Common Core foes oppose teachers assigning children such important texts as Sir Winston Churchill’s Blood , Toil, Tears, and Sweat speech. Now you can laugh.

A reason why the coterie of movement conservatives and hard-core progressives oppose the implementation of Common Core reading and math standards in 45 states and the District of Columbia is their contention that the various works of fiction, nonfiction and so-called informational texts used to demonstrate what can be read under the standards are somehow overtly political. This view, which has been articulated by the likes of National Review‘s Stanley Kurtz and others, dovetails nicely with arguments by many movement conservatives opposed to the standards that the voluntary initiative developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers is somehow an Obama Administration plot. The latest example of this argument comes courtesy of Education Action Group in a report on its Web site detailing the wrongheaded move by a fourth grade teacher at Glenn C. Marlow Elementary in Mills River, N.C., to use a series of talking points opposing a move by the Republican-controlled state legislature to overhaul the Tar Heel State’s early childhood education program for a classroom lesson. EAG intones that Common Core will somehow lead to “students might soon be reading screeds about mean-spirited Republicans and their wrongheaded policies”.

But a closer look at what the developers of Common Core cite as examples of books and other materials that children can read as part of their learning shows that those statements are hardly true. If anything, the statements made by Common Core foes is another example of what happens when one engages in false statements as part of opposing systemic reform (as well as what happens when one doesn’t do something simple called research and reporting). And why the arguments of Common Core foes are so hard to take seriously.

At the heart of this aspect of the battle over implementing Common Core is also one of the more-interesting aspects of the effort itself: The implicit emphasis on moving away from costly (and often, sub-par) traditional textbooks (as well as the often-politicized processes of deciding what is contained in them that often complicate efforts to provide all children with comprehensive, college-preparatory curricula) to the use of fiction and nonfiction works of higher quality that are available at lower costs. Especially in reading, Common Core offers a compendium of what it calls “exemplar texts” or examples of fiction and nonfiction literature, along with informational texts, that are either culled from the public domain or can be easily purchased from any publisher. This list, which only exists to set examples for what teachers can provide to children for their reading, is in many ways a paradigm shift that will force teachers to actually focus on providing children with high-quality instruction; it will also reveal those laggards who shouldn’t be teaching in the first place. That moving away from traditional textbooks could actually lead to cost-savings also makes Common Core’s list of exemplar texts even more appealing. Most importantly, there will be opportunities to provide kids with the great writings of fiction and nonfiction that are key to understanding the world around them.

What are some of the exemplar texts? For kindergartners and first-graders, the list includes poet Richard Wright’s Laughing Boy, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, and . Third-grade teachers can assign books similar to Ruth Stiles Gannett’s My Father’s Dragon, Emily Dickinson’s Autumn, or even E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (which was one of your editor’s favorite books when he was growing up). Meanwhile middle school English teachers can assign such classics as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, English poet William Butler Yeats The Song of Wandering Aengus, and Langston Hughes’ I, Too, Sing America. By high school, teachers can assign Homer’s The Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Voltaire’s Candide, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Based on any sensible interpretation, the books that can be assigned by teachers can include nearly all of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books featuring the mischievous Anne Shirley, any one of Shakespeare’s plays, and plenty of classics. Nothing which one can say with a straight face is political, unless you really have trouble with, say James Weldon Johnson ode to the black struggle for freedom from slavery, Lift Every Voice and Sing. Of course, there are novel such as Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, whose more adult themes (along with its setting in pre-Castro era Cuba) is one that some find too offensive to their sensibilities. But last I checked, this can also be said of Geoffrey Chaucer’s scatological classic, The Canterbury Tales, which features a soliloquy by a woman discussing her lack of sexual chastity, and that is a classic Common Core foes would wholeheartedly approve of high schoolers to read. [Actually, this can be said of many classics as well as the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (especially the Song of Solomon).] In any case, the books are age appropriate, and also of high quality.

A list of Common Core’s Exemplar Texts include works by Thomas Paine and George Orwell (along with a couple of manuscripts crafted by the Founding Fathers).

Then there are the informational texts — which include works of nonfiction, science articles, and other materials — which have become the biggest source of criticism for Common Core foes. Besides the arguments that the materials are akin to political indoctrination, the fact that children will also have to read the very books that have helped shape the world around us (including speeches by Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln) also offends their view (as well as that of English teachers miffed about putting focus away from fiction) that kids should only read literature.  A close look at the various example texts show little in the way of anything political. From the perspective of folks such as Joy Pullman, the otherwise sensible editor of Heartland Institute’s School Reform News, these texts are “piles of trash“.

A closer look shows that both assertions are off-target. Kindergarten teachers can offer their students books similar to Earthworms, a book by Claire Llewellyn on those lovely Oligochaeta that are found in the soil. Sixth grade teachers for example can give their kids copies of the Invasive Plant Inventory published by the California Invasive Plant Council to read. From reading the 44-page booklet, which details the various plants not native to particular regions that can damage the soil of farms and other property, kids can improve their science literacy as well as understand how to read the very texts they will have to consult in adulthood. High school science teachers can assign sophomores magazine pieces similar to “Amusement Park Physics”, physicist Jearl Walker’s 1985 Scientific American column that explains the scientific principles behind theme park rides.

Eighth-grade teachers can assign to students such classic speeches as Sir Winston Churchill’s rousing Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat, which helped keep Great Britain from losing hope amid the early losses during the Second World War. Meanwhile high school social studies and history teachers can offer perspectives on the conflict between the United States and American Indian tribes by providing students books similar to Son of the Morning Star, historian Evan S. Connell’s history of the Battle of Little Big Horn, and Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Especially given that children rarely get a full, comprehensive perspective on Native communities in American history, providing both books makes sense to do. John Allen Paulos’ excellent book on understanding the role of mathematics in everyday life, Innumeracy, is also featured as an exemplar text. Just about every one of the informational texts found that are exemplars in Common Core are the kind of writing that you would expect to be taught in school. Unless you really want to argue that Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and American Civil War general Horace Porter’s account of Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox are both piles of trash.

Simply put, there is almost nothing about the examples that would be considered political. Or trash. Just two out of the 137 informational texts cited as examples by Common Core’s developers would even come close. This includes a 2009 edition of Fed Views, the newsletter of the Federal Reserve System’s San Francisco branch that focused on the economic conditions of the nation after the financial meltdown, and Executive Order 13423, the environmental policy issued by President George W. Bush in 2007 that requires federal agencies to use sustainable resources in constructing federal buildings. Certainly your editor would one can argue that the executive order could have been left out. But one can also argue that it is important for young adults, who will eventually have to deal with political issues, should understand the various documents that shape what government agencies do. For example, it would be hard to discuss the history of American Indians in the United States without talking about the Indian Education Act or any of the executive orders issued by various administrations over the past six decades; same is true in discussing the civil rights movement of the last decade (including Harry Truman’s 1947 executive order desegregating the military). This can be done with high-quality teachers leading discussions about both sides of underlying issues (as well as exercises such as debates). After all, that is what teachers and schools are supposed to do. And we want our children to be knowledgeable men and women equipped to engage thoughtfully in the marketplace of ideas. 

In fact, it would be hard for any teacher (or parent) to interpret the text exemplars as giving them leeway to offer anything that would be explicitly political. This is because Common Core’s list of exemplar texts is actually thought through. One can quibble about whether more texts should be added — nearly every book by Smith and John Stuart Mill should be on this list in order for children to gain a full understanding of economics — but it is almost impossible for any teacher to get this wrong if they have strong subject-matter competency, are knowledgeable in instruction, care for the lives of all children in their classrooms, and are entrepreneurial self-starters who know how to lead classrooms. Oh, and have that thing of nature called common sense.

