The education reform movement is big business. There are those around the country who are touted for their accomplishments in raising educational performance by things they have done. Among the reformers, Jeb Bush had some success with a school grading system which caused schools to put greater effort into raising standardized test scores. Seeing some success, Utah legislators passed a school grading scheme for use in Utah.

Another reform is that of computer adaptive testing (CAT) which was adopted in Utah a couple years ago in order to help show where students are deficient or advanced in their understanding of concepts. Initially I supported this because I thought this would finally show schools using real math would trounce schools using fuzzy math. After this was adopted, I learned that Common Core was going to require CATs. That was a huge red flag as I realized CATs were going to be hijacked and used as a compliance mechanism for Common Core.

So in spite of the fact that these ideas may have had some merit to begin with, the bottom line is, the Common Core assessments will now control teacher evaluations, school grading, and thus curriculum. Any idea behind these that might have been thought useful under one set of circumstances has been hijacked.

Where some positive outcome was seen in implementing computer adaptive testing, as well as a school grading system, both became requirements under Common Core and will now be enforced via the AIR/SAGE assessment system that our children are subject to under Common Core. This means that one test, largely under control by 2 federally funded consortia (PARCC and SBAC), with a review panel by the federal government, now controls how schools are graded, how teachers are assessed (and even transferred between schools to ensure fair distribution of ‘quality’ teachers), how students are assessed as “college and career ready”, and directly leads to the curriculum choices in the classroom so teachers and schools will optimize for success on the test. To anyone without their head in the sand, this is a clear federal takeover of education.

Here are two must read posts. The first is by Alpine School District member Wendy Hart where she calls for us to join a rally on Tuesday morning at the USBA (bring signs like “No School Grading tied to Common Core”. The second is a post she references by Autumn Cook about the new accountability system.

http://wendy4asd.blogspot.com/2013/08/no-man-can-serve-two-masters-school.html

http://alpineparentsociety.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/august-13-2013-board-study-session/

Last week on Glenn Beck’s Friday night show on Common Core, Orlean Koehle, one of the audience attendees and CA Eagle Forum President, held up a government manual with a picture that showed some devices for how the government is planning to monitor our children. I was able to locate that resource and found their reasons for it disturbing.

A few days ago I emailed out an interesting article titled “Student test scores show that ‘grit’ is more important than IQ”?  I find it a little coincidental that this government report is titled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21^st Century.” It was published in February 2013.

http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/files/2013/02/OET-Draft-Grit-Report-2-17-13.pdf

If you open up this government document (and I’d save a copy to your computer), and go to page 61 of the pdf (which is page 43 on the bottom of the page). Look at the chart on “observables” they are looking for. This is a fascinating chart that splits out several aspects of conscientiousness.

Scrolling forward a page, you can see 4 methods they plan to use to track these observable behaviors on our children. If you have time, read the few pages before the chart. This is all very disturbing and a massive violation of privacy.

The people who created this document (including people from the Gates Foundation), have the warped idea that children need their ideal set of core knowledge, and the most effective way to get it to those children is through the scientific method of a lab rat. Put the cheese (standardized test scores) over here, see how long it takes them to get to it and how can we experiment and improve the process.

From page 45 of the document, just after these devices are shown, comes this:

Methodological tradeoffs.

Measures of behavioral task performance hold strong promise for deepening the field’s understanding of the interactions among the cognitive and affective processes underlying grit. They are minimally “fakable” (Kyllonen, 2005) and typically do not “cue the intentions” of the teacher or researcher (Shute & Ventura, in press). They do not require participants to have fully developed verbal skills or be able to articulate their own internal processes. Micro-level indicators also have the potential to be seamlessly integrated into a learning environment, and indicators can provide measures of behavior in real time, making it possible to examine and address dynamic changes in student understanding (e.g., how goals and affect change over time in an activity) (U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology, 2013; Woolf Et al. , 2009).

