We realize that several Republican controlled states have already rejected Common Core. But it is much easier for a Republican controlled state to reject Common Core than for a Democratic controlled State to reject Common Core. All Republicans have to do is call it “ObamaCore” and blame the entire thing on those “Damn Democrats” and Republicans will jump at the chance to get rid of Common Core. For example, the Washington State Republican Party passed a resolution opposing Common Core over a year ago.
But not all states are Republican states. Nor do children come with D’s or R’s stamped on their foreheads. For a Democratic state to pass a Resolution opposing Common Core requires going against a sitting Democratic President and also going against nearly your entire Democratic Party political leadership – who are all aligned with Obama and Arne Duncan just as Common Core tests and Common Core books are (supposed to be) aligned with Common Core standards.
A Brief Lesson in Political Organizing
For parents and teachers living in Democratic controlled states and wanting to escape from the death grip of Common Core, we would like to explain how this miracle happened – so that you can use this process as a template to pass a similar resolution in your (Democratic) state.
First, we have been working on this issue for nearly a year. So it will take a lot of patience and determination to overcome the wealthy billionaire controlled wing of the Democratic Party. Do not expect overnight success. You should write a well organized resolution that takes no more than one page. Our successful resolution is at the end of this article if you would like to read it. Feel free to copy it. Unlike Common Core, it is not Copyrighted!
Second, it is helpful if at least some members of your group are already members of your state’s Democratic Party. One of us, David, has been a Precinct Committee Officer (PCO) in the Democratic Party for more than 14 years in East King County, near Seattle Washington. The other of us, Elizabeth, is a new PCO for a different legislative district in North Seattle, Washington. Even if you do not like your local Democratic Party, and you think they are evil, you should join it and start attending monthly party meetings in your legislative district. You will find that Democrats are not as evil as you may have been led to believe. Many of them are parents and teachers just like you. They care about our kids and about the future of our country just like you.
Third, it is helpful if you have passed other resolutions at various levels of the Democratic Party in the past and have at least some idea of how the process works. We have previously passed SIX resolutions in the State Democratic Party before the Common Core Resolution. These include resolutions in favor of a State Public Bank, restoration of Glass Steagall Banking Regulations, Getting the Money out of Politics, and Restoring a Fairer GED test. So this was our seventh successful resolution. But it was also by far the hardest to pass.
Fourth, it is essential to start at the legislative district level. Start with your own legislative district. Attend several monthly meetings. Get to know the other folks attending the monthly meetings. Find out who are parents and teachers and whether their kids are struggling with Common Core. Most kids are having a terrible time. Ask these parents and teachers to help you pass a resolution in your legislative district. After you pass a resolution in your legislative district, work on passing the resolution in neighboring legislative districts.
Fifth, also join Parents Across America (PAA) or start a chapter in your city. We are lucky that Seattle already has a chapter of Parents Across America. One of their leaders, Dora Taylor, was willing to come with us to several legislative districts and help us get the measure passed in those legislative districts. Eventually, we were able to get the Resolution Opposing Common Core passed in four legislative districts.
Sixth, also join your State Party Progressive Caucus. This is also referred to as the “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.” These folks really support public schools and they are really opposed to the billionaires privatizing and taking over public schools. The more wealthy democrats are called “New Democrats.” These are the folks who are in it for the money and are paid off by the billionaires. The benefit of having the resolution passed by the Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party is that these folks are often extremely long time Democrats and they really know the ropes and how to get things done – despite the opposition of the corporate or “New Dems” wing of the Democratic Party. Many are also on the County and /or State Resolutions Committees.
Seventh, the next task is to get the resolution considered by the County Resolutions Committee. It is helpful if you have friends on this committee and/or can get to know the members of this committee. This group usually meets once per month.
Eighth, the next task is to get the resolution considered by the State Resolutions Committee. This group only meets three or four times per year. There are lots of rules that have to be met to get a resolution considered by the county committee or the state committee. These rules are usually posted on the County Democratic Party website and/or the State Democratic Party website.
Ninth, get to know your progressive State Party leaders. These are elected representatives who care more about kids and parents and teachers than about keeping billionaires happy. We are lucky in our State to have State Senator Maralyn Chase in our corner. Having a well respected leader of the State Party on your side will help because the billionaires will certainly have some state party leaders on their side.