In short, the teacher at Marlow Elementary didn’t follow the examples provided by Common Core’s developers. The teacher should have been sticking with the guidelines for fourth grade, which explicitly state that the focus was to be on showing her students “how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text”, as well as “determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words or phrases” in relevant texts. This could easily be done with a number of books and articles that include Nelson Kadir’s We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball and Henrietta Buckmaster’s Underground Railroad, both of which are already on the list of exemplar texts; she could have also found any reading material that is similar to those pieces for use in the classroom assignment. Ben Velderman of EAG, who wrote the original piece (and is following up the story) says that the principal told him that the particular piece used by the teacher was, in his view, appropriate under Common Core; the standards clearly show that this isn’t so.

What EAG and others argue is a problem derived from Common Core is actually the problem of low-quality teaching and school leadership, which includes the penchant among those teachers to engage in the kind of political activities that don’t belong in classrooms. That’s been a problem for decades. The solution for that lies not in ceasing efforts to provide all children with high-quality curricula, but to overhaul the abysmal system of recruiting, training, compensating, and managing the performance of teachers and those who oversee them. If Common Core foes are truly serious in addressing those issues, they can join with the rest of the school reform movement in making that a reality.

But as Dropout Nation has noted over the past few months, this is not the first time Common Core foes have engaged in the kind of misinformation, exaggeration and conspiracy-theorizing that reformers wouldn’t tolerate generally from traditionalists on a good day. Within the past year, Common Core foes have attempted to use a couple of asides about the standards in a U.S. Department of Education report on using facial technology in assessing student learning (along with the mention of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation program officer in the report’s acknowledgement section) to argue that the standards are the next step in some Orwellian plot to take control of the minds of children. From spinning conspiracy theories about the role of the Gates Foundation in advancing Common Core implementation, to false arguments about the standards leading to middle school students losing out on introductory algebra (when most don’t even take this much-needed course), what was once principled, if wrong-headed opposition to the development of national curricula standards has now devolved into a campaign of misinformation that should be offensive to those opposed to the standards who offer principled, more-serious arguments against them.

But the consequences of such misinformation and gamesmanship are borne by children, especially those from poor and minority backgrounds, who have long been subjected to educational abuse and malpractice. As this publication has demonstrated since its founding, far too many kids aren’t getting the kind of curricula needed to succeed in an increasingly knowledge-based economy. Thanks to the emphasis on such approaches as guided learning, children who are particularly struggling in literacy are never exposed to the kind of challenging books that help them become proficient in reading. Addressing this underlying culprit of an education crisis that condemns 121 children each day to poverty and prison requires a series of solutions. The implementation of Common Core is one of the key steps in helping all children get the college preparatory curricula they need and deserve. This isn’t to say Common Core foes don’t care about the futures of kids, including those who are brown and poor. Many of the movement conservatives (along with some conservative reformers) opposed to Common Core are men and women of good will. But it is crystal clear that they are far more concerned about preserving their ideological purity than about helping all children succeed.

Certainly Common Core foes have a right to offer honest, valid, and thoughtful reasons for opposing the standards. But when they engage in misinformation, false statements, and invalid arguments about that which the standards demand, then it is hard to take other arguments that are valid all that seriously.

As opposed as the American Federation of Teachers and its president, Randi Weingarten, have been to most aspects of systemic reform, one could at least say that the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union has been correct in supporting both the concept of national curricula standards and common academic curricula. So it wasn’t too shocking that the AFT decided four years ago to back the development of Common Core reading and math standards by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

At the same time, you have to always remember that the AFT is first and foremost a teachers’ union, and it has no interest in backing anything for long if it has the potential to weaken its already-declining influence over education policy. This is especially true if it involves the use of objective student test score performance data in teacher evaluations and other efforts to end the shoddy teacher evaluation regimes (as well as near-lifetime employment privileges) that have helped make teaching one of the professions public sector or private insulated from any performance management (as well as justifies the union’s existence). The AFT is also loathe to continue supporting anything that threatens the grand bargain it (along with the National Education Association) has struck with Baby Boomers among the rank-and-file members under which they give the union carte blanch to do what it pleases so long as it stands stalwart for traditionalist thinking as well ensure that the profession is insulated from accountability. And when the AFT is faced with both trouble and opportunity, the notoriously crafty Weingarten will stop at nothing to take advantage of it.

Considering all this, it isn’t all that shocking that Weingarten announced yesterday that the AFT was calling for states to issue moratoriums on rolling out the new exams being rolled out as part of the implementation of Common Core. After all, the union finds itself in a rather tough spot, both with Baby Boomers among the rank-and-file already annoyed with the union for its modest acquiescence on allowing the use of some test score data in evaluations, and with hardcore progressives among the traditionalist ranks who have teamed up with movement conservatives to oppose the implementation of the standards in 45 states and the District of Columbia. Whether this latest effort at triangulating reformers and the most fervent of traditionalists within her ranks will work? That’s a different question altogether.

As you would expect, Weingarten only alludes slightly to the underlying intra-traditionalist and internal union politics in her latest bit of rhetorical rope-a-dope. Proclaiming that the AFT still supports implementing Common Core, Weingarten still argued that states needed to delay implementation of the tests in order to keep it from being relegated to “the overflowing dustbin of abandoned reforms”. Borrowing language from Common Core opponents, Weingarten argues that states need to delay launch of the tests — and their use in teacher evaluations as well as in assessing district and school performance – for at least two years in order to “field test” the assessments. From where she sits, “decoupling” Common Core exams from their proper use as accountability tools will help relieve supposed “anxiety” among those concerned about the tests, as well as ensure the viability of the standards.

Weingarten certainly chose a good time to call for a moratorium on launching the tests. Districts and AFT locals in New York State, along with teachers and some parents, have already expressed annoyance with how the Empire State’s education department has rolled out the new Common Core-aligned exams. The fact that Indiana is itself struggling with glitches and other issues involving the online version of the Empire State’s ISTEP-Plus exams (which aren’t aligned with Common Core) just as the Hoosier State has passed a law temporarily stopping (and, to the hopes of foes of the standards, permanently stop) implementation of the standards and the array of exams geared to assessing how well students are learning the new lessons (and how well districts, teachers, and school leaders are doing in educating them), also gives Common Core foes additional ammunition for opposing implementation. By borrowing the words of Common Core foes — as well as harping on the reality that families and their children often bear the consequences of test performance (largely because the AFT and the NEA have worked hard to insulate teachers from accountability) — Weingarten has put together some well-polished sophistry.

Yet Weingarten’s argument that the Common Core tests need to be “field-tested” doesn’t hold water when one looks closer at the facts. For one, states have been working on implementing Common Core for most of the past three years — and actually longer than that, since NGA and CCSSO (along with the PARCC and Smarter Balanced consortia that are directly handling the day-to-day development of the online and paper tests) began developing the standards (along with thinking through the technology issues that will come with implementing the exams) since 2009. As Weingarten admits, the AFT has been actively involved in developing Common Core and has been training teachers to understand and implement the standards; the union has also actively touted its Share My Lesson joint venture with Times Educational Supplement publisher TSL’s online unit, which features lesson plans developed by teachers aimed at helping their peers adapt to the changes being wrought by the standards. And the supposed “anxiety” over Common Core testing is no different in substance than the usual angst that comes whenever the performance of kids are being assessed — especially when adults in schools are also being held accountable for success or failure.

Certainly Common Core supporters should be concerned about implementation, especially when it comes to the assessments, almost all of which are online. Traditional districts and states need to devote more energy to addressing the technology infrastructure issues that can complicate both reform efforts and day-to-day operations; rural districts (especially those serving American Indian and Alaska Native communities), which have just adopted late 20th-century technology, have particular struggles on the broadband access front. Yet even in those communities, Common Core implementation has already been proceeding apace. Even if the online assessments aren’t yet ready, states can conduct testing through traditional pen and paper.