These methods are not, however, without their own set of challenges. It is important to recognize the immense effort that goes into interpreting the meaning of student log files, for example, before an intelligent tutor can be designed to “know ” what a student’s behavior means and be able to offer appropriate scaffolds or feedback. The research into the design of these systems involves multiple observations and/or interviews of students interacting with the learning environment, achieving agreement among raters about how to interpret student behaviors and using these findings to design the programs that support student learning (e.g., Baker et al., 2008).

What is the goal of this? If you can track someone’s behavior and learn these things about them, you can condition them in ways that are most effective toward the goals set by those who control the learning environment. They are being manipulated.

I encourage you to read this article by Anita Hoge entitled “MANIPULATING STUDENTS – REWARD AND PUNISHMENT.”

On a much more light note, you could read Orson Scott Card’s awesome book, Ender’s Game, which comes out in movie theaters this November, and deals with manipulation of children by conspiring adults.

Reposted from Christel Swasey’s blog

When I saw, both in a Politichicks article and in a Blaze article, that it was on the recommended reading list of Common Core for 11th grade students to read “The Bluest Eye,” a book that graphically, vividly narrates sex crimes of a child molester in first person, I found it hard to believe that this would be approved in my state.

I wrote to my state school board member.

“Dixie, please tell me that in Utah, we have not approved “The Bluest Eye” for our students’ English reading which is on the Common Core’s list of approved readings. Please tell me that our curriculum committee is more selective. This is disgusting child pornography.
Thank you for finding out the answer.”

She wrote back after consulting with someone at the Office of Education with an assurance that although it was recommended by Common Core, it was not recommended by the Utah State Office of Education. Here is that letter:

“I hope this helps-was what I thought but wanted to be sure.

Dixie

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: “Dickson, Sydnee”
Date: Aug 25, 2013 10:43 AM
Subject: RE: Common Core approved reading: The Bluest Eye
To: “Allen, Dixie”
Cc: “Hales, Brenda”

Dixie,
You are correct in that there are no prescribed texts for the Common Core. There are examples of texts that could be used for text complexity by grade level but this is certainly not one of them in Utah. When you go to our Appendix A and look at the suggestions for 11th grade, you will not find Bluest Eyes listed http://schools.utah.gov/CURR/langartelem/Core-Standards/ELA-Color-Standards-8-12-13.aspx. When you look at Appendix B (pg. 154) in the document published by CCSSO and NGA you will find the following brief excerpt from Bluest Eyes considered as a piece of text with complex language. This is not a recommended book but a section of brief text from the book.

[Excerpt was shared here from Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”]

We have not recommended this excerpt nor is it published in our Core ELA Standards documents. Because the Common Core is NOT a prescribed curriculum, districts, schools, and teachers are free to use texts and materials that comply with their district policies. This is not a book or text that would be likely be approved by schools in Utah. Also, we are developing digital texts by teachers for teachers and have started with 6-8. Those can be found at http://www.schools.utah.gov/CURR/langartsec/Digital-Books.aspx. Last, and most importantly, we have the RIMS review process that is conducted by a commission of appointed community leaders, parents, and educators. They create a list of published materials that are recommended, recommended with reservation, or not recommended. That list can be found at http://www.schools.utah.gov/CURR/imc/RIMs-Search.aspx. You will not find Bluest Eyes on that list as it has not been requested to be reviewed by either a publisher or a school/district.”

————————————————————————–

For a moment, I was relieved. Utah students were off the pedophilia-literature hook, it seemed.

But then the wheels started turning in my head again. Ms. Dickson had written that the book was not recommended reading in Utah. But we know that Utah’s teachers must follow the national Common Core to prepare children for a nationally-aligned Common Core test (AIR test) this year.

It would seem that an excerpt from this book or any Common Core approved book could be used on Utah’s AIR test, since AIR writes the test to Common Core alignment. Since I wasn’t completely sure whether AIR writes to Utah’s recommended reading list or to Common Core’s recommended readings, I asked Dixie to find out for me. I’m waiting very anxiously to hear back.

