Thank You

Thank you kindly for allowing me the opportunity to come and personally speak here today. I am eager to share with each of you my personal experience, and the direct impact common core had upon my children.

Important Decisions in this building!

I actually remember back in 6th grade taking a school field trip to the Capitol building. Are schools even allowed to do that anymore? Anyways, I specifically remember getting really dressed up because we knew we were going to a REALLY important place. We hopped on the bus and toured the inside and out of the Capitol. I especially recall thinking as a child, WOW, This is a really scary place! I know all these people who work here are REALLY important, but I never want to do this important job when I get older. Well now, 20 years later here I am. Only this time I am here as a very concerned parent. I am here once again, in this VERY important place facing all of you VERY important people. I honestly DO NOT want to be here, in fact, I tried for years to avoid putting myself in these situations. I do not choose to fight common core and education reform because I have nothing better to do with my free time. I did not choose thisit chose me. I watched my own 2 kids, along with the 32 other kids in my childrens class suffer, it absolutely tears your heart out. I know for a fact we do not have 33 failing children in one class, especially in Kindergarten and 1st Grade. And I certainly know we do not have 65 failing teachers. What we do have, because I have witnessed it first hand, is a broken set of standards , also known as Outcome Based education, and it completely removes children from the outcome. We have turned schools into corporate entities at the expense of the students, and those students are the ones paying the consequences!!

Cant go through the motions

My point is this, now as an adult I truly see just how important this Capitol building and all of the people in here really are. In fact, talk about changing lives, talk about impacting an entire state, impacting an entire generation even. This TRULY is a VERY important place; each person in this building is a life changer. Senators, Governors, Mayors, Representatives and all of their assistants walk in and out of this Capitol building day in and day out. They make vital decisions on a daily basis, decisions that affect each and every one of us in this room. Decisions that affect our children, and more importantly, decisions that effect our entire future. So, this education reform certainly is not something we should be taking lightly. We have an entire generation of children relying on these significant decisions. And let me tell you why MY family is unique and different, we do not look at this education reform, these so-called higher academic standards on paper or in theory.
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Brief History about Past Experience

We actually lived through them, at the Vista peak campus. Vista Peak is the ONLY preschool through postsecondary educational concept in the Nation! It even states it on their website. The pilot school, Vista Peak, a P-20 campus which was recently built in Aurora, Colorado. We were at the grand opening celebration of this school in August of 2010. We were excited for this new 21 st Century education for our children. Three years later due to common core we in turn uprooted our family exclusively to get away from these standards in hopes to give our children a more traditional approach to education, specifically reading, writing and math. What a tremendous difference it made in our children, in fact it was a major turning point especially for my 8 year old. Both of our children learned and achieved more in just one year as opposed to the 3 years we spent barely surviving common core. They soared because the traditional standards were real and genuine, clear and exact. The major difference we saw was that teachers here in Oklahoma were actually teaching and they stopped to take time and value every student as an individual. We noticed there wasnt any major pressure of teachers having to race through material in order to meet standards or teach to a test. So who says our current standards in Oklahoma arent already good, or even great for that matter? How many parents are lined up outside our administrators buildings demanding a major overhaul of our state standards? The only ones I see raising a voice are the ones that have actually been awakened to what common core really is and how rigor impacts children. I actually looked up the definition of rigor in the good old fashioned Webster Dictionary, let me read it to you. I also looked up the definition of the words moral and value. Let me also read those two definitions to you. Moral and Value are quite the contrary of rigor. Now, allow me tell you what attracted us to the state of Oklahoma in the first place. Moral values, principles, character, the people here are genuine and it shows. We moved here to Oklahoma just over a year ago, and we as parents are so grateful for what Oklahoma is teaching our children. Immediately we were drawn in by the fact that people here still had moral values. It was evident compared to where we were living. We were impressed that citys here posted signs and encouraged communities to instill moral character. those same relative values NOT the strict, severe or harsh unyielding precision. Essentially we toured 7 differe nt school districts. What shocked us the most was how innately similar they all were. It was incredible! Each leader was proud to share their districts beliefs, on not just values, but fundamentals in good moral character. In fact, every school site had its own scho ol success creed of some sort, and we were blown away. We were excited to see these things still being taught in school, as those have been far removed in Colorado and even a few other states where we have resided. In fact, we couldnt believe students were still allowed to profess the Pledge of Allegiance. Instantly, we were reassured that basically any district here in Oklahoma woul d produce a well rounded education that would prepare students for success and mold them to be responsible citizens and future leaders. We were seeking that distinctively for our two children!
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Higher Standards, or is it?

