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

Common Core Is Rotten to the Core


Monday, 09 June 2014

Written by Brian Farmer


In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk, which warned that the country’s economic, political, and cultural future was threatened by our weak education system. That report stated these now famous lines: “Our nation is at risk.... The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.... If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.... We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.” A Nation at Risk brought about a renewed focus on what Americans should know and be able to do once they had finished their formal education.
Fast forward to 2001. In that year, President George W. Bush pushed his education policy, which came to be known as “No Child Left Behind,” and which promised to increase student achievement by encouraging states to set high standards and to develop assessments based on those standards. Unlike the initiatives before it, No Child Left Behind required states to test all students in certain subjects and at particular grade levels in order to receive federal funding. Most education experts eventually concluded that No Child Left Behind had failed to deliver real and lasting success, and ultimately left the nation’s schools in a bureaucratic mess.
In 2007, two special interest lobbying groups — the National Governors Association (which helps state governments get federal grants) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (which claims to provide leadership, advocacy, and technical assistance on major educational issues) — started work on a common set of curriculum standards in English language arts and mathematics. By allowing those two groups to lead the effort, it gave the impression that the states initiated the action. In reality, the situation resembled something closer to a Potemkin village. In other words, it was just a façade. Funding for the project was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. To date, the Gates Foundation has provided roughly $250 million to those and other pro-Common Core organizations. One might be inclined to think, “So, what?” But what if that quarter of a billion dollars in funding had come from the Koch brothers? Would people (especially the liberally inclined education establishment) still be likely to think, “So, what?”


