So Can You Do The Same For Alaska's Children?

Thank you Governor Parnell for nullifying the Federal intrusion into gun laws and indefinite detention. Can you please do it for Alaska's children too?  The data mining requirements of these tests are not trivial. SBAC wants broadband to COLLECT data, not to deliver content.

Please Governor Parnell, you signed Alaska into Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. You still have time to pull out of this. Please Governor, save Alaska's children from Federal over-reach.

Reject the Common Core Assessments. 

Far More Expensive Than Previously Posted

In a prior post, I pointed out that the internet and other technology requirements for participation in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) would lead to significant cost increases for the State of Alaska. I had previously estimated this would lead, at the very least, a doubling of Alaska's Education budget. That estimate was based on the data requirements for the older broadband requirements of SBAC, and not the newer requirements that they will be issuing.

These new requirements are quite significant. I spent a bit of time researching them.

Andrew Dyrli Hermeling, expects the data requirements to be 1 Gig mbps per 1,000 students by 2016, and that is beyond the NBPs plan. The new requirements were discussed in an article published by the State education Technology Association.  Schools have three years to meet them.

This is huge. This is technology that is beyond the National Broadband Policy (NBPs). Alaska is struggling to implement the 2010 policy, and that cost would be enormous. The technology that Hermeling intends to impose on Alaska is beyond what Anchorage has available. In fact, it is only available in 11 places in the United States, and none of them are anywhere near Alaska. In places like Morristown, TN, this service is currently offered for $849.00 a month to residential subscribers.

Goodness only knows how much this would cost in Alaska.

Alaska can have the Common Core without SBAC. It can form a consortium with the University of Alaska Fairbanks or it can tell the Federal Government to fly a kite.  Really, expecting rural communities to invests their money on high speed data lines rather than meeting other needs is ridiculous.

I am not against Broadband or high speed internet. But I think Alaskans should have a conversation about what is in the best interest of their children. I think there needs to be honest and open discussion about what the state is doing.  This is something Alaskans should be deciding, not a distant group of technical experts who think they know what is best for Alaskans.

My prior estimates were very low. Our state is dipping into the reserve fund. Where is the money for this madness going to come from? Why is it that Mike Hanley gets to decide the matters, rather than Alaskans?

Call the Governor TODAY. Get Alaska out of SBAC. You can also tweet Governor Parnell at @GovSeanParnell

Note: an earlier draft on this topic is at  http://stopalaskacommoncore.com/?p=93 

Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia's Broadband Requirements Could Double Alaska's Education Budget

http://www.fcc.gov/maps/broadband-availability-alaska

Alaska's decision to enter into an agreement with Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is probably one of the most disastrous fiscal decisions ever made by any Alaskan Governor. A seemingly innocent signature to implement a set of standards, curricula, and tests, has set rural Alaskan education in the middle of the costly and contentious battle over our National Broadband Policy (NBPs). The reasons is that the "consortia" that Alaska signed on with, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), has data needs that are on par with the broadband requirements of the NBPs. In essence, this requires that each school site have broadband access.  While "broadband" is often used rather loosely, the data requirements for meeting the broadband criteria in the NBPs is fairly close to what SBAC requires. So this map is a fairly good approximation of the ability of Alaskan communities to meet this requirement.

Now, someone from AK DEED will say that I am making up things and that this "test" does not require broadband. Well, then why does their tool for assessing technological readiness for K-12 say "Broadband Assessment Tool?" Consider the recent article written by  Andrew Dyrli Hermeling, the technology guru at SBAC to  State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA).  In that article, he stated that 100 mbps per 1,000 students was the broadband standard schools needed. He would know, since he works with states on bandwidth issues for SBAC.

National Broadband Policy's requirements in 2010 are close to what SBAC's computers require. The NBPs has sharper definitions on data in and out, but for all practical purposes, they are the same. You don't have to take my word for it, search for yourself.

Therefore,  the map above can be viewed as a good indicator of Alaska's ability to meet the bandwidth requirements of SBAC. The dark green dots meet the NBPS criteria for broadband, which is not far off from what SBAC indicates is needed.  It would appear that broadband is available in small region in South Central Alaska. I assume that is Anchorage. If you enlarge the map, it looks like there is a dark green dot in the central portion, and going out on a limb, as say that is Fairbanks.The light green areas did not have it available, but it was technically possible to hook those communities up in 2010 with "minimal investment." It may be some of those areas now have something close to broadband today.  The tan areas did not have any access. The white areas are listed as unpopulated by NBPS, but that is probably not what Alaskans regard as unpopulated.

