Florida State Rep. Charles Van Zant Sr.
BY ELAINE MAGLIARO
Last November, I wrote a column for Res Ipsa Loquitor on the subject of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Common Core standards. It appears that Duncan was unhappy with critics of Common Core and made remarks before a group of superintendents that came back to haunt him.
Arne Duncan:
“It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary. You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.”
I responded to Duncan in my post at RIL:
A punch in the gut, you say? Here’s one right back at ya, Arne. Lots of people aren’t ecstatic about the “common core” effort to standardize curricula across this country and to institutionalize a “one-size-fits-all” cookie cutter approach to educating our children. It isn’t just “white suburban moms” who aren’t happy with the Common Core standards. There are myriad others who are also concerned about the them—including other parents who don’t belong to the cohort of “white suburban moms,” school administrators, teachers, other education experts, child development experts—as well as a number of liberals AND conservatives.
Philip Elliott of the Associated Press provided some of the reasons why people have been critical of the Common Core standards:
Some opponents of the standards say they are a one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t appropriate. Other critics say the standards put too much emphasis on high-stakes testing and punish teachers for students’ stumbles. Some oppose the standards because the Obama administration used them as a requirement for states to receive money from the economic stimulus bill.
Earlier in 2013, Duncan had even requested support from leaders of the Chamber of Commerce because Common Core was “coming under withering attack from the left and right, and some states were reconsidering implementing the standards.”
I admit that I have misgivings about Common Core—as well as great concern about the overemphasis on the high-stakes testing of children to assess the educational efficacy of the Common Core standards. That said, I think some critics of Common Core may have claims that aren’t legitimate with regard to Common Core or the standardized tests created to assess the educational standards.
Take, for example, Florida State Representative Charles Van Zant Sr. At “Operation Education Conference,” the anti-Common Core event that was held in Orlando in March, Van Zant claimed that American Institutes for Research (AIR)— the testing company hired to create Florida’s new standardized assessment tests—promotes homosexuality. According to ThinkProgress, Van Zant warned those in attendance at the conference that officials who were implementing Common Core in Florida were promoting a LGBT agenda.
Van Zant encouraged people to visit AIR’s website. He said, “Click the link to what they’re doing with youth and you will see what their agenda really is. They are promoting as hard as they can any youth that is interested in the LGBT agenda and even name it 2-S, as they define as having two spirits. The Bible says a lot about being double-minded.” He continued, “These people, that will now receive $220 million from the state of Florida unless it’s stopped, will promote double-mindedness in state education and attract every one of your children to become a homosexual as they possibly can. … I’m sorry to report that to you and I thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak. I really hate to bring you that news. But you need to know,” said Van Zant.
SOURCES
Florida Lawmaker: Common Core Will Turn ‘Every One Of Your Children’ Gay (ThinkProgress)
Florida Lawmaker Stands By Claim That Common Core Turns Kids Gay (ThinkProgress)
Rep. Charles Van Zant says testing company promotes homosexuality: Lawmaker stands by comments in interview with Channel 4 (News4 Jax.com)
Rotten to the Common Core?: On the Subject of Education Standards, Arne Duncan, “White Suburban Moms”…and Bad*ss Teachers (Res Ipsa Loquitor)
Arne Duncan tells newspaper editors how to report on Common Core (Washington Post)
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
Elaine,
You might want to check RIL.
Here:
on 1, May 22, 2014 at 1:32 pmThe Twelfth Post in the “Oh My Achin’ Head” Series: Florida State Representative Warns That the Company Hired to Create New Common Core Standardized Tests for the State Promotes Homosexuality | Flowers For Socrates
[…] November, I wrote a column for Res Ipsa Loquitor on the subject of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Common Core standards. It appears that […]
Sorry, I think concerns about common core have a more fundamental and reasonable basis than this.
Of course, there are some, to my mind very reasonable, concerns about what is in common core.
And, if we believe some reports it seems that states risk loosing funding if they do not go along with common core. If the advantages of common core are so persuasive then why is it necessary to use a budget bludgeon to implement it?
And common core seems to come part and parcel with universal testing. What is that testing supposed to measure? Should it measure student performance, teacher performance, school performance, system performance. You don’t have to be a practicing statistician to know that one test instrument may not be ideal to measure all those different kinds of performance. And if you are measuring teachers, schools or systems why would you have to test all students. Could it be that the concept of sampling is new to the people pushing common core? Or do the people pushing common core have an interest in selling and giving tests?
This story is fascinating stuff. But I don’t think the views of one cockamamie nut job tells us anything at all about the usefulness or desirability of common core.
