Thread: "Common Core" And The All-Too-Common Tendencies Of Heavy-Handed Government

Common Core Won’t Make Kids Smarter

by Phyllis Schlafly
July 17, 2013

The new education standards called Common Core won’t make U.S. kids any smarter. The overall Common Core strategy is to raise middle-scoring students a point or two but do nothing to motivate or help the smarter kids or the dumber kids. CC’s goal is to achieve a result like Lake Wobegon, the fictional Minnesota town where “all kids are above average.”
Professor Sandra Stotsky, a member of the CC validation committee, refused to approve the standards finally published and explained: “Common Core has carefully disguised its road to equally low outcomes for all demographic groups, and many state boards of education may quickly follow up their unexamined adoption of Common Core’s K-12 standards … by lowering their high school graduation requirements in the name of alignment….”
CC advocates continue to say that CC standards are not a curriculum but are merely standards. But it’s clear that the curriculum must be aligned with the CC tests, so teachers will be compelled to teach to the test.
A report by the UCLA-based National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing concluded that “educators will align curriculum and teaching to what is tested, and what is not assessed largely will be ignored.” Bill Gates, the largest individual financial contributor to Common Core, told the National Conference of State Legislators, “We’ll know we’ve succeeded when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards.”
The CC English standards replace about half of the readings in literature classics with “informational” materials, which CC advocates say are supposed to promote analytical thinking by students. In a report released by the Pioneer Institute, Professor Stotsky gave an example of her grandson’s experience.
The students were assigned to read selections on the fate of the Taino Indians and from a diary supposedly written by Christopher Columbus’s cabin boy, and then were told to write to a state official opining on whether Columbus should be honored by a state holiday. Every student’s letter said Columbus should not be so honored. That’s how “informational” reading morphs into liberal propaganda.
Common Core gives leftist educators a backdoor for bringing leftwing activism into the classroom. NPR reported that one veteran teacher, Melinda Bundy, replaced her popular unit about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table with one about President John F. Kennedy and the 1960s because, she said, she “adored JFK.”
Comic books and graphic novels were formerly considered useful primarily for underachieving students and poor readers, as a means to get them interested in books. But now Common Core is bringing picture books into the mainstream of education.
At a National Teachers of English conference, the teachers of a senior Advanced Placement honors course presented an argument against having students read Beowulf and substituting a comic book based on Beowulf. No doubt parents will be told that CC includes classic literature such as Beowulf.
The outgoing president of the Missouri branch of the NEA said CC will “prepare our kids for a global community, a global society. These are going to exactly take us there.”
The new science standards, called “Next Generation Science Standards,” were examined by nine scientists and mathematicians for content, rigor and clarity, after which the Fordham Institute gave them a grade of “C.” They criticized the “ceiling on the content and skills that will be measured at each grade,” the excluding of content that more advanced students can learn, the failure “to include essential math content that is critical to science learning” in physics and chemistry, and the “confusing” wording of the standards.
The Fordham Institute studied the science standards and concluded that they are inferior to existing standards in 12 states, superior in only 16 states, and the standards of 22 states are too close to call. It would be better if states used their own revised and improved version of standards already successfully piloted in 12 states.
Proponents of evolution and manmade climate change are ecstatic about the new science standards. Education Week reports: “The standards make clear that evolution is fundamental to understanding the life sciences.
It is misleading to claim that CC standards will make students “college-ready.” They will not be ready to major in STEM subjects at a four-year university.
Always a friend of parents’ rights, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is leading an effort to persuade Senate appropriators to restore state-level decision-making about academic content in public schools in order to counter the way federal incentives have forced states to adopt the Common Core standards. He wants the Senate “to restore state decision-making and accountability with respect to state academic content standards” because “parents ought to have a straight line of accountability to those who are making such decisions.”

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Further Reading: Common Core



http://www.eagleforum.org/publicatio...s-smarter.html

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Look Who Funded and Developed "Common Core" Education

Dave Hodges
Activist Post

After reading this article, the reader will become aware that Common Core is a simply a regurgitation of Bloom’s Taxonomy combined with some very clever propaganda interwoven into the fabric of every course which embraces social justice, collectivism the eventual deindustrialization of America through the acceptance of climate change theories and the resulting carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies which will follow.

No teacher and no school board member was asked to contribute to the Common Core standards. Nor was any State Legislature involved in the creation of this monstrosity.

Under this plan, every teacher will teach the same material with much of the same teaching strategies as every other teacher. This is the 21st Century educational version of the Stepford Wives. The Tenth Amendment is dead and individual freedom is being stamped out.

Common Core Plagiarizes Bloom’s Taxonomy

Common core espouses the laudable goal of making children think critically. In every piece I have read where the establishment defends Common Core, the company line states that it is important to move children away from memorization learning to analyzing and creating. I wholeheartedly agree with this goal. However, we do not have to spend billions of dollars to achieve this end.


In 1948, psychologist Benjamin Bloom and associates, developed the six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Under the taxonomy, learning progressed from memorization to analyzing and creating. If that sounds familiar, Common Core has copied Bloom's taxonomy almost verbatim. Sure they changed nouns to verbs and verbs to nouns, but the progression of learning is almost identical. And this is what is being touted as the great revolution in teaching and learning. After comparing Bloom's Taxonomy to Common Core, can there be any doubt that of the lack of authenticity of Common Core?

Compare Bloom’s Taxonomy *pictured on the left) to Common Core (pictured on the right).

Why would the creators of Common Core go backwards and regurgitate Bloom’s Taxonomy? First, the taxonomy is respected and gave America some of her best days in public education. Bloom’s taxonomy was successful because of the fact that the government did not get to control the content or the application. Secondly, if a respected learning progression will be universally accepted, then the substance behind the theoretical approach can be slipped in and the propagandizing of the young can begin. Yes, I am talking about a system of education where propaganda is a thinly disguised goal.

Nobody is going to challenge the notion that we should get children to think more critically. And what if the creators of Common Core can mandate specific topical material to be taught within the Common Core, an entire generation of young learners can be molded to the desired point of view. Before you tell me to remove my tin foil hat, please examine the evidence listed below and then honestly tell me that there is not a cause for concern.

First, let’s take a look at the history of failed federal educational programs.

One Failed Federal Education Program After Another

To understand where we are going, we have to first understand where we have been. Teachers have endured such educational faux pas from Goals 2000, to School to Work, to No Child Left Behind and now we are witnessing the latest in fad in American education, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

Each one of the aforementioned programs threw billions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet, while contributing to the dramatic decrease in student performance. For example, SAT Reading scores, for the high school class of 2012, reached a 40+ year low since the implementation of No Child Left Behind. (NCLB).

The successor of NCLB, Common Core, is based upon social justice, arriving at knowledge and subsequent decision making through a spirit of collectivism and developing a communal agreement about the need to teach and to integrate into each classroom an underlying theme of sustainable development. These goals are not just going to be taught in specific Environmental Science courses, but these philosophies are to be implemented and taught in EACH and EVERY course that a child takes during their educational experiences beginning with pre-K and stretching to post graduate secondary education.

Bill Gates, the driving force behind Common Core

Globalist and Eugenics proponent, Bill Gates, is one of the Founding Fathers of the Common Core movement and its copyright holders, NGA/CCSSO. Gates donated about $25 million dollars to promote his version of global education. Gates has made several donations to CCSSO to promote Common Core. In 2009, Gates made two separate donations of $9,961,842 and $3,185,750. In 2010, Gates donated $743,331 and in 2011, he contributed $9,388,911. In 2008, Gates donated $2,259,780 to the National Governor’s Association (NGA) to develop and implement Common Core. The NGA is the conduit into America from the United Nations UNESCO, Education for All Agenda 21 version of globalist education being forced down the throats of our young people.

Gates is listed as partner with UNESCO/UN to fund ”Education For All,” which in turn was transferred to the National Governors Association which changed the name to Common Core. In a key document, "The Dakar Framework for Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments" which identifies the goals for what became Common Core. The document speaks directly to the Agenda 21 educational ideals of collectivism, social justice, environmental justice and the espousing of the beliefs of the pseudoscience known as sustainable development.

Common Core Serves the Edicts of Agenda 21

Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 Public Awareness and Training focuses on impressing upon every citizen on the planet, the indispensable need for achieving sustainable development. In plain language, Common Core is going into every country. The implementation names of this global education may vary, but the underlying Agenda 21 philosophies do not. Chapter 36 also states that the globalists plan to “reorient” worldwide education toward sustainable development. In future installments in this series, the weak academic standards of Common Core will be revealed. Reform of the nation’s standardized objectives is merely a smokescreen to the true intent of the program which is to covertly gain acceptance for Agenda 21 policies.

Subsequently, the Agenda 21/UNESCO documents clearly state their intention to turn each student into a globalist who will accept smaller living space, residing in the stack-and-pack cities of the future, acceptance of drastic energy reduction and the loss of Constitutional liberties. The document goes on to say that:

While basic education provides the underpinning for any environmental and development education, the latter needs to be incorporated as an essential part of learning. Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes so that they have the capacity to assess and address their sustainable development concerns…

Educational Russian Roulette

The Common Core is an untested, federally promoted, unfunded experiment. The standards creators (NGA/CCSSO) have not set up a monitoring plan to test this national experiment, to see what, if any, unintended consequences the Common Core will have on our children. This is a game Russian Roulette being played on the socio-emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects of our children’s development.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. If we let the teaching of the controversial topic of sustainability in each and every course, our children will not be given the chance to debate the merits of climate change theories. This will lead to the unquestioned ushering in of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies. This will spell economic doom for this country as know it today through the biggest wealth transfer in American history through cap and trade which will severely curtail individual and small business energy usage.

Yet, the rich will be able to afford to buy their way out of restrictions by paying the penalties that the average person cannot afford. Ultimately, this will lead to neo-feudalism. If you doubt the veracity of these comments, let’s give President Obama the floor and let him tell you in his own words.


Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket






Are we really naive enough to believe that Obama is just making up this nonsense about implementing cap and trade and causing our utility prices to skyrocket and significantly lowering the standard of living for the middle class?

We can teach our kids to think critically without this program, we could just return to Bloom’s Taxonomy because it works. However, this would not offer the pretext for the Bill Gates’ of the world to shove their climate change agenda down the throats of our children and get them to acquiesce to what is coming.

In another 10 years, this federal program will implode like all the other federal education programs, but the damage will have been done. How many more decades can America endure a drop of reading comprehension scores by another 40+ points until we are as functionally illiterate as most Third World countries? And more importantly, how far will that American standard of living be decreased during this time as we produce a generation of children who will mindlessly accept the resources scraps of this planet as they attempt to survive in a completely changed world?

Solutions

Is it time to homeschool? It is certainly understandable if many choose this option. For most, the time for mass homeschooling has not yet arrived, but we need to demand accountability and demand it now. Teachers and administrators need to be involved in revamping of this program. For example, when dealing with controversial topics like climate change, both sides of the issue need to be fairly presented. We need to halt the funding of Common Core immediately and embrace what it is based upon: Bloom’s Taxonomy. We need to embrace what we know works, not the anecdotal accounts of Common Core supporters who stand to make billions of dollars through the implementation of this program. We also need to return education to the local level and empower local school boards to make education decisions on curriculum as they once did. Then and only then, can we shape a future for our children that we can trust.

Dave is an award winning psychology, statistics and research professor, a college basketball coach, a mental health counselor, a political activist and writer who has published dozens of editorials and articles in several publications such as Freedoms Phoenix, News With Views and The Arizona Republic.

The Common Sense Show features a wide variety of important topics that range from the loss of constitutional liberties, to the subsequent implementation of a police state under world governance, to exploring the limits of human potential. The primary purpose of The Common Sense Show is to provide Americans with the tools necessary to reclaim both our individual and national sovereignty.

http://www.activistpost.com/2013/08/...ed-common.html

Protesters Condemn ALEC's Push to Privatize Public Education

Demonstrators Crash ALEC convention in Chicago, a city impacted by the privatization of public schools - August 9, 13


Published on Aug 7, 2013
Demonstrators Crash ALEC convention in Chicago, a city impacted by the privatization of public schools

