The Speed Of Transparency In NC Records Requests

Posted on March 19, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

The speed of return on public records requests to various agencies was tested by WRAL. One of the agencies was NC’s Department of Public Instruction:

One of the fastest initial responses came from Vanessa Jeter, communication director for state Superintendent June Atkinson. One minute after receiving WRAL’s public records request by email, Jeter called the reporter. She then sent a follow-up email later that day to acknowledge she had received the request and was “pulling the items you require.”

On Feb. 24, 15 days after receiving the request, Jeter provided WRAL with 89 pages of Atkinson’s travel records, including reimbursement and travel authorization forms, hotel and parking receipts and credit card statements.

That’s interesting.

I have multiple outstanding requests to DPI, some of which are now passing the 6 month mark, like my request in August 2014 for the funding documentation for the Common Core SBAC field test given in Spring 2014.

Another I sent asked for the changes to the Common Core Unpacking documents goes back to November 21, 2014. I even touched base last month and still have not received these items.

On January 18th, 2015, I requested the raw data from the Common Core Teacher surveys. No response at all.

Today, I asked for information on the author of the Common Core unpacking documents being used by Wake County Schools. We’ll see how long that takes…

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), NC DPI | Tagged , | Comments Off on The Speed Of Transparency In NC Records Requests

#NCGA Revising ‘School Health Assessments’

Posted on March 19, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Yesterday, HB 13 passed a second reading as tweeted out by Policy Watch’s Lindsay Wagner:

The primary sponsor is Rep. Torbett of Gaston County. Other sponsors include Jones, Pittman and Whitmire. View the HB 13 Bill History.
A ‘health assessment’ is defined in HB 13 as:

A health assessment shall include a medical history and physical examination with screening for vision and hearing and, if appropriate, testing for anemia and tuberculosis. Vision screening shall be conducted in accordance with G.S. 130A‑440.1. The health assessment may also include dental screening and developmental screening for cognition, language, and motor function. The developmental screening of cognition and language abilities may be conducted in accordance with G.S. 115C‑83.5(a).

The changes and additions to the language in the bill give me pause.

Examples:

Every parent, guardian, or person in loco parentis shall submit proof of a health assessment for each child in this State entering kindergarten in who is presented for admission into kindergarten or a higher grade in the public schools shall receive a health assessment.for the first time.

[…]

The health assessment transmittal form shall be permanently maintained in the child’s official school record.

 

What does one of these ‘health assessments’ look like?  NC Dept. of Health and Human Services has the Kindergarten form and a link to the related NC Statute.

I’ve never seen this assessment form before and it is frankly incredibly invasive. Much of that form is none of the state’s business. All I needed to enroll my child in Wake County was to show proof of his age, our address and their vaccinations.  None of the Wake County enrollment packets require such invasive health data.

State statute § 115C-364 says all you need is the birth certificate.

The changes to this bill are arguably asking for the collection and storage of health related biometric data, which is in violation of SB 815 that was signed into law in 2014.

 

Related:

Wake County Schools Enrollment Packets:

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, NCGA | Tagged | 1 Comment

Three Outlets Report on ASRC Meeting; All Quote Angry Jere Confrey

Posted on March 19, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Three articles have surfaced about Monday’s NC Common Core commission meeting. Former Common Core Validation Committee members, Dr. Stotky and Dr. Milgram, gave testimony.

The three articles are:

All three reported pretty much the same thing: Critics say to rewrite the Common Core.

The problem is, that’s not what they said.

What both Dr. Milgram and Dr. Stotsky actually said is that you can’t ‘re-write’ Common Core.  The better option was to adopt a clean set of pre-Common Core standards to replace it, such as Massachusetts for English Language Arts and California for math.

Both Milgram and Stotsky gave a list of recommendations to the Commission, which is captured at StopCommonCoreNC.org in more detail than this list:

  1. Request the NC Board of Education to develop rigorous, internationally benchmarked standards at the secondary level.
  2. Request your legislature to ask the state’s own engineering, science, and mathematics faculty and literary/humanities scholars to develop entrance exams (matriculation tests) for NC institutions of higher education
  3. Request the NC Board of Education to offer two different types of high school diplomas.
  4. Request the legislature to restructure teacher and administrator training programs in North Carolina institutions of higher education.

