On Sunday, the Missoulian ran a piece explaining how the state and local school districts are working to develop new standards for science across the state. It was a much-needed piece in an era when Republicans repeatedly claim that there is no local control over what students learn.
The piece ably explained something that few people outside of education really seem to understand: that the state, in collaboration with local teachers, establishes standards, broad guidelines and expectations for student learning in every curricular area. Then local districts, often alone, but sometimes in voluntary partnership with other districts, develop curriculum, the specific instruction and content that is used in those districts to meet the broad standards.
It’s an arrangement that Montana schools have always used: partnership to write the broad guidelines combined with local autonomy about how to implement them. Conservatives who demagogue about the Common Core, for instance, seem unwilling to admit or learn that even under these new standards, the curriculum is written by local teachers in their own communities. And just as your local board will open up discussion about curriculum to the public, the state will do the same with the new science standards. As the story notes:
The proposed standards were created by committees of educators, administrators and community members. They will be open for public input, and are slated to be up for approval this fall.
All in all, the Missoulian piece was a useful explanation of a process that conservative opponents have politicized across the nation, leading to states abandoning the teaching of climate science and valorizing the slaveowners of the Confederacy. At the root of that politicization is a deliberate effort to mislead the public about how standards and curriculum are developed, something the Missoulian piece explained well.
Here in Montana, conservatives claimed, for instance, that the Common Core standards were adopted without public input, despite 12 public meetings about the adoption of the standards.
The increasingly heated (and often entirely irrational) debate about education standards, whether they are the Common Core or Next Generation Science Standards would certainly be improved if conservatives understood the difference between a state standard and local curriculum, and even more so if they told the truth about what those standards really mean.
The Common Core standards were adopted without public input *into the standards*. This is widely acknowledged. The fact the those standards were *adopted* after public input does not change the fact the standards themselves were adopted in a relative vacuum.
But the fact the curriculum is developed locally ignores the fact that the DoE can reject any curriculum at will and without explanation. And it can then apply its own measurements that negate the efforts of local jurisdiction.
You are absolutely wrong.
1. The Department of Education cannot “reject any curriculum.” That is flatly untrue, as they have no oversight over local curriculum.
2. Teachers and the public were involved in the development of Common Core from the outset.
http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/development-process/
3. That something is widely acknowledged certainly doesn’t make it true.
Um, no – you’re wrong:
After Oklahoma Rejects Common Core, Replacement Standards Rejected For Failing To Prepare Students: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/28/3476826/oklahoma-common-core-replacement/
And from a liberal site, so you can’t even accuse it of bias.
Well, you wouldn’t do well on a Common Core reading test. The article is referring to standards, not local curricula, a point this post and the original article addressed.
Secondly, Oklahoma is free to develop and use whatever standards it likes. They just couldn’t get a waiver from the ESEA requirements unless their standards met the new guidelines.
It’s not about bias. It’s about being right.