Common Core Education And More About Federal Government Control

[Ross]

Parents Against the Common Core Enters the Fight

The new organization called "Parents Against the Common Core" aims to assist those who wish to fight Common Core. It represents a broad base of grassroots activists who know that Common Core is the wrong direction for American education. Parents from many states, in cooperation with American Principles in Action, started Parents Against the Common Core as a resource for Americans who are increasingly "frustrated with Common Core and the related assessments, which were forced on an unwilling populace by bureaucratic institutions and corporate interest groups." American Principles in Action is part of the American Principles Project, which educates and advocates for "public policy solutions that respect and affirm: human life from conception to natural death; the union of one man and one woman as the definition of marriage; the freedom to practice and proclaim religion; authentic economic progress for working Americans; education in service of the comprehensive development of the person; and, the legacy of immigrants in contributing to the American story." (AmericanPrinciplesProject.org)

STOP Common Core
The Parents Against the Common Core website provides state-by-state information about everything from how individual states adopted Common Core (CC) to the status of CC in each state, including the current progress of any legislation that might curtail the use of CC.

Members of the Advisory Board of Parents Against the Common Core are mothers who became engaged in education policy once their children started being affected by Common Core. They are accidental activists who began by acting in the best interests of their own children and are now sharing what they know to protect the right to a good education for all American children. They include Jenni White of Restore Oklahoma's Public Education; Heidi Huber of Ohioans Against Common Core; Heather Crossin of Hoosiers Against Common Core; and Gretchen Logue of Missouri Education Watchdog and the Missouri Coalition Against the Common Core. The Heartland Institute's Joy Pullmann is also featured at the website.

Jenni White points out that "the moms and dads, the parents, who have studied [Common Core] know much more about it than even the policy wonks."

"The Common Core is not about raising student achievement. It's about power and control being sought by corporations, the federal government, a whole slew of big giants," says Erin Tuttle. She makes the case that CC is not just a public school issue but is undermining private, Catholic schools, and other religion-based options in education, and will even change homeschooling.

Heidi Huber states that parents must "reclaim that first and final authority over their child and this is the window to do it." She says, "Once this closes, once they turn that machine on, your opportunity is lost forever. [Parents must] act now, reclaim their classrooms, and reseat their authority over their child's, moral and academic education."

The Top Ten Reasons to Reject Common Core

According to Parents Against the Common Core, there are ten reasons to reject Common Core:

There is no evidence to support the claim that the centralization of national academic standards raises student achievement. International tests show no correlation between countries with centralized standards and high test scores. Countries with and without centralized standards rank in both the top and the bottom in student achievement.

The adoption process was flawed. State legislators were not involved in the process and "we the people" were not given a voice. The adoption of the Common Core was done quickly and quietly through State Boards of Education without proper notice to the public or input from teachers and parents.

It's unconstitutional. There is no legitimate role established for the federal government in setting state education policy. The U.S. Department of Education exceeded its authority by making federal grants and waivers contingent on the adoption of the Common Core standards and related assessments.
The standards are not of high quality. The Common Core standards were not ranked as the top set of standards within the United States by the Fordham Institute. By adopting the Common Core standards, many states sacrificed quality for federal compliance. Top mathematicians have warned that the lack of math content in the Common Core standards will place American students two years behind their peers in high-performing countries by eighth grade and further weaken America's international competitiveness.

The Common Core standards are "instruction-based standards" that limit how content will be taught to students. Teachers will be forced to use instructional strategies that are experimental and have not been proven to raise student achievement, and that in many cases have even proven to be failures. The Center for Education Policy at George Washington University concluded in a recent compendium evaluating sixty pieces of research used to support the Common Core standards that there is no evidence to support the claim that they will improve student achievement. See the full report in the Feb. 10, 2015 "Compendium of Research on the Common Core State Standards" at www.cep-dc.org.

