This petition was established by concerned parents and citizens living in the Marshfield, MO area with the sole purpose of gathering support in an effort to encourage the Marshfield R-1 school board to sign a resolution to stop and re-evaluate the implementation of Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) for the following reasons: 1. CCSSI was never approved by Congress but was included in the “four assurances” required of governors to sign to apply for of the State Fiscal Stabilization and Reinvestment Act and the Race to the Top grants funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. 2. CCSSI was never evaluated by Missouri State Legislators, they were bypassed. 3. CCSSI was presented as an enticement for the waiver of “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” funds. Since “No Child Left Behind” required an unrealistic goal of 100% proficiency by 2014, a waiver was a must or suffer disaccreditation. 4. CCSSI are copyrighted to non-government trade organizations. We have concerns regarding access to additional information and the cost of such information. 5. Individual school districts are committed to paying unknown costs associated with implementing Common Core assessment plans, and purchase of materials, of which tax payers and their elected representatives never had any input. This would imply taxation without representation. 6. An apparent conflict of interest by our Governor sitting on the Board of Directors for National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, which holds the copyright to the CCSSI English and math standards when the standards were developed. He also sits on the Board of Directors of Achieve Inc. which holds the copyright to the Next Generation Science Standards. 7. CCSSI, which requires a large amount of data collection on students as well as teachers, could lead to unauthorized sale or sharing of personal data to commercial sources. Although, it hasn’t presented a problem to date, MO has no formal restrictions on DESE from populating data systems designed according to the National Data Model of over 400 data points including non-education related information such as religion, voting history, biometric data, etc. 8. The Department of Education Organizational Act of 1979; the General Education Provision Act and the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965 that was amended by No Child Left Behind of 2001 each prohibits the Federal Department of Education from involvement in developing, supervising, or controlling instructional materials or curriculum (Federal Law 20 USC 1232a-Sec. 1232a. and The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Pub.L. 89-10, 79 Stat. 27, 20 US.C. ch. 70), CCSSI and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium assessment tests coming in 2014 were funded, incentivized, and will be controlled under the direction of the Federal Department of Education. This seems to be an overreach of the Federal Government into the state’s educational system. 9. There is no evidence that Missouri State Statute 160.526 2.was followed. The statute states, The state board of education shall, by contract enlist the assistance of such national experts, as approved by the commission established pursuant to section 160.510, to receive reports, advice and counsel on a regular basis pertaining to the validity and reliability of the statewide assessment system. The reports from such experts shall be received by the commission, which shall make a final determination concerning the reliability and validity of the statewide assessment system. Within six months prior to implementation of the statewide assessment system, the commissioner of education shall inform the president pro tempore of the senate and the speaker of the house about the procedures to implement the assessment system, including a report related to the reliability and validity of the assessment instruments, and the general assembly may, within the next sixty legislative days, veto such implementation by concurrent resolution adopted by majority vote of both the senate and the house of representatives.

Sponsor

Links