Two from CMS named to state commission on Common Core

Two Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools administrators have been included on the final 11-person team that will review what North Carolina will do with Common Core standards, the state said Tuesday.

The state legislature set up the Academic Standards Review Commission as a sort of compromise on what to do with the controversial standards. Plenty of legislators wanted to do away with the Common Core, and the N.C. House passed a bill that would not let any of the current standards be considered. The final outcome is a group that will study the standards and come up with a recommendation for a rewrite.

The final list of who's to serve was just released this week. From CMS: Deputy superintendent Ann Clark and Project LIFT zone supervisor Denise Watts.

Their appointments at least indicates that the outcome of the commission might not be predetermined. Superintendent Heath Morrison and other administrators in CMS have been on the record about supporting the Common Core standards.

A few other members have been upfront with their opposition to the standards. Retired math professor John Scheik, for example, told N.C. Policy Watch that he thinks they include "ludicrous" methods of teaching.

The group will meet for the first time Monday up in Raleigh. Here's the full list of appointments, courtesy of the N.C. Department of Administration. I've added in parentheses a brief description of how they ended up on the list.

House Appointments

Tammy Covil, New Hanover (New Hanover County school board member)

Dr. Jeffrey Isenhour, Catawba (principal of Bunker Hill High School in Claremont)

Katie Lemons, Stokes (South Stokes High School teacher)

Denise Watts, Mecklenburg

Senate Appointments

Ann B. Clark, Iredell

Dr. Laurie McCollum, Rockingham (assistant principal, Western Rockingham Middle)

Jeannie A. Metcalf, Forsyth (Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school board member)

Dr. John T. Scheik, Wake (retired UNC math professor)

State Board of Education Members

Chairman William “Bill” Cobey, Durham

Dr. Olivia Oxendine, Robeson

Gubernatorial Appointment
Andre Peek, Wake (IBM executive and leader of the N.C. Business Committee for Education)

Common Core roots are tangled and fascinating

As North Carolina cannonballs into the political battle over Common Core standards,  I came across two in-depth pieces that helped me understand the roots of the current conflict.

Retired teacher Lou Nachman steered me to a recent Washington Post article on  "How Bill Gates pulled off the swift Common Core revolution."

Gates

Reporter Lyndsey Layton chronicles how the Microsoft founder's billions pushed the quest for academic standards from obscure wonk talk to a national craze in just a couple of years,  "one of the swiftest and most remarkable shifts in education policy in U.S. history."

Layton outlines how Gates money brought together state leaders and groups on the right  (such as the American Legislative Exchange Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) and left  (teachers unions and the Center for American Progress) to find common ground on Common Core.

Hunt

 There's a fascinating section on the role of The Hunt Institute,  founded by former Democratic N.C. Gov. Jim Hunt and affiliated with UNC Chapel Hill.  According to the article,  the Hunt Institute got $5 million in Gates money in 2009,  "more than 10 times the size of its next largest donation,"  and used that money to coordinate more than a dozen organizations,  convene weekly conference calls and hire a strategist to create  a  “messaging tool kit that included sample letters to the editor (and) op-ed pieces that could be tailored to individuals depending on whether they were teachers, parents, business executives or civil rights leaders."

Last week's mail also brought the Southern Poverty Law Center's  "Public Schools in the Crosshairs:  Far-Right Propaganda and the Common Core Standards." It also goes deep on the origins of Common Core,  as well as the various sources of opposition that have emerged.

Image from SPLC report

To state the obvious: SPLC,  an Alabama-based civil rights group,  has a strong point of view.  But you don't have to agree with those views, or the premise that some Common Core critics are striving to undermine public education and turn the system over to for-profit interests, to learn something from the 36-page report. It itemizes a number of concerns the group considers valid,  including the influence of the Gates Foundation and testing companies and the link between Common Core and a "toxic testing culture."

The report attempts to track the basis of claims that some might dismiss as  "the rantings of extremists"  --  that Common Core promotes socialism,  anti-Americanism and homosexuality,  for instance,  and is anti-Christian.  It notes that the standards specify only one set of required readings,  for high school students:  The Declaration of Independence,  the preamble to the Constitution,  the Bill of Rights and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.  Most of the objections are based on selections from "exemplar texts,"  or suggested readings,  the SPLC report says. 

