2014 LEGISLATIVE

ANALYSIS

Common Core and the 2014 Florida legislative Session

An In-depth analysis of Common Core in the 2014 Session

June 11th 2014

The Liberty First Network

1334 Tampa Rd #6, Palm Harbor, FL, 34683 info@libertyfirstfl.org

http://www.libertyfirstfl.org

Introduction

In 2013, parents across Florida started sounding the alarm of the disastrous consequences that

would be felt by our children with the adoption of the scheme called Common Core. These

concerns fell on deaf ears in the Florida Legislature. Actually worse than ignoring us, they

chose to deceive the people, by playing a shell game, thinking they could fool us into believing

they had addressed our concerns.

The politicians in Tallahassee are saying they heard us and passed laws addressing our

concerns, but did they?

In my years in Tallahassee, I have discovered that when politicians are feeling pressure from

angry voters, they will always do the least amount they can possibly do to make you think they

actually did something with the hopes that you will go away.

In some ways we may have given them an open door to deceive us. I think we made the

mistake of referring to the Common Core scheme as Common Core Standards. As I met with

Legislators, their standard prepared response was; what is wrong with having standards? We

all would admit that there is nothing wrong with standards, the even mention that anyone

wouldnt want standards is almost ridiculous, but Common Core is about so much more than

just standards and we gave them an opportunity to focus on the ridiculous and ignore the real

danger.

Why is Common Core wrong for our students?

The problem with Common Core is not that it provides standards, even though educational

experts that analyzed just the standards said they would set Florida students back two years,

the problem is that there is also a transformational change to the method and practice of

teaching. Common Core buries students in concepts at the expense of content. Make no

mistake; there is a push to have national standards. That means every school will teach the

same concepts on the same schedule, with no regard for the interests or abilities of individual

students. Common Core is a one-size-fits-all scheme that kills the innovation and creativity of

individual states, along with teachers, school boards and parents finding the best ways to

teach our children. School funding and teachers salaries will be based on results from testing

aligned to Common Core and teachers will be pressured to follow suggested curriculum and

instructional material tied to Common Core. As someone said; those who write the test, set

the curriculum.

Dr. Karen Effrem, who is a pediatrician, researcher, and conference speaker, has been an

ardent opponent of Common Core. Dr. Effrem has provided testimony for Congress, as well as

in-depth analysis of numerous pieces of major federal education, health, and early childhood

legislation for congressional staff, state legislatures, and many organizations. Dr. Effrem serves

on the boards of two national organizations: Education Liberty Watch and the Alliance for

Human Research Protection.

Here is what Dr. Effrem has said about the Common Core scheme:

Teachers will feel pressured to gear much of their instruction to this annual regimen. In the

coming years, test results are likely to affect decisions about grade promotion for students,

teachers job status and school viability. Dr. Karen Effrem

You have the national standards accompanying national tests which are paid for and the

development overseen by the federal government. The federal government is involved in the

assessment writing as well as in the curriculum guidelines and thats important to understand.

Everybody says, oh, well the states and the districts and the teachers can choose their own

curriculum, its just standards, yet the stakes are so high for the results of these tests that that

freedom is really only in there in theory because if student grade promotion, graduation,

district funding, teacher pay and tenure are all dependent on the results of these tests how

independent of the federal model curriculum do you think anybody is going to be? Dr. Karen

Effrem

Was PAARC the only problem?

After much pressure from parents around the state, Florida abandoned the controversial

PAARC (one of the federally funded national testing consortiums for Common Core).

Unfortunately they decided on a testing institute worse than the original, American Institutes

for Research (AIR). American Institutes for Research are developing test for SBAC (Smarter

Balanced Assessment Consortium), which is the other federally funded, and supervised

national testing consortium testing the national Common Core standards. AIR is a progressive

non-profit think tank and advocates a left leaning social agenda with a heavy emphasis on

psychological student profiling.

NEW YORK FIELD TESTS

COMMON CORE ASSESSMENTS

Recently New York students took their first Common Core State Standards tests. Using the

new Common Core aligned testing, students were asked to analyze both fiction and nonfiction,

not only through multiple-choice answers but also short essays. The mathematics portion of

the test included complex equations and word problems not always included in students

classroom curriculums. After the first wave of exams, students were so overwhelmed by the

convoluted and confusing questions that parents refused to let their children continue to take

the test. New York principals reported problems with Common Core assessments, including:

Difficult and confusing questions (some on unrelated topics).

