Common Core A Part of Leftist Centralized Education Plan, Says Heritage Foundation Report

by DR. SUSAN BERRY29 Mar 201689

The Common Core standards initiative is part of the progressive push to centralize education, says the Heritage Foundation in a new report – a compilation of essays by experts in education policy in the United States.

Lindsey Burke, a Heritage Foundation education fellow, introduces the report with a summary of how the Common Core initiative evolved:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was created by Achieve, Inc., and driven primarily by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association. The effort began moving forward in earnest in 2009, with the financial support of the Obama Administration. Following the introduction of Common Core, the Administration offered $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top grant money, along with waivers from the onerous provisions of the widely derided No Child Left Behind Act.

Forty-six states signed on to Common Core, either enticed by the waiver/grant package dangled before them by Washington, or out of a belief in the project itself. Whatever the motivation, the Common Core standards, along with federally funded common assessments aligned to the standards, put American education on the path toward a national curriculum.

Neal McCluskey, director of education at the Cato Institute, writes in his essay, “[T]he trajectory of Common Core is a direct path to a federal curriculum.” He continues with a history of education in the United States and the march toward centralization.

“Americans do not need centralization at the national level; rather, we need to move to complete decentralization so we can treat children as what they are: unique individuals,” McCluskey states.

Theodor Rebarber, CEO of AccountabilityWorks, explains the seeming paradox that many proponents of “school choice” are also proponents of Common Core. He observes that some conservatives and libertarians have been fooled into believing the “market-based language” of school choice used by many who also support Common Core’s standards-based tests.

Rebarber writes that the United States has been using a model of education policy whereby “curriculum standards serve as the fulcrum for education reform…state policy elites aim to create excellence in the classroom using an array of policy levers and knobs – all aligned back to the standards…”

“Common Core defines and constrains the content and sequencing of the curriculum—and, in many cases, even the instructional methods—to such an extent that the distinction is disingenuous,” he writes.

The Advanced Placement and SAT programs are created and administered by the College Board whose president, David Coleman, was also the “architect” of the Common Core standards. Stanley Kurtz, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, writes:

Under Coleman’s leadership, the College Board has begun to radically redesign all of its Advanced Placement exams, not just AP U.S. History. Ultimately, this transformation will also include subjects such as Physics, World History, European History, U.S. Government and Politics, and Art History. So in effect, Common Core covers English and math, while the College Board’s AP subjects cover the rest of the curriculum.

“It is time to wake up and realize that Common Core has radically expanded its reach, capturing the entire spectrum of the curriculum, not in name, but in fact,” Kurtz adds. “If we are ever to restore local control and public accountability to America’s education system, the College Board’s recent power grab must be a central component of the debate over Common Core.”

William Estrada – director of federal relations at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) – says that, as a result of the unpopularity of the Common Core initiative, homeschooling is growing in the United States. He articulates his concern that, with further centralization of education, homeschooling freedom will be adversely affected.

“The current Common Core effort has applied solely to the public schools thus far, but if proponents are successful at establishing a nationalized one-size-fits-all approach to education, policymakers will likely inquire as to why homeschoolers and private-schoolers are not taking the same tests,” he writes. “How do we know, the argument will go, that these children are receiving a good education?”

Williamson Evers, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, explains that despite parents’ and taxpayers’ passion for local control of education, given the current public school “monopoly” of distant elites setting policy, those closest to the children “view the public schools as an unresponsive, declining bureaucracy carrying out edicts from distant capitals.”

Evers says Common Core not only “undermines competitive federalism,” but also “in part” was “designed to do so.” Nevertheless, he sees organized groups of parents pressing for Common Core’s repeal in their respective states and opting out of the Common Core-aligned tests as a positive force for education freedom.

The entire Heritage Foundation report can be read here.

Sales Manager at Major Textbook Publisher Quickly Fired After Hidden Camera Captures Common Core Claims

A sales manager at one of the nation’s largest textbook companies has been fired after she was caught making controversial claims about Common Core on an undercover video.

Dianne Barrow, who was secretly recorded while at a restaurant by conservative muckrakers with Project Veritas, laughingly said that she “hate[s] kids” and simply does her job to sell books. While unknowingly being recorded, Barrow alleged that Common Core simply enables publishing companies to sell more textbooks and make more money.

“You don’t think that educational publishing companies are in it for the education, do you,” Barrow, the West Coast sales manager for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said. “No, they’re in it for the money.”

