Breaking News: The HSLDA has just released its Common Core documentary movie on its website.
It is free to watch and can be viewed in full here: http://commoncoremovie.com/
–Or here:
Please watch and share!
Archive for the ‘not state-led’ Tag
FULL COMMON CORE DOCUMENTARY MOVIE NOW ONLINE 13 comments
President of College Board: I Convinced the Governors 2 comments
In the video posted here, David Coleman speaks. (Coleman is current president of the College Board, a non-educator, who was the chief architect of Common Core English Language Arts standards.)
Coleman says in this 2013 video: “When I was involved in convincing governors and others around this country to adopt these standards, it was not ‘Obama likes them.’ Do you think that would have gone well with the Republican crowd?”
Special interests, meaning money-hungry businessmen like David Coleman and Bill Gates, led Common Core. I hope this video clip helps put to rest the oft-repeated mantra that Common Core was in any way “state-led” or that it in any way represented the actual will of the American voters, teachers, principals, parents or students.
Watch the video.
More detailed commentary is available at the Missouri Education Watchdog about this David Coleman video, too. See it here.
Share this:
Video: Citizens of New Hampshire Speak Out Against Common Core 3 comments
I really enjoyed watching this New Hampshire video, which was filmed at a curriculum and instruction meeting of the Manchester school board.
Citizens were allowed to speak for three minutes apiece.
http://manchestercommunitytv.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=ded36c2e6dc5d55415f5b053f1880a83
Testifiers included several high school students, as well as parents and other citizens before the local school board.
At 22:35 a graduating high school senior speaks about how “we forget about the high achieving students” in the misguided effort to comply to government policies and financial carrots and not allowing enough AP and honors classes. He says, “Time and time again we look at the middle, we do look at the bottom… that also affects the higher achieving students.” He is so right.
Most eloquent and impressively source-based is the seven minute testimony of Anne Marie Banfield. (ending at minute 20:00 and picking up again at 26:25 – 30 when another testifier gave her three minutes to Anne Marie.)
At minute 31:10 a woman spoke (directly to the high school students who were in attendance as testifiers ) saying that in the past a principle might have said to a child who was getting detention, “that’s going to go on your permanent record” as a threat, but now because of the SLDS systems, absolutely everything that a student does, good or bad, is going to be used as part of everyone’s permanent record. “It’s none of their business!” she said.
Then the listeners gave their loudest applause.
The fact that these testimonies were given at a local, not state, school board meeting is evidence to me that it’s individual localities that make a difference, not top-down, far-flung policies from D.C. groups with official sounding names like CCSSO and NGA.
It’s the individual voice that matters.
We the People are individuals, not a coagulated, collective mind as defined by the self-proclaimed know-it-bests: Duncan, Barber or Gates.
Local school boards can make a difference.
Here are the words of a wise member of another local UT school board member, who will remain anonymous here:
“One of the main reasons, in my opinion, Common Core and all of its predecessors have had any traction at all is because we, as a society, have mostly given up on the idea of local control of education. We’ve bought into having “experts” tell us what and how our children will be taught. I’m not opposed to experts, but parents need to be the biggest experts. Local control is exactly what will fix this problem. However, most people don’t know what local control would look like. We drop our kids off at the door, volunteer for PTA, and sometimes go into the classroom. Some fellow school board members in another district were actually in shock when I mentioned that one of the problems with Common Core was that parents were left out of the process.
“Do you really think parents should be involved with standards and curriculum?”
“Yes, I really do.”
Back to the point. In our city, a few years back, we put together a rotating group of people to attend city council meetings and report back. It wasn’t much, but it made a huge difference. It only took a commitment of attending 2 meetings/year. And, of course, the more people you can get to attend, you can either have a greater impact or reduce the number of meetings each person needs to attend.
If you had 20 or 30 people in each school district, depending on the number of meetings they hold, you could certainly set something up like that.
The beauty of it is 1) the content of the meetings will change when “outside people” are present. I can personally attest to this. If the press isn’t there and if “regular people” aren’t there, it has a different feel. 2) there is an organized group of people to show up for any and all public hearings (like budgets) or if there is an issue of concern. You don’t need to worry about how to get in touch with people, you just email the group and they show up. 3) You end up with a “head’s up” on all new issues. In our district, there is public comment allowed in every board meeting. And having members of the public voice comments and concerns actually has a greater impact than just the individual board members. If you are a board member in the minority, then your voice is often dismissed because of that minority status. Having people in the public show up to voice a similar concern give weight to the board member’s concerns. I tell people that the elected officials are just the tip of the spear. The people need to be behind that spear providing the force.