Tenth, get some upset parents and upset teachers on your side. We were very lucky to meet a group of upset teachers organized by a determined and courageous teacher, Becca Richie, who understood that Common Core is very bad for kids. These parents and teachers played a crucial role in helping us get the last few votes we needed to get the resolution passed because thankfully teachers are still highly respected in our state and state delegates were willing to listen to these teachers talk about how Common Core harms kids.
Eleventh, build a website where parents, teachers and State Party delegates can go to learn more about why they should support your resolution. We built a website called “Weapons of Mass Deception (dot) org.” To learn more about how to build your own website using a free platform called Joomla, visit one of our other websites: http://buildyourownbusinesswebsite.org/
Strategy At the State Party Meeting
After getting the resolution passed at a legislative district meeting and or a county meeting, it is forwarded to the state party for consideration at the next state party meeting. You need to go to this meeting a day in advance – because the State Resolutions Committee usually considers resolutions the evening before the main state party meeting. Bring a one page flier of no more than ten reasons why those on the resolutions committee should vote for your resolution. Arrive to the committee meeting early and make sure that everyone on the committee gets a copy of your handout. In Washington State, there is usually about 30 people on the resolutions committee. Your state may be bigger or smaller than our state.
The first task of the resolutions committee is to “clean up” your “poorly written” resolution. Do not argue with them. They have been writing resolutions and cleaning up resolutions for years. Let them fix your resolution. They know what they are doing. The second task of the resolutions committee is to decide whether to recommend that the main group “pass” or “not pass” or “table” the resolution or send it to the main body “without recommendation” so it can be debated by the main body. Because Common Core is very controversial in Democratic states, do not be surprised if it is passed to the main body without recommendation. That was what happened to us.
The state resolutions committee usually meets on a Friday night and the main State Party meeting is the following afternoon from 1 to 4 pm. We prepared about 300 handouts to pass out. These were 40 for the Resolutions Committee plus 60 for the Progressive caucus meeting on Saturday morning plus 200 to place on chairs at the main state party meeting 30 minutes before the meeting is scheduled to start. After attending the progressive caucus meeting on Saturday morning, meet with your group of parents and teachers. Hopefully, they will have signs and their own handouts to pass out at the main meeting. Hopefully someone experienced with the process should explain what will happen at the state party meeting.
The goal is to get your team to the meeting before it begins and pass out the fliers with one on every chair. Then have parents and teachers on your team circulate around the big room as the state delegates begin to arrive. The goal of each parent and teacher is to talk with just a few delegates before the main meeting is called to order. You will have about 20 minutes after the delegates arrive. There were 8 of us and with each talking to about five delegates for about 4 minutes each. Together, we were able to share our stories with about 40 out of the 200 delegates. Our goal was simply to “tip” a close vote in our favor. As you approach a delegate, ask them if they have heard of Common Core and if they have decided how they will vote on the resolution. Most delegates will be undecided and will usually give you a couple of minutes to explain to them why they should vote for the resolution. If a delegate has already decided, then move out to someone who is undecided. Do not waste these precious minutes trying to convert someone whose mind is already made up. If a delegate does not support the resolution, then just chalk it up to “Bill Gates and his billions in corporate propaganda.”
You also need to meet with the State party delegates who will each give a two minute speech in favor of the resolution. You need at least two and hopefully three speakers qualified to speak. These folks will likely be state committee delegates from the legislative districts that passed your resolution earlier in the year. They need to not only know about the drawbacks of Common Core, they also need to be able to speak clearly. It is also helpful if they are well known and well respected by other members of the Democratic Party. So choose wisely.
We were lucky to get Sarajane Siegfriedt, the chair of the King County Legislative Action Committee and member of the State Resolutions Committee to speak in favor of the motion. We were also lucky to get Brian Gunn, the chair of the State Progressive Caucus to speak in favor of the motion. Brian said, “Corporations are looking at our children as commodities. We’re allowing corporations that produce these materials and sponsor these tests to treat our children as sources of income…a source of profit. And that source of profit is our own children.”
Our final speaker for the resolution was Richard May, a leader of the Whatcom County Democrats who is also a parent. Richard spoke of the negative impact Common Core had on his two daughters. Richard said that “Common Core sucks… All of the parents and teachers in Bellingham hate it.”
