Common Core State Standards (CCSS)

and College and Career-Ready Standards

(CCRS):

A Question of How to Improve, not

Whether to Improve

Juan Sebastian Roa

November 30, 2015

Executive Summary

This report highlights a few of the most prevalent implementation issues with Common Core State Standards (CCSS). It asks the Congress and Senate to develop, through the current ESEA rewrite, amendments that appropriate funding towards teacher development, materials, and research centers; in order to, fund trainings that educate and prepare teachers to implement their state’s College and Career-Ready Standards (CCRS), help Local Education Agencies receive materials that match state-picked standards with curriculums, and fund research centers, at the state level, that focus on examining the implementation of College and Career-Ready Standards at Title 1 and Title 2 schools.

Common Core State Standards, a federally backed standard under College and Career-Ready Standards, are a significant step forward, in some cases, from previous state standards; however, in other states, they have hindered educational progress. Increased federal grant flexibility, resulting in states choosing their own College and Career-Ready Standards, can serve as a tentative solution for state education systems harmed by CCSS. Background

In an effort to address concerns with student mobility, teacher accountability, and student performance, the National Governors Association (NGA) and The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), drafted the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) (Skinner 8). They sought to “…create a rigorous set of shared standards that states could voluntarily adopt. The standards [were] crafted to ‘define the knowledge and skills students should acquire through their K-12 education careers so they graduate from high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and workforce training programs.”1

States that align their College and Career-Ready Standards to CCSS qualify to receive federal funding under a subset of the Race to The Top grant competition (RTT) and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Flexibility Package. The Federal Government gives states the 1 Common Core State Standards Initiative: Highlights and Themes from the Public Feedback

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freedom to choose whether or not to adopt CCSS in their educational systems; however, a clear link to CCSS as their College and Career-Ready Standard is rewarded in the states’ grant applications by receiving additional points that qualify states for federal funding.

Prior to 2001, ESEA provisions allowed states greater flexibility in picking both content and performance standards; however; “concerns related to the diversity of accountability systems as well as concerns related to student mobility, consistent expectations for students, preparation of students for global competition, and skills students needed for employment spurred a grassroots movement led by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to develop common standards for ELA and mathematics in grades k-12” (Skinner 8). The NGA and CCSSO received funding from the Gates Foundation in order to create CCSS. It “… gave millions to NGA, CCSO, Achieve, and to Student Achievement Partners. Once the standards were written, Gates gave millions more to almost every think tank and education advocacy group in Washington to evaluate the standards—even to some that had no experience evaluating standards—and to promote and help to implement the standards” (Strauss). With this money, NGA and CCSSO developed common standards in mathematics and English/language arts (ELA). Overall, the Gates Foundation “…expended nearly $200 million to pay for the development, evaluation, implementation, and promotion of the Common Core standards” (Strauss).

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) modified and reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to expand the role of the federal government in “…supporting standards-based instruction and test-based accountability” (Skinner 2). In order for a state to receive education-based funding prior to NCLB, their standards in reading and mathematics must have aligned with Title I-A2 of ESEA. After NCLB, three

2 Per the U.S. Department of Education’s fact sheet, “Title I, Part A (Title I) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended (ESEA) provides financial assistance to local educational agencies (LEAs) and schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards.”

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factors changed the willingness of states to apply for federal education grants: (1) the rewarded implementation of common core, (2) the Race To The Top and Assessment Grants competitions, and (3) the ESEA flexibility package drafted by the Department of Education (ED) to states with accepted proposals (Skinner 2); however, most states did not have a choice given their reliance on federal funding. 43 states subsequently adopted CCSS.

Today, both the RTT and the ESEA flexibility package fund States by primarily relying on them submitting evidence demonstrating the adoption and implementation of CCSS in the required subjects at the required grade levels (Skinner 3). Under the General Education Provisions Act (GEPA)3, the ESEA4, and the Constitution5, opposing states claim the Department of Education has intruded on their right to make decisions over state education standards. Implementation Problems

After the modification and reauthorization of ESEA, in 2001, “…43 States, the District of Columbia, 4 outlying areas, and the Department of Defense Education Activity …adopted the Common Core Standards…”(Skinner 2). Four states, Virginia, Texas, Nebraska, and Alaska, never adopted CCSS. Indiana, South Carolina, and Oklahoma adopted CCSS, but dropped it subsequently. Minnesota adopted CCSS in only one subject. With time, many states continued to push against Common Core. Local school systems started breaking their allegiance with CCSS and sought to create standards that better aligned with the demographics and needs of their students.

