ANOTHER REASON TO BE WORRIED ABOUT COMMON CORE: ‘THE CHILDREN BELONG TO ALL OF US’

In yet another reason to worry about Common Core, a proponent of the education standards said that “the children belong to all of us.”

The liberal think tank Center for American Progress held a forum on the English and math standards on Friday that have been adopted by 45 states and Washington, D.C., CNSNews.comreported.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, left, speaks with student Stephanie Gil after roundtable discussion with local students, parents and educators at the Benito Juarez Community Academy in Chicago, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013. (AP/Kamil Krzaczynski)

A panelist and former Massachusetts education secretary Paul Reville dismissed opposition to Common Core.

“To be sure, there’s always a small voice – and I think these voices get amplified in the midst of these arguments – of people who were never in favor of standards in the first place and never wanted to have any kind of testing or accountability and those voices get amplified,” Reville said, according to CNSNews.com. “But those are a tiny minority.”

He continued arguing against leaving standards entirely at the local level.

“Why should some towns and cities and states have no standards or low standards and others have extremely high standards when the children belong to all of us and would move [to different states in their educational lives]?” Reville said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) this week is expected to introduce a Senate resolution critical of the Common Core state standards, and objecting to the use of $4.3 billion in Department of Education “Race to the Top” grants to promote its adoption.

During the Center for American Progress panel Friday, Reville said states have voluntarily adopted the standards because it made sense for them.

“So, it’s less about where it came from and more about, ‘OK, now we settled on this as a set of targets, what are the strategies we need to implement, to be successful at it?’ Because educators and students want to be successful,” Reville said.
The Center for American Progress was founded by John Podesta, current counsel to President Barack and former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton.

Common Core education standards were adopted by 45 states for English and math for kindergarten through 12th grade. Though not formally a set of national standards, many critics believe it has become de facto standards through an Obama administration’s carrot and stick approach. Common Core is supported by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The standards have even prompted opposition on the left, as the as the New York State United Teachers, the state’s public school teacher union, announced formal oppositions to the standards.

MIKE HUCKABEE TO COMMON CORE CREATORS: REBRAND, DON'T RETREAT

Though former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told his Fox News Channel audience in early December he was no longer supporting the Common Core standards for which he had avidly campaigned, his message to one of the groups that created the standards was different.

According to The Washington Post, at a recent meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), one of the organizations that created the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Huckabee urged state education officials to get rid of the “Common Core” name because it has become “toxic.”

As the Post indicates, however, Huckabee still intends to support the standards.

“Rebrand it, refocus it, but don’t retreat,” Huckabee reportedly told CCSSO members.

As Breitbart News reported in December, Huckabee, who is considered to be a Republican presidential hopeful in 2016, opened one of his shows by telling his audience that people have been posting on his Facebook page that they will never watch his show again because he supports the Common Core standards. Others, he said, have told him they could not trust him because of his support of the standards, and some said he needed to learn the truth about Common Core.

“I don’t support what Common Core has become in many states or school districts,” Huckabee said. “Look, I’m dead set against the federal government creating a uniform curriculum for any subject. I oppose the collection of personal data on students that would identify them and then track them, and certainly any effort to give that personal information to the federal government.”

“I am steadfast in my belief that parents – parents – should ultimately decide the best venue for their children’s education, whether it’s public schools, private schools, religious schools, or home schools,” Huckabee added.

Merely changing the name of the “Common Core” standards, in fact, is becoming the new trend across the country.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has used an executive order to purge the name “Common Core” from the standards and refer to them, instead, as Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards: "The Executive Order requires that executive agencies refer to the standards, adopted in 2010, as Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards, and encourages citizens and education stakeholders to do the same."

Similarly, in Iowa, the Common Core standards are now called The Iowa Core, and inFlorida, the push is on to delete the words “Common Core” from official education documents and replace them with Next Generation Sunshine State Standards.

The superficial changes are indicative of several things.

First, the Common Core creators, the political class, and the Obama administration have clearly been placed on the defensive by parents, teachers, and American citizens in general – though not all of these groups are fighting Common Core for the same reasons.