Meanwhile, I fact-checked the Blaze article’s statement that said that the Common Core expected students to read the whole texts, not just excerpts. Sadly, that was correct!

At the official Common Core website, it says: “When excerpts appear, they serve only as stand-ins for the full text. The Standards require that students engage with appropriately complex literary and informational works; such complexity is best found in whole texts rather than passages from such texts.”

So, “improving college and career readiness” and “rigor” means, to the architects of Common Core, exposing 11th graders to the literature of pedophilia.

I’m worried about what kinds of “literature” may appear on the Common Core test that Utah students will be exposed to this year. I’m also worried about their exposure to the new version of the ACT/SAT –since David Coleman has both led the creation of Common Core and is now the College Board president. He’s said he’s altering college entrance exams to match his vision of what college and career readiness means. I do not like and do not trust that man.

Then there’s this:

In Utah, there’s a law that 15 parents will be chosen to serve on a test watching committee. These 15 can see the test questions for the new Common Core AIR tests. I applied to be on the 15 parent panel. (I hope many, many Utah parents apply.) The state wrote back to say they received my application, and that I should know that there is a confidentiality agreement. So if any parent serving on this committee sees anything we find unacceptable like this, we can not speak out and specify what we saw. This seems to defeat the purpose of having the committee.

All of this makes me despise the Common Core Initiative, it’s nontransparent testing and nonrepresentative decision making, more and more and more.

We received two emails from concerned parents in Alpine School District. This isn’t necessarily directly related to Common Core, but it does relate to data tracking and privacy concerns.

“My granddaughter attends school in Alpine School District. She came home with a disclosure document from her junior high P.E. teacher that indicated that all student in the class would be required to wear heart monitors and if they didn’t it would affect their grade. Do you know anything about this?”

“My daughter attends school at _____,  in the Alpine School District. The school is requiring all students to wear heart monitors during gym class. I sent the gym teacher an email saying I do not want my daughter to be electronically monitored. The vice Principal responded with a letter saying that there is a firm expectation that all students comply, and the students grade will be affected by way of participation points. In researching this I found that other states implemented this and in the end the students ended up having to wear monitors even when at home. I do not want my daughter to be monitored in this way and I want to know my legal options. If you can help or know where I can get help, please contact me via email. Thank you for your time.”

I sent an email to some of the school board members and got this reply back.

“Parents have the right to opt their children out of all this database stuff: database monitoring (FitnessGram testing), heart monitoring, etc.  You are to simply send a note to the teacher and request an alternate assignment for this kind of thing.”

You should definitely ask your children about what’s happening in their classes. Be more involved than ever this year. You have to be vigilant and know who is teaching them and their philosophies. I know of two middle school teachers at different schools in Alpine district who have convinced children that communism isn’t really all that bad, and parents were unaware this was happening until after the fact. You need to know what is happening in the classroom and take a stand or pull your child out to homeschool for some or all of the classes. If you do a partial pull out it’s called dual-enrollment and that’s what I’m doing with one of my children that wants electives at the school but we don’t want her being taught Common Core math.

Here’s a fascinating infographic on homeschoolers you may be interested in.

http://www.tjed.org/2013/08/american-homeschoolers-measure/

Carie Valentine sent us this great email she sent to several Utah legislators pointing out inconsistencies in Utah education laws and agreed to let us post it.

*****************

Dear Elected Officials,

I have been doing some research on the laws as they relate to Common Core and have found, what appear to be, inconsistencies in the law.  Attached is a document that shows how SB271, SB175, and elements of Title 53A seem to be in conflict with one another.

Basically, SB271 states a school must have 95% participation in the SAGE testing(the new computer adaptive standardized testing) or receive a grade of F.  It also outlines the grading procedure for the school and says the scores will include non-proficient students which may have IEP accommodations.

