On August 9, 2012, two groups sent a mass mailer to all legislators in Utah. The two groups are  Prosperity 2020,   a business group led by our Governor, and a politcal action group Education First, who say they are a business-led movement concered with accountability.   They do explain that their vision is to “champion educational investment,” but they […]

My brother called the other day to ask me what I thought of the radio ads for “Prosperity 2020.” In my gut I knew there was something bad about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.  But thanks to Professor Steven Yates’ white paper on the subject of public-private partnerships, now I get it. It […]

Free to use and share:  the Student Data Privacy Toolkit has arrived!   If you’re wondering why it matters, read on. ———————————– ————————————- —————————————–   Is anyone honestly opposed to having students govern and own their own private data?  Are reputable organizations openly, actively working around systems to get hold of individual students’ data? Yes. […]

  Betsy DeVos, America’s newly appointed Secretary of Education, is quite adorable.  She interviews like America’s Sweetheart, her name sounds like Betsy Ross, and she says she’s opposed to the Common Core. But the parents who began Stop Common Core in Michigan say DeVos used her Michigan big-funding machine to block, rather than to assist, the Stop Common Core parents’ nearly successful legislation […]

Senate President Niederhauser and House Speaker Hughes The State School Board race has never drawn much attention before. But this year, the Salt Lake Tribune reported, businesses and even top-tier elected officials are personally campaigning and fundraising for and against certain candidates. Yesterday’s headline was: “Niederhauser and Hughes ask Business Leaders to Help Defeat UEA-Backed School […]

My friends and neighbors are receiving mailers this week that look like this. When my husband saw this, he said, “So what? What’s so bad about Education First?” Glad he asked.     Here’s the short version:  Education First = Common Core.   If you love Common Core and federal-corporate takeover of local control, vote for […]

FACT CHECK ON GOVERNOR HERBERT’S LETTER TO DELEGATES APRIL 13, 2016  by Alyson Williams Republished  –with thanks to Alyson Williams–  from Utahns Against Common Core Ed. Note:  … State delegates have received no less than five communications in the past week from Governor Herbert related to Common Core … Just today we received a robocall from […]

Please vote for Johnathan Johnson  for Governor of Utah.  Gary Herbert’s pretend-a-thon about Common Core has been growing increasingly desperate and despicable.  Johnson doesn’t pretend that the nationalization and standardization of all things educational is acceptable, or that it’s not happening. I actually keep the campaign mailers that Governor Herbert sends out, rather than sending them to the bird cage, because […]

I was just going to the Utahns Against Common Core Facebook Page to share my “Thank You” letter with my friends. (I’d written a letter to thank the representatives who had voted no on HB164, the bill that would cause any child to fail a class whose parents opted him/her out of the SAGE/AIR (invalidated, common […]

    Tonight, Utah’s Governor Gary Herbert will take questions on KBYU TV.   The public may submit questions via Twitter, Facebook, phone or email.  askeleven@byu.edu is the email address.  Click here for additional ways to submit questions. Feel free to use my questions in your own words if you like.   1.  Will you veto SB […]

  Senator Howard Stephenson was right when he said on the Rod Arquette Show  that SAGE tests turn our children into guinea pigs and that SAGE should be abandoned immediately, this very minute. He was right when he said that it’s educational malpractice to use a beta-test to judge students and teachers and schools. He was […]

  The State School Board of Utah meets tomorrow and will discuss SB 235 (bad bill) and HB 360 (great bill).  They apparently want the good one vetoed.  Too much liberty for teachers; too much distance between Utah and Common Core.  It’s an open meeting; come and see. The board doesn’t like this freedom-saving bill.  But the […]

I was invited to speak on the Rod Arquette show today about the results of a poll published  by Utah Policy.  I’ve decided to write here what I won’t have time to fully say there. The poll’s questions narrowed the larger Common Core Agenda to a tiny fraction (just the academic standards, string free) so […]

