Common Core Education And More About Federal Government Control

[Ross]

Common Core: An Uneven Playing Field

Many parents, teachers, legislators and citizens are fighting against the Common Core juggernaut. Some are becoming disillusioned and fear they might never overcome the well-planned and well-financed takeover of American education that was orchestrated by those who would eliminate local control and institute a one-size-fits-all federal education system.

P-TACCArne Duncan, Bill Gates, Pearson Education, and hundreds of education systems who have and will continue to gain financially from the restructuring of American education are formidable enemies for parents and a few legislators to fight.



In some states, legislators and other leaders are on the side of students and parents. In others, parents worked as hard as possible to institute better standards but have met with limited or no success.

In New Jersey, parents and teachers convinced legislators in the state House to stop Common Core. But before the state Senate could pass the bill, Gov. Chris Christie stepped in with an executive order to create a "committee to review" Common Core. Gov. Christie issued this edict in spring of 2014 but he has so far failed to appoint even one review committee member. It would be difficult to reach any other conclusion than that the governor's scheme was and remains a means to allow Common Core to remain in New Jersey.

Oklahoma passed and Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill aimed at dumping Common Core. But the "steering committee" that will design new standards is controlled by the state board of education. So far, no member of the committee is a teacher or other professional who could provide expertise on standards. It is feared that Oklahomans will suffer the fate of Indianans who refuted Common Core only to see it come back with slightly different wording. Similar ersatz changes to Common Core may be underway in South Carolina and in Missouri.

So far no state that adopted Common Core has approached the matter of better standards seriously. States could adopt Massachusetts' superior standards, which Massachusetts sadly ditched in favor of Common Core.

What the CC Status Quo Means For Students

Common Core is not internationally benchmarked, it is not evidence-based, it is not "rigorous," and it will not prepare students for competitive four-year universities. Common Core proponents have followed a set of talking points and most of the media has parroted their lies.

The "College and Career readiness" that is called for by Common Core is "workforce-prep" and not meant to create an educated and informed populace.

The way CC math is being taught is confusing for young students. Being forced to write sentences to explain why they gave the answer they did is ridiculous. But in Common Core math the explanation is more important than whether the student gave the correct answer. The Heartland Institute's Joy Pullman says, "[Common Core] mandates explicitly require kids to learn the least efficient ways of solving basic problems one, two, and even three grade levels before they are to learn the traditional, efficient ways."

Older students will not have a chance to attend great colleges because the coursework schedule doesn't allow them to complete calculus by 12th grade.

Common Core's Appendix B for English Language Arts suggests that students read such books as The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison, Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, and Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia. These books should not be suggested reading for high school students because they contain inappropriate subject matter and disturbing events. Yet, they are Common Core staples. The standards ignore excellent classical literature in favor of modern, lightweight, and sometimes "trashy" fiction, along with a heavy reliance on non-fiction "informational texts," which are frequently little more than leftist political indoctrination.

There are many reports from parents and teachers that students are frustrated and stressed by the complicated and poorly designed standards. Third graders are forced to take almost ten hours of tests when their state uses the PARCC testing consortium. (Washington Post, 9-28-14) The hours upon hours of tests that are required by Common Core are simply too much for young students. Most of the school year will be spent preparing to take the tests. The standards and the tests drive the curriculum. Children will learn to hate school when they are under duress because of developmentally inappropriate curriculum and tests.

What Parents Face

Parents have been ignored, belittled, maligned, and have no choice but to accept Common Core or pull their children out of schools. Even many private and parochial schools have succumbed to Common Core.

http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/dec14/common-core-an-uneven-playing-field.html

[Ross]

Evidence of Dumbing Down
Middle School Reading Lists: 100 Years Ago versus Today

by Annie Holmquist

This article originally appeared on October 31, 2014 at Better-Ed.org and is reprinted with permission.