SB175 states students whose parents opt them out of testing will receive a non-proficient score and it will affect the school’s grade.  It also says teacher’s will consider student’s SAGE tests in determining academic grades and advancement to the next grade level.  Yet, within SB175 and in Title 53A it says, “Nothing in this part shall be construed to mean or represented to require that graduation from a high school or promotion to another grade is in any way dependent upon successful performance of any test administered as a part of the testing program established under this part.”  In addition to the above items, Title 53A-13-101.2 says, ” (5) A student’s academic or citizenship performance may not be penalized by school officials for the exercise of a religious right or right of conscience in accordance with the provisions of this section.”  If a parent wants to opt their child out of the invasive computer adaptive testing they are acting under a right of conscience and therefore their child’s grades and advancement to the next grade level shouldn’t be penalized.  Which law overrides the other?  Either a parent has the right to opt their child out of the testing with no repercussions,  or they don’t.  I am not a lawyer so I could be off base here but it looks like a conflict.
SB175 also says a student with an IEP may make other arrangements for testing according to the student’s IEP.  This information needs to be shouted from the rooftops so that parents who have children with an IEP know they don’t have to subject them to the computer adaptive testing (SAGE).  One of the most disturbing parts of the computer adaptive testing is that the goal is to pull all students into it so there is no need for testing accommodations.  Children who struggle with testing issues should not be over looked simply because there is a new test in town.

In regards to the State School Board’s desire to launch a PR campaign for common core, Title 53 A-4-205 says the board

(i) may not:

(i) engage in lobbying activities;

(ii) attempt to influence legislation; or

(iii) participate in any campaign activity for or against:

(A) a political candidate; or

(B) an initiative, referendum, proposed constitutional amendment, bond, or any other ballot proposition submitted to the voters.

Common Core is an initiative and it certainly has laws dictating its implementation.  The board engaged in what they called educational meetings to introduce the computer adaptive testing they have contracted with American Institutes of Research to create.  I attended one of these meetings and found it to be replete with propaganda type points rather than a balanced approach to informing the public.  The most controversial parts of the testing were glossed over, lied about, or just omitted from the discussion.  The school board needs to be held accountable for breaking their own laws.  Will you hold them accountable?  Now, they are poised to begin a media PR blitz to “inform” the public about common core education reform and will, again, be in violation of this law.

Finally, Title 53A-11-1305 says the Board rules to ensure the protection of individual rights.  If this is the case, then they must uphold a parent’s rights to direct the education of their child(ren).   HB0015 line 59 which says the computer adaptive testing may include “the use of student behavior indicators in assessing student performance.” interferes with a parent’s right to protect their children from invasive, high stakes testing.  These tests are designed by a behavioral research company.  Judy Park said there will be absolutely no behavioral indicators in the tests but how are we to know that?  The tests are viewable by no one.  Not parents, not teachers, not administrators, no one.  The parent committee of 15 chosen to review the test questions will not even be seeing the test questions, just a version of them.  This parent committee isn’t even qualified to review a test such as this.  Psychometricians will be over seeing the scoring of the tests along with the algorithms created to analyze whatever data A.I.R. wants to analyze.

I have attached a document that has the webpages listed so this information can be double checked.  I would appreciate some contact on this issue.  I can come and meet you in person to review it or you can email me.  I will also accept phone calls.

Thank you,

Carie Valentine

Attachments:

Contradicting Laws

SB175 with amendments and Title 53A inclusions

*****************

Ed. Note: The USOE is notifying applicants who desire to be on the 15 parent review panel, that they must sign a non-disclosure agreement so concerns that arise may not be shared with anyone. This is not a review panel. It’s a rubber stamp and checkmark on a piece of paper to tell legislators that a parent panel has reviewed the test and it’s safe for kids to take.

