Dr. Sandra Stotsky, an expert on ELA Standards and a former member of the CCSSI validation committee explains how states and school districts can opt-out of Common Core. Here’s a key excerpt.
On the national level,
If a state received RttT money and spent it, it most likely doesn’t have to pay it back if it now seeks to opt out of using Common Core’s standards (by any name) and any tests aligned to or based on these standards. Neither the RttT application nor the grant award from USED contained a repayment penalty for withdrawing from a commitment. Moreover, the Grant Award Notification from USED implied withholding of future RttT funds, not repayment of RttT funds already expended.
In other words, there seem to be no likely penalties if a state accepted a USED award of RttT funds and now chooses to withdraw from the agreement. States can justify their withdrawal on the grounds that the Common Core standards do not meet the original requirements of “common standards” outlined in the RttT application. These standards were supposed to be “supported by evidence that they are internationally benchmarked.” But they are not. The Common Core Validation Committee never received any evidence….
At the state level,
Districts can select their own curricula and, in some states, their own standards. What they cannot do easily is avoid state testing. State tests operate under state laws which force all districts to participate, although sanctions vary by state. Typically, the results of these tests are used to rank or grade schools publicly, and they serve to label the schools as meeting or not meeting NCLB’s requirement of proficiency.
A district with a stronger curriculum than one addressing Common Core’s standards is betting implicitly that its results will be better on the state test. If schools choosing to address more demanding standards than Common Core’s are ranked low on a Common Core-aligned test for several years, they may face state department of education sanctions, which can range from the state managing the district to reshuffling school administrators. Legislators can address this power play by withholding funding of the state’s department of education if it seeks to prevent schools with low scores on a Common Core-aligned test from addressing more demanding standards than Common Core’s. All the district should be required to do is produce evidence of evaluations showing that its standards are more demanding than Common Core’s….