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Sunday, August 3, 2014

Chicago Teachers Union lays out the issues with Common Core.

This is a bit of a long read, but is extremely valuable for acquiring a deeper understanding of the problems with the CCSS.

CTU Common Core Position Paper

DOWNLOAD THE PDF OF THIS REPORT HERE.

Common Core Mission Statement:

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.[1]

John Dewey:

With the advent of democracy and modern industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently.[2]

Martin Luther King:

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.
If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, "brethren!" Be careful, teachers! [3]

INTRODUCTION

The Chicago Teachers Union is committed to helping members do their best work and, since the Common Core Standards (CCS) are required to be taught in Chicago public schools, the CTU supports teachers in this work through professional development and curriculum development. However, as educators, we are also obligated to question the true purpose of CCS, and expose flaws in the standards themselves, their developmental appropriateness, the testing requirements, uses of test results, equity of opportunity, their roll-out time frame, and their implementation. As the preceding quotations indicate, the CCS reflect a far narrower vision of education than that of Dewey or King.
This paper’s purpose is to stimulate thought and discussion about the context of CCS roll out across the country, specifically in Illinois and Chicago. The standards themselves may or may not turn out to be useful frameworks for teachers and appropriate for students; however, this paper is not mainly an appraisal of the standards themselves, but a critique of the idea that common standards across all states and district contexts are the solution for education’s woes. On the contrary, research and careful study reveal that the CCS are likely to increase the opportunity gap experienced by students of color and low-income students; exacerbate the over-use of standardized tests; and increase the influence and market share of vendors, private consultants, and other education profiteers in the public schools.
Study after study (e.g., Rothstein, 2012[4], Ladd, 2012[5]) has documented that the root cause of educational failings is poverty and racism. Common Core Standards, like other “reforms” promoted by the corporate elite, ignore these vital issues entirely.  U.S. education could benefit from a dose of Finland’s approach. Students there regularly achieve high scores on the international PISA test, but not because they emphasize standards or standardized testing. Instead, the idea that every child should have the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background or income, has been Finland’s primary education policy driver for the last thirty years. Education there is seen first and foremost as an instrument to even out social inequality.[6]
The rhetoric of the education reform movement champions CCS as a tool to create civil rights opportunities for Black and Latino students, but the reality is that new CCS-aligned assessments are used to unfairly label students, punish teachers, and close schools.  For example, when New York City students took the CCS –aligned state test in 2013, general pass rates were low--below 30 percent. However, Black and Latino students passed at lower rates than White and Asian students. In math, for example, 15 percent of Black students and 19 percent of Latino students passed, compared to 50 percent of White students and 61 percent of Asian students. On the English Language Arts exam, only 3 percent of non-native speakers and 6 percent of students with disabilities were deemed proficient.[7]  Rhetoric about “failing schools,” justified largely by these test scores, enabled the New York state Department of Education to close or phase out 50 schools and cut education spending by 14%, leading to larger classes and fewer textbooks.  While money, time, and other resources pour into (and go out of) school districts all over the country in support of anything labeled Common Core, little if anything is being done on a national scale  to guarantee educational equity.