For example, while many parents are concerned their children’s education will be dumbed down for the sake of the federal government’s desire to promote economic social justice and redistribution, teachers’ unions are focused on the fact that their angry members face teacher performance ratings that will be tied to students’ test scores on the Common Core-aligned assessments. Note that both the National Education Association (NEA) and Randi Weingarten's American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have not rejected the Common Core standards at all – only their “implementation” as it has occurred.

As veteran educator and author Marion Brady wrote at the Post about the fact that Americans across the political spectrum are opposed to the Common Core:

Three cheers for those on the political right. Three more for those on the left. May the chaos in Washington and state capitols over education policy help the public realize that, in matters educational, the leaders of business and industry and the politicians who listen to them are blind bulls in china shops.

...

Compared to most of the complex realities facing humankind, what’s happening to the reality visible out my window is small potatoes. But making sense of it (and all other realities) requires a particular kind of thinking—a kind of thinking that makes civilized life possible. However, the Common Core Standards don’t promote that kind of thinking. That means it won’t get taught, which means it won’t get tested, which means we’re not really educating, which means too much to even try to summarize.

Second, a superficial tweaking of the “Common Core” name demonstrates that the political elite and corporatists funding the standards believe Americans can still be easily misled.

“Political power must be exercised, but parents, grandparents, and thoughtful, caring citizens are the only ones with enough clout to exercise it effectively,” Brady writes. “They need to recognize poor policy when they see it, organize, and act appropriately.”

Arkansas Mother Obliterates Common Core in 4 Minutes!

NEW YORK COMMON CORE WEBSITE SENT STUDENTS TO SEX QUIZ PAGE

*The following article contains graphic, sexually explicit terms.

While lawmakers in New York State are considering delaying the Common Core standards initiative because of its disastrous rollout, new problems with the academic standards are now drawing intense criticism.

Carol Burris, New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year, reports at Valerie Strauss’s Washington Post blog that Anna Shah, the mother of a kindergarten student, discovered highly offensive materials on the Student Services Page of the Engage NYCommon Core materials site. When Shah reported her discovery to NYSED, the page was taken down, though the link had reportedly been active since October of 2012.

The link below is to a screen shot made prior to the removal of the site. 

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) site contained a section called “Make test prep fun,” which directed students to a site with quizzes that help them find out if they are a “sexy bitch,” “evil,” a “freak,” “insane,” etc.

Scrolling down and right on the page, students could also click on the links to take quizzes that would help them find out if they are “sluts,” or “losers.”

Questions on the “Are you a slut?” test include:

• How many sexual partners have you had?
• Would you have a threesome or a gang bang?
• Are you often called a slut?
• Have you ever let a boy hump you or grind on you in your younger years?
• Have you ever messed around with brothers, cousins, or some other people related somehow?
• What type of sex do you enjoy/prefer?

Students who wish to find out if they are a “loser” must answer these questions:

• Are you a virgin?
• Do you pay to talk to hot girls, and or pay for any female interaction?
• How many times per day do you jerk your dick to porn/female pictures?
• When did you last have sex?
• How much is in your savings and checking?
• What’s the average size of your dick?
• How much time do you spend on femdom sites per day?
• Do you cross dress?

As Burris writes, the Engage NY website, created and maintained by NYSED, was supposed to be a step in a positive direction for Common Core in New York. Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch had earlier boasted that New York is the only state using its award of over $28 million in Race to the Top funds to develop curricula aligned with the new standards:

When parents and teachers complained about the content of the curriculum modules, state education Commissioner John King dismissed their concerns, saying that he has “tremendous confidence in the materials.” He often describes the interest in New York’s reforms by the number of “hits” on Engage NY pages.

Based on the “Make test prep fun” fiasco, Burris quips, “sometimes ‘hits’ on the pages prove to be embarrassing.”

FED UP WITH THEIR KIDS’ FAILING MATH GRADES UNDER COMMON CORE, THESE PARENTS TOOK MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS

Parents fed up with their kids’ declining math grades under newly adopted Common Core standards took an unorthodox step to remedy the problem: They pulled their children out of school for an hour a day to teach them at home.

Nine parents took their seventh- and eighth-graders from math class at Evergreen Middle School in Hillsboro, Ore., reported KATU-TV in Portland, citing a sudden drop in grades and performance.

