The Home School Legal Defense Association issued a statement a couple weeks ago against the Common Core effort which they view as dangerous to the home school movement. Here is their statement:

December 17, 2012

Background

In 2010, the National Governors Association published their “Common Core State Standards” (CCSS). These were meant as voluntary math and English guidelines which individual states could adopt.

HSLDA and numerous other organizations grew concerned about this push to standardize what public school students are taught. HSLDA wrote two articles outlining our concerns, one in March of 2010, and one in June of 2010. We explained that states were being enticed by the federal government—through the Race to the Top program—to align their state curriculum with the CCSS, resulting in de facto national standards. We were concerned that this would lead to a national curriculum and national test, and that the pressure would grow for homeschool and private school students to be taught using this national curriculum.

During President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union speech, the president stated, “We’ve convinced nearly every state in the country to raise their standards.” How were the states convinced to adopt the CCSS? The simple answer—federal dollars. President Obama added adopting the CCSS as a criterion for states to gain points in the Race to the Top education federal grant program, regardless of whether the state already had comparable or superior educational standards. States with the highest points are more likely to win the competitive Race to the Top federal grants.

Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the CCSS since 2010. Only Alaska, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia have not.

Are the Common Core State Standards a Good Idea for Public Schools?

Recently, there has been a growing controversy over whether the CCSS are even beneficial. Many states have spent years adopting their own state standards, only to throw them away in favor of the CCSS. Some commentators have said that the CCSS will weaken English learning and reduce analytical thinking. Others point to a weakening of math teaching. Still others point out that the CCSS will cost billions of dollars to implement—which could be deal-breaker for states struggling to implement the standards.

The CCSS by themselves are not necessarily controversial. They’re similar in certain respects to other state curriculum content standards for public schools. However, HSLDA believes that children—whether homeschooled, private schooled, or public schooled—do best when parents are fully engaged. And parents are most engaged when they know that they are in charge of their child’s education. Top-down, centralized education policy does not encourage parents to be engaged. The CCSS removes education standards from the purview of state and local control to being controlled by unaccountable education policy experts sitting in a board room far removed from the parents, students, and teachers who are most critical to a child’s educational success.

Will the CCSS Affect Homeschools?

The CCSS specifically do not apply to private or homeschools, unless they receive government dollars (online charter school programs have no such protection). However, HSLDA has serious concerns with the rush to adopt the CCSS. HSLDA has fought national education standards for the past two decades. Why? National standards lead to national curriculum and national tests, and subsequent pressure on homeschool students to be taught from the same curricula.

The College Board—the entity that created the PSAT and SAT—has already indicated that its signature college entrance exam will be aligned with the CCSS. And many homeschoolers worry that colleges and universities may look askance at homeschool graduates who apply for admission if their highschool transcripts are not aligned with the CCSS.

HSLDA believes that a one-size-fits-all approach to education crowds out other educational options, including the freedom of parents to choose homeschools and private schools. A common curriculum and tests based off common standards could be very harmful to homeschoolers if their college of choice refuses to accept a student’s high school transcript if it is not based on the CCSS. Homeschoolers could also have trouble on the SAT if the test is fundamentally altered to reflect only one specific curriculum. And our greatest worry is that if the CCSS is fully adopted by all states, policy makers down the road will attempt to change state legislation to require all students—including homeschool and private school students—to be taught and tested according to the CCSS. Common Core State Standards spreading

The National Governors Association first focused the CCSS on the general subject areas of math and English. However, there is now movement to create CCSS in numerous other subject areas. The National Governors Association is also urging states to align early education programs for young children.

This is also encouraged by the federal government’s Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge, a program which causes grave concerns to HSLDA.

Due to laws prohibiting the creation of national tests, curriculum, and teacher certification, governors and state legislatures are the only policy makers who can actually decide whether or not to adopt the CCSS. While the federal government has encouraged the states to adopt the CCSS through federal incentives, the states are completely free to reject the CCSS.

Further Action

• To find out whether your state has adopted the Common Core State Standards, you can visit this website’s useful map. (Please note that this is the website for the common core state standards initiative.)
• Contact your state legislators, including the governor, to discuss this issue with them. Ask them about their position on the issue. Find your governor’s current information here.
• If you have a governor’s election coming up in your state, we encourage you to raise this issue with the candidates. Even if a state has already adopted the national education standards, a new governor will be faced with the costs of implementing these new standards and new accountability to the federal government.
• Numerous states that have already adopted the CCSS are considering rejecting the CCSS. Now is the time to help raise awareness of this issue and educate yourself about the CCSS.
• Because this affects all parents, and will not currently affect homeschool freedom, it is not necessary to identify yourself as a homeschooler.

I received this email yesterday and (with permission from Sue to post) thought I would pose the question to parents, do you know what’s in your child’s school books?

Oak,

I just thought you would be interested and I want to let as many parents as possible aware of my experience.   I have been a homeschooling mom mostly since my now 17 year olds were in 3rd grade.  We recently moved to Springville and that combined with other circumstances led me to try public school for all my 7 kids who are of school age (I have 2 younger ones still at home.)

