Common Core--A Package Full Of Lies--Here's One State's Example
Thursday, November 14, 2013 at 04:35PM
"For these Superintendent and others who say we've spent so much and we gotta continue--No! If you're feeding poison to your children, you don't want to continue using that poison on supply even if you've invested a lot of money buying it!" Per Professor Sandra Stotsky who was invited to be on the Common Core National Validation Committee.
Most of us realize children are gifts from God and the responsibility to raise them belong to parents. Unfortunately Common Core is a families worst nightmare as it takes away PARENTAL AUTHORITY.
Unfortunately like Obamacare which most Americans have seen as a package of lies and destroys so many-this too is the case with Common Core. Common Core gives control of educating your children to Arne Duncan of US Dept. of Ed just like your family's healthcare is now under the control of Kathleen Sebelius and Dept. of Health and Human Services. As many are groaning of the changes in their healthcare coverage so will many families at the changes in educating the childdren. And you will find same in that Common Core was pushed on states with lies and of course fed $$.
Package of Lies:
Developers LIED!!!
Testimony from Texas Commissioner of Ed-Robert Scott --HE was urged to adopt CC before they were written. Final draft came out in June 2010 and yet these standards were already touted as tested, benchmarked and will make our kids college and career ready. (see signature of Alabama signing on in Jan 2010).
The Developers failed to heed the Science-
The Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education--signed by 500 of the most prominent pediatricians, deveopmental psychologists and researchers that warned CC is developmentally inappropriate.
Standards Same For All Common Core States
From ESEA Flexibility Application: On November 18, 2010, Alabama joined 40 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands in adopting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in Mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA). The adoption by the Alabama State Board of Education (SBOE) incorporated selected Alabama standards with those in the Common Core to create a set of internationally benchmarked college-and career-readiness standards that will prepare students for a future in the ever-expanding global environment. These standards are known as the Alabama College-and Career-Ready Standards (CCRS). http://www2.ed.gov/policy/eseaflex/al.pdf
Tommy Bice --Alabama's State Superintendent LIED!!! These are not Alabama's own standards--they are copyrighted--Alabama can only make a difference on 15% of it which will not be tested. And his Resolutionto get out of CC is "a ruse, an attempt to deceive good people and make it appear the board has done something to correct the common core disaster. In reality, the board is reaffirming its commitment to common core ....", according to a press release submitted by Board Members Stephanie Bell and Betty Peters yesterday. To support their statement, they reference a February memorandum written by the ASDOE General Counsel who stated that "the 2009 Memorandum of Agreement contains no legal obligations and has been superseded in practice at the state level by the state board of education's adoption of AL College and Career Ready Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts."
The mindset of the developers needs to be questioned.
When they tout the Bluest Eye which many see as pornographic(I couldn't read it as it dealt with incenst, rape etc).--it is on their Common Core Website as part of a National List--they are so proud ofit they placed it there--you really need to question who are these people and what kind of a moral compass will we have specially when these standards are copyrighted and parents are out of the loop?
Dr. Carla Horowitz of the Yale Child Study Center (one of the above signers of Joint Statement) says The Core standards will cause SUFFERING not learning for many, many, young children!!!!
Conclusion: The Horror Stories you hear in NY and others states is coming and for some it is already here...New York got into it earlier but here is NY experience which should move every parent to kick out Common Core!!
Testimony-From a licensed clinical social worker in New York State and have been providing psychotherapy services since 1995 appeared before their NY Assembly:
I am a licensed clinical social worker in New York State and have been providing psychotherapy services since 1995. I work with parents, teachers, and students from all socioeconomic backgrounds representing more than 20 different school districts in Suffolk County. Almost half of my caseload consists of teachers.In the summer of 2012, my elementary school teachers began to report increased anxiety over having to learn two entirely new curricula for Math and ELA. I discovered that school districts across the board were completely dismantling the current curricula and replacing them with something more scripted, emphasizing “one size fits all” and taking any imagination and innovation out of the hands of the teachers.In the fall of 2012, I started to receive an inordinate number of student referrals from several different school districts. A large number of honors students—mostly 8th graders—was streaming into my practice.The kids were self-mutilating—cutting themselves with sharp objects and burning themselves with cigarettes. My phone never stopped ringing.What was prompting this increase in self-mutilating behavior? Why now?The answer I received from every single teenager was the same. “I can’t handle the pressure. It’s too much work.”I also started to receive more calls referring elementary school students who were refusing to go to school. They said they felt “stupid” and school was “too hard.” They were throwing tantrums, begging to stay home, and upset even to the point of vomiting.I was also hearing from parents about kids bringing home homework that the parents didn’t understand and they couldn’t help their children to complete. I was alarmed to hear that in some cases there were no textbooks for the parents to peruse and they had no idea what their children were learning.My teachers were reporting a startling level of anxiety and depression. For the first time, I heard the term “Common Core” and I became awakened to a new set of standards that all schools were to adhere to—standards that we now say “set the bar so high, anyone can walk right under them.”Everyone was talking about “The Tests.” As the school year progressed and “The Tests” loomed, my patients began to report increased self-mutilating behaviors, insomnia, panic attacks, loss of appetite, depressed mood, and in one case, suicidal thoughts