Phillip Hamburger, law professor at Columbia Law School, gave a moving speech at Hillsdale College about the Constitution, also published in Imprimis this year. It laid out more clearly than I’d seen it before, exactly how the U.S. has strayed from our Constitution, and how it’s endangering us. His speech was titled, “The History and Danger of Administrative Law”.
Professor Hamburger made no allusion to education reforms, yet he wonderfully, as a bonus, happened to explain the foundational problem of the Common Core Initiative: that the governance system of Common Core is unrepresentative, unconstitutional and dangerous. Here’s how.
Hamburger explained that administrative law revives something that the Constitution barred: prerogative, or absolute power. He wrote: “Administrative law is commonly defended as a new sort of power, a product of the 19th and the 20th centuries that developed to deal with the problems of modern society in all its complexity… What I will suggest, in contrast, is that administrative power is actually very old.”
Old is right. Throughout history, countless generations suffered because others have wielded power over their lives. The whole purpose of the suffering and sacrifices of American pilgrims and pioneers was to escape unbalanced, top-down, often cruel, power. The success and freedom of the USA stemmed from the Constitution’s restraining of human power over other humans, and its strict limitation of its own government, and its checking and spreading of power, in order to avoid the cycle of oppression that the founders fled. The Constitution gives no lawmaking power to anyone but Congress.
Hamburger said, “Put simply, administrative acts are binding or constraining edicts that come, not through law, but through other mechanisms or pathways…In a way we can think of administrative law as a form of off-road driving… For those in the driver’s seat, this can be quite exhilarating. For the rest of us, it’s a little unnerving.”
Reading this, I thought about Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who drove off-road when he made regulations and policy changes to what Congress had long ago created in the privacy-protecting federal FERPA laws, so that he could meet his education data mining goals, which included (as outlined in his cooperative agreements* with state testing consortia) the sharing of “student-level data” –subject to law. Duncan had to alter that law. He shredded the previously protective FERPA when he made those regulatory changes. The Electronic Privacy Information Center sued him for it. But Duncan got away with it. Case dismissed.
I also thought of Duncan’s waving of money in front of cash-strapped states, tempting/coercing states into adopting Common standards and assessments and database systems in exchange for money. Off-road again. No basis in Constitutionality, just in cash.
I also thought about the little unauthorized onto-the-road drive taken by a little private club with a misleading name, the National Governors’ Association (NGA) which acts as if it were a legitimate voice for the people, as if it were Congress. NGA created, promoted and copyrighted these national standards, (the Common Core) as well as partnering with CCSSO in making national data collection standards (CEDS). The CCSSO and NGA hold no representational authority over education. It’s a giant bluff, and would almost be laughable, but it’s not funny, because it damages America.
I also thought about the blurring of lines of authority and power that happen with the creation of public-private-partnerships. When NGA and its sister-club, the superintendents’ club, CCSSO, partnered with the federal government and with Bill Gates to create education policy, Common Core bypassed Congress in two ways: by federal overreach plus corporate overreach –into what ought to be the states’ voters’ decision making arena.
Here’s a screenshot, evidence that the federal government has partnered with the private club that copyrighted Common Core and created Common Data Standards:
Remember our Constitution. It says that ALL legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress. Congress is supposed to make the laws. The Department of Education isn’t Congress. Neither is the National Governors’ Association, and neither is Bill Gates. Their assumption of unauthorized power over education policy, rather than having voters, via their Congressional representatives, to determine how education goes, is a clear corruption.
So what about corruption? Who cares?
Here’s why we must care. Hamburger writes that administrative law is “essentially a reemergence of the absolute power practiced by pre-modern kings. Rather than a modern necessity, it is a latterday version of a recurring threat—a threat inherent in human nature and in the temptations of power.”
He reminds us: “Early Americans were very familiar with absolute power. They feared this extra-legal, supra-legal, and consolidated power because they knew from English history that such power could evade the law and override all legal rights… Americans established the Constitution to be the source of all government power and to bar any absolute power. Nonetheless, absolute power has come back to life.”
He goes on: “ over the past 120 years, Americans have reestablished the very sort of power that the Constitution most centrally forbade. Administrative law… binds Americans not through law but through other mechanisms—not through statutes but through regulations—and not through the decisions of courts but through otheradjudications. It… requires judges to put aside their independent judgment and defer to administrative power as if it were above the law—which our judges do far more systematically than even the worst of 17th century English judges. And it is consolidated in that it combines the three powers of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—in administrative agencies.”
