Below is a post from Christel Swasey’s blog concerning a massive document the Utah State Office of Education (USOE) put out trying to set the record straight on Common Core. Unfortunately for them, truth is not on their side.

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By Christel Swasey

http://truthinamericaneducation.com/common-core-state-standards/debunking-misconceptions-the-common-core-is-state-led/

Of all the things that the Truth in American Education site has posted, my favorite thing is that title.

Truth in American Education.  The title itself teaches a fact most Americans still don’t realize: that there are loads of lies parading as education reform improvements that need exposure via verifiable, well researched facts.  It does not matter if good people with good intentions, merely parroting information received from other organizations, tell those lies in all sincerity.  Sincerity does not trump truth.  Facts are still facts and the consequences for all of us are huge for aligning our school systems with such lies.

Our children’s futures are at stake, yet few parents stand up.  Why?  For those of us who are naturally non-confrontational and trusting, the title, Truth in American Education, is a wake-up call that we should ask questions, verify claims and demand references for promises being spoken by authority figures in education reform today.  We should know our educational rights under the Constitution and know our rights as parents.

Don’t take unreferenced promises as answers.

Speaking of which: today I became aware of a 204-page document put out by the Utah State Office of Misinformation Education.

It’s called “A Complete Resource Guide  On Utah’s Core Standards.”

You can access the 204-pager here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B745qngYVLvVWXRFeU9MRUIzRTQ/edit?usp=sharing

Rather than waste my afternoon composing yet another rebuttal to the Utah State Office of Education, I will just quote Professor Sandra Stotsky of Arkansas, who has read the 204-page Utah document.

Stotsky served on the official Common Core Validation Committee and was among those who refused to sign off that the Common Core standards were, in fact, adequate.

Of “A Complete Resource Guide On Utah’s Core Standards,” Stotsky states, “lies and unsupported claims” abound in the document.

She also writes:

“the writers didn’t even get the committee I was on right.  I was appointed to the Validation Committee, not the Standards Development Committee, and along with the one mathematician on the Validation Committee (and 3 others) declined to sign off on the final version of Common Core’s standards.

The writers keep repeating ad nauseam that Common Core was a state-led effort.  Everyone knows most of the effort was financed by the Gates Foundation and that Gates chose the standards writers who had no qualifications for writing K-12 standards in either ELA or math (David Coleman and Jason Zimba).

What more can I possibly add?

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That is the end of Christel’s article, but I (Oak Norton) want to add one thing about the math write-up this document from the USOE contains.

Whoever wrote the first few pages in the introduction that deals with the history in 2007 of revising the Utah math standards is ill informed and misrepresents several key points. I was heavily involved in this process to get new math standards for Utah and there were people in the USOE who actually worked to torpedo the process. There was supposed to be a comparison of the standards to Singapore and Japan. That never happened and was admitted to.

The USOE document above says that Drs. Milgram and Wu were dissatisfied with the 2007 standards but the Fordham Foundation gave them an A- rating, trying to show Milgram and Wu as out of touch. This is patently false, but this lie gets repeated down through the timeline of events presented by the USOE. Milgram and Wu were pleased with the FINAL product, but what happened prior to finalizing was a stunning indictment of the USOE’s personnel working against the math standards, and what upset these two distinguished standards writers. After Wu made a final review of the standards, he gave dozens of revisions to the USOE. They made NONE of his changes to the standards. When he found out, he was stunned.

Here’s a write-up I did in September 2007 which includes the email from Dr. Wu to Nicole Paulson chastising her for ignoring his revisions.

http://www.oaknorton.com/mathupdates/20070926.cfm

Then read these articles, particularly the first one which has other links to my website for what happened then and what the USOE is doing now to destroy quality math education in Utah.

https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/a-recent-history-of-utahs-math-standards/

https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/usoe-common-core-death-of-math/

https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/reigniting-the-math-wars-over-the-death-of-calculus/

It is clear that whoever prepared this 204 page piece of propaganda isn’t concerned with the truth. They are looking for a big document they can throw at legislators to convince them under the “official seal” that their side of the story is right without them having the time and resources to look up everything in the document. Unfortunately, those who are convinced by this documentation are accepting a house of cards.