Education

Thus 20 years after the charter school movement began in Massachusetts, it is at a crossroads. This paper aims to point the Commonwealth in the right direction by exploring the history of charter school authorizations, with an eye to understanding how the current authorization process both sets Massachusetts apart from other states and stands to constrain the continued success of the charter school movement.

Who developed Common Core's standards? Three private organizations in Washington DC: the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and Achieve, Inc.—all funded for this purpose by a fourth private organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Successful removal of the Common Core State Standards requires parents, educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders to have facts about what the standards are and what they are not. The following Claims and Facts address Common Core myths about the development, intent, content, and implementation of the standards.

When President Obama unveiled his “Race to the Top” (RttT) initiative in 2009, the idea was to award $4.35 billion in federal grant money to states to replicate policies that boosted student achievement. That quickly changed and the federal money was instead used to persuade states to adopt administration-backed nationalized K-12 English and math standards and tests.

The collective grasp of basic history and civics among American students is alarmingly weak. Beyond dispiriting test results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and other measures, poor performance in history and civics portends a decay of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for a lifetime of active, engaged citizenship.

When Abraham Lincoln breathed his last at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton intoned: "Now he belongs to the ages."

Since the late 1990s, when the first fulltime virtual schools appeared, educators, IT professionals and government officials have been working through the practical issues involving technology, personnel, administration and funding. Around the country adoption of online learning has occurred in varying degrees. States such as Florida and California have been leaders, while elsewhere specific school districts have aggressively embraced the new model.

Three years ago, with great incentive from the federal government, the Massachusetts state legislature raised the cap on charter schools in some underperforming districts across the Commonwealth. The move was welcomed by parents, students, and other concerned citizens in those communities—communities where charters have provided a high quality alternative to the traditional public system.

More than one million students drop out of high school in the United States each year, setting them on courses of lost income, diminished health, and increased odds of incarceration. Collectively, their decision costs the nation hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, lower economic activity and increased need for social services.

Across Massachusetts public schools, history teachers believe that the study of U.S. history through the grades is in jeopardy if not in a poor state altogether.1 To judge from recent national tests, students are graduating from the state’s high schools as well as from high schools across the country with little understanding of our nation’s history, its founding principles, its major institutions, and the central figures and events that shaped who we are as a people.