support the CCSS against increasing attacks. The World Socialist Web Site is simpatico with libertarian Glenn Beck in reporting that CCSS is a "FEDERAL initiative bankrolled by various corporate interests" — while the US Media is backing Obama's agenda and pushing the administrations propaganda that CCSS is "State-led".

To reassure me that I hadn't landed in an alternate universe where socialists support limited government, the "World Socialist" article concluded their astute analysis of the deficiencies of CCSS by placing blame squarely on evil capitalism."The provision of high quality public education is incompatible with the continued existence of capitalism." Here is of course where we differ. My contention has been that Common Core is the result of a key tenet of socialism; markets heavily regulated and centrally managed industries. Common Core is the educational counterpart: managed markets, managed work force, managed career paths - P-20.

Despite our obvious differences -- our different solutions for quality education and strategies to address  poverty and other social factors that most profoundly affect educational outcomes -- we seem to have found common ground on Common Core.

Our common ground includes:

1) We oppose the "intensified testing regime to evaluate the performance of students and teachers" that will not improve education and does great harm to students and teachers.

2) We oppose Obamacore because it seeks to "tailor public and higher education entirely to the needs of corporate America" (State Capitalism). Viewing students as cogs in a global economy and "assessing students for the purpose of channeling them into collage or trade skill tracks."

3) We oppose the unholy and unaccountable partnership between the compulsory power of the federal government and the bankrolled priorities of various corporate interests and political unions.

4) We oppose the movement towards tracking our children from Pre-K through career and the privacy concerns associated with making that data available to the Federal government, private political NGO's, and corporations.

5) We oppose the creation of giant corporate education monopolies, "radically altering the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments."

6) We oppose the cost to state taxpayers — "none of the funding going to teachers’ salaries... increasing resources for art, music and gym courses" — instead states will be forced to divert funds to "CCSS implementation and testing materials such as computers, software and training materials for teachers."

Can our common ground NOW lead to a common solutions later?

Common solutions are usually built on common understanding of the problem. Albert Einstein said it this way, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." For this reason I hope to reach open minded progressives, to persuade them to entertain the idea that the Capitalism they see today is not the product of Free Market Capitalism that propelled American freedom and prosperity. Capitalism has been corrupted by the power hungry in the government who seek to control the free market and the power hungry corporate moguls who seek corporate privilege via law. Thus both sides amassing great power and wealth by corrupting both government and business.

It would certainly make for a much more cohesive reform movement if my socialist friends (and yes I have some) might find truth in what a true believer in the virtue of Capitalist, Ayn Rand, taught: "A free mind and a free market are corollaries." Without some foundation of truth to which we all ascribe I am leery about our chances of finding common solutions, however, their is a glimmer of hope because we already oppose Common Core on common ground. It seems like a solid starting point to build meaningful education reform in the US. Can we?  I hope we have the opportunity to find out.