The chairman of the Arizona State Standards Development Committee for K-12 standards, Scott Leska, discussed the rewrite process and the draft product in a Tucson radio interview last week. Leska, a cautious and thoughtful engineer by day, spoke from his heart as he outlined the failed process.
Leska appeared on the James T. Harris radio show as a somewhat reluctant guest. Listeners could tell from the tone of his voice, and his carefully chosen words, that he felt a duty to tell the public what the Governor and his appointed members of the State Board of Education never wanted the public to know.
“What I really am concerned about is that Arizona will be the first state to re-brand this twice and adopt it a third time,” said Leska referring to Common Core. “We’ve re-branded Common Core two times and adopted it all three times. No other state has done that and we will be the first. We will be the last laughing stock as they say. It is unacceptable.”
Harris, a former high school History teacher, struck just the right tone as the two men raised the alarm for parents, teachers, and stakeholders who reject the widely criticized cookie cutter standards pushed on us by the National Governor’s Association and the chambers of commerce.
As the ADI reported last week, the re-write is anything but. The vast majority of the standards were left unchanged and prescribed pedagogy is still littered throughout.
Rarely these days is the public represented by a public servant like Leska. The fact that he would consent to lead the State Board of Education’s Standards Development Committee for K-12 is remarkable thing for which we all owe him a debt of gratitude.
The full interview:
James: I want to thank you for giving us some time here. I want to give you some time to give our audience a bigger bio on you.
Leska: I’m a U of A grad, an engineer. Good college to graduate from. I am a public school product. I went to Flowing Wells and Amphi Elementary. I am a school board member for the Amphitheater School District and I am not up for re-election this year because it is going to be a nasty one I hear. Even for our district, and we have been out of the news for a while that is typically a good thing. However, you never know. I am married and my oldest son is in the Navy and he is serving our great country and as you stated I am the chairman of the Arizona State Standards Development Committee for K-12 standards that was required or created by the Board of Education.
James: The Board created this subcommittee, how did that come about and what does this subcommittee for in regards to standards. What are they supposed to do?
Leska: Well how it came about, back two years ago when I was running for the Amphi School Board our great governor was running for the governorship and also serving the state of Arizona. This typically would not be on his radar; however we had a lot of parents, and I am one of those – a lot in Tucson, and northern Arizona, and central Arizona, parents that came together and said Common Core is messing our children up. Messing up our nation. It will be a detriment to our entire society. Governor Ducey, in his campaign, learned a lot about what Common Core was about. Parents and constituents put enough pressure on him to actually do something about it. So he asked the Board of Education to create a committee, which instead of him outright saying they wanted to get rid of it (Common Core) he wanted to find a way to replace it by creating this committee through the Board of Education.
James: So that is how it came about and what they are supposed to do is oversight?
Leska: Our committee is charged to look at the standards; the 2010 standards we are using today which is Common Core or we re-branded after the name Common Core because it was too detrimental to the campaigns of public officials. So they re-branded the name to Arizona College and Career Ready Standards.
James: But it is the same thing.
Leska: Nothing was different. Pull the wool over the voter’s eyes and of course voters are not stupid, especially the ones listening to you James. The governor could not push this group of very active constituents so he created this to make it so we could review the standards and see how we can change them so that they are age appropriate and they work for our children and our future businesses and current businesses. Engineers, and literary artists, whatever. So we can actually become and stay the top nation in the world.
James: That sounds noteworthy. What went wrong? This whole thing seemed to be so secretive. It isn’t out there. Why was it so secretive? And are you doing what you were actually chartered with.
Leska: Well yes and no. We had our committee, which let me read you what our committee consists of: we have elementary teachers, secondary, high school teachers, charter school administrators. We have an administrator from a public school. I am the only elected governing board member that is in the group. There are 17 of us. Our State Superintendent of Public Education Diane Douglas is on it. You know she ran her entire premise against Common Core. We have 3 parents: one from an elementary school, one from a middle school and a high school. We have some deans of colleges on there. Most of us are not complete experts on this committee. And we are volunteering our time.
We couldn’t individually dive in 100 percent into this so we charged and formed working groups. Experts in their field to get this process rolling. These experts are teachers and administrators and really content experts and such. I hate to use that term because some people cringe on that, but as you know most people are not experts in that. They are experts in their children and what their children learned but they aren’t experts supposedly on how the mind works.
First grade teachers dived into the first grade standards and all the way through to Algebra II, I believe. Your question was how it is going? So we unveiled a few weeks ago the draft standard. And I looked at them and unfortunately they were unveiled to the public at the same time as the committee. So the committee of 17 did not see these before it was unveiled to the public and what I am finding unfortunately is that they are re-branding it again.
As a chairman of this committee, I am going to be bringing it up to the forefront at the next meeting. This is not what we really asked for. I am hopeful though.
James: Hold on there I want to hold you over to further explain that.
James: I need you to tell me that the draft you were working on was released to the public and committee at the same time?
Leska: Yes so let me back up a little bit here. In June of 2015, we held our first meeting and the last meeting was supposed to be on June of ’16. Getting ready for this school year or maybe even just next year; either way it should have been done by now.
