Julie DelegalThis is part two of a six-part series on Florida’s Future with the Common Core State Standards, presented in partnership with Folio Weekly. A complete version of this series will appear in Folio on Oct. 16.
Everyone, it seems, has chimed in on the Common Core State Standards, which the Florida Department of Education adopted in 2010 and has been implementing since 2011.
Florida’s League of Women Voters, the Florida PTA, and the Florida Education Association (FEA) are on record favoring the new learning benchmarks. The FEA, however, voted at its convention on Saturday to appoint a teacher-led task force that will monitor implementation of the standards and make recommendations for changes.
Proponents say that common standards, and an accompanying common test, will allow states to compare student achievement in an apples-to-apples manner.
Meanwhile, the tea party movement, parent advocacy organizations and the newly minted Badass Teachers Association (BAT) have found common ground — for both overlapping and differing reasons — in opposing further implementation of the new standards.
The BATs held their own meeting at the FEA convention on Friday.
“We’re a democratic organization,” FEA President Andy Ford said. “The delegates can change their minds if that’s what they want to do.”
While the FEA did not change its position generally supporting the Common Core, sources say that the BATs’ concerns regarding CCSS implementation resonated broadly with FEA members at the convention. New business items approved at the convention on Saturday reflect teachers’ desire to “slow down the bulletin train,” Ford said, referring to the Common Core State Standards and the yet-to-be-determined corresponding test.
The state teachers’ union also expressed a desire to allow districts the option of using paper-and-pencil tests until the infrastructure, i.e., computer technology for testing under CCSS, is fully implemented across the state.
In addition to concerns about transitioning to the new standards and test, the BATs object in general to what they call “high-stakes testing culture.”
“It comes with more than just standards. The high-stakes testing comes with it — it’s a package,” Badass Teacher Association founding member Donna Mace told Context Florida.
But Duval Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti says both parts of the “package” are necessary. “You have to have a common assessment,” he said. We need both pieces, Vitti explained, to ensure the “equity of high standards across subjects and across grade levels.”
Parent and education advocate Colleen Wood shares educators’ unease about how CCSS is being implemented. Wood founded 50th No More, is the former executive director of Save Duval Schools, and currently serves on the board of Diane Ravitch’s group, the Network for Public Education.
“In Florida, as always, my concern is the implementation, that it will be politicized and twisted into something it was never intended to be,” Wood said of the Common Core.
Additionally, the Badass Teachers, like tea party opponents to the Common Core, are apprehensive about potential violations of student privacy, i.e., “data-mining.” Tea party members are concerned as well about federal government “intrusion,” and have objected to inappropriate or obscene literary content they’ve unearthed on reading lists linked to the Common Core.
Next: Part 3, Gov. Rick Scott’s half-step
