A local high school physics teacher recently wrote a letter to the editor of our Bartlesville paper opining on the virtues of Common Core.  I find many of his statements unsupportable by facts.

The letter writer is a long time teacher in our public schools and I thank him for his decades of service to our young men and women. I think he sincerely believes what he has written, nonetheless the facts about Common Core must be told.

He says “the standards do indeed have higher expectations for students in regards to reading, writing, and mathematics.”  As with all his opinions this statement does not include a single supporting fact.  As I have pointed out in other forums, the Fordham Institute found that Oklahoma’s 2010 PASS standards for both math and English were at least comparable to Common Core.  Sure Common Core and PASS were different – one better in one area, the other in another area – but overall Fordham found the old Oklahoma standards to be “too close to call” when compared head-to-head with Common Core.  I prefer to believe Fordham’s review over our physics teachers’ unsupported opinion, and I should point out that Fordham is a supporter of Common Core and therefore their bias, if any, should tend to favor Common Core.   

But Fordham is not the only organization stating that Oklahoma’s PASS standards (pre-Common Core) were good.  Education Weeks’ Quality Counts 2014 report for Oklahoma, which reveals that Oklahoma K-12 achievement is 41^st out of 50 states, rates Oklahoma’s old standards with a grade of 100.  Yes, 100 out of a total of 100.  Both the Fordham and the Education Week data suggest that Oklahoma’s education achievement problem is not due to poor standards. If you, like me, believe that Fordham and Education Week got it right, then you have to ask why Oklahoma is wasting so much money implementing new standards that aren’t any better than the old standards, just different.  Why would we think that simply swapping one standard for another “too close to call” standard would improve anything?  The answer is it won’t.

Our physics teacher also proudly asserts that our State Superintendent of Instruction Janet Barresi has solved what he calls “the ridiculous amount of additional testing that would have been required if Oklahoma remained in one of the testing consortia devising new assessments aligned to [Common Core].” Johnny Rinchman, a member of the Tulsa Community Board of Regents, correctly points out “While [State Superintendent] Barresi did drop the PARCC testing, it was a classic bait and switch of changing the branding instead of the rotten core.  The state has signed a $34 million dollar contract for Measured Progress to provide the testing, which just happens to ALSO be part of the same Smarter Balanced Consortium – which falls under the Race to the Top federal guidelines.”  The reality is that nothing really changed – just political positioning by the State Superintendent to make it appear the testing problem had been solved.

Near the end of his letter our physics teacher reaches what I believe to be his primary thesis – namely that the Bartlesville school district and Bartlesville teachers will never succumb to the supposed plot of Common Core to ruin our public schools.  Unfortunately he misses the entire point of the discussion about Common Core. This debate is not simply about Bartlesville education and not even about Oklahoma education.  This debate is about the future of education in America.  If Bartlesville stays pure and  “write(s) our own curriculum” and still relies “upon tried-and-true methods to educate students,” but we lose education in the rest of the nation, what will it matter that Bartlesville students are still taught the tried-and-true way.  If Bartians want to live in a country that is thriving with knowledgeable and virtuous citizens we better wake up and be concerned about the direction of education nation-wide.

In closing our physics teacher again opines, “The Common Core standards are not a nefarious plot to ruin our schools.” I often wonder if proponents of Common Core have actually read the standards and their backup appendices.  Let’s explore our physics teachers’ hypothesis by actually examining the standards – the English standard – since it is the most important because it guides literacy for not only English class but also for history/social studies, science and technical studies.   On page 9 of the Text Exemplars (translation: recommended reading list) of Appendix B¹ the Common Core recommends grade 6-8 students read the Preamble and First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Why they don’t recommend reading the whole Constitution is beyond me, but let’s leave that discussion for another day.   In order that students might be able to understand the Constitution Appendix B further recommends students read Linda Monk’s book Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution. In the Appendix B Sample Performance Tasks (page 95) we get a glimpse of what the Common Core authors want students to learn about the Constitution from Linda Monk: 

The first three word (sic) of the Constitution are the most important. …But who are “We the People”? … Which ‘We the People’? The women were not included. Neither were white males who did not own property, American Indians, or African Americans – slave or free.

Then Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is quoted:

            ‘We the People.’ When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not have in mind the majority of America’s citizens…

The Sample Performance Task is actually four paragraphs; for brevity I have not quoted it all, but you should read it all.  It is clear that the authors of the Common Core want to paint the Founding Fathers as racists and misogynists.  As Terrence O. Moore, author of The Story Killers, summarizes, “Rather than stressing the amazing achievement it was for a people to declare themselves sovereign, something that had never really been done, and certainly not in modern history, the teachers must show the students what the Founding Fathers did not do.” ²

If the students had been asked to read the Constitution they would have learned in Article I, Section 2 that the vote franchise was left to the states.  As Terrence Moore writes “the Framers were committed to the principle of federalism, something that is not explained in [the Monk selection]. … At the time of ratification, some women and free black men were already voting…Thus, Article I, Section 2 in reality acted as an invitation to expand the franchise, not to limit it.  At no place in the Constitution are either women or men of any race prohibited from voting.” ³

Other examples of trashing the Founders and the Constitution exist; for instance see page 176 of Appendix B. If the authors of the Common Core really wanted students to understand the Founders’ perspective on the Constitution why didn’t they recommend reading some selections from The Federalist papers.  Why is there no Benjamin Franklin in the reading list? If the authors of the Common Core wanted an explanation of the founding of our country from an author of another generation why didn’t they include something that Abraham Lincoln had to say about the Founders and the Constitution?  The answer is clear; they did not include these readings because such readings would provide the students with a factual understanding – both the good and the imperfect – of the Founders and the Constitution.

There are many more examples of bias in the reading selections of the Common Core.  I suggest you investigate them for yourself, something that the proponents of Common Core will never do nor tell you about.

Common Core when actually read turns out to be a Trojan horse.  It pretends to be nothing more than rigorous college and career-ready standards when in reality it is a thinly disguised attempt to eradicate all vestiges of a liberal education from our public schools.  As Terrence Moore so aptly summarizes, “A liberal education teaches future husbands, wives, parents, citizens, friends, public servants, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and, yes, workers the language, mathematics, history, science, music, art, and stories they need to participate in a civil, common conversation about how to live together.”  Common Core is not liberal education and never will be.

1.  Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, Appendix B: Text Exemplars and Sample Performance Tasks

2.  Moore, Terrence O. The Story Killers: A Common-Sense Case Against the Common Core. 2013. P. 130.

3. Ibid. P. 131.

4.  Ibid. P. 266.