My name is Andre Rosa and I’m a State Rep candidate in Hillsborough District 8 / Manchester Ward 1. I oppose Common Core. I recently wrote this oped.
Rotten to the Core
by Andre Rosa
Education is a big deal. How children are taught determines New Hampshire’s future. Are we educating a new generation of teachers, engineers, researchers, and artists? Are our programs building the foundations for a better, more prosperous tomorrow?
A successful education system requires parental and teacher involvement, experimentation, innovation, and outright copying of education models that have proven successful. This is already done in the private sector. There is a wonderful diversity in alternative education, each with their own success stories. There’s the Sudbury school, where students are responsible for the direction of their own education [1], charter schools with their smaller class sizes [2], the Montessori schools [3], and, of course, homeschooling [4]. Why are similar options not available to public schools?
Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been introduced because lawmakers recognize that educational reform is urgently needed, but this new legislation misses the mark. We must welcome new, innovative teaching methods; however, it must be a bottom-up approach, not a top-down one. Unfortunately, CCSS is looking to be a disastrous, “one size fits all” solution, a framework being forced on us all. CCSS was developed and promoted by the National Governors Association, the Council for Chief State School Officers, Achieve, and Student Achievement Partner. These and other D.C. public policy institutions have received millions from Bill Gates to push and promote the national implementation of CCSS [5, 6]. Worse yet, we don’t have any insight into how effective CCSS will be. Even Bill Gates said, “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” [6] Is the Federal government really forcing a new, untested, experimental education standard on our students?
Not only is CCSS being imposed across the entire country, certain members of the Common Core Validation Committee are adamantly against these new standards. Former committee member Dr. Jim Milgram, a mathematics professor at Stanford University and one of the original authors of California’s 1997 K-12 mathematics standards [7], evaluated CCSS and said, “Common Core does not come close to the rhetoric that surrounds it. It doesn’t even begin to approach the issues that it was supposedly designed to attack.” [8] Professor Marina Ratner, an award-winning mathematician at University of California Berkeley, is concerned that CCSS moves calculus and algebra to higher grades, throwing out necessary concepts to prepare students for college. Professor Ratner wrote, “For California, the adoption of the Common Core standards represents a huge step backward which puts an end to its hard-won standing as having the top math standards in the nation.” [9]
While CCSS is lowering expectations in mathematics, its English Language Arts (ELA) standards will actually leave reading-impaired students, such as those with dyslexia, in the dust. CCSS contributing writer Dr. Louisa Moats was dismayed to discover what these standards have become. In discussing the reading program, she wrote, “Idealistic visions of student potential, coupled with unattainable standards, … and a disregard for decades of research on reading acquisition and individual differences may exacerbate student failure” [emphasis mine] [10, 11]. It is ironic education experts would disregard, if not willfully ignore, research-based approaches to reading skill development, and we may feel the consequences sooner than you think.
New Hampshire should take a stand against CCSS just as other communities are doing. It is being roundly rejected by other states further ahead in its enforcement than New Hampshire is. In New York, teachers, parents, and students are actively revolting against the mandates. This past spring, 60,000 New York students refused to take the required tests. In Chicago, Chicago Public Schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett stated she does not want any student to take the required PARCC exam and has requested to delay its rollout [13, 14, 15].
The worst part of all this is CCSS is a national standard with momentum preventing it from being amended by any state nor any local community. Not only are the SAT and AP programs changing to align with the new standards, CCSS is copyrighted, and states have signed a memorandum agreeing not to alter the framework [16, 17]. In Manchester, the city “rebranded” CCSS as the Manchester Academic Standards (MAS) assuaging the public and promised MAS would be a more rigorous, locally determined standard, merely building upon CCSS recommendations. That is far from the truth, and there is very little evidence of any significant differences, as contributors and local teachers are suggesting [18].
I’m not against the introduction of new education standards; however, I’m against CCSS being shoved down our throats by D.C. special interest groups. The Department of Education is threatening to remove federal funding if it is not administered [19]. This is all happening without any feedback from the most interested parties in a child’s education: the parent, the teacher, and the student.
I want diversity in education, and I will put up a fight at the State House! If CCSS supporters are confident in the framework’s effectiveness, I wish they would instead work with local schools, try out the new standards, test them, study them and promote its success stories as examples for others to follow. We are not ready for this. These mandates will absolutely increase our education costs. Between the recent increases in our state’s spending levels, the unexpected revenue shortfalls, continuing to implement Obamacare and Medicaid expansion, and now, carrying out the CCSS mandates, I don’t know how we will pay for all of this, and we may face an income tax in the coming years. For all these reasons, I say NO to Common Core.
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