Mom Says She Uncovered ‘Very Shocking’ Content When She Decided to Look Over Her Child’s Vocabulary Lesson

The parents of a high school student in Farmville, North Carolina, are seeking answers regarding a Common Core-aligned vocabulary assignment given to their child that they claim is essentially Islamic propaganda.

The assignment was reportedly given to seniors at Farmville Central High School and included several pro-Islamic messages.

The worksheet reportedly read: “In the following exercises, you will have the opportunity to expand your vocabulary by reading about Muhammad and the Islamic word.”

The assignment used the words astute, conducive, erratic, mosque, pastoral, and zenith in sentences about Islam.

“The responses to Muhammad’s teachings were at first erratic. Some people responded favorably, while other resisted his claim that ‘there is no God but Allah and Muhammad his Prophet,” one sentence read.

Read some of the other sentences via FoxNews.com below:

Source: FoxNews.com

A parent, who asked to remain anonymous, told the news outlet that it was “very shocking” to read the religious material.

“I just told my daughter to read it as if it’s fiction. It’s no different than another of fictional book you’ve read,” she said.

One of the students who was reportedly in the class in which the assignment was given told FoxNews.com that she was “caught off guard” by the content.

“I just looked at it and knew something was not right – so I emailed the pages to my mom,” the student added.

A Pitt County Schools spokesperson reportedly confirmed the assignment is from a state-adopted workbook that meets “Common Core standards for English Language Arts.”

“Our school system understands all concerns related to proselytizing, and there is no place for it in our instruction/ However, this particular lesson was one of many the students in this class have had and will have that expose them to the various religions and how they shape cultures throughout the world,” the district said in a statement.

‘I Don’t Want to Deal With This Nonsense’: What a 10-Year-Old Girl Had to Say About Common Core Left Parents Cheering

The school board members seemed to know what was in store — they joked about “cutting her off” as she took the mic — and they were right to be concerned.

Image source: YouTube

When New Jersey 10-year-old Elizabeth Blaine reached the podium in video recorded by her mom Monday night, she laid right into Common Core testing and she didn’t let up.

“I love to read, I love to write, I love to do math but I don’t love the PARCC,” Elizabeth said. “Why? Because it stinks.”

The PARCC, or Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, is a Common Core test, and the Montclair School Board was meeting to discuss a policy that would allow parents to opt their kids out of taking it.

Elizabeth was all for the policy.

The PARCC is riddled with ”very confusing and extremely hard questions,” Elizabeth said, and in a deadly mix of unforgiving technology and the application of concepts that students haven’t learned, the test is a counterproductive mess.

Elizabeth said:

“One of the essay questions was identify a theme in ‘Just Like Home’ and a theme in ‘Life Doesn’t Frighten Me.’ Write an essay that explains how the theme of the story is shown through the characters and how the theme of the poem is shown through the speaker. Include specific details from the story and the poem to support your essay.

“This is crazy! I am one of the most gifted students in my grade, or so my mom says, and I have not even the slightest clue what this means.”

By the time she was done speaking, the room had erupted with cheers and applause.

“I’m glad my mom and dad are letting me opt out,” Elizabeth said, “because I don’t want to deal with this nonsense.”

Watch Elizabeth’s whole speech below:

Monday’s meeting was a first reading of the opt-out policy, the Washington Post reported; the Montclair School Board will vote at a later meeting on adopting the policy.

Critics say Common Core includes collecting psych data on kids

A little-known aspect of Common Core should have students worried about what goes on the dreaded "permanent record," say critics of the national education standard.

Parents in Pennsylvania have written outgoing Gov. Tom Corbett to demand a moratorium on the collection of what they describe as sensitive and personal information on students, which they say is part of a federal database to track the development of every child. And education activists around the nation say it is part and parcel of the controversial campaign to impose a uniform, national standard for math and English.

“This follows them from the cradle to the grave,” said Tracy Ramey, of Pennsylvanians against Common Core. Her group, along with Pennsylvanians Restoring Education, recently wrote Corbett to demand the shutdown of the state’s Pennsylvania Information Management System (PIMS) in all 500 school districts.