This story is a diversion from the serious questions we ought to be asking about common core.
Oh noes! The childrens might catch teh gay!
Really, Charles?
You a birther too?
There are lots of reasons to be critical of CC, but that? Isn’t one of them.
Bigfatmike,
Did you read the entire post? I thought I had made it clear that there are people who have legitimate concerns about Common Core–including myself. Such critics deserve to have their concerns addressed. People like Van Zant may give some people the impression that Common Core critics are all wackos like him.
“MYTH: The Common Core is anti-Christian and anti-American. ”
“FACT: These ideas are mainstays among many of the most ardent Christian Right and Tea Party critics, and typically the assertions are made without any factual evidence to support them. They appear, though, to be based on several factors. First, many of the critics object to the very notion of a common set of standards for the entire country, which they believe undermines local control and promotes some kind of anti-American or “collectivist” ideal. Second, they often cite vulgar language, sexual content or other material they consider objectionable in specific books that are listed as “exemplar” texts. As is perfectly clear, exemplar texts—many of which are classics already taught in public schools—are not required reading under the Common Core. Rather, they are listed as examples of texts that would help students reach achievement goals. Third, because the standards do not promote Christianity, and public schools are, by law, bastions of secular learning, the standards are deemed anti-Christian. The fact is, the standards contain nothing whatsoever that promotes anti-Christian views. And, as noted above, the only required texts are uniquely American—the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.” SPLC
Along with gay marriage, Texas has banned Common Core. Must be too liberal. Don’t think it has a creationist science curriculum.
swarthmoremom,
There are both liberals and conservatives who have concerns about Common Core…and the high-stakes testing associated with the new standards.
*****
Everything you need to know about Common Core — Ravitch
Valerie Strauss
1/18/14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-common-core-ravitch/
Excerpt:
Diane Ravitch, the education historian who has become the leader of the movement against corporate-influenced school reform, gave this speech to the Modern Language Association on Jan. 11 about the past, present and future of the Common Core State Standards.
Here’s her speech:
As an organization of teachers and scholars devoted to the study of language and literature, MLA should be deeply involved in the debate about the Common Core standards.
The Common Core standards were developed in 2009 and released in 2010. Within a matter of months, they had been endorsed by 45 states and the District of Columbia. At present, publishers are aligning their materials with the Common Core, technology companies are creating software and curriculum aligned with the Common Core, and two federally-funded consortia have created online tests of the Common Core.
What are the Common Core standards? Who produced them? Why are they controversial? How did their adoption happen so quickly?
As scholars of the humanities, you are well aware that every historical event is subject to interpretation. There are different ways to answer the questions I just posed. Originally, this session was designed to be a discussion between me and David Coleman, who is generally acknowledged as the architect of the Common Core standards. Some months ago, we both agreed on the date and format. But Mr. Coleman, now president of the College Board, discovered that he had a conflicting meeting and could not be here.
So, unfortunately, you will hear only my narrative, not his, which would be quite different. I have no doubt that you will have no difficulty getting access to his version of the narrative, which is the same as Secretary Arne Duncan’s.
He would tell you that the standards were created by the states, that they were widely and quickly embraced because so many educators wanted common standards for teaching language, literature, and mathematics. But he would not be able to explain why so many educators and parents are now opposed to the standards and are reacting angrily to the testing that accompanies them.
I will try to do that.
I will begin by setting the context for the development of the standards.
They arrive at a time when American public education and its teachers are under attack. Never have public schools been as subject to upheaval, assault, and chaos as they are today. Unlike modern corporations, which extol creative disruption, schools need stability, not constant turnover and change. Yet for the past dozen years, ill-advised federal and state policies have rained down on students, teachers, principals, and schools.
George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top have combined to impose a punitive regime of standardized testing on the schools. NCLB was passed by Congress in 2001 and signed into law in 2002. NCLB law required schools to test every child in grades 3-8 every year; by 2014, said the law, every child must be “proficient” or schools would face escalating sanctions. The ultimate sanction for failure to raise test scores was firing the staff and closing the school.
Because the stakes were so high, NCLB encouraged teachers to teach to the test. In many schools, the curriculum was narrowed; the only subjects that mattered were reading and mathematics. What was not tested—the arts, history, civics, literature, geography, science, physical education—didn’t count. Some states, like New York, gamed the system by dropping the passing mark each year, giving the impression that its students were making phenomenal progress when they were not. Some districts, like Atlanta, El Paso, and the District of Columbia, were caught up in cheating scandals. In response to this relentless pressure, test scores rose, but not as much as they had before the adoption of NCLB.
