Charles Grassley, the Republican Senator from Iowa, has begun the process of removing funding from the Federal Budget that would be used by districts to carry out the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core State Standards have raised the ire of not only Republicans and right leaning groups such as the Heartland Institute, but also left leaning bloggers and educators and researchers who question the relationship between high-stakes testing and national standards. Anthony Cody, over on Living in Dialogue on Education Week has researched and critiqued the use of the Common Core in our schools. Indeed, the Michigan House of Representatives approved a budget that would prohibit the use of any state funds to implement the Common Core or the Smarter Balanced Assessments which are tied to the Common Core.

I want to focus on Senator Grassley’s initiative to defund the Common Core State Standards, and compare this effort to the defunding of National Science Foundation science projects in the 1970s. The effort to defund the Common Core is a “back to the future” moment for me, as it feels like I am being sent back to the 1970s when Congress defunded NSF science education programs, resulting in serious reprimands, and fundamental changes in the way NSF developed curriculum.

The underlying reasons for each defunding actions are similar, and it is interesting to note how some things haven’t changed. Senator Grassley wrote a letter on April 26 to Tom Harkin and Jerry Moran, ranking members of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Senate Appropriations Committee. The gist of his proposal as stated in his letter to Harkin and Moran is to “restore state decision-making and accountability with respect to state academic content standards.” In particular, Grassley does not want funds used by the Department of Education to develop, carry out or evaluate content standards, to adopt multi-state (read Common Core Standards and Next Generation Science Standards) standards, or to enforce any provision of the ESEA Flexibility waivers that states are seeking in exchange for more flexibility in carrying out No Child Left Behind. Harkin, a Democrat responded and said he supports the common core initiative.

What’s behind the effort to defund the Common Core? And what caused the Congress to defund and cut funding for NSF science education programing in the 1970′s? We’ll see that emotions, attitudes, and family values form the fundamental angst that led to actions 40 years ago, and now.

Please read on…

Back to the Future

Unlike the Common Core State Standards, most NSF science programs were developed at American universities or educational development centers, and enlisted the work of scientists, science education professors and K-12 science teachers. For example, the first NSF program, PSSC Physics was developed at MIT in the late 1950′s. Other universities wrote grants to fund programs in elementary, middle and high school science over the next three decades. NSF proposals are peer-reviewed, unlike any of the work done to develop the Common Core or the Next Generation Science Standards. NSF projects were field-tested in schools across the country, and then revised based on the feedback received through test centers. For a brief history of the NSF, please follow this link.

The Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards have not been field-tested, although they have been available for online review.

The NSF spent about $1.6 billion on science and mathematics education from 1958 – 1978. Part of this funding was used to develop curriculum project materials (59 projects were developed) in the amount of $189 million or 12% of the full education budget. Most of this was spent on developing the materials, but $82 million was used to implement the projects. (Disclaimer: I received an NSF Academic Year Institute Fellowship to attend The Ohio State University in 1966, and was a writer for two NSF curriculum projects at Florida State University (ISCS and ISIS), directed the ISIS NSF Test Center at Georgia State University (GSU), and received grants from the NSF while at GSU).

In contrast, the U.S. Department of Education awarded more than $4 billion in Race to the Top Funds (RTT) to between 2010 -2012, but they mandated that states must adopt the Common Core to be considered for RTT funding.

ISIS.From 1974 – 1977, I was writer and test-center director (in the Atlanta area) for the NSF curriculum project at Florida State University called the Individualized Science Instructional System (ISIS). The goal of the project was to develop and field-test about 100 science mini-courses for grades 9 – 12. Professor Emeritus George Dawson of Florida State University assembled the entire collection of ISIS materials, including the pre-publication versions, NSF proposal details, and all related research papers ascribed to the ISIS program. The idea was to develop a large number of mini-courses that could be used by school districts that they could use to assemble their own curriculum. Mini-course titles included, Kitchen Chemistry, Let’s Eat, The Physics of Sport, Tomorrows Weather, Salt of the Earth, Cells and Cancer, Birth and Growth, Human Reproduction. When we field tested Birth and Growth, and Human Reproduction in high school biology classes, a number of parents complained, and insisted that their children not be exposed to these mini-courses.

During the first two years of the ISIS project, more than thirty mini-courses were developed and field tested in centers around the country, including Atlanta. But in 1977, the ISIS Project Director, Dr. Ernest Burkman of FSU, was informed that the ISIS project funding would be reduced, and that no funds could be used to prepare teachers and districts to carry out ISIS. Why did this happen?