No matter your views,  if you care about education and take the time to get through these two pieces,  you're almost sure to come away with more perspective on the debate  --  and to find something that'll make you crazy. 

Dr. Seuss as education agitator

The U.S. Department of Education probably thought it would start a nice book chat when it celebrated Read Across America day by asking on its Facebook page what people are reading.  Instead,  it got a barrage of posts from teachers and parents protesting the Common Core standards and/or Education Secretary Arne Duncan's test-driven approach to education reform.

"I'm reading Reign of Error,  Mercedes K. Schneider's blog,  EduShyster,  Jersey Jazzman and everything else I can get my hands on that informs me as a parent to help my children escape from the pseudo-science of the corporate reform movement's nonsense curriculum," read a typical comment.

Diane Ravitch's "Reign of Error:  The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools" was cited by many of the 184 people who had posted as of Tuesday afternoon.  

Some got more creative.   “Race To The Top of Gates Mountain" and  “Harry Plotter:  Similarities Between the U.S. Department of Education and The Ministry of Magic,"  replied Jacob Rosecrants,  a former high school teacher.

Michael Bohr, whose Facebook page identifies him as a "contemporary insurgent,"  wrote a poem,  apparently inspired by the Dr. Seuss theme that's part of the official Read Across America event:

I am busy reading all the writings on the wall
Of which I doubt you've read any of that at all.
For if you did, I'm sure that you would probably see

That the Common Core is as bad, as bad as it can be. 

Thanks to Vivian Connell,  a former Providence High teacher who's now a lawyer working with Public Schools First NC,  for the heads-up on this entertaining thread.

NC superintendents send message to lawmakers

Create a five-year plan to get N.C. teacher pay to the national average.  Kill the new voucher program. Commit to the Common Core curriculum and adopt nationally-normed exams.

Morrison

Those are among the recommendations prepared by superintendents of the state's 10 largest school districts,  including Heath Morrison of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and James Merrill of Wake County Public Schools.  The coalition, which also includes Cumberland,  Durham,  Gaston,  Guilford,  Johnston,  New Hanover,  Union,  and Winston-Salem/Forsyth, has created position papers on Common Core, vouchers and teacher pay.

After a 2013 legislative session that brought dramatic changes to public education,  the superintendents got together to let legislators and the N.C.

Merrill

Board of Education know their thoughts on key issues.

Among the recommendations:

*In addition to boosting base pay,  lawmakers should scrap the bonus plan for 25 percent of teachers and instead work toward a more comprehensive performance pay system.

*Restore pay supplements for teachers who earn master's degrees in teaching or their academic subject.

*If the General Assembly isn't willing to rescind the Opportunity Scholarship program,  which was put on hold by a judge last week,  it should at least add more oversight for the private schools that take the public money.

*Provide assurance that the state will not change its academic standards for at least seven years.

*Adopt nationally-normed exams  (North Carolina has been working with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to create such tests)  and try to reduce the burden of mandated testing.

Morrison will present the report to the CMS board Tuesday. 

Hot topic for 2014: Common Core and testing

As state legislatures convene in 2014,  look for renewed debate about Common Core academic standards and the testing that comes along with it,  says Pam Goins, director of education policy for the Council of State Governments.

Goins

"Rising numbers of stakeholders are questioning the Common Core State Standards Initiative, state assessment systems and teacher evaluation models. Of the 45 states that adopted the common core, as many as 20 states may re-open the discussion on rigorous academic standards,"  Goins wrote in a news release last week. "The remaining states likely will review their commitment to overhauling state assessment and accountability systems."

That's certainly true in North Carolina,  where questions about testing are raging and the state is moving toward new exams developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium that will provide cross-state comparisons of higher-level skills.

In addition to assessment and accountability, the council pegs the top five education issues for 2014 as expanding access to early childhood education,  increasing college/workforce readiness,  figuring out the best uses of digital learning and increasing college completion.

