Common Core Issue #1 In Many States

Across the country there is hope that parents and children can regain their sanity as parents across America get ready for elections.  But it has to start with 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.

From the crazy math

, to the English with highly charged negative words, more parents

get it that education today is no longer about academics--see these pictures of an approved Social Studies Supplement that is coming next year (Ex. in Alabama even though State Board of Ed was asked to not approve all--the majority members did --disapproval coming from Betty Peters and Stephanie Bell).

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.

See these links 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

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.

Here's Common Core Tool box of resources you may find useful:

• Common Core and Effects On Mental Health (2)
• Common Core CD (1)
• Flyers (1)
• Forms (1)
• Petition (1)
• Sharing Common Core With Pastor (1)
• Sharing Truths On Common Core With Local School Boards (1)
• Who Are Against Common Core (1)

Flyer-Common Core Removes Parental Authority / Who Will Parents Go To When The Power of Local School Boards Is Gone?

Here is a link to a Common Core Collage that you can copy and make CDs to distribute for those new to the Common Core fight.  Very informative--excerpts from Proferssors Jim Milgram, Sandra Stotsky,  Christel Swasey, Charlotte Iserbyt etc.

Here is a flyer (tri-fold) that can be used to wake up parents to the coming demise of Parental Authority (should they decide not to be involved).  Please download the files and then print from your downloaded PDF file--you may want to enlarge it just a bit.  It is going to take a massive awakening to make a difference.  Please share.  This flyer includes Lou Gerstner's idea (his company Achieve wrote Common Core) on getting rid of the 16,000 school districts and replace with 70.  He apparently does not believe most parents should have input.  So he makes a suggestion to our Pres  and as you can see in this link the power will be solidified under one global management firm (a firm where he got his start) within the next two years.  Included is also the very disturbing supposition from Planned Parenthood that their role should be that of math teachers as they are the experts on the medical aspects of Sexuality Education.  If you have a problem with that, then please share this brochure with your friends, family, churches etc.  Also here is a link to an OPT-Out Form and a Petition that should be physically handed to your legislator when they come to townhall meetings to educate them on your feelings about the loss of your Parental Authority over your children.  It's time to pray, study and act and may God have mercy upon us and save us in this time of need.

Inside

Disasters Looming Ahead As The Enemy Is Within--The Dangers of Common Core Standards, Islam and Their Charter Schools and Politicians Who Only Want To Buy Your Votes --All These With Taxpayer Money In Spite of America's Looming Bankruptcy

THERE ARE THOSE WHO WOULD RATHER YOU DID NOT KNOW!!!

Hear interviews about a humongous hurricane of various winding plans which unfortunately steals what used to be a sea of money (now almost dry) desperately needed by the citizenry for various agendas which ultimately will lead to weakening the foundation of America and could possibly destroy it.  Hurricane Irene painted a picture of what weakening the foundation by drops of rain that turns into torrents will do.  It will destroy everything in its path and no one is safe as citizens in Vermont can tell you. Unlike hurricane Irene--you can do something about them--share this and listen daily for more (1:30 PM CENTRAL)

Example in The Path They Have Implemented To Take Away Parental Input or Common Core (National) Standards:

Common Core Standards or what some say as the nationalizing of education is an attack on the constitutional right of parents to oversee their childrens education. 

Wall Street Journal article Nov 23, 2008-- See Mr. Lou Gerstner suggestion to the president elect Obama:

..."I’m going to suggest is that he 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...

Now, the governors could decide, we’ll keep them as advisory, we can keep them as community support, but they will not be involved in the fundamental direction of public education in America. Second, this group of governors will then select 50 school districts, plus I’d say 20 major cities, so we got 70 school districts. Seventy instead of 16,000.

 

They will within one year develop a national set of standards for math, science, reading and social studies. Twelve months after that they will develop a national testing regime, so that there’ll be one day in America where every third, sixth, ninth and twelfth grader will take a national test against a national curriculum."

Add this administrations mindset:

Obama's Sec. of  Ed Arne Duncan's speech at  2009 Governors Education Symposium  June 14, 2009 Cary, North Carolina

 "But if all we do is save jobs, we will miss this opportunity – which is why we are also using this recovery money to drive reform"

"There has never been this much money on the table and there may never be again"

"Once new standards are set and adopted you need to create new tests that measure whether students are meeting those standards. Tonight -- I am announcing that the Obama administration will help pay for the costs of developing those tests."*

Plans for younger children

Link to what Alabama is trying to do with common core standards--an example for some states

 (Parents--please be sure to visit this site for resource:  Truth In American Education.com

Link to Islam and Charter Schools(over 30 already in Texas)

Link To Obamacare that destroys Medicare for the elderly so votes can be bought with your money?

Link to COIN Strategy and ROE--why fight with a strategy set up by the enemy--listen to stories of what happens to America's best.

(Listen in at 1:30 pm central time M-F and share the podcasts--www.cityonahill.tv)

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be.  Jefferson

Common Core Standards--Is It Bill Gates or Lou Gerstner or Obama's Standards?

Audio link to interviews--with Betty Peters   with Donna Garner--pointing to troubling plans and effect on boys(at bottom half of interview)

Common Core Standards--Who really is behind it?

