Education Week - August 6, 2014 - 21

Embattled But Entrenched, Common Core a Tough Target
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mon core, or considering doing so, will
ultimately produce anything that is
truly different from those standards.
"The common core is not a yes-no,"
said Michael McShane, a research fellow
at the Washington-based American
Enterprise Institute. "There are
shades of gray in there."
'Repeal Lite' Strategy Seen
Florida, where state lawmakers
rebuffed legislation to put the brakes
on the common core, could end up
being an archetype for states moving
to re-examine the standards rather
than repeal them outright.
After soliciting public input on
where the common core in Florida
should be changed, the state school
board adopted some alterations to the
standards in March. But officials did
not dump or vastly change the common
core, although the new standards
are now called the Mathematics and
Language Arts Florida Standards.
(Adoption guidelines for the standards
said that states can supplement the
common core with their own specific
standards, up to an additional 15 percent
worth of standards.)
The language concerning the
common core in new laws in Missouri
and North Carolina reflects
a similar approach. In both states,
the laws create groups-with some
members appointed by state legislators-that
will review the common
core and make recommendations
about English/language arts and
math standards to their respective
state boards. But there's no explicit
prohibition on any set of standards,
or reversals of those states' prior
adoptions of the common core.
And even though board members
will likely be under political pressure
to seriously consider and adopt recommendations
from those advisory
groups, nothing obligates the state
boards to detach themselves from the
common standards.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat,
and North Carolina Gov. Pat
McCrory, a Republican, both stressed
that the bills they signed into law
July 14 and July 22, respectively,
constituted reviews of the standards
and opportunities to raise
academic expectations in
general. Gov. Nixon noted
in a statement that the
relevant bill was originally
written to "ban" the standards,
while Gov. McCrory
stated that he was focused
on how the review would
deal with "testing issues."
In South Carolina, the
state education department
has begun drafting
new standards based on
a measure signed by Gov.
Nikki Haley, a Republican,
in May. But the executive
director of the state's Education
Oversight Committee,
Melanie Barton, said
in June that significant
changes to the common
core won't be possible by
the time the state's new
standards are used in the
2015-16 school year.
And despite such moves,
Missouri, North Carolina,
and South Carolina will
all retain the common core
in schools for at least the
2014-15 school year. None of those
three states has explicitly prohibited
the standards, and what exactly a
ban on the common core would look
like isn't clear.
"It's what I call Repeal Lite. You get
to pound your chest and say, 'I threw
BLOGS www.edweek.org/go/blogs
Federal Data-Privacy Guidance
Stresses Communication to Parents
| DIGITAL EDUCATION | The U.S. Department of Education has
released new, nonbinding guidance for schools and districts on
better informing parents about how their children's sensitive
educational data are being used. Some privacy advocates,
however, are less than enthusiastic.
Among other things, the guidance, issued by the
department's Privacy Technical Assistance Center, suggests
that schools and districts publish an inventory of all data
collected about students, post online all contracts that require
the sharing of student information with third-party vendors,
and provide parents with a list of all online software and apps
that are approved for classroom use.
Such efforts at transparency are important, said Khaliah
Barnes, a lawyer with the Washington-based Electronic
Privacy Information Center. But an equal emphasis on
accountability is also needed, she said.
"The department routinely is not investigating possible
[Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act] violations,"
Barnes maintained. She also said the new federal
transparency guidelines "fall short" in not suggesting that
districts notify parents of breaches or unauthorized release of
student information.
In response to the criticism, Education Department press
secretary Dorie Nolt offered a statement via email saying, "The
department is committed to enforcing federal privacy laws that
protect students and families while also providing guidance
and best practices to school systems and educators facing
rapidly changing technology in the classroom."
Series of Bipartisan House Votes
Move Higher Ed. Bills to Next Stage
-BENJAMIN HEROLD
| POLITICS K-12 | A trio of higher education-related bills have
made their way through the U.S. House of Representatives
with bipartisan support, part of an effort by House education
committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., to reauthorize the
Higher Education Act in a piecemeal fashion.
On July 23, the House approved by a vote of 414-0 a bill
that would allow federal student aid to be used at colleges,
universities, and other postsecondary education programs
that operate on a competency-based system versus a
traditional credit-hour system. It's aimed at getting
students degrees in a faster, more cost-effective way.
That same day, lawmakers cleared by voice vote a
largely noncontroversial measure that would present
to prospective students and their parents information
on tuition and other college costs in a more transparent
way. And on July 24, the House passed a bill that would
increase the amount of required financial counseling for
students and their families taking out federal student
loans. Financial counseling is currently required upon
entering and exiting college, but this measure would
require annual counseling.
Meanwhile, on the Senate side, education committee
Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, released a discussion draft
of the Higher Education Act reauthorization, which-in
contrast to Kline's efforts-is a sweeping 700-page overhaul
of the entire federal law. Harkin plans to continue work on
reauthorization when lawmakers return from their five-week
summer recess in September.
Rhee's StudentsFirst Organization
Ends Paid Staff Work in Five States
-LAUREN CAMERA
| STATE EDWATCH | StudentsFirst, the advocacy group
founded by former District of Columbia schools Chancellor
Michelle Rhee, has expanded at a steady pace into many
states over the last few years, but confirmed last month
that it's ending the work of paid staff in Florida, Indiana,
Iowa, Maine, and Minnesota.