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?...&jumival=10548

here is the transcript


Transcript

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.We continue our series looking into ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, as they celebrate their 40th anniversary in Chicago. Six people were arrested Monday when protesters descended upon the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago to push back against the impending visit of ALEC. Now joining us to talk more about the protest and the history of ALEC and its influence on public education around the country are two guests. We are joined by Julie Mead. She's a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She researches, teaches, and writes about topics related to legal aspects of education. Her research centers on legal issues related to special education and raised by forms of school choice. We're also joined by Brendan Fisher. He is general counsel with the Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECExposed.org and PRWatch.org. He has worked extensively on the ALEC Exposed project. Thank you both for joining us.BRENDAN FISHER, GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY: Thanks for having me.NOOR: So, Brendan, let's start with you. Give us the latest on the protest happening right now in Chicago.FISHER: Sure. So today is the first day of the ALEC meeting in Chicago at the Palmer House, which is one of the nicest hotels in town in the [lu] just a few blocks from the lake. Yesterday, six people were arrested. There were smaller protests today, but I think there's a much larger rally planned for tomorrow, with a number of environmental and civil rights and labor groups coming together and bringing in their voices against ALEC and the really broad agenda that it has implemented in the states to lower wage and create fewer environmental regulations and worse educational outcomes for the 99 percent.NOOR: And the significance as far as the protesters are concerned that ALEC is having this meeting in Chicago, what can you tell us about what's been happening in Chicago's public education system over the last, you know, even 15, 20 years?FISHER: Sure. Sure. Well, so Chicago has definitely been bearing the brunt of the education privatization movement. I mean, it does show to a certain extent how bipartisan the education privatization push has become. But it really--when you tie it back to where the source of a lot of this legislation, in many cases it's very far-right groups that are trying to push an ideological and profit-driven agenda. So if you look at ALEC, K12 Inc. is one of the top sponsors of this year's meeting. K12 Inc. is the nation's largest provider of online for-profit schools. And as one of the top sponsors of the ALEC meeting, it's allying itself with the tobacco industry and with the oil industry and with the pharmaceutical industry, all of which are not something you would normally associate with good educational outcomes, not the sort of thing that you would typically expect of a school that is looking out primarily for kids. This year you saw the Illinois Policy Institute, which is the state policy network think tank in Illinois, teaming up with K12 to push virtual charters in the state to try and get virtual charters established in 18 school districts across the state of Illinois. They were unsuccessful in that effort, but it did show how these different nodes in what you might call the right-wing infrastructure are working together to try and push an ideological and profit-driven agenda in many states, including Illinois, which has been typically regarded as a blue state.NOOR: And, Julie Mead, I'm looking at your piece "A Smart ALEC Threatens Public Education: Coordinated efforts to introduce model legislation aimed at defunding and dismantling public schools is the signature work of this conservative organization." What can you tell us about ALEC's influence around the country and just about--just how it goes about exerting this influence?PROF. JULIE MEAD, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND POLICY ANALYSIS, UNIV. WISCONSIN - MADISON: Sure. I can handle that. The way that ALEC works is by bringing together state legislators with various private interests, including for-profit interests like K12. They write model bills, of which there is an entire educational portfolio. Those private interests then have significant influence on the development of those bills. And, in fact, that can't be taken forward as a model bill until those both private and public members of any task force, the education task force or any of its subcommittees, sign off on it. And so if you look at the portfolio of education model bills, you would find that they can be roughly categorized into four groups. One group is to influence market forces into education and all of its realms, including teacher education, for example. The second is to privatize education by introducing vouchers, for-profit charter bills or for-profit charter agencies and tax incentives of tax credits. The third is to increase student testing. And the fourth is to reduce or eliminate the influence of locally elected school boards and school districts.NOOR: And so, Professor Mead, ALEC was one of the forces behind the push for vouchers around the country, and especially in Wisconsin, which became the first state where it was implemented. Talk about the history of the system in Wisconsin and what the impact has been in Wisconsin, especially over the past couple of years, when the right to collective bargaining has been taken away from many of the unions, the public education unions there.MEAD: Well, as you said, Wisconsin got their first publicly funded voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which was enacted in 1990. And at that time it was a very limited experiment in the terms of the Supreme Court that first reviewed the bill. And at that time, it was limited to only 1,000 students or 1 percent of those enrolled in the Milwaukee Public School District. It required that any eligible student could have a family income of no more than 175 percent of the federal poverty level and that any participating private school had to have a majority of students attending through private tuition. So they could have no more than 49 percent of their student population there by virtue of a voucher. And, in fact, when it was first initiated, only nonsectarian schools could participate. Since then, all of those controls, if you will, have been removed. So now there's no limit to the number of students who can participate. To be eligible, it's 300 percent of the federal poverty level. Schools can be completely--their entire student body population can be there by virtue of a voucher. And, in fact, the majority of schools do have 90 to 100 percent of their students attend by virtue of a voucher. And there is no longer a requirement that the schools, that the private participating schools be located within the city of Milwaukee. They can be anywhere.The next push, then, was to add Racine to have a limited voucher program. And then most recently it's been expanded now that--with a limited--at least to begin with--a limited manner to 1,000 students--excuse me--500 students initially across the state can participate in a voucher, a publicly funded voucher.In terms of its impact on education, again this has been operational for more than 20 years, and research very clearly does not show that voucher schools do any better than traditional public school systems, and, in fact, sometimes worse. And even when you do those comparisons, you have to recognize the fact that the private schools don't serve the same population, so they're not required to serve children with disabilities to the same extent. Same thing with children who are learning English to the same extent. So all of those kinds of special needs populations remain in the Milwaukee public school district. That also then means that you've got a lot of money that flows to these private schools without the same kind of accountability.NOOR: And the significance of Scott Walker's antiunion bill being passed in Wisconsin which severely limits the power of public unions, including teachers unions, to collectively bargain, how has that impacted public education? It's one of the efforts that ALEC also has supported.MEAD: Well, just as you said, it's a measure to make it much more difficult for public employee unions to operate. And, in fact, it creates a situation in which, because it's harder for them to operate and because it's harder for them to gain their membership, that then makes it more difficult for them to influence public elections.NOOR: So, Brendan, at The Real News we've been closely following how private companies have been increasingly looking at public education, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent every year as one of the last untapped resources that they can get their hands on around the country. What can you tell us about the at least 139 bills or state budget provisions introduced by people who are getting support by ALEC around the country in just 43 states? And that's just in the first six months of 2013.FISHER: Yeah, that's right. So there were actually--31 of those bills became law, but the number of bills that were introduced, so how much of a priority it is for ALEC and ALEC legislators to promote the privatization of education.And like you mentioned, this is a big industry. Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Corp., which is the parent company of Fox News, has called it a $500 billion industry just waiting to be transformed. There's a lot of money to be made when taxpayers are spending this much on trying to educate our children. You may not be surprised to find that News Corp.'s new education division, called Amplify, is an ALEC member. They are a part of the Education Task Force. They've been promoting policies to try and use a specialized Amplify tablet in schools which would certainly increase the profits of Amplify and News Corp. You know, I think there's two things connected to this push for the privatization of schools. It's not--one part is profit. Clearly, Amplify, K12 are seeking to make as much money as they can on the back of taxpayers. But the other part of it is political. Many voucher programs are not--or many voucher schools are not unionized. And teachers unions are one of the biggest political forces in politics. They often support Democratic candidates. They're often supporters of progressive causes. And in the post Citizens United world, as you've seen corporations being able to spend more and more money trying to influence politics, trying to advance their agenda, trying to influence policy, teachers unions and unions in general are one of the few counterweights to that corporate power. So the more that you can reduce the influence of unions, and teachers unions specifically, the more that you can expand corporate power. So that's another piece that's really at stake here, which really, to be clear, that should take second--should take the back seat to educational outcomes and making sure that our kids are educated. But when you're looking at the motivations of the reasons that these bills are sweeping across the country, it's not for the benefit of children; it's for political purposes and to advance the profit motive.NOOR: And finally, Professor Mead, let's end with you. What are the lessons of Wisconsin that the rest of the country should be paying attention to as these same policies, like vouchers, spread throughout the country?MEAD: Well, one of the things that I like to talk about is what's public about public education, because I really do believe that that is precisely what is at stake, what is public about public education. And when we think about that publicness, I like to talk about five dimensions of publicness. There's public purpose, public funding, public access, public accountability to communities, and the public curriculum. And as we push to privatize all of those, save for--perhaps except for public funding, are at risk. So the public purpose becomes muddied. Yes, there are some [incompr.] purposes are served by private education, certainly, but you also introduce private interests, private for-profit interests, and even private interests of wanting to control the nature of the education itself.Public funding gets preserved in both systems, but without the same public access. So public schools have to serve all of the public in whatever form that public school child comes to us. Private schools, that's not so. So they don't have to serve children with special needs in the same way. They don't have to serve English language learners and so forth. Public accountability to communities. We elect our neighbors as public school boards, and then we can petition those neighbors and talk to those neighbors to try to make sure that our schools reflect what we want them to reflect locally. We can do the same thing at the state level, on the federal level in terms of influencing educational policy. Once you shift into a privatization mode, there is no accountability to voters. There's no way I as a voter with a child or I as a voter without a child can influence what's happening at that private school once they've accepted the voucher. So we lose that public accountability to our communities. And finally, public curriculum. If you think about it, over the many years that public schools have been in existence, we have continually, as a collective, through our representative governments at all three levels, defined what it means to be an educated citizen, what kinds of things should be taught in schools, what should be emphasized, how that's going to--how a child's going to progress through that curriculum throughout their educational journey. All of those things we have codified in various kinds of statutes, both state and federal, and of course local policies. And once you shift into a private school, all of that is lost, save for the very rudimentary you have to teach some reading, you have to teach some arithmetic, and perhaps you have to teach some science, and how many days you have to be in school or in session. So we lose all of that history of what we [inaud.] together to determine what it means to be an educated citizen.NOOR: Julie Mead and Brandon Fisher, thank you so much, both, for joining us.MEAD: Thank you for having me.FISHER: Thanks for having me.NOOR: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?...&jumival=10548


Here we go again public and private partnerships, profit for them, taxes and bills for us( the taxpayers. ) More of our money from our pockets to their pockets, with no accountability for them and no say from us for our children. Now isn't that a plan!! Our children will suffer for their profits!!

