Action Steps To Defend Against National Take-over of Education

ACTION STEPS: Please ask your Congressional House members to defund Common Core Standards and Race to the Top -- $900 Million in FY 2012.  The House has the authority to do this because they are the branch of government that appropriates funds.

Obama plans for these $900 Million CCS/RTTT federal dollars to go directly to local school districts.  Because superintendents are so desperate to obtain funding, they most assuredly would grab their share of the $900 Million without counting the real cost -- (1) the loss of any local control whatsoever over the day-to-day curriculum and (2) the sure-and-certain indoctrination of every public school child into the Obama administration’s social justice agenda.

 

“Do Not ‘Read Their Lips’ -- National Curriculum Is Upon Us”

by Donna Garner

5.26.11

As you read yesterday’s Education Week article posted further on down the page, please bear this in mind:  Whatever the Obama administration says with their lips is the exact opposite from what they are actually doing. 

Therefore, when Sect. of Education Arne Duncan said at yesterday’s NCEE meeting, "We have not and will not prescribe a national curriculum…it would be against the law to prescribe national curriculum,” we know that that is exactly what the Obama administration is doing.  In fact they are.  Common Core Standards and Race to the Top are nothing but a national curriculum which is absolutely against the law.

For more information, please go to my 5.16.11 article entitled “Rising Chorus of Voices Against Federal Takeover of U. S. Public Schools” --

http://www.educationnews.org/commentaries/insights_on_education/156088.html

Donna Garner

Wgarner1@hot.rr.com

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5.4.11 -- EducationWeek

“Arne Duncan: We Will Not Prescribe a National Curriculum
By Catherine Gewertz on May 24, 2011 1:57 PM  

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2011/05/arne_duncan_on_national_curric.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2

We've been telling you a good deal lately about the arguments over the role of the federal government in promoting common standards and in funding the development of curriculum and assessments for those standards. (If you've been napping, see here for a refresher.)

Until now, we've had only occasional words on this from federal officials (see U.S. Ed Department spokesman Peter Cunningham's comments last week). Most of the volleying on the federalism issue has come from advocates and policy wonks. Today, however, we've got weigh-ins from Rep. John Kline, the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and from Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Kline's comments came during an appearance today on Bill Bennett's radio show, as my colleague Alyson Klein reports over at Politics K-12. During the 13-minute interview, the Minnesota Republican said he thought the federal government was using its Race to the Top program to "push" a "national curriculum." (RTT, you remember, gave states points for adopting the common standards and is also providing funding for state consortia to develop tests and curriculum materials for those standards.)

"My concern is if you look at what the administration is doing with Race to the Top and so forth, on the one hand they will say they want this bottom up, and yet it's all stick and carrot with Race to the Top," Kline said.

"You do what the secretary thinks is a good thing to do and you get rewarded, and if you don't, you get punished. ... That's the line we're talking about, where you get the federal government starting to push a national curriculum, or insisting on one, and as you know, that's been against the law, and I think correctly so. We don't want the secretary of education to decide what the curriculum is in every school in America..."

Duncan weighed in on the topic this morning as well. At a forum hosted by the National Center on Education and the Economy, Duncan was discussing lessons that can be learned from higher-performing countries, and he mentioned national standards and curriculum. But he said: "We have not and will not prescribe a national curriculum. I want to repeat that." This remark prompted laughter from the audience, my colleague Stephen Sawchuk, who attended the forum, reports. Duncan also said it would be against the law to prescribe national curriculum. (A webcast of the symposium is here.)

How, might you ask, could this debate affect the holding-together of the common-core movement? Good question. Worth watching.

Here's a Way Congress Can Save Money and Improve Education

“Congressmen: A Great Place To Cut Funding -- National Assessments”

by Donna Garner

4.9.11

Almost daily I continue to submit my requests to Congress, asking them to cut the federal funding of Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and the national assessments.  

Besides the obvious -- that CCS/RTTT is a federal takeover of the public schools and lies way outside the provisions of the U. S. Constitution -- American taxpayers simply cannot afford it. 

Besides the cost of states’ dumping their own textbooks, standards, and tests in order to implement the Common Core Standards, the cost of the national assessments alone would be horrendous!

An education technology expert whose name I shall keep confidential explained to me how expensive the national assessments would actually be, and the costs would fall squarely on the shoulders of local taxpayers.