Seventh-grader Amy Craig had always been an “A” student in math until this year when she brought home a “D,” her mother Julie Craig told KATU. Another mom said her daughter, previously a sold “B” math student, is now failing the subject.

Julie Craig took her daughter out of math class after her grades dropped. (Image source: KATU-TV)

So the parents keep their kids at home for an hour each morning, then the kids head to school for the rest of the day.

This is the first school year that every Oregon public school has been using Common Core teaching standards, KATU reported.

“Our teachers would tell you math is more challenging this year than it was a year ago,” Rian Petrick, principal of Evergreen Middle School, told the station.

Petrick said he’s not surprised some students are struggling, as Common Core math standards call for fewer numbers and formulas and more word problems and real-world scenarios, along with more group work.

Evergreen Middle School principal Rian Petrick said newly adopted Common Core standard have proven difficult for some students. (Image source: KATU-TV)

“Our teachers feel like it’s the best thing for kids,” Petrick said, “making them look much deeper into mathematics than they have in the past.”

But asked whether the standards were the best thing considering nine families pulled their kids from math class over stress and struggles, a Hillsboro School District spokeswoman present for the KATU interview stopped Petrick before he could answer.

“You don’t have to answer that, Rian,” she interjected. ‘That’s an aggressive question.”

According to KATU, while the state won’t test students on Common Core math standards until 2015, it has predicted that up to two-thirds of middle schoolers could fail those standards based on a similar test.

The Oregon Department of Education did not immediately return a request for comment from TheBlaze Friday.

Separately, Oregon state Rep. Lew Frederick noted a “searing critique” of Common Core by Catholic scholars on his Facebook page, KATU added. The statement issued last month reads in part: “Promoters of Common Core say that it is designed to make America’s children ‘college and career ready.’ We instead judge Common Core to be a recipe for standardized workforce preparation.”

The critique also states, “Common Core adopts a bottom-line, pragmatic approach to education. The heart of its philosophy, as far as we can see, is that it is a waste of resources to ‘over-educate’ people.”

(H/T: KATU-TV)

TN Student Speaks Out About Common Core, Teacher Evaluations, and Educat...

Second-graders taught labor politics in Core Curriculum-aligned lesson plan

Published October 23, 2013

FoxNews.com

A textbook company contracted to produce materials under the Common Core State Standards is trying to teach students as young as second grade about economic fairness by praising unions, protests and labor leader Cesar Chavez, according to an education watchdog group.

Zaner-Bloser, which is based in Columbus, Ohio, is distributing a lesson plan aimed at teaching second-graders about “equality” by highlighting labor issues, according to Education Action Group Foundation, a non-partisan organization that looks to promote education reform.

As part of the plan, students spend a week reading “Harvesting Hope,” a book about Chavez written by children’s author Kathleen Krull, and then discuss what the lesson plan calls “scales of fairness,” which compare the living conditions of farm workers to that of land owners.

“Fairness and equality exist when the scales are balanced,” teachers are prompted to instruct the students. They are then supposed to ask the students whether both sides, as presented in the plan, are equal, providing a correct answer of “no” in the teachers’ guides.

“Why are we teaching organized labor lessons to young children?” asked Kyle Olson, the publisher of the group’s website. “Isn’t there a simpler way to teach about fairness, like saying it’s not fair if Johnny works all day and gets one piece of candy while Jimmy plays video games all day and gets the same piece of candy?”

It was not immediately clear how many districts are using Zaner-Bloser’s materials. But the company on Wednesday evening defended the Common Core standards and said Education Action Group was targeting one lesson plan instead of viewing the program as a whole.

"Education Action Group has chosen to focus on one book out of the 174 books that accompany the program," the company said in a statement. "These books are written by independent authors and have been widely published by major children's publishing houses."

Chavez, who died in 1993, is considered an icon of the American labor movement and Latino community for his efforts to unionize field workers across the country.  Last year, the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument was dedicated in Keene, California, an event at which President Obama spoke.

This isn’t the first time Olson has taken issue with Zaner-Bloser’s materials. Earlier this month, Olson ripped the company for teaching third-graders about organizing protests, a lesson plan that cited the 1985 SEIU-led janitors strike in Los Angeles.