every saturday at ten pm and saturday at nine pm eastern. you can watch previous after his program on our website, book to be.org. >> here's a look at what's on prime time tonight. at at 7:30 p.m. eastern time a panel on, court and the state of the education system in america. at 9:00 p.m. remember the life and political career of late congressman, john kemp. at ten pm on book tvs afterwards, bethany mclean talks about the u.s. mortgage finance system. at 11 pm buzz a biz injured or talks about the impact of football on the social and political landscape in odessa, texas. that all happens next, but first up in big tv but first up in big tv a panel on education in america.

>> good morning, the publisher of burlington court. five years into the common core we are at a critical juncture. common cores added all-time low -- it has dwindled from 26 states and from washington d.c. to seven states to washington dc. it is really no longer viable. in fact, the other national is not doing much better. it is true better. it is true to say there is little common purpose or competent ability left in common core. this volume that we are releasing this morning, drilling through the core is definitely a timely release.

five years into this great american education today, it is worth remembering what we are debating. it is not politics, whether the debate of a contest between two distinct views. the first is that the common core standards are a state driven effort to improve k-12 public education and especially to help children in underperforming districts. the second is that they are from dubious quality and what is historically legally, and financially as state and local issue. drilling through the core is a book that strives to treat the view fairly but to argue the second view should prevail. a little on the publisher pioneer institute, pioneer has been called in the media the brains of the common core opposition, when in fact pioneer really cut its teeth and mashes to sits on issues k-12 education

reform. to help the state make a storks strides and become the highest sector in the region. massachusetts has been at the top of every measure in academics in the country, we rank above -- among the top countries and national tests. we are proud of our state and our contribution to bring about these results for our students, but with with the arrival of common core pioneer realize we needed to move our sites beyond the borders of massachusetts. unfortunately we we have already seen the corrosive effect of the core on students achievement in massachusetts students. the core is a calm nation of multiyear research and initiative examining the key elements of common core. the book basically tries to answer three questions that apply to three different

constituent groups. the first is, for parents of the palm core it is academically rigorous. for states, how much will it cost to actually implement the common core in the online test. finally for congress, are the common core standards in the federally funded test legal? two final comments before we hear from our panel of experts, they are are over 12 over 12 authors, scholars who have contributed to this, a volume that has been edited and within introduction from doctor peter wood. you have biographies. i have two final comments. the first is, contrary to what several scholars and scholars we respect have argued, standards do matter. pioneer takes a backseat to know organization, it is advocating for the very best standards we can have for students. this is not a paper debate. standards are more than just a simple document, especially in the hands of states like massachusetts that took those goals seriously, implemented

tests that were lined for their students, as well as well as teacher certification test which were the best in the country. i may want to recognize a name that does not appear, jeannie guest, she has been a driving force the pioneers work of the nation and developing the strategy we have undertaking in engaging the best minds from who you will hear today. also making sure we maintain the seriousness of purpose and all we do on this. jamie's fingerprints are all over this volume and at the levels of national debate. with that, let me invite dr. peter peter wick, the editor and author for the introduction to come up to the podium. >> the, court has has already touched the lives of millions of americans. i use the word touched

cautiously here, it has been a rather hard touch and have left some bruises. the bruises are mainly what i want to want to talk about in the next 20 minutes. there are probably too many of them to fit into that amount of time so let me try to organize this a bit in the form of something like this, the lower academic quality is for me, the primary issue. i am an academic i had the national association of scholars, i am concerned that the students who reach college are prepared for college and are ready to prepare once they reach the college classroom. the common core has been sold as something that makes students in high school, college and career ready. the career ready part falls away pretty quickly. it is meant to be college ready it is a false advertisement. it doesn't do that. at lower do that. at lower standards. the other two areas are the

enormous costs of the common core and its failure to be a really good halfway to the sciences and stem area. let me take care of those last 21st. i want us spend more time on the academic quality issue. the enormous the enormous costs are a bit hard to pin down, one of our panel experts here is an expert on that. we have come up with a figure of about $16 billion nationwide as the overall cost of implementation of the common core. that is $16 billion figure, we now know a few years ago when we came up with its is probably a lowball estimate. it will will be more than $16 billion. you will not find any accounting of what these numbers are, what the actual costs are in the common course promotional material. this debate goes on for almost five or six years and we are doing it blindly without much knowledge of numbers.

