This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 13, 2013 - State Sen. John Lamping says he isn’t necessarily against the content of education standards that he is trying to block Missouri from adopting as other states proceed with them. He’s more concerned with the way the state decided to join the crowd.
And the freshman Republican from Ladue doesn’t even think his bill to prohibit the state from the putting the new standards into place will pass the General Assembly.
But he’s glad it has stirred conversation that he says is long overdue.
“I’m pretty confident that parents don’t know what the standards are,” he told the Beacon. “The whole process has been going on under the radar, in stealth fashion.”
He says Missouri law gives legislators the final say over how the state should assess how well students are performing, and it certainly gives them the power to appropriate or withhold whatever dollars are needed to give the tests.
“At the very least,” he said, “there has been an incredible breakdown. The Department of Education has the responsibility to present itself to the General Assembly and let us know what it is doing. There has really been no communication at all. There has been a complete disregard.”
For her part, Chris Nicastro, commissioner of elementary and secondary education, told lawmakers last week that the standards in question were developed by educators as part of a state-led initiative. She said the standards support the goals that her department has set for Missouri students and will be put into practice through courses that are developed by local districts.
“The standards establish what students need to be able to know and to do,” she said, “but do not tell teachers how to teach.
“Local school districts and educators will decide how to implement the standards.
"School leaders and teachers will establish the curriculum and determine how the standards are to be taught, just as they currently do. Teachers will continue to create lesson plans and tailor instruction to the unique needs of the students in their classroom.”
And in response to Lamping’s claims of legislative jurisdiction, Nicastro pointed to parts of the Missouri Constitution as well as state law that she says give the state board of education responsibility for adopting academic standards that ensure Missouri students learn.
The core of the issue
At the center of the dispute are the Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted by 45 states, including Missouri and Illinois.
Leaders of the effort say the standards are designed to “provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.”
So far, standards have been developed in language arts and math.
What do they say?
In kindergarten, students should be able to retell the details of familiar stories and ask and answer key questions about a text; they should be able to count and describe shapes and space.
By 12th grade, they would be expected to analyze a text and provide support for their conclusions; in math, ideally they would be proficient in concepts from fields such as algebra, geometry and statistics and probability.
In general, according to a statement from the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the standards:
- Are aligned with college and work expectations;
- Are clear, understandable and consistent;
- Include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills;
- Build upon strengths and lessons of current state standards;
- Are informed by other top performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in our global economy and society; and
- Are evidence-based.
What Lamping's bill says
Compared with the voluminous detail and supporting material that the common core standards include, Lamping’s legislation to stall Missouri’s implementation of them is short and to the point:
“Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, the state board of education and the department of elementary and secondary education shall not implement the Common Core State Standards developed by the Common Core Standards Initiative. Any actions taken to adopt or implement the Common Core State Standards as of the effective date of this section are void. Common Core State Standards or any other statewide education standards shall not be adopted or implemented without the approval of the general assembly.”
He said the idea for the bill – and a companion bill in the House introduced by Republican Kurt Bahr of St. Charles -- sprang from a sense that a big change was coming to Missouri schools but neither he nor his legislative colleagues had a very clear sense of what was going on.
As he surveyed other members of the House and Senate, he said he found that, “with the exception of one or two people, the entire General Assembly had no idea of what I was talking about.”
Lamping said he understands that the standards do not represent any sort of national curriculum being imposed on states by Washington. But, he said, federal education efforts like Race to the Top and the chance for states to win waivers from No Child Left Behind carry with them the requirement that the common core standards be adopted. So to him, those represent powerful incentives.
He is also concerned about two aspects of the standards: the role that private companies took in adopting and implementing them, and the data that would be collected on individual students as part of the testing process.
“Private companies actually own the rights to the standards,” he said.
As far as the data are concerned, Lamping said they would go beyond simple test scores to include social, cultural and racial factors, and it is not clear who will have access to the information.
Finally, he is concerned about the costs that school districts will incur if they have to give the tests not with pencils and paper but online – a sum he said could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in new technology districts would have to buy. He calls the added cost “a huge stumbling block” and an area where lawmakers who control the state’s purse string would have the final say.
“We ultimately are the decision makers,” Lamping said.
Solid support for standards
Lamping’s bill may have been brief, but it touched off a flood of opposition by a wide range of education organizations and others.
Groups representing teachers, parents, administrators and businesses, as well as individual school districts and public and private college and universities, signed on to a statement that read in part:
“By establishing fewer, higher and clearer academic benchmarks, the standards will enable students, with the help of parents and teachers, to best prepare for success in college and careers.”
The standards, they said, will ensure Missouri reaches its so-called Top 10 by 20goal – being ranked among the top 10 states in education nationally by the year 2020.
To add to the flurry of backers was a joint video released by Nicastro and David Russell, Missouri’s commissioner of higher education, and testimony from Rusty Monhollon, his assistant commissioner for academic affairs, on how poorly prepared students are affecting the state’s colleges and universities.
About one-third of recent high school graduates require remedial courses in English or math or both, Monhollon said, at a cost of $91 million in the 2007-08 school year. Common core standards, he said, will not only prepare students better for higher education but will improve the education of teachers.
In addition to asserting her department’s responsibility for educating Missouri's students, and the value of the standards to improve student achievement, Nicastro also responded to concerns about data that would be collected from tests.
She said school information is collected as part of several state and federal programs, but no identifiable data are collected and sent to Washington except for information under the migrant education program, which tracks students who move from state to state.
Student information submitted to the federal government, she said, is collected only in the aggregate and not in ways that it can be traced back to individuals.
Lamping said he appreciated the outpouring of information that last week’s hearing provided, and he fully expects his bill to fail to reach the finish line at this year’s legislative session.
“I have no grand illusions that this will ever become law,” he said. “But I could see the General Assembly saying, hey, let’s stop and educate the public and the department of education and ask you to give us an assessment of what this is going to cost the state.”
And, Lamping said, he wishes the conversation about the standards and their impact had begun a lot sooner.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “if everyone thinks this is a good thing, it should go forward. But it’s extraordinary that a bill filed to stop it brings the department of education for the first time to present itself to the General Assembly and the public about what they are doing.”