Maryland Dad Robert Small, the Rosa Parks of 2013.
Maryland Dad, Robert Small, was forcibly removed from a meeting last night, when he stood to ask questions about Common Core that were not being answered in the preferred written format.
In the video taken at last night’s event, you hear other parents in the audience pleading with the board to allow this man the dignity to ask his question. But the man was removed by security, and he was then arrested –for “disturbing a school operation” and reportedly for also assaulting an officer. The reports say Small will face jail time and/or hefty fines.
Fines for disturbing a school operation? This was an informational meeting for parents, where information was clearly not being honorably and fully disclosed.
Robert Small refused to be told that he doesn’t have a voice, refused to be told he, as a parent with concerns, doesn’t matter. He refused to say that the edu-government knows best about what is best for his child– without his input.
He is a hero. I am thinking that Rosa Parks is smiling down on Robert Small tonight.
The Utah Legislative Session begins in two weeks. It is short.
Please call legislators, state school board members and Governor Herbert and ask for the following:
• UT LEGISLATORS MUST WRITE FREEING LEGISLATION – Utah should reclaim its educational sovereignty by following the lead of states such as Indiana and South Carolina which are attempting to break free of Common Core by writing legislation that halts it.
WHY?
• PRIVACY ISSUES – Common Core testing requires that every student be tracked using personally identifiable information that is sent beyond the local school and district to six Utah agencies (Utah Data Alliance) and uses the federally instated “State Longitudinal Database System” (SLDS) which allows interoperability for all states and federal oversight. The Dept. of Education has been sued because it altered Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations without congressional approval to empower common core testing data to be accessed by them and others. These alterations redefine terms such as “authorized representative,” “directory information” and “educational program” to remove the obligation of school systems to keep family information private.
• NO COST ANALYSIS – It is utterly irresponsible to have no cost analyis on Common Core. One of Texas’ and Virginia’s reasons for rejecting it was financial. Texas estimated $560 million just in CC professional development costs. Utah just spent $39 million just on CC test development alone. Corporations such as Pearson, Microsoft, Wireless Generation, and countless others will become wealthy at students’ learning expense and at taxpayer expense as they implement the mandates of common core in textbooks, teacher development courses and technology and sell them to us.
• NO ACADEMIC ANALYSIS – The standards and the preschool- through-workforce system they promote (P-20 system) are not only what amounts to an unfunded mandate; they are academically inferior to what we had before and far inferior to what top states (Massachusetts) had before. The line about “rigor” is a false claim, especially at the high school level. Members of the official CC validation committee Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram refused to sign off that these standards were rigorous or legitimate. We note that CC was written without input from any of the major curriculum research universities and is an unpiloted experiment without any metric to measure intended or unintended consequences. Its harms are less marked for lower grades, yet it slashes classic literature by 70% for high school seniors and dramatically dumbs down high school math.
• ILLEGALITY ISSUES – There is a Constitutional ban on federal direction of instruction which is underscored in the 10th amendment and further clarified in a law called the General Educational Provisions Act. Yet the Dept. of Education has gone around the law and congress to promote the copyrighted CC standards (developed by the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers) and has put a 15% cap on top of it, so that no state may add freely to the supposed “minimum” standards. Additionally, the CC national tests are written specifically to CC standards, to divest the 15% allowance of states’ “wiggle room” of meaning. The Dept. of Education has coerced states into adopting the CC, using the lure of possible grant monies, and this financial incentivization has not put the best academic interests of children first.
Additionally, share a video link:
There are five short videos which explain Common Core very simply and with verifiable references (point out that the State Office of Education does not provide references for claims in any explanation of what Common Core is.)
There are 5 videos and each is short. The American Principles Project created them, with Concerned Women of Georgia.
COMMON CORE 