People keep asking, “What do we use in place of Common Core if we are successful?” The actual answer is: Local Control.
If we don’t backfill with more involved, and locally concerned parents and taxpayers, then there will be another creation, just like Common Core or maybe worse, that will take it’s place. Power abhors a vacuum. So, we need to step up and get back to the system that used to work, once upon a time.
And even if your local district isn’t going in the right direction, it’s a lot easier to replace the local school board than the CCSSO.
My two cents.”
-from a school board member of a local school board in Utah.
—————————————–
Thank you to the school board member who shared those “two cents.”
I completely agree.
Share this:
Truth in American Education vs. “A Complete Resource Guide for Utah’s Core Standards” 1 comment
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 nonconfrontational and trusting, the title, Truth in American Education, is a wakeup 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
Dr. Sandra Stotsky, an education scholar and whistleblower, one who is often quoted at the Truth in American Education website, happens to have read the 204-page Utah document, “A Complete Resource Guide On Utah’s Core Standards.”
Stotsky previously 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).
… I frankly can’t spend time on people who can’t document with citations their claims. What country was used for international benchmarking? Where’s the evidence?
The document simply repeats the false claims made by CCSSO from the beginning.”
— —– —
Despite not being willing to spend time rebutting a resource guide that fails to document its claims with citations, Dr. Stotsky took the time to bust 5 myths that the document contains:
1. Myth (Lie): Common Core was a state-led initiative.
Truth: Common Core was funded and directed behind-the-scenes by the Gates Foundation at every step. Gates funded NGA and CCSSO to serve as the front organizations, selected key people to be on the standards development committees (mostly from testing agencies), and funded many organizations, including the Fordham Institute and the PTA, to promote its adoption. Fordham was funded in particular to ensure that Common Core’s math and ELA standards (no matter what their condition) were given a high grade in a comparison review so that most states would accept the lie that CC’s standards were fewer, clearer, and more in-depth than whatever they had. Most states were willing to accept this lie because the USDE dangled RttT funds before their eyes. Gates and the USDE worked together on the incentives to states. Gates also funded the writing of many states’ applications for RttT funds by hiring consultants to write the applications for them.
2. Myth (Lie): Common Core’s standards were developed by the states—or by experts.
Truth: CC’s standards were written by people chosen by the Gates Foundation to write the standards: David Coleman and Jason Zimba, in particular. Coleman had no credentials for writing ELA standards, had never taught at any grade level, and was not a literary scholar. (Nor had his associate—Susan Pimentel. She had taught only in Head Start and had no degree in English.) Zimba, too, had never taught in K-12 mathematics, and had no experience in developing or writing math standards.
3. Myth (Lie): Common Core’s standards are internationally benchmarked.
Truth: Common Core’s standards were never internationally benchmarked because they couldn’t be. They are about two grades lower than what most other countries accept as “college readiness”. No countries have ever been mentioned by CCSSO as “benchmarking” countries.
4. Myth (Lie): Common Core’s standards prepare students for college or university.
Truth: Jason Zimba told the Massachusetts Board of Education in March 2010 that college readiness in mathematics means readiness for admission to a non-selective community college. (This is recorded in the minutes of the meeting.)
5. Myth (Lie): Common Core’s ELA standards promote literary study.
Truth: Coleman’s 50/50 mandate requires English teachers to teach to 10 informational reading standards and 9 literary standards each year. His mandate reduces literary study because English teachers must add informational texts to their curriculum. There is no research base showing that an increase in informational reading in the English class leads to greater college readiness. Just the contrary. The evidence, historical and empirical, shows that a focus on reading and discussing complex literature in high school leads to college readiness.
——————
What more can I possibly add to Dr. Stotsky’s clear corrections to the Utah State Office of Education?
–Maybe an acronym translator:
ELA – English Language Arts
NGA – National Governors’ Association (the group that with CCSSO created Common Core)
CCSSO – Council of Chief State School Officers (the group that with NGA created Common Core)
USDE (U.S. Department of Education)
RTTT – Race To The Top (a competitive grant opportunity that the federal government used to incentivize Common Core adoption to the states)
PTA (Parent-Teacher Association, a national group that promoted Common Core because Bill Gates paid them to)
COMMON CORE 