The National Governors Association is one organization driving the process of drafting national standards in English and Mathematics. If one goes to this page of their website, one can read ab out the initiative, being done in association with the Council of Chief State School Officers and several other organizations, iAchieve, Inc, ACT and the College Board They brag on the process, and present the list of people drafting the standards. Below the fold I will offer several snips about the initiative to set the stage. Then I will list all the members of the work groups drafting the standards. Yes, there will be feedback from professional organizations, but they are not included in the drafting. I will also list the members of the two ongoing feedback groups. You tell me what you think is missing.
First, about the process:
"This initiative is a significant and historic opportunity for states to collectively accelerate and drive education reform so that all children graduate from high school ready for college, work and success in the global economy," said Dane Linn, director of the NGA Center's Education Division. "These standards will be research and evidence-based, internationally benchmarked, aligned with college and work expectations and include rigorous content and skills."
Also this:
The Work Group's deliberations will be confidential throughout the process. States and national education organizations will have an opportunity to review and provide evidence-based feedback on the draft documents throughout the process. Final decisions regarding the common core standards document will be made by the Standards Development Work Group. The Feedback Group will play an advisory role, not a decision-making role in the process.
Now the membership of the two work groups:
The members of the mathematics Work Group are:
Sara Clough, Director, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Phil Daro, Senior Fellow, America's Choice
Susan K. Eddins, Educational Consultant, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (Retired)
Kaye Forgione, Senior Associate and Team Leader for Mathematics, Achieve
John Kraman, Associate Director, Research, Achieve
Marci Ladd, Mathematics Consultant, The College Board & Senior Manager and Mathematics Content Lead, Academic Benchmarks
William McCallum, University Distinguished Professor and Head, Department of Mathematics, The University of Arizona &Mathematics Consultant, Achieve
Sherri Miller, Assistant Vice President, Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS) Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Ken Mullen, Senior Program Development Associate—Mathematics, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Robin O'Callaghan, Senior Director, Mathematics, Research and Development, The College Board
Andrew Schwartz, Assessment Manager, Research and Development, The College Board
Laura McGiffert Slover, Vice President, Content and Policy Research, Achieve
Douglas Sovde, Senior Associate, Mathematics, Achieve
Natasha Vasavada, Senior Director, Standards and Curriculum Alignment Services, Research and Development, The College Board
Jason Zimba, Faculty Member, Physics, Mathematics, and the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, Bennington College and Cofounder, Student Achievement Partners
Members of the English-language Arts Work Group are:
Sara Clough, Director, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
David Coleman, Founder, Student Achievement Partners
Sally Hampton, Senior Fellow for Literacy, America's Choice
Joel Harris, Director, English Language Arts Curriculum and Standards, Research and Development, The College Board
Beth Hart, Senior Assessment Specialist, Research and Development, The College Board
John Kraman, Associate Director, Research, Achieve
Laura McGiffert Slover, Vice President, Content and Policy Research, Achieve
Nina Metzner, Senior Test Development Associate—Language Arts, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Sherri Miller, Assistant Vice President, Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS) Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Sandy Murphy, Professor Emeritus, University of California – Davis
Jim Patterson, Senior Program Development Associate—Language Arts, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
Sue Pimentel, Co-Founder, StandardsWork; English Language Arts Consultant, Achieve
Natasha Vasavada, Senior Director, Standards and Curriculum Alignment Services, Research and Development, The College Board
Martha Vockley, Principal and Founder, VockleyLang, LLC
Yes, there are also the feedback groups, but as the website note (and I hae adding some bolding for emphasisis):
The role of this Feedback Group is to provide information backed by research to inform the standards development process by offering expert input on draft documents. Final decisions regarding the common core standards document will be made by the Standards Development Work Group. The Feedback Group will play an advisory role, not a decision-making role in the process.
