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

Back to February 2014 Ed Reporter

Common Core? No Thank You

Common Core opponents are surfacing in more states as lawmakers, teachers, and parents become more vocal in protest of the standards that were forced on schools, often without legislative approval. Some states question why there was a switch to Common Core (CC) standards when previous standards were clearly superior. Others are concerned about the focus on testing and the negative effect it has on actual student learning. Concerns over student privacy due to federal government demands for personally identifiable information collection and requirements to share that information is a focal issue in some states. Many are also experiencing sticker shock, as they face costs of new curriculum, testing fees and increased technology demands because students will take computerized tests; some are realizing that in every case a proponent of CC profits from those expenditures.
There are grassroots movements to stop Common Core in every state where it was enacted. Some 20 states have begun legislative activity to slow down, change, or stop Common Core implementation or funding.
The largest state teachers union has withdrawn its support of Common Core. The board of New York State United Teachers, which is affiliated with both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers unions, voted unanimously that support of CC is unjustifiable unless there are “major course corrections.” The union president said, “We’ll have to be the first to say it’s failed.” (Politico, 1-26-14)
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley promised to sign Senate Bill 300 that would end Common Core in that state if it makes it to her desk. She said, “We are telling the legislature: Roll back Common Core. Let’s take it back to South Carolina standards.” (Education Week, 1-17-14)
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence indicated in his State of the State speech that the current Common Core slowdown in his state could become a dead stop for CC. He said academic standards in his state “will be written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and will be among the best in the nation.” (Education Week, 1-15-14)
Referring to the sneaky and cajoling manner in which Common Core was foisted upon states, political commentator George Will wrote in the Washington Post (1-15-14):
Political dishonesty has swift, radiating, and condign consequences. Opposition to the Common Core is surging because Washington, hoping to mollify opponents, is saying, in effect: ‘If you like your local control of education, you can keep it. Period.’ To which a burgeoning movement is responding: ‘No. Period.’

Topic Highlight:

• Common Core info

• A Child's Reading List
• 100 milestone documents
• Bad Books
• Book Reviews/Lists
• ClassicReader.com
  Read, search, and annotate great works of literature.
• America's Great Religious Document
• Christopher Columbus
• George Washington Articles
• Marc Tucker "Dear Hillary" Letter
• Obligation, Inc.
  Reminding Businesses and Governments of Their Responsibility to Children
• Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment
  Assistance: Family Policy Compliance Office
• School Board Candidate Questionnaire

http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/feb14/common-core-thank.html

Wisconsin superintendent’s pro-Common Core campaign is height of hypocrisy

Posted by Joe For America on Feb 24, 2014

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By Ryan Ekvall | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON, Wis. — Like a campaign organizer working at Obama for America, State Superintendent Tony Evers emailed a call to action to educational bureaucrats for the purpose of rallying around Common Core academic standards, now under siege at the statehouse.

Evers omits facts, distorts truths and appeals to emotion rather than reason in his email and Youtube video to educators and bureaucrats. He and his staff at the Department of Public Instruction have long maintained that any opposition to Common Core is nothing but partisan politics.
GRASSROOTS: WI Supt. Tony Evers sent out a campaign-style call to action to rally around the Common Core.

It’s not the first time Evers played fast and loose with the facts in demagoguing policies with which he doesn’t agree.

Standard operation among Common Core supporters has been to decry opposition as partisan, misguided or ignorant, even in the face of national outrage among education experts, parents and voices of both thepolitical right and left.

How we got here

The effort to undo Common Core is led by Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, and made possible by thousands of boots on the ground throughout the state.Gov. Scott Walker has said he wants stronger, Wisconsin-based academic standards.

An assembly education committee is expected to vote Wednesday on a bill that would scrap Common Core standardized tests and create a Model Academic Standards Board to develop new K-12 education standards.

This unexpected development comes after hundreds of citizens comprised of a healthy representation of parents, tea partyers and education bureaucrats packed four legislative public hearings around the state last year on Common Core.

These were the public hearings that DPI never held when Evers quietly signed onto Common Core before the ink dried on the final version of the standards in 2010. In fact, a recent Marquette Law School poll found that roughly half of Wisconsinites today have never heard of Common Core. That’s nearly four years after the fact.

The same poll found that nearly 2 in 3 Wisconsinites say education standards should be set at the local or state level. Only 8 percent said several states should agree on regional standards, and 23 percent said standards should be national.

