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

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Feds recommend reform group created by terrorist Bill Ayers
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Ayers-founded Small Schools Workshop for use in creating “learning environments that are supportive of perseverance”. The Small Schools Workshop is ...

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Describing it as a “highly regarded organization”, Obama’s Education Department recommends the Bill Ayers-founded Small Schools Workshop for use in creating “learning environments that are supportive of perseverance”.

The Small Schools Workshop is currently led by Mike Klonsky, a fellow 60′s radical of Bill Ayers, who once vowed to the communist government of China that he would lead the struggle to topple the U.S. imperialist ruling class. Read more about Klonsky here.
The Department of Education document, Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century, also recommends the Coalition of Essential Schools, the progressive indoctrination movement behind CSCOPE and Common Core.
This is the same document that has drawn attention in recent months due to content outlining invasive data mining techniques for use on students.
Supposedly for the purpose of improving education, Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance reveals that our government intends to turn children into human guinea pigs whose every expression, emotion, and physiological trait will be read, monitored and evaluated through devices designed to monitor facial expression, EEG brain wave patterns, skin conductance, heart rate variability, posture, and eyetracking.
For our president to have history with these organizations and terrorists is definitely a concern. For these organizations to furtively infiltrate our schools under the guise of raising test scores and graduation rates is another cause for concern. But far beyond disturbing is the fact that our government recommends giving maoist, communist, domestic terrorists control over the ‘structure and culture’ of our classrooms, while also suggesting that grossly instrusive methods be used to collect and store extremely personal information on every child.
Let’s not forget that there are several former Weathermen/Weather Underground Organization members involved with both the Coalition of Essential Schools and Small Schools Workshop, and that those same people were reported to have discussed and planned the rounding up, re-education, and extermination of American citizens.
To read more about the Coalition of Essential Schools, go to the Common Core/CSCOPE/CES Connection page.
To see the other communists and terrorists behind these organizations, go to Name Names.

Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/01/fed...0YdoqIR7aBp.99

Arkansas Mother Obliterates Common Core in 4 Minutes!

Joe the Plumber


Common core is definitely secular in its mission. Dumbing down children and at the same time encouraging sex, this is what our Dept. of Education is pushing.



Common Core may endanger religious freedom of Catholic schools
joeforamerica.com
religious freedom issues explain that Catholic schools must “maintain their religious mission in all their programs—including standards, methods, and curric ...

Common Core may endanger religious freedom of Catholic schools

Posted by EAGNEWS on Jan 13, 2014 in EAG News, Education, Politics, Public Employee Unions, Religion






MANASSAS, Va. – In the fourth of a series of reports on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) published by The Cardinal Newman Society, two legal experts on religious freedom issues explain that Catholic schools must “maintain their religious mission in all their programs—including standards, methods, and curriculum—if they want to avoid” government threats to their Catholic identity.

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Authors Kevin Theriot and Jeremy Tedesco are senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which has played a key role in court battles to halt the HHS mandate and has worked closely with The Cardinal Newman Society to advise Catholic school and college leaders on protecting their religious freedom.
The report is part of the Newman Society’s Catholic Is Our Coreproject to help key stakeholders in Catholic education – Catholic families, pastors, teachers, principals, superintendents and bishops – know and evaluate concerns about the Common Core and its potential impact on Catholic education.
Theriot and Tedesco address federal statues which can be used to undermine a school’s religious identity. For schools seeking to avoid restrictions by claiming First Amendment protection or religious exemptions, the authors list 10 characteristics commonly cited by courts to determine if an organization has a strong enough religious character to merit an exception. In the past, courts have considered:

1. Whether the entity operates for profit
2. Whether it produces a secular product
3. Whether the entity’s articles of incorporation or other pertinent documents state a religious purpose
4. Whether it is owned, affiliated with or financially supported by a formally religious entity such as a church or synagogue
5. Whether a formally religious entity participates in the management, for instance by having representatives on the board of trustees
6. Whether the entity holds itself out to the public as secular or sectarian
7. Whether the entity regularly includes prayer or other forms of worship in its activities
8. Whether it includes religious instruction in its curriculum, to the extent it is an educational institution
9. Whether its membership is made up by coreligionists
10. Consistent compliance with religious beliefs.

