Missouri Coalition Against Common Core

The House Rules Committee met tonight and voted 8:3 to pass SB210 on to the House for a third reading. The only Republican voting against the bill was Representative Lair of Disrtict 7. It could be heard by the House tomorrow evening.

The hearing on SB210 ran almost two hours this morning. The Committee adjourned to attend the regular House session. They reconvened this evening and voted a substitute bill out 17:0.  The bill language was the same as the original Senate Committee substitute, focusing only on Common Core and requiring 2 subject reports, 8 congressional district meetings (with Commissioner Nicastro in attendance) completed by December 31, 2013 and a final report to the Senate and House by January 31, 2014.

The bill now goes to Rules Committee who is expected to turn it around quickly. It will go for a third reading on the House floor and, if voted out, go back to the Senate to be truly agreed and finally passed.

A special report in the St. Louis Beacon opens with a peek into the world of today's teacher.

"Like many teachers right now, I have a Common Core app on my iPad. Reading through the newly refined learning standards for K-12 students, I am concerned about my IEPs, especially the ELLs who are perhaps also ADD and receive pull-out services, or others whose paras might not be familiar with strand 1.RFS.4, which says that a first grader needs to be able to “read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension” and are only worrying about keeping him from bouncing off the wall when I’m trying to DRA half the class and Tungsten the rest and all the other kids are perfectly silent doing their SSR. I am not at all concerned about my Proficients -- nobody is -- but come next May when MAP rolls around, how will I ever get my Basics and Below Basics where they’ll need to be if I want to avoid getting pic’d? I had a walk-through last week and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t doing any DOK."

That jargon is not exaggerated. It is the language of eduspeak and something that drives the day-to-day functioning of our teachers. The author goes on to talk about the real world impact of Common Core on teachers and students in a way that sheds light on why so many people have a negative gut reaction to a single set of standards that everyone must follow.

"Having an idea of where you’re trying to “get kids” may be fine, these people say, but since all learning emerges out of a highly individual and dynamic interaction between a specific person and her teachers, peers and cultural and social setting, one-goal-for-all may not be an-equitable-system-for-all."

The author pulls out specific standards that may, on their face, appear non-controversial, but upon application in our diverse classrooms present real problems.

"Second problem: Who’s going to teach educators to hear the mother tongue of all students without bias, since this is what has to happen for children to really “adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating a command of formal English when indicated or appropriate” as the Common Core requires (12.SL.6)? Who’s going to explain to the well-meaning teachers in Carthage, Mo., where Latinos constitute more than a quarter of the population, that it is both immoral and conceptually erroneous to say that someone is speaking “broken English.” Human language is the opposite of fragile. It don’t break, it bends."

The article deserves to be read from beginning to end and shared with other teachers and administrators who may have not given much thought to the full impact of a single set of national standards. 

Common Coredom by  Inda Schaenen 

Posted May 6, 2013

Today SB210 was perfected in the Senate. Discussion centered around the public's need for more information on this very large change to our education system.  

Two amendments were added to the bill. One is a long standing amendment to change the timing and process of the decision for the state to take over a district which has lost its accreditation.

The second amendment sets up an interim committee to study the foundation formula. It was noted during the discussion that DESE has not followed the foundation formula in distributing $130 millions dollars to the district. (For context, DESE's budget is $3 billion and the districts contribute another $4 on top of that making the total the state spends on education, out of a $22 billion bugdet, $7 billion.) One impact of this misuse of the foundation formulat is that the St. Louis Special School District has lost $3 million dollars annually. 

For the perfected language click here.  The bill now goes to the house for reading and a vote. 

Sir Michael Barber is a name you need to get to know and look out for. He is fast becoming the international guru of education reform and is a huge supporter of Common Core Standards. After ruining British education with his "Deliverology" he has begun consulting with education experts around the globe including here in the United States.

Read this great overview of who he is (one of his titles is CEO of Pearson), who he's associated with, and where he wants to go.

Why worry about Barber?  He wants “sustainable reform” which he defines as “irreversible reform” and aims to “make it so it can never go back to how it was before.”

"We were asked how many were going forward with it, and every hand went up," he said. Los Angeles is not a unique case. Dioces in Philadelphia, Louisville and Arlington VA are also on board with CCSS.

The reasons centered around making schools comparable and concern that college entrance exams will be heavily influenced by CCSS. 

Read more about which private schools are heading into CCSS here at Ed Week.