Common Core Politics

Common Core was developed by a small group of people backed by tens of millions of dollars primarily from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The standards were produced under the auspices of two D.C.-based national trade organizations, the Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors Association. The standardized tests are being developed by two new organizations which received nearly $200 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education.

Using Common Core political logic, supporters insist that because these private clubs for state officials were involved in adopting standards that Common Core was therefore a state-led process. Incidentally, none of Evers’ campaign literature makes a statement about what he pledges to do as a member of CCSSO.

And I’d be willing to bet that more than twice as many people in Wisconsin have heard of Common Core than the CCSSO.

Two members of the Common Core validation committee, Sandra Stotsky and James Milgram, testified the standards were not rigorous and had been rubber stamped by the committee.

Ze’ev Wurman, a former policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Education and who sat on the committee that evaluated Common Core in California, also said the standards were inadequate.

Both Wurman and Milgram said Common Core’s “college ready” math standards actually prepares student to enter a low level community college, but not STEM programs in more selective schools. Jason Zimba, one of the architects of Common Core, confirmed this to the validation committee.

That doesn’t mesh with Evers and DPI’s stance that national Common Core standards are necessary for students to graduate with “21^st century skills” — another ambiguous phrase without definition.

In Evers’ latest email, he again dismisses these concerns as meritless and instead resorts to logical fallacies and emotional appeals to incite action.

“Regardless who controls the legislature or governorship, as a grandfather, I am frightened that Wisconsin will turn over what our kids learn to the whims of an increasingly polarized legislature….Please contact your legislators and Governortoday to express your strong opposition to this legislation that puts politics before our kids and puts the Legislature and special interests in charge of writing standards,” Evers wrote. (emphasis his)

“The bill would allow four additional nonvoting ‘experts’ to help write the standards, like those out of state ‘experts’ who were brought to Wisconsin by special interests to testify in opposition to the Common Core,” he wrote.

The special interests Evers refers to are Wisconsin citizens passionate about education and Common Core. The “experts” he so disparagingly placed quotation marks around are the people listed above who hold top positions in their field.

He ignores scores of daily news stories from around the country featuring parents and voters upset with the standards and changes to their schools. In places like New York, where the implementation process is further ahead, parents, teachers and school principals are almost in mutiny over Common Core.

Germantown, Wis., a nationally-recognized top public school district, rejected the standards because they think it gives them the best chance of remaining a top school district. Catholic dioceses in the state refused to adopt Common Core in their schools.

Evers would have you pay no mind to all that though. He also contradicts his previous testimony in the first public hearing.

“This places our ESEA waiver in jeopardy and could bring back the broken No Child Left Behind law,” Evers wrote to supporters.

The federal government offered ESEA waivers and Race to the Top funds to states that adopted Common Core and agreed to be tested using standardized tests that hadn’t yet been developed.

Evers had testified, however, that the federal government didn’t coerce states into adopting Common Core. Here Evers uses the fear of consequences of disobeying the federal government as an appeal to educators to support Common Core.

He asks “are we ready for our legislators to debate and legislate academic standards related to evolution, creationism, and climate change when they take up the science standards? What about topics like civil liberties and civil rights, genocide, religious history, and political movements when they take up social studies?”

The innuendo here is that Republicans want to replace all school textbooks with The Bible. Unfortunately school standards are already political to some extent. It’s a function of the state’s control of education. Some schools teach sex education from aPlanned Parenthood pamphlet. Other schools teach the hard science of white privilege.

Besides, as Evers and DPI staff pointed out in testimony, standards tell what a student should know or be able to do at a given age. Curriculum — or what resources are taught and how — is up to the local school district.

Now he apparently wants people to think academic standards and curriculum are the same thing.

But these are all really secondary points.

The legislation doesn’t call for nearly any of what Evers claims it does.

It calls for a Model Academic Standards Board to be co-chaired by the state superintendent and a gubernatorial appointee. The superintendent would appoint four members to the board. The governor would appoint six members, including the co-chair. Senate majority and minority leaders would appoint one member each, as would the assembly speaker and minority leader.

It would be comprised of principals, educators, parents and experts, and yes, elected representatives. It appears to be along the lines of what the public wants in standards creation based on the results of the Marquette Law School poll.

The irony is particularly rich because Evers and DPI have spent copious time combating what they characterize as myths about Common Core deliberately perpetrated by opponents. Instead it’s Evers and DPI who are again caught playing politics with education.

Consider this statement from Evers’ Youtube video:

“We’re going to be a national embarrassment for what we’re doing in public education,” said the guy who carried signs around the Capitol in protest of Act 10, warning how it would “harm public education.”

