 |
| Sen. Mike Wilson |
With Republicans solidly in control state government, the current legislative session is seen by many as an opportunity to cleanse the state of some of the more foolish ideas put forth by less enlightened politicians of the past. The Kentucky Senate began the process with 2017's version of Senate Bill 1. The bill's sponsor, Republican Sen. Mike Wilson of Bowling Green has said this effectively would "repeal" the Common Core
standards for English language arts and math that the state adopted
several years ago. Gov. Matt Bevin has repeatedly said he wants to
repeal Common Core. But that effort is more rhetorical than it is real.
So who put forward such an unpopular idea in the first place? Turns out it was mostly Republicans. They thought it was a great idea when Eisenhower, Reagan and GHW Bush promoted it. A bad idea when Clinton tried to implement it. A good idea again under GW Bush. And an abomination under Obama. Having railed against the standards for so long, today's politicians seem to have forgotten that our students needs a stable set of curriculum standards - no matter what you call them.
A Brief historical
timeline of the development of the
Common Core State Standards
·
Introduction:
The elementary and secondary education system was created in the early 1900s to
serve a different time when people had different needs. Although the idea of
human capital is as old as education itself, the concept of college readiness
was hardly a concern when access to college was limited to a relatively few
privileged individuals who had the wherewithal to attend. Illiteracy was seen
as the state’s educational problem. There was no concern that high school
graduation rates were too low at a time when very few jobs required knowledge
workers. Most students would grow up to work on the farm, in a factory, or a
business and the dominant model of the school was as a sorting machine. If an
individual student failed academically he was said to have wasted his
opportunity and the consequences were seen as the student’s own fault. But
while school failure might relegate a student to a life of manual labor, there
were industrial jobs to be had. Indeed, one of the purposes of American high
schools from 1920 to the 1940s was an attempt to remove youth from the labor
market. (Spring, 2010; Harrison & Klotter, 1997). School reform in the
early 20th century was largely focused on the development the
American high school (and somewhat separate efforts at vocational education, as
with the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917) and were dominated by the prevailing
progressive impulse to bring educated elites to the task of improving social
conditions in the nation. But by mid-century, nearly every state had compulsory
attendance laws, teachers were required to earn a four-year degree, school
administration had been removed from patronage-hungry trustees and placed in
the hands of professionals, and most young people were earning the coveted high
school diploma. (Peterson, 1995) But the rise of the Cold War following World
War II, and concurrent scientific advancements, brought a new urgency to the
task of raising graduation standards. It began with a beep heard around the world.
·
1957:
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik. Despite the fact that the satellite, a 23”
silver ball with whiskers, was relatively simple, compared to the satellites
that would follow, its beeping radio signal quickly galvanized the nation. Not
only had the Soviets beat the United States into space, but it became clear
that they possessed the technology to launch nuclear bombs. The nation awoke to
the need to improve the schools.
·
1958:
In response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the Eisenhower administration
passes the National Defense Education Act which calls for higher academic
standards.
 |
| President Dwight D. Eisenhower |
·
1959:
President Dwight D. Eisenhower suggests that national academic standards were
needed (Layton, 2014).
·
1965:
Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed.
· 1968:
In McInnis
v.
Shapiro, 293 F. Supp. 327 (1968),
the first fiscal equalization case
to make it all the way to the U S Supreme Court, plaintiffs argued that
under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, funds should be distributed
based on educational need. But they were unable to help the court devise
“discoverable and manageable standards” by which the court could determine when
the Constitution is satisfied, and when it is violated. Plaintiffs began looking
for a set of judicially manageable standards that could be used to determine
whether a state had met its obligation to provide equitable schools for its
children. (Day,
2003).
·
1973:
The U. S. Supreme Court rejected 14th Amendment arguments altogether
in San Antonio Independent School
District v Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1
(1973), creating a new
wave of cases based on education clauses in state constitutions (Day,
2003).
 |
| President Ronald Reagan |
·
1983:
President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Education published its
catalytic report, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.”
