common core and the 2014 florida legislative session
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An In-depth analysis of Common Core in the 2014 SessionJune 11th 2014The Liberty First Network 1334 Tampa Road #6, Palm Harbor, Florida, 34683http://[email protected](727) 424-9530TRANSCRIPT
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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 [email protected]
http://www.libertyfirstfl.org
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
[email protected] http://www.libertyfirstfl.org