American Classical Education (ACE) board member Dolores Gresham, a former Tennessee state senator, said Tuesday a story published earlier that day at Tennessee Lookout that claimed ACE charter schools are teaching a curriculum with links to the Common Core Standards, is “false.”
“The Core Knowledge Foundation program is not the same thing as Common Core,” Gresham said in a statement. “It is decades older than Common Core and is already in use by many schools in Tennessee – including all three of Nashville’s top-performing charter schools.”
“In fact, the founder of Core Knowledge has disavowed Common Core,” she added. “Additionally, the Tennessee Department of Education adopted Core Knowledge for use in its Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) Skills curriculum.”
Tennessee’s embrace of CKLA curriculum can be seen on the Tennessee Department of Education website, which features a page about videos developed in Tennessee public schools for use in “Teaching Tennessee CKLA 5th Grade.”
This video series was created in collaboration with teachers and content experts from Overton County for use with Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA), an Open Education Resource (OER). Prior to implementing the curriculum and filming the videos, district team members aligned the content to Tennessee standards.
The videos are designed for use by districts that have adopted the curriculum, educators who use the open curriculum in their classroom, or those who need resources for remote learning. Please note that the videos follow the source materials’ intentional sequence of knowledge building and are meant to be used in order. A coherent, systematic approach is key to effective knowledge building instruction in English language arts.
The issue of ACE’s use of Core Knowledge comes following the board’s application to open charter schools in five Tennessee counties, with approval, thus far, by the Rutherford County School Board.
ACE’s board took exception to Tennessee Lookout’s report Tuesday that stated:
Hillsdale College’s affiliated charter schools are asking for an exception in Tennessee law to teach a curriculum linked with Common Core, which state lawmakers banned twice.
The article quoted Gresham as stating:
The concept behind a charter school is that it can do something that is not currently done. They are supposed to diversify opportunities within districts and across the state, so charter schools will naturally use some approved materials but will also incorporate additional materials that aid in their unique approaches to education.
The Tennessee Lookout article included only two sentences of the nine sentence response it was provided by Gresham, in answer to this question: “Why is ACE applying for an exception to TCA 49-6-2206 (Use of unapproved textbooks)?”
“This is a pretty standard course of action for charter schools across the board. Most, if not all, charter schools — including KIPP — apply for the same waiver. I assume this will be reflected in your reporting,” Gresham noted at the beginning of her response.
“Because these materials are not specifically approved, does not mean they are disapproved. In most cases and as in ACE’s case, these are quality, robust materials that have not necessarily been considered by state and local educational authorities, etc. Again, this is a common practice across all charter schools in Tennessee and nationally, as seen by KIPP and many others. Charter schools can approach a subject differently while still being aligned to Tennessee standards,” she added.
Additionally, Tennessee Lookout quoted JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, as stating, “You can’t say you’re against Common Core, but for Core Knowledge. They’re both ideologically from the same place. They’re very interconnected.”
In a subsequent interview with The Tennessee Star, Bowman made clear that there is a significant difference between Common Core and Core Knowledge, a point which the Tennessee Lookout failed to note in its article.
“There are absolute differences and concepts between Common Core State Standards, Core Knowledge, and our own state standards,” Bowman told The Star.
In October 2016, Liana Loewus wrote in an opinion piece at Education Week that E.D. Hirsch, Jr., the originator of the Core Knowledge program, had initially praised the Common Core English Language Arts standards for embracing his philosophy of a “shared knowledge” among all students, put forward in his 1987 book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.
However, in his 2016 book, Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories, “Hirsch excoriates the education policies of the day, including—interestingly—the use of the common core,” Loewus wrote. “The reading standards’ focus on all-purpose comprehension skills rather than content, while it may be politically necessary, is ‘a deep misfortune,’ he said.”
“It’s a pointless approach,” he concluded, Loewus noted.
The Common Core State Standards, a federally promoted education initiative introduced in the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus bill through a competitive grant program called Race to the Top (RTTT), were adopted by 45 states.
The National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and nonprofit progressive education think tank Achieve, Inc. were mainly responsible for the initiative, and both the NGA and the CCSSO were the publishers of the Common Core State Standards.
The implementation of Common Core had been privately funded, primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funded The Fordham Institute, a major promoter of the Common Core, underscoring the alliance of government elites and corporatists in this academic initiative.
Teachers’ unions pulled back their support of Common Core when it was realized that Core-aligned test results would be utilized for school accountability and teacher evaluation.
“It is important that people recognize that academic standards are separate from the curriculum,” Professional Educators of Tennessee’s Bowman told The Star Tuesday evening. “Standards tell you what a student is expected to learn. The curriculum is the content that is taught to help students meet those standards.”
Bowman continued that “there is little difference between most state standards,” and added:
At one point most states adopted the Common Core State Standards. Tennessee adopted Common Core and ultimately repealed these standards. Certainly, some of the vestiges remain. Tennessee now has its own academic standards. For conservatives, it was “a classic example of federal overreach in matters best left to local governments.”
The Tennessee Lookout article also failed to include this information, provided to it by a spokesperson for ACE:
An important clarification is that ACE is separate from Hillsdale. Their only affiliation is that ACE intends to utilize Hillsdale’s classical curriculum – which is provided to charter schools at zero cost – so Hillsdale receives absolutely zero dollars from ACE and Hillsdale has nothing to do with operating or managing the charter school(s). A lot of reporting leaves out or misconstrues these key distinctions – whether intentionally or not. This is an issue of accuracy in reporting as opposed to regurgitating talking points pushed by opponents of educational freedom.
Tennessee Lookout is part of a nationwide far left non-profit, States Newsroom, which Influence Watch described as follows:
States Newsroom (formerly the Newsroom Network) consists of a number of left-of-center media outlets that cover state-level politics and policy and a Washington, D.C. bureau that claims to focus on congressional delegations and key Supreme Court decisions that specifically affect the states.
Before 2019, the Newsroom Network was a fiscally sponsored project of the Hopewell Fund, a left-of-center 501(c)(3) funding and fiscal sponsorship nonprofit managed by the Washington, D.C.-based consultancy firm Arabella Advisors, which manages multiple high-dollar left-leaning philanthropic organizations. In 2019, States Newsroom re-branded and received independent nonprofit status.
ACE’s Gresham rebuked the Tennessee Lookout for its story which, she said, amounted to a “political stunt designed to withhold school choice from kids and their families and enrich teachers’ unions.”
“ACE offers a high-quality public classical curriculum,” the former state senator observed. “We are not surprised to see partisan rags like the Tennessee Lookout carry water for special interests. It’s more distressing that legitimate news outlets and others are taking the bait. You don’t need to be an A student to understand the difference between Common Core and the Core Knowledge Foundation–you just need to use Google!”
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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
