Should Louisiana taxpayers “keep it simple,” and allow
high-priced Common Core education contracts to be funded in violation of our
state contracting laws?
That was the suggestion of Stephen Waguespack, LABI President,
when he argued last Sunday that it was too late to remedy the badly designed
Common Core Program by canceling the sole-source contracts the way our
governor, Bobby Jindal, chose to do.
Mr. Waguespack does not seem to be aware of the public
testimony of teachers, parents, and administrators who are clearly making the
case that Louisiana's Common Core Program was disastrously adopted, recklessly
imposed, without adequate design input from teachers, subject-matter experts,
or education testing experts.
There have been dozens of hearings, media interviews, and
expert testimonies in which education leaders argued that the Common Core
Program is hurting our state public education system.
The legislature tried to halt the program, but, so many state
legislators are financially beholding to education industry lobbyists, they
dared not cross their patrons by voting down the Common Core, as their
constituents asked them to.
Governor Bobby Jindal chose to halt the Common Core with a
legal strategy. He vowed to restore some
modicum of democratic process to the next phase of planning for Louisiana's
public schools.
But, now, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary
Education is trying to force the Common Core through – no matter what the
people and the experts say.
Enter Mr. Waguespack, spokesperson for the Louisiana Business
Institute: Go through with the Common Core, because we've already invested four
years in it. “It's just that simple.”
Mr. Waguespack did not address any of the critical concerns
presented by dozens of nationally recognized educators. He ignored concerns expressed by thousands of
teachers and parents who are worried that the Common Core is not age
appropriate for younger school children, but at the same time, not rigorous
enough for high school age children.
He minimized our concerns using the label “doubts,” then
proceeded to argue we should do the easy thing: spend hundreds of millions of
dollars MORE on tests that were never subject to scrutiny by experts in the
field of education.
I can think of several disasters that resulted from this kind
of thinking, this kind of inattention to fundamental design flaws.
Do you remember the Challenger Shuttle that was torn apart minutes
after takeoff, killing six astronauts and the first teacher to travel in
space? Days before takeoff, NASA
engineers were still debating design flaws.
NASA management chose to go through with the launch, because it was just
that simple: they were fearful of the
embarrassment guaranteed if there was another delayed take-off due to an
inexpensive design flaw.
Do you remember our shock and awe as a nation, when the City
of New Orleans was submerged under water – because design flaws in the New
Orleans Levees resulted in devastating floods after Hurricane Katrina? Three months BEFORE Katrina, scientists were
testifying that MRGO, a dirt moving project that was supposed to make it easier
for ships to navigate to the port were rarely used, and they actually created a
funnel for storm waters to surge through – guaranteeing major flooding. MRGO was nicknamed “Trojan Horse.” Warnings to correct the design flaw were not
heeded. We know the rest of the story.
So many complex engineering plans have design flaws, but, we
ignore them because “It's just that simple:”
Disasters rarely happen.
Do you remember our disbelief as a nation when the Deepwater
Horizon wells ruptured? This engineering
project was rushed. Warnings of
impending danger by trained staff were ignored. In the interest of getting oil
to market quicker, managers took the simple solution. They rushed a job and ignored reports of
design flaws. Eleven workers were
killed.
The Deepwater Horizon Disaster caused one of the worst
environmental crises in American History.
There's no reason to rush the Common Core Program through, now
that design flaws and contracting flaws have been made obvious to our
legislators, our Governor, and our parents and community leaders.
Sometimes, it's smart to pull the plug on badly engineered
structures. It's just as smart to pull
the plug on badly designed education programs.
In the short run, superintendents and directors and public
leaders may be red-cheeked with embarrassment at the sudden change of
course. After all, they've been forced
to publicly endorse a very badly designed program that is already doing a lot
of harm to our children.
But, in the long run, we can produce lasting positive changes
in our schools by adopting research-based curriculum and testing strategies
that meet the real needs of our diverse students and our 21st century workforce --- without doing harm in the process.
Public Education should do no harm. It's just that simple.
Copyright July 22, 2014
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