Was this the only path Alaska could have taken? No. The state could have taken different paths. Alaska could have went to court and fought this on constitutional grounds. It didn't. Why? Governor Parnell could have stood with Governor Perry who outlawed the Common Core and CScope in his state. Parnell had the legislature to do it, too. He could have stood strong with the Governor of Michigan who defunded the Common Core, with Nikki Haley who suspended Common Core, and with the Lt. Governor of North Carolina who also suspended implementation. It could have found company in Indiana, Alabama, and Utah as being independent of the consortia. Sadly, he did not.
I guess federal overreach is acceptable in education, but not in health care and guns.
Alternatively, Alaska could have formed standards and a consortium in the state with the University of Alaska system instead of using Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). Why didn't they do that? Good question, one that should be asked of Commissioner Hanley and the University of Alaska Board of Regents. Actually, just cut to the chase and ask the Governor.
Of course, it would also be good to ask why the Alaska Administrator's Coaching Project (AACP) and the other teacher mentor projects are being conducted via the University of Maine rather than the University of Alaska? Maybe it is because West ED, in Massachusetts, who has the grant for these coaching projects, wants to keep the program under the radar? The same West ED that implements these "College and Career Ready Standards" for SBAC is the same one that guides the operation of AACP, that "coaches" administrators into these programs. Under the Obama Administration the AACP program has been aimed at mentoring administrators through Common Core implementation. Keeping the credits in Maine keeps the program on the "down-low" & has decidedly kept the project out of the public purview. It has certainly kept most of the money flowing to other institutions of higher education out of Alaska rather than the University of Alaska System. While forming an in-state consortium would have also kept the control in the state, it would have cut West Ed and some of the other "consultants" out of the money, wouldn't it? Thousands of dollars would be flowing to the University of Alaska rather than to these consultants....
Ah, but I digress; back to the actual standards that Alaska adopted.
The reason the Commissioner is shunning the use of the term "Common Core" and using the "College and Career Ready" language of the Race to the Top is because he is hiding what he is doing. Maybe he is ashamed that he did it? Maybe he afraid of the backlash? Maybe he thinks Alaskans are ignorant? Certainly the Alaska Department of Education is going way out of its way to point out that these are "Alaska's" standards, and that "We own them."
Hogwash. We could have if it had been done with the University of Alaska; but not by joining the consortia.
Alaska didn't want to call their standards "Common Core" but wanted to call them "College and Career Ready" and claim them as their own standards rather than the federal ones. It was the "appearance" of not having the Federal Common Core standards, but still having them.
It also means that the elusive 200 Alaskans who allegedly wrote these standards probably had tea and crumpets as they read the Federal Standards. Or was it wine and cheese? Or did they meet at all? How much tax payer money was spent on that?
In joining the consortia, each state can vary the content standards as much as 15%, but no more than that. This isn't something I "made up" in my wee little brain, this is part of the RTTT. In the Ed Week article, Eddie Arnold, a spokesman for SBAC said that any state seeking to enter by calling their standards College and Career Ready
"must demonstrate that its own standards are "substantially identical to standards adopted by all states across the consortium and that any additional content standards do not comprise more than 15 percent of the state's total standards for that content area."
Therefore, for the state to argue that their standards are not the federal standards is an exercise in futility, and an insult to the intellectual capabilities of every Alaskan.
Governor Parnell, at the urging of Commissioner Hanley or on his own, entered Alaska into SBAC. They could not admit Alaska into the consortia unless they adopted standards identical to the Common Core Standards from RTTT. The SBAC has a Memorandum of Understanding with US DOE; it has governing rules based on its own Memorandum Of Understanding (aka contract) with US DOE. These rules can be found here.
These are the rules that bind all members of SBAC. If you read the document, look at #2 under A at the top of the page.4. Adopting the Federal Common Core from the Race to the Top is a Precondition of entering the Smarter Balanced Consortium. For those with a mobile device, here is the screenshot
Even worse, the Ed Week article clearly states that the state had been seeking membership in one of these consortia for over one year. As it turns out, Alaska originally tried to join PARCC. Why that did not materialize is unclear. What is clear is that the Parnell administration has been shopping consortia membership for over a year. In an article in Ed Week of April 23, 2013 details Alaska's acceptance into SBAC and their history in consortia shopping. As the article states,
The other consortium, PARCC, which Alaska had also approached last year about potential membership, conveyed to the state that its Memorandum of Understanding requires that a state adopt a "common set of college and career ready standards," according to PARCC spokesman Chad Colby.
Given all the PARCC in-service grants that flew out the legislative door from the economic development committee under the guise of STEM, I am not surprised. I had thought to write that off as a product of the bi-partisan majority, but not any more. This is Parnell's and he owns it.
What surprises me is that Governor Parnell's people lied. This is a man who ran on a faith and freedom style campaign. He lied, or he instructed his people to do so, I'm not sure which. Rather than stating a position and defending it on its merits, he lied. They had every intent to enter into the RTTT consortia.
What is even more sad, is the insistence by Dr. McCauley, Commissioner Hanley, and Rep. Tammie Wilson that these are "Alaska's" standards that were written by 200 Alaskans. They may have been copied, but they are identical to the federal standards. It is factually false to continue the claim that these are uniquely Alaskan Standards. They had to prove they were identical to the Federal Standards to get into SBAC. Thus any creative component here is from the spin, not the standards.
Commissioner Hanley even went so far to imply that he was part of the team that wrote the common core at the meeting in Wasilla on June 2, 2013. There were only 5 writers of the Federal Common Core. The prime author is a man named David Coleman. He recently married, and so when you watch him talk, he is playing with his ring in a very distracted way in this clip. (He has remarkable wedding pictures, and I encourage folks to google them). Or you can go to David Coleman's entire 50 minute talk on May 31 where he describes writing the standards on the back of a napkin, or you can enjoy the significantly shorter clip below.
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It is bad enough Governor Parnell adopted these standards. But to listen to DEED knowingly say factually false information and to mislead the State House legislature is despicable. It is an insult to Alaska. To knowingly repeat factually false talking points is bad enough, but to claim you own them just makes you look like a fool and insults the intellect of honest, hardworking Alaskans.
Gov. Sarah Palin had it right on the Race to the Top.
What else is Parnell covering up?
A shorter version of this blog is at http://www.teapartynation.com/profiles/blogs/gov-sean-parnell-deception-in-education-policy-1?xg_source=msg_appr_blogpost
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