Of course, Weingarten knows this. Which is why she sidestepped so many of these issues in her speech. The reality is that Weingarten is doing nothing more than what traditionalist-minded school leaders such as Montgomery County, Md., Supt. Joshua Starr are seeking: Halting any effort to hold districts, teachers, and school leaders accountable for success or failure in improving student achievement. After all, the new Common Core exams are being launched just as states are launching new teacher evaluations that require objective student test score growth data on those exams to account for at least 20 percent of (and sometimes, as much as half) of the overall performance reviews. The fear that declines in student performance on the exams will adversely impact evaluations is largely overblown. But the reality is that the new evaluation systems will likely lead to more teachers being sacked. This doesn’t help the AFT’s bottom line or its effort to preserve influence.

Weingarten knows that states will not delay implementation of Common Core tests unless their legislatures and governors have decided to abandon the standards altogether. More than likely, Weingarten and AFT affiliate bosses at the state level will seek agreements from states to not use objective student test score data from the new Common Core tests for at least two years. Such a move would delay the development of more-accurate teacher evaluations and more-stringent performance management until the AFT can find another reason to halt reform efforts.

At the same time, Weingarten’s play isn’t just about resisting reform. After all, throughout its idiosyncratic history, the AFT has embraced comprehensive curricula as an ideal (even if it works to resist such efforts in practice). Weingarten is not only attempting to once again co-opt school reformers– an effort that has failed for a variety of reasons, including the ideologically-driven missteps of Weingarten’s minions along with her own — she is also trying to mollify unhappy allies within her ranks.

Baby Boomers within the union ranks and hardcore progressives among traditionalists (including those also in the AFT’s rank-and-file) are none too happy about the implications of Common Core’s implementation for their defense of failed thinking. This reality is none too comforting for either Baby Boomers who make up an increasingly smaller percentage of teachers working in classrooms, or other traditionalists dead set against standardized testing in general — especially if the exams are even better at assessing student performance than those currently in use today. Weingarten’s decision to embrace at least some marginal use of test score data in teacher evaluations — albeit in the so-called multiple measures approach championed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — hasn’t exactly gone over well with many of her fellow traditionalists, even though the union is no more committed in action than the NEA to using test data in teacher performance management. Some were especially displeased with her this month after teamed up with Gates Foundation education czarina Vickie Phillips on an advertorial touting multiple measures in the New Republic. By calling for a moratorium on Common Core testing, Weingarten has thrown a bone to these fellow-travelers that at the very least keeps them somewhat pleased to have her on their side.

But it isn’t just about the impact of Common Core exams on teacher evaluations — or standardized testing in general — that is displeasing to Weingarten’s allies. Hardcore progressives among traditionalists such as Susan Ohanian and Education Week columnist Anthony Cody have long opposed implementation of Common Core, because of the involvement of private-sector interests such as the Gates Foundation in shaping and supporting implementation of the standards, and because of the fact that Common Core also pushes teachers to move away from the longstanding practice of crafting their own curricula without any high-quality North Star to guide their efforts (part of the tradition of teaching as a solo and autonomous practice that traditionalists have long-fetishized). The fact that this slipshod approach has damaged the futures of generations of children, along with the reality that far too many teachers lack the subject-matter competency needed to develop their own curricula without guidance, doesn’t factor into their thinking. Add in the reality that Common Core standards, even if poorly implemented, will likely further expose the low levels of subject-matter competency among laggards within the teaching ranks — an underlying cause of the nation’s education crisis — and suddenly, the standards are a threat to traditionalist opposition to systemic reform. The fact that the AFT has continued to support implementation of the standards even as fellow-travelers such as the intellectually demagogic Diane Ravitch have decided to abandon past advocacy for them is particularly annoying; so long as Weingarten didn’t waiver on Common Core implementations, foes of the standards (along with their movement conservative allies) were relegated to the fringe.

But now, thanks to Weingarten’s triangulation (along with the move last month by the Republican National Committee to pass a resolution opposing Common Core), the Ohanian-Cody crowd (along with the likes of Michelle Malkin and otherwise-sensible conservative reformers such as Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute) now have some small leverage in opposing further implementation. Expect Common Core foes, especially movement conservatives, to cheer on Weingarten’s call for a moratorium, even as they loathe teachers’ unions in general and oppose the AFT on nearly every other education policy issue. [The fact that this will likely happen shows clearly that opponents of the standards on both sides are more concerned with succoring their ideological leanings than helping poor and minority kids attain teaching and curricula worthy of their potential.]

Will Weingarten’s move lead to more states abandoning Common Core? If the RNC’s resolution didn’t lead Alabama’s legislators to stop implementation of the standards, why would the AFT’s proposed delay? Weingarten’s does provide the AFT some opportunities for a defensive victory on the teacher evaluation front, and allows for her to keep the most-fervent traditionalists oppose to Common Core at bay. More importantly, the Obama Administration’s own desire to ensure that its effort to eviscerate the No Child Left Behind Act — under which states have agreed to launch performance-based evaluations in exchange for being allowed to ignore federal law — may stand in the way of any dealmaking between AFT affiliates and state governments.

As for mollifying Common Core foes and other fervent traditionalists, especially within AFT ranks? That may not work out either. Many in that crowd has long ago written Weingarten off as little more than someone more-interested in playing both sides against the middle than as one of their  own. They may be pleased in part with Weingarten’s triangulation, but they will soon find it wanting. As always.

When people talk about the nation’s insolvent teachers’ pension that make up a key part of traditional compensation, the Massachusetts State Teachers Retirement almost never comes to mind. But it should. With a reported pension deficit of $12 billion (as of 2011, the latest year available) — and a key reason why Massachusetts’ state government spend 50 cents for every dollar of teacher salary in 2010, a 25 percent increase over the amount spent in 2005 — MTRS is such a burden on the Bay State’s fiscal and educational fortunes that the state attempted to stem the long-term costs of it two years ago by restricting such practices as spiking (under which districts granted retiring teachers and school leaders double-digit wages in order to boost the annuity payments they received), and increasing the minimum retirement age from 55 to 60.

But the Bay State and its governor, Deval Patrick — an aspirant to succeed Barack Obama as the Democratic Party’s standardbearer and U.S. President in 2016 —  still haven’t taken enough steps to address MTRS pension deficit, much less taken strong steps to overhaul how it pays teachers — especially high-quality teachers for who pensions (along with seniority- and degree-based pay scales) do little to fully reward and recognize their work. Such steps start with honestly admitting the extent to which MTRS is insolvent.

Even among the inflated rates of return for teachers’ pensions, MTRS is especially high given, assuming an 8.25 percent rate of growth for investments at a time when market performance on the Standards & Poor’s’ 500 is little more than half that. Because of such an inflated rate of return, MTRS hides what is likely the actual extent of its virtual insolvency. This, in turn, makes it harder for Patrick and the state legislature to get a full handle on the problems besetting it.

So Dropout Nation conducted its own analysis based on a formula developed by Moody’s Investors Service. Assuming a more-realistic rate of return of 5.5 percent — or 2.75 percent lower than MTRS’ assumed rate — the pension’s likely deficit is $16.1 billion, or 36.6 percent higher than it officially reports. None of this, by the way, includes the $1.2 billion in unrealized losses still on MTRS’ books, which would increase the reported pension deficit to $13 billion Based on a 17-year amortization schedule, Massachusetts (and ultimately, taxpayers) will have to pay an additional $946 million annually to get rid of the underfunding; that’s double the $831 million the state paid into the pension in 2011, according to the state’s annual valuation report. If Bay State districts used a slightly more-lenient 20 year amortization schedule — the one Moody’s now uses in its analysis since it was finally revised this month — they would still have to pay an additional $804 million, or almost double what was actually paid in 2011.