3 “Section 438 of GEPA clarifies that no provision of any applicable program16 is intended to authorize the federal government to exercise any “direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system,” or over the selection of “library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system.” (Skinner 13 qtd. 20 U.S.C. §1232a.)4 “Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school’s specific instructional content, academic achievement standards and assessments, curriculum, or program of instruction.” (20 U.S.C. §6575) (Skinner 11).5 Opponents claim it violates the 10th amendment wherein: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

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Rapid discontinuation of CCSS by states followed various issues arising from a fast implementation process with limited stakeholder input. Some states, due to backlash from students, teachers, and parents now faced pressure to alleviate the negative repercussions of adopting CCSS. Stakeholders stepped forward with various concerns. Some of the most prevalent included: lack of experience from those hired to grade PARCC assessments, materials not aligning with CCSS, and lack of teacher development workshops on CCSS. Teachers, skeptical of Pearson’s hiring process for those grading PARCC assessments, asserted that Pearson should have require extensive teaching experience for those hired to grade exams. At the moment, Pearson claims that three-fourths of its PARCC graders have teaching experience, but has not released data on the exact numbers. In some instances, claims the New York Times, the definition of ‘teaching experience’ can refer to one year of teaching 45 years ago.6

Lack of materials aligning with CCSS also represents a hurdle in implementation. William Schmidt, Director of the Center for the Study of Curriculum at Michigan State University’s College of Education, analyzed 34 math textbook series and found that materials published after 2011 “…were, predictably, better aligned to common core than older ones but still left out about 20 percent of the standards”.7 In a May report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, researchers claimed that “…the need for standards-aligned curricula is undoubtedly the most cited implementation challenge for states, districts and schools”.8 Rising costs, paired with lack of adequate materials, placed schools at a stale-mate, leading them to make a decision on whether to continue pushing forward with the standards or reconsider their support of Common Core. Previously, in 2012, a similar report by the Fordham Institute had predicted that, “cumulative national estimates [for the cost of common core] range from $12.1 billion for Business as Usual to $3.0

6 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/us/grading-the-common-core-no-teaching-experience-required.html?_r=17 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/years-common-core-teachers-lament-lack-materials-319706188 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/years-common-core-teachers-lament-lack-materials-31970618

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and $5.1 billion respectively for the Bare Bones and Balanced Implementation models.”9 They suggested, at the time, that to supply school systems with the necessary funds for implementation, “the most significant source of cost reduction [came] from shifting away from hard-copy textbooks and using more online resources to deliver professional development.” Shifting from hard-copy materials to online models, paired with materials inadequately aligning with CCSS, caused schools to briskly seek funding to expand their technological capacities— many times falling short and causing teachers and students to appear as failing due to limited resources and a questionable assessment process.

Teachers were not prepared. While trainings exist to help teachers develop methodologies that align with the standards, a survey by the Education Week Research Center suggests that “[a]lthough a large majority of educators received some professional development for the Common Core, nearly eight in 10 report wanting more”.10 Joseph Herbert, a math teacher at Wilson High School in Washington D.C., states, “Previously, all students took the paper-and-pencil DC-CAS standardized test at the same time, and instruction was disrupted for about a week. With the new PARCC test, there was a much more protracted disruption to instruction. The PARCC test is administered online, but Wilson simply does not have the technological infrastructure to test large numbers of students simultaneously. Without the necessary IT infrastructure we were forced to test small groups of students on a rotating basis. As a result, we spent over three weeks administering the first round of PARCC tests alone. Students were forced to miss class to test while their classes went on, causing them to lose valuable instructional time.”11 New assessments, developmentally inaccurate standards for students, and lack of institutional capacity to support new standards, have

9 http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED532509.pdf10 Based off of a 2013 survey with a sample size of 457. For more information: http://www.edweek.org/media/ewrc_teacherscommoncore_2014.pdf11 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/09/d-c-teacher-how-the-parcc-common-core-test-hurt-my-students/