He concludes: “In sum, the conventional understanding of administrative law is utterly mistaken. It is wrong on the history and oblivious to the danger. That danger is absolutism: extra-legal, supra-legal, and consolidated power. And the danger matters because administrative power revives this absolutism. The Constitution carefully barred this threat, but constitutional doctrine has since legitimized this dangerous sort of power. It therefore is necessary to go back to basics… We should demand rule through law and rule under law. Even more fundamentally, we need to reclaim the vocabulary of law: Rather than speak of administrative law, we should speak of administrative power—indeed, of absolute power...”
*Today, I noticed that the Cooperative Agreement between the Department of Education and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia link says “webpage not available.” But I had typed it into another post, not in full but at length, if you are interested, here.
Once again, we are indebted to Colorado Principal Bob Schaeffer who has collected this list of national news articles about pushback concerning high-stakes tests in the U.S.
Before I post the list of news articles, I want to share a concern recently raised by Utah Dr. Gary Thompson: that perhaps the heated, national testing pushback could result in public acceptance of another nascent trend called stealth assessments. What do you think? Stealth Assessments are tests that are so deeply embedded into the curriculum and into video-game-based assignments that students do not suffer from test anxiety, not knowing they are being tested; but parents cannot easily opt children out of the tests; and in fact, teachers may be unaware that any testing/data mining is going on during stealth assessment. The tests blur the lines between assessment and curriculum. Is that to be the solution to all the test trouble? Which is worse? View Dr. Thompson’s full lecture on SAGE testing (Utah’s Common Core testing) here. See minute 35 for information on stealth assessments.
Mark Twain said that it’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.
Having tried and failed for (going on three) years to persuade Governor Herbert and the State School Board of Utah to withdraw from the Common Core Initiative and its snake oil data mining programs, I agree with Twain.
And I’ve stopped trying to figure out whether people who promote or go along with Common Core are witting villains or not, remembering my dad’s saying, that it doesn’t matter much if someone is a pawn or a knave; the results of their actions or inactions are the same.
Actual villains don’t have claws and fangs to tip us off, like characters in a Disney movie; they don’t even know they’re on team villain, in most cases. Out of ignorance and arrogance, most villains sincerely believe in their paths.
Consider the case of David Coleman, who wrote the Common Core English Language Arts Standards and then snagged the gig of president of the College Board (the group that creates college entrance exams and writes the A.P. standards and tests).
Coleman’s villainy, in my opinion, really boils down to his own blinding pride. As Homeschool Defense Association President Michael Farris smartly said: “I told Mr. Coleman… Just because you have a good idea (homeschooling in my case, Common Core in his case), it doesn’t mean that it is appropriate to force everyone in the country to follow your idea. And that is my central problem with the Common Core and all forms of centralized educational planning.”
It’s strange that Coleman, a non-teacher, a businessman, believed that he held the only vision for what was best for every American child’s education, and also sincerely believed that it was a veddy, veddy good idea to impose it, by unconstitutional means if necessary, on the entire nation.
Just watch the first minute of this video.
He admitted on this film that he went around talking governors into his vision. (It wasn’t the governors who thought of Common Core; it was Coleman. Coleman didn’t realize that governors don’t have constitutional authority to represent voters in creating a national education system.)
But Coleman was so convinced of the superiority of his ideas that he successfully directed their imposition on K-12 schools throughout America, and then successfully altered college entrance exams to match his Common Core. That’s a lot of power in one guy.
That’s a lot of nerve in one guy, too. Where did he get the nerve to defy millions of teachers, years of time-tested tradition, simple logic and all due process? I don’t know.
The purpose of my post today is to share what they have said.
Tampio’s and Greene’s reviews clarify what’s wrong with Coleman’s Common Core vision: 1) Faulty, narrow assumptions in the actual standards 2) The restrictiveness; in other words, even if the standards weren’t faulty, they are one person’s vision: we’re all stuck with his One True Vision. Nobody else gets a voice.
1. Places “tight restrictions on what may be thought — or at least what may be expressed to earn teacher approval, high grades and good test scores.”
2. “Expects students to answer questions by merely stringing together key words in the text before them. This does not teach philosophy or thinking; it teaches the practice of rote procedures, conformity and obedience.”
