Academic Standards Review Commission April 20, 2014

Coastal Carolina Taxpayers Association members from the Common Core/Public Education
and the Legislative Action Committee made a trip to Raleigh on April 20 to attend the
Academic Standards Review Commission and to attend a hearing on Certificate of Need
Legislation.
The Call to Order was promptly at one. Commission members in attendance were:
Tammy Covil, Andre Peak, Katie Lemons, Olivia Oxendine, Denise Watts, Ann Clark, John
Scheick, Bill Cobey, and Jeff Isenhour. Joining the meeting via conference call was Jeannie
Metcalf.
The first order of business was to approve the minutes from the last month meeting, the
motion was made, 2nded and passed with no dissent.
Items for information were shared by co- chair Andre Peek and Tammy Covil that included
the status on the commissions funding that had been held up in the Coal Ash Bill. The
bill became law by default, the Governor did not sign the bill. Staffing for the commission
is underway, the Human Resource Dept. has been collecting resumes and doing
screening. The commission members were all invited to participate in interviews. They
were looking for candidates with a background in education, education policy, public
policy, previous experience, etc. In addition, it is important that the candidates
understand this is a temporary position that will end with the completion of the
commissions charge. The positions to be filled are Executive Assistant, and Editorial
Assistant. Now that funding is available, the staffing will proceed and these positions
filled as soon as possible.
The working committee for the English Language Arts committee that consisted of
members Laurie McCullom, Olivia Oxendine, Katie Lemons, and Denise Watts had
provided a written report on their work at the ASRC website, http://www.doa.nc.gov/asrc/.
Prior to the meeting a matrix was created by Dr. Olivia Oxendine to use to evaluate the
different standards. The standards that were to be reviewed were the Archived
Massachusetts English Language Arts Curriculum Framework from 2001, in 3 areas,
implications for instruction, clarity, and focus, and implementation and sustainability.
This pre work allowed the subcommittee to gain hands on experience with the matrix to
determine its efficiency, and if it could be used as an instrument to meet the goals of the
commission. Then on April 3, the group met to compare notes, align and adjust the
matrix as needed. For detailed information on these findings, refer to the web site
referenced above.
Generally, the subcommittee liked the matrix, but determined to add an additional
domain that would incorporate priority areas that should be considered in the assessment
of standards. The standards in K 5 would consider the foundational skills needed, with
reading and writing embedded in every grade, and in grades 6 to 12, the standards would
be evaluated for preparedness of post 2ndary readiness of the students. There was also
a decision made to modify the clarity and focus domain to include parents in the
understanding by the general public indicator.
After the report was given, questions and comments followed. These were all over the
place, including how to address career readiness versus college readiness, how do you
deal with the kids that dont want to go to college, what about the kids that are lazy and
dont want to do college level work? What about the kids that choose to go into the

military and are not college or career ready for years? Are we looking at standards that
are life skills, work force training, or college readiness, are they one and the same, or at
different levels? What is a college track, what is a technical track, what if the kid doesnt
want either of those, like a plumber, where your training is on the job? Dr. Scheick said
what kind of breakthrough do you expect to have in plumbing? Dr. Scheick also asked
what kind of standard deals with the nail tech, a mail man, a mechanic, a construction
worker? None of these jobs needs college. He feels if the standards are too hard, kids
drop out of school.
The discussion on the questions included statements regarding the current definition of
college and career readiness, and not to veer from that as a quality measure. To read
and evaluate standards for depth of understanding as well as to meet the need of what is
necessary to meet the intent of the standards. Standards should be rigorous, they should
be considered the floor, with the ability to have higher levels to address the advanced
placement and honors students. Meet or exceed current standards.
A college track was described by Ann Clark, as specific courses of study, with focus on
the requirement of a specific college degree, and to have courses and standards that
meet the needs of the trades as well. The standards should deliver graduates that are
prepared for either path. Scheick stated he thinks this is impossible, that Common Core
math does not make kids college and career ready, that they need remedial courses, and
additional courses than are not in Common Core to be ready for college. He asked how
you can have an honors or a remedial class without separate standards, (one size fits all).
Andre said the point is we need to accommodate everyone. Jeff Isenhour said that a set
of standards should be a minimum expectation, the baseline, if you need to go above or
below, that should be addressed at the course level, AP Honors, etc. Dr. Scheick still
disagreed, stating that you cant separate the standards from math classes. Andre stated
that every course has a perception of what knowledge has been gained by taking a
specific course, taking AP Math, is harder than business math, etc. Dr. Scheick shared an
article about a sample exam from NC that kids knew the wrong way to do math problems,
and half the kids did worse than guessing. Andre stated that the standards we have
now have issues that whatever recommendations are the result of this commission, they
have to be inclusive, no one left out, and no remediation should be required of those
entering college. Olivia Oxendine shared that there are career technical education
classes, with a whole body of standards and curriculum to do prepare kids for the world of
work. There is an expectation of minimum literacy requirements. No consensus was
reached.
The funding legislation indicated that the commission should not spend any money doing
a survey. So the word used is feedback. There was a teacher survey done prior to
this legislation, and they dont feel another one would add anything, however part of the
matrix includes input from teachers, so as long as there is no cost, and the feedback is
done digitally, using DPIs website for teachers e mail address, they are ok. They feel the
information they get is useful to use with raw data they already have.
Standards to be reviewed are MA, CA, TX, NC (current) compared using the matrix, shared
with the public via a google doc that can be read, but not edited. This would be a
working document and will be continually changing, but the commission wants their work
to be transparent.
In standards review process, the question on how to evaluate the standards, by strand
or individually. The consensus was to approach with a more holistic view. Standards
need to have context in real life, they need to be more concise, easy to understand,
eliminate the ambiguity, and leave the teacher the ability to choose their method of