Originally posted at WatchDog.org.


Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/02/wis...XBBJm8VsDu4.99

Tennessee Senate Bills Back Common Core

March 24, 2014

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State Sovereignty | I firmly believe in the Tenth Amendment and I want all citizens to understand the concept that “nullification…is the rightful remedy” when the federal government reaches beyond its constitutional powers.

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Opinions from Liberty Crier contributors and members are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Liberty Crier.

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By Joey Garrison
Senate, House divided on approaches they’re taking over Common Core
Republican Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey has no interest in following the House’s path on delaying Common Core in Tennessee, a hopeful sign for Gov. Bill Haslam and others looking to stave off a full-on revolt over the education standards.
The Tennessee Senate took actions Monday to express the state’s sovereignty over education standards, ensure data collected from its new testing isn’t shared and overhaul the state textbook commission.

All are aimed at Common Core — but each is less sweeping than the House’s stunning move last week to suspend further implementation of Common Core and postpone its companion test for two years.
If the Senate’s leader has his way, the latter move won’t catch fire.
“I do think the horse is out of the barn, so to speak,” Ramsey told reporters Monday regarding Common Core, which Tennessee has phased into classrooms over the past three years beginning with reading and math. “We’ve trained 100,000 teachers. There’s lots of things that have already happened in this state to just say we’re going to put this off for two years.”
Tennessee Senate Bills Back Common Core [continued]


Read more at http://libertycrier.com/tennessee-se...wUz2cYYyWMr.99

Decision expected soon in California education case

By Mary C. Tillotson / March 24, 2014 / 1 Comment






By Mary C. Tillotson | Watchdog.org
Closing arguments in the Vergara versus California lawsuit will be heard Thursday.
Nine student plaintiffs, sponsored by StudentsMatter, brought suit against the state, alleging several of the state’s education statutes deprived them of their right to a quality education. Students, teachers, experts and other witnesses have spent the past several weeks arguing their case in Los Angeles Superior Court.
A court decision is expected within the next few months, though the timeline is at the court’s discretion, said Manny Rivera, spokesman for the plaintiffs.
The suit has been criticized for being funded by David Welch, a Silicon Valley millionaire and founder of StudentsMatter. The state’s teachers unions, including the California Teachers Association, have intervened in the suit. Itself no stranger to money, the CTA spent more than $211 billion in elections from 2000 to 2009.
Some watching the court cases have said the legislature, not the courts, is the appropriate place for debates over teacher dismissal — but in California, reforming education through the Legislature is effectively a lost cause.
“I don’t typically believe in litigation. We’re an overly litigious society,” said Larry Sand, a retired California teacher of 24 years and president of California Teachers Empowerment Network. “If you have no recourse, that’s sort of the last bastion. And here in California, the CTA … consider the state assembly their house. They assume themselves the fourth branch of government. Courts and litigation seem to be the only way to combat this.”
Unions have often used the courts to stop reformers or overturn school choice programs, and it may make sense for reform proponents to use the same tools, said Frederick Hess, resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. At the same time, he said, the legislature is the proper place for policy debates.

“There are other people who are more liberal who could file suit and say, ‘You know what, California’s failing these children because it is not paying teachers twice as much as it currently is. California has to offer universal preschool for all 3 and 4-year-olds. California is not allowed to use testing because that’s going to violate the quality of these kids’ education.’ Essentially, once you kind of start saying to the judges, ‘You guys get to decide what a quality education requires,’ you’ve taken it out of the legislative process. You’ve removed it from the citizens of California, and now you better hope the judges happen to agree with you,” he said.
Hess said he agrees with the substance of the lawsuit — that the students’ rights are being violated — but the ideal place for the conversation is the legislature.
“Obviously, the makeup of the California Legislature means that such an approach isn’t going anywhere, so it’s partly a question of means and ends. This is why I’m very sympathetic to the lawsuit,” he said. “Realistically, in that context, it’s probably a question of either you file this lawsuit or you just sit on your hands for a while, as far as your ability to fundamentally change those statutory protections.”
Contact Mary C. Tillotson at mtillotson@watchdog.org.

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http://watchdog.org/133904/vergara-closing-arguments/

Spending more on Virginia students doesn’t mean they’re getting smarter

By Kathryn Watson / March 21, 2014






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WHERE ARE THE RESULTS? Spending and school employment has soared over the last four decades, but test scores are stagnant, suggesting that throwing more money at K-12 education won’t fix the problem.