CLOSE READING

A look at the standards themselves reveals troubling features as well. The strategy of “close reading” is a central focus of the English Language Arts Standards. As explained by Timothy Shanahan (2013) in American Educator,[8]  “These standards will likely lead to the greatest changes in reading instruction seen for generations.” (p. 5) Students are expected to read the text three times. The first time, students read to understand key ideas and details; the second, to understand the craft and structure of the text; the third, to “critically evaluate the text and compare its ideas and approach with those of other texts.” (p. 10)
Close Reading is a useful strategy, one commonly used by book reviewers and others, but the emphasis given to this technique in the CCS is disproportionate to its usefulness and pushes out other important purposes for reading.  For example, reading for pleasure leads students to develop imagination, worldliness, and vocabulary skills, as well as an appreciation for literature. Isn’t it important to help children develop a love of reading and literature, and not just read for information or to critique, evaluate, and compare? The best way for children to develop their reading abilities is to read.
Proponents of CCS-style close reading argue that reading should be decontextualized. For example, David Coleman, a chief author of the standards, and now President of The College Board, created a video on the close reading of Martin Luther King’s famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.[9] Coleman (2012) emphasizes the need for students to pay attention only to “what lies within the four corners of the text”. King’s letter was written in response to white clergy, who disapproved of the campaign he led against segregation by downtown businesses and for which he was jailed. It is particularly disturbing that Coleman would emphasize non-contextual reading of a text so rich in historical background and one still relevant to the lives of many CPS (and other) students. It is an example of how the Common Core idea of close reading, in dismissing the relevancy of students’ thoughts and experiences, undermines students’ potential to connect with the material and learn more from it.
As Rethinking Schools author Daniel E. Ferguson (2013) points out,[10]
There is a grand irony in the last few minutes of the video when Coleman praises King for not just responding to what was in the clergymen's letter, “but pointing out how critical is what's not in the letter.” Why then, is it problematic to let students do the same, to let their world inform their reading? …What if King had done only a close reading of the letter from the Southern clergymen he was addressing? What if he did not allow his own reading of the world to inform his understanding of the white clergymen's words? What leadership and wisdom would have been lost?
Close reading replaces the “text to self” strategy, which has been taught for years and values learning from relatives or members of students’ immediate communities. Close reading contrasts with critical reading, which incorporates close reading but emphasizes what is not in the text as well as what is in it. Critical reading allows students the opportunity to relate what they are reading to both personal experiences and other texts (the “text to text” strategy). Context allows the reader to make personal connections and build on previous reading or knowledge. Common Core gives undo emphasis to learning from isolated pockets of text.
Insisting that teachers focus on “text dependent” questions narrows the scope of classroom discussion. The primary (perhaps the only) place that students encounter text they must read out of context is on standardized tests. Coleman (2012) implied this in his recommendations to curriculum publishers, stating that since “80 to 90 percent of the reading standards require text-dependent analysis, aligned curriculum materials should have a similar percentage of text-dependent questions” (p. 6).[11]The narrow view of close reading emphasized by Coleman and other Common Core authors may make students better test takers, but it is unlikely to make them better readers or more learned individuals.

DEVELOPMENTAL APPROPRIATENESS

The early childhood CCS were designed by working backward from College and Career Readiness at the senior high school level, without taking into account developmental appropriateness. More than 500 early childhood professionals, including prominent members of the field, made this clear in the Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative (2010). The statement points to the need for support, encouragement, active hands-on learning, and play at the early childhood level. They describe the long hours of didactic instruction, scripted teaching, narrowing of the curriculum, and overuse of standardized tests with young children that have already resulted from current state standards, and call for the withdrawal of CCS for children in grades K-3.[12]
The CCS require Kindergarten children to master more than 90 skills. Yet, research reveals[13] that early skill development, such as “Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet” does not correlate to later reading proficiency.  Instead, research supports a nurturing environment, project based interdisciplinary learning, and guided play to develop executive functioning (staying on task, problem solving, working collaboratively, planning, conflict resolution, organizing and delaying gratification). This nurturing environment needs to be devoid of the stress related to discreet skill mastery. The social and emotional skills appropriately developed in the early years of school lay the basis for students’ learning behaviors in ELA, Mathematics, and other subjects.
The basis for love of literature should, in formal schooling, begin in the pre-primary through early elementary grades. It is therefore crucial that the study of literary text (fiction) be valued at least as much as the study of non-fiction texts in these grades.  Common Core Standards, however, under-emphasize reading for pleasure. For example, CCS emphasize the reading of folk and fairy tales for skill mastery purposes such as identifying story element, patterning, rhyming, main idea, and character study. While mastery skills are important, at the early childhood level reading should primarily be for pleasure (Learning to Read) rather than a chore or process for gathering information (Reading to Learn).

