More than 150 attend Common Core Standards meeting at East Newton

Those who were expecting to hear the pros and cons of Common Core Standards during the meeting Friday night in the East Newton High School gymnasium went home disappointed, but it was through no fault of the organizers of the informational session.

Bobbi Sherwood opened the meeting by telling the more than 150 in attendance all of the efforts she made to get someone to speak for the standards, which are being implemented in all Missouri schools.

Department of Elementary and Secondary Education officials turned down the request, as did numerous other officials contacted by Ms. Sherwood and Jill Carter, including Joplin R-8 Superintendent C. J. Huff.

One of those the women talked to was the legislative assistant to Sen. David Pearce, R-Warrensburg, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, who told them, “You can bring your torches; but it’s going to be implemented.”

The speakers, Nina Dean, a legislative assistant to Rep. Kurt Bahr, R-St. Charles, and Mary Byrne of the Missouri Coalition Against Common Core, warned about the incredible amount of data that will be collected by the government through Common Core and how its mandates will effectively remove control of schools from local boards of education.

Ms. Dean, who emphasized she was speaking as a private citizen and not as a state employee, criticized the consortium that created Common Core. “If we were in New York and this consortium were the Mafia, we would call this a money laundering scheme.”

States and local school districts will end up footing the bill for the added testing that will be required by Common Core, she said.  Testing will take place three times a year. “They’re definitely going to be teaching to the test.”

This will cause an even greater emphasis on the tested subjects, Ms. Dean said. “Our kids will no longer learn cursive. They will no longer have social studies.”

Much of Ms. Dean’s presentation centered around a distrust of government, with frequent mentions of the recent scandals that have enveloped the NSA and IRS, with a message that the government cannot be trusted with information about students and parents and that efforts are being made to see to it that classes are taught the same way at the same time in school districts across the United States.

The big brother images she conjured were completed with an answer to a question she had received about whether cameras would be installed in classrooms to make sure the Common Core curriculum is being taught.

“We don’t know,” she said, “but if people don’t stand up, it will probably eventually happen.”

Parents can play a role in stopping what Ms. Dean indicated were the excesses of Common Core and she advocated tough tactics.

Ms. Dean recommended pulling kids out of school during testing. “Make sure your kids aren’t feeling well during assessment.” Funding for Missouri schools is based on attendance.

She suggested personalized letters to legislators and reminding them that it is local school boards, not superintendents currying favor with state and federal education officials and trading in local autonomy for the promise of free technology, who should be deciding what is taught in local schools.

Ms. Byrne’s presentation detailed how Common Core came about  and how only one person with classroom teaching experience participated in the creation of the standards and that person’s recommendations were largely ignored.

One of the most serious problems with Common Core, Ms. Byrne said, is that it was essentially created by big business with the idea of changing public education into a training ground for the workforce, rather than a vehicle to teach young people the knowledge and skills they need to function effectively in society and to be effective citizens participating in their government.

“This is turning our schools into a training program for businesses,” Ms. Byrne said. “That is the intent of Common Core. The driving force behind all of this is money.”

Though Common Core Standards are purported to be a creation of the consortium that was began by the National Governors Association and supposedly has nothing to do with the federal government, nothing could be further from the truth, Ms. Byrne said.

States and individual school districts that wanted any part of the billions of dollars in Race to the Top money and stimulus money that was available through the federal Department of Education have to follow Common Core and also agree to its standardized testing regimen and basing at least a percentage of teacher evaluations on student test scores.

Ms. Byrne also noted the danger of all educational decisions being taken out of the hands of local school boards and a one size fits all approach being mandated on education in all public schools in the United States.

“I’m not trying to incite a riot,” Ms. Byrne said. “I’m trying to get things back to the way they belong.”

Ms. Sherwood and Ms. Carter will make a presentation on Common Core Standards to the East Newton R-6 Board of Education at its Thursday, June 27, meeting.

(In the accompanying video, Bobbi Sherwood explains how everyone from Peter Herschend to David Pearce to C. J. Huff to DESE officials rejected her offer to come to East Newton to talk about Common Core Standards.)