 The map above is the most recent map (2010) I could find on broadband availability in Alaska. But it is now 2013. There have been some minor gains in broadband availability along the coast of Alaska based on grants given by the Federal Government in 2011. While there have been manpower reports filed for the number of jobs created, there does not seem to be any indication of how operational these locations are; but let's be gracious and say they are operating near the standard.

That leaves considering the "other areas." Quite a bit, but certainly not all of this area would fall under tribal considerations. It would seem there is quite a bit of discussion about the NBPs in those tribal areas. There is a somewhat contentious appeal to a decision made by the Federal Communications Commission regarding Annette Island that was filed in May of 2013 which stated 500 unserved census blocks were being excluded from broadband access considerations. I may not understand all the technical terms or legal issues, but I suspect that 500 unserved census blocks excluded means that 500 communities will not have access to broadband capabilities in the near future. It looks like there are plenty of filings on the matter. It doesn't appear to be something readily resolved.


That has serious fiscal ramifications for Alaska's ability to meet the requirements of the SBAC.

In addressing the NBPS, ACS gave a presentation on the costs of meeting broadband requirements in rural Alaska in 2011. While market forces are a fluid in some markets, in large scale utilities like cable and internet tend to have large fixed costs associated with them. ACS, on page 10 of their presentation,  indicated that satellite backhaul is the most cost effective method for delivering broadband access in rural Alaska. (This is 4 G on your cell phone). Of course, the FCC doesn't want satellite backhaul, they want fiber optic cable. Further, satellite backhaul also tends to have high operating costs in Alaska due to weather, geography, and a variety of other matters. According to ACS, it costs 100 thousand per month per site to operate these sites.

Now, let's keep in mind that this test isn't one month of broadband. Commissioner Hanley clearly intents to have both formative (intermittent) and summative (end of the year) assessments for Alaska's students. This is not a one time end-of-year test, despite what Hanley claims. His own presentation to educators on June 7, 2013 indicated this.  As evidenced from his presentation notes, Hanley also fully intends to use the curriculum, despite whatever claims he is making verbally that only the test will be used. That means 9 months of broadband, or $900,000 per school site.

This isn't like the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE) where the test is stored on a local disk or hard drive and the results are transmitted. This is not like that at all. If anyone in Alaska would know that, it is me. I worked on the REAL grant and am quite familiar with the TABE. This is not like that at all.  This is delivered on-line; the test responds to responses of the student.  This is not a static test like the TABE. Each time the test is offered it is unique and no two students have the same test.

At $900,000 per site across 20 schools, that is $18,000,000. That is just for primarily native schools; we are not even discussing the lack of broadband along the "road" communities, (i.e. communities that have access to the road system), which are the tan areas on the map. This isn't even discussing the green areas on the map. Further, recall that the Molly Hooch ensures that each village has its own school if there are students. So if there are a few or 20 children in the village, there must be a school, the broadband has to be available.

Realistically, there are 50 school districts or Educational Service Areas (ESAs) in the parlance of the Race To The Top language. Two of these ESAs have broadband, but not uniformly. So, just because an ESA has a school located where there is broadband, doesn't mean the whole district has it.  If only one site in each district has to have broadband, we can assume that the kids can be bused into broadband labs for the purposes of tests. But that isn't very satisfactory.  Still, our $18,000,000 cited above becomes $45,000,000. Certainly, Yukon-Kukok has several sites alone, and that is one district.  For our purposes here of getting an informal estimate, I've assumed they are one site. That means, my estimate is quite low.

Alaska DEED's budget has been around $1 billion. The entire number of "sites" have not been accounted yet, and the cost of just providing the broadband is almost half of DEED's budget. In fact, there has been no personnel, no books, no school lunches, no building maintenance, and no other function of DEED except providing broadband.  We haven't bought a computer with 1 gig of processing, the Microsoft 7 operating platform (also required by SBAC), paid a teacher, trained a teacher, included school lunches, funded OCS, or heated the classrooms yet. Even if some benefactor, like Bill Gates, provided all the satellite backhaul equipment, computers, and software for free, the operating cost of the backhaul rates won't change. Those are recurring operating costs, not construction costs. I am not even going to try to guess the installation of satellite backhaul, electricity, and wiring. In my estimate, I've assumed the "good fairy" or some do-gooder is giving it to the state, that electricity is free,  and it is being installed by volunteers, which are all very unlikely assumption.

Don't forget, that Andrew Dyrli Hermeling, expects the data requirements to be 1 Gig mbps per 1,000 students by 2016, and that is beyond the NBPs plan. So, even if some schools meet the current requirement, none of them within another three years.