TESTING and CCS

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) failed to significantly increase academic performance or positively affect the education of underserved Black and Latino students[14], and had a negative impact on curricula and instructional practices. This bodes ill for CCS. The experience of NCLB suggests that the students most likely to be behind—those who are poor, African-American, Latino, and/or go to segregated schools—are also the ones most likely to have their schools turned into test-prep factories so that children meet the demands of success metrics.  Ironically, the very instructional processes and methods proven to enhance academic improvement have been scrapped in districts across the country in favor of test prep, which has the opposite effect. Instead of learning from NCLB that accountability, as measured by scores on a standardized test, is not the way to increase student learning or improve education, Common Core places even more emphasis on testing. Mastery of Common Core Standards will be tested in English Language Arts and Mathematics (until more subjects are added) at least twice every school year for all students by computerized tests. The amount of time students sit in front of screens will drastically increase, as companies feed the national market for test-prep materials that are supposed to help students be more successful on these tests. The role of the teacher as instructor, coach, and facilitator will diminish, as will the educational values of life-long learning, reading for pleasure, puzzling over and solving difficult problems, collaborating on projects, integrating the arts, and learning from and about people from multiple cultures.

PART OF CORPORATE REFORM

The development of CCS is part of the corporate “education reform” agenda. These “reforms” are characterized by heavy emphasis on standardized testing, competition, ranking and sorting of teachers, and the position that language barriers, special needs, personal circumstances, poverty, and other hardships in students’ lives are irrelevant to education policy. They echo previous education “reforms”, going back at least 120 years to the 1893 “Committee of Ten” report, in that they focus on capitalist economic needs but not necessarily children’s learning needs. The United States has a long history of relatively small groups of people influencing the direction and tenor of education policy and curriculum nationally. [1]
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced his education program, “America 2000,” including a set of national tests to be given in five core academic areas. The program was given a boost in 2007 when a commission of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) published Tough Choices or Tough Times.[15]  This document lays out a theoretical framework for common standards, and nearly half of the commission’s leadership group members are now vocal supporters or directly involved in Common Core implementation. For example, one of the commissioners, Joel Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor who championed corporate education reform, is now the chief executive officer of Amplify[2], one of the companies that will profit from Common Core with educational software.
Advocates of the Common Core Standards, such as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, promote the myth that they were the brainchild of state governors and the Council of Chief State School Officers who turned over standards’ development to classroom teachers. In fact, no teachers authored the original standards, and most of the development work was done by test and textbook publishers. Even the name, Common Core State Standards, supports the illusion that these standards were developed independently by the states. In this paper, therefore, “State” is dropped in favor of “Common Core Standards”. Further obscured is the fact that only a few teachers had cursory review power (at best) during the standards’ development. According to testimony of teacher Sandra Stotsky[16], CCS validation committee member, this committee was little more than a “rubber stamp” whose “requests were ignored” for the “supposed body of research evidence” on which CCS was based. Stotsky opposed, for example the misplaced stress on informational texts and the omission of major topics in trigonometry and pre-calculus.[17]
Of 29 CCS Development Work Group members, eight were from Achieve (the “non-profit” organization formed to manage CCS development and implementation), seven from College Board (test publishers), seven from ACT (test publishers), two from America’s Choice (now owned by Pearson, one of the largest textbook and test publishers in the world), two from Student Achievement Partners (another “non-profit” creating CCS materials), one from Vockley Lang LLC (a communications group that specializes in effective message management), one retired educational consultant and one professor emeritus (see full list on last page). Teachers were not part of CCS development, but Pearson, the company that stands to make millions on Common Core, is using their position on the development group to sell its products by boasting that its “close association with key authors and architects of the Common Core State Standards ensures that the spirit and pedagogical approach of the initiative is embodied in our professional development.”[18]
It is not just test and curriculum publishers, who have been intimately involved with the Common Core push. Some of the largest corporations in the world are fierce CCS advocates.
Morna McDermott, professor of education at Towson University in Maryland, created a flow chart[3]  that demonstrates research, funding, and advocacy links supportive of the CCS. She identifies the people, organizations, and corporations that are key drivers for Common Core standards. McDermott points out, for example, that Bill Gates, (co-chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) has paid $173.5 million to businesses and non-profits for the implementation of CCS. Gates is well-known for his support of charter schools, and initiatives which seek to use student test scores for teacher evaluation and merit pay. The people and organizations named by McDermott are shown in the table below.
Corporations, Foundations, Organizations, and People linked to CCS (McDermott)
Corporations
State Farm*
Wal-Mart*
Lumina*
Boeing*
Lockheed Martin*
Ford Motor Co.
Pearson
McKinsey Consulting
News Corp.
Achieve
inBloom (Gates/Wireless Generation)