but slowly and surely those numbers are coming forth. we held in california one of the few states that is actually taken the trouble to break down the conditional costs the common core imposes. $2.5 billion on additional textbooks, by $.5 $.5 billion for professional development and $7 billion for technology. those are national numbers i stand corrected. california has 12% of u.s. -- so we can project on their basis how this is going to looked nationally within a few years the #talking about are not one-year expenditures, they are overseas seven years in most cases. we are finding a california that the expenses are out running the projections are ready. the issue on science preparation

really comes down to the fact that the common core focuses on math and english language. so on mathematics that the sciences are crippled. by the time students graduate from high school, unless they are an accelerated program are taken after school programs their basis to proceed in the sciences is very slim. probably the simplest way pointing this out is the teaching of algebra has been pushed back into higher grades so there is not enough room left in most high school curriculum for students to proceed even as far as precalculus. what this means for colleges admitting students on the stem track is that they arrive on prepared. there are prepared in other ways too, that is that is what i'm going to focus my

attention. the common core, as i said is making students college and career ready. to to be college ready means what? it means in the eyes of the founders of educational reform that students are prepared to engage in what is called critical thinking and they have learned to do things such as read text for informational context and to develop arguments based on the readings they get. now, most things stated in the abstract sound pretty wholesome. wouldn't we want our students to be critical thinkers? shouldn't they be able to read text in order to extract relevant information? shouldn't they be able to construct good arguments on the basis of that information #the answer to those questions is yes, we want that for students but how do we get there. this requires me to do what academics which is taking a

relatively simple subject and making it more complicated. so for a few minutes i'm going to complicate. the complications are something like this, the united states has over the last 200 years proven not to be a very good nation when it comes to figuring out how to educate its children. we have had, starting with horse man in the 1830s wave after wave, after wave of reform attempts that has a list every single one of them resulted in making some of the problems worse and inventing brand-new problems. i don't have time to give a history of american education but the common core ought to be seen as the latest in a long series of these.

it follows on from no child left behind, it follows on from reforms of the 1990s .. to 1984 nation at 84 nation at risk report. all of these together .2 a deep dissatisfaction among americans in the way our schools proceed. when the common core started taking shape in 2007 it was building on a pent-up dissatisfaction. that dissatisfaction has a variety variety of forms, one of them is the dissatisfaction that the education establishment had with the way in which our system of education served students who don't perform very well. one of the very first steps of common core was the idea that it was going to set higher standards, it was going to redefined the word higher to include the more inclusive for more students. so the common core begins, the story begins in 2006 when david coleman and his partner jason december, a professor of

mathematics get together and start thinking how to read cast the standards. they're coming on the heels of a long series series of efforts by people who wanted to nationalize our standards, makers cool something of a national project rather than a local estate project. they came up with a very clever way around this which is since the constitution and statutory law for the most part for bid the national government from taking over the schools, or setting curriculum they said let's do this at the state level but let's cordon it all of the states of at the same time this we have the same standards and we will have to factor national standards. sounded like a great idea with the backing a bill gates money, money, they went to the national governors association, they went to an organization called achieve which was founded in 1996. they went to the association of

chief state school officers, i find that name right, they made this pitch that here is a way that we can get around to the constitutional statutory obstacle to have a real education reform in this country. the national governors association and chiba state school officers convened a project called the common core state initiative, they drew in many other partners both corporate and other parts of educational establishment. we we are off to the races. initially, this proved to be very popular with governors, with states, some 46 states adopted it in principle is something they wanted to do or at least they wanted to explore. then we had the recession, and in 2009 when pres. obama found himself with billions of dollars on hand as part of the stimulus

package he was looking for shuttle ready projects, and secretary of education arnie duncan said he had one on hand which was to put some of the stimulus money into the common core. that created what was called a race to the top which was a type of piñata that states could swing at, if they hit it they've got a lot of money. states were desperate for money and suddenly within a matter of two months we had states officially signing onto the common core k - 12k-12 state standards. the trouble was, there were not such standards. they were still conceptual, the project of creating them was underway even as the states were saying we are ready to adopt them. the mess we're in right now largely flows from that moment in 2009 and 2010 when states rushed into adopt, court without knowing what they were getting into in hopes that this would mean a lot more money. some of the states at some money but now we know the cost of implementing the common core far

outspend what the federal government was willing to put into it. common core came with a whole lot of promises, i can run through some of those. it was to be internationally benchmarked which meant we would set standards at least equal to those of the best in the world. in a national benchmarking piece has been almost entirely forgotten at this point. benchmarking now means simply acknowledging that other countries have a standards and are so not quite as good, so what. the insistence on informational text turns out to be a recipe for dissing literature. we found the common core to have shaped informational text meant everything from reading repair manuals to government regulations and sometimes reading works of literature, oftentimes out of context, oftentimes x hurts and as it proceeds from kindergarten

