WESTFIELD – State Representative John C. Velis and At-large City Councilor Dan Allie hosted a forum and fundraiser for End Common Core MA at the Short Stop Bar & Grille on Thursday.
The guest speaker was Sandra Stotsky, a former deputy commissioner of education in Massachusetts, who is credited with developing one of the country’s strongest sets of academic standards for K-12 students and licensing tests for prospective teachers from 1999 to 2003. Stotsky served on the Validation Committee for the Common Core in 2009 and 2010, and refused to sign off on the standards.
The Common Core standards were adopted in 2010 by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and adopted into schools the following year. Common Core is a national educational initiative that details what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade. The initiative is sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and seeks to establish consistent educational standards across the states.
Several states have repealed or are in the process of repealing the standards. End Common Core MA is currently holding a petition drive to collect 66,000 signatures by November 18, in order to put ending Common Core and PARRC testing on the 2016 statewide ballot. The proposed law would reverse a 2010 vote by the Massachusetts Board of Education regarding Common Core.
Stotsky said the Common Core standards were not research based, and are poorly written and confusing. Referring to the PARCC test, she added, “If you have a poorly written standard that’s confusing, the test item will be confusing.”
Stotsky also said the Common Core standards are not comparable to high-achieving standards in other countries, which is one of the rationales behind using a national set of standards.
She said these standards were imposed on the state’s Board of Education, who asked no questions.
“How could intelligent, educated people adopt a ‘pig in the poke’?” she asked.
Currently, Stotsky said 40 states are using Common Core, and only six plus the District of Columbia are still invested in the PARCC test. The PARCC, or Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career, is an online, timed test that is aligned with Common Core, and would replace the state-owned MCAS test. Massachusetts is the only state that rolled out PARCC over two years, giving districts the choice of whether to use the test. The Gateway Regional School District participated in PARCC last year.
DESE is expected to vote on whether to adopt PARCC statewide in November.
Stotsky called the test “a huge open-ended expense,” including spending on computer specialists and repairs. She said that research papers have recommended paper and pencil tests, which she said are “fairer to all types of kids.”
“For me, the real issue is the way Common Core is tested,” said Velis.
He said he’s had parents tell him that their children have become physically ill over concern for the test.
“If I had to go through that, I most certainly would not be where I am today,” he said.
Velis said he struggled in high school, and credited his teachers with sitting down and meeting him more than halfway. He is concerned that teachers will be teaching to the test, and not able to spend that time. He said he wouldn’t have made it through school if the focus had been on mastering the test.
Velis graduated from Westfield High School in 1998, received a bachelor’s in political science from the University of South Florida in 2004, and a law degree from Suffolk University Law School in 2008.
“Let teachers teach, and educators educate. This is not-out-of the-box thinking,” Velis said.
Stotsky said she believes that once the proposed law to repeal Common Core gets on the ballot, teachers and parents will vote for it.
“It’s the only way to give teachers and parents a voice,” she said.
If they are successful and Common Core gets repealed, Stotsky said the old standards are in the bottom drawer.
“Teachers could go right back to the old standards,” she said. “In one month, those teachers would be teaching what they used to teach.”
