The last three weeks SD Rostra published the first three parts of a presentation by Citizens for Quality Education made during the April 22 Poway Unified School District Board meeting on the implementation of Common Core State Standards in schools.
Below is the last of that four-part presentation.
The concerns expressed by the group are of impact to all schools, not only those in the Poway area.
Guest Commentary
by Mary Baker, Jeannie Foulkrod and Steve Sarviel, Citizens for Quality Education
Common Core State Standards for Education
All Californians should be very aware of the new education standards that the State adopted under Governor Schwarzenegger for Math and English. This is supposed to be integrated by all districts by 2015, whether the districts have funding or not. Please read the series of articles taken from a recent Citizens for Quality Education presentation to the Poway Unified School District (PUSD) that address real concerns about the new standards.
Obviously, PUSD has its well publicized financial issues, but no one would disagree that the district has an excellent reputation statewide. It would not be beneficial to change a curriculum that is NOT broken, either for parents, business owners, homeowners or students in the district. Please do your own research and comment on the issues. This cuts across party lines as it is about education and privacy for our children and their families.
Poway Unified School District Board Meeting – Presentation on Common Core State Standards, Part 4 of 4
This includes an analogy and the conclusion given to the PUSD during the presentation. Our group decided to illustrate the ‘Grand Experiment’ of the Common Core State Standards with a very effective analogy given by an expert in pharmaceutical field. This was very enlightening to attendees of the meeting. Anyone that cares about education and their families should do a similar presentation to their school boards voicing these concerns and the fact that if everything is dictated by the Federal Government, School Boards and Superintendents are no longer needed.
Untested Methods
As a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, I tend to look at issues from the perspective of my experience. To illustrate the Common Core State Standard story, I have created an analogy to summarize our point. (Editor note: Janeth Bartlett, Ph.D, was addressing the school board at this time.)
In order to market a new drug, a sponsor must first conduct years of research to assure the quality, the safety and the effectiveness of a product. Now let’s look at a hypothetical new drug I will call “Supersmart” and consider its intended use.
Let us suppose that I come to the board with this proposal:
- I represent a consortium that develops pharmaceuticals and supplements that promote human health and well-being. We have discovered a compound, Supersmart, that has great promise for creating the kind of student that will benefit our economy in the future.
Supersmart greatly increases the ability of students to learn. It increases
- their ability to absorb concepts,
- their ability to focus on material presented, and
- their interest in and enthusiasm for learning with the right attitudes and values
We are so positive about the potential of Supersmart that we propose that PUSD start immediately to provide Supersmart to all students in the district.
We will train your personnel on how to use Supersmart for best results. Supersmart itself, and the associated personnel training are expensive, but we are sure that you will be pleased with the overall results.
Don’t worry about the fact that we haven’t tested Supersmart on children yet, or that we have no data to support its quality, safety or effectiveness.
We have a questionnaire that measures 400 data points on an ongoing basis for the full thirteen years of primary and secondary education to test the effectiveness.
What a proposal! Well I would hope that this board would turn down my offer without giving it a second thought.
- The push in education for states and local districts to adopt new and untested standards, relates to what I just illustrated.
- CCSS is untried so that there is no experience with respect to its effectiveness or its safety in regards to student development
- It promises to be expensive to implement, and it will collect massive amounts of private, personal data not only on students but also on the families of students.
Is this what we truly want for our children?
Conclusion
Parents buy homes, start businesses, work, and volunteer in the community. The reputation and quality of our schools has indirectly created demand for real estate and commerce. We all want the best for our children, this is the reason we are bringing our concerns about Common Core State Standards to your attention.
We are hopeful that our presentation has stimulated you to open a dialogue with your local elected and appointed representatives. As a reminder, they are John Collins, Superintendent; Marc Davis, Board President; Todd Gutschow, Vice-President; Andy Patapow, Member; Kimberley Beatty, Member; Penny Ranftle, Clerk.
We ask that the Board provide specific and detailed responses to the following:
- Request #1: Provide an initial study on the impact of CCSS on the quality of education.
- Request #2: Provide a budget analysis to forecast the costs of implementing CCSS and how it compares and impacts the current budget.
- Request #3: Investigate changes in the education privacy laws, make the changes known to the public, and establish clear policies to secure privacy for teachers, students, and parents.
- Request #4: Explore and provide an exit strategy to potentially withdraw from CCSS if it is not effective or is detrimental to students and their learning environment.
Finally, a fundamental question that must be addressed:
Who should set educational standards for PUSD? Should our local school district and community set the standards, or should the federal government’s Department of Education, an unelected bureaucracy, arguably ineffective in improving education since its inception in 1979?
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Comments 12
There are far too many disturbing issues raised here to adequately comment on each one. So, I’ll start with the last question first and decide on other comments later after my blood drops below boiling point.
“Who should set educational standards for PUSD?” Are you kidding? If anyone genuinely has to question whether or not it is the parents and local community and their elected representatives who should be determining ALL aspects of their childrens’ education, they probably aren’t reading this site or perhaps cannot even read.
Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, and maybe even Greenies… virtually all share a strong desire that their child be properly educated to their standards and not have what their child is taught and how their child is taught to think controlled by some corporate entity or unelected federal or state bureaucrat.
Wake up people. YOUR child and their mind is being taken from you in plain sight.
Lastly, perhaps there won’t be any comments here from those who would really have to consider the question addressed in this comment because they aren’t capable of answering the challenge question below 🙂
This article poses many important questions for readers of sdrostra.com. The introduction of the conclusion is however, perhaps the most important thing for citizens and businesses in the community to take note of. Exceptional schools creates demand for housing within an area and necessarily puts upward pressure on values and commerce within that area. ANYTHING which can or will reduce the level of exceptionalism of schools, real or perceived, will then necessarily have a negative impact on real estate values and commerce.
Business owners all over San Diego County, especially within the Poway Unified School District, parents or not, should be considering the implications to their business of standardizing the educational outcome (which IS the goal of Common Core) with areas like Los Angeles, Detroit, and Chicago. As local schools integrate this nationalized set of standards and come into par with others, the reputation of local schools and corresponding values and commerce will follow (and not in a desired direction).
All aspects of education should remain with the LOCAL school boards. The proponents of CCSS will argue that the local districts can create their own curriculum. They can indeed so long as it conforms to the national and corporate defined standards. In other words, “local districts can do anything they want as long as it is exactly this”.
Business owners need to join with parents everywhere and put a stop to this federal/corporate takeover of education. People should have the freedom to determine for themselves how and what their children are taught and how their community will be impacted by it.
Point of fact: California’s students currently are Ranked #48 out of the 50 United States! California teachers are THE HIGHEST PAID teachers in the USA! It’s time to make teachers accountable! Tenure needs to be only a small part of parent groups being able to evaluate teacher performance and keep the best (with bonuses) and retire the lacking! That’s what happens in most every successful corporation, Why not in education???
Christopher, no argument against making teachers accountable here. Charter schools do it every year. If a teacher sucks, they are looking for another job no later than next June. I have no problem with that. Unions might. I don’t.
These decision needs to be with the LOCAL school districts and not based on some federal assessment determined by scoring by some temporary workers hired by Pearson Publishing in some corporate boiler room somewhere. Ask local school district board members, principals or teachers how the assessments will work and you will get either a blank stare or some regurgitated babble about how the state is working on that.
Mr. Roos, I agree, teachers should be held accountable and I would give stellar teachers big bonus’, just like in the private sector. CCSS is not the path to get there, there are too many other strings attached, like the personal data sent to the federal government.
Big picture, IRS knows our financial background, next year, they will know our health history, in addition, they (fed govt) will know our children’s information. Does this bother anyone?
Bueller? Bueller?
Ms. Right is RIGHT. Wake up folks. The news papers are full of it today. Your personal information is for sale if you use a bank, on-line service, email, just about anything where you fill in a form in order to do business or get information – even your IRS or census forms. WAKE UP.
That’s WAYNE and I live in Poway, not in Neverneverland.
Government should not set the standards. PARENTS should — through school choice. Just about every “public school” issue could be better handled with true choice. Not just charter schools, but making PRIVATE schools a real option — with education vouchers or (better yet) tax credits that work like the EITC.
We get into these endless arguments about government setting/dictating standards, mandates and prohibitions. When we do that, in effect we turn education of to the CTA/NEA/AFT labor union bosses and their allies, who clearly do NOT consider our kids’ education a major priority. To the extent they ARE concerned about education, it’s a concern that our kids are taught to be meek “good citizens” — unquestioning advocates for big(ger) govenment.
We’d be better off with genuine choice without government strings — and PRIVATE standards (such as the SAT and ACT tests) to use as benchmarks.
Private schools are not perfect, but Utopia is not an option. They are FAR better than public schools — even if they exist only as a viable alternative for all. Competition is the way to improve education — not government dictated “standards.”
Right on Mr. Rider. School choice is the “magic bullet” that will eventually rid our public schools of federal government tampering.
About ACT and SAT: They are going to be “harmonized” to be compatible with Common Core. So much for a local district or a state to be able to define education standards of their own.
Richard Rider… much of what you say is absolutely correct. The one exception is regarding SAT and ACT tests. Please look up “David Coleman” on google. He is now the President of the College Board (SAT tests). He has promised to align the SAT with Common Core State Standards. This beast has tentacles which reach into ALL schools, be it public, charter, private or home schooling.
The only recourse is to educate parents and the public about the TRUTH about Common Core State Standards and together get education out of the hands of the “Education Cartel” led by the Federal government spending our grandkids’ money on it.
Well, it goes far beyond our grandkids. As far in the future as deficit spending and “Education Cartels” can possibly make it is more accurate/likely. Ask Arne Duncan, head (czar) of the US Dept. of Education. He will readily tell you what his vision for nationalizing public, and all forms of education, is for our country.
That’s not just for our school districts, it’s NATIONALIZING the systems that have made our country great and ruining them like the postal system, the health system, the taxation system, and just about any nationalized system you can name.