Two weeks ago I noticed tons of common core materials coming home again. I asked a few teachers who were reluctant to talk (mainly in fear of their jobs), but the consensus was they felt common core was not practical and the testing is excessive . I asked fellow parents and not a single parent I approached had even heard the words common core. This is exactly what happened to us back in Colorado (3 years ago), nobody knew about this slow progression of common core. It somehow just sneaks itself right in, quietly, secretly almost. If these standards are so great, then why are we having to secretly implement them? Now that I began seeing common core here in these exceptional Oklahoma schools I demanded answers. I was going to protect my children and I had to find out what my options were. I immediately contacted our curriculum director and our school superintendent to ask then what they knew and what the districts plan was. I had a heart to heart with both of them and told them our past hands-on experience with common core. I divulged all the detrimental aspects of what common core did to my children in Colorado. Their response to me was this, This is a nationally mandated standard and unfortunately we dont have much choice. Its a law and we must abide. Quite frankly I was disappointed in her lack of concern. My parents always told me that if all my friends were jumping off a bridge that I was expected to be a leader and not follow. I have been raised to stand up for my values even if I stand alone. My purpose is that each of you here will become enlightened and will go home and do more research. I hope you will step into the trenches of these schools and really begin to authentically survey the very teachers, principals, and superintendents who are seeing the ramifications of these standards first hand. Then you can take our past experience combine it with your dedicated research and decide for yourself if these standards are truly what is best for our future generation of children.

So lets dig into these CC / Oklahoma Academic Standards from the Kindergarten level (MATH)
I have printed off the standards from the Ok.gov website, I have them right here. Due to major time constraints I can only highlight a few, so why not just start at the basic level of the Kindergarten Math standards Please note this is new math it is also known as front end estimation, or integrated math. Which by the way this new math is subjective math not objective, which means it takes an abstract approach to reasoning. Turn to Grade K Overview pg. 10 And let me read you the kindergarten standards of mathematical practices for our 5 year old children (pg. 10 grey shaded box top right)
Now I dont know about you but I dont even understand how this can be expected of 5 year olds when I have a difficult time grasping these abstract concepts as an adult. And why would we need 5 year olds critiquing other 5 year olds. Let me tell you what DID happen to my five year old (whom by the way is good with math and numbers). He began to absolutely hate school, hate math, and he became very discouraged. Essentially he started having anxiety issues, refusing to get out of the car, stomach aches, headaches, etc. Quite frankly he felt like a failure and so did we because he couldnt grasp these concepts and it didnt take very long for him to completely shut down. Children this age are not mentally capable nor are their brains physically developed enough to understand abstract subjective reasoning, which is why typically Algebra has never been introduced until the later years, closer to 8th grade but now teachers are expected to start that process in Kindergarten. Yet these children have not even learned the basic math facts, and they have no confidence or fundamental math concepts with numbers. Talk about getting the cart before the horse. We all cried and struggled daily, it was horrible, 3 LONG devastating years of frustration.
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So lets dig into these CC / Oklahoma Academic Standards from the Kindergarten level (WRITING)
Now lets move on to the writing standards, which writing becomes the main emphasis in common core. The writing part of common core was actually the most difficult standard for my kindergartener. The main reason is because kindergarteners typically are not independent learners. They need lots of guidance from their teachers. How many 5 year olds do you know that can actually write in complete sentences, with punctuation and all? Most importantly, it is extremely difficult for them to be able to write if they cant read fluently. And due to the cost of implementing CC in Colorado, kindergarten had high class sizes with no assistants so I volunteered immensely in the classroom and I personally saw these expectations and the entire classes difficulty first hand. My son hadnt even mastered all of the letter sounds, sight words, even writing his full name let alone a complete thought and sentence with immense details. They had no time for phonics and phonemic awareness so in turn we had to hire a private in home tutor to provide the phonics that were missing, as whole language was the main approach. My son, was very analytical he wanted to know why the ch says ch, and because I went to school for business and had no understanding for being a teacher I couldnt explain it. After several parent/teacher/principal meetings we had no other option but to supplement it at home. Now let me read to you the Research to Build and Present Knowledge standard for Kindergarten writing. (Page 18 bullet #1, #2 & #3) In regards to these specific writing standards, again the main focus is to encourage the students to write lengthy, detailed stories, and yet many of them still cant read independently. They havent even been taught how to spell or break a word down with phonics. My son was expected to write personal narratives and sometimes even progressive poetry. He was also expected to link the events as they occurred. Truthfully, 5 year olds are not developmentally able to think literally in regards to time or put things in a specific order as they occur. Thats why they get today, yesterday, even 5 minutes ago all mixed up. I can tell you firsthand not a single student in my childs class could actually comprehend what the teacher was even expecting of them. This, once again, created major anxiety and stress on not only our son, but the class as a whole. My son began to refuse to even get out of bed in the morning, simply from the shear terror of thinking he was going to have to go write more papers with more details that he did not comprehend. Talk about banging your head on a wall. I compare it to teaching a 2 month old how to walk. They just arent developmentally capable and kids this age have not been alive long enough nor have they enough life experiences to relate to these writing standards. It creates a lot of undue stress and apprehension not only on the students, but also the teachers. Now lets move on to the reading standards back on page 10 Anchor Standards for Reading. There are 10 of them, but I will just read the first 3 in order to save time. 7

What about older students?