By Kathryn Watson | Watchdog.org, Virginia Bureau
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — More money doesn’t necessarily translate to more successful, college-ready students.
A new study by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., finds that, adjusted for inflation, per-pupil spending from 1972 to 2012 has soared 120 percent in Virginia.
But SAT scores have remained virtually stagnant. In fact, when adjusted for participation and demographics, Virginia’s SAT scores actually fell by 3 percent.
Virginia isn’t alone. Nationally, per-pupil spending has increased close to 200 percent, and school employment has increased nearly 100 percent since 1970. Reading and math scores of 17-year-old students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have remained flat, the study found.
“There has been essentially no correlation between what states have spent on education and their measured academic outcomes,” wrote Andrew Coulson, director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom. Coulson conducted the study.
Of course, SAT scores aren’t everything. But Cato researchers argued the SAT is a mark of how well-read a student may be and whether he can think critically.
“While SAT scores are not a comprehensive metric of educational outcomes, the SAT measures reading comprehension and mathematical skills that are intrinsically useful,” Coulson wrote.
Delegate Steve Landes, chairman of Virginia’s House Education Committee, said it “does look as if both nationally and in Virginia student achievement is relatively flat in comparison with both state and local funds invested in K-12 education that have increased significantly over the same period. That is disappointing, and we will need to look at the study and results very carefully as we move forward in developing and reforming Virginia’s K-12 education system.”
International testing backs up that lack of correlation between more spending and success in critical cognitive areas.
The U.S. spends more per pupil than almost any nation, yet the U.S. was a miserable 36th in math, 28th in science and 24th in reading, according to the 2012 PISA assessment, ranking below countries such as Slovakia, Latvia and the Czech Republic.
It’s not news to Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, that more spending doesn’t equal better success.
“The conventional thought is if we just throw more money at the problem we will fix it and things eventually get better,” Kerwin told Watchdog.org on Wednesday.
What matters more than spending are parent empowerment, choice and competition, Kerwin said, who added that charter schools provide the best example.
“Charter schools see about 30 percent less funding than public schools, and yet they’re doing so much more with less,” Kerwin said. “And so, the establishment finds that threatening.”

The problem isn’t money. Rather, it’s that traditional public schools lack empowerment, choice and competition.

That’s why charters are outperforming their public school counterparts — charters are renewed annually on a performance basis, and they compete with public schools for students and success.
Competition from charters naturally challenges traditional public schools, Kerwin said.
Charters are just one piece of the school-choice puzzle, but they’re a big one. And once again, Virginia scored an F in the Center for Education Reform’s 15th annual ranking of state charter school laws, released this week.
With just one independent authorizer that can establish charter schools in Virginia, and just six charters, Virginia shares a failing grade with only Kansas and Iowa.
“I think the most important thing in Virginia and what has plagued the charter school sector is the fact that school boards think they have exclusive authority over education,” Kerwin said. “… Making a charter school have to go to a local school board is the equivalent of McDonald’s asking a Burger King to open.”
It’s exactly the kind of scenario Virginians have seen played out in battles like the one between the Fairfax County Public School Board and the Fairfax Leadership Academy, a proposed charter school for at-risk students that got a hearty endorsement from the State Board of Education. The local school board ultimately killed the project, and charter hopefuls had nowhere to turn.
States that thrive are those in which many groups can authorize charter schools, such as respected universities, Kerwin said.
Virginia doesn’t have to languish at the back of the pack in CER’s report forever, Kerwin said.
All it takes is one lawmaker — with the guts to stand up for choice and accountability — to file a bill that paves the way for more authorizers. That, Kerwin said, is the most important step Virginia can take to nurture student success with fewer dollars.
Kathryn Watson is an investigative reporter for Watchdog.org’s Virginia Bureau, and can be reached at kwatson@watchdog.org, or on Twitter @kathrynw5.

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http://watchdog.org/133648/study-spending-students/

Education

Bill Gates loves Common Core for your kids, BUT NOT HIS


Billionaire software tycoon Bill Gates has poured millions of dollars into efforts to develop and promote the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a set of K-12 math and language arts curriculum benchmarks and high-stakes standardized tests now being implemented in 46 states.

Strangely enough, though, Common Core isn’t quite good enough for Gates and his wife, Melinda, when it comes to the education of their own three children.

Diane Ravitch, a self-styled education policy iconoclast who tends to oppose Common Core (and charter schools, and much else), noted this irony on her blog earlier this week.

The children of Bill and Melinda Gates – Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe – have attended Lakeside School, Seattle’s most elite, fancypants private school.

