What’s the powerful reason that you’ve taken a stand against Common Core?  Why do you want the restoration of high quality, time-tested education standards and local control in Utah?  Do you have a great story?  We want to hear it!

Submit your essay to Utahns Against Common Core at consecutiveintegers@yahoo.com by the deadline:  midnight on February 15th.  Three essays will be selected to be read at the State Capitol Common Core Event on February 18th  from 6:30 to 8:00.  Winners will be notified on February 17th and winners will be announced at the public meeting.  Winning and non-winning essays will be posted at Utahns Against Common Core.

Topic:  Why I oppose the Common Core Initiative

Length:  Essay must be readable in less than three minutes.

Deadline: 12:00 midnight on February 15th, 2014

Prize:  You get to share your story/essay at the State Capitol Common Core Event

Dr. Christopher Tienken on Common Core assessments: “I think it borders on institutional abuse.”

It’s starting to look like New York, that bastion of right-wing extremists, err…, may be the first state to throw off Common Core. Having fully embraced it in all it’s glory, they’ve now seen first hand the damage it can cause to children. Here’s some clips.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/17577-new-york-revolts-against-common-core

Now, after listening to an outraged public in a series of 11 forums held across New York, state lawmakers are getting ready to file a bill that would slam the brakes on the scheme. In a phone interview with The New American, New York State Assemblyman Al Graf, a member of the Assembly Education Committee, explained that the coalition of legislators had no choice but to take action to stop the “disaster” that Common Core has foisted on the state. “This is state-sponsored child abuse,” he said.

Dr. Gary Thompson would agree.

Among other problems with the controversial standards, Graf cited wildly inappropriate material, massive costs, the devastating impact on teachers and students, and more. “If you wanted to destroy public education, this is what you would do,” he said. “Teaching is a skill. Teaching is an art form. What they are doing here is turning teachers into hall monitors.”

When will Utah teachers and schools speak out? It took Alpine School District years of complaints from parents before they started teaching the times tables and long division to children again. There’s a reason why there are more charter schools in ASD per capita than any other district… Common Core will create a push for alternate education, but this time it’ll be home school and private school to escape the nonsense.

The material is often highly inappropriate, the lawmaker continued. “Explain to me why a first grader has to point out ancient Mesopotamia on a globe or explain their contributions to modern civilization — they’re six,” Graf said, citing a broad range of examples illustrating that the controversial standards appear to have been poorly thought out — at the very least. “But you know there are a lot of people making money on all this.”

Bingo!

Graf, who represents a Long Island district, also told The New American that Common Core fails to take into account children with disabilities. One special-education teacher who spoke out during the forums held across New York, for example, told lawmakers about the disasters she has experienced under the new education scheme. The kids were being tested on material they never learned and, sitting still for 90 minutes to take the new tests, were deeply confused. One distraught child was even caught stabbing himself with a pencil under the desk during the test.

“She was breaking into tears testifying about this,” Graf said about the special-education teacher who shared the story. “I have parents pouring their hearts out telling me how their kids are coming home and don’t want to go to school anymore. I have kids that loved math and now hate math.” Some teachers who testified, knowing that they could be putting their careers in jeopardy, told lawmakers that they just “couldn’t sit there and let them do this to these children.”

Dr. Gary Thompson and Ed Flint should have no problem supporting themselves in the future. Deja Vu. I think I just wrote that.

Dr. Gary Thompson penned this article regarding the lawsuit just filed for the family whose child has been psychologically damaged as a result of Common Core and bad district policy. Ed Flint is the attorney representing Dr. and Mrs. T.  Dr. Thompson published this post publicly on Facebook. Ed Flint replied to it and I have included his comment below as well so that everyone can understand the gravity of this situation.

Common Core Is The “Hotel California” For “Quirky” Kids:

                              “You Can Check In Anytime You Like…But You Can Never Leave.”

  Why Paternalist Attitudes Towards Parents Are Destroying Our Children In Public Schools

Forward:

Don Henley’s and Glenn Frey’s eerie musical salutation to the over indulgences associated with the California lifestyle of the 1980’s,  sheds some light on two defective foundational issues associated with trendy educational reforms such as Common Core: 1).  A sense of omnipotence, 2). A lack of humility.

Yesterday, Attorney Edward D. Flint and I were asked, by Rod Arquette on his radio show, to discuss the recent “lawsuit” filed against Alpine School District for and behalf of our clients Dr. & Mrs. “T” and their son “T.T.”  Attorney Flint brilliantly outlined the legal issues associated with the suit, the blatant and serious violations of both civil and disability laws, and the level of arrogance associated with the District when they were made aware of their errors.  He also discussed the dangerous effects of applying a “one size fits all” decision matrix to children who do not fit into the neat categories designed by politicians, and special interest “suits”, who have never stepped foot into either a classroom, or an education psychology clinic.

Near the end of the show, the host asked me how the current “lawsuit” was related to “Common Core”, and seconds before I launched into my well prepared sound bite, my phone died.  This was no conspiracy; it was just pure idiocy on my part.  Cellphones do not operate well without sufficient power.   Barring a lightening strike that fries my computer hard drive, I will now answer Rod’s question.

Alpine District vs. Dr. & Mrs. T clearly and definitively exemplifies everything wrong with several philosophical and operational aspects that under pin the Common Core, none of which have anything to do with the curriculum or standards of the Core.

Over the past year, I have had the wonderful opportunity to listen to, and rub elbows with, some of the sharpest minds in the world in the areas of Mathematics, English and Social Studies curriculum development and implementation.   As a parent and a voter, I have developed my own lay, non-expert, opinions regarding these issues.  Lay opinions, however, are like elbows… everybody has one.  I will not discuss issues related to curriculum as they pertain to Common Core, and the issue is not a cause of action in the Alpine v. T case.

The causes of action in this Due Process Petition, set to be heard in an Administrative Law Hearing, should be of great concern to every parent, taxpayer, local & state school board member, elected members of the Utah Legislature,and local public school administers and Superintendents.   In layman’s terms, Dr. & Mrs. T, via their counsel, asserts the following:

1.  Their parental concerns regarding their son’s educational placement were ignored and/or dismissed.

2.  Their parental concerns regarding their son’s mental health were ignored.

3.  Their concerns were met with extreme and cruel passive aggressive actions.

4.  Alpine District retaliated against them for “daring” to bring in outside “experts” to assist them.

5.  Despite well documented concerns regarding the validity and ethics of the school’s IEP evaluation, the District IEP Team continued to utilize invalid, or unethical,testing protocols as part of their determination to deny special education considerations.

6.  Despite multiple pleas from parents and licensed clinical child therapists, the school continued to utilize punitive measures on a gifted 11 year old. This resulted in the demise of a child’s mental health, until his therapist suggested they remove the child from the school.

In the past, when I have written, lectured or testified to the “harm” that Common Core can, and has, caused a multitude of children.  The “one size fits all” and “top down (“we know better than you”) me