3. Minimally discusses historical context or outside sources that may make material come alive. “For instance, he suggests that teachers ask students, “What word does Lincoln use most often in the address?” rather than, say, discuss the Civil War.”
4. “Discourages students from making connections between ideas, texts or events in the world — in a word, from thinking. Students are not encouraged to construct knowledge and understanding; they must simply be adept at repeating it.”
5. Imposes Coleman’s philosophy of education across all subjects. [Coleman]observes, “ ‘Similar work could be done for texts … in other areas such as social studies, history, science and technical subjects.’ Like a chef’s signature flavor, Coleman’s philosophy of education permeates the myriad programs that the College Board runs.”
6. Copies China’s test-centric system. “U.S. schools have educated many successful intellectuals, artists and inventors. By contrast, the Chinese model of education emphasizes rigorous standards and high-stakes tests, pre-eminently the gaokao college entrance exam. Chinese policymakers rue, however, how this education culture stifles creativity, curiosity and entrepreneurship. The Common Core will lead us to the same trap. Educators should not discard what has made the U.S. a hotbed of innovation and entrepreneurship.”
7. Disrespects student individuality. “In perhaps his most famous public statement, Coleman told a room of educators not to teach students to write personal narratives, because “as you grow up in this world, you realize that people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.” This statement expresses, albeit more crassly, the same sentiment as his essay on cultivating wonder. He demands that students do what they are told and not offer their own perspectives on things.”
Pennsylvania teacher Peter Greene is likewise more than slightly annoyed at David Coleman.
Greene notes that Coleman is a “man who has singlehandedly tried to redefine what it means to be an educated human being.”
Greene writes, “Some reformsters may pay lip service to the accumulated wisdom of the vast army of professional educators; Coleman never does.” Coleman “is not here to share some ideas and techniques teacher to teacher, but is here to give his superior insights to the nation full old lesser beings who are hopelessly lost and failing.”
In sum:
“Coleman repeatedly fails to distinguish between his own experience of the text and Universal Truth. This leads him to believe apparently that if he just figured something out about Bernardo, he must be the first person ever to see it, that his own reaction to a line is the universal one, that his path into the text is the only one, and that things that do not matter to him should not matter to anybody. Of all the reformsters, he is the one least likely to ever acknowledge contributions of any other living human being. For someone who famously said that nobody gives a shot about your thoughts and feelings, Coleman is enormously fascinated by and has great fait on his own thoughts and feelings.”
“…Coleman thinks a standardized test is really a great model of life, where there’s always just one correct answer, one correct path, one correct reading, and life is about showing that you have it (or telling other people to have it)… what David Coleman doesn’t know about literature is what David Coleman doesn’t know about being human in the world. Life is not a bubble test. There is a richness and variety in human experience that Coleman simply does not recognize nor allow for.
His view of knowledge, learning, understanding, and experience is cramped and tiny. It’s unfortunate that circumstances have allowed him such unfettered power over the very idea of what an educated person should be. It’s like making a person who sees only black and white the High Minister of National Art.”
Joy Pullman’s new must-read article at The Federalist is: “Seven Things Politicians Will Say to Make You Think They Oppose Common Core”.
Linked, documented and easy to read, this article delivers a long-needed direct punch to the gut of the hypocritical politicians (and school board candidates and others) who claim to be “for local control,” for parents’ rights, for teachers, for children—- some even claim to be against Common Core— but all the while, their left hand is undoing whatever their right hand does. Pullman’s article explains this hypocrisy so well. Her seven points are:
1. Scott Walker: Let’s Create Another Educrat Committee
2. Mike Pence: But We Can’t Lose Our NCLB Waiver
3. Mike Huckabee: It’s Not Common Core, It’s the Name
4. John Kasich: We Still Have Local Control
5. Jeb Bush: I Will Never Support a National Curriculum
6. Bobby Jindal: The Feds Ruined Common Core
7. Senators: I Can’t Do Anything Because It’s a State Issue
Pullman also exposes the still-little-known fact that Common Core is NOT just academic standards but also common data standards and databases.