It’s worth keeping in mind what inside informant “Deep Throat” told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal investigation: “Follow the money!”
In December of 2008, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers produced a document on national education standards that would guide the Obama administration during its transition into office. Two months later, the secretary of education announced a federal education grant program known as “Race to the Top.” This program included billions of dollars from the 2009 Stimulus Bill, which was to be used by states to improve academic standards and assessments. In order to receive Race to the Top grants, states had to commit to “a set of content standards that define what students must know and be able to do and that are substantially identical across all states in a consortium.” In 2011, the Obama administration made the adoption of common standards even easier. Most states were still obligated to meet the onerous No Child Left Behind requirements, but the U.S. Department of Education promised No Child Left Behind waivers to states that adopted a common set of college-ready and career-ready standards and assessments. While the U.S. Department of Education did not require states to adopt the Common Core standards specifically, those standards are the only standards that meet the U.S. Department of Education’s criteria. As a result, all but a handful of states ultimately signed on to the Common Core program.
Common Core will now not only provide the framework for what students learn in math and English language arts, but it will also establish two federally funded and approved tests that will replace what states currently use to measure students’ academic success. Not wanting to be left out of the new national education marketplace, private companies are quickly trying to align themselves with the Common Core standards. (After all, there is a great deal of money to be made in this new educational environment!) In order to survive in the Common Core era, textbook publishers and other educationally related industries must show how their materials meet the new national standards. The SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) and ACT (American College Testing) college entrance exams are also now aligned to Common Core. Those who think that they can avoid Common Core by sending their children to private schools or by homeschooling their children must now deal with a new reality. In addition to college entrance exams, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Stanford 10 — two popular tests used by private schools and by parents who homeschool — will also be aligned to Common Core. Within a few short years, Common Core has gone from being virtually unknown to being a national educational juggernaut that may end up influencing the formal education of tens of millions of elementary, middle-school, and high-school students in America for many years to come, despite the fact that Common Core has some serious flaws.
Cost
Common Core will be very expensive to implement and maintain. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, in 2012 published the study entitled “Putting a Price Tag on the Common Core: How Much Will Smart Implementation Cost?” on the cost of implementing Common Core standards and assessments nationwide, which estimated a price tag of about $16 billion over seven years. But no one really knows what the final price tag for Common Core will be. Most states acted irresponsibly when they adopted the standards because they did not first have a clear understanding of its price tag (they also acted irresponsibly because they did not have a clear understanding of the standards themselves). Many states saw the Race to the Top funds as a way to pay for immediate education expenses and failed to see that they were signing on to something that would be far more expensive in the long run. It should have been obvious that the new education standards and assessments would bring a need for new and different textbooks, tests, teacher training programs, computer software programs, and everything else that goes along with the change and expansion of a federal government program. But politicians and bureaucrats too often do what is expedient, rather than what is in the best interests of the taxpayers.
Privacy
The 2009 Stimulus Bill required states to begin tracking students in a database, starting in their preschool years, until their entry into the workforce. This database will link students’ results on Common Core-related assessments to other personal information, and will be available to a wide variety of departments within the federal government. While supporters of Common Core claim that the system employs measures to protect the anonymity of students, critics have pointed to studies that demonstrate how these measures will not be as secure as supporters assume. But the larger issue remains whether collecting such private information is consistent with the role of the federal government expressed by our nation’s Founders. After all, the data to be collected includes personal information, such as healthcare history, religion, and parents’ income. Defenders of Common Core insist that the data will be used only for the noblest of reasons and will never be part of a federal database. Some Common Core advocates even ridicule those who warn of the potential for abuse that such a system invites. But we should not be too quick to dismiss such possibilities, particularly given the federal government’s questionable track record, and the attitude of “political correctness” that is so rampant in various sectors of our society. Already a student named Brandon Jenkins was denied entry into a college radiation therapy program because of his Christian faith, the IRS has been caught targeting conservative organizations in its audits, and a federal law-enforcement “fusion center” disseminated materials that claimed that veterans and pro-life advocates were likely terrorists.
Quality
Rather than pushing all states toward high standards, Common Core is encouraging a race to the mediocre middle. For example, while Mississippi’s standards appear to get stronger by adopting Common Core, the standards in Massachusetts get weaker. Several curriculum experts have examined the math and English language arts standards and have discovered some alarming weaknesses. In fact, because of those concerns, both Sandra Stotsky and James Milgram, who served on the Common Core’s validation committee, refused to sign the final validation report.
Three philosophical ideas appear to be an integral part of Common Core: statism, moral relativism, and progressivism. First, the statist goals of Common Core are implicit in the lockstep uniformity that is the central thesis of the program. There is a clear intention to mold people through schooling, to overthrow accepted custom and traditional values, and to weaken parental influence. An example of the latter is the development of a curriculum that is so foreign to the parent that the parent cannot help the child with homework assignments. Here is a sample Common Core third-grade math problem found by Townhall: “Add 26 + 17 by breaking apart numbers to make a ten. Use a number that adds with the 6 in 26 to make a 10. Since 6 + 4 = 10, use 4. Think: 17 = 4 + 13. Add 26 + 4 = 30. Add 30 + 13 = 43. So 26 + 17 = 43.” Get it?
Second, relativism’s influence is particularly evident in the “National Sexuality Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K-12,” which deviates from the Judeo-Christian view of human sexuality. This is not surprising, given that the Advisory Committee included directors from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. The relativist philosophical bias reflects what John Dunphy stated in the January-February 1983 issue of The Humanist magazine: “The battle for mankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new — the rotting corpse of Christianity and the new faith of humanism.” As if that were not alarming enough, Dr. Chester Pearce, professor of education and psychiatry at Harvard University, has expressed the situation even more bluntly: “Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our Founding Fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being.”
Third, progressive educator John Dewey, often referred to as the “Father of American Education,” argued more than a hundred years ago for a standardized curriculum in order to prevent one student from becoming superior to another, and envisioned a workforce filled with people of “politically and socially correct attitudes” who would respond to orders without question. The traditional, American values of rugged individualism, self- reliance, and personal responsibility are to be rejected and children are to be educated to accept a collectivist world view. As Dewey proclaimed, “You cannot make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society.”
