Common Core Education And More About Federal Government Control

[Ross]

[Ross]

[Ross]

[Ross]

Common Core is making me stupider.

Blogged By trisha haas
 
As you may know if you follow me on Facebook, I pretty much hate, with a capital H-A-T-E, this "new common core" math being taught. Every day it's a massive struggle for Chris and me, him with a Masters Degree and myself with a Bachelors, to teach 3rd grade homework to our daughter.

Putting aside that we work for hours past an already 8 hour school day, ignoring that we are provided no text books to learn about the material, and sweeping under the rug that they send home homework on things they have yet to even teach yet, we are doing our best.

But we are lost.

LOST.

And I am a bit angry to tell you the truth.

Today was just another example of "fuzzy" math.

This is on Charlotte's homework:

(See picture below)

All her problems have to be done this way.

Under what math EVER would 291 be "estimated" or "rounded off" to 200?  Am I missing something? And this is the example for her to base all her other math homework on.

I can tell you that if I estimated or rounded off my bills from $291 to $200, I would get a notice of an unpaid bill. I am not sure my mortgage or car payment would agree with that.

And let's jump to the answer. The estimated sum '500′ is considered reasonable with '645′?

Is 5 million the same as 6.5 million? Ask an accountant that. Ask a corporation that.

I can't help but wanting to refuse to teach Charlotte something that I find completely and utterly wrong.

http://www.momdot.com/common-core-is-making-me-stupider/

[Ross]

I had to take a second look at the above post.

It just seemed ridiculously simple to screw it up?

First I reread the problem without bias and looking for a possible error I may have made.

To my surprise it is a very simple mistake I made.

I did not read the problem thoroughly the first time.

Using Front-End Estimation, something I had never of before today, so I Googled it.

It amounts to a short cut but lacks accuracy, so in this case the problem the answer is correct and the rounding is correct.

You can read about Front End Estimation at:

http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/68366.html

[Ross]

KANSAS URGENT: Tell House Ed Committee to vote YES on HB 2621 

February 15, 2014

Great news! Thanks to the hard work of so many activists, especially our friends at Kansans Against Common Core, we finally have a solid bill in the House Education Committee (HB 2621) that will be heard next week!

Right now, your voice is critical in this discussion. We must ensure that these Kansas legislators follow through in pushing back against federal overreach and restoring authority over education to the Kansas people.

A quick recap of Kansas' Common Core history:
•The Kansas Board of Education adopted the national K-12 Common Core standards in English and math in 2010 in order to score points on a federal grant competition – a competition that we did not win.
•As a result we now have the Common Core standards (Kansas College and Career Ready Standards), and they are of poor quality:
◦They fail to prepare students for studies in science, technology, engineering and math.  They put our students two years behind their peers in high-performing countries by eighth grade, and they are even worse for high school.
◦In English language arts, the Common Core severely de-emphasizes the study of classic literature in favor of drab and simplistic "informational" texts.  It does this despite the fact that the overwhelming evidence is that children should be reading more, not less, classic literature.
◦Prominent child psychiatrists and psychologists have heavily criticized the standards as being age-inappropriate for young children.
•The Kansas State Board of Education also adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in June 2013.  The NGSS standards fail to prepare children for college science courses.

Kansas needs to reclaim its sovereignty by exiting the Common Core and developing top-notch standards that will be under Kansas' control! The state legislature can do this with the passage of a simple law – HB 2621.

TAKE ACTION!

First, forward this to as many Kansas friends and family as possible who will take action too! Please call AND e-mail (with the form below) the five most important members of the House Education Committee, and respectfully tell them to support HB 2621. After this, please select the rest of the email addresses below and ask the rest of the committee members to support HB 2621. There is not time to wait – they must lead Kansas out of the Common Core THIS session.

If you can only make a few phone calls, here are the most important representatives to contact:
•Rep. Ward Cassidy, Vice-Chair (785-296-7616) ward.cassidy@house.ks.gov
•Rep. Sue Boldra (785-296-4683)  sue.boldra@house.ks.gov
•Rep. John Ewy (785- 296-7105) john.ewy@house.ks.gov
•Rep. Amanda Grosserode (785- 296-7659)  amanda.grosserode@house.ks.gov
•Rep. Kelly Meigs (785-296-7656)  kelly.meigs@house.ks.gov

If you can contact more, here are the rest of the members.