The Common Core standards diminish the amount of literature read in English class in favor of informational texts. Data from international tests, such as PISA, show a strong correlation between higher literacy scores and students who read more complex literature. The same cannot be said about informational texts.

The federal government is collecting massive amounts of personally identifiable information on students. Many states have signed agreements with federally funded testing consortia to administer required student assessments. The consortia have signed agreements with the U.S. Department of Education promising access to the student data collected through the assessments.

The standards are costly. National implementation of the Common Core standards and assessments will cost an estimated $15 billion across the participating states, according to the Pioneer Institute.

States with the earliest implementation of the Common Core standards, such as Kentucky, have seen a decline in student achievement on the National Assessment of Education Progress, showing a lack of results from the standards.

The new Common Core pilot tests were plagued with major technical difficulties and complaints from teachers regarding the content. Parents are upset that the Common Core increases the amount of time spent on testing and robs the classroom of valuable instruction time.

For more information, visit the website: ParentsAgainstTheCommonCore.com

http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/mar15/parents-against-the-common-core-enters-the-fight.html

[Ross]

Isn't this where Common Core Originated?
Isn't this simply redesigning Common Core by a RHINO?

The Rush to Reauthorize NCLB

A plan to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and to revise No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is being rushed through the U.S. Congress. House education committee chairman John Kline pushed one version through his committee, hoping for quick approval on Feb. 27 by the full House.

By now the public should be aware that long bills that are fast-tracked sometimes have tricky passages and stealth consequences. H.R. 5, the "Student Success Act," is over 600 pages long and those elected representatives who will vote on it may not have time to read it, let alone ponder the significance of its provisions and the possible intended and unintended consequences it entails.

H.R. 5 claims to be "responsible legislation to repair the nation's broken K-12 education system by reducing the federal footprint, restoring local control, and empowering parents and education leaders to hold schools accountable."

The bill is actually a solidification of federal power over education, an attack on parental rights, and an affront to the independence of private education.

An Attack on Private Schools

Pages 78-82 of H.R. 5 contain provisions for private schools, including the mandate that they "ensure that teachers and families of the children participate, on an equitable basis, in services and activities. . . . Such educational services or other benefits, including materials and equipment, shall be secular, neutral, and nonideological."

As anti-Common Core activist Christel Swasey points out, "The federal government has no right to mandate that private schools must provide services that are secular and non-religious." This is contrary to the intent of many private schools and anathema to private religious schools.

A policeman of private schools, called an "ombudsman" is introduced in H.R. 5. The document states: "The State educational agency involved shall designate an ombudsman to monitor and enforce the requirements."

It says on page 82, the school district "must consult with private school officials and must transmit results of their 'agreement' to a state-appointed ombudsman." The "agreement" includes such things as equity among public and private school students and the "ombudsman's job, according to page 80, is to 'monitor and enforce' such 'equity for private school children.'" (WhatIsCommonCore.wordpress.com, 2-21-15)

This represents an entirely new way to control and crush the independence of private schools. Since homeschools are treated as private schools under some states' laws, this means an ombudsman will watch and have control over families who homeschool.

The Common Core Lie

While the House pretends that they want to help parents who are concerned about Common Core, H.R. 5 actually does nothing to rein in the mess that is the national standards foisted upon all students as a gross experiment.

A report at WorldNetDaily says, "Conservatives have been fighting Common Core national education standards for two years at the state level, but a massive bill steamrolling through Congress has the potential to cement some of the most despised elements of Common Core into federal law." (2-9-15)

Senate Bill Is Equally Flawed

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has promised to work with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) to develop a bipartisan ESEA reauthorization bill to present to Senators. A draft bill in the Senate already runs over 400 pages and cements Common Core into American education just as much as the House bill.

Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation says both the House and Senate bills "fail to adequately reduce federal intervention in education, and as such, represent a missed opportunity for advancing conservative principles." (Breitbart.com, 2-11-15)

Burke, along with Williamson "Bill" Evers of Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former U.S. assistant secretary of education; Theodor Rebarber, CEO of AccountabilityWorks; Sandra Stotsky, professor emerita at University of Arkansas; and Ze'ev Wurman, former senior policy adviser with the U.S. Department of Education, released a joint statement regarding legislation pending in Congress. They state:

The current drafts, both the Senate and the House versions, do not return authority to the states and localities or empower parents. The ESEA has evolved from what was described at the outset in 1965 as a measure to help children from low-income families into an instrument of testing mandates and federal control of public K-12 education and, increasingly, of private education as well.

The Senate bill may include an amendment by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) that prohibits the federal government from funding Common Core. Anita Hoge of Pennsylvania Against Common Core says, "All they're doing is repeating what's already in the General Education Provisions Act, section 432, and what that says is the federal government can't direct or supervise curriculum. So when you look at the Roberts bill, it says the same thing." (WND.com, 2-9-15) The language won't do anything to stop the states from implementing Common Core.

Education Activist Mercedes Schneider suggested in an email to Sen. Alexander that he should let ESEA and NCLB expire. She says, it is "time to curb the federal role. ESEA is 15 years off track and has been punishing American public education since it became NCLB."

Schneider told Alexander, "It looks like your 400 rushed pages will only burden states and erase state control over education as you write in that money follows the student." (WND.com, 2-9-15)

American parents are watching what their legislators are doing. Citizens were fooled once with lies about "rigorous," "internationally benchmarked," and improved standards. Although some may be suffering from reform fatigue, the Common Core debacle has taught them that things aren't always as rosy as they are painted to be and that they can't trust anyone but themselves to know what is best for their children.

Editor's note: Just prior to publication of the Education Reporter, the House withdrew H.R. 5 in response to citizen complaints but it could return to the floor at any time.

http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/mar15/the-rush-to-reauthorize-nclb.html

[Ross]

[Ross]

4th Grader Destroys Common Core
By Asking School Board
One Question

Mar 29, 2015

From Mad World: Sydney Smoot might look like your average 4th grade girl, but she has taken such a bold stand against Common Core that she received a standing ovation from adults at least three times her age.

Sydney asked one question that addressed the obvious flaw with exhaustively testing students at the end of a school year.

"Why am I being forced to take a test that hasn't even been tested on students here in Florida, so how can it be valid and accurate on what I know?"

The spunky student from Brooksville Elementary in Florida could barely reach the podium when she stood before the Hernando County School Board this month, but her presence could not have been clearer.

Immediately addressing school officials, little Sydney never muddled her words as she described the dangerous impact that state standardized testing is having on students.

"This testing looks at me as a number. One test defines me as either a failure or a success through a numbered rubric. One test at the end of the year that the teacher or myself will not even see the grade until after the school year is already over. I do not feel that all this FSA testing is accurate to tell how successful I am. It doesn't take in account all of my knowledge and abilities, just a small percentage."

However, Sydney didn't merely complain of the problem without providing a feasible solution. Instead, she suggested that the painstaking test be divided up into three smaller tests to determine how students are fairing throughout the year.

"Why should we have so much stress about one test when we should be learning and having fun at school?" she asked.

Perhaps the most startling moment in Sydney's speech was her revealing of a secret contract that students must sign, preventing them from speaking with their parents about the test.

"I do not feel good about a form in the FSA that you have to sign ensuring that you can't even discuss the test with your parents. I am not comfortable signing something like this. I have the right to talk to my parents about any and everything related to school and my education."

Sydney told Upworthy that she owes her courage to her mother, but that it was all her idea to address the school about the issue.

"What inspired me to speak all started one day when I came home. My mom asked me how the testing went, and I told her I was told not to speak about the test to anyone. I had not felt comfortable signing something in the test. I had concerns about this test because there was a lot of stress put on students and myself. I was a little nervous before the speech, but when I was called up to the podium, I did not feel nervous because I knew this speech was going to help a lot of people."