Constitutionality
The biggest concern regarding the implementation of Common Core is the federal government’s ever-increasing role in education. The 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution declares, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Hence, the power to oversee education belongs to the states or to the people themselves, not to the federal government. This long-standing principle of local control of education is reiterated throughout our laws and government codes. If one accepts Lord Acton’s observation that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” then why on Earth would anyone want to give more power to a centralized, bureaucratic, almost unaccountable federal government to control education (or almost anything else, for that matter!)?
Supporters of Common Core like to portray critics as far-right extremists who are paranoid about a government takeover of education. But Diane Ravitch, a respected historian of American education, is no right-wing radical. In February of 2013, Ravitch wrote a commentary, “Why I Oppose Common Core Standards,” in which she summarized many of the concerns that most critics have:
I have long advocated for voluntary national standards, believing that it would be helpful to states and districts to have general guidelines about what students should know and be able to do as they pro*gress through school.
Such standards, I believe, should be voluntary, not imposed by the federal government....
For the past two years, I have steadfastly insisted that I was neither for nor against the Common Core standards. I was agnostic. I wanted to see how they worked in practice....
I have come to the conclusion that the Common Core standards effort is fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted upon the nation....
President Obama and Secretary Duncan often say that the Common Core standards were developed by the states and voluntarily adopted by them. This is not true.
They were developed by an organ*ization called Achieve and the National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states.
In fact, it was well understood by states that they would not be eligible for Race to the Top funding ($4.35 billion) unless they adopted the Common Core standards. Federal law prohibits the U.S. Department of Education from prescribing any curriculum, but in this case the Department figured out a clever way to evade the letter of the law. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia signed on, not because the Common Core standards were better than their own, but because they wanted a share of the federal cash.
Most supporters of Common Core try to hide behind words such as “state-led” and “voluntary.” But anyone willing to take an honest look at what transpired between 2009 and 2011 would conclude that many of those cash-strapped states, already under the burden of budget shortfalls and expensive No Child Left Behind requirements, were seduced by a high-pressure, time-sensitive sales pitch for adopting the standards that included relief in the form of money and waivers.
The idea of common, nationwide standards may sound appealing, but standards alone do not lead to success. One needs to look at the process that is supposed to lead to the attainment of those standards. Educational success depends on the dedication of teachers, the motivation of students, and the support of parents. How does Common Core address those components of the process? One is hard pressed to find the answer to that question when listening to the promoters of Common Core. In fact, one is likely to come away with the impression that Common Core simply does not deal with those issues.
The concerns over Common Core, especially its implementation, are real and troubling. Any of these concerns — cost, mediocrity, and federal overreach — are serious enough that states should consider repealing their adoption of Common Core. Indeed, as the scholastic weaknesses and the skyrocketing implementation costs of the Common Core standards become more evident, many states are scrambling to delay or defund implementation. But a much more fundamental concern exists about Common Core that goes to the heart of any educational experience.
The phrases “college-ready” and “career-ready” appear throughout the Common Core standards. If any other goal is mentioned, such as literacy, it is clearly made out to be of lesser importance. Common Core’s mission statement reflects this notion, as well: “The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.”
With such a mission, it is easy to see why so many business leaders support Common Core. Indeed, Common Core receives support from such places as the Chambers of Commerce — the same Chambers that received millions in Gates Foundation money and that want Common Core precisely because it will provide worker drones rather than well-educated individuals. But should career preparation for a “global economy” really be the ultimate educational goal in America?
In the ancient world, job preparation was known as “servile education,” because it prepared the student to “serve” a master in a particular type of work. Modern academics would say that it is ridiculous to associate the ancient notion of “servile education” with “skills for the 21st century,” which allegedly would allow students to adapt to an ever-changing society. But as long as students are told that the end of education is a job or career, they will always end up being servants of some master. As oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller put it, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.”
Joy Pullmann, an education policy analyst with the Heartland Institute, recently addressed Common Core’s misguided focus at a hearing in Wisconsin on Common Core Standards:
In a self-governing nation we need citizens who can govern themselves. The ability to support oneself with meaningful work is an important part, but only a part, of self-government. When a nation expands workforce training, so that it crowds out the other things that rightly belong in education, we end up turning out neither good workers nor good citizens.
The ancients knew that in order for men to be truly free, they must have a liberal education that includes study of literature and history, mathematics and science, music and art. Yes, man is made for work, but he is also made for so much more.... Education should be about the highest things. We should study these things — stars, plant cells, square roots, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Mozart’s Requiem, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address — not simply because they will get us into the right college or a particular line of work; rather, we study these noble things because they can tell us who we are, why we are here, and what our relationship is to each other as human beings and to the physical world that surrounds us.
Commenting on the Common Core standards, Anthony Esolen, English professor at Providence College, said, “What appalls me most about the standards … is the cavalier contempt for great works of human art and thought, in literary form. It is a sheer ignorance of the life of the imagination. We are not programming machines. We are teaching children. We are not producing functionaries, factory-like. We are to be forming the minds and hearts of men and women … to be human beings, honoring what is good and right and cherishing what is beautiful.”
If the purpose of education in America has become, as Common Core openly declares, preparation for work in a global economy, then the situation is far worse than critics have imagined, because the concerns about the cost, the quality, and the constitutionality of Common Core pale in comparison to the concern for the hearts, minds, and souls of America’s children. Consider what John Taylor Gatto, three-time New York City Teacher of the Year and 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year, has said about the situation: “Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to complete strangers and having those strangers work on your child’s mind — out of your sight — for a period of twelve years? Could there be a more radical idea than that? Back in colonial days in America, if you proposed that as an idea, they’d burn you at the stake, you mad person. It’s a mad idea.”
In the end, Common Core is more than just a Potemkin village; it’s a Trojan Horse!
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http://www.thenewamerican.com/cultur...91a7-287785873

What’s So Bad About Common Core? A lot!

Many parents are beginning to ask this question as the debate over Common Core heats up. There are several reasons Common Core is a really bad thing for your kids.

Common Core is a nationalized education program. Some people may say this is a good thing. After all, we should want common standards across the country for our kids’ education. Really? Do we really want top down standards forced onto our schools? Does that approach yield good results?

Let’s take a look at the federal government’s last attempt to get involved in our schools – No Child Left Behind. This federal law required states to prove their schools were making “adequate yearly progress” or they would be fined. So, all of the schools really kicked it up a notch and our kids shined – right? Wrong! Instead, some states made their standardized tests easier for students to pass so they could avoid the fines. Instead of lifting the poor performing schools up to achieve a higher bar, federal involvement resulted in schools lowering their standards for kids.
And how has federal involvement in our schools been working out for us? Our students now rank 26^th in math and 21st in reading compared with other countries.

Common Core eliminates choice in education. I find it interesting that people who claim to be so pro-choice on one issue are so anti-choice on everything else, including choice in education. How is choice going to be limited? If your child does not attend a Common Core school, they will have a more difficult time getting into college. The ACT and SAT college entrance exams are being rewritten to reflect Common Core standards and processes. So, if your child is home-schooled or attends a charter school that has not adopted Common Core, your child will likely do very poorly on these exams which will impact their ability to attend college. This is a way to move parents away from non-Common Core schools – limiting choice.

A vast government database will be created on your child. What will be collected? The National Center for Education Statistics (part of Dept. of Ed) has already developed a coding system which includes a student’s medical condition, religious affiliation, disciplinary problems, and family’s income along with their voting status. In addition, some schools will soon start to collect physical and biometric data from students. Students could soon be wearing sensor bracelets to collect data on how well-engaged they are during class. Iris scans and facial recognition programs are currently being tested as well.

“Biometric record,” as used in the definition of “personally identifiable information,” means a record of one or more measurable biological or behavioral characteristics that can be used for automated recognition of an individual. Examples include fingerprints; retina and iris patterns; voiceprints; DNA sequence; facial characteristics; and handwriting.

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act Regulations

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/f.../ferparegs.pdf


Common core standards are not rigorous. To the contrary, these standards will make our kids less prepared for higher education. Take math, for example. Under Common Core, algebra will not be taught until ninth grade which means that kids will not be exposed to pre-calculus until college. Without a good math basis, they will have difficulty obtaining college degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM). Moreover, these standards fall well below other nations, so our kids will be at a significant disadvantage in a world economy.

I think it’s a fair critique that it’s a minimal definition of college readiness … but not for the colleges most parents aspire to … Not only not for STEM, it’s also not for selective colleges. For example, for U.C. Berkeley, whether you are going to be an engineer or not, you’d better have precalculus to get into U.C. Berkeley. (emphasis added)

Jason Zimba, a Common Core creator

Dr. James Milgram (Stanford University emeritus professor who served on the official Common Core validation committee) reported:

I can tell you that my main objection to Core Standards, and the reason I didn’t sign off on them was that they did not match up to international expectations. They were at least 2 years behind the practices in the high achieving countries by 7th grade,and, as a number of people have observed, only require partial understanding of what would be the content of a normal, solid, coursein Algebra I or Geometry. Moreover, they cover very little of the content of Algebra II, and none of any higher level course… They will not help our children match up to the students in the top foreign countries when it comes to being hired to top level jobs.

What about English? Under Common Core, only 30% of high school seniors’ reading will be literary based. What will the other 70% include?

Government documents, of course. You know, fun and informative things like regulations from government agencies. How much imagination do you think your child will be using with a government regulation in front of his/her face? As a patent attorney, I have read many government documents, and let me tell you – if there is anything that takes the joy out of reading, government documents are it!

Your child will be taught to be a worker not a thinker – a follower not a leader. Besides the less rigorous learning standards, under Common Core your child will be exposed to government rules/regulations teaching them that government is the answer to all. Pearson Education creates Common Core-aligned material. It recently apologized for distributing a grammar worksheet to fifth-graders which included the following political statements. Was this a simple mistake or a way to indoctrinate kids?

“The commands of government officials must be obeyed by all.”
“[The president] makes sure the laws of the country are fair.”
“The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation.”

Common Core eliminates parents’ ability to help their children with schoolwork. It drives a wedge between parent and child because the parent no longer understands the process by which the child is learning. I have seen this first hand as I watched a friend struggle to help her daughter with 3rd grade math because the process for solving the math problems was so convoluted by Common Core language and techniques. In a subtle way, the child learns that they must look to the school for direction rather than their parents.

So, whether you are a parent or not, it is crucial that you educate yourself on Common Core. This nationalized program is well on its way in our schools.

http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com...aily+Digest%29

The Truth About South Carolina and Common Core Nullification



After South Carolina governor Nikki Haley signed H3893 into law, social media blew up with tantalizing headlines that Common Core standards had been eradicated. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly this would be an overstatement much like the cheering choruses heard after Indiana and Oklahoma passed anti-Common Core legislation.

These bills don’t actually end Common Core. A different name for a state-run program with “college- and career-ready” standards to qualify for federal funding in essence is still an implementation of Common Core.

So it all comes back to money. Funds the federal government took and now flaunts in the faces of state legislatures have proven to be an irresistible bait.

Common Core will only go away “when lawmakers learn to turn away federal cash” says The South Carolina Policy Council. All states are still dependent on hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government since accepting waivers from No Child Left Behind.

