State must commit funding

Published December 28, 2014

By John Hood

by John Hood, John Locke Foundation and NC SPIN panelist, published in Greenville Daily Reflector, December 27, 2014.

When state legislators created a new commission last summer to review North Carolina’s participation in Common Core standards for elementary and secondary schools, they made an excellent decision.

While setting high expectations for our students and assessing their performance with rigorous tests are good ideas, the Common Core project did not successfully implement them. Some of its standards are faulty and the upcoming Common Core exams appear to be extraordinarily expensive. North Carolina can and should do better.

However, when the General Assembly set up the new panel in 2013 to review, revise, and replace the Common Core standards, lawmakers forgot an important detail: an appropriation to fund its operations. The Academic Standards Review Commission has had several meetings. But without funding for support staff or analysis, it hasn’t made much progress in carrying out its mission.

Fortunately, that’s about to change. As Barry Smith reported in Carolina Journal, legislative leaders have agreed to fast-track an appropriation when the 2015 session begins in January. In the meantime, the commission can draw on some funds from the Department of Administration, where it is housed.

It’s important to understand that while some of the original Common Core standards were developmentally inappropriate, and the federal government’s role in “encouraging” states to adopt them has been opaque and heavy-handed, simply repealing them and defaulting to North Carolina’s previous standards and examinations is not an adequate response to the situation.

North Carolina repeatedly set low expectations, published questionable curricula, and mismanaged a state testing program that sometimes seem intended more to generate good headlines rather than to challenge our schools and students to improve.

So we should neither stay where we are nor go back to where we were. That’s why the work of the Academic Standards Review Commission is so important. It should seek out and adopt the clearest and most rigorous academic standards any state has ever produced. These standards should then be translated into an effective curriculum for school districts to implement — although districts, schools, and teachers ought to be given the authority to decide how best to implement that curriculum through instructional practices in the classroom.

As for assessment, North Carolina public schools should administer statistically valid, independently produced, competitively priced standardized tests that allow for national or even international comparisons. There are plenty of options out there. In fact, the state has already taken several steps in the right direction by using the ACT and its affiliated tests to measure performance in North Carolina’s middle and high schools. It is impossible for any state politician or bureaucrat to fiddle with the ACT. That’s a feature, not a bug.

Parents should have a broader array of school choices. Decisions about hiring, supervising, rewarding, and firing teachers should be devolved as much as possible to districts and schools. We should embrace innovative ideas and applications of new technologies in education, as long as they are subjected to evaluation for results — either by value-added test scores or by parents making choices.

I also think it would be wise to clarify North Carolina’s education governance by, for example, reshaping the State Board of Education so that the governor and legislature share the authority to appoint its members, who in turn hire the state superintendent of public instruction. However, education reformers shouldn’t expect such a change in governance to produce massive improvements in school operations or student achievement. Higher standards, better tests, school autonomy, and parental choice are higher priorities.

When the General Assembly reconvenes in January, lawmakers should quickly approve funding for the Academic Standards Review Commission so it can complete its work as soon as possible. At best, Common Core was a distraction. In practice, it’s been a costly detour. It’s time for North Carolina to get education reform back on track.

http://www.reflector.com/opinion/hood/hood-state-must-commit-funding-2744595

December 28, 2014 at 7:10 am
Larry Gracie says:

John, welcome to education's reality...the General Assembly or our public wanting social change and not appropriate adequate funds. First (or in my opinion), many of these "social changes" do not belong in government or public education. Often these changes are in public schools because society has failed to provide adequate sources for nutrition or medical intervention.

This failure is often introduced to the schools as a misuse of the term accountable.

December 28, 2014 at 12:04 pm
Norm Kelly says:

Usually I come here to praise John's posts, and to complain that he leaves so little room for argument. This is due to his insistence on using facts and figures to support his position. However, when John is obviously partisan, and his post appears intended solely to disparage the demoncrat party, I must object. Let me provide an example of John's obvious partisanship: 'North Carolina repeatedly set low expectations, published questionable curricula, and mismanaged a state testing program that sometimes seem intended more to generate good headlines rather than to challenge our schools and students to improve'. This is obviously a slam against the leadership of the demon party, who controlled Raleigh for the vast majority of the prior century. The libs constantly, continuously, repeatedly told us that they were the party of the children, that their entire reason for being in office was to be known as 'the education governor/senator/representative/etc'. Wasn't it Gov Mike that most recently improved the education system in the state by raising teacher pay to the closest it's ever been to national averages? And which demon Gov was it that created the More at Four program to be on top of Pre-K? Or was it the other way around? And then we had Gov Bev who hired an ADDITIONAL state-level education czar because she wasn't happy with only paying 1 education czar. Wouldn't having 2 education heads be better than 1? So, you see, the demons did everything they could to improve education in our state, including spending more and more and more money on it. And remember it was the demons who accepted the bribe from the central planners to implement Communist Core in the first place.

Then, here comes John telling us that the demons actually didn't care about the kids, but cared more about their careers and the headlines they were able to create. If this isn't raw, hateful, partisanship, I don't know what else to call it. Shame on John for pointing out what everyone outside the demon party already knew. Just because it's true is no reason to actually express it! Everyone knows that when you point out the failings of the socialists, you simply drive the 'undecideds' to the leftist party!

The only solution is for the state to do what other states have started doing: find our own best solution and implement it. Carefully review any dictate coming from the central planners and refuse the scheme if that's in the best interest of the RESIDENTS of our state. Fully fund the search for a better solution to OUR states' education needs. Do what's best for OUR kids, using what works best and can be vetted and adjusted by our LOCAL communities. It's time to reject the community organizer and start working to fix challenges in OUR communities, using OUR goals & plans. It's time to reject central planner schemes.

(before you attempt to correct me on the number of states we have, i try to be pc sometimes. not often, but sometimes. it was the community organizer occupier who said we had 52. if i use the correct number, i expect every lib out there to call me a racist for disagreeing with their holy one, so i continue to use his number. i try to avoid being a racist as much as possible. being pc is just a nice side benefit!)

December 29, 2014 at 11:24 am
Richard Bunce says:

Mr. Hood... this is all a waste of money in establishing any government school assessment process as long as that process is based on the persons being assessed, the government school bureaucrats, administrators, teachers, are also the persons conducting the assessment. What we have learned over the last decade is that they are no better at assessing themselves than they are at their primary task, educating all their students. At best they come up with teaching to the test and at worst outright cheating on the test.

Until there is an assessment process totally independent of any government school entity involvement and with significant input from the government school systems customers the students parents, the students future employers, and the students post secondary education officials, there will be no meaningful assessment or possibility for progress in K-12 education which has to include real and effective parental choice.