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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