“What’s alarming is what they are doing with the data,” Ramey said.

The process, set to play out throughout the country in what critics call a “womb to workplace” information system, was originally developed by the Department of Labor and contains information on every U.S. citizen under the age of 26. Most of the information on individuals is collected while K-12 students are in school, and includes names, grades and information such as personality traits, behavior patterns and even fingerprints. The state of Pennsylvania was one of the early adopters of the data mining and contributed to the framework for a nationwide program.

Both groups allege that any state entity as well as outside contractors can access personal information.

“This follows them to from the Cradle to the Grave.”

- Tracy Ramey, Pennsylvanians against Common Core

“The personally identifiable information includes information on every student’s personality, attitudes, values, beliefs, and disposition, a psychological profile called Interpersonal Skills Standards and anchors,” reads the letter sent to Corbett on Monday. “This data has been illegally obtained through deceptive means without the parents' knowledge or consent through screening, evaluations, testing, and surveys. These illegal methods of information gathering were actually fraudulently called ‘academic standards’ on the [Pennsylvania] Department of Education website portal.”

Anita Hoge, a member of Pennsylvanians Restoring Education, said local districts may have a need to collect some personal information, but a state or national database is a danger.

“There are two problems with sharing data beyond the local district,” she said. “First, parents are not aware that FERPA [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act] regulations now allow their children's data (personally identifiable information) to be shared to outside third party vendors. And, this data is being collected and placed on a data system that is shared with the feds. This first level of data collection and sharing is a violation of privacy.”

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Expand / Contract

This excerpt from a state contract provided to FoxNews.com explains how the state implemented a "womb to workforce" database.

“The second problem is that the data then becomes a ‘decision making model,’” she added. “This is where the violations of privacy are expanded for information to be used for ‘interventions.’ This is a civil rights violation.”

Pennsylvania Department of Education officials said the activist groups are misinformed.

“It’s riddled with inaccurate information,” Tim Eller, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, said of the letter. “This has been an ongoing issue associated with Common Core, [and one] which Pennsylvania is not part of.”

“It’s possible that school districts are collecting data but not probable,” he said, adding that the DOE has no outside contracts either.

The department provided a list of “data elements” that go into the PIMS system, which include semester grades and courses taken, but also information on truancy, infractions and disciplinary actions.

But Hoge said her group has proof their concerns are well-founded, in the form of a contract the state entered into with Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS).

“PDE has made great strides designing a comprehensive K-12 data system and creating a solid foundation for a ‘womb to workplace’ information system," reads a section from the grant contract, which Hoge's group obtained from the state Senate Education Committee. "Thus far, we have developed the foundational features of PIMS and have two years’ worth of longitudinal data in a state data warehouse.”

Watch This Math Teacher Take Almost an Entire Minute Explaining How to Add 9 Plus 6 Using Common Core Math

A simple addition problem seems to become a little more complicated under Common Core. That is made very clear in a new “Homework Helper” segment that recently aired on WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, New York.

In the new educational segments, local teachers attempt to help confused parents better understand their children’s Common Core homework. In the introductory segment, a math teacher takes nearly an entire minute explaining why 9 plus 6 equals 15.

“Our young learners might not be all together comfortable thinking about what 9 plus 6 is. They are quite comfortable thinking about their friend 10,” the teacher says in the video. “10 is emphasized in our young grades as we are working in a base-10 system. So if we can partner 9 to a number and anchor 10, we can help our students see what 9 plus 6 is.”

She continues: “So, we are going to decompose our 6 and we know 6 is made up of parts. One of its parts is a 1 and the other part is a 5. We are now going to anchor our 9 to a 1, allowing our students to anchor to that 10. Now our students are seeing that we have 10 plus 5. Having them now more comfort seeing that 10 plus 5 is 15. That is much more comfortable than looking at 9 plus 6, an isolated math fact.”

Got all that?

Essentially, the Common Core way of solving the simple math problems has students decipher that 5 plus 1 equals 6 and 10 minus 1 equals 9 before they even solve the actual problem. One has to wonder why kids can’t simply be taught that 9 plus 6 equals 15.

