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Here are 6 reasons that a vote for Trump will help preserve freedoms for our children– including freedom from Common Core– contrasted with 6 reasons that a vote for Hillary (or a third party who can’t beat her) will dramatically reduce the future freedoms of our children.  

Reason #1:   Religious Liberty and Freedom of Conscience

Hillary’s aiming to remove religious liberty and freedom of conscience from schools and from society.  She has called for this:

“All the laws we’ve passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced… laws have to be backed up with resources and political will.  And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”    (see video minute 8-9)

Trump supports religious freedom!  He supports the important First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) of Senator Mike Lee, which aims to preserve religious liberty.  Trump has also said:

“‘I would like them to pray for guidance and to pray for our country because we need prayer now almost more than we’ve ever needed it before.”

How might presidential stands for or against religious liberty trickle down into school curricula, and into laws concerning churches and homes?

Reason # 2: Trump’s opposed to Common Core. 

His campaign video  about education explains that America must “end Common Core,” which he calls “a disaster” because “education has to be local“. At rallies like this one in Wilmington, North Carolina, he’s said:  “We’ve got to get rid of Common Core.”

On a Fox News interview, when asked if he would cut departments, Trump said, “I may cut the Department of Education“.

In the March presidential debate, Trump said, “Education through Washington, D.C., I don’t want that.  I want local education.  I want the parents and I want all of the teachers, and I want everybody to get together around a school and to make education great.”  This contrasts greatly with Hillary, who mocked local control.

She called Common Core nothing more than a “political failure.” She said, “…this was a political failure because they negotiated something and they had no real agreed-upon program for explaining it and selling it to people so that they left an opening for those who were always in the education debate, who don’t think anybody should be told anything about what to study, even if it’s the multiplication tables.  You know, that that should all be left to local control. And then you get into more complicated areas, as we all know, that that’s just totally off limits.”  

Reason # 3:    Trump’s got Evers.

Trump’s opposition to the Common Core machine aren’t just words. Check out who Trump chose for an education advisor:  Williamson “Bill” Evers.

Trump’s choice of ed guru Bill Evers speaks volumes to those who are opposed to Common Core.   Evers, a scholar at Hoover Institute (Stanford University) has been influencing lawmakers, writing books, white papers, think tank documents, and columns; has served on panels and has published opinion editorials  against Common Core for years.  See more on Evers at:  Breitbart, CSPAN, Stanford University, Utahns Against Common Core.

I had the honor of helping to transport Evers to a Stop Common Core speaking engagement in Salt Lake City a few years ago.  I remember the leather satchel he carried, which overflowed with books– all titles about federalism and states’ rights.

Read his stuff.  Again and again, Evers has explained that Common Core “has violated the traditions of open debate and citizen control that are supposed to undergird public schooling.”  Evers could turn the whole Common Core machine around if he were permitted to serve as presidential advisor under Donald Trump.

 

Reason #4:  Trump’s free from the NEA and AFT (abortion-promoting) national teachers unions, which fully endorse Hillary.

Both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) back Hillary Clinton, and both financially uphold Planned Parenthood and other controversial groups and initiatives.

Even so, when Hillary presented her keynote speech at the recent National Education Association (NEA) conference, she was booed  –why?

She spoke of cooperation between public charter schools and public schools.  She’s not talking about sporting events or dances, folks.  She wants all schools to  be controlled by her public-private partner-shipping elite agenda.

Democratic-leaning NEA takes an anti-charter stand, but Hillary is aiming to play both sides with her private-public school initiatives.  She knows that the Common Core machine is comprised of two machines, both of whom she needs:  the corporate machine, comprised of Pearson, Microsoft/Gates, etc. (these make money starting charters and selling ed tech aligned to common standards) and the government machine (this gains control by using common data mining systems and common tests and teacher evaluations).  This is what Hillary is speaking of when she speaks of her educational technology agenda, built on public-private partnerships).

Trump doesn’t need Gates’, Pearson’s, the NEA’s, or the AFT’s funds, and he’s not bound to their political standards.  Hillary, though,  is bound;  Bill Gates, her Foundation’s top $25 Million+ donor, remember, is also the leading promoter of Common Core Education and Data Mining.  He was almost her vice presidential pick.  Hillary’s not about to get rid of Gates’ precious baby, the Common Core.