A.  The Bill Gates Money Jump Start:

The Gates foundation gives nearly four times as much annually to education as the Walton Family Foundation.  Could there be ulterior motives behind such benevolence and such great PR--some wonders about it.  The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gave 25 states money to help apply for Obama's Race to the Top grants. It also gave 35 million since January 2008 to the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and other organizations developing and promoting the common core standards.   Obama praises the standards movement but cannot fund it directly as it is unconstitutional.  Bill Gates Foundation however has stepped in to fill the gap. (However as in Arne Duncan's speech below they will fund the assessments.*)

An article dated Nov 12, 2008 SEATTLE  cites the foundation’s $500 million investment in experimenting with performance-based teacher pay systems; another $500 million toward creating data systems; advocacy work pushing for national standards; and efforts to create a national test distributed to states and school districts in the country, free of charge for now.  Some are speculating that what he's spent is chump change as his company may eventually reap a lot as government spending on K-12 education is estimated at more than a whopping $500 billion yearly.

Bill Gates, announced his new initiatives to a private meeting of about 100 school officials, union leaders, and policy experts such as: " the presidents of the two major American teachers unions; the current U.S. Education Secretary, Margaret Spellings; at least one former Education Secretary, Dick Riley, who served under President Bill Clinton; and several people named as possible Education Secretary in the Barack Obama administration now being formed."

B.  Enter Achieve:

In April 2009, representatives from 41 states met with CCSSO and National Governors Association representatives in Chicago and agreed to draft a set of common standards for education.

They commissioned Achieve to draft the new "common core" standards by summer '09 and grade-by-grade standards by the end of the year.   Achieve work-groups met in private and the development work was conducted by persons who were not, with apparently only a single exception, K-12 educators. The work groups were staffed almost exclusively by employees of Achieve, testing companies (ACT and the College Board), and pro-accountability groups (e.g., America's Choice, Student Achievement Partners, the Hoover Institute). 

C.  Obama's plan:

Obama's Sec. of  Ed Arne Duncan's speech at  2009 Governors Education Symposium  June 14, 2009 Cary, North Carolina

He states the following:

 Perfect Storm for Reform

• Obama effect
• Leadership on the Hill and the Unions
• Proven strategies for success
• The Recovery Act -- $100B

 "But if all we do is save jobs, we will miss this opportunity – which is why we are also using this recovery money to drive reform"

"There has never been this much money on the table and there may never be again"

"Once new standards are set and adopted you need to create new tests that measure whether students are meeting those standards. Tonight -- I am announcing that the Obama administration will help pay for the costs of developing those tests."*

"Today, perhaps for the first time, we have enough money to really make a difference."

Money indeed-- from the American people to implement the plan.

D.  Mr. Lou Gerstner's suggestions:

Wall Street Journal article Nov 23, 2008-- See Mr. Lou Gerstner suggestion to the president elect Obama:

..."I’m going to suggest is that he 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...

These organizations stand in the way of what we want to do.

Now, the governors could decide, we’ll keep them as advisory, we can keep them as community support, but they will not be involved in the fundamental direction of public education in America. Second, this group of governors will then select 50 school districts, plus I’d say 20 major cities, so we got 70 school districts. Seventy instead of 16,000.

They will within one year develop a national set of standards for math, science, reading and social studies. Twelve months after that they will develop a national testing regime, so that there’ll be one day in America where every third, sixth, ninth and twelfth grader will take a national test against a national curriculum."

And as Chairman of Achieve--his plans are being carried out thanks to Bill Gates money and the administration of O'bama.

So really there are many behind the common core standards including all three named on the title.  They have pooled their resources.  And with the perfect storms in healthcare, jobs etc., which most parents are still trying to figure they can hardly pay attention to the future of America--their children.  And with the flowery words in the presentations of the common core states standards the ugly truth has been beautifully hidden.   America has monied and powerful people that think they know best for your children and you are not a part of the equation (just in the payment).   I hope you will no longer be ignorant to this precious foundation of the future of America--but be wary and share your thoughts with your governors (governors can be the key--hear interview).

E.  Enter Kevin Jennings Dream:

Kevin Jennings, the safe schools czar in the Dept of Ed (that unlike the green czar, Van Jones could not be removed--though some in Congress tried)has plans for our kids.  Dr. Sandra Stotsky, one of the professors in the validation committee, would not affirm these common core standards and one of the reason is there is so much left out of the standards.  

Indeed they have made "room" for affecting thoughts of generations of children.   Kevin Jennings has said he looks forward to the day when “promoting homosexuality” in schools will be seen in a positive light (find out more on plans click here.) 

F.  The Church disconnect of their role in government--remember this nation shed tyranny due to the warnings and help of the church.  Have we failed and are we on the way to living in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah?  Media and schools may both be promoting that to our children.

“Temptations (that is, snares, traps set to entice to sin) are sure to come; but woe to him by or through whom they come! It would be more profitable for him of a millstone were hung around his neck and he were hurled into the sea, than that he should cause to sin or be a snare to one of these little ones.” Luke 17:1&2 Amplified.

Those snares are on the way and it is through the Dept. of Ed.  Our children are no longer safe and most citizens are too tired to do anything.   Would you please be the one to help take a stand and protect them, your right as parents and the future of this nation?  First step is get informed-share it with your church-  click here and maybe a petition.  Listen to interviews and learn more about the common core standards and be sure to PRAY (the founding fathers did and it made all the difference).