This video contains actual audio from the beginning of the Common Core standards discussion in Utah. Having listened to these meetings, I wanted to make sure some key points were readily accessible and available to everyone.
As human beings, sometimes it’s helpful to go back to original sources instead of listening to talking points. This information on the Common Core process is invaluable in providing insight from those who were there at the time. What was their perspective, and what was their focus?
Please take a few minutes to watch and to understand what was being said about Common Core from the very beginning, not the least of which was the Utah State Board Agenda Item: “National Common Standards”. Contrast this to the Utah State Office of Ed flyer which states: “Fiction: Utah adopted nationalized education standards that come with federal strings attached.” Then ask these questions:
What was the overriding reason for Utah joining in with a group that was developing national, common standards?
Was there any federal involvement, real or implied, that motivated the jump into Common Core?
With all the public involvement, who do you know who was involved in vetting the Common Core standards?
The answers you get may be different from what you are being told.
Links to audio files featured in the video:
May 1, 2009 Utah School Board Meeting, Agenda Item: National Common Standards
(Please note that the opinions stated herein are the sole personal and private opinions of Dr. Gary Thompson and do not necessarily reflected the views and opinions of Early Life Child Psychology & Education Center, Inc., their Board Members, or other licensed clinical employees of the Clinic).
Lest I be hypocritical, my two year old is receiving speech therapy services from Jordan District Developmental Center. She was in the program long before I became involved in the Common Core battle or was aware that someone now even at the age of two, can become a victim of Utah’s questionable and fuzzy data privacy laws.
The hypocrisy stopped today.
Zoey’s speech therapist is simply amazing. It’s free. Its in my home.
They have now (last week) equipped our speech therapist with a laptop where the session notes she writes go directly to the Department of Health or wherever the heck they are transmitted to.
I told the therapist to “put that thing away….and you know exactly why.”
We then had an hour long talk about privacy issues, and she commended me for saying “no”. She confided that from the moment she hit the “send” button, she has zero idea where this data is going or who gets to see it. She brought the issue up previously with District “suits”, but was expressly ordered not to discuss the issue and her concerns with parents other than what was written on the District’s consent form, which simply stated that “all personal data is protected per Federal & State FERPA privacy laws.”
She saw me on Glen Beck debating these very issues four months ago.
She said she was not surprised with my reaction, but only 1% of all parents question issues related to privacy. She also said that it was District policy for her to send this information about the session on her laptop, or services can’t be continued. When asked if she was aware of the changes the Obama administration made unilaterally to privacy rules via “FERPA”, and that they provide essentially zero protection, she bowed her head, turned red in the face, and simply said one word:
“Yes”.
She was visibly upset and embarrassed to have to say that to me. Her new young speech therapist employee that she brought along to train, did not have any clue about what was going on, was not told about these data privacy issues, and also was visibly upset.
I did what any other red blooded American entrepreneur does when faced with this situation…..I made her a better offer. It was an offer that not only benefits my daughter, but the community as a whole……
Ina few months, Early Life Child Psychology (and baby Zoey) will have a new private part time speech therapist courtesy of me stealing employees from Jordan School District.
We LOVE well trained, passionate public school employees. It pains me to get “hate mail” from across the country stating that I have negative agenda with public school teachers. We will not, however, give up my kids data in exchange for their services….
Neither should any of you.
So, I’m going to steal her, and one other lady I have in mind, and send them into the homes of parents who need these speech services. Privately. No data train. No IEP’s. No fighting with Districts to provide speech therapy to kids with overworked therapists with huge case loads.
Our model of client/child care is simply the exact opposite of what the Federal Government is desperately trying to get this community to buy into. It was not difficult to devise a conceptual model of client care for this community. We just simply did the exact opposite of procedure’s implemented in both the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) and Common Core (Obama Core).
Parents of Utah, we have been deceived.
All done without directly lying to us parents, but simply by lies of omission. This talented Jordan District speech therapist was actually relieved that I knew what was about to happen with my daughter. I can tell, because in a professional manner, I can tell that “Ms. Doe” loves Baby Zoey. She is easy to love.