Indeed, this is sounding suspiciously similar to what  Ethan Berkowitz proposed in his bid for the Governorship in 2010.  I don't recall him winning.

Is the state of Alaska going to double DEED's budget for these new operating costs?

Now, who is going to pay for this broadband? Is it expected that the local communities pay for it, or is the state paying for this? It seems to me that if local communities are expected to pay for it, then they should have had a voice in deciding the matter.  There can be no doubt that if each community is expected to pay for the cost of broadband, then they will have to raise the one tax most communities operate on: property taxes. During the 2010 election, I estimated that property taxes would have to increase 25% to pay for the Berkowitz proposal; however, I suppose this could also be met through a reduction in other services like emergency services, closing recreational facilities, or curtailing other governmental functions.

That doesn't seem like a good solution. Nor does this plan look anything like what a fiscally sound governor would do in the face of declining oil tax revenue.

But never fear; the good people at SBAC have an Architecture Review Board! I'm sure that will generate a hefty consulting fee for the state to find out what I am telling them for free here. Too bad Commissioner Hanley rejected the Pioneer Institute's findings out of hand; he would have seen that fairly urban areas in California have been reeling from the cost of SBAC's requirements and the flight of property owners in California to escape taxes escalating so high that Bill Maher has said that liberals could lose him.

I usually forecast numbers, not people. The math on this couldn't be more clear. I can see a lot of borough assembly meetings with people furious and furious assemblymen blaming property tax increases on Governor Parnell and Commissioner Hanley. I see a lot of angry people of all racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds and income classes.

You thought this was about taxes and oil? Ha! Nope, this is about expenditures driven to meet Barack Obama's Educational dreams.

The governor recently said he might dip into the Constitutional Budget Reserve, and even the Alaska Permanent Fund's earnings reserve to meet huge budget shortfalls next year.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2013/06/13/2937258/compass-sign-up-to-repeal-th-oil.html#storylink=cpy

I see an end Permanent Fund Dividend program and an income tax in if the above statement is a trend.  

And there hasn't even been a discussion yet of the curriculum content and the meanings of terms like "adaptive technology."  They don't mean what you think they mean.  They mean what the American Institute of Research says they mean.

The optics on this do not look good for Governor Parnell. He should withdraw from SBAC and find a different path in the Race To The Top. Stand-up like Governor Perry and tell the federal government no. Channel your inner Irishman and tell them to bugger off.   

The Parnell Deception: Education Standards & Policy

There are people under the impression that Alaska's Common Core Standards are not the same as the other states, or that it is some "Uniquely Alaska College and Career Ready" set of standards. There is tremendous effort on the part of a few people to distance the Alaska Common Core Standards (College, Career, and Cultural Standards) from the Federal ones listed in the Race To The Top (RTTT). The definition of College and Career Ready standards is, according to the Federal Government, the Common Core.

 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.

              .  

 Or you can read this analysis of the Alaska Standards in Math and ELA compared to the Federal Standards at the Truth in American Education website. The standards are word for word the same, with very little variation. The writer of that blog also provides links to the Alaska and Federal  standards.  You can check their similarity for yourself.  Just be advised, that the State of Alaska hit the landscape button on their standards before it went into an Adobe file. This was probably to make it more difficult to compare the standards.

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

An Open Letter to Governor Parnell Requesting Withdrawal from SBAC

Dear Governor Parnell:

 Never in my wildest dreams did I expect you to implement the Common Core Curriculum from the Race to the Top program in this state. I thought you would take the high road as Governor Palin and Governor Perry did. Sadly, you chose the low road of capitulation and appeasement to a federal government out of control. To say I am disappointed would be an understatement. What happened to the Governor who sued the Federal Government on Obama Care? The Race to the Top created "Consortia" are clearly unconstitutional and violates other Federal Statutes.


I am requesting that you remove the state of Alaska from Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC)   and keep Alaska independent of both SBAC and the Partnership for Assessing College and Career Readiness (PARCC). I am  asking you publicly.  I do not ask this for myself. My children are grown.  I ask this for Alaska’s citizens,  voters, taxpayers, parents,  and the future generations of Alaskans. I ask it to preserve Alaska as America's a northern bastion of freedom.

