CCRS Support Links

CCRS Support Links and Resources - Share with Your Senators and Legislators

Huntsville City Schools' Parents Support the CCRS

Huntsville Chamber of Commerce's Letter of CCRS Support

Let's Stand Up for Learning Standards: Open Letter to the People of Alabama 
(Letter Written by Cathy Gassenheimer, Executive Vice President, Alabama Best Practices Center, A+ Education Partnership) 


"The Alabama Legislature needs to rely on experts in matters of education." 

Article on TimesDaily.com

Why Conservatives Should Support the Common Core


The Truth about Common Core 
Why are prominent conservatives criticizing a set of rigorous educational standards? 


Elois Zeanah: Her Common Core Standards propaganda broken down (video)

Lessons (Video) Utilizing "Common Core" Standards

Etowah County Teacher of the Year Describes Her 4th Grade Students' Transformation in Math  Since Implementing the CCRS

CCRS Letter (Dr. Rudolph) - Do Your Homework

Former Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Celia Rudolph, speaks out.  She hits on everything misinformed opponents need to hear.   I've used the "kick in the gut" euphemism several times myself.  That's exactly what these last few months have felt like.  Thanks, Dr. Rudolph, for submitting your letter to our blog.  Melissa 

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Dear Mr./Mrs. Legislator, 

Thank you for serving our state.  It is my hope that you will read this email in its entirety. 

I am a 29-year veteran employee of Alabama's public schools.   I've worked in school systems in north Alabama as well as in south Alabama, and in Pennsylvania. Because of this experience, I feel I have a good perspective of not only the discrepancies that exist in funding and expectations in our state, but also what other states are doing, and about their perception of Alabama's public schools. I recently retired as the Assistant Superintendent of the high-achieving system in  Muscle Shoals City,  and now serve as Chair of the Teacher Education Program at Huntingdon College in Montgomery where we are preparing outstanding teachers for Alabama's children.  In short, I have devoted my life's work to Alabama's school children and I still believe in a free and appropriate education for all. 

The Alabama College and Career Ready Standards (CCRS) are the last chance for Alabama's public school children to achieve to their highest potential.  Please do not deny our children the most rigorous standards we've seen yet in Alabama.  These standards are NOT Obama-led standards; they are not driven by Bill Gates.  Please do your homework. These standards are a grassroots efforts by a consortium of states who got together to improve public education in America by having mutual expectations for students across states. I have been studying these standards since before Alabama ever even considered adopting them as our Course of Study standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics.   We have always had Courses of Study for our content areas in Alabama, and have always aligned our standards with national organizations such as NCTM for mathematics (National Council for Teachers of Mathematics), and NCSS for social studies (National Council for Social Studies), and NASPE  for PE (National Standards for Physical Education), and I could go on and on for music, art, reading, the sciences, etc.  Therefore, I can not understand why, now, this is a big issue. The bottom line is that Alabama's school children - black, white, purple, rich, and poor - deserve the absolute highest quality education and the highest quality standards as a framework for their curriculum. The current courses of study (with the CCRS embedded) provide these standards. Moreover, Courses of Study in Alabama have always been a framework for curriculum; teachers may add what they wish.  Ask any teacher.

These standards are not political; there should be nothing political about teaching a student to “apply the properties of integer exponents to generate equivalent numerical expressions”(Grade 8 Mathematics), nor to “distinguish among the subcategories of poetry, such as ballads, lyric poems, epics, haiku, and limericks, based on their characteristics”(8th Grade English Language Arts). If you do not know exactly what the CCRS standards say, and you are basing your opinion on hearsay, I encourage you to scrutinize yourself the CCRS online at ALEX, the Alabama Learning Exchange (http://alex.state.al.us/index.php), and click on Courses of Study. Please see for yourself that these standards are rigorous standards, requiring students to think critically with descriptors such as "analyze", "solve", "apply", and "compare".  Not just rote memorization. There are no suggestions of books, no requirement of literature, and no hint of left-wing life-style. If there were, I would vehemently oppose them; moreover, if you have previously believed these things, you are grossly misinformed. 

If the CCRS are not implemented statewide in Alabama, then it is my opinion that we will, at best, have a haphazard approach to preparing our children for college or a career.  Eliminating the CCRS standards will have a huge impact upon the ability to attract desirable industry (due to the lack of rigor and expectation of excellence) in our state as well as give our sister southern states a “talking point” they will readily use against us in recruiting industry. 

