Common Core replacement commission members have been named by the House and Senate. The Governor still hasn’t announced his selection, neither has the State Board of Education. No worries, CCSSO President Elect and NC State Superintendent, June Atkinson, is apparently holding her own little Common Core Commission.

“So parallel to the work of this commission, we will be looking at the standards by inviting teachers who have used the standards for at least two to three years to give us input,” she said.
– Citizen Times

Oh really?  Look out, we’ve got a “bearing false witness” alert here.

Atkinson can’t be on the commission, so she will make sure Common Core gets a seen as superior with her hand-picked “parallel” group.

4 years after adoption and 2 years after implementation, now she decides to turn to teachers to look at the standards? Dr. Atkinson is not satisfied with letting the commission do it’s job – actually they’re doing the job she didn’t do in 2010.

It would be two years of use; Common Core went into action in the 2012-2013 school year. If someone has been using it in North Carolina for three years, that would be an  interesting development. It begs the question, is Atkinson implying she’s not talking about input from North Carolina teachers?

Shouldn’t teachers already have been giving input on the standards before adoption and certainly before implementation?  Certainly DPI has been collecting input during implementation, right?

Related:
State Superintendent Addresses Changes in Standard Course of Study
Dr. June Atkinson shares information on recent Legislative decisions around NC’s Standard Course of Study. The decision holds no changes for the 2014-15 school year. Dr. Atkinson outlines the timeline for how the changes will affect NC schools in years to come.
(mov, 21.7mb)

Input, Input Everywhere But Not A Comment To Read
By the way, all of this “input” is reminding me about the feedback I’ve already asked for.
Where are those ‘10,000 comments‘ that Dr. Atkinson mentioned during the Legislative Research Committee hearing that were collected as ‘feedback’ during North Carolina’s adoption of Common Core? What about those “60,000 teachers” involved in the revision of the standard course of study?

If you watched the hearing clip, stop me if this sounds familiar:

Forty-six states brought together experts, teachers and researchers to write the Common Core State Standards, along with almost 10,000 comments and suggestions, including many from Oregon teachers and parents. Oregon adopted them in 2010. The standards are well-matched for our classrooms and will help our students learn more. Please visit http://corestandards.org/the-standards to read the full set of standards.

Those ‘10,000 comments’? I requested them from DPI over  a month ago, but it seems there is trouble tracking down the person who worked on those comments:

Vanessa Jeter <vanessa.jeter@dpi.nc.gov>
Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 5:30 PM

I am working on this request. The individual who spearheaded the Accountability and Curriculum Reform Effort which started in 2008 and resulted in the 2010 adoption of the current Standard Course of Study is no longer with NCDPI and now works at New Schools, so I am having to go back into archival information. But your request is on my list and will be fulfilled.

Sincerely,
Vanessa W. Jeter, Director
Communication and Information Services
NC Department of Public Instruction
6306 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-6306

New Schools? As in the North Carolina New Schools Project, Inc.?  The same one DPI’s Rebecca Garland sits on the board of?  Would that employee possibly be Angela Hinson Quick? Part of the bio of Sr. Vice President Quick reads:

From 2008 to 2013, she served as deputy chief academic officer for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. In that position, she was responsible for the standards, assessments and accountability metrics for North Carolina’s K-12 academic programs, oversaw the design and development of the Instructional Improvement System (IIS), and worked with North Carolina’s successful Race to the Top (RttT) Grant program.

My question is why would such important data not be at one’s fingertips and be archived, especially when Common Core has been under fire for two years?