 

Fun Fact: The March 16th meeting was the first time that this commission has heard from any Common Core critics since they began work last September.

All three news outlets also reported commentary from a rather angry former Validation Committee member, Jere Confrey.

I say ‘angry’ because I (and half the room) witnessed her rather loud meltdown to the News and Observer reporter (Lynn Bonner I believe) after Milgram spoke.  To Bonner’s credit, Confrey’s horrifyingly unprofessional diatribe didn’t make it into the article. Bonner’s article was a good deal longer than the last time Confrey was in an article in the News and Observer.

A couple of the articles included links to Confrey’s written ‘rebuttal’ to Dr. Milgram’s testimony, yet failed to link to the written testimony of Milgram or Stotsky.

I personally watched Confrey passed this document out to the Commission but did not bring copies for the public in attendance.  I snagged a copy and intended to scan and upload it, but Policy Watch apparently got their hands on a copy as well.

WUNC’s Reema Krais has this quote from Confrey:

“We reviewed international standards, we reviewed data from different groups that do research on how kids learn, we heard from teachers, we sent the standards out to the states and got responses,” Confrey explained.

Ms. Confrey’s statement here is nothing more than the same talking points supporters have handed to us for years with no proof to back it up.

Why is there no proof? Because the CCSSO and NGA won’t release the Validation Committee’s files or minutes.

Confrey claims ‘we heard from teachers’, yet only a single teacher with current K-12 classroom experience was involved in writing the standards.

Confrey doesn’t mention assessments in the WUNC quote, but she does have an opinion about assessment writing on the article, “The Smarter Balanced Common Core Mathematics Tests Are Fatally Flawed and Should Not Be Used.“

“My group read your piece.  We found the examples to be worrisome and compelling. You convinced us that writing assessments requires lots of expertise and critical eyes.”
— Jere Confrey, College of Education, North Carolina State University

Writing standards requires expertise and critical eyes too, right?

For those interested, I left a comment on Lindsay Wagner’s article at NC Policy Watch, which can serve as a response to any of the other articles out there. Comment text is below, where I start out citing part of the Policy Watch article.

“I think they have a contingency on the board who is aligned with a group of people that is strongly opposed to the Common Core,” said Confrey. “There is an agenda being carried out, which is to only hear from people who oppose the Common Core.”

Ms. Confrey clearly has not been in attendance for the last 6 meetings, as the March 16th meeting was the FIRST one where we heard from Common Core Critics.

I watched Confrey corner Lynn Bonner of the News and Observer and listened to her proceed to malign an internationally recognized mathematician. It was truly horrifying to listen to and when I interjected into her very LOUD objections to Dr. Milgram’s testimony, she pointed her finger at me and snapped that ‘she’d get to me in a minute’.

She never did ‘get to me’ and her assertions that the examples Dr. Milgram used were “not common core” are hollow ones parents have heard before. Common core had no curriculum, so when curriculum surfaces to support the standards Ms. Confrey cannot cry foul. The example Dr. Milgram used was one I had seen right here in Wake County. It is similar to that of examples I have seen in other states as well.
IT IS COMMON CORE in that it is being used to support the standards. If the material is bad, then perhaps the standards driving it are equally bad.

This article posted her shallow rebuttal that does not take into account the impact these flawed standards are having on kids. Confrey insists they are age and developmentally appropriate, as a mom of 2nd grader in his 3rd year of Common Core, I can tell you THEY ARE NOT.
Kindly also post the written statements from Stotsky and Milgram for people to download?

Ms. Confrey is financially invested in Common Core.
Kindly dig into her affiliations with NCSU and the Friday Institute, include her work with Amplify and their pre-loaded common core tablets that utilize her work at NCSU.

If you have trouble finding the information, let me know. I’ve done the research and will share it.