Educators and parents have expressed concerns that the Common Core—which rests on entirely secular standards that are sometimes at odds with Catholic schooling rooted in a classical approach to education—could impact the Catholic identity of Catholic schools, if they voluntarily conform their curricula, textbooks and testing to the Common Core. This, suggests the analysis by Theriot and Tedesco, could lead to problems with protecting Catholic schools’ religious freedom.
To the extent that a religious school departs from its historic religious ties, it may be in danger of losing its ability to claim that it is a religious employer exempted from civil rights legislation disallowing even religious discrimination. To minimize regulation, such institutions should firmly maintain their religious identities and should exercise caution when accepting federal funds or allowing their students to accept federal financial assistance.
Schools also can anticipate difficulty avoiding problematic requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Catholic schools must either bring about a change in the law which expands conscience rights or bring successful lawsuits against the HHS in which they demonstrate “that it actually has a sincere religious belief against providing or facilitating coverage for certain objectionable practices, and that forcing it to do so will substantially burden its belief because it would select non-objectionable health coverage if it could.” Catholic Education Daily recently reported that Catholic schools associated with the health plan for the Michigan Catholic Conference, University of Dallas, University of Saint Francis and Aquinas College are among a recent list of colleges and schools that have been awarded temporary relief from the HHS mandate.
Catholic Education Daily is an online publication of The Cardinal Newman Society. Click here for email updates and free online membership with The Cardinal Newman Society.
Authored by Erica Szalkowski – The Cardinal Newman Society


Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/01/com...edbcmY7sEiD.99

Joe the Plumber


Want your kids to grow up being idiots? Well then just sit back and let the government cram Common Core down your throat! There is only Right and Wrong, and common core is about as wrong as you can get!



Lawmakers to consider anti-Common Core bills
joeforamerica.com
lawmakers begin the new legislative session on Tuesday. The Associated Press reports that lawmakers will be presented with a variety of bills that ...

Joe the Plumber



New Hampshire is wising up and resisting big Government in favor of parents and kids



New Hampshire legislation would ban Common Core



joeforamerica.com
New Hampshire State House of Representatives during next year’s legislative season, adding the Granite State to the list of states pushing back against this ...

Us vs. Them

By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | January 14th, 2014 at 04:30 AM



The United States Chamber of Commerce, already in the tank for amnesty, is now in the tank for Common Core. The Chamber of Commerce will be funding Republican candidates to beat conservatives.

The New York Times recently ran an article on the corrupt and entangling alliances within the Mainstreet Partnership. This group of liberal Republicans, funded by an alliance of Wall Street and Labor Unions intends to defeat both conservative incumbents and challengers to Republicans.

Both of these groups are working with the Republican Establishment, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, whose staff, when not hanging out with questionable souls, is attacking conservative talk radio hosts.

Friends, the battle lines are stark and clear. Conservatives will beat the GOP or the GOP will go left. It will go left toward amnesty, left toward common core, left toward Obamacare, left toward abortion rights, left toward gun control, and left toward tax increases and even bigger spending.

You may think you can sit it out. You may not want to get dirty. But you do not have a choice. You will either stand with the labor unions and crony capitalists funding the establishment, or with the conservative fighters funding freedom loving candidates.

One day, should I ever have the money to buy back the joint, I’m going to put a map on the front page of RedState that will make it easy for you to track all the candidates we are supporting. For now, though, I’m going to begin rolling out the list. We need to take Washington back from entrenched interests on the right and left who profit from the status quo. We must start by beating Mitch McConnell to send a shockwave before us. Then we must work in other states in the wake of that conservative victory with Matt Bevin.

It will not be easy. They will fight back hard. But it must be done. We must save the GOP from itself. To do that, we must stand together and fight against a tide of incumbency that profits off Washington’s status quo.

This week, I’ll highlight candidates we support in the House, Senate, and Governors Mansions across America. Get your credit cards out. Get your prayer lists out.

We need to go to war against those who would sell out the country — even those who will have an “R” next to their name on the ballot.



http://www.redstate.com/2014/01/14/us-vs-them/

WND EXCLUSIVE

New Obama adviser wants Big Labor to shape education

Podesta spells out 'game-changing' reforms in document

Published: 2 days ago

The highly influential group founded by newly appointed White House counselor John Podesta has recommended “game-changing” education reforms, including the involvement of labor unions in higher education.

Scores of recommendation papers produced by Podesta’s Center for American Progress, or CAP, already helped to inform and craft policy for the Obama administration.

Last month, CAP released a 29-page paper titled “A Path Forward: Game-Changing Reforms in Higher Education and the Implications for Business and Financing Models.”