This is the block of text Carie refers to above. It was recently found and shows administrative rules by the USOE which will interpret SB 175.  It is unknown at present if this is proposed language to be voted on by the board, if it has been voted, or if it doesn’t even have to be voted on by the board. The intent is clear. If you have a student in a public school, you may not opt your child out of SAGE/AIR testing without your child, the teacher, school, and you as a parent being punished. The child is punished by being forced to take the exam, the teacher and school because they must maintain 95% of students taking the exam or have the school receive a failing grade, and as parents if this is in high school and your child has straight A’s, a non-proficient score will mess with their GPA and transcript for college applications. So if you can’t opt-out, your child can walk-out. You the parent are in charge of your child’s education. Do what is best for your child.

164 (2)  the  parent  makes  a  written  request  consistent  with
165 LEA administrative timelines and procedures that the parent’s
166 student  not  be  tested.    Students  not  tested  due  to  parent
167 request  shall  receive  a  non-proficient  score  which  shall  be
168 used in school accountability calculations.

*************

9/28/13 Addendum from Carie:

How Often Will the Tests Be Administered?

The state has identified three types of testing your students will participate in.  This information comes directly from their pamphlet.

The first type of tests are called summative assessments.  These will replace the end of year testing called the CRT’s  Utah students have taken for many years.  Students will be tested in English/Language Arts, Mathematics, and eventually Science.  It is my understanding the science portion of the common core standards have not been approved and so the science SAGE tests won’t be administered until they are finished.  A field test will be administered in the Spring of 2014 and the system is set to go fully operational in the Spring of 2015.

The Second type of tests are called Interim assessments.  “These tests are optional and can be administered in the fall and mid-year to evaluate student competence with the Utah Core Standards-which are Common Core Standards-in English/Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science.  Interim assessments will be psychometrically predictive of the summative assessment and utilize the same student interface and reporting system.”

What does this mean?  It means that students who are struggling or teachers who need to see where their class is may utilize these assessments at the beginning and middle of the school year to determine instruction.  This program is set to go live the Fall of 2014

The third type of tests are called Formative assessments.  “Formative assessment guides teacher’s day-to-day instruction.  Each student’s Formative SAGE results will link to instructional resources to help teachers target and individualize instruction.”

What does this mean?  This means that teachers have the potential to have testing done after every lesson they teach.  They can access the massive bank of common core aligned material online to use as instructional resources for struggling students or students that need additional help on a subject.

All of these assessments are matched to complement one another.  This testing is set to go online in the fall of 2013.

All of this means your child has the potential of participating in high stakes, computer adaptive testing, daily.  It won’t start out that way because it will take time for education reform of this magnitude to be developed but this will be the outcome once all the variables are in place for your children to have summative, interim, and formative assessments throughout their school year.  A tremendous amount of time is already spent preparing students for their standardized tests each year.  Imagine how much more time will be devoted to test preparation when all of the various SAGE tests come online.  The state school board has said teachers have complete creative control in their classrooms for how they want to teach to the standards, but with so much emphasis on testing, a teacher will have little room in his or her day to teach much more than to the test.

There is so much testing with common core, that a recommendation has been made in HB15 on lines 119-120 that “The State Board of Education shall consider administering the basic skills competency test on a Saturday to preserve instructional time.”

(Christel Swasey wrote this letter to Superintendent Menlove after the State School Board meeting on August 2, 2013.)

Dear Superintendent Menlove,

Thank you for speaking with many of us today and I apologize for my ongoing impatience.

I requested a list of items several months ago, after I was told that we were misinformed.  I am still waiting, and I’m willing to study items that you feel that my associates or I are still misinformed about.

I welcome clarity. I hope you feel the same way, and hope you take the time to read the research we’ve shared about Common Core as we take the time to attend board meetings and to read your publications.

