Common Coreconfusion at symposiums

Weeks of planning should have produced several interesting symposiums for Carson City and Fallon residents to learn more about Common Core State Standards, a measuring stick for what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics by the end of each grade.

In December, Citizens for Sound Academic Standards (C4SAS) and the Nevada Department of Education began working on a format for the symposiums in mid January.

In looking at a very extensive email thread from both the C4SAS and NDE, we see the initial idea of having two people from each side explaining Common Core digressing into NDE wanting to bring in other educational experts. C4SAS, though, sought only policy experts to explain Common Core, first with discussion and then with rebuttals followed by a question and answer period.

The forum in Carson City on Jan. 13, though, digressed into harsh feelings between the two sides due to the format, and because of that, Dale Erquiaga, superintendent of Public Instruction, canceled NDE’s involvement with the Fallon forum the day after.

Erquiaga’s letter was also sent to the Churchill County School District, which agreed at a previous board meeting to be a participant in the Fallon forum. He said his staff invited Nevada teachers to participate in the symposium, contrary to an NDE email sent to C4SAS.

Erquiaga claimed the Common Core participants were disrespectful to the Carson City School District educators; on the other hand, C4SAS accused NDE personnel of being arrogant and forgetting they were public servants.

Erquiaga pulled the NDE out of the Fallon forum, and Dr. Sandra Sheldon, Churchill County School District’s superintendent, decided — even though she and the trustees agreed to be part of this forum according to our reporter’s tape recording — not to show along with five out of seven members: Board President Ron Evans, Steve Nunn, Greg Koenig, Clay Hendrix and Rich Gent. As public servants who agreed to be part of this forum, they needed to attend. Furthermore, CCSD paid for $160 in taxpayers’ money for the convention center rooms to be no shows.

The real losers were not the people from C4SAS, NDE or the CCSD. Those who had planned to learn more about Common Core were the ones hurt because the two sides had different ideas on the forum’s presentation; as a result, the NDE slapped the citizens of Fallon by taking their toys home, not wanting to play at the convention center because of the bad feelings that erupted in Carson City.

Plowing through scores of emails was confusing, so we have this recommendation for both sides if they plan a future symposium. Instead of each side going back and forth with emails from multiple sources, let’s do negotiations the old-fashioned way so there is no confusion. Sit down face to face at a table (what a novel idea), review the forum’s schedule, and once a consensus is approved, sign off on it. Then we eliminate the “he said, she said” disagreements.

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