Have you seen the new regulations that just came out of the White House? Americans who see these must run screaming to legislators for protection against the Department of Education. The new regulations declare that Secretary Arne Duncan will amend ESEA to “phase out the authority of States to define modified academic achievement standards and develop […]

  “…The US ranks 1st in the world in Nobel Prizes in the sciences and medicine. 60% of all Nobel Laureates come from US public schools.  The US ranks 1st in the world in the number of utility patents and the number of scientific papers produced. The US ranks 2nd in the world on the […]

  One of the reasons that our family moved from Wasatch County to Utah County last month was to be closer to the school in Alpine (Utah County) that my son is attending this year. The 50-mile (times two) daily commute was worth it. Filled with uniformed students and happy-looking staff, Mountainville Academy’s a cheerful, […]

By JaKell Sullivan and Christel Swasey   Common science standards, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are gleefully trending all over the nation now, birthed by the same folks who pushed Common Core English and Math (Achieve, Inc., David Coleman’s baby and US Delivery Institute, Pearson CEA Michael Barber’s baby. Many states have rejected, or are wisely in the middle of […]

Below is the full text of the resolution that Utah County Republicans voted to pass, in opposition to Common Core this week.  It will be interesting to see what Governor Herbert does with the mounting evidence that Utahns oppose Common Core.  Despite publically taking a second look at the academics, he has not taken any steps to get […]

Yesterday, Utah’s Stop Common Core folks followed the example of Oklahoma and Maine, wearing grass-green T-shirts for a protest held in Salt Lake City outside the offices of the Utah State School Board. Trucks honked, kids danced, families waved signs. Honestly, it was fun.   A teenage protester (who was dancing with his “My Education is Not Your Experiment” […]

SUPERINTENDENT MENLOVE martell.menlove@schools.utah.gov I like Superintendent Martell Menlove.  He’s approachable, pleasant, polite; has a warm smile and even responds to emails. But there is a problem.  Dr. Menlove is not just any Utahn; he’s the State Superintendent.  He supports Common Core and he’s a member of the Council of Chief State School Officers,  which created and copyrighted Common Core (with […]

Good news: after sending an opt out letter (seen below) I received three letters back, from my high school student’s principal, math teacher and English teacher. Each letter said that my child may take a paper-and-pencil alternative to the Common Core tests without any academic penalty. The school is apparently not enforcing the absurd current […]

An opinion editorial by Glenn Jacobs in today’s Daily Caller says that the Common Core should be renamed the “Lowest Common Denominator.” He suggests that American schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education, thus “ensuring workers who will never be tempted to better their stations in life.” What do you think of that? Considering […]

http://www.schools.utah.gov/board/Meetings/Agenda/8-2-13Agenda.aspx Is this the proper role of government? The Utah State School Board is using your tax dollars and mine to create a huge marketing machine with the aim to persuade all Utahns (utterly without legitimate evidence) that Common Core will not damage, but will improve education, and that Common Core has nothing to do […]

Tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. there will be a Common Core informational meeting at a home in Syracuse, Utah. If you live nearby, please feel free to stop by and bring a friend. Dalane England and I will be speaking about the Common Core. Address: 2532 South 1300 West, Syracuse, Utah, 84075. We plan to […]

Hooray, Hooray! Today, the Deseret News published my op-ed. Here’s the link and the text: Utah state 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 […]

The Ogden Examiner covered the Utah GOP’s  rejection of the Common Core at Saturday’s convention. But Utah’s main newspapers, the Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune, have not yet covered the story. That lack of coverage speaks volumes. Discussing Common Core is now akin to bringing up religion, sex or politics at family reunions.  People have such varied, and intense, beliefs […]

Utah’s Republican state delegates sent a clear message to the Governor, Utah legislators, and to the State Office of Education at Saturday’s GOP convention when 65% of the state delegates voted yes to support the resolution written by Utahns Against Common Core. Utah’s delegates are calling on Governor Herbert and the Utah State School Board to withdraw from Common Core, and […]