I recently dug up a 1908 curriculum manual in the Minnesota Historical Society archives. It provided instructions on everything from teacher deportment to recommended literature lists for various grades. As a book lover, I was especially interested in the latter!

With the exception of a few textbook-like anthologies, the chart below lists the recommended reading material for Minnesota 7th and 8th graders in 1908:

With such a list in hand, I decided to examine if the common accusation that today's education standards have been dumbed down is really true. To make sure I wasn't unfairly weighting this survey in favor of the past, I went to one of the Twin Cities metro area's finest districts, namely, Edina Public Schools. Again, with the exception of a few textbook anthologies, the list below offers the reading options for their 7th- and 8th-grade students:

In examining these lists, I noticed three important differences between the reading content of these two eras:

There is much more to read at http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/dec14/evidence-of-dumbing-down.html

[Ross]

This is in the line of confirming the Dumbing Down of America.
I had to fight with my son attempting to teach him phonics.
He argued they didn't do it that way in school.

Schools Don't Teach Kids to Read

by Phyllis Schlafly                                                                                                            December 31, 2014

A high school English teacher at Rosemount High School in Minnesota, which was called a "top ranked school" by the Minnesota Department of Education, given the Blue Ribbon School of Excellence Award by the U.S. Department of Education, and named a top school in the nation for 2014 by Newsweek Magazine, just wrote a shocking letter alerting parents and the public that her high school juniors can't read. Her letter published by the Minnesota Star Tribune on December 4 was eloquent, so I quote it verbatim.

"We are in the midst of one of the greatest literacy crises ever encountered, and we are fighting an uphill battle. Every day I experience firsthand what it means to be illiterate in a high school classroom. Average students with average abilities can fervently text away, but they cannot read."

She said some of her students just sleep away an assigned unit. Others resort to depression or aggression. She gave them a not very difficult test, but they couldn't read the test.

When she assigns her students a book to read, they often don't even try to read it. Ask them why, they say "It's boring." She wrote that this translates into "It's too hard to read." The teacher appeals to parents and the public, saying, "I need your help."

Don't count on the shift to Common Core to teach school kids to read. Common Core will change the assigned stories and books, but it won't change the fact that elementary school kids are only taught how to memorize a few dozen "sight," mostly one-syllable, words, but not taught phonics so they can sound out the syllables and then read the bigger words in high school and college assignments.

Students are not assigned or motivated to read whole books. In the name of "close reading," they are given short so-called "informational" excerpts to read over and over in class, almost until they are memorized. You don't find the students going to the library to take out and read the classics, and students don't acquire the vocabulary necessary to do college work.

Limited reading skill means that what the students read is tightly controlled. Common Core has rewritten the history of America's founding to present James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and other Founders to fit the leftwing narrative of gender, race, class, and ethnicity, and students have neither motivation nor skill to seek out the true history of the Founders.

Common Core does, however, find space for stories that many parents find morally objectionable such as "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison.

The change from teaching school children to read by phonics, and replacing phonics with the so-called "whole word" or "look-say" method, was fully debunked in the landmark book "Why Johnny Can't Read" by Rudolph Flesch in 1955. Unfortunately, the truth had no impact on public schools which stuck with the new method because it was part of "progressive" education. It was brought to Teachers College at Columbia University with a $3 million grant from John D. Rockefeller Jr., who then sent four of his five sons to be educated by Dewey's progressive ideas.

Publishers responded eagerly to the opportunity to sell new books to all elementary schools, and the "Dick and Jane" series seemed much more attractive than the widely used McGuffey readers. Reading suddenly appeared to become easy because the Whole Word method teaches the child to guess at the words from pictures, to memorize a few dozen one-syllable words that are used over and over again, and to substitute words that fit the context.
The Dick and Jane books were full of color pictures and only a couple of short sentences on every page, A typical page showed Dick and Jane on a seesaw. The kids could easily "read" the two sentences below: "See Dick up. See Jane down."

Nelson Rockefeller, who became Governor of New York and ran three times for U.S. President, described his reading handicap in The Reading Teacher in March 1972: "I am a prime example of one who has had to struggle with the handicap of being a poor reader while serving in public office."

Rockefeller hired expensive speech writers, but he said that many times he threw away the speech and told the audience he was just going to give his "spontaneous thoughts." He confessed that the real reason was that he could not do an adequate job of reading the speech prepared for him.

If parents want their children to be good readers, parents will have to do the teaching as I did with my six children. When the book I used was allowed to go out of print and its publisher went out of business, I wrote "First Reader" to teach phonics to my grandchildren at age 5 or 6 (now available at FirstReader.com) and "Turbo Reader" for kids over age 8 (available at TurboReader.com).

http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/column/schools-dont-teach-kids-to-read.html

[Ross]

14 Statements
About The
Common Core Standards

What the heck am I talking about? The end of the world? Some kind of natural disaster? Zombies? No, something even scarier: the Common Core.
- David Kierski

Most of us who lived through this Hitler era remember how British Prime Minister Chamberlain gushed how great Hitler's Youth Corps was, much like those who support Common Core today.
- Donald Conkey, Cherokee Tribune

This is the progressive movement coming in for the kill. And believe me, if we don't stop it, this will be the kill.
- Glenn Beck

Allowing the federal government at the throats of our young people is to disallow children the opportunity to know the unique American experience of liberty in a freewill republic.
- Jim Mullen

Remember the quote by Hitler, 'Give me your children and in 10 years I'll change society?' The Obama administration intends to do just that.
- Elois Zeanah

Obama Core is a comprehensive plan to dumb down schoolchildren so they will be obedient servants of the government and probably to indoctrinate them to accept the leftwing view of America and its history.
- Phyllis Schafly

Your child or grandchild will not be able to escape Common Core materials that are anti-Christian, anti-capitalism, and anti-America. Or that are pro-homosexuality, illegal immigration, unions, environmentalism, gun control, feminism and social justice.
- Elois Zeanah

If this isn't Nazism, Communism, Marxism and all the 'ism's' I don't know what is.
- Christina Michas

The missiles are coming not just from the left but also the right. As we fight this insidious menace to our children and to our families ‑‑ and that's exactly what it is ‑‑ we are going to have a difficult time discerning who our allies are."
- Glenn Beck

Today's teachers and psychologists are NOT being trained to educate students academically or to counsel and help people cope with their problems, but to influence their political views. Does it sound like we're becoming Castro's Cuba? I can tell you from personal experience that we're already there.
- New Hampshire Tea Party

Our kids are going to be indoctrinated with extreme leftist ideology. That should terrify most people.
- Glenn Beck

It sends shivers down the spines of freedom loving individuals.
- Common Constitutionalist, Political Outcast

Now they're teaching something called Common Core. Folks, this president is emulating dictators. Do you not understand that he is not playing games? If you look at Mao Tse-tung, this boy is emulating Mao Tse-tung to a T.
- Bradlee Dean

[Ross]

This is apparently a teacher with true compassion and understanding and appreciation for childrens problems! But goes beyond that to understand the road blocks to an awful lot of children's educations. She apparently does not blame the parents as most teachers do!

I would bet she opposes further roadblocks that are built into Common Core.

Teacher: I see the difference in educational privilege every day.
I live it.
I am disgusted by it.

Children are served lunch at Broad Acres Elementary School in Silver Spring, Md., in 2012. Of the 708 students at the school during that year, 95 percent qualified for a free or reduced-price lunch because of low family income.  (Matt McClain for The Washington Post)

Here is a post by a Colorado teacher who vividly explains the difference in the lives of fortunate students and the less fortunate students whom she teaches. Her last post on this blog was a nuanced look into the psyche of some students of color who live in poverty, which you can read here http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/19/the-importance-of-a-name/.