through it gives less and less attention to literature. why should should this matter? if you are perching education simply utilitarian thing, learning how to read, how to express yourself maybe it the recent matter very much. literature is our key to most of dimensions are reading, getting the arguments of cross imagination, world conceptions, the idea of what it means to be something rather than be an extract of information, it gets canted in the common core and that remains a problem to the state. the common core sets itself in an odd way against the american family. but is probably clearest comes to math instruction, where in the early grades map has been turned into a torturous set of instructional procedures that parents cannot comprehend.

one of the immediate effects of the common core was to put a wall down between parents and their children. you try to learn things and help your children proceed through this curriculum, most parents, really all parents find themselves baffled by these news procedures. the claim that this is going to make students college ready just appears to be rather preposterous at this point. it is true that there is some 300 colleges that have now signed on and said yes, we will accept students who had a common core education as college ready. what does that mean? it means they exempt those students from remedial courses. places like california state were over half of the students in recent years have had to take remedial courses before they are eligible to take regular

courses, cal state is now said we are going to stop that. we will let anybody who passed the common core their home high school bypassed remedial courses and go directly into the curriculum. what does that mean if your college teacher as i was for most of my career? it means you end up with students who are really ill prepared and you have to now adjust your course downward to their level. how does the common core make students college ready? not by improving the students but by dumbing down the colleges. wire colleges ready to do this? for one thing, their state colleges when they states agree to do, core common core they agree to a principal that they would abandon remedial courses and treat the common core education as everything you needed in order to attend college. as i said, the bruises here go on and on. one might point to the disempowerment of teachers. the common core's advocates are fond of saying it is not a curriculum simply a set of standards.

that is a distinction without really much of a difference of standards. the standards are so minute in many cases that it leaves teachers extremely little room on how to teach, what to teach, or went to teach it. it is not literally a curriculum, doesn't specify the exact text each teacher might use or what the lesson plans would look like for a given day of the week, but apart from that it is a straitjacket. teachers are now turning out to be one of the biggest critics of common core. an interesting path because it recently the teacher unions were strong proponents of the common core, now there is but a big split between the leadership of the teachers union and the ranking file who find, core is unbearable. they. they did not like no child left behind, they like the common core even less.

the common core fragments knowledge. it does that because it has built into it the proposition that it is unfair for to expect students to have background knowledge or contexts. the most famous example was the teaching of the gettysburg address. without mentioning that gettysburg was the battlefield and a lot of people died there. it is simply treated as a pile of words. the treatment of techs as piles of words is signature movement of the common core. it takes history, takes the personalities, the understandings of human context simply out of the teaching. teachers of course can try to smuggle it back in but it brings us to the next problem which is that the common core is not simply a set of standards of floating out there telling teachers what to do, it is aligned to a set of tests.

in principle it is. to make the common core work, two testing consortia, one called, one called smarter balance and the other called parts, which i can never remember exactly what that stands for. these were created in order to set up national tests marketed through the states so states could choose to be part of smarter balance or both. initially states rushed in as you just heard in the introduction, states are now rushing back out. leaving the national consortia does not mean they get out of the testing game and means they have to develop alternative tests. this defeats one of the purposes of the common core

which was to nationalize everything, now it is the nationalizing and going back in some sense to a state level, but level, but to a state level that is marred by its implementation of a set of rules that get in the world of state autonomy. the common core has a forensic approach to knowledge, everything is now knowledge. you are teaching students to think not in terms of trying to put together a whole understanding of things but to break them down into pieces in order to make arguments. it is as though we would like every student in the country to be a mini lawyer. this forensic approach again, it has some merit, it is a good idea for people to learn how to make the argument but if that is all they learn how to do and a k - 1212 education we are missing a great deal. this movement of the common core, i depicted as falsely labeled initiative. it really looks for something and it has been a prince of the federal government on it through

president obama and the department of education. it is really important to see it arose from, and remains to a large extent, a private enterprise. the national governors association is a private organization, the copyright on the common core is held by an organization. the two testing organizations are private. be in private means they do not have to disclose, they are not subject to foia requests or anything else, the process by which they arrive at their standards, how they change their standards, the question cycle into their test, it is all a black box. when i said earlier this disrupts the family and it puts some kind of wall between the learning that young children are doing and how their parents can help, that wall is even higher. it is a wall that shuts off all of us, the public in general, teachers, parents, everybody

