Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/BENJAMIN KRAIN --04/23/2015-- Nearly a dozen teacher leaders, university faculty, superintendents, and state agency administrators, including from bottom left, Clara Carroll, Harding University Assistant Dean and Chair of Graduate Studies in Education, Jason Endacott, University of Arkansas Assistant Professor of Secondary Social Studies Education, and Chasidy White, 2015 Alabama Teacher of the Year, present information on the Common Core State Education Standards to the Governor‚Äôs Council on Common Core Review, in background. Thursday was the first of the five public hearings in the Old Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol for the 16-member council appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson and chaired by Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin. ( Benjamin Krain

Arkansas is a unique state that needs an "Arkansas solution" regarding education standards for its public school students, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Thursday.

The governor told his newly appointed Governor's Council on Common Core Review that the Arkansas Constitution makes the state -- and not local school districts -- responsible for setting the standards on which curriculum and instruction are based in the state's public schools.

Setting education standards can't be delegated to the local school systems.

"I do know that Arkansas is a unique state," Hutchinson said. "Whatever challenge faces us, I expect us to come up with an Arkansas solution that works for us. That means it's not something that is dictated out of Washington. I don't mean that in a pejorative way -- but we want an Arkansas solution."

The 16-member council, led by Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, is made up of educators, parents and business leaders from the four corners of the state. They will make preliminary recommendations to the governor in early summer about the ongoing use of the sometimes controversial Common Core State Standards.

Some parents and educators in Arkansas and across the country have complained that lessons based on the Common Core standards are too challenging for students in some grades and that the federal government was too involved in their passage.

The kindergarten-through 12th-grade standards in math and English/language arts were adopted in 2010 by the Arkansas Board of Education. They are the first set of standards in the nation's history that are common to the majority of the 50 states.

The council spent Thursday listening to and questioning four panels of educators that included former Arkansas Education Commissioner Ken James, Arkansas Teacher of the Year Ouida Newton, university faculty members, and Arkansas Department of Education staff leaders.

The different panelists described the Common Core standards, the history of those standards and their perceived strengths and weaknesses.

Future hearings by the council will delve deeper into the actual math and English/language arts standards, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or PARCC tests that are based on the standards, and on student data privacy issues related to the tests.

The governor said Thursday that he didn't know what the outcome of the 16-member council's review will be.

"It's not preconceived," Hutchinson said. "But I do expect high standards and high expectations for our students that are transparent and that we can use to measure where we are in reference to the competitive world and other states."

Griffin said the council is seeking to hear a wide range of viewpoints on education standards and testing over the course of at least four more day-long hearings in the Old Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol.

The only criteria is that the speakers must be credible and know what they are talking about, he said.

"Blame me for all of this," James, a former Arkansas education commissioner, jokingly told the council. "I was the commissioner when we started the conversation" about a common set of education standards.

James was a member of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which was initially split 50-50 over the issue of common education standards in the 50 states. On one hand there were concerns about loss of state control and that the standards would be imposed by the federal government. On the other hand there was a desire to raise the achievement level to be competitive with other nations and better prepare students for college and the workplace, he said.

He was chairman of the Council of Chief State School Officers when the education leaders and representatives of the governors in more than 40 states agreed at a Chicago conference to move forward with the establishment of common standards. The governor, the state's chief school officer and the chairman of the state Education Board in each state had to sign up to support the writing of the standards.

The standards were prepared by lead writers who were backed up by writing teams. Drafts of the standards were then sent to the states for review before they were revised and sent to the states for approval.

James said the standards are not set in stone and can always be improved, but too much time and too many resources have been invested in them to abandon them.

He recommended to the council that Arkansas "stay the course" on the standards, using a statewide communications plan to inform parents and the general public about the standards and to correct misconceptions. He also recommended the high quality teacher training programs be the method used to improve the implementation of the standards.

