WHEN DID AZ JOIN COMMON CORE?
Arizona leadership went to Washington, D.C. in 2009 through 2012 to apply for Race-to-the-Top (RTTT) Federal Grants (Phase I, Phase II and Phase III) and to apply for a No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver if they adopted "college and career ready standards." Arizona leadership chose to adopt the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) verbatim through the RTTT Phase I application. Former Governor Jan Brewer and former Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI)Tom Horne signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" (MOU) agreement with the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Chief Council of State School Officers (CCSSO) which committed Arizona to accept CCSSI "verbatim." This MOU agreement and other Common Core documents can be found in Appendix U of the RTTT Phase I application. All of the states were given the option to add 15% on top of the Common Core Standards when we signed the MOU and Arizona and many other states chose to do this.
Former Governor Jan Brewer |
Former Superintendent Tom Horne |
In July 2009 President Obama and the Department of Education's (DOE) Secretary Arne Duncan announced RTTT funding, paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in which states would compete for these funds based upon who had the best application outlining their "college and career ready" roadmap. On August 24, 2009, former State Board of Education (SBE) member Jaime Molera advised the SBE board members that Governor Brewer had asked Dr. Deb Duval, former Superintendent of Mesa Public Schools, to lead Arizona's effort in the RTTT application process.
Jaime Molera |
Dr. Deb Duval |
Bill Gates |
The total cost impact on AZ to fully implement Common Core is unknown. The State Board of Education (SBE) estimates that it would cost $131 million over 2 years (FY14 and FY15) to implement "Common Core," not including related costs for additional Internet access and computers needed for testing. The Arizona Association of School Business Officials (AASBO) estimates are $157 million for instruction-related costs plus $230 million for additional Internet access and computers ($387 million total). We do know that John Huppenthal, asked the State Legislature in the 2013 legislation session for $65 million dollars to upgrade the AZ Department of Education's (AZED's) computer database system so they could implement the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College & Career Readiness (PARCC- Phase II see below)! Can AZ afford this $387 million dollar expense? No!
The State Board of Education (SBE) adopted the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) for K-12 in Mathematics and English Language Arts on June 2010. See AZ Timeline and Transition Plan to Implement Common Core (CC) here. Implementation of the 2010 Common Core English Language arts (ELA) and Mathematics Standards began in the 2011-2012 school year for most Elementary School Districts. Full implementation of the 2010 Common Core ELA and Mathematics Standards occurred in all school districts by the 2013-2014 school year!
The Common Core Science standards will be next in Arizona! These standards are up for public comment now. See "The Next Generation Science Standards."
ARIZONA'S COMMON CORE (AKA "ARIZONA'S COLLEGE AND CAREER READY STANDARDS") WAS IMPLEMENTED IN THREE PHASES
PHASE I- Implement the Common Core standards at the Arizona school
district level or charter school level, and
train teachers on "how to teach" the standards. Implementing new curriculum
to support the Common Core standards goes right along with this at the district
level. Read more about the
"Arizona Common Core Standards Professional
Development" here.
PHASE II- Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College
& Career (PARCC)- Developing the PARCC assessment is now
complete but this assessment was replaced
with a new assessment on November 3, 2014 with a test
called Arizona's Measurement of Educational Readiness to Inform Teaching
(AzMERIT). The AzMERIT Assessment replaced the Common Core PARCC assessment, and
by spring 2015, all of our students from 3rd grade to 11th grade will take
this test. For more information on AzMERIT visit our AzMERIT replaces
PARCC webpage.
PHASE III- AzMERIT testing of our students, and sharing the data with
the Federal government and other states through the Statewide Longitudinal
Data Systems
(SLDS). AzMERIT testing started in March 2015.
Visit the AzMERIT Assessment website here. Yes, data on our students will be shared with the Federal
government unless we
pass legislation to support "local control over education standards and
the assessment" and to
"protect student privacy and their data!" What ever happened to
the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act
(FERPA) which prevents sharing student data to the Federal
government? President
Clinton wrote an Executive Order 12866, which was further solidified in
2011 by President Obama through funding, which stripped
FERPA and allowed sharing of "Aggregated Data" and "Personal Identifiable Information"
(PII) directly through the Statewide Longitudinal
Data Systems (SLDS), and with "outside entities" for marketing
purposes. Executive order 12866 circumvents
the FERPA student protection provisions and makes FERPA meaningless. We will not stand for this! Read more on
the
Arizona SLDS system and federal grants by visiting the National Center
for Education Statistics website.
Our Children Are Not For Sale! |
To learn more about the "Data Mining" occurring on our children in Arizona review our presentation "Our Children Are Not For Sale", the article posted on Gilbert Watch entitled "Common Core: Part 2 of 9 (Data Mining the Minds of Arizona's Children)", and the article posted on "Opt Out AZ" entitled "Data Collection on Your Child."
For a quick visual overview on "How Arizona is Implementing Common Core?" view this
"AZ Money Trail" flowchart below:
