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

Tuesday, 01 October 2013 07:00 Expert Explores Link Between Federal Data Mining and Common Core

Written by Alex Newman





In an exclusive studio interview with The New American magazine’s Dr. Duke Pesta, Heartland Institute Education Research Fellow Joy Pullmann outlined the crucial link between the Obama-backed “Common Core” nationalization of schooling, the federally funded tests that go with the standards, and the vast data-gathering apparatus being erected by the administration to gather private information on U.S. students. The Common Core assessments, which have already been adopted by about four in five state governments, are a key element underpinning the entire scheme, she explained.

“The first thing people have to know is that testing is inseparable from Common Core,” said Pullmann, a leading analyst focused on the education “reform” agenda with the non-partisan Heartland Institute. “When governors signed a bunch of documents saying ‘yeah, we want to do this nationalization of education project,’ one of the things that they signed on to was the Common Core initiative, and they defined it as standards plus assessments. So those assessments, those tests, are the enforcement mechanism to make sure that Common Core gets into the minds and into the hands of teachers and children in the classrooms.”

There are currently two testing consortia developing Common Core assessments for state governments with federal tax dollars, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). Several state governments have started to withdraw from the testing schemes following massive public outcries, but both organizations are marching full speech ahead despite the growing outrage among parents, teachers, and experts.

As part of the agreements signed between state governments and the federally backed consortia, Pullmann explained in the interview, data gathered on children at school will be provided to the organizations. As an example of the types of data being sought, she said one of the consortia was interested in information on “student behavior, their attitudes, their persistence, their discipline, and so forth — a lot of non-academic things that a lot of parents aren't comfortable with.”

“The reason I call this the student-data pipeline is because states have promised these organizations they'll give this information to them — it's basically a blank check; whatever information they think is necessary,” Pullmann explained. “And they've promised that they'll change their state laws or their regulations according to whatever is necessary to get that carried out.”

Because the testing regime is funded by the U.S. taxpayers via federal government, meanwhile, the assessment consortia have promised to deliver the information they gather on students to bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., she added. The agreement between the Obama administration's Education Department and the two testing organizations it funds, excerpted in the video interview, puts it succinctly: “The grantee must provide timely and complete access to any and all data collected at the state level to ED [the U.S. Department of Education].”

“We have a mass of student information available and open and unprotected — personal information about kids — that is literally being collected by Common Core,” Pullman continued. Indeed, as she points out in the interview, the administration has essentially re-written federal privacy regulations — without approval from Congress — to claim that information on children can be shared without parental knowledge or consent.

Aside from the data-mining schemes, Pullmann said other problems with nationalizing education through Common Core include the fact that it enhances the education monopoly already held by government. That will allow special interests, which invariably seek out power sources, to push their agenda more easily. “Just creating that sort of structure for education really makes it inevitable that bad things are going to be perpetuated on everybody beneath that structure," she said, citing the history of humanity to illustrate the argument against creating such centers of power to begin with.

Beyond that, the agenda goes even deeper. “The real goal is social engineering,” Pullmann said, echoing widespread concerns among Common Core critics across the political spectrum. “I don't like to use explosive sorts of things like that, but this is very obvious — the goal is to create a workforce that responds to the needs of the 21st century, as determined by the central planners.”

Dr. Pesta, who also serves as academic director at FreedomProject Education and an English professor at the University of Wisconsin, recently compared the effort to impose Common Core and associated government schemes on the American people to a frog being boiled alive over time. In the latest interview, he said that FPE, an online K-12 school offering classical education, has been working with Catholic schools. Many have been adopting Common Core standards in the mistaken belief that it would not pull them closer to the federal government, which Pesta noted had become increasingly hostile to Christianity and religious freedom.

For more information on Common Core, Dr. Pesta suggests exploring TheNewAmerican.com, which has been staying on top of major developments, and checking out the Heartland Institute’s page at www.heartland.org/common-core.