The report was a response to the freewheeling reforms of the 1960s and early
1970s (which sought to free the children, challenge authority, and focus on
social justice issues) and decried “a rising tide of mediocrity” in American
high schools (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). While the
report’s statistics were disputed, the nation’s attention was galvanized around
the idea that American schools were failing and the era of school
accountability was given birth. The Commission made findings in four areas:
Content, Expectations, Time, and Teaching. In the area of content, the
commission recommended an examination of curriculum standards in light of other
advanced countries, and higher college admission standards. While shocking at
the time, the vision of school reform as drawn by ANAR was mild compared to the
21st century vision that would develop around President George W.
Bush’s No Child Left Behind eighteen years later. ANAR called on states and the
nation to craft genuine curriculum standards and strengthen high school
graduation standards. “Far from being a revolutionary document, the report was
an impassioned plea to make our schools function better in their core mission
as academic institutions and to make our education system live up to our nation’s
ideals” (Ravitch, 2010).
 |
| Ed Prichard |
1985:
In Kentucky, an equally influential contribution to the policy dialogue had
come from the Prichard Committee on Academic Excellence with the publication of
The Path to a Larger Life: Creating
Kentucky’s Educational Future. The Prichard Committee saw “Education [as] a
seamless web running from the earliest years through the highest levels of
educational achievement” and called for a more direct connection between
secondary and postsecondary education in the form of a set of curriculum
standards that anchored a high school diploma to entry-level college standards
(Prichard Committee, 1990). Prichard pushed for the publication of school
goals, the “identification of the competencies expected of all Kentucky high
school graduates,” measurement of “the mastery of these competencies,” and
assuring that a diploma is only awarded “when the student demonstrates that he
or she has mastered the desired competencies…” (Prichard Committee, 1990).
1989:
The National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) published their highly
influential report, “America’s Choice: high skills or low wages!” which called
for new set of national educational performance standards to be benchmarked to
the highest educational standards in the world and met by American students by
age 16. Many states began enacting policies recommended by NCEE (National
Center on Education and the Economy, 1990).
1989:
Kentucky drew national attention when its Supreme Court declared the entire
system of schools to be unconstitutional in Rose
v Council for Better Education, 790 S. W. 2d 186, (1989). The Rose court accepted a standards-based
rationale for determining whether the state had met its constitutional
obligation, and that launched another wave of school reform litigation based on
both equity and adequacy claims as expressed in state constitutions (Day,
2011).
 |
| President George H. W. Bush |
·
1989:
President George H. W. Bush invites the nation’s governors to an education
summit, where influential AFT President Albert Shanker urges them to begin
creating a national system of high standards and rigorous assessments with real
consequences. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton took charge of the governors’
effort to draft national goals for the year 2000, a major policy shift away
from keeping students in school without any real standards of achievement.
·
1990:
In response to the Rose decision, the Kentucky General Assembly passed the
nation’s most ambitious statewide school reform package, the Kentucky Education
Reform Act of 1990 (Day, 2011; Guskey
& Oldham, 1997). Arguably, KERA’s most powerful feature was the advent of a new kind of high-stakes accountability
system based on student achievement outcomes (test scores). The old method of
reporting only school-wide means concealed the substandard performance of as
much as a third or more of the student population. The new data, disaggregated
into subgroup performance, revealed those short-comings and changed the way
educators talked about student success. The public reporting of student test
score data by subgroups, along with the ranking of schools – a contribution of
the news media - proved to be a powerful tool for driving change in this new
era of “high-stakes” assessment. The promise of “equality of educational
opportunity” that had guided American schools for a century was effectively
replaced by a new goal – “equity of student achievement outcomes” (Day &;
Ewalt, 2014).
 |
| President Bill Clinton |
·
1994:
President Bill Clinton’s effort to create voluntary national standards fell
apart when history standards, which included social justice issues, were
attacked by conservative groups as “the epitome of left-wing political
correctness” (Ravitch, 2010). Clinton backed away from national standards and
provided funding under his Goals 2000 program for states to write their own
standards, pick their own tests, and be accountable for achievement (Ravitch,
2010).
1996:
The National Governor’s Association, in concert with corporate leaders, created
Achieve, Inc., an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit education reform
organization based in Washington D. C. that focused its efforts on helping
states raise academic standards and graduation requirements, and strengthen
accountability (American Diploma Project, 2011).