RELATED: Laugh or Cry: Validation Cmte Member’s 4 Sentence Defense of Common Core

Posted in Academic Standards Review Commission, Common Core, EDUCATION | Tagged | 3 Comments

Guest Post: A Rebuttal To Dr. Atkinson’s ‘State of Education’

Posted on March 18, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

GUEST POST ICON

The following is a guest column sent to me by a concerned NC Citizen.

 

 

NC’S STATE OF EDUCATION:
STATE SUPERINTENDENT ATKINSON DEFENDS COMMON CORE — DEVELOPED BY TWO WASHINGTON, DC LOBBYING GROUPS — AS A STATE’S RIGHT’S ISSUE?

 

This week the NC State Superintendent, Dr. June Atkinson, delivered a stealth “State of Education” message to us all.

 

Perhaps you missed it (like me), because Supt Atkinson’s message was not a speech, and —  from what we can tell —  was not delivered to the Governor or General Assembly.

 

Nor was it covered by the media. The real media, that is, like TV stations or newspapers.

 

Nor was her message posted anywhere on the NC Department of Public Instruction website, which is curious considering she presumably delivered the message as a State employee, in the performance of her State duties, while being paid by NC taxpayers.

 

Instead, Dr. Atkinson oddly delivered her message via a private website owned by “EducationNC“, an astroturf group funded by variety of NC corporations (predominately SAS and the Goodnights, it seems) and non-profits (like the Smith Reynolds Foundation). A major contributor is the “Low Wealth Schools Consortium”, an amorphous entity with no website, but which ironically contributes at least $100,000 to EducationNC. Low wealth indeed.

 

Apparently, Dr. Atkinson’s major policy message on the “State of Education” in NC was delivered to just one person, a young “researcher and legislative reporter” for EducationNC named Alex Granados. He certainly looks like a cheerful, friendly audience of, well, one. Thankfully, he apparently knows how to Tweet, otherwise we would have missed Dr. Atkinson’s very important policy message.

 

Dr. Atkinson’s stealth “State of Education” message addresses two main points: the Governor’s budget and Common Core. We recommend you read it carefully because without doing so it is difficult to discern the glaring omissions in Dr. Atkinson’s speech…er…message.

 

First, she begins with a (steel) magnolia-scented attack on the Governor and NCGA, asserting that a 10% budget cut to her DPI bureaucracy and a 2% cut to local school districts central office budgets will undermine the education of NC school children by depriving them of “leadership.” Unfortunately, Dr. Atkinson doesn’t say exactly how Educrats in Raleigh or local district middle managers “lead”, or how they contribute to actually teaching children. She simply complains that she and her staff are being ‘punished for success.’

 

Second, the timing of the Superintendent’s message is suspect. She (and EducationNC) chose to post this very important policy message on March 16th, the same day the Academic Standards Review Commission (ASRC) was hearing from two nationally renown critics of Common Core.

 

Perhaps it was just a coincidence that Supt Atkinson launched her latest pro-Common Core propaganda on the same day the ASRC heard from out-of-state experts. But it lends the impression that she was clearly scared of the impact Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram would have on the ASRC. Both served on the national Common Core validation committee, both refused to approve Common Core, and both were prominently featured in the Common Core documentary “Building the Machine“, a film every NC parent should watch.

 

Dr. Atkinson then launched into a series of well-worn, disingenuous strawman arguments to support Common Core:

 

1) Atkinson: “I’m troubled by people saying that we just need to get rid of the standards,” she said. “Especially when that thrust is based on erroneous information, such as Obama made us do it.”

 

REALITY: While some critics have incorrectly blamed solely President Obama for Common Core, there is currently a well-reported backlash by conservatives against former Governor Jeb Bush, a Republican, for his unwavering support for Common Core. A Google search of Jeb Bush and Common Core yields over one million hits, including over 50,000 news articles. So, Supt Atkinson’s assertion appears to be simply a cynical attempt to garner support for Common Core from Obama voters who are likely unaware of the firestorm against Common Core faced by Republican Jeb Bush.

