Defund Common Core and the NCLB Waivers--Also HowTo Defend Parental Rights When Even Homeschooling Will Not Be Safe

Plans for national take-over of education is happening due to perfect storms and perfect partnerships--the only thing that can put a kink in their plans is if you the parent finds out and shares the truth(they were hoping you'd sleep through this storm).  Go to this website and see the complete picture and share with your legislators--after all, they are supposed to listen to "We the people", right?  It takes a lot of e-mails and calls so make yours.
http://truthinamericaneducation.com/category/race-to-the-top/

Players:  Here's a link to find out who some of them are (try not to get sick as you read through the article and the education trips) .  It takes a lot to pull the wool over our eyes when it comes to our kids and under the guise of improving our childrens education--who can resist?  Certainly most states in these economic times can't resist when the Obama administration is having competition for millions of dollars.  And now the offerings of No Child Left Behind Waivers to lure desperate states?

When free trips overlap with commercial purposes--"The commissioners stay in expensive hotels, like the Mandarin Oriental in Singapore. They spend several days meeting with educators in these places. They also meet with top executives from the commercial side of Pearson, which is one of the biggest education companies in the world, selling standardized tests,..."

Why Common Core and RTT must be defunded:
No. 1 Reason--Unconstitutional---Parental Input through local school boards will be a thing of the past.
No 2. Reason--Abe Lincoln's warning--"The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."  
Here is where logic plays a part--warning from Mrs. Donna Garner
Fact:  We know that the Obama administration is pushing the social justice agenda.
Fact: We know that Kevin Jennings( now stayed in the Obama administration long enough to make sure the social justice agenda (particularly homosexuality) was put into the USDOE’s 10-page manual.
Fact:  Once the CCS get implemented in English and Math, all of  the other school subjects will follow (including Science, Social Studies, and Health).
Fact:  Teachers will be forced to teach whatever is in the CCS curriculum and assessments because of the national teacher evaluation system tracked by the national database.
Conclusion:  CCS will contain the social justice agenda, and teachers will be forced to teach it.  
Because I have tracked the development of the Common Core Standards since before Obama even took office, I have an extensive file. What I have seen is that the Obama administration tells the locals “not to worry” and then proceeds right on down the path it has set for itself.
I, for one, object very strongly to the social justice agenda that will be forced upon our public school students when those decisions should be left up to our elected state and local officials to make. 

(Kevin Jennings has moved on now to promote "Be The Change"--but the groundwork has been laid.)
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/issues/kevin_jennings/leaving_DOE/new_job.html

For complete look at where agenda trail leads--read Mrs. Donna Garner's complete study:

And if you are still in doubt read this from the Washington Post:
ICYMI: A federal takeover of education
WASHINGTON, D.C. | October 3, 2011 -By George Will
Obama Gives States a Voice In ‘No Child’
— New York Times, Sept. 24
Many Americans, having grown accustomed to Caesarism, probably see magnanimity in that front-page headline. Others, however, read it as redundant evidence of how distorted American governance has become. A president "gives" states a "voice" in education policy concerning kindergarten through 12th grade? How did this quintessential state and local responsibility become tethered to presidential discretion? Here is how federal power expands, even in the guise of decentralization--read rest.

A few in Washington are starting to speak up and the National Federation of Republican Women have passed a Resolution to Defeat National Standards--hope you will also by calling your Congress (make sure to contact the leadership too--202 224 3121).

Action Steps To Defend Against National Take-over of Education

ACTION STEPS: Please ask your Congressional House members to defund Common Core Standards and Race to the Top -- $900 Million in FY 2012.  The House has the authority to do this because they are the branch of government that appropriates funds.

Obama plans for these $900 Million CCS/RTTT federal dollars to go directly to local school districts.  Because superintendents are so desperate to obtain funding, they most assuredly would grab their share of the $900 Million without counting the real cost -- (1) the loss of any local control whatsoever over the day-to-day curriculum and (2) the sure-and-certain indoctrination of every public school child into the Obama administration’s social justice agenda.