She explains that the federal government is “sending states millions to create identical student databases that plug directly into Common Core K-12 testing pipelines so everyone’s personal information can be collected in a government dossier. Are these senators saying they have no power to stop things they or their predecessors (mostly) authorized? Are they saying they can’t sign onto bills that prevent federal involvement with Common Core, testing, or curriculum? That once an executive decides to run all over Congress and the laws, no one can stop him? If so, time to get someone else into their offices who thinks Congress is more than a bunch of bobble heads. At the very least, they could be honest like Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, who recently went from supporting Common Core to opposing it, and to prove his conversion has introduced a bill that would prohibit the federal government from mandating or incentivizing curriculum mandates, tests, or curriculum. It seems to be a strong bill, but here’s the problem: The U.S. Department of Education is already ignoring three laws that prohibit its Common Core-pushing. Adding another doesn’t seem likely to change its behavior. That means what really needs to happen is cutting USDOE off at the knees by slashing its budget and responsibilities.
Here’s a video that I hadn’t seen before, made last spring as Alaska legislators listened to expert testimony about Common Core. It’s long, but truly worth the time. My plan was to listen while I folded laundry but I kept throwing down the laundry to run over and replay a section, cheering for the vital testimonies being presented.
One of the jumping-and-cheering parts was Professor Anthony Esolen –on the ham-handed writing of the Common Core English standards– which starts at minute 19:00 and goes to about 27:00.
He vividly expressed how during this era of trash-literature, when it is more important than ever to bring students to great books, the Common Core fails us; it doesn’t even introduce students to their great literary heritage except in little fragments and shards; it fails to coherently teach grammar; it tragically kills any chance at kindling a deep love of reading, suffocating under information-text mandates the needed wide exposure to imaginative and classic literature.
It’s understated to say that the meeting grew a bit tense. Those gathered did not seem to agree even on whether or not Alaska’s standards are the same as Common Core standards. Key attendees appeared unmoved by the logical, passionate expressions given by testifiers, their minds likely having been made up prior to the testimonies.
At this link, watch the discussion, introduced by Representative Lora Reinbold. Testifiers include: Terrence Moore of Hillsdale College; Anthony Eselon of Providence College; Sandra Stotsky (ret.) University of Arkansas; Ze’ev Wurman, former Department of Education Official (Bush Admin.), NEA Ron Fuhrer President; Marty Van Diest, parent; Troy Carlock and Joe Alward, teachers; and Mike Hanley, Commissioner of Education.
The Governor’s new budget plan is making news this week, with most of the tax surplus money planned for Utah “education.” That’s the governor’spipeline-based definition of education, not education as most of us would define it. His “education funding” funds the state’s SLDS data-mining aligned programs made palatable to citizens and legislators under the branding of “education.”)
It’s tragic and ironic that the Governor has often said that Utah can get out of Common Core anytime we want to. The Utah Attorney General validated that statement in his report, saying that Utah’s Common Core doesn’t cede control to the federal government. (See rebuttal to the report here.)
But how would Utah free herself now of Common Core?
We’ve decided to sign away, in ink made of the sweat and blood of taxpayers who earned the hundreds of millions— any real possibility of withdrawal from the Common Core.
How would Utah ever get out of Common Core after recreating our whole education system based on the experiment of Common Core and Common Data aligned technologies and tests? (Not only that– we are now leading others along: Utah now gains millions by selling our Common Core test questions to other states, making them dependent on us for their own Common Core assessments.)
How foolish are we, to keep investing and investing— in something that was built on a sandy, utterly experimental, and unconstitutional foundation from the start?
The Governor’s even planning to hike gas taxes to support his enthusiasm for the workforce-pipeline version of “education”. The Deseret News reported that “The governor’s spending plan… puts pressure on lawmakers to look at a gas tax increase by calling for $94.2 million in sales taxes earmarked for transportation to instead be used for education.”
The Utah Board of Education praised the governor this week: “The Board of Education is very pleased that the Governor recommends such a large investment in Utah’s public education and its children. Like the Governor, the Board of Education believes the best educational policy in Utah is made in Utah by Utahns.”
Sadly, these are lies. The funding decisions aren’t set up to bless children. The programs being funded just promote centralized–not local– control.
This is far from being policy being “made in Utah by Utahns.” This is voter-unvetted policy being duplicated precisely from policies laid out by Obama, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates/Microsoft/Pearson Inc, CCSSO, Choice Solutions, Utrex, and the rest of the partnered organizations and corporations that profit deeply from Utah’s taxpayers’ gullibility and the same-ifying of Common Core (CCSS) education and Common Data (CEDS) education data systems.
Remember that Common Core/Common Ed Data financier Bill Gates said: “We’ll only know that this effort has succeeded when the currriculum and tests are aligned to these standards …The Common Core …when the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well, and it will unleash a powerful market… For the first time, there will be a large, uniform base of customers“.