2001: Achieve
sponsors a National Education Summit and joins with the Education Trust, the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and the National Alliance of Business to launch
the American Diploma Project (ADP) to identify the “must-have” knowledge and
skills most demanded by higher education and employers.
 |
| President George W. Bush |
·
2001:
When President George W. Bush signed the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act
into law a new definition of school reform became nationalized; one
characterized by accountability (Ravitch, 2010). The Act requires states to
test every child annually in Grades 3 – 8 in reading and math and report
disaggregated test scores. This reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act was built upon a standards-based reform whose roots were found in
policy responses to A Nation at Risk (Kaestle,
2006). Nationally, there was concern over the “vast differences in educational
expectations [that] existed across the states” (Conley, 2014).
2004: The American Diploma Project (ADP) writes, “Ready or Not: Creating a High
School Diploma that Counts” which described “specific content and skills in
English and mathematics graduates must master by the time they leave high
school if they expect to succeed in postsecondary education or
high-performance, high-growth jobs.” The standards were said to be
“considerably more rigorous than [the existing] high school standards” (American
Diploma Project, 2007).
 |
| Governor Ernie Fletcher |
2004: Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher’s (R-Lexington)
education agenda featured the idea of getting high schoolers ready for college
and the workplace, including year-end assessments and better curriculum
alignment across all core content areas. Fletcher’s plan was developed based on
research conducted through the state's participation in the American Diploma Project,
a
joint effort of three Washington-based education reform groups: Achieve
Inc.,
the Education Trust, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation – which are
not coincidentally, also the groups behind the Common Core State
Standards (CCSS).
2005:
At the National Education Summit on high schools that year, governors from 45
states joined with business leaders and education officials to address a
critical problem in American education – that too few students were graduating
from high school prepared to meet the demands of college an careers in an
increasingly competitive global economy. The result was ADP’s creation of a set
of benchmarks that were proposed as anchors for other states’ high school standards-based
assessments and graduation requirements. ADP identified “an important
convergence around the core knowledge and skills that both colleges and
employers – within and beyond ADP states – require.” (American Diploma Project,
2004) The American Diploma Project set five goals and the criteria against
which participating states were measured to determine if the goal had been met.
·
Common Standards – The criteria are met
“if the standards writing process is guided by the expectations of the state’s
postsecondary and business communities, if those communities verify that the
resulting standards articulate the knowledge and skills required for success in
college and the workplace, and if an external organization verifies the
standards’ alignment to college- and career-ready expectations” (American
Diploma Project, 2011).
·
Graduation Requirements – “High school
graduates…need to complete a challenging course of study in mathematics that
includes the content typically taught through an Algebra II course (or its
equivalent) and four years of grade-level English aligned with college- and
career-ready standards” (American Diploma Project, 2011).
·
Assessments – “[S]tates must have a
component of their high school assessment system that measures students’
mastery of college- and career-ready content in English and mathematics. The
assessment must have credibility with postsecondary institutions and employers”
such that a certain score indicates readiness (American Diploma Project, 2011).
·
P-20 Data Systems – States must have
“unique student identifiers to track each student through and beyond the K-12
system” and must have “overcome all barriers to matching” and have “the
capacity to match longitudinal student-level records between K-12 and
postsecondary, and matches these records at least annually” (American Diploma
Project, 2011).
·
Accountability Systems – States must
value and reward the number of students who earn a college- and career-ready
diploma, score college-ready on high school assessments, and enter college without
the need for remediation (American Diploma Project, 2011).
2006:
ACT’s report, “Reading between the lines” argues that there are high costs ($16
billion per year in lost productivity and remediation) associated with students
not being ready for college level reading and suggest that students are
actually “losing momentum” during high school, that poor readers struggle, are
frequently blocked from advanced work, that low literacy levels prevent mastery
of other subjects, and is commonly cited as a reason for dropping out (ACT,
2006). NAEP reading results from 1971-2004 showed average reading scores for
9-year-olds were the highest on record but scores for 13-year-olds had risen
only slightly since 1975. But reading scores for 17-year-olds had actually
dropped 5 points between 1992-2004 (Perie, Moran, & Lutkus, 2005).