The hallowed halls of Lakeside School are a sweet place to attend classes if you have the means.

According to a Seattle education blog, the student-teacher ratio is 9 to 1. The average class size is 16. Some two dozen varsity sports are available and the opulent athletic facilities include “hydrotherapy spas.”

Of course, what with tuition for the 2013-14 academic year costing $28,500 per kid (not including books, laptop, field trips, etc.), most families don’t have the means.

Lakeside’s website doesn’t appear to discuss Common Core much.

“The mission of Lakeside School is to develop in intellectually capable young people the creative minds, healthy bodies, and ethical spirits needed to contribute wisdom, compassion, and leadership to a global society,” reads the school’s mission statement. “We provide a rigorous and dynamic academic program through which effective educators lead students to take responsibility for learning.”

A sub-mission statement talks about “interacting compassionately, ethically, and successfully with diverse peoples and cultures.”
A 2011 webpage from Lakeside School does discuss how Lakeside has sort-of-kind-of used Common Core’s relatively obscure science component as a framework. The page notes, however, that Lakeside students are “generally more advanced than average” and won’t be subject to any of the standardized testing which the hoi polloi in public schools will undergo.

Like his children, Gates also attended Lakeside before going off to – and then dropping out of – Harvard University.


Next Page
Literature is a luxury reserved for the scions of aristocrats now >>

In a 2005 speech at the tony prep school, Gates fondly remembered his time and his teachers at the school.

“Teachers like Ann Stephens. I was in her English class, and I read every book in there twice. But I sat in the back of the room and never raised my hand,” Gates declared.

“She challenged me to do more. I never would have come to enjoy literature as much as I do if she hadn’t pushed me.”

Interestingly, the Common Core standards Gates has funded so heavily mandate a nonfiction-heavy reading regime that devalues literature tremendously. Specifically, in the 46 states which have adopted Common Core standards, nonfiction books must constitute at least 70 per cent of the texts read by high school students. (RELATED: Under Common Core, classic literature to be dropped in favor of ‘informational texts’)

This month, the former Microsoft CEO has been aggressively pushing Common Core. For example, Gates visited the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. to deliver a robust defense of the controversial education standards to a largely conservative audience. (RELATED: Convinced yet? Bill Gates defends Common Core)


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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/23/bi...#ixzz2wz1sWMnj

Education

Convinced yet? Bill Gates defends Common Core

Having poured millions of dollars into efforts to promote Common Core, billionaire business magnate Bill Gates visited the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. to deliver a robust defense of the controversial education standards to a largely conservative audience.
AEI education research fellow Michael McShane asked Gates — who has spent millions backing national education standards through his personal non-profit, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — why Common Core has become his paramount public policy reform.
“Your foundation has been known for supporting the Common Core curriculum standards that have become increasingly controversial… and the question that I have is, why?” asked McShane.


Gates responded that he believed the standards would improve education by breaking up the monopoly that each state has over its own education system.


“Scale is good for free market competition,” said Gates. “Individual state regulatory capture is not good for competition.”


The Common Core standards were developed by the National Governor’s Association, though they have become synonymous with the goals of President Obama’s Department of Education. The standards set curriculum benchmarks, and assume an accompanying regimen of high-stakes standardized testing. They are currently being implemented in most states, though both teachers unions and grassroots conservative activists are fighting them fiercely all over the country. (RELATED: Powerful NY teachers union renounces support for Common Core)


Gates expressed frustration that Common Core was being opposed by typically pro-market people. (RELATED: Here is the conservative defense of Common Core)

“And so this thing, in terms of driving innovation, you’d think that sort of pro-capitalistic market-driven people would be in favor of it, but, you know, somehow, it’s gotten to be controversial,” he said.


But many conservative opponents of the Common Core disagree with Gates. Joy Pullman, a research fellow at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of School Reform News, wrote that from a free market perspective, a national monopoly on education was hardly preferable to a statewide monopoly.


“So state regulatory capture is bad…and the answer is national regulatory capture? Logic, please!” she wrote in a comment. (RELATED: EPIC FAIL: Parents reveal insane Common Core worksheets)


McShane told The Daily Caller that he appreciated Gates’s argument, but was surprised that Gates would realistically expect Common Core to be such a panacea, give the enormity of the problem: America’s failing education system.


“It would seem to me that if the ship seems so unlikely to right, it would be wiser to spend time, resources, and energy building schools or starting new teacher preparation programs in an attempt to little by little improve the situation, not take a bite at the whole apple,” McShane told TheDC.
Gates has poured roughly $75 million into lobbying efforts on behalf of Common Core.


