Watchdog: Concerns about Antioch School District’s support for Common Core curriculum
Questions reasons for drop in student population
By Barbara Zivica
A number of school boards, including the Antioch Unified School District Board, are seeking to fill vacant superintendent positions. AUSD has hired Leadership Associates to aid in their search.
Here’s hoping that a new superintendent will be able to solve the District’s unexpected drop in student enrollment for which the district has offered no explanation. I find it puzzling because, Antioch’s population has continued to grow and the district’s specialized academies have proved to be extremely popular. It’s a serious problem which needs to be immediately addressed, because it will result in a loss of approximately $1.4 million in state funds which are tied to enrollment projections.
I’m also want an explanation why the AUSD school board, with the exception of Fernando Navarro and Diane Gibson-Grey, decided to purchase new Common Core textbooks and curriculum now despite the fact that revenues are declining.
As far as I know, the subject of the district’s decision to endorse Common Core curriculum was never discussed publicly with district taxpayers, many of whom will not be happy that the board adopted an educational curriculum being forced upon states by the Obama Administration who is requiring states to endorse the standards in order to be eligible for Race To the Top grants.
Common Core curriculum has been endorsed by Governor Brown and former Antioch resident Tom Torlakson, current state school superintendent and a full time elected official since 1980.
Unlike other statewide offices on the June, 2014 ballot, the race for superintendent was settled by having one candidate collect more than 50% of the vote.
Teacher unions who opposed performance evaluations in favor of retaining the current system for layoffs (based on seniority) and other state groups spent more than $4 million to reelect Torlakson, defeating candidates who wanted more freedom for school districts to try new approaches and favored promoting growth of independently managed, publicly funded charter schools.
What is Common Core? It’s a curriculum that assumes all children will “be on the same page at the same time,” replaces classics with informational texts presented without context or explanation, and its math standards are equally dismal. In fact, a Stanford math professor, the only mathematician on the Validation Committee, refused to sign off on the math standards because they would put many students two years behind those of many high achieving countries.
Frankly, there appears to be a similarity between the Common Core agenda and the prior No Child Left Behind underfunded federal educational program that became law in 2002, one that 44 states requested waivers from. A number of states have already dropped Common Core, discovering that when school districts are allowed to innovate and chose what works best for their students, charter schools resulted in increased student test scores.