*ALEC members
Organizations/Institutes
US Dept. of Education
US Dept. of Defense
American Enterprise Institute
College Board
Council on Foreign Relations
ACT
Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Car5eers (PARCC)
Alliance for Excellent Education
Fordham Institute
Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium
Student Achievement Partners
Teach for America
 
Foundations
Broad Foundation
Gates Foundation
Walton Foundation
 
 
 
People
Joel Klein, CEO, Amplify
Rupert Murdoch, former Director, News International
Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education under GW Bush
Gene Wilhoit, former director of Council of Chief State School Officers
Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida
Chester Finn, President of Fordham Foundation
David Coleman, College Board President
Lou Gerstner, former IBM CEO
Joanne Weiss, former Chief of Staff to Arne Duncan
Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State under GW Bush
This table reveals the deep connection between the main business and political backers of corporate education reform and the CCS.  To these elites, the standards are much more than just a means to improve reading and math scores—they are a critical component of American economic and military competitiveness. For example, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein promote CCS in a report for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) about military preparedness. [19]  They write that too many students are unable to pass the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and “many U.S. generals caution that too many new enlistees cannot read training manuals for technologically sophisticated equipment.” (p. 10)
The authors of Tough Choices or Tough Times (2007), whose connection to CCS was previously described, lay out a vision based on the concerns of corporate America. The report posits that globalization requires routine jobs, outsourced to the lowest bidder on a global scale. “Although it is possible to construct a scenario for improving our standard of living, the clear and present danger is that it will fall for most Americans” (p. 8). The claim that CCS will lead to “College and Career Readiness” rings hollow, given that 44% of 2012 college graduates are unemployed or under-employed.[20] More likely, the corporations behind Common Core are concerned with their own profits, not students’ educational futures.

IMPLEMENTATION AND ROLL-OUT ISSUES

School administrators and state superintendents are rolling out CCS for all grade levels at the same time, even though the standards are sequentially based. This means, for example, that a sixth grader will be taught based on standards that assume mastery of Kindergarten through fifth grade standards (which have yet to be taught), in the first year CCS are rolled out. A reasonable process might be one year at a time, starting with Kindergarten, and starting with necessary professional development for teachers in the new standards. First grade educators would then teach from first grade standards to students who were taught from, and mastered, Kindergarten standards, and so on.
However, even this more logical scenario has problems. Common Core provides no guidance or leeway for students who enter first grade (or any grade level) without sufficient background. Since early grade standards are developmentally inappropriate, at least in part because learning at that level is non-linear (even more subject to sudden changes or directional shifts than learning at other levels), it is reasonable to expect that many children will not master Kindergarten standards. This sets them up to be behind in school at the age of six and never be able to catch up! Students most likely to fall behind are economically disadvantaged students of color. Nothing in the prolific CCS promotion materials addresses these inequities in education, even though well-developed research exists on both the problem and solutions (e.g., smaller class size, well-rounded curriculum, and adequate wrap-around support services).
The CCS have no supports for students who are not “on grade level,” English Learners, students with Individual Education Plans or other students with special needs or circumstances. Therefore, in addition to rolling out the standards faster than they can be taught well, there are no provisions for support for teachers in general or support for teachers of EL or Special Education in particular.