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Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Common Core, Public education


http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/17/co...s-common-core/

Common Crap: Education in America

Posted by Joe Wurzelbacher on Mar 29, 2014

Education in America is not what it used to be and sadly, we won’t get the true results for decades..

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Nurture or nature—is one of these responsible for the pitiful state of American students? I got news – we’re in BIG trouble if it’s nature.

Because if it’s nature, it means Americans are producing intellectually inferior people. Not easy to measure, and unfair to impose reproductive incentives to the intellectually superior while bribing the others to hold up on bearing young. But, if it’s nurture, we can fix the system in which we foster academia.
Was this kid being stupid or clever?

Right now the system is suffering, and the data proves it. High school graduation statistics are more than embarrassing. They are an indication of a national crisis. According to one source only 69% of American high school seniors earn diplomas! We are no longer Number One in quality and quantity of high school graduates, we’ve fallen to below the top 10%. Half of our Bachelor Degree candidates are taking six years instead of four to finish.

Are we producing intellectually inferior people? An argument could be made for that, depending on whom you poll or which mall you canvass. But seriously, that’s not likely. It’s the nurture quotient that is lacking. Parents set the kids up with iPods, iPads, iPhones, gaming equipment, and HDTV. So the kids act as if everything useful has already been invented, and they have no purpose other than to whittle away hours using it all. They lack interest in real life and pursuing achievements of their own. No wonder they’re lazy and have a sense of entitlement?
mmm.. selfie..

An education system that coddles young people instead of challenging them is also partially to blame. The shift from rewarding top performers to rewarding all participants has contributed to national shame in our current education systems. And kids know it. The ones who don’t try know they are not deserving of recognition. They mock the system. The ones who exert themselves with success, but are treated as just another participant, become disillusioned over lack of recognition. Disillusionment can lead to apathy. It’s a vicious circle, this one-reward-fits-all arrangement.

Because of imposing a so-called level playing field, or Common Core, we are at risk of seeing critical thinking go by the wayside, and seeing curiosity and ambition die. American inventors are going the way of video cassettes and rotary phones. Our greatest inventors of the last thirty years were educated in the 1960s and ‘70s B.C. (Before Common Core). It’s not a coincidence that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs excelled on the personal computer scene at the same time. Both were products of a better system of education—one that endorsed ingenuity and exploration over preparing to pass exams.
“So what you’re telling me is that when I grow up, my kids are gonna be stupid and put me in a rest home?”

Educators of the decades of the 1960s and 1970s were long-term dedicated professionals who invested of themselves in their students. They were respected within the community and boards on which they served. Parents cooperated with teachers, school principals and counselors for a unified approach to discipline and meeting academic standards. Children were expected to maintain good attendance, exercise self-control and do their own work. Parents enforced homework routines. There was cohesion between school authorities and parents, for the good of the students.

It’s hard to say when the shift toward coddling our youth took place. Could it be when the dress codes changed and it became acceptable for boys to untuck their shirts and for girls to begin wearing pants? Or was it when divorce spiked at 50%, and parents were attempting to compensate for dividing their children’s loyalties. Maybe, more likely, it was when psychologists began to put self-esteem above all other character strengths.

When high self-esteem started to encroach upon other attributes, and mothers and fathers were urged to withhold correction in favor of unconditional praise, things got lopsided. When parents began to ask children what’s what instead of telling them, things got tilted a little more. Eventually self-esteem replaced self-control altogether as a trait to nurture. America saw an increase in smart-ass back talkers and a decrease in dedicated young scholars. Parents gradually became defensive and demanding teachers to back off controlling the classroom. Bullying, as natural a childhood phenomenon as it is, increased in frequency and hurtfulness. We’ve produced a couple of generations of poor performers who feel good about themselves while operating devices they could never invent.
Only a system with academic competition and cohesion between school and parents will re-direct our students’ energies and help curb the increase in couch potatoes and get American youth back on top as academic high achievers able to compete in the global marketplace. In turn, motivated young scholars will lead the way to medical breakthroughs and scientific and technological advances.


Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/03/com...OZZoXyGR7Ap.99

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Are Fed Up States Finally Dumping Common Core?

Melissa Melton
Activist Post

Out of 45 states that implemented the hideous Common Core State Standards, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a bill last week that officially made his state the first to withdraw:

“I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made at the state and local level,” said Pence in a release about Senate Bill 91.

“By signing this legislation, Indiana has taken an important step forward in developing academic standards that are written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and are uncommonly high, and I commend members of the General Assembly for their support,” he said.