Do not be surprised if the wealthy wing of the party tries to sabotage the issue. In our case, the leaders of the party read a letter from a well known state senator urging the group to vote against the resolution. She warned the group that should this resolution pass, it would make passing a state budget and getting school funding much more difficult. This of course was a lie. Common Core costs our state more than one billion extra dollars for the tests and books. But the goal of the billionaires is not to tell the truth. It is simply to deceive the public.
Next was the big vote. We thought it would be very close – especially after the letter from one of the leaders of the democratic party was read. As it turned out, we won the vote by a two to one margin – with more than 120 state party delegates voting to ignore their own state party leaders and ignore their own President and support our resolution. This huge landslide victory proves that Democrats care just as much about the well being of our children as Republicans.
The other good news is now that Common Core is officially opposed by both the Republican and Democratic Party in Washington State (perhaps the first time we have ever agreed on anything), there will be a bill introduced in the state legislature in the next week to delay or perhaps even halt Common Core in Washington State.
In our opinion, the most crucial element of our success was the presence of real parents and real teachers speaking from their hearts about how Common Core harms their kids. Without these parents and teachers we do not believe we could have been so successful. The other important factor was the year we spent building our team and building support one person at a time and one legislative district at a time within the Democratic Party. Common Core is an extremely complex issue that has billions in marketing used to fool parents. It takes one on one talks to overcome this marketing blitz. But we proved it can be done. We hope you have as much success in your state as we had in ours.
Below is a copy of our successful Common Core resolution. Be sure to visit our website to learn more about the drawbacks of Common Core. Here is the link.
http://weaponsofmassdeception.org/
And feel free to email us if you have any questions or need addition help.
Regards,
David Spring M. Ed. and Elizabeth Hanson M. Ed.
springforschools@aol.com
Resolution Opposing Common Core State Standards
WHEREAS the copyrighted (and therefore unchangeable) Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a set of controversial top-down K-12 academic standards that were promulgated by wealthy private interests without research-based evidence of validity and are developmentally inappropriate in the lowest grades; and
WHEREAS, as a means of avoiding the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment prohibition against federal meddling in state education policy, two unaccountable private trade associations–the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)–have received millions of dollars in funding from the Gates Foundation and others to create the CCSS; and
WHEREAS the U.S. Department of Education improperly pressured state legislatures into adopting the Common Core State Standards and high-stakes standardized testing based on them as a condition of competing for federal Race to the Top (RTTT) stimulus funds that should have been based on need; and
WHEREAS as a result of Washington State Senate Bill 6669, which passed the State legislature on March 11, 2010, the Office of the Superintendent of Instruction (OSPI) adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on July 20, 2011; and
WHEREAS this adoption effectively transfers control over public school standardized testing from locally elected school boards to the unaccountable corporate interests that control the CCSS and who stand to profit substantially; and
WHEREAS the Washington State Constitution also calls for public education to be controlled by the State of Washington through our elected State legislature, our elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction and our elected local school boards; and
WHEREAS implementation of CCSS will cost local school districts hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for standardized computer-based tests, new technology, new curricula and teacher training at a time when Washington is already insufficiently funding K-12 Basic Education without proven benefit to students; and WHEREAS some states have already withdrawn from CCSS;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we call upon the Washington State legislature and the Superintendent of Public Instruction to withdraw from the CCSS and keep K-12 education student-centered and accountable to the people of Washington State.
What do you think? What will be the next place that will follow Washington’s lead?
This post originally appeared here, and is re-posted here with the authors’ permission.
David Spring
Anthony, Thank you for reposting our article. We sincerely hope that Democrats in other states will be encouraged to pass a similar resolution opposing Common Core in their State. It can be done! And thanks again to the entire team who worked so hard to make this happen in Washington State!
Albanyduck
Myth: No teachers were involved in writing the standards. Fact: The Common Core drafting process relied on teachers and standards experts from across the country. In addition, many state experts came together to create a transparent process of standard setting. This was only made possible by many states working together.
David Spring
I do not know where Duck is getting his facts from. We have researched this issue extensively and concluded that no teachers at all were involved in writing the math standards. They were written by one person, Jason Zimba. There was a fake “review” committee that looked at the standards after Jason wrote them. But the review committee had no power, it was not a transparent process and the one person that was somewhat of a teacher, a college professor resigned in disgust. So I think that Duck is living in Dreamland.