In Florida, as reported by Travis Pillow at RedefinED last
month, StudentsFirst will maintain only a "nominal presence,"
while pulling the plug on its core policy work. A couple
days later, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported a similar
situation in Minnesota: StudentsFirst's state affiliate will no
longer maintain a paid staff there.
The reasons vary. Indeed, Florida seems to have done well
enough in meeting StudentsFirst's policy priorities that the
group no longer considers the state in dire need of its attention,
according to Pillow's report. Florida (along with Louisiana) got
a B last year on the group's state policy report card, the highest
overall grade given out. In Minnesota, meanwhile, the director
of the group's state affiliate, Kathy Saltzman, indicated that
the "continually changing legislative climate" there led the
group to end its core operations.
In an interview with Education Week, a spokesman for
StudentsFirst, Francisco Castillo, said that scaling back the
group in five states will allow for the organization to focus on
other states, and that the number of staff affected was small
compared with the overall size of the organization. (It will
remain officially active in 13 states, based on the listing on
the group's website.)
-ANDREW UJIFUSA
EDUCATION WEEK | August 6, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 21
out the common core,' " said Bob Wise,
the president of the Alliance for Excellent
Education, a Washingtonbased
group that supports the common
core, and a former Democratic
governor of West Virginia.
Political and policy goals based on
rejecting the standards also can be
quickly mired in legal and bureaucratic
maneuvering. Despite the anticommon-core
declarations of Gov.
Bobby Jindal-a Republican
widely assumed to be
interested in a presidential
run-as well as a legal
fight over tests aligned
with the standards, Louisiana
has so far kept the
common core on the books.
Even for Oklahoma,
N.C. GOV. PAT
MCCRORY:
Signed a bill setting in
motion a review of the
common core in that state.
which decisively dumped
the common core by reverting
to its prior content
standards in June, shifting
to new standards has posed
problems. The state school
board, which adopted the
common core in 2010, has
twice delayed approving an
official plan for replacing
it, after groups representing
local school boards and
administrators raised concerns
about the process.
Oklahoma's new stanWIS.
GOV. SCOTT
WALKER:
Called on the state
legislature to repeal the
common core in 2015.
dards, which must be approved
by the legislature by
August 2016, could end up
looking very similar to, or
completely different from,
the common core.
Friends of the common
standards argue that part of the
common core's mission-to push
states to adopt more rigorous standards
as a general matter-is working
as intended.
"The ideas behind the standards
are holding, whether or not there's
a debate about the specifics in the
standards," said Chris Minnich, the
executive director of the Council of
Chief State School Officers, which
oversaw the common core's development
along with the National Governors
Association.
Similarities Noted
Another possible variation is on
display in Indiana, where the common
core was largely retained by
the state in the new standards it
adopted in April, even after officially
repealing its 2010 adoption of the
common core.
That continuity has angered opponents
of the common core within the
state and elsewhere. Indiana's path
could illustrate the difficulty for anticommon-core
activists of truly rooting
out the standards.
Some opponents of the common
standards say their real concern
is not primarily what's in them,
but whether states now make decisions
that aren't tainted, in critics'
view, by pro-common-core financial
incentives offered by the federal
government in the Obama administration's
Race to the Top grant
competitions and waivers from the
No Child Left Behind Act. To that
extent, the opponents see marked
progress.
"If a state really thinks common
core is the best thing to do, then they
should adopt it. I don't want them
to adopt it because they want to get
federal money, or want to get a federal
waiver," said Neal McCluskey,
the associate director of the Center
for Educational Freedom at the Cato
Institute, a Washington think tank.
In July, two Republican state leaders
distanced themselves from the
common core in distinct ways.
In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert
tasked the state attorney general
with reviewing the standards' connections
to the federal government.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin
called for the legislature to repeal
the common core in 2015, although
at least one state gop lawmaker with
power over K-12 policy has criticized
the announcement.
But pushback will also be driven
by parents and school district officials
who reject merely cosmetic
overhauls of the common core and
demand something better, said
Sandra Stotsky, a professor emerita
of education reform at the University
of Arkansas' Department of
Education Reform in Fayetteville,
Ark. She oversaw the development
of academic standards in Massachusetts
from 1999 to 2003 and is a
critic of the common core's quality.
Ms. Stotsky said that commoncore
opponents are now smart
enough to reject Indiana's approach
of largely repackaging the
standards. But she said these opponents,
in turn, have to push for
officials to specify precisely where
new standards under development
are an improvement.
"If you want to have a common-core
floor, label the floor as a floor, and
then show us the furniture; ... you've
got to show us what's above the floor,"
Ms. Stotsky said.
Common-core advocates should
be happy about states that drop
the common core in name only,
Mr. McShane of the American Enterprise
Institute said. But they
still should worry about the number
of states that truly stick to the
common core in all the important
ways.
"Maybe that's actually a good thing
for the common core that only states
that really want to do the common
core do it," Mr. McShane said.
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Education Week - August 6, 2014

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