The MACOS Controversy.Enter Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), or better known to the education community as “The MACOS Controversy.” Man: A Course of Study is an elementary science and social studies curriculum project funded by NSF and developed the Educational Development Center (EDC), Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jerome Bruner took leave from Harvard to lead this fifth grade curriculum which examined the commonalities between human behavior and that of several animal species, and culminated with a series of short films documenting the lives of the Netsilik Eskimo people.

MACOS, between 1963 – 1975 received about $7.1 million to develop, carry out and test the MACOS curriculum. MACOS, like ISIS, developed curriculum materials (follow this link to an online archive of MACOS that is free for noncommercial use) that departed from the usual NSF curriculum project which consisted of a text-book, laboratory activities (often integrated in the text), and hands-on teaching materials specific to the project. ISIS not only developed a curriculum with specialized hands-on materials, but its goal was to produce 100 mini-texts. MACOS did not have a text-book, instead it created a curriculum that consisted of a variety of media, including films, and required extensive teaching preparation because of the course’s teaching strategies, and potential of the subject.

When MACOS went looking for a publisher, 43 American publishers indicated interest, but none of them was willing to sign a contract that had such implementation requirements. As a result, the developer, EDC, in collaboration with NSF, agreed to lower the royalty rate to attract publishers. Curriculum Development Associates of DC signed up, and began publishing the curriculum in 1970. Forty-seven states and over 1,700 school districts used the MACOS program. However, MACOS, as we will see, was a controversial curriculum project.

Publishers were aware that the content and pedagogy of the MACOS program was controversial, so it should have been no surprise that conservative politicians would discover MACOS, and go berserk. Here is a brief overview the MACOS curriculum written by Peter B. Dow, the director of the project, as cited in Karen Wiley’s 1976 research report The NSF Science Education Controversy: Issues, Events and Decisions.

Summary of the intent of the MACOS Project

The eventual defunding of MACOS and cutting of funds for other projects, including ISIS, had its origins in Phoenix, Arizona, the home of Congressman John Conlan. Some parents in Phoenix were upset that their schools were going to implement MACOS, and as a result Conlan’s staff investigated MACOS, which resulted in Conlan moving in Congress that:

No funds authorized shall be available directly or indirectly for further development or implementation of “Man: A Course of Study,” MACOS. Karen Wiley reported that Conlan raised specific complaints against MACOS, including:

1. The content of the course is unfit for American children; the course advocates un-American values.
2. The instructional methods of the course are manipulative.
3. The implementation activities of the developer (EDC) go beyond the Congressional mandate; they constitute unfair competition with private publishers (recall that 47 publishers turned EDC down); and they exert undue influence on local decision makers (this is an odd one, because local schools make the final decision on the selection of curriculum and texts).

Conlan’s investigation expanded from MACOS to all of NSF’s curriculum development projects. As Wiley wrote in her research report, the controversy expanded to professional societies and the media.

If you have the time, the video, Through These Eyes looks back at the MACOS project, and explores the social and educational implications of the controversy that was critical of national curriculum projects, especially MACOS which not only suggested that “man” was an animal, but that studying cultures different from our own could be an important teaching tool of discovery and experimentation. This idea did not bode well with conservatives.

Through These Eyes looks back at the high stakes of this controversial curriculum. Decades later, as American influence continues to affect cultures worldwide, the story of MACOS resonates strongly. The implications for today’s conservative agenda is relevant.

In the case of the Common Core State Standards, there is great similarity with MACOS. The Common Core has been adopted by most states (47) and it is in the process of being implemented in many states. But, long before Sen. Grassley wrote his “Common Core” letter, there was discontent with the Common Core by left and right leaning organizations and people.

MACOS content also raised the shackles of conservatives who thought that the curriculum was too progressive, and in their mind did not reflect the values of American families. In their text, The Art of Teaching Science, the authors discussed the MACOS controversy, and wrote this:

Indeed, conservatives viewed progressive schools as ‘anti-intellectual playhouses’ and ‘crime breeders,’ run by a ‘liberal establishment.” The MACOS curriculum was seen as a progressive Trojan horse. Conlan’s staff investigated complaints and eventually, Conlan took steps to stop appropriations for MACOS “on the grounds of its ‘abhorrent, repugnant, vulgar, morally sick content.” Nelkin claims that the Council for Basic Education objected to MACOS for its emphasis on cultural relativism, and its lack of emphasis on skills and facts. Even liberal congressmen got on the anti-MACOS bandwagon because of their desire to limit the executive bureaucracies, such as NSF, and for “their resentment of scientists, who often tended to disdain congressional politics; and above all, the concern with secrecy and confidentiality that followed the Watergate affair.”

