December 13,
2013
Raleigh Meeting of
Taxpayers and Superintendent of Public Instruction
The Coastal
Carolina Taxpayers Association's (CCTA's) Common Core Committee, chaired by Kim
Fink, left New Bern at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, December 12 for a 1 p.m. meeting with June St. Clair Atkinson,
North Carolina's Superintendent of Public Instruction, in her Raleigh
conference room.
After
introductions were made, Chairman Fink opened the meeting by giving an overview
of the reason the committee had asked for Dr. Atkinson's time (concern about
many major aspects of Common Core), and how we planned to proceed (an
approximately 10 minute presentation by each of 6 other members of the
committee, followed by feed-back from Dr. Atkinson). Dr. Atkinson nodded her
assent as she had graciously committed a 2 hour block of time to the committee
in advance. Chairman Fink then introduced her husband, Glenn Fink, to lead off
the committee's presentation.
Mr. Fink
covered North Carolina's Race to the Top
application which is the mechanism by which North Carolina initially became involved in
Common Core. Mr. Fink noted the $400 million dollars of federal taxpayer money
which was sent to North Carolina
as a result of that application, the time line and what person, or entity,
signed or passed what. His presentation made it abundantly clear that the
application pledging North Carolina's participation in Common Core was made in
advance of common core standards' being published; thus North Carolina
"bought a pig in a poke;" we agreed to thembefore the standards were known.
At the
conclusion of his presentation, Mr. Fink handed off to BG (Ret) Hal James for
the next segment. BG James began by quoting a federal law that prohibits the
federalization of curriculum and programs of instruction. He then laid out a
case for Common Core's reaching beyond standards and going so far as to be de
factocontrol of curriculum. He did this in part by quoting Craven
County's Superintendent of Schools and the North Carolina Department of Public
Instruction's own website on which a pertinent page can be accessed at http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/curriculum (emphasis added). Secondly, BG James
suggested that we "follow the money" and pointed to several
beneficiaries of taxpayer money via Common Core implementation. One of the
obvious beneficiaries is Bill Gates' Microsoft. You will remember that the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed money to the 3 entities that developed
the Common Core standards. Was that seed money provided by a skilled
"crony capitalist?"
BG James' wife,
Raynor James, covered the data mining aspects of Common Core next. Mrs. James
pointed out that, in making application for Race to the Top funds, North Carolina agreed to
do data mining for the U.S. Department of Education. Mrs. James then explained
that the U.S. Department of Education has altered its regulations relative to
the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act. It now says that personally
identifiable information may be released to third parties without prior written
parental consent. It also has changed the definition of "personally
identifiable information" included in the regulations to include "fingerprints;
retina and iris patterns; voiceprints; DNA sequence; facial characteristics;
and handwriting." The U.S. Department of Education also encourages the use
of facial expression cameras, posture analysis seats, wireless skin conductance
sensors, and other devices to measure students' emotions and assess personality
traits and beliefs. To support this, Mrs. James referred Dr. Atkinson to page
44 of the DOE pamphlet entitled, "Promoting Grit, Tenacity and
Perseverance."
Terrie Winter's
focus was on the Common Core testing. Ms. Winter noted that federal taxpayer
money had gone to the two consortia (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and
the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) tasked
with developing the tests for Common Core. Two years into the program when the
testing was done at the end of the 2012-2013 school year, North Carolina students' scores were down by
37.3%. Ms. Winter wonders why this is, and what makes us think our money is
being well spent. If you instituted a new program in your business, and two
years into it your receipts were down by more than one-third, would you
continue that program?
Nancy Murdoch
covered the age inappropriateness of the Common Core standards with special
emphasis on the excessive inappropriateness for young children in kindergarten
through third grade. While concerned about all children, Mrs. Murdoch confessed
that her bright six year old grandson, Luke, who is a student in New Bern sharpened and
deepened her concern. Mrs. Murdoch pointed out that a large number of
credentialed young child development experts (there were none on the committee
that developed that portion of the Common Core standards) have gone on record
as stating that the standards require skills that a young child's brain is not
yet capable of achieving. Mrs. Murdoch quoted from a letter signed by some five
hundred such experts in New York State this fall listing a variety of ways the
stress of being tested for things impossible for them to master was being
exhibited by young children they were seeing. These included vomiting, losing
control of bladder and bowels, and scratching themselves until they bled.