The recent decisions of the House and Senate have been a “kick in the gut” for me – and for all of us who have given our lives to improving public education in Alabama. The very fabric of our society is made up of workers who are products of public schools, and it is quite disheartening to see such a lack of trust in building up this piece of our government. I might add that I’ve voted Republican the great majority of the time, and am disappointed that the party to which I mainly align has been blinded by lies about the CCRS.

I would welcome a conversation with you about this matter.

Sincerely,
Dr. Celia Rudolph
crudolph@huntingdon.edu

Trust Your Teachers - Fact Sheet

Please Support our College and Career Ready Standards.

As highly educated and trained teachers, WE support them.

We ask YOU to believe in and support US.

Facts You Should Know…..

• We are NOT a “Common Core” state.  Common Core is NOT a “program” in our state.  We only included those standards in our math and English courses of study.
• There are no parental control changes from Alabama’s previous standards to the CCRS. If anything, parents are encouraged to be MORE involved.
•  These standards are posted on the ALSDE website, as well as most school system websites.  The standards went through several drafts, in which stakeholders, teachers, and other officials were asked for input.
•  The SBOE maintains “sole and exclusive vested authority” over our schools.
•   The CCRS are only math and English academic standards.  They do NOT mandate any type of data collection. Regardless, all student and teacher data is protected by FERPA.
•   The Math and English CCRS are NOT a curriculum.  Local systems retain COMPLETE control of their curricula (including texts, resources, and instructional strategies).  Parents are still asked to serve on textbook adoption committees, as they always have.
• Alabama selected its own assessment.  We are the first to utilize ASPIRE for grades 3-8.  This assessment is fully aligned with our courses of study.  Instead of an ineffective “grad exam,” upper grades will take the ACT suite, including ACT plus Writing for ALL 11^TH grade students.   Many students will now receive scholarships as a result. 
•  NO classic literature will be removed from the curriculum.  Non-educators have misunderstood the 30% literature/70% informational text suggestions.  The 70% informational text  is to be shared with history, science, and Career Tech teachers, meaning they will embed reading, writing, and speaking into their curricula (as good teachers have always done).
• These standards are far more rigorous and reflective of 21st Century learning than the previous standards from 2003 and 2007.
• We would not support anything that was not in the best interest of our students.  Trust us. 

Alabama College and Career Ready Standards (posted on our website for all stakeholders):

http://www.ecboe.org/mathccrs              http://www.ecboe.org/elaccrs

NBCT (Connie Stancil) - CCRS Letter

Dear Senator,

Please do not support the SB403! I am an Instructional Coach in an Alabama public school.  I have 20 years experience in education.  I have three of my own children currently attending public school and hundreds of children in my local school for whom I want a quality education. When the Alabama State Department of Education created the College and Career Ready Standards(CCRS) they utilized the Common Core Standards so that our students would not be disadvantaged when competing with students from other states.  Our ALSDE did not give up their power to establish what our students need, nor did they abort the right to tailor the standards to our individual state.  The decision to incorporate the Common Core standards into our CCRS was the best way to prepare our students for their own post-secondary college or career within, and outside, of our state.  Our previous standards were outdated, causing parents to pay thousands of dollars toward remedial college courses. The previous standards did not prepare our students for the next level of education.  CCRS is NOT a federal mandate, nor will our student performance data be submitted to the federal government.  Those are fear tactics to distract decision makers from the truth.

My school has successfully implemented the new College and Career Ready Standards for Mathematics this year.  Our students' performance on problem solving and application has drastically improved from previous years. The CCRS helped our teachers make that happen.  My faculty and I have completed an exhaustive search through the College and Career Ready Standards Reading Language Arts this spring in preparation for implementation next year.  We are excited about the new standards for our students.  