The document, reviewed in full by WND, petitions for more federal government regulation of education, calling for the restructuring of higher education.
Aaron Klein’s “Impeachable Offenses: The Case to Remove Barack Obama from Office” is available, autographed, at WND’s Superstore
A primary recommendation in the paper calls for the government to establish a Guided Pathways to Success, or GPS, which it defines as addressing “what is perhaps the most longstanding problem plaguing the American postsecondary education system: the lack of clear pathways for students to take them through postsecondary education to a career.”

Continues CAP: “Under the GPS model, students start in a limited number of meta-majors – a set of courses to meet academic requirements across a range of disciplines and programs – and ultimately complete a specific major through a highly structured degree plan.”

CAP envisions “tightly structured” semester programs to assure “that students have access to key milestone courses when they need them.”
“Technology would be in place to warn advisers when students fall behind so that they can offer timely and effective intervention,” the paper adds.

Podesta’s organization calls for the Department of Education to bypass Congress in implementing the recommended reforms:
“We also propose policy solutions that do not require congressional action that could accelerate the pace and acceptance of reforms with clear and significant implications for students, employers, and ultimately, taxpayers,” CAP says.

“Specifically, we call on the U.S. secretary of education to design and implement experiments authorized under federal student-aid programs and urge the adoption of quality metrics against which innovative strategies can be assessed.”

CAP goes on to call for labor unions to help in education reform.

“Finally, we urge greater stakeholder – organized labor, employers, and philanthropic organizations – involvement in higher-education innovation,” reads the paper.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/new-obama...X5i7uAuMRsk.99

“Specifically, we call on the U.S. secretary of education to design and implement experiments authorized under federal student-aid programs and urge the adoption of quality metrics against which innovative strategies can be assessed.”

And after that we can all play ring around a Rosey!!!!

The John Birch Society



"“The curriculum it is a part of, it aligns with national standards around those topics, and it’s part of our curriculum in the school district,” she said."

Should schools be teaching sex education at all? Why is it part of Common Core?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014...middle-school/


Imagine If You Found a Sex-Ed Poster Asking This Provocative Question at Your Daughter’s Middle...

theblaze.com
A poster asking some Kansas middle school students a sexually provocative question has at least one parent up in arms. "How do




Imagine If You Found a Sex-Ed Poster Asking This Provocative Question at Your Daughter’s Middle School

Jan. 15, 2014 7:30pm
Oliver Darcy

Editor’s Note: The following story contains strong sexual themes that may offend some readers.

A poster asking some Kansas middle school students a sexually provocative question has at least one parent up in arms.
“How do people express their sexual feelings,” the poster asks, before listing “touching each other’s genitals,” “anal sex” and “vaginal intercourse,” among other things.
(Image source: Screen grab via WDAF-TV)

After seeing the material posted at Hocker Grave Middle School in Shawnee, Kan., Mark Ellis thought it was likely posted by pranksters, WDAF-TV reported. He couldn’t believe school officials would actually expose his 13-year-old daughter to such a question.
However, after calling the school, Ellis learned the poster was teaching material and part of a health and science curriculum.
“Why would you put it in front of 13-year-old students?” he asked.

“Why would you put it in front of 13-year-old students?”

“It upsets me,” Ellis continued, speaking with WDAF-TV. “And again, it goes back to who approved this? You know this had to pass through enough hands that someone should have said, ‘Wait a minute, these are 13-year-old kids, we do not need to be this in-depth with this sexual education type of program.’”

Nevertheless, school officials have defended the decision to use the material.

“The poster that you reference is actually part of our middle school health and science materials, and so it is a part of our district approved curriculum,” district spokeswoman Leigh Anne Neal told WDAF-TV. “However the item is meant to be part of a lesson, and so certainly as a standalone poster without the context of a teacher led discussion, I could see that there might be some cause for concern.”

“The curriculum it is a part of, it aligns with national standards around those topics, and it’s part of our curriculum in the school district,” she said.
Ellis, who is threatening to remove his daughter from the sexual education classes unless the poster is removed, doesn’t think the school’s arguments hold water.