What if the unrealized losses were included? Based on DN‘s analysis, MTRS’ pension deficit would be $17.8 billion, or 36.6 percent higher than it officially reports. Based on a 17 year amortization schedule, districts in the Bay State would have to pay an additional $1 billion a year just to eliminate the pension deficit, and would have to pay a slightly lower $887 million in additional payment each year if a 20-year pay down schedule was chosen. No matter what, MTRS actual financial picture is worse than it publicly reports. And for the state, the troubles are just beginning; after all, it also bears a share of Boston’s costs for providing pension annuities to its teachers, and that burden is also understated. [The good news at the state level is that it doesn't bear the full share of healthcare costs; but for districts such as Springfield, which picks up 75 percent of the tab for both teachers and their dependents according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, there will also be a reckoning, especially with unfunded retired teacher healthcare costs being a long-term problem.]

The true level of pension underfunding won’t be the only issue weighing heavily on Massachusetts as well as on other states. Last year, the Government Accounting Standards Board issued new guidelines requiring states, school districts, and other local governments to fully report the extent of their long-term pension woes. Under GASB 68, districts and states will have to break out all the increases and decreases in pension liabilities over an 11 year period; this will include investment losses, increases in benefits given to teachers as part of the deals struck by states, districts and affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers (which have made teaching the most-comfortable of all public-sector professions), and borrowings to pay down pension deficits. Such revelations, which will finally be completed by next year, will force Massachusetts to deal seriously with its pension insolvencies.

But Massachusetts isn’t the only state understating its teachers’ pension woes. There’s also the even more-woeful teachers’ pension in Illinois, the Teachers Retirement System, which has become notorious for being one of being among the nation’s biggest busts. The 31 percent increase in its officially-reported pension deficit between its 2010 and 2012 fiscal years (on top of a 93 percent increase in the insolvency between 2002 and 2010) has contributed to S&P cutting the state’s debt rating to A-, a level lower than that given by the rating service to the more-woeful California. Yet for much of this year, state legislators and Gov. Pat Quinn have been sparring among themselves over how to address this and the Prairie State’s other pension insolvencies. One plan, already passed in the lower house, would only cut all of the state’s insolvencies by $100 billion over 30 years (including a supposed $20 billion reduction in the first year), while the senate passed its own version; legislators then went on vacation, causing the Chicago Tribune to hope that they will have “vacationed at leafy resorts, collected your thoughts, planned for Illinois’ future — and read pension legislation, poolside” by the time they return. Gov. Quinn has decided to not put his signature on legislation allowing for online gambling (as well as the expansion of traditional casinos) until both houses offer a pension reform plan he considers worthy of his pen. Meanwhile the NEA’s and AFT’s’ Prairie State affiliates, along with other public-sector unions, are already doing their best to scuttle any pension fix that will lead to a decline in their influence.

But the question that Quinn and legislators (including House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton) should be asking is whether the pension plans are based on solid, realistic numbers. This is especially true for the teachers’ pension. It officially reported a deficit of $52 billion for 2012, according to its annual financial report. But that number only includes the recognition of 20 percent of its $3 billion in investment losses during 2012. This means that $2.3 billion in losses for which the pension does not account. If those losses were added to the tally, the reported deficit would increase to $54.4 billion. When one considers that the Illinois pension assumes a rate of return of eight percent, which is nearly eight times higher than the eight-tenths of one percent return (net of fees) that it actually experienced in 2012, one can imagine how that the Prairie State’s teacher pension insolvency is even greater than it reports.

Based on Dropout Nation‘s analysis, which assumes a more-realistic 5.5 percent rate of return, Illinois’ teachers’ pension deficit is more likely to be at least $71 billion, or 36 percent more than it officially reports. Based on an amortization rate of 17 years, Illinois taxpayers would have to pay an additional $4.2 billion a year to cover the shortfall, more than double the $2.6 billion paid now by the state and local districts. Even if the amortization was extended to 20 years, Prairie State taxpayers would still have to make $3.5 billion in additional payments each year just to eliminate the insolvency.

But that calculation doesn’t include the unrealized losses. Add in the unrealized losses, and the total insolvency for the Illinois pension is $74 billion. Prairie State taxpayers would have to shell out $4.4 billion a year in additional payments over 17 years just to cover the deficit. [Under a 20-year amortization schedule, the annual additional payments would be $3.7 billion.] Taxpayers living in Chicago, who must also face $11 billion in teachers’ pension deficits for the Second City, won’t likely be too thrilled about bearing the burden for two insolvencies.

Of course, Quinn and state legislators aren’t factoring these larger numbers into either the upcoming state budget or into proposed pension relief plans. But they should be because those numbers are more accurate and honest about the state’s fiscal morass. Requiring Illinois TRS, along with the Prairie State’s other pensions, to revamp its financial reporting to offer more-realistic numbers, would be the place to start. Once that happens, Quinn and the legislator can address other issues related to the pension — including the fact that teachers contribute just 27 percent of the $3.5 billion contributed annually to the pension. Requiring teachers to pay more, along with developing a defined-contribution plan with the state guaranteeing a rate of contribution, would be a key step. Making the pension less generous (the average Illinois teacher will get an annuity equal to 75 percent of the average salary earned during the last four years of service), ending cost of living payments (which has allowed an Illinois teacher who retired in 1995 see her annuity payments increase from $65,000 to more than $100,000 a year in 2012), and ending the practice of allowing teachers to trade in as much as two full school years’ worth of sick days in order to boost payouts, would also make sense. But again, Illinois needs to deal realistically with the true extent of Illinois TRS’ insolvency.

The direct pension deficit for Illinois TRS itself will only be part of the problem. Because GASB’s new rules end the practice of allowing districts and states to report proceeds from pension obligation bonds floated for paying off insolvencies as assets — and forces them to report them as liabilities, as they should be because those dollars have to be paid back to bondholders — Illinois will finally have to be honest about the true cost of the $10 billion in bonds it floated a decade ago address all of its pension woes. Taxpayers have already paid $4.1 billion in interest and principal payments in the nine years since the bonds were issued, and will pay another $17.2 billion by the time the bonds should be paid off in 2033, according to data from the Illinois Policy Institute. Two more pension bond floats in 2010 and 2011 added another $7.1 billion (not including interest and other payments over time) to that tally.

As Everett Dirksen would say, $16 billion here, $74 billion there, and suddenly, teachers’ pension deficits are costing taxpayers, high-quality teachers — and ultimately, children — dearly. And it doesn’t matter whether you are in Amherst or Peoria. It’s time for pensions in Massachusetts, Illinois and other states to provide realistic numbers on the extent of their fiscal woes.

Children should be reading Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will and other great works of nonfiction that have shaped the world in which they are growing up.

One of the great joys of being the editor of this fine publication — and straddling both the media and education policy arenas — is that it allows me to indulge my inner geek and read through materials that I would otherwise ignore. This is especially true in dissecting the arguments of supporters and opponents of the effort by 45 states and the District of Columbia to implement Common Core reading and math standards. And it is particularly clear when one actually looks at the argument offered by the coterie of movement conservatives, hardcore traditionalists, and smattering of otherwise-sensible conservative reformers opposed to the standards that Common Core’s reading standards will weaken the quality of teaching, curricula, and learning in classrooms.

