Common Core Issue #1 In Many States (Easy Print Version)

From the crazy math, to the English with highly charged negative words, more parents get it that education today is no longer about academics.  On the example of one very large state where students and their families are guinea pigs read these excerpts:

What exactly is “education?” --for most parents, something very traditional: the three Rs, standardized test performance, college entrance, and teachers happy to teach students eager to learn.  Parents see education as highly individualistic because they understand that at SAT time and ACT time, that child will be required to expound upon the knowledge that he or she has internalized. However, when progressive, socialist constructivist educators speak of “education,” they are not defining their terms. To them, education means something more of a great social experiment where children form opinions about issues in groups, building their ideas as a group. They may not be as concerned about individual factual knowledge as they are about how well children do in groups, how many questions they ask, and how they behave within that group setting.

With all of this in mind, we must be very careful to force pedagogical proponents and experimenters to define their terms, to clarify what “this” or “that” means to them. Parents should remember that, ultimately, they are footing the bill for the education of students and it is THEIR idea of education that must be met. Not the grandiose social experimental musings of ideologues who believe that they know what is best for other peoples’ children.

 Google this on the Common Core movers and shakers:

• Bill Gates--Since January 2008, more than 250 Gates grants have targeted causes such as charter schools, testing research, data systems, science and math education and common academic standards. “In total, the four organizations primarily responsible for CCSS – NGA, CCSSO, Achieve, and Student Achievement Partners – have taken $147.9 million from Bill Gates,” Schneider concludes. “Common Core Gates Standards.”  All for big profits of course...

• Lou Gerstner--He says, "We need more time on task, we need a longer school day, we need a longer school year, and we need accountability and measurement in the system so we can constantly adjust what’s going on....convene the 50 governors, and the first thing they do is they abolish the 16,000 school districts we have in the United States. Sixteen thousand school districts are what we’re trying to cram this reform through."

• Kevin Jennings--Plans that Common Core "start" with academics but will eventually encompass "school climate" standards.
• David Coleman--likes partnering with the Obama Administration’s campaign data team members to use techniques on data collection and use of data on your students.

• Obama Administration--Arne Duncan's speech excerpts: "I want to talk about the Race to the Top fund. I explained that the Recovery Act provides $5 billion dollars in discretionary funding.

  After the set-asides for the Innovation and What Works fund and the money for the new assessments, we will have $4 billion dollars for states to drive education reform.This is your opportunity to be bold, creative, think big and push hard on the kind of reforms that we know will create fundamental change.  But this money will only go to states that are absolutely pushing reform in real and measurable ways..

• Bill Ayres (former terrorist) and Linda Darling Hammond-Obama Connection:
  

  "It is shocking that Obama Education Department officials would appear at a conference that also featured someone like Ayers. On the other hand, their boss, President Obama, worked with Ayers in Chicago, and this kind of collaboration is not entirely surprising. We are left, however, wondering about the precise nature of the role that Ayers is playing in the development of this federal education plan."  You see the fruits of their handiwork in Texas CSCOPE.
  
• Pearson--Paving the wayf for profit...“They want to offer products and services in all areas of school practice: assessment, pedagogy, curriculum and management, and they want to create the possibility for that through policy work. They want to have indirect influence in policy to create opportunities for business expansion. It’s a very well thought-out business strategy.”  Their method in Great Britain--"In many ways the strategy for promoting academies in Great Britain is similar to the strategy for promoting charter schools in the United States. Working class and poor families are told the academies are a solution to educational inequality. The academies are also exempt from following national curriculum and are not answerable to local governments. According to one British commentator who has carefully documented the history of the academies, “When threats don’t work, the department resorts to bribery. Schools receive up to an extra £65,000 or over $100,000 in state funds, if they become academies. As a result, the academies program exceeded its budget by £1 billion ($1.6 billion) from 2010 to 2012."
• State Superintendents and Key Elected Officials devising new bills such as the "Systems of Reduction" where there is a shift from using seniority as major factor in teachers retained.  I say teachers please wake up..
• Alabama Example:  “This plan supports Dr. Bice’s plan 2020.”  Dr. Joe Morton representing the Business and Education Alliance spoke for the bill SB 353, sponsored by Senator Pro Tem Del Marsh (R) from Anniston, Alabama in past session.   Morton said the state needs to develop a plan to retain the best teachers.  Morton said this is a major shift, in that the seniority of a person can not be a major factor in why they are retained during a Reduction In Force...Hope we get the right candidates in.  Teachers please look at Dr. Morton's BCA candidates while you still have your job...

More resources for you to know who are also concerned about Common Core and why...

This is an excellent resource to share with those who want to catch up--Common Core 101

Across the country there is hope that parents and children can regain their sanity as parents across America get ready for elections.  But part of it has to be knowing who the people are behind the invalid, untested Common Core Standards Initiative.  Parents are seeing through the speeches that even though Superintendents say we don't have Common Core, the truth is here and yes, we adopted it and are bound to it according the NCLB Waiver Application.

There is a Great Awakening and here's why...

The pain and torture of this past year and from what one Mom has said "School has been tormenting for the past month.  Who am I kidding--all year!" It has made a recipe of angry parents and grandparents who have helplessly watched their child's world (and theirs) get turned upside down and they are ready for change...see the results election time.  Many prayers needed.

In close remember God's Word and his warnings and a story from the past:

 "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land."  2Chron 7:14

"It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin."  Luke 17:2

Will Christians heed the cries of the children today and remove the blight called Common Core?? An elderly German man who lived through the Holocaust tells the following story:
I always considered myself a Christian. I attended a church since I was a small boy. We had heard the stories of what was happening to the Jews; but like most people in America today, we tried to distance ourselves from the reality of what was really taking place. What could anyone do to stop it?
A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we would hear the whistle from a distance and then the clacking of the wheels moving over the track. We became disturbed when one Sunday we heard cries coming from the train as it passed by. We grimly realized that the train was carrying Jews.
Week after week that train whistle would blow. We would dread to hear the sound of those old wheels because we knew that the Jews would begin to cry out to us as they passed our church. It was so terribly disturbing! We could do nothing to help these poor people, yet their screams tormented us. We knew exactly at what time that whistle would blow, and we decided the only way to keep from being so disturbed by the cries was to start singing our hymns. If some of the screams reached our ears, we'd just sing a little louder until we could hear them no more.
Years have passed, and no one talks about it much any more; but I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. I can still hear them crying out for help. God forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians, yet did nothing to intervene.