To take the national assessments, every student in a school (K-12) would be required to have his own individual technology device because the multi-media, interactive assessments are to be given online; and students would continually be taking formative assessments (a.k.a., periodic, benchmarked) throughout the entire school year.

The USAC Universal Service Fund, which is presently tacked onto the price of all of our cell phones and home phone bills, already supplies Internet Access (IA) at a reduced fee for every public school and library in the country.

The USAC spends $2.5 Billion each year just on telecom, IA, and building infrastructure to these schools and libraries. Therefore, the costs are very substantial already. 

Recently the federal government put $10 Million into a pilot project to give Internet Access (IA) to individual school students.  The federal funding for this pilot project, which provides only the IA, was eaten up almost instantly by just a few school districts. 

For us to understand the scope of the problem, we must realize that states such as Texas have 1,237 separate public school districts and charters, 8,435 campuses, and over 4.8 million students.  California has 1050 districts.  The nation has over 35,000 districts.  

Unfortunately, there is not a cost-effective way to deliver IA to every public school student without their also paying a $30 a month IA fee along with the cost of the technology device.  In fact, the cost of the device itself is becoming incidental to the monthly fees over which AT&T, Verizon, and other companies are salivating.

This is similar to companies giving a free cell phone to a customer if he signs up for the two-year plan; the companies know the monthly fees will more than make up for the cost of the devices themselves. 

As people in the telecommunications industry consider the money to be made under the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and the national assessments, talks have begun surfacing about building mesh networks around the public schools. This would allow Internet Access (IA) to everyone living around the schools (the outliers), and they could use the same IA that the feds through the USAC fees are currently purchasing at the school sites.   The “gotcha” is that the outliers would be required to pay the monthly technology usage fees. 

A huge fiscal problem is that building out these mesh networks around all the public schools in America would cost billions, and the USAC fees would not pay for this part.  

It is easy to see why AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft, Cisco, and Dell are all planning on benefitting from the implementation of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and the national assessments. [From the very first moment that Obama came into the White House, Bill Gates has been using his moneybags to promote CCS/RTTT.)  

As usual, it would be the taxpayers who would have to foot the bill for these national assessments and the technology infrastructure required.  

ACTION STEP:

Please contact your Congressmen and ask them to cut immediately the funding for the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and the national assessments.

Donna Garner

Wgarner1@hot.rr.com

=======================================

As a follow-up to this Education Week Teacher article (posted below), please read my March 18, 2011, article entitled “Taxpayers, Grab Your Wallets.” 

http://www.navigator-news.com/component/content/article/3-local/251-taxpayers-grab-your-wallets

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http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/04/high_tech_testing_on_the_way_a.html

High Tech Testing on the Way: a 21st Century Boondoggle?

Excerpts from this article:

by Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian

When the plans to create Common Core Standards were announced, Secretary Duncan told us that it would be accompanied by assessments to enforce the standards. We were also told that developing standards would be relatively inexpensive, but developing assessments, by contrast, will be a "very heavy lift financially" (USA Today, June 14, 2009).

It is gradually becoming clear that the lift will be extremely heavy. The new tests will be computer-based, administered online, and "will make widespread use of smart technology. They will provide students with realistic, complex performance tasks, immediate feedback, computer adaptive testing, and incorporate accommodations for a range of students" (Duncan, 2010). Duncan noted that "with the benefit of technology, assessment questions can incorporate audio and video. Problems can be situated in real-world environments, where students perform tasks or include multi-stage scenarios and extended essays."

An example:
The National Education Technology Plan 2010 (U.S. Department of Education; Office of Educational Technology) describes one kind of testing that is being developed, testing that takes place "in the course of learning" (xvii) and that tries to find out what students are thinking while doing projects:

As students work, the system can capture their inputs and collect evidence of their problem-solving sequences, knowledge, and strategy use, as reflected by the information each student selects or inputs, the number of attempts the student makes, the number of hints and type of feedback given, and the time allocation across parts of the problem.

(pages 29-30: "Assessing during online learning").

Aside from the mind-control aspect of this kind of testing, how much will it cost, in addition to the cost of developing, testing and revising the new tests?