^{Photo at top: Dr. Duke Pesta interviewing Joy Pullmann}

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More in this category: « Strategies to Defeat Common Core Education Gain Momentum


1 comment

• Comment Link Tuesday, 01 October 2013 23:32 posted by Nora There is absolutely no need or reason for the government to have that much information on minor children or anyone else for that matter. The potential for abuse is plain for anyone to see. We need to pull our kids out of the disaster called "public education" and home school them, because if we don't they will be indoctrinated with socialist values, and unable to perform simple math, read, write or think critically. That's the goal of Common Core; to make children dumbed-down mindless slaves. A good bit of a child's formative years will be spent learning useless drills and blind obedience, if we don't stop this Common Core process of social control in its tracks.

http://thenewamerican.com/culture/ed...nd-common-core

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October 21, 2013

Nebraska Homeschoolers Speak out against Rule Changes

Staff Attorney Peter Kamakawiwoole helps defend homeschool freedom in Nebraska. He is married and the father of three small children.

In direct response to HSLDA’s May 2013 victory in the Nebraska Supreme Court, the Nebraska Department of Education has proposed significant changes to the homeschooling regulations, which would significantly curtail homeschool freedom.
The most noteworthy of these changes require students to remain in accredited public or private schools for up to 30 days, until they receive an official “acknowledgement” letter from the state, before parents can begin teaching them at home. Nebraska’s homeschool statute specifically says that parents can begin homeschooling in compliance with the law as soon as their paperwork is received by the DOE.
On October 15, 2013, the Department of Education held a video conference hearing reviewing the proposed rule changes in Lincoln, Scottsbluff, and Grand Island. Approximately 250 homeschoolers attended the meetings to voice their opposition to these proposed changes, which smack of governmental “approval” for homeschooling. Turnout was so strong that the hearing rooms became “standing-room only,” and many families had to settle for a spot in the hallways outside.
Testimony

Dave Lostroh, legislative liaison for the Nebraska Christian Home Educators Association (NCHEA), and HSLDA Staff Attorney Peter Kamakawiwoole, both testified in opposition to the proposed changes.
“At least twenty homeschooling parents and students gave oral testimony in opposition to the changes,” attorney Kamakawiwoole said. “Many others had originally intended to do so, but decided to not give oral remarks given the volume of the turnout.”
State Senator Beau McCoy and a representative of Saint Gregory the Great Seminary also submitted testimony opposing the proposed changes.
Many families who attended the hearing also submitted written testimony, and others across the state who could not attend took the time to fax and email testimony to the department over the weekend. All of this testimony, along with a recording of the hearing, will be made available to the department as it weighs making these changes.
Thanks to the strong response, the Department of Education understands that Nebraska homeschoolers consider the proposed rule changes to be significant. While the DOE had originally planned to make a decision in early November, the Department announced after the hearing that it does not have a set timeline for making a decision.
Thacker Decision Background

On May 31, 2013, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled unanimously in State v. Thacker that a family who had waited to begin homeschooling their five children until after the public schools were in session was not guilty of truancy. The decision not only put to rest the dangerous assertion that children are “presumed” to be enrolled in public schools, but also reinforced the fact that parents do not need “approval” from the Department of Education before they can begin homeschooling.
For more information you can read HSLDA’s detailed analysis of the proposed rule changes on our recent e-lert, or check out the proposed changes to Rule 12 or Rule 13 for yourself.

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Protect Your Family

HSLDA’s mission is to support homeschool freedom. We appreciate your prayers and membership. If you are not yet a member, please consider joining HSLDA to make sure homeschooling stays free in Nebraska and across the nation! Join today >>

http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/ne/201310210.asp

Common Core or Pornography? (**Reader Warning-Explicit**) My Kid Is Reading What????


Tuesday, September 3, 2013 17:45

I have myself noticed some inappropriate content in books my son has been reading. A fellow blogger sent me this article about, “Common Core Pornography” in schools. Anyone who has children needs to read this, and share it!

*Graphic content. Reader Discretion Advised

What an exhausting day! You look at the clock and see you have about 20 glorious minutes to rest before the kiddos come home from school. You notice that your 16-year-old left his Literature book on the coffee table. ”The Bluest Eye.” It’s too tempting. At this point you are too exhausted to care what you read, you just want a break. So you decide to indulge.

If this DOES NOT bother you, and you are a parent, something is definitely wrong!