from what actually makes up the content of the american public education. in what sense do we have public education left when we have decided to privatize the entire enterprise by handing it over to organizations that have names that vaguely suggest that they are public. the national governors association, what's that? we know people are private because we have been trying to get information out of them for the past five or six years and it is hard to get. there are other components to this, one although it was not initially part of the scheme for the common core, when the federal government made the common core part of the race to the top it added a demand that the states also adopt a state longitudinal data system, data mining mining is what we call it. the ideas that students performance on the common cork from kindergarten through 12th

grade should be measured and the data from that should go into a national database. as soon as the database stuff got out, and organization named in bloom, went bankrupt. the data collection mandate remains there, the state started to bridle turning the information to the federal government. the two private testing consortia just love the idea, in fact parts liked it so much that they increased it. every bit of of data, every gray, every assignment, everything you do in school is in principle going to be recorded and transported to a national database. this sounds awful, too awful to be true but in fact that is exactly what the plan was.

i doubt it will ever materialize and in fact the public revulsion of this idea is quite strong. it tells you something about the people who plan and implemented the common core that they heard this idea and thought hey, this is great stuff. the position wherein at this point, i would say is one that involves a certain amount of philosophy as well as sort of pragmatic implementation set of reforms. to see the common core as a whole could take quite a while. in fact, we have written a whole book that compiled the details on this. you will not find any other books like this around. i think we are the first to attempt the systematic and passionate as this. it doesn't quite get to some of what i think needs to be said and which i will conclude with. that is, the common core is a

vision of what education should look like for this country. it is a vision that i would say has four parts. one is a cult of expertise, this is education in the form of people saying we know best, we have studied this, we have deep understanding, listen to us, and us, and that elements of education that is always involved allowing parents, teachers, local community to have some say in what education should look like has been sacrificed to the scope of expertise. second, it has an experimental element. i am not against experimentation i think it is healthy. this is one of the experiments in which we don't have any safeguards. we are experimenting the whole country at once. we are eliminating the possibility of local variation of people trying things out and discarding them, instead we put all of our eggs in one basket. that kind of experiment taste and is dangerous.

there, i've use this word before but it is a utilitarian approach to education. i mention bill gates money behind this, he has been a major financial supporter as well as ideological advocate of it. what he would like and many supporters of, core would like is a form of education that prepare students to go into a workplace with a set of skills that they can immediately put to task and earn a living. of course want children to learn to grow up and be productive members of society. education is more than utilitarian. it has to do with trying to form whole people who will be good citizens and can lead complete lives. that stunting of education in a utilitarian straitjacket is a bad idea. finally, most importantly, the common core centralization. american education has never been successfully centralized. there has always been people who

would like to see it centralized and have fought for but there's been ferocious pushback from the american people, actually from the time of george washington on we have had this debate in one form of another. the constitution leaves education to the state, states were a great part of their effort and left most of their decisions to the local community. the community is a partnership have been formed for over 200 years. the. the common core puts. to that. in fact, the founder of achieve, one of the partners of common core, a few years ago called for the abolition of all local school boards. i do not believe that is a part of the common core mantra at this point. it is very much in spirit of what the common core brings. centralization for its own good.

standards, why standards? because they leads to centralization. why centralization? because it leads to sit standards. i am not opposed to standards, i think a big great thing if i found freshman coming into college both literate and numerate and having read some good books. more and more are what is called book virgins. it is not a curriculum that leads students onto the place they need to be in order to achieve in college the kind of education that we would like to see the young men and women in this country. so thank you. [applause].

one of the great reformers of this movement. thank you. >> ..

>> >> we have heard that standards matter. i will focus on english-language arts house standard literally a matter and here i drop my experience in the massachusetts department of education over two years ago while we were developing standards we were determined with the help of teachers to develop a set of standards that focused on literature

why? because in their judgment is what taught students how to read between the lines so they could become analytical leaders and thinkers and writers a and thereby becoming college ready for whatever else they chose to do. with the standards that we created over the next few years was of the classroom curriculum standards are not the curriculum but they died and shape curriculum and here is the first problem with common core e l.a. they're mostly skills not content oriented standards. what do i mean?

