Common Core: Math standards prompt parents to push back
Rick Nath was tired of the emotional turmoil math homework was causing his daughter.
She was struggling with a new approach to old subjects, and Nath found there were fewer things he understood and fewer ways for him to help. It was a difficult realization for the 44-year-old Sioux Falls resident, who has a degree in math from South Dakota State University.
"By the time she got to sixth grade, that's when it really got bad," Nath said. "In sixth grade, it was tears."
When the 2013-14 school year ended, and 13-year-old Izzy had finished her first year at Patrick Henry Middle School, her parents started considering other options.
In the four years since South Dakota schools began using Common Core, another movement has emerged: more parents are home-schooling. In Sioux Falls, the number of home-schooled students has more than doubled, and numbers statewide also are growing.
Parents choose home schooling to push their child academically, to teach beliefs not found in public schools or to avoid potentials for drug and alcohol abuse, according to the National Home Education Research Institute.
But some parents who have opted to leave public schools cite the new standards, which are benchmarks adopted by a consortium of states and embraced by the federal government: New homework, new lesson plans, new course material. And after piloting new state tests last spring, South Dakota will administer a finalized version later this year to thousands of students.
Even pushback from state legislators has done little to slow the introduction of Common Core in K-12 schools.
Educators have tried to calm parents' fears about Common Core and stress its goals — higher levels of thinking and problem-solving for students.
But parents are frustrated by what they say is a top-down and experimental approach to education. As some seek to regain control of their children's academic future, the two largest school districts in the state have experienced growing home-school populations, and so has the rest of the state.
Nath opted for a mixed approach. His son remains in the Sioux Falls School District, a sophomore at Washington High School. For Izzy, they considered home-schooling, but eventually enrolled her in Good Shepherd Lutheran school.
Mary Scheel-Buysse, who last year co-founded the group South Dakotans Against Common Core, said parents have noticed a difference in the classroom.
"People might not know what the Common Core is, but they'll say, 'Is that that goofy math my son is bringing home?' " Scheel-Buysse said.
Home-schooling doubled with rollout
In the 2012-13 school year, Sioux Falls public schools started rolling out new K-5 math curriculum tailored to Common Core. The same year, the number of home-school students in the district doubled. Home-schoolers increased their numbers in Sioux Falls again last school year, peaking at 544 before dipping to 485 this year — the first decrease in at least five years. That's still more than double pre-Common Core levels.
Thousands more across the state are choosing home-schooling, and like the Sioux Falls district, their numbers steadily increased between 2010-11 and 2013-14, according to pro-rated data from the Department of Education.
In 2010-11, the number of home school students in the state equaled 2.2 percent of South Dakota's total K-12 enrollment. Last school year, they made up 2.5 percent.
Nath decided to withdraw his daughter from public schools because he felt he was being sidelined by a force greater than her classroom teacher or even the district.
"The government is trying to tell us how to educate our kids, without us having any say in it," Nath said.
A letter finally drove Ann Holman to pull her 12-year-old daughter out of the Tri-Valley School District.
Holman had approached district officials because she was concerned about a spring pilot of new math and reading assessments for public school students.
"I said, I don't want her taking this," Holman said. "It's going to be a field test, anyway. There's going to be no results given to the parents."
She asked for an opt-out. District officials forwarded her a message from South Dakota's Education Secretary Melody Schopp. In her letter, Schopp said all students in the tested grades had to take the exams. State law requires all districts to administer the same assessment to all students in grades 3-8 and 11.
"Keeping the student home from school to avoid the assessment would not only violate these laws, but also potentially violate the state's truancy laws," Schopp wrote.
About 11,000 students eventually would take an early version of the Common Core-based Smarter Balanced exams in math and reading.
But not Ann Holman's daugther. Holman already had decided to home-school and pulled her daughter from the district last December, months before the assessments were administered.
Not only was assessing every student a simple matter of following state law, it was important for future tests, Schopp said recently.
Data from the statewide pilot will shape cut scores for future exams, and those exams will be used to shape instruction. Also, it gave students an opportunity to explore the new test, Schopp said.
"We would have been doing every student a disservice by not having them take it," Schopp said.
Holman, a former Crooks resident, now lives in Sioux Falls and is preparing for another move. Never did she consider enrolling her daughter in Sioux Falls public schools, or open-enrolling back to Tri-Valley.
"I thought, I'm a taxpayer, she's my daughter," Holman said. "I'm losing control over, you know, what's happening here."
Common Core sentiments
Diana Koch has heard crazy rumors about the Common Core, including tales of kids studying pornography or learning how to eat bugs.
She battles those sentiments and others as curriculum director for Rapid City Area Schools. Another idea she disputes is the perception that schools are under the thumb of the federal government.
Rapid City schools also have seen an increase in home-schooled students. Like Sioux Falls, the number fell slightly for this school year, but it remains above pre-Common Core levels.
Some parents don't understand the standards, Koch said.
"They think that it's dictating how we're teaching our kids," she said.