You begin to read…..(warning**explicit)

“A bolt of desire ran down his genitals…and softening the lips of his anus. . . . He wanted to f*** her—tenderly. But the tenderness would not hold. The tightness of her vagina was more than he could bear. His soul seemed to slip down his guts and fly out into her, and the gigantic thrust he made into her then provoked the only sound she made. Removing himself from her was so painful to him he cut it short and snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina. She appeared to have fainted.”

It continues:

…..“He further limited his interests to little girls. They were usually manageable . . . His sexuality was anything but lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in his mind with cleanliness.” And later, this same pedophile notes, “I work only through the Lord. He sometimes uses me to help people.” Page 181: “The little girls are the only things I’ll miss. Do you know that when I touched their sturdy little t*** and bit them—just a little—I felt I was being friendly?—If I’d been hurting them, would they have come back? . . . they’d eat ice cream with their legs open while I played with them. It was like a party.”

The color drains from your face and the book slips from your hands. You quickly look around, hoping that no one has seen what you just read. You double-check the cover. Yes, you see the school’s information printed on the spine. Yes, you see your son has the book signed out to him. You continue further. Burning anger surges from your stomach up to your throat. You quickly scroll through the pages frantically.

Pages 84-85: “He must enter her surreptitiously, lifting the hem of her nightgown only to her navel. He must rest his weight on his elbows when they make love, to avoid hurting her breasts…When she senses some spasm about to grip him, she will make rapid movements with her hips, press her fingernails into his back, suck in her breath, and pretend she is having an orgasm. She might wonder again, for the six hundredth time, what it would be like to have that feeling while her husband’s penis is inside her.” ….Pages 130-131: “Then he will lean his head down and bite my t** . . . I want him to put his hand between my legs, I want him to open them for me. . . I stretch my legs open, and he is on top of me…He would die rather than take his thing out of me. Of me. I take my fingers out of his and put my hands on his behind…” Pages 148-149: “With a violence born of total helplessness, he pulled her dress up, lowered his trousers and underwear. ‘I said get on wid it. An’make it good, n*****, Come on c***. Faster. You ain’t doing nothing for her.’ He almost wished he could do it—hard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much.” Read more

• Pedophilia
• Incest
• Rape
• Graphic Sex

And the article goes on to say:

If the articles that came out this week about the idea of new Common Core math (i.e 3X4=11) principles of the “thinking process being more important than right or wrong answers” didn’t bother you… would the possibility of your child reading pornographic books bother you? Missed the math lesson? View it below. (SOURCE)








Go to YouTube and type Stop The Common Core in the search area to see the rest…


http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative...t-2754774.html

Chuck Norris crushes Common Core initiative just by staring it down

Posted by EAGNEWS on Nov 14, 2013

DALLAS – Yesterday, tough man Chuck Norris waded into the Common Core controversy and drew some common sense conclusions.

He writes:

In 2007, a group of governors and state education chiefs got together to try to remedy the declining and degraded U.S. public academic system.Their goal was to establish a new set of standards that better prepared kids for college, careers and their ever-changing, hyper-connected and globally competitive world.
In short, as a result, the Common Core State Standards were born.
In 2010, standards were published and made available for mathematics and English language arts. Though standards for science and social studies are still in development, the goal is for states to have 85 percent of their curricula based upon the full spectrum of those standards.
CCSS advocates pitch that the initiative is a step in the right direction from the disastrous No Child Left Behind federal system. But not everyone is catching the CCSS fever. In particular, there are concerns about federal overreach into and control of their local academic arenas.
By 2009, 45 states had signed on to join; Virginia, Nebraska, Texas and Alaska declined CCSS adoption. Minnesota partially adopted the language arts standards but rejected the math ones. And some other states have since jumped ship in other ways. In August, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Oklahoma and Utah withdrew from the assessment groups designing tests for the CCSS.