here is a simplified skill base standard by the main idea and supporting details it could be applied to the three little p.i.g.s. or bo b dick doesn't tell you where you go with difficulty level, the culture or history or understanding or choosing a particular work for the classroom. a true standard that our teachers help to develop was understand, analyze become familiar with the greek and roman poetry is sound esoteric but that means they could teach the odyssey or the eliot but that is the period that they would choose from to help develop the base of knowledge that

my co-author talk a great deal about in one of our chapters. the first effective standards is a lot of the classroom curriculum the second is on the student test that we were developing at this time because it was required by the education reform act a remarkable and well-written piece of true reform legislation that cable and 93. -- came out in '93. the assessments are the test with the major focus have a literary study it was not imposed by political considerations are even

someone like me who favored a literary standards but that is what the teachers wanted because we passed out surveys to make sure that is what they wanted. please give me one minute warning so i know when to close up. we had any effect on the standards but that was not the primary effect. you were also concerned with the effect on teacher training and teacher professional development those first-class sanders to have teachers to teach to them otherwise it is empty

on paper. i will talk about those two final items that we did not only with the national report card but tied in science and first place with singapore. we have independent confirmation that we cannot manipulate independent international confirmation we were going in the right direction and all students were improving. not just the top or the middle but the bottom as well.

even though it does not seem to be where common gore is going. with informational reading this bill based standards that we have almost no content in cater 12 to guide the curriculum but with those reading standards something that they have never been trained historically to teach because information belongs and other areas of the curriculum.

and the less than half far of literary and that the was the major thrust why did they go in that direction? that is what i kept asking questions about because i come from the field of graduate work of reconstruction and research. with the empirical research to say if the english class teaches informational texting will make students better ready for college and it is not the case. but the fact is it is not

what teachers are trained to do but yet it is half of the reading standards. so i have a good basis of judging what is not common core and then a published poet at providence college his concern is where was the poetry? okay now only have one minute. really have a core set of standards to look at the test because that shows so as they hit school systems across the country after

relearn what it meant then it turns out from our own analysis they don't elicit the kind of writing that is done of the real world of work. messages substantiated does not get it where we want to assess vocabulary research why is that this leaves teachers what to do with their own classroom with innovative test items which is no support to have deeper thinking and reasoning to develop critical thinking. this goes to a teacher

training colleges howell - - now must teach for accreditation and teach to the common core standards in the development that we spend billions better for leanness -- guiding with professional development will take care of those unlicensed in the classroom. so the ongoing battle of the nature of accreditation for teacher training programs and administrative teaching programs and how do we cope with a set of standards to effectively cripple our future teaching force? thank-you.

[applause] >> next we will hear from james milgram professor emeritus. >>. >> let me apologize in the beginning i can barely see you out there because in my world it is 630. with that in mind i will try my best. i want to talk about doublespeak because that is what we deal with talking about common core to hear

every opponent of common core use these standards that we rigorous standards so every state uses this type of burbage. -- verbiage so as a mathematician and most of you, when we hear the word rigorous rethink careful, a precise and to correct. bb boring or frustrating but we think specifically correct above all. but for educators this is too boring. for people to speak the language of education has a

different meeting - - meeting. of the old definition with the incomprehensible common core math i will read one sentence. they may use the term rigorous to describe bernie did reverence they're not intended to be harsh or reject or overly prescriptive but stimulating and engaging in and supportive. if you think about that, you realize this is the exact opposite of us in the real english speaking world of. is a you have a professional

educator hopper greatest king wished faculty member to stand up and say we have created rigorous standards you think one thing about what are they thinking they're thinking creative inflexible. it is a different world of course, this is only one of many examples where words used in context of the education world to beaded dead opposite of standard english. i will not go one but keep that in mind. and i cannot even handle reading my watch so let me know when the there were two events when i should stop.

now look at the common core math standard as professor teeeighteen mentioned what they call the validation committee for common core which was a committee selected by the governor's of the various states and other people that our unknown to me, it to validate to common core the common core standards. we've asked to check the research to verify it is correct, and sign off on the standards as research based and standards that cover the topics that need to be covered. in fact, if we did not like the way the final version

was written part of the charge was to rewrite it. when it became clear that we fully intended to take a vintage of the charge, it was rapidly changed and the final charge was simply to sign a letter saying the common core standards are acceptable. there is no other option that they are excellent. we could sign rothstein -- or not sign. five of us did not sign so they tried to erase our membership in the committee but unfortunately some of us remembered we were of the committee so that has not worked.

with mathematics the standards themselves are said to be an international benchmark but they gave up on that now they say they were compared to the international standards of the height the cheeping countries just compared but not comparable just compared. in fact,, overall in a common core standards, if you compare them against the high itchy being companies -- countries by eighth grade they are tour three years behind. but people have heard that it is far worse for high-school graduates.