Those all sound on target for our state,  though I'd add teacher compensation and charters/choice to North Carolina's hot-topic list for 2014.  Any other big items on your radar?

Questions about state's final exams

The "incomplete" grades expected to show up on Charlotte-Mecklenburg high school report cards soon may be just the start of an uproar over state exams that are causing delayed grades.

North Carolina created 30 final exams that will be used to evaluate teacher and school effectiveness  --  and which have to count for 20 percent of students' final grades in those courses. After I wrote last week about delays in translating those scores to letter grades,  I heard from a handful of teachers and parents who said the exams don't match the material being taught.

"My son is a junior in high school and this past week had to take his honors pre-calculus exam.  On that exam were four questions never covered in the curriculum," wrote Anita Gimon of Union County. "Why is there subject matter on a test not in the curriculum during the semester? This was a problem as well last year. Students who normally made 80s & 90s on their tests were averaging 40s because the test did not match the curriculum. This seems to me to be a system that sets our kids up for failure."

"My daughter took the Math 3 exam yesterday and was pretty upset afterwards," wrote Susan Flynn.  "Half of the material was familiar to her, about half was not."

"The passages from the test last year  --  the only available preparatory material released by the state  --  are incredibly difficult and would be considered challenging in an AP-level course.  I know, because I teach standard, honors, and AP English 12,"  wrote Tiffany DiMatteo, a national board certified English teacher at Myers Park High.  "It feels as though NC wants to prove that students and teachers are failing by providing a terrible test that is being poorly planned, administered, and scored."

Chuck Nusinov,  executive director of learning and teaching for CMS,  says he has checked into that kind of concern.  The tests do appear to match the curriculum introduced last year,  which reflects national Common Core and N.C. Essential Standards,  he said.  The academic standards and the exams are designed to ensure that students learn more rigorous material and express that knowledge in more sophisticated ways on tests,  he said.  That should be a good thing in the long run,  but in the short run it means scores are down.

Nusinov says the challenges and confusion are particularly strong in math,  where the state also switched from a series of algebra and geometry classes to a new progression of math classes that incorporate various skills each year.  He said CMS is working to make sure teachers know what's expected,  but he knows teachers and students are struggling with the transition.

Students took the new finals last year,  but CMS opted not to count the scores toward grades because the tests were new.  This year it's not optional.  So first-semester report cards are expected to come out with incompletes for classes with state finals,  to be replaced with letter grades that factor in those tests once the state completes its tables for converting raw scores to grades.  That's bound to come as a shock to students who are used to making higher grades and who are watching their grade-point averages for college admissions.

No second chance on 2013-14 exams

N.C. students won't get a second chance if they flunk state exams this year, Vanessa Jeter of the Department of Public Instruction told me this week.

Before the new exams rolled out in 2012-13,  students who fell short were required to take the tests again  (different questions on the same material). If they passed on the second try,  it counted toward school proficiency rates, a significant bump for many struggling schools.

This year,  the only students who will be retested are those who fail third-grade reading exams.  The state's new Read to Achieve program spells out a series of actions that are triggered by failure on those tests,  starting with retesting and potentially leading to summer school and retention. (See the process on page 4 of this guide.)   Based on this year's results,  a lot of children aren't clearing the bar at the end of third grade.  See elementary school proficiency rates,  including the percent who passed third-grade reading,  on this new results map.

A second year of one-shot testing could be bad news for schools facing state-issued letter grades in 2014 (see 2013 results for all Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools and Mecklenburg charter schools in the rail at right).  The same goes for CMS high school students,  who will see 25 percent of their final grades in math I, English II and biology shaped by their score on the state tests.

But Superintendent Heath Morrison argues it will be good news for people trying to monitor how much progress schools make this year.  Before the state made it clear whether retesting would be revived this year,  he argued against it for the sake of having two consecutive years of comparable results.  In 2014-15,  the state is slated to switch tests again,  introducing Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium exams designed to reflect national Common Core standards and provide a consistent testing system among participating states.

"We would prefer to keep the testing as similar as possible,"  Morrison told the school board.