 

2) Atkinson: “I find it very very hypocritical for some people to say, for other states to say, we need to get rid of the Common Core,” she said. “My recommendation would be why don’t you stick to your own state, because this is a state right’s issue.”

 

REALITY: Dr. Atkinson, while apparently trying to motivate native North Carolinians by restarting the Civil War with the “state’s rights” strawman, conveniently ignores that there is heated opposition to Common Core by many real North Carolinians, and by their elected officials who reside in the NC General Assembly and passed legislation to replace Common Core in 2014.

 

REALITY: Without naming them, Dr. Atkinson was clearly targeting the two out-of-state education standards experts appearing before the Academic Standards Review Commission on March 16. What she failed to say was that they were appearing at the invitation of the ASRC, and had previously been invited by many other States that have reconsidered their rubber stamp acceptance of Common Core. (Notwithstanding Dr. Atkinson’s fear of an invasion of carpet-bagging Yankee educators, the ASRC graciously heard from these two elderly (and unarmed) national experts and engaged them in a vigorous Q&A after their prepared remarks.)

 

REALITY: Dr. Atkinson, while subtly criticizing out-of-state opponents of Common Core, apparently has no problem with out-of-state Common Core proponents, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and various for-profit education companies, spreading money throughout the State to buy Common Core’s acceptance.

 

3) Atkinson: “She said the issue has been painted as one of federal overreach, which she says is far from the truth. The federal government didn’t make North Carolina do anything. The State Board of Education — a state Constitutional body, she points out — adopted them.”

 

REALITY: Dr. Atkinson curiously implies that because the State BOE is a NC constitutional body, that its 2010 unilateral decision to adopt Common Core (which was developed outside of NC by a private company hired by two lobbying groups, and funded with $200 million from Bill Gates) somehow instantly made Common Core a uniquely North Carolina standard. Dr. Atkinson apparently does not apply this same standard to the North Carolina General Assembly, also a NC constitutional body, whose decision to eliminate and replace Common Core is one she seems to have not fully accepted.

 

REALITY: Dr. Atkinson also fails to mention that the well-documented strategy of Common Core’s advocates was to use the massive income tax shortfall in the States caused by the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, combined with the offer of federal Department of Education grants, as a lever to blackmail financially desperate States into accepting the unfinished and untested Common Core standards. This strategy worked in 46 of 50 States. NC received $ 499 million in Race To the Top Funds to accept and implement Common Core. Dr. Atkinson implies that this federal money did not influence the BOE’s decision to approve Common Core. Right.

 

CONCLUSION

 

Dr. Atkinson conveniently omitted in her stealth “State of Education” message mention that the other organization she heads — the CCSSO, a national lobbying group in Washington, DC,  co-owns the Common Core standards, and was given $90 million (?) by Bill Gates to implement Common Core.  She failed to state that the CCSSO is a prominent advocate of Common Core, and that she as its President leads that effort.

 

So, there is a fundamental conflict of interest between Superintendent Atkinson’s role as a NC state employee charged with doing what is right for NC schoolchildren and her role as a lobbyist for an out-of-state organization that is funded by private sector education company donors.

 

So the real State’s Rights issue revealed by Dr. Atkinson’s stealth “State of Education” message is whether NC taxpayers have a right to a State School Superintendent who works solely for our children, and not as a spokes-model for private sector companies that fund, and will massively profit from, her pro-Common Core advocacy.

 

It is Dr. Atkinson’s fundamental conflict of interest that defines the current State of Education in NC, and is the cause for the citizen civil war against the bureaucracy she runs.

 

As her message on the private EducationNC website indicates, Superintendent Atkinson is not a failed leader of NC schools. Student performance has improved during her tenure, although it was from a low starting point. Additionally, she has embraceda draft proposal by the State Board of Education to significantly reduce the number and alter the type of testing done in public schools.