Reason #5:  Trump’s not about Hillary’s 1998 Marc Tucker successful conspiracy against local control.  

The infamous Tucker-Hillary letter, a detailed plot outlining how Hillary and Tucker planned to turn America into a socialistic machine using national school standards and “large scale data management systems” (school-work data) is part of the Congressional Record from 1998.  You can read the PDF files of each page of Marc Tucker’s “Dear Hillary” letter in the 1998 Congressional Record through these links: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7. 

Hillary and Tucker are still working hard to implement their plot, nearly twenty years later.  Tucker‘s at NCEE, where his reports still spout sickening ideas such as: “the United States will have to largely abandon the beloved emblem of American education: local control“.  Meanwhile, Hillary’s whole “Initiative on Technology and Innovation” is a detailed, updated extension of their 1998 conspiracy letter against local control.

Will Americans be smart enough to decipher her witchery of wordplay to see her plan for what it really is?

 

 

Reason #6:  Life Itself

Hillary has a commitment to increase the number of abortion deaths in this country, and she’s coming for your guns. Trump will uphold  rights for gun ownership and is against the killing of babies.

Whose vision keeps children safe?  How will voting third-party bless children?

If you want your home –or local school– to have defenders– gun-owning teachers and principals—  and if you believe as our founders did, that self-defense and gun ownership are vital American values, vote for Trump.

If you want to be disarmed and at the mercy of an unaccountable government, and if you are comfortable with the murder of babies, then vote for a third party candidate, or Hillary.  It is the same.

A final note:

Many of my constitution-loving friends are voting for Castle (or McMullin) and tell  me that Trump is only slightly, if at all, better than Hillary, and say that voting for either Trump or Hillary is condoning evil and will thus draw the displeasure of God.

I beg to differ.

God holds us accountable for the world we allow to come upon our children by our votes– far more so, I imagine, than He weighs our dream vote or “statement” vote which we might cast for a candidate who will never be elected to stand against our actual enemy.

Is just “what’s in our hearts” what matters here– or is what matters the real vote, a vote for actual power, that affects actual lives, and actual deaths?

Trump’s commitment to the American dream’s basic foundation: religious liberty, self-defense/gun rights, educational liberty, the right to life, and freedom from governmental micromanagement, are unarguably, eternally significant differences between these, the only two candidates who are within hope of winning this presidential election.

Will not the consequences of voting for Hillary (or third party)– thus enabling the loss of the basic American rights outlined above– draw greater grief and displeasure from God?

I believe so.

Please vote Trump.

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Like a recurring nightmare, Race to the Top 2.0 is here.

Race to the Top #1 is an ugly story from 2009 that some Americans might not know.  Picture the Federal Department of Money riding in a buggy, driven by the Secretary of Education.  There are 50 horses (taxpaying states) pulling his load, and 5o sticks (RTTT grants and data systems) with 5o carrots (RTTT monies) dangling in front of each horse.  Carved into each carrot is the word “Race to the Top” to make the horses feel noble, and not embarrassed about so lustily chasing the cashcarrots, because the horses can then say that they only chased the cashcarrots to improve education.

But it was never, ever about improving education.  It was about implementing a labeling system for individuals, lifelong (with State-federal-corporate data tags) and it was about  controlling education from the top.   Regardless of what we are now calling Common Core (“Challenging State Academic Standards” is ESSA’s latest name) –it was the common data tags and systems that  married corporate greed to the federal power agenda by labeling individuals, tests and digital curricula uniformly, and nationwide (CEDS).

Race to the Top 1.0 dangled huge money lures in front of state education departments.  If the state boards of education took the bait, they might or might not ever see the cash, but the buggy drivers (feds) had successfully lured all the states into driving in the direction they wanted them to drive– and they only had to give out the money to a few “winners”.  (Utah was not a RTTT grant winner).

Where did they drive the states? In the direction of big “Fed Ed” –by signing on to Common Core standards, Common Educational Data Standards, State Longitudinal Database Systems, aligned tests and more.)