District officials choose the curriculum. In the classroom, Koch said she sees teachers empowered by the standards, which she compared to best-practices guidelines common in medicine.
"Why should education be different?" she said.
There is no mystery about the standards, said Jim Holbeck, superintendent of the Harrisburg School District.
His district experienced a home-school jump last school year, but the rate since has evened out. He said there's nothing about Harrisburg's trend that conclusively points the blame at Common Core.
But former Harrisburg district parent Charles Thomas, 52, does attribute his family's decision to home-school to Common Core. Like Holman, he was told last year he would be subject to "truancy laws" if his son didn't take the Smarter Balanced pilot this spring.
He kept 9-year-old Keegan home anyway. Spats with district and state education officials drove Thomas and his wife away. They opted for home-schooling.
"It's just frustrating trying to deal with the school," Thomas said.
Quiet introductionto hot-button issue
The Common Core math and reading standards were drafted by governors and top education officials from different states. National leaders embraced the proposed changes, and federal money was dangled to reward states for education reform.
South Dakota adopted the consortium's standards in November 2010, but only after state educators reviewed the changes, Schopp said.
"We would not have adopted them had we not had the opportunity to vet them, to validate them," she said.
About a year later, district officials in Sioux Falls began considering new curriculum. By 2012-13, new lesson plans were being introduced in classrooms. School board member Kate Parker said all curriculum changes were carefully considered.
"Any time we look at curriculum changes, I think we're just very thoughtful about the approach," Parker said.
In math, for instance, a committee of teachers, parents and community members agreed to buy a Pearson-affiliated curriculum called Investigations because of the support it offered educators, according to old board documents.
The same Investigations-based math, however, is what would later frustrate Nath and other parents.
Scrutiny from parents and elected officials wasn't as present as it is now when the Department of Education adopted the math and reading standards, said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University.
"I think that only sort of happened as it starts to be unrolled," he said.
A Republican state legislator reacted quickly.
Jim Bolin, a former history teacher, introduced his first Common Core-related bill in 2011 — a proposal to block the adoption of national history curriculum standards.
"To me, it just went against the grain of what American education is about," Bolin said.
Bolin was author of a bill in 2012 that requires the state Board of Education to host four public hearings before adopting new curriculum standards. The state board now is host to a series of public hearings for science, history and fine arts.
Bolin also tried to free families from the required Smarter Balanced exams by proposing an opt-out measure. It failed in the House education committee. "We might try to resurrect that bill again," he said. "That's a possibility."
Bolin and other lawmakers passed a two-year moratorium on the adoption of any nationalized standards. Educators and state education officials followed suit earlier this year by drafting new science curriculum standards.
The rallying cry against the Common Core in South Dakota has been mostly a conservative one, at least in the state Legislature. But nationally, criticism has come from various points of the political spectrum, Schaff said.
The two biggest teachers unions in the country have cooled on the standards, or at least on how the learning benchmarks were introduced in schools. In February, National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel called for a "course correction" and said the implementation had been "botched" in states where teachers were given limited input.
"It appears to be this good thing, but the devil, as always, is in the details," Schaff said.
Carly Swedeen used to be the expert for her kids. The fifth-grade teacher at Harvey Dunn Elementary assigned problems, gave students a formula and knew the answers.
Swedeen needed time and professional development to learn the new math curriculum.
"There was definitely some unease," Swedeen said.
Her role is validation and guidance. And Swedeen said she already has noticed a deeper understanding of math concepts in her students.
"We'll run out into the hallway and say, look at how my kid solved this problem," she said.
TIMELINE
NOVEMBER 2010: State adopts Common Core math standards.
OCTOBER 2011: Sioux Falls' Elementary Instructional Level Committee meets for the first time.
JANUARY 2012: Board approves new K-5 math standards, awards bid to Investigations. "The new curriculum is based solely on the Common Core Mathematics Standards."
AUGUST 2012: District rolls out new Investigations-based curriculum.
AUGUST 2013: Sioux Falls Catholic Schools introduce a new constructivist-type math curriculum called Everyday Math, similar to Investigations. Sioux Falls public schools roll out math overhaul for middle and high school students.
MARCH-APRIL 2014: Students across the state participate in a test run of the Smarter Balanced exams, written by another consortium of states and tailored to the Common Core standards. Sioux Falls Catholic Schools opt out of state assessments for the first time since 2001.
AUGUST 2014: Sioux Falls Catholic Schools revamp math curriculum for the second time in two years, introducing a hybrid of old and new-style learning.
HOME-SCHOOL NUMBERS
*South Dakota
2013-14: 3,653
2012-13: 3,444
2011-12: 3,380
2010-11: 3,039
*Adjusted for partial enrollment
Sioux Falls
2014-15: 485
2013-14: 544
2012-13: 489
2011-12: 237
2010-11: 206
Rapid City
2014-15: 566
2013-14: 604
2012-13: 542
2011-12: 492
2010-11: 473
Harrisburg
2014-15: 81
2013-14: 86
2012-13: 61
2011-12: 62
2010-11: 55