Repealing Common Core Means Nothing

If Oklahomas New Academic Standards

Are Not Better than Common Core
Restore Oklahoma Public Education (now Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment) concluded
a near five year odyssey dedicated to the task of repealing the Common Core State Standards
in our state, when the ink from Governor Fallins pen dried on HB3399 in June 2014.
As directed by the bill, the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) was to
immediately begin the process of creating new educational standards for English/Language Arts
and Mathematics to replace the Common Core Standards adopted by the Oklahoma State
Board of Education as directed by SB2033 in 2010. The final drafts of the new standards were
to be completed by the OSDE in August of 2016 with copies presented to the Oklahoma
legislature prior to the February start of that years legislative session.
Unfortunately, though the standards development process was begun immediately, it quickly
became waylaid by Oklahomas 2014 elections, which saw the selection of a new State
Superintendent of Instruction after a contentious race.
Formally installed as Superintendent in January 2015, Joy Hofmeisters Department of
Education scrapped the work done by the previous administration and re-booted work on the
new Oklahoma Education Standards process in February 2015 when the Oklahoma Standards
Steering Committee (formed in September 2014) heard testimony from standards writing
experts Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. Lawrence Gray.
Dr. Stotsky is credited with developing the countrys strongest English/Language Arts standards
while serving as the Senior Associate Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of
Education (1999-2003). Dr. Lawrence Gray, professor of Mathematics at the University of
Minnesota, is credited with developing the countrys strongest Mathematics standards (2003).
In providing excerpts of the OAS reviews as follows, I will only outline the issues listed as
concerns by the reviewers as those that have been praised do not need addressing.
Additionally, though there were documents including public feedback by education
stakeholders linked to every draft, these were commonly one line comments that generally did
not provide enough solid critique to be considered helpful to either the public at large or the
Oklahoma Legislature, who must sign off on the new OAS.

FIRST DRAFT OAS - JUNE

Following the presentations of the standards experts, the Oklahoma process was begun in
earnest with the first draft of the Oklahoma Academic Standards (OAS) released in June of
2015. Immediately, ROPE put out the call for anyone interested in reviewing the standards to do
so.
We asked for specific comments on the standards to be made in the blog comments and many
did so, with the largest concern being the VAGUENESS of the standards. From Lorraine:
Oklahomas standards are not clear, thus not clearly made accessible for a variety of
students.
Reviews for the first set of standards reviews were placed on the OSDE website. Though
several sets of reviews were provided, none were really instructive excepting that of the
Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.
ROPE sought reviews of several teachers which were placed on the OSDE website. More
substantial reviews from five different educators can be found here. One, concerning the Math
OAS from Dr. James Milgram, Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University, was copied
onto the ROPE blog. A commenter to the post simply says this,
As disturbing as this article is, I find it almost comforting. Comforting to know that
someone else out there AGREES WITH ME! The standards are poorly written.
Dr. Sandra Stotsky reviewed the English/Language Arts standards and says,
The organization of that draft isnt useful for what needs to be done to provide nonCommon Core standards. Right now, what you have is very close to being compatible
with Common Core and a Common Core-based test. OK kids deserve better.
J.R. Wilson, one of the founders of Truth in American Education and Wheres The Math says of
the math standards,
The standards are not written in a clear and concise manner.The standards document
would be well served by simply listing clear and concise pedagogy free standards.To
be world class, it needs lots of improvement.
Dr. Barbara McClanahan, Associate Professor of Educational Instruction and Leadership,
Southeastern State University says,
One other concern that my colleague had was that there should be a glossary; she fears
that not all teachers would understand all the terms being used. Another concern I have
is that some of the terms have ambiguous meanings. For example, what does gradespecific or grade-appropriate actually mean

Oklahoma State Regents for higher Education says,

I believe that sample problems and classroom activities will be a significant benefit
(Math)
The outcome understand is vague and should not be used (ELA)

General Complaints Draft 1

ELA:
Vague; uses imprecise terminology
Needs a glossary of terms
Math:

Too much overlap of standards across grades

Vague; uses imprecise terminology
Needs specific examples of problems
Needs a glossary of terms