Most of all, many of us hoped to see empirical evidence and pilot studies –not merely opinions– backing up claims that the standards and tests might benefit, rather than harm, students, and that they are not an experiment at taxpayer and student expense; and many hope to see laws guaranteeing Utah’s authority (without having to get NGA-CCSSO permission) to improve local standards, sky-high; and many hope to see the demise of the out of control monster that is the federally interoperable SLDS as well as the related CAT (SAGE) testing, which track our children without asking our permission.

In the meantime, below is a list of documents with links that document some concerns with Common Core.

If we are permitted to meet in the future, many of us will refer to these documents, and it will be helpful if we know that our leaders have read them as well.  We have certainly read the USOE site and the Common Core standards.

I hope my impatience has not harmed the chances that this elected board will work with parents, teachers and others who are so concerned about the direction in which Utah education has gone.

Christel Swasey

Common Core Concerns

Please click on the links to get to the original source documents that verify Common Core does far more damage than good.

The Race to the Top Grant Application – In this, Utah got points toward possibly winning grant money.  Points were awarded in this application for the state’s having a student-tracker, this federally funded, nationally interoperable SLDS database system. (It is illegal to have a national student database; yet, all 50 states have matching, interoperable SLDS systems. The 50 SLDS’s effectually function as a national student database.  States submit K-12 data to the federal Edfacts Exchange –despite the U.S. Constitution and  GEPA law which makes such accountability to the federal government illegal.  Note that it is not allowed for any Utah student to opt out of being tracked, and parents are not notified nor asked for consent for this P-20 (preschool through grade 20) surveillance.)  Also in this application, Utah got points to adopt the Common Core (without having seen any empirical data to prove Common Core academically legitimate). This lure of federal money was how Utah got in to the current bind. Despite not winning any grant money, Utah unfortunately chose to remain in both the Common Core and what amounts to the federal student surveillance program. It is noteworthy that despite claims that only aggregated data is submitted  to Edfacts Data Exchange, the CCSSO (state superintendents society that copyrighted Common Core) has a “stated commitment to disaggregation of data” and numerous federal websites do model student data standardization and invite states to use common data sets which makes it easier to share personally identifiable information, including biometric and behavioral data.

The No Child Left Behind Waiver – This shows the 15% cap the federal government put on top of the copyrighted Common Core.  The 15% rule limits innovation and excellence, being enforced in the common core aligned test systems and by textbook sales companies’ near-monopoly  on any thought beyond Common Core.  The 15% rule is also echoed in multiple documents from governmental and common core corporate developers.

The State Longitudinal Database System Grant – This is the federally paid-for database that every state in the U.S. has. It tracks students within the state. But each SLDS can communicate with another.  There is no apparent limit to how much information is being collected by schools, and no permission is collected from parents to have such information, nor is there any limit on how much information can be given by states to the federal government about students, because of Department of Education alterations to federal FERPA regulations.  Vendors, volunteers and other unwanted “stakeholders” can  now be considered “authorized representatives” to access data.  Parental consent has been reduced from a requirement to a “best practice.”

The lawsuit against the Department of Education – The Electronic Privacy Information Center has sued the U.S. Department of Education for shredding previously protective federal FERPA law. The lawsuit explains which terms were redefined, which agencies now have legal access to the private data of students, and much more.

Utah’s Core Standards – This document (link below) has been removed, but it used to show on page four, how Utah lost local control under Common Core. Utah had to ask permission from an unelected D.C. group to alter its own state standards.  It said: modified by permission from CCSSO 2010.

http://schools.utah.gov/CURR/mathelem/Core-Curriculum/Utah-Core-Standards-in-Mathematics-Approved-Versio.aspx

The copyright on Common Core held by CCSSO/NGA – The fact that there are “terms of use” and a copyright shows that Utah has no local voice in altering the national standards, which were written behind closed doors in D.C. and which can be altered by their creators at any time without representation from the states governed by them.

The report entitled “For Each And Every Child” from the Equity and Excellence Commission – This report was commissioned by Obama. It reveals that power to forcibly redistribute resources, including teachers, principals and money, is a key reason that federal education reformers want a national education system.