This public school teacher often blogs anonymously under the name Shakespeare's Sister at Daily Kos. She teaches 11th grade AP Language and Composition in the Denver area.

Recently, events in Ferguson and New York have reminded us there are still two very different Americas. What I wish more people were talking about is that there are two American educations: One for the affluent, and one for students living in poverty.

Many of the reports focus on numbers for free and reduced lunches, which is, some say, a "rough proxy for poverty," but those labeling it in such a way have probably never set foot in a classroom.

Almost every day, I slip food to one of my students. Both of his parents are in prison. Or, one of his parents is in prison and the other is dead. We can't quite get the full story from him. He lives with his older sister, whom he refers to as his mother because he doesn't want to explain anything. Or he doesn't live with her. He won't say where he's staying. We've attempted home visits but can never get anyone to answer the door.

A senior from a nearby high school spoke at the Colorado Association for Gifted and Talented's annual conference in Denver this past October. Poised and polished and wearing a suit, he told the assembled teachers and administrators about how he had recently received a $25,000 grant from a company to allow him to continue to develop a thumbprint-activated gun prototype. He takes a special class in a public school—a scientific discovery class—in which he is allowed time to process through his scientifically based ideas. He works with a special adviser from a corporation that helped him set up his own corporation, and continues to help guide the research and development of his prototype. He admitted openly to taking many days off of school in order to work on his projects. He laughed it off, though, because his teachers make a special exception for him because they know he's gifted, and they know what he's working on.

My students take several days off of school also. They do it when they have to care for their brothers or sisters because their parents are working. They do it when they have to work so their family can eat. They do it when their parents are in the hospital receiving emergency medical care. Instead of a special exception, my students will eventually get a date in truancy court.

Another student who spoke at the conference, a fourteen-year-old "Indigenous Environmental Activist," is "committed to standing up and protecting the Earth, Water, Air, and Atmosphere." He attends a private school on a full-ride scholarship, and travels around the world—by airplane, I should mention—to perform with other activists, fight for the environment, and encourage other people to do the same. He and his siblings have released an album of rap songs about fighting for the health of the planet. My kids fight for the chance to break the oppressive cycle of poverty.

My student comes to school hungry every day. He wears size XXL shirts to hide what we all know is an emaciated frame. A couple of weeks ago, he used a plastic bag—stretched out to its full length—as a belt. He says he doesn't get to choose the size of clothes he gets so he has to make do with what he has. He tells me I don't have to buy him food, but I do anyway, because he needs it. He always takes it.

Why do I do it? Is it because it hurts me to see when my students are hungry, to know that they are wanting? That's one reason, yes. But another reason I do it is because, deep down, I am ashamed of an educational system that provides such privilege to some students, while willfully and purposefully denying it to others.

I am angry that when I attend a conference for gifted children—which, make no mistake, I do have in my classroom, though they do not have the same opportunities as their more affluent counterparts—I see such a stark difference between the opportunities afforded to students in affluent areas, and the opportunities afforded to students in my classroom.

There has been plenty of talk about privilege lately: the difference in racial privilege, the difference in gender privilege.

There's a difference in educational privilege, too. I see it every day. I live it. I am disgusted by it.

Where there is money, there is education. Where there isn't money, there is excessive testing, lack of curricular options, and struggle. There is the struggle to give students the tools they need to fight their way through a system that is designed to hold them back from the moment they take their first breath, from the moment they try to write their first paragraph. As The Washington Post report states: "A growing number of children start kindergarten already trailing their more privileged peers and rarely, if ever, catch up. They are less likely to have support at home, are less frequently exposed to enriching activities outside of school, and are more likely to drop out and never attend college." They are, overall, less likely to succeed.

When I was at the conference, I heard confidence in the voices of the two students that spoke; their words were steeped in the self-assuredness of privilege.

Instead of self-assuredness, my teenage students' voices are already wracked with weariness.

So what do my students need, then? Access to the same funding, opportunities, and "exceptions" afforded to privileged, affluent students.