Unnecessarily long testing sessionstwo weeks of three consecutive days of 90-

minute periodsthat require more stamina for a 10-year-old special education

student than of a high school student taking an SAT exam.

Field-test questions that do not factor into a childs score but take up time.

Confusing directions for the English Language Arts sessions.

Math problems that repeatedly assess the same skill.

Multiple choice questions that ask the student to choose from the right answer and the

next best right answer. The fact that teachers report disagreeing about which

multiple-choice answer is correct in several places on the English Language Arts exams

indicates that this format is unfair to students.

Here is what we do know about Common Core:

Common Core is not state-led and is not truly voluntary, especially because Florida

signed onto Race to the Top Grant and requested a waiver from No Child Left Behind

(NCLB).

Intrusive and extensive database (over 400 fields) is required by accepting the Race to

the Top Grant money.

Common Core includes an implicit reduction in the variety and difficulty of vocabulary

by over-emphasizing informational texts.

70 percent of a teachers instructional materials must be derived from informational

texts by the end of high school.

New math will emphasize concepts and theories rather than traditional computation.

Students will not receive the instructional time needed to learn how to do the

operations because teachers will be forced to devote their precious few classroom

minutes to explaining concepts.

The unproven idea of testing based on essay answers leads to subjective grading where

there is no wrong or right answer.

Dr. Sandra Stotsky, Professor of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, was formerly

Senior Associate Commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Education and in charge

of the development of the states widely praised English Language Arts standards.

These problems are precisely the type of dumbing-down Dr. Sandra Stotsky warned about in

her many critiques of the literary content or lack thereof of Common Core. Dr. Stotsky

warned that:

College readiness will decrease as a result of Common Core English Language Arts (ELA)

standards, which include a marked shift from fiction in favor of informational texts... That

decrease in college readiness, is due to the simplicity of such informational texts. By reducing

literary study, Common Core decreases students opportunity to develop the analytical

thinking once developed in just an elite group by the vocabulary, structure, style, ambiguity,

point of view, figurative language, and irony in classic literary texts. Dr. Sandra Stotsky

2014 Florida legislative Session analysis on

Common Core Bills

SB 188 -Student Data Privacy

SB 188 prohibits the disclosure of confidential and exempt education records to the federal

government or any person, public body, body politic or political subdivision unless disclosure is

authorized by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act;

FERPA authorizes school districts, colleges, and universities to disclose student education

records without consent of the student or parent if the disclosure meets limited conditions.

Examples of conditions include, but are not limited to, disclosure of student education records

to:

A contractor, consultant, or other party to whom an agency has outsourced institutional

services or functions; and

Organizations conducting studies for, or on behalf of, school districts, colleges, or

universities.

SB 188 codifies recommendations from the Commissioner of Education to prohibit any agency

or institution from collecting information regarding:

Political affiliation

Voting history

Religious affiliation

Prohibit the collection of Biometric information of a student or students parent or

sibling

Bottom Line: SB 188 did nothing to stop the disclosure of

student data. Private data can be disclosed to anybody due to

FERPA. Of the over 400 fields in the federally required database,

SB 188 only eliminates three of them. SB 188 does seem to

prohibit Biometric collection.

SB 864 - Instructional Materials for K-12 Public Education

In 2013 the Florida legislature passed a law giving local school districts the option to choose

from state reviewed textbooks or the school district could choose their own textbooks,

although they would have to be Common Core aligned. The original bill language of SB 864 this

past session would have forced school districts to take over the job of reviewing and choosing

textbooks. The House and Senate could not agree on language and the only change SB 864

accomplished was to create an appeals process for parents to object to textbooks and a

requirement for notification before a school district adopts material.

SB 864 was originally touted as being a return to local control over educational materials,

however, even if the original language of the bill stayed intact, it still would have been

superficial at best, as long as the Florida Statutes and Next Generation Sunshine State

Standards include curriculum standards that are found in the federal Common Core

Standards, with end of year standardized testing being administered by Common Core

compliant testing (AIR) and funding being contingent upon the student results of the end of

year exams administered by Common Core compliant testing (AIR), our school districts will be

forced to choose Common Core compliant instructional material.

HB 7031 - Education

In the 2013 legislative session the legislature passed SB 1076, which changed Sunshine State

Standards to Next Generation Sunshine State Standards and defined it to include Common

Core Standards in Math and English.

Refer to page 8 of SB 1076:

Next Generation Sunshine State Standards means the states public K-12 curricular

standards, including common core standards in English Language Arts and mathematics,

adopted under s. 1003.41.

