Why Comply With A Bad Education Law?

And just because lawmakers say they are giving “autonomy” to states and local schools doesn’t make it so.

Why comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) when it is as bad as the law it replaced — No Child Left Behind (NCLB) ? Worse really.

Most teachers feel they must comply. Most parents don’t know what the law does. The general taxpaying public? They should care. Billions have been wasted in the false promises of reforms.

I’m part of the general public. The “why comply” question began to plague me because I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears how compliance with the ESSA requirement for “meaningful” consultation with parents was not at all meaningful.

This teacher clarifies what happened when we complied with NCLB. We knew it had “unintended consequences” by year five of its existence. It did harm without doing what it promised. But we kept on complying for another decade. Why?

Here’s the problem: ESSA still contains everything that made NCLB a law detrimental to the education of disadvantaged children. Plus it is a federal law designed to defund existing public schools.

Is the promise of ESSA to “restore local control, and empower parents” really what it does?

This is how the House of Representatives presented this law to the public. Truth?

Well? We hear more about state control, don’t we? And as many know, state lawmakers have been a cheap date for organizations like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council).

I would love to avoid being critical of my state, but I’m watching the same scenario unfold as I did with NCLB.

Why comply with NCLB’s “replacement” when it is based on the same failed theory? Lessons learned?

“What NCLB has demonstrated, 15 years in, is something policymakers already knew—that standardized test scores are strongly correlated with a student’s family income.”

Photo by Bradley

Well, here’s how the NCLB replacement law, ESSA, rolled out in my state.

At an early November (2016) meeting here in Idaho, the first draft of our ESSA State Plan was presented. With “meaningful consultation” with stakeholders about the state plan being part of ESSA, the compliance recommendation was met — in theory.

The word “meaningful” is used abundantly in the law. Among other things, ESSA promises “meaningful choice” to parents, “meaningful parent and family involvement,” “meaningful communication between family members and school staff,” and “meaningful teacher leadership.” You get the idea.

But eleven months after the passage of the new law, the draft of our state plan did not have even ONE INDICATOR of school quality decided. So, how meaningful could the meeting be? Isn’t input about school quality what most parents would like to voice?

But does it matter what the state presented “to stakeholders”? Other than teachers and administrators who happen to also be parents, how many parents attend these meetings? This particular meeting was in a school in my district that was designated under NCLB as “Needs Improvement,” and under the NCLB Waivers and now ESSA as a “Focus” or “Priority” school.

If there was to be meaningful involvement concerning school improvement issues, this should have been the place.

But meaningful parental involvement in a “reform” planning process doesn’t happen when you don’t give notice of the meeting, don’t have anything relevant for parents to comment on, and don’t give a presentation that is substantive. And when you schedule more meetings to occur over the holidays, a meaningful contribution by regular-ole parents is highly unlikely.

Truth is, parental input in my state has historically been selective.

How Compliance Eats Up Time and Money

Those of us attending this meeting were told that the Idaho State Department of Education took the first three months to read and translate the law.

We were told that from the time we adopted Idaho Core Standards (Common Core Standards) to the development of the assessments that correspond to those standards was 18 months.

Can’t we see how much time and money has been wasted on new standards and tests to give us a correlation to family income?

Meaningful Input?

Then, to add salt to my open wounds, a young state department of education employee stated,

“Children learn while taking assessments.”

Hello! THAT’s right! And that is one problem with computer-adaptive standardized tests. Remember, the promise was local control. Testing corporations are not “local” for most of us.

The local curriculum —what and how things are taught in the classroom— is not under local control. There is no meaningful consultation with parents. Parents have no clue what their children are being taught through the tests…..no matter what the “high” standards say.

So in Idaho’s plan, our assessments stay the same as they were under No Child Left Behind… with the addition of computer adaptive tests. Like them or not, parents comply regardless of how those tests are affecting their children. Or are parents not aware of the problems?

One thing is certain: When policy makers and school administrators
are basing more and more high stakes decisions on the results from assessments, we are obligated to explore and find a solution to the growing problem of test anxiety for all modes of testing administration.”

 

Plus, we were told at this local ESSA meeting that assessment scores for math, reading, and language arts would be heavily weighted in our new accountability plan. The new plan is just like the joke that was NCLB “accountability.”

Can it get worse?

The night of this meeting I didn’t get all my questions answered. But I heard enough to know ESSA is No Child Left Behind all over again — with some extremely damaging additions. CHARTER FUNDING, CHARTER FUNDING, CHARTER FUNDING is written in all over this law.

The danger? Federally funded, state “controlled” corruption. (So much for accountability.)

And this law continues to pretend to be a “reform” law. It’s standards-based (not standards guided) — revolving around “challenging” State academic standards. It still requires annual standardized testing based on those “challenging” standards. Therefore, this continues to be an outcome-based system exactly like NCLB but using different language.

ESSA puts test scores ahead of children’s learning needs. This is the opposite of the anti-poverty law it used to be.

So, the bulk of our federal education money is going towards standards, assessments, data-collecting technology, accountability systems, and “choice.” ESSA stands upon the principles of NCLB and the direction set by the National Governors Association back in 1988 (credit Lamar Alexander, Bill Clinton, and many others).

1988 – Restructuring schools (dismantling) was really the first step in restructuring public schools for use in the “knowledge economy.”

And all over the country, good people are trying to make a bad law “work” just like they did under NCLB. They comply.

Never mind that the 15-year experiment called No Child Left Behind produced overwhelming evident that how “high”, “challenging”, or “rigorous” the standards are has little correlation to student achievement. Yet we comply.

How can we even say with a straight face that we require “evidence-based” programs for education reform? The law itself isn’t based on evidence. It goes against the evidence.