Then does this mean it’s no use fighting Common Core? Surely not. Longtime Tenth Amendment Center fans look back with pride on such early successes at state resolutions expressing reverence to the 10th Amendment and Bill of Rights in 2008-9. Symbolic and token actions can lead to real nullification.

The recent news of revulsion to Common Core should strengthen the resolve of all tenthers or any American. But these are simply not enough, and actually hardly even a start to the Constitutional mission of nullifying Washington, D.C.’s usurpation of our communities’ responsibilities.


http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com...aily+Digest%29

Public School Principal Hates America

By Onan Coca / 13 June 2014

Public School Principal Greta Hawkins hates America. At least that’s what it seems like. For some reason that she seems unwilling or unable to logically articulate, Hawkins keeps banning patriotic music from her school.

Back in 2012 Hawkins gained national fame (or infamy) when she wouldn’t allow 90 kindergarteners from her public school to sing “God Bless the USA” at their kindergarten graduation ceremony. She explained that she couldn’t allow “God bless the USA” or the popular Lee Greenwood song “Proud to be an American” because she didn’t want to “offend” other cultures.

Now, she’s found another song she doesn’t like, and has banned a group of pre-K students from singing “Stand Up for the Red, White and Blue” at their “moving-up” ceremony.

Her explanation to the teachers?

“You didn’t ask permission to do it,” Hawkins scolded the teachers.

Stunned and disappointed, teachers said the simple, rhyming processional was sung to cheers at a pre-K ceremony several years ago.

“It’s a nice, rousing song,” one said. “The parents got up and clapped and yahooed. The kids waved their flags, and it just got everything going.”

Hawkins also told the teachers that the small American flags they’d be using for the ceremony would not be allowed because they were unapproved “materials.”

The principal insists that it’s not about patriotism, but back in September she also stopped the traditional daily singing of “America the Beautiful.”

(Though the kids do still get to pledge Allegiance each day.)Some parents are not happy with the Principal’s decision.

One pre-K mom said, “I’m angry about it. It’s the American flag. What’s wrong with that? So many soldiers died for it. Why is she against the red, white and blue?”

Her child sings the lyrics at home, the mom said. She called the waving of flags “wonderful.”

Greta Hawkins is hardly an aberration in our liberal public school indoctrination system. These are the folks who are training the next generation… they are training our kids.


Read more at http://eaglerising.com/6720/public-s...40SRpxbIczI.99

State Lawmakers Push Common Core Agenda With 340 Bills

June 14, 2014


Stephen Colbert mocked it. Comedian Louis C.K. called it a “massive stress ball that hangs over the whole school.” And lawmakers in state capitols spent countless hours over the past few months debating it.
Their target is the Common Core , a set of math and English language arts standards voluntarily adopted beginning four years ago by all but a handful of states. The standards define what students should know and be able to do by the end of each grade.
Forty-five states and the District of Columbia initially signed onto the standards in both math and language arts (Minnesota adopted only the language arts standards), hoping to better prepare students for college and careers by the time they graduate from high school. Supporters say the Common Core encourages critical thinking and analytical skills, rather than rote memorization.

But in the past year, criticism over the Common Core has ramped up in state legislatures, school board meetings and classrooms. Critics from both the right and the left, including a very vocal tea party contingent, want to throw out the standards.
As of May 15, lawmakers introduced over 340 bills in 46 states—every state that had had a regular legislative session this year— that addressed college- and career-readiness education standards, including the Common Core. Of those, 30 would slow down or delay college- and career-readiness standards and 35 would halt or revoke implementation altogether.
At the same time, implementation of the standards is well underway in most of the states that originally signed on. Despite widespread debate, only a handful of states have officially backed away from the Common Core, with a few others on the fence.
State Lawmakers Push Common Core Agenda With 340 Bills [continued]


Read more at http://libertycrier.com/state-lawmak...90uGOpZHpuv.99


Wake up America it is all about control of your children, they are giving up on you, but not your children , the aim is control from the cradle to the grave.. A stupid society is easier to control..

WND EXCLUSIVE

Inhofe plan reins in federal authority over schools

Washington know-it-all approach 'has failed our nation's children'

Published: 23 hours ago




Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.


Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has introduced legislation to curb the U.S. Department of Education’s regulatory power, which, he contends, has grown out of control under President Obama.




His Senate Bill 2451, also known as the Local School Board Governance and Flexibility Act, would return education decision-making to state and local officials.
The federal bureaucracy overseeing the nation’s schools has been in the crosshairs of conservative Republicans since it was created in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter. In his 1980 election campaign, President Ronald Reagan promised to abolish the agency, but once elected, was unable to deliver. The department’s tentacles over the education policies of the 50 states have grown ever since.


Unable to kill the agency, Inhofe is hoping he can rein it in. He said the federal government’s controversial push for states to implement the Common Core curriculum standards is only one of many reasons he authored the bill.


“Our education system has grown to operate as if Washington knows best, but this approach has failed our nation’s children and silenced the most important voices in the room – parents, teachers and local leaders,” Inhofe said in a statement released June 11.


“Children’s education needs are unique to each city and state. … My bill will give state and local school boards the necessary flexibility to achieve their education goals by reining in federal regulations and giving local communities a voice as to how those regulations are impacting their education pursuits.”


The bill would prohibit the secretary of education from issuing federal regulations, rules, guidance materials, grant conditions or other requirements that “conflict with the power and authority” of local and state educational agencies and which are not fully funded by the federal government.


Senate Bill 2451 is already drawing attention from school board members across the country seeking relief from federal dictates.


“National standards, national assessments, school nutrition regulations … it is all a federal overreach at the expense of local school districts and the children they serve,” Kathleen Angelucci, chairwoman of the Cobb County Board of Education in suburban Atlanta, told WND. “The continued assault on local control is a systemic and chronic issue that is shaking the very foundation and ideals that this country was founded on.”


As a member of a school board that’s responsible for Georgia’s second-largest school system, Angelucci said she welcomes Inhofe’s bill and hopes it gains traction among his colleagues in the Senate.


Oklahoma last week followed Indiana and South Carolina in rejecting Common Core, although some activists have noted that Indiana’s new standards appear to be almost identical to Common Core minus the tarnished brand name. The DOE didn’t create the Common Core standards, but it adopted them and then offered millions in federal stimulus dollars to any state that agreed to implement them. Strings were attached, including requirements to implement a longitudinal data-collection system that tracks students from kindergarten to college. Much of the data is personal in nature.


But Inhofe’s communications director, Donelle Harder, said Common Core-related rules are not the only onerous and invasive regulations to come out of Obama’s Department of Education.


“It’s not just Common Core,” she said. “One of the senator’s main concerns has been how this administration over-regulates everything. The types of regulations we’re seeing coming out of the Department of Education don’t even fit the needs of some school districts, nor do they take into consideration the cost of implementation. So this legislation is a response to everything [Obama] has been doing in Oklahoma and the nation.”


Harder said that Inhofe’s office has received many complaints from school board members, school administrators and parents about the need to rein in the federal bureaucrats, not just in the DOE but in other agencies as well.


“He’s used numerous unchecked regulations to skirt Congress and still get what he wants through his agencies,” Harder said of Obama.


WND contacted the U.S. Department of Education Thursday for a reaction to Inhofe’s proposed legislation, and a press officer said she would find out if DOE Secretary Arne Duncan had any response. She did not respond to a follow-up email later in the day again seeking a response.


Inhofe told the Tulsa World newspaper that he introduced the bill “so school boards would have a voice in things like the (Common) Core and other scary things that have been going on.”


Harder said the legislation has support from the National School Boards Association. She said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has signed on as a co-sponsor.


While the bill would seem to have little chance of passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate, Harder said it is nonetheless “serious legislation.”
She said even if it doesn’t pass this year, the bill helps keep the issue of over-regulation “in the public eye.”


Inhofe has made similar proposals to curb the Environmental Protection Agency that have delayed regulations affecting farmers,” Harder said.


“His big target has been the EPA, but this legislation is a response to what has been going on in Oklahoma and the complaints he’s been hearing from people across the state about the Department of Education.”



Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/inhofe-pl...4xBbsSpfKko.99





WE NEED TO GET RID OF THE DEPT OF EDUCATION!!!! Return the money paid to the Federal Government back to the States!!!! DOE Another useless 3 letter agency. It is all about control, nothing to do with education.

Common Core: Dangers and Threats to American Liberty and Education

TheJohnBirchSociety·206 videos

Education or Indoctrination? - Eagle Rising
eaglerising.com
Education is the parent of self-confidence, and the broader you sew your seeds, the more confident you become in almost all settings.

Education or Indoctrination?

By Michael Reisig / 18 June 2014

I was speaking with a friend the other day about education – they had sent me an email showing an eighth grade final exam for a school in Salina, Kansas, in 1895.

I was amazed, flabbergasted, at the level of knowledge required to pass that exam, and I suddenly understood why we had grown into such a remarkable country.

Here are a few of the questions (not necessarily the most difficult by any means):

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza, and paragraph.
4. What are the principal parts of a verb?
5. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
6. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
7. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
8. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
9. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
10. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.

Again, this was an eighth grade class in 1895…

I am reminded of a quote by Mahatma Gandhi: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” We became a great nation because we treasured learning and knowledge. We discovered that you can never be too educated.