Yesterday, Oklahoma took the first step in potentially following suit, as the state’s Senate passed a bill to repeal Common Core on similar grounds, citing that education standards should be set at the local and state levels instead of being set outside of democratic process by Bill Gates’ money.

Pennsylvania’s House also passed a bill to drop Common Core, and three other states, including Florida, Michigan and Ohio, have also introduced bills to get rid of it.

As New York became the first state to administer statewide Common Core initiative testing this week, some families practiced their own brand of civil disobedience by opting out. Three Brooklyn schools saw as many as 70% of their students refuse to take the state-mandated tests.

Also sitting out were New York Republican Rob Astorino's children; Astorino, who is set to challenge challenge Governor Cuomo in November, recently attended an anti-Common Core rally where he described how his kids were stressed out and feeling ill over Common Core testing:



“We don’t want [our kids] to be part of some grand experiment that might be hurting them and not helping them,” Astorino said.

Astorino’s children aren’t the only ones feeling sick and stressed out due to Common Core.

As I previously reported back in December, a group of eight New York principals got together and penned a letter expressing their concerns that the Common Core standardized tests were psychologically damaging the children, causing their 3rd through 8th grade students to cry, throw up and have accidents in their pants:

The group, led by Sharon Fougner, principal of E.M. Baker Elementary School in Great Neck, said that the children have reacted “viscerally” to the tests, The Washington Post first reported.

“We know that many children cried during or after testing, and others vomited or lost control of their bowels or bladders,” the letter reads. “Others simply gave up. One teacher reported that a student kept banging his head on the desk, and wrote, ‘This is too hard,’ and ‘I can’t do this,’ throughout his test booklet.”

The frustration is spreading from schools to homes, as parents across the nation are posting copies of their children’s ridiculous Common Core homework all over social media sites. Here are just a few examples The Daily Caller has reported on:

• EPIC FAIL: Parents reveal insane Common Core worksheets
• ANOTHER impossibly stupid Common Core worksheet sure to make your kid a moron
• This Common Core math worksheet offers a glimpse into Kafkaesque third-grade hell
• Can you solve this grammatically incorrect, impossible Common Core question?
• ‘Why are they making math harder?’ More absurd Common Core math problems
• Is this Common Core math question the worst math question in human history?

For something called “Common Core,” common sense seems nowhere to be found in these assignments.



his copy of his kid’s math homework posted by frustrated parent Jeff Severt has now gone viral:

Common Core was able to take this math problem, which was supposed to be a simple subtraction of 316 from 427, and turn it into something even an adult with a college education that included higher mathematics courses couldn’t figure out. Severt wrote:

Don’t feel bad. I have a bachelor of science degree in electronics engineering which included extensive study in differential equations and other higher math applications. Even I cannot explain the Common Core mathematics approach, nor get the answer correct. In the real world, simplification is valued over complication. Therefore, 427 – 316 = 111. The answer is solved in under 5 seconds — 111. The process used is ridiculous and would result in termination if used.

Severt is absolutely right.

That’s because some of these Common Core math assignments find inventive (read: insane) ways to take what should be an easy math problem with a straightforward solving process and try to force students to abandon all logic to solve it in a whopping 108 steps instead of the two it actually takes.

For a program that’s supposed to make kids “college ready,” in the real world, taking the time to perform over 100 utterly pointless, ridiculous, time-consuming steps to do something that would normally (and much more simply and efficiently) be completed in just two isn’t exactly considered a desirable trait in a potential job candidate.

Melissa Melton is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple, where this first appeared, and a co-creator of Truthstream Media. Wake the flock up!

http://www.activistpost.com/2014/04/...y-dumping.html


They will know in 10 years if this experiment works...."""10 years"""", so your children are going to school now and or starting out in the first grade right up to the 10th grade!!!!! Your children and grandchildren will be fed this crap for this 10 year experiment, your child/ or grandchild, is an experiment!!!!! Wake up it is all about control of your children, they can't control you !!!! It is all about the "dumbing" down of our society. Wake up America!!!!

Gender Confusion and the Complicity of Public Schools

By Clash Daily / 3 April 2014



By Lee Culpepper
Clash Daily Guest Contributor

For students confined in public education camps across the country, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland might now make more sense compared to Little Johnny’s confusing reality at Space Mountain Middle School in Never Never Land, California.
Of course, Little Johnny represents real students, and Space Mountain simply signifies the madness masterminded in actual schools where a growing number of parents and teachers must truly wish the government’s lunacy were only imaginary.
However, unlike Alice, none of the real world’s characters are fortunate enough to be dreaming — at least not those who recognize nonsense and make-believe for what they are.