the high school math curriculum stops with algebra womack to that is barely the beginning of real subject sitting in the middle of that is a standards were geometry and those are interesting. i don't know if professor sandra stotsky emphasized enough the degree that that, gore standards described pedagogy they tell the teachers how and what to teach. it is non-refundable to tell them what but it is a new phenomenon to tell them how to teach it. and in particular the

prescriptive description of geometry and ochers -- ochres and a common core standards is one of the strangest approaches in the of world it has not worked the few times it has been tried in the past except for one little tiny area in flemish speaking belgium. that's it. no research basis in literature or experience is internationally for this particular form of geometry course that is typical of what is in the common core standards. thank you.

and as a consequence what is not commonly considered is a part of the duty of mathematics in high-school is to provide the background needed for the sciences so a certain amount of the algebra is needed in physics so that is provided typically one year before. more is needed for chemistry the biology in the high school is not biology anymore so that is not true but in particular, a chemistry and physics you need a certain amount of mathematics to take the courses. but a common core does not supply that so with alger breaux one year later that

articulation is not there anymore. geometry and of the things that are needed as well is not there. so the articulation between the sciences and mathematics is gone. they prepared for that purpose of now we have something called the next generation science standards that are characterized as common court to be content free. that is incomprehensible to be frank how can you have content free science? and this is ironic that my son just parted his second career as a high school

science and biology teacher. i abusing his phd in molecular biology and his considerable work on the human genome project as background. he tells me the high school teachers in science and mathematics are leaving in droves because they see the writing of the wall. what is planned is totally prescriptive courses content free in mathematics and science. so the education that you get a high-school to beat carrier and college ready becomes progressively weaker with the broader picture.

it was difficult but we found out how the people constructing common core defiant college ready and i will conclude with that it is worth noting what they meant was straightforward. four then it means back to doublespeak, ready for college is ready for the two-year community college or conceivably a private for-profit for your college or university such as university of phoenix is in desperate trouble because of

the things that they do with government money. but they do not mean a real public or private university. but they do mean the little things that set out and hopefully prepare the kids that our behind for real university courses. so i will stop there. the queue for your attention. [applause] >> big q. professor james milgram -- i'm sorry up next is professor ze'ev wurman.

>> good morning. i live in california but accent is not from california. so they called me professor by an engineer i have the chapter about mathematics but they did some cost evaluations and i will talk to that because it is important and as mentioned in the beginning early estimates assess the cost of implementation $16 billion nationwide over seven years. a big proponent of common

core commissioned another study that came up with other members between three and 12 that that was plenty and that was then. california is one of the few states that made the cost of common core explicit all of the others did not have to separate from the regular budget but california did. over the last three years of october of next month the budget are 5.$2 billion with

5.$2 billion to implement common core. the original estimate was 1.six. so within three years where there of three times higher than cleaning it would cost. assure other numbers are similar but headed which brings me to another point that some of the school districts are suing sacramento because they played the testing is the unfunded mandate because they have to buy all the computers quickly but there is not enough money than is

up to $1 billion per year potentially forever for technology. you would think how do they come to the crazy numbers? if you assume you need a computer for four students for testing and it is cheap. $500 with software is cheap probably cheaper than your phone. but five years than 20 percent amortization and then maintenance and insurance so $5,000 -- $1,000 / four is twitter $50 per student that is $50 per

year going forward forever. so could be used in a classroom sometimes they could not how much is $50 a year per student on average? the current testing cost has more than doubled. then you forget about the actual cost to administer it and they have to do it immediately but in the past he did not have to rush for you could wait another year hear you have to.

so we paid the of money do we get a better test? may be. we spent so much money that it tells of the implementation one proponent says would you hire a contractor that says i would give you the architectural plans in the middle of building your house? would you hire them? so i touched on the issue of

mathematics but let me point out of what is happening in their earlier grades. a lot of people argue which to go with each grade and argue about that and they could say why should i believe you? me being a professor when part of the it buys three panel assembled by the president to create the leading experts in mathematics and political science is taking now with

recommendations with people from both sides of the ideal those that to support common core. with the a research accommodation so what kids should know. and went to the report to compare to expectations of a common core. the expectations are one and two years behind more than that the advisory panel strongly recommended to provide algebra by grade eight not high-school that is what other people are to

ring that is what common gore promised us 2008. end to now they say by the way for getting a. -- forget it. don't worry it is better. no. if it were true then why? to make their repeat the class? it is not true. common gore is barely the old pre-elder brother. so we have a situation read the elementary grades are evolving that national benchmark is in form to to