It has a positive experience so far in many ways but I continue to dislike common core on many levels and I have really been concerned  about what is and isn’t being taught in history.   So concerned that I decided to ask my 6th grade child’s teacher if I could borrow a copy of the history books he is teaching out of.

Appalled is the ONLY word I can think of to describe what I found there!  It’s a world history book and the section on the US is maybe 4 pages long.  It has no mention of our founding fathers but teaches abundantly about Karl Marx and his “wonderful ideas”.

The section on Christianity is a joke but the section on Islam is lengthy.   It’s just ridiculous! !

Needless to say my kids will either be transferring to the local charter school that does not use common core and teaches much about our founding fathers or it’s back to homeschooling.

I think the media needs to hear about this!  Just thought you’d be interested.

Thanks,
Sue Schmidt

Do you want to be a solution to problems? Speak up to teachers, principals, and your school board. I recently filed a GRAMA request with the state and in correspondence with the legal council for the Utah State Office of Education, I was told the request was going to be charged to me because they felt it was primarily of private interest instead of public since state board members had not received a single complaint on the subject of the selection of the new superintendent. I happened to know this was false but this is how things work. If you don’t speak up, those who do get more easily isolated. It reminds me of a few years ago when in the course of a single month, I was contacted by 4 separate families who went to Alpine School District to complain about Investigations math, and the very same administrator at the district office told each one of them that they were the only parent to ever complain about the math program. Each left wondering if they were the only one to speak up. Unless we all speak up about the problems and work to get our neighbors informed and to do it as well, we will continue the downward slide into government controlled curriculum and indoctrination. I am so thankful for those of you that do speak up in meetings, emails, and phone calls. Please keep pressing forward.

I received this email below from someone in the Midwest showing the direction the Academy of Science wants to take teachers in STEM fields. STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. STEM is being pushed hard in Utah and other states because there is a very real shortage of math literate students. The problem is, pushing the Green movement as they are below, won’t help math skills improve. If we really wanted to solve the math problem, we would cut constructivism out of schools since it’s a proven failure, and implement real math programs. That would solve the STEM problem by giving children a solid foundation in math and their success would drive their career choices.

Another link someone else sent me this morning shows what UNESCO is planning for teacher professional development. This verifies that this green movement push is all about the “sustainability movement” which is going to be used to control populations.

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/

This comes as no surprise to those of us following the trail of Common Core. Common Core is being hijacked by the Feds and UNESCO to push the sustainability movement. For an excellent video showing this problem, please watch Alisa Ellis’ presentation at the recent Agency Based Education conference. Then write your new Utah legislators and ask them to get us out of Common Core because of it’s direct ties to movements against our freedom and sovereignty.

(sorry for the poor formatting below)

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We’ve previously published some of the nonsense that the USOE is pulling regarding teacher training and curriculum being produced and how heavily constructivist it is, but now here’s evidence they are actively conspiring to hide this from the public.

Internal emails that were received by GRAMA request show that Asst. Superintendent Brenda Hales had asked the people involved with the secondary math 1 book to rewrite the introduction, whitewashing it of typical constructivist terms like “inquiry.” Instead, “balanced” terminology appears verifying that this term is public code language for constructivism.

We’ve know this for years based on Alpine School District doing the same thing to lull parents to sleep over Investigations math, but now it’s internally verified. Bye, bye STEM programs. If you’re a university professor who is already crying over the poor skills freshmen enter your classes with, it’s heading downhill even faster. Read below the emails for the Mathematics Vision Project nonsense.

From the state website http://www.mathematicsvisionproject.org/ we find this gem of constructivist-based education.

Has your state, district or school chosen the Integrated or International pathway of courses?
The MVP classroom experience begins by confronting students with an engaging problem and then allows them to grapple with solving it.  As students’ ideas emerge, take form, and are shared, the teacher orchestrates the student discussions and explorations towards a focused mathematical goal.  As conjectures are made and explored, they evolve into mathematical concepts that the community of learners begins to embrace as effective strategies for analyzing and solving problems. These strategies eventually solidify into a body of practices that belong to the students because they were developed by the students as an outcome of their own creative and logical thinking.  This is how students learn mathematics.  They learn by doing mathematics.  They learn by needing mathematics.  They learn by verbalizing the way they see the mathematical ideas connect and by listening to how their peers perceived the problem.  Students then own the mathematics because it is a collective body of knowledge that they have developed over time through guided exploration. This process describes the Learning Cycle and it informs how teaching should be conducted within the classroom.

Constructivism is essentially socialist math and they’ve written their description perfectly illustrating this. How bad could this be? Remember this “engaging problem” in groupthink about the groundhog?

If BYU’s Math Education department can’t teach HONORS calculus students with this method, it is sheer madness to think schools across the state are going to improve math education with this program. This isn’t what put Massachusetts at the top of the country for math. Homeschooling is looking better and better.

Please email your State School Board member and ask them to stop this constructivist nightmare (http://www.schools.utah.gov/board/Board-Members.aspx). Then email your legislators (http://le.utah.gov/) and ask them to step in. It’s clear that the USOE isn’t concerned with what really works in the classroom and pushing this statewide is going to kill Utah’s math future.

Then talk with your local school board member and ask them to reject all materials coming from the USOE. There is no evidence that constructivism produces results.