House Education Committee

Rep. Kasha Kelley, Chair (785-296-7671) kasha.kelley@house.ks.gov

Rep. Ed Trimmer, Ranking Minority Member (785-296-7122) ed.trimmer@house.ks.gov

Rep. John Bradford (785-296-7653)  john.bradford@house.ks.gov

Rep. Carolyn Bridges (785-296-7646) carolyn.bridges@house.ks.gov

Rep. Diana Dierks (785-296-7642) diana.dierks@house.ks.gov

Rep. Willie Dove (785-296-7670) willie.dove@house.ks.gov

Rep. Shanti Gandhi (785-296-7672) shanti.gandhi@house.ks.gov

Rep. Dennis Hedke (785-296-7699) dennis.hedke@house.ks.gov

Rep. Ron Highland (785-296-7310)  ron.highland@house.ks.gov

Rep. Roderick Houston (785-296-7652) roderick.houston@house.ks.gov

Rep. Jerry Lunn (785-296-7675) jerry.lunn@house.ks.gov

Rep. Nancy Lusk (785-296-7651)  nancy.lusk@house.ks.gov

Rep. Melissa Rooker (785-296-7686)  melissa.rooker@house.ks.gov

Rep. Valdenia Winn (785-296-7657) valdenia.winn@house.ks.gov

COMMITTEE EMAILS:

kasha.kelley@house.ks.gov, ward.cassidy@house.ks.gov, ed.trimmer@house.ks.gov, sue.boldra@house.ks.gov, john.bradford@house.ks.gov, carolyn.bridges@house.ks.gov, diana.dierks@house.ks.gov, willie.dove@house.ks.gov, john.ewy@house.ks.gov, shanti.gandhi@house.ks.gov, amanda.grosserode@house.ks.gov, dennis.hedke@house.ks.gov, ron.highland@house.ks.gov, roderick.houston@house.ks.gov, jerry.lunn@house.ks.gov, nancy.lusk@house.ks.gov, kelly.meigs@house.ks.gov, melissa.rooker@house.ks.gov, valdenia.winn@house.ks.gov

The whole story and The form to fill out that helps you write your letter is at:
http://capwiz.com/eagleforum/issues/alert/?alertid=63100036&queueid=10176686696

[Ross]

From: John Bradford
Date: 2/15/2014 4:32:45 PM
To: Ross
Subject: Re: Common Core

I am a solid yes. I carried the bill last year as HB2289.

Enthusiasm is Contagious

[Ross]

States Reconsider Common Core Tests

Washington Post
By  Adrienne Lu,   Published: February 20

Beginning in March, more than 4 million students will serve as guinea pigs for the English and math tests for the Common Core, a set of standards adopted by almost every state that map out what students should know and be able to do in each grade.

Ultimately, Common Core tests will be used to assess both students and teachers, and they are critical to the larger mission of the standards: to increase academic rigor for all students and to allow states to better evaluate their students and compare them with those in other states.

The testing that will take place starting in March will serve as a dry run for the two groups of states that have banded together to develop Common Core tests, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC. In most states, the real Common Core tests will begin in 2015.

But as controversy over the Common Core has challenged some states' commitment to the standards, a number of states have decided to withdraw from PARCC or Smarter Balanced or to use alternative tests, raising questions about the cost of the tests and the long-term viability of the multi-state testing groups, which received $360 million in federal grants to develop the tests. The federal grants will end this fall, and it is unclear whether the testing groups will continue past that point.

"What gets tested is what gets taught," said Joan Herman, co-director emeritus of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. "To the extent that the assessments well represent the spirit and meaning of the standards, the spirit and meaning of the standards will get taught. Where the assessments fall short, curriculum, instruction and teaching will likely fall short as well."

Dropping the tests

Controversy over the Common Core heated up last year across the country. Critics from both ends of the political spectrum cited a variety of complaints, including the fear of federal control over education, questions about whether Common Core is superior to previous state standards and worries about the implementation of the standards, including the cost to states and school districts.

So far, none of the 45 states that adopted the English and math standards has dropped them (Minnesota adopted only the English standards). But several states have backed off from using the tests created by the two multi-state testing groups or ended their participation in the collaborations.

In December, Kansas withdrew from the Smarter Balanced coalition, opting instead to commission tests from the University of Kansas. Last month, Alaska also announced it would withdraw from Smarter Balanced and instead use tests from the University of Kansas. In September, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) ordered the state's education department to withdraw from PARCC and consider other test options. Utah withdrew from Smarter Balanced in 2012. Georgia and Oklahoma withdrew from PARCC last summer. Alabama, which had been a member of both Smarter Balanced and PARCC, withdrew from both groups; Pennsylvania has said it will use its own tests.

Some of the states have expressed concerns about the cost of the tests. PARCC has estimated its test will cost $29.50 per student — about the median its member states now pay for standardized tests; Smarter Balanced has estimated its test will cost $22.50 per student for the end-of-year exam and $27.30 per student including mid-year exams, less than current standardized test costs in two-thirds of the member states.

"Cost is an issue because it takes money to innovate," Herman said. "You can't just do that with no resources, you have to be able to invest in research and development and in the development and testing of new forms of assessment."

Herman said both PARCC and Smarter Balanced are breaking new ground in developing student tests.

"They are moving us forward in addressing deeper learning to solve problems and to think critically," Herman said. "No doubt some folks don't think they're far enough, but in my mind, they're definitely an important step forward and will provide much better targets for instructions than do most existing state tests."

Historically, most state standardized tests have focused on the knowledge and skills that are relatively simple to test and don't reflect a great depth of learning, said James Pellegrino, co-director of Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a leading expert on student assessment.

Pellegrino said that because every child is now tested every year from third through eighth grades and once in high school, and because the tests must be secure, new test items must be generated constantly.

"You get into a mode of mass production, and mass production doesn't always get tuned to the highest levels of quality," Pellegrino said. "It's not like you couldn't do it, but it's very costly to produce high-quality assessments on an ongoing basis with the sort of scope and scale" used in the United States.

States that try to cut the cost of tests too much could pay the price, Pellegrino warned. "If we have shallow tests because we're trying to economize, teachers will respond to the test because they're held accountable for performance on the test," Pellegrino said. "As a consequence, they won't teach to the standards — they'll teach to the test."

Assessing complex skills

From the beginning, Smarter Balanced and PARCC have promised smarter tests that will evaluate how well students apply knowledge. Instead of multiple-choice questions, for example, students might be given "performance tasks," or groups of test questions designed around a common theme and built to assess more complex skills.

Jacqueline E. King, a spokeswoman for Smarter Balanced, said that in addition to end-of-the-year exams, Smarter Balanced will offer a package of materials including ways to assess student learning throughout the school year, along with extensive resources for teachers, such as model lesson plans.

On the end-of-year exams, King said high school students might be asked to imagine being a staff member in a congressman's office. The congressman has asked the staffer to write a short memo explaining the pros and cons of nuclear power and provide a recommendation on what position the congressman should take, including the justification for the recommendation. The student would be given background materials to read and would need to evaluate the credibility of the background materials before constructing a cogent, concise argument.

David Connerty-Marin, a spokesman for PARCC, said the group's tests will have several advantages over most current state standardized tests. They will, for example, make it easier to evaluate students who are significantly above or below grade level. They also will evaluate reading and writing scores at every grade (currently, few states test writing at every grade level) and gauge whether students are on track to be "college ready" when they graduate from high school.

'Depth of knowledge'

In Michigan, which has seen its share of controversy over the Common Core, Joseph Martineau, the deputy superintendent for accountability services, said the Smarter Balanced exams offer multiple advantages over the current state standardized test, the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, or MEAP. Smarter Balanced will allow schools to get results in two weeks, compared to about six weeks for the state's current standardized test, for example. And because the Smarter Balanced exams are different for each student, with computers adjusting the difficulty level of questions based on students' responses, they can also be administered over a longer period, whereas the previous state tests had to be administered on a single day to prevent cheating.

On the MEAP, students might be asked to choose a correct answer from four possible options, whereas on the Common Core test, they would be asked to explain how they arrived at their answer.

"One of the major differences between the two is the depth of knowledge that we're asking students to demonstrate," Martineau said.

Martineau said that by working with the other states in Smarter Balanced, Michigan was able to develop a higher-quality test than it could have created independently.

"We would not have been able to afford to develop the kind of quality that was developed through the consortium," he said.

http://www.cascity.com/howard/forum/index.php?action=post;topic=15765.10;last_msg=217402

[Ross]

This is about property,     but also about education,    about what is taught,   that devalues ownership!

communism, history
You Should Ask 'Whose Property Is It?'
by Lonely Conservative • February 28, 2014

The following is a guest post by Dr. Robert Owens.

***

You Should Ask "Whose Property Is It?"

Even for someone who learned at their grandmother's knee that what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable the knowledge that some things are mine and some things aren't came early.  The whole idea of freedom rests upon the idea that within the wider world which is society there is a smaller circle that outlines what is personal and what is communal.  Even in monasteries where monks have taken vows of poverty they refer to my cell, my candle and my prayers.

Private property is an essential ingredient of a free society.

Two of the greatest rewards derived from the study of History are the ability to build upon the achievements of others and the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others.  One of the greatest calamities caused by the failure to study History is a lack of context.

Most people live their lives as if History began the day they were born and they forever live in a constantly flowing and ever changing now.  George Orwell said in his epic dystopian novel 1984 that, "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."

The Progressives captured the majority of American education long ago and have taught generations of Americans that capitalism is bad and socialism is good. 

They have also taught children since at least the 1950s that America has been a grasping imperialistic power that has prospered by taking from others.  We are seeing the fruits of this propaganda today.

Instead of memorizing the Declaration of Independence, our children have memorized the outlandish theories of Al Gore.  Instead of learning the truth, they have been indoctrinated with an inconvenient truth that is inconvenient because it isn't true. They have been taught from History books that have more about Nelson Mandela than they do about George Washington.  And this is not a new thing.  I am in my 60s and I was thrown out of public schools for standing up for capitalism by people who were pushing socialism.

If we want to recapture the future we have to recapture the present so we can recapture the past.  Today those of us who believe in limited government, individual freedom and economic opportunity live as subjects in a land dominated and occupied by people who act as if America should pay a penalty or do penance for being the greatest country to have ever existed.  We must regain and preserve our heritage of knowledge by regaining knowledge of our History or it will be erased from the consciousness of our children and replaced with the inconvenient lies of a shabby Progressive future.  A future where the sun is setting for the West, rising in the East, and a paternal government seeks to take the place of God.

If we want to save America we must begin at the beginning.  Most people think the Constitution is the beginning.  Even though our Progressive masters seek to reinterpret it to bring about our end it wasn't our beginning.  Before the Constitution came The Declaration of Independence.  This is the seminal document proclaiming to the world a new nation not ruled by kings had appeared upon the stage.  This Declaration did not spring freshly from the imagination of Thomas Jefferson.  It was not born in a vacuum.   Jefferson was a student of Philosophy and History.

When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence he built many of the ideas on the works of John Locke, one of the greatest influences on the Framers.  Locke had written in The Second Treatise of Civil Government, "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions..."

This in turn inspired George Mason to write in The Virginia Declaration of Rights which was published just before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

Today the concept of private property is out of fashion as our collectivist rulers try to build a classless society on such misunderstood and elastic phrases as the Pursuit of Happiness and the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Looking at the works and words of our founders and of those who framed the Constitution it is plain to see that the phrase "Pursuit of Happiness" was everywhere used as meaning the right to own, control and use private property, which brings us to economics.

In a capitalistic system people own, control and use their own private property for their own devices.   The opposite of that is Communism, which advocates the state ownership of all property.  Portraying itself as half way in between is Socialism, which seeks to extract a portion of the rewards of private property for the benefit of those who do not own it.  A malignant form of socialism with a capitalist veneer, Fascism advocates private ownership and total state control of its use.

Looking at capitalism we see the miracle that was the United States.  In just a little over 150 years we rose from being 13 impoverished, war ravaged states loosely bound together into a colossus that strode upon the world stage saving freedom first from fascism and then from communism.

One of the founders of the Soviet nightmare Leon Trotsky said of the communistic system he helped create, "In a country where the sole employer is the state. Opposition means death by slow starvation.  The old principle, he who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat."

