Let education standards go forward as “Asa Core’
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Oct. 20, 2015
Name that core.
That’s the main recommendation Gov. Asa Hutchinson has offered to the state Board of Education after four months of study by the Governor’s Council on Common Core Review.
Hutchinson appointed the 16-member council of educators, parents and business leaders earlier this year to, as he put it, apply an Arkansas flavor to the standards, which have been adopted in 45 states. “Arkansas is a unique state. Whatever challenge faces us, I expect us to come up with an Arkansas solution that works for us,” Hutchinson told the panel at an April meeting.
He said then he would not be satisfied with simply renaming the standards. “The terminology, the branding, that’s a marketing thing. I’m more concerned about the substance of it and the direction we go and the standards that are set,” he said.
Nevertheless, his Aug. 12 letter to the state board emphasized the need for a new name. “I am instructing the ADE [Arkansas Department of Education] to examine any copyright issues with the Common Core State Standards. To avoid any issues, I would recommend the ADE proceed with a new name for the standards, if need be.”
Let’s go with “Asa Core” so that perhaps we can minimize the political controversy in this effort to better educate our children. That would eliminate use of the nickname “Obama Core” and give the standards an Arkansas flavor.
The council reported on July 30 after a 9-city listening tour, during which 16 panels and some 50 witnesses offered their comments. The report included 21 findings and 21 recommendations.
Most of the recommendations put the burden back on the governor to make sure that the ADE continues to work on implementation and review of the standards. By then Hutchinson had already substituted his judgment for that of the state Board of Education in changing the standardized test used to assess how students are doing in meeting the standards.
Actually, the board, with three new members appointed by the governor and two abstaining, voted 4-2 to make the third test change in three years. Earlier the board had voted 7-1 against the change.
The Aug. 12 letter further instructs the ADE to seek feedback from the public on the current and revised standards and to proceed with review and revision of the English Language Arts and math standards. Those are steps that surely would have been taken anyway.
What’s most commendable about the review committee’s final report is what the council didn’t do — recommend an end to the Common Core. Instead, a key finding was that educators are “almost unanimous in the opinion that the old Arkansas standards, the “Arkansas Benchmark Standards,” were less rigorous than and inferior to the current CCSS” [Common Core State Standards].
The council further found that criticism of the CCSS ranged from well founded to completely baseless, with a significant percentage related to frustration and dissatisfaction with other issues such as testing.
Who isn’t frustrated with all the standardized testing we’re now doing in our public schools? Surely the students are more frustrated than anyone.
The controversy over Common Core is eerily similar to that over the Affordable Care Act. In both cases the idea for what became public policy was rooted in conservative proposals. However, when President Obama and Democratic lawmakers adopted them, Republicans turned away and labeled the ideas liberal.
The Affordable Care Act has many similarities to a 1989 publication of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s political arm. Among other things it urges: “Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance.” A 1993 bill with 20 Republican sponsors included an individual mandate, purchasing pools, standardized benefits, vouchers for the poor to buy insurance and a ban on denying coverage based on a pre-existing condition. It never came to a vote, though, and Democrats eventually adopted a similar plan, mocked by Republicans as Obamacare.
As for the Common Core standards, the initiative came from the states, not the federal government. The National Governors Association created a task force charged with finding a replacement for No Child Left Behind, federal legislation passed under the leadership of President George W. Bush.
The problem with No Child Left Behind, as noted by one scholar, was that states which adopted tough standards and administrated hard tests made their own schools look bad. That wasn’t a good public relations strategy for the governors.
The Common Core had many conservative supporters, including Republican governors Jeb Bush of Florida, Bobby Jindall of Louisiana and Arkansas’ own Mike Huckabee.
As recently as 2013 Huckabee wrote: “It’s disturbing to me there have been criticisms of these standards directed by other conservatives. I’ve heard the argument these standards ‘threaten local control’ of what’s being taught in Oklahoma classrooms. Speaking from one conservative to another, let me assure you this simply is not true … They’re not something to be afraid of; indeed they are something to embrace.”
However, the Obama administration became a strong advocate for the Common Core, and many Republicans turned against them, especially when they started running for president.
Now Huckabee says on his campaign Web site: “[I] oppose Common Core and believe we should abolish the federal Department of Education. We must kill Common Core and restore common sense.”
There is no common sense in such shameless political posturing. Change the name if you must, but keep the standards because they’re working.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.