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ignited educators against CCSS. The National Education Association (NEA), after supporting Obama in 2012 during his reelection campaign, came forward against CCSS by saying, in a letter to its 3 million union members, that the “…standards will fail without more input from teachers and a ‘major course correction’…”12 The suggestion for a ‘major course correction’ comes from the educator’s concerns that the standards do not match the developmental stages of students. Similarly, early childhood educators “… are nearly unanimous in saying that no one who wrote the standards had any expertise in the education of very young children”, signing a joint statement, with over 500 signatures claiming “…the standards were developmentally inappropriate for children in the early grades”.13 Tom Loveless, of the Brookings Institute, believes that CCSS are not likely to make any difference in our educational system given “… there are variations in academic achievement within states, there are variations within districts, [and] there are variations within every school” (Strauss). Similarly, Diane Ravitch, research professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, opposes CCSS due to the lack of field-testing and negative repercussions that the standards caused, in states like New York. During a speech to the Modern Language Association, she affirmed, “…my fears were confirmed by the common core tests. Wherever they have been implemented, they have caused a dramatic collapse of test scores. In state after state, the passing rates dropped by about 30%. This was not happenstance. This was failure by design” (Strauss).

Assessment grading, lack of adequate materials, and teacher training, represent some of the hurdles in the implementation of Common Core State Standards. Even though CCSS may not align with particular school systems, it has benefited some. While Maryland and Pennsylvania saw test scores

12 http://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/a-guide-to-common-core/articles/2014/02/27/who-is-fighting-against-common-core13 Strauss, Valerie. "Everything You Need to Know about Common Core — Ravitch." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 18 Jan. 2014. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.

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drop significantly under Common Core State Standards, Washington D.C. has put all its efforts behind CCSS, resulting in significant improvements over the past 15 years.1415 Sound education policy will recognize the varying effects that CCSS has on differing states, allowing for the ESEA rewrite to provide states a chance at funding by widening the scope of standards accepted under ‘college and career-ready standards’ and equally supporting those states wishing to continue with CCSS. The wider scope must not, however, come at the cost of rigorous standards that better prepare our students for a competitive, global job market. Recommendations

Support states that decide to adopt CCSS, as their College and Career-Ready Standard, as well as those adopting equally competitive standards. Through the current ESEA rewrite, both the Senate and Congress must develop policies that increase the appropriation of funding for teacher development, materials, and research. Allowing for; an increase in teacher workshops that serve to train educators on the standards picked by states, added funding for the creation of relevant materials that Local Education Agencies can use to match state standards with curriculums, and the rise of research agencies, at the state level, that provide quantitative and qualitative measures for the improvement of College and Career-Ready Standards. Research agencies that also look for ways to enhance state education standards in order to better serve Title 1 and Title 2 schools.

In particular, the ESEA rewrite should include amendments that increase, by 2%, Title 1 and Title 2 funds to cover teacher development workshops centered on the state’s chosen standards, additionally, an amendment that incentivizes states to appropriate federal funding towards low-performing districts needing materials that align with college and career-

14 States leading this opposition include Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Minnesota, Texas, Virginia, Louisiana and Alaska. It is important to define opposing states as those that have dropped the standards, partially implemented the standards, or sued the federal government, as is the case in Louisiana with Governor Bobby Jindal. 15 However, D.C. has announced that they will not evaluate teachers based on student performance. See more at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/50-state-look-common-core-playing-us/ and http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/05/22/32common_ep.h32.html

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ready standards, and finally, an amendment that targets funds for the establishment and support of research centers, in State Education Agencies, which focus on examining the implementation of College and Career-Ready Standards at Title 1 and Title 2 schools, and through research, supplement and dictate federal policy that addresses educational areas of concern.Conclusion

The ability for states to pick standards that better align with local demographics proves critical for developing appropriate standards throughout the country. Having a choice must not be synonymous to stagnation in the development of state standards and curricula. There must be a choice on how to improve our educational system not whether to improve. The examples presented cannot cover the myriad of issues reported about the implementation of CCSS. By highlighting a few of the more critical hurdles sited by local stakeholders, this paper sheds light on a bigger issue; the lack of congressional action to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary act for the benefit of America’s educational system.

Hope lies in the current ESEA rewrite including policy that accurately represents and takes into account those directly affected— students, parents, and teachers—while fighting against the forces of private interest that taint today’s policy environment.

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