 

“Do Not ‘Read Their Lips’ -- National Curriculum Is Upon Us”

by Donna Garner

5.26.11

As you read yesterday’s Education Week article posted further on down the page, please bear this in mind:  Whatever the Obama administration says with their lips is the exact opposite from what they are actually doing. 

Therefore, when Sect. of Education Arne Duncan said at yesterday’s NCEE meeting, "We have not and will not prescribe a national curriculum…it would be against the law to prescribe national curriculum,” we know that that is exactly what the Obama administration is doing.  In fact they are.  Common Core Standards and Race to the Top are nothing but a national curriculum which is absolutely against the law.

For more information, please go to my 5.16.11 article entitled “Rising Chorus of Voices Against Federal Takeover of U. S. Public Schools” --

http://www.educationnews.org/commentaries/insights_on_education/156088.html

Donna Garner

Wgarner1@hot.rr.com

================================

5.4.11 -- EducationWeek

“Arne Duncan: We Will Not Prescribe a National Curriculum
By Catherine Gewertz on May 24, 2011 1:57 PM  

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2011/05/arne_duncan_on_national_curric.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2

We've been telling you a good deal lately about the arguments over the role of the federal government in promoting common standards and in funding the development of curriculum and assessments for those standards. (If you've been napping, see here for a refresher.)

Until now, we've had only occasional words on this from federal officials (see U.S. Ed Department spokesman Peter Cunningham's comments last week). Most of the volleying on the federalism issue has come from advocates and policy wonks. Today, however, we've got weigh-ins from Rep. John Kline, the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and from Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Kline's comments came during an appearance today on Bill Bennett's radio show, as my colleague Alyson Klein reports over at Politics K-12. During the 13-minute interview, the Minnesota Republican said he thought the federal government was using its Race to the Top program to "push" a "national curriculum." (RTT, you remember, gave states points for adopting the common standards and is also providing funding for state consortia to develop tests and curriculum materials for those standards.)

"My concern is if you look at what the administration is doing with Race to the Top and so forth, on the one hand they will say they want this bottom up, and yet it's all stick and carrot with Race to the Top," Kline said.

"You do what the secretary thinks is a good thing to do and you get rewarded, and if you don't, you get punished. ... That's the line we're talking about, where you get the federal government starting to push a national curriculum, or insisting on one, and as you know, that's been against the law, and I think correctly so. We don't want the secretary of education to decide what the curriculum is in every school in America..."

Duncan weighed in on the topic this morning as well. At a forum hosted by the National Center on Education and the Economy, Duncan was discussing lessons that can be learned from higher-performing countries, and he mentioned national standards and curriculum. But he said: "We have not and will not prescribe a national curriculum. I want to repeat that." This remark prompted laughter from the audience, my colleague Stephen Sawchuk, who attended the forum, reports. Duncan also said it would be against the law to prescribe national curriculum. (A webcast of the symposium is here.)

How, might you ask, could this debate affect the holding-together of the common-core movement? Good question. Worth watching.

States Beginning To Figure Out They Will Be Left Holding The Bag With National Assessments They Can't Afford to Implement--Will Governors Be Seeing Wisconsin's Woes In Their Own States Soon?

“The Other Shoe Drops:  National Testmakers Worried”

by Donna Garner

4.12.11

Summary of worries revealed in this Education Week article (posted below):

1.  High expectations for these national assessments may outpace the ability of states to pay for the technology required to administer them.

2.  Both of the consortia have to provide -- for each tested grade level and course -- benchmark assessments (a.k.a., periodic, formative) and summative assessments (a.k.a. finals).

3.  The consortia are worried that the tight timelines set by the feds won’t allow for well-done piloting of the assessments.

4.  Both consotia have to create formative and summative assessments that are of equal content and difficulty and which can be taken by all types of students.

5.  The national assessments were originally intended to save states money, but the federal grants contain no money for administering the assessments. 

6.  States are beginning to figure this out and are worried they will be left with national assessments they cannot afford to implement.