The MACOS controversy brought the issue of censorship into the public arena. However, to avoid the claim of censorship, which probably would not have been acceptable to many in Congress, Conlan focused on the federal government’s role in implementing MACOS, as well as all other NSF funded curriculum projects. One issue that surfaced was “the marketing issue – the concern that the NSF used taxpayers’ money to interfere with private enterprise.”Along with this was the place that conservative writers such as James Kilpatrick, who attacked NSF science programs as “an ominous echo of the Soviet Union’s promulgation of official scientific theory.” The temper of the times was quite clear: “resentment of the ‘elitism’ of science reinforced concern that NSF was naïvely promulgating the liberal values of the scientific community to a reluctant public.” The result: on April 9, 1975, the Congress terminated funds for MACOS, and further support of science curriculum projects was suspended, and the entire NSF educational program came under review.

At the core of MACOS was The Netsilik Film Series, an anthropology program from the National Film Board that featured a year in the life of an Inuit family, and its relationship with the outside world. It was the graphic images of the Netsilik people who clashed with the values of some individuals, such as in Phoenix, Arizona.

Peter Dow, Director of MACOS, explored the implications of MACOS in a paper written many years ago. Dow points out that as Pablo Freire wrote that there is no such thing as a neutral educational process. For Freire, education either leads the student to conform with the present system, or it becomes “the practice of freedom” which means that teaching will focus on creativity and discovery. This fundamental concept is at odds with the conservative world view that has been discussed on this blog. It runs counter to the authoritarian mode of living and education.

Finally, Dow comments made more than 40 years ago are relevant to the present “faux reform” that is being forced on schools today. He said this about educational reform:

There is clearly a conflict between the pedagogy Freire espouses and curriculum building on a national scale if curriculum decisions continue to be made by state adoption boards to be imposed with no recourse on a powerless population of students and teachers.

Until curriculum decisions rest where they belong, in the hands of the users, curriculum reform movements will continue to be used as instruments of oppression. A liberating education must perforce originate from the aspirations of the participants.

Lastly, curriculum makers must become increasingly sensitive to the social and political implications of curriculum building. In designing curricula, we cannot escape the fact that we make choices and impose values on the constituency of students and teachers we serve. If no schooling is neutral, and we believe in freedom of choice, then we must increase curriculum options and be explicit about the social goals of our curriculum materials. And in our continuing search to understand the central purposes of curriculum, we would do well to have our ears tuned to the increasingly liberated voices of the young, and to keep the writings of Bruner, Erikson, and Freire close at hand. (“Man: A Course of Study” in Retrospect: A Primer for Curriculum in the 70′s, Peter B. Dow

Theory into Practice, Vol. 10, No. 3, A Regeneration of the Humanities (Jun., 1971), pp. 168-177)

Nowadays

There is a groundswell to defund efforts to carry out the Common Core State Standards. The defunding efforts have gained traction in states dominated by Republican legislatures, such as Alabama, Texas and Michigan. The present effort is a bit of a dilemma for progressives (like myself) in that we see ourselves in agreement with our conservative colleagues. I‘ve written extensively on this blog that standards actually impede learning, and are like brick walls, preventing real learning from happening. My concern has more to do with the implication of having single sets of content standards that people actually believe are important to the welfare of schooling. There is little evidence to support the idea that standards, whether rigorous or not, make any difference in student learning.

Opposition to the standards comes from the left and the right. If the opposition comes from the left, its typically a resistance to a one-size-fits all conception of curriculum, and a rejection of a single set of standards for all children and youth, and evidence that standards will do little to improve education, especially for children living in poverty. If the opposition comes from the right, the right to choose comes to the surface. Folks on the right tend to think that élite scientists or mathematicians are trying to impose an ideology that rejects conservative values. To conservatives, teaching and learning should focus on basic facts (of science, for example), and we should test students every year to make sure that they are getting the facts straight.

Grassley’s letter, and the legislative actions around the country to defund the common core show how dysfunctional our elected officials are in matters of educational reform. Instead of facilitating educational reform, Federal and state government policy has resulted in partisan bickering, and the serious impediment to improving life for students and their teachers.

In the 1970s, the Congress saw fit to dissolve a very creative and thought-provoking curriculum (MACOS). Abandoning the Common Core might be the right decision, but what are we left to when Congress and state legislatures impose their values on local school districts, who really have the legal right and responsibility to education our children and youth.

What do you think about the movement to defund the Common Core? Do you think this is a good idea? Tell us what you think.