Education is the parent of self-confidence, and the broader you sew your seeds, the more confident you become in almost all settings. But in many facets in America today there is almost a disdain for general knowledge – a cocky ignorance and an arrogant pride in the avoidance of learning anything past your immediate setting. Those who make it to higher education often find even the system itself is divided into colleges and universities that teach diametrically opposed concepts and refuse to entertain the possibilities their foes present.

So much of our educational system today is a process of indoctrination, and it strikes me that children should most importantly be taught the rudimentary process of how to think, not what to think. The good news is, there are still wonderful teachers out there, struggling every day to instill the wonder of learning, and they are truly the vanguard of hope for this nation.

I will leave you with a wonderful quote by the author, Doris Lessing: “Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgments.”

Amen, Doris.Amen…

Read more at http://eaglerising.com/6799/educatio...GRxJz2ThA0j.99

Teacher-funded NSEA financially backs groups pushing controversial social agenda

PLAN, ProgressNow received $100,000 from teacher unions in first quarter of 2014

By Chantal Lovell
Thursday, June 19, 2014



Nevada teachers’ hard-earned money is funding a lot more than the Nevada State Education Association.

With each paycheck, teachers across the state contribute to the state teacher union through their individual membership dues, which amount to hundreds of dollars per year, per teacher— more than $770 per year for teachers in Clark County.

What many teachers may not know is that their dues are going to support much more than the union’s operating costs.
Teachers’ monetary contributions are regularly used to further political and social agendas that may conflict with the personal views and convictions of individual members.

For example, pro-life teachers and those who support traditional marriage may be interested in knowing that, with each payment of dues to the NSEA, they are indirectly funding organizations that support abortion and same-sex marriage. From January 1 to May 16, 2014, the Nevada State Education Association gave a combined $100,000 to these liberal causes through payments to ProgressNow Nevada and the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN).

The union gave the money to PLAN and Progress Now via The Education Initiative Political Action Committee, an organization formed to advocate on behalf of the margin tax, which will go before voters this November. In the first four-and-a-half months of this year, The National Education Association and the Nevada State Education Association were the only contributors to the PAC, donating a combined $235,000. Since 2012, the unions have donated over $1.9 million to the passage of the margin tax.

Using the teacher unions’ contributions, The Education Initiative Political Action Committee paid $50,000 each to ProgressNow Nevada and PLAN, according to contribution and expense reports filed with the Secretary of State. The payments were filed under the “Expenses related to consultants” category.

ProgressNow Nevada lists its support for same-sex marriage on its website, where it invites people to sign a petition to establish same-sex marriage in Nevada. The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada boasts on its website of its role in helping to further pro-LGBT policies. Among PLAN’s member organizations are the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network of Southern Nevada and the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada.

While liberal and libertarian teachers may not object to helping fund those initiatives, Christian and socially conservative teachers very well may.

PLAN’s member organizations include some with pro-abortion agendas, including but not limited to the Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood Affiliates; Planned Parenthood, Mar Monte; and Planned Parenthood, Rocky Mountain.

Progress Now Nevada — headed by the former public affairs manager of Planned Parenthood of Southern Nevada — is also a PLAN member organization. Both organizations earlier this year co-hosted a movie screening with Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood.

The NSEA teacher union’s financial support for controversial, divisive issues may rightly cause members who hold opposing positions to pause before retaining membership in the organization. Members who fundamentally oppose the NSEA’s social agenda — or its other unpopular political positions — or wish to drop membership for any reason, may do so by notifying the union (and sometimes their school district) in writing between July 1 and July 15 of their decision to leave.

Despite billing itself as “the voice for education in the Silver State,” the Nevada State Education Association makes hefty political contributions that reveal its bosses sees their mission as much broader.

They boast about the union’s political activity, but that activity clearly stretches far beyond matters of education.

Chantal Lovell is the deputy communications director at the Nevada Policy Research Institute. For more, visit http://npri.org.

http://www.npri.org/issues/publication/teacher-funded-nsea-financially-backs-groups-pushing-controversial-social-agenda


Common Core, Agenda 21 for your children. This is going on in Nevada is it in your State too??.

June 20, 2014

Reading: The Con Continues

By Bruce Deitrick Price

Not much is certain in life, but here are two things you can take to the bank. If you want a child to learn to read, phonics is the way that works. Second, you can be sure that our Education Establishment will try to keep phonics at a minimum and force children to memorize the English language one sight-word at a time.

Where reading is concerned, the nonsense never stops.

In his famous 1955 book Why Johnny Can’t Read, Rudolf Flesch said he looked at all the research. There were 11 studies from 1913 to 1948; in all of them, phonics was superior.