Its bad enough when a child starts out distraught over school, and we as parents knew with our first child something wasnt quite right, but we just couldnt pin point it. However, when our daughter the natural learner began falling into the same exact patterns and started absolutely hating school, it was then that it became very obvious. The 20/20 hindsight vision was even brighter once we enrolled them here in Oklahoma. But now lets talk about how these standards affect the older students, 3rd thru12th graders? Next fall, August 2014, as we know, ALL Oklahoma schools will be fully implementing CC in ALL grades. And you see there is this major problem called a GAP and its huge. Imagine if a child has been taught a traditional approach his entire life also known as a fact based approach to learning, then what happens when they are only tested on the new transitional or subjective material? Let me give you an example scenario to explain this. Lets say I teach you for 5-10 years all about airplanes (makes, models, engines, you name it.) Youve studied and put forth your best effort to master the entire product line. Now its time to take the final test (an EOI exam which stands for End of Instruction) in order to graduate. Your boss now hands you a test with questions only related to automobiles. Still a mode of transportation just not the specific mode you have been mastering. How would you feel? What is your success rate and/or your test score? Do you see where the gap lies? This is a huge problem, yet nobody seemed to have a solution prior to implementing these standards. And now by this age the child has overwhelming pressure to perform on this ONE test. In fact, the End Of Instruction test counts for everything in order to graduate from high school. One single test will determine whether or not that child moves on, regardless of the fact that he might be a straight A student, has major test anxiety, is overcoming challenges at home, and many other factors. Now what? Dont forget that they also just recently changed the grading scale also known as a cut score, so now in order to receive that same A the child must get a 95 or higher. Now isnt that motivating?!

The Game Changer

As most of you know, the education industry has been making changes for decades. By this point most educators are numb and assume years from now well be rediscussing yet another reform strategy to our education system. That may be true although, prior to now there has not been a big key player such as Bill Gates. Bill Gates has created the software programs designed to evaluate and streamline the entire process, along with state longitudinal tracking systems and databases. Technology is a game changer folks. See in the past no matter what education reform took place, the school district had the ability to filter a lot of the information. Unfortunately when all of these standards eventually become streamlined , the student will just sit down in front of a computer and at that point there will be no ability left to filter what content is being tested. Do you see what happens? Technology now makes it very difficult as books become a thing of the past. How then will a teacher ever filter some of the content that administration or you and I as parents dont agree with.

My Point is This
3 Years ago Common core snuck in on our family and we didnt even know it at the time. I am here today to bring awareness and prevent this from happening again. It is our duty, as well as, that of our legislators to protect our children, especially because school already has enough challenges. If we dont fight for our kids then who will? Im not waiting around to see the bottom drop out and regret ever speaking up about everything I know and have already lived through. I absolutely refuse to let should have, could have, would have haunt me. I keep hearing that famous phrase college and career ready, however, it's been 3 1/2 years and I am still waiting for someone who can define what "college and career ready" or "deeper more critical thinking" really means....can somebody please show me proof and give me some specific evidence, please? Honestly, is it even possible for our brains to think uncritically? I have asked senators, representatives, superintendents, state boards, local school boards, principals, teachers, parents, but have yet to actually receive A CLEAR defined answer with evidence and/or a simple definition of these so called higher standards. How do these standards guarantee that for every student here in the state of Oklahoma? Especially after weve already stressed them out for years with high-stakes testing.

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I am not convinced

Bottom line Common core in a short amount of time has already proved to fail. Just go check out NY, California, Colorado, Kentucky, or Georgia test scores. Common core is the first time in the history of this country that a privately written and copyrighted plan has become public policy. Quite frankly, my child is not a robot that I send to school to be programmed to pass tests. Our children and our teachers are way more valuable than any given test! And if my child, or any child for that matter, is not engaged they lose interest. What ever happened to curiosity, adventure, and resilience? We can not be idle and sit back accepting mindlessly somebody elses opinion for truth. Should we be training and programming our students to just pass tests or should we be inspiring them?

Are you telling me that if my child doesnt go off to college to receive a college degree, that he/she is not successful? Is the hardworking farmer that farms 400 acres, the fireman, the business owner, or even the military helicopter pilot down the street not successful?