It is all becoming clear to me now….the missing element that our state education leaders, School Board members, and lawmakers lack when it comes to making policies regarding our children :
Love.
Semi-socialized, one size fits all education is not an expression of love, but of politics.
The random and extensive data gathering that Jordan District wanted to accomplish with Baby Zoey was not an expression of love, but is simply a indication of bowing to the pressures of a distant federal government, and private business entities and special interest groups that want money. Data is Gold.
The young, talented speech therapist employed by Jordan School District that came into my home loves my sweet baby toddler…..
……the District that employees Zoey’s therapist, simply are not capable of modifying practices that best meet the needs of both Zoey and her parents because they do not “love ” her.
You all must decide what is best for your kids involved in public schools. I plead with you to make informed decisions that revolve around the unprecedented and massive changes that have now arrived in public schools in Utah.
It sickens me to say this, but leaders in this State whom we have entrusted the care of our children to, are deceiving us.
Utah State School Board members, State Lawmakers, and State Superintendent Menlove, I once again, 4 months after our original meeting, say this directly to all of you:
Not with my daughter.
Not without a fight.
I will close again with my favorite motto. One that should be on the desks of every policy maker in this State and on the President of the United States desk in the Oval Office:
“Parents are, and must be, the resident experts of their own children.”
“Common Core Standards are here to stay, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and school administrators have been telling us, but what they have not been telling us is that these nationwide standards are opening the door to more and more standardized testing.
And with standardized testing comes companies that make profits not only with tests, but with materials to prepare for those tests, and with ready-made curriculum based on those tests, just like we saw with all of the school districts in Missouri, including Joplin, that fell hook, line, and sinker for McGraw-Hill’s Acuity tests, which were allegedly designed to prepare students for the Missouri standardized tests, which were also made by McGraw-Hill.
It never worked in Joplin, where test scores have decreased ever since administrators bought the Acuity package.
Common Core Standards will be the same thing on steroids.
If students are going to be tested three times a year, then gullible school districts will be shelling out hundreds of thousands for test preparation materials, and before you know it, there will be no time to do anything but teach to the test.
Pearson, one of the companies that has been involved in the creation of Common Core Standards, has been selected by Missouri to create the tests. Pearson, not so coincidentally, is hawking a series of materials to help schools prepare for those tests, out of the goodness of their hearts, I am sure.”
Rick Hess at Ed Week just published this article exposing how Common Core is basically the same old reform mindset which educators have hated in the past, but for some reason have embraced now.
“In a number of conversations this week over at Jeb Bush’s annual edu-fest, at AEI, and around DC, I was struck by the degree to which the Common Core seems to have become Dr. Pendergast’s miracle cure for everything that ails you (seemingly including heat blisters). The exchanges were eerily reminiscent of the run-up to Waiting for Superman, when smart, enthusiastic people kept telling me how everything was about to change–how suburban voters would wake up and leap on the reform bandwagon. And it reminds me more than a little of conversations had earlier this decade or back in the ’90s about how NCLB, school choice, or site-based management were going to change everything as well.”
…
“More to the point, the confidence that the Common Core will wake folks up in 2015, “changing everything,” is an easy way to avoid unpleasant conversations about what it would actually take for the Common Core to connect with suburban voters or deliver on its promise (like, for instance, it might require the policy recommendations that have flowed from our “achievement gap mania” in the course of the past decade). The Kool-Aid allows would-be reformers to postpone facing up to hard truths. And it encourages proponents to regard their primary challenge as “messaging” the Common Core to parents and teachers, rather than grappling with these more substantive issues.”
“…This event has been an opportunity for federal leaders to talk about touchy subjects. For example, you asked President Kennedy to talk about the Bay of Pigs. So, thanks for having me here to talk about the Common Core State Standards. Academic standards used to be just a subject for after-school department meetings and late-night state board sessions. But now, they’re a topic for dueling newspaper editorials. Why? That’s because a new set of standards… are under attack as a federal takeover of the schools… And your role in sorting out truth from nonsense is really important.”