Now, United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) reports, we have to stop Race to the Top 2.0.

It isn’t called 2.0 by the feds, but instead is called the ridiculous title of:  The Elementary and Secondary Education Act as Amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority.  

What a name.  The anachronym would be TEASEAAABTESSAIADA.

Just call it  2.0.

It’s like the first Race to the Top  in its federal bribery, coercion, and control grabbing from states.

• Like Race to the Top 1.0, it increases data mining of children without parental consent. 2.0 requires federal study of children’s data by peer reviewers including psychometricians and requires states to “collaborate” with federal data mining agents at the Institute of Educational Sciences.
•  Like 1.0, it pushes federally aligned tests, but this time, states are encouraged to get away from parent-opt-out-able standardized tests by using other systems:  “an array of innovative assessments” which will likely mean stealth/gaming assessment.
• Like 1.0, cements Common Core Standards but under the new name of “challenging State academic standards,” which are, of course, still aligned to the federal-corporate common data tags.
• Like 1.0, it cements the use of student tracking and labeling via common data tags (CEDS).
• And, as if federally aligned education was not “Big Brother” enough, it also promotes globally aligned education and data standards  and asks states to continue to use the  “Universal Design for Learning.“

#ReinInTheKing

In USPIE’s recent blog post, we read more about these federally proposed regulations which must be commented upon LOUDLY AND FIRMLY by citizens, teachers, and legislators.   The deadline is September 9th for comment and that commenting link is here:

https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=ED-2016-OESE-0047-0001:

Before you comment, you could read this summary –provided by USPIE parents:  (footnotes documentation also below.)

“The following are specific areas in which the proposed regulations are egregious in their attempts to impose a common, Federal education system, stripping parents and SEAs of what little local control of education remains, and in many ways contradicts and undermines the law in which they are intended to provide guidance.

PROPOSED 200.76:

• Clarifies that any innovative assessment design can be used as long as it meets the Department’s requirements and is aligned to the State’s “challenging academic standards.”

NOTE: In other words, only assessment designs aligned to Common Core and approved by the Department can be used. This is contrary to the meaning of “innovation,” and flies in the face of ESSA prohibitions.

• Gives States “flexibility” by allowing them to choose computer-adaptive statewide tests, so long as they align to “challenging State academic standards,” and are approved by the Department.

NOTE: This gives the illusion of flexibility while still ensuring States’ assessment systems align to the Common Core State Standards. Furthermore, since 2013 countless computerized testing malfunctions have been recorded leaving invalid results and wasted classroom time.¹

• Requires applications to be peer reviewed to help the Secretary of Education determine whether an applicant will be able to successfully meet the requirements. The peer review panels will include “psychometricians” (psychometrics is the modeling of test taker responses (behavior) in response to items (situations),²“measurement experts,” and “researchers.”

NOTE: These peer review panel members will collect data on children’s behaviors while testing, which is well beyond the scope of assessing a child’s knowledge…

• Requires applications to include a description of how a State’s innovative assessment demonstration will align to” challenging State academic standards.” NOTE: The Department is requiring States to align to the subpar Common Core State Standards in order to receive funding. Parents are not fooled by the rebranding.

 

PROPOSED 200.77:

• Requires a State Educational Agency to prove it has collaborated with “experts” including the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the lead Federal agency in charge of data collection, and in the planning, development, implementation, and evaluation of innovative assessments.

NOTE: The entire mission of IES is to collect data on America’s school children and share it.³

• Requires State Educational Agencies (SEAs) or consortia to ensure assessments are “accessible for all students including children with disabilities and English learners. An SEA may also incorporate the principles of Universal Design for Learning in developing its innovative assessments.”⁴

NOTE: Universal Design for Learning uses computerized assessment programs to track a child’s brain function.⁵

 

PROPOSED 200.78:

• Is aligned with the principles of President Obama’s Testing Action Plan, as is much of the proposed regulations. The criterion of the President’s plan will help SEAs or consortiums to develop “an array of innovative assessments so that we may learn from a variety of models rather than establish a preference for one particular approach.”⁶

NOTE: Obama’s Testing Action Plan states that there are “other means” of measuring a student’s performance alongside assessments such as school assignments, portfolios, student surveys, school climate, etc. This will certainly encourage more surveys given in schools and lead to more data mining.⁷

• Clarifies the selection criteria the Secretary will use to evaluate an application and permit the Secretary to provide Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority to an SEA or consortia of SEAs.