If we are going to have computer-based tests, and if they are to be delivered to students via the internet, the first requirement is that all students need to be connected to the internet. A recent article in the New York Times gives us some idea of what will be involved. The article begins by noting that money is scarce these days:

Despite sharp drops in state aid, New York City's Department of Education plans to increase its technology spending, including $542 million next year alone that will primarily pay for wiring and other behind-the-wall upgrades to city schools ... and $315 million for additional schools by 2014...

(New York Times, "In city schools, tech spending to rise despite cuts," March 30, 2011)

Buried deep the article is a statement by "city officials" that the huge expenditures for technology are primarily to make it possible for students to take computerized national standardized tests.

We can expect this to happen nation-wide. If the New York figure is extrapolated to the entire country, the cost to connect all children to the internet will be at least 50 times the cost of connecting New York City alone, or $25 billion (New York City enrolls one million students, the USA as a whole, over 60 million). This is only to connect students to the internet. The whistles and bells needed to do "computer adaptive testing" with audio and video will cost more.

Technology, of course, continues to develop all the time, and consumers have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to discard the old and embrace the new, even at considerable expense. We can expect that after every student is connected, sooner or later the set-up will become obsolete and need to be replaced, either in part or totally. The schools, we predict, will cheerfully pay up, eager for the "newest" technology, and the computer companies will cheerfully accept their money.

The billions spent so that students can take national tests will have a huge payoff for the entire computer industry in other ways. This was enthusiastically announced by Education Secretary Duncan's Chief of Staff and former CEO of the New Schools Venture Fund, Joanne Weiss. Weiss noted that because all students will have internet access in order to be tested, technology companies can now profit from one giant national market for all their educational products:

The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale

(Weiss, 2011)…

Of course, the administration has argued that these will be new and better tests, more sensitive to growth in learning, able to chart student progress through the year, and able to probe real learning, not just memorization. Before unleashing these "improved" tests on the country, however, there should be rigorous investigation, rigorous studies to show that these measures are worth the investment. Right now, the corporations and politicians insist that we take on faith the claim that these tests are good for students. Such claims exhibit a profound lack of accountability…

The Department of Education plans to use American students as experimental subjects to try out an extremely expensive, time-consuming and dubious testing program that will engulf classrooms. If it fails, the effect on students will be devastating, with schools robbed of money, and a generation of students poorly educated, teacher professionalism subsumed by data management, and schools robbed of funds for anything but technology repair. But the testing and technology companies will win, profiting regardless of the success or failure of their products and always ready to convince us that the next versions will be better…

Dr. Stephen Krashen is a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. He has written numerous books on his research into literacy and language acquisition. In recent years he has emerged as a persistent voice pointing towards the basic steps we should take to build literacy and strong academic skills for our students.

Susan Ohanian, a longtime teacher, has written 25 books on education, including When Childhood Collides with NCLB and co-authorship of Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? Since the passage of NCLB, she has run a website of resistance, www.susanohanian.org, which received the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public language. She is a fellow at National Education Policy Center and an editor at Substancenews.net…

Donna Garner

Wgarner1@hot.rr.com



Common Core Standards--Is It Bill Gates or Lou Gerstner or Obama's Standards?

Audio link to interviews--with Betty Peters   with Donna Garner--pointing to troubling plans and effect on boys(at bottom half of interview)

Common Core Standards--Who really is behind it?

A.  The Bill Gates Money Jump Start:

The Gates foundation gives nearly four times as much annually to education as the Walton Family Foundation.  Could there be ulterior motives behind such benevolence and such great PR--some wonders about it.  The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gave 25 states money to help apply for Obama's Race to the Top grants. It also gave 35 million since January 2008 to the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and other organizations developing and promoting the common core standards.   Obama praises the standards movement but cannot fund it directly as it is unconstitutional.  Bill Gates Foundation however has stepped in to fill the gap. (However as in Arne Duncan's speech below they will fund the assessments.*)

An article dated Nov 12, 2008 SEATTLE  cites the foundation’s $500 million investment in experimenting with performance-based teacher pay systems; another $500 million toward creating data systems; advocacy work pushing for national standards; and efforts to create a national test distributed to states and school districts in the country, free of charge for now.  Some are speculating that what he's spent is chump change as his company may eventually reap a lot as government spending on K-12 education is estimated at more than a whopping $500 billion yearly.