I am overwhelmed with frustration at the amount of misinformation and propaganda with which our political leaders are being bombarded.  I assure you, I have read every single CCRS Kindergarten through 12th grade! I have looked very closely at the interpretation and lesson implementation.  THERE ARE NOTHING BUT QUALITY EDUCATION STANDARDS LISTED.  The document establishes the Anchor Standards for our graduates, then maps out the pathway from kindergarten to ensure their success by 12th grade.  There are NO political slants, liberal/conservative twists, democrat/republican viewpoints, nor are there any methods of indoctrinating our students anywhere in the document. Please follow the links below. CCRS is not a form of nationalizing education,  yet it does enable our students to be competitive nationally.

http://alex.state.al.us/staticfiles/2010_Alabama_Mathematics_Course_of_Study.pdf 

http://alex.state.al.us/ccrs/sites/alex.state.al.us.ccrs/files/2010_Alabama_English_Language_Arts_Course_of_Study.pdf

Notice, these links are the actual CCRS documents, not an organization's interpretation or misrepresentation of the document! These pdf documents are what the teachers will be using!  I will be glad to sit down with any political leader, WITH THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT, and search for what the propaganda is claiming.  IT'S NOT THERE!!! 

The CCRS opponents, regardless of their passion and motives, are deceiving our decision makers.  Please read the CCRS document that is on the ALSDE site.  That will be what our teachers implement, nothing more, nothing less!  You will NOT find any evidence to support the opposition's claims.  If you find something I haven't, PLEASE CALL ME!!! Help me understand why our leaders would be against educational standards that will help Alabama students progress.  More importantly, please help all educators understand why our leaders are so vulnerable to fear tactics.  Our state has an institution specifically designed to assess and adjust our educational system for the betterment of our citizens. To undermine that process is much more damaging to Alabama schools than stifling quality standards alone.

I plead with you to protect what the Alabama State Department of Education has created for guiding our teachers, administrators and school systems to deliver quality education. CCRS is the vehicle to enable our students to excel now and in their future.  My children and the parents of the students within my school plead with you to maintain the CCRS.

Sincerely,

Connie Stancil

Ed.S. Elementary Education 

NBCT Certified Literacy-Reading Language Arts

State House CCRS Hearing Speech

Melissa Shields

Curriculum and School Improvement, Etowah County Schools

Nationally Board Certified Teacher, English Language Arts 2000 & 2010

melissa_shields@ecboe.org  /   (256) 549-7563

Twitter: mjshields & ECBOE

The Common Core…                                                                               

·         “will invade student privacy and will track them until retirement."    

·         “dumbs down education." 

·         encourages a lack of love for our country."  

·         "removes classic literature."  

·         is  like "Obama is teaching the class." 

·         is “un-Christian” and “un-American.”        

·         “makes 50 Shades of Grey look like a G book.”   Rep. Jim Barton      

I have read these outrageous claims against the Common Core, and yet….not one iota of proof to support them.  I challenge you to review our College and Career Ready Standards (CCRS), any grade, either English Language Arts or Math.  You will only find strong 21^st Century standards…no politics, no anti-religious rhetoric, no liberal (or conservative) ideals.  I cannot grasp how anyone can read them and see these expectations as the ruin of public education.

I see movement as pure propaganda, a stab against the President and liberal ideals, at the expense of our children and teachers. If this was such an issue, why didn't opponents speak up three years ago when the SDE was creating the CCRS documents? Why now after our districts have spent so much money for CCRS materials and training? Going backward would be devastating to morale for teachers, students, and our stakeholders, not to mention an enormous additional financial burden. My system alone spent over $600,000 to replace the math texts that were literally held together by duct tape. 

As a district administrator, I have spent the last two years studying and implementing the math and language arts courses of study in our district. These courses of study do include the Common Core standards, but they also include our own added Alabama standards. We have complete control of the curriculum, delivery of instruction, and assessment. And just to be clear, every content area has always had "national standards.” Our previous courses of study aligned with them as well. 

I would be the first to speak up if I felt these standards were not in the best interest of our students and our communities. I am truly outraged that this movement against them has gained so much momentum. Is anyone visiting our schools? Talking to our dedicated teachers? I was recently in an elementary school whose math scores had improved dramatically, thanks in part to the new standards and CCRS resources. This is the most exciting time to be a teacher; our schools are the best they’ve ever been.   Thanks to a committed state superintendent with a "teacher's heart” and staff to match, teachers finally have a voice, and THEY can decide how to best teach their students (contrary to what the opponents say).

I thank you for your commitment to preserving the conservative ideals of our state. I want the same, but I vehemently disagree that our College and Career Ready Standards deter from them.

Alabama College and Career Ready Standards (posted on our website for all stakeholders):

http://www.ecboe.org/mathccrs           http://www.ecboe.org/elaccrs

Excerpts from our College and Career Ready Standards: