THE KING OF 'COMMON CORE' - Jeb Bush's Shiny Campaign

CURMUDGUCATION
by Peter Greene
Friday, March 28, 2014

Quote:

---

It takes a little clicking to learn that LMGF is brought to you by the Foundation for Excellence in Education (and I'm sure I'll be neither the first nor last person to point out how appropriate it is that these champions of privatization have chosen FEE as their acronym), and FEE is founded and led by that champion of reformy stuff, Jeb Bush.

---

Jeb Bush's Shiny Campaign


If you wanted to find all of the bullshit talking points about the CCSS Reformy Complex, you'd be hard pressed to do better than clicking on over to Learn More. Go Further.

It takes a little clicking to learn that LMGF is brought to you by the Foundation for Excellence in Education (and I'm sure I'll be neither the first nor last person to point out how appropriate it is that these champions of privatization have chosen FEE as their acronym), and FEE is founded and led by that champion of reformy stuff, Jeb Bush. And FEE is here to sell you all the wonders that are the Common Core.

One gets the impression that this is a work in progress. In some corners of the site one finds the name "Learn More. Go Further Florida." And there is a definite Florida-centric nature to some portions, while other portions take a more nation-spanning view. It's almost as if somebody connected to the site had a strategy to take a local story and upscale it as a sort of national platform for some sort of major nation-wide undertaking, an undertaking so large that it might not come to full flower for another two years, a project that could stretch all the way from Florida to New Hampshire and Iowa. Though in fairness, I'll note that Jeb's mug is absent from this shiny shiny ad campaign.

The site is slick. And if nothing else, it is an interesting study in what research and focus groups must be telling the folks who want to market a Presidential candidate an educational vision, and the corporate sponsors that back them (more about that at the bottom).

For one thing, we can deduce that they have totally gotten the memo that lots of folks don't think that teachers like Common Core very much. They have lined up four freshly scrubbed teachers, all women, none with a mention of TFA in sight, and all four with branny new twitter accounts that made their first noise on March 15. All four have tweeted since then with a string of advertising copy for the core, some of which are nearly identical for each of the women. You may well have seen them; this morning their accounts are appearing as promoted "Who To Follows" on my twitter page.

Were I supremely cynical, I might conclude that these women were a magical combination of stock photography and an ed department intern, but I'm a cynic with a computer, so I dug just a bit. Here are our four teacher voices for FEE (see what I did there? Jeb, you should not make it so easy).

Rian Meadows is a teacher ambassador at the Florida Dept of Ed. It appears that at least in 2011, she was an economics instructor at Florida Virtual School (FLVS) — the nation's first-ever statewide virtual public high school. Faye Adams is a charter school teacher in Pasco County. Angela Anchors is a charter school teacher. And Beth Smith seems to actually work at an honest-to-God public school, where she has only just been promoted to Assistant Principal from her previous job as reading specialist.

There's a whole other point to be made about exactly how these women are being used as props-- their twitter accounts are @USteacher[firstname]. So we've picked women who teach elementary school and reduced them to first names, like Miss Mary on Romper Room. They appear in ads in classrooms, with children.

You can click on an ask-a-teacher link, and cut-out pop-up clips of these women will appear to read answers in a manner that will do nothing to dispel the impression that they are Stepford Educators. Ask "Are teachers excited about Florida Core Standards" and one (I think it's Beth) pops up to say earnestly, "We sure are." And then we get the usual line about how the Core will free teachers to teach creatively because, gosh darn it, there's already just too much teaching to the test, and under the Core, those testing days are over.

I offer that as a representative sample of the site's content, because taking us through all of it would be like repeatedly punching you in the heart. The site depends heavily on spin, equivocation, and just plain flat out lying. As I said at the top-- every piece of bullshit you've ever heard about the CCSS regime of reform is here, in slickly well-designed webullar glory.

Teachers totally helped write the Core. It totally leaves local school boards in complete control. It is not a curriculum. Critical thinking out the wazoo. Competitive in a global market. The only time the site deviates from the standard baloney is when it goes for even bigger piles of baloney-- in reply to the "myth" that the states' tests weren't broken site asserts "Many states had reading proficiency standards that would qualify their students as functionally illiterate by international standards."

And there is copy devoted to promoting the Florida miracle, because claiming that the state has achieved miraculous advances in education has been a proven winner for members of the Bush family in the past. These claims are similar to what we used to call the "Texas miracle" in that they are not really based on what we used to call "facts." Head over to Integrity in Education to read the breakdown of how reality-impaired these claims are.

There is along page of supportive quotes from all the usual subjects: Petrelli and Brickman from the Fordham, Kramer and Villaneuva from TFA, and (ex-)Mayor Bloomberg all check in with words of support for the Core.

There are slick ads that I'm sure some of you are seeing already; these assure us that what's at stake is everything. Those are paid for by the Higher States Standards Partnership, a group with their own website; the HSHP brings together a coalition of the Business Roundtable, the US Chamber of Commerce and a whole long list of individual corporate sponsors. So if we know one thing from this campaign, it's that corporate interests are willing to spend even more money to buy their access to great public ed money pile. [Update: Erin Osborne has done the research and broken down the folks behind HSHP and put it all in a chart. It's amazing, and there's not an actual teacher in sight.]

