Mass set to vote on common core
UPDATE: The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted 9-0 in favor of common core on Wednesday with three absences or abstentions. During the discussion, Michael Cohen, president of Achieve, which helped create the common-core standards, said that the perspective of Massachusetts had been incorporated into the final standards. “Massachusetts had more influence — had more engagement over the standards than any other state,” he said.
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In a vote that will be closely watched in California, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will decide today whether the state should become the 28th state to adopt the common-core national standards.
Even as they were conceding that the board would probably approve common core, opponents stepped up their fight, and some of Massachusetts’ top politicians entered the fray in ways they haven’t in California.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker accused his Democratic opponent, Gov. Deval Patrick, of rushing the approval process during summer vacation and doing the bidding of President Obama, who is pushing for states to adopt common core, and the Massachusetts Teachers Assn., which endorsed Patrick last week.
Former Republican Gov. William Weld and a former Democratic state senator who sponsored legislation in 1993 establishing the state’s heralded standards and its state tests, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, also came out this week against dropping state standards in favor of common core. Wells called adopting common core “a retrograde step.”
But two former Massachusetts education commissioners who served under Republican governors, Robert Antonucci and David Driscoll, announced support for common core this week. They joined the current commissioner of education, Mitchell Chester, who is recommending adoption following an extensive review and comparison of common core and the state’s current standards.
Massachusetts’ English language arts and math standards, like California’s are highly rated. But unlike California, where students perform near the bottom on national standardized tests, Massachusetts’ students outperform the nation. At least part of the credit has been given to the state’s assessment system.
If common core is adopted today, Massachusetts will then begin a months-long process to determine whether to bolster common core standards by adding up to 15 percent of Massachusetts standards. Chester has said the adoption of common core would not necessarily jeopardize Massachusetts’ assessments, although they may have to be modified.
That two-step approval process differs from California’s approach. Last week, the California Academic Content Standards Commission approved common core after fortifying it with California standards, particularly in math. On Aug. 2, the state Board of Education will vote the total package up or down.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger insisted on the inclusion of a full Algebra I course in eighth grade, which common core spreads into ninth grade, as a prerequisite for his endorsement.
Neither of California’s gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Jerry Brown nor Republican Meg Whitman, has yet made a statement on common core.
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Interesting information coming from Massachusetts on the Common Core issue today. Interesting to note that MA chose to make a “yea” or “nay” decision first, and then take their time working on additions [or possibly “modifications” per earlier memoes from the SPI and Gov’s Ofcs out there) over the next six months before finalizing a complete new set of content standards for MA. CA’s process involved developing additions [no modifications permitted per Commom Core and RTTT rules) in breakneck speed between mid-June and mid-July. Whether one is fer or agin the new content standards recommended last week by CA’s Standards Commission, one has to acknowledge they look like a horse designed by a committee with an unknowned number of humps not unlike a camel — in other words, they will need some fine tuning before implementation. One particular concern will be the “copy and paste” method of adding individual standards to earlier grades while leaving them intact in the CC grades, thus duplicating standards in multiple grades, supposedly without impacting the 15% add-on rule of the CC consortium and RTTT initiative. How the duplication of standards across grades will play out for instructional materials (textbooks larger and more expensive??), professional development (more material to cover within each grade??), assessments (longer tests, greater testing time, greater expense to cover the duplicative material??), and accountability systems (lack of reasonable grade-to-grade sequences required for growth models??) will be quite problematic in the implementation of the CA Standards Comm recommendation as it now stands. If the recommendation is approved by the CA State Board on Aug 2, it would do well to address these complications soon after approval before CA rides into the sunset on an ugly camel rather than a good looking horse. Doug McRae, Retired Test Publisher, Monterey
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