Michelle Malkin’s true to her word. She said her New Year’s Resolution would be to expose the truth about Common Core, and she’s well on her way. Her fourth installment in the series “Rotten to the Core” is out. In “The Feds’ Invasive Student Tracking Data Base” Malkin brings up the fact that while millions of […]

Senator Aaron Osmond State School Board Chair Debra Roberts Representative Kraig Powell Governor Gary Herbert We are not put here on earth only to eat cupcakes, to quote one another and make each other feel lovely.  We are here to STAND UP and DO something when we see our freedoms being threatened, or when we […]

Here’s a facebook thread from today that I think is significant. Governor Gary R. Herbert wrote: Preparing to testify before Congressional Committee on education and workforce alignment in Washington, D.C. tomorrow. Talking to Rod Decker about how Utah continues to impress the nation. Tomorrow I will tout Utah’s goal to attain post-secondary degrees or certificates […]

This is creepy. For months and/or years, many of us have been studying the United Nations’ Agenda 21, especially the education chapters.  It’s the U.N.’s plan to change everything in the 21st century. But just now, just today, we noticed that if you try to find it on the United Nations website, it is GONE. The U.N. […]

  The more you study the plans and plots of Obama and of his Federal Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, the more you see the crushing trend.  They crush any individuality and local independence or control over education paths or career paths.  And the Constitution be damned. Individuals’ desires or states’ desires are not to be taken into account.  The word […]

Governor Herbert surprised a lot of people this week, including me. After spending the past six years promoting,  marketing, and providing workforce alignment strategies to serve Common Core, and after rising to the throne of Common Core’s organization, National Governors Association, to become its chair, and after going out of his way to have the Utah Attorney General provide […]

At the #AboutTheChild conference in Houston last week, B&L Network speakers said that even in the middle of a struggle we might seem to be losing, we have great power and great hope. Although America is seeing dangerous shifts in who can and who cannot amend tests, in who controls (and does not protect) children’s data;  in who gets to redefine even babies’ “educations” as a collective-economy-purposed thing; while we […]

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’s pipeline-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.”) […]

—————  On Children’s Privacy ————————– The insatiable data-hunters at American Institutes for Research (AIR) –who also happen to create Utah’s SAGE/Common Core/Utah Core school tests— seem to qualify as stark enemies of student privacy and parental rights. Desperate to access personal information about children, AIR  wants us to believe the following lie: “your information is […]

I am fascinated with the increasing convergence of honest right-wing thinkers and honest left-wing thinkers in the context of protecting legitimate, locally controlled education and fighting Common Core and its data-mining tentacles. Professor Singer points out in his article not only what Pearson is doing in England and in the U.S., but how these “curious […]

I’m calling for a hogwash alert on today’s National Review article about Common Core. The ironically titled  The Truth About Common Core article cannot be taken seriously.  It’s written without any links or references for its Common Core-promoting claims, and it’s written by two authors whose employers are largely funded by the main funder of all things Common Core. Can anyone take seriously those who […]

The question of who’s controlling education today could be fodder for a hilarious classic comedy skit, like “Who’s On First?” –Except that messing with our children and wasting tens of millions of hard-earned tax dollars ain’t  funny. Does anyone really know the answer to the question of who has the authority to change Utah’s education standards today?  […]

A friend forwarded the article below to me.  I have to repost the whole thing– there’s not a sentence I can leave out.  The authors, Raymond and Dorothy Moore, point out that parental time and warmth –and less child-institutionalization– benefits children in significant ways.  This method creates the success that eludes the institutions who attempt to force ever more government […]

There is a battle going on for control of American classrooms. It’s a battle about which many students, teachers and State School Board Members are still blissfully unaware. It’s a battle between the rights of each individual and each locality, versus the collective, as defined by the United Nations and, now, even by the U.S. Dept. of Education. It’s a battle for […]