NOTE: Under ESSA, the federal government is prohibited from funding the development of assessments. ⁸

• Requires SEAs to ensure that each Local Education Agency (LEA) has the technological infrastructure to implement the [aligned] testing system.

NOTE: This requirement will incentivize increased State spending in order to compete to receive Federal funds.  Very few states have the necessary technology⁹ to support the federally designed testing system, and ESSA prohibits the Federal Government from mandating “… a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act.”¹⁰

• Requires an SEA or each SEA in the consortium to annually report to the Secretary updates on the implementation of the innovative assessments. Definitions of innovative assessments may include: “cumulative year-end assessments, competency-based assessments, instructionally embedded assessments, interim assessments, or performance and technology-based assessments.”

NOTE: These types of assessments are based on the mastery/competency/performance based education model or blended learning where children will be assessed and data mined all day long electronically and through projects.¹¹  The federal government is incentivizing states to implement computer adaptive, nationally-aligned assessments and education models through a pilot grant. This is all prohibited in ESSA.¹²

• Requires States, for selection purposes, to include continuous improvement process assurances for “developing or improving balanced assessment systems that include summative, interim, and formative assessments, including supporting local educational agencies in developing or improving such assessments.”¹³

NOTE: Testing consortia providers such as the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium offer a complete assessment kit including formative (daily classroom testing tools through their digital library of computerized learning video games, etc.), interim, and summative assessments. As these new pervasive testing systems are incentivized by Federal funding, the potential of data mining will be expanded to all day long, every school day. As testing evolves into a daily activity embedded in the curriculum, the opt-out movement will die, and parents will lose more authority over their children’s education.

 

PROPOSED 200.79:

• Requires States and consortia to annually measure the progress on the Academic Achievement indicator of at least 95% of all students.

NOTE: Under ESSA, States are still obligated to the 95% participation rate of the burdensome NCLB, but with even more restrictions as opt-outs are added into the rate and with punitive actions taken against schools with low participation rates.¹⁴

• States an SEA may use their innovative assessment system for purposes of academic assessments and statewide accountability only after the Secretary determines whether an SEA’s innovative assessment system is of high quality.

NOTE: “No State shall be required to have academic standards approved or certified by the Federal Government in order to receive assistance under this Act” (ESSA).¹⁵

 

Works Cited

¹   Computerized Testing Problems- Chronology:

http://fairtest.org/computerized-testing-problems-chronology

² Improving Assessment: The Intersection of Psychology and Psychometrics:

(P. 4) http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RM-08-15.pdf

³ Institute of Education Sciences, Connecting Research, Policy and Practice:

https://ies.ed.gov/aboutus/

⁴ Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority; Proposed Rule: P. 44962

⁵ National Center on Universal Design for Learning, The Three Principles of UDL:

http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/whatisudl/3principles

⁶ Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority; Proposed Rule: P. 44967

⁷ U.S. Department of Education- October 24, 2015, Fact Sheet: Testing Action Plan:  http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-testing-action-plan

⁸ ESSA SEC. 8549A (a)(1); p. 865

⁹ “Are schools “tech-ready” for the Common Core Standards?”http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/technology-ready-for-the-common-core-tests/

¹⁰ ESSA SEC. 8549A (a)(1); p. 865

¹¹ ESSA SEC. 1201 (2)(L); p. 209   

¹² ESSA SEC. 8549A (a) and (b); pp. 865-866

¹³ ESSA SEC. 1201 (2)(F); p. 207

¹⁴ ESSA SEC. 1111 (4)(E); pp.87-88

¹⁵ ESSA SEC. 8527 (d)(1); p. 845-846

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Thanks to USPIE parents !

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Join Utahns Against Common Core in a  heartfelt thank you to the following U.S. Senators whose official letter both exposed Sec. Duncan’s assumption of unauthorized educational authority (which is only to be held by states); and called out Duncan’s unauthorized takeover of the rights of children with disabilities via standardized tests.

If you tweet, Facebook, or  email, please thank them.  What they did was important.  I’m using the hashtags #THANKHATCH, #THANKKIRK, etc.

 

Utah – SENATOR ORRIN HATCH  @SenOrrinHatch

 

Georgia – SENATOR JOHNNY ISAKSON  @SenatorIsakson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alaska – SENATOR LISA MURKOWSKI @lisamurkowski

 

Kansas – SENATOR PAT ROBERTS @PatRoberts2014

Illinois – SENATOR MARK KIRK  @SenatorKirk

 

 

Wyoming – SENATOR MIKE ENZI @SenatorEnzi

 

 

North Carolina – SENATOR RICHARD BURR @SenatorBurr

 

 

Tennessee – SENATOR LAMAR ALEXANDER  @SenAlexander

 

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If you live near Salt Lake City, please join us at 11:00 at tomorrow’s public and media event at Royal Wood Office Plaza, 230 west 200 south.  Bring signs.  Wear green if you have green.  Be prepared to take a turn on the soap box with the megaphone to use your freedom of speech and make your voice heard.

Inside the Royal Wood Office building, a federal agent of Arne Duncan’s Dept of Education will be meeting tomorrow with Utah State Office of Education leaders to ensure their compliance with federal mandates –mandates that the eight senators’ letter  just called illegal.   Let’s let our Utah State education employees know we defend their right to not comply, as they host this unauthorized federal visitor.

 

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The NEA just passed a resolution calling for the resignation of federal education secretary Arne Duncan.

 

The fact that the NEA is calling for Duncan’s resignation is a very big deal.  Duncan’s trying to downplay it.   But this is a very big deal.

Check out details here:

CBS  News

Fox News

Diane Ravitch

Politico

Huffington Post

Blogs

A Utah elementary school teacher, Lily Garcia,  happens to be the brand new head of that huge teachers union, the NEA.  Interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nothing real supports the  outrageous, increasing, ongoing federal overtake of schools. Federal bluffing and federal pretense to education authority continues because it is upheld by the stupored, undefending millions of us who aren’t aware of our right to control education locally  –and who do not defend it.

Two federal overtake moves stand out in my mind today as heart-stoppingly wrong.  These are things that we should firmly, loudly oppose.

• The first is Secretary Arne Duncan’s mandatory preschool.  In his “Statement for the Record” to Congress concerning the new education budget request, Duncan lay aside the former practice of calling federal preschool voluntary.  In this recent (April 29, 2014) speech, Duncan called for mandatory preschool:  “The third major priority in the 2015 request is to continue the President’s commitment to expanding educational opportunity for millions of children through a $75 billion mandatory Preschool for All program…” he said.

 

• The other is the Department of Education’s principals’ re-education program, aka “Principal Ambassador Fellowship” (PAF).  Do you like the idea of federally-approved-and-groomed, model “Fellowship” principals, teaching your local principal how to “engage with” federal policies?  Me neither.

From the Department of Education’s site, learn why the PAF program exists: —“principals should have meaningful opportunities to both contribute to and understand the  [federal] policies” —“to implement needed reforms, all stakeholders… must understand the intent of [federal] policy…” —“PAF’s will spend time gaining greater knowledge of the content of key federal programs and policies…” — “Principal Ambassador Fellows (PAF) are hired.. to facilitate cooperation between the Federal Government and the non-Federal entity…”

The Department of Education Secretary said, on the very same page where he announced the PAF program, that “The best ideas in education will never come from me or anyone else in Washington, D.C.  They’re always going to come from a local level.”  Yet principals are also told to understand and engage with federal policies.    Such doublespeak. It is pretty unlikely that principals lack or need “greater knowledge” of the federal agenda.  Given the increasing number of examples of defenders, notably schools like Maesar Prep in Utah, superintendents like Joseph Rella in New York, or the example of the state of Washington, which recently refused to tie teacher evaluation to Common Core student testing and got punished by Arne Duncan’s yanking of the state’s NCLB waiver– given these examples, it is more likely that principals are showing signs of resistance to the federal standardizations being shoved down their throats. Good for them.