By John Fensterwald - Educated Guess

The drafters of the common-core state standards released their final version Wednesday with fanfare and the endorsement of a slew of educators and political leaders in Atlanta. The debate now shifts to state capitals, including Sacramento, where the question that must be answered in two months can be reframed: Is what’s good for the nation – K-12 academic standards in math and English language arts that are more demanding than most states now have – also good for California?

Preceding that question is another: Can Californians who care about these matters engage in  a dispassionate analysis of common core standards and associated issues of cost and testing without becoming defensive and retreating to the positions they had in the ‘90s, when they fought over the current state math standards?

The answers are critical, because the standards will determine what students are taught, which textbooks are used, what tests are written and how teachers are trained. Until now, it’s been each state for itself, making comparisons among states and nations difficult and often inaccurate.

In California, the sides, while not yet hardened, are forming.

On Wednesday, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell gave his endorsement, stating, “By adopting common core standards, California can choose to look to the future and build upon what is the best of our current standards – which is considerable – with the best of what other states and high performing countries offer their students.”

Also endorsing common core were five Californians who served on the 29-member national common-core review or validation committee and have been immersed in the standards since last fall: Stanley Rabinowitiz, director of Assessment and Standards Development at San Francisco-based WestEd; Stanford School of Education Professors Kenji Hakuta and Linda Darling-Hammond; P. David Pearson, professor and dean of UC-Berkeley’s School of Education, who said in an e-mail that he still has issues he wants addressed;  and  Long Beach Unified Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser. Praising the standards’ clarity and precision, Steinhauser said California would make a mistake not to adopt them.

But another outspoken validation committee member, Stanford emeritus math professor Jim Milgram, didn’t endorse the final product (four other validation committee members didn’t either).  Milgram, who was instrumental in creating the state’s math standards 13 years ago,  argues that common core’s math standards aren’t as rigorous as California’s. They would leave students unprepared for the state’s goal of having students take Algebra I by eighth grade and, according to Milgram, two years behind much acclaimed Singapore – an assertion that common-core drafters dispute.

Schwarzenegger’s power through appointments

The one person who can shape the outcome of common core in California, through his power of his appointment, is Gov. Schwarzenegger. In a one-paragraph statement Wednesday, Schwarzenegger was non-committal. “California leads the nation with our rigorous academic standards, and I am committed to ensuring these standards are upheld,” he said. Common core standards “set a high, though minimum, bar for all states to reach in K-12 educational content to help ensure that every student is college and career ready.”

The state’s latest Race to the Top application, which the governor and State Board of Education President Ted Mitchell signed, states that the goal is to “develop and adopt common core standards.” But it’s not as simple as that.

Legislation adopted in January authorized the adoption of common core, but the memorandum of understanding that Schwarzenegger and Mitchell signed last year joining the common-core consortium committed California only if the standards “meet or exceed” California’s. SB X5-1 gave the job of evaluating common core standards to an Academic Content Standards Commission, which must finish its work by July 15 – less than six weeks from now – and pass on its recommendations to the State Board of Education for an up or down vote by Aug. 2. Schwarzenegger gets to name 11 of the commission’s 21 members, which he promises to do any day now. The Senate and Assembly have named the other 10 members.

15 percent to add

To remain part of the common core consortium, a state must adopt all of the standards. But it can supplement those by up to 15 percent – a figure that will be hard to measure – for a state to  add rigor, as Schwarzenegger implied is needed.  The commission will likely spend much of its time in coming weeks deciding how much of California’s Algebra I standards need to be added for eighth grade and how much Algebra II needs to be reinforced in high school.

But Jason Zimba, a math and physics professor at Bennington College who helped write the common core math standards, told me he hoped the commission and other Californians would take a broader perspective on common core than simply adding back what the common core drafters intentionally chose to omit. California has rigorous standards, no question, he said, but its students have consistently underperformed. Evaluators must ask whether common core, applying approaches that have proven sound in other states and nations, will result in more California students achieving at higher levels.

Zimba claims so; he says the math standards are coherent, logically sequenced and scaled from grade to grade and written clearly for teachers.  He’s supported by UC Berkeley math professor Hung-Hsi Wu, who in a common-core press release called common core “the best standards that I have seen in the past twenty years.”

Although the Obama administration is strongly encouraging common core, with extra points  in Race to the Top for states that pledge to adopt it, common core is not a federal initiative. Sponsors are the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The math and English language arts standards, plus appendices, total hundreds of pages that can make daunting reading. Complicating a comparison between California and common core is that math standards beyond eighth grade are done not through courses – Algebra II, Geometry, Calculus – but through strands and concepts of math, such as probability, that students should master. Common core sponsors are supposed to explain how these relate to courses in a coming document.

EdSource’s common-core primer

To offer context and background, EdSource has written a useful 20-page common-core primer. It has also boiled down the issues that the Academic Content Standards Commission should consider to four questions:

• “Are the Common Core standards better than California’s existing, highly rated standards, and based on what evidence?” As I mentioned, common core advocates would argue better and more rigorous are not necessarily synonymous.

• “Should the state endorse one set of expectations for all high school graduates?” This is a critical question, because there are fundamental disagreements over whether one set of standards should apply for students who pursuing  college and those pursuing work. Common core drafters argue that preparing students for a college  degree without remediation and preparing them for most good-paying jobs in the 21^st century, such as auto mechanics and electricians, require essentially the same abilities to solve problems, synthesize information, do computational skills and comprehend technical writing – whether textbooks or work manuals.

• “Can California afford to implement the standards and how would it do so?” There will be substantial costs – in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year in the next five years or so – to create curriculum frameworks, purchase textbooks, train teachers in new standards, and create and administer newly designed tests. Some of these costs can be spread among the states. A different way of framing the question: At what point do the added costs outweigh the benefits of common core?

• “Can it afford not to if the vast majority of other states implement them?” California may find itself isolated  if it rejects common core, unable to take advantage of the improved standards,  new research and new assessments. Other states’ test results would be comparable; California would be an outlier.

For 13 years, state leaders have treated the state standards as sacrosanct, using their reputation for rigor to dismiss criticism and calls for revisions. That’s been unhealthy. Common core invites an honest comparison, with a fresh perspective on what experts and teachers in other states and nations consider not only rigorous but also effective.