Watch the video via the Foundry Blog:

And basic subtraction:

Is ‘social justice math’ creeping into your child’s curriculum?

With American children heading back to school, Thursday’s Glenn Beck Program focused on the latest developments related to the Common Core standards and how it impacts the future of education in this country. Dana Loesch spoke to Kyle Olson, co-author of Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education, about a disturbing trend in classrooms: Social justice-inspired math.

As Dana explained, because of the way Common Core has been implemented, not all private school or homeschool curriculums are safe. Furthermore, as Kyle pointed out, college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT are going to be reformatted in the coming years to be “Common Core aligned,” which means children who do not receive a Common Core curriculum will be at a disadvantage.

“Just because you homeschool or go to a charter school or private school or whatever the case may be, it is critical parents are engaged in that process, aligned with the teachers and school leaders to make sure their child is getting a proper education and one they expect for their kids,” Olson explained.

Perhaps most disturbing, however, is a trend Olson described among math materials that seeks to recalibrate the economic principles from which concepts are taught.

“There is a huge movement to push what is known as ‘social justice math,’” he said. “Proponents of social justice math don’t like how much consumerism is in math.”

If you think back to your elementary school years, your math equations probably centered around going to the store and making a purchase or having to make change in some way. Not anymore. Now, progressives are pushing to have themes like climate change and casualties of war worked into these problems.

“A typical math problem would be you have 13 cents and a green pencil is 3 cents – you know, that sort of problem. They want to get rid of those sorts of problems,” Olson said. “Instead, they want to calculate war deaths, or they want to calculate the number of liquor stores within a particular radius of the school, or problems related to global warming – those sorts of things.”

Ultimately, there is a push to insert a political and ideological bias into areas of the curriculum that should be straightforward and fact-based.

Common Core anger triggers homeschooling surge in North Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolina officials say there has been a huge increase over the past two years in the number of Tar Heel families who have pulled their kids out of public schools and begun educating them at home.

The number of homeschools has jumped 27 percent since the 2011-12 school year, NewsObserver.com reports.

As of last year, 98,172 North Carolinian children were homeschooled; that’s 2,400 students more than the number who attended a private school.

While the sputtering economy is the reason families are choosing homeschooling over private schooling, the nationalized learning experiment (Common Core) is the main reason families are leaving the public schools in the first place.

“Common Core is a big factor that I hear people talk about,” Beth Herbert, founder of Lighthouse Christian Homeschool Association, told NewsObserver.com. “They’re not happy with the work their kids are coming home with. They’ve decided to take their children home.”

In-the-know parents understand that Common Core’s plodding approach to math instruction leaves students unprepared for college study in STEM courses – science, technology, engineering and math.

These same parents also realize that the nationalized learning standards’ emphasis of nonfiction, “informational” texts over classic literature is intended to mold students into drone-like workers, not out-of-the-box thinkers.

For some homeschool parents, it’s the Common Core-related standardized testing that they’re trying to protect their kids from.

Whatever the particular reason, it all adds up to a significant exodus from the public schools.

Homeschooling doesn’t mean kids have to miss all the social and sports-related aspects of traditional schools. Communities with a significant number of homeschoolers offer extracurricular activities for families.

Homeschooling was legalized by the state Supreme Court in 1985. In the days before Common Core, most homeschool families chose to leave the government-run schools because they were too secular, violent and crowded, the news site notes.

It’ll be interesting to see if the homeschool surge levels off once state education leaders revise and replace the worst parts of Common Core, as state lawmakers recently directed them to do.

But North Carolinians shouldn’t be surprised if it continues to grow, as homeschool parents share their success stories with others.

“It was scary at first,” homeschool parent Melissa Lopez told the news site, adding that her New York friends were skeptical when they heard her plan.

“Up North it’s not as common as it is down here so I always thought it was a crazy idea. But once I said, ‘I’m not asking for opinions – I’m doing it,’ they see it’s worked out for us,” Lopez said.

Abbott And Costello / Classic Math vs. Common Core... Yes, 7 x 13 really DOES equal 28