Tag: nclb

Are PARCC, SBAC, and Common Core State Standards Initiatives the DOE’s SuperPAC?

It’s a surprise to me to find myself writing in agreement with something coming out of the Pioneer Institute, but their “The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers” is the first comprehensive piece of scholarship I’ve found that examines the legal nuance of the RtTT effort and compares it to both the letter and the spirit of federal law. The entire white paper (by Robert S. Eitel and Kent D. Talbert with contributions from Williamson M. Evers) is worth a read.

I realize not everyone has the free time to sit and consume a white paper, so I’ll highlight some salient points:

With only minor exceptions, the General Education Provisions Act (“GEPA”), the Department of Education Organization Act (“DEOA”), and the ESEA, as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (“NCLB”), ban federal departments and agencies from directing, supervising, or
controlling elementary and secondary school curriculum, programs of instruction, and instructional materials.

And while RtTT and NCLB waivers don’t explicitly direct, supervise, or control curriculum, programs of instruction, and instructional materials; it’s hard to imagine either isn’t attempting to do so using the levers of financial aid or reprieves from NCLB sanctions.

Eitel, Talbert, and Evers point out:

Thus, rather than permitting state and local authorities to use standards and assessments that uniquely fit a given state as required by the  ESEA, the Race to the Top Assessment Program requires each state in the consortium to use common standards across the respective states of the consortium. The result is that the Race to the Top Assessment Program moves states away from standards and assessments unique to a given state and into a new system of common standards and assessments across the consortia states.

Again, this isn’t the expressed purpose of these moves, but it does appear to be the desired effect.

Regarding the PARCC and SBAC consortia established to draw up RtTT-required assessments, the authors write:

These PARCC and SBAC supplemental funding materials, together with recent actions taken by the Department concerning ESEA waiver
requirements, have placed the agency on a road that will certainly cause it to cross the line of statutory prohibitions against federal direction, supervision or control of curriculum and instructional materials – upsetting the federal system.

…adding…

With conditions that mimic important elements of Race to the Top’s ingredients, the Conditional NCLB Waiver Plan will result in the  Department leveraging the states into a de facto long-term national system of curriculum, programs of instruction, and instructional materials, notwithstanding the absence of legal authority in the ESEA.

The conceit of the argument is that the Department of Ed has implemented these programs and made money available to those who applied. What, specifically, groups like PARCC, SBAC, and CCSSI do with that money after it’s passed on is out of DOE control. If they want to implement a national curriculum, national standards, and national assessments, well bully for them. If each of those pieces happens to be exactly in line with what the DOE would like to see happen but is banned by federal law from doing, all the better.

The result is an education policy SuperPAC that acts in the grey area of the law – aligned with the letter, but in clear opposition of the spirit.

My annotated version of the white paper is here.

Things I Know 203 of 365: My dad could climb a rope

If I were to draw on a paper what gym does for me, I would make one dot and then I would erase it.

– Elizabeth Berg

On matters of policy, my father and I are traditionally at odds. Fiscal, foreign, defense, entitlements, everything.

Education is no exception.

While I’m able to steer clear of most of the others when we get together, I’m not so great at keeping my mouth shut when my dad starts talking about education policy.

Last night, we started talking about testing and Sec. Duncan’s decree easing the expectations of schools around the country to get to 100% proficiency as called for by No Child Left Behind.

My father is of the, “I guess that’s just another thing we don’t expect of our kids anymore” mindset.

He works in the technology office of the school district from which he graduated. As anyone can imagine, this means he often sees the worst from teachers. Rarely do faculty members bake cookies for tech team.

To further illustrate his point of the lowering of the bar for today’s students, my dad talked about a rope.

He first encountered the climbing rope on his first day of middle school P.E.

It kicked his butt.

A competitive swimmer from way back, my dad thought he should have been able to make his way up the rope with no problem. Such was not the case.

For weeks, my father struggled to make it to the top of the climbing rope.

For weeks, he could not make it.

This, for my father, was the bar to which all students should be held.

“I walked through the gym the other day, and do you know what I saw?”

Not pausing for a response, my dad continued, “The rope has knots in it.”

I was confused.

He explained.

The same climbing rope, which had been my father’s adversary for weeks in his youth, had single knots running in it every few feet up to the rafters.

Dad explained this and sat looking at me for a moment.

“It took me weeks to get up that rope, but when I did, I knew I could.”

He lamented the knotting of the rope the same way he was lamenting the easing of NCLB’s testing requirements.

“Are we too worried kids aren’t going to feel good about themselves, so we make everything easy on them?”

I see his point – I really do.

For the same reason folks are worried playgrounds are becoming too safe, learning should have some scraped knees, some trial and error.

My problem with my dad’s point accepts his metaphor and rejects his premise.

What are we still asking kids to climb ropes?

Maybe, in dad’s day, the climbing rope was the best we could do to figure a upper-body strength and endurance. Maybe, way back when, we had no other choice than to make a student’s learning and abilities a matter of public display. Maybe, when my old man was coming up, we didn’t know any better.

I doubt any of that was the case, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Today, though, we certainly have better methods and tools at our disposal.

Cut down the ropes, find out the best ways to figure out if kids are fit and healthy, and then truly teach them how to do it better for reasons other than their peers will laugh at them if they don’t.

Yeah. The metaphor works.

Let’s cut down some ropes.