They need a society and educational system designed to actually meet their needs, instead of a society that passes laws to keep them constantly underfoot and an educational system designed to test them to death and tell them how they are inadequate instead of educating them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/01/29/teacher-i-see-the-difference-in-educational-privilege-every-day-i-live-it-i-am-disgusted-by-it/

[Ross]

Rand Paul - Stop Common Core Now

Published on Jan 30, 2015
Sign your "Stop Common Core" petition: tinyurl.com/mg7u8jg


Video at:

[Ross]

The Common Core Pipeline

A June 7, 2014 Washington Post article is titled: "How Bill Gates Pulled Off the Swift Common Core Revolution." It states: "The Gates Foundation spread money across the political spectrum, to entities including the big teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, and business organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — groups that have clashed in the past but became vocal backers of the standards.

The article continues:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn't just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the country, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly changes.

The Post reports: "Gates money went to state and local groups, as well, to help influence policymakers and civic leaders. And the idea found a major booster in President Obama, whose new administration was populated by former Gates Foundation staffers and associates."

Read more at: http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/jan15/the-common-core-pipeline.html

[Ross]

Common Core Test Found Unconstitutional in Missouri

Although a judge has issued a temporary restraining order to stop the state from paying for Common Core tests, Missouri students will likely still take the tests. A judge temporarily blocked payment to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, saying payment represents an interstate compact to which Congress did not consent and is therefore unconstitutional.

Common CoreThe Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is one of the two testing entities that in 2010 received $330 million in stimulus funds from Obama's American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. SBAC and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) were federally supported until September of 2014. At that time states began paying for the Dept. of Education-mandated tests to be administered in participating states.

Judge Daniel R. Green wrote that "the payment of membership fees to an unconstitutional entity would impose irreparable harm on the Plaintiff taxpayers, who have an interest in ensuring that all payments from the Missouri Treasury are made in accordance with the law." But the judge said that Missouri can still administer Common Core tests, even without being a dues-paying member of SBAC.

Read more at: http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/jan15/common-core-test-found-unconstitutional-in-missouri.html

[Ross]

Back Door
Sex Education

Most would agree that information about eggs, sperm and fertilization is basic to the understanding of biology. But when did contraception and abortion become part of the biology curriculum for high school students?

In October, the Gilbert, Arizona school board voted 3-2 that a textbook used for honors and Advanced Placement biology is at odds with a state law that mandates schools to teach "preference, encouragement, and support to childbirth and adoption" over abortion. The law, SB 1009, was enacted in 2012 to ensure that sex education classes favored adoption rather than abortion.

The efficacy of various methods of contraception, the topics of sexually transmitted disease and condom use, and "morning after" abortion pills are covered on page 545 of the textbook Campbell Biology: Concepts and Connections. The book specifically mentions the drug mifepristone and states that it "can induce an abortion during the first seven weeks of pregnancy."

State Senator Nancy Barto, the sponsor of SB 1009, says there is no doubt this textbook is in violation of the law. She says, "Sex education by any other name is sex education, and all the rules apply." Barto also notes that it is not "value neutral" when a textbook discusses an abortion pill.

The Arizona Dept. of Education approved Campbell Biology for use in the state. But the locally elected school board believes the book breaks Arizona law.

Read more at: http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/jan15/back-door-sex-education.html

[Ross]

Illegal Immigrants Strain
Many School Districts

While New York launches a review of procedures used to enroll illegal immigrant students, Washington, D.C. is straining under the tremendous burden of educating such students. The influx of over 50,000 children and young adults across the nation's southern border is taxing school budgets across the nation. These students were unexpected and not included in schools' fiscal plans. Most need specialized English Language Learner programs and are usually on free or reduced lunch programs, furthering schools' financial challenges.

N.Y. Enrollment Policy Investigated

Read more at: http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/jan15/illegal-immigrants-strain-many-school-districts.html