·
2007:
The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) issued a report that
established the lack of any continuity among the various state accountability
systems. Under the provisions of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act
(NCLB), states were required to report annually the percentages of students achieving
proficiency in reading and mathematics for grades 3 through 8. But the law allowed each state to select the
tests and set the proficiency standards by which it determines whether the
state has met its adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals. The NCES report
revealed that proficiency standards varied so much from state to state that
comparisons were impossible. Students in states where cut scores for
proficiency had been set low appeared to be achieving at remarkable rates. But
when the performance in these states was mapped against the estimate of
students achieving a “proficient” rating on the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) there were
substantial difference found. The variations could be explained by differences
in both content standards and student academic achievement from state to state,
as well as from differences in the stringency of the standards adopted by the
states. As a result, there was no way to directly compare state proficiency
standards in an environment where different tests and standards were used
(National Center for Educational Statistics, 2007).
·
November
2007: CCSSO policy forum discusses the need
for one set of shared academic standards.
·
2008: Achieve
report “Benchmarking for success: Ensuring US Students receive a world-class
education” recommends states “upgrade state standards by
adopting a common core of internationally benchmarked standards in math and
language arts for grades K-12 to ensure that students are equipped with the
necessary knowledge and skills to be globally competitive” (National Governors
Association, CCSSO, & Achieve Inc., 2008).
·
July 2008: In “Out of many One: Toward
rigorous Common Core Standards from the ground up,” CCSSO Executive Director,
Gene Wilhoit, says, “All students should graduate from high
school prepared for the demands of postsecondary education, meaningful careers,
and effective citizenship. A state-led effort is the fastest, most effective
way to ensure that more students graduate from high school ready for college
and career, a universally accepted goal…ADP Core has become the common core as
a byproduct of the alignment work in each of the states.”
 |
| Gene
Wilhoit |
·
Summer
2008: CCSSO’s Executive Director Gene
Wilhoit and Student Achievement Partners Co-founder David Coleman convince
philanthropist Bill Gates to spend more than $200 million advancing Common
Core. Over the next two years Gates would fund groups across the political
spectrum and by June 2009, CCSS would be adopted by 45 states and the District
of Columbia (Layton, 2014).
·
December
2008: NGA and ADP report urges states to
create internationally benchmarked standards.
·
April
2009: NGA & CCSSO Summit in Chicago
called for states to support shared standards.
·
May
2009:
The CCSS Initiative Development begins on the college and career ready
standards. (CCSS Initiative, 2014)
·
July
2009: Based on positive responses from the
states Common Core State Standards Writing Panels begin work.
·
July
24, 2009: Race to the Top competitive grants are announced.
To be eligible, states had to adopt "internationally benchmarked standards
and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the work
place.”
·
July
2009: President Barack Obama and Education
Secretary Arne Duncan announced $4.35 billion in competitive “Race to the Top”
(RTTT) grants. To be eligible, states had to adopt "internationally
benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in
college and the work place (U. S. Department of Education, 2009). But the
support of the Obama administration for this hitherto voluntary national effort
would create confusion as to whether CCSS was a national effort or a federal effort.
When viewed as a federal effort, CCSS became ripe for politicization.
 |
| Sen. Damon Thayer |
August 2009: The Kentucky legislature passed
Senate Bill 1 which was sponsored by a host of Republicans
including former Senate President David Williams (R-Burkesville) along with Sens. Katie Stine (R-Southgate)
and Damon Thayer (R-Georgetown). SB1 directed the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) and the
Council of Postsecondary Education (CPE) to plan and implement a comprehensive
process for revising the core standards so they are fewer in number, more
focused and in-depth, evidenced-based, incorporate international benchmarks
where possible, and are common from high school to postsecondary introductory
courses. KDE issued detailed time lines for implementing the
deadlines imposed by the bill – which was to be fully implemented by 2011.
College Readiness Workgroups had already been established to review the common
core standards. After reviewing the time lines Stine encouraged Holliday and King saying, “It’s a tall task but
it looks like you’re well on your way.
·
September 2009: 48 states (not Texas or Alaska)
Washington, D. C., the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico were counted as
participating in this effort (National Governors Association, 2009).
·
January,
2010: Responding to fears that Common Core
might squeeze social studies out of the curriculum, an alliance of social
studies organizations, including a state collaborative working under the CCSSO
called the Social Studies Assessment, Curriculum and Instruction (SSACI), the
National Council for the Social Studies, and the Campaign for the Civic Mission
of Schools (CMS) began an initiative to focus on the four state standards
identified in the No Child Left Behind Act: Civics, Economics, Geography and
History. The group expands to include 15 organizations and forms the Task Force
of Professional Organizations to work with SSACI (Swann & Griffin, 2013).
 |
| EPSB, KDE and CPE leadership |
·
February
11, 2010: Kentucky adopts CCSS, the first state
to do so.
