Common Core State Standards (recently renamed PA Core Standards) is a costly, untested, educational experiment that was foisted on Pennsylvania’s schools without legislative approval. When full math and language arts implementation began in PA’s public schools in July of 2013, few educators, school administrators, school board members and legislators understood the particulars of this initiative that will fundamentally transform our educational system. Currently, even fewer parents and taxpayers understand the variety of motives for its formulation, its methodologies, its huge unfunded mandates, and its potential harmful effects on Pennsylvania’s educational system and economy.
Listed below are several questions that citizens should pose to their own district’s school board members and school administrators in order to gain a better understanding of the Common Core initiative and parental and student rights with regard to its mandates.
1. There are multiple indications that the federal government will wrest control of our educational system from local school boards and parents via the Common Core initiative.
Question: Is this likely to occur in our school district? If the answer is “No,” can you provide assurances and convincing reasons why this will not happen?
2. Beginning in 2017, the passage of three Keystones — Algebra I, Biology, and Literature – will be a requirement for high school graduation in PA.
Question: What is the estimated cost to our district for the remediation and/or project- based assessments that must be provided to students who are unable to pass these Keystones?
3. Pennsylvania’s regulations describe: (1) an opportunity for students to opt out of the PSSA’s and the Keystones on religious grounds, and (2) the right of a Chief School Administrator to waive the Keystone graduation requirements on a case-by-case basis for “good cause.”
Question: Will our district fully explain the specifics of each of these options to parents?
Question: If the number of students opting out and/or being given waivers is too large in a given school: (1) how will that affect the performance ratings of that school, and (2) how will that school’s compliance with PA’s regulations be evaluated?
4. There are major concerns that the student data collection that is tied to acceptance of federal funding for the Common Core initiative will intrude on students’ privacy rights.
Question: What specific information will be included in a student’s data file? Will data be exclusively academic or will behavioral, familial and/or biometric categories be included?
Question: Will parents be permitted to review what is in their children’s data files? If not, why not? With whom can PA schools legally share information in students’ data files?
5. Over the last several decades, educrats have devised educational experiments such as “Outcome Based Education,” the “New Math,” and the vastly unpopular “No Child Left Behind,” in which our nation’s students have been used as guinea pigs. All of these experiments have proven to be abject failures in improving educational outcomes and each has disrupted learning in a multitude of ways at great expense to the taxpayer.
Question: In light of the failures of the aforementioned experiments, why should we believe the “experts” when they say that Common Core, often described as “No Child Left Behind on Steroids,” will improve the educational performance and learning outcomes of our students?
Citizens must be persistent in obtaining answers from their school districts and must remember that an unasked question won’t be answered. A fully informed public is essential to impede governmental overreach into our educational process and also to understand the toxic consequences of Common Core. The well-being of our most precious possession – our children – is at stake!
For additional information, E-Mail nocommoncoreinpa@yahoo.com.
Editor’s note: Gov. Tom Corbett is on board with Common Core. Bob Guzzardi, who is challenging him in the May 20 Republican gubernatorial primary is against it.
Colette Moran tweeted the below image of an answer key of her daughter’s Common Core-based third grade work book back in October.