What we know on the standards debate

We know that Massachusetts students scored below the national average on SATs in the early 1990s and barely broke the top 10 on national assessments. We know that Massachusetts students have become the best students in the nation on these same assessments, and are among the best “nations” in math and science.

• We know that implementing standards in Massachusetts took years of public debate and hard work, and, spending over $90 billion since 1993 on K-12 education, that it came at no small cost to the Commonwealth and its communities.


• We know that there are ways to improve our current standards and our performance across all demographics and geographies of the Commonwealth.


• We know that our education reforms distinguish us from the rest of the country and are critical to business and job creation.


• We know that having state flexibility allows us to improve faster than the rest of the nation and to make adjustments that are good for the people and children of Massachusetts.


• We know that, had we followed the rest of the country, we would not have seen such improvement in our schools and that our example would not have served as a beacon for so many other states.

We also know that there are many reasons to oppose the adoption of national standards.

• We know that the proposed national standards are not as good as Massachusetts’ current standards, and that they are even weaker as compared to the revised state standards that have been ready since February 2010, but were suppressed by the Patrick Administration until just recently.


• We know that the proposed national standards are not internationally benchmarked, while the Massachusetts standards are.


• We know that the future national assessments to be used by all states are not even developed yet, so we have no guarantee that they will constitute an appropriate graduation requirement and we have no guarantee that they will be based on academic content rather than “soft skills”.


• We know that the state, in its June 2 Race to the Top application, has committed to replacing the MCAS within four years.


• We know that these changes are being sold as saving money, but that they will require new textbooks, new professional development and new expenditures by local governments.


• We know that urban districts like Brockton and Boston have toiled over the past few years to align their local curricula with the state’s fine standards, and now local schools and teachers will need to expend more time and money chasing new academic goals.


• We know that the Commonwealth has over time used the power of the state purse to convince districts to align local curricula, and we know that even if the national standards are adopted local districts are likely to be slow in aligning their curricula with the new standards.


• We know that the Administration has repeatedly skirted the appropriate vetting for its actions, not allowing the Board to vote on, or even see, either of the commonwealth's two applications for federal "Race to the Top" education grant funding before they were submitted.


• We know that, in the run-up to his recommendation, Commissioner Mitchell Chester promised a full vetting and that he would base his decision on analyses from his staff, as well as outside independent reports from state and national education research firms.


• We know that the Commissioner did not do this, as he based his Friday July 16th recommendation on the review of one external organization, Achieve, Inc.


• We also know that the three organizations that the Commissioner sought analyses from have, at worst, serious conflicts of interest and, at the very least, direct financial relationships with funders who support national standards.


• Governor Deval Patrick sits on Achieve’s Board. The organization received $12.6 million from the Gates Foundation in February 2008, according to data provided to the Washington Post by the foundation. The Gates Foundation is the major funder of the national standards project.


• The Fordham Institute has accepted more than $1.4 million from the Gates Foundation, including nearly $960,000 to conduct Common Core reviews.


• The report undertaken by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education was funded by the Gates Foundation.


• The one organization, Pioneer Institute, which did not take Gates Foundation money in undertaking four reports by national experts, was not consulted and our work was ignored by the state.


• We know that the Governor, who spoke frequently of his philosophy of “whole child” learning, was never convinced that high academic standards grounded in content, together with standardized testing, was right for children.


• We know that the Commonwealth’s first Race to the Top application received low marks mainly because of the state’s failure to undertake systematic teacher evaluations and to begin building a system that would link teacher evaluations to student performance.


• We know that it was too politically difficult for the Patrick Administration to address the 40-point shortfall resulting from the weaknesses in teacher evaluations, so he turned to the state standards, which did not altogether please him or his Secretary of Education.


• We know that the Administration attempted previously to change our standards and introduce “soft skills” by skirting Board of Education regulations and creating a special committee without the Board’s approval.


• We know that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s record in education reform is unproven, while we know that Massachusetts’ record is tested.


• We know that unelected trade organizations, fueled by tens of millions of dollars from private organizations including the Gates Foundation, are working to persuade states to adopt proposed national education standards and assessments. Many of these organizations, like the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, have poor records improving student achievement and are made up of public officials whose membership dues are taxpayer funded.


• We know that the Gates Foundation since January 2008 has awarded more than $35 million to the Council of Chief School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the two main organizations charged with drafting and promoting common standards.


• We know that the line dividing public officials and trade organizations working on national standards has become so murky that Pioneer Institute recently submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence between state education officials and organizations like NGA, CCSSO, the Gates Foundation and the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

We know what works here in Massachusetts. Our best-in-the-nation standards, along with a commitment to innovation, accountability, and funding, have delivered best-in-the-nation results. We should know better than to throw this success away in a rush to embrace national standards that no truly independent evaluator has found to be superior to our own.