And did you know there is a LONG list of famous successful people that didnt graduate college and/or high school for that matter? Including, Mary Kay, Michael Dell, Walt Disney, Debbi Fields (Fields cookies), Henry Ford, Milton Hershey, Rachael Ray, Oprah, Ted Turner, Steve Jobs, Frank Lloyd Wright, even Bill Gates just received his honorary college diploma in 2007 on the basis of his contributions to the world of business NOT his college coursework. It takes so much more than an opinion based standard of college and career ready to convince me. I dont buy it, and I refuse to sit back and just watch every childs joy for learning be stripped away. I also refuse to watch these AMAZING teachers satisfaction and joy for teaching be extinguished. We are all created to do so much more. Why would anybody in Oklahoma be willing to except any amount of money in exchange for a childs brain? I am sad for the kids in our community who will never know the beauty of a good inspirational classic literature novel because it was more important to read informational texts like EPA guidelines and standards. Im also sad for the kids who will always think that understanding a mathematical process is far more important than getting an accurate answer. I sure wouldnt want to ride in the car that those kids are going to engineer! And I especially dont want them monitoring my medication dosages when I am in my retirement home. 11

Summary
If these are the standards and expectations in Kindergarten at the bottom level than the staircase only rises and climbs from there. As a parent I attempt to rationalize why the National Standards expect my 5 year old to be thoroughly engaging, clear, precise, informative and instructive in all aspects and yet nearly all elements of their grading assessment and evaluation are nothing but ambiguous, rhetorical, and vague. I am all about setting standards, but we need concrete realistic standards that are attainable as well as measurable.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of these higher quality standards. Im just getting started. By rigorous what you really mean is excessive in workload, so once common core really gets rolling here in Oklahoma I know what to expect again, tons of extra homework daily. Trust me when I say that the teachers can not get through all of their benchmarks or modules in class, and because the teachers can not get through all of this information in class it will be coming home because their jobs and more importantly their teacher evaluations depend on it. The standards truly become introduction of sorts, because there is no time to make sure children are really grasping all of these concepts which means little to no retention. I suggest you survey some of the teachers and ask them how overwhelming it all is? Benchmark after benchmark, moving through it at a rapid pace, teachers have no choice but to go through the motions, theres no time to teach anymore you see.we have lots of rigorous standards to achieve. Our children lose their individuality and the teachers lose their flexibility. Its called the race to nowhere, and essentially what happens is the good teachers and leaders that want to really teach our children either retire or quit. Its already happening in Owasso we just had 12+ teachers retire or quit at our one elementary school this past year, and we have cycled through 5 new principals in the past 2-3 years. They evidently see these standards coming down the pipeline. Its already begunthe same mass exodus of exceptional leaders who know and see the consequences first hand. This is like dj vu for me, I see the train wreck up ahead. This is the exact same turmoil that we abandoned in Colorado in order to pursue a more gratifying education here in Oklahoma.
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Final Thoughts
In conclusioncuriosity, creative expression, motivation, concentration, interest and enjoyment are key for the development of learners in order to gain knowledge and academic ability. That is why their truly is a huge distinction between intelligence and wisdom. If you want children to develop high level reading skills the best way is to encourage a love and passion for learning, instead of dissecting everything they read with complex high order analysis. That scrutiny alone destroys the very thing you are trying to create, a love of reading. It creates the exact opposite effect and in response makes them less likely to spend time with books. Both my children HATED school, and
it only took a mere 3 months, 90 days, for them to show the signs and proof of total calamity. Here we are approximately 90 days into implementation in our school district and the havoc wreaked on our school alone is already observable. This time I will not allow the wool to be pulled over my eyes. Any standard that includes analyze, determine, compare, critique, opinion, judgmentthe list goes on, and on.are understandings and brain functions that are not physically developed until high school at the earliest. Exactly why child psychologists and developmental experts actually refer to these standards as a form of child abuse, because the students are not physically capable of these high demands. Almost any idea or standard can sound convincing and look persuasive and credible on paper. Frankly, three years ago we were absolutely certain that Vista Peak P20 school was an exact fit for our two children. We as parents wanted them to have a 21st century experience in education. But the practicality failed, and it failed miserably!! My two children (along with the other hundred in their grade levels) are affirmation enough. They have already been that common core experiment. Please do not take Oklahoma schools for granted, Oklahoma has it right! Our current standards are already well established, and suitably demonstrated, this state is thriving to be exceptional not average. These traditional academic standards here are already way too exceptional to accept anything less. And just for the record, I was a terrible test-taker. I know, and you know, that the significance of life itself is invaluable, priceless, incalculablefar more than a mere test score.