Utah--While many states are turning away from Common Core amidst concerns over poorly planned curriculum and testing, that even teachers are not allowed to see, Utah is jumping in with both feet getting ready to embrace the Science Standards.
The Utah State Office of Education (USOE) is now experiencing backlash from parents who feel betrayed by the school board. Parents were assured that adopting the math and language standards was not a precursor to adopting science, history or health standards--all of which parents and teachers have expressed concern. USOE has stated on their website, “The ‘slippery slope’ is a bona-fide fallacy of reasoning as it applies to the Math and English Language Arts standards. There is no movement or desire or intention on the part of the State Board to adopt more standards common to other states in additional subject areas, and the core standards are the sole constitutional prerogative of the Board.” Now it would appear that USOE is doing exactly that.
One of the major concerns of the science curriculum is that it is heavily slanted with progressive and liberal views, emphasizing global “climate change,” evolution and an agenda showing that we are killing our planet. In conservative Utah, many parents are not happy to hear this will be the standard that will be taught to our youth. USOE has asserted that the science standards are not the National common core standards, but a new version of standards developed in Utah. The website Utahnsagainstcommoncore.com refute this claim with the following information:
· Performance Expectation are word-for-word copies of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
· Boundary statements were very, very similar
· Clarifications were very, very similar
· Uses essentially the same indexing scheme of NGSS for science topics
· References Common Core Math, and Literacy concepts with the same index numbers and their related topics Cross-Cutting Concepts are essentially word-for-word
While some of the verbiage has been changed from the national standards, it is clear that the standards the State of Utah School Board is intending to adopt are nearly identical to the troublesome National Common Core Science Standards.
One teacher who posted anonymously on the website stated her concerns, “We were mandated to use a specific remedial literacy curriculum/software about 4 years ago in grades 3-6. After only one year, the district replaced all of the materials and software at some considerable expense with the NG or “New Generation” version. We were told to turn back in any previous materials and discontinue use. We as teachers had no idea what NG meant. I started to notice “College to Career” statements everywhere in the lesson plans –not openly discussed with the educators so it had little meaning to me.
What I noticed on my own, and before the whole Common Core thing came up as an issue, was that the topics were very socially and scientifically biased. Topics that covered a month of activities each, covered racial, immigration, earth resources use, animal humane/exploitation issues, etc… There were no differing views, but a railroaded view and conclusion with student answers actually formatted so they had to orally or in written form answer in a certain way with pre-scripted emotionally-charged dialogue sentence starters (“It was hard for Carlita when her mother couldn’t stay and had to return to Mexico for awhile, and Carlita felt that…”).”
If like many parents and grandparents you are concerned to see Utah adopting these standards then take the time to call and write your legislators, the Board of Education, and especially Governor Herbert.
