By Linda Murphy

Oklahoma classrooms, teachers and students are being prepared for the transformation of education into a system centered on testing, testing and more testing like no one has ever seen. The State Superintendent has repeatedly said "Common Core is just a set of standards." Nothing could be further from the truth.

Common Core standards, which some teachers have thought they could manage just fine with their own methods of teaching and by making adjustments, are going to fade into the background as they "find out" Common Core Testing will drive the system. Testing will dictate what is taught, how students perform and how teachers teach. Field testing will begin this year and next school year the testing will be fully implemented for the first time.

Not only students, but also teachers and schools will be graded on the "outcomes" of student performance on tests. In the name of accountability, the high stakes testing will be the focus with the entire process of education revolving around it. Numbers and scores will be used to quantify everything that is deemed important to produce the individual student profiles needed to feed the data based decisions of big business interests. As Governor Fallin and the NGA -- National Governor Association's plan "America Works" states, education is being aligned to meet the needs of business. Children are considered the "capital" in what the NGA calls the "Human Capital Pipeline." The audacity of creating this plan is beyond belief but it is real and clearly stated in NGA documents.

Common Core's standards by themselves will pale in comparison to the system they help create with the highly regimented computerized teaching, frequent pre-tests, interim tests, post-tests, and computer-based performance assessments coming ahead. Student performance will be "quantified," measured, rated, evaluated numerically and fed into the data system designed to create individual student profiles. Common Core standards are the first incremental step in a process designed to manage human capital and utilize it to supply workforce needs.

Measured Progress has been contracted to produce Oklahoma's Common Core testing for 3rd through 8th graders, at a cost of 34.45 million dollars over the next five years. (The state school board must vote each year to continue or discontinue the contract.) The Measured Progress website states they work with PARCC -- Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Superintendent Barresi said we left PARCC, yet it is still directly involved with our "new" company. PARCC test items, which were developed with federal grant money, are required to be reviewed and revised by the Federal Department of Education. We have the long arm of the Federal Government in the testing being given to our 3rd through 8th graders. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said he is "convinced that this new generation of state assessments will be an absolute game-changer in public education." President Obama said we need to increase technology capacity and provide teachers information about how the students' minds work through day-to-day and hour-to-hour testing

High stakes testing brings high stress. In his article, "The Problems with the Common Core" Stan Karp tells us about New York's experience. "Reports from the first wave of Common Core testing provide evidence for fears. Last spring students, parents, and teachers in New York schools responded to new Common Core tests with outcries against their length, difficulty, and inappropriate content. Students reported feeling overstressed and underprepared -- meeting the tests with shock, anger, tears, and anxiety. Teachers and principals complained about the disruptive nature of the testing process and many parents encouraged their children to opt out."

Oklahoma schools are beginning to experience some of these problems already and we haven't even started the field testing. How ignorant are we? Will we just let this problem ridden system which robs students of precious time for education be imposed on our children and teachers? We can look down this road ahead and see that we are on the wrong track. We can stop this Common Core system before it gets locked in place!