There is good news for disruptive types. The site includes both a place to "tell your story" and the opportunity to ask questions of these four educational spokemavens. Knock yourselves out, folks.

Posted by Peter Greene at Friday, March 28, 2014


http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2...-campaign.html

Common Core Lesson Teaches that America is a Racist Nation

Quote:

---

Our children are being taught that America is, at its core, a racist nation.

The book appears to follow the viewpoint that all opposition to the president is based purely on race, which has reached near-comedic levels in its absurdity.

---

http://www.tpnn.com/wp-content/uploa.../obamaBook.gif

Bobby Jindal says he will get Louisiana out of Common Core test group, if Legislature won't

http://imgick.nola.com/home/nola-med...683-mmmain.jpg
Politicians, parents and teachers opposed to the education standards known as Common Core rallied in Baton Rouge on Sept. 28, 2013. (NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

By Julia O'Donoghue
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
April 14, 2014

Gov. Bobby Jindal has said he wants to withdraw Louisiana from a consortium of states developing the assessment associated with the Common Core academic standards if the Louisiana Legislature doesn't choose to do so on its own.

Eight state House members sent a letter to Jindal Monday afternoon asking him to nix a years-old agreement that has Louisiana helping craft the Partnership of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test. The governor, who once supported Common Core and the PARCC, said he is in favor of the state's withdrawal from the group developing the assessment at this point. Jindal also indicated that he hopes the anti-Common Core efforts currently brewing in the Legislature succeed.

"We share the concerns of these [anti-Common Core] legislators and also of parents across Louisiana. We're hopeful that legislation will move through the process this session that will address the concerns of parents or delay implementation until these concerns can be addressed. We think this course of action outlined in the legislators' letter remains a very viable option if the Legislature does not act," said Jindal in a written statement.

In some ways, pulling out of the PARCC consortium would be a largely symbolic gesture on behalf of the Jindal administration, since the group's work crafting the test is almost done. The state signed on to Common Core in 2010 and is set to start giving the PARCC to third-through-eighth graders in 2015. Louisiana has not technically signed up to use the PARCC yet, thought it's assumed, as a member of the test's consortium, that the state would implement the assessment.

Jindal's withdraw from PARCC - and Common Core by extension -- is likely to play well with a vocal group of parents and lawmakers who have serious reservations about the assessment. Common Core critics, particularly those with conservative political leanings, believe the PARCC could cause Louisiana to lose control over its student data and risk children's privacy, since it will likely be used by several states. They also say the test will be expensive to implement, though its costliness is a point of contention with PARCC backers.

"The state requires by law that students be tested. Developing a Louisiana-specific test would be significantly more expensive [than PARCC]," said Louisiana's Superintendent of Education John White, who favors the exam and Common Core.
White and the assessment's supporters say the PARCC is actually relatively affordable, since many states split the cost and worked together to develop it. Also, PARCC allows Louisiana to compare its own students' performance to those in other states easily, another bonus in their eyes.

On a practical level, there is some question as to whether Jindal can unilaterally tear Louisiana away from the PARCC consortium, in which 16 states plus Washington D.C. participate. White and Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education [BESE] president Chas Roemer said their permission is also required to leave the consortium, and both White and Roemer -- who also avidly supports Common Core -- are unwilling to do so.

Roemer chalked the statements by Jindal and legislators about leaving the PARCC consortium up to a political stunt. "They are going to resort to parlor tricks to try and stop it," he said.

Still, Jindal's willingness to scratch the assessment is a political blow, if nothing else, for those who have championed Common Core, including White, Roemer and several state lawmakers. It could also be a sign that the threat to the academic standards -- once considered a long shot -- is more viable than Common Core supporters originally thought.

So far, the traditional legislative means of getting rid of Common Core have failed in Louisiana. But a small group of lawmakers intend to pursue the issue until the Legislature adjourns in June. And now, they have a high-profile ally in Jindal.
The governor had previously supported the academic standards, but as conservatives, in particular, have turned against Common Core, Jindal's opinion of the benchmarks has changed. Two weeks ago, Jindal backed the now-dead legislation to repeal the standards and PARCC.

"It has become a political card in a house of cards," said Roemer about the debate over Common Core.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.s..._out_of_c.html

George P. Bush says dad 'moving forward' on 2016

Cuomo Continues To Distance Himself From Common Core

by Wochit 0:52 mins 9,100 views

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has slowly been backing away from the controversial Common Core education standards.

The issue was surprisingly potent in what will likely be the only New York gubernatorial debate featuring the incumbent.

Republican challenger Rob Astorino is well behind in the polls, and used the debate to seek out any potential weakness for Cuomo.

One of Astorino’s strongest lines of attack was against Common Core, which he attempted to label “Cuomo’s Common Core” and described as an “unmitigated disaster” ceding control of the state’s schools to the federal government.

https://screen.yahoo.com/wochit/cuom...105103248.html