Martinez needs to sniff the wind on Common Core

COMMENTARY: The flame of Common Core standards, fanned into wildfire proportions by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and propagated into most of the states through National Governors Association, burned brightly for two years until something remarkable happened. It began to fizzle out.

Leading the way with flame-dousing legislation have been a number of states, most of which can be considered Republican leaning or “red” states, but blue and purple states have opted out as well.

Fresh from its rousing endorsements from governors, a billionaire or two, and enterprising corporations eager to cash in on the required testing accompanying the new curriculum, forty-five states originally joined various consortia supporting the Common Core standards. Some edumetricians and high-level bureaucrats became downright giddy over the prospect of standardizing the school curricula of every state and local school district to conform to a one-size-fits-all set of national standards and assessment.

Many saw Common Core as the silver bullet to address our national standing in comparison to the rest of the world.

States are bailing

However, an interesting thing happened on the way to the Forum, or, in this case, Common Core Valhalla. States are bailing out of Common Core and the attached multi-million dollar assessment contracts like rats off a sinking ship.

To date, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and the five that never joined in the first place — Texas, Nebraska, Alaska, Virginia, and Minnesota — have dropped full participation (Minnesota only assesses English language standards but not math).

Mississippi and Arkansas have pending legislation putting them on the fast track to drop Common Core. Missouri and North Carolina are also actively considering hopping off the careening bandwagon.

Teacher unions and conservative voting blocks, though not directly cooperating, have at least made surprising bedfellows in opposition to Common Core. The unions have grave concerns about teacher evaluations being based on a curriculum that has not even been universally deployed across all grade levels, while conservative groups have voiced stern opposition based on loss of local and state control to ever-expanding federal agencies.

The U.S. Congress attached amendments to the Elementary and Secondary and Education Act defunding certain Common core initiatives and allowing for parental opt-out. If one were to take the current temperature of the states with regard to adoption of Common Core standards into every local public school curriculum, one might find it to be quite tepid, if not cool. The shiny newness has apparently worn off.

If this was baseball

New Mexico is one of the states still actively supporting Common Core. Although the great preponderance of states dropping out of Common Core and its attendant corporate assessment are “red” states, with a governor and at least one of legislative house Republican, New Mexico bucks that trend.

In a strange twist of followership New Mexico actually sides with the Obama Administration and some blue or bluish states on the issue of Common Core.

Gov. Susana Martinez rode to victory partly on a promise to reform New Mexico education to make it competitive with the rest of the nation and the world. Later, policymakers at the state’s Public Education Department (PED) determined that a massive expansion of time, money and effort embracing standardized testing developed by world corporate giant Pearson would be the vehicle on which education would ride to the top.

PED Secretary Hanna Skandera loudly and proudly trumpeted that New Mexico had applied for and was granted an exemption to No Child Left Behind requirements by accepting the tenets of the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” policy — which is predicated on using extensive assessment of Common Core-based curricula to evaluate schools and teachers.

Six years after a change in administration from Richardson to Martinez, student reading and math scores have flat-lined. ACT scores have dropped from 20.1 in 2010 to the present 19.9 (out of a possible 36). After a bump due to redefinition of graduation criteria, graduation rates dipped this past year.

If New Mexico public education leaders were baseball managers and the governor was the team owner, one look at falling student performance and the exodus of good teachers from the profession would result in the manager being fired and the club being reorganized. But this isn’t baseball.

Even so, a number of states have interpreted the proverbial handwriting on the wall and taken steps to opt out of Common Core, with New Mexico a notable exception to this red state trend. Dropping Common Core would be a positive first step in reorganizing the team.

Mired in deep mud

One cannot say Martinez isn’t tenacious when she attaches herself to a policy or program. Whether it is good or bad, constructive or destructive, helpful or harmful, she has shown a tendency to not change course. This might be an admirable quality if one is an English bulldog in a tug-of-war contest, but it’s problematic if it refers to a policy that isn’t working.

New Mexico educational policy is stuck in low gear and mired in the deep mud of oppressive Common Core-based assessment mechanisms.

Though PED has control of the reins of public education in New Mexico, it should be noted that it must also follow the commands and edicts of the national Department of Education, directed by Obama cabinet secretary Arne Duncan. It is becoming quite apparent that many states are somehow arriving at the same conclusion that Common Core is not the answer to education concerns.

The parent opt-out movement is growing. State legislators are taking note of the troubling groundswell of grassroots opposition to Common Core. It’s an opposition shared by a wide swath of the voting public.

Changes are in the wind. One of the most important notions involves the return of lost educational autonomy to states and local school districts. As often as chambers of commerce and political pundits bemoan governmental interference into business, they seem quite comfortable with total, top-down, and autocratic control of public education. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

The current push-back against Common Core, the national Department of Education, and even state departments of education is a sign of the times. New Mexico needs to sniff the wind.

The fact that New Mexico has a Republican governor and a Republican majority in the House of Representatives presents a golden opportunity to reach across the aisle and change direction in current public education policy. Other states are recognizing the damage that has been done and will continue to be inflicted if Common Core is allowed to metastasize. The trends, based on current policy in this state, are not promising.

The governor would be wise to take note of the other states, mostly red but some blue, that have recognized the bleak future Common Core presents school-age children.

Del Hansen is a 40-year veteran of professional education, having taught math and physics at the high school level, math at the community college level, math methods at the college level, and having worked with the North Central Accrediting Association and The Golden Apple Foundation. He also served as a high school administrator. He currently is retired and resides in Las Cruces.