that resulted in a 2-week hospital stay for an adolescent.I do not know of any formal studies that connect these symptoms directly to the Common Core, but I do not think we need to sacrifice an entire generation of children just so we can find a correlation.The Common Core and high stakes testing create a hostile working environment for teachers, thus becoming a hostile learning environment for students. The level of anxiety I am seeing in teachers can only trickle down to the students. Everyone I see is describing a palpable level of tension in the schools.The Common Core standards do not account for societal problems. When I first learned about APPR and high stakes testing, my first thought was, “Who is going to rate the parents?”I see children and teenagers who are exhausted, running from activity to activity, living on fast food, then texting, using social media, and playing games well into the wee hours of the morning on school nights.We also have children taking cell phones right into the classrooms, “tweeting” and texting each other throughout the day. We have parents—yes PARENTS—who are sending their children text messages during school hours. Let’s add in the bullying and cyberbullying that torments and preoccupies millions of school children even to the point of suicide. Add to that an interminable drug problem.These are only some of the variables affecting student performance that are outside of the teachers’ control. Yet the SED holds them accountable, substituting innovation and individualism with cookie-cutter standards, believing this will fix our schools.We cannot regulate biology. Young children are simply not wired to engage in the type of critical thinking that the Common Core calls for. That would require a fully developed prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is not fully functional until early adulthood. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for critical thinking, rational decision-making, and abstract thinking—all things the Common Core demands prematurely.We teach children to succeed then give them pre-assessments on material they have never seen and tell them it’s okay to fail. Children are not equipped to resolve the mixed message this presents.Last spring, a 6-year-old who encountered a multiplication sign on the NWEA first grade math exam asked the teacher what it was. The teacher was not allowed to help him and told him to just do his best to answer.From that point on, the student’s test performance went downhill. Not only couldn’t the student shake off the unfamiliar symbol, he also couldn’t believe his teacher wouldn’t help him.Common Core requires children to read informational texts that are owned by a handful of corporations. Lacking any filter to distinguish good information from bad, children will readily absorb whatever text is put in front of them as gospel. So, for example, when we give children a textbook that explains the second amendment in these terms: "The people have a right to keep and bear arms in a state militia," they will look no further for clarification.We are asking children to write critically, using emotionally charged language to “persuade” rather than inform. Lacking a functional prefrontal cortex, a child will tap into their limbic system, a set of primitive brain structures involved in basic human emotions, fear and anger being foremost. So when we are asking young children to use emotionally charged language, we are actually asking them to fuel their persuasiveness with fear and anger. They are not capable of the judgment required to temper this with reason and logic.So we have abandoned innovative teaching and instead “teach to the tests,” the dreaded exams that had students, parents and teachers in a complete anxiety state last spring. These tests do not measure learning—what they really measure is endurance and resilience. Only a child who can sit and focus for 90 minutes can succeed. The child who can bounce back after one grueling day of testing and do it all over again the next day has an even better chance.A recent Cornell University study revealed that students who were overly stressed while preparing for high stakes exams performed worse than students who experienced less stress during the test preparation period. Their prefrontal cortexes—the same parts of the brain that we are prematurely trying to engage in our youngsters—were under-performing.We are dealing with real people’s lives here. Allow me introduce you to some of them:…an entire third grade class that spent the rest of the day sobbing after just one testing session,…a 2nd grader who witnessed this and is now refusing to attend the 3rd grade—this 7-year-old is now being evaluated for psychotropic medication just to go to school,…a 6-year-old who came home crying because in September of the first grade, she did not know what a vertex was,…two 8-year-olds who opted out of the ELA exam and were publicly denied cookies when the teacher gave them to the rest of her third grade class,…the teacher who, under duress, felt compelled to do such a thing,…a sixth grader who once aspired to be a writer but now hates it because they “do it all day long—even in math,”…a mother who has to leave work because her child is hysterical over his math homework and his CPA grandfather doesn’t even understand it,…and countless other children who dread going to school, feel “stupid" and "like failures," and are now completely turned off to education.I will conclude by adding this thought. Our country became a superpower on the backs of men and women who studied in one-room schoolhouses.I do not think it takes a great deal of technology or corporate and government involvement for kids to succeed. We need to rethink the Common Core and the associated high stakes testing and get back to the business of educating our children in a safe, healthy, and productive manner. - Mary Calamia, LCSW, CASAC--Statement for New York State Assembly Education Forum Bentwood, New York October 10, 2013
Food for thought for those who says Obama admin had nothing to do with Common Core
Obama's plan: Obama's Sec. of Ed Arne Duncan's speech at 2009 Governors Education Symposium June 14, 2009 Cary, North Carolina...He stated the following..."But if all we do is save jobs, we will miss this opportunity – which is why we are also using this recovery money to drive reform"
"There has never been this much money on the table and there may never be again"
"Once new standards are set and adopted you need to create new tests that measure whether students are meeting those standards. Tonight -- I am announcing that the Obama administration will help pay for the costs of developing those tests."*
"Today, perhaps for the first time, we have enough money to really make a difference."