For decades, Eagle Forum has been fighting the radical leftist indoctrination of our children in education. We support parents' rights to guide the education of their own children, to protect their children against immoral instruction, and to home-school without oppressive government regulations.


We have long opposed liberal propaganda in the curriculum through global education and political correctness, and deplore the dumbing-down of the academic curriculum through fads such as outcome-based education, and courses in self-esteem, diversity, and multiculturalism – like that found in the current battle against the Common Core State Standards Initiative.


Eagle Forum has fought initiatives like the Common Core for years, and because of those experiences, you are guaranteed solid, effective activist training at Eagle Council where we will hold a special boot camp on defeating the Common Core, on Saturday, September 14th.


We will begin with a brief history of progressive education that will be given by Phyllis Schlafly. Then, you will hear from the nation’s leading experts on issues of the current federal overreach, the national curriculum that will come from the Standards, and the federal database that is prescribed through Common Core.


We will also feature two panels where you will hear from those that have been in the trenches. This will include state legislators as well as citizen activists and lobbyists from Capitol Hill.


You will only find this type of information and training at Eagle Council – you cannot afford to miss it!


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10,000 Pages Needed to Answer Common Core Questions


Elizabeth Henry

August 20, 2013 at 3:30 pm






North Carolina Lt. Governor Dan Forest continues to stand up for educational freedom in his state by questioning the stakes connected to the implementation of the Common Core national education standards.


In June, Forest released a video explaining his opposition to North Carolina’s rush to adopt the Common Core and lending his support to the State Board of Education’s decision to review the standards.



Aiding the review process, he has now sent a letter to the superintendent of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI) listing 67 unanswered questions about the Common Core in North Carolina. He asked for the answers to be delivered before the State Board of Education meeting later this month.


In response to the letter, the DPI requested that Forest provide 10,000 pieces of blank paper. Happy to oblige, Forest sent them the requested reams, stressing that he expects all questions to be answered by his deadline. He plans to lead a discussion of the department’s answers at the next Board of Education meeting.


Forest’s letter outlined seven chief concerns about North Carolina’s rush to implement Common Core as it pertains to: (1) development of standards, (2) cost, (3) required technology, (4) impact of standards on student performance, (5) the role of the federal government, (6) data collection, and (7) Race to the Top federal grant funding.


Here are a few of the questions included in Forest’s letter:


(1) “Who owns the standards? [...] Do we, [the Board of Education and the Department of Instruction], have the right to revise the standards to accommodate our Public Schools’ diverse needs? […] Has the Common Core been validated empirically?”


(2) “What is the total cost of implementing Common Core state standards (CCSS) and tests for North Carolina? […] What is the projected cost of implanting and carrying out Common Core state standards for the next 5, 10, and 15 years?”


(3) “How can we allow students the flexibility to learn at individualized rates of study, if we are adopting standards and assessments that require them to learn at the same rate as the collective whole, as dictated by the benchmarks that will be assessed? […] David Coleman, President of the College Board, has stated that the SAT will be redesigned to reflect the CCSS. What will this impact mean for our non-public school families?”


(4) “When North Carolina applied for federal Race to the Top grant money, we agreed to adopt the standards before they were officially published. Why did we agree to standards without knowing and vetting them first?”


Lt. Governor Forest is setting a good example of what state and local leadership should be asking of Common Core before diving into implementation. The stakes are high, and implementation is already proving costly in terms of dollars and will prove even more costly in terms of lost educational liberty. Education decisions should be in the hands of those closest to the students: parents and local leaders. Forest’s actions are consistent with that principle and should be considered by other states that have signed on to national standards.


Elizabeth Gray Henry is a recent member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please click here.



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http://blog.heritage.org/2013/08/20/...ore-questions/



Rotten to the CORE!!!!!

Badass Teachers Association and other leftists join fight against Common Core

Posted by EAGNEWS on Aug 26, 2013

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Think Common Core opponents are all right-wing, tin-foil-hat-wearing Tea Party members?

If so, it’s time you learned about the Badass Teachers Association.
BAT is a 25,000-member group of left-wing educators, union members and progressive activists who “are pushing back against the national (learning) standards with Twitter strikes, town hall meetings and snarky Internet memes,” reports Kathleen McGrory of the Miami Herald.
Group members – known as BATs – share the concerns of conservatives and libertarians that Common Core will strip states and school districts of control over public education.
BATs are also worried the one-size-fits-all learning standards for math and English place “too much emphasis on testing and will stifle creativity in the classroom,” McGrory reports.
“The liberal critique of Common Core is that this is a huge profit-making enterprise that costs school districts a tremendous amount of money, and pushes out the things kids love about school, like art and music,” said Mark Nelson, a Fordham University professor and BAT co-founder.
McGrory notes that the more traditional teachers union – the Florida Education Association – is also beginning to turn on Common Core.
FEA President Andy Ford said some union members don’t like that their job reviews and (in some cases) wages will be determined by how well their students perform on assessments that are aligned with the new standards.
They have a point. New York school districts switched to Common Core testing this spring and saw their students’ test scores plummet.
Education gadfly Diane Ravitch believes the Badass Teachers Association proves U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is wrong when he “insists that the main criticism of Common Core comes from extremists and fringe groups like the Tea Party.”
McGrory notes “there are still plenty of Democrats who support the Common Core initiative, from the Obama administration down to teachers and parents on the local level. And in Florida, the movement still enjoys widespread support from the Republican-dominated legislature.”
“But the opposition is strong enough that state Sen. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami, is calling for a review before Florida moves further ahead with the standards and accompanying exams,” McGrory writes.
By Ben Velderman at EAGnews.org

