DENMARK — A former Norway mother of three is on a crusade with others to stop what she calls “a tidal wave of discontent,” over the implementation of Common Core standards in public schools in Maine and other states.

Donna Dodge, who lives in the southern Oxford County town of Denmark, is spending nearly every evening attending board meetings and meeting legislators in Maine and New Hampshire. She’s urging people to attend a Dec. 6 public forum sponsored by No Common Core Maine at Shawnee Peak in Bridgton.

The panel will inform participants about Common Core state standards, where they came from, how they were adopted, why they believe the standards are detrimental to academics and how to repeal them. The meeting will be held from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the ski resort at 119 Mountain Road, Bridgton.

Speakers include Heidi Sampson, co-founder of No Common Core Maine and member of the Maine State Board of Education; Ann Marie Banfield, legislative activist and public speaker whose focus is education in America and the perils of national standards; and Diane Holcomb, a retired teacher who lives in Norway.

In 1997, Maine implemented the Maine Learning Results as its state standard for eight content areas. They were updated in 2011 and fully implemented in the 2013-14 school year to include Common Core as the standard for English language arts and math.

The Maine Department of Education said the new standards are meant to emphasize more complex content and concepts and the development of needed real-world skills like problem-solving, collaboration, critical thinking and communication.

Dodge calls the standards a “horrible, intrusive program.”

She said Monday that she initially became concerned about the new standards when she saw the type of work her children were bringing home from school, particularly in mathematics and English language arts.

“I was appalled at some of the math,” said Dodge, who is a registered nutritionist, a heavily math-based career. She has completed six years of undergraduate and one year of postgraduate work in her field. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of New Hampshire in 1989.

Dodge said some of the mathematics work her daughter was being taught in her sixth grade classroom at Molly Ockett Middle School in Fryeburg was simply “illogical.”

As an example, she said when children were asked to subtract 72 from 30, the problem should take less than 30 seconds to answer. Instead, she said, the students are put through 11 or 12 time-consuming steps to get to the final answer of 42.

“It’s crazy math,” she said.

English language arts fared no better under the new standards, she said. Dodge said the students no longer read classical literature. Instead, they read things such as Inland Fisheries and Wildlife brochures, President Barack Obama’s inaugural address, and more informational and brochure type assignments.

Cursive writing is no longer taught, she said.

And the collection of data, requiring students to answer questions about everything from whether guns exist in their homes, to what prescriptions their parents take, to what religion they practise, are being collected on a broad level.

“I kept hearing whispers from parents complaining about this work,” Dodge said.

She pulled her second grade son from school and put him in a private school. Her daughter still attends Molly Ockett Middle School.

The changes have been detrimental to students across the state, she said.

Dodge and others in No Common Core Maine say there’s no local control.

But information from the state DOE says school districts and teachers make their own choices about textbooks and other educational materials to use and curriculum remains entirely a local decision. Each school district only needs to align to the standards and the assessments that measure them under the Maine Learning Standards.

Dodge has met with boards of selectmen, school boards, legislators and others in the region and in New Hampshire communities trying to bring awareness about Common Core concerns.

Last week, she met with SAD 17 directors in Paris, who listened to her without comment. Dodge said that is not unusual during her meetings because she believes many are not well informed on the concerns.

She said 24 states now have major efforts underway to get rid of the standards.

“We need legislation. We can’t do it alone,” she said.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link