Bill Gates, announced his new initiatives to a private meeting of about 100 school officials, union leaders, and policy experts such as: " the presidents of the two major American teachers unions; the current U.S. Education Secretary, Margaret Spellings; at least one former Education Secretary, Dick Riley, who served under President Bill Clinton; and several people named as possible Education Secretary in the Barack Obama administration now being formed."

B.  Enter Achieve:

In April 2009, representatives from 41 states met with CCSSO and National Governors Association representatives in Chicago and agreed to draft a set of common standards for education.

They commissioned Achieve to draft the new "common core" standards by summer '09 and grade-by-grade standards by the end of the year.   Achieve work-groups met in private and the development work was conducted by persons who were not, with apparently only a single exception, K-12 educators. The work groups were staffed almost exclusively by employees of Achieve, testing companies (ACT and the College Board), and pro-accountability groups (e.g., America's Choice, Student Achievement Partners, the Hoover Institute). 

C.  Obama's plan:

Obama's Sec. of  Ed Arne Duncan's speech at  2009 Governors Education Symposium  June 14, 2009 Cary, North Carolina

He states the following:

 Perfect Storm for Reform

• Obama effect
• Leadership on the Hill and the Unions
• Proven strategies for success
• The Recovery Act -- $100B

 "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."

Money indeed-- from the American people to implement the plan.

D.  Mr. Lou Gerstner's suggestions:

Wall Street Journal article Nov 23, 2008-- See Mr. Lou Gerstner suggestion to the president elect Obama:

..."I’m going to suggest is that he convene the 50 governors, and the first thing they do is they abolish the 16,000 school districts we have in the United States. Sixteen thousand school districts are what we’re trying to cram this reform through...

These organizations stand in the way of what we want to do.

Now, the governors could decide, we’ll keep them as advisory, we can keep them as community support, but they will not be involved in the fundamental direction of public education in America. Second, this group of governors will then select 50 school districts, plus I’d say 20 major cities, so we got 70 school districts. Seventy instead of 16,000.

They will within one year develop a national set of standards for math, science, reading and social studies. Twelve months after that they will develop a national testing regime, so that there’ll be one day in America where every third, sixth, ninth and twelfth grader will take a national test against a national curriculum."

And as Chairman of Achieve--his plans are being carried out thanks to Bill Gates money and the administration of O'bama.

So really there are many behind the common core standards including all three named on the title.  They have pooled their resources.  And with the perfect storms in healthcare, jobs etc., which most parents are still trying to figure they can hardly pay attention to the future of America--their children.  And with the flowery words in the presentations of the common core states standards the ugly truth has been beautifully hidden.   America has monied and powerful people that think they know best for your children and you are not a part of the equation (just in the payment).   I hope you will no longer be ignorant to this precious foundation of the future of America--but be wary and share your thoughts with your governors (governors can be the key--hear interview).

E.  Enter Kevin Jennings Dream:

Kevin Jennings, the safe schools czar in the Dept of Ed (that unlike the green czar, Van Jones could not be removed--though some in Congress tried)has plans for our kids.  Dr. Sandra Stotsky, one of the professors in the validation committee, would not affirm these common core standards and one of the reason is there is so much left out of the standards.  

Indeed they have made "room" for affecting thoughts of generations of children.   Kevin Jennings has said he looks forward to the day when “promoting homosexuality” in schools will be seen in a positive light (find out more on plans click here.) 

F.  The Church disconnect of their role in government--remember this nation shed tyranny due to the warnings and help of the church.  Have we failed and are we on the way to living in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah?  Media and schools may both be promoting that to our children.

“Temptations (that is, snares, traps set to entice to sin) are sure to come; but woe to him by or through whom they come! It would be more profitable for him of a millstone were hung around his neck and he were hurled into the sea, than that he should cause to sin or be a snare to one of these little ones.” Luke 17:1&2 Amplified.

Those snares are on the way and it is through the Dept. of Ed.  Our children are no longer safe and most citizens are too tired to do anything.   Would you please be the one to help take a stand and protect them, your right as parents and the future of this nation?  First step is get informed-share it with your church-  click here and maybe a petition.  Listen to interviews and learn more about the common core standards and be sure to PRAY (the founding fathers did and it made all the difference).