In March  of 2013 when I discovered Teacher in Service Worshops  on the Common Core in Fairbanks announced on the State of Alaska DEED website, I called your office to ask if the Common Core had been adopted by the state of Alaska. Your office staff researched the matter and assured me on April 2, or 3rd, by telephone that the state of Alaska had not, nor did it plan to, implement the Common Core, but if local districts decided to do so there was little the Governor's office could do. Yet, on April 4th, your office signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with SBAC. The words "Common Core" were struck out, the Race to the Top Definition  of the Common Core (College and Career Ready Standards) replaced them.  That is very disingenuous. In fact, it is like saying you don’t use a pencil, but a graphite filled writing device. It is the same thing, according the Race To The Top (RTTT) definitions, Governor.  I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.

These "consortia" are not vendors or clubs. They are a new form of government that  violate federal law, the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution, and Article 4 of the US Constitution. Article 4 of the US Constitution  guarantees a Republican form of government. There are no elected officials in the new super-structure of government.   Alaska has no elected representative in this new government structure. Article 4 section 4 of the US Constitution clearly says, "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government..."  Because this entity known as a consortium can collect revenue from the state and has governing authority and lacks elected representatives from the state of Alaska, I would argue it is in fact a new form of government that violates the guarantee.

There was no legislative approval of this agreement. There was no citizen referendum that allowed you to enter this agreement.   1) you lack the authority to enter into the agreement, 2) it runs counter to everything upon which you campaigned, 3) cannot be supported by the Republicans and Independents in the state that elected you,  4) it conflicts with the other infrastructure improvements that you have established in your legislative agenda, and 5) there are several fiscal uncertainties in this agreement  that are not known and are not clearly delineated in the agreement nor were they fully considered by Commissioner Hanley. Of course, nothing with Commissioner Hanley has been followed the process, including his appointment.

Entering into a binding agreement with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is not within your authority as Governor. SBAC is not merely a vendor agreement; it is an agreement that says the State of Alaska will obey the rules of the governing states of the consortium and the members of the executive board. (lines 6 &7 counting from the bottom of page 3, MOU).   According to what the consortium asserts and you signed, Alaska cannot even exit the agreement without their approval once you move forward with it (p. 12). In fact, given my study of the document it would seem that the only way the state can exit is if the test is not rigorous enough, because of supplemental documents in the file. Indeed, I will be commenting on the exit provisions in the days ahead. Further, these MOUs come in stages, and I have seen stage 2 MOUs with other states, so I am well aware of what is coming down the trail.  I've seen the back of this dog, Governor, and I don't like the view. I don't think other Alaskans will either.  Alaska still has a narrow band of time to withdraw. I urge you to do so.

This agreement is contrary to everything you have campaigned on.  By your signature on that document, the state of Alaska has been placed under the authority of governing states and an executive committee that was not elected by anyone in any state (p. 11, MOU). The people who sit on the governing board of SBAC who are so left of Alaskans that it would make Sen. French look like a Tea Party candidate.  Indeed, one member, Linda Darling Hammond, is so far to the left that Senate Democrats in 2009 told then President –Elect Obama not to nominate her for Secretary of Education because she could not survive confirmation.  This is a woman who was Barack Obama’s campaign adviser. Linda Darling Hammond’s radicalism is something William Ayers can only aspire to and never achieve, for he can never be a sweet grandmotherly figure who can spout Marxist concepts in the same way that Julie Andrews singing about her favorite things. They sound perfectly reasonable until you think it through.

Commissioner Hanley has stated that Alaska is an advisory state and says that Alaska will be advising the Consortia. However, the particulars of the agreement state just the opposite; Alaska will be “ADVISED” by the Consortium and the Governing States such as California, Oregon, and Washington.  You do realize, Governor, that Governing states govern and that advisory states are the ones governed?

This is what you did in exchange for the No Child Left Behind waiver (NCLB).  Read the document you signed carefully. This document states that Alaska will  abide by the rules and decisions of the consortium.  While I am an economist and not a lawyer, I do not see how you can possibly have the authority to sign over Alaska’s sovereignty in education or other matters unilaterally.  I find no provision in the Alaska Constitution or in any of Alaska’s laws that enable you to do so. Indeed, I find plenty in AS 01.10 to preclude you from such an agreement.   Certainly such an act would require at least legislative review; I would think that it would require some sort of change in our State Constitution.  Indeed, I think it would require a revocation of our statehood charter. Alaska has fought long to overcome the vestiges of colonialism with respect to its position in the United States. Your own Lt. Governor has lamented that officials would sometimes meet with him during his ASRC days with a flag showing only 48 stars in the office. To place Alaska under the jurisdiction of other states is simply not something I would have ever expected from your administration and validates the colonial notions held about our state by those distant officials. 

Where is the representation of parents, taxpayers, and teachers in this agreement?  Where was their voice considered? Nowhere, sir. This is education without representation, governance without representation, and yes taxation without representation. This is everything the American Revolution was fought against, pure and simple.