Sydney is living proof that even though the government has failed our public education system, they cannot smother the desire to learn, as long as we continue to teach our children that they must stand up for what's right, especially when it means standing against what's wrong.

See video of the little girl speaking to the school board at: http://woundedamericanwarrior.com/4th-grader-destroys-common-core-by-asking-school-board-one-question-2/

[Warph]

Common Core School Assignment FORCES Students to Make Islamic Prayer Rugs, Recite Muslim Prayers

http://toprightnews.com/common-core-school-assignment-forces-students-to-make-islamic-prayer-rug-recite-islamic-prayers/

by Gina Cassini  | Top Right News

A father in Seminole County, Florida, is stunned after discovering a indoctrination "lesson" on Islam in his son's 10th-grade history textbook, a book that is also used as part of the Common Core standards across the state.

Ron Wagner, who said he admittedly doesn't normally pay as much attention to his son's school assignments as he should, just happened to read from his son's world history book a statement which read, "There is no god, but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God."

Wagner found out that his son is being indoctrinated in the religion of Islam in his 10th grade class from a history book used in school districts across the State of Florida.

"Students were instructed to recite this prayer as the first Pillar of Islam, off of the board at the teacher's instruction," Mr. Wagner, who says he himself is not religious, told WFTV.

Wagner, with a little further investigation, found out that his son was given an "Islam packet" and was even required to make an Islamic prayer rug for the world history class.

Complete insanity, courtesy of your tax dollars.

WFTV reports (emphasis added):

Inside of the book is a chapter dedicated to the "Rise of Islam," including prayers and scriptures from the Quran. What's more disturbing for Wagner is that the first 100 pages discussing Judaism and Christianity are missing. The district blames a "defect" in the books, which are only a year old.

A "defect"? In the curriculum, without a doubt, but in the books themselves. Are they serious?:

According to Wagner, Dr. Michael Blasewitz, who oversees the high school curriculum, said, "The Pillars of Islam are benchmarks in the state curriculum"

Wagner's concerns prompted a district investigation that found the teacher never tried to indoctrinate or convert students.

That's the same Common Core "standards" setup by former Governor Jeb Bush and funded by Barack Obama under his "Race to the Top" scheme to hook states into Common Core for good with cold hard cash.

"For it to be mandatory and part of the curriculum and in the textbooks, didn't seem right," Wagner said.

WATCH the interview with the outraged parent below:

Video at: http://toprightnews.com/common-core-school-assignment-forces-students-to-make-islamic-prayer-rug-recite-islamic-prayers/

Head of curriculum Blasewitz — who blamed the state's Common Core standarss for the "lesson" — also reportedly "stormed out" during an interview about the Islam lessons, telling the news outlet, "If anything, [the curriculum] is a little imbalanced toward Christianity and Judaism."

Yeah right. The textbook is completely missing its sections on those religions. All they teach is Islam. Thanks to Rotten Core, Jeb Bush and Barack Obama.

[...]

Also, check these out:

High School Bans Students From Holding Prayer Group in Free Time
http://dailysignal.com/201...

Michigan High School Bans Football Team From Praying On Field
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry...

Tennesee cheerleaders cleverly defy school prayer ban. Or did they?
http://m.csmonitor.com/USA/USA...

Mom banned from praying out loud on public school steps
http://m.nydailynews.com/news/...

There's one about a 5 year old girl being banned from praying at school too.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

[Ross]

Opposition to Common Core a Bipartisan Issue

Common Core education standards are such bad policy that they have done what many thought impossible - brought Democrats and Republicans together.

Last week, two Washington State Senators hosted a legislative meeting to discuss what can be done to remove the standards from Washington schools. Sen. Maralyn Chase, a Democrat, and Sen. Pam Roach, a Republican, were able to put aside their political differences and work together for the sake of protecting the interests of children across the state.