http://joeforamerica.com/2013/08/bad...t-common-core/

A Monstrous Story for a Monstrous Curriculum: The Ugly Heart of Common Core

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Dana R Casey


photo: dave_mcmt


I am a high school English teacher. I became a teacher because I believe that literacy, which goes beyond just reading the words on the page, is an absolute necessity for maintaining our Republic. Proof of that is found in the many laws against reading certain texts, or against reading altogether, that have been passed down by every tyrant since literacy became available to the general population. A few examples of such tyrannical laws are the Taliban banning reading for any female or laws against teaching slaves to read or the Soviet Union’s banning of such books as A Wrinkle in Time, Where’s Waldo, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The communist Khmer Rogue in Cambodia so hated literacy that just wearing glasses was cause for execution. Literacy leads to freedom and tyrants know it. I have been teaching for over twenty years. Generally, I have been given either no curriculum or curriculum that was focused on skills, not specific texts. I would have to get those skills taught in whatever way I wanted to get there. Sometimes I was given more direction and that direction was generally pretty good including texts, key terms, supplemental stories, and suggested writing assignments. These directions were created at a school level by the teachers in the school. I helped write some myself. Mostly, I have had a lot of freedom in how I could achieve the learning goals.
Not anymore.
Today I was in a professional development session for my school district. Our school system has swallowed the Common Core curriculum whole. Why wouldn’t they? The federal system has said that it is “voluntary”, but “voluntary” means that the district gets cut off from major federal funding if it does not adopt the standards, so “voluntary” is subjective. Here is what the Washington Post reported Sen. Charles Grassley has to say about Common Core:
Current federal law makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education may not be involved in setting specific content standards or determining the content of state assessments. Nevertheless, the selection criteria designed by the U.S. Department of Education for the Race to the Top Program provided that for a state to have any chance to compete for funding, it must commit to adopting a “common set of K-12 standards” matching the description of the Common Core.
The Washington Post also reported, “The Republican National Committee recognizes the CCSS for what it is — an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children…”
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Common Core, it is a curriculum created in the private sector but pushed onto states by the federal government and endorsed by Bill Gates. The cost of implementing the program runs from millions to billions depending on the state. It is untested and unresearched. It has been criticized for being not as rigorous as proponents claim, clearly biased to a liberal perspective, so much so that many see it as indoctrination, and it is being forced on the states in spite of the fact that a federal curriculum is unconstitutional violating the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which established the principle that“…the “power” to oversee education belongs to the states. This longstanding principle of local control of education is reiterated throughout our laws and government codes.”
All of that sounds like something that makes NO connection whatsoever to most parents or teachers or American citizens as to why they should fight this curriculum. Here, I am going to provide you with a concrete example that shows the ugly heart of the Common Core. There is something deeply dark and offensive in this lesson created to support Common Core. It is a lesson designed to corrupt essential human decency.
The unit – sorry “module” – that I am using as an example is centered around To Kill a Mockingbird with the theme of “How individuals demonstrate individuality in the face of outside pressures.” At the beginning of all of this, it looks good. I love the book; it is a great American classic and I have taught it many times. The module includes 30 days of lessons associated with the novel and multiple additional short reading assignments. However, as I looked this module over, I became more and more concerned. For me to break down the many problems with this module in detail would take quite a while, so I am going to show you an example of one lesson on one short reading assignment that left me speechless with horror.
This assignment in the module includes a short story by Guy de Maupassant, 19^th century writer famous forThe Necklace. Again, this seems rather innocent; this story is often included in high school texts, but not thisparticular story and, more importantly, not with this particular writing assignment.
The short story is The Mother of Monsters (link below). A quick summary of the story is that a gentleman on vacation is introduced to the Mother of Monsters, a local oddity described as a “peasant” and the “Devil”. Her story is that she finds herself pregnant while she is working as a simple serving girl. She binds her body with boards and cords to hide her growing belly. Her child is born horribly deformed. She takes care of the child, but resents it, until a sideshow man comes along and offers to buy the “thing” and to pay a yearly stipend for its use. Once she realizes how much money she can make, she repeats her pregnancy pattern by birthingmonster after monster after monster of intentionally deformed children to sell to showmen. She lives a “bourgeois” life as a result (note the stab at the bourgeois here).
The narrator is reminded of this “Devil” when he later sees a popular “Parissiane” strolling on a beach followed by admirers. Her three children are also all deformed because she wants to maintain her trim figure throughout her pregnancies, so she keeps her corset tightly cinched. Peasant and lady; different, yet the same. Both the Mother of Monsters. Both display a level of selfish evil that most humans would revile.
Now as a high school story, this story may have a lot of meat to chew on for discussion…for maybe 11^th or 12^thgraders, but this is a story assigned to incoming 9th graders, students who are 13 or 14 years old. Students this age are not ready to handle the truly disturbing elements of a story which reveals some of the most perverse sides of human nature. That is bad enough; however, it gets worse. You may wonder what this story has to do with To Kill a Mockingbird and the theme of individuality. Here is the writing assignment associated with this story:
Write an essay that compares the cultural experience reflected in To Kill a Mockingbird and The Mother of Monsters and explain how this experience helped a character demonstrate individuality in the face of outside pressure.
Individuality! Outside Pressure!!!! These women chose to deform their children for their own selfish gains or selfish vanity! The first pregnancy of the peasant woman we might forgive out of mercy, but the purposeful birthing of the rest of the 11 children that she intentionally deformed is unconscionable and unforgivable. The same holds with the Parisienne.
To judge these women as demonstrating their INDIVIDUALITY in the face of outside pressure is absurd and defies human decency. It is like insisting Jeffery Dahmer was expressing his individuality through cannibalistic murder. Additionally, it is not a major leap to conclude that if deforming your children in order to express your own individuality is acceptable, then killing your children to protect your individuality (or selfish inhumanity) is perfectly fine too. This is obviously a pro-abortion message. This story paired with this assignment is a repulsive perversion of the concept of “lesson”; it is a corruption of anything descent and good.
There is something deeply repulsive in this lesson, especially as it is aimed at students as young as 13. I have been told that I must teach this module. I can make some adjustments, but not too many. I am struggling to find a way to NOT perpetuate the ugliness found here. I am certainly NOT going to teach this story, though I may find myself in trouble with the system as a result. Some things are worth refusing to do even if there is a cost.
This is what is going on in our schools. This is what you need to see with open eyes. They are doing more than trying to increase rigor; they are indoctrinating our children into one way of thinking—their way! Schools should teach how to think, but never what to think. This is why we must fight what some are trying to sell us as “hope and change” to America.