Coastal
Carolina Taxpayers Association's Chairman, Rick Hopkins, made the last segment
of the presentation by discussing the costs of implementing Common Core. The
money that came with Race to the Top has been spent. Additional costs will have
to be born by the taxpayers of North
Carolina. How high will they be? Mr. Hopkins pointed
out that, although there have been estimates (some of them astronomically
high), the truth is no one knows how much implementation of Common Core, the
associated computer-based testing, and so on will cost. He also pointed out
that whatever the additional cost, it's too much. Our state is on a tight budget.
Teachers want raises we've been unable to give them. Increasing other school
related expenses on an untested and unproven experiment to be conducted on all
the grade school and high school students in our state makes no sense.
CCTA Chairman,
Rick Hopkins, closed by presenting Dr. Atkinson with a resolution from CCTA
expressing opposition to the Common Core.
During the
presentation, June Atkinson made no notes, but appeared to be listening
attentively, and made strong eye contact with each presenter. Following the
presentation, Dr. Atkinson discussed most of the key points and directed her
remarks to the presenter who had raised that issue. Each time, she talked to
the correct person about the topic he or she had covered previously. It was an
amazing demonstration of engagement and retention. Dr. Atkinson exhibited great
charm and brainpower. However, since the committee had (at the insistence of
its chairman, Kim Fink) worked from original documents wherever possible, Dr.
Atkinson's attempts to persuade us to view Common Core differently failed.
For example,
Dr. Atkinson mentioned that New
York State
had had a program prior to Common Core that had given young child development
specialists pause, and inquired of Nancy Murdoch when the letter from which she
quoted was written. Both Mrs. Murdoch and Mrs. Fink were able to retrieve the
date (November of this year) within seconds.
In another
instance when attempting to refute the effects of stress caused by Common Core
testing of young children, Dr. Atkinson made the point that North Carolina had done "end of
grade" testing since the 1990s with no ill effects. When asked what was
the youngest grade tested in the 1990s by Mrs. James, Dr. Atkinson admitted
that it was not done before grade 3 and that pre-testing for reading at the end
grade 3 had only been done recently. Similar testing for younger children was
tied to Common Core.
When attempting
to refute the need to change North
Carolina law to relieve us of Common Core, Dr.
Atkinson assured us that was not true and passed out copies of one paragraph of
the law that had been mentioned. Chairman Fink did not directly contradict Dr.
Atkinson, but after she had left to attend another meeting, Mrs. Fink pulled
out her copy of the entire law and read from the next several paragraphs
following the one provided by Dr. Atkinson. As she read, the reason for doing
so became abundantly clear. The impression given by the first paragraph was
altered by the subsequent paragraphs. The committee found it interesting that
Dr. Atkinson had copies of the first paragraph alone instantly available for
us. Perhaps others have raised the issue of changing the North Carolina law?
At her request,
two people from other parts of North
Carolina who had appointments with Dr. Atkinson that
day to discuss Common Core sat in on CCTA's presentation and Dr. Atkinson's
subsequent remarks. As we were telling the two good-bye just prior to leaving,
they asked for and received the CCTA contact information they requested. They
were kind enough to praise the work of our Common Core Committee and say they
wanted our help to get something similar active in their part of the state.
Additionally,
CCTA Chairman and Chairman of CCTA's Radio Program Committee, Rick Hopkins,
announced that since Dr. Atkinson had given us permission to record the entire
session and he had done so, excerpts will be played over time on our radio
program (6:30 a.m. on
each Friday on 94.1, WNBU). Immediately after each
program is aired, it is posted at www.cctaxpayers.com.
Info provided
by:
Raynor James,
PR Chair, Coastal Caroling Taxpayers Association (CCTA)
252-626-2804 (cell)