"Someone has to stand up for the kids," said Roach. "Washington's constitution specifies that providing for basic education is the Legislature's top priority. As a parent and grandparent I know 'providing' for children means more than money. Providing for education also must be about more than money."

"Common Core is uniting liberals and conservatives like no issue I have seen," said Chase.

Part of this pushback is a response the Washington State Supreme Court, which has essentially threatened to hold legislators in contempt over an issue of school funding.

"Lawmakers set the policies that guide how education dollars are spent. Common Core does not make the best use of those dollars," Roach said.

"Our state fell victim to the 'testing-industrial complex.' Now it is up to us to defend the children by withdrawing from Common Core," said Chase.

The two senators are cosponsors of a bill that would remove Common Core standards from Washington and require the state to return to earlier standards that did not place so much emphasis on standardized testing. While the chances of their bill advancing this year are slim, given Washington's political climate, the lawmakers are looking forward to 2016 when presidential politics are likely to make Common Core a key issue.

The event included presentations from educators, activists, education policy experts, and was moderated by Dora Taylor, of the League of Women Voters Education Committee.

http://www.freedomworks.org/content/opposition-common-core-bipartisan-issue

[Ross]

WND EXCLUSIVE

AMERICANS OPTING OUT OF COMMON CORE TESTS IN DROVES

People must resist 'state-sponsored child abuse,' says education expert

Across the United States, concerned parents and students are refusing to participate in new tests aligned with the federal government's Common Core state standards, and international journalist and educator Alex Newman could not be more excited about it.

"The explosive growth of the opt-out movement has been one extremely encouraging development in a sea of bad news when it comes to government education in the United States," Newman told WND. "As more and more parents and teachers realize what is going on with Common Core, I expect this movement to continue growing by leaps and bounds."

Newman, the co-author of "Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy America's Children," believes Common Core and its affiliated tests are not just ineffective but dangerous.

"There is no doubt that this Obama scheme to nationalize education is designed not to educate children properly, but to shape their minds with propaganda and reduce their critical thinking abilities for nefarious purposes," Newman said. "As we show in our new book ("Crimes of the Educators"), rather than improve education, Common Core is the next phase in the education establishment's destruction of American children. One state lawmaker with an education degree told me this plot was 'state-sponsored child abuse.' He is right."

Read the details about your children's schools, in "Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy America's Children."

Many parents and students appear to have reached a similar conclusion, choosing to opt out of the Common Core tests. For example, nearly 1,000 students in the Portland, Oregon, Public School District have opted out of taking the new Smarter Balanced tests scheduled for later this month. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is one of two federally funded multi-state consortia in charge of developing tests aligned with Common Core standards.

In Pacific Grove, California, one mother told local news station KION that she chose to withdraw her fifth-grade son from this month's SBAC test upon discovering the test would not affect her son's grades.

The mother also said she didn't know she was allowed to opt out until another parent mentioned it. While California parents are allowed to make that choice, school districts don't generally mention it to them.

That seems to be the case elsewhere as well. In Kennebunk, Maine, several parents complained at a school board meeting that their district did not make it clear their students had a right to opt out of the new SBAC test. The assistant superintendent had sent parents a letter describing the new Common Core-aligned test, but parents claimed the letter didn't give information on how to opt out.

Newman, who has written extensively on education issues in the U.S. and worldwide, said states have different policies on opting out of the Common Core testing regime. Some claim the exams are mandatory, while others clearly give parents and students the right to refuse. Regardless of what a state's laws are, Newman believes people always have a right to refuse what he sees as federal encroachment on a child's education.

"Government does not own your children, so regardless of what bureaucrats and politicians in some especially radical states say, parents need to absolutely stand firm to protect their kids and their privacy," Newman said. "We cannot allow government to usurp parents' role in raising children and making decisions on education or anything else.