In essence, signing that agreement removed the 49^th Star and essentially placed the state as a non-state.   That star was Ted Steven’s gift to Alaska. How dare you, sir. It is a significant affront to those who have supported you most. Your signature on that document makes all the shenanigans of the Alaska Republican Party leadership to appear trivial, which is why I did not attend the SCC meeting and made up some other excuse not to be in Homer. Governor, your signature on that document has done greater damage to our statehood than any other prior action of any other prior Alaskan Governor. It gives the federal government and a board of regional governing states complete control over Alaska’s education policy. The person who is a senior adviser to UNESCO's Institute on International Economic Planning is Linda Darling Hammond is the same Linda Darling Hammond who is the senior adviser to SBAC, not some other person by the same name.  You have de facto placed this state under her direct control. Have you even listened to her views? Children belong to everyone?  Early childhood education to begin at 3 months of age? This is everything you campaigned against, or so I thought.

The fiscal enormities of this decision are staggering and the philosophical shift is vast and should have been fully vetted before the state legislature and the people of this state. My own questions to the commissioner in regard to the fiscal questions this decision have been posted anonymously here. They were not posted there by me, but nevertheless they are now out there. They deserved an answer then and they still deserve an answer.

The people of this state are worthy of an open and honest dialogue on the issue of educational standards.  This cannot happen when the very officials who are charged by you to implement these standards perpetuate narratives and talking points that are, at best, misleading. In some cases, their “facts” are factually false.  Dr. McCauley words on this topic sounds more like Susan Rice on Benghazi than something I would have expected from your administration. Even worse, their very disposition in discussing and relating to the public is one of that of nobleman toward peasants.  The citizens of Alaska are not serfs, Alaska is not a colony, and we are worthy of an honest and open dialogue as citizens in a way that is  not cloaked in the superiority of pretentiousness of unelected bureaucrats.


Dr. McCauley and Commissioner Hanley continue to repeat the mantra “these are not the Federal Common Core.” That was the same approach used in Utah to implement SBAC, and it failed.  They claim 200 educators, university officials and business leaders wrote these standards. I looked at the authors of the documents. I know a few of these people. They are not 200, but 9. This document does not reflect their parlance or literary style.   Further, if these standards were written by Alaskans as your DEED staff say, then how did they write the exact same words as the Federal Standards? This isn’t just “my word.” Others have examined these standards and arrived at the same conclusion.  Calling these standards in their entirety uniquely Alaskan is factually false.  Each state has 15% of “uniqueness.” That is all Alaska received was a 15% variance. Look at the links provided by the Truth in Education website. 

Lets take a moment to gander into the language of these documents. Do you expect me to believe that any Alaskan Math teacher accepts  "Mathematically proficient students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution" page 19  over knowing their math tables in the elementary grades? Let's compare that statement with p. 6 of the Federal Standards that state, "Mathematically proficient students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution."  Do I really have to publish grade by grade sentence by sentence analysis?  These are the exact same words. Did DEED think that if they used landscape in the PDF that no one would know?

Here is why it matters:  if a student put down 2 + 2 =5 under the current system of teaching math, that student would find a nice big red check mark next to the answer. But under the new Common Core standards, a plausible explanation allows a lie to become truth. Process and explanation matter but answers do not. This is unacceptable in the field of mathematics by any reasonable standard even in North Pole, Alaska.

There is a reason, Governor, that Lech Walesa chose 2 + 2 = 4 as the symbol of the Polish resistance to the Soviet Union. Ah, but I suppose future Alaskan students will never know Orwell, will they?  So much literature is striped out of the  Federal Common Core ELA standards, and  the Alaska ELA standards,   No, they will be busy reading Ho Che Min in 5th grade rather than George Washington and they will be reading executive orders and Microsoft training manuals in the 6th grade, just as has occurred in other states.

I assure you Governor, when an Alaskan employer hires an Alaskan, they don't want to hear why the wrong answer might be right. Alaskan employers do not want Hegelian dialect cloaked in the language of "deeper understanding."  They want the right answer. They need to know their math facts without taking off their socks. These standards in no way reflect the manpower studies of the department of labor, unless the category "radical Marxist revolutionary" is now the new description of a government bureaucrat.

How is interpreting spread sheets math?  While I am not against STEM, there should be a solid teaching of mathematics. STEM may be worthy of their own standards, but they cannot possibly be a replacement for solving the problem without technology.  Will spelling now be taught with a spell checker?