 

However, Dr. Atkinson continues to stubbornly defend Common Core standards that are based on three willful falsehoods that have been repeatedly disproved over the past five years: that they were “State led and developed”, “internationally benchmarked”, and “college and career ready.” Stubbornly defending a policy based on lies doesn’t help Dr. Atkinson’s credibility, nor does communicating with her constituents via a website owned by corporations that profit from her decisions as a State employee.

 

So despite her accomplishments Dr. Atkinson’s stealth message on the “State of Education” in NC reveals her as corporate-backed monopolistic bureaucrat defending a broken 19th century school model. While technology, online learning, and charter schools proliferate, Dr. Atkinson ignores these changes and continues to embrace a prison model of education based on seat-time and Common Core testing.

 

Dr. Atkinson’s stubborn unwillingness to change may be why her department’s budget is getting cut by the governor and state legislature. Further, it may be why the General Assembly has proposed a constitutional amendment to have the governor appoint the State school superintendent, with the approval of the legislature, instead of having an elected superintendent who spends her energy defending her bureaucracy instead of improving teaching and learning in public schools.
Posted in EDUCATION, GUEST POSTS, June Atkinson | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

All Around The Education Bush, The Monkey Chased The Weasel

Posted on March 18, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

This morning, I saw a tweet from BEST NC promoting an article at their PR Firm, EducationNC:

 Oh good three whole articles.   This first one is titled, The ongoing search for real common ground in education. I can summarize it for you:

I’m a far left liberal from Chapel Hill and I went to a Jeb Bush education summit where people actually talked to me a bit. Then they didn’t talk to me, but instead bashed Democrats. Then I got mad they used the word ‘reformer’ all the time and that I felt it didn’t include me somehow.  

Reading this passage has to wonder if irony or hypocrisy is something Meyer is acquainted with:

“In the end, I knew that the inability to find real common ground wasn’t so much about the conference itself. The conference just exposed the deeply partisan and philosophical divides in our education policy debates.”

Representative heal thy partisan self:  

This article started on the high road with a Kumbaya feel, then quickly became the low road filled with shaming. This three part series is a set-up to drive public opinion before Meyer drops his bill. It’s even telegraphed at the top of the article in an editors note; emphasis added:

Editor’s Note: Graig Meyer is on a quest this session to find common ground among legislators for the benefit of our students. After a three-part series this week about his own quest for common ground, he is going to blog for EdNC about a bill with potential for common ground as it winds its way through the legislative process. 

I am certain will look a lot like the BEST NC ‘2020 Vision Initiative’. After all, he was a member of the work groups who were involved. Get ready for more buzz words akin to ‘career and college ready’.

Rep. Meyer loves buzzwords and catch phrases – especially ‘equity’.  His Twitter timeline is littered with this stuff. Hey –  Remember the ‘school to prison pipeline‘?

Fun Facts About Rep. Graig Meyer

This is his second term in the NC General Assembly’s House of Representatives. He was a freshman last year and is a far left liberal.

Meyer’s idea of ‘school choice’ and ‘reform’ is to kill Opportunity Scholarships for low-income minority students.This is a total 180 from his ‘Blue Ribbon mentor’ activities to “efforts to fulfill the potential of low-income students of color”.

Graig Meyer’s bio on the EducationNC article says he is a ‘Educator and Social Worker’. He is a social worker. Meyer claims to have ‘worked for sixteen years in public schools’ under the Education issues section of his campaign site, but doesn’t say he was actually a teacher. Read his Campaign website Bio.

He formed the “Equity Collaborative LLC” in 2014, but his campaign site doesn’t tell you that date. I had to look it up. Documents at the NC Secretary of State shows a ‘Jamie Almanzan’ as a managing partner. Almanzan’s blog “The Equity Collaborative” apparently didn’t have its domain renewed. In the name of Equity, view Alamanzan’s cached front page and  cached bio.

Rep. Meyer is very concerned about his ‘whiteness‘.  He’s already filed a ‘racial profiling‘ bill this year.