Donna Garner

Wgarner1@hot.rr.com

=================================

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/12/28aera.h30.html?tkn=UPOFcmH8A3r0yI7V24Ln%2FSE7SKR6Bu7TcRC8&cmp=clp-edweek

Published Online: April 12, 2011

Includes correction(s): April 12, 2011

Experts See Hurdles Ahead for Common Core Tests

By Sarah D. Sparks

As America’s “next-generation” assessments for common core academic subjects begin to take shape through two state consortia projects, researchers and test developers alike are beginning to worry that expectations for the tests may outpace states’ technology and budgets.

Michigan and Louisiana education officials and leaders of the two consortia tasked with developing the new assessments—the 25-state SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC, and the 26-state Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC—discussed challenges to the tests at a panel here at the annual meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education.

The panel was organized by the Council of Chief State School Officers, one of two Washington-based group that spearheaded efforts to create new common standards for college and career readiness, now adopted by 44 states and the District of Columbia.

The tests are expected to roll out in 2014, and “the amount of innovation we’ll be able to carry off in that amount of time is not going to be that much,” warned Joseph Willhoft, the executive director of the SMARTER Balanced Consortium. “There’s an expectation that out of the gate this [assessment] is going to be so game-changing, and maybe after four or five years it will be game-changing, but not immediately.”

Both consortia received grants through the federal Race to the Top Assessment competition created in the federal economic-stimulus law to develop new tests based on the common standards. Each consortium must develop computer-based tests for each tested grade level and subject, as well as optional interim benchmarking tests to allow teachers to monitor how students progress and change instruction accordingly.

Both groups are developing both the end-of-year summative tests that can be used by any state in the country, and the ancillary benchmark tests that teachers or principals can use to track the progress of individual students or groups throughout the year.

The SMARTER Balanced Consortium’s tests are intended to go beyond simply moving questions from a paper to a computer screen, to adapt the difficulty of each question as students progress on the test. Ideally, individual test items will be tagged with the accommodations allowed for students who require them based on a disability or limited English proficiency, according to Laura M. Slover, the senior vice president of the Washington-based Achieve, Inc., which is helping develop assessments for PARCC.

Yet all of that is still in the works.

“One of the biggest problems I’ve seen with state assessments and national assessments is they are typically not done on a budget and a timeline that allow people to go out and do the pilot testing and tryouts that you would like,” said Mark D. Reckase, a professor of measurement and quantitative methods at the University of Michigan. “I’ve looked at the timelines for this, and they are fast; there will be incredible pressure to just get it done.”

Moreover, making sure the tests will serve their intended accountability use has become trickier in the wake of high-profile, test-based teacher evaluations, such as that done in Los Angeles last fall. “If we are trying to look in a crystal ball about educator evaluation … That is likely to be the most difficult use of any data we put out and therefore requires the most thought and care in designing the models,” said Joseph Martineau, the director of educational assessment and accountability for the Michigan Department of Education, part of the SBAC.

PARCC plans to train thousands of teachers both in how the assessments will work and how the resulting data can be used for accountability or classroom instruction, said Ms. Slover. “One of the purposes [of the consortia project] was to really change assessment, both the way it’s done and the way it’s experienced by the students and teachers in the classroom,” Ms. Slover said. “As we think about how to transform the test to make it more useable for teachers, teachers have to embrace it and think it’s something being done for them and with them—and not to them.”

Mr. Reckase warned that mistrust of the new tests during the transition could cause delays. “There’s a tendency to want redundant systems, computerized and paper-and-pencil, … but that causes a whole other set of problems because now you have to make sure the two tests are equivalent and ensure they work for all students.”

Betting on Technology

Ms. Slover said the consortia are “betting heavily” that emerging technology will help them create tests that can balance accountability on multiple levels—from annual student achievement reporting to ancillary data used to evaluate programs and curricula—with formative test information to help teachers tweak instruction for different students throughout the year. “One cannot be done at the expense of the other, so balancing those is critical, and then you add the cost factor into that,” she said. “Innovation in technology happens at lightning speed, so we are betting heavily on the fact that in four years there will be a new way of doing things, that iPads will be easily accessible or that handheld devices will be very affordable and will change the way we do testing in our schools.