Further, if these new Alaska Standards are indeed uniquely Alaskan, why are we using the assessment tool for the Race To The Top Standards? Shouldn't there be a uniquely Alaskan test for these uniquely Alaskan standards? Given that pay, promotion, and tenure will be based on these assessments, do you think the “Alaskan” part of the standards will win the classroom or the Federal “Race to the Top” component?  Do you think Alaskans didn’t see what happened in Utah when their state claimed to have a “Utah” version of the Common Core and claimed “it was only an assessment” that grew to a total buy in?

 It became clear by the end of the first week of June what the intent was with this program. Commissioner Hanley assured me that only the end of the year assessment would be used. He repeated this assurance at a June 2, 2013 meeting in Wasilla by the House Education Committee. However, if you compare this to his June 8, 2013 presentation, he very clearly has documents on his agenda from SBAC that make it obvious that he plans to “sell” the curriculum to the school districts. He does plan for formative (throughout the year) and end of the year assessments to be used, and he is angling to entice districts into the curriculum. Because the document is quite long, I thought I would save you computing time and put the documents here.  It is pretty clear that he fully intends for a total implementation.

I am still wondering why taxpayers, voters, and parents were not consulted in these standards.  Do you plan to be re-elected by “stakeholders” rather than “voters?”  Is policy by your administration now undertaken by “stakeholders” and the voters be damned? If you can’t "Choose Respect" for the voters, how can you then expect people to “Choose Respect” in other matters?  Your leadership, or lack of it, sets the tone on these matters.

Let's compare this to how  past governors wrote standards.

When Gov. Hickel assembled people to write standards in the Alaska 2000 document which pre-dated NCLB, the collection of people was quite large. The English teachers did not write the math standards; there were diverse groups from each discipline from across the state.  All who were writing standards were doing so in their field.  As I recall, the corpus of the Social Studies committee were teachers, parents, voters, and I was one of the few academics on it. Copies of various drafts could be found in various schools for discussion and comment. These committees received comment from the public and received comments from them on various proposals.  Previously when I had been engaged in a similar process in another state, the experience was similar.

The process followed by you,  Governor Parnell is the same that was followed by Gov. Knowles. A small group of technocrats gathering to write what they think they know best hiding behind a small citizen panel. Thus, I was totally shocked to see the small group of people writing the standards across all the discipline areas! I see no evidence of "Alaska generated" standards and all the fingerprints of the Obama Administration are all over these standards. To me, it would appear that the race to the top criteria were given to the group and they were allowed to restate a few things. That is the truth of what happened, and to suggest it was alternatively so is very disingenuous.

Surely you recognize the governing structure of SBAC as an Agenda 21 board?  Certainly your AG advised you of the number of boroughs and communities in the state that have laws making the implementation of Agenda 21 illegal? Certainly you have read  the GOP Platform rejecting Agenda 21?  Are you aware of the Alaska Republican party platform that rejects the implementation of Agenda 21? It is in 2 item H.

The Alaska Republican Party platform specifically speaks against excessive federal control on education. How about III item C on Education which states:

We support local control of public education provided it does not limit competition or parental choice. We oppose all federal control of or influence on education. We support the parental right to have access to all educational information reaching their child.

The Common Core that you, Governor Parnell, signed Alaska into is anti-choice and is most federally intrusive program of all! Even worse, you signed the state up with the one version of the Common Core that parents can't readily avoid. Parental Choice?  The choices that parents will have reminds one of a Monty Python skit on Spam, you can get baked beans and spam or  eggs and spam, but all the choices include Spam.  This is NOT what Alaskans who support "Parental Choice" had in their minds.

How will these families regard the pledge to be "Good Without God?"  How will you explain this to Pastor Prevo or Pastor Duffet or any of the other clergy in this state who have supported you through faith and freedom, right to life, and parent choices? How will this go with your traditional base?

I am certain you are aware that the Republican National Committee unanimously passed a resolution rejecting the Common Core Assessments at their Hollywood meetings in April of 2013. Certainly Governor, must not expect Republican groups to contribute to your re-election campaign after you proceeded with an agreement that is in direct contradiction to the Republican National Committee Resolutions, the National Republican Women, and the Alaska Republican Party Platform?

I am confident you understand that in 2011, the National Federation of Women unanimously passed a resolution rejecting the Common Core and its ASSESSMENTS. Certainly you do not expect local Republican Women organizations to donate to your campaign or support you when you have engaged in an act that is a flagrant disregard of their platform?  Or do you intend to allow the debate on SB 21 drown out the debate on your new, radical education policy? Is that the agreement you have with Senate Democrats and former Governor Knowles?  That the debate on SB21 and this whole recall movement is ginned up to hide what you are doing in Education Policy?

