“Foolish -- States That ‘Won’ the Race to the Top"
by Donna Garner
8.25.10
How do I say this nicely? Maybe there is no way. Therefore, I will tell it like it is.
The educational leaders of the following states are foolish and the parents who sat there and did nothing to counter their leaders’ decisions will be very sorry when they see how this will impact their public school children.
The following states will receive Race to the Top (RTTT) federal funding and all the mandates that go with it:
District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Tennessee
These states have just turned over their public school children to the Obama administration to indoctrinate them. Because these states applied and were chosen by the U. S. Department of Education to receive the Race to the Top funds, local and state administrators and educators will have no control over their schools because everything will be orchestrated from Washington, D. C.
Here is how it works:
National standards → national tests → national curriculum → teachers’ salaries tied to students’ test scores → teachers teaching to the test each and every day → federal indoctrination of our public school children
As Jim Stergios (Boston Globe) said yesterday when he found out thatMassachusetts had won the Race to the Top funding, “We spend through state and local expenditures $9 billion every year on K-12 education. This grant totals $250 million in one-time money. It will come over four years. That works out to about 33 cents a student per day.”
For states even to be considered to receive the RTTT federal funds, they had to adopt the Common Core Standards (CCS) -- 36 states and D. C. have done so. Taxpayers need to understand that the CCS standards will require huge expenditures to implement new curriculum and alignment documents, new benchmark assessments, new textbooks and instructional materials, new teacher-in-service training sessions, new teacher evaluations, and large outlays of money to hire consultants and to purchase new technology and software. Setting up the national database will cost a fortune.
The 33 cents per student/per day will pay a very insignificant part of the added expense for the eleven states (and D. C.) that won the federal RTTT grant.
Worse than the paulty sum is the fact that the educational leaders of these eleven states and the District of Columbia have locked their public school students and educators into a federally controlled system that has no guarantee of academic success.
Please read Joe Stergios’ article published today where he has posted the disclaimer from the CCS website. Its commcercial license indicates that the people behind the CCS do not want to be held liable when their highly orchestrated plan comes crashing down upon our nation.
Remember that the Science and Social Studies Common Core Standards have not even been written yet, but these eleven states and the District of Columbia in particular are already locked into them sight unseen. They are going to take the Race to the Top federal funds and, therefore, must “pay the piper.”
Donna Garner
Wgarner1@hot.rr.com
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http://boston.com/community/blogs/rock_the_schoolhouse/
The National Standards Come with No Guarantee
by Jim Stergios August 25, 2010 11:07 AM
Excerpts from this article:
Massachusetts' state standards and our reforms have been tested. And that's one of the major points to be made about our rush to adopt the national standards. They are not proven. Their proponents don't even have a clue yet what the national tests will look like. Will they be high-stakes? Will they be more subjective and project- or skills-based? Will they institutionalize career tracking of students? I'll post up some of the early summaries of the proposals out there in the coming weeks.
But the major point is that they are untested, unproven. And the proponents of national standards admit this openly.
Just look at the Common Core State Standards website, where its commercial license language just screams out:
You use these standards at your own risk!
Representations, Warranties and Disclaimer: THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS ARE PROVIDED AS-IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, AND NGA CENTER/CCSSO MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTIBILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE.
Limitation on Liability:
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL NGA CENTER OR CCSSO, INDIVIDUALLY OR JOINTLY, BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY LEGAL THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER FOR CONTRACT, TORT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR A COMBINATION THEREOF (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH RISK AND POTENTIAL DAMAGE. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, LICENSEE WAIVES THE RIGHT TO SEEK LEGAL REDRESS AGAINST, AND RELEASES FROM ALL LIABILITY AND COVENANTS NOT TO SUE, NGA CENTERAND CCSSO.
Thanks for saying honestly what we've known all along: These standards and the upcoming assessments are a huge and long-shot gamble. That may be okay for a state and localities to do, when they are picking up 90 percent of the tab for K-12 education. It's another thing when the feds pay a mere 10 percent of the cost of educating our kids and then insist that we be their guinea pig.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 10:07PM