For much of the past two years, Common Core foes such as Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas, have articulated two reasons why they think Common Core’s reading standards are weak. The first? Because teachers are now required to focus at least some of their time focusing their students on reading so-called informational texts — mainly books of nonfiction such as Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, speeches such as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and op-eds as well as other forms of expository essays — as well as on writing their own fact-driven op-eds and essays articulating points of view. From where Common Core foes sit (and as some teachers, including those profiled this past December in the Washington Post), this focus on nonfiction comes at the expense of the traditional classroom focus on great works of fiction such as The Great Gatsby as well as on writing stories and other pieces talking about their experiences. In turn, Common Core’s emphasis on reading and writing non-fiction weakens the quality of curricula, instruction, and ultimately, student learning in classrooms because children are not exposed to the great works of fictions that challenge their minds and stimulates their thinking. Proclaims Stotsky in an abbreviated version of a piece she wrote for the Pioneer Institute: “Common Core’s damage to the English curriculum is already taking shape.”

Then there’s the second argument against Common Core’s reading standards: That the standards themselves are not clear or self-explanatory. From their perspective, the standards are incoherent, don’t offer teachers enough in the way of instruction to understand what they should be doing in classrooms, and don’t help kids fully understand what they should know. More importantly, because most English teachers haven’t been trained to do this work, they are unable to understand what they are doing, and thus, will fail. This argument, along with the complaints about the focus on nonfiction as well as the loss of that mythical thing called local control of education (which, given that states are charged constitutionally with providing public education, and that districts, as local governments, are merely arms of their respective state governments, has never existed), is among the more-serious arguments offered by Common Core foes.

Yet when one actually reads through the actual standards itself, the arguments Common Core foes offer fall apart.

For one, Common Core actually emphasizes both fiction and nonfiction reading and writing, as well as reading books on history and science. This is a good thing because many state standards don’t focus teachers and districts to focus kids on reading nonfiction, while the focus on fiction is often desultory at best. During the first two grades, teachers are required to focus students on such fundamentals of analyzing and interpreting fiction as describing characters and understanding the central plot and message of a story, while also learning how to describe the “main purpose of a text, including what the author wants to answer, explain, or describe”. By the time kids reach high school, they must figure out Shakespeare’s plays draw from other great texts such as Ovid’s The Metamorphosis as well as determine how, say, John Stuart Mill’s point of view in On Liberty and how he  ”uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose”. And on the path to high schools, kids are asked to understand how, for example, director Kenneth Branaugh’s version of Frankenstein digresses from Mary Shelley’s original work, and at the same time, “analyze how 2 or more authors writing about the same topic shape their presentations of information” on the same issue. Simply put, teachers are required to help students master the kind of sophisticated reading, writing, and analysis that they will have to do once they enter the adult world.

The standards implicitly forces English teachers to improve the quality of books they assign for students to read. After all, to engage in the kind of sophisticated reading required under the standards, children (and their teachers) have to actually read great works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Iliad and the Old and New Testaments. At the same time, it still grants teachers wide latitude in how can bring relevance — including incorporating American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian cultures — into instruction. For example, a teacher at the Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii, a private school focused on improving the futures of Native Hawaiian children, can actually tie together the ”rose by any other name” scene in Romeo and Juliet and Native Hawaiian poems about the various flora that kids can find on every one of the state’s islands. This ability to bring relevance as well as comprehensive learning into reading and writing is one reason why Native communities have become less-resistant to implementing the standards than foes of the standards outside them.

Meanwhile an actual reading through the standards themselves shows that they aren’t exactly hard for teachers and school leaders to understand. It is really hard for any competent district curriculum director to not understand what it means to “determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details” and even harder for a good or great teacher to comprehend what it means to “trace and evaluate the argument” presented in, say, a Thomas Friedman column. In fact, an average parent or caregiver with a strong understanding of concepts such as close reading (or the careful and sustained interpretation of fiction and nonfiction text) can grasp Common Core’s reading standards, and actually handle instruction themselves in a home-school or tutoring setting. If anything, Common Core’s reading standards do something that most state standards don’t do very well: Explain to teachers what they should be teaching in their classrooms, and what kids should learn in order to be successful once they enter higher education (including traditional colleges and apprenticeships) and move on to the adult world, regardless of what career paths they choose.

The importance of Common Core’s reading standards in focusing American public education on exposing children to the great works of nonfiction cannot be understated. After all, so much of our activities and discourse in public and private life is shaped by ideas espoused in books written by Thomas Paine, Aristotle, Marx, and Voltaire. One cannot understand, say, American and even international economic policy for most of the past six decades without reading the works of Friedrich von Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. The architecture of Washington, D.C., and, in fact, nearly every state capital, is shaped by architect Andrea Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura, which was read by the leading intellectual among America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson. Considering the role of nonfiction books in shaping how we think and what we believe, especially in an increasingly knowledge-based economy and society, there is more need than ever for children, especially those from poor and minority households, to read, write, and understand nonfiction. Arguments by Stotsky and other Common Core foes to the contrary are not only wrongheaded, but absolutely, positively lacking in seriousness.

All that said, one of the problems that will be faced in implementing Common Core is the fact that far too many teachers lack the skills needed to provide high-quality reading instruction. This is one of the culprits behind the nation’s education crisis — and why 33 percent of fourth-graders (as of 2011) are functionally illiterate as well as will likely drop out. But this isn’t the fault of either the standards themselves or even of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (which crafted them). This problem lies with the nation’s university schools of education, which have long ago faltered in their recruiting and training of aspiring teachers. As the National Council on Teacher Quality concluded in 2006,  only 11 of 71 ed schools  it surveyed in 2006 adequately trained future teachers in reading; recent studies from NCTQ have also reaffirmed the abysmal quality of teacher training. Common Core foes don’t seem to acknowledge the underlying problem, and in fact, offer no solutions to overhauling teacher recruiting and training. This unwillingness to admit that Common Core — which has only begun to be implemented — is not the problem, as well as their lack of solutions also makes their arguments hard to take seriously.

Of course, Common Core foes such as Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey will complain that your editor is merely mocking his allies. After all, they have already complained about the mocking of their positions by Common Core supporters such as Benjamin Riley of the New Schools Venture Fund, who satirized the arguments of Common Core foes in a recent piece on the school reform outfit’s blog. [Of course, at least Common Core supporter, Larry Grau of Democrats for Education Reform's Indiana affiliate, is engaging in equally unserious arguments against Common Core foes that are counter to the school reform movement's principled bipartisanship. DFER Executive Director Joe Williams should tell Grau to take a time out, and the organization should stop engaging in this ridiculousness. Right now.] What foes of the standards fail to realize is that it is hard to take all but a few Common Core foes seriously (McCluskey being one of them) because of their association with allies who engage in misinformation and conspiracy-theorizing.

From the argument of Gatesers that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has somehow engaged in a stealth campaign to implement the standards that is somehow a violation of American democracy (even as it has been clear long ago that the Gates Foundation’s efforts have been anything but stealthy or anti-democratic), to statements by others that Common Core’s implementation would lead to kids having to use facial recognition software, to less-than-factual statements by movement conservatives opposed to Common Core such as otherwise-sensible syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin that the standards would lead to middle-schoolers not taking introductory algebra classes (even though few take such courses now, and the standards actually allow for states to further efforts to provide seventh- and eighth-graders to take Algebra 1), Common Core foes have been their own worst enemies.

Take  the the particularly interesting rhetorical ploy that Common Core is unworthy of  implementing because they have been “untested”. The statement would have merit if not for the fact it isn’t completely so. Aspects of Common Core’s nonfiction reading standards, for example, are echoed by the curricula standards put in place by Massachusetts 12 years (and the similarities between those standards and Common Core may be one reason why the Bay State moved to adopt the latter). Just as importantly, standards  (along with other aspects of education, including those reforms that many Common Core foes tout, including charter schools, which have turned out to be successful) aren’t ever field-tested in the first place. Whether standards and curricula should be tested is a different story, and your editor would tend to support testing them out first. But Common Core foes have never articulated why such an approach should be taken. They have just tossed out the words “untested” thinking that would actually resonate with anyone other than those opposed to any form of common standard. That is clearly less-than-serious rhetoric unworthy of any consideration.