The nation knows that Exxon Mobile wrote a letter reminding the Governor of Pennsylvania of their philanthropic contributions recently to the Governor of Pennsylvania when that state began a reconsideration of their implementation of the Common Core at the behest of Senate Democrats in that state. Of course, I am certain that you have enough backbone to stand up to Exxon Mobile’s desire to have the Common Core implemented? For I know that SB21 was based on supply side economics and not crony capitalism. For, if you were to implement the Common Core curriculum based on the word of Exxon Mobile, that would certainly make SB21 look like crony capitalism rather than an application of supply side economics.  Clearly, Republicans across the state of Alaska would get behind a governor who was implementing supply side economics. I supported it because I felt circumstances had changed that were to the underlying policy assumptions of ACES. However, many would greatly distance themselves from a candidate, even an incumbent who once served with Governor Palin, who was engaged in crony capitalism. Beyond bad optics, it would then lend credibility to all of the allegations of Senate Democrats in the oil tax debate, and that would make the road to re-election road rather bumpy.

Of course, even without Exxon Mobile, parents may well see this program as crony capitalism. Even in New York where the test is being protested by teachers and parents, the Common Core is being perceived as a sell out to Pearson Testing.

Certainly,  any governor of any state who implemented the Common Core could never claim the high ground on limited government. The facts are out there in a rather straightforward way. $300 per student assessment is the real figure quoted by SBAC to several states; there is no “Alaska” discount sir, and the contract you signed doesn’t specify cost.  Clearly,  any governor who intended to introduce a curriculum or assessment that enshrines concepts of collectivism, man-made climate change, alternate family structures, two-spiritness, Israeli occupation of Palestine, along with uncertain math algorithms would find themselves with stiff resistance in 2014. Such a candidate could not call themselves conservative or a candidate of family values! Furthermore, you cannot possibly expect Alaska Natives to willingly participate in this madnessunder the guise of “culturally appropriate” standards?

 Have you actually read Linda Darling Hammond’s work and teacher training manuals? Have you not seen Lev  Vygotsky’s writings and methodology all over her teacher training materials? Have you actually read Vygotsky’s work?  Or even a translation of it? Well, I have read some of it. Do you realize what Lev Vygotsky believed for personal freedom?

  ‘Only in community therefore, is personal freedom possible.’

How does this philosophy enshrine the works of Adam Smith, John Locke, any of the American founding fathers? You will find additional snippets of it here.

 Do you think Alaskans don’t know that Lev Vygotsky was behind both the Czar education of uniformity and oppression, and later Stalin’s psychometric indoctrination architecture of the Cultural Revolution? From your vast knowledge of history, you certainly recall that Vygotsky’s methods were applied by Chairman Mao in the Great Leap Forward, as well as in the reeducation techniques employed by North Korea and Cuba? You realize Vygotsky’s theories are fully implanted in the teacher training and in the data mining? Do you honestly believe that Vygotsky's name is being made synonymous with the Common Core is an accident?  Do you think Linda Darling Hammond and William Ayers are unaware of the totality of Lev Vygotsky's work beyond childhood learning theory?

Do you think Alaska Natives, or Alaska’s large populations of Koreans, Russians, and Cubans have forgotten how their fared under that system of education?  As for Alaska Natives, you might fool those up on the Chandalar (I hope not), but you won’t fool those in other Alaskan communities where the legendary acts of cultural oppression at the hands of Russian educators are alive in their cultural history?  Calling it “cultural common core” is an insult to every Native Alaskan and Alaskan Native, and quite frankly, every American.  There is only one culture in the common core, and I dare say it is neither an Alaska’s culture, nor America’s culture. Just because there are a few math units on beading and knitting doesn’t make it Alaska Native. The devil is not just in the details here; if you think it is, then you are willingly ignorant of what is going on here.

In addition, this agreement requires a revenue stream, referred to as “fees” in the document and I would consider it a tax. Have you read the page 19 of  the Strategy on Educational Equity & Excellence written by Linda Darling Hammond which was the blue print for this program?  She clearly plans on dictating how states finance education. They characterized the Race to the Top as MODEST EXPENDITURE.  These modest expenditures has set other states reeling from their fiscal impacts!

 I honestly don’t know how you intend to fund this program in the face of declining oil revenue. Clearly, you must have been aware of the fiscal provisions of this program. They have no revenue from RTTT after 2014 and have stated they plan to be self financing by then. So you signed us into a consortium that sets policy and will receive revenue ran by an executive committee who believes in income redistribution? This doesn't sound like a consortium, but a government entity.  I suspect you may have misunderstood exactly what you signed.

