Oklahoma House of Representatives November 5, 2013

Thank you for hearing the voice of educators and parents today while studying the future of Common Core State Standards in Oklahoma. I am going to reference the standards as CCSS not the recently rolled out Oklahoma State Standards from this point on; as there is no evidence to suggest that there is any difference between the two. The name has been changed, but we are still under the CCSS regime until the legislature votes otherwise. In fact, the State Department of Education or (SDE) website continues to refer questions about the Oklahoma State Standards to the CCSS website. Representatives, you are the only people in our State who can change the course of education for the better by taking steps to discontinue the CCSS and adopt a better researched, assessed framework for education.

I want to start with a brief timeline of the events leading up to the hurried adoption of the CCSS in Oklahoma.

2009 2010 2010 2010 2010 2010 2010 2011 2011

Stimulus Bill (Race to the Top) First Race to the Top Deadline to adopt CCSS in January Oklahoma Adopts CCSS during session Core Released in June Second RTT deadline to adopt CCSS in June Core Actually Released in June Majority of State adopt CCSS in July Contingent NCLB Waivers in September 44 States adopt CCSS Pioneer Institute, U.S. Department of Education

In 2009, Oklahoma schools were approached by the SDE and then Superintendent Garrett to vote for a resolution in support of Race to the Top(RTT) funding. As a condition of receiving RTT grants was the adpotion of CCSS, many schools did not vote for the resolution. Despite this, in a final push to receive the grant, the Oklahoma Legislature voted to adopt Common Core State Standards before they were published. Oklahoma did not win the grant.

Due to the criteria, my school did not vote in favor of the resolution to support the RTT. We were also concerned with adopting standards that had not been released and were not available for review before implementation.

By July of 2010, most States had adopted the CCSS in an effort to receive the RTT funding. No Child Left Behind the ultimate one-size-fits-all educational mandate. This brings us to where we are today.

I am going to discuss three specifics of the CCSS implementation that in my first hand experience as an educator and school administrator, can be shown to adversly affect students.

The first issue: Developmental issues for PK-3 students. Research by the Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals, states; We have grave concerns about the core standards for young children.The proposed standards conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development and

early childhood education about how young children learn, what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades..

The type questioning on the early standards disregards childrens brain development in the executive function. Childrens executive function skills provide the link between early school achievement, and social, emotional and moral development. (Building the Brains Air Traffic Control System, www.developingchild.harvard.edu).

Children at this age are developing connections in their brains and have been since birth. Tasks presented by CCSS are developmentally unappropriate for the stage of brain growth in each grade level. With the implementation of such structured curriculum, a huge developmental aspect is neglected. Social play is a major componet of a childs executive function development. Our experience in the early grades is that increasing testing and omitting a key element such as social play creates a stressful learning environment and creates a negative school climate for young children.

A perfect example is the following question given to second grade students in a SE Oklahoma school. (see handout)

The second: The assessment portion of the CCSS. In the school year of 2012-2013, Bennington Public School became very proactive about implementation of the CCSS. Our staff went to the Model Schools National Conference, we gave two teachers a stipend to be the liason between the Reach 3 coaches and the school. We

also purchased a software program to mirror the PASS skills with the CCSS. Our intent was to use Tuesdays as a District wide day to implement CCSS. We called it Transition Tuesday. We quickly learned we were unable to be held to the PASS objectives and tested under this mandate while implementing standards that were not being used to evaluate our school. The Reach 3 coaches knew less about the CCSS than we did and eventually became an early childhood resource of sort. As a result of the impossible implementation of CCSS while schools were being evaluated by PASS standards, I instructed our District to focus on the PASS.

These standards need a pilot year. It is impossible to throw all students into the new standards and tell the educators to sink or swim. Effective reform comes through time and adjustment. Professional development is a key elemet of reform. CCSS professional development has been sporatic and confusing for the schools of Oklahoma. Each school is fighting to develop their own idea of what is being expected of us. Stability of assessment is also neessary for reform to function. With the exit from PARCC, schools are left with no direction to look for assessment.

The third: The expense and direction of assessment. Implemantation of the CCSS has been expensive. Over the last ten years, testing funding has increased 10 plus million dollars and our scores have declined. Textbook companys have pushed out hurried publications and have different versions of what CCSS should be for States.

A theme of CCSS is college readiness. If we are to truly get students ready for college, we should be using standards that mirror college entrance. We administer seven tests at the high school level that mean nothing to students or colleges. A positive alternative to CSSS are the

Aspire standards from the ACT for 3-12. If we could teach the ACT standards, remediation rates would go down and scores would go up. This would require a new NCLB waiver submission.

Scores are not going to go up with the implementation of CCSS. Not because education is lacking, but because the implementation of CCSS has been too fast, too expensive and too random. That reflects leadership. This has been a top-down approach from the onset as seen in the timeline at the beginning of the presentation. Portions of the Common Core have been found to be significantly lower in quality than high quality standard states like Massachusetts.

Our leaders are making a conscious choice to stand with CCSS in Oklahoma. It is time to ask why. If countless experts in child development, national education leaders, university experts and educators are telling you that CCSS is not good for students, why are we continuing to rush its implementation without proper review, evaluation and preparation?