That “powerful market” and its “uniform base of customers” includes Utah’s clueless taxpayers and legislature. Gates’ customer base is being funded by Governor Herbert to benefit the Utah Chamber of Commerce and the D.C. based, Gates-funded, private organizations behind Common Core.
“$500 million for the state’s public and higher education systems, bringing total state education spending to approximately $4 billion. The Governor recommends over $340 million in support of public education…Major investments include $10.7 million for the Utah Education Network(UEN) to connect schools by providing statewide technology infrastructure. [This is the SLDS database.] An additional $56 million …provides funds for buildings or technology infrastructure to small school districts… The budget recommends $1.5 million for innovative approaches and collaboration for college and careercounseling and $2.4 million for the Utah Futures website.”
These budgetary decisions do not educate. They strengthen the tracking systems, the prediction systems, the control systems.
Do you see the tragic humor in these words from the governor’s budget?
“Unlike those who want to micromanage the public education system from the state level, the Governor believes that the state should establish general policy goals and expected outcomes and allow local control in the specific methods of attaining those goals.”
The opposite is happening.
Utah’s SLDS database, which was built to federal specs, using common data standards (CEDS) and an SIF national-interoperability framework, from which no Utah school district nor parent may opt any child out, does not allow any kind of “local control”. Neither does funding “Utah Futures,” which calls itself the one-stop career and college readiness* website and which fulfils the Governor’s socialistic workforce focus that puts citizens in a cradle-to-workforce “P-20” human capital pipeline, with central planning and far less personal freedom in education– just like China.
I wish our legislature were not afraid of offending those who accuse them of not funding “the needs of the children”–who give in and fund anything calling itself education. Funding for UEN, Utah Futures, SLDS technologies and Common Core testing infrastructures is not meeting children’s needs. Shame on those who say that it is.
Shame on this foolish waste of hundreds of millions of vital tax money on the shackles of Common Core.
*Career and college readiness, college-and-career-ready standards, and any other similar sounding word, means in the redefined langugage of the Department of Education, Common Core aligned.
I already had a sense of growing nausea attached to my observations of locals’ infatuation with technology-centric schooling.
It got worse when I read the latest White House fact sheet on Obama’s ConnectEd plan. Utah’s perfectly in line with D.C. –the cool people are dumping the old fashioned notion of using books in schools to spend gobs and gobs and gobbledy-gob-gobs on technology.
I’m not against technology. I’m against foolishness.
Technology is a great, glittering servant. But it’s a terrible master. Its imperfections can be disastrous. But in Obama’s version of reality, it has no flaws and it deserves our full (tax dollar) attention.
“Our schools were designed for a different era – based on a limited school day and a seasonal calendar. This system does not take into account the constant learning opportunities of global connectivity…”
(Recall that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been saying for many years that he wants students to attend school 6-7 days per week, up to 14 hours per day, all year round. If you haven’t seen it before, watch that video clip here.)
ConnectED sounds appealing on the surface: upgraded connectivity, reaching out to rural students, exposing students and teachers to new technology. It even appears, on first reading, that ConnectEd promotes local control: “purchasing choices remain in the hands of local educational leaders,” it says.
Common Educational Data Standards (CEDS) is the unshakable shadow to Common Core State Standards (CCSS) –both of which which ConnectEd depends upon, and both CEDS and CCSS come from the same people: The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) –a private, unelected, nontransparent club of superintendents, financially backed by Gates.
CEDS common data standards ensure that all state databases (aka SLDS) match one another, and that all student and teacher information is fully labeled and compare-able. Thus, there is no room for true diversity among states/schools in this system; no true freedom of thought, no true competitive soaring, just sameness. And because CEDS are used in every state’s longitudinal database, are interoperable with the federal EdFacts Data Exchange, and are no longer protected by federal privacy law, it means also: no guarantee of student data privacy.
Fact: “A continued commitment to disaggregation” of student data is a central goal of the CCSSO Council. These facts make national school interoperability and connectivity sound a lot less peachy.
Still, the Obama and Jeb Bush clique is pushing for a one-size-fits-all national, matching technology system. We are not just to receive the good things touted, like upgraded connectivity and new technology for kids; we are also getting shackled to the CEDS/NCES data collecting system and to the Common Core testing system, and to the corporate educational products that are aligned to these systems.
