By Alan Singer  

You can't make this stuff up. On June 23, 2015 the New York Times reported on Pearson mass Common Core grading centers where a college degree but no special knowledge is required to grade tests and temporary employees make between $12 and $14 an hour plus small bonuses if they "hit daily quality and volume targets." According to the article, Pearson insists "strict training and scoring protocols are intended to ensure consistency, no matter who is marking the tests."

Pearson advertised for people to grade the Common Core aligned tests on Craigslist and Facebook and hired about 14,500 temporary employees. To ensure "quality," already grading exams were sorted in with new exams to see if the graders come up with the same score. It is not clear what happens if they don't.

Bob Sanders, vice president of content and scoring management at Pearson North America compared the scoring of high-stakes standardized Common Core-aligned exams to making hamburgers at McDonald's. "McDonald's has a process in place to make sure they put two patties on that Big Mac. We do that exact same thing. We have processes to oversee our processes, and to make sure they are being followed." Mr. Sanders, of course, has a degree from the University of Iowa in business and has never been a teacher. According to his Linkedin page, he cares about children and considers himself a "A respected dynamic leader, strategic thinker, and creative problem solver within technology, retail, and the educational assessment industries."

By Kris Shaffer  

When a teacher assigns homework, she makes some big assumptions about students' home lives. Do they have the requisite supplies? A quiet place to study? Supportive parents or guardians who will motivate them to work? Knowledgable guardians who can assist with challenging problems?

But even these questions have significant assumptions underlying them. Do students have a stable family life? Or does the return home in the afternoon bring an increase of stress and anxiety about their family's well-being? Single parents working multiple jobs, for example, may put the "parenting" of young children onto the shoulders of their older siblings. The increased responsibility likely increases the stress experienced by the older child, while simultaneously reducing time for academic study outside of school.

Situations like these are not isolated incidences. In fact, they are common - and increasingly so. Recently released data show that the majority of American public school students are living in poverty. Researchers have also documented that students from low-income families tend to have a chronically higher level of anxiety than their middle- and upper-class peers. This anxiety reduces working memory load, diminishing their ability to utilize and develop higher-order cognitive capacities. And this reduced cognitive growth at early stages in life compounds as young people progress through school. (Thanks to Laura Eakman, graduate student at CU-Boulder, for bringing some of these resources to my attention.)

Nevada recently became the fifth state to enact the nation's most systemic K-12 funding reform: education savings accounts. ESAs allow parents to pull their children out of public schools and put the allotted tax dollars toward an education they prefer. This makes the phrase "school choice" a reality.

Unlike vouchers, which make public dollars available only for private-school tuition, the savings accounts can be used for a range of educational options, for private schools or distance learning, tutoring, computer software, educational therapies, public-school classes and activities, and community college classes. Any money left after graduation can be put toward college. This will give Nevada parents more than $5,000 to work with.

Education savings accounts are an innovation; they harness the capacity of modern technology to deliver high-quality, tailored education to every child in the state. Families can mix and match educational offerings to meet their children's needs and aptitudes, perhaps combining interactive distance learning with a local high-school chemistry lab and a tutor in mathematics.

By LYNN STODDARD  

Going against the 10th Amendment, the federal government started hijacking public education 35 years ago when Congress changed the Department of Education into a cabinet-level position. Even though President Ronald Reagan wanted to abolish the department, it became permanent when the department's first secretary, Utah's Ted Bell, appointed a commission to study our "ailing schools." The commission's report, "A Nation at Risk," claimed "our schools are failing" to keep up with other advanced countries.

Following a long-established pattern of states specifying subject matter content, the commission recommended: "(a) 4 years of English; (b) 3 years of mathematics; (c) 3 years of science; (d) 3 years of social studies; and (e) one-half year of computer science for high school students. The commission also recommended that students work toward proficiency in a foreign language starting in the elementary grades." The commission did not mention art, music, health, physical education, electronics, woodworking, mechanics, agriculture or many other subjects.

Supporters point out that charters receive 28 percent less money per child, on average, but still have higher graduation rates and send a higher percentage of graduates to college than traditional public schools with similar demographics. Detractors counter that charters often push out the hardest-to-teach students, and, citing a national study published in 2013 by Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), they report charters barely, on average, outperform those traditional schools on standardized tests.

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