give the clearest benchmark and that's it. thank you. >> dr. williamson evers from the hoover institution former assistant secretary of education. >> i'm talking about centralization of a decentralized country with their government and education historically so what has the federal government given us a the way of education when it comes to curriculum and what

goes on in the classroom? it gives us social studies instead of history were focusing on curve problems this was the invention at the tide of world war i to give us an adjustment in the 40's to teach all the glasses topics like how to make a cherry pie yet what to do with the date and how to fill out insurance forms that was an idea from the federal government and the new math of the 1960's i know he ever heard this satirical song about how we do that the fee is only a child can do which referring to the break above the family because in the '60s and remember the new math quite well the parents could not understand so this save the teachers are backed with

common core. and tragically the federal government gave us the abysses that's blacks should be permitted from education just vocational education but what does the state give us? charter schools come out copied by other states states, vouchers have come out accountability and standards care about - - out in the '80s. so naturally the state's is innovative and the federal government is destructive and counterproductive. so what happened?

people do everything we talk about institutions but people have wanted national uniformity in the classroom a harsh character but it is more true of france bin united states to defer cities around the same page every day every subject in their wanted that in the united states there want this uniformity to make sure it happens so they wanted it to be federally funded so that is what common core is an ad is the project. their various attempts through h. w. bush, george w. bush said the clinton administration to do some of this you may remember the national history standards

were voted down by the senate 99 / one that is part of the earlier effort to do this sort of thing. year the people that promote common core say it is state to lead but it is not as if the state legislators ever got together to say we're sending representatives with a mandate to to put together that's not what happened. so talking about the validation and secrecy or whenever but it was not a big state enclaved but with the state's with the republican governor of torture with this was going on. in major figure in the policy arm of the national

governors' association did not like the fact that georgia or the students were not performing well causally they were being compared to students of other states with different standards so he was right in there with national uniformity because this way it could bring the entire country to the level of georgia. i personally don't agree with this juror gesture of climate's a letter of achievement not to drag down massachusetts dow -- down or drag louisiana or mississippi up if they are climbing but i don't think they should be lifted up or massachusetts or california standards should be applied.

wide we have federalism? it is unjust and somebody wrote a piece of paper in the '70s and real engaged in their worship of it or i against taking it very seriously. the people that wrote it to are smart and studied history and government all lot. but if you have decentralized institutions you can try different alternatives were effectively or efficiently that is why they're called the state laboratories of democracy to match the order preferences the needs of people of different places.

you can allow people to was cape if they don't like the jurisdiction that they live in they can go to a different place but if you have a common curriculum policed by testing then the only weightier differentiate , this is extremely important this is the essence of education, is lost to try better things were different things so with those may not be good but will find out we would not be stuck with the rigid way to do geometry that the professor top drug that has failed around the world when tried and has never been successfully taught in any jurisdiction in the united states ever. we know in education of

better look -- competitive federalism works so and though the eating educational economists is in the country studied different jurisdictions of places like miami or los angeles a school district to encompass a in the metropolitan area with multiplicity of school districts within that geographical area they had to bring a statistical analysis to invariables but she found having a situation where parents could move their children at the margin to a different district put pressure on the district's to do better it is more awkward of competition in business but it gives that

same pressure and people need that. would get mississippi and north carolina's starting in the fifties there both doing terrible they are very low. at the bottom. north carolina made a huge effort to get better they tried a variety of things that our better than mississippi today because they did not make the effort. look at massachusetts used to be in the middle but with teacher training and testing and development to write the standards to test the students in a whole variety of areas they went for excellence and climbed to the top so governors said people could say come to massachusetts where the

education is uniform put your company in massachusetts because the work force is well educated the executive said work force will have a good school. it is attractive. surrealism certain amount of this we don't really need centralization as we look around the world, we see a variety of countries of course, we have american exceptionalism in the major party is we have much more location of local authority and control for the individual but more countries are much more central listed. the people that promote common core will say the countries that are doing better than the united

states have national curriculum. and they are right to -- about this but they also have a centralized education system we have a decentralized pattern of education so we can use this to climb to the tops of these that are fairly similar of luff hot then united states have been national officer minister department of education they make all the efforts at the state level they make mistakes but they climbed since the '70s from being in mediocre with united states to headed various country with international

competition with all the test of math and science. so udall indeed as canada shows you can do better without this. in conclusion i would like to say that this is counterproductive efforts that runs against salvatore patterns of american institutions it is unfortunate for our children and teachers and parents. thank you. [applause] >> if you have questions please come up to the microphone. >> professor.