Indeed it is.
Duncan admits: “… the federal government has nothing to do with curriculum. In fact, we’re prohibited by law from creating or mandating curricula. So do the reporting. Ask the Common Core critics: Please identify a single lesson plan that the federal government created…Challenge them to produce evidence—because they won’t find it. It simply doesn’t exist”.
Thank you, Secretary Duncan, for pointing this out.
FEDERAL FINGERPRINTS
Federally created lesson plans don’t exist because Duncan’s department has worked so hard to get around the rules (i.e., Constitution) and to make others do the wrongs that the Department then promotes and funds. The Department’s associates (i.e. Linda Darling-Hammond, Bill Gates, David Coleman) work with Achieve, Inc., with SBAC, with PARCC, with CCSSO, with NGA and others, to collectively produce the federally-approved education “reform” agenda known as the Common Core Initiative. We know this.
But, thanks to Duncan for bringing up the term “lack of evidence.” We’ll get to that.
AUTHORITY, PLEASE
Duncan says: “The Department of Education is prohibited from creating or mandating curricula.” YES!
Yet the Department has coerced and urged and cajoled and bribed American educators into joining the Common Core State Standards Initiative, has funded tests upon which these standards are bases, and have mandated that the testing consortia must share student-level data with the federal government concerning Common Core tests. Just see the Cooperative Agreement for oodles of power-grabbing evidence that uses the tests as vehicles.
Duncan says there is no evidence of a federal takeover using Common Core. Well, almost; there is no trace of an Department of Education fingerprint on the writing of the national standards, tests and curriculum. This it correct.
But there are massive, unmistakable Department of Education fingerprints all over the promotion, marketing, funding and imposition of the standards on states. These fingerprints are everywhere.
But the Department of Education has been very careful to use other groups as smokescreens for its “reforms” while the Department oversteps its authority. It was the CCSSO/NGA that copyrighted the national standards, not the Department of Education.
Guess what? There is no evidence that Common Core will do anything it has claimed it can do does not exist– there’s no empirical data, no pilot test, no study to verify claims that the standards will improve diddly.
Duncan says that Common Core agenda is “neither radical nor a curriculum.”
I beg to differ.
It is radical to create nationalized, (socialist-styled) testing and standards for schools in a land of liberty.
It is radical to shred the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA) as the Department of Education has done, to demote “parental consent” from a privacy-protecting mandate to a “best practice” and to redefine protective terms to make them nonprotective, including “educational agency,” “directory information,” and “authorized representative.”
It is radical to carefully work around the U.S. Constitution and G.E.P.A. law’s prohibitions against federal control of education. For just one example: in the “Cooperative Agreement” between the Department of Ed and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) the federal government demands that states give conferences and phone updates, synchronicity of educational tests, triangulation of collected student-level data under the federal eye, and much more.
Duncan tries hard to persuade the American Editors Society in his speech to separate standards and curriculum, yet we all know that standards and curriculum go hand in hand –like frames shape homes, like hands shape gloves, like bones support flesh– standards direct curriculum.
As the main funder of Common Core, Bill Gates, said in his speech at a 2009 Conference of State Legislatures, “Identifying common standards is just the starting point. We’ll only know if this effort has succeeded when the curriculum and tests are aligned to these standards… When the tests are aligned to the Common standards, the curriculum will line up as well…. for the first time, there will be a large, uniform base of customers.” Watch clip here.
NOT COLLECTING STUDENT DATA
Duncan also denies the existence of any federal push to collect personal student data. He says that critics, “make even more outlandish claims. They say that the Common Core calls for federal collection of student data. For the record, we are not allowed to, and we won’t.”
No federal collection of student data? What a huge lie. Readers, please fact-check Secretary Duncan yourselves.