In fact, one of the reasons why they haven’t succeeded so far in halting implementation of Common Core is because supporters of the standards have been able to mock the less-than-serious arguments and obscure the more-serious objections. It is hard for even those who may support your position to publicly do so if they surmise that your allies are offering reasons and arguments that make talk about one-world governments seem more-plausible by comparison. This, in turn, has allowed Common Core supporters to evade important arguments such as whether there should there be national curricula (especially in reading and math) and whether anyone should fear this happening. This is an important question because the possibility of Common Core leading to national curricula is one reason why serious foes of the standards are so ardently opposed to its implementation. Given the wide latitude provided under Common Core for anyone looking to develop curricula — as well as the fears, well-founded or not, about the impact of a national curricula — this is unlikely to happen. In fact, one of the positive impacts of Common Core is that those who want to develop curricula actually have the ability to craft high-quality content based on a set of standards. All that said, whatever your position on that issue, it is a question worth discussing.

It also allows Common Core supporters to avoid discussing the real problems of implementing Common Core: That without strong accountability — most-concretely in the form of the No Child Left Behind Act, whose Adequate Yearly Progress provisions have been weakened by the Obama Administration as part of its waiver gambit — the standards may not actually be implemented effectively, especially in improving curricula for poor and minority kids). And that it will take vigilance on the part of reformers and state education departments to ensure that curricula actually meet the underlying standards, an issue already difficult to address now that textbook publishers are now trying to proclaim that their offering are “Common Core ready”. This matters because many Common Core supporters have oversold the likely efficacy of the standards. And this, in turn, is not a good thing for either side. When school reformers and those who want systemic reform (which movement conservatives opposed Common Core do want, something that their allies among traditionalists certainly do not) fail engage in serious discussions about implementing reforms, the movement suffers. Unlike education traditionalists (who depend solely on the passions generated from benefiting from a failed, amoral model), the school reform movement derives its strength and success from being thoughtful in developing solutions to address the nation’s education crisis. We need thoughtful conflict. Period.

Common Core foes could actually force supporters of the standards to actually think through these problems — and defend the standards in a more-meaningful way that advances systemic reform — if they rid themselves of those offering arguments lacking seriousness within their ranks. Until then, those less-than-serious arguments will be mocked. And so will they.

As Iowa’s senior member of the United States Senate, Charles Grassley is well-known for his investigations of whether flim-flam ministries such as the notorious Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church deserve federal exemption from paying income taxes, his defense of whistle-blowers who bring light to corporate and governmental malfeasance, and his longstanding support for federally subsidizing the production of ethanol, the corn byproduct that has proven to be economically uncompetitive as either a replacement for gasoline or an additive for it. None of those issues have much to do with federal education policy.

So it was curious to see Grassley’s move yesterday to weigh in on education when he sent a “Dear Colleague” letter crafted by his staffers (along with, quite likely, folks from Americans For Prosperity, the Pioneer Institute, and in a rare moment of relevance, the Cato Institute’s education policy team) calling for the addition of language to the budget restricting the Obama Administration from requiring states to approve or implement Common Core reading and math standards as condition for participation in Race to the Top and other competitive grant programs, or from providing federal funding for those efforts. Nothing wrong with that per se; all politicians should be engaged in education policy. But Grassley’s lack of knowledge about the process of red-lining education policy (as well as that of those who drafted the letter for him) shows. Badly.

One could point to the fact that Grassley addressed the letter to his fellow Iowan, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Chairman Tom Harkin (who isn’t likely to oppose the Obama Administration on this matter) and Jerry Moran (who is ranking member on an Appropriations subcommittee) and left out both Lamar Alexander, the former Tennessee governor (and onetime reformer) who now serves as Harkin’s counterpart on the committee, and Alexander’s predecessor, Mike Enzi. The latter two would have made Grassley’s letter worthier of consideration, as would have naming Barbara Mikulski (who now chairs the Appropriations Committee overseeing the actual budget process) and her Republican counterpart, Richard Shelby. Then there’s the fact that Grassley asks for a ban on any effort to require states to be part of Common Core when the administration doesn’t specifically mention it as a requirement in either its competitive grant efforts or in its counterproductive gambit to eviscerate the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. Nor does the administration even ask states to come together in any multi-state effort to develop standards much less actually specify anything of the type. Obama Administration officials wouldn’t exactly do so because it is restricted from specifically requiring Common Core in the first place. That fact, of course, makes Grassley’s rather superfluous in the first place.

The Obama Administration does ask states to have approved “college and career-ready” standards as a condition for being considered for Race to the Top funding and for being granted a No Child waiver. This is what Grassley and Common Core opponents using him as a stalking horse want to actually stop the administration from doing because it allows for the administration to implicitly support the standards, as it is doing. Grassley’s letter does mention college and career-ready standards, but doesn’t specifically call for restrictions in the suggested language it wants to red line into the federal budget. One possible reason why it doesn’t is that no one on the senator’s staff (and, quite likely, none of the folks who helped draft it in the first place) know enough about red-lining federal education policy to make that plain in the first place.  The other? Because demanding that the Obama Administration not be allowed to ask states to craft and implement college- and career-ready standards would put Grassley (and his fellow Republicans in Congress) in the uncomfortable position of being accused by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Senate Democrats of not wanting states to actually provide students with high-quality education, as well as put Republicans in the uncomfortable position of battling with entrepreneurs and businesses (as well as chambers of commerce) who have long supported implementation of the standards.

Of course, if Grassley and his allies were paying much attention, they would realize that the administration’s request for states to implement college and career-ready standards isn’t all that Common Core opponents (or, the administration, when it chooses to play it up) makes it out to be. Why? Because the administration doesn’t actually specify what makes for college and career-ready standards in the first place. A state could easily come up with a shoddy set of curricula standards, call them college and career-ready, and still get the administration’s approval in exchange for being allowed to ignore No Child and its Adequate Yearly Progress provision. More importantly, the administration can’t even hold states accountable for implementing the standards in the first place because federal law restricts it from doing so.

[By the way: This fact is one reason why Dropout Nation has argued strongly against the Obama Administration's waiver gambit since it was announced nearly two years ago; the administration is essentially allowing states to not meet their obligations to make sure that districts and schools are serving all children well, the very issue that led George W. Bush, the late Ted Kennedy, and current House Speaker John Boehner to craft No Child in the first place.]

As you would expect, what Grassley fails to mention in his letter is that Common Core was already being developed long before the Obama Administration came into the picture. Starting in 2004, Achieve Inc. started working with states through its American Diploma Project to help them develop curricula requirements for obtaining high school diplomas. That work would become more extensive when state governments through their two policymaking groups — the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers — began developing what are now Common Core reading and math standards. Common Core, in turn, builds upon the lessons gleaned from earlier efforts by reform-minded governors and standards and accountability activists within the school reform movement to craft curricula standards at the state level. Which hits upon this key point: Voluntary efforts toward national curricula standards has been as much a goal of the school reform movement (particularly standards and accountability advocates such as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute) as expanding school choice.

One of the lessons learned was that it is difficult for reform-minded governors to develop college preparatory standards in part because it meant facing opposition from traditionalists opposed to being accountable for providing kids with high-quality education. This fact is one reason why just two states had eighth-grade math standards that match that of the top seven nations in mathematics, according to the American Institutes for Research. The other, learned from No Child, is that the federal government can play a powerful role in providing cover to reform-mined governors and state chief school officers, who can then cut through opposition in order to make their overhauls a reality. Contrary to Grassley’s assertions and that of other Common Core foes, the Obama Administration isn’t engaging in any “interference”. In fact, based on the other complaints from Common Core foes about how the standards interfere with their cherished notions of local control by districts (which, under state constitutions, does not exist), and with their desire to continue the longstanding practice of districts and teachers developing their own curricula (which has proven to be an abject disaster for our children), Common Core supporters were right in essentially allowing the Obama Administration to implicitly support the standards.

