Education commissioner opens season for public comment on Kentucky’s version of the Common Core State Standards

Kentucky was the first state to adopt the Common Core State Standards and the first to implement tests in math and reading that were aligned to those standards.

And, those standards have proved increasingly controversial.

So, it makes sense that the Kentucky Commissioner of Education has pushed up his original plan to revisit those standards by a year and just issued the “Kentucky Core Academic Standards Challenge” to gather recommendations for changes and improvement to the standards from educators and the public.

Such changes are badly needed, and on one hand I hope many people provide inputs.

But, I also have a serious question – can Kentucky really change those standards? Right now, what is called the Kentucky Core Academic Standards for math and reading are really just cut-and-paste adoptions of the Common Core State Standards. I’m not at all sure we can change them.

Consider this:

1) The US Department of Education has largely hijacked the standards and testing authority of the states with Race to the Top grants and No Child Left Behind waivers,

2) Even the Kentucky Commissioner of Education is now pointing to serious intrusions of the feds into the states’ rights area of education, and

3) The standards are copyrighted by two private Washington, DC organizations. Kentucky has no control over the copyright.

So, what guarantees do Kentuckians have that we can actually make such changes to someone else’s standards? Will the feds let us do this? Have we already mortgaged this state’s control over such education matters to the US Government?

I don’t think anyone in Kentucky really knows, right now, but there is certainly a fur fight going on between our commissioner of education and the US Department of Education. All by itself, that is a remarkable, and very chilling, situation.