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I’ve spoken with one of the highest-ranking education leaders in Utah about Common Core. His primary reason for wanting Utah to remain tied to Common Core was to make Utah’s children ready for the altered college testing; ACT and SAT are now aligning to Common Core. I pointed out to this man that lemming-like adherence to Common Core, regardless of the fact that these standards are LOWERING high school graduation requirements for most states, and are ending local control of education, might be unwise. But he wanted to be a lemming. (Not his exact words.) If ACT/SAT was aligning, Utah would align. Hmmm.

Do you think it’s never going to become household knowledge that these standards are unpiloted, untested, and that they dumb down high school graduates? Do you really think that the ACT, SAT, and other tests will maintain their former levels of respect and authority once people realize that they’ve lowered themselves into the academic murk of Common Core math and its diminishment of classical English standards that used to lead out with classic literature?

Already, the truth is seeping into the general consciousness. The ACT and SAT are going to lose credibility with thousands if not millions, of Americans.

Proponents of Common Core are running scared. We are onto their racket. So, evidence that damns Common Core and its appendages is disappearing, lately. Did you notice that the video where the current College Board President David Coleman, (lead architect on Common Core English standards) curses and demeans student narrative writing– is gone? The video where MSNBC spokesperson Melissa Harris-Perry promotes collectivism/socialism, saying that “we have to break away from the notion that children belong to their parents–” is gone! Even our local Utah State Office of Education broke the link to the portion of their “Utah Core Standards” that said that Utah only modified our local standards after getting permission from the unelected D.C. group called CCSSO. Gone!

But proponents can’t cover up everything. The evidence trail is so wide and so damning. Dozens and dozens of links to documents, videos and government reports are still online and openly available. Please read them. Share them.

What I really think about the whole now-college-consuming monopoly of Common Core, via David Coleman making sure that every formerly respected college-related test in America now aligns with his Frankenstein (Common Core): it’s just a puffed up bully tactic, an intimidation technique. Without long-term muscle.

When I see articles describing how the ACT/SAT/GED/AP/textbooks/K-12 testing are ALL ALIGNING to this new monopoly on thought: Common Core? I think it’s no scarier than any other schoolyard bully intimidation game.

Why? Because we can choose not to fall for it, no matter how many big name companies and institutions Bill Gates’ dollar bills have persuaded to “endorse” Common Core alignment.

We can choose to opt out of the now experimentally-aligned tests, and we can still get our kids into good colleges. We can stand strong and have higher expectations for colleges and schools, and work to make sure alternatives materialize.

Liberty– and legitimate, time-tested education: That’s where I’m placing my bets.

Because what do the proponents of Common Core really have? Nothing real, just marketing and money. They don’t own our children’s futures.

They just want us to think they do.

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On the first day of school, my fourth grader complained that they’d had “another dumb assembly on bullies.”

“Do you have bullies at your school?” I asked.

“Nope.”

Today, the first day of the second week of school, my fourth grader complained that they’d had “another dumb team meeting.”

“What’s a team meeting?” I asked.

“That’s when we sit in a circle and talk about walking in the hall better.”

“Walking in the hall better?!”

“And a dumb, creepy lady comes in and says we can come and talk to her whenever we have problems with bullies, which nobody has,” he said.

Okay.

I have a problem with this on so many levels.  First of all, why are they having repeated, ad-nauseum lessons on bullying while they cannot do their multiplication tables or long division without 99% of the training coming from moms like me?  Secondly, why do they have  “team meetings” when they lack time to adequately cover science, history, art, writing, cursive, literature, poetry, languages and grammar?  Third, why is there a paid position for a “creepy lady” they are supposed to learn bullying lessons from and go and talk to about their problems, when we don’t have enough salaries to go around for art and other teachers?

Why are we being told by the State Office of Education and our local and state school boards that academic rigor is increasing because of Common Core, when it simply isn’t true?  Academic rigor is being minimized and marginalized:  cursive is dropped, math is being made fuzzy (“integrated math”) literature is being pushed aside in favor of info-texts by Common Core mandate, most dramatically at high school levels, and time is being made for touchy-feeling nonacademic time waster programs that promote Obama-style social justice thinking.

Is this school or some kind of social-justice church we are sending our kids to?