Education Week - November 6, 2013 - 23

States Aim to Soothe District Worries on Common Core
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the standards. "It doesn't really solve
anything, because it doesn't really do
anything."
Florida, which in September curtailed
its relationship with a consortium
developing common-corealigned
assessments, backed away
from a controversial supplement to
the standards when the state school
board voted 5-1 on Oct. 15 not to
adopt any of the standards' appendices,
including a list of text "exemplars"
or suggested reading.
Political Tremors
The exemplars have angered conservative
anti-common-core activists in
other states like Alabama and Georgia
for including books deemed controversial
because of their treatment
of sexuality (in Toni Morrison's The
Bluest Eye) or radical politics (in Julia
Alvarez's In the Time of Butterflies).
However, a spokeswoman for
the Florida education department,
Cheryl Etters, said the choice remains
with local districts whether
to use none, some, or all of the suggested
reading when developing common-core-aligned
curricula.
The day after the Florida board's
vote, the Louisiana state school board
announced that it had barred the
state and the federal government
from "forcing school systems to use a
specific curriculum or course content."
Six days before the Louisiana vote,
the state's St. Tammany Parish school
board had passed a resolution opposing
the common core.
The state said it would also require
the Louisiana education department
to use student ID numbers that
couldn't be traced back to individual
students, and would require schools
to notify parents about high school
English reading lists and give parents
an "opt out" option.
The president of the state board,
Chas Roemer, said in a statement that
all those moves allowed officials to "reaffirm
that common core is not a federally
mandated curriculum."
The policy about local control over
curriculum had been implicit in
the state, but not official, before the
board's vote, Louisiana Superintendent
of Education John White noted
in an interview, while the parentalnotification
policy is new.
Mr. White argued that the policies
in Louisiana deal with serious concerns,
at the same time that they
buttress the state board's commoncore
support.
"Parents, I think, are probably more
concerned about knowing what their
students are learning and the privacy
of their children's information than
they are about the intricacies of testing
policies," Mr. White said.
None of the moves by the state
board, he said, is solely related to the
common core.
The Alabama state board recently
tried to put to rest concerns about
both privacy and the state's links to
the two national groups that spearheaded
development of the common
standards in English/language arts
and mathematics, which the vast majority
of states have adopted.
In addition to adopting a student-
data-protection policy Oct. 10, state
schools Superintendent Tommy Bice,
a common-core supporter, offered a
resolution Oct. 24 that would rescind a
2009 memorandum of agreement the
state had with those groups, the National
Governors Association and the
Council of Chief State School Officers.
Revoking an Agreement
Mr. Bice said in a statement that
while the 2009 agreement only acknowledged
that "internationally
benchmarked" standards that could
be shared across states were in development,
ditching the memorandum
allowed Alabama officials to
show that the standards did in fact
spring from "a state-initiated and a
state-led effort."
Clearing up misconceptions over is-
sues like data privacy is important as
individual states deal with the common
core in their own ways, said Carissa
Miller, a deputy executive
director of
the CCSSO.
"I see state
boards and legislators
doing that as
a way to say: 'These
are state-owned standards,'"
she said.
Ms. Miller added that
the common core doesn't
change how states have
to handle student data.
But Mr. Bice's proposed
Alabama resolution,
in particular,
should be viewed as a purely political
move, said Shane Vander Hart, a
consultant for the American Principles
Project, a conservative free-market
Washington advocacy group opposed
to the common core.
In Mr. Bice's statement about revok-
ing the agreement, the phrase "common
core" is not used.
"It's an empty gesture," Mr. Vander
Hart said. "It does nothing."
A resolution approved by Michigan
lawmakers last month that allowed
state spending on the common core
to resume-after a state budget-mandated
spending freeze on common-core
activities that began at the start of
October-also emphasized local school
boards' control over curriculum and
classroom materials, and districts' right
not to provide lessons that compromise
their communities' values.
John C. Austin, the president of the
Michigan board of education, who consulted
with lawmakers about the resolution's
language, said it "reaffirmed"
the power of districts, while shielding
the board from political meddling in
academic-content standards. The
REASSURANCE?
Several state school boards last
month took steps intended to ease
anxieties about how the Common
Core State Standards would
impact local education decisions
and the privacy of student data.
LOUISIANA: Clarified that school districts
maintain control over classroom content, and
cannot have course materials forced on them.
Stated that ID numbers used to track students
couldn't be traced back to individual students.
ALABAMA: Adopted a policy that no data that can be
traced to individual students is to be shared with the federal
government. State Superintendent Tommy Bice has also
offered a resolution rescinding a 2009 agreement between
the state and two state-based organizations regarding the
Common Core State Standards' development.
FLORIDA: Refused to adopt appendices accompanying
the common core that include suggested specific fiction
and non-fiction selections. Some of the suggested
literature has come under fire from conservative activists
for how they portray radical politics and sexuality.
SOURCE: Education Week
ON THE WEB: Track the development in various states of legislation seeking withdrawal from the Common
Core State Standards. You can also find a short synopsis and a timeline of recent actions for each bill.
www.edweek.org/go/billtracker
EDUCATION WEEK | November 6, 2013 | www.edweek.org | 23
board adopted the common standards
in 2010, the year of their release.
"We do not want the state legislature
revising our standards every
two years," Mr. Austin said. "It would
whipsaw our standards and our educators
without mercy."
The Michigan resolution deals
with one other politically sensitive
area for the standards: the aligned
assessments. It requires the state to
re-examine its options for those tests.
Michigan is a member of the Smarter
Balanced Assessment Consortium,
one of two multistate groups developing
common-core tests.
For those who oppose the common
standards, the recent state board actions,
overall, are encouraging but
small steps, Mr. Vander Hart said.
"I don't think anybody should be
doing victory laps right now," he said.
Hillsborough County (Fla.)
Schools Superintendent
MaryEllen Elia speaks in
favor of the Common Core
State Standards at a
meeting in Tampa last
month, as common core
opponent Tina Neace waits
her turn to speak. State
officials in Florida have
sought to reassure school
districts worried that the
common standards will
impinge on local authority
over curriculum and
materials.
Edmund D. Fountain/The Tampa Bay Times

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Education Week - November 6, 2013

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