Then along came the Obama administration, with its signature program called Race to the Top. In response to the economic crisis of 2008, Congress gave the U.S. Department of Education $5 billion to promote “reform.” Secretary Duncan launched a competition for states called “Race to the Top.” If states wanted any part of that money, they had to agree to certain conditions. They had to agree to evaluate teachers to a significant degree by the rise or fall of their students’ test scores; they had to agree to increase the number of privately managed charter schools; they had to agree to adopt “college and career ready standards,” which were understood to be the not-yet-finished Common Core standards; they had to agree to “turnaround” low-performing schools by such tactics as firing the principal and part or all of the school staff; and they had to agree to collect unprecedented amounts of personally identifiable information about every student and store it in a data warehouse. It became an article of faith in Washington and in state capitols, with the help of propagandistic films like “Waiting for Superman,” that if students had low scores, it must be the fault of bad teachers. Poverty, we heard again and again from people like Bill Gates, Joel Klein, and Michelle Rhee, was just an excuse for bad teachers, who should be fired without delay or due process.
These two federal programs, which both rely heavily on standardized testing, has produced a massive demoralization of educators; an unprecedented exodus of experienced educators, who were replaced in many districts by young, inexperienced, low-wage teachers; the closure of many public schools, especially in poor and minority districts; the opening of thousands of privately managed charters; an increase in low-quality for-profit charter schools and low-quality online charter schools; a widespread attack on teachers’ due process rights and collective bargaining rights; the near-collapse of public education in urban districts like Detroit and Philadelphia, as public schools are replaced by privately managed charter schools; a burgeoning educational-industrial complex of testing corporations, charter chains, and technology companies that view public education as an emerging market. Hedge funds, entrepreneurs, and real estate investment corporations invest enthusiastically in this emerging market, encouraged by federal tax credits, lavish fees, and the prospect of huge profits from taxpayer dollars. Celebrities, tennis stars, basketball stars, and football stars are opening their own name-brand schools with public dollars, even though they know nothing about education.
No other nation in the world has inflicted so many changes or imposed so many mandates on its teachers and public schools as we have in the past dozen years. No other nation tests every student every year as we do. Our students are the most over-tested in the world. No other nation—at least no high-performing nation—judges the quality of teachers by the test scores of their students. Most researchers agree that this methodology is fundamentally flawed, that it is inaccurate, unreliable, and unstable, that the highest ratings will go to teachers with the most affluent students and the lowest ratings will go to teachers of English learners, teachers of students with disabilities, and teachers in high-poverty schools. Nonetheless, the U.S. Department of Education wants every state and every district to do it. Because of these federal programs, our schools have become obsessed with standardized testing, and have turned over to the testing corporations the responsibility for rating, ranking, and labeling our students, our teachers, and our schools.
The Pearson Corporation has become the ultimate arbiter of the fate of students, teachers, and schools.
This is the policy context in which the Common Core standards were developed. Five years ago, when they were written, major corporations, major foundations, and the key policymakers at the Department of Education agreed that public education was a disaster and that the only salvation for it was a combination of school choice—including privately managed charters and vouchers– national standards, and a weakening or elimination of such protections as collective bargaining, tenure, and seniority. At the same time, the political and philanthropic leaders maintained a passionate faith in the value of standardized tests and the data that they produced as measures of quality and as ultimate, definitive judgments on people and on schools. The agenda of both Republicans and Democrats converged around the traditional Republican agenda of standards, choice, and accountability. In my view, this convergence has nothing to do with improving education or creating equality of opportunity but everything to do with cutting costs, standardizing education, shifting the delivery of education from high-cost teachers to low-cost technology, reducing the number of teachers, and eliminating unions and pensions.
The Common Core standards were written in 2009 under the aegis of several D.C.-based organizations: the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve. The development process was led behind closed doors by a small organization called Student Achievement Partners, headed by David Coleman. The writing group of 27 contained few educators, but a significant number of representatives of the testing industry. From the outset, the Common Core standards were marked by the absence of public participation, transparency, or educator participation. In a democracy, transparency is crucial, because transparency and openness builds trust. Those crucial ingredients were lacking.
Elaine, I know, but maybe the adoption of Common Core might be an improvement in some states.
http://www.businessinsider.com/states-where-teachers-unions-are-illegal-2011-2 No teachers unions in Texas to oppose Common Core so the opposition largely comes from the right. Texas has made teachers unions illegal. The five states that have made teachers unions illegal have the lowest SAT and ACT scores.
swarthmoremom,
That may be true–but when such standards are tied to overemphasis on high-stakes testing to evaluate students, teachers, and school systems it doesn’t bode well for education in this country. My state actually lowered some of its standards when adopting Common Core. Unfortunately, the Obama administration made adopting the standards a requirement for states if they wanted to qualify for certain federal funds.
swarthmoremom,
Thanks for the link to that article!