The Obama Administration isn’t engaging in anything novel. Since the passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (which encouraged states to do more so that children can get on the path to employment in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields) administrations Republican and Democrat have encouraged this work in providing all kids with comprehensive college-preparatory curricula. The Reagan Administration’s release of A Nation at Risk in 1983 supported efforts already being undertaken by governors and chambers of commerce in southern states; it also led to the launch of some 25o commissions and panels working on developing curricula standards along with addressing other aspects of the nation’s education crisis three years later, according to current Teachers’ College President Susan Fuhrman. Then in 1989, the first Bush Administration would convene governors together in Charlottesville, Va., to craft America 2000, a series of goals that included setting comprehensive curricula standards; the Clinton Administration would follow up on this by 1994 with the passage of Goals 2000 as well as the reauthorization of what is now No Child. The passage of No Child, with its focus on measuring how well states and districts were doing in providing education to all children (including those from poor and minority backgrounds) would further encourage states to come together and develop common curricula standards.

Driving much of the work is the reality that far too many kids, especially those from poor and minority backgrounds (including those who live in Grassley’s home state) are not getting the education they need for success in an increasingly knowledge-based economy. The other driving force? The reality that the federal government wasn’t actually doing its job of holding states accountable for how it spent — or even whether it achieved results — with the subsidies provided, and that states, in turn, were not meeting the obligations in their respective state constitutions to ensure that districts — the arms of state government providing teaching and curricula — were doing their job as well. If anything, the Obama Administration is doing exactly what previous administrations since the 1980s have done: Holding states accountable for the federal education subsidies they receive, as well as supporting efforts by states to provide children with high-quality education. [The fact that the Obama Administration fails to realize that the strong accountability that is provided by No Child would actually help Common Core stick is pitiable; it should embrace common standards and common accountability that can be provided through No Child's accountability provisions.]

One can argue with some legitimacy that the federal government shouldn’t be funding education in the first place. But that discussion was settled 150 years ago with the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act, which provided support for  development of the nation’s public universities. More importantly, as shown by Grassley’s fellow Republicans such as House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (a defender of federally subsidizing the nation’s special education ghettos) and House Speaker Boehner (a school reformer who continually defends efforts such as the D.C. Opportunity voucher program) few on Capitol Hill are either seriously interested in scaling back that role or  think it makes sense to do so.

Grassley’s effort, in short, is merely hamfisted grandstanding. It certainly gives Common Core foes a talking point for their claptrap. But it offers nothing in the way of thoughtful solutions for the nation’s education crisis.

Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

Anyone who has been paying attention to the failures of California on the school reform front shouldn’t be surprised by Sunday’s move by the Golden State’s Democratic Party activists to approve a measure condemning centrist and liberal Democrat reformers in the state (and across the nation) for daring to oppose the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers affiliates that have long sustained the party. After all, NEA and AFT affiliates in California have sewed up their sway over Democratic Party leaders who control the state legislature, as well as have the state’s once-and-future governor, Jerry Brown, along with Supt. Tom Torlakson, under their thumbs. Considering how state Democratic leaders sparred with Democrats for Education Reform last year over the latter’s use of Democrat in its name (along with the NEA’s California affiliate complaining about the Obama re-election campaign’s hiring of former Parent Revolution communications lead Linda Serrato), the rancor between Democrat activists with ties to teachers’ unions, and centrist Democrat reformers is no longer all that shocking.

Conservative reformers who support Common Core reading and math standards, on the other hand, are probably more shocked by the move earlier this week by the Republican National Committee to pass a resolution opposing the implementation of the curricula reform effort in 45 states and the District of Columbia. After all, conservative reformers supporting Common Core have succeeded in beating back efforts by opponents — most-notably fellow reformers Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute and Hoover Institution’s Williamson Evers — to gain support from the American Legislative Exchange Council, the convening organization for GOP legislators in the nation’s 50 statehouses, so they didn’t likely expect the RNC to pass this proposed resolution. But they shouldn’t be. Movement conservatives such as Americans For Prosperity, cheered on by Stergios, Evers, and University of Arkansas’ Jay P. Greene (and playing on former Indiana superintendent– and now Florida Commissioner — Tony Bennett’s defeat last year) have stepped up their campaign in states such as Indiana, Missouri, and Alabama to roll back the standards.

Both events serve as important reminders to reformers on both sides of the party lines of this reality: That they cannot count on unquestioned support from politically ideological fellow-travelers whose concerns often lie more either with issues other than addressing the nation’s education crisis or with preserving political power they have gained in districts and at the state level with the help of traditionalist forces. Building strong bipartisan coalitions that engage families and communities on the ground, along with forcefully challenging the thinking of ideological allies within party ranks, is critical to sustaining systemic reform.

For centrist Democrat reformers at the national level, this is the best of times. They largely won the day when it comes to education positions within the Democratic National Committee, as well as in directing federal education policy, with the Obama Administration largely ignoring the entreaties of the NEA and AFT (and those of the progressive activists within the part who have been co-opted by the two unions over the past few years). This strong position at the national level, which began in the early 1990s when Bill Clinton embraced charter schools and supported the first efforts to require states to show results for the federal subsidies they received, became more-prominent five years ago after reformers backed eventual Democratic presidential nominee Obama while NEA and AFT leaders backed Hillary Clinton instead. Democrat politicians who aspire to succeed Obama as the nominee (and next president) will likely embrace systemic reform wholeheartedly. Two of the likely nominees, in 2016, New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, have both spearheaded reform efforts during their tenures in top state office.

As for conservative reformers? They still dominate education policy within the Republican National Committee having long ago won support for much of their positions. This is especially true when it comes expanding school choice, with strong today among presidential aspirants such as Sen. Marco Rubio as well as from congressional leaders such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, all of whom have realized that it has the potential to play key roles in building a strong platform to retake the presidency three years from now. At the same time, conservative reformers — especially those in the vanguard of the standards and accountability movement — are in a stalemate of sorts. Movement conservatives, still steamed over the what they consider to be the excesses of George W. Bush’s presidency, wrongly view the No Child Left Behind Act and its accountability provisions as federal overreach, even though the law merely reaffirmed the role of states as the primary decision-makers in education policy, blessed accountability efforts that had already been put into place by governors in states such as Texas and Florida  (and supported in the 1980s by the Reagan Administration with the release of A Nation at Risk), and gave reform-minded state leaders leverage in advancing reforms opposed by traditionalists.

The implement of Common Core has become a particular bone of contention between conservative reformers supportive of standards and movement conservatives opposed to them, especially in the nation’s statehouses. As with No Child, movement conservatives think that it is essentially federal overreach, especially because of the role of the Obama Administration in implicitly endorsing the standards as well as in supporting the work of states to implement them. [That the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has supported conservative and centrist Democrat reformers alike, is involved in advancing the standards, has also led some foes -- call them Gatesers -- to claim that supporters engaged in a conspiracy to craft the standards in secret.]

As a result, conservative reformers have sparred both at the national level and in states such as Indiana with usually-sensible counterparts on the movement conservative side as well as beating back the conspiracy-theorizing and misinformation campaigns by the likes of syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin (whose misinformed pieces were criticized by Dropout Nation last month). [Malkin feels that she's "under fire" from supposed big-government conservatives, your editor somehow included; feel free to heartily laugh at that statement.] Centrist Democrats may soon find themselves engage in similar battles with fellow Democrats of a traditionalist (and often, progressive) mindset, especially California, where Gov. Brown has been skeptical of reform measures in general (and is likely just as opposed to Common Core) because he thinks they are efforts in social engineering. Apparently Brown and Malkin share similar thinking.