David Spring
Again Duck does not know what he is talking about. No teacher or parent who opposes Common Core is in favor of ignorance. We want good standards written by teachers that align with child development research and can be changed as needed to meet the needs of children. What we do not need are rigid standards written by Wall Street consultants that are copyrighted, set in stone and cannot be changed no matter how badly they are written or how many children they harm.
chemtchr
Magnificent. Moral for every state: If we do the work on the ground to put this question before Democratic Party membership, we can take the Party and our public schools back from the corporate wreckers.
Albanyduck
Myth: The standards are not based on research or evidence. Fact: The standards have made use of a evidence base which includes scholarly research, surveys on what skills are required of students entering college and workforce training programs, assessment data identifying college‐ and career‐ready performance, and comparisons to standards from high‐performing states and nations
David Spring
Again Duck is completely ignoring the history of Common Core. The standards for early Kindergarten through 3rd grade are a good example. They ignore 80 years of research that has concluded that young children are concrete thinkers – by forcing children as early as age 5 to engage in Abstract Reasoning! The Common Core standards were hastily written in secret by a couple of people with no background in child development and they wrote standards that amount to child abuse. This is not merely my opinion. It is the opinion of the largest Child Development Specialists Organization in the US! Duck must be living under a rock to not know this.
Karl Wheatley
OK, now I’m inspired. I’ve been working for months on a research article about why CC$$ is counterproductive, and am about to send it out, so I was thinking about what political steps need to be taken now. This couldn’t have come at a better time.
gboatman
I am actually appalled at this action by the state Democrats! Clearly the Democrats, of which I am (maybe was) one don’t understand the Common Core Standards and are conflating them with the assessment. There is no “Common Core Assessment” , there is a Smarter Balanced Assessment. The two are not the same thing. The Common Core Standards for ELA are the clearest, most sensible set of standards I have seen in my 40 years as an educator. They are rigorous…something the public continually dings education for, in that we are not rigorous enough. They are integrated and integratable. They work very nicely with science, social studies, mathematics, art…and each other. What student in Washington shouldn’t be able to: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking (Language standard), Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on grade level topics….(Speaking and Listening), Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience (Writing)? This is just a sample. Come on, people….kids should be able to do this stuff!
These standards were not top down. They were envisioned by states and developed by a consortium of states, who had total control of whether they wanted to adopt them. Being copyrighted does not mean the same thing as being unchangeable, that is a misconception. They absolutely do not mandate teaching in a specific way but rather provide the end goal with the options for meeting that goal being entirely teacher/school/local decision.
The tests are rigorous and I am, quite honestly convinced that we test entirely too much and for the wrong reasons. I am not neccessarily a proponent of the SBAC . However, the decision to use SBAC testing is a separate decision to be dealt with and not a Common Core Standards issue. We will still need standards or we will go back to random acts of education that are inequitable. The previous iteration of Washington Standards were pretty random and we were all just as unhappy with the results of assessment in the first several years (for math we always were).
I am sad to think that we will now join the fine company of states like North Carolina and take a giant step backward.
David Spring
It is amazing to me how little Boatman knows about Common Core. For example, the claim that the SBAC test is not related to Common Core standards when the whole point of SBAC was to have a high failure rate test “aligned with” Common Core standards and Common Core books. Common Core is a package deal. As for the standards being wonderful and better written than the prior Washington State standards, that too is absurd. The prior Washington State math standards were written by a committee of math teachers here in Washington State. The Common Core math standards were wriitten by a single person, Jason Zimba, who has never taught in the public schools. Jason decided it would be a good idea to have Kindergartners engage in abstract reasoning exercises. Any elementary school teacher or child development specialist (and most parents) will tell you that very young children are “concrete thinkers” who require concrete reasoning with concrete objects. Piaget first noted this decades ago. Forcing small children to engage in abstract reasoning tasks they are incapable of performing is a form of child abuse. This is why every major organization of Child Development Specialists in the nation has condemned Common Core standards, books and tests. Does Boatman really want to go down in history as advocating for the abuse of millions of children? Washington state will eventually reject Common Core because it is harmful to children. Hopefully Boatman will wake up and start doing some research and we can get rid of Common Core sooner rather than later. One place to start is by visiting our website, Weapons of Mass Deception (dot) org. Regards, David Spring M. Ed. (my Masters Degree was in Child Development)
Albanyduck
Parents who want to exclude their children from the process have that right. But there nothing ‘noble’ about promoting ignorance. Will these parent go with their kids to college to tell the Professors ‘you can’t give my kids a tests every few weeks, it makes them feel bad about themselves’. Looney tunes