Certainly you understand that taxing and spending are functions of the legislature. Therefore, how could you possibly entertain the idea of undertaking a program with such a large, uncertain fiscal note without legislative approval? Furthermore, since it is clear that property taxes in every borough of the state will have to increase to pay for this program, shouldn't the borough governments been consulted? After all, we are talking about a test that was estimated to cost $300 per student in Vermont in 2010, and probably more so now based on the CRESST study performed for SBAC that cited escalating costs!

Nowhere is there any sort of delineation of costs that will upgrade the rather substantial upgrades in data wire, computer hardware, software that are associated with the test alone. After all, do you think Microsoft is funding this to sell Apple's platform? How large of a contract to Cisco will there be?  This program has placed California on the brink of bankruptcy and has so bled the state of Washington that they can no longer afford to maintain their infrastructure.   There is no way, from a fiscal perspective, that the state can implement this program and engage in the sort of infrastructure improvements upon which you campaigned unless you plan for boroughs to raise property taxes by at least 25%. No where is this more obvious than in the state of Michigan, an SBAC Governing State, which defunded the Common Core this week to pay for infrastructure. If Econ One is advising you that you can, then they have not fully researched the matter and considered the lack of fiber optics capabilities beyond the road system.

Another revealing aspect of Linda Darling Hammond's goals lies on page 21 of her Strategy on Educational Equity & Excellence . "...we must also have policies and practices that develop, select and fairly distribute a highly effective teacher workforce to all schools."  Excuse me Governor, this sounds like SBAC, through the state will be deciding which teachers can teach.  This sounds like education planning.  How would any member of a bargaining unit appeal a decision by SBAC that orders a teacher to move from Fairbanks to say, some village on the slope against their will? With whom would a teacher file a grievance? Is that addressed in current collective bargaining contracts? Teachers are often spouses and parents that have lives that extend beyond the classroom. A decision on where a teacher teaches could have profound impacts on these public servants's personal lives and on other aspects in a community.

Governor, this “grand experiment” is not just a fiscal disaster in the making; we are talking about people’s lives. We are talking about the lives of children and families. We are talking about people’s careers as educators. The citizens of this state are not just mere objects, but people. The optics in this matter are not good and the winds of change are blowing counter to these "consortia." I truly believe that Governor Palin had it right on the Race to the Top. I believe staying on the path to the RTTT will lead to higher property taxes, a significant erosion of the state’s permanent fund, and possibly the implementation of a state income tax. It will bleed money out of the state rather than to our own institutions of higher education.  It will put Alaska’s students two years behind as it has in every other state, and will obliterate math education in this state. It will institutionalize the agenda of Barack Obama's collectivist approach. This is a decision that will echo throughout history, and it is a future generation that will pay the price.

Please, Governor, I implore you, withdraw the state from SBAC while you still can. Follow Governor Perry’s lead. If you do not have the intestinal fortitude to do so, then look to Utah, Alabama, Michigan, Indiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina for ideas.  If you are feeling particularly brave, I have a solution.  While you are at it, clean up DEED. You have people there who do not serve you well, and they serve the people of this state even worse. 

I thought better of you.

Sincerely,

Barbara Haney, Ph.D.

A modest request of Governor Parnell: http://t.co/NxO4Y7itJt #tcot #againstCommonCore #pjnet #greta @SarahPalin

— 147DegreesWest (@147DW) June 15, 2013

Dr. Barbara Haney has lived in Alaska since June 8, 1991. She served as the Director of the Center for Economic Education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks until 1996. In addition, she worked on the Alaska 2000 project under Governor Hickle and worked with Galena City schools when the Air Force base shut down to find other options to maintain the school district. She was a charter member of IDEA and worked actively with homeschool groups in Alaska to issues related to homeschool legislation. Dr. Haney has served on a variety of advisory boards and political campaigns. She currently works as an occasional consultant on economic issues to various groups and on matters related to social media in national markets. Dr. Haney also serves as Chairman of District 2 Republicans, Vice Chairman of Golden Heart GOP, and as Vice Chairman of Interior Alaska Conservative Coalition.  She is a member of the North Pole Republican Women and serves on the Steering Committee on the Statewide Teleconference, which is a non-partisan forum on public policy in Alaska.  Prior to Alaska, Dr. Haney served as a faculty member at Washington State University, Eastern Illinois University, and University of Notre Dame. She can be reached at BarbaraHaney100@gmail.com