GOP Sens. Blast Obama ‘Coercion’ of Schools Through Common Core

Nine Republican senators on Wednesday joined the outcry against Common Core State Standards for education introducing a Senate resolution insisting that federal grants should be tied to adopting what critics believe are de facto national standards.

Karima Hawkins of Jackson, foreground, holds a sign against Common Core, the State Standards Initiative that established a single set of educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics, at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014. (AP/Rogelio V. Solis)

“The Obama administration has effectively bribed and coerced states into adopting Common Core,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement Wednesday. “Blanket education standards should not be a prerequisite for federal funding. In order to have a competitive application for some federal grants and flexibility waivers, states have to adopt Common Core. This is simply not the way the Obama administration should be handling education policy. Our resolution affirms that education belongs in the hands of our parents, local officials and states.”

Graham’s South Carolina colleague, Sen. Tim Scott, joined as a co-sponsor to the resolution, as did Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, and Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

TheBlaze first reported last week that Graham was seeking co-sponsors for the draft resolution.

Common Core are education standards for greades K-12 in math and English that were adopted by 45 states and Washington, D.C. The standards were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. It has the backing of the Obama administration’s Education Department and national teacher unions.

Critics including parent groups, private school organizations and lawmakers are concerned that Common Core amounts to a de facto national curriculum through incentives of $3.4 billion in Race to the Top grants from the Department of Education.

“Common Core is another example of Washington trying to control all aspects of Americans’ lives, including the education of our children,” Cruz said in a statement supporting the resolution. “We should not allow the federal government to dictate what our children learn; rather, parents, through their teachers, local schools and state systems, should be able to direct the education of their children.”

Among organizations concerned about the standards are the American Association of Christian Schools and Home School Legal Defense Association.

“HSLDA applauds Sen. Graham for this powerful resolution pushing back against the notion that Washington, D.C. should use taxpayer dollars to pressure states into adopting specific education policy,” said J. Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association. “Parents, teachers and local school districts, not education bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., should be in charge of the critical decisions of what, when and how children learn. The success of homeschooling shows that greater freedom and less top-down control helps lead to academic success.”

The resolution states that education belongs in the hands of states, local governments and parents and that the federal government should not coerce states into adopting uniform standards. More to the point, the resolution states that future applications for federal grants or waivers should not be tied to the adoption of Common Core. It states that linking federal grants to common education will increase federal control over education.

“Educational decisions are best made by parents and teachers – not bureaucrats in Washington,” Scott said. “While Common Core started out as a state-led initiative, the federal government unfortunately decided to use carrots and sticks to coerce states into adopting national standards and assessments. That is simply the wrong choice for our kids.”

Lee added that that states could lose control of their guidelines.

“Common Core has become polluted with federal guidelines and mandates that interfere with the ability of parents, teachers and principals to deliver the education our children deserve,” Lee said. “Rather than increasing coercion, we should be demanding that further interference by the U.S. Department of Education with respect to state decisions on academic content standards be eliminated.”

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)

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