teaching and their sources. The work team liked the way MAs framework was structured,
the use of exemplars with embedded sources making them easy to understand and
implement. They shared that currently NC has some resources for teachers available,
called a live binder, but they are spread out, not easy to find and Ms. Watts, who was
giving the report, shared that she had never used it.
Professional Learning communities (PLC) is a group of teachers working together to align
their understanding and expectations of a grade level, standards interpretation, etc.
They meet according to their individual schools, sometimes once a week, sometimes
more. This is where the current standards have been unpacked (Personally, I would
like to see standards that didnt need unpacking, that were clear, concise, and
measurable, that I didnt need someone else to tell me that I understood what I was
supposed to be teaching) This led up to the discussion on how the standards are written,
for example, one reading text can address more than one standard, for instance,
understand the meaning of text is one standard, compare the text to multiple passages is
standard 2, identify the differences in the passages, is standard 3, all 3 of these
standards can be applied to ONE reading assignment. The question asked is do you give
the assignment and expect the teacher knows how to break down the task into the
standards, or do you have to break it down for her?
Ms. Metcalf asked since the MASS. Standards were already reviewed, and are vetted and
proven, why dont we just use them. The answer is we want to look at all the options of
what is available and pick the best to be NCs.
Math: The math work group includes Dr Scheick, Jeannie Metcalf, and Jeff Isenhour. They
have not met for a work group yet. Ted is identifying teachers, professors and some
volunteers to look at math standards. He indicated there are no K-8 teachers identified,
(but one of our teachers from the NCAFA volunteered to help after the meeting) One of
the candidates he mentioned is Dr. Michelle Stefflin, a math Ed PHD, however my red flag
went up when he shared that she is in favor of National standards. Dr. Scheick is going to
make a matrix similar to Dr. Oxendines to review math standards. Wants to look at MN,
Mass, and Singapore math. The question of how math is mastered, the age and
association of what should happen at each grade. The traditional path for math is
different than common cores integrated path.
There was an integrated math survey developed, but never presented, that identified
questions for the superintendents, principles, and administrators of the math program,
some of the questions were open ended, some were clear with the purpose of finding out
if they liked the sequencing used in the integrated math versus the tradition path. Jeff
created this, and wants it to go out to the High Schools, dealing only with math. Since
the funding bill says no surveys how they can accomplish this, the answer was, as long as
no funds are spent, and this is ok.
Looking forward, there will be an attempt to get an early learning professional in for a
future meeting, to speak to age appropriateness of standards.
The ELA matrix will be a template to use for math, just adjusted for math, so reliability
and reporting of the 2 topics is similar. In addition, they will move forward with Jeffs
questions to administrators at the high school level for the integrated math questions.
The Math team will meet soon to begin their review process.
Meeting Adjourned, Next
meeting will be May 18.
On a personal note, we had 2 early education teachers at the meeting that both
volunteered to be in the work groups, (one Math, one ELA) I know and admire both these
ladies and hope they will be able to participate in this process. In addition, the focus and

direction given the work groups is the direction that those of us that support the NC Plan
have already been on, and some of that work is already in progress. For more
information on the NC Plan, do a search on You Tube for some video introductions.