"Bureaucrats making lawless threats against parents and children who refuse to be subjected to this unconstitutional invasion of privacy are way out of line and need to be held accountable by voters, taxpayers, and our elected officials. Parents should research the law in their state carefully, but we must never allow ourselves to be intimidated by these lawless threats."

It's not just parents and students who oppose Common Core. Some teachers oppose it as well, and in one Seattle school district, the students are saving their teachers the trouble of protesting. At Garfield High School, the site of a 2013 testing boycott, roughly half the juniors have refused to take the new Smarter Balanced tests. Therefore, teachers who oppose the tests have said they don't feel the need to protest this time around.

New York State has seemingly been the center of the opt-out movement. The Washington Post reported that about 60,000 New York students refused to take the state's Common Core-aligned tests last year, and even more are expected to decline this year.

That anti-Common Core spirit was on display Tuesday in New Paltz, when more than 100 students, parents and teachers held a rally to call on families in their region to boycott the tests.

New York state law makes no provision for parents to opt out of the tests, although some state lawmakers want to change that. Assemblyman Dean Murray, a Republican, recently sponsored a bill to allow students to refuse the tests without negative consequences.

Newman believes students should refuse Common Core tests regardless of any threats of punishment, because he sees the alternative as far worse: a dumbed-down population that lacks privacy.

"These federally funded Common Core tests are being used to gather unimaginable amounts of private data on your child for the federal government – records that will follow him or her from 'cradle to career,' as Obama officials put it, and beyond," Newman warned.

But Newman is encouraged by the opt-out movement, believing it could  stop the education establishment from achieving its goals.

"Because the federally funded national testing regime is so crucial to both the Orwellian data-mining and the alignment of school curricula with Common Core, I think the opt-out movement may play a major role in derailing the whole abomination," Newman said.

"Parents who love their children and do not want the federal government creating invasive dossiers on them need to educate themselves and refuse to participate in this nightmarish scheme foisted on America by an out-of-control Obama administration. Our children deserve better."

http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/americans-opting-out-of-common-core-tests-in-droves/

[Ross]

Kansas Common Core is Known As:

College and Career Ready Standards
(CCRS)

Common Core State Standards

This issue is a real head-scratcher, especially in light of what transpired recently in the House Education Committee.  Last month the committee debated HB 2292, a bill that would have eliminated Kansas's version of Common Core – the College and Career Ready Standards (CCRS). The bill and its subsequent amendments failed, leaving the CCRS intact. What's puzzling is it was clear a majority of the committee members wanted the CCRS repealed, but failed to do so because they couldn't agree on how to eliminate and replace them.  This comes at a time when the questions surrounding Common Core are broadening.

In a just-published article in Education Week, the initial winner of the $1 million Global Teacher Prize (dubbed the Nobel Prize of teaching) is advising prospective teachers to stay away from teaching in public schools because of Common Core. Nancy Atwell, the award recipient and a language arts teacher at a private school in Maine says "[t]he new common core curriculum and the tests that accompany it are tending to treat teachers as mere technicians. [Teachers] open the box and they read the script, and that's not what good teaching is about. It's an intellectual enterprise, and that's been stripped from it by the current climate."

Some of the concern among those expressed by house committee members was what schools would do about curriculum if the CCRS rug was pulled out from under them. This discussion was being made concurrently with a published report about how poorly the most popular math curricula are aligned with Common Core. According to EdReports.org, 17 of the 20 most popular "math series reviewed were judged as failing to live up to claims that they are aligned to the common core." Interestingly, the only series that is fully aligned was written after Common Core became part of the education landscape. So it appears if Common Core went down like a Kelvin Herrera strike-out victim, Kansas school districts wouldn't be burdened with having to purchase a new math series because chances are overwhelming that the one they are using now doesn't align with Common Core anyway.

