Common Core standards come under fire
PERRYOPOLIS — Peg Luksik tore the state’s Common Core educational standards apart Tuesday at Frazier High School.
Luksik, a teacher and conservative political activist as well as a frequent candidate for statewide office, offered a candid assessment on the standards that are guiding public educational policy within the schools. She said the policies that have been put in place during President Barack Obama’s first administration are meant to create a one-size-fits-all approach to education that incorporates power in Washington, not locally or even through the states.
Luksik’s presentation to a crowd of more than 20 people supported her opinions with scores of state and federal documents.
“If you control the standards and the tests, you control the curriculum,” she said.
Luksik compared the top-down approach to baking a cake. She said in most cases, it is very hard to bake one chocolate cake so that it tastes exactly the same as the other. Luksik said the federal government steps in to provide the recipe so that all the cakes taste the same. And because the states have agreed to baking the cakes that way, no one can opt out.
Luksik said the Common Core principles don’t raise educational standards but lower the bar so that students can pass those all-important standardized tests demanded by Washington bureaucrats. She said the goal of all these tests is money — a state is awarded federal money based on test scores. But the problem is that students are not learning anything because teachers are teaching to the test, she said.
“We spend hundreds of millions to go from abysmal to horrendous,” Luksik said.
Luksik talked about how teaching Algebra I is the base standard, one that is far below what students are being taught in East Asia. Luksik, 58, said her sons were taught Algebra I in eighth grade.
“They are not planning to move the bar for achievement up, but the bar for success down,” she said.
But now with Common Core standards, a student taking the numerical operations section of the Algebra I test has to pass — 33 percent — to be considered proficient in that subject, she said.
“That should never be called passing,” Luksik said.
Math is not the only subject affected by Common Core standards. Luksik said English has changed from reading for content to something entirely different that ignores context and more. She said that approach has troubling implications for society.
“Western civilization is learned through literature,” she said. “Information versus literature. We are creatures with hearts and souls, so that things look different.”
Luksik used as her example, President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Under Common Core principles, teachers must not deviate from Lincoln’s timeless speech, she said. Even when students ask about the reasons for the Civil War and slavery, teachers must teach solely about the text, not the context and larger questions that inspired Lincoln’s speech or how students are taught a clinical way of analyzing problems such as who would get a seat in one of the Titanic’s lifeboats, Luksik said.
Reading as compared to seeing these actions play out of the silver screen nets a different result and approach for the students, she said. An informational approach has the businessman who dresses in a woman’s clothes saved, whereas a literary approach augmented by perhaps a movie has the students condemning that same businessman for his self-centered approach to saving his neck, she said. And what’s more, “To Kill a Mockingbird” protagonist Atticus Finch takes on new power and meaning that literature offers — something that is left out when teaching from a sheer informational approach to the novel.
Luksik said Common Core principles are aimed at indoctrinating students into believing that the government should be held in high regard. Luksik displayed a slide for fourth-grade students that detailed how “the government is like a nation’s family.”
“This is a political agenda, not something that is based on the Constitution,” she said. “Children are being taught a political point of view.”
For those who want to opt out, perhaps pursue a General Educational Development diploma outside school, think again. Luksik’s presentation showed an example of a test question adopted from Common Core standards that supported global warming. She said if someone taking the test didn’t agree with that theory, that person would have to come armed with a series of facts to rebut the assertions made by that question.
“You either agree with the political agenda because you have the better information offered by the test question, or you disagree and have a much harder test which could mean a lower test score,” Luksik said. “Parents are not told this is a test of political point of view, but that it is a writing test. How you do, what you believe, could affect college acceptance rates and even scholarships.”
Francy Angelo, a Republican candidate for Frazier School Board, said she organized the lecture so as to inform people about Common Core standards.
“I think if parents care about their child, they need to get Common Core abolished from the state,” she said.