Aggregated student data has long been collected federally at the Edfacts Data Exchange. Edfacts states, “EDFacts is a U. S. Department of Education initiative to put performance data at the center of policy, management and budget decisions for all K-12 educational programs. EDFacts centralizes performance data supplied by K-12 state education agencies.” Although the information collected here is aggregated (grouped, not individualized) data, this will change because of the federal requests for more disaggregated (ungrouped, individualized) data.
Here are some federal sites you may click on to verify that the federal government is asking for more and more data points about each individual in our school systems. Click on:
Common Educational Data Standards – click on K12 student and find personally defining words like “identity,” “parent,” “incident,” “contact,” “authentication identity provider.”
National Data Collection Model – under “core entities” you will find “teacher,” “student,” “school,” “bus stop” and other identifying terms.
And Duncan is surely aware that the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) which helped copyright and produce the standards, has a stated commitment to disaggregation of student data.
Lastly. A simple common sense test.
If Arne Duncan were truly concerned about the quality of American schools, if he and his group cared about the education of children and not the controlling and surveillance of populations, then would they not have pushed for tested, piloted standards that would have used, for example, the sky-high standards of Massachusetts as a template, rather than circumventing all voters, circumventing academic tradition, and using this literature-diminishing, algorithm-slowing, cursive-slashing, informational text-pushing, unpiloted experiment called Common Core?
So am I suggesting that this is a diabolical scheme? YES.
Duncan himself used the term in his speech. To make fun of those of us who see it as exactly that.
He quoted columnist Michael Gerson —President Bush’s former speechwriter— who wrote that if the Common Core “is a conspiracy against limited government, it has somehow managed to recruit governors Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush, current governors Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce… A plot this vast is either diabolical or imaginary.”
Diabolical is the right word.
While Duncan and his education reformers may truly believe that socialism/communism is the way to go, I do not. And if most of America does, then let’s at least vote on it.
If anyone doubts that total governmental control of schools and children, to the detriment of families, is Duncan’s direction, view Duncan’s interview on Charlie Rose, where he outlines his goals for the complete takeover of family life by schools. Schools are to be health clinics, parental education centers, are to be open six or seven days a week and twelve hours or more per day, all year round, as day and night centers of civilization.
With permission, I am printing the following account from a retired Utah elementary school teacher. I spoke with her personally and she desires to remain anonymous and keep the school, district, teachers, and principals anonymous in her story.
Just to make it abundantly clear, this teacher retired 16 years ago (approximately 1997) and this is not related to Common Core. There is no clear evidence that this exact thing is happening today in Utah, but there are some warning signs which as parents you should be aware of and I share those in a brief Q&A with this teacher, below this account.
Underlining is by the author/teacher, bolding is by me.
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“Cooperative learning: my experience with co-operative learning began in _______ elementary _______ school District, when Mrs. ____ was principal. Once a week the teachers had a meeting with the principal. At this time, we, the teachers, were told to put all desks in a group of four. Teachers were to put one of the best, one of our poorest, and two mediocre students in a group.
Each student had a role to play in the group. The brightest student reported the consensus arrived at in the group. The “happy talker” was one of the mediocre students whose job might be thought of as “climate control.” If a student in the group made an acceptable comment the “happy talker” would say something like “great idea,” “smart thinking.”
We the teachers, we’re given charts to put on the blackboards or bulletin boards where the happy talker in each group of four could see and could verbalize a comment from the chart in response to every comment made by each person in his group. As long as the comments were of an encouraging nature the “happy talker” knew what he could say according to the chart but if one student said something like “I think that is a stupid idea” the happy talker said “no put-downs.”
The first year of cooperative learning this was the acceptable response: “no put-downs.” The second year the response changed and the happy talker was to respond by saying “killer” or “suicide” because the person who negatively reacted to the group or individual was “killing an idea” or causing the idea to self-destruct; thus the explanation for the use of words killer and suicide.
This second year of cooperative learning the teachers were given a game they were to teach to the children in physical education class. The game was called “suicide.”
The teachers were told that their work would be so much less because the four students in the group would receive the same grade because they had received a consensus or a group response to the question so all four students were deserving of the same grade.
