The Federal Hand
Behind Common Core
“Common Core is a state-led initiative.”
This sentence is among the most repeated pitch lines of
those selling Common Core. It is an effective sales pitch, but is it
true?
The answer lies in the maze of money and regulation tying
federal and state departments of education together.
Let’s start with the money. The money is always the
carrot that the federal government offers the states.
The money trail for Common Core begins in 2009, with the
passage of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, commonly called the
Stimulus Bill. Among the bill’s many provisions was a $53.6 billion
appropriation to the U.S. Department of Education, called the State Fiscal
Stabilization Fund. Of that amount, $4.35 billion was set aside for the
Race to the Top initiative.
States had to access the funds in a prescribed order.
First was the Stabilization fund program.
In order to receive these funds, states had to assure the
federal government that they would adopt “rigorous college and career ready
standards.” The elements of the standards were dictated by the
federal government in the America COMPETES Act, and as part of their
application for Stabilization funds the states had to sign an assurance page
that specifically required them to align their state programs to the language
of that federal law.
The Stabilization funds were awarded in two phases, with
states submitting an application outlining their plans to adopt the standards
to receive the first phase, and then submitting a progress report showing that
they were actually completing those plans in order to receive the second phase
of their Stabilization grant. The U.S. Department of Education had to
approve each state’s plan before Phase Two funds were awarded, effectively giving
the federal government control over each state’s education programs.
States who had successfully completed the Stabilization
grant process could then compete for Race to the Top funds. This
requirement was explained in question A-4 of Race to
the Top Guidance and Frequently Asked Questions, published by the
U.S. Department of Education on May 27, 2010.
Race to the Top was a competition grant process. States were
awarded points based on how closely they conformed to the desires of the
federal Department of Education. In the case of the Common Core State
Standards, Section (B)(1)(ii) of the Race to the Top grant application clearly
outlined the federal requirements. States would be awarded up to 40
points depending on their commitment to adopting a common set of standards by
the federal deadline of August 2, 2010.
Under Race to the Top, states could add to the common
standards, provided that the additions were not more than 15 percent of the
total, but they could not subtract or change any of the standards.
The Race to the Top grant applications had to be submitted
to the U.S. Department of Education BEFORE the standards were actually
available to the states. In January 2010 William McCallum, one of the
authors of the Common Core Math Standards, spoke at a national mathematics
conference in San Francisco. In response to questions and concerns about
the compressed schedule for developing the math standards, a schedule that did not
allow for pilot testing or normal editing, Mr. McCallum told his audience that his “bosses,” the National
Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State
School Officers, were being “pressed by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
who was using the possibility of getting Race to the Top money as leverage to
force states to commit now to adopting uniform standards.” He told his
audience that states were committing to the adoption of the standards “sight
unseen.”
In Pennsylvania’s Race to the Top Phase Two grant
application, submitted in May 2010, the State Board of Education told the
federal government that if they received the standards by June 2, 2010, they
would adopt them by July 1, 2010. They kept that promise, tying every
public and charter school student in the Commonwealth to standards that they
had not even seen when they made the commitment.
A visit to the web site for the Common Core State
Standards, reveals that the standards are the copyrighted property of the
NGA Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers,
and may only be used if a public license is obtained. The same web site
states that every user of the standards must acknowledge this ownership, except
states. States are exempted from sharing this information with their
citizens.
So the money in the federal State Fiscal Stabilization Fund
and Race to the Top were the carrots.
What was the stick? The stick was federal regulation.
And it was a big one.
Federal regulations implementing No Child Left Behind
required every state to prove that 100 percent of its students were proficient
in reading and math by the end of the 2013-2014 school year, with substantial
penalties for failure to demonstrate that it had attained this impossible goal.
The U.S. Department of Education has allowed states to apply
for flexibility from these requirements. Section C of ESEA Flexibility Frequently Asked Questions, dated
August 3, 2012, tells the states that to receive this flexibility, the state
must prove to the federal government that it has formally adopted college and
career ready standards. The federal Department of Education is the sole
judge of whether or not the state has adopted adequate college and career ready
standards.
An examination of ESEA flexibility requests from across the
country reveals that even states that did not apply for Race to the Top money,
such as Texas and Virginia, were required to show how their state’s educational
programs were aligned with the Common Core State Standards in order to be
granted flexibility. So even the states that did not take the carrot
found themselves confronting the federal stick.
“State-led initiative” may be a wonderful sales pitch for
those promoting Common Core, but an examination of the facts reveals that the
reality does not match the marketing.