SECOND DRAFT OF OAS JULY

The OSDE website has reviews listed for Dr. Gray, Center for Standards and Assessment
Implementation (CSAI), Shannon Riley-Ayers (Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes),
American Institutes for Research (AIR), Partnership for 21st Century (P21), South Central
Comprehensives Center Math, ELA (SC3) and Southern Regional Education Board Math, ELA
(SREB)
CSAI says,

the Oklahoma ELA standards descriptors tend to be vague and may not be
sufficiently granular to adequately describe the skills and abilities students should
possess at each grade.
Although the progression from one grade to another is largely logical and
reasonable, the descriptors within each standard often lack depth, precision, and
consistency.
These standards should describe a measurable objective in clear and concise terms,
and the state might consider including examples to specify what students are
expected to do.

P21 says,
we would urge Oklahoma to fully develop the Sample Problems or Classroom
Activities portion of the standards documents, as guides to not direct teachers how to
teach, but to provide best practices that demonstrate ways to incorporate the 4Cs more
deeply into the standards, curriculum and instruction.
SC3 Math says,
We believe teachers will find great value in seeing sample problems or classroom
activities immediately associated with the standards to be mastered by students in that
grade level.
SC3 ELA says,
Consider including a glossary of key terms to ensure practitioners have a common
understanding of key terms.
SREB ELA says,
In the current draft there is not enough clarity in either the reading or writing standards in
each of the five standards to justify the inclusion in each standard.
SREB Math says,
Be careful not to suggest in the explanation that reasonable and appropriate are new
federal terms. A crisp and clear general statement of the standard followed by a listing of
specific content and skills intended may cause less confusion to teachers, parents, and
the public.

General Complaints Draft 2

ELA:

Vague; uses imprecise terminology

Not measurable or precise
Needs a glossary of terms
Needs examples of literary texts at each grade level

Math:

Too much overlap of standards across grades

Vague; uses imprecise terminology
Needs specific examples of problems
Needs a glossary of terms

THIRD DRAFT OF OAS AUGUST

The list of reviewers for the third OAS draft include Dr. Christopher Yakes (Math), Dr. Sandra
Stotsky (ELA), American Institutes For Research (AIR), Oklahoma Educated Workforce Initiative
(OEWI provided by the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce) and the Oklahoma Technical
Advisory Committee (OK TAC).
ROPE reprinted much of Stotskys comments on our blog, along with comments from Dr. Gray
as provided by Oklahoma Watchs Nate Robison.
Yakes comments were few. Those made were done editorially inside the OAS document. The
majority of his comments appeared to deal with specificity in writing and clarity of instruction.
AIRs review was conducted specifically based upon the OAS and their alignment with
employability skills something that should be far down the totem pole of importance in our
opinion and therefore wont be included in this review.
OEWI listed 50 detailed ELA recommendations and 40 for Mathematics. OEWI says, in part
(ELA),

Add a detailed glossary of all content specific vocabulary used in the standards to
ensure consistent definitions are used instructionally.
Add a comprehensive reading list for specific grades or grade bands which aligns to
the qualitative and quantitative measures of text to illustrate grade-level reading.
Provide guidance on text selections.
Provide resources/links of recommended sites where current research-based fluency
rates and reading levels can be found and used to guide instruction.
Provide student exemplar writing samples for each genre at each grade level with
the task from which the samples were generated. Provided an annotated copy to
identify specific elements of the states rubric that is used to score essays. Ideally,
provide samples from the continuum of the rubric.

OEWI says, in part (Math);

Create examples for each standard. While it needs to be made clear that such
examples do not reflect all of the possible problem types that may be encountered on
a state assessment, many of the standards lack clarity in terms of student
expectations. Example problems allow teachers to better understand the student
expectations.
Add a detailed glossary of all content specific vocabulary used in the standards to
ensure consistent definitions are used instructionally.
Provide resources/links of recommended sites where high-quality, standards-aligned
instructional materials and additional sample problems may be found, particularly
because textbook materials will not yet be available that are aligned to these
standards.