So, the membership of the feedback groups:
Members of the mathematics Feedback Group are:
George Andrews, The Pennsylvania State University, Evan Pugh Professor of Mathematics
Hyman Bass, University of Michigan, Samuel Eilenberg Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics & Mathematics Education
David Bressoud, Macalester College, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics & President, Mathematical Association of America
John Dossey, Illinois State University, Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics Emeritus
Scott Eddins, Tennessee Department of Education, Mathematics Coordinator & President, Association of State Supervisors of Mathematics (ASSM)
Brian Gong, The National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, Executive Director
Kenji Hakuta, Stanford University, Professor of Education
Roger Howe, Yale University, Professor of Mathematics
Henry S. Kepner, Jr., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Professor, Curriculum & Instruction and Mathematical Sciences
Suzanne Lane, University of Pittsburgh, Professor in the Research Methodology Program, School of Education
Robert Linn, University of Colorado, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, and Co-Director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST)
Jim Milgram, Stanford University, Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, Department of Mathematics
Fabio Milner, School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Arizona State University, Director, Mathematics for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education
Roxy Peck, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Associate Dean, College of Science and Mathematics and Professor of Statistics
Nora Ramirez, TODOS: Mathematics for ALL, President
William Schmidt, Michigan State University, College of Education, University Distinguished Professor
Uri Treisman, University of Texas, Professor of Mathematics and Public Affairs & Executive Director, Charles A. Dana Center
Vern Williams, Mathematics Teacher, HW Longfellow Middle School, Fairfax County, Virginia Public Schools
W. Stephen Wilson, Johns Hopkins University, Professor of Mathematics
Members of the English-language Arts Feedback Group are:
Peter Afflerbach, University of Maryland, Professor
Arthur Applebee, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY) Distinguished Professor & Chair, Department of Educational Theory & Practice, School of Education
Mark Bauerlein, Emory University, Professor of English
Mary Bozik, University of Northern Iowa, Professor, Communication Studies
Don Deshler, University of Kansas, Williamson Family Distinguished Professor of Special Education & Director, Center for Research on Learning
Checker Finn, Fordham Institute Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University & President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Brian Gong, The National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, Executive Director
Kenji Hakuta, Stanford University, Professor of Education
Carol Jago, University of California – Los Angeles, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) President-elect, California Reading and Literature Project
Jeanneine Jones, University of North Carolina – Charlotte, Professor
Michael Kamil, Stanford University, Professor, School of Education
Suzanne Lane, University of Pittsburgh, Professor in the Research Methodology Program, School of Education
Carol Lee, Northwestern University, Professor of Education and Social Policy
Robert Linn, University of Colorado, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, and Co-Director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST)
Dolores Perin, Columbia University, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education
Tim Shanahan, University of Illinois at Chicago, Professor, Urban Education
Catherine Snow, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor
Doranna Tindle, Friendship Public Charter Schools, Instructional Performance Coach
If you have not yet gotten it, go back and look at both sets of lists and find those currently involved in K-12 education, even in the feedback groups.
Now imagine that you were going to draft medical standards without any practicing doctors.
For what it is worth, some states have when drafting their own standards included the voices of current classroom educators or at least district level content supervisors in the process. Here the national organizations of professionals who teach the subjects are not even included in the current feedback groups.
Combine this with some of what is coming out of the mouths of both Sec. Arne Duncan and President Barack Obama and recognize the following: once we get national standards, national test will be sure to follow.
And why is it so important to have voices from testing organizations like ACT and ETS and not to have the voices of teachers and content area supervisors is beyond me. If the argument is that ACt and ETS are in tune with the requirements of Colleges and Universities, then why are increasingly such colleges and universities going SAT optional?
I have not been writing much about education in recent weeks because what is in the news is so discouraging. Perhaps I might be considered lucky because I teach social studies, which so far is not part of this process. You would be wrong. We have already seen the impact of not testing history and social studies under NCLB - that it is squeezed out to have more time to improve performance on tests. And increasingly test scores are driving everything, to wit, Duncan and Obama pounding on states like California that do not link the performance of students on such tests to the evaluation of their teachers, even though such tests have not been designed for such use and the various professional organizations such at National Council for Measurement in Education and the American Educational Research Association are on record that tests can not be used to draw valid inferences about what students have learned and how schools and/or teachers how performed. Not the same instruments, not and get meaningful information. Even if the emphasis on such tests does not lead to the distortion of driving everything towards what is being tested.
I am about to leave for summer school, where today we will being administering on the computer the state tests. Our students are in a special program because they have failed one or more state tests at least twice and are in jeopardy of not graduating from high school. We have been shepherding them through an alternative validation process of doing projects in lieu of tests. But we require them to sit for all four state tests, taking them on the computer, even though in the three weeks we have had them we have done little direct preparation or review for the tests. Get 'em through, hope that perhaps they will score somewhat higher on one or more of the four, since the state looks only at the highest score in each content area. Perhaps they have spent all their time doing Bio and English but we will still also test them in algebra and Government.
I wish I could feel better about this. We are losing sight of the individual students before us and driving things by gross numbers which may not even accurately measure what they purport to do. And our solution is in some ways to do even more of the same.
Go figure.
And no, I do not feel any peace about this.
