June 7, 2013 The Dispatch/Maryland Coast Dispatch Page 43 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR FROM PAGE 42 Slow Down Common Core Implementation Editor: Recently, the Worcester County School Board (WCBOE) president made it clear, the board plans to fully implement Common Core State Standards for Education (CCSS) by the end of next year. Many people have not heard of CCSS. For those that have researched CCSS, most do not like what they have learned. According to Truth in American Education, 16 states are in some form of discussion to or are withdrawing from CCSS. Nine U.S. senators signed a letter directed to the Senate Appropriations Committee calling for defunding of CCSS. Thirty-four U.S. congressmen, including our representative, Andy Harris, signed a letter to the US Dept. of Education expressing concerns with the implementation of CCSS and the manner in which the federal government collects and distributes student data. The RNC passed a resolution rejecting CCSS stating that the RNC recognizes CCSS for what it is, an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children. American Federation of Teachers (the second largest teacher associations in the US) president recently stated, “CC changes are being made nationwide without anything close to adequate preparation is a failure of leadership, a sign of a broken accountability system and worse, an abdication of our moral responsibility to kids, particularly poor kids.” A recent Maryland State Education Association Survey indicated that 82 percent of Maryland teachers believe significant challenges remain to understanding and implementing CCSS in our schools. The MSEA president stated, “We can’t close our eyes and hope for the best. This survey should be a wakeup call for more focus, more professional development, and more consideration of how to implement these changes successfully.” Public policy organizations such as Heritage Group, Cato Institute, American Principal Project, Heartland Institute and Freedom Works as well as parents across the United States are opposed to Common Core State Standards. Maybe the WCBOE needs to slow down, conduct town hall type, public information meetings to provide the taxpayers that are paying for this untried experiment lacking legitimacy and empirical study, the opportunity to openingly ask questions of our elected board. During the last WCBOE meeting, it was stated that this train (CCSS) has left the station and is moving on. It appears that many states and regions are trying to get off the train before it wrecks. Why in the world did WCBOE hop on this train when we were supposed to be the best school system in the state, leading a state that is supposed to be number one in education in the entire country? Every parent should be asking why are we sacrificing our children for a free ride on the Race To The Top (stimulus money) train without knowing or worse yet asking where the train in headed. Kellee Kennett Berlin Between The Lines By Publisher/Editor Steve Green Last weekend’s frightening hit-and-run accident involving a 6-yearold struck by an 18-year-old motorist is as disturbing as they come. The child was reportedly hit with such force that she flew about 15 yards in the air and is now hospitalized with major injuries. While she is expected to recover, that pedestrian accident, along with the handful of others that have happened already this summer, only serves to grow safety concerns in Ocean City. The recent rash of accidents is particularly disheartening after Ocean City and the State Highway Administration invested significant time and resources in new tactics to spread pedestrian safety messages. In the short term, an assumption can be made that those changes were worthless and have not made Ocean City a safer place. That would be a myopic and unfair view at this time. Perspective is helpful here when accidents involving pedestrians and vehicles are involved. The fact is hundreds of thousands of people cross Ocean City roadways every day during the summer. Add to that thousands of vehicles, driven by motorists who may not be familiar with their surroundings and may not be using as much common sense while on vacation, and there is danger here. These sorts of disturbing accidents and a spike in crime happen every early June, and a bit of perspective can help the situation. The fact is we are lucky there are not more accidents on a daily basis in Ocean City, but the effort to spread safety messages is surely worthwhile and its success cannot be measured by mere numbers. There were some strange developments at City Hall in Ocean City on Monday night when Mayor Rick Meehan pitched a last-minute compromise measure on the ongoing paid parking controversy. Meehan’s compromise, which basically scaled down the amount of paid parking spaces included in the city’s new plan, seemed to meet tepid support from the paid parking detractors. However, it seemed to go over like a lead balloon with his close colleagues on the council. As was the case with the former Mayor and Council body, as in preNovember’s election, it’s no secret there is a clear divide on the council. Council members Brent Ashley and Margaret Pillas, who prior to November were in power on the majority side, are routinely along on the opposing side of votes. Not every vote of the council is 5-2, as was the paid parking and budget