The irony in both these examples is that Bill Gates, who was a principal driver of Common Core, both lauded the award given to Ms. Atwell and primarily funded the math curriculum study. Hmmm....

[Ross]

If it comes from the Federal Gov't you can count on getting screwed in my opinion !
No Child Left Behind was the precursor to Common Core!
Using tax Dollars as bribery !
Still demanding outside control !

The No Child Left Behind Reauthorization Is a Mixed Bag

Sen. Lamar Alexander and Sen. Patty Murray have announced that they've reached a compromise on reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. When a moderate Republican and a not-so-moderate Democrat cooperate on legislation, there's reason to be nervous, but in this case there may be a silver lining among the clouds.

First the bad news. The reauthorization, under the name of "The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015," maintains testing requirements, and requires state standards that prevent more local control of education. Tests are required to be the same in every school in the state, and any plans submitted by the states for how to structure their education programs must be reviewed and approved by a panel representing a wide cross-section of states, rather than letting each state determine its own policies.

All of this is anathema to the advocates of local control of education, but all the way down in Title IX of the bill is some language that conservatives can get behind. It's the section dealing with Common Core education standards, and the ability of the Secretary of Education to bully states into doing his bidding through the threat of withholding funds. The bill says, in section 9527,

Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal Government, through grants, contracts, or other cooperative agreements (including as a condition of any waiver provided under section 9401) to—

(A) mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school's curriculum, program of instruction, instructional content, specific academic standards or assessments, or allocation of State or local resources, or mandate a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act;

(B) incentivize a State, local educational agency, or school to adopt any specific instructional content, academic standards, academic assessments, curriculum, or program of instruction, including by providing any priority, preference, or special consideration during the application process for any grant, contract, or cooperative agreement that is based on the adoption of any specific instructional content, academic standards, academic assessments, curriculum, or program of instruction; or

(C) make financial support available in a manner that is conditioned upon a State, local educational agency, or school's adoption of any specific instructional content, academic standards, academic assessments, curriculum, or program of instruction (such as the Common Core State Standards developed under the Common Core State Standards Initiative, any other standards common to a significant number of States, or any specific assessment, instructional content, or curriculum aligned to such standards).

This language is functionally identical to that of Senator Pat Roberts' standalone bill, The Local Level Act, for which FreedomWorks issued a letter of support earlier this year. This is important because until now, states have been unable to effectively repeal Common Core because of the Secretary of Education's power to strip them of education funding. This bill would prevent that, and allow states to regain control of their own standards.

There's a lot not to like about the Every Child Achieves Act, but the Common Core language, at least, is a victory for conservatives.

LEARN HOW TO FIGHT COMMON CORE WITH JULIE BOROWSKI: http://www.freedomworks.org/content/real-talk-julie-borowski-how-fight-common-core

http://www.freedomworks.org/content/no-child-left-behind-reauthorization-mixed-bag

[Ross]

I borrowed this because it makes much sense.


Common Core is an extension of how the architects of America's public school disaster implemented a plan to socialize the United States by knowingly and willingly dumbing down the population. A mission now closer to success than ever as the Obama administration works relentlessly to nationalize K-12 schooling with Common Core.

The whole-word method of teaching children to read – introduced by John Dewey and colleagues in the early 20th century and which permeates Common Core – is a significant cause of dyslexia among students. Public education's war against religion, the "great American math disaster," promotion of death education and the government's plan to lower standards for all so that "no one is left behind" are destroying the logic, reasoning and overall educational prowess of America's next generation.

According to the Program for International Student Assessment, which collects test results from 65 countries for its rankings:

In reading, students in 19 other locales scored higher than U.S. students
In science, 22 education systems scored above the U.S.
In mathematics, 29 nations and other jurisdictions outperformed the United States
Journalist Henry Mencken said it best in 1924 when he wrote that the aim of public education is "to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality."

It is time to hold the Department of Education accountable for the crimes of the educators.