Additionally, under the misleading subheading “Restoring U.S. Leadership in Vital Areas” the ConnectEd fact sheet touts the end of using actual books in schools, as a good thing.
“The United States is now falling behind… In South Korea, all schools are connected to the internet with high-speed connections, all teachers are trained in digital learning, and printed textbooks will be phased out by 2016.”
Why the hurry? Are people afraid that if they question the race to “phase out books,” they will be labeled “against progress” and out of touch? Are we backwards if we raise an eyebrow at the mad rush toward every student being hooked up to the internet? What are the unintended consequences and opportunity costs of phasing out books and tangible libraries to bring about the brave new unvetted vision of Bill Gates, Marc Tucker, Sir Michael Barber, Obama and Bush?
Remember the smell of a book and the feeling of paper. Are books suddenly worthless because they are not speedy, networked and electronic? If we don’t invest philosophically and financially in books, soon there won’t be many around.
Please wake up, American leaders and Utah leaders. We can find solutions for increased technology, free from the Obama-Bush-Gates clique’s narrow vision.
Let’s hold on to real books, real libraries, and the time-tested culture of academic freedom and student data privacy. Let’s shake off the chains of common data, common testing, and common data mining that will bind our children down.
The Daily Signal reported yesterday that Louisiana Senator David Vitter has filed a bill that would help ease the way for any state to opt out of Common Core.
Vitter’s new bill intends to enable states to more easily exit the national Common Core standards, which so many parents and educators now oppose, by voiding requirements attached to issued waivers from federal law. The Daily Signal reports: “States likely could retain their waivers from the law, called No Child Left Behind, even if they chose to pull out of Common Core.”
Breitbart News reported that Vitters explained why he changed his stance on Common Core: “After listening to literally thousands of parents, teachers, and others…I don’t believe that we can achieve that Louisiana control, buy-in, and success I’m committed to if we stay in Common Core…
“First, Common Core is controlled by national groups and interests outside Louisiana… many Louisianans legitimately fear that it will become a federal government takeover of education under President Obama and his far-left allies.
“Second, Common Core is causing deep frustration and worse in many classrooms and homes, and not because of greater rigor… “It’s preventing lots of involved parents and teachers — our most important education leaders — from being effective and helping kids learn.”
Vitter added that a third reason for his change of heart is his view that “an entrenched few in public education are trying very hard to manipulate the Common Core controversy to greatly weaken or reverse accountability measures.”
Senator Vitters proposed that his home state:
Exit the Common Core PARRC testing consortium immediately and adopt a rigorous interim test that is not aligned with Common Core.
Have the Governor, Legislature, and BESE convene a blue-ribbon panel of Louisiana parents, teachers, experts from higher education, and business leaders to develop an updated system of rigorous Louisiana standards and testing outside of Common Core/PARCC.
Require that this new system be developed, debated, and adopted in a fully inclusive, transparent, and democratic way.
Implement it in a careful, methodical manner, unlike the roll-out of Common Core.
Technically, Texas is not in Common Core. The state rejected the Common Core Initiative while most other states took the bait back in 2010. But Texas has not escaped. (see minute 12:40 to 13:25 on the linked clip.) National, Common Core standards-aligned books and software has taken over most of the United States educational sales market.
Texas parents are fighting back. They formed “The Truth in Texas Textbooks Coalition” (TTT) a textbook study coalition and studied the books their children were reading.
Then they spoke.
Lt. Col. Roy White, one of the members of TTT, has written and spoken about the big difference that TTT, the parent group, has made in restoring truth to textbooks used in Texas. White reported that the Texas State School Board did contact publishers about these errors, following parental testimonies (below) and publishers have agreed to make the requested changes.
White’s bullet point summary of textbook errors found by parents includes:
Publishers attempted to push the softer definition of “jihad” as the “struggle to become a better person.” TTT pointed to original Islamic sources, the Quran, Hadiths, and Mohammad’s biography describing jihad as a mandatory offensive war (including violence) to be waged by Muslims against all non-Muslims until all persons are followers of Allah. Attempts by publishers to re-define the term is “spin” and not based upon original Islamic sources.
“Conditions in Cuba are painted as highly beneficial for young people from a healthcare and education standpoint.” Misleading information and half-truths is how TTT characterized this description of life in Cuba with details of other reports and sources providing facts justifying TTT’s position.
“It’s easy to get depressed about Climate Change.” Telling a child what emotions to have on a topic is “agenda building.” Only one side of the issue was told. TTT urged both sides be presented on climate change, but publishers chose to pull the book as the solution.