my question is, is there any empirical evidence to support reading across the curriculum? >> no. that was the ill-fated attempt a number of decades ago. i've looked at the history reading and writing across the curriculum. both of them ended up busily out over the years because it simply did work at the high-school level. i'm not aware of the research at the college level but it didn't make much sense except in the general sense that teachers beyond the english class should do more reading and writing but what do you happen in the science lab

class riding or lab work? and math was a really to be focused on reading and writing about math? it did long workout in there is nobody research of the two movements. >> can you talk about the three federal laws? >> it isn't just the pattern of federalism as it sits in the constitution but congress was concerned of the potential of federal interference of uniformity. so with eisenhower government put it monday

when dash but many and so there are three federal statutes that forbid the word nt is in there that is very important - - the word any they will go through any opening. any direction or control of curriculum and the statutes that our applicable is elementary and secondary education act with the johnson era now called no child left behind said general education provisions act so this is all educational programs of the federal government then under jimmy carter his

administration couldn't u.s. department of education organization act all statutes have varieties of the same prohibition on any direction or control or supervision of curriculum. clearly the federal government working to support common core and funding aspects of it runs counter to the spirit not even the letter of a lot. -- of volos. >> talk about the gates federation funding it in particular to do a number of events across the country can you comment about the funding on the opposing

side? [laughter] >> i am not sure there was any funding it is grassroots >> you want to know about perot common core or we could tell you about both. >> let me take it because with those groups that have participated decade institute is a big player and the heritage foundation foundation, a state level think tanks but out of those that have been active to organize whether public testimony or even some of the we have made it a badge of honor not to take money from explicit anti-common core donor. the book putting out today was funded by a foundation in parts that is a supporter of the pro club record as well will reapply for with

funding to make sure we put out a fact based, less passionate more fact based history and analysis of common core across three dimensions in one of those is quality but the massachusetts federalism matters a lot to us i am not wasting money matters a lot but given the fact many other states had to develop standards will beyond common core but many states had better standards our rise from the bill of the pact to buy dash in the middle of the pack to the best end of the international test that

is promised largely on high quality standards. as a badge of honor we have spent over five years as a of a thumbnail about to read it thousand dollars. i would urge anyone to look at the gates foundation they do some good things but it is in the hundreds of millions of dollars of anybody is watching pioneer is a good investment. [laughter] >> the think tanks that have been against common core haven't had the special projects it is just part of their regular budgets of activities. common core multiple times puts more money into a and it is a feeling project for them.

anti-common core just do it as part of the regular course of their public policy. >> let me add something. as has been mentioned we have gone all over the country to talk to families a and the legislatures and teachers about the issues of common core. we have a fairly unique perspective to do this with some authority but every single time we can into restate it is the parents who have funded our trips they have to scrounge dollars and we took nobody because it wasn't fair for

any of this for every video not one of those did we take 1 penny and i would love to charge a standard speaker fees but they had no money for that so the only big we consistently asked for and got because they were willing to somehow find was they would pay for travel. that is it. >> this is an issue that was testified about basically the biggest issue with coated core is the common part to treat every single student the say they have to learn exactly the same thing at the same pace. can you comment more about the flexibility if any at

all? >> the original plan was even worse because the original plan for testing involved tests in the course not just at the end but that plan included bad that - - bat but that has not emerged at this point here is the thing. take the case with geometry. it's not that you have to buy a certain book but by saying you have to teach similar aid to growed trying goals through rigid motion you are excluding talk about that eighth goal side theory they remember from your own experience.

it is prescriptive in discretionary well dash and exclusionary. it imposes uniformity. it doesn't say what time the bill will bring or when there is recess. by the way to overstate the much more the we have previously seen the for uniformity in america did education. . .

in math there is no acceleration, specifically there's no room for a second or advanced track.

>> i want to thank all of you for coming and just building on the final statement, we are strong believers this country needs a lot of acceleration in education. the way to get there is certainly not the common core, it is a great read. if you want to know the facts on common core, if you want to do deep into the facts, the legal arguments than this is the book arguments than this is the book for you. thank you for being here. [applause]. book tv is on twitter and facebook. we we want to hear from you. tweet us at twitter.com/book tv. or post a comment on be. or post a comment on her facebook page at facebook.com/book tv. >> vernacular and fred barnes are nest. they recently sat down on washington's journal to set down and discuss the life of jack kemp. >> the fir