decisions this week, but many are, and it’s almost always Ashley and Pillas in opposition. The remaining council members –Doug Cymek, Dennis Dare, Mary Knight, Lloyd Martin and Joe Mitrecic – generally see things the same way and vote together more often than not. Meehan’s compromise proposal was a divisive one, as his five colleagues, who usually see eye to eye with the mayor, did not go along with it. An argument could even be made that the mayor’s conciliatory approach here cast his allies in an unfavorable light in front of an adversarial crowd at City Hall. There were no visual signs of discontent among the council majority over the mayor’s 11th-hour proposal, but it was clearly an indication that not everyone is always on the same page on this new council majority. In the weeks prior to this week’s meeting, the council majority had maintained the move had been evaluated extensively and that the city had done its due diligence when it selected the new paid parking areas. In other words, the council vote to install more paid parking was not going to be changing. While that turned out to be true, the attempt at a compromise surely undermines those earlier statements and confirms the mayor and the council majority was not on the same page at least on this issue. It’s not every day that downtown Berlin residents see cops running around with guns drawn, but that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday afternoon when a manhunt ensued for a suspect who fled the scene of a traffic stop. It seems highly likely that eventually DaMar Collins will turn himself into authorities, and the likelihood is he will be heading back to prison. Court records confirm Collins is on probation for drug distribution and recently finished a three-year prison term for that crime. Shortly after being released from prison, he was charged with second-degree assault in April and was set to appear in court in June. Once he either turns himself in or is apprehended against his will, this new assault of a police officer, along with all the other charges, should put him back where he belongs – behind bars. New Standards Will Only Hurt Children Editor: “Common Core Standards will cause suffering, not learning, for many, many young children,” states Dr. Carla Horwitz of the Yale Child Study Center. A Washington Post article, “A tough Critique of Common Core on early childhood education (1/29/13) reads, that when the CC standards were first revealed in March 2010, many early childhood educators and researchers were shocked. “The people who wrote these standards do not appear to have any background in child development or early childhood education,” wrote Stephanie Feeney, chair of the Advocacy Committee of the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators. The promoters of the Common Core Standards (CCS) claim they are based in research. They are not. There is no convincing research, for example, showing that certain skills or bits of knowledge, if mastered in kindergarten will lead to later success in school. Two recent studies show that direct instruction can actually limit young children’s learning. At best, the standards reflect guesswork, not cognitive or developmental science. This is not surprising, particularly in K3 standards because of the 135 people on the panel that wrote and review the CCS not one of them was K3 classroom teacher or early childhood professional. It’s bad enough to set up committees to make policy on matters they know little or nothing about. But it’s worse to conceal and distort the public reaction to those policies. And that’s exactly what happened. Take a look at the summary of “public feedback” posted on the Core Standards website. It is grossly misleading. First of all, calling the feedback “public” is wrong: the organizers of the standards would not make public the nearly 10,000 comments they say they received from citizens. The summary quotes 24 respondents – less than 1/4 of 1 percent of the total – selectively chosen to back up their interpretation of the results. But they don’t even mention a critically important statement opposing the K3 standards, signed by more than 500 early childhood professionals. The Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative was signed by educators, pediatricians, developmental psychologists and researchers, including many of the most prominent members of those fields. Their statement reads in part: We have grave concerns about the core standards for young children. … The proposed standards conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development and early childhood education about how young children learn, what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades … .We therefore call on the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to suspend their current drafting of standards for children in kindergarten through grade three. They did not. Worcester County School Board is quickly moving forward with im- plementing CCS. If this Washington Post article is correct, maybe we need to slow down and schedule public information meetings so parents and taxpayers (who are paying $75 million of the proposed county budget towards education) can ask questions. The Washington Post article concludes, “Our first task as a society is to protect our children. The imposition of these standards endangers them.” Fran Gebhart Berlin