Meyer is clueless on Common Core and dismissive of parents who oppose the standards.   I have witnessed this myself at the Common Core Legislative Research Commission meetings. After one meeting, he commented to the woman in front of me, who was trying to explain her problem with the standards, that ‘parents need to trust them (DPI) on what’s best sometimes’. 

Moral Monday true believer.

 

RELATED READING

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, Media Bias, NCGA, THE LEFT | Tagged , | 2 Comments

VIDEO: NC Common Core March #ASRC Meeting (Updated)

Posted on March 17, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Dont mend it end itThe March meeting of the NC Common Core Academic Standards Review Commission was held yesterday in Raleigh.

Former Common Core Validation Committee members, Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram came to present to the commission.

Materials presented, including written testimony from Dr. Milgram and Dr. Stotsky, can be accessed at the ASRC website.

Both Milgram and Stotsky give details into why they did not sign off on validating the standards. Emphasis was placed on teacher preparation, licensing and training by both Milgram and Stotsky.  Each speaker highlighted multiple and serious flaws in the Common Core standards and used illustrative examples.

Update 3-18-15: A copy of the ‘rebuttal‘ by Validation Committee member and Friday Institute employee, Jere Confrey’ was posted by NC Policy Watch. Related: Laugh or Cry: Validation Cmte Member’s 4 Sentence Defense of Common Core

Also asked to speak to the group, by Co-Chair Andre Peek, was Dr. Kevin Perks of WestEd. WestEd is largely funded by the Department of Education and has extensive ties to the CCSSO and the Common Core testing consortium, the SBAC.

Through information from various sources, allegedly someone from SAS Institute’s ‘education non-profit’, BEST NC, advised Co-Chair Peek on inviting Dr. Perks to the meeting.

I live tweeted from the meeting. You can view the tweets in a chronological timeline in my Storify Article.

Video was shot of this meeting and a big thank you to Major Dave for his work on that front. This is a great service he has provided.

Below are links to the video clips and the video descriptions.  In the coming days, I’ll be delving into these various videos. Stay tuned.

Part 1 – NC ASRC Hearing 

The NC Academic Standards Review Commission continues its work to develop recommendations for changes to replace Common Core in NC. This hearing offered three national experts in the field an opportunity to express their views about what NC should consider as their replacement and what that process might look like.

Part 2 – Dr. Sandra Stotsky – NC ASRC Hearing 
Dr. Sandra Stotsky is a renowned authority on academic standards and spoke to the Commission about English/Language Arts (ELA) standards originally promoted as a component of Common Core and about her resignation from the group developing it when the final version was discovered to be a radical departure from her recommendations and those of some of her colleagues.

Part 3 – Dr. James Milgram – NC ASRC Hearing
Dr. James Milgram was one of the original participants in the design of Common Core standards but resigned in disagreement over the final product which was neither rigorous nor tested sufficiently to determine their real value in the classroom. He speaks primarily about the Math standards in use across the globe and why some succeed where others fail.

Part 4 – Dr. Kevin Perks of WestEd – NC ASRC Hearing 
Dr. Kevin Perks, Program and Research Associate with the non-profit WestEd spoke about his experiences with helping states, districts and schools transition from one set of standards to another and the common challenges to be faced in any such endeavor. He made it clear from the outset that he was not speaking either in favor of or in opposition to Common Core but was focusing on the mechanics of the transition process.

Part 5 – Roundtable 1 NC ASRC Hearing 
Following the presentations by all three guest experts, members of the ASRC engaged them in a round table discussion to clarify such things as the difference between standards and curriculum, issues of teacher licensing and certification, and on methods and standards successfully used by other States and countries.

Part 6 – Roundtable 2 NC ASRC Hearing
Members of the NC Academic Standards Review Commission pose additional questions to the panel of experts on the details of revising NC’s current standards which are part of Common Core to assess what is required as both a method and a result for replacing them.

Part 7 – Roundtable 3 NC ASRC Hearing 
In the third and final part, the Commission engages the experts on the relationship between the needs of the workforce and the goals of the education system.

 

Posted in Academic Standards Review Commission, Common Core, Video | Tagged , | 3 Comments