Continue Reading…



Written By : Chuck Norris
November 12, 2013 In 2007, a group of governors and state education chiefs got together to try to remedy the declining and degraded U.S. public academic system. Their goal was to establish a new set of standards that better prepared kids for college, careers and their ever-changing, hyper-connected and globally competitive world.
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In short, as a result, the Common Core State Standards were born.
In 2010, standards were published and made available for mathematics and English language arts. Though standards for science and social studies are still in development, the goal is for states to have 85 percent of their curricula based upon the full spectrum of those standards.
CCSS advocates pitch that the initiative is a step in the right direction from the disastrous No Child Left Behind federal system. But not everyone is catching the CCSS fever. In particular, there are concerns about federal overreach into and control of their local academic arenas.
By 2009, 45 states had signed on to join; Virginia, Nebraska, Texas and Alaska declined CCSS adoption. Minnesota partially adopted the language arts standards but rejected the math ones. And some other states have since jumped ship in other ways. In August, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Oklahoma and Utah withdrew from the assessment groups designing tests for the CCSS.
And Congress.org noted, “Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah are all currently considering full withdrawal with other fiscally conservative states sure to follow.” And in September, Florida Gov. Rick Scott issued an executive order restricting Florida’s involvement with the CCSS national assessments because of concerns over federal overreach of the program.
I commend the governors and state education chiefs who tried to improve the substandard and dilapidated state of U.S. public education, despite decades of attempts by federal and state governments to improve it. But there are good reasons that so many states have rejected or are questioning the ultimate value of the adoption of CCSS.
Let me tell you my core problems with CCSS and why I believe that the standards are not the solution for America’s broken educational system. (I’m going to unfold these problems in depth with solid evidence in successive weeks, concluding with what I believe would be a far better option than CCSS.)
My first issue with CCSS is one that is hot on the blogosphere and in the news: The feds have abandoned their commitment to stay out of local academic affairs by using CCSS to usurp power over public schools and influence young American minds.
In fact, one of the biggest defenses by CCSS advocates is their belief that the federal government — particularly the White House — is in no way behind the standards’ implementation, development and utility.
PolitiFact examined the words of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who said last July that CCSS is being “used by the Obama administration to turn the Department of Education into what is effectively a national school board.”
PolitiFact categorically evaluated Rubio’s statement as false.
But recent evidence shows that Rubio is right and PolitiFact is wrong. The feds already have started invading local school districts via CCSS in three ways: funding, influencing classroom curricula and siphoning student information from schools. Let me explain each in turn.
First, if the feds are so far removed from CCSS, why is it that the Department of Education has funded it with $350 million and motivated states to adopt the standards by rewarding Race to the Top grants and waivers from No Child Left Behind? (Please read and ponder that question again.)
For example, according to Politico, in August, the Department of Education granted NCLB waivers to eight school districts in California that agreed to the White House’s pro-Common Core preferences.
Politico further reported that the Council of Chief State School Officers, which represents state superintendents, has shared that it regards district-level waivers “as an example of federal overreach — and a direct threat to their authority over schools.”
Politico also noted, “California teachers unions also oppose the plan, warning in a June letter that the waiver sets up a ‘privatized “shadow” system of education in California’ that leaves children ‘susceptible to market exploitation and profiteering.’”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve yet to see the federal government funding anything that it didn’t eventually have its hands into.
The Foundry explained: “The waivers are set to expire for 34 states and the District of Columbia at the end of the 2013-2014 school year. The Department (of Education) is offering renewal but is requiring states to reaffirm commitments to its policies. (Notice: “its policies”!) This includes increased emphasis on ‘college and career-ready standards,’ which most states have interpreted to mean Common Core national standards and tests.”
I know that Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who is a former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools (interesting that it’s Barack Obama’s former turf), is working desperately to distance the federal government’s connection to and influence over CCSS. But if Duncan is going to be successful in maintaining that separation, for starters, he needs to drop the funding (monetary coercion) and refrain from using first-person plural pronouns when discussing who is responsible for the Common Core State Standards as he did when he told a group of journalists in June: “ We’ve set a high bar for states.” (Italics mine.)
I am personally challenging state and federal representatives to get on board to stop this Common Core insanity. I will be researching each politician to see who is and who is not supporting CCSS, and before this series is complete, I will be publishing their names in my columns, and they reach millions. I’m sure my readers will find my list of names helpful the next time they walk into the voting booths!
Stop Common Core right now!
In Part 2, I will give the second and third pieces of evidence of the feds’ collaborations and entanglements within CCSS, namely that the feds are influencing curricula already and — the most astounding piece of proof — that the feds are creating a national database to store your kids’ private information obtained through a technological project within CCSS.
Follow Chuck Norris through his official social media sites, on Twitter @chucknorris and Facebook’s “Official Chuck Norris Page.” He blogs at http://chucknorrisnews.blogspot.com.