In one of our discussions, they (SBE staff) wanted to present all of these standards to the public at the same time as the committee. I, and a handful of others were pretty opposed to it and it was a pretty dramatic meeting to say the least. Well we ended up postponing the vote to have this done for another month or two because the standards weren’t ready….. It was still up for review. The next time we met we had this (unveiling it to the committee and public at the same time) presented again and the committee voted to allow it to happen. Part of the reason was time. This was only supposed to be a year process. Now we are a year and a half in and we just had this presented to us.
James: Who made the call?
Leska: The Board of Education.
James: You are giving them the benefit of the doubt?
Leska: I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.
James: You’re a kind man.
Leska: I am a cynical man too but on air I am going to be kind.
James: The process has been secretive. What can people do to open up the process for real change? I am listening to you and right before the break you were hesitating. You sound like you aren’t satisfied with how this whole thing went down.
Leska: I’m taking a deep sigh. I was looking at these along with some of the committee members and some parents and we are looking at this side by side. Again you are saying a secretive process. I am trying to be on the positive side of things but it is always in the back of my mind really is there a conspiracy; what is going on here. With the subcommittee working under us signed a disclaimer that they are not allowed to share any information about their progress. I talked to the Department of Education about this and it is a standard procedure and the Board of Education reiterated it.
James: I’m going to stop you right here. ….We are talking to Leska on the process and what the subcommittee does. He was telling us that the committee had to sign a nondisclosure document so they couldn’t share anything on what they found.
Leska: So let me clarify. The committee of 17 did not sign that. It was the subcommittee working on the nitty-gritty development did. There are theories about that and what we were told they did not want this to get out to school districts so they would not buy textbooks before everything was revealed. I think that is goofy because no one would buy textbooks and spend millions of dollar on the speculation of a standard would come out. Not until it is actually adopted. That was the reason they gave me.
James: How did they get out? The details?
Leska: The details were not out. We did not know anything which is why it was so hushed. The committee of 17 knew nothing. It was all the sub-working groups that were closed mouth and it was also the groups that were, anyway. The subcommittees were the only ones that knew what was going on and the Board of Education; nobody else really. Diane Douglas did not have any information at that point.
James: Again all the ways this information is protected. You would think this would be transparent.
[Editor’s note: It was not until the ADI had made two formal requests for the Redline versions of the rewrites were the documents available to members of the committee and the public. (View examples here) and here) The SBE placed only the rewritten version online, and as noted by Mr. Leska, those documents are still very hard – if not impossible — to find on the SBE site]
Leska: That is really what it amounts to when I started diving into the nitty-gritty of this – and mind you it is about three hundred pages. We only have four weeks to do it, maybe five. I am finding a very interesting issue with these because we were finally able to get a side by side comparison because they weren’t publishing a side by side comparison between a kindergarten’s standard of reading from the old one to the new one.
One of our directives was to keep examples out of the standard because the examples constitute how to teach not the what to teach and Common Core standards have that in it and that isn’t right because it takes the ability of school districts and teachers and individuals to be able to teach to a child with different learning abilities. So that was one of the main things we wanted out. We wanted cursive. That’s in there now. One of the only states that is going to have cursive. But what I was finding that they were rewriting this instead of putting i.e. they were writing “how” at the end of the example. They are taking out the i.e. and still keeping that same thing (pedagogy) in. There are no changes.
The age inappropriateness are still there. The age inappropriateness of some of the subjects are in the same spot as in the 2010 Common Core Standards. I am seeing it as the same thing with only a few minor rewrites.
It is so important that your listeners, especially with kids, have time to do this. To go on that website; k12standards.az.gov, and make comments. Again, tedious work. I have a full time job and I work on a school board I was elected to with no pay and get beat up over that. I get beat up over this. I am at odds with the Board of Education over this because I am so outspoken and I get phone calls all the time saying that I am being too mean. I almost had, with the old Board of Education president (Greg Miller), rifts with him. He wanted to throw me off and have a reelection for the chairmanship. I don’t get paid enough for this.
James: This is amazing to me because you are the third person I have talked to who has volunteered to be on committees and once they do the results they were supposed to do only get their lives made miserable. Because why? Why are you getting this action right now?
Leska: Fifty percent of our nation’s expenditure is going to education in some form or another. Arizona has I think over 50 percent. It has everything to do with money and that is why. Textbook companies are pouring millions of dollars into every state to keep this stuff in because they want the testing, the textbooks.
James: Now we are down to the nitty-gritty. They rebranded it to something else and it comes out and they rebrand it again and what it is we have the governor trying to protect the Common Core. Is that a fair speculation?
Leska: I won’t say it is, but it is plausible. What I really am concerned about is that Arizona will be the first state to re-brand this twice and adopt it a third time. Re-brand Common Core a two times and adopted it all three times. No other state has done that and we will be the first. We will be the last laughing stock as they say. It is unacceptable.
James: You said what we need to do is go to https://k12standards.az.gov
Leska: It is a specific web address. It is very strange. For the Google folks you can probably find it.
James: I’m up against the wall but I want to thank you.