CONCLUSION

Across the country, education policy-makers from the Department of Education to state and local school boards are pursuing so-called education “reform”.  These “reforms” are heavily promoted and financed by the business community, which sees them as setting the stage for future profits. “Reforms” include the appropriation of public funds by private charter school managers, the wholesale closing of public schools, disproportional emphasis on standardized testing, and attacks on teachers and their unions. While Common Core Standards may appear to be benign or even helpful, they are part and parcel of the corporate reform strategy. Standards, coupled with testing and evaluation tied to student test scores, set the stage for greater control of what is taught in each classroom--destroying teacher discretion, and pressuring teachers to ignore the needs of the students in front of them by focusing on the fulfilment of requirements set by the school district.
ENDNOTES
The members of the mathematics Work Group were:
Sara Clough, Director, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Phil Daro, Senior Fellow, America's Choice
Susan K. Eddins, Educational Consultant, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (Retired)
Kaye Forgione, Senior Associate and Team Leader for Mathematics, Achieve
John Kraman, Associate Director, Research, Achieve
Marci Ladd, Mathematics Consultant, The College Board & Senior Manager and Mathematics Content Lead, Academic Benchmarks
William McCallum, University Distinguished Professor and Head, Department of Mathematics, The University of Arizona &Mathematics Consultant, Achieve
Sherri Miller, Assistant Vice President, Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS) Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Ken Mullen, Senior Program Development Associate—Mathematics, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Robin O'Callaghan, Senior Director, Mathematics, Research and Development, The College Board
Andrew Schwartz, Assessment Manager, Research and Development, The College Board
Laura McGiffert Slover, Vice President, Content and Policy Research, Achieve
Douglas Sovde, Senior Associate, Mathematics, Achieve
Natasha Vasavada, Senior Director, Standards and Curriculum Alignment Services, Research and Development, The College Board
Jason Zimba, Faculty Member, Physics, Mathematics, and the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, Bennington College and Cofounder, Student Achievement Partners
Members of the English-language Arts Work Group were:
Sara Clough, Director, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
David Coleman, Founder, Student Achievement Partners (he is with ETS now, right?
Sally Hampton, Senior Fellow for Literacy, America's Choice
Joel Harris, Director, English Language Arts Curriculum and Standards, Research and Development, The College Board
Beth Hart, Senior Assessment Specialist, Research and Development, The College Board
John Kraman, Associate Director, Research, Achieve
Laura McGiffert Slover, Vice President, Content and Policy Research, Achieve
Nina Metzner, Senior Test Development Associate—Language Arts, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Sherri Miller, Assistant Vice President, Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS) Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Sandy Murphy, Professor Emeritus, University of California – Davis
Jim Patterson, Senior Program Development Associate—Language Arts, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Sue Pimentel, Co-Founder, StandardsWork; English Language Arts Consultant, Achieve
Natasha Vasavada, Senior Director, Standards and Curriculum Alignment Services, Research and Development, The College Board
Martha Vockley, Principal and Founder, VockleyLang, LLC


[1] In  addition to the 1893 Committee of Ten report on the organization of secondary education in the U.S.: In 1895 the Committee of Fifteen was similarly formed to organize the elementary level curriculum. There was also the 1913-1918 Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, as well as the 1931 Committee on the Relation of School and College, the 1934 Commission on the Social Studies in the Schools, and the 1945 Commission on the English Curriculum. The National Commission on Excellence in Education and their 1983 report, A Nation At Risk kicked off the modern era of high-stakes, standardized testing. (Thanks to Wayne Au for supplying this list.)
[2] “Amplify is reimagining the way teachers teach and students learn. We enable teachers to manage whole classrooms and, at the same time, empower them to offer more personalized instruction, so that students become more active, engaged learners. http://www.amplify.com/company Amplify About Us
[3] McDermott, M. (2013). Retrieved from http://truth-out.org/images/images_2013_09/2013_0909cha_.jpg