The outside of our rooms had been designed for showing individual art. There was a strip of corkboard all around the outside of our rooms which had been a joy to see art displayed respecting individual talents. The principal told us we were not ever to display anything but collectively chosen, collectively designed art projects with the collective names of the four students on it. One large piece of paper was to be given to each table of four combined desks. The four children were to come to a consensus on what the art project would be and each student would work on a portion of the large piece of paper. This was one of the most difficult adjustments for the creativity found within each child.
There were four teachers in our second grade team. One teacher was the “team leader.” She was the teacher who reported to the principal written and verbal reports for the entire second grade teachers.The team leader often walked into our rooms without knocking. Her observation was revealing. Upon much concern and searching for what to do I decided I would appeal to “the best” in my team leader. I went into her room when no children were there and I said: “I’ve taught in a one room country school in Missouri, a school almost a block long in Iowa, a private school in Wisconsin, and I have seen many education ideas come and go. In Iowa schools it was decided by an educator that a child’s first idea was usually right so all erasers were removed from pencils and if a child marked over his first response the answer was considered wrong because it wasn’t his “first” thought. Do you see, I said to her, how ridiculous ideas may come into education but we don’t have to accept them as an ironclad rule? She knew exactly what I meant. She quickly and conclusively told me: “I will do what it takes to keep my job.” This ended the conversation.
At a meeting with teachers and principal ____, a teacher inquired “Mrs. ____, what if the teacher doesn’t do cooperative learning?” Mrs. ____’s response was “she is out the door!”
At this time I had been able to put on a “dog and pony” show which the children and I had carefully planned for when we were to be visited by _____School District supervisors and Mrs. ____. All desks were as a table, happy talkers had the words on charts in mind and we practiced for a week.
What was perceived by the second grade district supervisors and principal I don’t have any way of knowing but when I was called to the principal’s office for an evaluation, Mrs. ____ had given me a #3 of a possible 5. I read it carefully. Mrs. ____’s markdown was stated as a restlessness in the classroom; too much energy. I said “I won’t sign it. I have 32 students in my classroom. I am not, according to state regulations, supposed to have in second grade more than 27 students. Also most of my students; 20 are boys. Boys have a much higher energy level than girls. No I will not sign that evaluation!” She reached across the desk, picked up the evaluation, erased the #3 and changed it to a #5.
It was near the weekend. On Sunday afternoon I went to see brother ____, an attorney in our ward*. Although I had tenure, I felt sure I would be fired. Brother ____’s response was “pray for interference, the Lord can interfere if you ask.”
In all my wild imaginations I could never have dreamed of what happened next. It was in the middle of the school year – not a usual time for teacher or principal transfers to other schools. I believe every teacher may have been as surprised as I was when Mrs. ____called all teachers to the library and told them she was being transferred to a neighboring school, ____. Within a week or so she was gone and Mr. ____ was our new principal. A teacher asked Mr. ____ if we still had to do cooperative learning. Although his answer was “yes,” very little was ever said or done about it in our weekly meetings. It was a relief to most teachers who conscientiously tried to teach the children in their classroom like they would want their own children taught.
I had a teacher friend in the (school where the principal got transferred to). She said Mrs. ____ instigated cooperative learning as vigorously as she had in ____. I do not know if Mrs. ____was using a cooperative learning model (or federal grant) to get more money for the schools from the federal government.
This social experiment passed over as a dark cloud does but leaving some ideas and elements in place; such as the philosophy that it takes a village (not the family) to raise a child.
* Oak Note: For those of you that are not familiar with the LDS religion, individual congregations are called a “ward” and encompass a specific geographical area ranging from a few blocks in densely populated LDS areas, to entire cities in sparsely populated areas.
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Q&A with this retired teacher:
Q: Is it still happening in Utah schools?
A: No direct knowledge of this happening now.
Q: What grade levels did this take place in?
A: Our school was K-6 and I taught 2nd grade. I know it happened in 1-6th grade
Q: What was the game “suicide” about?