“But we’re betting on that, and it does worry me,” she said. “I think technology is not really fully embedded in the world of classrooms at this point.”

Even among classrooms with computer and Internet access, state officials agreed there are few brick-and-mortar schools that fully integrate technology into instruction, which may make it harder for students to adapt to taking tests via computer.

Changes Difficult

Scott Norton, Louisiana’s assistant state superintendent for student and school performance, said states must be careful to get the tests right in the first shot. While jointly developing tests was intended to save states money, the grants do not include money for administering the new assessments long-term, and it will be harder to make adjustments to the tests once they are completed, because so many states will need to sign off on changes.

“The cost makes me the most anxious,” Mr. Norton said. “In today’s world if we have a [testing] cost problem, we own that: We can print on lighter paper or something. I’m not sure that holds up when we don’t own it alone. If we get into a test we can’t afford, we’re really left holding the bag.”

Vol. 30, Issue 28



Common Core Standards--Parents Need To Ask Why Is There No Debate?

Part I

No More Local School Boards or State Boards?  Who will parents go to when state and local school boards no longer have input !

"How can the State Boards of Education make decisions when they haven't even read the standards? Many state's Board Member had never been initiated into what was in these documents.  What were the policy issues coming out of these documents and whether these analyses were truly were in a sense legitimate academic analysis-- a really serious issue of uninformed Boards of Education in this country which they would never do on most other issues.  These are very serious issues about what self- government means at the state and local government level."--Sandra Stotsky,  professor in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and holds the 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality.

 State Board Member, Betty Peters, says this sounds like a back door entry for a complete control of the federal government.  Many states voted before the final standards came out in June.  Race to the top grant money was an enticement so many states voted early on to accept the common core standard when they werent even completely finished.  Texas said no to it.

"There are two separate automacity requirements for all of the algorithms--one is their own construction and then the other is the standard algorithm.  Standard Algorithm always come a year or two later and so these students are going to learn their own way of doing things many of which are incorrect and then they're going to learn the standard algorithm and they're going to get totally confused.  The net effect in terms of learning is that they know neither approach verywell.  The second set of things-- the requirement to automaticity on their own self- invented algorithms was one of the political issues that came in at the last moment and it's  absolutely crazy.  And then there was an entire list of similar ones, that equally made no sense whatsoever in terms of the long term development of children's mathematical capacity." --  Dr. R. James Milgram, professor of mathematics at Stanford University.

Link to Part II on CSSI  Link to Part III

Common Core Standards--Federalizing the Educational System

" The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of  government in the next." Abe Lincoln.

The enemy knows that quote well to the point they can probably almost taste their success because they have practically removed the defenders of the family from most American homes.  Fathers are many times absent and so are the mothers.  Many children are either latch key kids or being raised by their grandparents.  Sexual and drug addictions are being promoted/supported rather blatantly in the movies, in homes on televisions and many adults no longer see their role as parents to their offsprings. 

The parents who are trying to take care of their families are inundated with the woes and cares of maitaining a job, preserving what money they get in light of today's problems with the economy and looming insurance uncertainties for their families health care.  Those in the military protecting their nation have special problems that makes the task of parenting harder.

So most of us are distracted when they try to put in place the federalizing of this nation's educational system.  Listen to this podcast and share it.  Let it serve as a wake-up call as Abe Lincoln quotes a warning for us.  It is time America to rebuild the wall and set this nation back to the right course.  It begins with each of us protecting our own.  You don't want to be surprised at what they will be teaching your children--make a difference today with knowing the truth about what is in Obama's Common Core Standards.

Link to contact your state's governor

Link to the key to unlocking it all UN Treaty on the Rights of a Child

Take heart as Jesus said to a parent who asked in Mark 9:21-24

"But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us."

 "If you can'?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes."

 Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

Let us overcome our unbelief America--we have work to do for our children's sake!

 Link to Audio of Common  Core Standards Initiative (CCSI) radio interview podcast with Betty Peters

Update on Friday, August 27, 2010 at 04:31AM by City On A Hill

Interview with experts on 8-25-10--parents beware!