OK TACs comments were solicited based upon the perspective of whether the standards
would be assessable in future state tests and if the strands and benchmarks can be measured
by the state summative assessment. Robert Terry. Ph.D. Professor, University of Oklahoma
writing for OK TAC says,
(ELA) After examining the draft standards, I have concluded that while some of these
standards may be assessed at the State level, some clearly cannot, and many will
require a change in emphasis from selected-response items to constructed-response
items. This will have multiple impacts upon the State system, including increasing costs
of item and test development, reduced turn-around time due to the need to have ratergrading, and sufficient investment in computing facilities to handle the technologyenhance items that will be needed.
(Math) Many of these standards are Common Core consistent and item developments
for these types of standards have already been released (PARCC, 2013).This raises
several concerns about timing, cost of item development, and cost of technology
asking the why questions (which are good questions to ask) requires CR-type
questions which invokes delays in scoring and reporting back to the teachers for
instructional purposes. Since the State has requested a quick turn-around on these
assessments, it is quite possible that little if any feedback will be returned at the pace
Oklahoma teachers have come to expectsome of these standards cannot be easily
assessed in a large-scale assessment, if at all.
Stotsky says,
I think the OK drafting committee should be challenged to come up with an example of a
literary text that could be used (and how) for every single standard so that teachers
understand what reading level is required or desirable at every grade level (and what the
standard means). Make it clear these texts are not required; only examples of reading
levels. We did that in MA and it helped us to keep out gibberish.
Can't the ELA committee put in Oklahoma-related reading standards at the high school
level- -grades 11 and 12? One standard for texts by major authors born in or who wrote
about Oklahoma, and one standard for biographies/autobiographies about famous
Oklahomans through history. Aren't there any recognized authors/texts/people
Oklahoma students should know about?
Gray says,
The mixture of Oklahoma and Minnesota standards also created an odd flow in how
students progress with mathematical concepts through middle and high school.

General Complaints Draft 3

ELA:

Vague; uses imprecise terminology

Not measurable or precise; not easily testable
Needs a glossary of terms
Needs examples of literary texts at each grade level
Needs reading/writing lists of Oklahoma authors

Math:
Too much overlap of standards across grades; lack of focus on
alignment
Needs specific examples of problems
Needs a glossary of terms
Needs resources for teachers to utilize
Use of technology makes testing expensive
FOURTH DRAFT OF OAS DECEMBER
Reviewers for the OAS fourth draft on the OSDE website included only the OEWI (ELA only),
Ms. Shellie Klein (ELA), Dr. Christopher Yakes (Math)
The OEWI says,

Create literacy standards for the content areas for grades 6-12. These disciplinary
literacy standards should encompass all disciplines across a students course of study.
Add a comprehensive reading list for specific grades or grade bands which aligns to the
qualitative and quantitative measures of text to illustrate grade-level reading. Provide
guidance on text selections.
Provide resources/links of recommended sites where current research-based fluency
rates can be found and used to guide instruction.
Provide student exemplar writing samples for each genre at each grade level with the
task from which the samples were generated. Provide an annotated copy to identify
specific elements of the states rubric that is used to score essays. Ideally, provide
samples from the continuum of the rubric.

Shellie Klein (were not told her affiliation or credentials on the link) says,

My main concern is that for some standards, there is not sufficient specificity at each
grade level to ensure a steady progression or consistency across schools and
classrooms
Some standards need additional clarification, while the language in others can be
simplified.
Glossary: suggest adding definitions for academic vocabulary and for
informative/explanatory writing

Dr. Yakess critiques are specific to several specific standards, indicating the ways in which they
needed to be changed to make more sense to teachers and students. He also adds a review of
the Mathematics Glossary in which many of the terms need to be revised and numerous terms
need to be added.
Dr.s Stotsky and Gray submitted their reviews of the final ELA and Mathematics Oklahoma
Academic Standards as presented to the Oklahoma State Legislature. They have been
uploaded to our Scribd account and can be accessed through the links via their names.
Dr. Stotsky says,

