Twelve Facts That Governor Parnell Can't Avoid

August 9, 2013

 Dear Governor Parnell:

 I appreciate your response yesterday to issues raised in my public letter back in June of this year. I know in 2009 that you rejected the Common Core, continuing in the tradition of Governor Palin and the others who rejected the Race To the Top. If I had I thought you supported the Common Core, I would never have lent my time, money, and efforts toward your election in 2010.

That is why I was so shocked that you not only entered the SBAC agreement in April of this year, but allowed the arranged affairs that led to the adoption of the common core. Further, Mike Hanley’s announcement came AFTER the legislature gaveled out for the year. This is key, because the Alaska Constitution, upheld in  Moore vs State of Alaska states that the State Legislature, NOT the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (AKDEED) and NOT the local school districts that determine education policy in the state of Alaska. A change this vast should have gone to the legislature. Yet, the past three Committee Chairs of Education in the Alaska State House have told me that nothing regarding this came before their committees.


Pulling out documents from 2009 will not save you from culpability in this matter. Your record in education policy since 2010, including the adoption of the Common Core by ASD,  speaks for itself. 

Let these facts be brought to light:

 1) While Commissioner Le Doux is mentioned in the letter you have submitted as evidence of your rejection of the common core in 2009,  you dismissed Le Doux in 2010 and brought Mike Hanley on board as Commissioner of Education. He is the brother of Mark Hanley, Chief Lobbyist for Anadarko Petroleum. Anadarko is a proud sponsor of the common core through the Business Roundtable.

 2) The state of Alaska, either through AK DEED or through UA, did hire Achieve, Inc . in 2010 to facilitate Alaska's acceptance of the Common Core Standards. Achieve put together a list of stakeholders, the teachers and the like with the aim of building support for the Common Core initiative and were consulted in every step of the process. This is detailed in a letter from Patrick Gamble to Arne Duncan.  at the behest of YOUR COMMISSIONER.

Quoting from that correspondence

“…Alaska Department of Education and Early Development Staff coordinated with Achieve, Inc in the initial planning stages, of the standards revision process in 2010. Staff from Achieve reviewed Alaska’s revision plan and provided feedback via phone conversations and teleconferences. Achieve provided critical guidance for consideration of appropriate stakeholders, identifying key decision makers, and process-specific tasks, which Alaska incorporated into the review.”

3) The meeting facilitators Dr. Brian Gong and Dr. Karen Hess, mentioned in the Gamble letter in (2) have a background in psychology. They work for the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, Inc (NCIEA) . NCIEA has worked hand in glove with SBAC, as evidenced in New Hampshire In particular, Dr. Karen Hess works closely with Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, the Senior Advisor of SBAC as evidence on page 2 of this document from SBAC.

4) The meetings followed the procedures outlined in the Achieve Implementation document on page 20. The scoring guide from teachers is still in archive form.

5) The Alaska Department of Education’s meeting minutes for December 15-16, 2011 note that the Common Core Standards were the basis of the Alaska standards, and that there would be a publicity campaign around the roll out of those standards to convince Alaskans that these standards were “Alaskan made. “ I refer you to page 3, 4A1 How much money is being spent on this publicity campaign, Governor?

 6) The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSSO) issued memos on the “draft” standards and the “final” standards showing they were quite close to the Common Core. Indeed, it is noted that the literary selections were scrapped and replaced with informational texts, and that math standards were stripped of math table memorization and other features of the Alaska Math Grade Level Expectations, that bore NO RESEMBLANCE to the Common Core before they were morphed on AK DEED’s Server into the Common Core.


7) Scott Norton, Strategic Initiative Director of the CCSSO, wrote on January 22, 2013 that

“…analysis showed that the final Alaska ELA and Math Standards track nearly exactly with the Common Core, employing the same structure and language used in the CCSS, with nearly all the CCSS being used verbatim in the Alaska Standards.”

8) SBAC’s own analysis of Alaska’s Standards states that your Commissioner had to prove that Alaska’s standards were substantially identical to enter the agreement with SBAC. In addition, Shane Vander Hart of Truth in Education also concluded the same thing. There are also numerous blogs by educators in Alaska on the issue, most notably Peak 5390 that detail the word for word alignment of the Common Core standards and Alaska's Standards.

 9) AK DEED ran workshops in Fairbanks on implementing the Common Core. They were by “invitation only.” They were only “scrubbed” after I called your office to inquire why in-service training on the common core (allegedly for Anchorage Teachers according to FNSBSD) was being held in Fairbanks.

 10) It is your signature on the SBAC Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that was placed on the document TWO DAYS after your office assured me that Alaska would never adopt the Common Core.  That MOU REQUIRED the adoption of the Common Core Standards. Calling them "College and Career Ready" is simply using the Race To the Top definition of the Common Core.

11) Carolee Adams, President of the Eagle Forum in New Jersey, detailed the relationship between William Ayers (of terrorist fame) and SBAC. As someone who follows the Eagle Forum, I would be quite surprised if you were not aware of the numerous statements by that organization on the common core. Start at the 4:27 mark below

   

You should have been well aware that Linda Darling Hammond is best friends with William Ayers, and is a radical in a way that Mr. Ayers could only aspire to achieve. She is the Senior Advisor and “mojo” of SBAC , Next Gen, and CSCOPE. Earlier versions of Alaska's standards are called  Next Generation standards, a specific term used for the NGSS standards that teach man-made global warming as fact and adopted by SBAC.


12) It was your executive order that allowed the PFD Data to be integrated into the P-20 Database. It was your administration that contributed $1.6 million of the state of Alaska’s money to the development of the P-20 database through the Alaska Commission on Post-Secondary Education.This P-20 database is a key component of the common core, and includes 400 points of data on things from bus stop times, parent’s religion and voting patterns, and a dearth of other intrusive details.


 Governor Parnell, you own this. I am NOT in the habit of defending Mark Begich. Indeed, he can assure you that I excoriate him at every opportunity.  He was not even smart enough to have a valid question for General Hamm at his confirmation hearings for AFRICOM.  Yet, you expect me to believe that Begich is responsible for the implementation of the common core in Alaska? Based on a letter from Mark Begich in 2009?


Please indicate where Mark Begich’s signature is on these documents, for I cannot find them. Of the Alaska officials, I only see your signature and Mike Hanley’s signature, Patrick Gamble's signature, and a few other minor officials.


I also noticed  in Patrick Gamble's letter that the University of Alaska’s Center for Education Policy Research is validating the results for the Common Core in Alaska. I noticed that the Gates Foundation has contributed heavily to the University of Alaska Anchorage. Given the enormous financial investment of the Gates foundation in the Common Core, isn't the university’s objectivity compromised by these wonderful donations? Isn't this a violation of academic integrity and a bit of quid pro quo?


This happened on your watch, Governor Parnell.  I warned repeatedly about the past education debacle in 2005 in the waning days of Governor Murkowski, and yet, I find that the very man responsible for that debacle is the 2nd in charge in AK DEED.

The Common Core books are arriving at the schools, and already there are community meetings regarding them. I am getting quite a few calls.

What will you do Governor? How will you take this back?  Were you going to let the local school boards and teachers and legislators bear the brunt of the backlash? If so, what was the point of electing a Republican majority?  So that the party could wear this?  I think not.

As every school child knows, "He who denied it, applied it." You need to clean house in a serious way, Governor.


 Respectfully,


 Barbara Haney, Ph.D.

PS: The letter from Patrick Gamble was part of the ESEA Flexibility document. Senator Murkowski took credit for securing these funds for Alaska on her Facebook page. That is something a wee beyond Mark Begich's senatorial rank.