Get Wise, America: Defining Terms of Education Reform

America, we need to get smart about education reform. Fast.

Lesson one:  when education reformers use the term “rigorous,” they mean to impress you.  Don’t be impressed.  One size fits all education can never be rigorous for every student.  That’s like calling a mile run “rigorous.”  It might be rigorous for the couch potatoes but it won’t be for the athletes.   The term is meaningless when applied to every child and stripped of teacher input.

Lesson two: when education reformers use the term “high quality teacher,” they mean their version. Don’t buy the assumption that what they call a high quality teacher is what you imagine when you think of a great teacher.  The new high quality teacher must be “effective” as a data-collector, test-prepper, and political indoctrinator of environmental and social justice agendas.  Gone are the days when good teachers were characterized by benevolence, spontaneity, creativity, love, nurturing, and intellectual openness and honesty.  A high quality teacher to the Dept. of Ed means one that pushes the line that the government wants pushed, one that no parent got to vote on.

Lesson three: when education reformers use the term “education reform,” they mean their version.  It’s a tightly controlled, standardized, data-collection focused, collective-not-individual focused, environmentally-obsessed, social-justice promoting, uncreative  form of education that has little to do with what a particular student needs or wants. Don’t buy the assumption that it’s actually improving education the way a reasonable parent or grandparent would want education to be improved!  Ask for evidence and empirical studies to back up claims– always.

Lesson four: when education reformers use the term “internationally competitive,” they mean to intimidate you.  Don’t be intimidated.  The truth is that America turns out so many highly qualified college graduates that we can’t even employ them all.  We are incredibly competitive internationally.  Not only are we smart, but we are creative because we have been free.  We innovate miracles in medicine, technology, entertainment and agriculture because we have not been stifled as so many other countries are.  Watch this video.

Lesson five:  when education reformers name-drop, (Harvard, Stanford, Fordham Foundation, Manhattan Institute, the P.T.A., etc.) they mean to marginalize you.  Don’t be moved.  Common Core is educational malpractice and many –even in academia– know it.  Common Core is an untested experiment being pushed without empirical evidence as a foundation.  Harvard, Stanford and countless other supposedly intellectual institutions have been literally bought with Bill Gates’ foundation money –bribed to say that the naked emperor is wearing clothes–  and these establishments have, by taking Gates’ bribes, lost their ability to question the validity of the Common Core.  Don’t listen to anyone’s academic reviews who has been paid to say Common Core is valid.  That’s not honest; that’s gold digging.

Lesson six:  when education reformers say Common Core is “state-led,” they mean to reassure you that it’s no threat to your constitutional rights.  Don’t be fooled.  There’s nothing state-led about Common Core.  Legislators were completely bypassed.  There was never a vote.  There was never a public discussion.  Most people in most states still don’t even know what the term Common Core means, much less feel they led the process.  The standards were developed stealthily behind closed doors in Washington, D.C., by the NGA/CCSSO, two unelected groups who copyrighted the standards and who have provided no amendment process for any state to alter a single strand of a standard.   And the federal government claims credit for pushing the standards on the states.  Just listen to Sec. Duncan’s and Pres. Obama’s speeches on the subject. For example, see Sec. Duncan’s 2010 speech on “The Vision of Education Reform“:

“In March of 2009, President Obama called on the nation’s governors and state school chiefs to “develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.” Virtually everyone thought the president was dreaming.

But today, 37 states and the District of Columbia have already chosen to adopt the new state-crafted Common Core standards in math and English. Not studying it, not thinking about it, not issuing a white paper—they have actually done it. Over three-fourths of all U.S. public school students now reside in states that have voluntarily adopted higher, common college-ready standards that are internationally benchmarked. That is an absolute game-changer in a system which until now set 50 different goalposts for success.

The second game-changer is that states have banded together in large consortia to develop a new generation of assessments aligned with the states’ Common Core standards.”

The unconstitutional, detrimental, top-down nationalization of education and usurpation of states’ rights to determine education has clearly and without question, occurred.

The thing that remains unclear is this:  what are Americans going to do about it?