A: I never found out. Another teacher and I used to alternate taking both our classes together to phys ed. This teacher was my grade level team leader. When “suicide” started, I quit allowing her to take my students to the gym and just did it solely myself.
Q: It has become somewhat normal to see elementary school desks organized into small groups, or see round tables for desks for multiple children in classrooms. If you see this what should you do?
A: You should sit down in this class and see how this teacher is working with these children. Does the teacher have a plan as to how each child functions in that group and is there consensus building for answers, or are they just grouped together but do individual work? Who is going to be the one that speaks for this group? The most intelligent student? The happy talker? The student who is struggling?
Q: What other concerns did you see?
A:
1) We used to have specialists to send students to for reading or math help such as a special ed teacher who had their own plan to take that child from where they were to a higher level. Now in many cases another teacher comes into the room to try and keep the student on the same schedule as others and the plan is above where that child really needs help. To put it another way, “even though you don’t understand or have the bottom foundation bricks, we’re going to work on these higher bricks.”
2) Gifted and talented students were pulled from rooms for special advancement, but instead of being advanced they got more field trips to put them into job training previews (huge disadvantage to their advancement, and bad for the remaining students who didn’t see good examples in the class). It seemed to be building a tiered society in schools.
Q: What is your advice to other parents?
A: Find out what your children are learning. Sit in their classrooms and watch how the teacher operates. You have that right.
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Oak Comments:
I am not 100% certain of the origin of this insane experiment in indoctrination, but I would suspect it is from John Goodlad and his involvement in our state which began in 1983 at BYU when he set up the Public School Partnership with 5 surrounding districts.
On page 174 of Goodlad’s book, “Access to Knowledge”, he writes that one reason for “cooperative learning strategies” is “to provide more excellent and equitable education.” Equitable is the key word. As seen above, individuality is crushed so that all students can be mediocre. (Matt. 18:6)
Teachers, if you are engaged in any of this type of classroom experimentation on children, I urge you to stop. If it is being forced on you, please let parents know what is happening to their children. I pray they’ll do the right thing.
The booklet is called “Children and the United Nations.” Published by Zaner-Bloser, and listed as “Recommended Student Resource” in Utah’s online Recommended Instructional Materials database, this Common Core-aligned “instructional text” evangelizes the United Nations, UNICEF, and the controversial UN “Convention on the Rights of the Child,” (which recently failed to pass the US Senate, and is likely to be voted on again this year). Here is a small excerpt from the 64-page booklet (emphasis added):
“Kofi Annan, the UN’s former Secretary-General, said, ‘There is no tool more effective than the education of girls.’
“Let’s take a look at why Annan’s statement is true. Suppose a country commits to educating its young girls. What might be the result? First, families will probably get smaller. Educated women tend to have fewer children. Why do women who are educated have fewer children? Because they have more opportunities in life. They have options beyond raising children. Having fewer children makes a big difference…Smaller families mean there are fewer people to feed, clothe, and shelter. That helps a society preserve its natural resources.
“Sadly, many young girls in the developing world are still denied a good education. To address this, UNICEF has been working with other international groups to address this.” (p. 34-35)
This political booklet is a clear example of why an increasing number of Utahns are fighting nationalized education standards and are demanding a return to local control of education.
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The USOE review states there could be some things thought to be controversial or political in nature in the series and teachers should use this as an opportunity to discuss potential bias (http://delleat.schools.utah.gov/rims/BookDetail.jsp?isbn=9780736799645&coreCode=06020000010). This didn’t lessen their recommendation of the series to be used by teachers, nor have they any way to track which teachers might be using this series and notify them of any issues. Schools and districts purchase books based on the recommendations of the Utah state office of education individuals who review materials and put their stamp of approval on the books. <sarcasm>No doubt, the state office is working with the John Birch Society to identify a quality resource to give the other side of the U.N. story so that teachers can properly discuss the political bias in the U.N. book. </sarcasm>
This book is a Common Core aligned nonfiction book, designed for Level T/U reading which puts it solidly in material deemed appropriate for 5th graders.
Here’s a look at what the book teaches about the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Please read below it as well.