Why comply?

Why not #Resist bad law? Why not take over the Quiet Revolution with our own #PublicEdRevolution ?

Our schools; our rules?

Airing the Dirty Laundry

It rained this morning in the high-mountain desert region of Idaho so that makes it the perfect day to air out the house. First, I’m going to finish airing my grievances with the “Super Supers” presentation.

As most of us commoners know — for leaders to do something we want, they have to believe it is their idea.

So as I listened to Dr. Eric Smith tell a “common” Core story that the Common Core State Initiative hatched in Chicago, I was struck with a notion. What if these people honestly believe this WAS their idea?

I had attended a local Common Core dog-and-pony show and one administrator there enthusiastically believed she had been in on this “state-led” adventure – because Mr. Tom Luna (Idaho’s Chief for Change) had brought her along to… you guessed it…Chicago.

And listening to Dr. Smith tell the same story in his easy, down-home manner really makes it believable.

You can read the Chicago story for yourselves by scrolling down to CORE BEGINNINGS in this Huffington Post article. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. No one seems to be able to do that.

You will hear it told that there was help from some “simultaneous efforts by outside groups.”

Right. Coincidence. And in their efforts to be “credited” with the Core, one group put out their plan ahead of the rest.

No coincidence who was on that planning “committee.” It was once called the Coalition for Student Achievement and none other than the Common Core architect himself, David Coleman, was there. They produced their paper, got their letter to the Obama administration, and got in the news by April 16, 2009.

They met in D.C. in “early” April 2009. “They” work fast.

Oh, but wait; there was the earlier Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano’s part in the Common Core story. She is credited with the “Innovation America” paper written in 2007 and low-and-behold, David Coleman and Jason Zimba joined the effort.

“Coleman and Zimba went to work on a seminal paper for the Carnegie Foundation that called for “math and science standards that are fewer, clearer, higher.” Directors at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation saw the paper and were impressed by its ideas. They funded some of Coleman’s work — and eventually dropped as much as $75 million on what would become the Common Core.” HuffPost

From 2007 to 2009, it appears that David Coleman carried the ball to D.C. through his Student Achievement Partners -to- the Coalition for Student Achievement meetings …. but wait, there are the airport meetings …

This “story” gets better. As Eric Smith explained to the Boise crowd: It was just this casual conversation (I paraphrase because no video yet) — “hey, why should we redo algebra in Florida and you redo it in Kentucky? Algebra is algebra. Let’s work together.” And we were “taking notes on napkins.” Really? You didn’t need to; Coleman had you covered.

But the show must go on … in Chicago

“At one point, Eric Smith, then the head of Florida’s schools, asked CCSSO and NGA to send around an agreement that would allow states to opt into the process of creating new standards.

Lucky for Smith, that document already existed. [Chris] Minnich and [Dane] Linn passed around a “Memorandum of Agreement” they had written hoping that governors and schools chiefs would sign on. The memo committed states to participate in the process of developing common learning standards, but specified that the standards would remain voluntary.”

“A few months later, the project got a sudden boost from the federal government.” HuffPost

Surprise, surprise?

“[Terry ] Holliday, the Kentucky schools chief, said. No one from the federal government attended that meeting, he added, emphasizing that the adoption of the Core was, at least initially, a state-led effort.”  HuffPost

That infamous meeting in Chicago was on April 17, 2009. And it was reported, “A representative of the Education Department was slated to attend the Chicago meeting.”

There must have been a bouncer at the door.

“So NGA and CCSSO representatives lobbied the Education Department several times to get the Common Core standards adoption requirement cut from Race to the Top guidelines. The feds didn’t exactly back off, but they did remove the term “Common Core” from the guidelines, requiring instead that states adopt “college- and career-ready standards.” The administration also allocated $350 million in stimulus cash to fund the development of tests aligned to the Common Core.” HuffPost

Well, at least we know that the government was good at delivering the mail. The coalition’s letter must have gone through.

So much for Rahm Emanuels Quiet Revolution and as far as his statement that “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” that is still playing out for education reform. We could come up with a “Fair Shot Agenda.” But no liars allowed in the meeting…so…

Which “leaders” are telling the truth and which have joined the masters of deception?

Until proven otherwise, I’d say the whole damned bunch is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. This is disgusting. Shame on them! Either they are dishonest or just too damned dumb to be leading!

“Our stimulus dollars” went into the hands and pockets of some already well-to-do people while the very schools that we say we want to turnaround are doing without teaching supplies and proper building maintenance. Meanwhile, the public system is being dismantled — parents being told to go homeschool if they don’t like the tests and wish to opt out.

Ladies and gentlemen, the old saying about liars led us to believe that when your laundry is soiled with lies, your pants will catch on fire. I wish.

If only it was so easy to tell.

If only it was so easy to tell.    Source:tnvalleytalks.hoop.la

And to all you Common Core supporters out there: look beyond the end of your noses and beyond your own classroom doors and windows. Look into the future and imagine this system “they” are creating. You are enabling them.

You are selling us out. These are not just standards.

I’d personally prefer to talk about the alternatives for helping struggling schools. I’d rather see us do the right thing.

Professional standards of practice and trust in the institution of public education can’t be built on a rotten foundation or one of sand.

The sun is now shining. #TruthBeTold

#####

P.S. My original research on Common Core looked at some of the official players on the development team. What I didn’t know at the time I wrote this blog was how INFLUENTIAL the SMART OPTIONS group was. The April dates seem confusing but it was that confusion that made me look further.

I’m not here to convince people what they should think. I’m here to encourage people to look beyond what they first see, seek the truth….really look for it…before taking a firm stance. And think about more than just their own immediate circumstances. Think about the future.