"Our set of standards must be rigorous to get kids to higher levels of learning," James said. "I didn't hear the governor's reference to 'Let's make them Arkansas' standards,' but my gut reaction to that is that yes, these are Arkansas standards and we embrace them, but they are all standards designed so that our students can compete across state lines. Any governor understands that the success of the populace is directly tied to an educated workforce."

Newton, a math teacher in the rural Poyen School District and the 2015 Arkansas Teacher of the Year, told the council that the Common Core State Standards have restored her freedom to teach and to go into more depth. She said the state's previous frameworks -- the standards developed by Arkansas teachers -- seemed more like a checklist of skills that she and her students had to get through.

"My teaching has changed drastically and for the better," she said, describing how math lessons in measurement and volume now go beyond learning formulas to more real-world math applications in projects such as designing sports bags or packaging for candy products.

"Common Core is not my curriculum. It is my guide," Newton said. "It raises the expectations I have for student learning," she said, adding that she was surprised this school year when her eighth-graders grasped new mathematical lessons that she thought would be beyond them.

Because of the greater depth in teaching and more emphasis placed on understanding concepts in addition to math facts, Newton said students with improved thinking skills will do well on whatever state tests are mandated.

Jason Endacott, assistant professor of social studies education/curriculum and instruction at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, told the panel that he is opposed to the continued use of the Common Core standards.

He said Arkansas and other states had little input into the preparation of the standards and were ultimately "manipulated" into adopting them under pressure from the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

"They were not written by teachers," Endacott said, but "by small teams of test makers and corporate employees. Teachers were only given the opportunity to provide feedback on drafts of the standards after they had already been written."

He said there were more than 10,000 responses to the drafts, which he said were incorporated into the final documents within two months. That, he suggested, led to concerns about some of the standards being developmentally inappropriate or too difficult for certain grade levels.

Arkansas and other states adopted the new standards in hopes of receiving the multimillion-dollar federal Race to the Top grants, he said. States received points toward receiving the grants for the adoption of college-and-career-ready education standards.

Endacott said a recent as yet unpublished survey of Arkansas teachers in all subjects and grade levels show that a majority believe the Common Core standards are better than the state's previous standards, but their perceptions about the Common Core are not as positive as they were two years before.

"Our state is perfectly capable of creating better standards than the Common Core," he said. He pointed to the recent proposed revisions in Arkansas' social studies frameworks as evidence. Those standards are being developed by Arkansas teachers, incorporating the best of proposals made by a national social studies organization. Those standards can be easily revised by Arkansas educators, unlike the Common Core standards in math and English, he said.

Another of the panel members Thursday was Chasidy White, the 2015 Alabama History Teacher of the Year and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the development of what is known as the Nation's Report Card. That is a test that is given to a random sample of students in all 50 states at no direct costs to the states.

White said she doesn't believe that the Common Core standards will be successful.

She also argued against testing programs based on those standards that are money-makers for testing companies and erode up to a month of teaching time -- including time for creativity -- in the classroom.

White said teachers are professionals who are very capable of testing their students and determining whether they are moving toward being ready for postsecondary education and the workplace.

Griffin said it appeared that an excellent teacher and poor standards will produce a good student while good standards and a poor teacher will not. Standards are not the variable, he said.

Council member Kalven Trice of Little Rock told the council that high standards create opportunities for students regardless of their socioeconomic status. Poor students in Northwest Arkansas school districts have greater opportunities than poor students in the Arkansas Delta, said Trice.

Others who testified Thursday were: Deborah Jones, assistant commissioner for learning services in the Arkansas Department of Education; Stacy Smith, director of curriculum and instruction in the Education Department; Clara Carroll, professor of education and assistant dean of the College of Education at Harding University; Michele Linch, executive director of the Arkansas State Teachers Association; Sarah McKenzie, executive director for the Office of Education Policy, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; and Gary Ritter, endowed chair in education policy at the university.

A Section on 04/24/2015