Much of what is said here seems like common sense. This is intentional . At its heart is an agenda of gutting parental rights.The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has not been ratified in the United States, but it comes up periodically by those who wish to have it made law. Here are a couple of resources that help show the bigger picture.
This excellent video shows real life stories about how parental rights are being taken away under the same philosophy as the CRC. If it is ever ratified in the United States, it will be a wholesale loss of parental rights. The video is about 36 minutes long.
This is the progressive education dream. They are openly exposing their agenda because they are either confident they can pass it, or panicked they’ll never get another chance.
“Children who don’t get a pre-kindergarten education, ideally from birth to age 5, might fall behind and “may as well drop out” by third grade, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said on Wednesday at an event to garner support for President Barack Obama’s $75-billion proposal to increase pre-school enrollment across the country.
Sebelius said investing in pre-school education would bring ‘prosperity to all our people.’”
Utah state GOP delegates officially disapproved Common Core when they passed the anti-common core resolution this year by a 65 percent vote.
Was that not enough for our state school board and governor?
Gov. Gary Herbert continues to promote the Common Core-dependent Prosperity 2020 initiative. And the state school board continues to label teachers and others who long to reclaim local control and who want legitimate, non-experimental education standards, “the misinformed.”
The fact is, we are not misinformed; we know what Common Core is, and we reject it.
The board won’t even respond to requests for specifics about what we’re so misinformed about.
Now, despite the Utah anti-common core resolution passing; despite the examples of Michigan, Indiana and other states passing time-out bills against Common Core implementation; despite Obama’s recent announcement that he plans to tax Americans to pay for Common Core technologies in his ConnectEd Initiative; still, Utah’s school board has not softened its rigorous-praise-of-Common-Core talking points and is moving it forward as if nothing is wrong.
In fact, the board markets Common Core as being beyond debate; it’s so minimalistic, so consensually adopted, so protective of privacy rights and so academically legitimate (none of which is true) that it is too big to fail and is beyond any future need for amendments (which is indeed fortunate for them, since there is no Common Core amendment process).
Something is truly amiss when experienced Utah teachers with credentials, like me, are perpetually rejected for requests to the state school board to discuss the pros and cons of Common Core. The board doesn’t want a two-sided discussion.
The board is silent on these simple questions:
Where is a shred of evidence to support the claim that Common Core improves education?
Where are any studies showing that the reduction of literary study improves college readiness?
Where is some evidence that slowing the age at which students learn math algorithms improves college readiness?
Where is any amendment process for Utah’s math and English standards, under the copyrighted Common Core?
How can one opt out of the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) tracking and the Common Core tests?
Where is the legal — constitutional — authority for people outside our state to set our local standards and to create and monitor our tests?
Why does Utah stand by while Obama announces that he will redesign schools and tax all Americans to pay for it, without Utah putting up a fight?
Why is there a spiral of silence culture now, that demands everyone pretend to agree; where is freedom of expression and freedom of speech in the common agenda, now that teachers and principals don’t speak out for fear of losing their jobs?
How on earth can anyone call Common Core “state-led” when unelected boards that operate behind closed doors, that are not accountable to the public, developed and copyrighted the standards, bypassing voters and the vast majority of teachers and legislators?
Where is the line-item cost analysis of taxpayers’ money being spent on Common Core technologies, teacher training and texts?
When will state leadership address Common Core’s specific damages with the people who elected these leaders to serve us, rather than bowing to every federal whim?
Will the board and governor ever stand up to the Department of Education’s tsunami of assaults on liberties?
Will they continue to fight against local teachers and citizens who rightfully demand local liberty and who rightfully ask for proven, non-experimental, amendable standards — following the example set by the national and world-leading education system in Massachusetts, prior to Common Core?
Joy Pullman, research fellow at Heartland Institute, writes this awesome article exposing how the Common Core standards were created in a shroud of secrecy while states claim they were state-led. Our own Utah office of education didn’t even know who was on the writing committees for math and ELA standards until they were complete.