Now, a century after that first study, Malkin Dare, a Canadian expert, summed up the latest research from the UK:

There is no such thing as a silver bullet in education, but systematic phonics comes pretty close. Doubters ought to read this report by Dr. Marlynne Grant, an English educational psychologist. Dr. Grant is actually reporting on two studies. The first is a two-year study of…children who were taught to read using systematic phonics. At the end of two years, when they were just six years old, all 30 children were fluent readers who could read well above grade level….The second study is a larger longitudinal study following up on a much-earlier cohort of 700 disadvantaged children who had been taught to read using systematic phonics but then received no special treatment. At the end of grade 8, the group as a whole could read significantly above the national average and not one child had difficulties with literacy.

What else would an intelligent person need to know? We have a hundred years of research showing that phonics is best. (That’s where you start with letters, sounds, and blends.) But our ideologically impaired Education Establishment schemes continuously against phonics and in favor of “whole words.” (That’s where you treat each word as a unitary design.)

The result is that you find, across the country, every possible degree of real phonics, adulterated phonics, and no phonics at all. There are school districts so benighted that they are almost entirely Whole Word, just as almost all school districts were 50 years ago.

Such schools chatter reverently about reading’s famous quacks:

Edward William Dolch, Ph.D. published a book in 1948 called ‘Problems in Reading’ which devoted an entire chapter on sight words….Dolch’s sight words represent approximately half of printed material and he encouraged every child to learn to recognize these words instantly. Many of the Dolch list words cannot be sounded out phonetically, nor can they be illustrated to add a visual cue to the learning process….Dr. Edward Fry, was Professor Emeritus, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.….During his twenty-two years at Rutgers, he was President of the National Reading Conference, the International Reading Association, and the New Jersey Reading Association. He is a member of the Reading Teacher Hall of Fame.

The people pushing Whole Word remain a huge, shameless juggernaut. It’s almost guaranteed that a large percentage of their students won’t learn to read. What do they do with all the troubled readers? They have an array of excuses, crutches, and interventions for every age, all the way to high school, often including the expensive one-on-one approach known as Reading Recovery.

So the question before us is, how do we make people understand once and for all that sight-words (aka Dolch words, Fry words, etc.) do not work?

Consider the icons in the top right of your computer screen. (If you know PhotoShop, consider those icons.) These little graphics are convenient and easy to grasp. In small groups, they seem to work better than words. So instead of having the word “PENS,” you have a pen.
These graphic designs are equivalent to sight-words. In both cases you are dealing with structure or shape. When a child is just starting off, such graphic symbols seem doable. This apparent easiness is used to fool parents and students.

But try to imagine that the number of icons on your screen goes above 50. Very quickly the convenience disappears. You would probably scream, “Please, no more pictures. Just write the words.”

Imagine having to memorize 100 icons on the right side of your computer. You will find this an overwhelming experience. (But that’s just the beginning in learning English.)

Also keep in mind that these icons are dealt with one at a time. But English words typically occur in sentences, and you have to process them very quickly to extract the meaning.

People who memorize several hundred sight-words typically read only in a stumbling, painful way. They remain semi-literate.
Whole Word experts have invented numerous gimmicks that let such children fake it. They do a picture walk, a pre-read, and a paragraph-by-paragraph discussion of what might be in the book. By the time the child comes to “read” the book, he can answer questions about “meaning.” And if he can extract meaning, then according to these experts, he can “read.” What a con.

Imagine that this is a nine-word sentence in a language that your child is going to learn: $ ^ # * ) = @ ! &, pronounced, “Dick and Jane like to play in the street.” You’ll find it’s quite a lot of work to memorize those nine symbols so you can read that sentence. You’ll also find that if someone reverses the symbols, or adds new ones, you will be very confused very quickly.

This is typically what happens to Whole Word victims in the second and third grades, as they try to go from100 sight-words to 300. The common expression you hear is: “They started off so well, but then they hit the wall.”

Isn’t that cute? Little children are hitting the wall. Splat, splat, splat. And big adults are making lots of money giving them interventions. And so the lucrative con continues.

Systematic phonics (i.e., nothing but phonics) is the only way to go. If your children are at a school that uses any of the following terms, start fighting back: sight-words, Dolch words, Fry words, high-frequency words, picture clues, context clues, whole language, pre-read, picture walk, guess, skip ahead, balanced literacy.

Why are there so many of these bogus phrases? Simple. For the last 75 years, the Education Establishment has been selling a bogus reading method. Some people figure it out. So the Education Establishment has to come up with new slogans and clever new marketing phrases. That’s why we have all the slop.

Meanwhile, in all that time, phonics was called phonics and still is. When something works, you don’t need to fake it.

PS: Common Core is guilty of perpetuating Reform Math and Whole Word. Eliminating both is the prerequisite for educational success.

Bruce Deitrick Price explains education theories and methods on his site Improve-Education.org.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/06/reading_the_con_continues.html