Link to the story “The Mother of Monsters”: http://www.classicreader.com/book/1238/1/
Dana R. Casey is a veteran High School English teacher of more than two decades in an East-coast urban system. She is a life-long student of theology, philosophy, and politics, dedicated to the true Liberalism of the Enlightenment, as defined by our Founders and enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter.

http://dcclothesline.com/2013/08/25/a-monstrous-story-for-a-monstrous-curriculum-the-ugly-heart-of-common-core/

Thursday, 29 August 2013 16:02 Common Core National Education Outrages Teacher Coalition

Written by Alex Newman





As outrage continues to grow surrounding the unprecedented “Common Core” nationalization of K-12 education under the Obama administration — particularly among Republicans, Tea Party groups, conservatives, and libertarians — a new foe of the controversial scheme is attacking the federally backed standardization plan from all angles, including the political left. Known as the Badass Teacher Association, with members calling themselves BATs for short, the nationwide coalition of educators is working hard to defeat the agenda — and they have been wildly successful thus far.

Analysts say the group is set to have a major impact on the raging debate, and in an interview with The New American, BATs co-founder Dr. Mark Naison explained why. Already, in a period of a few months, the association has attracted some 26,000 BATs on its primary Facebook page. Headlines about the teachers and their opposition to the Common Core national education scheme have appeared from coast to coast. As the battle against the controversial standards heats up, the group’s influence is expected to grow in tandem.

Proponents of Common Core regularly claim that criticism of the standards, pushed on 45 state governments so far by the establishment and the Obama administration, has come mostly from the right. The BATs, though, while certainly a left-leaning organization as evidenced by the "socialist fist" in their logo (shown), have their own problems with Common Core — and they are making it known, loud and clear. While its members and leaders quoted in media reports say they, too, want to restore local control, the outrage goes much deeper.

“This association is for every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality through education,” the organization says on its website and in e-mails to new members, asking others to join the alliance and fight back as well. “BAT members refuse to accept assessments, tests and evaluations created and imposed by corporate driven entities that have contempt for authentic teaching and learning.”

According to the association, its aim is to reduce or even eliminate the use of high-stakes testing while increasing teacher autonomy in the classroom. In a nutshell, that starts with killing Common Core. The BATs are also working to “include teacher and family voices in legislative decision-making processes that affect students,” it explains. To achieve its mission, the alliance says it will plan different actions each week where members can help out, as well as having state groups coordinate local rallies and events. Other activism will include phone calls, letter-writing campaigns, e-mails to officials, and more.

"We've had enough. We are not your doormats. We are not your punching bags,” says Dr. Naison, one of the association founders and a professor at Fordham University with experience in public schools. “We are some of the hardest working, most idealistic people in this country and we are not going to take it anymore. We are going to stand up for ourselves, and stand up for our students even if no organization really supports us. We are Badass. We are legion. And we will force the nation to hear our voice!”

In a phone interview with The New American, Dr. Naison said he has been concerned for a long time about what he called “excessive testing” and the effects it is having on public schools, adding that kids were essentially doing nothing all day except preparing for standardized tests. "I saw this whole emphasis on standardized testing as smothering the learning process and driving the best teachers out of our schools,” explained Naison, who teaches history and African-American studies. “When I heard that Common Core was coming to New York, I realized that everything I was worried about was going to get worse — much worse.”

Among other concerns about the national standards, Dr. Naison cited the huge expense, taking money away from things that make kids enjoy school, the “punitive and humiliating” nature of the scheme, ratcheting up pressure on students and teachers, and more. “I saw Common Core as testing on steroids, like it was coming from outer space,” he said. “This is an extremely intrusive and oppressive program being mandated in all of our schools — it’s been shoved down the throats of school officials in a fundamentally undemocratic process.”