Many publishers routinely referred to the U. S. form of government as a “democracy.” The word “democracy” is not found in the Constitution nor in any of the 50 state Constitutions. Our form of government is a constitutional republic. The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag is to the Republic for which it stands, not to the democracy for which it stands.
Publishers claimed in several instances that Muslims were the original inhabitants of the area known as Israel. TTT pointed out that Jews inhabited this area hundreds of years before Islam existed.
Multiple publishers left out the terms “Islamic jihadist” and “Muslim terrorists” even when the attackers used these terms in describing themselves. No mention was made that the Barbary pirates were Muslims and the 911 hijackers were Islamic jihadists. The word “Islamic” was absent when describing the terrorists in the 1983 Lebanon Marine Barrack attacks. If the terrorists/jihadists refer to themselves using these terms, then why won’t publishers use those same terms?
Gorbachav had more to do with the Berlin Wall falling than President Ronald Reagan according to one publisher; the deficiencies of Communism were downplayed while Western democracies were marginalized; TTT was able to get re-writes on these and many other distorted areas.
In November 2013, and again in June 2014, Idaho Superintendent Tom Luna rejected offers to participate in moderated, formal debates concerning the pros and cons of Common Core. He did participate in one panel debate, to a packed house. But Luna’s unwillingness to participate in further open debate is remarkable because, beginning in 2011, Luna was president, top dog at the organization that co-created and co-copyrighted the Common Core: Council of Chief State School Officers. Nobody should have felt more vested. This article, a response to a recent Idaho Statesman interview with Luna, comes by request. Thank you, Stephanie Zimmerman.
Is Idaho’s Common Core Battle Over– Or Just Starting?
In the Nov. 30th Statesman interview granted by Tom Luna, I was not surprised to read Luna’s responses to the following questions:
Is the battle over Idaho Core Standards over? “It is definitely over in the education arena. And my experience has been so far that it is primarily over with the vast majority of parents, but it is not over politically.”
How big were the Idaho Legislature education committee hearings on Common Core standards? “I think it was an eye-opener to a lot of legislators and even people around the state who tuned in and listened because I think you heard a lot of the concerns that were raised – that were then shown to be not true: whether it’s the data we collect, who developed the standards, who has control of the standards. I have yet to have one person who says they oppose the standards tell me which standard it is that they oppose … If we do nothing else in education over the next three or four years, but continue to teach every kid to these higher standards, then measure students with this better assessment, then that is going to have more impact on improving student achievement than anything that we can do.”
Where to begin…
Common Core is just now (in the past three months) being fully implemented in Idaho’s schools. How can Mr. Luna possibly say the battle is over –when it hasn’t even had a chance to begin?? Nowhere in the country was Common Core fully, fairly or publicly vetted or debated in legislatures, with parents, or with educators before it was quietly imposed upon us. Most educators and parents are still learning the full implications of the Common Core . More and more teachers are stepping forward with their concerns about the way children are being treated. Meg Norris, Kathleen Jasper, David Cox,Savannah Kucerak, Mercedes Schneider and Kris Nielson are just a few who have made waves nationally by speaking out against Common Core. Polls show that the more parents know about it the less they like it.
Common Core is about far more than simply singling out which standard we do or don’t like. It’s the reform package as a whole that’s the problem; the standards, assessments, data collection, tiered licensure (yes, that’s Common Core, too), and the star ratings system (which make our schools sound like a motel chain).
I wouldn’t care if these are the best standards in the world; I still wouldn’t want them in Idaho because of the federal strings and mandates that come with them.
Tom Luna is a man who was essentially defeated by Common Core. His extreme political unpopularity began with his 2011 push to pass Students Come First, a set of educational reforms for Idaho that weren’t even his or his department’s original idea but that came straight out of the national Common Core playbook , and that only got worse as more and more people realized the role this former president of the CCSSO played in selling out our children’s future.
So, this particular battle may be over for Mr. Luna – we all know he’s moved on to bigger, better things. But for those of us in the trenches, we know this is far from over. We will continue to fight for local control of our children’s education.
Unfortunately for Tom Luna, his legacy will ultimately end up as the man who sold Idaho’s children’s birthright for a mess of pottage.
————————————-
Stephanie Zimmerman, author of this post, stands second from the right in the photo below.
COMMON CORE 