But Common Core isn’t the only issue on which centrist Democrats and conservative reformers find themselves unable to count on their ideological fellow-travelers for support. Centrist and liberal Democrat reformers have suffered a string of defeats at the ballot box over the past three years, with longstanding champions such as former state senator Gloria Romero losing to traditionalists such as Torlakson in primary races for offices such as state superintendent. In other states such as Connecticut, reform-minded Democrat governors such as Dannel Malloy find themselves sparring with fellow Democrats in control of legislatures just to pass reform measures and budgets to fund them. Meanwhile conservative reformers in Republican-dominated states such as Alabama and Virginia have learned over the past two years that they can’t count on those majorities when it comes to passing teacher quality and school choice measures. In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves (along with allies in the state senate) spent two years using their political capital to convince fellow Republicans in control of the Cotton State’s lower house to accede in passing what ended up being a relatively modest charter school expansion law. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has had as much trouble convincing fellow Republicans to expand the Wolverine State’s public school choice initiative and voucherize school funding as he has had success in passing measures allowing the state to take control of failing districts and other local governments.

For both centrist Democrat and conservative reformers, the roots of the sparring with ideological fellow-travelers are both political and philosophical.

In most cases, battles over reform have far less to do with political ideologies than with the power relationships (and often complementary views on the potential of poor and minority children) that often exist at the state and even school district levels. For centrist Democrats, the NEA and AFT remain formidable (albeit weakened) foes within the party because of their vast war chests and rank-and-file members, both of which the unions use to keep Democrat legislators in line. The two unions, especially the AFT, use their longstanding ties to old-school civil rights groups (particularly the NAACP, whose aging members also tend to be rank-and-file teachers’ union members), and successful co-opting to support Democrat legislators opposed to reform; this includes the aging cadre of old-school black politicians (including Virginia State Sen. Henry Marsh) who are reliable foes of expanding choice.

As for conservative reformers? They have to deal with the fact that school districts are often the biggest employers in their communities and the most-powerful political players in southern and rust-belt states. Plenty of state legislators, regardless of party affiliation, have gotten their start serving on the school board with support from the local teachers’ union affiliate; their relatives often also work for the district in some capacity. These relationships, along with the interest of politicians in keeping office, often lead to Republican legislators — especially those representing suburban districts opposed to any disruption in their monopolies — being far less interested in embracing any sort of systemic reform. It is why until recently, states such as Tennessee often limited the growth of charter schools to big-city locales.

Then there are the ideological complications with which both reform camps must deal. The ideological opposition of progressives to anything that smacks of private-sector involvement means that supposedly “neoliberal” concepts touted by centrist Democrats such as charter schools (which are public schools operated by companies and nonprofits) will never find favor with the Move.org crowd. This thinking (along with their general view that education can be used as a form of indoctrination — a view also shared among many movement conservatives — even through both Nobel Laureate Friedrich von Hayek and history have shown that attempts to do so never really work out) makes it easier for progressives to join arms with NEA and AFT affiliates, whose leadership often mouth such views (even as they are paid as well as counterparts in the corporate realm). It makes sense. Progressives not focused on education and traditionalists tend to also engage in the same anti-intellectualism.

Meanwhile conservative reformers have to win over both public intellectuals among movement conservatives (who are focused more on the expansive role of the federal government in civil society than on education, whose complications often defy ideological orthodoxy on both left and right), populists (who want to preserve what they consider to be traditional values such as the idea that the government that is best is the one at the local level that is, in theory, closest to the people), and even social conservatives and libertarians (both of which want government out of the education business). Any reform effort that doesn’t match either perspective will be opposed strongly, even if it helps their children. It is why movement conservatives have opposed Common Core even as they have to privately admit the low quality of curricula provided in schools, and have to accede that expanding choice alone won’t address those issues. The fact that many movement conservatives have forgotten that it is an important to make what government that does exist work effectively as possible as it is to reduce its scope — an important principle at the heart of the movement itself since the days of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan — is also part of the problem.

None of this should surprise either centrist Democrat or conservative reformers. If anything, the success of the school reform movement has been driven by bipartisan efforts that involved defying opposition from their respective ideological fellow-travelers. In Indiana, for example, the alliance between a cadre of centrist Democrats and conservative Republicans (including former state higher education commissioner Stan Jones, an appointee of former Hoosier State governor and later U.S. Senator Evan Bayh, and state Rep. Robert Behning, who chairs the lower house’s education committee), led to the array of reforms that weren’t necessarily embraced by either party’s more-orthodox wings. Same is true in Florida, where both Democrat Lawton Chiles and Republican Jeb Bush would be responsible for the most-successful state-level reform effort. And this was made especially clear within the past decade, especially at the federal level, with the work of George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy (along with current House Speaker John Boehner) in passing No Child.

Centrist Democrat and conservative reformers simply cannot succeed in advancing their efforts without working together. This is especially true as both No Child and the Obama Administration’s less-than-useful effort to eviscerate the law’s accountability provisions have reaffirmed the role of states in overseeing education. This means embracing an approach similar to that of Wayne Wheeler, the legendary head of the Anti-Saloon League who successfully worked with all comers to pass the 18th Amendment that led to Prohibition. Part of that work must also include engaging families — especially single-parent households, grandparents, immigrant households, and even social conservative families — who understand the need for systemic reform. This starts with listening closely to those families, as well as addressing the safety and school climate issues that greatly concern them (which are a byproduct of the nation’s education crisis).

At the same time, both camps of reformers must strongly challenge the thinking of their ideological fellow-travelers, even if it means making one’s allies a little unhappy. After all, if school reformers have to challenge each other’s thinking, then they should challenge their politically ideological allies as well, especially if it perpetuates practices that lead to poor and minority kids being condemned to poverty and prison. Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Kathleen Porter-Magee and Sol Stern did a fine service earlier this month in following Dropout Nation‘s suggestion to conservative reformers last month by challenging movement conservatives in the pages of National Review. Both camps need to engage in that kind of challenging — and given the conspiracy-theorizing and misinformation by Common Core foes (as well as the overall nastiness of Democrat allies of traditionalist opponents), playing hardball is not an option. Centrist Democrats, in particular, should press progressives on how they can stand with NEA and AFT affiliates when their opposition to choice — as well as their defense of defined-benefit pensions (and their massive deficits) — hurts the very poor and minority children for who they claim concern.

Reformers on both sides must also make clear to their fellow-travelers the political advantages that can come from embracing all aspects of systemic reform. After all, at the end of the day, politicians and activists want to win as much as they want to be ideologically pure. Conservative reformers, for example, can note to other Republicans how embracing Common Core can actually help the party win support in big cities as part of a comprehensive effort that includes immigration reform and addressing the quality-of-life issues that Democrats can sometimes ignore to their peril. At the same time, centrist Democrat reformers can articulate to other Democrats how supporting the overhaul of traditional teacher compensation would actually help free up money that can be used to address other concerns, especially funding early childhood education. Reformers on both sides must also find ways to help politicians within their respective ranks (as well as hold them accountable for not standing for overhauling American public education). Helping a state representative craft answers to questions posed by constituencies who may oppose those reforms would certainly be helpful.

For both centrist Democrat and conservative reformers, the battles with their politically ideological fellow-travelers won’t cease. It is best to build upon their bipartisan alliance, while also forcing their allies within Democratic and Republican Party ranks to answer for their defense of policies and practices that cannot be defended.