·
March
2010: First draft of CCSS officially released.
·
June 2, 2010: The standards-development process was
completed in approximately one year by Achieve, Inc., (Mathis, 2010). The
standards were finalized on June 2, 2010 (Porter et al., 2010).
·
June
2010: Final draft of CCSS released (English
Language Arts and Math).
·
July
2010: Kentucky launches Leadership Networks
for teacher, school, and district leaders around the implementation of the
common core state standards within the context of highly effective teaching,
learning, and assessment practices.
·
Spring 2012: Kentucky assesses CCSS in a new accountability
system.
·
September 2. 2012: Education Secretary
Arne Duncan awards $360 million to two multi-state consortia to develop
standardized tests: The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and
Careers (PARCC) and The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). (U. S.
Department of Education, 2012)
·
2013: Nationally, with bipartisan support for a conservative
proposal, and much evidence-based rationale, CCSS seems to be on track for a
relatively easy adoption among the 45 states that remained committed. The
thornier issue appeared to be whether a set of national exams based on the CCSS
could be agreed to, and would be affordable. But backlash against CCSS was
surfacing in state legislatures in Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri,
Pennsylvania Missouri, Georgia, South Dakota, and Kansas (Exit Strategy,
2013).
 |
| Sen. Charles Grassley |
·
April
2013: The Republican National Committee
surprises many educators when it passed a resolution bashing the standards. In
a letter to colleagues on the appropriations subcommittee that
handles education funding, Sen. Charles Grassley (R, Iowa) calls CCSS an “inappropriate
overreach to standardize and control the education of our children” (Strauss,
2013). Grassley asks Congress to cut off all
future funds for CCSS and its assessments, and “restore state decision-making
and accountability with respect to state academic content standards.” The
letter says in part:” While the Common Core State Standards Initiative was
initially billed as a voluntary effort between states, federal incentives have
clouded the picture. Current federal law makes clear that the U.S. Department
of Education may not be involved in setting specific content standards or
determining the content of state assessments. Nevertheless, the selection
criteria designed by the U.S. Department of Education for the Race to the Top
Program provided that for a state to have any chance to compete for funding, it
must commit to adopting a “common set of K-12 standards” matching the
description of the Common Core. The U.S. Department of Education also made
adoption of “college- and career-ready standards” meeting the description of
the Common Core a condition to receive a state waiver under the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act. Race to the Top funds were also used to fund two
consortiums to develop assessments aligned to the Common Core and the
Department is now in the process of evaluating these assessments” (Grassley,
2013).
2013: Once a public policy issue becomes
politicized, it is difficult to accurately predict its future. But a report
from the Center on Education Policy (CEP) found that while concern over funding
for CCSS implementation is high, state education leaders say that the effort
will go forward. In their report, “Year 3 of Implementing the Common Core State
Standards: State Education Agencies Views on the Federal Role” CEP found that
the majority of the 40 states responding to the survey, said that it is
unlikely that their state will reverse, limit, or change its decision to adopt
CCSS this year or next. Few state education leaders said that overcoming
resistance to CCSS was a major challenge in their state (Renter, 2013).
 |
| Sen. Katie Stine |
·
April 2014: Damon Thayer and Katie Stine follow the national party lead and abandon common core. In an Op-Ed in the Herald-Leader Stine claimed that CCSS would fail to meet the needs of all
students including those most advanced, and that somehow, CCSS hampers a
student’s ability to “take those upper-level high school courses that are essential
prerequisites to college studies in science, technology, engineering and
mathematics (STEM).
June
2014:
By this time 43 States, the Department of Defense and several U. S.
territories had adopted CCSS in ELA/literacy and Math (CCSS Initiative, 2014).
References
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T. (2014). Common core state standards: Insight into their development and
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A 2011 study found that Kentucky significantly increased the rate at which bachelor’s degrees were produced in the 12-year period of time following passage of reform legislation in 1997 - at a 36% rate, which is greater than more than half of the other states. 
