Truth That Common Core or National Standards Is Truly A Dumbing Down--Even In Science

Boston Herald

Circulation: 185,000

Science friction

By Boston Herald Editorial Staff | Sunday, August 14, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Editorials

We’ve always thought Massachusetts should stay out of national curriculum standards in math and English because our standards were better, but the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education signed up anyway. We did say national standards were bound to be an improvement for many states. Now we’re no longer so sure.

An influential body has proposed new science curriculum standards (“frameworks” in education jargon). The state board plans to align the Massachusetts standards with whatever national ones emerge. Both the board and the national organizations sponsoring the “Common Core” project should reject this bewildering effort from the National Academy of Sciences.

We were alerted to this by Ze’ev Wurman, a software expert who helped develop California’s standards and who commented critically on the new Massachusetts standards. In his blog comment on the Academy’s proposal he said: “The framework does not expect students to use any kind of analytical mathematics while studying science.”

The document only expects students by grade 12 to be competent in recognizing this and expressing that, and in using “simple mathematical expressions’” to see if something “makes sense,” Wurman wrote.

Wurman could find only one equation in all 280 pages of the proposal. A careful reading of the 29 pages of the physical sciences section, where equations would be most important, found none at all.

This is baffling. Mathematics, to which the authors devoted much praise, is the language of science. Wurman’s conclusion, which we share: The document “simply teaches our students science appreciation.”

The size of the document is a disqualifier, too. Teachers and principals need a concise document that will tell them what students need to know and how to learn it, not endless streams of sludgy prose.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view.bg?articleid=1358585

Jeb Bush and Ties To Promoting Common Core Standards

[Just in case any of you read the Wall Street Journal today in which Jeb Bush and Joel Klein lauded CCSS/RTTT -- Donna Garner]

“The Three-Legged Stool: Obama, Duncan, Gates”

by Donna Garner

5.22.11

The one thing that this New York Times article (posted below) “forgets” to mention is that Obama shares the same agenda with Bill Gates and Arne Duncan. All three have worked together to take the public schools of America away from local control and put them under the control of the federal government.  All three share a big-government, Socialist agenda.  Gates had the money; Obama and Duncan had the power.  Obama, Gates, and Duncan are “the three-legged stool.”

To learn the inner details about the takeover of the public schools by the Obama administration (including Bill Gates), 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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5.22.11 -- Here is a quick summary of this New York Times article.  I have listed the individuals and organizations who were “paid off” by Bill Gates to carry out the Obama/Duncan takeover of the public schools.

INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS “PAID OFF” BY BILL GATES TO CARRY OUT THE OBAMA AGENDA

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Allan C. Golston, president of U. S. Program for Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Frederick M. Hess, American Enterprise Institute

Education Equality Project and Education Trust

Bill Gates and Eli Broad -- influenced Presidential candidates -- 2008

National Governors Association, Council of Chief School Officers -- promoted and developed Common Core Standards (CCS)

Achieve, Inc. -- coordinating national assessments aligned with CCS

Alliance for Excellent Education -- to grow support for CCS

Fordham Institute -- received $959,000 to review and develop supportive materials for CCS

Chester E. Finn Jr. (president of Fordham Institute) --promoted CCS when released in March 2010

Center on Education Policy (president Jack Jennings) -- tracked states who committed to CCS

New Teacher Project -- wrote report faulting teacher evaluation systems -- led to development of national teacher evaluation system for CCS/RTTT

$2 Million to produce “Waiting for Superman”

American Federation of Teachers

National Education Association

Foundation for Education Excellence (founded by Jeb Bush) -- advocacy group -- established strong ties to journalists

Educators for Excellence and Teach Plus -- pressures new teachers  -- mouthpieces for Gates

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

Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates

By SAM DILLON

Published: May 21, 2011

 

INDIANAPOLIS — A handful of outspoken teachers helped persuade state lawmakers this spring to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies. They testified before the legislature, wrote briefing papers and published an op-ed article in The Indianapolis Star.

Bill Gates's foundation spent $373 million on education efforts in 2009, the latest year for which its tax filings are available.

Annotated Excerpts of the Gates Foundation 990 Form 2009

They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform — one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, “They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers’ union lobbyists.” They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Read more

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/education/22gates.html?_r=1&ref=education

“He’s not the nation’s superintendent,” Rep John Kline said of Arne Duncan-Those Who Does Not Want To Lose Local Controls Has A Hero In John Kline

Rep John Kline, chairman of the House education committee on Thursday challenged plans by the education secretary to override provisions of the No Child Left Behind Law.

Responding to Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s promise to grant states waivers if Congress failed to rewrite it, Representative John Kline of Minnesota, sent Mr. Duncan a letter on Thursday with a demand of an explanation by July 1 the legal authority that he believed he had to issue the waivers.

Mr. Kline went further in a conference call with reporters, criticizing the administration’s use of the $5 billion Race to the Top grant competition to get states to adopt its reform agenda.

“He’s not the nation’s superintendent,” Mr. Kline said of Mr. Duncan, who increased his reach when in 2009, Congress gave $100 billion in economic stimulus money for Education for Mr. Duncan to use at his discretion.

Rep Kline said--“Unquestionably, Congress gave the secretary way too much authority in the stimulus bill when it said, ‘Here’s $5 billion, go do good things for education,’ ”

Indeed, this should be a wake up call to all the states to start looking at the truth--common core states standards was a well thought of plan to use federal money to nationalize education and it certainly was not to raise the nation's standards as facts speak loud and clear even the best standards in California's math and Massachusetts ELA are now dumbed down thanks to blind leading the blind syndrome.  Thank God for Rep John Kline, Texas Gov Rick Perry, Donna Garner, Peyton Wolcott and others who are trying to shine the light.  In today's economic suicide that this Administration have us heading for--it is time to put the brakes and isn't it ironic--it must start in the Dept of Education!

Read article

Visit and find the truth in

http://truthinamericaneducation.com/

Common Core Standards and Truth In American Education--New Site To Give Facts

[6.8.11 -- I was notified today that a new website has just been launched -- Truth in American Education. The site looks very informative, current, and well done to me. - Donna Garner]

http://truthinamericaneducation.com/

Excerpts from this website:

Truth in American Education (TAE) shines a beacon of light directly on the government’s behind-the-scenes efforts to drastically alter American education. As taxpayers, parents and concerned citizens, we believe that proper respect for the American people requires that major educational changes be subject to an open and public discussion prior to approval and implementation, not the other way around…

Truth in American Education provides information to parents, taxpayers, school board members, educators and legislators who are concerned about these issues.

Donna Garner

Wgarner1@hot.rr.com

Common Core Standards--Action Steps

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.