Common Core alone is a curious nightmare. If the subversive agenda were another strange character in Lewis Carroll’s book, it could easily deliver the Mad Hatter’s line, “You would have to be half mad to dream me up.” Just ask any of the demoralized school children who used to love math (or any of their frustrated parents). No doubt they would all agree with an imaginary character’s wisdom.

On the other hand, when childish fantasies of how some people wish reality would be literally begin to replace logic and order, a counter-productive school curriculum should hardly surprise anyone — not obsessed with Wonderland.

Last week, the national press reported on a 56-year-old high school biology teacher in California who plans to undergo a sex-change operation (i.e. cosmetic surgery) and to return to the classroom appearing as a woman. Sadly, the situation is far more complicated and confusing than advocates of gender confusion or their allies in the media will admit.

Although the American Psychiatric Association dropped the diagnosis of gender identity disorder in 2012, the APA merely renamed the condition gender dysphoria in its manual of mental disorders (the DSM-5). What was the reason for the change? To reduce stigma while maintaining access to medical care.

Understandably, most people suffering from a serious mental illness would like the stigma of their medical conditions to magically disappear. But simply calling “bipolar disorder” “intensely sporadic mood swings” does not remedy a patient’s condition any more than calling “gender identity disorder” “gender dysphoria.” The Mad Hatter might call this a linguistic placebo.

In fact, in a USA Today article on gender confusion, Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist who helped revise the APA’s DSM-5, stated, “[Gender Dysphoria is] different from other mental disorders.”

“Usually with a mental disorder, we try and change the person’s mind. This is the only mental disorder where the treatment is changing the body. In a typical mental disorder, we try to make those symptoms go away. Here the treatment has emerged to align the person’s body to match their gender identity.”

He went on to say, “The truth is we actually don’t know what it is. Is it a mental disorder or does the cause of gender dysphoria lie somewhere else? We don’t know what causes it, so there’s no absolute reason why it has to be in the mental disorders section, except as a fact of history, it’s always been there.” Does Dr. Drescher’s last sentence not sound like one Alice might have encountered among the symbolic nonsense she endured in her dream?

Simply acknowledging that the APA’s own psychiatrists remain vexed by this serious medical condition would generally heighten concerns for most responsible adults. Most youngsters are generally experiencing all sorts of issues related to their own developing identities. Pretending that individuals who exhibit signs of serious mental illness in the classroom are helping impressionable children defies common sense.

Then again, compelling juvenile minds to believe they understand complicated medical conditions that psychiatrists themselves still have not resolved is par for the course. If public schools have succeeded at anything over the last 60 years, they have painfully revealed that they can convince impressionable minds of many things that are just untrue. But so long as students graduate feeling good about their dismal knowledge, subpar reading levels, and their politically correct indoctrination in to absurdity, who cares about reality?

If the media and advocates for gender confusion were interested in reality, the rest of us would see more coverage about psychiatric experts who can explain the seriousness of gender confusion. Dr. Joseph Berger, a distinguished psychiatrist in Toronto, clarifies that gender confused individuals claim “they really are or wish to be people of the sex opposite to which they were born, or to which their chromosomal configuration attests.” The medical classification for those symptoms include the following, according to Dr. Berger: “delusion, psychosis, or emotional unhappiness.” He adds that none of those conditions associated with other mental illnesses call for cosmetic surgery as the medical treatment.

Furthermore, Dr. Paul McHugh, a distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, has written, “We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia…to provide a surgical alteration to the body of these unfortunate people [is] to collaborate with a mental disorder rather than to treat it.”
Public education went down the rabbit hole where feelings trumped facts a long time ago. Experimenting with the minds of children by teaching them to ignore reality or teaching them things that are simply untrue is nothing short of brainwashing.

A society that promotes such confusion under the ruse of education is lost. Wishful thinking does not maintain childhood innocence any more than pretending wrong is right. Alice in Wonderland should have taught us that.

When Alice asked the Cat, “How do you know I’m mad?” The Cat responded, “You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Who knew that the Cat’s response would apply to Little Johnny’s public education today?
A former high school English teacher and United States Marine, Lee Culpepper is a contributing writer at Townhall.com and BearingArms.com. Follow Lee Culpepper on Twitter @drcoolpepper.


Read more at http://clashdaily.com/2014/04/gender...fsRXujMlmB6.99