And although Socialists try to play the part of sentimental reformers who are only out to help the children, their ultimate agenda shows that they are in reality merely a stalking horse for their communist big brother.  One socialist site puts it this way, "In Socialism, the laborer is the direct manager of their means of production, and receives the whole of their production. In Capitalism, the laborer is dominated by a Capitalist, who directs production and sets wages."

As for the Fascists their program may sound familiar, "We ask that government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within the confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ... an end to the power of financial interest. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand ... the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our system of public education.... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents.... The government must undertake the improvement of public health — by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor — by the greatest possible support for all groups concerned with the physical education of youth. [W]e combat the ... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good."

Ask yourself where are we today?  The government issues regulations at the mind numbing rate of 68 per day.  According to a study by the American Action Forum, regulations that went into effect in 2013 cost Americans $112 billion – or $447 million for each of the 251 days the federal government was open.  This study also predicts that the regulatory burden will increase to $143 billion in 2014.  Who controls the property you own?  Who reaps the benefit of your labor?  Tax Freedom Day, the day after which you have worked enough to pay your taxes and can now start working for yourself gets later each year.  In 2013 it was April 18th, five days later than it was in 2012.

F. A. Hayek tells us in The Constitution of Liberty, "True coercion occurs when armed bands of conquerors make the subject people toil for them, when organized gangsters extort a levy for 'protection,' when the knower of an evil secret blackmails his victim, and, of course, when the state threatens to inflict punishment and to employ physical force to make us obey its commands."

John Locke told us, "Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself."  He also said, "All wealth is the product of labor," and "Government has no other end, but the preservation of property."  These are the bedrocks upon which our system was originally built.  The next time you receive your pay look at the deductions.  Ask yourself for whose benefit do you toil? Then look around you and think of the taxes you pay, the regulations you must follow, and the rules you must obey; then ask yourself, whose property is it?

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future

http://lonelyconservative.com/2014/02/you-should-ask-whose-property-is-it/

[Ross]

I just received this in an e-mail from eagle@eagleforum.org
 
KANSAS: Support HB 2621 in the House Education Committee

KANSAS: Support HB 2621 in the House Education Committee Take Action!
March 3, 2014


There is still hope that we can get rid of Common Core State Standards Initiative with HB 2621, currently before the House Education Committee. This bill will remove the state from the Common Core and establish an advisory committee led by Kansas legislators, parents, and educators to create new standards.

This bill presents a real opportunity to restore local control to education. However, we must act quickly because the legislature must act before it goes out of session! We cannot have our students locked into the Common Core for another year.

Please call or email these members of the House Education Committee. Tell them that you support HB 2621, and their YES vote would mean a rejection of federal and big business overreach and a return to an education system governed by the citizens of Kansas.

Rep. Ward Cassidy, 785-296-7616
Rep. Amanda Grosserode, 785-296-7659
Rep. Sue Boldra, 785-296-4683
Rep. John Ewy, 785-296-7105
Rep. Kelly Meigs, 785-296-7656
For more information on Common Core, click here. A quick recap of Kansas' Common Core history:

The Kansas Board of Education adopted the national K-12 Common Core standards in English and math in 2010 in order to score points on a federal grant competition – a competition that we did not win.
As a result we now have the Common Core standards (Kansas College and Career Ready Standards), and they are of poor quality:
They fail to prepare students for studies in science, technology, engineering and math.  They put our students two years behind their peers in high-performing countries by eighth grade, and they are even worse for high school.
In English language arts, the Common Core severely de-emphasizes the study of classic literature in favor of drab and simplistic "informational" texts.  It does this despite the fact that the overwhelming evidence is that children should be reading more, not less, classic literature.
Prominent child psychiatrists and psychologists have heavily criticized the standards as being age-inappropriate for young children.
The Kansas State Board of Education also adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in June 2013.  The NGSS standards fail to prepare children for college science courses.
Kansas needs to reclaim its sovereignty by exiting the Common Core and developing top-notch standards that will be under Kansas control! The state legislature can do this with the passage of a simple law – HB 2621.

Take Action at:
http://capwiz.com/eagleforum/issues/alert/?alertid=63123676#action