Glenn Beck’s Angry and Ignorant Book About Common Core
By Diane Ravitch
5/21/14
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/glenn-beck-common-core_b_5367897.html
Over the years, we have seen a steady dumbing down of American culture, especially in the mass media. Whether newspapers, radio, or television, we have lost many of our well-educated, cultured, well-informed thinkers. Often they have been replaced by shock jocks, ranting talk show hosts, and an entire cable channel devoted to trashing liberals, liberal social programs, and labor unions.
I miss Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and dozens of other smart journalists who brought more than their opinions to their journalism. Bill Moyers is one of that breed. We need more.
Another thing I don’t understand is why people on the far right like to paint their own country in the most negative tones while pretending to be patriots. I used to see a lot of this in right-wing think tanks, where people seized gleefully on every negative statistic to prove what a bad country this is; how horrible our public schools are; how dumb our teachers are; how we are doomed. Michelle Rhee’s advertisements often make me think she really hates this country, that no one is smart enough or good enough for her. .
All of this is a long-winded way of disassociating myself from Glenn Beck’s screed against Common Core and public education. It is called Conform: Exposing the Truth about Common Core and Public Education.
Here is a review by Hilary Tone of Media Matters that gives you an idea of how false and hysterical this book is. It is clear that Beck did not read Reign of Error. I won’t be reviewing Conform. I am not interested in reading or writing about crazy right-wing attacks on our great American tradition of public education or on our nation.
In the same vein as the one now being mined by Glenn Beck is a video about a Florida legislator denouncing the Common Core because it will make all children gay. Seriously.
This is crazy stuff, and it makes it difficult if not impossible to have a reasonable discussion about the pros and cons of the Common Core. The Common Core is not wicked, evil, or dangerous, nor are those who wrote it.
Perhaps my critique of Common Core is too sophisticated for those who want simplistic answers. I don’t condemn those who want to use Common Core. I don’t they are wrong or un-American. If they like it, they should use it.
My advice to states that want to use it, who think it is better than what they do now, is this:
1. Convene your best classroom teachers and review CCSS. Fix whatever needs fixing. Recognize that not all students learn at the same pace. Leave time for play in K-3.
2. Do not use the federally funded tests. Do not spend billions on hardware and software for testing. Let teachers write their own tests. Use standardized tests sparingly, like a state-level NAEP, to establish trends, not to label or rank children and teachers.
3. Do not use results of CC to produce ratings to “measure” teacher quality. Study after study, report after report warns that this is a very bad idea that will harm the quality of education by focusing too much on standardized tests, narrowing the curriculum, and forcing teachers to teach to the tests.
4. Do not let your judgment be clouded by people who make hysterical claims about the standards or those who wrote them.
“Did you read the entire post? I thought I had made it clear that there are people who have legitimate concerns about Common Core–including myself. Such critics deserve to have their concerns addressed. People like Van Zant may give some people the impression that Common Core critics are all wackos like him.”
Credit where credit is due. Anyone reading my remark might believe that you have suggest that all opposition to Common Core is at the level of Van Zant. That is not correct.
Anyone with an interest in Common Core would do well to read your entire post and earlier remarks you have made as well.
But I think the following quote from your post gives a far more accurate suggestion of your actual position:
“A punch in the gut, you say? Here’s one right back at ya, Arne. Lots of people aren’t ecstatic about the “common core” effort to standardize curricula across this country and to institutionalize a “one-size-fits-all” cookie cutter approach to educating our children. It isn’t just “white suburban moms” who aren’t happy with the Common Core standards. There are myriad others who are also concerned about the them—including other parents who don’t belong to the cohort of “white suburban moms,” school administrators, teachers, other education experts, child development experts—as well as a number of liberals AND conservatives.”
I may not always agree with you. But I think we are very close on this issue. And if it needs to be said let me acknowledge you have always been clear, fair and accurate. It doesn’t get much better.
Elaine,
Here is a link to a news story from yesterday regarding upcoming legislation in Ohio regarding Common Core:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/05/20/Common_Core_.html
I believe 487 had a successful 3rd reading and that there were only 5 nays to its passage. Opposition to Common Core is coming from all sides
AY,
Whenever I link to one of my posts at RIL, it will automatically show up under “recent comments” at that blog.
*****
Blouise,
Thanks for that link!