The Executive Summary of Race to the Top – see page 3, part D 3.  This clearly shows the same tactic: the federal education reformers hope to gain the power to redistribute teachers and principals to their definition of “ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals.”

The Cooperative Agreement between the Dept. of Education and the testing consortia – Even though Utah escaped the SBAC and is not bound by the Cooperative Agreement directly, Utah’s current testing group, A.I.R., works closely with SBAC.  This document shows how clearly the Department of Education has mandated a synchronizing of tests and the sharing of data to triangulate the SBAC and PARCC under the watchful eye of the Department.

The speeches of Secretary Arne Duncan on education – He claims Common Core was Obama’s plan.  He also states that he hopes to make schools replace families as the center of people’s lives, with schools open seven days a week, all year round, almost all day long.

The speeches of President Obama on education – Obama’s 2020 goal is to control teachers, tests, money, and toddlers.

The speeches of the CEA of Pearson Ed, Sir Michael Barber – Barber wants every school on the globe to have the same academic standards and he promotes the underpinning of global education standards with environmental extremism.   He promotes ending diversity, using global sameness and uses the term  “irreversible reform.” His ruthless book, Deliverology, is dedicated to American education reformers. It advocates delivering a set goal at any price and at any cost.  Pearson is the world’s largest education sales company; it’s now partnered with Bill Gates, the second wealthiest man on earth, to promote global common education, devoid of any academic empirical proving that the standards are beneficial rather than harmful.

The speeches of the main funder of Common Core, Bill Gates – He’s funded Common Core almost completely on his own; he’s partnered with Pearson; he says “we won’t know Common Core works until all the tests and curriculum align with these standards” and he’s writing curriculum for all.  He also speaks of the usefulness of having students be “a uniform customer base.”

The speeches of David Coleman, non-educator, and the lead architect of the Common Core ELA standards who has been promoted to College Board President. He mocks narrative writing, has diminished the percentage of classic literature that’s allowable in the standards, promotes “informational text” without studying the effect of the reduction of classic literature on students long term, and, although he’s not been elected, yet he’s almost single-handedly reduced the quality and liberty of the high school English teacher’s options. As College Board President, he’s aligning the SAT to his version of what Common standards should be. This will hurt universities, which now know, for example, that students are not learning Calculus nor much classic literature in high school any more.

Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance – see p. 62/44 – This U.S. Dept. of Education report assures all that data about behavioral and attitudinal indicators of students are desperately wanted by the federal government. It’s all about controlling students by knowing their inner thoughts.  Facial expression cameras, posture analysis seats, pressure mouses, wireless skin sensors are all recommended as ways to collect data about children in a continuous stream, in this document.

The federal websites such as the EdFacts Exchange, the Common Education Data Standards, the National Data Collection Model, and the Data Quality Campaign, sites  -Three of these four ask states to match other states’ personally identifiable information collection. – The first link shows what we already give to the federal government; the others show what the federal government is requesting that all states do, which does include collecting intimate, personally identifiable information such as bus stop times, nicknames, parental voting record, academic scores, health information, mother’s maiden name, social security number, etc.

The Common Core English and Math standards – These are the actual standards.  They were rejected by key members of their validation committee, who have written and testified extensively that Common Core is a terrible academic mistake.

American Institutes for Research  –  AIR’s common core implementation document shows that AIR is not an academic testing group but a behavioral research institute partnered with the federally funded and federally controlled SBAC testing group. Parents and teachers may not see these subjectively written, attitude assessing test questions; and students cannot succeed in this computer adaptive test, which guarantees that all students fail about half the questions.

HB15 – This bill shows that Utah law requires the assessment of behavior and attitudes.  See line 59.

SB 175 – proposed amendments to this bill show that it is Utah educational leadership’s will that any student who opts out of Common Core testing will be punished academically (see line 135) and his/her school will be punished as well (see line 168)