“This has nothing to do with abstinence or sexual reproduction, actually, a lot of these things,” he said. “I would like to see that this particular portion of the curriculum is removed from the school.”
–
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/01/15/imagine-if-you-found-a-sex-ed-poster-asking-this-provocative-question-at-your-daughters-middle-school/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign =ShareButtons

Common Core Pushes Global Warming

Sunday, January 19, 2014

How many reasons do you need not to have your kids in government schools?
Check it out:
A Common Core-aligned elementary school homework assignment in a Jefferson County, Colorado school district tells children that by 2512, Kansas will be an oceanfront state, that the “Smokey” Mountains [sic] will become the “Smokey” Islands [sic], and that a sharp decline in the human population will take place, all due to man-made global warming.
According to Complete Colorado, the assignment, labeled as “Common Core Comprehension Grade 5,” given at the Fremont Elementary School, is identified as a science fiction exercise in reading comprehension, but in “no part of the material, including a sheet of follow-up questions” is there “any critical thinking ‘pushback’ against the narrative provided in the exercise.”
The observation raises an irony, given that proponents of Common Core state that one of the main features of the new standards is that they encourage “critical thinking” over mere memorization of facts.
Priscilla Straughn, Executive Director of Educational Research and Design at Jefferson County Public Schools, told Complete Colorado, “We have district policy around controversial materials we expect all schools to follow.”


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Common Core Reading Comprehension Assignment Pushes Global Warming

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by Dr. Susan Berry 19 Jan 2014 227 post a comment
A Common Core-aligned elementary school homework assignment in a Jefferson County, Colorado school district tells children that by 2512, Kansas will be an oceanfront state, that the “Smokey” Mountains [sic] will become the “Smokey” Islands [sic], and that a sharp decline in the human population will take place, all due to man-made global warming.

According to Complete Colorado, the assignment, labeled as “Common Core Comprehension Grade 5,” given at the Fremont Elementary School, is identified as a science fiction exercise in reading comprehension, but in “no part of the material, including a sheet of follow-up questions” is there “any critical thinking ‘pushback’ against the narrative provided in the exercise.”

The observation raises an irony, given that proponents of Common Core state that one of the main features of the new standards is that they encourage “critical thinking” over mere memorization of facts.
Priscilla Straughn, Executive Director of Educational Research and Design at Jefferson County Public Schools, told Complete Colorado, “We have district policy around controversial materials we expect all schools to follow.”
However, when asked whether global warming was a “controversial” topic, Straughn reportedly responded, “I think the topic of global warming would be considered controversial. That was not the intent of this assignment. This assignment was around comprehension, with the science fiction genre.”
According to the report, a school district official said that the workbook containing the assignment was purchased individually by the classroom teacher without the use of district funds.
The assignment, published by Newmark Learning in a Common Core-aligned reading comprehension workbook, has the premise that a student from the year 2512, “Gif,” must create a hologram image of a student from the 21st century. Upon his arrival, the hologram student is shocked to see an oceanfront Kansas, and the explanation given by “Gif,” the “real” student from the future, is:

Well, by the early 21^st century, people knew that the massive use of fossil fuel was heating up the planet. But people didn’t stop their destructive lifestyles. They just kept using up Earth’s resources. The ice sheets melted, and Earth’s crust shifted. Volcanic pressure burst through in places that never had volcanoes.

“Gif” adds, “In 2130, the oceans began to rise over farmland and cities. In 300 years, most of the eastern United States was covered with water. All that remains are the Smokey [sic] Islands – formerly the Smokey [sic] Mountains.”
The reading comprehension questions following the story include:

• What caused all the problems on Earth?
• What were the Smokey [sic] Islands before?
• How could the problems have been avoided?

Complete Colorado states that it obtained the assignment after a listener to KOA’s The Mike Rosen Show submitted a copy from his child’s homework to the host. After it was read on the air, Complete Colorado requested a copy from the school district and an opportunity to review the entire workbook.
Psychologist Dr. Shawn Smith reviewed the assignment and told Complete Colorado:

Children who complete this assignment are not being asked to consider a viewpoint and make their own decisions, they are instead surreptitiously instructed to parrot that point of view. Regardless of the assignment’s intent, this is a potent form of indoctrination because humans have a well-documented drive to bring their beliefs in line with their actions.
When children, who are trusting and vulnerable, find themselves transcribing the political message at the core of these stories, they are likely to accept those ideas in order to establish consistency of behavior and belief. Add to that the fact that children routinely learn by way of fantasy, and these stories begin to look like an insidious form of coercion.

Read the rest of this Patriot Update article here: http://patriotupdate.com/2014/01/com...fUJRkrWg4Vg.99