The default strands in the proposed standards that could contain these progressions of
content-rich standards do not have the content necessary for developing the knowledge
base for critical reading, thinking, and writing (e.g., Vocabulary, Critical Reading and
Writing and Multimodal Literacies).
The proposed standards are purported to be written by Oklahomans for Oklahomans.
Yet, one looks in vain for standards that expect future taxpayers in Oklahoma to become
familiar with some of the significant texts, people, movements, or events in the states
political, literary, and intellectual history.
Nowhere does one find the only clear content that was in Common Cores High School
ELA Standards. Its standards required study of this countrys founding and seminal
documents.
The proposed standards fail on the most important issue of all. Some significant content
has to be taught to them if they are to see themselves and those they know sharing a
state and a country together. Common Cores ELA standards were not quite as empty
as these proposed standards are. This document is completely empty. An empty
document does not develop young minds, or help teachers to develop a sound and
rigorous curriculum.

Dr. Gray says,

We have identified well over one hundred items that need to be fixed. Many of them can
be made acceptable by a small amount of rewriting or by being eliminated altogether.
But there are quite a few important issues in the document that cannot be repaired with
simple rewrites, because they involve many connected items. These connections run
both horizontally (within a grade level) and vertically (from one grade level to the next). It
is impossible to suitably fix the document with supplementary material or errata sheets.
In order to help us achieve focus in Minnesota we carefully followed most of the
guidelines in the CTM Curriculum Focal PointsUnfortunately, it does not appear that
the Oklahoma draft adhered very closely to such principles.
We noticed several instances in the Oklahoma document where expectations were
essentially repeated at multiple grade levels, presumably in an attempt to maintain
alignment across grade levels, but focus was lost in the process.

General Complaints Final Draft (draft 4)

ELA:

Vague; uses imprecise terminology

Not measurable or precise; not easily testable
Needs more work on glossary of terms
Needs examples of literary texts at each grade level
Needs reading/writing lists of Oklahoma authors
Needs reading material from the founding documents
Needs student exemplar writing samples

Math:
Too much overlap of standards across grades; lack of focus on
alignment
Needs specific examples of problems
Need much more work on glossary of terms
Needs resources for teachers to utilize

Following the upload of the final draft of the OAS to the OSDE website, letters of support for the
final draft from schools and organizations all across the state were provided by the OSDE in
supplementary standards documents created for both Mathematics and English Language Arts.
These letters were general in nature, not specifying their comments to either set of standards.
The creation of the OAS by Oklahomans, the 8 overarching principles used to create them, and
the clarity of the OAS were primarily the basis for their glowing reviews. No criticisms were
provided.
In their letter of support, the Cooperative Council of State Administrators (CCOSA) one of the
education establishments that fought the repeal of Common Core - began the narrative that the
standards must be immediately approved (pg 69):
CCOSA supports the approval of the Oklahoma Academic Standards as proposed by
the State Superintendent and many other Oklahomans involved in this process. It is
imperative that the standards are quickly acted upon so that the school leaders and
teachers can begin the important work of training and implementing these new
standards by August of 2016.
It is obvious, after reviewing ALL the submitted documents regarding the new OAS, that these
standards MUST BE RETURNED TO THE OSDE for edits and revisions. The specific areas
needing to be addressed are OBVIOUS, as these same issues are addressed at least cursorily
in ALL the general critiques submitted by standards reviewers (those listed in bold behind each
draft heading).
Oklahoma has a unique opportunity one not availed of by any state in the nation that has
repealed Common Core to date that of creating standards of true excellence for Oklahoma
students that are not simply a Common Core rebrand.
It makes literally no sense to have undergone all the political wrangling and subsequent
lawsuit of 2014 in which Common Core was repealed from law in Oklahoma, to create
standards in their place that are sub-standard.
All we are asking is for the Oklahoma State Legislature to DISPROVE the OAS as submitted to
the legislature by the OSDE in February, with specific instructions to fix those concerns
commonly identified by standards reviewers as solicited by the OSDE themselves.
To do anything else makes absolutely no political or educational sense.