[1]Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2014. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/
[2] Dewey, John (1897) ‘My pedagogic creed’, The School Journal, v LIV, n 3 (January 16, 1897), 77-80. [Also available in the informal education archives, http://infed.org/mobi/john-dewey-my-pedagogical-creed/.
[3] King, M. L., (1948). The purpose of education. Retrieved fromhttp://seattletimes.com/special/mlk/king/education.html
[4] Rothstein, R., & Santow, M. (2012, August 22). A different kind of choice: Educational inequality and the continuing significance of racial segregation. Retrieved from http://www.epi.org/publication/educational-inequality-racial-segregation-significance/
[5] Ladd, H. (2012). Education and poverty: Confronting the evidence. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, v31 n2, 203-227.
[6] Sahlberg, P. (2011).Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? New York: Teachers College Press.
[7] Hernandez, J. & Gebeloff, R. (2013, August 7). Test scores sink as New York adopts tougher benchmarks. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/nyregion/under-new-standards-students-see-sharp-decline-in-test-scores.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
[8] Shanahan, T. (2013). Letting the text take center stage: how the Common Core State Standards will transform Language Arts instruction. American Educator. v3, n37, 4-11. [Also available at: http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall2013/Shanahan.pdf]
[9] Middle School ELA Curriculum Video: Close reading of a text: MLK “Letter from Birmingham Jail” | EngageNY. (2012, December 5). Retrieved from http://www.engageny.org/resource/middle-school-ela-curriculum-video-close-reading-of-a-text-mlk-letter-from-birmingham-jail
[10] Ferguson, D. (2013) Martin Luther King Jr. and the Common Core: A critical reading of “close reading”. Rethinking Schools v28 n2, p. 18-21 .
[11] Coleman, D., & Pimentel, S. (2012, April 12). Revised Publishers' Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy, Grades 3–12. Retrieved from http://corestandards.org/assets/Publishers_Criteria_for_3-12.pdf
[12] Joint statement of early childhood health and education professionals on the Common Core Standards initiative. (2010, March 16). Retrieved from http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/Joint%20Statement%20on%20Core%20Standards_%28417%29.pdf
[13] Preston, J., Frost, S., Mencl, W., Fulbright, R., Landi, N., Grigorencko, E., & Jacobsen, L. (2010, May 19). Early and late talkers: school-age language, literacy and neurolinguistic differences. Oxford Journals v 133, n 8,. 2185-2195. Retrieved from http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/133/8/2185.full.
[14] Strauss, V., Guisbond, L., Neil, M., & Schaeffer, B. (2012, January 7). A decade of No Child Left Behind: Lessons from a policy failure. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/a-decade-of-no-child-left-behind-lessons-from-a-policy-failure/2012/01/05/gIQAeb19gP_blog.html
[15] National Center on Education and the Economy (2007). Tough choices or tough times. Retrieved from http://www.skillscommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/ToughChoices_EXECSUM.pdf
[16] Stotsky, S. (2011, May). Stotsky's testimony before Texas legislature. Retrieved from http://coehp.uark.edu/colleague/9863.php
[17] Stotsky, S. (2014, January 2). Sandra Stotsky: Common Core doesn't add up to STEM success. WSJ.com. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304020704579278060483138096
[18] Singer, A. (2012, June 13). Alan Singer: Protest builds against Pearson, testing, and Common Core. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/protest-builds-against-pe_b_1586573.html
[19] Klein, J., Rice, C., & Levy, J. (2012, March). U.S. education reform and national security. Council on Foreign Relations Task Force Report. Retrieved from www.cfr.org/united-states/us-education-reform-national-security/p27618
[20] Weissman, J. (2013, June 28). 44% of young college grads are underemployed (and that's good news) The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/44-of-young-college-grads-are-underemployed-and-thats-good-news/277325/

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