http://www.rightwingnews.com/column-2/feds-3-tentacles-in-the-common-core-part-1/


Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2013/11/chu...0UVS7O4D8sE.99

Student Records Easily Hacked: Security Breach Triggers Common Core Rebellion from Teachers and Parents

4 hours ago | Education, US | Posted by Joshua Cook


According to Long Island Newsday, Suffolk (N.Y.) Police and Sachem School District are investigating a suspected security breach where a hacker was able to access and leak to a web forum personal student data, including medical and disciplinary records.
That student database is linked to the Common Core standards and the longitudinal collection of student data associated with Obama’s Race to the Top, which offered school districts $4 billion in grants if they chose to participate in the program.
According to The Journal News, in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam counties, N.Y., the database uploads to Web cloud run by inBloom, a non-profit group funded by the Gates Foundation and supported by Amazon.
Even before the early November security breach, parents and teachers were concerned about data collection and the potential of sharing it or stealing it.
The Journal News reported that more than 20 districts in the Lower Hudson Valley have pulled out of New York’s participation in the federal Race to the Top initiative, hoping that doing so will allow them to withhold certain data. Since the state has said that this strategy will not work, districts are now writing to inBloom directly and requesting that their student records be deleted.
A dozen parents in New York City even went so far as seeking a restraining order to protect their children’s data.
These concerns aren’t limited to school districts in New York. According to The New American, schools in Delaware, Colorado, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Illinois, Louisiana, Georgia and North Carolina have committed to “pilot testing” and information dissemination via sending students’ personal information to the inBloom database.
The New American reports, “The fact that Common Core Standards require children’s personal information to be provided to a database that can be expected to sell or share the data to unspecified companies is worrisome to many parents and educators. ‘It leads to total control and total tracking of the child,’ said Mary Black, curriculum director for Freedom Project Education, an organization that provides classical K-12 online schooling. ‘It completely strips the child of his or her own privacy.’”






Joshua Cook currently lives in Greenville, South Carolina. He received his MBA from North Greenville University and is actively involved in South Carolina politics

Read more: http://benswann.com/student-records-...#ixzz2l1UwrdS3
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Common Core scandal: Medical and disciplinary reports on children hacked

Posted by EAGNEWS on Dec 3, 2013

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – As the Florida Department of Education, Governor Rick Scott, former Governor Jeb Bush and key Florida legislators move forward to implement Common Core State Standards in the sunshine state a database in Long Island’s Sachem School District is compromised.

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Nancy Smith from Sunshine State News reports, “On Long Island earlier this month a hacker apparently was able to access records in the Sachem School District and leak personal student data to a web forum. The records included medical and disciplinary reports.” According to The Journal News, in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam counties, N.Y., the database uploads to Web Cloud run by inBloom, a nonprofit group funded by the Gates Foundation and supported by Amazon.

“Surprisingly, the breach didn’t come as a great shock to the community. Even before it transpired, parents and teachers were concerned about data collection and the potential of sharing it or stealing it,” writes Smith. Also reported in The Journal News, “More than 20 districts in the Lower Hudson Valley have pulled out of New York’s participation in the federal Race to the Top initiative, hoping that doing so will allow them to withhold certain data. Since the state has said that this strategy will not work, districts are now writing to inBloom directly and requesting that their student records be deleted.”
Governor Scott has raised concerns about the data mining portion of Common Core but has not supported legislation to either delay or stop its implementation in Florida. Florida Representative Debbie Mayfield (R-FL District 54) has introduced HB 25 to delay implementation until the costs and impact of Common Core can be determined.