One of the most remarkable elements of the opposition, Dr. Naison continued, is how it spans across the entire political spectrum and obliterates traditional partisan divides. “Never have I found myself finding so much common ground with people who call themselves conservative and libertarians — we all agreed public schools were going to be ruined by this,” he said. “This really represents the worst fantasies of both the right and left coming true: Big Government and Big Corporations imposing this terrible, untested, expensive plan using intimidation and bullying.”

The fact that such a broad coalition opposes Common Core forced Dr. Naison to ask why it was happening in the first place. “It was very suspicious,” he said, noting that both the Democrats and Republicans played a role in foisting the “untested, expensive, and oppressive” scheme on most of America despite the overwhelming lack of public support. However, considering the association’s explosive growth — there are now 50 state BAT groups working to defeat the agenda alongside the national alliance — the professor sounded upbeat about the prospects for success.

“One of the reasons we’re making such a big difference is because proponents of Common Core claim only right-wing extremists are opposed to it; we show that’s not true, we show that opposition comes from across the political spectrum,” he said, adding that progressives, liberals, libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, conservatives, and more were active in the effort. “It’s clear that this group crosses the whole political spectrum. We are a multi-partisan, anti-Common Core group dedicated to sticking it to the man — the big shots in America who are bullying teachers.” The association, formed on June 14, also supports the choice that homeschooling parents make and commends those who “realize that our fight is their fight.”

On the BATs website, the association goes on to blast “high-stakes testing and attacks on teacher autonomy” that have “become official policy of both major parties, supported by the wealthiest people in the nation, and cheered on by the media.” Teachers, the group goes on, “may have reached a tipping point” regarding the demonization of educators and the “micro-management of their classroom lives.” BATs are also upset with the leaders of teachers' unions who have accepted funds from the Common Core-financing Gates Foundation and have failed to fight back effectively against the schemes.

As awareness of the billionaire- and taxpayer-funded educational takeover continues to grow, opposition to the plan is surging across America in a way that has united far-left progressives, hardline conservatives, and people everywhere in between in a unique alliance. The new teachers’ group, however, represents what could become one of the most potent forces seeking to stop Common Core. While only a little over one third of Americans were even aware of the new national standards, almost three fourths of Americans say they “have trust and confidence” in government-school teachers. As such, the voices of teachers are likely to have a major impact on the national grassroots effort to stop Common Core.

As The New American documented extensively in a recent cover-story package, the administration’s education agenda has come under fire for countless reasons: poor standards, propaganda, endless federally funded testing, stripping parents and local communities of control over education, unconstitutional coercion by the Obama administration, links to the United Nations, unimaginably intimate data-collection schemes, and much more. Universities and colleges are now in the federal government's crosshairs, too. With a heavy-hitting coalition of teachers joining the battle, however, analysts say the future of education is already starting to look a little brighter.

http://thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/16428-common-core-national-education-outrages-teacher-coalition

The Most Dangerous Domestic Spying Program is Common Core

1 day ago Posted by Joshua Cook

• September 2, 2013

Earlier this year, revelations about the Department of Justice spying on the Associated Press were quickly followed by revelations that the NSA was collecting phone data on all Verizon, and then all American cell phone, users. Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing drew yet more attention to the issue, and domestic surveillance programs have remained a top issue in people’s minds ever since.
While Americans focus on institutions like the CIA and NSA, though, programs are being implemented which would lead to a much more institutional way of tracking citizens. Obamacare is one of these, but Common Core Standards – the federal educational program – is the most eyebrow-raising.
Bill Gates was one of the leaders of Common Core, putting his personal money into its development, implementation and promotion, so it’s unsurprising that much of this data mining will occur via Microsoft’s Cloud system.
Even the Department of Education, though, admits that privacy is a concern, and that that some of the data gathered may be “of a sensitive nature.” The information collected will be more than sensitive; much of it will also be completely unrelated to education. Data collected will not only include grades, test scores, name, date of birth and social security number, it will also include parents’ political affiliations, individual or familial mental or psychological problems, beliefs, religious practices and income.
In addition, all activities, as well as those deemed demeaning, self-incriminating or anti-social, will be stored in students’ school records. In other words, not only will permanently stored data reflect criminal activities, it will also reflect bullying or anything perceived as abnormal. The mere fact that the White House notes the program can be used to “automatically demonstrate proof of competency in a work setting” means such data is intended to affect students’ futures.
Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that data collection will also include critical appraisals of individuals with whom students have close family relationships. The Common Core program has been heavily scrutinized recently for the fact that its curriculum teaches young children to use emotionally charged language to manipulate others and teaches students how to become community organizers and experts of the U.N.’s agenda 21.
Combined with this form of data collection, it’s easy to envision truly disturbing untruths and distortions making their way into the permanent record.
Like Common Core, states were bribed with grant money from the federal government to implement data mining, and 47 states have now implemented some form of data mining from the educational system. Only 9 have implemented the full Common Core data mining program. Though there are restrictions which make storing data difficult on the federal level, states can easily store the data and allow the federal government to access it at its own discretion.
The government won’t be the only organization with access to the information. School administrators have full control over student files, and they can choose who to share information with. Theoretically, the information could be sold, perhaps withholding identifying information. In addition, schools can share records with any “school official” without parental consent. The term “school official,” however, includes private companies which have contracts with the school.


NSA data mining is troubling because it could lead to intensely negative outcomes, because it opens up new avenues for control, and because it is fundamentally wrong. Common Core data mining, tracking students with GPS devices however, is far, far scarier.
It gives the government the ability to completely control the futures of every student of public education, and that will soon extend to private and home schools. It provides a way to intimidate students – who already have a difficult time socially – into conforming to norms which are not only social, but also political and cultural.

http://benswann.com/the-most-dangero...s-common-core/