Image source: YouTube

“It’s all about the money,” she said again at another point in the video released Tuesday. “What, are you crazy? It’s all about the money.”

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Senior Vice President Bianca Olson confirmed to the Daily Mail on Tuesday that Barrow “has been terminated.”

“I hate kids,” Barrow had been caught on the undercover video saying. “I’m in it to sell books; don’t even kid yourself for a heartbeat.”

The company’s CEO, Linda Zecher, told the Daily Mail that she and her company are “as appalled by these comments as we expect readers will be.”

“These statements in no way reflect the views of HMH and the commitment of our over 4,000 employees who dedicate their lives to serving teachers and students every day,” Zecher said. “The individual who made these comments is a former employee who was with HMH for less than a year.”

Jodi Cohen, a Brooklyn teacher, seemed to confirm Barrow’s comments while speaking to an undercover journalist at what appears to be a bar.

“Oh my god, it’s all a money game,” she said. ”And the things is, what they do is, they create some new f***ing system that f***ing sucks to sell more books, and then we have to learn something new with the students,” she said. “So it’s bulls**t.”

Besides Common Core, Barrow also weighed in on the 2016 presidential race.

“Who is listening to Donald Trump. I mean, come on,” she said of the GOP frontrunner. “Do you know who is listening to Donald Trump? It’s all old, white men that are frustrated with their lives.”

“It’s like a midlife crisis,” she continued. “And so, he doesn’t know policy, he doesn’t even — has he ever read the Constitution?”

Watch the heavily edited video from Project Veritas below.

Common Core-Related Worksheet Teaches That Only White Schools Get New Textbooks

A Florida father is up in arms over a class worksheet his fourth-grader received that stated that “only schools in white districts” get new textbooks.

It was part of a story in a “cause and effect” lesson Tim Marden’s son was assigned at Newberry Elementary in north-central Florida:

One day some time ago, a boy named Jack was doing his homework. His mother began to examine Jack’s textbook. A puzzled look clouded her face. She noticed that the book was worn and missing a dozen pages.

The next day, she told the school’s principal that Jack deserved better materials. He agreed, but said that only schools in white districts got new texts. Schools in African American areas got old, damaged books.

So Jack’s mother met with a lawyer. They filed a legal case, claiming unequal and unfair treatment toward Jack. A judge decided that Jack’s mother was right. The board of education agreed to revise the system for providing materials to schools in the district.

Marden told TheBlaze he asked his child’s teacher about the worksheet, and the teacher agreed it was troubling and “developmentally inappropriate.”

Alachua County Public Schools spokeswoman Jackie Johnson told TheBlaze the exercise comes from the state’s Florida Standards, which she described as ”pretty much Common Core standards with some changes.” She did not comment about the “appropriateness” of the example used.

Johnson said the goal of the unit is for students to “understand that the right of equal opportunity is or was protected by the Civil Rights Act, integration and changing laws; Martin Luther King Jr.; [and] the U.S. Constitution.”

“Any parent, student or staff member who objects to an instructional material may also request that the material be re-evaluated at the school level, then at the district level,” Johnson said.

Madden said he has no objection to his child learning about racism, but said the lesson should be more specific rather than the “obtuse nature” of the worksheet.

“It’s just a made-up story, it lacks concrete, fact-based information, ” he said. “We have so much history, why not use it?”

Arkansas Mother Obliterates Common Core in 4 Minutes!

Judge Takes a Swipe at Common Core

Ahead of the controversial Common Core exams being administered across the country, a judge ruled Tuesday that the state of Missouri’s membership with a testing company aligned with the Common Core State Standards is illegal, the Associated Press reported.

Missouri conducts its Common Core math and English exams in grades three through eight under by the Smarter Balanced Consortium of 16 states, out of more than 40, who have adopted the standards.

Cole County, Missouri Circuit Judge Daniel Green said the state’s membership with the testing company is “illegal interstate compact not authorized by the U.S. Congress.”

Missouri’s education department budgeted about $4.3 million for member dues this fiscal year.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers developed the controversial Common Core education standards. The U.S. Department of Education has tied federal grants to states with adopting Common Core, which critics say makes it a de facto federal program. More than 40 states adopted the standards, but three states have outright repealed it, while numerous others are reviewing or rolling back certain aspects of the standards.

Two private testing companies are involved in administering the exams, Smarter Balance and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

You ought to listen to the videos in the Mississippi web site to stop Common Core

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.