Dr. Karen Effrem, President of Education Liberty Watch and a co-founder of the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition, and Randy Osborne, Director of Education for Heartland Research and the Florida Eagle Forum, did a Policy Analysis of Common Core in Florida. Effrem and Osborne state, “The Common Core standards, along with the aligned curriculum and the mining of nearly 400 data points reveal that the goal of the standards is not simply to improve academic achievement but also to instill federally determined attitudes and mindsets in students including political and religious beliefs. According to the US Department of Education, this will be carefully regulated through the extensive data-mining of both students and teachers using devices such as ‘facial expression cameras,’ ‘posture analysis seats,’ ‘a pressure mouse,’ and ‘wireless skin conductance sensors’ as well as the use of the actual assessments. The federal government asserts that to secure their definition of improving the quality of education, a student’s right to privacy may be sacrificed.”

Commenting on the Sachem School District data compromise Effrem states, “A number of standards will be used for the psychological training of children starting at a young age … One of the main goals for uniform national assessments is for the federal government to have access to highly personal individual student data. It isn’t just teachers and school officials who can request and get students’ records. It’s also ‘a contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party to whom an agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions … Common Core completely strips the child of privacy.”

Dr. Effrem writes, “The utter failure of proponents of Common Core to make rational arguments about this imposed system of inferior, psychosocial workforce training standards, national tests and data collection has stimulated them to lash out to mock and marginalize anyone who opposes it. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has joined former Governor Jeb Bush and Senate President Don Gaetzin now bipartisan sneering derision of parental and citizen concerns. Duncan created a firestorm on Friday (11/15) with his mocking, racist attack on mothers that oppose Common Core: ‘It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary. You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.’” Duncan has since issued an apology for his remarks.

A new Facebook group, Moms Against Duncan (MAD), has almost 1600 members since then and the comments on Twitter have been overwhelmingly critical. Conservative columnists and liberal moms have joined together in righteous anger against these thoughtless remarks.

History tells us the larger the Common Core database becomes the more likely it will be target by those who would do children harm. Will Governor Scott and the proponents of Common Core listen to moms and take heed? Time will tell.

Authored by Dr. Richard Swier - Watchdog.org

Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2013/12/com...kMsx1GWQkmG.99

Wisconsin school district votes to replace Common Core with its own standards

Posted by EAGNEWS on Dec 13, 2013

MADISON, Wis. – It appears that Wisconsin lawmakers won’t be getting rid of the Common Core learning standards anytime soon, so leaders in one school district are taking the task upon themselves.

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According to Wisconsin Reporter, the Germantown school board voted unanimously on Tuesday to develop its own set of learning standards, which will eventually replace the Common Core standards. The process will begin in January and is expected to take about a year.

Board members say Common Core – which the district has been using since 2011 – isn’t rigorous enough for their high expectations.
“We don’t want to be a mediocre district,” board Vice President Sarah Larson told Wisconsin Reporter.

Germantown school officials know that extricating the district from Common Core isn’t going to be easy, as the state’s mandatory
standardized tests are designed to comply with the new math and English standards. The matter is further complicated by the fact that student test scores impact teacher evaluations and state-issued report cards for districts and their individual schools.

It’s a bit of a jumbled mess, but Germantown school leaders appear up to the challenge.
That puts them at odds with lawmakers who comprised the state Assembly committee charged with reviewing Common Core.

On Wednesday, those lawmakers signaled the controversial learning standards will stay in place for the foreseeable future, although their final report – due later this month – will likely recommend the standards be reviewed periodically to ensure they’re tailored to Wisconsin public schools, WSAU.com reports.

The GOP-controlled Legislature apparently lost its nerve to replace Common Core, partly because Republican Gov. Scott Walker has refused to support the effort. Walker sits on the executive committee of the National Governors Association, one of the two private groups that developed (and hold the copyright to) the Common Core learning standards.

Lawmakers faced another obstacle in state schools Superintendent Tony Evers, who claims the sole constitutional power to adopt or reject the standards. Evers singlehandedly adopted Common Core back in 2010 and vowed to take legal action against the Legislature in the event of a repeal effort, the Associated Press reports.

That leaves the task of repealing and replacing Common Core up to the state’s school district leaders, one district at a time.
Germantown school leaders say they’re more than willing to lead the way.
“Hopefully others see what we’re doing as a model,” Superintendent Jeff Holmes said. “People do have the prerogative to change their minds. If you see a better path, why not take it?”

Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2013/12/wis...CxdQ2Gfmmqt.99