HB 7031 simply deleted references to Common Core Standards, and despite minor changes,

they are still 99.1% Common Core. They can call it what they want, it is still Common Core

Standards including the other bad aspects of Common Core (CCSI), including assessments,

curriculum, textbooks and database.

Legislative Champions who fought to stop Common Core

Representative Debbie Mayfield filed and sponsored HB 25, which would have created strict

criteria before Common Core could be implemented. Representative Mayfield

not only sponsored HB 25, she fought for it to be heard in committee and

traveled across Florida to reach as many Floridians as she possibly could to

explain the disaster known as Common Core. Unfortunately, House leadership

still refused to let HB 25 be heard in even one committee. Representative

Mayfield took a lot of heat from the pro-common core crowd, which included

her own partys leadership, but she never backed down and she deserves a lot of credit for

that fight.

Senator Greg Evers filed and sponsored SB 1316, the companion bill to HB 25.

Senator Evers also ran into a roadblock by Senate leadership who refused to

let SB 1316 be heard in even one committee. Senator Evers lobbied other

Senators for support as well as the Governor to no avail.

HB 25 Representative Co-Sponsors (12):

Ben Albritton

Doug Broxson

Matt Caldwell

Neil Combee

Dane Eagle

Heather Dawes Fitzenhagen

Matt Hutson

Ray Pilon

Ray Rodrigues

David Santiago

John Tobia

Charles Van Zant

SB 1316 Senate Co-Sponsors

Alan Hays

Lizbeth Benacquisto (Pundits felt that Senator Benacquisto co-sponsorship of SB 1316

was a campaign stunt for her run for US Congress and attempting to deflect her

previous advocacy for Common Core.)

Legislative Enemies blocking any substantive debate on Common Core

Senator John Legg - Chairman of the Senate Education Committee and vocal

proponent of Common Core. Senator John Legg would not allow SB 1316 to be

heard or debated in his committee.

Senator Bill Galvano - Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on

Education and member of the Senate Education Committee. Senator Galvano

would not support SB 1316 being debated in committee.

Senator Kelli Stargel - member of the Senate Education Committee. Senator

Stargel was another large proponent of Common Core and would not hear any

objections. Her Legislative Aide referred to our concerns as White Noise (a

reference to a random signal with a constant power spectral density).

Senator Don Gaetz - Senate President. Senator Gaetz refused to use his position

as Senate President to allow SB 1316 to at-least be debated in committee.

However, Senator Gaetz did use his influence to have language inserted into a

school voucher bill to require private schools to use Common Core aligned

testing. Fortunately, because of your calls and emails, the language was removed.

Representative Eric Fresen - Chairman of House Education Appropriations

Subcommittee. Representative Fresen refused to allow HB 25 to be heard in his

committee.

Representative Marlene OToole - Chair of the House Education Committee.

Representative OToole refused to let HB 25 to be heard in her committee.

Representative Janet Adkins - Chair of the House K-12 Subcommittee.

Representative Adkins refused to allow HB 25 to be heard in her committee.

Representative Elizabeth Porter - Vice-Chair of the House Education Committee.

Representative Porter is also a large proponent of Common Core and used her

influence to stop HB 25.

Representative Will Weatherford - Speaker of the House. Speaker Weatherford,

like his counterpart in the Senate, would not use his influence to allow HB 25 to

be heard in even one committee.

What do we do now?

First of all, it may seem like we are losing some battles, but I do feel we

are winning the war. Stopping this insidious policy will not be easy. The

entrenched political elites like Jeb Bush, and special interest groups

seeking financial gain from Common Core are not going to go away

quietly. The fact that they even tried to deceive us with worthless

legislation, still shows we have them nervous.

Due to all of your hard work we have made great strides and now is the

time to double down, dont cut them any breaks, dont listen to their slick

talking points. The best thing we can do now is to make the November

election a referendum on Common Core.

If any candidate tells you that we dont have common core now, we

have Florida Standards, this person does not deserve your vote.

Remember the minor changes to Common Core standards were less

than 1%. American Institutes Research (AIR) will be conducting Common

Core aligned assessments. We still have an extensive and intrusive

database.

Your vote is the most powerful tool you have in fighting for liberty; do

not give it away easily.

In Liberty,

John Hallman

Liberty First Network

It is upon us, the citizen, to ensure that freedom is guaranteed

and that our government is limited in a manner to not impede on

our liberty.

JOHN HALLMAN

The Liberty First Network 1334 Tampa Rd #6, Palm Harbor, FL, 34683

info@libertyfirstfl.org http://www.libertyfirstfl.org