By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
It is easy to see why people often feel overwhelmed by the prospects of changing the way our schools and colleges operate. Powerful vested interests can make the task seem insurmountable, even when the polls indicate that the majority of the country agrees with those seeking the change. Examples abound, everything from school prayer to tenure rules to left-wing biases in school textbooks.
But the situation is not hopeless. The so-called Common Core “opt-out” is showing us how a grassroots movement can successfully challenge the powers-that-be in the education establishment and government.
An Associated Press story on April 18 reports that “thousands of students are opting out of the new standardized tests aligned to the Common Core.” According to the AP, “some superintendents in New York are reporting that 60 percent or even 70 percent of their students are refusing to sit for the exams.”
It has gotten to the point where some “lawmakers, sensing a tipping point, are backing the parents and teachers who complain about standardized testing,” even though federal aid can be withheld from school districts where “fewer than 95 percent” of the students “participate in tests aligned with Common Core standards.” (It should be noted that, to date, no school district has had its funds withheld as a result of the opt-out, according to AP.)
In New York, during the period in mid-April when the Common Core standardized tests were being administered, “tens of thousands of students sat out the first day of tests, with some districts reporting more than half of students opting out of the English tests.”
The phenomenon is not limited to New York state. The AP story also reports that “considerable resistance” is taking place in “Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, and Pennsylvania” and will likely occur in many other states that are scheduled to “administer the tests in public schools for the first time this spring.”
Moreover, the opposition to the Common Core tests “runs across the political spectrum.” Republicans and “Tea Party activists” focus on “Common Core standards themselves, calling them a federal intrusion by President Obama” into the operation of their local schools. But “in deep-blue New York, resistance has been encouraged by the unions in response to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to make the test results count more in teacher evaluations.”
The AP reports that in Rockville Centre on Long Island, the superintendent of schools said that 60 percent of his district’s third-through-eighth graders opted out. In West Seneca, a suburb of Buffalo, “nearly 70 percent didn’t take the state exam.” This led Mark Crawford, the West Seneca superintendent of schools, to tell reporters, “That tells me parents are deeply concerned about the use of the standardized tests their children are taking. If the opt-outs are great enough, at what point does somebody say this is absurd.”
First Teachers continues to receive mixed correspondence about Common Core. The majority of those who write to us object to the federalizing of local school districts and the liberal bias that they see in the Common Core curriculum. There are those who disagree, however, pointing out that Common Core’s standards were developed by the National Governors Association and each state’s education leaders.
Conservative Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and William Bennett, secretary of education during the Reagan administration, are in that camp.
That said, the success of the opt-out movement indicates that those who oppose Common Core have momentum on their side. It did not require massive amounts of money and people in high places to achieve the success that opt-out is enjoying this spring. Individual parents did it on their own, by standing up and refusing to permit their children to participate. There is a lesson to be learned here.
On another topic, one discussed in several recent editions of First Teachers: the massive student loan debt being accumulated by college students.
J.M. writes to offer a way to remedy the situation. He suggests that the colleges and universities themselves, not the government and the taxpayers, become the source of the loans.
Writes J.M., “A college or university endowment fund has a portfolio that includes stocks, bonds, real estate, mutual funds, etc. Included in such a portfolio would be holding companies that hold home mortgages, automobile loans, business loans, etc. These kinds of investments provide a revenue stream that the institution currently uses as income to pay salaries, operating costs, etc.”
J.M. proposes that “student loans could be held as an investment in the same way as any other loan is now held. Students would pay interest on the loans (revenue for the institution just like revenue from any of its other investments) and repay capital which can again be reinvested. Banks managed to do well from an investment in a student who had prospects for steady income and I suggest that colleges and universities could do equally well.”
He adds an intriguing insight: that his proposal would serve as an incentive for colleges to provide a course of study that will increase the odds of gainful employment for their students. It would focus the colleges’ attention on the need to “put out a superior product . . . i.e., a well-trained and educated student who can repay the loan with interest.”
J.M. continues: “The last time I looked at the student loan issue, the ‘industry’ had a capitalization of close to one trillion dollars…i.e., students (and probably their parents) were carrying loans for about a trillion dollars on which they are paying three to five percent interest. That puts the loan revenue stream at somewhere around fifty billion dollars! Interesting project to find out who is getting that payout at present! This isn’t a whole lot different than loans bought up by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the real estate realm. The federal government bought all the loans, regardless of the quality of the loan.
“The student loan business is getting into the same morass, as many students are getting in way over their heads with no prospect of being able to repay the loans. If the colleges were the holders of the loans, I believe their attitude would be to focus more on the quality of their graduates, to ensure that the loans will be paid back.”
J.M. goes on to offer specifics: “Assume our imaginary college has a one million dollar endowment fund that is invested in Google, GE, and Ford. Say the combined income from these stocks to the college is $30,000 per year, or 3 percent on the invested funds. My proposal would require that the college realign its investments to include student loans, along with its investment in Google, GE, and Ford.
“Student loan interest would pay about the same as the stocks mentioned and would not alter the school’s income, and when the principle of the loan is paid off it would keep the endowment at full value.”
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
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